Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/18/february-is-snag-a-normie.html
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I just helped kickstart this new game. Looks like you can still pre-order it on their site.
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I just picked up this recently.
Which is an interesting and quick game about finding treasure by filling in your island cards based on tetris like shapes.
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I host a regular bar game of Cards Against Humanity, so every game snags normies. ;D
I like Carcassonne for easy new rules as well.
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Y’all like Yahtzee?
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Horrified is a lot more fun/good than I expected. If you haven’t played it yet, try it!
Some other games “normies” will likely enjoy:
Tsuro
Majesty: For The Realm
QueenDomino
Welcome To…
Century: Golem Edition
Clank!
Wingspan
Parks
… and since you mentioned RelicBlade, check out StarBreach for (free) sci-fi skirmish that’s miniature agnostic.
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psst,
I would like to play tabletop games so long as I didn’t have to interact with anybody, go anywhere or do any setup.
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I think that even with that I would have to interact with people.
Dang, I want to play all these.
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ah! dang. I’m going back to bed now…
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In my experience (I mostly play in work or with my children) non regular board gamers tend to like the social bluffing/ party games like Werewolf or Coup - or other dystopian universe games though they add complexity and Coup is just right I think.
They also lmay ike word games party games like Dixit mentioned in the post (Codenames is another cheap and good option).
For board games, particularly Eurogames, Ticket to Ride is hard to beat. Base Carcassonne hasn’t, I think, stood the test of time. You know who’s going to win as you play. Hunters and Gatherers has the river scoring mechanism (similar to the routes completed on Ticket to Ride) which keeps it exciting to the end.
I had great take up with “the mind” when it came out but I’ve not played it since to be honest.
This week at work I played Jaipur (which my children used to love at 7 and 9) and Salem 1692 (witches won!). I think sometimes games that work with inexperienced players are ones you can explain in a “high concept” way So for example Sushi Go! “you get passed a hand of cards, pick one to collect sets, and then pass it on to the next person and you all reveal what you chose at the same time. Repeat until you’ve run out of cards and score up”.
I’ve been running a community boardgaming every Sunday for about five years now. My favorite “gateway games” are Tsuro (fast and fun for anywhere from 2-8 players), Ticket To Ride (more in-depth and strategic), and TransAmerica (a very different train game from the previous game, faster and easier to learn but with less replay value).
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Interesting - my experience with Fluxx has been the exact opposite. I’ve found that people who aren’t habitual tabletop gamers are bewildered (soon turning to frustration and irritation) by Fluxx’s mechanic of constantly changing the rules.
Wow, amazed I got through this post and all the comments without anyone mentioning the original gateway-to-German-style-boardgames for normies: Settlers of Catan. It seems to remain king of the hill for an approachable look and feel, simple enough rules, and everyone gets to make “wood for sheep” jokes. The other reason it’s a gateway game is that after a dozen plays or so, everyone starts to learn that the rules are broken (there’s one strategy that breaks all others and the randomness is insufferable, always giving 1/4 people a terrible evening) so it encourages people to move on to other better-designed games shortly thereafter.
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I regularly use 6Nimmt (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/432/6-nimmt) as an introduction to gaming because even my non-gaming mother likes it (enough we bought her a copy for her house). And I just turned on a friend to Dungeon Drop (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/phaseshiftgames/dungeon-drop) because I bought extra copies and gifted her one. On the first day, her family played seven times…and they expect to play a lot more. The GREAT news about DD is that Phase Shift signed with Gamewright to get their game onto the shelves at Barnes and Noble, Target, etc…mass market availability makes for easier adoption by the non-boardgame population.
ETA: Bonus, both are relatively inexpensive purchases…6nimmt is <15$ and DD will be sub-20$usd, as I understand.
My brain read that as February is “Shag-a-Normie” month.
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I’d snag a normie, but I don’t know any
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