Inside the board game renaissance

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal is thriving under its leading role during the Age of Discovery. The cultural center is Coimbra. As the head of one of the oldest houses, you seek to earn prestige by deepening relationships with nearby monasteries or funding expeditions of the era. For 2 — 4 players, games run 60 — 90 minutes. The competition level is high and it is, like in the game, all about that glory. A great auction system and way to build through the map.

You are trying to attract artists and scholars to the city to become the most prestigious family in Florence. You get your own palace grid and you need to fill that with a mix of buildings.

There are a variety of professions such as astronomers, organists and architects. Each is attracted to a particular combination of building, landscape features, and social freedom. The more you can do this, the more work points you generate. For 2 — 5 players, games last 75 — minutes.

Goa makes the list of the best Renaissance board games because it is another fun title that sets you out to explore the era. This is a hand management game with plenty of gambling opportunities to push your luck. The auction system really drives things and makes for an exciting time. A strategy game of auctions and resource management, Goa is set at the start of the 16th century: beautiful beaches, a mild climate, and one of the most important trading centers in the world.

Competing companies deal in spices, send ships and colonists into the world, and invest money. The game mixes an interactive element of the auction, which ties in on many levels. For 2 — 4 players, games run about 90 minutes. Splendor may be a simple engine building game but it really drives home that you are a gem trader trying to make it in the Renaissance well.

If nothing else, this is an award-winning game and an icon of board gaming. No one has mastered the ultra simplistic engine builder like Splendor has. An easy middle staple for the list of the best Renaissance board games. My friends and I would spend many nights trying out new titles and refining our strategies. Because most of my Euro Games were, as of yet, unavailable in the North-American market, I would take cards or tiles that had text on them and translate them into English by writing on them with a pen, making them playable for my new-found friends here in Winnipeg.

If you wanted to spend time with Olaf, you had to learn a new game. That was the deal. As a collector, board gaming was not only a passion for me, it had become a life-style. Of course, the success of Euro Games meant that they soon began to be released in English and made available in North America. Since then, the selection of new games available here has grown exponentially.

Nothing makes me happier than seeing people of any age, gender or background gathering at a table to spend quality time together over a good game. Hopefully I have intrigued you enough to try a new or older board game with friends or family. There are a lot of new and exciting games available and trying to decide which one to buy can feel overwhelming at times.

Do you want to try one of the classic Euro games that is easy to learn? Cosmic Pizza, for instance, rewards spatial reasoning more than luck, as players craft complex routes to deliver pies through outer space, zooming from planet to planet, collecting tips, and avoiding asteroids. Share this: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading Subscribe in a reader. Adultgames-direct facebook.

The defining feature of the new wave of games that have come out since then is their emphasis on giving players meaningful choices. There are often multiple ways to win, and problems seldom have obvious solutions.

And while many game designers try their best to create games that are broadly appealing in addition to being textured and challenging, they have had a difficult time producing anything remotely as popular as Monopoly, or as widely loved as Pictionary and Taboo. According to Cambridge Games Factory developer Rob Seater, most new American games in the European tradition sell 30, copies at the very most. It has to be a card from the Supply. You cannot use coins from Treasures or previous Actions like the Market to increase the cost of the card you may gain.

Still, for a lot of designers, hope resides in the possibility that by engineering just the right kind of fun, they can create games that will grab something inside people and not let go. A game controls for all those things. Leon Neyfakh is the staff writer for Ideas. E-mail lneyfakh globe. Ideas Inside the board game renaissance Can a cardboard box take over your mind?