Introduction to Board games beyond Monopoly

So you want to play some board games but every time you try, your nerd friends bombard you with confusing rules and expectations that makes the entire experience frustrating and boring? I used to be right there with you.

The world of board games may seem like an impenetrable fortress of rules and concepts, but I’m here to hopefully navigate you through the basic fundamentals of games and suggest an ordering that will help you work up to the most “complicated” of games.

Learning a Victory Point System
Board game of choice: Ticket to Ride

One theme of many popular board games is the mad dash for victory points. Victory Point driven games work easily because it gives players a sense of what behavior the game wants to reward. Ticket to Ride is the perfect game to learn how to manipulate the Victory Point system because the main impetus of the game is fairly simple. Make Connections and Complete Routes. Ticket to Ride’s natural randomness (this is typically referred to as RNG [random number generator]) makes it so that a fairly novice player can win on their first go around and the new player can focus on how victory point systems work.

Strategic Value
Board game of choice: Coup
One of the biggest barriers to people enjoying “complicated” board games is the inability to make good decisions in light of what your opponents can do. New Players often view their options and take the choice they believe will confer the best benefit. This is not always the best strategy. Sometimes you want to take a particular option because it confers to you a slightly weaker benefit, while also denying your opponents the ability to do well. Coup is all about trying to predict what your opponents will do and constantly assessing the best move given your opponents. It’s the perfect game to shift players from casual to strategic thinking.

Economy or Asymmetric information
Board game (s) of choice: Economy: Settlers of Catan Asymmetric: Secret Hitler
Advance options: Economy: Puerto Rico, Asymmetric: Human Punishment

At this point we see a departure in the charge of particular games. Either a game is obsessed with efficiency (e.g. Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Tzolkin) or the game has an asymmetric element to it (Werewolf, Resistance, Saboteur). Both types of games are very fun and the best games in my opinion have elements of both. I think it’s important to learn these concepts separate from each other.
Catan is all about the resources. Catan is the perfect embodiment of what we learned in the previous two board games. It is a victory point driven game with strategic elements embedded inside. What Catan adds is a resource driven element, whereby players need to be conscious of what resources they need to get in order to earn victory points. The RNG of Catan also helps new players, who will win occasionally from good luck.

Secret Hitler is basically resistance with some stipulations. It’s a game that requires you to take strategic thinking to the next level and begin what many people refer to as “meta gaming.” The question of what is the best move here becomes recurring. If I only know x, then how would I act if I knew y? Secret Hilter is not the best example of this, but it seems to be one of the least complicated versions of this game. Original Saboteur is a good replacement for Secret Hitler, but any expansion would be far too confusing.

Opportunity Cost
Board game of choice: Power Grid, Chinatown
Advance option: Puerto Rico
Power Grid is a simple game where people attempt to power up multiple cities using a variety of different energy sources. Power Grid is akin to ticket to ride in its emphasis on connections, but adds a resource market similar to Catan. The notion of opportunity cost, a concept drilled into the minds of micro-econ students, can become second nature to you in this game. Do I move into coal knowing others will purchase it or do I take the high initial cost of going into solar? The answer is always it depends. Power Grid is one of the first “complicated games” introduced on this list and I think it comes at an appropriate time.

Engine Building
Board game of choice: Wingspan
Advance option: Quartermaster General
Wingspan won several awards for being the hot new entry into the board game world. A game that has stunning visuals and scientifically accurate information. Wingspan is all about engine building. Engine building refers to games where you need to acquire certain traits or conditions in order to achieve success in the game. Think of it as constructing a Rube Goldberg machine, every component is significant because of what comes before and after it. That’s what an engine builder is. You need to start thinking about the move you hope to make three or four turns down to the road. These games tend to have a huge bias towards experienced players due to their familiarity with the different conditions that exist. Do not be discouraged! A few play throughs and you will feel like a pro.

Auction
Board game of choice: Ra
Advance board game: Powergrid

At this point you should have experienced auctions in Powergrid, but focusing in on auctions as a game mechanic is a different game. Powergrid’s RNG for auctions makes it far more forgiving when mistakes are made. Pure auction games are not quite as generous. Auction games are all about measuring risk. It’s taking into consideration what options are available, what is the probability those options will happen and predicting what other players will do when those options come. I feel auction games are deceptively simple, but incredibly difficult to master.

Co-op
Board game of choice: Hanabi, Pandemic
Advance board game: Quartermaster General, Captain Sonar

I would recommend before playing Cooperative games with your friends, become familiar with other games first. That’s because the best cooperative games forces you to rely on your teammates for capacity and information, making the act of coordination the core fun of the game. The worst cooperative games devolve into one person effectively telling everyone else what to do. Hanabi is perfect because it prevents one player from dominating the others. The asymmetric information in Hanabi makes you dependent on your teammates for information. The more capable they become, the more likely you will succeed.