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[Board Games]: Meeples, Minis, Dice, Cards and Tokens galore!
Forar
#432Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
#432Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
Hey there! This thread is about board games. Let me tell you about them!
Welcome, traveller! But perhaps you come to this thread as a regular attendee; in that case, I move aside to let you pass, give you a fraternal nod, and I gesture you towards your regular chair. For the rest of you, I continue:
Perhaps you have heard tales of “penile locomotives” (see above spoilered comic and associated post). Perhaps you have been referred here, and still grasp the scribbled directions to this odd corner of the PA district, itself an odd corner of the Coruscant-like internet metropolis. Perhaps a search has brought you here, dropping you off unceremoniously at our door like some rude chauffeur. Whatever the circumstances, I again say, welcome!
This thread exists to convey one simple message: board games have come a long way since Monopoly and Risk. Like, a really long way. Perhaps you like those well enough, but fear the time investment. Perhaps you’re looking for quick games to play during your lunch hour. Perhaps you’re looking for something for when friends want to hang out. Perhaps you’re looking for an all-day simulation of the asymmetrical struggles of Europe during the Protestant Reformation. No problem, gotcha covered. So without further ado, let me attempt to give you a barely-sketched outline of what is possible in cardboard, wood and plastic.
GREAT GAMES TO INTRODUCE TO JUST ABOUT ANYONE (including those new to games):
Ticket to Ride
Quite possibly one of the best entry-level games. Draw cards into your hands, claim a route between two cities with your train cars by laying down same-color cards that match a route on the board. Simple, intuitive. Kids can grasp it, adults can play it more cut-throat and get into deeper strategies. Many versions have been made; they are pretty much all great, but check to see how many people can play. There’s also plenty of expansion maps, including a highly-rated Asia map for team play up to 6.
Dominion
This genre-defining game is played entirely with cards. Hey, I thought we were talking about board games! We are, shut up, it’s a problem of semantics, whatever. Anyway, in this game you build up your own personal deck by accumulating money cards (to buy things), action cards (to make cool stuff happen), and victory point cards (which give you points but clog up your deck). Each game has different action cards to buy so every game is different. There are a TON of expansions; good ones are Seaside (adds effects which carry over into later turns), Intrigue (a lot more interaction between players), and Prosperity (adds higher-value money and victory point cards). It plays fast, but some of the expansions slow it down a bit. Don’t buy Village.
Carcassonne
Another older game, which has aged well because of its short length and wide appeal. Pick up a tile, add it to the tiles already placed so that you match the road, castle, or field. You may optionally “claim” a road, castle, or field with one of your followers or “meeples”, which gives you points. A great, quick game for pretty much all ages, but it is especially good for a younger crowd.
Small World
Wil Wheaton! In this very spoiler! But if you let him out you'll have to say his name three times to put him back. Choose from the randomized races, spread out, hold key areas, gain points every round. Once you have extended as much as you can, put the race into decline (i.e. you can’t do anything with it but it still gives you points), and choose a new race. You get the good feeling from wiping someone out without as much of the hurt feelings, because they can just get a new race and ethnic-cleanse you in return. Popular, has a bunch of expansions.
Lords of Waterdeep
Newer game, but it has really made a splash. It’s a fairly light worker-placement euro that non-gamers (or minimal-gamers) really seem to enjoy. The “worker-placement” part is themed up as sending knights and wizards off to accomplish quests, and there’s even a bit of back-stabbery against the other players.
REALLY GOOD TWO-PLAYER GAMES:
Twilight Struggle
Probably the best epic 2-player game. Epic because of its length and scope. Intensely confrontational without being a wargame. Imagine a game about the Cold War where the mechanics take, at face value, the rhetoric of both sides. In other words, it’s the USA versus the USSR, and all the other nations in the world are just pawns to be influenced one way or the other. Influence is what you “spend” every round, to control a nation or even cause an uprising in a less-stable nation. Influence tends to spread through a region like a virus. You can use an event card for the event (which is some historical event or concept), or use it for influence, or even put it towards the space race. The only possible downside is that it’s long for a 2-player game, so it may be hard to introduce to a casual gaming group.
Memoir '44
This is simply the easiest introduction into a whole family of light wargames: Commands & Colors: Ancients, Commands & Colors: Napoleonics, BattleLore, BattleCry. Most can be played within an hour, but can feel suitable epic. The basic idea is that the battlefield is divided into a left, center, and right flank. You play a card that “orders” units in a flank (or flanks), which allows it to move and attack. You attack by rolling dice, which can cause hits or retreats. You win by wiping out a set number of units (and maybe occupying critical points). A brilliant system that each game has a special “spin” on. Memoir is a bit simpler and has a very appealing theme. Ancients is also highly regarded here (and is my favorite); it has a priority on melee attacks and gives additional benefits if your units are lined up.
Summoner Wars
Think of this as some strange asymmetric chess variant where the pieces are cards. Each player chooses a faction, and your goal is to kill the enemy summoner. Your units are ranged or melee, and have different attack strengths, and different hit points. You attack with dice. You bring new units out of your hand onto the board if you can pay the cost in magic. You gain magic by killing units or by dumping cards from your hand. Each faction plays VERY differently, and in fact every single card has some special ability (like moving extra spaces or attacking in a different way). There are a TON of factions for this game -- I think 16 right now -- and expansions for limited deck construction, and even some alternate summoners, so there’s a lot of stuff to try out.
Battle Line
This SOUNDS like another combat game, but it’s not. It’s an abstract game where you’ve got 9 flags in a row, and you take turns playing one card in front of a flag. You need a better “set” of three cards in front of a flag to “claim” that flag as yours. Get 5 total flags or 3 adjacent flags to win. It’s a game where you’re working through the odds of finishing a “set”, against a bit of guessing as to what your opponent is holding onto in his hand.
Hive
This is an abstract game where the entire game is 22 hexagon pieces of bakelite. There’s not even a board. The pieces are bugs, each of which moves in a particular way. The winner is the one that surrounds the enemy queen. It looks pretty nice as the game plays itself out, too.
BattleCON (War of Indines)
Round 1! Fight! Yes, another "fighting game simulation" where you have a movement track and play attacks simultaneously, and try to out-think/out-maneuver your opponent. Your "hand" is made up of a few "styles" (unique to your character) and "bases" (mostly the same for everyone), and an attack combines one style and one base. Any attack you do is on "cooldown" and can’t be used for 2 beats. The game comes with 18 characters, and they are all QUITE different to play. This one will inevitably get compared to Yomi (and Flash Duel), but I think that this is somewhat easier and/or more fun to learn. The print-and-play comes with 4 characters and is pretty easy to put together, if you want to try it out.
Android: Netrunner
Newer asymmetric game that is very geeky and very good. The "corporation" player must defend and score their agendas. The "hacker" player must steal agendas from the "corporation". The agendas are worth points, and first to 7 points wins. What really sets this one apart is that almost everything the corporation does is hidden information (i.e. face-down cards), so there's ample room for bluffing and traps. This is a "Living Card Game", which means that there are numerous expansions, each of which is a fixed number of cards so you know what you're buying. Still allows for spending a lot on the game, but the base game comes with a LOT of stuff to try out (i.e. multiple hacker and corporation "identities").
BIG-GROUP FUN (6+ players):
Bohnanza
Great little game of planting, trading, and harvesting beans. The trick is that you can’t rearrange your hand; you must trade in order to plant the beans you want. Once you get enough of a particular type of bean (or when you’re forced to plant another type of bean), harvest it for points. It get special kudos from me because it’s great with kids and adults. Plays up to 7.
Dixit (Odyssey)
A party game! Well, sort of. In this game everybody is given a hand of imaginative, surreal, and evocative cards. The active player puts a card face down, and give a phrase, word, or noise that goes with it. Everyone else ALSO puts in a card that best goes with that “clue”. They are mixed up, shown, and people get points for picking the active player’s card, or for getting people to choose their card. But if the clue is too obvious or too hard, the active player gets NO points. So there are serious demands made on the imagination of the players -- dull clues or simply half-hearted ones diminish the game experience. But knowing that caveat, it’s a GREAT game. There are a couple of versions of this one, but Odyssey plays up to 12.
Time’s Up! (Title Recall)
Another party game, but you might call this one a “proper” party game. You play in pairs, and you have 30 seconds at a time to make your partner guess what’s on the cards. In the first round, you can use just about any clues, gestures, and noises. In the second round, you are limited to ONE WORD for a clue and one guess. In the third round, NO talking but gestures and noises still allowed. Absolute hilarity ensues. The "Title Recall" version is the best, because even if you don't know the movie/book/song, you can give hints one word at a time (i.e. "Devil With the Blue Dress On" is easier than "Rutherford B. Hayes" if you are unfamiliar with both).
Citadels
Straight-forward, almost bare-bones social game that is also great and plays up to 8. Pass around the role cards, pick one secretly, the king calls out the roles in order. A good way to introduce the “social” type of board games.
7 Wonders
30-minute game that is VERY popular game these-a-days for a group of up to 7. You build up a civilization, which really just means you play cards that produce some product, or provide military strength, or give you points directly, or improves your science. So multiple win paths, which is always cool. Each player has a hand, but you only play ONE card before passing your hand to the adjacent player. You can also trade with your neighbors, so overall you are VERY interested in what other players are doing, and you often have to change your strategy to thwart theirs. Highly recommended by this thread.
The Resistance
You ever play mafia or werewolf? Some smart guy boiled it down into a 5-10 player game that can be played in 30 minutes. Every round someone becomes the leader, who then chooses a team for a mission. Each person on the team secretly contribute a “pass” or “fail” card for that mission. Since there are spies, some missions are going to fail. Incriminations will fall like the rain on the moor. Best 3 out of 5 missions. An elegant and tense social game, but like all social games it is somewhat dependent on the group. Quick enough for multiple games (which will often be stridently demanded). There's also a newer, advanced version of this game called "Resistance: Avalon", where one character (Merlin) knows who the bad guys are, but the bad guys will win if they identify Merlin.
LONGER GAMES (3+ hours):
Twilight Imperium (3rd edition)
Ah, the game that defines epic space expansion and warfare. In a nutshell, the hex-based “board” is made up of planetary systems, which can be conquered. You “spend” command tokens to activate a system and move stuff there or build stuff. Then there’s technology research, trading, dice-based warfare, secret objectives, phase selection, a hand of action cards,... and on and on. Pretty intense. Pretty long. But there’s something about the theme that makes it almost irresistible.
Eclipse
This game LOOKS similar to Twilight Imperium. Sci-fi space exploration with hexes, dice combat, and tech research. However, it is QUITE different in scope and "feel". This is a premier mechanic-centered euro in the same class as Power Grid and Agricola. This means that it’s a bit more indirect than you might expect in the genre; it has been described as “intensely passive-aggressive”. Many of your thoughts are about optimizing your actions or making other people’s actions sub-optimal, rather than "space ship battle pew pew". However, direct conflict has a definite place in this game, and furthermore it has awesome stuff like exploration-produced initial maps, and also customizing your own spacecraft blueprints.
Arkham Horror
In many ways this is on the other end of the spectrum from the sterile spaceships and abstracted planet-conquering of Twilight Imperium or Eclipse. This game is all about the atmosphere, and trying to hold it together while you avoid being devoured by nameless horrors. Those horrors are of the Lovecraftian kind, and the rulebook kind. Seriously, the FAQ has its own FAQ. But if you can pierce through the “rule crust” into the pulsing black heart of the game, you’ll probably... uh... go insane. But madmen are often happy, right?
Risk: Legacy
This has consistently been one of the most-talked-about games since it came out. It’s a streamlined version of Risk with a huge twist -- after each game you will permanently alter the board (naming a continent, adding a city), the cards (ripping up(!) one of them), and/or the rule book itself. It comes with packets that you will open after meeting certain criteria. It’s meant to be played over 15 games with the same group of people, producing a totally unique map which is also a testament to each previous battle. Not all groups can make this kind of commitment, but we can dream, can’t we?
Dominant Species
A grand worker-placement and area-control game, that still very successfully conveys the theme of struggling for survival on a map that’s far too small and environmentally hostile.
War of the Ring
The definitive LOTR experience in board game form. It’s everybody against the Sauron player, and you have to keep the One Ring out of his hands while also keeping his armies from turning Middle-Earth into a suburb of Mordor.
And here are some common board game categories, and some representative games for each:
DECK-BUILDING:
ROLE SELECTION
ROUTE BUILDING/CLAIMING:
Ticket to Ride (mentioned above)
Power Grid
A meaty, polished, economic game. Buy a network of cities, bid on power plants to power those cities, profit. You need to supply your power plants with resources (oil, nuclear, etc), but the cost of a resource goes up if everybody needs it. There’s math. LOTS of math. There’s also a bit of fiddling as you decide the turn order (and whether you’re going through it forwards or backwards), refilling resources, knowing when to go to “Step 2/3”, and so on. So not really an introductory-level game, but very satisfying.
Steam
This is the latest incarnation of a very good series of route-building goods-delivery games. This one is great because it has a totally viable "basic" version of the rules, streamlined and appropriate for casual groups, and a "standard" version of the rules, with auctions for everything and a much more demanding economic system. It's almost two games in one. Whenever I play Ticket to Ride (except for the Asia team game), I fantasize about playing this one instead.
HIDDEN TRAITOR:
Battlestar Galactica
In the description for The Resistance, I called it “tense”. Battestar Galactica redefines the term into something devastating. It’s a game with a strong theme from the TV series, but the game is good enough to be fully enjoyed by people who have who have never seen the show. The goal is to get to Earth, but the ship is faced with environmental threats in deep space, hostile Cylon warships, and internal Cylon traitors. Each player has a hand of cards that is used to meet (or sabotage) these threats. The basic flow is “Jump into terrible location, deal with terrible event after terrible event, deal with an increasingly terrible Cylon armada, and then jump again... if anybody is still alive”. Popular here on the forums as PbP.
ABSTRACT:
OP shamelessly stolen from @jergarmar
Welcome, traveller! But perhaps you come to this thread as a regular attendee; in that case, I move aside to let you pass, give you a fraternal nod, and I gesture you towards your regular chair. For the rest of you, I continue:
Perhaps you have heard tales of “penile locomotives” (see above spoilered comic and associated post). Perhaps you have been referred here, and still grasp the scribbled directions to this odd corner of the PA district, itself an odd corner of the Coruscant-like internet metropolis. Perhaps a search has brought you here, dropping you off unceremoniously at our door like some rude chauffeur. Whatever the circumstances, I again say, welcome!
This thread exists to convey one simple message: board games have come a long way since Monopoly and Risk. Like, a really long way. Perhaps you like those well enough, but fear the time investment. Perhaps you’re looking for quick games to play during your lunch hour. Perhaps you’re looking for something for when friends want to hang out. Perhaps you’re looking for an all-day simulation of the asymmetrical struggles of Europe during the Protestant Reformation. No problem, gotcha covered. So without further ado, let me attempt to give you a barely-sketched outline of what is possible in cardboard, wood and plastic.
GREAT GAMES TO INTRODUCE TO JUST ABOUT ANYONE (including those new to games):
Ticket to Ride
Dominion
Carcassonne
Small World
Wil Wheaton! In this very spoiler! But if you let him out you'll have to say his name three times to put him back. Choose from the randomized races, spread out, hold key areas, gain points every round. Once you have extended as much as you can, put the race into decline (i.e. you can’t do anything with it but it still gives you points), and choose a new race. You get the good feeling from wiping someone out without as much of the hurt feelings, because they can just get a new race and ethnic-cleanse you in return. Popular, has a bunch of expansions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9QtdiRJYroLords of Waterdeep
Newer game, but it has really made a splash. It’s a fairly light worker-placement euro that non-gamers (or minimal-gamers) really seem to enjoy. The “worker-placement” part is themed up as sending knights and wizards off to accomplish quests, and there’s even a bit of back-stabbery against the other players.
REALLY GOOD TWO-PLAYER GAMES:
Twilight Struggle
Memoir '44
Summoner Wars
Battle Line
Hive
BattleCON (War of Indines)
Android: Netrunner
BIG-GROUP FUN (6+ players):
Bohnanza
Great little game of planting, trading, and harvesting beans. The trick is that you can’t rearrange your hand; you must trade in order to plant the beans you want. Once you get enough of a particular type of bean (or when you’re forced to plant another type of bean), harvest it for points. It get special kudos from me because it’s great with kids and adults. Plays up to 7.
Dixit (Odyssey)
Time’s Up! (Title Recall)
Citadels
7 Wonders
The Resistance
LONGER GAMES (3+ hours):
Twilight Imperium (3rd edition)
Eclipse
Arkham Horror
Risk: Legacy
Dominant Species
A grand worker-placement and area-control game, that still very successfully conveys the theme of struggling for survival on a map that’s far too small and environmentally hostile.
War of the Ring
The definitive LOTR experience in board game form. It’s everybody against the Sauron player, and you have to keep the One Ring out of his hands while also keeping his armies from turning Middle-Earth into a suburb of Mordor.
And here are some common board game categories, and some representative games for each:
DECK-BUILDING:
Dominion -- (mentioned above)
Thunderstone (Advance)
This was the next big game after Dominion that used the same mechanic, but it has a real theme! It’s a dungeon crawl. Wait, what? No, seriously! The basic idea is that you alternate between buying adventurers and weapons and stuff in the village to improve your deck, and then trying to defeat monsters in the dungeon, which also get added to your deck, giving you points and other benefits. Has a ton of expansions. There’s a new version of this called “Thunderstone Advance” that is probably your best choice if you’re starting off.
Quarriors
Dice. Lots of dice. Cool dice. You roll dice and buy things with... ugh... “quiddity” shown on them. You buy monsters that attack other players’ monsters. Doesn’t have a lot of depth, especially when compared to other games with this mechanic (I would lean towards calling it filler), but it’s flashy and quick and good for getting an “Oh, cool!” out of people you introduce it to. There are some "advanced rules" if you want to mix up and/or deepen the gameplay, though it makes the game a bit longer.
Ascension
Thunderstone (Advance)
Quarriors
Ascension
ROLE SELECTION
Puerto Rico
The premier euro game. Shoot, the premier board game. Rich, deep, and meaty. Grow crops, sell them, buy buildings which give you abilities and benefits, and you need laborers for all this stuff as well. You choose a role which helps you in some way every round. High player interaction, though it's not direct. For such a deep game, it’s not actually that difficult to teach to new players, but there can be a big gulf in player skill. Some people who have played this forever can be a bit hostile to newbies, but that is NOT true of the people in this thread, that I've seen. Playable online -- many people here will help you get started if you ask.
Race for the Galaxy
Card-based space-exploration/conquest economic game, though the theme isn’t very strong. Players choose a phase simultaneously, and the only phases in the round are the ones that players picked. Has a pretty dense iconography, making it a bit daunting for new players, but it allows for a fleshed-out and satisfying game with multiple paths to victory. Low player interaction. Has a bunch of expansions; I suggest the first one (Gathering Storm), as it improves the base game and adds some optional goals to provide a focus for new players. Good with two players, also.
Citadels
-- see above
Race for the Galaxy
Citadels
-- see above
ROUTE BUILDING/CLAIMING:
Ticket to Ride (mentioned above)
Power Grid
Steam
This is the latest incarnation of a very good series of route-building goods-delivery games. This one is great because it has a totally viable "basic" version of the rules, streamlined and appropriate for casual groups, and a "standard" version of the rules, with auctions for everything and a much more demanding economic system. It's almost two games in one. Whenever I play Ticket to Ride (except for the Asia team game), I fantasize about playing this one instead.
HIDDEN TRAITOR:
Battlestar Galactica
ABSTRACT:
Ingenious
Great, intuitive abstract that scales well from 2-4. Place a tile on the hexagonal board to score points for matching icons. You need to score well in EVERY icon type, because only your WORST icon score is your actual score. Get it? Part of the appeal of this game is the excellent component quality. Chunky plastic tiles, fabric bag, and solid cardboard.
Blokus
A more confrontational abstract, where you simply need to get as many of your pieces on the board as possible. Anything not placed counts against you. Blocking others is inevitable but still tricky. Simple enough for young players. A possible downside is that it is really best with 4 players. For a slightly more flexible (in terms of players) and forgiving variant, try Blokus Trigon. But my wife swears by the original.
Through the Desert
Another Knizia classic. You place colored camels one at a time, getting points by getting to an oasis or cordoning off a section of the board. It's vaguely reminiscent of Go, actually.
Hive -- (mentioned above)
Blokus
Through the Desert
Another Knizia classic. You place colored camels one at a time, getting points by getting to an oasis or cordoning off a section of the board. It's vaguely reminiscent of Go, actually.
Hive -- (mentioned above)
OP shamelessly stolen from @jergarmar
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
+6
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
Kingsburg
Agricola
NEGOTIATION:
Game of Thrones
TRADING:
Bohnanza
-- see above
COOPERATIVE:
Space Alert
AREA CONTROL:
Chaos in the Old World
Age of Empires III: Age of Discovery
RACING:
Galaxy Trucker
Racing game? Well, yeah, but the most fun is the time-limited and frenzied ship-building phase. Or maybe the most fun is watching your friend’s ship get sawn in half by an errant meteor. Anyway, you get points for bringing home cargo ahead of your competitors, but there’s a good chance that nobody even makes it to the finish line. And nobody seems to mind!
Formula D
DEXTERITY:
Sorry! Sliders
Pitchcar
Catacombs
TACTICAL MINIATURES:
This is probably one of the biggest wallet-smacking games in this thread, but it’s irresistible. It’s a fairly quick and easy system to send a handful of TIE fighters against a couple of X-Wings and see what happens. Oh, but there’s also Y-Wings. And TIE Interceptors. And A-Wings. And the Millenium Falcon and Slave 1. And they all look pretty great. You can also choose pilots like Luke and Vader and Biggs, and add mech droids like good ol’ R2-D2. But for a proper game you’ll probably want 2 core sets, 1 X-Wing and 1 TIE (for the extra pilots), a couple of Interceptors, a couple more rebel ships to taste.... yeah. But it’s Star Wars! So queue up the John Williams on your MP3 player and get started.
Super Dungeon Explore
Descent 2.0
Looking for an old-fashioned fantasy RPG with an epic campaign, packaged into bite-sized scenarios? You might try this one. This new version has really boiled it down to it’s best parts, and there’s already expansions in the works, so there’s no better time to jump into it.
D&D games
This is not a single game, but a whole family of light dungeon-crawl skirmish games (Wrath of Ashardalon, Legend of Drizzt, Castle Ravenloft), which are all compatible with each other and have some pretty cool looking monsters.
LIGHT/SHORT/FILLER:
King of Tokyo
A little game by Richard Garfield (i.e. creator of Magic) that is way more fun than it has any right to be. Each player is a giant monster, and you can attack each other by rolling a bunch of dice, but the big points are gained when you go into Tokyo and stay there for as long as you can. While you're there you can be attacked by everybody, so there's a push-your-luck element to it.
Hey, That's My Fish!
Fun game of sliding penguins and claiming fish and blocking opponents, that's ALSO cutthroat enough for adults to play.
Love Letter
Roll Through the Ages
A surprisingly satisfying little civ-building dice-rolling game.
No Thanks
For Sale
AND INTRODUCING SOME REGULARS TO THE THREAD :
JonBob
Short, filler games
No Thanks! - This game is basically perfect. A very small set of rules leads to very interesting emergent behavior.
For Sale - What No Thanks! does for push-your-luck games, For Sale does for auctions. Simple, quick, easy to teach.
King of Tokyo - Roar! Monsters! Everyone can get into the theme here, and it's hard to take it too seriously. Power Up! is a great expansion, but it does make the game longer.
Light, Gateway games
Ticket to Ride is a classic for good reason. The base game is greatly improved by 1910, and Team Asia is also fantastic.
Pandemic remains my favorite co-op, especially revitalized with On the Brink.
San Juan... I honestly prefer it to papa Puerto Rico or twin brother Race for the Galaxy] in most ways. I'm in the minority.
Light, but not really gateway, games
Dominion is still probably the best basic deckbuilding game mechanically, if it is thematically dry. Try Prosperity first if you want to expand it.
7 Wonders is short, but can be fairly deep. You won't understand what decisions are good ones the first time, which is why I don't put it in "gateway." The second time and thereafter, it's a blast. Best with the Leaders expansion.
Kingdom Builder is dry, but the variable setup lends a lot of variety. It's basically an abstract, and I think refines ideas from classics like Through the Desert very well.
An oddball suggestion
Zendo is my favorite board game, bar none. I barely ever get to play it.
Trynant
Earth Reborn - Best tactical minis game out there. Crazy deep almost to the point of simulation, but slowly eases you into it. Cannot recommend enough.
Archipelago - Maybe not for everyone, but this game takes a good worker placement game and adds a heavy dose of theme and player interaction. Clever, amazing game.
Space Alert - The best coop game. Play space cadets trying to deal with alien attacks, but in REAL TIME (tm). Great stuff.
Dominant Species - Best game closest to a traditional worker-placement game I've played; although it's more like an abstract war game in many ways!
Splotter games (Great Zimbabwe, Roads and Boats, Indonesia, Antiquity, Greed Inc.) - if you can get your hands on one (or more) of these, do so. Best kinds of straight euros out there.
Worst Games:
Fluxx
Munchkin
Titan
HORUS HERESY - what an awful game
Namrok
ArcticLancer
Everything syncs up remarkably well, and is supported with nicely flowing gameplay and gorgeous artwork.
Inquisitor
A Few Acres of Snow, Chaos in the Old World (sans expansion), GOSU, Citadels, Puerto Rico, Ghost Stories (favorite co-op), Twilight Struggle. Ascension (strictly as a portable, play by post, iOS experience).
Games I dislike that other people like:
Arkham Horror, Space Alert, Galaxy Trucker, Dominion
jakobagger
A Game of Thrones: the Board Game
Battlestar Galactica
Blood Bowl
Chaos in the Old World
Civilization (2010)
Dominion
Dune
Magic: the Gathering
Puerto Rico
Through the Ages
Twilight Struggle
Currently playing (apart from favourites):
7 Wonders
A Few Acres of Snow
Blood Bowl Team Manager
Citadels
Horus Heresy
Infiltration
Innovation
Lords of Waterdeep
Want to get into/play more:
Andean Abyss
Android: Netrunner
Republic of Rome
Games I was less into:
Ideology: the War of Ideas
Junta
Monopoly
Outpost
Power Grid: Factory Manager
Zombies!!!
I like: strong theme combined with tight/elegant mechanics, asymmetry/variable player powers, moving dudes around on a map, some amount of luck to ensure variation and re-playability (Cards over dice), breaking up turns to remove or minimize downtime.
Dislike: overly dry or pasted-on theme, abstracts, games with perfect information and no luck (games that feel solvable I guess?), games with too much randomness or unpredictability, games that are longer than their depth can justify.
Vyolynce
As a Magic Judge, I'm predisposed to liking card-based games and have a definite bias against randomness (read: dice) affecting strategy*. As such, some of my favorite games are Race for the Galaxy, Sentinels of the Multiverse, and Ascension. You can see my full Top 10 (and collection) on BGG. I'm also a big fan of abstracts, but those don't usually get talked about as much since they're typically dry two-player affairs. Sadly, I don't get to play as many "epic" games as I would like due to my Board Game Night happening in the middle of the work week.
*Games where dice drive strategy (Castles of Burgundy, Alien Frontiers) are usually ok.
Good places to play games online:
Boite a Jeux
-- Agricola
-- Alhambra
-- Castles of Burgundy
-- Dixit
-- Trajan
OCTGN
-- THE place to play Android: Netrunner
Yucata
-- A Few Acres of Snow
-- Roll Through the Ages
-- El Grande
-- Fearsome Floors
-- Hawaii
-- Stone Age
Board Game Arena
-- Race for the Galaxy
-- Seasons
-- Puerto Rico
-- Libertalia
-- Troyes
-- Caylus
BrettspielWelt
-- ton of games but daunting
Good places to find out more about games:
BoardGameGeek
The definitive site for all things board game. Forums, reviews, pictures, marketplace, you name it. Also complex and daunting at first. If you want to start using it, just start with looking up games you're interested in.
The Dice Tower (also has The Dice Tower podcast)
Very good podcast that is also an umbrella for a bunch of gaming podcasts and reviewers. Tom Vasel himself is a pretty good reviewer, but not so interested in the heavier euro games, especially those with threadbare themes.
Shut Up and Sit Down
Paul and Quinns are very funny reviewers of board games. The videos are great, but I think their blog reviews can be even better.
Critical Failures PbP Gaming Index
A repository of PbP games. Quite an assortment. Especially successful are Battlestar Galactica and Chaos in the Old World.
Kickstarter Tabletop Games
NEVER GO HERE. You'll end up paying some ridiculous amount for a miniatures game that won't ship for like 6 months because of the meticulously crafted minis and numerous stretch goals that they add-- hey! Didn't I just tell you not to go there?
And finally, here are some previous incarnations of this thread (newest to oldest):
-- Running all your nets, winging all your exes
-- Saving the world...
-- Wil Wheaton's cardboard nerd-cred...
-- Risk Legacy is Neat...
-- Space Alert Owns...
-- Citadels For > 5 People...
Hell, even Risk has come a long way since Risk. Monopoly not so much.
It now uses credit cards removing the key attraction of the game: stuffing handfuls of paper money into your trousers.
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O.O
Woooow. Well, at least I can axe my first reponse to tuck in a second. Hopefully I don't have to do much of a butcher job to fit in all three.
Can't wait to hit up Eldritch Horror. Arkham Horror is, as has been mentioned a few times now I'm sure, a bit of a sore spot, in that I've never seen it be anything but an afternoon long effort in watching the board win. Which is rather appropriate given the source material, but if I really wanted that I could just read one of Lovecraft's tales. If we're going to spend an hour or more setting it all up and god knows how long playing it, I'd like at least a chance to win.
If nothing else, the lack of an abundance of expansions (for now) may be the saving grace. With AH my crew always uses at least one 'big' expansion, one 'small' one, and I'm reasonably certain the decks are twice the size they start at with other odds and ends. Apparently there's even been discussion about playing it without any expansions next time, just to prove to me that it can be won by my crew. I'll believe it when I see it.
Wish I'd had the time to justify going to Arkham Nights to try it out and snag some swag. Maybe next year.
Edit 2: okay, had to strip out notes and a bunch of BGG urls in one of the 'get to know the regulars' sections to free up the 1200 characters over the post limit, but I managed to trim the OP down to 2 posts, but respect that the next thread iteration may do well with 3 opening posts for the free room to grow as new games come up. Luckily the original is always available (and now linked), so it isn't a big deal to go grab the originals if necessary/desired.
Believe it or not, Monopoly DOES has some interesting ways to play these days. Tom Vasel really likes the "Tropical Tycoon" version. A buddy of mine likes the "Monopoly Deal Card Game" version.
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Probably doesn't help that they all went completely AWOL for BGG con. They also only now introduced a stretch goal. But they are pretty clearly treating this as a pre-order service.
But is it still Monopoly at its core like Risk: Legacy is still Risk? Because that's most of the problem, honestly. Monopoly spin-offs are often more than fine.
I should probably wait until I finally get Love Letter to the table though. I picked up the Japanese edition under the store owners recommendation because of supposed limited edition promo cards and both versions were equally priced. Now that I've opened it, I really regret not picking up the other version. The art is far worse, the unique promo cards are laughable, and I think the gameplay changes are greatly to it's detriment.
Probably, since Coup is best 4-5 players, and Masquerade is 6+.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
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I'm going shopping for new games in TWO HOURS. My group already has a big collection of games, most of the classics and big names, so I'm looking for any interesting or more obscure new hotness suggestions.
On my list are Cyclades, Letters to Whitechapel, and Archipelago.
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Star Trek: Attack Wing is the more "obscure" version of the X-Wing system... which makes it automatically better. Only those smart enough etc etc etc.
Seriously, though, it's hard to get more "interesting" than Archipelago. By all accounts and my personal experience, it feels a LOT different than just about anything.
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I've heard Cyclades is quite good in a different way, though I disapprove of dice-based combat. What makes it meh?
As for Archipelago, I love how it sounds, but the victory conditions don't seem very clear - is it possible for one player to win who isn't the sympathizer/traitor, or is it always a cooperative game for the other players (or everyone, if he's not in the game)? I thought it was an economy-management VP race, but some reviews have made it sound like something else.
Archipelago is NEVER cooperative, really. It's just that everybody can lose. Think CitOW. And it's NOT mainly about economy-management, because the victory conditions are wildly different from game to game. One time the VPs come from building cities, another time it's exploration tokens. You have to suss out what gives points from the other players, while working on your own goal card, while also obfuscating it from everyone else. So it's part bluffing, part negotiation, part economy, part hidden traitor.
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@Evil Multifarious If you have six, seven or eight regulars get Space Cadets: Dice Duels. Fast, funny, exciting and is one of the few games to be team vs team. Also different roles offer different experiences, so you can play four games and never be playing the same game twice.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Maybe if we played it a lot more we'd have found solutions to these problems. We could have learned the strategy to a 2 player game better, so that an auto-win doesn't happen. We could avoid knocking a player back to a single island in a 3 player game, disallowing the turtle catchup abuse strategy. In a 4+ player game we could better pay attention to everyone's avenues towards victory. But the game was just so consistently underwhelming for the first 6 or 7 plays, no one wanted to put that effort in. Not when we owned Chaos in the Old World, and enjoyed it so very much more.
Just a quick addition if anyone is worried: Coup plays totally fine with 6. That's how we usually play it actually, as a spiteful nightcap after AGOT or something - in case people didn't hate each other enough (the game night I host is called "You're Not Here To Make Friends").
...hhhnnnggghhhh
I love it, and a lot of people have been very impressed with it at our game group.
Cyclades I love too, and I win a fair bit, and I almost never roll dice. There are multiple routes to victory, and mine has been the political/geographical - positioning us so that 'Let's you and him fight' happens a lot, and then thinking Really Hard about the auctions. It has multiple routes to victory, and is just always good.
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The d20 is pretty poorly made (some of the numbers are shallow/missing paint making them hard to read), but I've got bags of dice I can use, but none white/orange. May need to find a nice one online.
I feel like the AI gets a bit weird sometimes. In the first 10 or so games, I never received any of the side benefits of Intrigue cards. Might have just been weird run of luck, but I imagined the AIs were conspiring against me, heh. Then yesterday, while I was about 15 points behind everyone else, I got slammed with 3 consecutive Mandatory Quests. Now I'm convinced the AIs are out to get me...
(I did have both a 20 pt and a 25 pt quest almost ready to go, so I don't doubt the logic behind the moves. Just thought it was pretty funny.)
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We also played 3 games of Forbidden Desert, and a game of Eminent Domain. Forbidden Desert is pretty badass on Elite or Legendary. We almost squeaked a win on Elite. Had all the parts, was running for the hangar. Then the last card of the last turn we needed to get through used up the last sand token. End game. Oh well. Also, Eminent Domain just keeps growing on me. I was this close to trading it away between Core Worlds and Race for the Galaxy. But it's just so damn good, in its own way. I feel good about having decided to keep all three. If only I could get Race to the Galaxy back to the table.
Now that GameZone has pulled their HeroQuest Kickstarter, the next thing they should do is contact to people behind Super Fantasy: Ugly Snouts Assault and arrange a joint Kickstarter for a Deluxe Edition with miniatures. Probably should get a better subtitle too.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
It's apparently taken longer to manufacture these dice than they projected. So rather than pay seperate shipping for the base game and the dice, they delayed the base game to the new completion date of the dice. Which I believe is in February. Even if you did not order the stupid-butt rocket dice. As you can imagine, a lot of people are angry.
I want more info on this. What happened, HeroQuest was completely canned?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
This Spanish company is just running rogue as a bunch of rookies and refusing to do things legally, hoping the kickstarter money will smooth things over. With a decent chance, I'd imagine, that after the kickstarter money went through everyone might be SOL.
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1079761/moon-design-publications-official-statement-on-gam
I'm glad someone challenged it now and sort of won than lots of people being out $200+ each. I wanted to believe in that project so bad. But it seemed so fucking shady. It was gonna turn into another Valley Games episode.
Oh well, hopefully seeing them raise half a million in a couple days will spur someone to get it done properly. And it's not like there aren't also a dozen different options available for similar gameplay out there now.
I know it didn't wow a lot of people, and there's some reluctance based on Flying Frog's other offerings, but my crew is eagerly awaiting Shadows of Brimstone. Obviously a wildly different setting (Malifaux meets Rifts as a dungeon crawler boardgame is how I'm thinking of it) but solo to 6 player co-op with a simply crazy amount of expansion material ought to keep us busy for years.
You don't have to lie per se but you do need to double bluff and act like you're lying constantly so other people end up killing themselves trying to call you on your perfectly legitimate shenanigans. I've found the more I protest that I never lie the more people think I always lie.
Not that it matters, as the owner of the game I have to die at least second or third after the previous round's winner.