Games that shaped me - the early days

I’m 44, and honestly have no idea what the first game I ever played was, but I do know that my childhood contained Monopoly, Chess, Draughts, Pool, and many games you could play with a traditional deck of cards. Cribbage. Knockout Whist. Hearts - though I only ever played that on my computer, against 3 computer opponents, thanks to it being bundled with Windows.

Many of these I remember fondly, so I’m going to take the time to take us both down memory lane and wonder about what happened to my beloved classics, what still stands up through the haze of nostalgia, and what’s been improved beyond recognition in more modern times.

I hated Monopoly. I might be looking back with the opposite of rose-tinted spectacles, but today it’s a cause for celebration that I have purchased over 1000 games, and none of them are Monopoly. If you’re subscribed to this newsletter you probably don’t need me to tell you that Monopoly is a bad game, but it sticks in my head because of just how unlike Monopoly the games to come could be.

Whilst it might seem strange to begin a nostalgic article about beloved classics with an example of something I never liked, it’s important to me that when I encountered Monopoly, I thought this was just what board games were, and I didn’t know it was lacking in ways that could be fixed. Present-day me is obsessed with the vast array of possibilities in modern board game design, whereas in a different timeline there’s a version of me that never played another multiplayer boardgame because my Monopoly experience was just that bad.

I’m happy to say that this would have been a huge mistake in the same way it would be to read a dull book and decide that books are boring, to see a terrible rom-com film and write off the entire genre, or to see children’s cartoons like Tom and Jerry in the 80s and pre-emptively decide that animation simply could not ever reach the artistic heights of say Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse or Arcane.

These design features I’m talking about are the feeling that you’re in control of the game and doing cool things, not just following instructions that include rolling dice and moving where you are told. I also love that modern games often allow the people who didn’t win to point at what they did accomplish and still have something to be proud of.

In case you are in fact a Monopoly lover, don’t worry, you’re still welcome here. But if you or a friend are die-hard Monopoly fans, perhaps you should at least take a look at (Settlers of) Catan. Every turn starts with that familiar roll of 2 dice that drives the player economy. You get to trade things you have with other players for things you want, and then use your accumulated resources to build more and take over the island of Catan. The robber is a much more interactive thwarter of plans than Go To Jail is, and there’s a deck of cards that even includes a card called Monopoly!

The lesson: Whilst I’m being facetious, taken point-for-point there is a lot in Catan that overlaps with concepts in Monopoly that you can use to entice Monopoly players back into the light. As for Monopoly, a single bad example of a genre, sub-genre or artform shouldn’t be taken as a reason to ignore everything that looks like it. After all, the very concept of a deck-building game didn’t even exist until less than twenty years ago when Donald X Vaccarino introduced Dominion to the world in 2008. I wonder what the next genre-defining innovation in board gaming will be?

It’s not all bad though - my childhood did offer glimpses of what the gaming world could be. Chess and Draughts (Checkers for the Americans amongst us) introduced me to abstract games. Although I wouldn’t hear the term ‘abstract game’ for a long time later, this is what I thought real games were. Devoid of theme, they stood as mechanical systems to be studied and exploited, where more thematic games lived in that same decision-less space as roll-and-move, and were more like toys than games.

I still carry a great love for this style of game. Yes - a game will end in a win for one player and a devastating loss for the other, there is no room for nuance when it’s impossible to lose ‘just by a few points’. Checkmate, annihilation, the endings of these games has a certain finality to them.

Then again, as 2-player games, resignation is always an option. It’s not like a multiplayer game that’s very close between two of your friends, but you’re a distant third. Why spend time making moves in a hopeless situation long after you’ve lost, when you can resign and immediately start a new game?

This skill testing kind of game really shines in a tournament setting. I love the chance to play a game with excellent players, in a setting which encourages us to each try our best to win, knowing that I can learn more about a game by seeing first hand how skilled players play it.

These games have also taught me a lot about how I think about games. It’s very easy to write some games off with short one-liners that sound more profound than they are. For example, how many times have you heard that Chess is impossible to get in to because it’s all about memorisation - the opening book is so well known that you have to learn good openings to even get to play? Or even that amongst experts the game is too draw-ish?

There are solutions to the memorisation problem:

What I’m saying is, it’s quite easy to be put off playing a game because of one fact about it, it’s not just Chess! But there are a multitude of ways to make a game playable for you even in the face of such blockers. As for the problem of the game being drawish amongst experts, I would classify this as “a nice problem to have”. Honestly, if you’re that good at Chess that many of your expert games end in draws, that’s perhaps a reason to move on from Chess and find something else to play, but it’s not a reason to not start playing in the first place.

The lesson: Otherwise strong games can have flaws that appear to unbalance the game or make them less fun to play in certain scenarios. Those flaws can seem larger when people confidently state that of course everyone knows about these flaws. Imperfections however exist in everything, they can be fixed or patched over with house rules, or simply ignored as they might not even apply to you and your style of play! You have my permission, not that you need it, to have fun any way you like with your board games.

Of course, you could just play a different game. So, what is there to play that’s more modern than Chess, but still evokes some of that feeling of play?

I’m picking YINSH here as my go to example of a modern abstract. There’s a lot to love about it, the rings move around the board dropping pieces as you go, you can flip pieces over to the other colour by jumping over them, and the aim of the game is to make 5-in-a-row. The game doesn’t end there unless you’re playing blitz - each time you make a 5-in-a-row you remove that line and one of your playing pieces and the game continues until someone makes their third line.

YINSH is part of an incredible series of abstract games by Kris Burm, the GIPF series, so called after the first released game. I’m highlighting YINSH for a number of reasons, despite being playable at boardspace.net for some time it has just arrived at boardgamearena.com which I’m hoping leads to an influx of new players - there literally isn’t a better time to learn how to play than right now.

For completeness, the rest of the GIPF series includes:

The lesson: There is something fascinating about being shown a game that’s unfamiliar, and trying to spend time studying it and playing it repeatedly to just see how it works. Not all games need to be telling a story or be adorned with artwork of anthropomorphised animals to be worth spending time on. Whilst I happily admit that these abstract games can be a tough sell to some types of people, to others they are fascinating puzzles waiting to show you just how intricate they can be.

Whilst writing this article I discovered a few things about myself. For someone who would in all likelihood claim to not get all that excited about being offered to play a dexterity game, I have played a lot of them, have fond feelings for many of them, and lots to say about them. So, in editing, I cut all of that verbiage and held it off for its very own future article! Sorry (not sorry) for the teaser…

The lesson: I am far from immune to boardgame snobbery.

Cribbage taught me that a game doesn’t have to consist of beautiful parts to become a beautiful whole. Honestly - if someone sat me down to teach me to play Cribbage today I would think they were pulling my leg with the sheer number of edge cases, exceptions and traditions built into this game!

But I was taught to play a long time ago, by my Nan, and it was a great game we used to pass the time. I don’t think this game has stood the test of time for me - though I was a little addicted to an iPhone implementation called Cribbage with Grandpas a while back, thanks to seeing a review from Shut Up And Sit Down. I only wish it had included some grandmas!

Is there a modern analogy to Cribbage? I’m going to go out on a huge limb here and suggest that Power Grid actually gives me similar feelings. The games couldn’t be more different on paper. Power Grid involves auctions for power plants, a resource market that reacts to supply and demand, and a geographic puzzle of finding cheap ways to connect cities to your network. The real beauty of Power Grid is in the realisation that despite each individual part of the game having a certain clunkiness to it, the whole shines in a way that would be hard to replicate if you did smooth off all the rough edges.

Back to the nostalgia for card games - There exist a large genre of trick-taking card games playable with a traditional 52 card deck, and those trick taking roots can be seen in many modern games. Most have ditched the traditional deck for mostly commercial reasons, but the beating heart of the game is still present. I previously reviewed the solo game “For Northwood!” but lovers of trick taking games should certainly check out the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring Trick Taking Game.

My introduction to trick-taking was through Knockout Whist, a lovely and simple example of the genre which descends into chaos as the games moves on and the hands get smaller.

I always thought the rule about following suit was a weird one. So, you’re telling me that if a player had a card in their hand that matches the suit that the lead player led with, I have to play a card of the matching suit, but if I don’t have any then I can play a card off-suit. But I’m the only person who can look at my hand and verify what my legal plays are??!?

Without the idea of following suit however, I don’t think these games would be quite so fascinating. With them, the deck becomes a tactical minefield, especially when the whole deck is dealt out. You know the Aces are somewhere, but who has them and when will they play them? Can you force your opponent’s hand? Can you learn the hidden location of cards by carefully observing what the other do play when given the chance? Taking my trick-taking knowledge and applying it to a co-operative experience served to totally re-contextualise what I knew, or thought I knew, about a deck of cards.

There are games still coming out which use a traditional 52-card deck though (or 54, jokers sometimes get to play too!), either alone or with some small additions. Regicide asks you to band together the peasantry (ranks 2-10) with their animal companions the Aces, and in doing so take down the Jacks, Queens and Kings in combat. River Rats asks you to co-operate to defeat the local villains at heads-up poker.

99 Heroes asks players to form teams of 3 heroes with special abilities that are triggered by playing cards of certain suits - so whilst the hero cards provide the pzazz, the traditional 52-card deck provides the familiar engine for the game. 52 Realms: Adventures presents a solo dungeon-crawling adventure, with the different suits taking on different identities, playing roles as your equipment and weapons, your adversaries and encounters.

Moving away from my well-known poker deck, I am also really looking forwards to seeing what Level 99 Games do with the Tarot deck and their book The Dealer’s Tarot. I haven’t owned a Tarot deck before, but I backed them on Kickstarter and am eagerly awaiting delivery in a few months time so I can see what new ‘Traditional’ games D. Brad Talton Jr has come up with.

There are even examples of much larger games bringing elements of traditional card games into the fold. It would be a huge stretch to look at the space-opera that is Arcs and conclude that it is a trick-taking game, but the core experience of a chapter of Arcs includes those very same concepts of following suit and trying to win the lead even if what you do with the lead is unrecognisable.

The lesson: The humble deck of playing cards was a much bigger invention than I think anyone could have realised at the time. It’s still going very strong, and people are constantly finding ways to re-contextualise it and extend what you can do with one. There’s never been a better time to pick up a nice deck of cards and find some games to play with it, and the skills you learn about playing around hidden information and learning what players are telling you through their actions are highly transferable skills.

I think I was 20 years old before I ever encountered a truly co-operative game, one where the players as a team are trying to beat the game, and not each other. That game was Reiner Knizia’s Lord of the Rings, the discovery of which began the transition in to what I would call my modern era of gaming. That story will simply have to wait for another article.

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Apologies for the lack of pictures in this week’s article, I spent too much time writing and editting the text. Besides which, the pictures I would really want to show you, playing Chess at a school tournament, learning Cribbage from my Nan, feeling so grown up at getting to play Pool with a glass of Coke in a side room at a pub - these pictures are impossible to recreate and live only in my head now.