The Perfect & Efficient Game Collection: Four Games to Diversify Your Game Collection
Chris Flood
United States
Oakland
California
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An efficient game collection has a minimal number of games that can cover a wide variety of situations while also providing diversity in the underlying game mechanics ("structures"). The table below shows the top six most important situations and the top six most important structures (with examples for the latter), based on nominations and comments from around BGG.
Situations and Structures for Game Collection Diversity*
Previous attempts at describing "perfect" collections address too many marginal game properties or do not prioritize properties that most feel are crucial. My own stab at this a while ago had too many list items in which I merely said to pick the right game from another category.
This new list makes those selections for you by including the absolute minimum number of games that collectively cover all the situations and structures you need for a diverse start to your game collection.
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Chris Flood
United States
Oakland
California
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Party Game with Player Secrets & Negotiation
Although many hard-core gamers might feel like they can pass on party games, having at least one is deemed essential to a well-rounded collection. Werewolf and its variations are particularly refreshing because players lack perfect information about the game and are forced to use deductive reasoning to figure things out.
$11 on Amazon
Alternatives
- Ultimate Werewolf
- The Resistance
- How to Host a Murder
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Chris Flood
United States
Oakland
California
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Cooperative Gateway Game with Asymmetric Information and Alternative Win Conditions
Although Werewolf and other party games offer a high level of interactivity, few board games call upon players to work together to win. Pandemic and other cooperative games do just this. The On the Brink expansion adds an element of player secrecy and asymmetric information.
Pandemic goes a step further with a couple other variations on standard board game structures. First, instead of affording players the usual one move per turn, Pandemic uses an action point allowance system. Second, instead of using a point scoring system to ascertain victory, Pandemic provides players with a variety of ways to lose the game if they fail to secure a set of cures.
$30 on Amazon
Alternatives
- Space Alert is a cooperative game that happens in real time.
- Forbidden Island is a "light" version of Pandemic with a new theme.
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Chris Flood
United States
Oakland
California
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A Kid-Friendly Party Game Using Dexterity
Most games resolve conflicts with some sort of "highest wins" mechanism, whether it's an auction, trick-taking, or area majority. Dexterity games are different because conflict resolution comes down to speed and agility. Jungle Speed gets this unique play style into your collection in a quick game that works for kids and large groups.
$16 on Amazon
Alternatives
- Dancing Eggs
- Attribute
- Egyptian Rat Screw
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Chris Flood
United States
Oakland
California
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Two-Player Gamer's Game with Sophisticated Resource Economies and Movement/Placement
Most of the top-rated games on BGG fit into this category. Instead of messing with the usual formula combining competition, most-victory-points-wins, and minimal interaction, they alter the resource economy with auctions, worker placement, deck-building and provide unique ways to deploy or move pieces on the board. Usually, there's also an action point allowance systems, action/event cards, and other flexibilities in how one can play a turn, thus moving beyond the traditional one-turn-per-move routine of Core Games (above).
While pretty much any of the most popular games here on BGG would fit the above description, we also want a two-player game and a "gamer's game" in our collection. It turns out that the #1 game on BGG fits all these criteria, but there are of course other options.
$46 on Amazon
Alternatives: This is the space most BGG users want to explore, so the GeekList linked above goes into more depth on this category.
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Posted Sat Apr 10, 2010 3:56 pm
Eindhoven
The Netherlands
Oakland
California
Liverpool
New York