Board games: Be the Killer you are, Nicole.

I came across an article this week with the title ‘Why boardgames bring out the worst in us,’ and I feel I must address Nicole’s needs.

Click to see Nicole Spector's article.

“I absolutely love a game of Scrabble or Apples to Apples or The Settlers of Catan. I may love them a bit too much though, as they tend to bring out the worst in me. I may become competitive, petty and paranoid, convinced that someone is cheating or that fate is working against me.” – Nicole Spector, NBC News.

Dear Nicole,

I hear you, especially your love of games, and I’m here to help.

Please take this fondly, but it seems that the Spector family are ‘Killers.’

This is not a bad thing – it’s just a category invented by games professor Richard Bartle to describe players who like to dominate other players, and in that I admire your family’s ability to turn conflict-free Catan into a full-contact death match.

Youare not alone in this. One of my American friends threatens knife violence if you so much as look at the Bohnanza bean she is after.

Might I delicately suggest that Catan might be too restrictive for Killers. There are many games that you would enjoy more for their allowance of a bit of bloodletting.

‘Our brains don’t know it’s a game,’ you say, and this is true, but it is more accurate to say it the other way around. Educational theorist Jean Piaget said that the brain doesn’t know what is NOT a game – everything is a game! From the moment we interact with Mum’s finger until we lose our last marble, it’s all games.

As a child, you play-act TV characters, manipulate your parents and tease the emergency teacher or as if these were all games. Even playground arguments over the rules of games instead of playing them is a game! An important one with social stakes.

As an adult, the stakes are higher, and they feel more like obligations than voluntary actions, but they are nevertheless a game to your brain. The only time we recognise it as a game is when someone says, ‘Here are some rules,’ while holding some kind of curious object.

If I can have a wild stab in the dark like Trish on a losing streak, Nicole, I’m guessing that that perhaps, just maybe, you’re just a bit more competitive in real life than you’d like to admit. This gung-ho approach to life is borne out in your style of play.

I get the feeling that the Spector family needs an outlet. Some cardboard bloodlust.May as well run with it. For that, you don’t need less strategic games, you just need ones with a different approach to randomness.

You were playing Catan, with plenty of input randomness – the land itself is dealt out with probabilities upon it from which you must form a strategy. Then there is a small dose of output randomness – rolling for resources –which you can’t affect. This will ultimately determine if your previous strategy works, or if your brother will get bragging rights. All outside of your control, and without having fought anyone.

No wonder you’re frustrated. Let me prescribe an alternative.

Champions of Midgard is a testosterone-fuelled romp through the land of the Viking. Strategise for resources, gather warriors, then sail off to slay trolls, water-beasts and demi-gods with a fistful of warriors and a barbarian Yawp.

Sound good? Awesome. Note that the aggression is directed towards the beasties, not your niecies. Side-by-side. Important distinction if you want them to play, and to hone their assertiveness at a goal instead of a person.

Is there output randomness? Yes! So you can’t give yourself stress through analysis paralysis. You pick the beast you will challenge, dead-reckon a fistful of how many warriors you might need, and throw.

Champions of Midgard - ShutUpAndSitDown

You also have control over the odds, as you spend half of the game building an army of more and better warriors, so when the cubes tumble from your hand and into the watchful eye of Freja, you decided your own chances of success.

If you have children playing, and you want to break some generational cycle of competitiveness, then I could suggest the even more passive games of Pandemic, where together you cure the world, or you might all contemplate abstract art in Dixit.

But if you want quick and fun cartoon violence, then both Bang and King Of Tokyo will have you Yahtzee-ing your way to be the last person standing.The games are quick, so you could get through four games in the time it takes to play one of Catan.

Plenty of games will let you blow off steam without making it personal, and many will give you the satisfying wallop of combat to slake the Spector family’s bloodlust.

Take a look, Nicole. There is a world of battlegrounds to explore.

Goodhunting.