Roll a dice.  Move your thimble.  Go directly to jail.  Do not pass go.  Do not collect $200.  This is the image that most Americans conjure when the topic of boardgames is brought to the table.

Risk and Monopoly, are the staples of the American board game industry.  On top of having sold millions of copies, they have a number of other elements in common.

Both are dependent on dice.  One good roll can bring you great fortunes, while a bad one can cripple you for the rest of the game.  These games tend to have a large amount of chance or luck built in that seriously alters the flow of the game.  Coming back from these near death predicaments is not impossible, but struggling to survive up to your next turn is not the most enjoyable experience. Most board games in this category involve luck, conflict, and drama.

There is a school of boardgames that relies heavily on strategy without being a war-game like Risk or Axis and Allies.  They are more abstract than buying up random properties, and considerably less abstract then the movements in chess.  Simple economic themes tend to be somewhat more prevalent.  Also in this camp, it’s important to note that there are no player eliminations.

These games are still struggling to find a uniform name across the hobby.  Some call them German games because Germany produces the largest amount of boardgames per capita, the majority fitting this description.  Others call them Euro Games, because their popularity and production is not restricted to merely Germany.  Expanding further, some call them designer games and others strategy games.

I often refer to the games as Euro games, dispite the fact that a growing number are designed and produced outside of Europe.  Allan Moon is a popular designer here in the United States that has created quite a few popular games in this category.

Although it depends on who I am talking to.  If the person only knows of games like Scrabble and Monopoly, I’ll sometimes call them strategy games.  Although I always have to explain right after words that I’m not talking about pushing little tanks around a map, and I’m not talking about sending little dwarfs to fight dragons.

A lot of games are very different from the countless versions of Monopoly or Risk.  The games Ticket to Ride, The Settlers of Catan, Alhambra, Tikal, Zooloretto, Puerto Rico, and Agricola are all very different from one another.  They do however share a couple things in common aside from being great games.  They are all classified as Euro games, and they have all won ‘Spiel Des Jahres’

The ‘Spiel Des Jahres’ is an award given out every year to the top European style board game.  The award was created in 1978 to promote board game excellence.  It is basically the equivalent of an Oscar in it’s own right.

Winning the award traditionally means that the game is going to see a growth in sales up to 100 times what it would have originally seen.  Even being nominated for the award means growth of up to 20 what could have been expected.

Often times the award leans closer to lighter family games.  Every couple of years, the committee gives out special awards for bigger and more complex games.

This year’s special complex game of the year went to ‘Agricola.’  Which is Latin for farmer.  In the game you start out as a couple of poor farmers and strive to become a family of slightly less poor farmers.  Each turn you send out a family member to a different action such as plowing fields so you can grow more food, collecting timber so you can fence off pastures, or collecting stone so you can upgrade your house.  You have quite a few potential routes to victory, and it is often heavily influenced by the paths that others attempt to take.

A less complicated game is Alan Moon’s game ‘Ticket to Ride,’ the 2004 Spiel Des Jahres winner.  This game is much lighter and easier to learn.  The basic idea is that you are racing to complete your routes across the country by connecting cities by railway.  You get destination tickets that contain two cities and a point value.  If you can connect them you will get the points.  If not, they will be subtracted from your final score.

Ticket to Ride is what many consider to be a ‘gateway game.’  It is a great introduction to the hobby.  It is easy to learn, fun, and has a lot of replay value to it.  The typical game lasts one hour.  There are a couple of different versions available, and each one adds a little more functionality to the game play.

Ticket to Ride Europe adds train stations that allow you to use segments of other peoples tracks.  This makes it harder for you to get locked out of a specific city.  But you get points if you don’t use your train stations, so there is a trade off.  In Ticket to Ride Marklin, the German Edition, there is a new passenger element added to the game.  The sooner you run passengers through the different cities, the more points you can collect from them.  But you can only take them to the cities that you are connected to.  If you go to early, you won’t collect as many points, but if you run your passengers to late then another player might choose to collect before you do.

Although some of the fundamental mechanics are the same, within the different versions of Ticket to Ride there is a large variance in game play.

There are plenty of different types of mechanics that a designer game might include.  So going from one to the next can be a completely different experience.  This also means that there is sure to be at least one game out there that you love.  After playing a variety of them, you can determine which types of games might be more enjoyable for you.

So the next time you want to play a board game, remember that there are some places where innovation constitutes more than haphazardly slapping on a Starwars, Simpsons, or Spongebob theme on worn out 80 year old game.

There are games available that can be played in under 5 hours.  There are games that can be played without having to stab your friends in the back every time to win.  When you look at the games in your closet, think about adding a couple of Euros.

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