The Opinionated Gamers

I have recently had the pleasure of playing board games with a number of folks that are relatively new to the hobby, and it has me thinking about the foundations of contemporary strategy board games.  Having been completely hooked on these games since the mid-1990s, I often mistakenly assume that everyone has a similar frame of reference. So I am repeatedly amazed at many people’s unfamiliarity with the games that I see as foundational.

I’ve been struck speechless when finding that people who are otherwise very familiar with games from the past few years are nevertheless entirely unfamiliar with the likes of Nexus Ops, Princes of Florence, or Tigris & Euphrates.  And yet, those games are not on the list below. Neither are Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons, both of which are of course foundational in their own way. The games below represent my view of the core pantheon that undergirds modern strategy board gaming.  The Nine, if you will. These are the games that I recommend just about everyone try in order to better understand developments of the past 25 years, and where the latest hotness on Kickstarter truly originates. These are games that came without ornate artwork, shiny pieces, or custom stretch goals; these are games that managed to thrive on simply their rules and gameplay alone.  Over the course of two decades, the ideas promulgated in these forerunners have flourished by subtly seeping into thousands upon thousands of successor designs across the globe.