10 iconic board games

Battleship

War at sea. Two combatants. One against the other. Mystery. Subterfuge. Explosions. What could be better? Oh yeah, add in destroyers and submarines and aircraft carriers. This game of hide-and-seek with ships on a peg board is a long-time favorite.

Candy Land

This might seem to be a game for the kids, but its really for all ages. It’s basically a racing game around the board to see who can get to the end first. Cards drawn can send a player forward and back. Lots of color to this game.

Chutes and Ladders

Another one for the kids. Believe it or not, this game of climbing up and sliding down is based up an ancient game of morals from India. And the morals are still there. If you do something good, you advance by climbing up a ladder. Do something bad and you slide down.

Clue

Okay, an adult game. Why? Because it involves murder. Murder most foul. The drift of the game is to find out who did the killing, where they did it and what weapon they used. It can be a laugh riot trying to figure all this out.

LIFE

Much like real life, in this game you take your chances and win big or fall low. Money and getting to the end are the big rewards. That, too, sounds kind of like real life. In another “believe it or not moment,” this game was originally created all the way back in 1960.

Monopoly

This is possibly the most iconic of board games. You move around the board while buying property and hoping you don’t land on someone else’s property and have to pay them rent. With so many different house rules, sometimes Monopoly games can seem to go on forever. In the official rules, the winner is the player who has bankrupted everyone else; in other words, it’s the player who has all the properties. But this can take hours. Probably the best way to shorten the game is to set a time limit, then the winner is decided by who has a combination of the most money and property values.

Mouse Trap

You move your mouse around the board and hope it doesn’t get caught in the trap. It sounds like a game for little kids, but what with all the fancy pieces of the actual trap, it looks like something that could draw the interest of many adults, especially guys who like those Sharper Images catalogs.

Risk

Another war game, but this time the goal is to take over the whole world. Yes, you too can be a conqueror. This is another of those games that seemed to last forever and there was no end in sight. It seemed like no one could ever win. Even if you were down big time, a few lucky dice rolls and you could be back on top.

Scrabble

A lot of adults love this game, but the kids can enjoy it, too. Being able to spell helps big time, as does have imagination with letters and words. You score

Stratego

Yet another war game. This time, generals face off with their armies fronting one another. The way to win is by capturing your enemy’s flag or by making it so he or she can’t make any more moves. A fairly simple game of tactics, it can also be a lot of fun.