Eldrbarry's Game Closet Part 4:
Current Favorites and the Euro Games Revival

Through the years, I have accumulated and played a lot of games in our family game closet. Some have been enduring hits, some had brief moments of glory, some were never played more than once. There is a lot of information on the internet on these various games including variant rules or alternate ways to play, and I am linking that to my games on these pages.
• Introduction to my Game Closet Pages
• Page 1 - Board Game Internet Resources and Current Game Publishers
• Page 2 - The Classic Games and some history of the Game Makers of the Past
• Page 3 - - Our New Favorites and The European Board Game Designers who have revived Table Game play.
• Page 4 - Games for Two and Hosting Game Nights
• Page 5 - Some of the Games I Grew Up With, We played as a Family, and those awful Avalon Hill Games
  Eldrbarry's Storytelling Games .. Eldrbarry's Chess Pages .. Eldrbarry's Mancala Page
  .. Eldrbarry's Carcassonne Page .. Eldrbarry's Sudoku Page .. Eldrbarry's Jigsaw Page .. Eldrbarry's Active Group Games Guide .. Eldrbarry's Active Group Games Guide



Our Game Closet

Eldrbarry's Games for Two : A Quest for the "Empty Nest"


My wife and I have always enjoyed playing games together. I put together a games pack which we take with us on over-night trips with some of our favorites. We have always played lots of Classic Games such as Scrabble, Pente, and Triple Yahtzee which work well for two as well as card games like Crazy Eights. Two Player Games tend to be abstract games, even when given a "theme" - but here are some other two player games we enjoy or intend to try . .
• Fjords ( - Geek) A Tile laying game, first building a map of Fjords, then competing for territory.
• Hive (Wiki - Geek) Official Site is another tile game where the "buggy" tiles keep moving - the object to surround the opponent's Queen.The Mosquito expansion. has been hard to find, but will soon become available from Funagain Games. Another forthcoming game from the same designer is Army of Frogs.
• Mancala in its simpler variations - an African game. I hope to bring home from Uganda an Omweso Board.
• Abalone (Geek), a kind of "sumo wrestling" with marbles. The rules are pretty simple, but the strategies are not. There are also a number of variations for play. Oshi is a similar game.
• Carcassonne A game of building with tiles the medieval landscape of France, and placing meeples to complete cities, roads, farms and cloisters for points. With just the two of us, we play tiles from hands of three. A Cribbage board makes a good scorekeeper.
• Hey! that's My Fish! which can be played by up to four. Penguins move over hex shaped tiles competing for fish on a collapsing ice flow.
• Kosmos (Wiki) has a Series of Two Player Games including:
  • Lost Cities (Geek) Strategies .
  • Balloon Cup (Geek) Some Balloon Cup Variations
  • Jambo (Geek) and its expansion cards
  • Tally Ho! (Geek)
  • Odin's Ravens (Geek)
  • Caesar and Cleopatra (Geek)
    but also a bunch of others including Hera and Zeus, Elk Fest, even one called Crocodile Pool Party
• WordSpot Find hidden words among the letter tiles and claim them using your WordSpot tokens. Words may go up, down, across, backwards or diagonally, The first player to use all his or her tokens is the winner
• Crazy Chicken - English Rules (A hard to find card game with cartoon chickens - the game has been recast as Simply fun's Drive with collector cars as a theme. (It can also be played by 3 or 4 with a slight adjustment in the rules)
• Schotten Totten - English Rules (A hard to find card game by Reiner Knizia with cartoon Highland Scots battling over boundary stones - The game is essentially the same as Battleline (Geek) by GMT Games. The two games are essentially the same, though the later has 10 cards of each suit, and seven cards make up a player's hand.
• Mr. Jack (Geek) is a very popular board game for two. Eight detectives pursue Jack the Ripper through a neighbor hood on a dark night - only one of them is Mr. Jack! One player tries to deduce which one - the other player tries to conceal his identity for the eight turns of the game!

• "Also rans" have included Triominoes, Boggle, and Cathedral (Wiki - Geek) (Official Site) Cathedral World has pieces representing 28 monuments around the world.

• Following in the lines of Pente and Abalone are some abstracts of possible future interest:
• Kaliko (formerly Psyche-Paths Hard to find and expensive) or a similar New Zealand game:Tantrix (Wiki - Geek) Tantrix Official Site - Similar tile laying games that can also be played as solitare puzzles.
• Cheapass Hip Pocket Games such as The Very Clever Pipe Card Game or Steam Tunnels
• The six games of the GIPF Project designed by Kris Burm: Gipf. Tamsk . Zertz . Dvonn . Punct and Yinsh.

  Geek Lists of abstract Games: Enjoyable Abstracts , ABC of Abstract Games. and Abstracts for the Missus

Still Looking for Two player games? Some Online Lists:
• Funagain's Games for Two
• A List of Geeklists: What to Play with your Spouse with Geek Lists such as "Our experiences with 2-player games" (Read the beginning for pointers in selecting games), "Multiplayer games that work well with only two players", "Best of the Two Player Games", "Two player card games with lots of theme you can play with your wife"
• Two Player Games You Really Should Try
• Fun Little Games That are Not Kosmos
• Under-rated Two Player Games



Friends and Family Game Nights

Of course the other alternative is to have some friends over to play games, which we try to do about one a month. Our game nights have been pretty popular, often resulting in more players than most games can handle. Here are some resources to help you host a game night....

• Hasbro's Family Game Night Pages: " Plan a Family Game Night" . . Family Game Night Q&A
• How to throw a Boardgame Party
• Forming a Game Club - Hosting a Game Night . . Great game nights are made, not born
• How to make your family game night a huge success by Christopher Byrne
• Game Night Ideas
• Board game Night
• Host a game night: A night of board games shakes things up.
• The Games Journal in its large archive of game articles includes:
  • How to Host a Games Day by Mark Johnson
  • Groundrules for Gaming by Jay Schindler
  • Nurturing a Game Group by Steve Kurzban
  • Involvement, Leader Bashing & Newbies by Jeff Ganong . . Leader Bashing - A Response by Will M. Baker
  • Game of the Month by Mark Johnson
  • Subterfuge, Violence & Mind Control by Joe Golaszewski
  • What Gender Gap? by Bruno Faidutti
  • Serious Gaming: Reflections on Gaming With the Younger Generation by Mike Petty

  There are a number of Group Board Games, descendants of Charades and Trivial Pursuits that are popular. These usually involve a box of cards with information on them communicated in some way that has to be guessed at by a group. Notable are: Apples to Apples, Pictionary, Balderdash, Scattergories, Taboo, Abstracts, Outburst, Wise and Otherwise, Cranium, and Stare and a new party game,Quelf

  Some other "party" games are Werewolf (best 8-25 players), and Bang! (5-11 players (with expansion)) And we have played Bohnanza with more than 7 too. Many of the new "Euro Games" are current game night favorites - Settlers of Catan, Carcassone, Ticket to Ride, and especially Bohnanza.

  See also Eldrbarry's Storytelling Games page. and his Group Games Guide for more Group Games.

There is a lot of information on the internet on these various games including for some variant rules or alternate ways to play. Wikipedia (which has many pages on board games, standard playing card games and dedicated deck dard games and collectable card games) and Board Game Geek, in particular, has a lot of useful information regarding various games. Pagat has rules for lots of Card Games, including many invented games, and The Game Cabinet has archived the rules for a lot of the older games as well. Another source of rules is Master's Games Traditional Rules. In the sections that follow on this page, I have hyper linked some of these and other information concerning the many games in our closet. My links include links to Funagain Games - which carries a lot of games at very good prices, as well as (Wiki)pedia and Board Game (Geek) pages on the various games.

Please send E-mail to me at: eldrbarry@eldrbarry.net

© 2008 Barry McWilliams


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