The new thing in boardgaming

[undyingking]

Wired is that prestigious magazine of the technological elites, its finger firmly on the cutting edge of all things geeky and zeitgeisty, right?

Apparently there's a new boardgame called Settlers of Catan, which is "poised" to become popular in the US. "Along the way, it's teaching Americans that board games don't have to be either predictable fluff aimed at kids or competitive, hyperintellectual pastimes for eggheads. Through the complex, artful dance of algorithms and probabilities lurking at its core, Settlers manages to be effortlessly fun, intuitively enjoyable, and still intellectually rewarding, a potent combination that's changing the American idea of what a board game can be."

Who'd have thought it? Why have none of us ever heard of this game before -- why have the Germans been keeping it secret for the fourteen years since its launch? What will those fiendish foreigners come up with next?

Comments

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

They're over-egging the pudding as well. Perfect game my arse! It's a good game, but as with most games, it gets boring after a while, even with added variants.

And Monopoly generally gets slated far more than it deserves. As well as the basic strategy and 2d6 statistics (plus the fact already pointed out that very few people play it according to the vanilla rules) there is a lot of negotiation that goes on in Monopoly. Where it falls down ultimately is when all players except the one(s) perceived as dominant come to the conclusion that they should never trade with anyone else under any circumstances.

Also, it's not always the youngest player that throws the game-ending tantrum!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

It was in my family, but that may say more about our bullying than about the game ;-)