Four fantastic games to play with friends or family during your free time this season.

Despite the busy lives we live in high school, we all should put a little time aside to play board games with friends and family. I hope to provide a few options to think about next time you want to try out something new!

Root: A Woodland Game of Might and Right is a complex game with delightful mechanics and art. You can play with two to four players with the base game. One thing that adds to the appeal for some players is Root’s “win conditions”. Each player plays a unique faction from the wood, and every faction plays a different game with a different way to win. 

The goal of the game is to get 30 victory points, but each faction does this differently. The base game has four factions. The Marquise de Cat works to dominate the board, building workshops and factories to win. Play this faction if you enjoy playing the part of the villains , marching your troops around, or if you have an affinity for felines. The Woodland Alliance focuses on gathering support for their movement, and wins by inciting rebellion across the board. Play this faction if you like to look out for the smaller creatures and fear tyranny. The Eyrie Dynasty has to balance making nests in the forest with the outrageous demands of their leader. Play this faction if you find the French Revolution funny or if you like a more fast-paced game limited only by your skill. The final faction in the base box is the Vagabond. Playing not as an actual faction, but as a single character, you make your way through the forest and complete quests for the other factions. Play the Vagabond if you enjoy role-playing games or simply like less top-down control.

The joy of Root is that it never grows old. If you feel like you have mastered a faction,and it begins to feel all the same, you can always play a different faction and it’s almost like an entirely new game.

The game pieces are sturdy, and having the rules right in front of each player helps even out the steep learning curve. The art is simply gorgeous and I think it definitely adds to the entire experience.

I wholeheartedly recommend this game to those willing to put in the effort to play a game with more complexity than Catan.

In Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Game, you take the role of a political party drawing district lines. The goal of the game is simple: control the majority of districts. Each player starts with the same number of voters, and the final outcome of the election relies on your ability to isolate voters of the opposing parties or pack them into your own. 

Included in the box are four factions, the Red Elephants, the Blue Donkeys, the Green Leaves, and the Yellow Porcupines. In addition, there are a ton of black boundary markers. The factions and markers are of high quality wood and paint, and have stood up against the several games I played with them. The board allows play with two to four players, thanks to its unique design. I have no complaints with the board or the box.

This game is simple to learn and can be played pretty quickly, but still has a real strategical element. If you have an hour or so you can play a really fun and educational game. 

Coup is a social deduction game of governance. In each game players start with two cards and two coins. Each of the cards have a certain ability, with the Duke gathering money, the Assassin targeting another player’s card, the Contessa blocking an assassination attempt, the Captain stealing from another player or blocking theft, and the Ambassador exchanging with your face-down cards.

The real fun of the game lies in bluffing, because any player can do any action if they lie convincingly enough. Coup quickly becomes a game of cat and mouse where basing your decisions on who to accuse requires you to consider the risk to your own survival. 

The artwork is a nice touch and having tokens in the box facilitates great gameplay. I love Coup and the stories that can be made about games like it.

Carcassonne is a game of medieval castle-building. As the player, you take the role of a lord in medieval France, subjugating peasants, paving roads, chasing bandits, and expanding your dominion. The game revolves around two distinct ideas: placing tiles, and placing tokens. There are several tiles of the base set from 2001, with cities, roads, fields, and abbeys. Some tiles show the junction between these two types, with cities and abbeys to roads being the two most common. You can claim a tile after placing a wooden token called a “meeple” on it. Meeples placed on cities become knights, those placed on roads become highwaymen, those in fields become farmers, and those in abbeys become monks.

There are two main strategies of the game: one is to place tiles with the intention of gaining points with meeples, and the other is to mess up your opponent’s landscape with a hard to complete tile. Some examples of the first are linking together a long road that does not have any interruptions, or walling in a city that you control. An example of the second could be blocking someone’s road with a city, or placing a wall where they could have expanded more. 

Carcassonne is well built and my family’s copy has lasted a long time. The art is very immersive, reminding you of the actual French city state that it is based upon. I love the simplicity, and you can make the game shorter simply by limiting the amount of tiles.

Article by Emmet Coughlan