Hello, Tabletop Gaming!

04 Oct 2015

I’ve recently begun exploring tabletop gaming and I’m happy to report my journey so far has been thoroughly enjoyable! Here are two games (one board and one card) that I’m currently hooked on.

Pandemic is a cooperative board game (2-4 players) that pits your team against four malevolent diseases, which are conveniently named red, blue, yellow, and black. Players take turns moving between cities and trying to stymie the spread of the various diseases while gathering enough resources to discover respective cures. Discussion among the team is encouraged and a must for victory as coordination is key. It’s a challenging game; it took us four tries to finally win a game! Mechanics in the game make each iteration feel novel and fresh: each person is randomly assigned a role that gives them special perks (e.g. a medic can cure diseases in a town faster) and how diseases spread are determined from a shuffled (random) deck of cards.

There are several expansions to Pandemic that increase the challenge in this already challenging game. If this sounds daunting, I still definitely recommend getting the On The Brink expansion from the get-go as it includes much-needed dishes and trays for organizing all the tokens and disease cubes. Pandemic and On The Brink will run you about $50, but I’ve found it a worthwhile investment!

Monopoly Deal is a faster way to play Monopoly. You’ll acquire property, charge rent, put houses and hotels down, screw over friends, and probably lose friends. But it won’t take more than 15 minutes to accomplish all this and all you need to carry around is a deck of 110 cards! You win when you can acquire three complete sets of a property color.

As with regular Monopoly, your friends mortal enemies will be looking to deplete your bank, take your property, and inflict permanent damage to your soul. Luck is certainly useful when drawing cards from a shuffled deck. But I’ve also lost consistently enough times that some strategy (that I’m unaware of) must be at play! Purchasable today for under $5, getting this game won’t break the bank!

If I’ve piqued your interest, but you’ve got any questions feel free to send me a tweet!