Category:Board Games

"Homsar: Oh no! You shanked my Jengaship!

Strong Sad: I shanked your Jengaship? We're playing Connect Four!"

- Homestar Runner, "Where's the Cheat?"

Classic games of skill and chance, often used in fiction to illuminate characters' personalities. There are many board games, but those listed in this index are pretty much the only ones you will see in fiction. Often, the trademarked ones will have an in-world Brand X equivalent. In the last decade, piecepacks have become popular as a means of devising new board games.

For a brief overview, there are four general categories of board games: Abstracts like chess; Party Games, which have a penchant for randomness and fun over hard strategy; Wargames, which typically feature maps full of troops duking it out at varying levels of realism, and Eurogames, which focus on gaining victory points through economic competition over game resources rather than direct combat (the most famous of these is "The Settlers of Catan" - the Germans have a particular love of these and they can sometimes be called "German Games"). A fifth category not well known outside of Boardgaming circles is "Ameritrash" which focuses on the theme of the game and aggressive gameplay which mixes strategy and luck. (Named as a contrast to Eurogames which are perceived as very skill-based). It should be said that Ameritrash Games aren't always made in or are exclusive to America - games such as the Avalon Hill line of board games for many years reached international audiences but were cut from the shortlist of games to preserve in print because of Hasbro's Money, Dear Boy. Many games float among these categories.

Some board games - especially of the war variety - are so complicated they become the trope Guide Dang It in that they are near impossible to play without the rule book in hand.

Since the 90s there's been a major revival of boardgames, and sites like boardgamegeek (which lists all existing games - yes, all of them) have many hundreds of thousands of members. Not to mention game conferences like Spiel (in Essen, Germany), which draws 150,000 people each year. Also, recent board games have been colored pink hoping more girls would by them.

A Massive Multiplayer Crossover homage to board games lies here. Also, a weird online game with lots of board games can be found at Boardgame Online.