Games to introduce monopoly players to Euro-style games

The Game Room
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I’m a role-player/board gamer from way back, and I’ve got two friends staying with me for a while who I’d like to introduce to more complex/interesting games beyond Monopoly et al. I know the standard advice is Settlers of Cataan, but lets just take it as read that I don’t want to go there.

Anyone want to share what games you’ve had success with in helping people make this leap? I have been thinking maybe Pandemic or Ticket to Ride might be good? Or perhaps Last Night on Earth as a stretch, as the theme would appeal to them, as they’re fans of the Walking Dead.

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Ticket to Ride and/or any of its variations/expansions: just a great game period.

Tsuro and Tsuro of the Seas: fun and simple to learn.

Forbidden Island/Forbidden Desert: cooperative games, which makes it easy on new players because they don’t have to figure out how to beat the other players.

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Carcasonne is a nice stepping stone into Euro games, along with the aforementioned Ticket to Ride. Dominion (just the base game!) is another relatively simple game that is both easily grokkable and deep enough to offer some depth to lure players back for another round.

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Anyone can figure out “Ticket to Ride” in fifteen minutes. My children learned it effortlessly, and there’s a cute iPad version.

Additionally, it’s whimsically designed, colorful, easy, has little toys to play with and cards and stuff, and a game doesn’t take long. Hard to top that.

5

Okay, I’m stumped: what makes a game a Euro-style game?

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A Euro game is about good game play; it is well-balanced and not necessarily flashy. Players are not typically eliminated before the end of the game.

Ameritrash games are mostly about the theme; shiny, flashy, much drama and luck from rolling of dice and random actions. Players are usually eliminated one by one during the game.

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IMO Pandemic is a bit overwhelming for newbies. At the beginning, there are so many options and it’s not clear which choices are correct. Even with experienced players, each person’s turn involves a lot of group debate, which would be really lopsided if there’s one or two experienced players.

Ticket to Ride, on the other hand, starts very simple, which makes it a great choice for inexperienced players. They won’t have any trouble figuring out that they need to buy a route from their destination, and there are a handful of reasonable options at first. Later on it gets more complicated as routes are claimed, but by then the newbie has had a chance to start thinking about alternate routes.

FWIW, our house rule is that the points are only tallied at the end. Mostly because the point counters are a pain in the ass to move when it’s on the opposite side of the board and the nearest player is trying to figure out their next move. But it also has the effect of reducing the apparent competition, which lets the newbies feel like they’re making good progress even if they’re really far behind.

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Splendor’s another good gateway game.

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As a general rule, Euro-games try to minimize luck in favor of player choices.

In a game like Monopoly, for example, you roll the dice and move that number of spaces. In a Euro-game equivalent of Monopoly, you’d have a choice of which space you wanted to move to, with each one having a different combination of advantages and disadvantages.

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Last Night on Earth was a good game in its day but Zombicide has pretty much replaced it.

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Leaving aside the subjectivity of Turble’s response, a “European” or “German” style game usually has the following characteristics;

  1. The game can be played by more than two players.

  2. All players continue play until the game is over (as distinct from Monopoly, for example.) The best games are designed in such a way that it is often not apparent until the end of the game who will win.

  3. The game is designed so that luck is generally not a major factor in who wins.

  4. The game is reasonably easy to learn.

  5. The game is not a word game, like Scrabble, or a card game.

ETA: By “Not a card game” the game can physically have some kind of cards. I mean not a card game as in it’s not bridge or poker.

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Ah, yes. The glitzy go-go neon world of American board gaming :stuck_out_tongue:

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Well, they don’t minimize luck, but they shift the location of it in the process.

For example, in Carcassonne, there’s plenty of luck involved, in the process of selecting tiles to place. Nothing like needing that one tile you know exists and getting it, thus completing the city exactly like you wanted! BUT, after the luck, you are in general presented with choices of what to DO with the luck. So, imagine if in Monopoly, the properties were distributed more randomly as to what was more valuable, and after you roll, you get to choose which direction to travel. I remember a game from the 60s called Careers, where you did Monopoly-like play (travel around the edge of the board in a single direction), but you got to make choices about what “career path” you would choose, which caused you to veer off the main track, and which altered how the game played for you then on. I always preferred it to Monopoly for that reason.

As for the OP, the usual suspects are Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, and Ticket to Ride. All three are winners of the Spiel des Jahres, a prestigious award given out in Germany to “family-style” games (primarily board games). This award is the genesis, if you will, of the “German-style” board game; it rewards games for concept, structure, layout, and design. So each of the three games above are excellent games, as determined by the critics which make up the panel of the Spiel des Jahres voters.

In addition, they all are relatively simple to learn, have a limited amount of time they take to play (for example, when you run out of tiles in Carcassonne), and have simple scoring rules. They all force you into both strategic and tactical choices. And they can be played, and enjoyed, by both young and old, together or separately.

Since you’ve eliminated Catan, it would help to know why. If you’ve eliminated it for complexity, then I would recommend Ticket to Ride over Carcassonne, as the latter is a bit complex, especially if has any of the expansions added. But one good version of Carcassonne that is especially kid-friendly is called Hunters and Gatherers, which reduces some of the complexity, and I find can be played much more quickly, even though it’s otherwise essentially identical (tiles chosen and placed, units then placed on the board to maximize score). Got my kids hooked on Carcassonne, and generally on German-style games with that one.

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I will add the following: Here is a list of Spiel des Jahres winners (and some of the runners-up).

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When I set out in my (successful) campaign to get my sister into Euro games, one of the first games we played (after Catan) was Power Grid. It’s a simple enough game that a number of her non-gaming friends have enjoyed playing it with us.

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While not really a Euro, I found Sushi Go to be a great introduce to the world of more complicated board games. My family loves it.

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Have you SEEN some of the stuff that Fantasy Flight puts out?

Anyway, yeah, assuming you want to avoid Catan (which I recommend, but must also admit there is a REASON it’s a gateway game) then Ticket to Ride is probably a good choice.

I love me some Dominion, but I think a lot of people have trouble wrapping their heads around it the first time or two.

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Maybe look at Concordia? It’s a hand management game. On your turn you play one card and do that action. The its another person’s turn. It’s pretty simple to learn but it’s fun. Here’s a review.

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I’ll second all recommendations so far.

I’m a big fan of Castle Panic. It’s a co-op game. It’s the players against the game until the game is over and then you tally points to see which player won.

There are good pics at the Amazon link.

Basically your castle is in the middle of the board and trolls, goblins and ogres come out of the forest at the edge of the game and slowly move inward to attack your castle. Players use cards to attack them trying to kill them before they reach the castle and start attacking it. If they knock over the last wall of your castle then the game wins.

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If you like Sushi Go, you should also try Fairy Tale.