eurogames

Many people have conceptions and expectations of boardgames based on childhood experience with such games as monopoly and risk etc. there's nothing particularly wrong with that, but recent years have seen a major increase in games from europe that are very different from these and also from party games, such as balderdash, pictionary etc. The name for these games is Eurogames though many popular examples are by american authors.

So what is a eurogame? And how is it different to those long dull games of monopoly you remember from childhood?

The blanket nature of the word eurogame is slightly nisleading in that al sorts of settings, or 'themes' are present and the games very wildly, but there are some factors common to most if not all.

Firstly, the worst part about those long games of monopoly for me were when you were the first to be eliminated, meaning you were ecluded from the next two hours of fun. Most eurogames get rid of elimination altogether, favouring a points scoring system of victory rather then a last man standing approach. This means that noone will be sitting on the sidelines during a game while their friends continue playing.

Secondly, the Victory Points system leads designers to create several different ways of achieving victory, creating points through different methods so that when you play multiple times you can do different things each time and keep the fresh feeling of your first game.

Thirdly, they tend to take less than an hour and since everyone is involved all the way through noone should be bored by the end. This is a crucial improvement on the games from my youth. A four hour game when you get eliminated four hours before the end? No thanks!

So you may want to look at the new generation of games before dismissing this as a hobby.

On the right you will find a list of my favourite games, some of those are Eurogames, chiefly Race For The Galaxy, Princes Of Florence, Power Grid, and Puerto Rico and Carcassonne are considered classics in this genre. As always, I'm always up for a game so heres to social fun!

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