by Pete Davison

Created on: January 04, 2009

Playing a board game offers everyone the chance to learn something - and not just children, either. Board games nowadays are so diverse that there is likely something out there for everyone to enjoy, whatever their experience level, age or interest in the subject matter. In this article, I am going to discuss some of my favourite games, which are a little outside the established "canon" of games like Monopoly, Clue and the like, but are still relatively well-known within the board gaming community. Hopefully my comments may inspire some of you to investigate some of these games, as they are a lot of fun, even without taking their educational value into account.

Firstly, I will bring up a game called Carcassonne. This game is available in several different editions, suitable for any number of players between two and five depending on which edition you play. There is also an excellent computerised implementation of the game available via Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service on the Xbox 360.

Carcassonne is a tile-laying game where players, in turn, lay a tile with representations of an area of land on it. These tiles may contain any combination of fields, roads, cities, rivers and chapels. Each tile has a different scoring potential, but all of them have to be part of a complete "structure" in order to score points. For example, city tiles must be laid in such a way that the city is completely enclosed for it to score points, chapels must be entirely surrounded by other tiles and roads must have a start and a finish. Players take turns drawing a tile at random and laying it on the table. They then have the opportunity to place one of their "followers" on the tile they have just laid, thereby claiming the road, city, chapel or field that they lay the follower on. Players have a limited number of followers, however, and they do not reclaim them until they score points for the relevant element - for example, if a player lays a follower on a road, they will not get that follower back until the road is completed.

Carcassonne is a simple game to play as it has easy to understand mechanics. However, its educational value comes in several flavours - firstly, there is the obvious visual benefits of encouraging spatial awareness and forward planning. Canny arrangement of the tiles and forward planning can allow a player to "cut off" another player's followers, leaving them in a disadvantageous position. Decision-making skills are also tested as players evaluate whether it

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