Hop on the road to board game addiction
Hello, my name is Nate, and I have an addiction to board games. (Hi Nate!) It started so simply; just a game or two for my wife and I to play during the long Alaskan nights (we were live-in caregivers for people with developmental disabilities, which meant we were on the clock 24/7, and meant that from about 9:30 PM onward we were stuck in the house and bored). From there it just…kept getting bigger, and now I have somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred games taking up an entire closet in my library.
I like to think I’ve got it under control, but I have to admit, it’s starting to affect my social life. People are afraid I’m going to spring a new game on them, something with a lot of rules and small parts and probably a strong fantasy theme. It’s happened.
However, I’m happy to report that I’ve found the perfect game to ease these people into board game addiction! It’s short, simple, fun, and the rules are super simple. Now we can all have our friends play games with us again!
The magic game is called Incan Gold. It only takes about half an hour to play, and after the first few minutes everyone is solid on the rules (there’s only about three rules) and everyone’s on the same page. Your previously un-addicted friends are starting to see that you’re not such an idiot for collecting giant piles of cardboard and soon they’ll be ready for any of the Days of Wonder games. From there it’s a short slide into Cosmic Encounter territory.
But even for us board game aficionados Incan Gold is fun. The premise is this: you and your friends are exploring an ancient Incan Temple and looting it right good. The goal is to be the one to get the largest pile of artifacts and treasure hoarded away in your tent without getting bitten by spiders, burned in fire traps, crushed by fallen rocks, or horribly, wordlessly destroyed by the evil zombie devil doll. There are five rounds, and if you die in one round you get miraculously better for the next round.
Each turn consists of a single decision: keep exploring, or turn around and run with the treasure you’ve already got. If you turn and run, you’re safe and you hide your treasure in your tent and wait for the inevitable death of your colleagues (i.e. the end of the round). Everyone who chooses to keep going has another card revealed, either a pile of treasure, which is divided evenly amongst the explorers still in the temple, or one of the aforementioned hazards. Two matching hazards means you’re dead.
See? Simple! Before long everyone will be laughing, making terrible Indiana Jones jokes (I’m of the opinion that there should be a 3-point penalty for anyone who says “It belongs in a museum!” during the game) and complimenting each other on their daring and cunning wit. And you will be sitting back, biding your time, knowing that soon these simple souls will fill out your table for 7 Wonders.
What’s that? This is supposed to be a group for curing board game addiction? Why would I want to do that? Listen, want to talk about it over a game of Incan Gold?
You have a limited amount of time, so why spend it reading about things that suck or are only kind of okay? Favorite thing EVER is not a review site. We're unrepentant fans, and this is the stuff we love. Hope you like gushing, because we're about to embarrass ourselves.
We keep getting rid of games… but now we’ve been buying them for the iPad. Such as Harry Potter Scene It and Small World.
Matt’s birthday is coming up, though…
Have you played Tsuro?
Actually we played Tsuro with my Mom and sisters a couple of days ago. Now my 6-year-old son keeps asking if he can play it…against himself. I’m raising that kid right.