(Moved from BoardGames and updated with description of San Juan and games for two players.)

Eurogames (also known and German-style Board Games) are a particular variety of board game. If the phrase 'board game' conjures up Monopoly or Risk in your mind, that the wrong image. I played board games a fair bit in my teens, but even then I had little time for such poor games. My taste then led to Diplomacy and Kingmaker - but then drifted off into simulation war-games and D&D. Eurogames are a relatively recent phenomena that's a whole new class of games which I really enjoy. Sadly I don't get to play often enough as most of my gaming friends are in England which is a long way from Boston.

Eurogames come from a community, focused in Germany, which developed around designing board games in the 80's or so with a particular set of principles. These were to make board games that have interesting tactics and strategy, yet are easy to learn, play in a couple of hours, stay fresh with multiple plays, and keep everyone fully engaged till the finish. This style really flowered with a game called Settlers of Catan in 1995, and now there are quite a few excellent games in this category, many of which are recognized by the Spiel des Jahres award.

Here I'm just going to describe some of my own experiences. For a broader view there's an excellent article on wikipedia. For more information than you can possibly digest: try boardgamesgeek; Stephan Wessels has a nice summary of several interesting games. Bear in mind that I'm a casual gamer, not a serious gamer. I like my brain to be engaged and exercised; but intense knowledge of arcane tactics, card counting and the like turn me off. Chess is too involved for me - I like a game I can play while tippling.

For most readers of the this blog, the best game to try to see if you like this sort of thing is Settlers of Catan - the game that's paved the way for this genre around the world. You can learn how to play in ten minutes of play and be competitive in your first game. However there's lots of room for skill as you choose between multiple strategies which have to change as other people make their moves. The board represents an abstract island on which you build settlements and cities, for which you need resources that the island provides. The island is dealt out differently each time, which helps keep the game varied. You also get resources by trading with other players, which keeps the game very interactive. We've played it a couple of dozen of times, often night after night, and so far it hasn't got stale at all.

I say Settlers is the best for readers of this blog, as I assume that most readers here are pretty quick to pick things up. My more general choice as a "gateway game" is Ticket To Ride. The big advantage that Ticket To Ride has over Settlers is that the rules are a level simpler, maybe a couple of minutes to understand. This gives it an edge with less geeky people, and also with young children. We've given this game to a couple of nephews this Christmas and they were up and away immediately; yet there was enough strategy to hook their parents too. I don't think I like it as much as Settlers, but it's still streets ahead of Monopoly.

We've played about half-a-dozen games of Carcassonne, which is another that I've really enjoyed. Similar in complexity to Settlers, it has a great mechanic where you build up the board as you go by laying a new tile on each turn. You score points by placing counters (referred to as "meeples") on the tile, but you only have a limited number of meeples so there's a lot of thought in both tile placement and how to best use your meeples. There's a ton of extensions and variants of this game; we have the Hunters and Gatherers variant but have played the original a few times. From that limited experience I'd recommend the Hunters and Gatherers variant - it's a later version which ironed out some the kinks in the earlier game.

Alhambra also uses tile laying, but instead of laying tiles on a common board, you lay them on your individual Alhambra. Instead of just drawing tiles, you buy them using money cards in various currencies from a common market. So the thinking involves getting the right amount of money to buy the tiles you need when they come up. You have to keep an eye on what the other players have in their Alhambras since players score for having the most of a certain feature. We've played this a few times and I'm slowly getting a hang of the strategy. At this point I'm inclined to put in the same class for complexity and game-play as Settlers.

Puerto Rico is often considered to be one of the most serious strategy games in this style. There is a much lower level of randomness than the other games I've mentioned (which can be a problem for casual gamers). It's a harder game to learn than Settlers, the first game is really just to get a hang of the mechanics, and after a few games I know I'm only scratching the surface of the strategy. There are lots of strategy articles on the web for this game, but I suspect I won't get into it properly unless we find some regular gaming friends.

A related game to Puerto Rico is San Juan. San Juan is designed by the same designer as Puerto Rico and has a similar theme and shares many mechanics. However it is really a different game. It's much lighter in feel, and has more randomness. It's also primarily a card game and thus is compact to carry around and can play in limited space, such as on an airplane. So far I've mostly played it as a two player game, but have found it works out very well. The thinking concentrates on card management, deciding which cards to keep, which to build, and which to discard to pay for the building.

Viking Fury is a little-known game, local to the UK (as far as I can tell). In terms of game-play I would rate it a 'B', a step below Settlers but still a good game (Monopoly and Risk would get 'E'). I've played it twice and quite enjoyed it, but it doesn't have the 'I can play every night' feel of Settlers standard games.

A game producer that's worth a special mention is Cheapass games. While their games don't rise to Settlers level, they are fun games and above all they are cheap (most between $2.50 and $7.50 each). They don't include common components (dice, counters etc) which you can scavenge from other games. They almost always have a strong dose of humor. The nice thing is that at that price, you don't mind buying a game you may only play once or twice. A simple, but rather nice example is Devil Bunny Needs a Ham. The setup is surreal ("You and your friends... are highly trained and well-paid sous-chefs, who have decided to climb to the top of a tall building, as fast as you can. Devil Bunny Needs a Ham. And he's pretty sure that knocking you off the building will help him get one.") but the game is actually quite a clever light game.

In the past few months Cindy and I have done more games as two-player games. Eurogames tend to be aimed at families and play with three or more. However some games play well with two and we've enjoyed playing Carcassonne (Hunters and Gatherers) and San Juan.