My Other Hobby: Table Top Gaming. Gateway Games

As many of you know, my other hobby is table top gaming. Board, card, miniatures, you name it. I love games. And as we are stuck at home for an extended period of time, gaming is a great way to pass the time. Every now and then I'll put up a post suggesting games for certain situations. Today, I have three suggestion for those who may be new to the hobby, or don't want anything to deep. I've tried to keep the price point reasonable, between $25-35. Most of these games can be found on Amazon or Walmart, but do consider helping out your Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS), and ordering from them instead. Brick and mortar game stores are taking a huge beating during the shutdown. Many are more than happy to ship directly to you. If needed, contact me and I will be happy to suggest some great FLGS's to contact.

Gateway Games

Tsuro

Number of players: 2-8
Time to play: 15 minutes
How do you win?: Last man standing
Difficulty to learn/teach: Easy

Tsuro is as simple as it gets. Every turn you'll choose one of three tiles and lay it in front of your piece, then follow the path you have created until you reach the end of the path. If the path takes you to an empty space, your turn ends. If the path sends you off the board, you lose. If the path sends you into another player, you both lose. HOWEVER, you can never intentionally send yourself off the board or into another player unless you have no other options. Last person on the board wins. It is also possible for everyone to lose or in rare cases, have a tie. This is a super easy game to learn with a fair bit of strategy. The theme is simple and accessible.
Problem: The game is currently unavailable on Amazon, so you may have to look around. The other option is to get Tsuro of the Seas, which has the base mechanics of the original, but adds a couple new things.

Carcassonne

Number of Players: 2-5
Time to Play: 45 minutes
How do you win?: Most points
Difficulty to learn/teach: simple/moderate

Carcassonne is a tile-laying strategy game. Each turn you will draw a tile from a bag and lay it in a way that it matches up with another tile. You will create roads, cities, farms, and abbeys along these tiles to score points. Points are scored by playing "meeples" (your pieces) on these features. You have a limited amount of meeples to use during the game, so you must carefully consider your strategy. Most points wins the game. This is a nice game because there is not much direct competition. You can certainly try to lay tiles to mess up someone's strategy, or claim features before another player, but nothing that makes you want to choke a bitch out.

King of Tokyo

Number of Players: 2-6 (best with 3 or more)
Time to Play: 30 minutes
How do you win?: Last man standing
Difficulty to learn/teach: simple/moderate

King of Tokyo is best described as Combat Yahtzee. Each player takes the role of a giant monster attempting to take over Tokyo. Each turn you will roll dice, Yahtzee style, to attack, heal, or gain energy. Energy is used to buy cards to add powers to your monster. The combat is high risk, as only one monster can stand in Tokyo city. If that monster attacks, he damages ALL players outside the city. Conversely, all players outside the city can only attack the monster IN the city. This game is absolutely about direct competition, and trash talk and wild gesticulating is encouraged. Highly thematic and lots of fun for all ages.

Next time, we'll look at cooperative games, where you're all on the same team, playing against the game itself!