Board Game Vocabulary

When I ask, Ms. Tannenbaum lets us visit her stash of board games. Merci Suárez Changes Gears

Players are split into two teams, and each round one team is tasked with moving a dial so that the needle is in the center of a funnel-like target (the closer to the center you get, the more points you score).
– The New York Times

Play to win at your favorite board game. The Outer Ring Games challenge competitive Board Gamers to be the best at single game competitions.
– The New York Times

“I don’t like games, because I feel like I’m performing in front of a group,” she told me. I dislike that social pressure, too, with its spotlight on victory and defeat.
– The Atlantic

If he could defeat adults at chess, why shouldn’t he be treated as an adult? Endgame

Risk: The strategy board game challenges players to control armies and conquer the world.
– The Seattle Times

“Catan’s a really well-made game,” Willey says. “It’s fairly friendly and fairly easy to pick up and play…and has a beautiful layer of strategy.”
– The Guardian

While the randomness of tile draws is something of a leveller Scrabble is definitely a game where the best player will win far more often than a weaker player.
– Meeple Like Us

I’ve never been a poker player, but now I bluff with the best of them. Challenger Deep

You needed a good roll of the dice, a lucky draw of the cards, and some smarts, but if things went your way and you gave it your all, anyone could win. Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library

The next page showed a picture of a chessboard, upon which all the pieces and pawns rested in their starting positions, except for a black pawn, which had advanced two spaces. The Mysterious Benedict Society

The rooks look like castles and travel in forward, backward and side-to-side lines across the whole board. Fish in a Tree

I reached down to remove it and saw a sticker on the coin mechanism: tokens only. Ready Player One: A Novel

And a fresh deck of cards popped up through a slot in the desk. Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library

Charles and Emma played backgammon every night, and they kept track of who won and who lost. Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith

Thus, some hands may contain one more card than others. All players ante to a pool; in some games, those players who are dealt fewer cards than others are required to ante an extra counter.
– Britannica