With an international hit like The Settlers of Catan board game, it is easy to look at Klaus Teuber as a success story. He creates a game for his family and it goes on to sell millions! In addition, he has created other games that have won prestigious gaming awards. In the face of such brilliant achievement, many budding game authors feel disheartened. How can they come up with a successful game?

Thomas Edison did not create the light bulb on the first try and Teuber is no different. For every game that goes on to be published, he has many more that remain prototypes or designs that never make it past his workshop. But he has learned to never give up, and that dedication is a huge factor in his success today.

One illustration of Teuber’s dedication comes from his work with a game that didn’t seem to take. Teuber had designed a game based on the adventures of Asterix and Obelix (two characters from a popular French comic book). He carefully created a board and cards by hand and submitted the prototype to the Ravensburger company. After their rejection, he redesigned the game with a theme of knights and dragons. It was rejected again. Teuber decided the game was not worth pursuing. Five years later, the Goldsieber company commissioned a game and Teuber remembered the prototype. He pulled it out and with input from his editing team he retooled it as squirrels hunting for hazelnuts. The game was well received and won the German Award for Children’s Games in 1997.  Read more... (1122 words, 1 image, estimated 4:29 mins reading time)

Manage a harbor, build ships and construct buildings in your bid to become the merchant with the most power and the largest fortune in Le Havre, the construction and economic strategy board game. Take control of resources, process them, sell them, and turn them into food to feed your hungry workers. Construct or buy up buildings like the bank and the art center, or ships like the luxury liner to prove that you are the master of Le Havre!

Le Havre is a construction strategy game with an economic theme designed by Uwe Rosenberg, the designer of other hit board games such as Agricola and At the Gates of Loyang. The game concepts are similar to Agricola, with the focus on obtaining and processing resources in order to feed your workers and construct buildings. The goal is also similar, that is to become the player with the strongest economic presence.

The setting of Le Havre is the port city of the same name located at the mouth of the river Seine on the northern coast of France, set during the Industrial Age. Your objective is to become the richest merchant in the city, and you do that by ending the game with the most cash. This can be obtained via a number of strategies, either by collecting and processing resources, shipping them off, building a merchant or luxury fleet, controlling local businesses, or any other strategy in between!  Read more... (938 words, 1 image, estimated 3:45 mins reading time)

Playing board games at home is a time honored tradition. Families gather around and compete in classics like Monopoly, Clue, Chute and ladders and Sorry. After a while buying all these games can start to add up. Toys are cheap and it can even be more rewarding, and fun, to make your own versions at home. You can personalize them for your family and add fun, unexpected twists to classics. Making your own board games at home does not require much in the way of materials and can be a great way to spend time together as a family. It is a great activity to get everyone’s creative juices flowing and is sure to end in many more game nights to come. Just follow these simple steps and get ready to host a game night!

1. First thing you need to decide are the ages that the games are intended for. Knowing who is going to play the game helps you determine the rules and design it as simple, or complex as you want. If you are designing for young children you do not want to include rules that involve any complex math or reading. You want to it to be easy to understand and fun. Same thing applies to adults playing the game. You want the rules to be a little more complex to keep it interesting and competitive.  Read more... (610 words, 1 image, estimated 2:26 mins reading time)

Sometimes, when dedicated fans play a beloved game over and over again, they may start to grow a little weary of the same, traditional rules. They often look for new ways to play the game, either little ways to twist the rules, or a completely new approach to an already enjoyable game. Some of these alternate rules end up becoming rather popular and can give players completely new insights into the games that they already love.

One such game that was built out of alternate rules is Speed Scrabble. Abandoning the traditional board, Speed Scrabble plays out using all of the tiles from a traditional Scrabble set and works on the principle of players needing to use all of their tiles to build words as quickly as they can. 4 or 5 players are the ideal number for a Speed Scrabble game, for when it is considered that there are 100 tiles in a traditional Scrabble set, the number of tiles works out exactly so that each player will always have an equal number of tiles.  Read more... (535 words, 1 image, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)

Carrom is among the one of the most famous among the board games. It comprises of accessories like carrom pieces, strikers, carrom table, and carrom powder and many other.

There are some carrom rules to be followed while playing carrom games. The most important and basic thing while playing carrom is to be familiar with the sitting position in carrom.

Sitting Position

Sitting pose is exceptionally significant in carrom game. If you sit down correctly on your chair or stool only then you will be able to play just the right game. Generally a few players will place their chairs and stool away from the carrom board it will make difficult for the player to play. One more disadvantage in this pose is that the performer’s legs may cross the imaginary line which is a foul. I have seen even some national champion crossing their legs beyond imaginary lines and if foul is declared then blaming the umpires. If you keep too much distance between your seat and carrom board then you have to stretch your hand for playing, which can develop tension in the playing hand. Correct position to sit is to take comfortable distance between your seat and the carrom board and occupy more than half portion of your seat.

Place both of your legs in front of the chair. See to it that while you play the position of your body must not be in a direct contact with the pockets of the carrom board but it must be in a straight line direction with the pathway of the striker where it is moving towards.  Read more... (433 words, 1 image, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)