Great Gateway Gift Games

Want to get someone into the hobby?

Well here are some Great Gift Ideas with suggestions spanning the world from the Akropolis of Greece to the Gardens of Japan, Mediaeval France and Hollywood Horror Film sets, ruling your Dominion or Fighting fierce Fires.

All of them make great introductions to our wonderful gaming world.

Enjoy.

Akropolis – Sam de Smith

It’s always a challenge to find a game that gets your less gamer-y pals into the more crunchy side of the hobby, but luckily Akropolis is an excellent, accessible tile-laying treat. Each turn, players draft tiles from the centre of the board, trying to group colours to unlock points combos – green for parks, red for military, yellow for markets and so on. Some colours work better together in different formations (parks together, military along the edges), some spread apart (markets need to be scattered across the city).

A key element is covering up existing Hexes, initially to produce raw materials (by covering Quarry hexes). Sometimes, you’ll want to cover less advantageous tiles, but at others you’ll have to cover something good to leave open a multiplier (the star tiles) or set up a later game strategy.

As the city tiles build up, it gains physical height – a literal akro-polis that’s a visual delight (and makes scoring immediate and obvious). It even has a delightful wooden column first-player token! An absolutely outstanding game that is ideal for 10+ and will be sure to have everyone arguing post-Turkey (wait the Akropolis is Greece, not Turkey… sorry, cracker joke).

Carcassonne – David Ireland

One of my favourite parts of Christmas and the festive period is board games with the family. With those people closest to me. When the presents are done, the food is eaten, the table cleared, it’s board gaming time!

When your belly is full of roast potatoes and sprouts, you don’t want anything too complex and Carcassonne is perfect there. It was one of the first modern board games I was introduced to and with its simple game mechanics and quick play, it is a perfect introduction game to family members who may not be as keen on board games as you are.

The key to a successful gateway gift game (for me) is players have to understand what they are doing and they have to be having fun. With Carcassonne each player has a pool of meeples. On their turn, they draw a tile, they play this tile, they play a meeple, then they check for scoring. If a score is available, take the meeple back to your pool that scores (not necessarily the same as the meeple just played) and move your meeple along the score tracker. Play then passes on to the next player to your left.

Carcassonne is for 2-5 players and the game works well with any player count within this. Once all tiles are played, the game ends and there is a final set of scoring to be completed and added on for all meeples left on the board. The player with the highest score takes the victory.

Victory at Christmas though is just a little bonus for me. Carcassonne can be ferociously competitive if you want it to be, but it is also a relaxing game to play due to its simple mechanics and does not require too much thinking making it an ideal gateway gift game for Christmas.

Dominion – Luke Griffiths

As the festive season approaches, we bloggers were asked to suggest great gateway gift games. My mind immediately went to a game that I have seen encourage people towards the world of games that are not the traditional ones that I remember growing up (Monopoly, Cluedo, Game of Life etc) and that game is Dominion.

Dominion is a deck building game and the one that made the game popular. I have the first edition, though the version you’ll see on sale now is the second edition. The recommended age is 14+, although the first edition says 8+ and I think that defines how easy playing the game can feel once picked up.

The premise is simple, be the player with the most victory points at the end of the game. Each player starts with just 10 cards in their deck, 8 coins and 2 Estate Cards. They draw 5 cards to use for their turn. Each turn in Dominion, a player is limited to one “action” and one “buy”. These must be played from, and paid for, from the five cards in your hand which will be actions, coins or victory points. Action cards allow you to gain a boost of some sort. This could be enabling additional actions to be played, additional buys to be made, giving you more coins towards your buy, drawing further cards that can be used in your turn etc. A buy allows you to gain an extra card (Action, Coin or Victory) to go into your discard pile. However, once you have exhausted your deck you immediately shuffle the discard pile. This will first occur after the second turn. Victory cards, whilst being essential for winning the game, fill up your hand limiting access to actions and coins that are useful during gameplay.

You only ever play with 10 action cards available from a core set of more than 20. These, in turn, amend the way that the game plays and the most effective strategies. This ensures that Dominion maintains plenty of variety as you re-play.

I have played Dominion with a variety of people, experienced gamers and people who have never been into board games and it is invariably a popular choice. This alone makes Dominion a great gateway gift game.

Flash Point Fire Rescue – Roger Bell-West

This cooperative game by Kevin Lanzing has the players as firefighters trying to save unconscious victims from a house fire.

There are two modes of play, and while old hands may not need to try the simpler “family game”, it’s good for someone who’s new to modern boardgames. You have four actions in a turn, moving and extinguishing fires and hauling out victims, all cost actions, and you’ll have to work together to get the job done.

The game is straightforward, and avoids hidden information—if there’s a victim in your space, even if someone else just arrived there with them, you can pick them up and move with them, and nobody needs to keep track of who’s carrying what for the rest of the game. Take your turn, advance the fire, then continue with the next player.

It’s very easy to visualise what’s going on. Everybody has an idea of how fires can spread, and the actions you’re taking are straightforward and clear, unlike the slightly abstracted travel and research in something like Pandemic.

It’s possible for a player to try to dominate others and tell them what to do (“alpha player” or “quarterbacking”); my solution is not to play with people like that, but this may not be an option round the family table.

The “experienced game” adds a host of small extras, like having to get victims as far as the ambulance rather than just to one of several rescue squares, but most importantly introduces unique player powers: I move slowly, but I can extinguish fires effectively with my foam tank, while you have a sensor that can tell victims from false alarms before we struggle all the way over to get to them.

There are just two maps in the box, the “standard house” and the “hard house”, but expansions add many more as well as new roles and hazards.

Horrified – Steve Conoboy

For me, Horrified is the game that not only opened the gate, it dragged me across the threshold and booted me so far down the path that I have no idea how to retrace my steps out of this mad and wondrous hobby.

Don’t let the horror theme put you off: this has a family rating, and possesses the charm of those old Universal black and white movies. A little scary, but we’ll be able to sleep afterwards. If a monster gets you (they probably will) you won’t die, you’ll wake up in hospital next turn a little sore and hopefully a little wiser. The theming, in fact, is unrivalled. The entire product oozes atmosphere, from the superb box art to the silent movie style warning on the back of the board – which itself is great to look at. Then there’s the monster minis, each easily identifiable, and the individual mechanics for each monster suit them perfectly: the Wolfman needs a cure, Dracula’s coffins must be destroyed before you face the toothy one himself.

It subtly introduces a lot of mechanics and gameplay elements new to those who’ve only played Monopoly, Cluedo and the like. Dice rolls are not for movement, they only come into play when the monsters attack either you or the villagers you haven’t bothered to ferry home. You get a set amount of actions, and you’ll split these between moving, gathering resources, tackling each monster’s puzzle, and guiding villagers home. You’ll assume that someone has to play as the monsters. Nope. Welcome to AI opponents, all controlled by a card deck and a few basic movement rules (no cheating on this, you’ll spoil the fun). Say hello to cooperative gameplay, where you really need a plan to succeed.

Easy to learn, easy to teach and snappy to play with very little downtime between turns, Horrified is a modern classic and a monstrously good time.

Takenoko – Pete Bartlam

Takenoko, the Happy Panda game is a great gateway gift for debutants to the wonderful world of Boardgaming. Look we’ve got a really cute Panda, a harrassed looking gardener, tall waving columns of bamboo to build and endless discussions about the weather. What’s not to like?

It’s also colourful and bright and you get a comic book to explain the set-up and the rules. Said rules are easy to learn and game turns are quick. The overall game length is reasonable too.

Takenoko is all about a gift itself. In this case a Giant Panda from China to the Japaneses Emperor. The panda is installed in the Japanese Garden and romps about eating the stalks of bamboo the weary Gardener has carefully cultivated. Your rôle is to lay out these plot tiles and irrigate them so the pink, green and yellow bamboo can be grown. The Gardener moves setting sprouts and watching them grow up to four pieces tall whilst the cheeky Panda moves around munching them!

Drawing cards to get Objectives you meet them in 3 different ways: match patterns of bamboo beds; grow different sets of bamboo stalks or eat particular combos of bamboo. Objectives have different point values dependent on difficulty.

Each turn you can do 2 things: place a tile; irrigate; draw a new Objective; move the Gardener and Sprout or move the Panda and munch! You also roll a Weather die for additional beneficial effects.

The game ends when a certain number of Objectives have been met and scores are totalled.

That’s it! Lovely to look at, lovely to play. Happy munching!

So there we have it 6 Great Gateway gift games to get your good friends into more gaming and maybe providing the genesis of a new gamer group.