Matt Carlson: Secondary Boardgaming

For the past few years, I’ve been the sponsor of my high school’s boardgaming club.  We meet once a week after school for about an hour and a half.  With such a short meeting length, it really limits what games we can bring to the table.  It has been interesting to watch which games turn into regular favorites.

Apples to Apples:  One judge reads a topic cards and all the other players select a card to best fit the topic.  The judge then selects the best submission (in his or her opinion) and gives the submitting player a point.  The role of judge is then passed on to the next player.  Since players have a limited number of cards to choose from, the proposed submissions can be quite humorous. 
I’m impressed at the wide appeal of this game.  While I’m personally somewhat “appled-out”, students in my classes who wouldn’t touch our strategy games love to try to convince me to bring out the game during class downtime.  Every few weeks our boardgame group turns into a near-unanimous game of apples to apples, even my stronger strategy die-hards will be drawn into the game.  I suspect that the game’s strengths – providing an easy conduit for comfortable social interaction hits a sweet spot for this age group.

Bang!:  One player is a sheriff while the others either try to eliminate or save the sheriff.  The game is played via cards and hand management with plenty of special cards and player special abilities to keep things interesting.  Player roles, other than the sheriff, are kept secret, keeping things tense while suspects are sorted out.
I believe our high school has single-handedly kept the local boardgame store(s) out of stock of Bang! for the past three years.  While it can rarely be found on the shelf, every store is well aware of it and orders it frequently.  The recent release of “The Bullet” edition containing a combination of all the released expansions created a minor resurge in the game.  I believe the nice combination of conflict (often a hit with male adolescents), relatively simple rules, and unique style of play combine to make a weekly favorite.

Heroscape:  A miniatures game for two to four teams with simple, but versatile rules that are expanded through each units’ special powers. 
The club initially had a master set of Heroscape donated and quickly found a niche among the players who didn’t want to get into the deeper Eurogame fare.  After a couple of expansions and the second edition master set, our club has a decent sized collection of figures and terrain.  The most popular scenario to play, of course, is to divide all the most expensive and biggest creatures into two or more piles and let them duke it out.  Fortunately, they usually manage to finish each other off before the end of our meetings.  In this case, I believe the nifty figures and colorful terrain draw the students in to trying out the game.  The flexible rules and many figure combinations keep them playing.  Of course, some of them just enjoy the whole idea of fantasy battles, smashing each others’ armies into fragments.

Setters of Catan:  Players claim areas and then roll dice which award areas with resources.  New areas and other rewards can then be purchased using resources gained or traded from other players.
While Settlers has been around for a long time in Eurogame circles, it is interesting to see how far into mainstream culture it has crept.  Many of my students are aware of Settlers, and think it’s the best game ever, but have never heard of Puerto Rico, Goa, Power Grid, or any of the other slightly meatier games.  Settlers has a bit more long term planning and strategy than their other favorites.  However, it maintains a splash of random chance via the die rolls and has plenty of player interaction through player resource trading.

A quick analysis of the gaming habits of our club shows a strong tendency towards games with a high degree of social interaction.  Settlers, Bang!, and Apples to Apples all work best when there is a lot of player interaction.  Few, if any, of our club members are captains of their sports teams or will soon be elected Prom king or queen.  Thus, I suspect games that provide them with comfortable ways to interact socially with their peers turn into common favorites.  High school students are also constant risk-takers, and games that give players a chance to make risky decisions for big rewards (as is typical in many games that contain dice) can also be a hit.  (Pikamino would be an excellent example, my student aides have become total fanboys of the game and I’m finding it difficult to convince them to try other new games.) Finally, our gaming group is quite diverse in academic ability.  The gamers tend towards the honors student side of things, but we have plenty of students who are taking lower-end classes.  Staying away from more complex games like Puerto Rico or In the Year of the Dragon helps to keep games at a level of play that doesn’t overwhelm some of the slower planners.

Of course, I’m not going to turn down a weekly game meeting as an opportunity to try out my newest, more complex game.  I typically bring something new every few weeks to see if I can find a new hit.  Since the club is still fairly new, I hope to continue to grow some gamers up so that we can bring my more complex favorites (like Goa or El Grande) to the table on a more regular basis.

So, what are your club’s favorite games?

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