Board Games without Borders
Some of the best language independent board games I play
I love playing board games. It’s a passion that built up in the last few years. With a bunch of friends we rediscovered a fun way to spend dark and cold winter afternoons inside (or sunny and hot summer evenings outside).
There are so many kinds and genres of games. I can’t say I’m an expert, but I’ve come to know many of them, thanks to on line research and actual play. I’ll give you some useful links later in the article.
I would like to focus, here, on language independent board games. No long texts to read, no necessity to translate things on the board, just someone that knows the rules and everyone can play in any language.
I’m listing only games I know and own (or that I’ve played so many times I know what I’m talking about).
Without further ado, let’s start!
Ticket to Ride and expansions
Ticket to Ride is a modern classic! It’s the game I’ve played the most recently and, with all the expansions available, you can play for months without getting bored of it.
The idea, in a nutshell, is this: you are a railroad tycoon and need to build a series of train routes along the map. All the players are competing to claim a route before the others, but they have to rely on their best strategy and some luck with cards.
The main part of the game is the map, where railroads of different colors are displayed. You can claim a line between two cities only if you have the correct amount of cards of that same color. Needles to say your opponents may need to claim that route too. To spice things up each player has some tickets to complete, linking two cities that can be really close…or impossibly far. If you complete a ticket you gain points, if you don’t complete it you lose points.
It all started with Ticket to Ride USA in 2004, but now there are lots of expansions available like Europe, UK, India, Africa etc... No two maps are equal and each one has specific rules, so try them all!
Colt Express
This one is brand new. Colt Express won the award as Best Board Game at the Lucca Comics and Games convention (imagine a Comic Con that takes place in an Italian medieval city. Isn’t it awesome?).
Colt Express is set in a western movie setting. Each player is an outlaw competing with the others during a train robbery to get the highest amount of money and jewels from passengers. Players have to defend from each other and from the sheriff, who can completely ruin their plans.
The game has some nice components. There are six carboard coaches, so you can pretend to be on a real train, and there’s also some background scenery that can be added to the set.
Players have a predetermined set of cards with a series of actions on them. Each player can move up and down the coach (yes, you can climb up to the roof), or back and forth along the train. You can also shoot or punch someone, grab the loot (if there’s any on the ground) and move the sheriff.
Each player can choose one among six characters and each of them has a special ability. But the best part is how the plan gets into action. Cards are played face up or down according to a predetermined list of turns (there are special cards for it). Only at the end of the round actions are committed one at the time. You need to be careful because things can go according to plan…or not!
Easy and fun to play. Perfect for kids.
Power Grid
Another classic coming from Germany. The players must build the most extensive power grid possible, connecting cities on the map and giving power to them.
At the beginning of each turn players first compete to buy a power plant, possibly the most powerful one. Then they have to buy resources (coal, oil, waste and uranium) to feed their plants, but the more resources you buy, the less there are available, the more they cost. Then each player can connect one or more cities. Finally players have to decide how many cities will have power this turn, according to how many resources they’ve stored on their power plants.
And this is the only action that really counts, in the end. The player who wins is the one that can give power to the highest number of cities in the last turn.
The game is easier than it seems. Be prepared to long sessions, though. Power Grid can last up to two hours!
Carcassonne
Imagine the French countryside, with fields, streets, cathedrals and fortified towns. You can build them all in Carcassonne.
The game is made of several tiles showing the elements listed above. Each player, in turn, choose a tile from a pile (or from a bag) and tries to connect it to other pieces of the puzzle already on the board. Every different element of the scenery can be claimed putting a pawn from your hand on it. If a player completes the structure (e.g. a city has a complete wall around it) he takes some point and claims his pawn back. The game ends when there are no more tiles available.
The game is quick and easy. Everyone can learn it in minutes. And when you get bored of the base set…you can choose one among 10 expansions to spice things up.
Splendor
This time players are jewellers. They have to collect preciuos gems (sapphires, onyxes, rubies, topazes and emeralds) to buy cards that will give them victory points. Occasionally, if the jeweller is well known, a noble will pay visit, giving him more points.
It seems odd, doesn’t it? Yet Splendor is one of the most complex games I’ve ever played. Don’t get me wrong, this again is a very easy game to learn, but there’s so much strategy that you really need to think carefully before every single move. One of the opponents can steal the card you wanted under your nose, just because he made the best choices.
Splendor work great even as a solitaire. Download the official app (I have the iOS version, but it’s also available on Android) and try to beat each and every challenge. Good luck!
Dixit
Forget all the party games you’ve ever played, Dixit will be your new obsession.
The box comes with a set of 84 cards with wonderful color illustrations. The first player, called the Narrator, chooses a card from his hand and gives a hint to the other players. The hint can be a word, a sentence, a song, a verse or anything else that the card inspired him. Then he places his card face down on the table. The other players must choose a card from their hands that matches with the hint. They also put it on the table face down. At the end the Narrator shuffles the chosen cards and every player, but the Narrator, has to try and guess which one is the card originally played.
The Narrator wins if someone guesses his card. Be careful though: someone has to guess, not everybody, not none. If the Narrator is too clear, or too cryptic, he gets no points!
Prepare for lots of fun and laughter, especially when you play in a large group (Dixit can be played from 3 up to 12 people). Do you think you know your friends? Find it out with Dixit!
Stone Age
Finally, let’s go back to the Stone Age, literally. Here players have to manage their prehistoric family sending them hunting, lumbering, mining or…mating. The more people in the family, the more food you need, but also the more resources you can get.
Resources, like wood and ore, can be used to build tepees and to buy development cards to get victory points.
Only the ones that can balance all those things will survive the Stone Age!
On line resources
This list is just the beginning. If you want more ideas just surf the net and find something new. I’m giving you some useful links. The article is in English, so I’m listing sources in this same language.
First the website Boardgame Geek (https://boardgamegeek.com), one of the biggest board games database in the Internet. Check it out if you need a game review or if you want to know some detail about a game you want to buy.
BoardGame Arena (http://en.boardgamearena.com/#!gamepanel?game=libertalia) is your online board gaming place. It’s a free online boardgaming website available in many different languages. You can play with real people and get to know new games. If you don’t know how to play rules are always available.
And then there’s You Tube! I can’t finish this article without naming my two best sources of board games knowledge.
The first one is The Dice Tower. A bunch of tabletop nerds from Florida, Tom Vasel being the Commander in Chief, review tons of games every week. If you want an opinion on a game you wanted to buy just look for their channel.
The second one is Tabletop. The series, produced by Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day for Geek and Sundry, is at its third season and it keeps getting better and better. Each episode, about 30–40 minutes long, shows a different game played by a group of VIPs and friends of the host, Wil himself. The dinamic of the game is briefly intruduced by Wil at the beginning. More rules are added as the game progresses. So you basically learn how to play watching Wil and his friends having fun.
And now, what are you waiting for? Stop reading, call your friends and go play your favorite board game!
