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A shelf of several board games. The left stack contains Carcassonne, La Città, Party & Co, and Monopoly. The right stack contains Risk, Drakon, Trivial Pursuit, The Seafarers of Catan, and Cities and Knights of Catan.

A board game is a game in which counters or pieces that are placed on, removed from, or moved across a "board" (a premarked surface usually specific to that game). As do other form of entertainment, board games can represent nearly any subject.

There are many different types and styles of board games, including those, at the most-basic level, that that have no inherent theme—such as Checkers—as well as more-complicated games with definite subjects, or even narratives, like Clue.

[edit] Categories

There are a number of different categories that board games can be broken up into. The following is a list of some of the most common:

• Abstract strategy games like chess, checkers, Arimaa, irensei or go
• German-style board games, or Eurogames, like The Settlers of Catan or Puerto Rico
• Race games like parchisi or backgammon
• Trivia games, like Trivial Pursuit
• Word games, like Scrabble
• Wargames, ranging from Risk to Advanced Squad Leader

[edit] See also

• List of board games
• List of game manufacturers
• DVD games
• Card game
• Tabletop game

[edit] Further reading

• Rollefson, Gary O., "A Neolithic Game Board from Ain Ghazal, Jordan,"

Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 286. (May, 1992), pp. 1-5.

• Fiske, Willard. Chess in Iceland and in Icelandic Literature—with historical notes on other table-games). Florentine Typographical Society, 1905.
• Falkener, Edward. Games Ancient and Oriental, and How To Play Them. Longmans, Green and Co., 1892.
• Austin, Roland G. "Greek Board Games." Antiquity 14. September 1940: 257–271
• Murray, Harold James Ruthven. A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess. Gardners Books, 1969.
• Bell, Robert Charles. The Boardgame Book. London: Bookthrift Company, 1979.
• Bell, Robert Charles. Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1980. ISBN 0-486-23855-5
  • Reprint: New York: Exeter Books, 1983.
• Sackson, Sid. A Gamut of Games. Arrow Books, 1983. ISBN 0-09-153340-6
  • Reprint: Dover Publications, 1992. ISBN 0-486-27347-4
• Schmittberger, R. Wayne. New Rules for Classic Games. John Wiley & Sons, 1992. ISBN 0-471-53621-0
  • Reprint: Random House Value Publishing, 1994. ISBN 0-517-12955-8
• Parlett, David. Oxford History of Board Games. Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-19-212998-8

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Boardgames in the Open Directory
• BoardGameGeek - A board game database with discussion forums.
• rec.games.board - A Usenet newsgroup dedicated to board games
• Board Games at LoveToKnow - Game overviews, strategies, and tips, including information on educational board games