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[Board Games] Cardboard Action at a Distance
JonBob
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Welcome to the Board Games thread!
Here we talk about the awesomeness that is face-to-face analog gaming with cards, tiles, dice, wooden and plastic bits, and sometimes just paper and pencil. This hobby promotes real-world friendships and shared memories, encourages sportsmanship, works out your brain, provides thrills and laughs, and will stand the test of time.
And it's not just Monopoly and Risk anymore.
New designer games are great! There are short games and long games; high-conflict and peaceful games; games for the young and the old; games with lots of chance and with very little.
In the posts below you'll find forumer picks for games in a number of categories. Check them out and join the discussion!
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Games that last 20 minutes or so, perfect for opening or closing a gaming session, or playing at lunch with friends. They are often (but not always) low on the complexity scale.
Ricochet Robots
Filler
Flip City
Other suggestions from previous threads...
These are often called "gateway games" because they are a frequent entry point into the hobby for people who are used to things like Risk and Monopoly. They are light-to-medium in complexity and often play in 45 to 90 minutes. They can be very interactive or not, but either way tend to avoid "take that" elements that can lead to hurt feelings.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg
Other suggestions from previous threads...
The next step up from "gateway games." This category includes things like thinkier 60-90 minute Eurogames, up to multi-hour epic affairs, with higher rules complexity. Most war games and deep economic games fit into this bucket.
Blood Rage
Nusfjord
Other suggestions from previous threads...
Games that support 6+ players, are quick to teach, and often produce laugh-out-loud moments. Many of these games involve performative elements like drawing or giving clues. Also, games that involve flicking things, or balancing things, or doing something quickly, or that utilize the physical nature of analog games in an interesting way.
Konexi
Codenames
Other suggestions from previous threads...
A comparatively young genre, these games have players working together for a common goal. Included in this group are games that may have a traitor working against the rest, and games you can play solo.
Spirit Island
Aeon's End
Other suggestions from previous threads...
I am a cheater. Minor spoilers for Carcosa.
Hard pass on that shit. I already lost Carcosa on the second to last scenario. I'm not starting over with a zero exp investigator. Part of me thought "Oh well I'll get to experience another investigator that could be cool" but that's so much effort.
Everything else has been good. I've actually enjoyed Minh way more than I thought I would. Mark + BAR is badass.
This is a puzzle game you can play for as many or as few rounds as you want, with people joining in or dropping out after each round! Rounds last about two minutes.
Family: Code names
Quick to teach and played in teams, this is super accessible. The heart of the game is thinking the same way as your friends, so you can communicate the right guesses with your clues. Codenames is easy to learn and very popular among non gamers. It also has stunning plays that make for memorable stories and hook people on the game. Not recommended for harshly competitive siblings
Medium to heavy games: Blood Rage
Play Viking clans competing to be most glorious in the eyes of the gods! Draft seven cards a turn and pillage the Viking lands in the moments before the apocalypse.
Party games: one night ultimate werewolf
Cooperative games: spirit island
This is a heavy game, in that it might take two hours to learn and play. You play nature spirits trying to repel European invaders from your shores, with the help of the native tribesmen. A fun puzzle for experienced gamers if the difficulty is turned up six or so notches. Base difficulty appropriate for people just entering the hobby. Theme and mechanics such that I've gotten rave reviews from new board gamers. I've had aborted attempts to teach, too, if people don't want to play a complicated game.
As a matter of fact, just played it on Saturday. If you're looking for a copy, please please please make sure that you have one with the corrected dice. We did not, but didn't find out until after we had given up in frustration because we couldn't score enough hits to ever kill the Bad Guys. The Kickstarter version of the game shipped with mis-printed Epic dice that didn't contain the intended 3 result, which is crucial for killing Hard mooks. Easily correctable with a Sharpie or the replacement dice, but we didn't know this at the time.
Other than that, it's a standard 'Roll Customized Dice to Accomplish Tasks and Resolve Quests' type game, lots of flavor, rather un-Politically Correct, just like the movie, but not so much that it bothered me. If your group is extremely sensitive to that sort of thing you may want to give BIG TROUBLE a pass. It certainly does a good job of capturing the tone of the film.
Aeon's End:
AE is a co-op game that tasks a group of players with fighting against a single deck-driven Boss Monster. There are a few base boxes, lots of expansions, and tons of overall content. The base mechanic is a co-op deck building experience where you're racing against the Nemesis, trying to save a town. Each Nemesis feels completely unique, the market of cards can be altered / changed / adjusted / randomized, and each player can choose from an assortment of Mages that all have their own unique powers and focal points.
The basic rules are simple and easy to grasp, but mastering the system is a long process, and each Nemesis will likely trounce your group the first time you fight them. If you're looking for a challenging co-operative experience where your wins will feel earned and exciting, and your losses will (mostly) feel fair and like you can do better the next time, AE or AE: War Eternal are great co-ops to pick up.
I got a copy from Barnes and Noble, with various coupons that too it down to like $13
Heh. I need to stop in there more.
I dunno. I feel like my LGS is getting more and more.. consumer unfriendly? Like they are carrying less and less stock (to try and cut down on shelf-warmers), but in the same vein they don't seem to get in new product as often and are requiring more and more pre-ordering.
I already order a ton. I dunno. Maybe I'm just reading things wrong because they didn't have any of the new wave of X-wing in, despite it being a constant high seller. Now, part of this is because one guy locally bought all their loose stuff (on top of his pre-orders), but I was surprised to see they hadn't restocked and didn't have plans to restock.
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/4/1/the-dogwich-legacy/
If this wasn't a joke I would buy this immediately.
Since FFG has Print on Demand capability, they could actually offer this as a product at no risk, aside from the time to set up the print files. They've already done the artwork for a bunch of cards...
My new-player suggestions, with the added restriction this time of no game longer than an hour:
Area control: Ethnos
Light RPG: Arcadia Quest
Dexterity: Sorry Sliders (but the real answer is Crokinole, haha!)
Hidden Role: Bang! The Dice Game
Cooperative: The Grizzled
Card Game: Arboretum
Deck Building: Dominion: Dark Ages (still!)
Programmed Move: How to Rob a Bank
Strategy: Race for the Galaxy (still! and the Xeno Invasion expansion is great.)
Abstract: Azul
Auction: Ra (still!)
My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
My whole group has really enjoyed it, but you have to be in it for a big, messy, sweeping Ameritrash game, and those feel like they're falling out of fashion. Also one of the primary draws is that the main quests you receive in the game are multi-step processes involving a (very flavorful and fun) storybook, and each main quest is tailored to a character controlled by one of the players, but the pacing of the game makes it so that you can realistically only accomplish one or two of them before the climax takes you off to fight Lo Pan. This can disappoint people who really wanted their character to get a little bit of the limelight, but missed out because of luck of the quest draw.
As to the topic of political correctness, one of the main reasons the movie still works really well is because it is a satire of American exceptionalism and of western ideas of the secretive mystic orient. The board game aims to celebrate the world of the movie, but sometimes in doing so it starts to lose the focus that the movie had, and when that happens it can stop feeling so satirical, which makes the world it depicts seem a little more racist, rather than a satire of racism.
Anyway if you're a huge fan of the movie, and aren't turned off by the idea of an ameritrash story and dice game with a fiddly set up, you'll probably really like the game. It's a big silly blast, with a few flaws. I personally hope it sees another expansion for more silliness; I guess there are a number of comics that the game drew inspiration from in addition to the movie, and I don't believe they've fully tapped that resource.
The "Lovecraft loved cats. It is known." joke is uh, a bit rough.
How much of an Ameritrash mess would you say? Compared to Zombicide?
Throw in a ton of flashy production (one character can turn into a supernatural spirit version of herself, and the game comes with a card that is literally just a piece of art to lay over her normal character art, replacing it with an image of her ghost form), a whole lot of stuff governed by dice or card draw (down to stuff like each enemy having different variants that are randomized at the beginning of the game), characters gaining experience and leveling up (each character has their own deck of unique upgrades), shops you can visit to buy stuff, etc etc etc. The game has a lot of moving pieces, and there are a lot of decks and things that need to be set up specifically during set up, which makes that part a chore.
It's actually super intimidating at first, and it's common to hear people hesitate about how it could all come together and function. It does, though! It takes a few rounds but things somehow do gel, and while the game always seems looney, it's mostly the right type of looney. Egg Shen could be spending the entire game in the sewers following his questline, as another player reads to him from the game's storybook, while a couple of people are tracking down errand sidequests in the alleyways, while yet another person is rolling heaps of dice in a protracted shootout with the Wing Kong, pinned down on the other side of Little China. In those times it can feel like everyone is playing completely different games.
It all ends up coming together because Egg is trying to speedrun his quest to give everyone a boost in the endgame, and while the sewers are essentially a totally different sideboard, he can pop up from any manhole to throw in a few attacks when and where he's needed. The folks doing sidequests are trying to watch each other's backs as they both beef up for the finale, and the guy in the shootout is there because he's running interference for them.
Or something like that. Anyway it's really surprising how well the game flows after everyone gets settled. It never feels like a perfectly oiled machine, though. It's always like a one-man-band with drum kits and flags and slide-whistles and kazoos sticking out everywhere. That's part of the fun, but it's also part of why my copy doesn't get played very often anymore.
I tell you there was a time when people wanted to get together every couple of days to try again, though.
Family games: Sheesh if nobody's going to mention SdJ winner The Quacks of Quedlinberg I sure am. Potion seller! They are going into battle and require your strongest potions! Too bad all you've got are a couple cheapos and a bunch of SFX powder. Push your luck to pull your ingredients out of a bag. Every one makes your potion stronger but more than 7 points of SFX powder will send the whole thing fizzing into the drains. Buy better stuff and get more fame! (If your potion is fleeing down the street, pick one.) Stack magical ingredients for weird side effects that you can pick to be more or less complex depending on your gaming group! Envy those lucky ducks with more fame and hunt rats in the night to bulk up your cauldron! (It's a neat catch-up mechanic.) Mystery! Drama! Pumpkin soup!
Midweight: Nusfjord, an Uwe Rosenberg game about developing a fishing company, played over 7 rounds of 3 actions each. Has 3 different resources: fish, which you get as income from the fleet you've built; wood, which you get by doing actions to mess with the forests; and gold, which you get by putting a kick me sign on your back - sell shares in your company, but if someone else buys them, you're fishing a little for them now, or use your fish to feed the town and amass goodwill, but other people can fritter it away and then the elders won't help you. The main point of game variance are decks of building cards, which require a mix of the three resources to build and interact with the base actions in increasingly complex ways. Early-game stuff that shapes your beginning turns (you always catch at least 1 fish for each forest on your island) mid-game stuff that keeps it moving (before you ask an elder to help, you can serve exactly one elder's worth of fish to the town for gold - now if people empty it out they don't stop you and you can get gold for practically nothing) and end-game stuff that rewards a particular strategy (get 1 gold for each share you've bought - yours or someone else's). Plays and scales 2 to 5, and that 5's a big deal if you do meetups a lot.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Oh boy. I have been on this journey friend. Caveat: I have played all of these at max with two players so they'll all probably take longer.
Dragonfire. Not bad. I kind of hate how all your purchases reset from game to game but you get feats and crap that carry over and mechanically I like the game. This is a good game but it is not my "D&D without the DM" game.
Gloomhaven. This game takes too long and the set up is onerous. I also hate how the treasure is not fairly divvied and it's kind of a "hahaha fuck you while you fight that shit I'm gonna get looooooot."
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: I don't like how all your equipment gets shuffled into the deck but at least you get to keep the stuff you find in your deck. A lot of this plays kind of samey. It is pretty fun though and in the time period you're looking for probably.
Arkham Horror LCG. This is the best one I've found by far. I'm not 100% on the theme but it feels like you're doing skill checks and punching dudes and earning experience and adventuring and questing. If you set up the encounter decks beforehand instead of assembling them as you go I think this could be about an hour per game.
Completely different, if you just want the dungeon crawling but no permanence Clank! is a fun game.
Alternatively just get a pile of D6 and play a PBTA game. PBTA is easy and fun. Con: needs DM.
It's better than Terraforming Mars in that it's a touch more interactive with the worker placement-y bits, and it's far more level overall as the game is divided into 3 eras and you'll draw most or all of the cards depending on player count. The general power level of things and how swingy they can be is also far more in check. The obvious tradeoff is that your turns and combos won't be as exciting as TM's can be. Still, working on YOUR OWN board instead of the mostly stupid shared main board, and having cards that aren't randomly useless in the given phase of the game are super big pluses. The only other big warn is that the game's turns just naturally seem to take a while to ensure you properly execute everything on your turn, so it'll run on the longer side for the sort of game this is (our game took 4 hours including reading/teaching rules, but I expect it'd get down to 120-150 minutes after a couple games).
Ironically it has art direction and components that are just as bad as TM, with the added bonus of weird inconsistencies in the text/icon design, so these two very much feel like distant-but-not-so-distant cousins. :P
If Terraforming Mars is your favourite game, you're going to disagree with my assessment. You probably like trying to build the wonkiest engine and see all the cool cards you might play. That's fine, you do you. Underwater Cities is a tighter design with some clever ideas, some stupidly fiddly components (look, another commonality!), and is probably worth a try if you didn't enjoy TM. Hard game to recommend buying right away though. >_>
[Edit] OH! The game also definitely doesn't come with enough components for 4 players - strongly recommend bringing your own cubes to suppliment the game's shallow resource pools. Credits were definitely an issue, and the other things were drained during final production. You could possibly pen + paper everyone's final resources to convert from there in a pinch.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
THE FANTASY TRIP was just re-released via Kickstarter. It may fit all of your needs. Combat is easily resolved, usually in five minutes or less, and there are several dungeon crawls included in the massive, 15-pound box.
That was me! It was definitely New Bedford. It's not as somberly meditative on its subject as something like The Grizzled is towards WWI, so if that's what you're looking for, New Bedford may misfire for you. It is, however, a great worker placement game that also uses its mechanics to tell an interesting historical story. Being able to put players in the feet of folks from back in the day as they mad dash towards what was seen as a bit of a gold rush at the time, and then eventually seeing the sad results, is a good and evocative moment for people who are open to feeling that.
Cave Goblins start with a bonus dwelling and three workers, and can always get up to six! But they're goblins, so they're dirty incompetent cowards; their dwellings are never worth points, when they pick up goods from a space (as in the goods tokens that are present on that space) they lose one of them to the discards, and any weapon they forge comes out two points weaker.
Dark Elves will thank you not to look down at them; so what if they don't mind a bit of hard work? They always get a bonus ruby when they build a ruby mine, but their utilitarian dwellings aren't worth any points. They can also find goblin help when they go adventuring, but hired goblins are dirty incompetent super-cowards, like cave goblins but unwilling to even get onto the board until all other actual players have gone (unless you dangle a ruby in front of them).
Elves love forests and sunlight! They don't even need to clear land. They can plant whatever they want, just outside in the forest. They can make pastures, too! They can even build cave buildings outside, no problem! (The new meadow and field buildings do need a cleared meadow and field first, though.) As for inside... sure! They can dig tunnels inside just fine! "They" meaning of course passing dwarves, at the cost of one ruby per tile you want to put down in the initial excavation. Fortunately, elves start with two gemfruits, which are rubies that plant like vegetables. Even more fortunately, elves don't lose points for having uncleared spaces. Elves are hard mode, for certain values of hard.
Humans are tall drinks of water. They clear land like crazy - they can hang any double tile off the edge of the forest grid for 1 gold and 2 food. But they have to dig tall; when they would put a double tile down underground they only pick one side of it. They don't lose points for an incomplete cave.
Mountain Dwarves dig greedily and deep. They can hang any double tile off the edge of the mountain grid for 2 gold. When they build buildings, they can substitute ore or stone for wood. But when they clear a double tile outside, they can only stand to get half of it done. They don't lose points for an incomplete forest.
Pale Ones just dig, man. They can hang any double tile off the edge of the mountain grid for 1 gold and 1 mushroom, which is like a vegetable that plants in an empty cave. They can go to any of the main digging spaces even if someone else is already there, though they don't get the stone. They also only clear single spaces outside and don't lose points for an incomplete forest.
Silicoids are rocks. So they eat rocks; each Silicoid eats 1 stone instead of 2 food (or 1 stone per 2 when you would eat 1 food). They build at a cost of 1 fewer stone. But they understand this "food" thing is in high demand elsewhere; at every harvest they can get up to 2 gold by paying 3 food each, and then optionally buy a stone for 1 gold. Silicoids are a more different hard mode.
Trolls are big and stupid. Full-grown trolls eat 3 food instead of 2; their only possible weapon is a 4-strength giant club that takes 2 wood, and their weapons can never improve beyond 10. But they adventure for 1 more reward whenever they adventure, and they're not picky eaters; any animal is a minimum of 2 food for them.
You can play as regular dwarves, too, and have a regular game alongside people going crazy. But they recommend selecting a minimum of four variants even if everyone plays regular dwarves, because each one also replaces four buildings with buildings that do the same kind of thing but different in specifics. Some are too strong with the race; cave goblins have an advantage pursuing the Broom Chamber, so they replace it with a different bonus point chamber that gives you bonuses for complete sets of animals (including dogs). Some are too strong against the race; elves could never take the Office, so they replace it with a different rulebreaker chamber that lets you feed vegetables to animals to breed 2 kinds again.
It sounds nuts, but everything has kind of held together across plays so far. One thing to keep in mind if you pick it up yourself is that, in addition to always adventuring vs. never adventuring being a balance that it's never good to be on the popular side of, tons of weaker actions vs. fewer stronger actions is also one of those balances. This is especially true of Dark Elves and their adventure goblins.
Whoops.