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Game Night: The Best Board Games for Your Next Night In

by
Dec 6th, 2013

A board game night is a timeless event.  A century ago, our grandparents and great-grandparents were passing time by engaging in friendly competition with one another indoors when the weather outside was unpleasant.  We make board games the main event at small gatherings in order to save a bit of money and engage our competitive edges from time to time.  Generations from now, our grandchildren will probably partake in game nights for the same reasons.  Anyway, enough about the cross-generational appeal of board game nights.  You were directed to this blog post because you were searching for board game ideas for the next game night you host in your luxury apartment home. And that is exactly what you are going to get.

Settlers of Catan

Imagine you’ve been transported to an island that is entirely undeveloped.  In order for you and your descendants to live a life marked by comfort and convenience, you are going to have to construct houses, roads, bridges, and other essential infrastructure.  The success of your settlement will depend partially on luck, but primarily on your ability to plan and convince other settlers that you’ve got something worth trading for resources they have that you need.  This is Settlers of Catan, hailed by The Washington Post as “the board game of our time.”  Introduce friends of yours who are hitherto unfamiliar with Settlers to the game, and they’ll be thanking you for years.

Ticket to Ride

Another fun game that mixes strategy with luck is Ticket to Ride, the winner of several different awards for best game in the years 2004 and 2005.  The goal of the game is to successfully connect terminus stations on routes that you draw at random, but the catch is that there is limited track on each route and one wrong move could ruin your chances of successfully connecting one rail station to another f̶o̶r̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ until the next game.  Ticket to Ride is highly addictive, and once you get tired of playing on the United States and southern Canada map, you can try your hand at one of the games’ other mapped boards: Germany, Scandinavia, or Europe as a whole.

Risk

Are you looking to have a serious game night?  If you and your friends are in it for the long haul, then this classic game of world conquest promises to keep you busy.  Develop your own strategy, allow it to evolve as the game plays, and roll your way to global domination or utter irrelevance.  In spite of the fact that your wins and losses will be determined by the roll of several dice, you may find that playing this game gives you some level of understanding as to how occupation and colonialism played out in the age of empire building.  If you get temporarily tired of playing this game or you and your game night pals are looking to play a more intricate and complex game of global domination, try Axis & Allies.

Apples to Apples

If you are hoping to put more of a “party” spin on your game night and are looking for shorter games that require little concentration and can be played by any number of players, Apples to Apples is probably the perfect game.  Once you’ve set up the board and briefly gone over the instruction, it’s time to mix wits and luck and see how well you know how your friends think.

Monopoly!

We had to.  We couldn’t not.  It’s the best-selling board game of all time, and it has a place in every home, on every luxury apartment dining table not only in the country but in the world.  Like it or not, somebody is bound to want to play Monopoly at one of your board game nights.  And it will remind everyone who is present of his or her childhood.

Planning a game night in your luxury apartment home is easy.  It’s winning that’s the hard part.  Call your friends, stack your favorite board games on top of one another in a criss-cross pattern on your living room coffee table, and practice your poker face so that none of your friends will be able to tell what card you’ve played in Apples to Apples or when you’ve drawn a card that will enable you to win another game.

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