AG’s Quarantine Survival Guide: Boardgames

Are you still bored, stuck at home? After all the ideas we’ve been over? Yeah we know, time comes to a crawl when you’re stuck at home. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still have fun. We’ve got a few other ideas to help you stay entertained.

Each staff member will be giving you their personal recommendations on various activities to help you get through this whole social distancing thing. We highly encourage y’all to share your picks in the comments below, as well.

We’re here to go over our favorite board games (or bored games) Amazon still delivers and plenty of these can be found online. So, gals and guys…what games have you all been playing?

MITKO:

Let me stop you right here. We’ll get into video games later, but this will save you from your own isolation: Go to steam and download Tabletop Simulator. Seriously do it. With it you can basically play any boardgame ever with friends online for $20. Game changer.

So what to play on Tabletop simulator. Well I like games that secretly pit one or more people against the other. Secret Hitler is a classic. One person is Hitler and a few others are Fascists. Everyone else has to figure who those people are before they take over! This leads to fantastic accusations like “Grandma likes to paint. So did Hitler”. I’m not saying they’re the same, but the parallels are there.

If you want to check out a similar game with less Nazis and more cannibals check out Donner Dinner Party.

Speaking of betrayal, the Betrayal at Balder’s gate and Betrayal at House on the Hill are both great games. The former is D&D themed and the latter is horror movie themed. Basically you are exploring a house/town until the haunt/adventure is triggered causing one player to turn evil and complete their goal. There are dozens of different scenarios, making the replay-ability high.

DAN:

Let’s get this started with a good group/family game in Catan. I wasn’t introduced to it until I met my wife and it quickly became one of my favorite board games. Trying to get as many points as possible and take them away from the group you’re playing with while building “colonies”. It’s a ton of fun for everyone and I highly recommend it for everyone. But a classic board game that is timeless to me is Clue. I grew up playing it at I still enjoy it immensely. Trying to guess the killer in a room full of suspects is always a good time!

DAVE:

Let’s see … board games … um … man, it’s been years since I sat down to a board game. Risk was always a fun one to play with my dad. Before that I would say it was Mousetrap, Chutes and Ladders, and maybe some Trouble or Sorry.

Truthfully I’m more of a cards/dice kind of guy, so I’m gonna bend the rules a bit and say my favorite “table game” is split between a card game and a dice game. For cards, it’s the timeless classic; Spades. If you don’t know how to play Spades, you probably don’t know how to operate a clutch and think Dickie’s BBQ is the best in Kansas City. So I won’t waste the intelligent public’s time.

For dice, it’s “Three Di C-Lo.” This is a fun one for all ages, and requires (3) dice and however many markers per person you want (we play with 4 quarters, winner takes all — in the Corps we played dollar rolls, and there were times I’d walk away with over $100). You can have as many people playing as you want, but I feel 3-5 is the most comfortable. I would explain the rules, but this is supposed to be short and I’m already at ‘BRaG-levels’ of rambling, so I’ll just say look it up when you have a moment.

Oh wait. You do. Now. Look it up now.

CHRIS:

Risk: Many hours of my life have been spent playing this game. In the mid 90’s, my buddies; John, Will, Jimmy, and myself would get a couple 2 litres of A&W Cream Soda and some Pizza Hut and play Risk all night. Many memories, a few fist fights, but worth it.

Monopoly Junior: I’ve been teaching the kiddos how to play the “Dory Monopoly” as they call it. It is just Monopoly but based off of Finding Dory, and there are no dollar bills bigger than $1.00. The 6 and 4 year olds have a good grasp of what is actually going on, the baby just throws everything and usually ends the game. I have not played old school monopoly in many years, but I might have to go buy it now that the older two are starting to enjoy playing it more.

BRaG:

My tastes in board games run to the mundane stuff; checkers, chess, backgammon, and so forth. There have been shout-outs to many of the rest from the rest of the crew, so I’ll give my shout-out to Stratego, which is kinda like chess crossed with Battleship (another pretty good one). Since that probably doesn’t make any sense to some, I’ll leave it to the curious to google up how the game’s played. Somebody snitched all my space. *snicker*

However, me being me I can’t leave it at that, so if you’d like to try out a game that’s over four thousand years old, check out the following. Technically speaking you could simply draw out the board on a piece of paper, use pennies for counters, and figure out the dice however, but the game, as you will see, is still quite playable.

Tony:

I’m going to go with the most uninteresting answer ever; Monopoly. I love playing Monopoly. When I was in high school I was in the marching band, and one year we took a band trip to Washington DC which involved a 24 hour long bus ride. During that bus ride I played a game of Monopoly on somebody’s computer with some friends, and I vividly remember being frustrated that somebody refused to make a trade with me that would have benefited both of us (we both ended up losing).

But I list it because in my adult life nobody I know seems to have the patience for it. I think that game on the band trip was the last game of Monopoly I’ve played with actual people. Maybe I should follow Chris’ example and have some kids so I can play Monopoly again.

Anthony:

Twister. Pretty sure that counts as the spinner is mounted on a cardboard…um…board. I don’t recall the last time I played Twister but I’m thinking it could make for an interesting evening after a healthy dose of adult beverages. So, who’s coming over?

Let’s go to the Winchester and wait for this to all blow over

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