Ticket to Ride: Europe
2-5 players, 60 minutes, ages 8+, $44 on Amazon
A classic. I hadn’t played this in some time, but lockdown provided a great opportunity to teach this set-collection and route-building train title to my 8-year old son. The iPad app for this is great—and waaaaay faster to play—but the tactility of the giant map, the plastic trains, and the presence of three trash-talking opponents made our in-person game a blast.
Ingenious
1-4 players, 45 minutes, ages 8+, $25 on Amazon
An old-school abstract from Reiner Knizia that sees you placing paired hexagons around a board, scoring points based on how many identical colors touch the five open lines radiating away from each of the paired hexes. (Okay, so the scoring takes a moment to wrap your head around.) The gameplay is fast and fun, and it requires you to value every color alike—because your final score is equal to the score of your lowest color.
Robin of Locksley
2 players, 40 minutes, ages 10+, $33 on Amazon
A new game from designer Uwe Rosenberg (Agricola, Patchwork), this one has about as much to do with Robin Hood as I have to do with the Sheriff of Nottingham. But what it does have is easy-to-teach gameplay in which your horse meeple moves around like a chess knight, snagging bits of loot. You collect this loot in order to satisfy a long series of conditions placed randomly around the edges of the play area—and you can move as far on a single turn as your loot allows. It’s set collection meets racing, and though we enjoyed our initial play of it, I’ll need a few more games to see how well it holds up.
Sanssouci
2-4 players, 30-45 minutes, ages 8+, $70 on Amazon (because it’s out of print)
A terrific tile-layer, this Michael Kiesling design has been criminally overlooked. No dungeon crawls here, D&D lovers—this is a game about building a European formal garden while moving your nobles down the garden path so they can smell the roses (and earn you points). It’s fast, it’s fun, and it’s extremely relaxing. The rules are simple to teach, turns are fast, and everything looks great. The game even includes a small expansion module in the box for slightly more complex play. The biggest downside? It might be hard to find new right now.
