This week, in honor of Valentine’s Day, I asked my wife to write an article for Boardgame News. Though Kimberly enjoys the occasional game, she’s by no means a serious gamer. Thus she offers a unique perspective on what games your loved one might enjoy. So, consider this a guide to games you might play with your non-gaming-spouse-or-girlfriend this Valentine’s Day, and an insight into why those or other games might be enjoyable. You might even print it out and give to them, so that they can decide for themselves if any of the games sound fun.

As for us, maybe we’ll play some Carcassonne or Lost Cities after a nice dinner out tonight at our favorite Cajun restaurant.

I’ll now turn things over to my wife, Kimberly Appelcline —SA

My husband, Shannon, has been writing articles for Gone Gaming for ages, and he has frequently discussed them with me. He games a few days a week, pretty much every week, but I don’t play games nearly as much as he does. I do enjoy some games, however, and this year he asked me to write something from the wife’s perspective, from the perspective of someone who doesn’t play games so often, discussing what games I particularly enjoy and why.

Alhambra is a purchase and tile-laying game that works particularly well for two or three players. This is similar to what Shannon says serious gamers deride as “multi-player solitaire,” but which I think of as parallel games, in which each player works in parallel on their own task, and results are compared at the end to see who wins. In Alhambra, the only interaction between players is in their purchasing tiles or choosing money that may be desired by others. The rest of the game consists of making choices about how to build your own Alhambra with the right tiles and walls in the right places to get you the most possible points. The choices are not very difficult or frustrating, but they are challenging enough to be fun for me. The game is also very pretty, and the looks of a game always affect how much I enjoy it.

Another game that is somewhat similar to Alhambra—in that they are both about purchasing tiles to build a structure in parallel with your opponents—but which I don’t like, is O Zoo Le Mio, in which blind bidding for the tiles requires guessing what your opponents are going to do. I don’t like blind bidding, so I prefer Alhambra’s version, in which players take turns buying tiles.

Carcassonne is a tile-laying game for two to five players. When I list it here, though, I’m really thinking about a group of games, because I also like Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers and the similar The Ark of the Covenant.

Since I rarely enjoy games in which players attack each other, my husband and I used to play the Carcassonne games with a “nice” rule: there was no stealing of properties. If there was accidental merging of properties, we split the points. But it was a clumsy solution, and we’ve never been able to go back to playing the game with the original rules, because Shannon was too upset by my negative reactions to some of those early games, even if I feel differently now. As a result, the Carcassonne game we enjoy most is Carcassonne: The Castle, because it is intended for two players, which is what I’m generally looking for so that I can play with my husband, and it is less confrontational because its unique rules—different from the other Carcassonne games—make it difficult to steal each other’s properties.

Gang of Four is a four-person card building game, like another of my favorites, Tichu. Tichu includes partner play, which is its primary difference from Gang of Four, but otherwise the two games are very similar.

My favorite thing about Gang of Four (and Tichu) is looking at a hand of cards and deciding how best to divide it up into pairs, poker hands, etc. As with Ticket to Ride’s choosing of destination tickets and routes, the choice of which cards to play together in Gang of Four is fun for me. More so than in Ticket to Ride, however, there’s the sense that there is a “right” way to play each hand, and the key is to figure out what that is. There’s also the challenge of reacting to the cards played by your opponents, which sometimes make your initial plan not the best course of action.

Lost Cities is a two-player tactical card game. This is another “parallel” game, as I call them. In Lost Cities, each player works on their own sets of cards (“expeditions”), interacting with the other player only through a board on which discards are offered or taken. I like the hard decisions involved as to whether to hoard your cards or play them to free up your hand.

I also like how the two players interact, though it may be considered to be very little; I like how my expeditions affect my opponent’s, and vice versa. If I’ve started a red expedition, for example, and I see my opponent start putting down a lot of red cards, I know I’m in trouble. And if I see my opponent put down a yellow card when I’m holding all the high yellows in my hand, it has the exact opposite effect.

Another thing I like about Lost Cities is that the scores are added up over three rounds, so if you get bad cards one time through (or if you make a mistake) you aren’t doomed. I like feeling like I have control over my own fate in games, and this aspect of Lost Cities helps make up for the randomness factor.

Memoir ‘44 is a wargame for people who don’t necessarily like wargames, like my husband and myself. Though very combative, this is nonetheless one of my favorite games. The combat attacks don’t feel personal, because they’re the whole purpose of the game. You have no choice whether to attack or not—attack is the default—so no one can take the attacks personally.

One of the main reasons I like this game is the theming. I’m interested in World War II, so I enjoy the historical element of reenacting real battles from the war. I also like the fact that “death” is incremental in the game: if you’re going to lose one of your units, you generally have fair warning and can try to get it out of danger (if your cards allow) or choose to sacrifice it. It’s unusual to lose a whole unit with no warning, and so I generally feel that losing a unit has been due to my own decisions, rather than purely because of my opponent’s attack, which feels better to me. As I mentioned before, I like to feel like I have control over my own fate. Lastly, I find the game aesthetically pleasing. I like the terrain tiles and the little soldiers and tanks.

Another game which is very similar to Memoir ‘44, BattleLore, isn’t as much fun for me for two reasons. First, I don’t like the fantasy theming as well as the World War II theming, and theming is very important in catching my interest. Second, it has a lot more rules than Memoir ‘44, and more rules generally mean less fun for me. So I prefer to play Memoir ‘44 if we’re going to play a game of this type.

Mystery Rummy is a series of rummy variant card games, of which my favorites are Jack the Ripper and Murders in the Rue Morgue. What I like best about these games is how well the mechanics of the game are integrated with the theming. So, for example, in Jack the Ripper there are victim cards, crime scenes, suspects, etc., and in Rue Morgue an orangutan plays a crucial role.

I’m generally quite fond of rummy games and would also list Seasons here as another of my favorite games. Though it doesn’t have the interesting theming of the Mystery Rummy games, I nonetheless find it very enjoyable.

Reiner Knizia’s Samurai is a simple abstract strategy game for two to four players, though I’ve only ever played it with two. I like it enough that I’ve played both the board game and the computer game.

Samurai is a constant struggle between players, but without actual attacks, as players do their best to win majorities around the board, placing their own pieces but not impacting their opponents’. Also, as in Memoir ‘44, you generally don’t lose a majority without seeing the danger in advance and having the opportunity to do something about it (if your tiles allow). This kind of advance notice of impending doom makes games much more fun for me than if unavoidable disasters come out of nowhere.

Rumis is a 3-D shape placement game for two to four players, though I’ve only ever played it with two. Rumis is a lot of fun to play, and is very pretty besides (another one for which the looks of the game have an impact on me). I enjoy the spatial reasoning required by this game, and there are occasional plays—when you find the perfect placement for an oddly shaped piece—that make me feel especially clever, which is always fun.

San Juan is a card game for two to four players, though I think I’ve only ever played it with two. It’s similar to the “parallel” games I’ve described, in that each player is building their own rank of buildings which are not impacted by other players’ actions, but there’s more interaction in the form of choosing what actions to perform on each turn. Each player’s choice of actions impacts the other players, since they get to perform the same actions but without the chooser’s privilege. As a result, players make their choices with the other players’ needs taken into consideration, knowing that they don’t have to choose certain roles because the other player will do so. It’s the kind of interaction I really enjoy, which doesn’t involve actually destroying each other’s buildings or anything aggressive.

There’s another game similar to San Juan, called Race for the Galaxy. As with BattleLore vs. Memoir ‘44, Race for the Galaxy has a lot more rules than San Juan. And, as I mentioned with BattleLore, more rules make for less fun for me, so I didn’t like Race for the Galaxy very much when I played it. I much prefer San Juan.

Ticket to Ride is a railroad game for two to five players. There’s a lot of room for sabotage in this game, but that doesn’t bother me like it might, though I generally don’t like games where there’s a lot of room for people to choose whether or not to attack each other. When I first started playing Ticket to Ride, I think it bothered me more, but now I just do my best to keep other people from sabotaging me and wince in acceptance when they do, because I recognize that I do have some amount of control. I’m not fond of games in which someone can do something bad to me that I have no control over, such as the robber in Settlers of Catan, but in Ticket to Ride you can take preemptive action by claiming at-risk routes as early as possible.

I enjoy the basic mechanic of saving up cards in order to lay down trains. Much of the game, multiple routes are desirable on each turn, so there are multiple colors of trains you can choose, though of course there are times when you’re stuck trying to collect one color of cards. Planning ahead can deal with this in a lot of cases, so again I feel like I have control over my own fate. This control is also achieved by choosing combinations of destination tickets, which is my favorite aspect of the game.

In short, my favorite games are interestingly themed, work for two players (so that I can play them with my husband whenever I want to), and allow for competition without attacks. Some of my favorite games—such as Gang of Four—don’t fit any of these descriptions, but most fit at least one.

Kimberly

Thanks to Kimberly for contributing this article to Gone Gaming at BGN. Meanwhile if you’d like to read the rest of my writing from this week, I’ve written another game design article, this time on The Free Rider Problem and I’ve also reviewed Age of Gods (a fantasy Euro-wargame), E.T.I. (a semi-cooperative alien invasion game) and Owner’s Choice (a filler stock market game). I’ll be back in two weeks with a continuing look at expansions in board games, which is partially informed by the games of Memoir ‘44 that I’ve played with Kimberly.

Liked it? Take a second to support Shannon Appelcline on Patreon!