The rise and rise of tabletop gaming

Gentler designs with an emphasis on teamwork are fuelling a boom in board game sales. Why, in the golden age of video games, are we choosing to play with counters round a table? Below, the best of the new wave

It's a bright Thursday morning in Oxford, and the Thirsty Meeples cafe on Gloucester Green market is thrumming with activity. As we sit at a sun-warmed window table, the maitre d', Gareth, introduces himself and presents a list of recommendations.

First, he suggests Forbidden Desert. It is not a cocktail. "You have all crash-landed in a desert where you are searching for a lost civilisation," explains Gareth, who sports a purple Thirsty Meeples "Game Guru" T-shirt. "A sandstorm hits, and you have to find all the pieces of a mythical flying ship to escape." Next he offers up Escape: The Curse of the Temple, in which we'll become "Indiana Jones-type people" who have to flee a crumbling ancient tomb. "Or," Gareth says, "how about fighting fires?". Last, he recommends Flash Point, in which I, my wife and two sons would rescue people from a burning building. Pull enough of them from the flames and we all win. But if a certain number are lost to the inferno, we lose. We choose Flash Point.