Upwords
by Laneia, Executive Editor
Without saying a single negative thing about the game of Scrabble, Upwords is like Scrabble’s friendlier, casually dressed, slightly inebriated cousin. I mean, it’s basically Scrabble and Jenga. UpWords knows you don’t have all night to spell words and add numbers, so it’s not gonna take too long or involve a lot of math. Oh you wanna stack some tiles on an already existing word to make a new word and still get points for the original word underneath your new word? Yeah alright, sure! Hey, you do what you want. You do you, player.
Apples to Apples
by Sebastian, Writer
Are you looking for a game where sobriety is not only unnecessary, but actually sort of annoying? A game that requires no tallying of scores or complicated board maneuvers? In which each round is short enough to hold the attention span of someone 2-4 shots into the night? Well, say hello to Apples to Apples. Certainly you do not have to be drunk to play, but let’s just say every box I’ve ever encountered has at least one stack of cards stuck together from the kid that spilled beer all over them last Monday.
The rules are as follows: every player holds a hand of 7 or 8 cards with nouns and proper nouns on them; each round there is one judge (this role rotates so there is a different judge each round); an adjective card is drawn and placed so everyone can see it; every player but the judge picks a noun or proper noun that best fits that adjective and submits it face down to the judge; the judge picks their favorite.
It’s not so much a game of who can make the best pairs, but one of knowing your opponents’ senses of humor. Jennifer likes irony so I’m going to put down “Public Radio” for “flirtatious” – had a good laugh with that one (because we are nerds). I value realism a bit more so I picked “socks” over “wine tasting” for the “cool” card. Truth be told, if you play at the beginning of a friendship with someone, especially if alcohol is involved, this can make or break yr relationship. You don’t “get” irony?! Last night (when I made – actually made – my roommates take shots and play with me), I got into an argument about whether toasted marshmallows or salads were more arrogant.
There is no definitive end point to the game, though I suggest calling it a night when your roommate is passed out on the floor (I swear to god this photo is not staged).
Carcassone
by Rachel, Senior News Editor
Carcassonne is so far from being even vaguely similar to other games that it is tempting to call it something else completely, like “tile-based friendship experience” or “spiritual empowerment via tiny wooden figures.” The gameplay is simple: each player draws a tile that represents part of the landscape on their turn, which may include features like a road, a pond, a wall of a castle, etc, and they are required to fit it into the larger landscape made up of previous tiles. Having done so, they can have one of their tiny wooden figurines interact with it in some way – for instance, claiming ownership of a castle – in order to gain points. It sounds simple, because it is.
But there’s also so much more, and that comes in the form of SHARED VICTORY. Since the landscape is constantly growing, there’s no way to predict how the point systems will turn out. Will the castle that you’re working on eventually grow to intersect with your friend’s, thus forming a giant castle conglomerate that is somehow always vaguely shaped like a penis? Maybe! Can this phenomenon extend to the point where you may be sharing castles, roads, or farms with ALL of your friends, thereby kind of diminishing the need for points whatsoever and giving you an incentive to hug and laugh together and talk seriously about how beautiful and wonderful you and all your figurines are, and also how castles are great? Yes.
Bonus points: I am 75% sure that at one point we invented a drinking game based on Carcassone, but I can’t remember any of it. Which means that clearly it was a GREAT drinking game, and I encourage you to do the same.
Mall Madness
by Laneia, Executive Editor
There’s a brief space of time between childhood and teenagerness, when you know there’s more going on out there on Friday nights than watching movies with your BFF Jennifer, but you’re not sure what it is and you can’t go anyway. Mall Madness filled that time by satiating a tweens desire to spend shitloads of money with their friends at the mall, unsupervised and without the risk of pedophiles or bankruptcy. The electronic version had a credit card machine and a computerized lady told you where all of the sales were, therefore making you feel very important and rushed. The first to complete their shopping list and make it out to the parking lot won. This is exactly what it’s like to shop with my aunts on Black Friday.
Mall Madness was the perfect sleepover board game, second only to the holy grail of sleepover board games, Girl Talk. I’m not sure what’s going on with this Hannah Mon-freaking-tana version of Mall Madness, but I think you should find an OG version and recreate my tweenhood. For authenticity, you’ll need to play this game while eating raw chocolate chip cookie dough and Doritos and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie, duh).
Settlers of Catan
by Carolyn, Contributing Editor
The best part of Settlers is that you make your own board, so you can (um, theoretically) play every single Saturday afternoon for three years straight and never get bored. There are hexagonal tiles with resources on them (e.g., rolling fields give you sheep, which are almost always useless, but never mind that), and numbers that sit on top of the tiles telling you what you have to roll to get those resources, and you can put both of these in almost any order you want. And then you build settlements and roads and cities and trade and get points and win, as if Risk and Monopoly had a less ruthless love-child (Unlike Monopoly, players aren’t ever eliminated until the game is over. Like Monopoly, under-the-table deals can make everything a lot more interesting.).
And there are expansions! Cities and Knights of Catan. Seafarers. That one that is basically just a few more tiles, numbers and playing pieces so you can have six players on the same board. That other one that is not really an expansion at all but just 50 additional board tiles and numbers you picked up on eBay, because who doesn’t love a board game that, if you’re doing it right, barely fits on the table?
Bananagrams
by Carmen, Contributing Editor
I played Bananagrams for the first time in the perfect place with all of these kids who were too cool for board games and liked word games instead. And unlike all other word games that make you feel a little dumb, or like maybe you should take the SAT again, or like maybe we should just say the god- damn word instead of guessing what it is already, Bananagrams is really just a crossword puzzle for every single person in the house waiting to happen in a big ol’ fabric banana. And I actually used to win sometimes! But what really makes Bananagrams better than your grandma’s collectible Scrabble board and your half-deck of Scattegories cards is that when the tiles get covered in alcohol, or an ashtray falls on them, or they become coated in your resentment of people with vocabularies that extend past “sex” and “bras,” you can just put them in a colander and rinse them with water to make them sparkle again.
Pictionary
by Katrina, Writer
Board games make me nervous. Like, they make me really nervous. There’s just a lot of yelling and winning/losing and getting shit-talked by your nine-year-old brother. It’s just a lot. Usually, in my childhood, I would prefer to be reading a book. But my senior year of high school, after 18 years of careful evasion, I was subjected to Pictionary, or, as was known in my AP Spanish class, Pictionario. Some people say that lesbians don’t like Pictionary, but I disagree. Lesbians love deriving profound and abstract meaning from simple words and actions. Pictionary is the way that we live. Plus, Pictionario taught me something about equality. No matter how many years of art class you’ve taken, no matter your cognitive abilities, no matter your ability to speak Spanish, everyone feels equally helpless when handed a marker and asked to draw a stick-figure sketch of “dignity” (Simpsons, eh?). You’re actually forced to laugh at yourself, and that’s what makes the game fun. I once dated a girl who almost got stabbed with a beer bottle over a game of Monopoly. And that’s because board games are too serious. But in Pictionary, we’re all laughing at each other and at ourselves. It’s fun. Let’s play Pictionary. Maybe we can hold hands afterwards.
Cluedo
by Crystal, Music Editor
Cluedo, aka ‘Clue’, is the only board game that has ever appealed to me. For the last two decades I have found great pleasure in racing my friends to figure out which of the guests of Tudor Mansion murdered Dr. Black, and what instrument caused the blunt force trauma. I’ve only now just realised how macabre that is.
I recommend the classic UK version, Cluedo, for an authentic England, 1929, murder-mystery experience. The US version, Clue, is also fine, just a little more family-friendly.
Yahtzee
by Sarah, Contributing Editor
Yahtzee is more of a dice-and-cup game than board game, but it’s still awesome. It’s a lot like poker, in that it incorporates pairs, three-of-a-kind, a full house, straights, etc. And then there’s the game’s namesake hand — six-of-a-kind. Yahtzee is far superior to poker, obvs. For starters, dice games are better than card games, cause who doesn’t want to throw stuff? No one. Secondly, Yahtzee also allows you the chance to yell a catchphrase. If you yell “poker!!” when you win at poker, you just look like an idiot. Thirdly, when I was a kid, I always won Yahtzee and always got my ass kicked at poker, so Yahtzee was the clear favorite for game nights at grandma’s house. Nowadays, I even own a Yahtzee t-shirt. Every single time I wear it, at least three people yell “Yahtzee!” at me on the street. Get a t-shirt and try it some time. It’s pretty fun.
