They were drawing tiles for a randomly-generated, ostensibly-haunted mansion.

“What?”

They were moving around delightfully crafted plastic player pieces, including a scientist, a football star, and a little white girl.

“What!?”

They were drawing items, fighting monsters, and reading flavor text aloud to each other.

“WHAT!?!”

Betrayal at House on the Hill Game was released by Avalon Hill in 2004. My game shop didn't carry it. Who knows how many hundreds of 'meh's' it elicited on the shelves, vying against such newly-released heavy-hitters as Power Grid, War of the Ring, Memoir, 44', and, for fuck's sake, Ticket to Ride. Six years later, its BoardGameGeek rating is also “meh” at 6.8. Fortunately, I don't have an iPhone, or an Android, or whatever, and I couldn't check the BGG while waiting for my hot wife to return with tiny delectations. I consider this a boon: Lacking any way to gauge the value of the game, surgically deconstructed by peers, I had a chance to evaluate it untainted by outside opinion.

Ooh, Shiny...

I guess that's actually unfair. After stealing a few glances at The Group At The Next Table, too awkward and tired to bother asking whether it was any fun, my first impression was formed the next day when I checked out a copy from the PAX board game library.

“Oh my God! Are you full up?” the stranger inquired.

“Yes,” Austin and I lied, still not swollen with the PAX spirit. (Forgive us, mysterious stranger!)

Dishonesty aside, that's a good sign. As it turned out, each time we checked out the game, someone was nearby asking to play with us. (We did relent, which turned out to be awesome.) Each time we turned it in, someone was behind us in line, asking to check it back it out. It doesn't matter how mediocre a game is reputed, if it draws that kind of interest, it's got to be good.

Part of the appeal may be its rarity. The game had one print run, and has drawn prices of $150 on eBay. That's more than I paid for my 1979 copy of Dune. Amazingly, two copies were available at the PAX library, and I have to thank the folks generous enough to entrust such a prize to the public. (A second edition has been announced for release winter of this year, but good luck finding an affordable copy until then.)

Gameplay

As we read the rules, I became even more enamored. We would slowly discover the layout of the House on the Hill, drawing room tiles randomly as we entered unexplored areas. Most rooms contain either an event, item, or omen. As more omens are drawn, it becomes more likely that a player will trigger what is ominously called the Haunt. When this happens, the game starts in earnest. The specific Haunt chosen depends on the room entered and the omen drawn. One player becomes the traitor and leaves the room, as in physically; gtfowise. Each “team” then consults their own game manual and reads their version of the Haunt story. The asymmetry informs each team's actions, and the winning condition for the opponent is unknown.

BAD.

ASS.

Naturally this leads to spoilers and diminishing returns on repetitious playthoughs, but still, I'm all for it. Storytelling in this game is also diverse. OMG SPOILERS: Although we were only able to play a single complete game, involving a giant spider and a possessed former teammate, other objectives include disarming bombs, the house coming to life (naturally), and constructing an airplane from found materials to engineer an escape.

Our playthrough was fairly short. The Haunt was triggered unexpectedly early, after the third omen was drawn. Austin, the power-lifting football star, was the unfortunate traitor, stuck in the basement after yours truly, the affluent precocious white girl, escaped in a magic elevator. With no better way to interrupt the “heroes'” actions, he chased Ben's character, the street-smart prescient urban youth, through the catacombs, tombs and game rooms of the House's lower level.

The heroes, meanwhile, were graced by fleetness and efficacy of Chris' monkey-toting scientist, who nigh-singlehandedly incapacitated the foe-spider, healed the victim Adrian, and freed him from the snarling web. He then deftly unlocked the House's front door, leaving poor Adrian to unluckily trip, fall, and die while attempting to follow, and exited the next turn, ending the game, the heroes victorious.

Assessment

I know what you're thinking: “That doesn't sound fair at all.” I agree wholeheartedly. There's a randomness to everything that can't be easily reduced in a game of this format. Austin was unfortunately placed, and the location and timing of the Haunt greatly favored the heroes. It was generally one-sided. But it was fun, and it was fun for everyone.

Here's what I think of the individual elements of the game.

Bits and pieces? Con. The items and board accessories come up lacking. Most items, monsters, and effects are represented by cardboard tokens. I tend to be less enthralled by a green square with text labeled “spider” than I am, say, a green square with at least a picture of a spider. Still, the plastic player pieces nearly make up for it, though rumor has it they may be missing from the second edition.

Map-tile drawing? Pro. Randomizing the board will make the game at least marginally different each playthrough, and deciding the Haunt based on the tile drawn makes it that much more interesting.

Theme? Solid. Any time you can play a game with wildly diverse objectives, I'm for it. One tends to get tired of destroying the same eldritch horrors time and again, and it's refreshing to escape a haunted manse via a hastily-constructed cardboard glider now and again.

Traitors? For it. I love a game that lets you fuck over your friends. It's a shame it's more overt than Battlestar Galactica or Shadows Over Camelot, but it's sweet that it's there nonetheless.

Replayability? Good. As I hear it, most scenarios ultimately amount to a few item-assisted skill checks. Ho-hum stuff right? But at least the scenario's different each time. I mean, shit, how many times do we have to run out of fuel one jump short of Kobol?

Roleplaying? Ehh, sorta. The character choices are limited, and each player disk is two-sided, meaning only one player can play a given character “type.” Getting into character is pretty trivial should you chose to, given your interests generally include such insights as “football” and “shiny things.”

Finally: Randomness? You're gonna hate me for this. This is a very random game. The board configuration, timing, and character placement when the Haunt is triggered significantly affect the outcome. If you're deeply into skill-based games, this is probably a major turnoff. While this is usually true of my own gaming circle, it's by no means absolute. Sometimes, you want to play a game like Galaxy Trucker. You get a bad draw, your ship gets mauled, and you laugh. It's not fair, but it's still fun.

Betrayal has that lighthearted vibe, and it's the crowning jewel in my opinion. It's not a cut-throat adversarial feeding frenzy like Puerto Rico, it's not as long and involved as the thematically-similar Arkham Horror, and it doesn't demand the same cooperation intensity as Pandemic. It's a game you pick up casually, crack a beer to, and poke jokes through for an hour or so. Grab it and give it a try with your less-competitive friends. It just might surprise you.

If you can find a goddamned copy.

There are some decent strategy guides out there (see the links at the bottom of the Colossus page, for example), and I highly recommend using Colossus to help tune your game.

But, one lingering question I've had is how good are the creatures in the game, really? The game assigns point values, in the range of 12–40, that is computed crudely: simply multiply the strength and level. But this is incorrect: a centaur isn't really the same as an ogre, is it?

Answering that question in general is tough. One thing I can do, though, is to figure out which creatures are more effective in one-on-one battles against each other. This is exactly what I did.

Here are some simple results for just the beginning ("tower") creatures, to decide which ones are inherently better. These results are averaged over 1,000,000 runs.

Essentially, they are all nearly equal when it comes to killing each other, but the Centaur has a slightly better chance of surviving against an Ogre, and an Ogre has a better chance of surviving against a Gargoyle. Not exactly a clear victory for anyone, but I would have to say that the Centaur appears to be the best tower creature here.

It is fairly easy to extend these results to all one-on-one battles possible, which I have included in this table (PDF). The table is arranged so that the creature on the left-hand-side is attacking the creature on top, and the pair of numbers represents the probability of the left creature defeating the top creating and the probability of the left creature getting killed, respectively.

The simulation to generate these numbers took about two hours (all written in Python / Cython, source code available here, if you are curious).

Image by Flickr user chez_sugi

There's an added bonus, as well: If you are used to Fantasy Flight Games, you know that they are rife with typos, errata, and other problems. War of the Ring is not a Fantasy Flight original, so seems to have much fewer problems with these issues than many of their other games. That said, this is a complicated, but beautiful game. And since it is complicated, I think that there are some guidelines to be followed when playing (many of which are similar to the Twilight Imperium rules).

• Only play with 2 players. Even though the box says 2–4, it is a 2-player game. Playing on teams for this sort of game is a bit silly.
• Make sure you have both read the rules thoroughly. This is one of the more complicated 2-player standard games (i.e., non-wargames). There are lots of nuances to remember, and it's best to have read through the rules yourself to help you get through them.
• Remember those defense bonuses! One of the most-forgotten rules (for me, least) is that fortifications, strongholds, etc., provide special defense bonuses on the first round of combat.
• Read some of the strategy information on Fantasy Flight's website. Some of the subtleties of playing either side can be elusive to new players, so it helps to know some of the standard sorts of strategies you can try.
• Finally, if one of you has played before and one of you hasn't, it might be best to let the new player be Sauron. In my opinion, Sauron is a little easier to play and is a little more straightforward, whereas the Free Peoples player is torn in half a dozen different directions and has some hard choices to make early on (such as, should I concentrate on moving the ring so early? Should I move the Fellowship through Rohan and Gondor, or take the shortcut across the plains? Should I try to fortify Rohan, or just let it fall?).

Any other advice for playing and enjoying War of the Ring?

Not to worry – we have some great options for you without dipping into heavy wargames. Nobody wants to have an ultra-competitive game start a fight between you and your date.

In addition, I am including some romantic variations of each game that you can, err, enjoy.

Bananagrams
Bananagrams is a very light word game that is fun for two or more players, but is extremely playable with two.  Essentially, players are trying to build their very own Scrabble board in front of them (as opposed to sharing one) as fast as possible.

With its low price-point, it's hard to pass up this staple of any word-lovers' collection. It doesn't hurt that Bananagrams eliminates Scrabble's problem of letting one player unknowingly ruin another's chances — not the best situation for a romantic evening.

Strip Banangrams: You can dump a letter, and instead of taking more letters, take off a piece of clothing!  Also, loser removes an article of clothing.

Fjords
Fjords is one of my favorite tile-laying games, meant for only two players.  The game is fairly light and completely balanced, with super-easy rules to learn.

Players take turns building a map in front of them on which they build competing farms. Over multiple rounds, players with the bigger farms wins.

Strip Fjords: At the end of each round, the difference in points must be expressed through the loss of clothing of the loser: if one person loses by 3 points, he or she must lose 3 articles clothing!

Dominion
A fun card game that plays well with two is Dominion. In Dominion, players take turns trying to buy new cards, which in turn give the player new powers with which to buy cards and try to win the game.

Its growing popularity in the past year has made it easy to find, and many people may already own this one. With the extremely high replay value from the large selection of cards to include, this game should provide lots of fun.

However, for Valentine's Day, you might want to take out the Witch, Thief, Militia, and other attack cards.

Strip Dominion: Repurpose one of the attack cards to force your opponent to remove a piece of clothing.

Race for the Galaxy
Race for the Galaxy is another great card game that plays well with two. In Race, players each pick roles that will be played this round, such as producing and selling goods, or building new cards. Everyone then simultaneously executes the abilities of the roles that were played while trying to get the most points.

The theme is fun, and the game has a lot of replay value, especially with its two expansions. Following in the footsteps of most Eurogames, there is little direct competition in these games.  Play is simultaneous, so there's no sweetie to blame for your bad misfortune after.

Strip Race for the Galaxy: Whoever produced the least goods this turn has to remove an article of clothing.

Alternative: San Juan.  Although I prefer Race, many people who want a slightly simpler and friendlier game with a lighter theme may prefer San Juan.  It's very similar in many ways, but with a Puerto Rican theme.

Heroscape
Heroscape is one of the only directly competitive games in this list. The game consists of two parts (in my mind): building the board, and fighting each other with creative armies.

But, despite the competitiveness, half the fun in the game is in building the board on which you will play. If you two enjoy(ed) Legos or similar building activities, this part may be more fun than the actual game.  The battles themselves are pretty random, so no ones' feelings should be hurt on account of the lucky die rolls.

Strip Heroscape: Reroll any die by removing an article of clothing.

Hive
Hive
is a two-player strategy game, whereby players place and move hex tiles that act with different characteristics, both of you trying to "kill" the enemy queen. The best analogy is probably to chess – you have pieces with varying abilities in attempting to dominate the other player.

But, the game is not too competitive, and is certainly easier to play than chess. Since it does not have a fixed starting board, games are often strikingly different than each other, and there isn't the pressure to study the game as heavily as chess, so two people can have some light fun.

Strip Hive: Since the games are fairly short, the loser can simply remove an article of clothing.

Blokus
The only completely abstract game on the list, Blokus is a great two-player "tile"-laying game.  Although, instead of traditional square or hex tiles, you are placing different sized blocks, arranged often like "Tetris" pieces with 1–5 squares (tetrominoes, pentaminoes, and such for the math geeks out there).

Since this game is played on a shared board, it can be a little more competitive than the others, as every move you make directly blocks or hurts the other player.  Play with caution!

Strip Blokus: Take back any of your played pieces in exchange for a piece of clothing.

Runner Up: Citadels
One of my favorite games is Citadels, another card game. However, I could not wholeheartedly put it in this list because it is very competitive, with lots of thieving and mean acts. If your relationship is strong enough, you might be able handle playing this, but be careful!

Citadels is played by the players taking different roles with different powers in an attempt to build the best city.  It tends to play quickly, but with lots of drama thrown in due to the evil nature of at least half of the characters.

Strip Citadels: The player who is not the king must remove an article of clothing at the end of every round.  Alternatively, you must remove an article of clothing every time you take the King.

Image by Flickr user stevefaeembra

The main difference is that when stealing from your neighbors, any word you steal will cost them points. In addition, you get bonuses for long words and for using all of your letters.

However, there is a rule that states that on your turn you can only steal one word from one other player. This gives you incentives to steal long, valuable words from another player, especially if it contains the current "trump" suit (worth more points).

I quickly discovered a few useful rules of thumb when playing this game.

• Always use all of your letters. It's nearly always possible if you have time to think it through, especially if you follow the next rule. Also, the more letters you use, then the more points you will score, as the game has a finite length based on who finishes first.
• Make lots of short, crappy words. Even though making words of all the same suit will "lock" them (thereby preventing players from stealing them), in general, the other players won't want to steal a really small, less valuable words. In addition, by making lots of small words, it is easier to use all of your tiles, and the damage from having a word stolen is minimized.
• Punish your opponents for long words. If they only play a long word on their turn, steal it (thereby taking away a lot of their points) and turn it into a ton of small words, punishing them for making a long word.

I love competitive word games. But I, at least, have to remember that a lot of my friends who like to play word games like Word Thief are not hardcore gamers, so maybe I shouldn't be so competitive with them.

Photo — Lainey's Repertoire

Over the holidays, I put together a Twilight Imperium game at my house, and I thought I would share some tips for preparation and organizing your own game.

You need at least 5 players. No, really. The game is not fun with less than five, because the alliances could form too easily, and the bigger maps can't be used. I think the game works best with 6 or 8 players (but you can only do more than 6 if you have the expansion).

Make sure that there is enough room for everyone. This means a large table, enough chairs for everyone, and possibly some smaller tables for people to organize their bits on (I like TV trays for this).

Despite what the box says, TI3 takes more than 4 hours to play. Typically, for an 6-player game, it's going to be at least 5 or 6 hours, and 8 players bring that closer to 8 hours.

Unless you and your friends have a lot of downtime regularly (for example, you are in college), you will need to set a date a few weeks in advance. Since you are going to have to start pretty early and eat up most of a day, your friends' schedules will matter in planning, so give everyone time to come together for this.

Have everyone bring cash. I like to start before lunch and go up until dinner (at least). This usually means that everyone will need to eat at least once, possibly takeout, and cash is a good thing to make this go easier.

Have a large table and lots of chairs.

The most important rule: make sure everyone has read the rules before coming. Nothing will make the game take longer than having to have a long rules exposition at the beginning of the game, and constant questions during it. The rules are long (about 44 pages for the base game), so this is a non-trivial, but necessary requirement.

Explain the Imperial–Initiative tick–tock unwritten "rule." If you have never played TI3 before, this may be new to you: whoever chooses the strategy card first should always pick the Imperial (8) card, since it gives 2 victory points and gets the game closer to victory. The next person should always pick the Initiative (1) card so that they can pick the Imperial card next time.

If not everyone understands this, then someone will run away with the game as soon as they figure out that the Imperial card is overpowered. Nothing is less fun than being 2 hours into a 6-hour game and noticing that there is no way for anyone to catch up with one of the players because someone let them draw the Imperial card twice in a row.

A possible alternative to this is to use the Imperial II card (in the expansion) with the Age of Empires option.

Minimize the number of optional rules and expansion pieces if you have new players. The game is complicated enough to learn as it is. Specifically, with new players, I don't play with Distant Suns, Leaders, Artifacts, Space Mines, Facilities, or Shock Troops. I will play with the expansion races and cards, but I try to make the first game with people as straightforward as possible.

Many of these ideas can be adapted to other long-running games, such as Diplomacy. Does anyone else have any tips or suggestions for organizing or running a large game?

Best Overall Game: Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition

This game has won my heart by being the most fun for me. The box is large enough that I think it ate all of other games and absorbed all of their fun.

This game is not for a light afternoon of gaming: it is a fairly serious all-day affair. It incorporates a wide variety of game elements including alliances, politics, strategy, tactics, turn order, resource management, and more. However, for a moderate to serious gamer, I can think of no better way to spend most of a day.

Best Cooperative Game: Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica is a cooperative game in the loosest of senses: all of the players (theoretically) are working together to survive the Cylon swarms and numerous challenges to get to Kobol. However, there is guaranteed to be at least on traitor in the game, with the possibility of two or three.

The game has a unique twist that halfway through, players are dealt an additional loyalty card, meaning that whether or not you are a traitor can change halfway though. So, you can't do too well in the beginning, even if you aren't a traitor, because that may change.

This dynamic as well as the fully fleshed out gameplay makes this a big win over comparable cooperative games for me.

Best Word Game: Bananagrams

Bananagrams is short and sweet: everyone rushes to make a complete Scrabble board at the same time as other players. There is no scrounging for points for two-letter words and no score to keep track of, making it ideal for players who haven't bothered to learn the two-letter word list but still want to have fun with a word game.

It's low price, portability, and replay value make this game a huge favorite these days.

Best Card Game: Dominion

Card games normally suffer from many problems that have limited my playing them in the past: too many cards increases the randomness of the game, too few reduces the replayability and fun, too complicated detracts from people playing it, too simple also reduces the fun (generally). Managing a massive deck of cards can be daunting, and hand management is almost too simple.

Dominion strikes a delicate but amazing balance between all of these elements, creating a game that is not too long (30–45 minutes), is flexible with the number of players, has a good selection of cards, and is not too complicated. How well you do in the game is essentially how well you manage the randomness of the cards in your deck, so in a way you are fighting against the randomness.

Best Random Game: Galaxy Trucker

Sometimes, you just have to say screw it to deep strategy, alliance making and breaking, and lots of thinking. You just want to spend an hour and a half with some friends laughing over how well the tiles have screwed you over, or how bad the draw pile is going to mess up all of your work.

Enter Galaxy Trucker. It is a game that embraces its random nature. Your job is to build an interstellar piece of junk that can get you from one end of the galaxy to other, maximizing your collection of cargo along the way. You also must survive a swarm of pirates, slavers, asteroid fields, laser blasts, and (yes) open space.

Photo — Chris Blakely

Train is a simulation of the Holocaust, requiring players to transport yellow pawns on model trains. The game does not overtly state what will happen to those pawns — in fact, it does not even make the underlying idea of the game obvious, omitting any mention of the word 'Holocaust. Instead, part way through the game, players realize the situation when they flip cards to discover the destination of each train to find that each is headed to a concentration camp.

While the game itself seems to provide a meaningful experience for players, I read a critique of Brathwaite's methodology recently that really struck home. Sirlin posted the following as part of a larger discussion on a presentation by Brathwaite:

To me, making a game is about ending up with a thing that is "good," whatever that means to the designer (or to the player?). But it's not about any particular backend production process. If I made a game about a modern tragedy and I told you I typed the rules on a real Bush Administration computer, would that matter? I think mostly it doesn't. If anything, using a real Nazi typewriter goes against the ability to
actually make copies of this game and put into players hands. But making copies of this game isn't the goal either, says Brenda. She made only one and said she wouldn't make any more. (I think she later agreed to make a total of 6 for very special exhibits or people, not sure on that.) The whole deal about the typewriter signals to us that the piece of art here INCLUDES the development process. That's kind of out-of-bounds to me, in that we're only supposed to consider the game as a final piece of work. I don't really care how Halo was made, only Halo is good. But Brenda isn't really making a game, is she? She's making a piece of art. I think Train is supposed to be about not only the final product, but how it was made. By the way, games can be art, but not all pieces of art are games.

At what level is board game design more art than science? Is a game truly a game if you can't replicate it?