Monopoly.
Our recommendation: Rum.
Monopoly’s an… interesting experience for a lot of different reasons, one of which is that it simulates all those fun things you’re going to have to do after college like pay bills, take out mortgages, live for a whole month on $200 dollars in a neighborhood you already can’t afford, and of course, deal with a corrupt, self interested, lying, cheating son-of-a-banker.
Why not do it in the state you’ll wish you were in when you have to do those things for real: absolutely plastered.
Rules: Fill up your cup whenever you pass GO, take a sip any time you have to pay any money to anyone, drain your cup when you have to go to jail.
Catan.
Our recommendation: Double Malt Wheat Whisky.
Catan is a great game, it’s even better with alcohol. When people are still a little buzzed they’re more likely to trade with you so you can build your roads faster. When they’re positively sheep-faced drunk they won’t notice if you happen to… “procure” a stone from their hand.
And when they’ve passed out in the face of the oncoming winter that is sure to kill the woefully unprepared dark-age settlers, well, at that point it’s just the last man standing. Plus, if Catan is the only board game you play, the whisky will make the 50th game a whole lot more bearable.
Rules: trade in two wheat or six of any other resource for a shot of Whisky. Drink it or give it to somebody else to drink, your choice.
King of Tokyo.
Our recommendation: Sake.
Ah Tokyo, home of Japanese efficiency, Tokyo Tower, and Godzilla. Sipping warmed nihonshu as massive monsters ravage the city and each other is sure to give that spark of class to this game, which is essentially battle yahtzee.
Not that you need class when you’re a thousand foot tall mechadragon pummeling a kraken into the ground, but it couldn’t hurt. Plus when some of the other players start getting red in the face you might be able to watch a real life tussle between monstrous egos.
Rules: Take a drink for every heart you have on your final reroll. Also take a sip anytime you take damage.
Dominion.
Our recommendation: Beer.
This classic deck building game has you trying to build a tiny little medieval fiefdom into a respectable kingdom that history will remember forever. Sometimes when a player has a chain of cards it might feel like the long stretches of Æfteraliða waiting for the harvest to come in, and a drink to pass the time would be great.
Well according to the tour guide at stirling castle in Scotland, daily wages included 24 pints of beer, so evidently they pair well with the labors of feudalism.
Rules: Crack open a new 24oz can of beer every round. If you don’t finish it by the time the next round starts, the king is just going to tax the piss out of you anyway.
Diplomacy
Our recommendation: Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1914.
Clearly you’ve decided to go big or go home if you chose to play Diplomacy, the game of World War 1 where all the casualties are your friendships. The world was never the same after WWI and neither should your life be. You need something cultured, refined, historied to sip as you scheme and plot with and against your former friends: a wine from the first year of the war then is probably your best bet.
Sip it slowly with dignity as you try to convince Russia that he really should abandon the defence of St. Petersburg and focus on attacking the Ottoman Empire.
Rules: Winner doesn’t have to help pay for the wine, which is currently 3,800.00 Euro. But remember: it’s only a win if it’s a solo win.
Magic: The Gathering
Our recommendation: Monster and Vodka blended with ice.
This will make your games more exciting right quick. If you’ve ever wanted to live out those old TV shows where losing a card game could literally mean losing your life this is the way to do it. Plus being drunk might actually make losing to a 32/32 lifelink deathtouch trample behemoth fun.
Rules: Take a swig every time your opponent swings at you.
Cosmic Encounter
Our recommendation: A wide variety of neon colored cocktails.
The more that you can make this game seem like you’re sitting in a wild and rowdy bar in the Star Trek universe, the better. With a huge amount of player interaction and more than a few secrets floating around the table, libations should be plentiful and exotic.
Have a cherry red drink for when you exterminate every living thing on the red player’s planet. Have a blue drink for when you sneak a colony into the the blue player’s system. Or imagine that your emerald green cocktail is the green blood of our enemies as you sip it after a successful defence of your system.
Rules: Take a drink of a similarly colored drink whenever you fight against a player, either as a main player or an ally.
Exploding Kittens
Our recommendation: Schnapps
This is a silly game so it needs a silly sounding liquor to get you blasted. Strategy has basically no part in this game so you needn’t worry about your diminishing mental faculties as the games roll by. If you can find a happy drunk who will coo at the art and miss the exploded kittens, that’s the way to do this one.
Also if you can grab the NSFW you might find yourself laughing again and again at the bonkers cards. My favorite is the Pope of Nope.
Rules: any time a cat explodes take a shot.
Risk
Our recommendation: Everclear, Moonshine, the strongest stuff you can legally obtain, whatever it is.
Look, you chose to play Risk, not only a game of attrition but the game of attrition. This is squarely your fault. And trust me I’m doing you a favor. I’m shortening the game time by at least 4 hours. Plus the winner has always been the last man standing… er… mostly vertical.
Rules: Every time you lose a troop take a sip.
