TaoBrowser: Find Board Games for Your Next Fireside Gathering
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Where can you buy that? You already know the answer: Taobao. But navigating China’s biggest e-commerce platform can be a nightmare for foreigners, so we’re helping out by rounding up useful stores to browse in our column, TaoBrowser.
Last week, we curated a list of video games to help you party, exercise, travel around the world, and even find a cure for a fictional pandemic. However, it's no secret that staring at a screen for days on end is one way to ensure that your first big trip of 2021 is straight to the opthalmologist. Luckily, there are board games, which can offer a much-needed respite for your eyes and free your fingers from incessant tapping. Not to mention, these suckers are analog, meaning there's no algorithm or AI to dictate your experience, which in turn empowers players, allowing them to use their noggins to guide the adventure.
Unfortunately, purchasing English-language board games is no easy task in China since most stores sell a limited number of titles, many of which are either counterfeit or turn out to be in Mandarin. To help me make sense of the whacky world of foreign-language board games on the mainland, I turned to Jeremy Foust, an expat board game guru and brains behind Taobao's most prominent English board game retailer, the Game Warehouse, which he established in 2016. All of the games below are available on the Game Warehouse (桌游秘库 zhuō yóu mì kù) store: gameswarehouse.taobao.com.
War Chest
Players: 2-4
Play time: 30 mins
Age: 14+
War
Chest is a bag-building war game in which players draft units into
their army from their bag which are then used to capture strategic
points on the board. This game makes significant use of the element of
chance, but it certainly takes some brainpower to wage a successful
campaign, both by maneuvering troops on the board and by building a
useful bag to draw from.
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
Players: 1-4
Play time: 30-120 mins
Age 14+
Gloomhaven
was created for gamers interested in story-telling and adventure-based
games but don't necessarily want to put in the requisite 150 hours these
games can last. Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion brings things to an even
more casual level and lowers the barrier to entry with a simplified set
of rules, all while introducing a few new characters along the way. You
don't have to own the original Gloomhaven in order to play this
separate, standalone game, though it certainly helps with understanding
the lore to have played it.
Tak University Edition
Players: 2
Playtime: 20-60 mins
Age: 12+
Tak
is a two-player abstract game that's perfect for couples spending time
indoors during these trying times. It was born out of the mind of
fantasy writer Patrick Rothfuss as part of his Kingkiller Chronicle
world, who collaborated with US-based game designer James Ernest to make
it a reality. The game embodies the "easy-to-learn,
impossible-to-master" philosophy, as well as just about any tried and
true classic game with its simple rules, which involve but one goal:
build a road from one side of the board to the other before your
opponent does.
Mansions of Madness
Players: 1-5
Play time: 120-180 mins
Age: 14+
If
you're not ready to give up the screens entirely, then this cooperative
game may be for you. Mansions of Madness: Second Edition is played with
the help of an app that immerses players in the Eldritch Horror
universe as they play the role of investigator confronting various
scenarios, for which they'll have to use their cunning to overcome
fights with monsters as well as their own inner beasts.
Palm Island
Players: 1-2
Play time: 15 mins
Age: 10+
Not
all board games require a big dining table and hours to play. Palm
Island is a deck "transforming" game designed to be taken and played
anywhere, and all you need is a pair of hands. But its versatility goes
beyond that, players can choose to play it solo, cooperatively, or
competitively against another player.
Tabletop Simulator
Alright,
alright, keep your computer. For one final recommendation, Tabletop
Simulator is a great way to connect with friends without even having
them over. (It's also super hot around the world right now, so you might
even find yourself reconnecting with some old friends back home.) You
can play classics, download newer games for free from the workshop, or
create your own game in a physics sandbox. Heck, you can even let out
your aggression by flipping the table! The only boundary is your
imagination. It's available on Steam, but keep in mind you may need some
significant computing power to run it smoothly.
READ: Kapital Koopas: Games For These Indoor Days and Nights
Images: BGG
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