Board games are making a comeback

We're a big videogame house. Everyone has their game - I'm Assassin's Creed Syndicate (so much so that I've screwed up my controller by running and jumping so much) and the boys and dad each have their own favorites.We also have our iPads and the boys have Nintendo 3DS games. Plus, you know, the computer. We even have a desktop computer still in these parts.This Christmukkah, however, my brother-in-law bought us Catan, because he somehow knew it would be a hit. We gave it a whirl and it's become our go-to family game whenever we have the time on a Sunday afternoon.The great thing is that our youngest son has thinking really strategically in playing the game, planning out moves two, three, even four turns ahead. He has his eye on what he wants to do and goes for it ruthlessly - though at the same time, he's always willing to offer a generous card trade if he can get something he wants out of it.In fact, he's won more than any of the rest of us, which has made him quite pleased. Today our older son won for the first time, which made him quite pleased.It's nice that we sit around the dining room table and play a board game instead of each individually playing our electronic games. We do a lot of outdoor activities together, and we have other board games - such as Monopoly and Scrabble - but none that the whole family enjoys as much as Catan, so far.We laugh, we jokingly threaten to blow out each other's Longest Roads, and we all try to win. But with a game like Catan, the only way to win is to work together, at least a bit, or else you're never going to get the resources you need to build what you need to win. So we grudgingly trade resource cards when we can get something we need, even when we suspect the other might be getting something they need even more out of it.Long live the board game.Photo by Andy Chow via Flickr Creative Commons.