Marginally relevant to personal finance?
A bit of a tangent today. I love board games, wargames, card games, strategy games, so for me they provide incredible value for money.
I find board games more valuable than computer games because they have a tactile and social element that computer games lack (plus I spend far too much time buried in a screen every day as it is).
This year I picked up a copy of Dominion to play with my family. I got the Japanese version as it’s much cheaper on Amazon, and I wanted to encourage my family to play. Once you understand the rules it doesn’t really matter what language the game is in.
Domion is an award-winning card game for 2-4 players (up to six can play if you have a second set, like one of the expansion sets). It takes an hour or so to play, and the gameplay is pretty simple.
Each player is trying to build up their kingdom by buying resources, and the game ends when a certain number of resources are used up. You can see the official rules in English here (which are incredibly difficult to understand) or the Boardgamegeek FAQ here.
The thing I really like about Dominion is that, unlike many board games, games tend to be pretty close and everyone can continue playing until the end. It’s definitely not like Monopoly where everyone can tell who will win after about twenty minutes, but it then takes another two hours for them to do so.
We have played four games since I got the game, and every time the difference between the winner and the runner-up has been about 10%. Even better, my wife and daughter have gotten really into it and we’ve had some great evenings (I definitely think the red wine and olives improve the experience).
And some less great evenings…
And one terrible evening.
But this was by far the best purchase of the holidays: hours of fun for the price of two cheap cinema tickets.
Next I’m going to try and persuade some friends to come round and try it. Cheap night in, lots of opportunities to chat.
Any other good family board games or family activities?
Wow, don’t get me started on boardgames, I could probably speak for hours!
We’ve owned Dominion and Seven Wonders (which I also recommend). Sadly my wife “doesn’t have time” (I’d rather say she has different priorities but this is a source of argument so I’ll leave it at that) so I ended up selling the games. Will probably by them again once all kids are grown up and she doesn’t have an excuse anymore 😉
Although to be honest after playing Dominion a couple times all I wanted to do was go back to my Magic The gathering cards, as I really loved the collection + deck building aspect that game provides, which is lacking in Dominion.
So instead of playing with my wife, I’ve been focusing on playing with my 5 year old son, and with friends (online, but read below).
With my son, the options for competitive play are quite limited, so we’ve looked into cooperative games: We’ve have some great times with Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert, and Castle Panic (for which the addon “Wizard’s tower” is heavily recommended if you intend to play with grown ups).
All 3 games are cooperative, meaning you play as a team against the game. This is great as it avoids bad feelings from the little ones when they lose, or boredom from grownups when they have to adapt to the level of their kids in competitive games.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that I play with a 5 year old, all three games are ok for a game evening with other grown ups.
I’ve also been playing board games online with friends across Japan, France, and the US (hence the online requirement). There’s a 3D engine named Tabletop simulator that basically lets you play any board game online with friends. It doesn’t do any rule enforcement, but just lets you directly interact with 3D objects representing the games. We played a cooperative game named Eldritch Horror, didn’t have a chance to finish the game though (a game takes maybe 3 hours?).
In practice, Tabletop simulator lets you “try” any board game before you decide if you want to buy it.
Google for “tabletop simulator dominion” and look at the video or images sections to get an idea of what it looks like
Excellent. I like cooperative games.
I think it would be interesting to see how many personal finance bloggers are into boardgames. I suspect it would be a large percentage 😉