My extended family started playing Ticket to Ride years ago. It’s one of our go-to games after holiday dinners, and we’re all comfortable with the mechanics, the strategy, and the map. We’ve mixed it up a bit by adding in the 1910 expansion, but for the most part, the game’s been the same for years. … Read more
Pandemic is Z-Man Games’ globe-spanning game of viral infection in which 2-4 players travel from city to city trying to prevent local outbreaks from turning into full-blown pandemics. The game is played on a map of the Earth, with major cities connected by highways and flight paths. At the start of the game, color-coded cards … Read more
Aliens. We always knew they were out there, ready to invade our planet, enslave the population and strip mine its resources. But we also knew that if they should try it, Earth’s greatest superheroes would rise up and save us. We were wrong. When the V’Sori came they slaughtered our super-powered defenders just as easily … Read more
Betrayal at the House on the Hill is a collaborative board game in which players explore an ancient house on a lonely hill, seeking to unlock its secrets … and its horrors.
It’s a dynamic game whose map is randomly generated each game using a series of tiles representing the basement, first floor and second floor of the house, with a new tile drawn every time a player enters a new room. Players take on the role of one of several adventurers tasked with exploring this haunted house. Each adventurer is represented by a stat card representing key abilities such as speed, strength and will. Different adventurers have different strengths — the preacher is strong in will but weak in physical abilities, while the boy explorer has a high speed, but low willpower.
The Xbox Live version of Ticket to Ride is a faithful port of the popular board game, recreating the train-themed game on Microsoft’s game console. The game board features a map of the continental United States with its major cities connected by different colored train routes. Players draw different colored tickets from a deck each … Read more
Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers is a tile-based board game in which players assume the roles of hunters and gatherers attempting to glean resources from a prehistoric landscape. It’s a great game for geeks, but it’s even better for families. The game uses a mechanic similar to the original Carcassonne game. The game “board” consists of … Read more
Settlers of Catan is one of those games you hear people talk about for years, but somehow never get around to playing. Then when you finally do play it, you wonder why you wasted all that time on sleeping when you could have been playing Settlers. The premise of the game is simple. Two to … Read more
Vanished Planet is a cooperative board game in which players struggle to prevent an ever-growing, inky-black entity from enveloping the galaxy. At the start of the game the Earth has been consumed by the entity, and has apparently been transferred to another dimension. The creature has already begun expanding beyond the Sol system, and it … Read more
Every once in a while, our regular Friday night RPG session falls apart. It might be because of sick kids, weddings, extended business trips or just bad luck, but only a handful of our players can make it. If it’s a night when the party really needed the resources of the missing players, we ditch … Read more