A book review of The Everything Tabletop Games Book: From Settlers of Catan to Pandemic, find out which games to choose, how to play, and the best ways to win! by Bebo of Be Bold Games
Stars: ***
Everything (2019)
Gaming
320 pages
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
Summary: In our ever-increasing technological world, playing old-school games is a welcome retreat from the overexposure to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of social media. Over the past few years, board games have become the hot new hobby. Instead of friends sitting around the same table and staring at their phones, they are now either working with or against each other. Millions upon millions of new fans have begun to join their friends in real life for a fun game of Pandemic, 7 Wonders, or Ticket to Ride.
The Everything Tabletop Games Book shows how to play some of the best tabletop games in the world, from classic strategy games like Settlers of Catan to great new games like Gloomhaven. Throughout the book, you’ll learn the different genres of tabletop and board games; how to play each game; rules and strategies to help you win; and even where to play online—including new expansions to keep your favorite games fresh and exciting.
So gather up some friends, pick a game from this book, and start playing! You’ll be having a blast in no time.
The Everything Tabletop Games Book
I bought this book because I’ve not played many Tabletop Games and I thought it would be good to read about them before buying. I tried playing Settlers of Catan with a friend once and found it complicated. I prefer board games and party games.
The games are separated into categories such as deck-building games, tile-laying games, cooperative games, dexterity games, luck based games, role playing games and more.
For each game that is discussed, you will find a difficulty rating (out of 5), number of players, age recommendation and play time. This was helpful to find games your children can or cannot play. Or if you don’t like to play long games, you can skip the ones that take over an hour to play.
Following that is the goal of the game and then an explanation of how to play. Each game also has three WHENs. For example the game Munchkin says: when you’re at a dinner party, when you feel like a little competition or when you’re just getting started with tabletop games. Other possible WHENs are when you have a few spare hours, when you’re in a large group, when the whole family is around, when you want to play something challenging and many more.
Each game also lists any expansion packs. Finally there are different side bars that may give game facts, tips, alerts or any other relevant information.
The only thing that could have been better is that every game did NOT have photos of the game boards and pieces. I wanted to see what the game looked like too, not just read how it works.
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