While vacationers tend to go to their cottage to participate in their favourite outdoor activities, such as hiking or kayaking, sometimes the weather doesn’t cooperate. That makes board games an essential cottage pastime, since they’re a fun option during a rainy day.
Everyone knows the more common games, and you’ll never go wrong with Monopoly or Risk. But if you’re looking to break out of a board-game rut, the following are a few newer games you might want to add to your collection.
Kingdom Builder
Only two years old, Kingdom Builder is a strategy board game designed for two to four players. Described as a “construction game,” much likes Settlers of Catan, Kingdom Builder players create a kingdom by building settlements. Each player has 40 different-coloured settlements and one terrain card. There are three different Kingdom Builder cards that explain how a player can earn gold, which they then base their settlement-building strategy around. At the end of the game, the player with the most gold is the winner.
Ticket to Ride
Ticket to Ride is a railway-themed board game for two to five players. Easy to learn, the game starts with each player receiving 45 coloured train pieces with a matching score marker; four train cards, which include a passenger car, caboose and tanker; and three destination ticket cards. These destination ticket cards then become the player’s goal, as these are the places they are trying to connect with their railway. During their turn, players can either draw two more railway cards, more destination tickets, or play their current railway cards, which are colour-coded to match the train pieces so players can claim certain routes and earn points. The game finishes when one of the players no longer has any coloured train pieces, with the winner being the person who has the most points.
Forbidden Island
If you like adventure games, then Forbidden Island should be a part of your board-game collection. For two to four players, this game can only be won through a team effort. The game’s premise is that players are part of an group of adventures who are on an island in search of treasure, but the island has been cursed to sink, so there are a variety of obstacles in the way as players race to find the island’s four treasures and escape. Throughout the game, players have to make sure that that their path is free of dangers, which improves increasingly difficult, since at the end of each turn players must turn over flood cards while trading cards with team members to find matching sets to help them reach the helipad before the island sinks.
Zooloretto
Zooloretto is a board game that’s sure to be a favourite for younger kids. Designed for two to five players, it’s based around the idea that players are zoo owners who must build up their animal collection in order to attract visitors and win the game. Players score points by the amount of animals they have in their pens or stored in their barn. If the barn is over capacity, they lose points. While there are different expansion packs for the game, its basic premise is that at the beginning 15 random tiles are set aside for the last round of play. Each player is given a game board that is their zoo and during each turn they can draw a tile from the bag and place it on a truck, take a full truck and add the tiles to their zoo or preform a money action, such as expanding game board. Once all of the trucks are taken by players, the round is over, with the last round starting when the players have to use the 15 tiles they put aside. Only one kind of animal can be put into a pen, with the other animals having to be stored in the barn area of the game board. As with most games, the player with the most points wins.
Mansions of Madness
For two to five players, Mansions of Madness is a mystery game for ages 13 and up. During gameplay, one player is “the keeper,” who chooses what type of map to use in gameplay, such as a church or university, and fills out a multiple-choice quiz to determine what items, puzzles, and events are included on the board. In order to win the game, the investigator characters must figure out the keeper’s “winning condition,” which is how they can win the game. Clues for the winning condition are hidden during the game, and the investigators have to find them. Once all of the clue cards are found, how each player can defeat the keeper is revealed, and the first side to finish their objective.
