This is the third installment of a three-part post about the games that you should be playing.
Parts 1 and Part 2 describe some cooperative and competitive games that are part of the recent rise in Indie and Euro boardgaming in Western Europe and the U.S., and this post moves on to three party games that are also part of this movement.
Party games are different from other sorts of games mainly in that no one really cares who wins, and the playing of the game is the fun part for everyone involved.
These games give you lots of things to think about while you are playing, and they are definitely competitive, but strategic and tactical thinking always take a second seat to fun-spirited arguing, thinking quickly on your feet, and enjoying the social dynamic of the group with which you are playing.
Geek Out is a game that we all, in some way, have already played: naming more things in a geeky category than your friends can. The core idea of the game is that the players roll a die to determine a category of nerdiness (scifi, comics, fantasy, etc.) and a specific question (“can you name two romance comic books,” for example), and then they try to name a bunch of geeky stuff answering the question. If they do, they get points.
The game mechanic that makes it all a bit more interesting and competitive is that the players don’t start by naming things. Instead, they start by making a claim that you could answer the question, and you can even claim to answer with more than the required number of geeky items.
For example, if the question asks for “four mythological places,” I might say “yes, but I’m going to name seven!”
Then, the next player in order has a chance to outbid you and steal the turn from you by claiming to name more. Then the bid continues to go around until at some point someone has to make good on her boasts and actually name that number of things. If she does, she gets the points. If she fails, she gets points taken away.
Geek Out is a great game, and it works really well for larger gatherings of people. That very geeky moment when all of the players argue about whether something “counts” or not is especially fun.
When an argument about the rules is just as fun as playing, you know it’s a good party game.
In Resistance: Avalon the players play members of Arthur’s court, but some of the players are secretly traitors.
The game play is very simple: the players select other players to complete quests, and then the players on the quest complete it by an anonymous vote for success. If three out of five quests are completed, the good guys win. The secret traitors in the group are trying to sabotage the votes in any way that they can, though, and so if three out of the five quests fail, the traitors win.
While the actual components and playing of the game are very straight forward, the real fun is trying to figure out who the traitors are, while the traitors are trying to cast the blame on the other players and trick the good guys into sending them on quests.
Somehow, the lying, shouting, and double-crossing all add up to a lively and fun time with a group of five to ten friends.
Superfight is a set of cards with which you can play any number of games (the rules come with three or four games). There are two categories of cards: the fighter cards, which usually name someone who could get into a fight with someone (like the Hulk, a child beauty pageant queen, or a carnie), and descriptor cards, which add some detail to the fighter (like “armed with grenades,” “throws cats,” or “is made of guacamole”).
In each game, the players play down a fighter and a descriptor from their hands, and then play a descriptor onto other player’s fighters. Then they argue about who would win in a fight.
In our group, we always play the Villain Battle game, in which each player takes turns being the referee, ultimately deciding who would win the fight (much like the core mechanic of Cards Against Humanity and Apples to Apples).
As with the other party games discussed above, the lively interaction between players makes the game fun, especially when you have to decide whether Steven Hawking, who can shoot poison gas, would beat the Hulk, if he were only ten inches tall.
What games are you playing these days? Sound off in the comments!
