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!
Posts
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.
Cockroach Poker
Codenames
Kingdomino
Qwixx
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.
Carcassonne
Century: Spice Road
Gizmos
Istanbul: The Dice Game
Kingdom Builder
Quantum
Ticket to Ride
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.
Caverna: The Cave Farmers
Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar
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.
Once Upon a Time
Pictomania
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.
Journal 29
Spirit Island
Witness
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.
Flick 'Em Up: Dead of Winter
I just don't want to scare people off. I love tzolk'in.
i meant to write up blood rage and inis and risk legacy and seafall and core worlds and arboretum but i've been so busy
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
So I finally got to go to one of the events from the local meetup.com board game group and I really enjoyed it, played some Coup and Werewords before I got stuck in to an Eclipse game for four hours. It was fun but I had no long term strategy and I didn't really know how to build technology efficiently (got completely blasted by a dude who went all in on plasma missiles and targeting computers) and made a few blunders (like accidentally trapping that guys ships in my system by building ships there, instead of building them outside and moving them if he stayed) and eventually points wise I was 4th of 5, but it was a fun game and I think I'd do better next time if I get to play it again. I also would probably play an alien since even though they're more complicated they seemed a bit more fun.
I also got my friends to play some Munchkin and they all really enjoyed it, so once I get my next paycheck I'm thinking of grabbing a couple of expansions for it for next time. I also refound my copy of Say Anything I thought I'd lost forever, so that's nice. Still looking for opportunities to play Tokaido, Alhambra, and Evolution the Beginning since I bought them, forgot to bring them to the big meetup thing, but next one that fits my schedule I'll see if anyone there is familiar and wants to play.
I'm also definitely picking up Betrayal at Baldurs Gate sometime, I loved BHH when I got to play it a few times, and I loved Baldurs Gate, so obviously I'll love this.
They are more "serious" games than MUNCHKIN and ILLUMINATI, from back when Steve Jackson was known as the OGRE and CAR WARS guy. And even these are considered "Light" wargames among us wargamers. I think they are a better fit for him. MELEE was quite good as a light, fast person to person combat game. WIZARD less so because it was all about the summonses, which turned the game into MELEE anyway...
The guy has certainly made other games, but I would still suggest they're pretty much all an acquired taste in their own way. The reverence for OGRE frankly baffles me, and in turn makes all the reverence for Car Wars highly suspect. <_<
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Car Wars is basically Battletech (except that it predates Battletech by several years), but with cars instead of 'Mechs. It's a pretty fun simulation of Car vs. Car combat. The main innovation is the "Turning Key", a game aid that gives you several common angles so you can easily plot out your turns and speed changes. If you like tabletop Battletech, you'd probably like tabletop Car Wars, as the gameplay is nearly identical. We used to play Car Wars with a bunch of Hot Wheels cars for minis.
A couple of wargames later used the same rule for parachute drops.
That is going to be... hard to resist.
I didn't even try. They say that it will ship once the Kickstarter orders are complete. Ironically, the RIVERFOLK expansion is available now ?
I'm looking to run a PbP of Liberty or Death. It's a four-player COIN game. Quite complex (though only medium-weight relative to other COIN) with fully asymmetric factions. It has a fully-functional VASSAL module and all the rules are available online.
@ me if you're interested. I'll want at least three players, but can take four. The game has no hidden information so there's no reason I can't play while running it. :P
I'm not sure if it makes sense to compare them, but I liked it a lot more than Vast.
How much would we need to know about COIN to join? I GMT500'ed Cuba Libre, but I haven't actually played any of them.
Having played a whole one game myself I don't expect experts, but everyone should have at least read the rules and have some vague idea of how it plays in practice.
I dunno, Ogre is a kinda timeless design. It's not some kind of perfect touchstone of game mechanics or anything but it absolutely captures the desperate defence against a seemingly unstoppable force feeling pretty much perfectly. It has the roller-coaster ups and downs of joy and despair, the grim calculations as you sacrifice units, the amazing feeling of role reversal when the Ogre player suddenly feels outgunned and on the run. It is a real good game.
Astra Titanus is a lovely solo play only evolution of Ogre.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Yes. Eclipse has some good ideas but it is a bad game
Edit: a review of the new version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcd0PIvOnNI
@admanb I've played Fire in the Lake a couple times solo. Not great by any means, but I'd play Liberty or Death if you need players.
I found the rules and player's aid. I'm down to play.
The strategy is just so cut & dry deterministic. It feels like you're just consulting a Blackjack index card telling you when to hit/stay/split. "Is there X number of GEVs behind you compared to X number of other units in front of you with no howitzers in range? If so, backtrack to take out GEVs." The only thing the defender will ever target is the OGRE's main turrets, then treads. At that point you're just playing out the die rolls to determine the winner.
(I also never understood why anyone would still bother with Cosmic Encounter after the 00s board game renaissance.)
Supposedly a focus with the 2nd edition is to even out the exploration tiles.
We were playing with the Rogue expansion. One player is a puny human rogue who... is really better than dragons in every way possible. They have an equal chance of winning battles with a dragon, when they "claim" a city they get tribute from that city until the city is destroyed, even if a dragon claims it too. They have no cave to steal from, so if they get out ahead you just lost the game. They can move faster than a dragon, teleporting around the map. They have what the ability to "burn down" a city like a dragon, but they don't destroy the city, so they can just keep doing that one move.
I guess if we knew that the Rogue was so powerful we could have made an effort to try and catch and kill him every turn but it wasn't very fun and it seemed really un-thematic. No one plays a dragon so they can fantasize about being a powerful thief.
Also the game seems startlingly similar to a competitive version of that Trogdor game.