You may have heard of a game called Galactic Civilizations II. If not, you’re about to. Lucky you!

GalCiv II is this monstrously complex and deeply involving strategy game from Stardock that has you shepherding a  race into colonizing the galaxy and hopefully becoming the dominant race in space. It’s a lot like Civilization, but set in the void instead of on terra firma. You build colonies, encounter anomalies, seek out new life and new civilizations, boldy go … well, you get the idea. Plus, you can design your own ships!

What makes the game truly exceptional are the many ways you can win, and the many, many ways you can go about winning in those ways. Instead of elaborating, I’m just going to direct you here and here. These are long blog entries detailing two long games of GalCiv II, the first using its first expansion, Dark Avatar, and the second using its most recent expansion, Twilight of the Arnor.

In the former game the writer decided to take on the universe with military might, only to desperately pursue a different path as doom closed in. The latter game is still in progress, with our intrepid blogger (a writer for PC Gamer) attempting a cultural victory, with no warships or direct attacks of any kind. It’s going to be fun to see how this game turns out. Fun for me, anyway.

Oh, and the races he plays as are his own custom creations — they look like rabbits.

It isn’t a free game, but I think it’s cool. So check these blog entires out (beware some swears), and the game’s demo if you’re so inclined.

(Image from GalCiv2.com)

When I was a kid we mostly played pretty traditional board games: Chess, Monopoly, Life, Connect 4, Balderdash, Clue, Pente, Scrabble, stuff like that. When I was a teenager my brother started playing Dungeons & Dragons — which I  never really got into (too abstract, I think) — and both of us occasionally played fantasy-themed board games like HeroQuest and Battle Masters.

In high school I played a lot of the popular card game Magic: The Gathering (I still have a box of the cards somewhere — anyone need a Vesuvian Doppelganger? I’ve got, like, four.), but I quit the game after myself and my lunchtime play buddies graduated — no one left to play with, you see. Since then my attention has remained focused on video games; aside from occasional matches of Pente or Boggle or whatever with friends and at family gatherings, I hardly played non-electronic games for years, and I certainly didn’t buy any.

I realized last year that I’ve been missing out. The catalyst was Catan, a board game whose cardboard version I’d heard talked up on message boards but which I’d never tried (its picture is at the top of this entry). Suddenly it was made available in video-game form on the Xbox 360’s Live Arcade — I played it a few times, and liked it. I wasn’t very good, but I had fun. And so I started looking into what modern board games had to offer, and discovered the existence of German-style board games, of which Catan is one of the most prominent examples.

Over the following year or so, more digital versions of notable board and card games were released on XBLA, including Carcassonne, Lost Cities and Ticket to Ride. I also figured out that there are more than a few board games based on video games. And now there’s even one based on Battlestar Galactica, pretty much my favorite show ever.

So I gave in. With a birthday coming up a while back, I put games on my list and received a couple doozies: Twilight Imperium, along with its expansion, Shattered Empire; Arkham Horror, based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft (thankfully minus the overt racism and classism that marked his writing); and a fun little word game called Quiddler. And about a week later my wife and I picked up a copy of Catan from Tom’s Toys in SLO, and liked it so much that we’ve put in an Amazon order for the Seafarers expansion.

With so many new things to play, I think we’ll be set for a while. Not that I don’t have my eye on a few games for the future.

Catan is the one we’ve played the most — the goal  is to gather resources and build settlements and roads on an island, with the first player to reach 10 “victory points” declared the winner (we’ve found the 10-point limit makes for a shorter game than we’d prefer, so we’ve been upping it to 13).

We haven’t yet had time (or enough people) to try out Twilight Imperium, but it looks like a blast — it’s a space-conquering game where three to eight players try to become the emperor of the known galaxy through conquest and political maneuvering.

I played a few practice rounds by myself to get a handle on the rather complex rules — this one isn’t a rookie game,  but figuring out how a beast like this works is half the fun.

And finally, Arkham Horror is a battle with the forces of chaos and madness. You have to maintain your character’s sanity and stamina while fighting monsters and  exploring alternate dimensions, then return to the city of Arkham so you can shut and seal the gates leading to these strange other worlds. Seal enough of them and you win; take too long and one of Lovecraft’s mythical monsters, like Cthulhu, wakes up and probably eats you. There’s a chance that you can send the creature back whence it came if it wakes up, but the odds are against you — the odds are always against you in this game. It makes for an intense, suspenseful game, and is the only board game I’ve played in which the players can all lose.

The point of all this is that board games these days are really neat, and if all you’re familiar with are the classics it would be worth your while to take a look at what newer games have to offer. Locally, it appears that Tom’s Toys and Captain Nemo Games & Comics have the best selections, though Barnes & Noble has its share as well. Let me know in the comments if I’ve missed and notable local sources. And by all means, discuss your own favorites!

(Images from Wikipedia)

As promised, I have a free game for you.

Title: WeeWar
Developed and published by: WiiWar Ltd.
Age rating: N/A

It’s called “WeeWar,” and it is a free turn-based wargame you play in your Web browser. There is an optional subscription fee for players who want access to additional unit types, the ability to run up to 10 games at once (the game hangs on an absent player’s turn until it’s resolved, and updates  players on opponents’ moves via e-mail) and other goodies. But it’s free to play the basic version, and the colorful graphics make it look a lot like “Advance Wars” on a hex grid. Ands everyone loves hex grids, right? Right.

The game itself looks like it would easily fall in the E or E-10+ range if it were rated by the ESRB. However, as an unrated online game with a number of customizable components (player designed maps, player avatars, etc.), you never know what crude or crass things you might come across, so be aware of that possibility.

(Screen capture by Justin Hoeger)

This week I don’t offer just a game … I offer the world! Well, that’s a bit overdramatic. What I’m really directing your attention to is “Freeciv,” an open-source clone of Sid Meier’s long-running “Civilization” series.

Title: Freeciv
For: Windows, Mac
Developed and published by: Freeciv project
Age rating: N/A

Why “Freeciv”? Well, as publisher 2K Games has just released a somewhat pared-down version of the series in the form of “Civilization Revolution,” I figured this would be a good way to direct anyone who likes that game to a more complex version; “Freeciv” is based strongly on “Civilization II.”

Of course, for the most complete modern “Civ” experience, the best way to go is to pick up  “Civilization IV” and its two expansions, “Warlords” and “Beyond the Sword.” The amount of content in this package is pretty staggering, and that’s before taking into account the wealth of user-created scenarios, units and other modifications available for download for free from the Internet.

Ah, but I’m getting carried away; “Civ IV” is not “Freeciv,” though this version shares much in common. In any case, the point of “Freeciv,” as in any other “Civ” game, is to guide a fledgling people from their first humble settlements through the ages on to victory, whether by martial victory, cultural dominance or other means. It’s turn-based strategy gaming at its finest, with players required to balance technological research and popular well-being with defensive and diplomatic concerns.

(Image courtesy of Freeciv.org)