In the latest Substandard (Subscribe! Leave a review! If we get to 100 reviews on iTunes by next week, Bill Kristol will record an especially condemnatory opening message!), we unveil the long-awaited Beauty and the Beast podcast! More importantly, we spend 25 minutes yammering about board games. Let's be honest, you love the yammering. The yammering is the best part. Listen below!
I'll be honest, I didn't have a ton to contribute to the Axis and Allies portion of the conversation because I've never played Axis and Allies. Seems too complicated. Definitely a nerd game for nerds. Instead of talking about that here, I shall offer up the definitive ranking of the 10 best board games that Sonny Bunch has played. (All images via Wikimedia.)
1. Scrabble
Making words and putting them on a board is definitely not a nerd game for nerds. It's awesome and I'm awesome at it. I will beat all of you.
2. Risk
Risk would be number one if it weren't for the fact that it takes so long to play and so often leads to people not speaking to each other for months at a time.
3. Trouble
Trouble is the perfect combination of luck, strategy, and spite, a deceptively amusing game that forces you to make life's most important choice: Do you play to win or do you play to make someone else lose? Beloved by trolls everywhere, Trouble is the platonic ideal of a game that relies on nothing more than the luck of the dice.
4. Trivial Pursuit
I used to enjoy this game more, before I drank away the trivia dumps in my brain.
5. Chess
I guess, just, like, objectively speaking, Chess is the "best" of all the games on this list. Infinitely variable and fascinating to watch play out in real time, chess is truly the board game of kings. But, also, I'm not that good at it. So down the list it goes!
6. Yahtzee
There's nothing in life quite as satisfying as rolling a natural large straight.
(I'm not pathetic, YOU'RE pathetic.)
7. Scattergories
True story: Two of my best friends in high school almost got into a fist fight over whether or not "Eh, fuhgeddaboutit!" should count as "something you yell" that starts with the letter E. We were all very cool.
8. Stratego
Either a poor man's Risk or a stupid man's Chess, one of the two. That being said, as a poor, stupid person, I enjoyed this one quite a bit.
9. Monopoly
Too dependent on luck tbqh. Though I did always enjoy being a rapacious capitalist impoverishing my enemies for five to six hours at a whack.
10. Cribbage
I'm not 100 percent sure I could explain the rules of Cribbage to you right now if you put a gun to my head, but I do remember enjoying it quite a bit. Maybe I should take it up again. If I had any friends, I probably would.