Tabletop Reads: 21 Great Articles About Board Games

As the war dragged on, creator Anthony Pratt longed for the fun of English country-estate murder-mystery parties, where guests would skulk the hallways, shriek and fall ‘dead’ on the floor.

A schoolteacher created the popular board game for quarantined children.

Though the game incorporates elements of chess, dominoes, rummy, and Mah-Jong, David Parlett, a game scholar, believes the Mexican game of Conquian is the ancestor of all Rummy games.

The game of Life is more than 150 years old, and its early incarnations were very, very different. The goal wasn’t to be a millionaire, but simply to live a good life. And that included the risk of suffering some incredibly depressing consequences.

Monopoly now accounts for nearly one-third of all global board game sales, largely thanks to Hasbro’s own expansion strategy.

Rob Daviau and the legacy game revolution.

Thousands of years before Monopoly, people were playing games like Senet, Patolli and Chaturanga

Klaus Teuber is still somewhat baffled by the popularity of his creation. “I never expected it would be so successful,” he said.

Right now, Magic card collectors around the world are letting out a collective groan at the thought of all those cards, some of which sell for thousands of dollars today, being stuffed into a 6-year-old’s backpack.

“We don’t know if it’s balanced or not. It’s gonna take seven years to play!’ And I said ‘you know what, if someone tells you it’s unbalanced, tell them ‘we think it’s your fault, play it again.’”

“At the heart of our mental chess game lies a profound lesson: The difference between being content or distraught is a matter of perspective.”

An ancient game known as “hnefatafl” held immense symbolic and religious significance.

It was an international sensation. It made an appearance in Fallout. It helped create the field of cybersecurity. But where did it come from?

One family’s 30-year long game and the unavoidable meanings of words

Before he became a resident at Johns Hopkins in the late 1980s, Andrew Goldstone, M.D., spent many adolescent hours trying to liberate the funny bone, wish bone, and Adam’s apple from Cavity Sam, the hapless patient plastered on every copy of the Operation board game.

How Netflix’s sleeper hit made chess exciting, the best ways to learn to play, and other fascinating reads about the ancient game.

Before Risk, before Dungeons & Dragons, before Magic: The Gathering, there was Diplomacy. One writer enters international competition to play the world-conquering game that redefines what it means to be a geek (and a person).

Their peaceful premises and intricate rule systems are changing the way Americans play—and helping shape an industry in the process.

How the pandemic, social unrest, and labor relations have shaped board games and RPGs.

After new research and testing, we still think our long-running picks have proved to be good options for new gamers.