Gaming crack
Thi Nguyen
United States
Los Angeles
California
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We are not talking about holy games.
(See: <A TARGET=BLANK HREF=http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist.php3?action=view&listid=3895> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist.php3?action=...tid=389...;/A> for what that means to me.)
My holy games leave me exhausted. I love them, I think about them, but I indulge rarely. And then, only once a night.
I mean games that create compulsive play. I mean games that you can play and suddenly be surprised that morning's coming. I mean games that you will play over and over and over again until your fingers bleed.
Remember when you first played Civ on the computer? Remember, two months later, when you walked outside for what seemed like the first time, and you saw the sun and it hated you and you forgotten that people moved too? And remember that, when you went and got your milk and pop tarts, you came back, and you knew that, even though you hated this goddamn game by now, even though it wasn't fun, you were gonna sit down and frickin' play until you died, because you couldn't help yourself?
THAT'S what I mean.
Crack.
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1.
Board Game: Blokus
[Average Rating:7.15 Overall Rank:200]
Thi Nguyen
United States
Los Angeles
California
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Blokus.
Jesus, Blokus.
I think Blokus taps into a deep, primal energy spring in all of us. Something instinctive, something deep, something important and long-buried in our child subconscious.
This something is Tetris.
I mean - I don't know about you, but I spent frickin' years of my childhood on Tetris. I dreamed flippy shapes, fitting into each other.
Blokus is Tetris, mixed with the possibility of serious and degrading physical violation.
I mean, you spend your time flipping and flipping and then you walk right up to your opponent's borders, dodge left, and BREAK THROUGH.
Blokus is the only game where, between when I first played it and when the copy my girlfriend ordered for us came in the mail, I experienced violent fits of trembling and need.
(I think it says something that, last night, when I introduced Blokus to some folks, and they were waiting on the fourth player, the other two immediately starting arranging their Blokus bits into a Tetris-dimensioned rectangle.)
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Thi Nguyen
United States
Los Angeles
California
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Wheedle is a simultaneous game of slapjack speed in the middle, and a dramatic card-collecting/trading game where really WEIRD strategies pay off. (Like giving away most of your cards.) (Due to special bonuses for having complete sets and going out first.) 'Cause trading stops the first moment anybody goes out.
I mean, it's fast, it's whip-snap, there's screaming, there's slapping, there's begging, and sometimes it's over just when you thought thigns were getting started and somebod else is leaning back, already finished, gloating, smoking a cigarette and grinning like a madman, and you're screaming bloody murder.
Or maybe that was my date last night.
Oh wait, I think I played Wheedle on my date last night.
6 people can play a full game of 6 rounds in, like, 10 minutes.
And then they will proceed to play all night.
No, really. It's happened.
We thought we were done after we played Liberte *AND* Taj Mahal. But it was 1 AM, and I unwrapped the Wheedle box and said, "Hey guys, let's try a round of this," and the next thing you know...
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Thi Nguyen
United States
Los Angeles
California
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It's Mine used to be our favorite high-speed card game, until Wheedle came along. It's Mine is pretty sweet. Vaguely like a chilled out, simplified Ra.
Somebody deals out cards. The cards are worth points in weird ways. Like - get a pair of these, get 6 points. Get one of these, -1 point. Have the most of these, 10 points.
First person to cry out "It's mine!" and slaps the mat gets it. That's it.
It's not dumb, though. Instead of money, you just have the limit of taking three groups. It's a pretty serious limit.
It doesn't have to be played fast.
It's fine. I can't really think about it when there's Wheedle around though.
But, man, Knizia, how are you so freakin' cool? You made Taj Mahal and Modern Art and Tigris... and then you made Wheedle and It's Mine? You made the most hard-core, screw-your-brother-to-death game I know, and then you made the sweetest, silliest card games I know? Krikey, man.
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Thi Nguyen
United States
Los Angeles
California
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Er, yeah.
I am currently afraid to play this game.
Last time I played it more than once, I ended up playing it for 8 hours straight.
My friend, Dave, had been visiting from the East Coast. We were supposed to do an L.A. taco tour. We were supposed to find girls and go dancing.
Instead we played this until our backs hurt, and I couldn't focus on the cards anymore.
It has to do with the creative possibilities of making your own plan, with the sweep of the plan, with how different your opening set-up is, with the increasing possibility of telepathy.
I don't know. I can't tell anymore. I can't play this game. The box glowers at me darkly from my closet.
It kinda scares me.
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5.
Board Game: Go
[Average Rating:7.77 Overall Rank:40]
Thi Nguyen
United States
Los Angeles
California
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Man, Go. Go is the one crossover between the holiest of holies and the crack list.
Because it fills me with awe, it exhausts me, it energizes me, and I can play until freaking dawn.
I don't know why.
Sometimes I don't know why I play anything else.
Oh yeah. I have friends that like to play games. More than one at a time. Right. Sure.
Maybe I'm just afraid.
At the Koreatown go club in L.A., there's more than one guy who lost his family to go. As in, the spouse says, "Choose, me or go," and the guy chose go. (Or baduk, as we should call it in Koreatown).
It's holy and it's crack.
I guess I should call it my gaming heroin.
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Johan L
United Kingdom
Buckinghamshire
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Does 12 plays in the first three days count?
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Paul DeStefano
United States
Long Island
New York
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For months it has inhabited my dining room table. Five nights a week we play. Either my son or my wife. Every Monday, a new map gets configured.
The real problem is, we host Thanksgiving. I am now trying to devise ways to not have to move the game.
Ever.
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Chris Tannhauser
United States
San Diego
California
"Gagging on the arrow in your neck, clutching at the last fleeting shreds of life as the light grows dim, you find comfort in the knowledge that you've just done your very best to help an orc level up."
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Left to my own devices I would keep pushing the bar on this one until I starved to death.
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Ignazio De Guglielmi
Italy
Padova, ma anche Schio
Vicenza
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Me and a friend of mine played so much this game that when we sit up from the chairs we started to think how to reach the room door using the movement rules of these damned robots. And the "I must use the wall to stop there and then I'll use the sofa to go there" feeling stayed for the entire afternoon.
Why did we play an entire morning? It's the "just another token" syndrome... draw a token... again... and again ... and again...
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No list is complete without the current titleholder of "cardboard crack".
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Jesse Shaver
United States
New York
New York
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When I convinced my friend Mike to buy this game, we brought it home to his roommate and gave it a test play. This was... oh, around 9-10pm. A few "one more game"s later, it was 8:30am, and his roommate's girlfriend came out to mock us.
A couple of months later, Mike drove me to Philly on the way to a weekend-long trip he was taking. I got him to come inside with me, and then I pulled out the Settlers board and started setting it up. He tried to resist, but I convinced him to play "just one game" to introduce a friend of mine to it.
Two days later, he had missed out on his entire itinerary, and was still sitting in Philly with us, playing Settlers.
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Adam Lott
United States
Hanceville
Alabama
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This game does not make it to the table very often, but when it does the plays just keep coming. It is so quick and simple that to play "just one more" always seems to be the thing to do.
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Michael Van Biesbrouck
United States
Mountain View
California
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sdhockeyboy and I played this for an entire afternoon. It's a short game with two players but it took hours to take all his money.
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Greg Schloesser
United States
Talbott
Tennessee
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This one is super, super addictive. It is SO incredibly light, so quick, and yet so fun. It definitely has that "One more time!" lure.
At one Westbank Gamers Christmas party, we stayed-up until 3AM playing this one over and over again.
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castiglione
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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God help me, this game is addictive.
I play it on www.youplay.it.
I wish I had a quarter for each time I check that page to see if it's time to select a move...
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Chris Martin
United States
scotia
New York
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phoenix definatlyhas that one more game apeal its quick to play 10 minutes per round three rounds per game and every time you lose its one more and i'll get you. me and one of ky friends played this for hours the other night
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Crazy Bob
Philippines
Cebu
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Whenever this old standby gets pulled out, it gets played till dawn and then some. I think it's the whole 'oh, we'll just play one more round, it's only 3 mintues' trap we fall into.
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18.
Board Game: Acquire
[Average Rating:7.43 Overall Rank:99]
Teacher Fletcher
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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I'm playing this obsessively since I got NetAcquire.
The elegance of the game almost reminds me of Go and the risk/reward aspect of the majority payouts fills me with an excitement that comes close to what I get from playing poker.
Oh, but get this: after two real-life plays and maybe a dozen online ones, I've not yet won a game. 
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castiglione
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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The Bowling Solitaire card game is very addictive. The nice thing about it is, it can be played without any thought at all to just pass the time...or it can be played with a LOT of thought, leading to a certain amount of analysis paralysis as the player sits there, pondering his options.
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Brian Schlichting
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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I've played this game from late evening, through the night, and through the next day until after my roommate came home from work. An 18 hour session.
I really like this one, and playing a tournament style, so we won car upgrades for each race won made for a fun night/day.
I've fitted matchbox cars with little machine guns, and spikes, and blades and such just for this game.
When I start playing, I usually don't want to stop.
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21.
Board Game: 1856
[Average Rating:7.52 Overall Rank:283]
Trevor Dewey
United States
Miami
Florida
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I would add 18xx games to this list. I could play 18xx and nothing else every night until I drop dead. Indeed, my image of Heaven consists (in part) of being able to play 18xx for eternity (seriously).
Take 1856, I've played it several hundred times and yet I discover something new about the game every time I play. Every game evolves differently.
Nothing comes close to the beauty of a well-played 1856 game.
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22.
Board Game: Hive
[Average Rating:7.37 Overall Rank:111]
Christine Doiron
United States
Juneau
Alaska
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Cannot get enough of this one. Constantly asking my husband to play.
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Christine Doiron
United States
Juneau
Alaska
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I am soooooooooo addicted to this game. Fortunately, my husband seems to like it too. But when I can't get him to play, I play on the computer. I love, love, love this game.
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Sometime you have to just go cold turkey...
