What's My Goal? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Pandemic

Pandemic was designed by Matt Leacock, and published in 2008. It is a cooperative game four up to four people, with the antagonist being the tenacious diseases directed by a deck of cards. Players have to manage outbreaks while also working on the cure to the four different strains. If players manage their resources poorly (or if they get unlucky), their problems will compound and spiral out of control, much like a real plague.

Pandemic, like many modern board games, has quite a few optional expansions that can be purchased. One of them, "On the Brink", lets one player play as the Bio terrorist antagonist.

Answer: Twilight Struggle

Twilight Struggle was designed by Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews, and published in 2005. It is a two-player game that recreates the intensity of the cold war. Unlike Risk, which is all about moving armies to conquer territories, Twilight Struggle is concerned with influence in different regions of the world. Players play cards from a shared deck, and each card is a unique event from the cold war (like the Berlin Airlift, or Nasser leading Egypt). Twilight Struggle rarely accelerates in one player's favour, and both players are often managing a perpetual string of crises.

A player may get a bad hand or a few bad rolls, but smart play can always bring things back.

Answer: Codenames

Codenames was designed by Vlaada Chvatil, and published in 2015. In Codenames, there are two teams: red and blue. One player from each team is selected as the spymaster, who will give clues to the rest of their team. On the table is a five-by-five grid of cards. Each card has a word on it. Lastly, the two spymasters have a secret pattern that only they can see, indicating which words belong to their own team, the opposing team, or are neutral. The spymasters have to give simple clues to get their team to select their own words. A spymaster might say "Location, two," hoping their team members will tap the cards saying "England" and "Beijing". But players may misinterpret clues and select wrong answers. They could choose a neutral card, or an opposing card (which would end their turn), or the single assassin card (which would lose them the game).

Codenames is a great party game for small or large groups.

Answer: Werewolf

Werewolf (functionally identical to Mafia) is a party game meant for large groups of players. Each player gets a role, villager or werewolf, that they keep secret. The game takes place over multiple "days", with a moderator running the game. During the night portion, players close their eyes, and then the werewolves wake up, and decide which villager they want to eat. Then, during the day phase, that player is informed that they have been eaten, and are removed from the game. The players then decide among themselves whom they think is a werewolf, and lynch that player, who is removed from the game. The game continues through day and night cycles, eliminating players until the werewolves outnumber the villagers, or until all the werewolves have been killed. In its simplest incarnation, the game is entirely social, with no real information being revealed until someone dies. Players have to read body language and keep track of what hidden alliance may exist. Many variations have special roles to make the games more interesting and complex.

Werewolf does not have a clear designer or point of publication. Many different incarnations by different publishers have been released over the years. Before specific Werewolf cards were printed, though, it was played using regular playing cards. A very similar game called Mafia (with a gangster theme instead of a werewolf one) was also being played. Many groups would use their own special house rules when playing.

Bezier Games released "Ultimate Werewolf", and then "One Night: Ultimate Werewolf" in 2014. By having all the action happen in "one night", this variant does not have removed players sitting out for long periods of time.

Answer: Dominion

Dominion was designed by Donald Vaccarino, and published in 2008. Dominion is a deck-building game, in which players start with small decks, and can add new cards to it to make it better. Players draw a fresh hand every turn, play what cards they want or can, and then discard everything else at the end of their turn. When their deck runs out, they shuffle their discard pile and it becomes their deck, so cards are constantly being recycled. Players can use gold to buy new and better cards to help their deck, or to hinder opponents. Because players only get to draw five cards at the beginning of every turn, sometimes removing the less useful cards is the smart thing to do. Lastly, the way to win is by having scoring cards in your deck. The scoring cards are only useful at the end of the game, and useless during your turn. It's a balancing act, choosing when to make your deck stronger, or when to add useless points cards to your deck to prepare for the end game (which often comes much faster than anticipated).

Dominion is a great game with many different card combinations, so it stays new and interesting every time it's played. It also has a large collection of expansion sets.

Answer: Resistance

Resistance was designed by Don Eskridge, and published in 2009. Resistance is social deduction game (same genre as Werewolf). In it, there are two teams: the good rebel agents, and the evil government spies. Each player is secretly given a card indicating which team they are on. The goal is to make teams, out of a subset of players, to go on missions. Players can discuss (squabble and bicker) who they want to put on the team, and whom they do not trust. When a team goes on a mission, each participating player get a success card and a failure card. They each pass one back, and the results are shuffled. A good player always has to succeed the mission, but an evil player can choose to go either way. If even a single failure card shows up, the mission is a failure. The rebels want three of the five missions to succeed, while the spies want three to fail. Players have to keep track of who was on successful teams and who was on failed teams, and try to work out who they can actually trust.

Thematically, Resistance takes place in the "Dystopian Universe", a near-future cyberpunk world that features courageous rebel freedom fighters resisting the machinations of the evil totalitarian government and corporations. The game Coup (2012) was also set in the universe, and more games and expansions have been added since. An Arthurian reprint/expansion called Avalon was released in 2012.

Answer: Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride was designed by Alan R Moon, and published in 2004. In Ticket to Ride, players build rail roads to connect the cities of America (and Canada). Players have hidden goals in which they are trying to connect specific cities, which can earn them more points at the end of the game (or cost them points if they don't). There are only so many possible rail lines, though, and other players may take them, forcing you to find new routes to connect your cities.

Ticket to Ride was very successful and won many awards. New versions of the game were printed with different maps (Nordic Countries, Switzerland, etc.), but the same core mechanics.

Answer: Munchkin

Munchkin was designed by Steve Jackson, and published in 2001. A number of players are all competing to level themselves up before their opponents. To do this, they fight monsters. To help fight monsters, they can equip weapons and armour, gain special abilities, or ask other players for help (often in exchange for the loot). Players will often try to keep each other down, helping the monsters, or by stealing equipment from each other.

The game play can be unbalanced and terribly random, but part of the charm of Munchkin is the goofy art and silly names on all the cards. The ridiculous stories and overpowered players and monsters is part of the appeal of Munchkin. Since being released there have been many standalone expansions to Munchkin, with different themes (space, western, eldritch horror, etc). Any and all of these expansions can be combined together to make even more ridiculous games (though the decks can become unwieldy).

Answer: Sheriff of Nottingham

Sheriff of Nottingham was designed by Sergio Halaban and Andre Zatz, and published in 2014.

The Sheriff of Nottingham was the villain in classic tale of Robin Hood. In the board game, he plays the role of the corrupt customs agent. Players take turns being the Sheriff. The non-Sheriff players then try to bring goods into the city of Nottingham. When players get to the gates, they declare the kind and quantity of legal goods they are bringing into the city. If the Sheriff trusts the merchant, he can let them through. If he thinks they are smuggling contraband, he can inspect the cargo. Furthermore, the players can bribe the Sheriff to not look too closely, or to look at what other players are bringing into the city.

There are no dice, and the game is all about players calling each others' bluffs.

Answer: Settlers of Catan

Settlers of Catan was designed by Klaus Teuber, and published in 1995. It is often cited as the first game (or at least the first popular game) in a new era of board games. It won many awards, and was the first major "euro" game to become popular in America.

Board games prior to Catan were often characterized by having high degrees of luck, rather than planning or skill. Catan still uses dice to add a degree of randomness, but players are not concerned just with getting the highest possible rolls.

In Catan, players place settlements on the vertices of resource-producing tiles. Players collect resources, build more settlements, and upgrade them to cities to gain points. The first player to ten points wins. Players never actually combat each other, but they can hinder each other by blocking new expansions with roads and settlements. Players can also trade resources with each other. Not trading is a way to stop another player from advancing, but they may remember that when you want to trade later.