Board Games and Pencil & Paper Games
#1 job for parents: establish a culture of board gaming in the home
An abstract struggle with clunky chips and a draw bag.
Simultaneous play and no downtime.
Urbino
2019
MathPickle
Runner-Up Game of the Year
2 players
30 minutes
ages 9+
Urbino is a themed strategy game that has brought joy to my home for years. It is almost as elegant as the greatest abstract strategy games of all time: Dvonn and Go.
Patchwork
2019
MathPickle
Runner-Up Game of the Year
2 players
30 minutes
ages 7+
Patchwork is a tactical zero-luck game. It is challenging to look many moves into the future!
878 Vikings
2019
MathPickle
Game of the Year
2-4 players
60-90 minutes
ages 11+
"1754: Conquest – The French and Indian War" is a simpler game using the same wonderful mechanics.
"The Crew: Missions Deep Sea" is the even better sequel. Beware that cooperative games like these can be more stressful than competitive games because your failure can wreck the whole group.
Cartographers
2020
MathPickle
Game of the Year
1-100 players
30 minutes
ages 8+
My favourite pencil and paper game is mostly a solitaire experience. Place tetris-like shapes to score variable objectives. Just when things get relaxed your sheet gets sabotaged from an opponent.
Jon Perry's Air Land & Sea impressed me immediately with its inspired rule that allows players to withdraw from a battle at any time. The game improves with play as the first games will be slowed down because each card has critical text... however there are only 18 cards in total. This game is a gem for those with a limited budget.
Elizabeth Hargrave's Wingspan does not have the most innovative mechanisms, but it is infused with natural beauty like no other game I've played. Unlike all previous winners, the game did not "wow" me on the first play, but over many plays, I came to love the anticipation of each new bird entering play. It is a sumptuous game.
Ever dreamed of being James Bond? In Sniper Elite one player secretly sneaks around a top-secret WWII military base - attempting to sabotage the enemy without getting killed. Many parents will have issues with the theme. I do not let my children play violent computer games, but a violent strategic board game? That is different.
My City is a legacy game that is played 24 times. A legacy game is one in which permanent changes happen with each game. For example, if you win a game you might "win" a building that is difficult to construct for all future games. Only buy My City if you plan to play with the same people again and again.
Dune Imperium
2023
MathPickle
runner-up Game of the Year
2-4 players
2 hours
ages 12+
This is not an easy game. Choose a different game if you are new to board gaming, but if you are an experienced gamer AND enjoyed the 2021 movie Dune, then this is an immersive game experience with tense decisions.
Cat in the box
2023
MathPickle
Game of the Year
3-5 players
30 minutes
ages 10+
This card game is a logician's paradise. The suit of each card is not written on the cards. Instead, you declare the suit when it is played. Then you must live with the repercussions of your decisions. Do you decide to trump a hand by saying you have no yellow cards? Fine, but that means you cannot play another yellow card for that round. Continue until someone wins or there is a paradox!
Skull
2024
MathPickle
runner-up Game of the Year
3-6 players
15 minutes
ages 8+
Skull is a minimalist joyful experience that is a descendant of the dice game Perudo/Dudo/Liars Dice. While I prefer the dice game original for the classroom, the artwork on these coasters make this the most beautiful of all the bluffing games.
This game is brilliant and minimalistic. You start with a hand of wrestlers. At the start of a hand, the relative strength of the wrestlers is unknown. If a wrestler beats another wrestler, then it will always beat that wrestler for the rest of the hand. The rules are awkward to understand. Please watch this video: https://youtu.be/4a69YZ-oujY?si=3zLJeNw9A4lz_8_z&t=59
Wiki Histories
2025
A Classroom Game
2 players
15 minutes
ages 8+
These are a series of pencil-and-paper games that are being designed for the classroom. The work-in-progress is available for free download here. Bias alert: Wiki Histories is my game.
Use Wiki Histories to teach world history, board game design or get your class to engage in a head-to-head battle of wits.
Welcome to the Moon
2025
Runner-up Game of the Year
1-6 players
25 minutes
ages 10+
Play eight scenarios on your way to setting up a successful moon base. This wonderful game with sharp decision-making. The first scenrio is not nearly as good as the second, so skip it or play it once and then leave it behind.
This is a game of light player interaction. If you are not super confrontational, this might be the chill game for you. The small pieces make it a bit fiddly, and the production quality is just average, but it is a mechanistic masterpiece! A true joy to get to the table.
Visit www.boardgamegeek.com for ratings of thousands of board games.
Santorini is as much a part of my legacy as MathPickle. It arrived in homes across the world in January 2017 and is currently ranked as one of the top family games and the top pure strategy games on board game geek. It fills me with joy that it is finally being published after over thirty years of trying. I was a game designer long before becoming a mathematician and these game design skills are most helpful in designing MathPickle puzzles. Long live board games 😉
Big thanks to Roxley Games for publishing Santorini!
Starting in January 2017, I’ll be the first contact of new game designers in Calgary with the Game Artisans of Canada. Creating a quality game from scratch is hard and should probably not be attempted in school. Much better is to get students to design cards for an existing quality game like Star Realms or Dominion.
The most important distinction for educators is to decide if a game is good for the classroom or is better left for the home. The video on the left highlights the properties of classroom games as it takes you through a journey through several great games.
Classroom Games
Home Games
Non-Commercial Games
This is a starting point showing how memes in board game design replicated over time. I’d love to make this a giant map of games some time in the future when I have better graphing software. See a higher resolution pdf here.
This is an older version. See a higher resolution pdf here. You can see the mess of connections makes it very hard to beautifully render the connections. In the solution above arrows and overlap both mean that a meme is shared.
Please use MathPickle in your classrooms. If you have improvements to make, please contact me. I'll give you credit and kudos 😉 For a free poster of MathPickle's ideas on elementary math education go here.
Gordon Hamilton
(MMath, PhD)
