ShareThisAs books, newspapers and music become ever more virtual and relocate online -- or at least onto handheld electronic devices -- it warms the cockles of my semi-Luddite heart to know that there are some sources of pleasure that continue to thrive in the real, physical world -- board games.
Here is a guide to the best of the family games.
Finca (Rio Grande, $39.95; 2-4 players; age 10 or older; 45 min.) -- Out of this year's excellent crop of new board games, this is the one I keep returning to most eagerly for its blend of simplicity, beauty and unpredictability. The premise is that the players are farmers on Majorca, reaping various bounties of six crops and delivering them to whatever part of the island requires, say, figs and oranges. That part is fairly conventional, but what sets Finca apart is the mechanism for acquiring the crops in the first place. It's a brilliantly straightforward scheme in which each move is determined by the position of every other playing piece, and the result is a chaos theorist's dream. The game would be enjoyable in any case, but the gorgeous physical design only adds to the pleasure.
Maori (Rio Grande, $34.95; 2-5 players; age 8 and up; 30-45 min.) -- Part of the delight of this short and rewarding game is seeing how much variety and tactical subtlety can be wrung out of an uncomplicated set of rules. Your goal is to complete an island map using printed tiles, with bonuses for things like palm trees and flower garlands. Players take turns moving a ship around a layout of tiles, trying to maneuver into position to get the tiles they want; you can spend clamshells for greater mobility, but they're hard to come by and need to be used sparingly. The whole thing sounds too simple to work, but in fact it rewards many repeated plays.
Secrets of the Sea (Playroom, $20; 2-4 players; age 5 and up; 30 min.) -- One of the many ways that kids have it better nowadays is that instead of Candyland and Chutes and Ladders, they can play easy but rewarding games like this winner from the German inventing genius Reiner Knizia. The theme is deep-sea diving, and the play mechanism is simplicity itself -- you roll dice, choose one row of hidden tiles to explore and try to scavenge some hidden treasures from among the nearly worthless seaweed and dangerous sea monsters. Although the game is meant for the wee set, adults will enjoy it as well.
The Kids of Carcassonne (Rio Grande, $29.95; 2-4 players; age 4 and up; 20 min.) -- Here's another, even simpler, game designed to introduce the very young to the pleasures of European-style gaming. As in the original Carcassonne (and its innumerable spin-offs), players assemble a landscape by adding tiles to the layout. In this version, though, there's no matching involved -- any tile can go anywhere -- and the goal is simply to complete the paths that have your pieces on them. That's not much of a poser for adults, but it's a well-judged challenge for small kids, and there's enough strategy to hold the parents' attention.
Dominion: Intrigue (Rio Grande, $44.95; 2-4 players; age 8 and older; 30 min.) -- Dominion, the card game that was last year's runaway success, has been expanded with another set of 25 cards for exponentially more play possibilities. As before, only 10 cards are used at a time, so if you combine both games for a set of 50 random options, the range is astronomical. The theme this time is alternatives, with many of the new cards serving dual purposes or offering the player a choice of actions, and the results can be pleasingly complex.
Connect 4 x 4 (Milton Bradley, $24.99; 2-4 players; age 8 and up; 20 min.) -- Connect 4 x 4 addresses a problem I hadn't known existed -- how do you play Connect 4 with more than two players? -- and solves it ingeniously. Just as in the original, players drop colored checkers into an upright grid, attempting to get four in a row horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Accommodating extra players is just a matter of creating a two-ply grid, and giving each player two blocker checkers that span both sides of the board. And voila! Works like a charm.
Catan Dice Game (Mayfair, $25; 1-6 players; age 7 and up; 15-30 min.) -- Sometimes, for whatever reason, you can't get a full game of Settlers of Catan going, but you're still jonesing for a fix of brick, sheep and ore. The dice game fills that gap deftly. Resources are garnered by three rolls of the dice, Yahtzee-style, and you combine them to mark off roads, settlements and cities on a printed score pad.
Jenga Max (Parker Brothers, $21.99; 2+ players; age 8 and up; 20 min.) -- As is so often the case, don't expect this game to have much to do with the original classic Jenga (for one thing, its ugly plastic pieces are worlds away from the attractive wood blocks of that stacking game). Still, the new game has its own appeal for those who like the manual-dexterity vein. Each piece is a plastic girder with a hole at one end and a wide notch at the other, which can be assembled into spidery mobiles that are large but shaky. Misplace one piece and the whole thing will become overbalanced and topple down -- an enjoyable implementation of an old idea.
Monopoly City (Hasbro, $39.99; 2-6 players; age 8 and up; 60-90 min.) -- This new Monopoly variant tweaks some of the familiar rules in an attempt both to alleviate some of the game's traditional blockages and, I suppose, to be more up-to-date. The main change is that you can now build on a property as soon as you buy it, although there are still benefits to owning an entire color group. Also, in a witty new touch, you can buy either residential or commercial buildings (or a combination of the two); residential buildings are cheaper, but your rent goes away if an opponent builds a sewage plant or a prison on your property.
7 Ate 9 (Out of the Box, $9.99; 2-4 players; age 8 and up; 10 min.) -- For those with a taste for speedy-reflex games like Spit -- let's gamble and say the tween set -- this variant leavens the usual card play with a bit of basic arithmetic. Each card has a main number, as well as a smaller number between 1 and 3. If adding or subtracting the two numbers gives the number on a card you have, play it fast.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit the San Francisco Chronicle
