Christmas is just around the corner. If you haven’t already picked up presents for your family and friends … it’s getting down to the wire. To help the process along, I wanted to offer what I hope will be the first in an annual series of board-game gift-giving guides.

I’ve mostly focused on games from the last year or two, with a few references to older releases. Everything’s organized by the type of gamer you’re giving to, with the caveat that most of my suggestions are euro games — which means somewhat more strategic and somewhat more abstract.

If there are any other great games from recent years that belong on this list, please tell me about them in the comments below, along with the type of gamer that you’d give them to.

For the Family Gamer

These games might work well for the casual family that occasionally enjoys a game.

Kingdom Builder (Queen, 2011, $60) 
Short Play (< 1 hour)
Designed by Donald X. Vaccarino

This game is ideal for families and other casual players because it’s got very simple gameplay: you place down three houses in terrains constrained by a terrain card you drew. You’re trying to do so such that you build near cities and also achieve other specific victory conditions (like building along rivers or near mountains or spreading your pieces out a lot).

It’s also great for regular play because it’s got a lot of variability: in any game you use four of eight boards, arranged together in a random manner and featuring four different special locales (which give special powers!). The specific victory conditions are also random each game. This gives the game a lot of long-term depth, making it something that families could put on the table every game night.

The theming is light and the game is pretty abstract, but it’s still a terrific high-end board gaming present.

Timeline (Asmodee, 2010+, $15)
Super Short Play (~15 minutes)
Designed by Frédéric Henry

There are four Timeline games, each containing 109 cards packaged in an attractive and sturdy tin. They are: Discoveries, Diversity, Events, and Inventions. Each of the cards within a set shows something historic (like the landing of the Mayflower or the discovery of penicillin). Players have to arrange these cards in a timeline based on when they happened (which is revealed on the back of each card). The result is surprisingly fun and tense, making this a great variant of the most staid trivia game. If you like it, you can keep buying new tins, either mixing the cards together or playing each one separately.

If you don’t like either of these newish releases, then I’ll point you to the classic top family games: The Settlers of Catan (a trading and building game); Carcassonne (a tile-laying game); and Ticket to Ride (a railroad game). If your family friends are Star Trek fans, Star Trek Catan is a great (and new) variant. For younger gamers (< 8) there’s also the new Catan Junior, which older family members will still be happy to play.

For the Emerging Gamer

These games are likely to appeal to someone just getting into the serious/euro gaming hobby.

7 Wonders (Asmodee, 2010, $50)
Short Play (< 1 hour)
Designed by Antoine Bauza
 
This game is a couple of years old now, but it remains one of the top light euros. It actually might be light enough to give to family gamers, but I’ve erred on the side of caution. The basic idea is that you will play up to 21 cards over the course of the game to form the foundation of a civilization. These tends to be “buildings” which give you different advantages in play. You do so by playing resource-production cards and buying resources from your neighbors.

Part of the charm of the game is that it’s built around “card drafting”, which means that each round you get a set of 7 cards, keeping one and passing the other 6 around the table. This continues as you select from 6 cards, then 5, etc … The other charm of the game is that the play of cards is simultaneous. After everyone has selected a card, they all simultaneously reveal what they took. The result is a game that’s amazingly fast for its depth (or amazingly deep for its ~45 minute play).

For the Serious Gamer

Serious gamers are a bit harder to buy for, because they may well have already bought anything that particularly interested them. I haven’t seen a lot that’s thrilled me in this category, so I’ve listed one that I think is quite good and another that’s great but probably not available.

Hawaii (Rio Grande Games, 2012, $40)
Long Play (2+ hours)
Designed by Gregory Daigle

This is a worker-placement game with some nice South Pacific theming and a twist: there’s actually a game board, and you have to move your chieftain from place to place so that he can do the various things that you want to do. The catch is that even moving takes a resource (footprints).

This is all wrapped around resource-management play. You collect footprints (to move), seashells (to buy stuff with), and fruit (which are a wild resource). You’ll use most of those resources to build a variety of buildings on your own island, which gives the game a fun and creative core.

There’s perhaps nothing super new in this game for a grizzled eurogame player, but it’s a well-polished game that doesn’t play quite like anything else that your eurofriend may have  in his collection.

Village would have topped this list except that it seems to be sold out and/or on preorder from TMG at the moment. Nonetheless, if it happens to be in your local shop, I highly recommend it. It’s a worker-placement game that edges toward a SimVillage like experience.

For the Role Player

This is for those folks who usually play roleplaying games but are happy to try out other board & card games in their spare time. The list is longer than my other categories, mainly because I thought that there were a lot of great games released in this category in the last year or so.

Lords of Waterdeep (Wizards of the Coast, 2011, $50)
Medium Play (1-2 hours)
Designed by Peter Lee & Rodney Thompson

Wizards of the Coast has been producing D&D-related board games for the last year or so. To date, this is the best result of that new initiative.
It’s a resource-management and worker-placement game. You’re trying to collect together rogues, mages, clerics, and fighters in order to accomplish various quests. You do so by sending agents to locales in Waterdeep which will gives you those various adventuring types, new quests, and more.
As a standard euro, this game probably wouldn’t be that exciting, but it shines as a very well-themed fantasy game, where the quests just glow with D&D-adventure goodness.

Cthulhu Fluxx (Looney Labs, 2012, $16)
Short Play (15-60 minutes)
Designed by Keith Baker
 
This is one of two games on my list that isn’t a euro. If you’ve played Fluxx, this is the same thing. You’re trying to play “keepers” (like Richard Pickman and Penguins) to achieve “goals” (like The Mountains of Madness), while the whole time the rules are changing under you. The game has always been a chaotic, American masterpiece, but this variant was written by someone with a superb understanding of Lovecraft’s writing, and thus will be well-loved by fans of Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, and all the rest of the Lovecraftia that’s infiltrated roleplaying.

Gauntlet of Fools (Indie Boards & Cards, 2012, $28)
Short Play (15-30 minutes)
Designed by Donald X. Vaccarino

I’m not sure if I’d actually call this a euro or an American design, as it’s so light. Each game a set of random adventurers with random weapons appears. The players then bid on who gets to use which adventurer — but the bidding takes the form of “boasts”. You say things like “I can play the Necromancer with one arm tied behind his back”. Each boast makes the character worse. Eventually everyone will get one adventurer, many of them handicapped in some ways. Then the adventurers meet a series of monsters and other challenges — and after everyone dies you count up everyone’s gold and see who won. It’s super light and mostly about the experience, but it’s a lot of fun too.

Epic Spell Wars (Cryptozoic Entertainment, 2012, $30)
Medium Play (1+ hours)
Designed by Rob Heinsoo

This is a classic American take-that game. On your turn you cast a spell and you zot! one or more of your opponents. However, it’s also a very cleverly designed take-that game. Your spells can be composed of up to three parts, which fit together like puzzle pieces. You can also try and maximize your spells by putting together spell parts of the same type,  and you have to balance that against the requirements that each spell include for who you get to hit. The result is not just fun, but nicely tactical as well.

That’s already a pretty long list, but I’d also suggest flicking fantasy game Catacombs, which recently became more available thanks to its third(?) printing.

For Existing Games

The last year also saw some great supplements for existing games. I’m going to mention them here in short in case you want to offer up a bigger present or offer a sequel to something you purchased in a previous year. These are not complete games!

7 Wonders: Leaders (Asmodee, 2011, $30).  This includes a set of leader cards that offer up a new round of play for 7 Wonders. More importantly, they give the game some strategic depth, as you can play leaders, then try and play other cards that work well with them. I conversely don’t suggest the newer 7 Wonders: Cities, which in my opinion makes the game less fun due to its “tax” power.

Dominion: Dark Ages (Rio Grande Games, 2012, $45). This is the strongest supplement for the Dominion deckbuilding game in a while. It’s got a lot of cards that work in very different ways (e.g., multiple cards of a type each with different powers, cards that let you take different cards, etc), and a strongish theme (for Dominion).

Kingdom Builder: Nomads (Queen, 2012, $35). I haven’t seen this widely available in the US, but if you do, more power to you. It gives you what you’d expect — new boards, new special powers, and new victory conditions — and that’s all exactly what makes Kingdom Builder good.

Ticket to Ride: Asia (Days of Wonder, 2011, $35). This expansion includes two new maps for Ticket to Ride, which is cool enough on its own. However it also has totally new rules for teamplay which really shake up the game. There are two other recent collections for Ticket to Ride. India also includes a Switzerland map; they’re both good, but not as revolutionary as Asia. I haven’t yet seen Heart of Africa, which is due out soon.

Thanks to Christopher Allen for suggesting this column.

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