My top 10 gateway games

Here is a post I sent to BoardGameGeek, in the Dice Tower Guild. I reproduce it here for your enjoyment.

First of all, hello to everyone. I'm not an avid BGG user, but hearing about this guild a few episodes back made me join the guild, and now I'm following the very interesting forums here (through the RSS feed). I'm a fairly casual gamer (I usually play only one game a week), but I enjoy board games a lot. I guess a recent kid, a move from France to Italy, and not having found a game group yet are the reason for this lack of gaming

Here are my top 10 gateway games, or maybe I should say my 10 gateway games (as I could not come up with that many). I'm going to only talk about games I've played as gateway games, and not so much about games that I think would make good gateway games but have not tried with new players.

For people who don't know anything about gaming and are afraid a game might take too long, my favorite is That's Life. It's a very simple game to explain, it plays fast, does not demand too much thinking, and is a nice introduction. And there is a lot of interaction!

Another game I found works well is Alhambra. It's longer, but as it's one of my wife's favorite, it's one that we've use with some friends new to gaming. The initial learning curve is a bit steeper than That's Life, but after a couple rounds our victims quickly got the hang of it.

A bit longer still, there is the classical Ticket to Ride, which has been much commented upon. The great thing about this game is that there is some confrontation, but it does not start right at the beginning. So players have the time to learn how to play before going one against the other.

I've had some successes with Munchkin. I used to like this game a lot, as a previous D&D gamer, but its novelty has worn off. Yet I introduced it to some younger family members (ages 12 to 17) and they just loved it. (Then we moved on to Ticket to Ride, and they have bought both games for themselves since!)

For younger kids, Pitchcar Mini is great. I consider it a gateway game for my 6 years old son, who has since taught it to some of his friends. He also played Carcassonne (without the farmers) and loved the puzzles aspect. We played it in a hotel lobby during vacations and it attracted a few people who were around, really interested about what was going on.

I know it's a party game, but Santy Anno was used recently during a "go to your neighbor" day, and it went really well. The game was quick, fun, and started a conversation about "modern games".

I work as a researcher in computer science, and I've introduced games to people there as well. They're a quite different kind, a bit more complex. The first one is Boursicocotte (You're Bluffing in English). A lot of player interaction, and a lot of thinking as well. The main issue I have with it (as with Modern Art), it's that it's very difficult for new player to give a value to things. Another game is of course RoboRally. No need to explain why these programmers loved it!

Finally, and surprisingly, I've had a great gateway experience with Caylus. We had a friend who wanted to try a game, so we described different ones we had, and he picked this. He loved it so much he wanted to go buy it immediately! I would not try this with anyone, but I was amazed how well it worked.

To conclude, I'd like to mention some gateway failures, probably because the game was not adapted with the audience. Tigris and Euphrates is one: complex rules and complex scoring made for several (yes, I tried it several times...) less than stellar experiences. I've seen Werewolf fail as well, because some people were just bother by the absence of rules.

I guess this is it. Thanks for reading all this