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Absolute Beginners: Boardgames
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The first recorded examples of boardgames are the Royal Game of Ur and the Egyptian game Senet. We know the Romans played dice games with sheep anklebones, and that Chess, Backgammon and Snakes and Ladders were all invented (in their current forms) in India.
The Victorians loved games in all their various incarnations, but their boardgames were mostly linear track and dice based movement affairs. The first modern boardgame - Monopoly - originally dates from 1903, but didn't hit the big time until Parker Brothers mass produced it in the 1930's.
Many of the popular mass market boardgames still in production today date from the fifties and sixties. Games like Cluedo (1946), Risk (1959), Stratego (1959) and Acquire (1962).
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Games Are For Life, Not Just For Christmas
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Running a shop that specialises in good quality boardgames is frequently like being one of those cult de-programmers that rescue people from the Branch Dravidians or somesuch. Years of family Christmasses spent arguing over whether or not you get to be the dog, the boot or the car have taken their toll on even the most balanced British psyche. So the first thing we have to say is that not all games are like Monopoly; it's great, it's a classic, it's always a top seller. But it really isn't a very good game. Too much is random, with winning a function of dice rolls and card drawing at the expense of any serious strategy. But what do we expect? The gameplay is a hundred years old. Playing Monopoly is like choosing to drive the Model T Ford of boardgames, rather than purchase a Mondeo.
In the 1980's Boardgame designers solved the Monopoly problem by inventing the party game. Here the gameplay elements were all but removed and the fun quota upped to the extreme. But you don't need a strategy to play a game like Trivial Pursuit; the journey itself is the goal, and the fun comes not from the game but from the people you're playing it with.
There is a third solution, and that's the traditional game. Chess, Go, Backgammon, Poker - these games excel at the gameplay, the abstract and the skill of the player. Which is great if you're a Chess grandmaster or World Series Poker professional, but less useful if you've got to entertain granny and the kids on Boxing Day.
But shouldn't there be some kind of middle ground, where skill meets randomness on the table of destiny? Where families and friends can get together for a good time without the tantrums before bedtime or the risk of losing your shirt to Dave the Devilfish in a game of high stakes Texas Hold 'Em (let alone Debbie from Accounts in a game of Strip Pictionary)?
Welcome to the Fan Boy Three Boardgame Pages.
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Vorspung Durch Spiele
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At Fan Boy Three, we scour the world to bring you the best boardgames. And unlike collectible cardgames and roleplaying books, we don't have very far to go for most of them. While plenty of boardgames still come from America and a few originate here in England, most of the top boardgames now come out of Europe and most of those come out out of Germany.
Nobody does gameplay like the Germans.
Unlike their American counterparts, German game designers shy away from overtly military boardgame designs making them much more suitable for an entire family audience. German families really do sit around a table and play a boardgame in the evening. (But then again, I've seen German television...)
Don't worry if your language skills aren't up to scratch - our German games are the English translated editions. German games tend come with very good quality boards and solid wooden pieces, play in around 60-90 minutes and German boardgame designers are so conscious of all the elements I criticised Monopoly for that they take the time to playtest a lot of the kinks out until the gameplay is smooth as a Heineken. Many boardgamers avidly collect and play almost every German release; we call these gamers Spielefreaks.
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State of Independence
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The Germans haven't always excelled at family games. Back in the early days of the Spiele des Jahres, they hardly ever won their own event (which isn't something you can EVER say about the Origins awards!)
The American boardgame industry is split firmly down the middle. On one hand you have the big games corporations producing endless variants on the same few classic titles: Monopoly, Risk, Stratego, Cluedo - all groundbreakers in their day, but nearly all approaching their pensions. On the other are the hobby producers, often the same companies who produce roleplaying and card games, or specialist counter based wargame simulations.
Some of these games are great, some random, but most of them are clearly specialist hobby products aimed at the specialist gamer who probably doesn't feel that these Absolute Beginners sections are aimed at them. Fantasy, science fiction, horror and war elements dominate the themes, and even when they buy in a German design like Vegas they'll fantasy it up and call it Maginor.
This may make most American hobby market games a harder sell if you're trying to convince your friends that playing a boardgame other than Cranium or Trivial Pursuit isn't in the slightest bit nerdy.
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Made in England
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Sadly the British boardgame industry is flagging in a dissappointing third place. Sure, we have companies like Paul Lemond and Upstarts, but their output is aimed mostly at the toy trade. Most boardgames published and sold each year in the UK are TV title cash in games aimed at an undemanding Christmas market and firmly expecting to wind up in the trash on Boxing Day.
How have the mighty fallen. Twenty years ago miniatures company Games Workshop had a whole slew of best selling popular boardgames - HeroQuest, Space Crusade, Fury of Dracula, Talisman and more, that all command good prices on the second hand market. By the mid Nineties, there were none. It seemed Britain got out of the boardgame market just as the rest of the world was jumping back in.
There's light at the end of the tunnel though, with games like Cat Attack, Treasure Islands and Manchester based company Warfrog. With any luck we'll see a great British Boardgame renaissance any time soon...
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How to Choose a Boardgame
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There are five elements to every boardgame:
1) Number of Players. If you're expecting five people at your table, you don't want a game that only runs to four.
2) Gameplay. How the game plays is probably the second most important factor. Course, any serious Spielefreak would actively limit the number of friends he had to just enough to play his favourite game, and thus wouldn't need to worry about the first category. You can use the Fan Boy Three ratings as a rough guide to gameplay, as the higher a product is rated the more absorbing we think the gameplay is.
3) Theme. A great game with a rubbish theme is still better than a rubbish game with a great theme. After a while you'll learn to look beyond the 'Egyptian Theme' and see the gameplay, but for now pick a game that looks like something you might be interested in. But be warned - an overtly military theme is likely to be a wargame by any other name.
4) Designer. In boardgaming the designers are celebrity figures who attract their own cult following. If you like one game by Bruno Faidutti, you'll have a better than average chance of liking another, so it's good to bear this in mind when building up your collection.
5) Components. It's easier to persuade players to pick up and play a game with a strong theme if it looks like a quality product. Certainly a couple of Alan Moon games (Time Pirates & Andromeda) suffered low sales because they just didn't look the business. Again, a true Spielefreak won't care if it comes in a shoebox with washers for pieces, so long as the gameplay is rewarding.
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Our Ratings System Explained
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At Fan Boy Three we rate each and every boardgame out of ten, but the chances are you won't see many on the shelves or the website with a rating of less than 5. We'd rather not run the risk of our customers taking home a stinker, so if there's a serious flaw with the gameplay, component quality or some other aspect we tend not to stock it.
We rate our games on gameplay, then add or subtract a point or two depending on component quality, replayability, a popular theme and the like. Just because a game scores 6 or 7 doesn't mean it's not as good as a game that scored 8 or 9; it might mean that the theme was obscure, we felt it was slightly unbalanced or that the components weren't solid wood or high quality plastic. Where we've not personally played a game, we base our ratings on internet reviews and the opinions of our customers.
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Where to Begin
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Start with the basics. If you want to dip your toe in the boardgame water, start with something with a strong theme that appeals to you or one of the following tried and tested classics:
Carcassonne
Elfenland
Lost Cities
Settlers of Catan
Ticket to Ride (this year's Spiele des Jahres winner)
Tikal
Zombies!!!
For the next few games you might want to try choosing a game or two from our Award Winning Games list; we've played all of them, and there's not a dud on the list (even if some deserved their win more than others!)
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Building Up Your Boardgames Collection
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So you've bought a few boardgames and you're wondering where to go next. It all depends whether you want to go broad or deep.
Your first purchasing decisions should probably be broad. Buy one representative game from each of the featured game designers on our Browse by Designers page. That'll give you an idea of who's style you like and who's you don't.
A deep collection might specialise in one game designer, theme or type of gameplay.
Remember, we also buy and sell second hand games, so if you do pick up something that doesn't agree with you, you can usually trade it back in to us for a discount off your next purchase.
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