Star Wars: Epic Duels is surprisingly fun for a licensed game.

Last week, I shared five card games you’ve probably never heard of, but should try. This week, I’m going to focus on board games.

Now, I’ve been a fan of board games ever since I was a kid, but I’ve always found that the standard family games (Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue, Stratego, Risk, The Game of Life, Payday, Sorry! and so on) are a little dull. I’ve also never been a fan of gimmick games that require a massive amount of setup time for a weak payoff (Mousetrap comes to mind…).

When I was in junior high school, some friends introduced me to some board games that dared to go beyond what I’d experienced before. The first I played was HeroQuest, a game co-developed by Games Workshop and Milton Bradley. It was a board game that played like a paper-and-pencil RPG — very cool. Another game was Battle Masters, a giant battlefield game that featured humans, elves and dwarves fighting goblins, orcs and ogres. Because of these games, I learned about Games Workshop titles like Space Hulk, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k and Blood Bowl… none of which I could actually afford to play. I was, however, able to afford a copy of Battletech: 3rd Edition, which included little plastic mechs and a paper gameboard.

Yeah! A good board game should come with LOTS of pieces. It's especially awesome when the miniatures are painted already.

I left board games behind as I got into video games, but when I was a little older, a friend introduced me to Star Wars: Epic Duels, a board game I didn’t expect to like, but which was surprisingly fun. I got so into it, in fact, that I wrote one of the definitive tactics pages for the game (apparently), which people still use as a resource for developing strategies. If you can get your hands on Epic Duels, I recommend it; it’s a fun and easy game that is easily accessible to casual gamers, but which has some real depth and strategy to it as well.

This game helped to rekindle my interest in board games, and over the last few years, I’ve been able to play a few that I never even knew existed. The five games below are all games that are a lot of fun, and which I’d recommend to anyone looking for an interesting evening of playing games with friends.

It shouldn't be so much fun to be Dracula... but it is!

Fury of Dracula is a board game where one person plays as Dracula and the other players control Lord Goldaming, Mina Harker, Van Helsing and Dr. Seward in an attempt to track Dracula down. The game takes place a few years after Stoker’s novel, and the playing board consists of a map of Europe. On each turn, Dracula secretly moves from one place to the next, and the hunters have to find his trail and track him down before he either attacks them and turns them into vampires or before he raises three vampires in the cities on his trail.

What makes this game fun is that it allows one player to play the villain while the other two, three or four players work against him or her. It’s a lot of fun to be Drac, and you can really play some complicated mind games with the other players if you’re cunning enough. It’s particularly fun to watch the other players attempt to guess where you are — sometimes wrong as wrong can be, and other times, with maddening accuracy. The production values are very high as well, and the (unpainted) miniatures and the game graphics are very detailed.

My wife and I play this game with our friends Collin and Jenna, and Stacie and I have both been so devious at being Dracula that Collin turned to us and said, “You really are quite a horrifying couple.” And that’s part of what makes this game so much fun — it gives you a chance to outwit your friends and show them what a great lord of darkness you can be.

Price range: $40-60 for the game. (Get it here)
Learning curve: About an hour.
Ease of play: Moderately simple.
Length of play: 2 -3 hours (though it can go longer if Drac is particularly cunning)
Family-appropriateness: I’d say this one is for teenagers and above since the theme of the game is horror.
Recommended number of players: We usually play with 4, but the game is designed for 3-5. A 2-player game could be played, but I’m not sure it’d be fun.

One of the best-looking zombie games I've ever played!

Last Night on Earth is a game about running away from zombies and surviving long enough to see the dawn. The game is divided between players, with half playing as the humans and half playing as the zombies. The human characters are mostly high school stereotypes like you’d see in a zombie film (the football star, the track star, the cheerleader, the school nurse, the farmer’s daughter, the loner, and so forth), but it’s in the spirit of fun. The zombies shamble in the direction of the closest hero, hoping to win by overwhelming force; the heroes explore buildings and try to find enough weapons to keep themselves from becoming zombie food.

There’s something of a random element to the way the game is played; the board is always slightly different due to the way it’s set up, the human characters are randomly selected, and actions are performed through using cards and rolling dice. Some of the cards allow the zombies to move faster or to slow the humans. One card, called “Last Night on Earth,” takes effect if a human male and female are in the same building together. The characters basically decide it’s their last night on Earth and, erm, lose their turn. Zombies can also bring down a human and turn it into a “Zombie Hero,” which gives the undead a great advantage.

There’s a lot to like about this game — it’s well-produced, with beautiful graphics and nice (unpainted) miniatures. The game also comes with a soundtrack CD, which I didn’t find too interesting, but I suppose it can help set the mood. There are different scenarios you can play, and different ways to challenge the humans (or the zombies) if one side is winning too often. I personally feel the game is in favor of the zombies, but that makes it all the more fun to win as the humans.

There’s also an expansion called Growing Hunger that I have not yet played, but which looks like a ton of fun!

Price range: $40-60 for the game (Get it here), $30-50 for the expansion (Get it here)
Learning curve: About an hour.
Ease of play: Moderately simple.
Length of play: 1 hour
Family-appropriateness: I’d say this one is for teenagers and above since the theme of the game is horror.
Recommended number of players: We usually play with 4, but the game is designed for 2-6.

Arkham Asylum may be familiar to Batman fans, but the name comes from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft.

Arkham Horror is fairly unique as far as board games go since it is a purely cooperative game — you play as one of many people investigating the strange events around the town of Arkham, and you have to work with the other players to prevent one of the Great Old Ones or Elder Gods (such as the monstrous Cthulhu) from awakening and destroying the world. No one plays as the bad guys; the game mechanics handle that. Thus Arkham Horror is not about competition – it’s about survival.

The game board is huge, with lots of bits and parts, and it takes awhile to set up. Due to the players who can be used, the variety of enemies, and the random events that can occur, every game plays very differently. Familiarity with the writings of H.P. Lovecraft is not necessary, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to know what it means when your player walks through a portal into the realm of R’lyeh or is whisked away to the City of the Great Race. Though the majority of the game takes place on the streets of Arkham, players must enter other worldly locations to seal off the portals that are allowing monsters to come into our world and to weaken the slumbering opponent.

Battles are fought with sanity and with physical stamina; some monsters are relatively easy to kill, while others are quite a challenge. Players can travel around Arkham to find weapons and spells to aid in combat, or they can try to sneak past monsters and avoid fighting. One of the interesting things about the game is that players can adjust their attributes on each turn to suit their play style. So, for example, if they want to raise their sneak ability, they do so at the expense of their movement ability. Players can also collect “clue” tokens, which are used for re-rolls or for sealing gates.

We have a lot of fun with this game, but it is a time investment; most sessions last 3-4 hours, and if we add on the many expansions (which really only make the game harder), our sessions can go 5-6 hours. If this were a competitive game like Risk, tensions would rise quickly, but since everyone’s on the same team, the time just flies.

Expansions for Arkham Horror include:

• The Dunwich Horror, which adds a new section to the board and a secondary objective. (Get it here)
• The Curse of the Dark Pharoah, which adds more cards to the deck. (Get it here)
• The King in Yellow, which adds more cards to the deck and a sense of foreboding as a blasphemous play that can bring about the end of the world is about to be performed. It also adds in a new gameplay element called Heralds that add yet another layer of insanity to the game. (Get it here)
• The Kingsport Expansion includes yet another section of board and more of pretty much everything. It also allows for the creation of wandering rifts (which are really bad news) and other nasty things. (Get it here)
• The Black Goat of the Woods expansion just adds more cards. (Get it here)

All in all, you’re looking at a pretty significant investment to own the game plus all its expansions ($300-400 easily), but it is enough fun that it’s well worth it. It’s not the only game out there that’s based on the Cthulhu mythos, but it’s certainly one of the best.

Price range: $40-60 for the game (Get it here), $20-50 for the each expansion
Learning curve: About an hour.
Ease of play: Moderate.
Length of play: 3-4 hours (or 5-6 with the expansions)
Family-appropriateness: I’d say this one is for teenagers and above since the theme of the game is horror.
Recommended number of players: We usually play with 4, but the game is designed for 2-8.

If the box art doesn't convince you that this game is crazy, try playing a round. It's nuts! (In a good way.)

Betrayal at House on the Hill is yet another horror game, but it’s a little bit different from the others in that its board is not set, but made up of randomly drawn titles. It starts off as a cooperative game — each player selects a character and wanders through an old mansion, exploring rooms and looking for items. As doorways are entered, room tiles are placed down, so you never know quite where you’re headed. Some rooms have what’s called an “omen,” and if a player triggers an omen, a random process determines which of the players will betray the others… and kick off a scenario that can be anything from that player trying to load the others up into his flying saucer to that player sprouting a bunch of firey bats and trying to hunt down and kill everyone before they can exorcise the house.

Betrayal is actually out of print, and it’s gone through a couple of versions due to a few spotty rules. But it’s a great game since it’s so unpredictable, and it has some pretty humorous elements about it for a horror game. Each character is a spoof of a horror movie cliche (the little girl with her teddy bear, the big dumb guy with an ax, the fortune-teller, the crazy scientist, and so forth), and the betrayal scenarios can get pretty wild.

I like the house tiles and the painted player miniatures; they’re very nice. I wish the rulebook held up better (make copies if you play it often!), and the little tokens you use for the scenarios are really easy to lose and difficult to find when you need them. Ah well.

Price range: $25-100 for the game (Get it here)
Learning curve: About 30 minutes.
Ease of play: Moderate.
Length of play: 1-2 hours
Family-appropriateness: I’d say this one is for teenagers and above since the theme of the game is horror.
Recommended number of players: We usually play with 4, but the game is designed for 3-6.

It's like my childhood dreams brought to life...

Monsters Menace America is a game about rampaging across the United States with a giant, unsociable monster. There are, of course, King Kong and Godzilla wannabes, but there’s also a giant eyeball, a giant crustacean, a praying mantis and a smog monster. Each player selects a branch of the military and a monster. They’ll spend part of the game trying to slow down the enemy monsters with their fighter jets, tanks, rockets and subs, and they’ll spend the other part trying to destroy cities and gain enough notoriety to become the king of the monsters.

There’s also a neutral branch of the military – the National Guard – which no player controls, but which can put a hurting on the monsters. And yes, there are two super military units that can fight the monsters as well — a giant robot and a guy named “Captain Colassal” who looks like a superhero.

I just got this one, so I haven’t had a lot of hands-on time with it. But from what I can tell, this is exactly the sort of game I dreamed of when I was a kid. It’s set up like a wargame, but it’s all about destruction and chaos, with some application of strategy, but some reliance on luck as well. The monster miniatures are painted, and the pieces are really nice-looking overall. The board is huge, and takes up the entire table. And since the monsters in the game can’t die, but merely get shipped off to Hollywood on exhibit until they summon the strength to resume their rampage, every player gets to stay in the game until the end. Awesome.

Price range: $30-50 for the game (Get it here)
Learning curve: About 30 minutes.
Ease of play: Easy.
Length of play: 1-2 hours
Family-appropriateness: I’d say this one is OK for kids, but it may be too advanced for kids under the age of 10 or so.
Recommended number of players: 4. It supports 2-4 players, but it’s the most fun with 4.