My Top Ten Favorite Games of All Time

So, I'm a board game person. I like video games, some of them at least, but they aren't my favorite. I love a good Friday night at home with the fam, playing a fun, challenging, and/or mildly competitive board game. In no particular order, these are the games that routinely come out of the box on game night at our house.


Apples to Apples is a good warm-up game. Easy to play, easy to stop playing, and really, really fun. Such a simple concept, but so ingenious.
I know it sounds pretty stupid, but Killer Bunnies is great fun. It can be competitive, if you play it right, but it can also be very random and party-game like. The object: kill Bunnies with a wild assortment of weapons (they range from nuclear warheads to kitchen whisks), and keep your Bunnies alive. This game has a million expansions, but none are worth the money except for the red deck and violet deck. Word of warning: as much as I love this game, it can be ruined by the wrong group of players. You need light-hearted, fun-loving, and not overly-analytical people. They can be competitive, but they can't think too much. Otherwise, it's a long, painful experience.
Days of Wonder is the best game company ever. EVER. The Ticket to Ride games have been their most successful, although they are beating a dead horse at this point with all the versions available. Our favorite is Ticket to Ride Europe. You are working on a map of Europe, with all country names in their native language, circa 1900. You learn some history and geography, if nothing else. The goal is to claim train tracks by trading in train cards and completing routes from one city to another. Great opportunities for shafting other players in this one, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.

I am amazed by the number of people, myself included, who say they dream about this game after the first time they play. Carcassonne is a tile-laying game, where you expand and complete roads, farms, and cities based on strategically placed tiles and "meeples" (I think this means "my peoples", but I can't be sure). This is a good one for younger kids if you are willing to let the rules slide and play cooperatively. If not, it can be cut-throat and the kiddies are better served going to bed early.
Blokus is the game that five-year-olds can dominate, and adults are challenged as well. You need four-players for it to work best, and each player takes a different color. You take turns getting your pieces on the board - they have to be anchored to existing pieces, touching at the corners only - and trying to block opponents from doing the same. Mark once had a perfect game, having no pieces left over and the single piece played last. He's never let us forget that amazing achievement.

Quiddler is a cross between Scrabble and Rummy. Seriously. They should have called it Scrummy.

I LOVE Puerto Rico. It's one of the few games I've ever played where no luck is involved. The only time luck comes into play is if someone sits to the left of an idiot, but it typically works to your advantage, so no one complains. No dice, no drawing cards. Just building, settling, shipping, and selling. And some other stuff. All in good ole Puerto Rico. Good times. Allow yourself a few plays before attempting to really know what's going on. Definitely too complicated for the kiddies.

Did I mention Days of Wonder makes awesome games? Memoir 44 is a two-player "recreate an actual WWII battle". Even I love this game, and I don't go for war games. Mark and I once played the Battle of Normandy 8 times before he was able to win with the Americans. He kept saying "But we really did win!!" while I kept picking his guys off in the water from the safety of my German bunker. Lots of expansions are becoming available for this game as well. Ben and Daniel both enjoy this one.

We bought Sword and Skull for Ben for Christmas one year, based solely on its being an Avalon Hill game (they make all the Axis and Allies games, if you're in to that.) This one is all about pirating, and it's really fun. You build up some street cred (or sea cred, in this case) and then you take on this big stud pirate. Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of rum.

I've blogged on this one before. Still my all-time fave. Also Days of Wonder. Good people over there at DOW.

Honorable Mentions: Mystery of the Abbey, Settlers of Catan, Heroclix, Niagara, Strat-O-Matic Baseball, Pirates Cove, Dos Rios.