Board games are kind of a strange thing. Supposedly, they bring people together for laughter and good times. At least that's what Hasbro would have us believe. However, I remember when my big brother was teaching me how to play Risk when I was 10 or 11 and I flipped the board in anger - at least once. I notice that Risk is NOT on the Hasbro Family Game Night web page. When our kids were younger we used to play Chinese checkers quite a bit. For some reason, we bought - and continue to use a Chinese checkers board that is fairly thin metal with kind of a rim around it. Unfortunately, this has a side-effect that if someone pushes down on the board just so the board is now cocked and ready to fire. There is no way to get the round out of the chamber, once you heard the tell-tale "click-clunk" of that board when someone made a careless move. It was just a matter of time until, Perfection-like, the marbles all popped up - and then the fun ended and the kids had to go to bed.
In our family, games seem to go in waves. We've had phases for checkers, chess, Chinese checkers, Battleship, Pictionary, Encore, and Domination.
I'm not really a fan of Sorry. In fact, I once passed out while playing it during a family game night. Of course, I had pneumonia at the time, but I still blame Sorry.
Encore is a tedious game for Mormons to play - things will be going along fine with normal pop and other well known songs, but eventually, in desperation, someone starts belting out a Primary song. As with other arms races, this is countered with a Primary song from the opponent. And then long, tedious madness ensues.
Domination (also known as "Focus") was an old Hasbro game. Unlike most board games, which seem to live on forever in various repackagings, Domination seems genuinely gone. My wife liked the game as a child and has spoken of it often over the years. I finally found a very nice copy on eBay and it is really fun. I'm surprised it is gone and yet "Cootie" goes merrily along.
Jeremy Clarkson, of BBC's Top Gear and also a columnist for The Times of London, recently had a very apropos article about board games. Jeremy asserts that despite all the hand-wringing about video games, people actually seem much more driven to violence by board games. As Jeremy points out, if only Hitler had a Playstation, maybe real war would have been unnecessary.Anyone who has ever suffered through a game of Axis and Allies can probably sympathize with the anger and frustration Hitler felt - moving all those little pieces around on the big command center map boards.
