Lately there has been a
Renaissance of a sort in
board games occurring in
Germany. These games often get translated to English as well, or sometimes only the rules need to be translated and English rules are included with the
game by its U.S. distributors or are available on the web.
Examples of these German games include:
German games tend to have certain features in common. Not every feature is in every game, but if you play enough of these you'll notice the commonalities:
- A scoring track on the edge of the board, which sometimes dwarfs the actual playing area, and often loops around because game scores exceed the length of the track.
- Three (or sometimes four) scoring phases during the game. At each scoring phase, you score points based on your current state in the game. As a result, it pays to not only be ahead at the end, but also during the game.
- Little wooden cubes in various colors, used to keep track of score or various quantities. There are two sizes and some games use both, with the larger ones representing 3 or 5 small ones.