Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Dave Tianen December 2004 USA

According to Games Quarterly Magazine, board game sales have gone up each year for the last six years.

While nothing has made a splash to rival the hit games of the '80s such as Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit, a new generation of board games from the Old World has started to find a loyal and growing following across the pond.

The so-called "Euros" combine manageable but inventive rules, imaginative themes, reasonable playing times, attractive components and, best of all, competitive and strategic challenges that go way beyond the old-fashioned, roll-the-dice-and-move board game.

Under the circumstances, it's not too surprising that Euros figure prominently in our list of this year's best grown-up board game buys for Christmas.

1. Ticket to Ride from Days of Wonder

I know one married couple who played Ticket to Ride nightly for a month. It's that addictive, and it's an even better game with four or five players. In Germany, where board gaming is more popular than anywhere else on earth, Ticket to Ride won the prize for the year's best game. The game has already sold 250,000 copies and was a surprise sensation at this year's World Boardgaming Championships in Baltimore.

Ticket to Ride uses a card mechanic as players compete to finish trans-continental rail lines. The catch is that if you start a line and don't finish it by the time the game ends, you score negative points. The card mechanic also guarantees that each game will play out differently.

Approximate price: $39.95

2. Time's Up! from R&R Games

Weak bladders be warned. One player in our group described Time's Up as "wet-your-pants fun." Time's Up also is challenging to brains and has a Mensa Society prize to prove it.

The game is played by four or more players matched in two-player teams. In a four-player game, you start with 36 cards, each with the name of a famous person. You can pretty much say anything to get your partner to guess the person. For instance, if it's Abraham Lincoln, you can say he was president during the Civil War and he's on a penny.

In the second round, you play with the same36 names. Sounds easy, right? It isn't. In round two you can only give one word clues. And it gets worse. In the third and final round, you can't give any verbal clues at all.

Approximate price: $19.99

3. Dibs by Tolany

The shortcoming of most trivia games is that they don't allow for much in the way of tactics or player interaction. Dibs is different. Before the game begins, players are dealt a hand of Dibs cards with numbers from one to five. They are then given a category for the next set of five questions, but they don't get to hear the actual questions right away.

First they must bid for the order in which they'll answer. A low number like two will answer earlier and presumably get easier questions, but it will also only advance two spaces on the game track. A five bid will probably get the toughest question, but it also will bring the biggest advance. It's a simple mechanic that makes for a much more tactical and interactive game.

Approximate price: $22

4. New England by Uberplay

Another superb design from Alan Moon, this one won Games Magazine's game of the year award last year. In this game, the players represent four of the founding families of the Massachusetts Bay Colony as they try to build up their homesteads and compete for scarce resources and land. It's one of those devilishly clever games where players have to balance three or four different problems to succeed.

Approximate price: $44.95

5.Carcassonne by Rio Grande

This is one of those rare strategy games that plays just as well with two or three players as it does with four or five. Carcassonne is a tile-laying game set in a walled city in medieval France. As they lay tiles, players compete for control of the best farms, road nets and biggest towns. With 72 tiles, no game of Carcassonne is ever going to play out the same twice.

A big hit for Rio Grande,Carcassonne has already inspired two expansions and two stand-alone sequels -Carcassonne: The Castle, and Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers, which moves the action to prehistoric France.

Approximate price: $22.95

6. Shout About Movies from Parker Brothers

If you were going to pick one new party game for New Year's Eve, I don't think you could do much better than Shout About Movies. DVD trivia games have been around for a couple of years, but nobody has done it better than Shout About Movies.

It's a DVD trivia game for two teams with the simple rules on the disc. The game uses actual scenes from classic films old and new as the teams compete to name movies based on snippets of dialogue, gradually revealed stills or cast members. All you need is a TV, DVD player and a remote. It's fun, easy, and the game even keeps score.

The only drawback is that there are only three games on each disc, but four different discs are available, and each game runs 45 minutes.

Approximate cost for each disc: $19.95

7. Memoir '44 by Days of Wonder

Even relatively simple war games often have 12 to 15 pages of rules. Here, just about everything you need to know is contained on nine simple little cards.

Memoir '44 takes the elegant card system from Avalon Hill's superb Civil War game Battle Cry and applies it to the Western Front of World War II. A two-sided map and movable terrain features allow players to re-enact a wide range of engagements, from Omaha Beach to the Battle of the Bulge.

If you've ever thought about trying historical war-gaming, Memoir '44 would be a great place to start.

Approximate price: $49.95

8. Dawn Under from Rio Grande

It's not easy finding games that will challenge and hold the interest of both kids and adults. Dawn Under is one of those rare discoveries. It's a memory game in which the players divide up 60 vampires in five different colors and try and find graves for them in matching colors. The first player to bury all his vampires wins.

The problem is that each grave is covered with a lid that hides the matching color. If you try to plant your vampire in a grave that's already been occupied, you get a wooden stake. You get three wooden stakes and the other players all get to give you a vampire.

Dawn Under is a great-looking game, and since kids are often as good or better at memory problems as adults, it figures to be fun for the entire family.

Approximate price: $44.95

9. Like Minds from Pressman

This fast-playing party game is part Outburst and part race game. The players roll a die and get a number between one and four. Then, in teams of two partners, they race to list items in a category such as famous TV families, potato chip flavors or professions that involve touching people's bodies.

If you think you and your partner have had enough time to come up with the required number of matching answers, you try to be the first to slap the plastic brain on the game table. The teams then each get a point for each matching answer. If the brain slappers get at least as many matches as the number on the die, they add that number to their total. However, if they fell short, they get no points at all.

Approximate price $24.99

10. Cloud 9 from Out of the Box

A simple and attractive little card game built on daring and luck. The players start out together in a little balloon basket with five clouds above them. They are then dealt a hand of six cards in four possible suits (with possible wild cards). One player is selected as the balloon pilot. They then roll the four Cloud Nine dice (each with two blank sides and the four possible colors). Each player decides whether he or she thinks the pilot can match the colors rolled with the cards in his or her hand. If not, they jump out of the balloon and collect the points for whichever cloud the balloon is on.

Of course, if the pilot matches the dice, the balloon rises to another cloud with more points, a new player becomes the pilot, and the dice are rolled again.

Cloud 9 is fun, fast-playing and well-suited to family play.

Approximate price: $12.99

For serious strategy gamers who don't mind somewhat more complex rules in exchange for a richer challenge, we also recommend the following titles from Rio Grande:Goa;Saint Petersburg; and Puerto Rico, the most popular tournament game at this year's World Board Gaming Championships.

Another brand new and somewhat simpler Rio Grande title that seems very promising is Goldbrau. Goldbrau may be a natural for Milwaukee since it pits players against each other as the operators of competing beer gardens.

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