20 Good Things: 2 - Tsuro

The Game Box

There are a lot of boardgames out there. My wife, working in the gaming industry as she does, brings home a lot of them. Most of them are either too difficult, take too long to play, or suffer from poor game design. And even when you find a game that you like, it's all too often for the wrong number of people.

Tsuro is none of those things. It's fantastic. It takes only about 20 to 30 minutes to play a game, whether two people or eight people are playing it. It takes about 5 minutes to learn the basics, and the rules are elegant, simple, and fun. It's got enough strategy to satisfy, and enough randomness to keep the min-maxers from ruining the experience.

On top of all that it has fantastic design, from the terrific Asian theme to the awesome physicality of the playing stones.

The Game Board

In short, it comes very close to being the best board game I can imagine and if you're only going to own one board game, I think it should be this one.

It even has a really low list price of $24.99, and you should be able to find it at any good gaming store. It's still in print, and comes from WizKids, the same people that produce the Heroclix line of miniatures-based gaming products.

Seriously folks, the next time you find yourselves considering purchasing one of the 1,238 specialty-themed versions of Monopoly, buy this instead. You'll play it more often, and have time to do something else besides.