Classic games and their more fun alternatives — Themed strategy games

Last week I wrote a post on better alternatives to abstract strategy games (Yahtzee, Dominoes, Scrabble, Cribbage, and Uno). This week we’re covering themed strategy games: Risk, Clue, Monopoly, Stratego, and Chess. Let’s jump into the worlds of war, murder, and rapacious capitalism for some good wholesome fun!

Risk

• What was great about this game — You’re moving across an asymmetric board trying to conquer territory, and you have to make lots of thoughtful decisions. Where do you want to deploy your forces? How do you balance offense and defense? When do you take risks to conquer a continent or an opponent? The sense of triumph and relief when you planned an attack exactly right and conquer Australia with your last available soldier harkens back to college where you studied just enough to get the grade you wanted with no wasted effort.
• What was terrible about it — The tyranny of the dice rolls. You could have a great strategy, and a string of bad luck leaves you feeling like you’re fighting with noodles and hats rather than muskets and cannons. Plus, the biggest factor in winning is how often other players attack you, and getting ganged up on in Risk is even more infuriating than getting ganged up on in family squabbles. Finally, if you do meet an untimely end on the fields of battle, your mates keep playing, potentially for hours, while you watch cat videos on your phone.
• What you should play instead: Small World — This preserves the great dynamic of using armies to conquer territories on an asymmetric board, but it does so with mechanics based on simple math where dice are only used in a very limited capacity. Most importantly, it adds loads of depth with armies of different races like trolls, orcs, wizards, and elves, each with their own special abilities. The game almost always plays in an hour, and everyone finishes at the same time.

• Bonus recommendation: Castle Panic — This is still a military territory control game, but the twist is that you and your fellow players start the game collectively controlling a castle in the middle of the board. You win the game by working together to stave off invading armies of monsters. The base game is fairly simple, and there are lots of expansions available to add more complexity.

Monopoly

• What was great about this game — Monopoly drives home the adage that you have to spend money to make money. Just like in actual capitalism, luck and your opponents’ strategies mean some investments do better than others. Taxes, jail, and other wrinkles add to an uncanny richness for a game almost 100 years old. Plus, it’s possible to win $10 by getting second place in a beauty contest, the first subtle burn in board game history.
• What was terrible about it — Monopoly actually mirrors the drawbacks of Risk: lucky dice rolling trumps strategy, a player who is clearly going to lose can often choose which other player wins (by selling properties on the cheap), and players finish the game at dramatically different times in a very long game.
• What you should play instead: Stockpile — This limited release game mirrors the investment dynamics in Monopoly, but with shares of stock rather than property. Every player has different knowledge about how stocks will perform, and you can choose whether to buy more shares or try to influence the trajectory of stocks. As in Monopoly, hoarding cash is a losing strategy. The basic game slightly more complicated than Monopoly, and there are lots of embedded options (different stock profiles, different characters, different return distributions) that increase the richness and complexity for serious gamers. It also plays much faster because there’s none of Monopoly’s open-ended negotiation.

• Shameless self promotion: Urban Tribes — So…I actually designed a game. Like Monopoly, you’re building properties and generating returns from them. But unlike Monopoly, each tribe (hipsters, preppies, rednecks, and soccer parents) have distinct buildings and can partner together on joint ventures (e.g., a trucker hat store for the rednecks and hipsters). Whereas Monopoly has freewheeling negotiations on trades/purchases, Urban Tribes preserves that dynamic for the joint ventures. Event cards inject some randomness like Chance and Community Chest in Monopoly, but players choose when and how to leverage them. There’s also an added strategy layer of using economic, cultural, and political power to generate the others.

Clue

• What was great about this game — It’s a race to figure out the hidden information and solve the most consequential murder since Abraham Lincoln. All the fun is in methodically working through weapons, characters, and rooms to figure out the combination that led to Mr. Boddy’s untimely demise. Well, that and the savage glee of moving your opponent’s pawn to the kitchen when they clearly want to be in the billiard room.
• What was terrible about it — This is a really great mid-childhood game, so I don’t have too many knocks on it. However, after a few plays, it does start to become formulaic. There’s an obvious process to figuring out what happened. It can feel silly making the same weapon suggestions over and over, and there really is a large degree of luck in happening to make the right suggestions early.
• What you should play instead: Decrypto — Decrypto is only like Clue in that there is secret information you’re trying to deduce, so this comparison is a stretch. But it’s a stellar game. You have two teams of spies. You’re trying to give clues to your team to get them to guess your words but making those clues so subtle that the other team can’t figure out what your words are. It’s all the fun of espionage with none of the risk of getting thrown in jail or assassinated.

Chess

• What was great about this game — Very elaborate strategy on a clear grid board. Being a great player requires thinking several moves in advance, anticipating opponent strategies and reactions, and understanding how the whole board fits together.
• What was terrible about it — You can only play with two players. Also, for all the complexity of the strategy, the game is the same every time — you and your opponent both always have the same pieces.
• What you should play instead: Santorini — Like chess, Santorini uses a square board grid that the players share as they move across. On it, the players construct buildings and move pawns up those buildings trying to get to the third level before their opponents, which is a multivariable math problem similar in complexity and strategy to chess. The world is stunning and immersive as you’re literally building a beautiful city vertically on the board. The game works well with up to four players, and with dozens of “god” cards that give players special abilities, you can experience literally hundreds of different versions of the game.

Stratego

• What was great about this game — Stratego is many people’s first love in strategy games. Just like in the fog of actual war, when you attack, you don’t know how strong your opponent is. With each move, you could be jumping to conquest or disaster. The simple math of higher number becomes a rich strategy of how to defend your flag and capture your opponent’s with 33 pieces of 12 different types on each side.
• What was terrible about it — I still love Stratego. My only critiques are modest. First, it only works for two players, and if one player knows the game much better, it’s hard for the other one to mount a viable campaign. Second, the outcome often becomes clear a while before the game ends, so the losing player is scampering about the board in a game of cat and mouse, or maybe better said, largely intact army and mouse.
• What you should play instead: Forbidden Desert — This a collaborative game by Matt Leacock, the designer of Pandemic, and has a similar feel to it. Your group has been marooned in a desert, and you must find the pieces of a flying machine and reassemble it to escape before you run out of water or time. As you dig through the sand, you never know whether you’ll find water, pieces of the ship, or other useful items. Like Pandemic, each player has unique abilities, and the optimal strategy relies on thoughtfully leveraging those as you deploy across the board.