carcassonne

Hey, hey, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here with another Top 5 Tabletop Game List throughout the years. Today, we’ve reached the current millennium for tabletop games. The 90s shook up what it meant to be a modern board game; the first decade of the 2000s will give us numerous evergreen titles that dominate the board game landscape today. We should see plenty of familiar designers and familiar titles in these upcoming lists. We’ll get to the games in a bit, but first, let’s review our list’s criteria.

1: Cultural relevance plays as much of a factor as overall quality. A game might make a list that doesn’t hold up to others of its type, but you must admit the game is everywhere.

2: Only one game from a franchise makes the list. This will become more of an issue the closer we get to games with expansions.

3: Longevity plays a role, too. A game doesn’t have to fly off the shelves today, but it had to have some widespread appeal for a decent time.

**5: Lord of the Rings (2000)**

Yes! Yet another Reiner Knizia title makes one of these lists. 2000’s Lord of the Rings is still a lot of people’s go-to board game that uses the Lord of the Rings intellectual property. It’s also one of Knizia’s few cooperative board games and may have inspired a cooperative board game boom that we’ll see in a handful of years.

Lord of the Rings follows the events of the novels to a T, which is why some gamers still consider this board game to be the definitive Lord of the Rings board game experience. And it runs fast. Gameplay is centered on advancing through a series of scenarios (that mirror the books). Players turn tiles and play cards to move forward and collect and spend tokens to avoid advancing the Dark Lord Sauron. In dire situations, tokens may be spent to call Gandalf for assistance, or the One Ring may be used to advance toward Sauron. The push-pull is thematic and tense. It’s no wonder Lord of the Rings received a Spiel des Jahres special award.

**4: Java (2000)**

I could’ve gone with Torres, another Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling collaborative design that won this year’s Spiel des Jahres (German game of the year), but I decided to go with the next game in Kramer and Kiesling’s Mask Series, Java. Tikal made the 1999 list. Java tends to be the forgotten game in the Mask Trilogy of board games, and I don’t know why. I love Java’s exploration.

Players take turns building the titular island, scoring victory points by setting up palace festivals at the right moment. Java ends when the players run out of tiles. It’s a simple premise, but Java’s rules may be unforgiving for novice players. Still, Java is a great addition to the Mask Trilogy.

**3: Battle Cry (2000)**

Wargame purists may disagree, but Battle Cry revolutionized wargames. Richard Borg (we’ll see his name again on one of these lists) took elements of wargames, combined them with miniatures, and simplified the rules, and came up with the war game powerhouse that is Battle Cry.

Borg would continue to perfect his system of card and dice combat with future wargame installments, but Battle Cry, set in the American Civil War, marked the first use of this system. Players command a variety of units: infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Scenarios dictate how many of each unit a player (one playing the Union and the other playing the Confederacy) will control. For each opponent’s unit removed from the board, a player receives one victory point. The player who scores the required number of victory points first (determined by the scenario instructions) is the winner. Battle Cry and its spiritual successors continue to divide gamers. Wargame purists, as I mentioned before, may consider Battle Cry too simplistic, but this simplicity makes Battle Cry more accessible.

**2: Blokus (2000)**

In Blokus, players score points by occupying the board with Tetris-style pieces(named polyominoes because they’re dominoes of irregular shape) in their color. Even today, Blokus is visually arresting. It earned numerous awards, including the Mensa Select award and the 2004 Teacher’s Choice Award. There’s no denying that Blokus has staying power.

But the reason Blokus is this high on our list is because of its use of polyominoes. While it took a decade or more to catch on, polyominoes have soared in popularity. Patchwork, Barenpark, Isle of Cats, A Feast for Odin, Planet Unknown, and many other board games that use polyominoes owe Blokus a debt of gratitude. Thank you, Blokus, for introducing this amazing board game component.

**1: Carcassonne (2000)**

Blokus just misses out on our top spot because the evergreen title, Carcassonne, was released in 2000. Polyominoes took some time to catch on, but tile-laying as found in Carcassonne exploded immediately, and it continues to grow today. Carcassonne has spawned numerous expansions, spin-offs, and imitators.

Carcassonne’s gameplay is simple. Draw and place a terrain tile. Station a follower on the newly placed tile (optional), but this shows you claim control of this region. And then score completed feature(s) if relevant. Carcassonne earned the 2001 Spiel des Jahres and Deutscher Spiele Preis award. I don’t know how the Spiel des Jahres committee determines which year a game is eligible. But Carcassonne’s influence can still be felt today. Carcassonne’s core mechanisms inspired 2023’s Spiel des Jahre winner Dorfromantik, and in turn, the award-winning Dorfromantik video game that inspired the board game was also inspired by Carcassonne. Carcassonne is everywhere, people. It even crossed over into video games. And that’s why Carcassonne takes our top spot for 2000.

Did we get the list mostly correct? Let us know which games you’d add in the comments. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

Uncle Geekly ran a search on a popular game type, area control, and found more results than he thought. These games range from simple who controls the most regions to more complex games where area control is an aspect of the game. We’re talking starting area control or the similar mechanism area influence games, so we’ll keep it simple and easy to learn, but most of all, an area control game at its core.

Most area control or influence games employ a great build to the game, where players begin with small gains that they hope to build upon through game play. These games, more than many others, have a natural progression to them, and gamers can see why someone won. Usually, this is a game type for players who like to see the wheels turn or have a little more agency in a game’s outcome.

As usual, good old Geekly has some starter games for someone interested in this gaming genre. Let’s get to some of these smaller games and work our way up to one’s that are more complex.

Hanamikoji

We’re starting with an odd choice: Hanamikoji. It’s classified as more area influence as players compete for the attention of geishas. Hanamikoji also happens to be a two-player game, which is a little unusual as well. A group of seven geishas is placed between both players and they range in point value from 2 to 5. The first player to gain the favor of 4 or more geishas or has 11 points or more of geishas wins. This is what makes Hanamikoji area influence instead of area control. One must gain the attention of the most geishas. The game play is fast—a typical game lasts ten to fifteen minutes which is lightning quick for an area control or influence game—and it’s intriguing.

Each player is dealt cards that correspond with each geisha (for example, green twos are used to gain the attention of the green two geisha). They’ll use these cards to gain favor. The players also have four action tokens, and this is where things get interesting. Both players alternate turns using all their actions tokens. One action locks down one card from a player’s hand. A second action removes three cards from play that turn from a player’s hand. The third and fourth actions have some combination of handing your opponent some of your cards and they choose one or two of the cards handed them, and the player using these actions keep the rest. This is an excellent way of mitigating a bad draw. It also makes for a surprising amount of choices for a short and simple game.

Carcassonne

Sometimes the oldies are the goodies. 2000’s Carcassonne—along with El Grande—all but popularized area control games. The two wrinkles Carcassonne adds are tile placement and worker placement. Bear with me as a quickly discuss tile placement; it does factor into area control. Each turn a player draws a land tile and places it adjacent to a tile already in the play area. These tiles will have roads, farms, cities, and/or cloisters depicted on them. When placing a tile, it must match the pre-existing tiles in the play area. Sides of tiles that show a farm can only be placed next to another tile side with a farm. So, random tiles dictate what constitutes an area. This was revolutionary at the time.

Once a tile is placed, the player may place a follower—or worker. Players gain control of areas by placing their workers on these spaces, and these workers can perform several jobs, depending on where they’re placed. Farmers work farms, monks live in cloisters, and so forth. The player with the most followers in an area when it scores gains the most points for that area. The game ends when the last land tile is played, and the player with the most points wins.

This combination of game mechanisms works well. So many other designers have used some combination of worker placement, tile placement, and area control because of how accessible Carcassonne is and these mechanisms’ inherent strategic flexibility. Carcassonne works as a great introductory game for all three game types. I’ll try not to add it to another list. No promises.

Small World

Sometimes gamers just want to conquer things. Small World takes place in a small world, where zany fantasy characters vie for control. There a lot of bells and whistles added to Small World. Each fantasy race like elves, trolls, and skeletons have their own race power, but each of these fantasy races are given one of 20 unique special powers like flying or ghostly that will make each playthrough different.

The concept is simple enough. When placing creature tokens, players start on the edge of the map. To conquer a land, they must use as many tokens as tokens in an area. If a player has enough tokens, they may conquer an adjacent land using the same method, so it’s likely that players will gain more than one area in a turn. In future turns, a player may choose to put their active race in decline (flipping their tokens upside down) and choose a new race. Players score points each turn for every area their races occupy; that’s for their active race and the race they have in decline.

At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins. That’s a common thread these games and a lot of other area control games share.

Small World does a great job of simulating combat without getting too in the weeds with it. It’s an area control game at its core with some nice window dressing, especially the use of variable player powers. Those race and special powers can be fun. Small World can also be the meanest game on this list. Players must know when to bail on a race and when to keep one. There will be a lot of hostile takeovers. It’s a small world after all.

Final Thoughts

So many of the best games on the market today use area control or area influence: Twilight Struggle, Star Wars: Rebellion, Scythe, Terra Mystica, Blood Rage, Twilight Imperium, and countless others. The games I just mentioned didn’t make this list because they get a little too complicated or they add more elements to the game than just area control.

The games I did include in this list will get new board game hobbyists the background they need to take on more complex games. Which games do you like to use as beginner area control games? You could place a worker to claim influence or it might make more sense to leave a comment.

Tag: carcassonne

Top 5 Tabletop Games from 2000