On Desert Island Board Games

[danieldwilliam]

Desert Island Games

You are to be marooned on a desert island with a group of friends or relations or your local boardgaming group. To while away the years until rescue arrives what boardgames would you take and why?

You get:

A life time supply of standard playing cards and a book of card games.

The John Lewis Classic Boardgame Compendium

https://www.johnlewis.com/john-lewis-6-in-1-games-compendium/p1993150

Your choice of eight board games including any expansions

I think my current pick would be

1) Carcasonne - a firm family favourite with really good replayability and works well with small numbers or larger numbers in case there has been some sort of feud and half of the party aren't speaking to the other half. A tile placement game with some great expansions. Lots of options about how long a game you have as you can add extra tiles. I think with all the expansion packs we currently have we have double the number of standard tiles.

2) Machi Koro - it's a gentle game with not much direct conflict and probably the favourite of at least one member of my family and it plays up to six. A deck building and dice rolling game which is a smart alternative to Monopoly.

3) Pandemic - firstly it has lots of expansions, it's a co-operative game for those times when you need to all be on the same side and it also plays a decent number. You are a team of scientists trying to stop an outbreak of disease killing everyone.

4) Ticket to Ride - a family favourite, although we don't play it often enough to have memorised all the mission cards so we spend the first game staring at our had trying to work out what we're doing. Build a deck to buy routes on a map, use the routes to score points and to complete missions for even more points.

5) Isle of Skye - a tile placement and auction game set in the Highlands of Scotland with lots of variable victory point conditions. You could play the game many, many times before you got the same group of victory conditions. It has Highland Cows on the tiles, this is important to some people.

6) Stramash - use decks of cards to move some marbles around a track and back to home, with the option for some mean-spirited sending your opponents back to their base. Easy to play but sufficiently deep not to get boring on replaying.

7) Hanabi - if ever a game will bring a group of weary castaways together it is this. A beautifully presented co-operative game with some elements that are similar to Bridge. You can't see your own hand, and only have limited knowledge of it from information that your fellow players give you. You all have to work together to put on a fabulous firework display.

8) Power Grid - I don't have enough time for large, long, complex big box energy themed games. Perhaps whilst on a desert island we will find the time to master this beast.

If I had to pick only one it would be Carcasonne.

As a bonus question, what board games do you think you could fashion out of materials likely to be found on a reasonably sized desert island? Could you remember the rules well enough?

If you can cobble together a game from locally found materials and the pieces from games you are taking then you can have those games for free.

Comments

[mountainkiss]

As many trivia games as I can get, but no others.

[danieldwilliam]

I can't say I'm shocked that you are not an enthusiastic Euro board gamer.

[andrewducker]

Dominion
Robo Rally
Puerto Rico
Agricola (which I don't enjoy in small doses, but is really hard, so well suited for when you're stuck somewhere for months)
Pandemic Legacy (wanted to play this for ages, and again needs a lot of time)
Power Grid is always good
Terraforming Mars is currently a lot of fun, although I'm not sure about its longevity
Codenames is nice and simple, and good fun for finishing evenings off.


Definitely not Diplomacy, as I'll be stuck with these people for a long time.

[danieldwilliam]

Several games on there that I fancy having a go at.

I think I own Puerto Rico but have never played it. I may be getting confused with something else.