A favorite thought experiment amongst gamers is the "desert island" question: if you were trapped on a desert island, what ten games would you want to have with you? Respondents usually make up a list of their favorite games, striving to include games that encompass different genres, that accommodate a wide number of players, that will have the longevity to endure a long isolation and so on. But no sooner does such a list get made then the questions get tougher: what if you could only have five games? What if you could only have three? And, inevitably, some eventually asks what you would bring along if you were only allowed a single game on your desert island stay.
Well, I know my answer to the last question, and it's not a game at all. Or it's half a thousand games, depending on how you look at it. When I head off to my remote oceanic resort, I'll make certain that I have a copy of The New Games Treasury tucked away in my suitcase. So comprehensive is this astounding volume that it could stave off boredom for a long time indeed.
"More Than 500 Indoor and Outdoor Favorites with Strategies, Rules and Traditions" crows the subtitle, and it turns out not to be an idle boast in the least. The New Games Treasury features 15 chapters, broadly grouped into five sections: board games, non-board games that require special pieces, card games, guessing / deduction games and outdoor games. The first section starts by giving you a rundown of some "board" games that can be played with nothing more than a pen and paper: Battleship, Boxes, Nine Man's Morris and the like. It then covers games that are played on a checkerboard, such as chess and checkers, before moving on to some of the specialized games like Backgammon, Go and Chinese Checkers. This section even includes the rules to proprietary games like Monopoly and Scrabble, along with some analysis of strategy for these popular games, and even a few house rules. Finally, the first section covers Mancala-like games, with no less than 13 different variants on this theme, ranging from the basic Wari to the complex Njombwa (which sports a Mancala board with 32 - 100 holes).
The second section concerns games that require specialized equipment. Of the three chapters, two are devoted to dice and "bone" games, covering Craps, Farkle, Dudo, Dominos and Mah Jongg. The final section is more eclectic, encompassing a wide range of pastimes, including Darts, Jacks, Pickup Sticks, Table Tennis and even Cootie. The third section, card games, isn't nearly as inclusive as Hoyle's, but hits all the favorites: Poker, Hearts, Euchre, Cribbage and the others you'd expect.
If this was all the book contained, it would still get my highest recommendation. As it turns out, though, it has two more sections that ice the cake quite nicely. The penultimate chapter covers parlor games such as charades and lotto; the last covers outdoor games, including rules for Softball, Volleyball, Quoits, and Croquet - even 12 varieties of Tag. Yes! A dozen types of tag, for crying out loud! Either of these could be a book in their own right; the fact that they are included here seems like an act of sheer generosity.
Each game description has a summary of the essentials, a rundown of the necessary equipment, the rules and the scoring. Many also contain strategies and variants, and some are accompanied by illustrations. The illustrations, incidentally, are not merely there to fill up space: they are exquisite pencil drawing that are of a quality you'd expect from architecture blueprints or botanical sketches. Indeed, the pictures often convey as much information as the rules themselves - my thrift store Mah Jong set has text-only instructions, and I've never really known how to build the wall at the start of the game until I saw the illustration in The New Games Treasury.
With a price under $25, The New Games Treasury is a gamer's best bargain. Think of it this way: forking over the retail price for Pictionary, Scattagories, The Great Dalmuti, Liar's Dice, Battleship and all the other games covered here would cost you well over $100, while this book includes them all and features hundreds more at a fraction of the cost. Even if you buy the book strictly as a reference, it's well worth the investment: my copy has gotten more use in the last year than my Phillips Head screwdriver, if that gives you any indication of how handy it is. It's a volume that you'll want to have with you, even if a desert island isn't in your immediate future.
The New Games Treasury