I’m a gamer, always have been. Problem is for a large number of years that’s really just consisted of the video variety. That’s a huge mistake on my part, to not enjoy the video game’s analog brethren… the board game. There’s actually a vibrant and intense board game world out there that’s been pushed to the sidelines by game players such as ourselves for too long. In this column I’ll be diving into this world, looking at games that hopefully you’d like to try out for yourself.

It doesn’t take long in playing games to start sorting them into different genres and mechanics, so you can at least know from the get go whether or not you’re going to be remotely interested. You hear FPS, RTS, RPG, etc. and you at least know what kind of game to expect. Same applies to the analog game universe, the only difference being they don’t have all the acronyms and they usually focus on the core mechanic. For instance there are “route-laying” games (Ticket to Ride), abstract games (DVONN & Hive), deck building (Dominion), bluffing, auction, deception, deduction, etc etc etc. So I’ve been trying to find all different types to cover here and today we’re going to cover a “press your luck” type game called Incan Gold.

Ready to go in search of untold treasures? Adventure is out there! (more…)

I’m a gamer, always have been. Problem is for a large number of years that’s really just consisted of the video variety. That’s a huge mistake on my part, to not enjoy the video game’s analog brethren… the board game. There’s actually a vibrant and intense board game world out there that’s been pushed to the sidelines by game players such as ourselves for too long. In this column I’ll be diving into this world, looking at games that hopefully you’d like to try out for yourself.

I’ve been doing my best with this column to show off all kinds of different board games, from card games like Dominion and Martian Fluxx to Euro-style games like Ticket to Ride to a game like Hive. Well, that trend continues today with the abstract strategy game DVONN. More complicated than checkers but less so than Chess, DVONN exists without any sort of theme whatsoever and just stands as “a game.” Which is perfectly fine. One doesn’t need to have a storyline to make a game engaging (just ask Tetris fans) and it just goes to show that like the video game world all different genres exist for board games as well.

So, just what exactly is DVONN? (more…)