Not bad for a game created by singer David Bowie. Wait to!?
You’re quite familiar with ‘Connect 4,’ that game where two opponents face off by dropping pieces trying to form a four-in-a-row, and there have been several mathematical ways discovered to win without regard to what the opponent does. And this, despite there being four trillion (with a ‘t’) possible final positions for the game, which still baffles several game theorists. Not bad for a game created by the singer David Bowie. Wait, what!?
The numbers match: Bowie was born in 1947, and ‘Connect 4’ was invented in 1974. Is it possible that a 27-year-old Ziggy Stardust, who hadn’t yet achieved international success, delved into board games? There are quite a few who believe it’s true, and that he’s even listed in the copyright of Milton Bradley’s game. We’ve seen stranger things.
The reality is much sadder and grayer: the myth that Bowie had created ‘Connect 4’ was manufactured by Stuart Maconie, a British presenter known for his jokes and trolling in the style of The Onion. The urban legend spread, and in the end, it remained in the collective imagination, as absurd as it may be.
The concept of ‘Connect 4’ was invented many years ago. In fact, it was already a well-known game among sailors in the 18th century. What Milton Bradley did was license the plastic version, whose patent was created in the name of a toy maker named Howard Wexler. But here’s the drama: apparently, the game had a co-creator named Ned Strongin who, after his death, was forgotten in favor of a Wexler who took credit for all the success.
Ned Strongin’s heirs had to provide documents proving that they both created it simultaneously at Strongin & Wexler Corp. The company lasted a short time, but long enough to create a board game that was originally meant to be played horizontally… until they finally had the fabulous idea to put it vertically to take advantage of, well, the fact that the pieces fell down. And meanwhile, David Bowie remained oblivious to the goldmine.
And what was on the pallet in question? Well, about 300,000 dollars in collectible cards, especially “Magic” and “Pokémon”.
Before co-creating ‘Dungeons & Dragons,’ Gary Gygax was already known in the board gaming community, which was primarily focused on wargames at the time. He was the founder of Gen Con, the largest convention of its kind in the United States (by the way, in Europe, we nearly triple the attendance at the Essen Spiel). In 1968, there were a hundred attendees. In recent years, there have been over 50,000. And with more people, come more problems.
The plan was truly masterful: instead of an armed robbery and creating a scene, two anonymous individuals approached Gen Con while the event was still being set up. They grabbed a pallet jack, went up to the first one they saw, and simply walked away with it in plain view of everyone, as if they were regular workers. They loaded it into their car, and off they went.
And what was on that pallet? Well, about $300,000 worth of collectible cards, mainly from ‘Magic’ and ‘Pokémon’. For a while, there were rumors that it might have contained the highly anticipated ‘Disney Lorcana’ set, a new game that had people waiting for up to 16 hours to get their hands on. However, the organizers themselves confirmed that they had all the packages they brought. For now, despite being caught on camera, the two individuals remain unidentified. A truly ingenious plan.
Card thieves are getting craftier: a few months ago in Indianapolis, a young man walked into a store and began stuffing Magic cards into a pizza delivery bag. In total, he made off with around $15,000 worth of merchandise, although no one was physically harmed. It’s worth noting that since a One Ring card sold for $2.6 million, people have realized there’s an investment opportunity in the world of collectible cards.
For now, here’s a piece of advice: if you have a hard-to-find card, like a Black Lotus, keep it under lock and key, lest someone stroll in with a pizza box and make off with it. That would be the last straw.
The actor thought it would be a casting or a way to meet, but none of that. The director reached for his collection of board games based on Travolta movies.
It is hard to believe, nowadays, the social phenomenon that John Travolta was in the 80s, when he was chaining hits like ‘Saturday Night Fever’, ‘Grease’ or ‘Look Who’s Talking’ until, little by little, he was passing into collective oblivion a decade later. It took Quentin Tarantino to resurrect a stalled career with a film that brought him back to the forefront. But of course, to get there, the actor had to do something unheard of: play board games with him.
The story goes that Tarantino, fresh from the maelstrom that was ‘Reservoir Dogs’, called the star at his house to do something in the early 90s. The actor thought it would be a casting or a way to get to know each other, but nothing of the sort. The director drew on his collection of board games based on Travolta’s films: ‘Grease’, ‘Saturday Night Fever’ and even the sitcom ‘Welcome back, Kotter’, which in Spain doesn’t ring a bell but lasted a good four seasons.
You may be thinking what the hell is a ‘Grease’ board game all about, but once we explain it to you, you won’t be satisfied. It is a game in which you will have to bet on different discs, and the one with the most at the end is the winner. What does it have to do with the movie of the same name? Well, the box features Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, so why else?
Meanwhile, in the ‘Welcome back, Kotter’ game, each player has to take the place of one of Mr. Kotter’s students and move to the initial desk until completing the phrase “Up your nose with a rubber hose”, the phrase made popular by Travolta himself playing Vinnie. There is also a card game based on collecting characters with points: the first to reach 100 wins.
There is no information about the ‘Saturday Night Fever’ game, not even in Board Game Geek, the world’s largest board game database, so it is possible that the actor made it up. Of course, they must not have had a bad time when, at the end of the night, Tarantino offered him two roles: that of ‘Open until dawn’ or that of ‘Pulp Fiction’. the rest is history.
By the way, this doesn’t mean that Travolta gave up board games forever: on the contrary, he is one of the few people in the world who insists on playing ‘Monopoly‘ with real money. Oh, who would be a millionaire.
It was clear what he had to do: one who would teach virtues in life until he reached old age: the then longed-for 50 years. Thus was born ‘The checkered game of life’.
The 1860s were not exactly a bed of roses in the United States: over the next 40 years, more than 14 million immigrants would arrive from all over the world, the Civil War divided the states, and there was a need to educatecitizens to live virtuously rather than in toxicity. That’s where a board game came into play, which over 150 years later is still being published: ‘The Game of Life’.
Milton Bradley, known as MB in Spain, was a self-made man who was born in the tumultuous year of 1836 and, at the age of 24, started a factory dedicated to publishing lithographs that eventually transitioned into board games. And it was no trivial matter: during those times in the 1860s, games of any kind were considered sinful and even “instruments of the devil.” It was clear what he had to do: create a game that would teach virtues in life, leading up to the longed-for age of 50. And thus, ‘The Checkered Game of Life’ was born.
To achieve this, he chose different possibilities that a life could take and assigned positive or negative points to each of them: poverty, ambition, education, childhood, gambling, politics… The goal was to reach one hundred points and land on the special square that would award you half of them: Happy Old Age. You could attain wealth or government contracts, but what was most intriguing is that a square was included in which landing would result in the end of the game: suicide.
In 1860, they didn’t beat around the bush. In this game of morality, it was possible to end up in jail and miss a turn, go bankrupt… or end your life by hanging from a tree. Immediately, your token would be removed from the game because “How can anyone continue their journey to Happy Old Age after committing suicide?” From 1866 onwards, that square removed the depiction of a person hanging from a tree and became a simple wild card where nothing happened. Imagine the traumatized children of that time.
Interestingly, to avoid using dice, which were associated with gambling at that time, Bradley counted the points using a hexagon that he would spin on the board. One hundred years later, ‘The Game of Life’ was reissued, completely changing the board and the moral aspects, turning it into the game that continues to exist to this day. It now has versions featuring ‘The Simpsons,’ ‘Hello Kitty,’ ‘Pokémon,’ and even ‘Star Wars.’ However, suicides are no longer part of the game… or at least, we hope not.
Legacy games have been with us for a decade, turning board games into a kind of video game in which each decision matters and each game is different from the previous one.
You know how to play a board game, even if it’s Parcheesi or Goose, right? You pick up your chips, roll the dice, move, throw cards, play against your friends or family and, in the end, one of you wins (unless it’s cooperative). The game goes back in the box and the next time everything is repeated in an impossible groundhog day… Or maybe not. Legacy games have been with us for a decade now, turning board games into a sort of video games in which every decision matters and every game is different from the previous one.
In 1998, a board game specialist named Rob Daviau joined Hasbro as a writer of Trivial Pursuit (yes, that job exists) and Taboo questions. A year later he was designing his own games, albeit as simple as ‘Monopoly Looney Tunes’ or ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. One day, while devising new versions of ‘Risk’ he thought of a sort of inside joke about the latter: Why do the ‘Cluedo’ killers keep getting invited back again and again?
Or to put it another way: the players don’t start from scratch, but the game does. If video games can save the game and always keep going until the end, why couldn’t it happen in board games? He soon thought of a complex system of envelopes, surprises, increasing rules and a game that would evolve according to the player’s decisions, which he called “legacy”. And the first one he wanted to try was, paradoxically, ‘Cluedo’. It did not go ahead because Hasbro forbade it.
It was 2008 and he himself tells what happened: “They looked at me like I was crazy, so I thought ‘Well, maybe it’s a crazy idea’ and I put it aside”. However, the concept stayed in the heads of his superiors, and soon after they sent him to make a perpetual version of ‘Risk’ in which players had to do things unthinkable until then: scratch the board, break cards or write on them knowing that they would never use them again after the campaign, as if it were a game of ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘. In 2011, ‘Risk Legacy’ was released after a year and a half of development. It was a smash hit in the gamers’ field, although for Hasbro it was nothing more than a side note.
Pandemic (but without masks)
After leaving Hasbro, his next legacy game was not long in coming, and this one would change the market forever. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1′ is the usual ‘Pandemic’ but with changes after each month. It starts being easy to overcome and little by little it starts to get more complicated with variations of the virus impossible to cure, zombie infections, easier to get infected and cities that are marked for life. Twelve (or 24) games, depending on your skill and luck, will lead you to victory… or disaster.
It was easy for Daviau to choose ‘Pandemic’. When the creators proposed it to him by e-mail, his answer was, at size 150, “YES”. Pandemic Legacy’ is a much more complex game than the original and the decisions you have to make (save one city at the risk of being far away from another when the virus explodes?) will make you sweat. A must-have after which came the madness: everyone wanted their legacy.
From ‘Ultimate Werewolf’ to ‘Machi Koro’, ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’ or the ‘Jurassic Park‘ saga itself, there have been few games that could resist a good legacy version. Obviously, it doesn’t always work well, and some, like Daviau’s own ‘SeaFall’, didn’t quite make the grade. Fortunately, if you are interested in this variation with which you can finally feel that board games have entered a new dynamic, pay attention, because we are going to recommend you the best ones.
Don’t let them pass you by
If you know anything about the world, no matter how little, you know that ‘Gloomhaven’ is a sacred cow. A sacred cow with a box that literally weighs ten kilos, but that contains an exciting campaign that will bring you back to the best role-playing with an easy to understand game style (depending on the attention you are willing to pay) and that assures you dozens of adventures. If you want something even more accessible but equally fabulous, you have ‘Gloomhaven: Maw of the Lion’. You’re welcome.
Another marvel is ‘Clank! Legacy’, in which every game will change and literally every decision will be vital to get to the end. In addition, it has a much more complex story than ‘Pandemic Legacy’ and is more familiar than ‘Gloomhaven‘, making it a perfect start to the adventure.
And what about those with small children? Well, they can also give theirs with a zombie adventure between kids: ‘Zombie kidz evolution’ and ‘Zombie teenz evolution’ will keep the progress from one game to another. Like a role-playing campaign, but without the need for infinite character sheets. This is the future of board games, after all, or did you think it was all going to be ‘Monopoly‘ and ‘Catan’?
How was the worlds most famous game for giant brains born? The answer is, when little… surprising.
If we talk to you about the color pink and you think “Shows” and blue and a part of you says “Geography”, you’re one of us. And the fact is that ‘Trivial Pursuit’ has sold more than one hundred million copies around the world. To put it another way, it is as if every inhabitant of Spain had a couple of units at home… And some even three. The figures are dizzying, but how did the world’s most famous game for giant brains come about? The answer is, to say the least… surprising.
December 15, 1979. Chris Haney, a photographer for the Montreal Gazette, and Scott Abbott, a sportswriter for The Canadian Press, get together to play their weekly game of Scrabble. Some say the game was missing pieces, some say they were simply asking each other general cultural questions as they put the letters on the board. It doesn’t matter: in any case, one thing leads to another and soon they are wondering how much money the company that distributes the game will make. The answer: millions.
So they made a decision: to create their own board game. How? Very easy: by cutting out different colored rectangles, using an old game board, writing general culture questions like crazy and dividing them into six categories well known to all: geography, entertainment, history, arts and literature, science and nature, sports and leisure. That same night, Trivial Pursuit was born.
No more and no less than the creators of the game
But of course, it’s one thing to have the idea of the century and another to get the money to manufacture it. They got two partners into the business, did a little crowdfunding of the time (that is, asking for money practically house to house) and managed to raise $40,000 from 32 investors. All or nothing. Success or failure. We’re not going to get more excited about it, because we all know how the story ended.
Few cheeses
Each set cost about $40 to make, so they could only make 1100 copies. In order for them to make a profit, they needed to sell them for $75. They took one more chance: stores would sell it for $40 and buy it for $20. They had already lost money before they started, but it makes sense. After all, what adult in their right mind would buy a board game? 2023, wave your hand wryly, come on.
The creator of the board with his prototype!
On November 10, 1981 the game was registered as a trademark, but it was of little use if they were going bankrupt at full speed and couldn’t even pay back the money to those who lent it to them, right? Luckily, the following year, stores started asking for new units, and they saw a ray of hope: they borrowed $75,000 as a loan from the bank and dared to release 20,000 units that could have been perfectly eaten up.
However, by the end of that same year there were hardly any Trivials left on the shelves. The project had been a success, and the following year Selchow and Righter bought the game to sell it in the U.S. Do you know what Selchow and Righter’s most famous game was? That’s right: ‘Scrabble’. That there hasn’t been a movie made about it is insane. Trivia began to make its way into dinner parties and adult gatherings proving that you’re never too old to stop playing. Or are you? There was still a twist at the end of the road….
Objection, by Colombo!
As much as we may want to believe that the authors of ‘Trivial Pursuit’ had a privileged brain to put 6000 questions of all kinds, the truth is that most of the answers were taken from the typical books of absurd facts, such as ‘Trivia’ (the first one, from 1966) or ‘The complete unabridge super trivia encyclopedia’, created by Fred L. Worth and that became a best seller. The problem? All the other books in the same format clearly copied it.
The author’s solution to not miss a single one and prove that he had been copied was to create a fake one and sit back and wait for someone to screw up. But it wasn’t a fact book that did it, it was… ‘Trivial Pursuit’. Worth went through all the Trivial Pursuit questions one by one until he finally found the one they had taken the bait on. Pink section: “What was Colombo’s first name?”. The false answer, “Phillip.” Worth sued the creators for 300 million dollars with the excuse of having copied his intellectual property.
Indeed, both confessed the truth: they had taken data from his books… And from dozens of others. Matthew Byrne, the judge, dismissed the case and it did not even go to trial. In fact, he thought it convenient to clarify that the board game was nothing like the book, leaving the author humiliated and the authors of Trivial more at ease than ever. Oh, in case you’re curious: Colombo’s name was Frank, and we know it thanks to the box set that compiled seasons 1 to 4 on DVD. Now you can sleep peacefully.
They didn’t want to introduce a new board game that would entertain children during the war, but… get their own out of prison.
The year is 1941: World War II rages in Europe, and British prisoners are falling into Nazi hands by the handful. However, a handful of them seem to be successfully escaping from German prisons. How is this possible? What were the jailers overlooking? They had made sure that they received nothing beyond the bare necessities: clothes, food and a game of ‘Monopoly’ to keep them entertained.
“Go to jail. Go directly without passing through the Exit box and without collecting the 20,000 pesetas”. If you had a ‘Monopoly’ in the 90’s you know perfectly well how many hours it could last until someone decided to withdraw from the game or went bankrupt buying hotels. It is the quintessential capitalist game (although it was born with the opposite idea in 1903) and it is difficult to tell something about it that you don’t know.
But there is a period when perhaps the least important thing in the world was ‘Monopoly’: obviously, during World War II. And yet, it became an indispensable ally in helping imprisoned soldiers get out of jail. But how? It all starts with one man, Christopher Clayton Hutton: soldier, escape artist, secret service employee, inventor in the Q style of James Bond movies. It was he who came up with the great idea of teaming up with Waddington’s, the board game company that, among others, first published ‘Cluedo’. But not to introduce a new board game to entertain children during the war, but to… get his own out of prison.
The escape kit that went past the Nazis as if it were humanitarian aid contained a silk map of different European countries on which were marked the safe houses, the places to go, knives, miniature compasses, pieces of metal (all posing as real pieces), rope and, what is even better, real money… placed exactly under the money in the game. But how is it possible that no one noticed?
Hidden in plain sight
As if it were a movie (and oddly enough, no one has made the biopic yet), Waddington’s and Hutton hid the maps and utensils inside the Monopoly boards: being made of silk and not paper, the maps held water well and could easily be hidden in a small place. Also, since they didn’t make any noise, they didn’t attract the attention of the guards. Not that they had to figure all this out on their own: before going on a mission, the British already knew that the fake Monopolys existed.
You may be thinking that it doesn’t make any sense that enemies would allow their prisoners to play board games, but the truth is that the Geneva Convention allowed NGOs to send them to keep their minds active. Besides, the Germans figured that, as long as they played, they wouldn’t make escape plans. Spoiler: it goes wrong.
These games could easily be mistaken for real Monopolys, and the only way prisoners could tell it was their key to freedom was by a red dot in the Free Parking box. Obviously, after using them, the soldiers had to destroy the games so that the Germans would not know how they had managed to escape. It may sound like something out of a ‘Mission Impossible’ movie, but the truth is that thousands of captured soldiers escaped this way. It can be said, yes, that they got a letter to get out of prison.
It may not be the best, but for many it was the first. This is the story of HeroQuest.
If you already have gray hair (or are on your way to it), there is a board game that will bring a smile to your mouth irrepressibly. It is the memory of clashing swords, battles won at the last moment, medieval epics, miniatures and dungeons that unfolded before us: it may not be the best, but, for many, it was the first. This is the story of ‘HeroQuest’.
A free program for Android, created by TwinCoders.
Pure dungeon crawling
By the end of the 80’s, ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘ was already more than established in popular culture. With the second edition about to be published, which would introduce the first major changes to the role-playing game, more than a few people tried to capitalize on its success. Among them, Games Workshop, founded in 1975 and which brought Gary Gygax’s work to the United Kingdom as well as creating complex miniatures and games like ‘Warhammer 40K’, which even now continues to receive versions and expansions.
In this scenario, in which medieval fantasy took all the glory, we find Stephen Baker, a game designer who left Games Workshop to go to the friendlier Milton Bradley (better known in Spain as MB). His idea, to create a fantasy game in the style of ‘Warhammer’ but one that could be played by everyone. Said and done: the only requirement was that it be simple enough for the whole family to understand.
Originally, Baker was going to contact his former company exclusively to make the miniatures, but he finally decided to trust them to create and develop the whole game. In 1989 it exploded in sales in Europe and became the gaming craze: ‘HeroQuest’ was a mix between role-playing game, miniatures game and board game that for four years was absolutely everything.
Role for novices
In ‘HeroQuest’, players had to fight against the master (“Morcar” as we know him or “Zargon” as he is known in the United States), who set up dungeons to try to defeat them. Players could choose from four archetypes (barbarian, dwarf, elf and mage), each with their own range of abilities, who fought against all the enemies put in front of them. For an experienced player it was really simple, but the kids of the time felt that finally a game gave them the epic they needed.
The same year of its release, ‘The Tower of Kellar’ allowed players to try to free the Emperor and his army by going through ten new scenarios with 17 different monster miniatures (it would appear in 1991 in the United States). And, at the same time that expansions were appearing like hot cakes (‘Return of the Warlock Lord’, ‘The Wizards of Morcar’), Games Workshop was preparing a special version for the most experienced players.
Advanced HeroQuest’ was the same game but more complicated, to put it simply. The characters acquired new characteristics and the combat was more complex… although at the time the fans didn’t like it very much. In fact, the fame of HeroQuest, in general, was falling over the years. And then came its darkest moment: crowdfunding.
Launch it
They asked for 58,000 euros, but managed to raise 679,927: a small company called Gamezone “accepted the challenge” of releasing a 25th anniversary version of ‘HeroQuest‘ giving it the level it deserved as a game that changed the life of a whole generation. They promised it would see the light of day by Christmas 2014. To this day, no one has seen a single figurine… or their money back. Gamezone didn’t get the rights but nevertheless launched the crowdfunding, convinced that, seeing the success, they would get them.
In 2021 the trial was still going on, and it doesn’t seem that it will end soon because of its “extreme complexity”. Luckily, last year Avalon Quest (Hasbro in Spain) was able to calm things down by releasing ‘HeroQuest’ for sale again with the usual expansions and some new ones trying to take advantage of the current wave of board game success.
HeroQuest’ is a game that has marked many childhoods, defined many lives and changed many minds about what role-playing games are. It may not have had a smooth path and it may have started as “an easy version” of role-playing, but in the end the numbers speak: especially in Spain, it was more than pure nostalgia. It was a mass phenomenon. Grab your axe, open the dungeon and get ready to collaborate to kill all the bugs: Let the battle begin!
Between the war and his tedious job, Anthony E. Pratt escaped in the best possible way: creating his first board game.
Year 1942. Birmingham suffers the bombing of the Nazi Luftwaffe every few years. So much so, that it became the third most bombed British city in World War II after 77 attacks in which 2241 people were killed and 12,391 houses were destroyed. And in the midst of that disaster, Anthony E. Pratt worked in a factory creating tank components, a laborious, repetitive job he hated. Between the war and his tedious job, Pratt escaped in the best possible way: by creating his first board game.
A complete application for iPhone, by Marmalade Game Studio Limited.
Miss Amapola at the ballroom
Before becoming a tank manufacturer, Pratt was a musician who played in different hotels for rich people where the highlight of those nights in the interwar period was playing murder mystery. Or what amounts to the same thing: discovering who had committed a murder among all those present. Reading the novels of Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler did the rest: on December 1, 1944, the Briton and his wife Elva, who designed the game board, registered a game called ‘Murder! But the story did not end there… And there were still to be a few unexpected twists and turns.
Shortly after registering it, the couple went to Waddingtons, a board game company (which in 1994 would be acquired by Hasbro) and which was already publishing ‘Monopoly’ in the UK. At that time the game was already basically what we know: a country house with different rooms in which a body is found and all the guests are potential murderers. And of course, only by finding the right clues will the mystery be solved. The Pratts immediately convinced Waddingtons, who agreed to distribute it.
It must be said that Waddingtons changed the game slightly to make it more accessible: from ten characters it went down to six and some weapons were removed, such as the hypodermic syringe or the Irish cane. Anyway, the original ideas ended up appearing in some of the many -many, impossible to follow- versions of the board game.
If you think this is a story of how Anthony E. Pratt got rich, think again. When, at last, ‘Cluedo’ was released in 1949, the results in a post-war UK were rather muted. The company told the Pratts that it wasn’t selling very well, especially in America, and they bought the world rights from them for £5,000 (the equivalent of about £100,000 today). Neither of them would ever see any money from ‘Cluedo’ again and their name would become anonymous.
In 1996, to celebrate 150 million units sold, Waddingtons (now part of Hasbro) tried to find Pratt to celebrate with him. He had died two years earlier, at 90. Since receiving the money for ‘Cluedo’ he opened a candy store and worked as a paralegal in complete anonymity. And yet his game has prevailed until now.
Sherlock Clue
In its American release, ‘Cluedo’ (there ‘Clue’) got a deal with Arthur Conan Doyle’s heirs to advertise itself as “the great new Sherlock Holmesgame”, even though the detective was neither there nor expected (later, all said and done, he would be the protagonist of several TV commercials in the 70s and 80s, when marketing was in full swing).
Since then, ‘Cluedo’ has been everything. Literally, everything. Starting, of course, with the board game itself with its different meanings: with VHS incorporated in the ‘Atmosfear’ style, in a children’s version where you can find out who hid the lost puppy, card games and even adaptations of ‘The Simpsons’, ‘Friends’, ‘Rick and Morty‘ and ‘Brooklyn 9-9’. Hasbro even came up with a kind of new version that came to replace the classic (‘Cluedo: Discover the secrets’) and was such a failure that two years later they were forced to withdraw it from the market. They should have learned from the history of New Coke.
‘Cluedo’ has had a collection of 18 children’s novels, two comic miniseries, a musical and a play that could end in 216 different ways depending on what the audience decided, a television series, competitions in Canada, Australia, UK, Germany, Italy, Portugal, France and Scandinavia, a dozen video games and, of course, the movie.
Today, ‘The Game of Suspicion’ (the Spanish title of ‘Clue’) is considered a cult classic, but in 1985 it was a resounding box office failure despite its curious way of taking people to the cinema three times: each screening offered one of three different endings (which today have been compiled into the complete film). There was a fourth ending planned, but it seemed to be of poor quality and was never screened.
Ah: in the end, ‘Cluedo’ had its version of Sherlock Holmes when Hasbro decided that there would be no franchise without its version of the game. To sell 150 million copies you have to know how to do it, right? And now, do you know who killed our victim today? Where? and with what weapon?
So that you don't get lost and put Catan aside, we are going to tell you about those ten board games that cannot be missing in any good house.
5100 years ago things were not so different from today. People also fell in love, worked, hated politicians, and brought complicated board games to dinner parties with friends for the pleasure of saying, “Well, a little game, eh?” Senet started it all in Egypt and, over the millennia, the same thing has happened that happens when we take a very old game off the shelf: the rules have been lost.
Fortunately, as a society we have left behind games like Monopoly, Trivia or Taboo to give way to an almost overwhelming number of modern “must try” games.It is estimated that 3000 new board games are released every year, not counting versions, adaptations and bestsellers. So that you don’t get lost and leave Catán aside, we are going to tell you those ten board games that can’t be missing in any good house. No, we are not referring to Parcheesi.
10) 7 Wonders Duel
You only have one person to play with and you’re sick of brisca? Try the version for two of ‘7 Wonders’, which surpasses (by far) its mother. In this game you will have to create an empire through three different eras getting the right resources to build your wonders without leaving aside the power of the army, science and, perhaps, get the favor of the gods. As easy to learn as it is difficult to master, ‘7 Wonders Duel’ is a must for any bookshelf.
9) Werewolves of Castronegro
You’ve played this game a thousand different ways (usually using cards from a regular deck and calling it ‘Town Sleeps’), but none can beat the quintessential social game, on which even reality shows like ‘Traitors‘ have been based. If you have a large group where you all know each other, this is the ideal game to never stop: a town full of innocent citizens, a few werewolves, daylight trials, impossible loves, hunters with one last bullet and girls who can be the first to fall. It never gets old!
8) Marvel Champions
Yes, yes, I know. If you’re a fan of European board games you’ll be holding your hands over your head, but… ‘Marvel Champions’ is the perfect adaptation of a powerful license to a collectible card game. Don’t let its somewhat complex rules hold you back. When you start to beat the villain of the day with Spiderman or Captain America you’ll immediately know why it has it all: excitement, adventure and the possibility that even Rhino will have a good hand and give you a haircut.
7) Pandemic Legacy
In any list, in any way, we would not propose ‘Pandemic’ as a game to be considered beyond a few pachangas. But ‘Pandemic Legacy’, especially in its season 1, changed everything we believed about the game. Twelve games, twelve months, twelve decisions that can change the fate of the world forever. Hold on to your character and boost his special powers, because as you open boxes, expand the rules and turn the plane of Earth into a place of uncontrollable infections, each month will become more and more difficult.
6) Terraforming Mars
And if we destroy Earth, the time has come to make Mars a habitable planet. But of course, several companies are fighting for the same thing. Buy the right cards, play smart, use strategy and claim a victory that won’t be clear until the last minute. A warning: you will probably need a couple of games before acclimatizing yourself to all the new concepts proposed by the game, but when your head clicks… You will be facing the most exciting two hours of your life.
5) Blue
Not everything is going to be games for hardcore gamers: you have to leave room for those that your father could understand if he wanted to. Azul’ and all its variants is a guarantee of eating your head off for a while, playing to annoy your opponent and, in the meantime, trying to decorate your own palace. Most likely you will end up eating many more pieces than you would like, but with a style of play so easy to understand and, at the same time, so complex to strategize, it is an absolute must that comes to replace the classics of a lifetime in the family.
4) The mansions of madness
Halfway between a role-playing game, wargame and horror is ‘Mansions of Madness’, a game that must be played with a mobile application and in which you must confront the hosts of Lovecraftian evil while you fall little by little in the lack of sanity. Each step will literally bring you closer to success or failure, and it is vital that you take it wisely. You may have to leave that object on the ground or not investigate that noise, the important thing is to get out alive!
3) Dune Imperium
Dune Imperium’ is a constant struggle between different factions to take over the power of Arrakis: build your deck little by little, gain influence and power, polish your strategy, make pacts with the other factions… And, if you can, win the war for the Spice. Ah! And once you get tired of it, in a long time, don’t let its expansions pass you by: pure playable gold.
2) Arkham Horror
We return to Lovecraft once again to get into one of the most famous card games of all time. Play alone or with another investigator, encounter cultists and try not to fall into madness when you see creatures beyond comprehension. All your choices will have consequences, and you may not finish this adventure alive – if you do, don’t forget to get any of the many, many, many expansions that extend the adventure to the limit!
1) Gloomhaven: Lion’s jaws
Although the deepest gamers prefer ‘Gloomhaven’, without extras, the truth is that its sequel is much simpler to set up and play, without losing a bit of the excitement, the fight, the struggle and the atmosphere of the original. A cooperative game of tactical combat in which you will have to finish off the monsters that come to finish you off. The best part? It’s as easy as opening the box and starting to play through the 25 campaign scenarios – learn as you play! An absolute must-have that improves on the original in every way. Not a good house without its ‘Gloomhaven: Lion’s Maw’.
