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Fun Stuff => ENJOY => Topic started by: ackblom12 on 15 Apr 2013, 14:04

Title: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 15 Apr 2013, 14:04
Alright, there's got to be other people around here who love board games to an unnatural degree. A good board game night is probably the best kind of kind of social events I can possibly imagine. Each session creates it's own stories and rivalries which can last over multiple games. There's a hell of a lot of variety and there are a lot of examples of cross pollination with video game design, especially if you go into some of the better, older board games.

Stories like this one are some of my favorites. (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/15/cardboard-children-the-fairgrounds/)

If you are familiar with this side of the gaming hobby, you may have noticed a trend in the last few years, which is that board game design has been improving at an absolutely ridiculous pace in the last 10 years. This video goes into the why of this, focusing a lot on Western and European board game design finally creating a wonderful hybrid of game design.

Why We're in a Goden Age of Board Gaming (http://vimeo.com/52293009)

The speaker, Quinn, also has a video review series for board games called Shut Up & Sit Down, which is massively entertaining. (http://vimeo.com/shutupshow)

I doubt there is anywhere near enough people who read this section of the board to make individual threads for games, but I'd be really happy to use this thread to actually talk Board Games. It's something I don't get to do often enough. I also don't get to play them very often either mind you, what with the whole requirement of having local friends, but yammering on about it is almost as good.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: cesium133 on 15 Apr 2013, 14:12
I'd like to get to play more board games, but I don't know many people around here who are interested. Back in college, we played a lot of Settlers of Catan, Axis and Allies, and Risk. We also had a copy of Scrabble, but it was forbidden after the Proper Noun War of 2005...
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Masterpiece on 15 Apr 2013, 14:14
Oh I thought you meant board games a la Settlers of Catan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_of_Catan).
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 15 Apr 2013, 14:18
Settlers is included in what I'm talking about! It's likely one of the bigger reasons why Euro style board games made it across the pond to the US in the first place.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Masterpiece on 15 Apr 2013, 14:20
I love Settlers yet none of my friends do, because, they claim, "you're a cheater".
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 15 Apr 2013, 14:26
Settlers is great fun, though after so many times playing it over the years I need to space out my nights playing with it.

Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: snalin on 15 Apr 2013, 14:55
While I have played far too few board games, there are some definite favourites that stand out amongst the ones I have tried.

A Game of Thrones is absolutely fabulous, with an order and resource management system that takes something that looks like Risk* and turns it into an actually engaging game.

Arkham Horrors is played cooperatively against the board, and is pretty damn difficult. You have to cooperate and think to respond to random events, and winning feels really great - especially as you win together. Winning is not a given, though. In my experience (and depending on expansion packs), I think we've won about half the games we played.

I just played Discworld: Ankh-Morpork. While I haven't really played it that much, what I played was stupidly fun. It's main, interesting feature is varied victory conditions - what you do to win is up to a card draw at the start of the game, and the conditions are very different. You also do not know what the other players needs to do to win. Really fun.

It is really a card game, but I think that if you are into board games, chances are you are into Dominion. It is much faster than any other of the games, but it is that kind of easy to learn, hard to master thing that makes it really compelling to play more.

If anyone is interested in discussing the pros and cons of any of these, please pick up the thread.


* Risk is so bad! Why is it popular? It is SO BAD! It takes for fucking ever, is super duper boring, and is won by dice toss alone. Fuck Risk.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 15 Apr 2013, 15:25
Oh yeah, card games are absolutely up for this. They've progressed into a sub genre of board games as far as I'm concerned.

I don't think Risk is a terrible game necessarily, or at least not for someone who isn't really into board games. It does teach a lot of skills necessary for much much better strategy games though, like risk management in the face of an RNG and how you should never have a land war in Russia. There are also a lot of really really great reskins of Risk that improve on the base game by adding a hell of a lot more tactical options on top of the dice rolling, like Risk 2210AD and Risk Godstorm which are genuinely good games. I've heard Risk Legacy is great, but I have little to no interest in checking it out. I mean, there's not a whole lot of reason to ever break out the base game since so many better games, that are just as accessible, have been made in the genre.

At least it's not Monopoly. :P

I've heard a hell of a lot of good about Game of Thrones and I'm hoping to join in on the backstabbing sometime.

Dominion is a weird one for me. I like it, but it's not a game I ever volunteer for play. I like my games to have a lot more interaction with other players, whether that's through co-op, backstabbing or trade, and Dominion is essentially MP Solitaire. I can absolutely understand the love for it, but it's kind of a middle of the road game for me.

I love the shit out of Arkham Horror, but dear lord is it a fickle fickle game. Which is pretty fitting for a Lovecraft game. My favorite expansion is probably The Dunwich Horror. Adds just enough to not be overwhelming, and is just as fucking lethal and horrifying as the base game. So very many ways to die.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: cesium133 on 15 Apr 2013, 15:41
As ackblom12 mentioned, there are several variants of Risk that have rules that add more strategy to the game. Personally I think Castle Risk is underrated (though I'm not sure if they even sell it anymore; of what I understand it never really sold well). As for when we played Risk, we usually played it with a bunch of house rules to make the game a bit less boring. One was a 12-army per tile limit, which disrupts the pattern that the game tends to fall into where two players just keep conquering each other's territory over and over without finishing the job.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: snalin on 15 Apr 2013, 15:41
Ack, about the dunwich horror, is that the one where you can sell your soul? I can't really remember which expansion is which.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: snalin on 15 Apr 2013, 15:55
Why We're in a Goden Age of Board Gaming (http://vimeo.com/52293009)

It is really, really weird to hear someone refer to stuff "coming to the west" when he's talking about importing things from Germany to the US. When did "the west" stop involving western Europe? Great talk, though.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 15 Apr 2013, 16:07
I'm actually not sure. He may have adopted it to avoid using the term Ameritrash, which refers to the more thematic style that American board gaming is famous for. It's a common term, but a lot of folks are not real fond of it for obvious reasons.

I don't think Dunwich had a soul selling mechanic, but it it's one of the expansions that has a small board expansion and transit between the two towns.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: GarandMarine on 15 Apr 2013, 16:37
I only have on copy of a "board game" right now, one of the greatest iterations of the greatest card games known to man. Star Munchkin.

I really need to grab a copy of Cards Against Humanity though. With my friends games of that would be fething amazing.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 15 Apr 2013, 16:48
Cards Against Humanity manages to be both the best and worst card game known to man. With the wrong group it ends up being nothing but a string of rape jokes and a load of Big Black Dick jokes. With the right group you end up with a haiku about babies and land mines.

I'm still pretty proud of that one.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: mtmerrick on 15 Apr 2013, 16:57
At least it's not Monopoly. :P

But, but, I LOVE monopoly :(
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 15 Apr 2013, 17:05
That's fine, lots of people do and there's nothing wrong with liking it, but it's a terribly designed game. Which to be fair to it, may have been the point.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: GarandMarine on 15 Apr 2013, 17:09
I would greatly like to hear this haiku about infants and land mines, That's my sense of humor summed up in a sentence.

Monopoly is another game that requires the right group. Cause it's basically required by the game that you be a complete ass.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 15 Apr 2013, 17:16
I don't remember it entirely unfortunately, I was rather drunk at the time. And to be frank, all of my favorite board games involve the opportunity for at least one person to be a massive dick.

Battlestar Galactica (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-galactica) for example, is a fantastic game to ruin friendships.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: snalin on 16 Apr 2013, 01:32
What's so problematic about monopoly is that in the vast majority of turns, you do not have a choice of what to do. It's roll, land somewhere, buy it if you can, pay if you must, move on. Since there is no decisions to be made, there is not really that much to talk about while playing, there's few deals, etc. The auction mechanic can make the game a bit more interesting, as it's something all the players are engaged in, and it presents real choice. I think it should be a core feature, not something that happens only when a player loses or passes a buy.

Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 18 Apr 2013, 07:25
Ackblom, I've been wanting to create this thread for like a month, but have either been too lazy or too busy to bother, so thank you for encouraging my procrastination! No seriously... thanks. I love talking about this stuff.

Some thoughts on things mentioned...

Settlers of Catan: One of my least proud gaming memories is of my high school research class where there'd be days it pretty much turned into a free period for one reason or another. A small group of guys were playing Settlers and all I could think was "I'm not a hardcore enough nerd to play whatever the hell that is." Because of this I didn't jump on the Euro board game wagon until Dominion. Though I did like board games prior to then... just Clue, Scrabble, et al. And only when I could actually get others to play with me...

I did get Settlers eventually, as a Christmas present from my SO. Fun game that I need to play more (I say this about 90% of my games), but probably won't ever fit my top 5 (then again, not sure what would).

Discworld: Thank you snalin for reminding me this exists. I need to read more of the series
Dominion: I have no issues with the MP solitaire aspect since it's fun just trying to get your deck into a victory-point making engine, though I totally understand how it may drive others away a little. I think the expansions help remedy that by offering a greater variety of attack cards, Intrigue in particular. Masquerade + anything that produces curses has always been a favorite combination.

Monopoly:

The auction mechanic can make the game a bit more interesting, as it's something all the players are engaged in, and it presents real choice. I think it should be a core feature, not something that happens only when a player loses or passes a buy.

The funny thing is... I hear the auctioning is one of the most commonly forgotten rules. Also what you're suggesting would probably bring Monopoly closer to being Powergrid... which certainly sounds like an improvement.

I'll have to share my thoughts on CAH and Battlestar Galactica later. Two games I also really enjoy, though for certainly different reasons.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Thrillho on 18 Apr 2013, 13:43
I love board games but my sister and her husband are so damn good at it that I frequently wonder why I bother playing against them. My dad is so bad at it that we once advised him on every turn and he ended up winning. It was hilarious.

I fucking love Risk. My dad and I were showing my best friend how to play it, we said to teach him the rules we'd do 3 rounds and then start over.

I won in 3 rounds.

My buddies went through a major monopoly phase at uni. We played it several times a week for a few months. It was wonderful.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 18 Apr 2013, 14:18
The only Risk I ever played was some... poorly made Game Boy (Color? Advance?) game that I don't think did it right. Most people tell me don't bother with actual, regular Risk... they're people whose opinions I trust, but at the same time I feel like it's something I should try for myself so I have my own take on it.

I do want to get a copy of Risk Legacy (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/105134/risk-legacy) and get some friends to play weekly since it sounds like a fun little journey. Though the thought of tearing up some of the components or writing on the board is enough to make me want to curl into a ball and cry. I guess I could toughen up if it's an actual game requirement though....
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Akima on 18 Apr 2013, 16:06
I play weiqi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weiqi) (AKA Go, Igo, Baduk). I have played a few other board games, but none has exerted any long-term attraction. The game's history, simplicity, enormous depth, and sheer spare elegance draw me back to the board again and again.

I don't understand the appeal of Monopoly at all; I find it very very boring. Probably you need the right group.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: snalin on 18 Apr 2013, 17:11
I've played some rounds of Hnefatafl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafl_games), the old, nordic board game. It's pretty cool - it's asymmetric, and kinda balanced towards one of the players, so you have to figure out a way to work around that (usually by counting number of rounds to win).
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: pwhodges on 19 Apr 2013, 00:20
I've barely played any board games since my mid-teens, when I played Halma for a time.  Since then I've just played Monopoly a couple of times, which just seemed to be a generator for bad feelings, and Campaign, which did the same.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Thrillho on 19 Apr 2013, 09:37
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: LTK on 19 Apr 2013, 10:06
I recently went on a study trip* where we played a lot of board games at the lodge, although very few of them were of the 'hardcore nerd' variety. I brought my own fancy Mah Jong set, and a girl who plays it with her family a lot taught me how to play. We also played Magical Labyrinth board game - I have no idea what it's called in English - a game about moles, and Saboteur.

I'd still like to get involved in the kind of boardgames Rab Florence talks about, but even if I owned them I think I'd have trouble finding people to play it with.

*It was more of a long weekend holiday organised by the student committee, no actual studying was done
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 19 Apr 2013, 11:51
The big thing about getting people to play some of the various types of board games is to ease them into it. Settlers of Catan has been a great gateway game for almost 20 years now and some folks think Carcassone is better for a gateway. I disagree simply because Carcassone has an incredibly irritating amount of scoring at the end of the game, but it's a bit less competitive so they may have a point. You can't get 'Wood for Sheep' though, so Settlers wins by default. But either way, they are both good introductions due to how they introduce a small number of mechanics in a fairly simple manner. Settlers by introducing city building, trade and expansion, while Carcassone introduces the Worker Placement genre quite well.

Once you've introduced someone to one or two accessible games, you can start expanding from there.

Edit:
I play weiqi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weiqi) (AKA Go, Igo, Baduk). I have played a few other board games, but none has exerted any long-term attraction. The game's history, simplicity, enormous depth, and sheer spare elegance draw me back to the board again and again.

It's been around for as long as it has for very good reason.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: GarandMarine on 19 Apr 2013, 23:47
Go kills me, it is a brutal game intellectually speaking, and requires a fair amount of study and effort just to be mediocre from what I understand... kinda reminds me of golf, but actually enjoyable.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Pilchard123 on 20 Apr 2013, 01:58
Nor does Go require that you wear ridiculous clothing.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: GarandMarine on 20 Apr 2013, 02:10
Yes that is true, not dressing like a clown who belongs to a country club is a significant bonus. Speaking of country clubs golf also costs a whole HELL of a lot less then golf. I worked as a security officer at a country club last year, good fucking GODDESS, it cost something along the lines of my yearly INCOME to be a member...
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 20 Apr 2013, 04:44
Go kills me, it is a brutal game intellectually speaking, and requires a fair amount of study and effort just to be mediocre from what I understand... kinda reminds me of golf, but actually enjoyable.

That's what kills Go for me. I currently don't have the patience for that sort of thing, so I've only got like half a game under my belt. But I definitely want to learn it to at least a mediocre level. I mean, it has a freakin' anime all about it! It has to be good! Perhaps there's some sort of online version against an AI that I can pick up and put down as needed until I have the patience to play real people....
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Pilchard123 on 20 Apr 2013, 07:34
I remember Akima saying there was some around, but I can't remember where she said it.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Akima on 20 Apr 2013, 07:44
Golf is ridiculous in every way, but you can spend silly money if you insist on the finest quality Japanese Go equipment. A flawless matsume kaya-wood floor goban (http://www.kiseido.com/go_ban01.jpg) will cost anything up to $60,000, the finest slate (black) and shell (white) stones up to $2,000, and Mikura mulberry bowls to hold the stones about $2,000. Why so expensive? Strong demand, and limited scope to increase supply. Kaya trees take 600+ years to grow, and are now rare and tightly regulated owing to over-cutting in the past. Even once you have the wood, it has to be seasoned for years before use. The Japanese clams from whose shells the white stones are cut, are close to fished-out, and the clams of Baja Mexico, which are imported as a substitute, are heading in the same direction. Cutting and polishing the stones is a slow, labour-intensive process, and only about 10% of the total production of shell stones are of the highest "snow" quality. Mikura island, from which the finest mulberry wood for bowls is considered to come, was badly affected by a nearby volcanic eruption, and the wood is now very hard to come by.

We Chinese are more pragmatic. We tend to play on much thinner table boards (http://www.kurokigoishi.co.jp/english/products/images/p01.jpg), often made of woods that the Japanese regard as very down-market. Our finest stones, the famous Yunzi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yunzi) (云子 pronounced roughly ooin-tzuh; never ever yun-zee), are manufactured, using a process somewhat like glass-making, by casting molten material on an iron plate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPdk6PbFbZk) (this is why Chinese stones are traditionally flat on the underside rather than bi-convex like the meticulously ground and polished Japanese ones). Traditionally we store our stones in small straw baskets (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/China_go2.JPG) instead of beautiful wooden bowls. As China gets richer, however, fancier equipment is becoming more popular.

You can buy Go equipment of many different quality levels, and you can get something nice for not much money. Just stay away from the nasty, much-too-small folding boards they sell in a lot of high-street and shopping-mall game shops, and don't expect spending more to make you a stronger player. Only hard work can do that. If you want to spend money, spend it on books...

Perhaps there's some sort of online version against an AI that I can pick up and put down as needed until I have the patience to play real people....

There are several well-established "environments" of clients and servers where you can play Go. English-speakers tend to favour KGS (http://www.gokgs.com/) which is a "closed" proprietary set-up, but it is free, and easy to install and get on-line. IGS/Pandanet (http://www.pandanet-igs.com/communities/pandanet) is another system, which is "open" in the sense that you can obtain many different clients that conform to the IGS protocols, and many Go-playing programs incorporate a built-in client. IGS is a little less friendly to people who only read and write English. Finally there is Tygem (http://www.tygem.com), which I don't really recommend unless you are competent in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. If you prefer to play in a slower-paced "correspondence Go by e-mail" style, there is Dragon Go Server (http://www.dragongoserver.net), which has a web interface.

All these servers offer AI "bots" for you to play against. Computer opponents can provide good practice for beginners, but don't rely on them entirely, because they will teach you bad habits. You can find yourself winning by "gaming" the AI's quirks rather than developing real strength. Many Go servers have "Beginner's rooms" where you can find fellow noobs, and, I will admit, the occasional sandbagging douche-bag who gets off on beating up weaker players. Sadly, the internet is always the internet.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: pwhodges on 20 Apr 2013, 13:22
As all the mentioned games have been strategy types, I guess I forgot to think of Scrabble - which I do play from time to time without getting riled up the way the other games make me.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: snalin on 21 Apr 2013, 06:04
Many Go servers have "Beginner's rooms" where you can find fellow noobs, and, I will admit, the occasional sandbagging douche-bag who gets off on beating up weaker players. Sadly, the internet is always the internet.

Now I'm imagining somebody doing the same kind of smack talk in a goo game as you get out of online shooters and such:

"Fuck you, you fucking faggot noob, if you place that stone I'm going to kill you, you fuck"


I'm apparently playing another Magic: the Gathering draft. I think I said something about the game somewhere, but since this is a relevant thread, I'll repeat it. My feelings are that the draft format* is very volatile - if somebody is lucky enough to get some really good cards, they might simply win on that basis alone. The constructed format seems like somebody who just spends a bunch of money on online auctions will have cards that are simply better than yours. To the ones of you that have played a bunch of MtG, is these observations true? Is there anything you can do to make the game not strongly balanced towards luck and money without sacrificing all of the interesting cards available?

*in a draft, you open fresh packs of cards and pass them around, picking one card at a time. In a constructed format, you bring a deck you made beforehand. There's a ton of limitations available for the second format.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 21 Apr 2013, 06:38
I imagined the same thing, snalin! XD

Thank you, Akima for the information! I'll definitely be bookmarking this for later use. I mostly would want to start with bots simply to make sure I have a pretty solid grasp on the rules and then work on the actual strategy with other players. Bots can definitely teach you some bad habits without you noticing.  Fighting games have taught me that the hard way, so I don't trust them too much for actual complete training in anything else.  :roll:

Also, I'm frustrated at the fact that the Alhambra Big Box edition is out of print since I want to get it for my fellow board game hobbyist for his birthday. A source at the publisher says it should be out by the end of the month, but the fact that I still don't see it out there makes me worried they're a liar...
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Pilchard123 on 21 Apr 2013, 06:46
I discovered these sites earlier today.

http://www.playcatan.com/
http://en.boardgamearena.com/
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: GarandMarine on 21 Apr 2013, 09:55
GaWF so far the only issue I've found to deal with power gamers in any situation is to just not play games with douche bags.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 21 Apr 2013, 10:34
I'm apparently playing another Magic: the Gathering draft. I think I said something about the game somewhere, but since this is a relevant thread, I'll repeat it. My feelings are that the draft format* is very volatile - if somebody is lucky enough to get some really good cards, they might simply win on that basis alone. The constructed format seems like somebody who just spends a bunch of money on online auctions will have cards that are simply better than yours. To the ones of you that have played a bunch of MtG, is these observations true? Is there anything you can do to make the game not strongly balanced towards luck and money without sacrificing all of the interesting cards available?

*in a draft, you open fresh packs of cards and pass them around, picking one card at a time. In a constructed format, you bring a deck you made beforehand. There's a ton of limitations available for the second format.

Drafts are a format I love largely because it's actually incredibly difficult for anyone to get any kind of impressive deck. About the only way someone can get something great is if their first pack has something they want to build around and most of their following draws are even playable with it. It is rather volatile, but it's volatile in a way that does more to reward someone who knows how to make something cohesive out of a total mess than someone who gets lucky on a pack draw.

On the other hand, my absolute favorite way to play is with a group doing Limited Construction. Everyone is only allowed to purchase the same number of packs from the same sets and you are allowed to trade within the group. It allows for rivalries and there to be a couple of decks that everyone is trying to stop which keeps the decks fluid and fresg. It's also a much more controlled environment for anyone who is not doing the best financially since things can be toned back if anyone is having problems keeping up.

You are absolutely correct that MtG in any kind of tournament environment largely depends on money spent though. It's part of why I love the Duels of the Planeswalkers games so much. Fairly balanced decks in a rather limited environment makes for a much more interesting (and cheaper) option than one in which netdecking has taken over.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 21 Apr 2013, 12:34
Also, I'd like to share a couple of reviews from Shut Up & Sit Down.

Galaxy Trucker - This is one of my favorite reviews of theirs. It's a game I've been wanting to try out for a long while anyways, and their review makes it look just as much fun as I've heard.


Archipelago - This is a game I've been eyeing as well, but the reason I enjoy this review so much is it's a good example of why I like these guys so much. It's a game of European colonization that they enjoy while fully acknowledging the problems with the game's themes, especially the way in which these kinds of games regularly wash over the rather horrible reality of it all.

http://vimeo.com/64343798
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ChaoSera on 21 Apr 2013, 14:12
Ah, Board Games.
I always liked board games and last year we set up a weekly board game day with some friends. So now I get to play some really awesome board games every sunday and we are always having a great time.
Games I can really recommend are Descent, Mage Knight, Akrham Horror, Game of Thrones and of course Munchkin, which is probably the most hilarious game ever designed.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Akima on 21 Apr 2013, 17:10
Now I'm imagining somebody doing the same kind of smack talk in a go game as you get out of online shooters and such:
You think you're kidding, don't you?
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 28 Apr 2013, 04:55
I accidentally ran into some friends while having lunch and found out one of them was moving away this Tuesday.  :-( They invited me and the bf to join their group for the day. We played Cuthroat Caverns (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28259/cutthroat-caverns), Smash Up (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/122522/smash-up), and Cosmic Encounter (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39463/cosmic-encounter).

The first was fairly entertaining and I like the idea of the theme. One round it would feel like we were cooperating, until the next when our characters were busy shoving each other out of the way to get the final blow.

Smash Up was pretty awesome. The different factions played differently and their playstyle definitely felt right according to the game. It was the Ninja Zombies, Alien Wizards, Robot Pirates, and Trickster Dinosaurs fighting it out. May have to pick it up for myself along with the expansion one day...

As for Cosmic Encounters, I'm not a fan, but I knew that from the one other time I played. I had more fun with it this time, so maybe with more play it would grow on me, but I feel like it's not my cup of tea overall.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Welu on 28 Apr 2013, 08:32
My family refuses to play Scrabble with my brother or me because we always win. When my brother and I play the scores were 250ish. Not Scrabble expert level but enough to piss most people off.
Haven't played in a year though so would suck now though.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Thrillho on 28 Apr 2013, 09:38
We seem pretty even when it comes to Words With Friends...
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: de_la_Nae on 28 Apr 2013, 15:54
GODDAMNIT I had a whole writeup about a few different games and I accidentally lost it.

Ugh. I'll come back later.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: CardinalFang on 28 Apr 2013, 16:44
Boardgames?
*Pulls up rocking chair*
It was back in '75 when I picked up a little game called Panzer Blitz (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2238/panzerblitz). Perhaps not the best game for a beginner but there weren't any "Eurogames" back then. Which is just as well since I've always been a military history buff and many eurogames aren't very interesting to me. I followed Panzer Blitz up with many more Avalon Hill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon_Hill) (Pre-Hasbro) games. Sadly many of those were lost when I found out too late that a storage unit had a leak.

I was out of gaming for a decade or so and around about when I turned 30 I got back into it. I started pulling out my old games and buying new. Fantasy Flight Games (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/) has a whole lot of my money. So does Flying Frog Games (http://www.flyingfrog.net/). If you're not sick of zombies yet and are looking for a game about them it's really hard to do better than their Last Night on Earth (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29368/last-night-on-earth-the-zombie-game). I'm scratching my wargame itch with GMT Games (http://www.gmtgames.com/). I have to give special mention to Hexasim (http://www.hexasim.com/) and their Liberty Roads (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39188/liberty-roads) which is the best game about the Allied invasion of France that I've ever played.

Okay, I MAY have gotten a tad link happy but I do love me some boardgames and I've been playing them for ages. One day I hope to be able to win a few games.
Amongst my many regrets is that Ackblom and I didn't get a chance to meet up at the World Board Game championships when it was equidistant between us. 
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 29 Apr 2013, 07:52
If you're not sick of zombies yet and are looking for a game about them it's really hard to do better than their Last Night on Earth (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29368/last-night-on-earth-the-zombie-game).

Seriously, this.

LNoE takes the B zombie movie genre and turns it into board game form. It's beautiful and is a great example of why Flying Frog Productions is one of my favorite gaming companies. I have to cut myself off here about it because I'm at work, but expect my next post to elaborate a little bit on it and Fortune and Glory (basically you're a hero in an Indiana Jones-esque movie).   
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Boiled Dove on 01 May 2013, 09:33
I got into a game of Empires in Arms once, that was a serious time commitment. The people that hosted it had a room closed of and dedicated to the game so we did not have to try to take down and set up the board.

Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: CardinalFang on 02 May 2013, 17:44
I have never played a complete game of Empires in Arms. I have a friend who has played it multiple times and yes it was generally set up in a spare room or garage. I think more than one game was ended early on account of cat.

Regarding Last Night on Earth, I'm glad there's at least on other person here who appreciates the game as much as I do. I had a chance to go to GenCon last year and I spent a lot of time at the Flying Frog booth playing demos of various games. They have the people who are characters in the game there either running demos are just walking around chatting about the games or what not. They all seem very very nice. During a lull a couple of the actors sat down to play Fortune and Glory. They could've been doing it just to try to interest passersby but I like to think it's because they like to play.

(http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t85/FangHamhands/DSC00226_zpsb6773825.jpg) (http://s158.photobucket.com/user/FangHamhands/media/DSC00226_zpsb6773825.jpg.html)
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 04 May 2013, 21:08
This is an absolutely amazing and hilarious review of Chess.

Chess: An Interesting Concept Ruined by too Many Design Flaws (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/442795/chess-an-interesting-concept-ruined-by-too-many-de)
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: GarandMarine on 05 May 2013, 03:12
That chess review had me rolling on the floor.

I want to take a second to shill for a game I backed on KS that's coming out next month. Serpent's Tongue which is a CCG RPG with active spell casting and a fully functional conlang.

Here's a couple rounds of a PVE encounter of the game with an "AI" opponent.

This game's brilliant, I love the way it's battling works taking out the "monsters" from a traditional TCG, instead making you, the player, an active participant in a magic duel. They're also working on an RPG supplement for the game where the card combat will take the place of the traditional dice rolling.

Here's a couple rounds of early Alpha PVP, the game's changed a lot since a year ago.

Game play aside I'm a big fan of the world that the Sons of Gabriel (the primary team on the game is five brothers) have painted around this game, lots of secret cults, traditions of magic and fantasy hiding just behind the curtain of the normal world, lots of mysticism, intrigue, monsters, black mages. It's really enjoyable and intriguing. The website has more information www.becomemagi.com

edit: here's the original KS vid, again, things have changed a lot, the card size, thickness, art style, the language, some of the rules have all changed. This does have a decent backing to the lore though.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Pilchard123 on 05 May 2013, 03:53
If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 09 May 2013, 07:16
So I finally took the plunge into the world of HeroClix... cause you know, the money I'm saving by not buying Magic cards anymore has to be pumped into something just as useless.

Anyone else here play or know anyone that plays? I'd be interested in advice on how to get a decent starting collection going. It'll be mostly me and the boyfriend playing each other with different forces and occasionally getting other friends involved, but it'll probably be from just my pool of figures. Unless I manage to convert other people. :)
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 13 May 2013, 13:39
Here's a history lesson about the most complicated board game in existence!

The Campaign for North Africa (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-north-africa)

A war game released in 1979 with 1,800 counters, maps large enough to cover multiple tables, a 3 volume rule book, best played with 10 players (5 per team) and averaging about 1,200 hours per campaign. One of the common examples used to explain how detailed it is the fact that the game's Italian troops require extra water resources so that they can make pasta. It's been called 'The Unplayable Monster' and rivals many PC war games in complexity. It's a game I'd love to own for collection sake. I'd never even pretend like I was going to play it, but oh how I'd love to own it.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ChaoSera on 14 May 2013, 02:30
This Sunday me and some friends tried out D&D for the first time. Nobody of us had any experience with it so I volunteered to DM. After spending literally hours helping the others creating their first characters we were finally ready to start.
It was AWESOME! DMing is hard but pretty cool. At one point the players used a light spell on the fighter's armor to try and scare away a few dire rats. Great fun all in all and we're going to continue soon.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: CardinalFang on 14 May 2013, 19:17
Here's a history lesson about the most complicated board game in existence!

The Campaign for North Africa (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-north-africa)

A war game released in 1979 with 1,800 counters, maps large enough to cover multiple tables, a 3 volume rule book, best played with 10 players (5 per team) and averaging about 1,200 hours per campaign. One of the common examples used to explain how detailed it is the fact that the game's Italian troops require extra water resources so that they can make pasta. It's been called 'The Unplayable Monster' and rivals many PC war games in complexity. It's a game I'd love to own for collection sake. I'd never even pretend like I was going to play it, but oh how I'd love to own it.

Yes, the Campaign for North Africa is a legend among wargamers. I've never even seen a copy but I've heard some of the stories, like the rules for supply go as far as requiring Italian units to use more water because they have to cook their pasta. Also the campaign game was never fully playtested because the playtesters never managed to finish an entire game.

I do own one game that is considered a 'monster' game (not to be confused with a game with or about monsters. I have several of them.) and that is The Longest Day (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5651/the-longest-day). Over 1500 counters and a playing time listed as 5400 minutes (that might just be for set up though). Here's a decent picture of the board (http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic264876.jpg). I've played part of a game of this but never a complete game. I have a friend who has played it several times and is willing to play it again. It's a matter of finding a place we can leave it up for a few months while we play.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 22 May 2013, 16:34
So I finally used my Amazon credit and got ahold of Galaxy Trucker. We love it even at 2 player, though it's nowhere near as frantic as I imagine 3 - 4 players would be, and I'm going to be opening the expansion and seeing what it adds to the game tonight. You should definitely check it out Eric.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 23 May 2013, 07:28
Space Alert (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38453/space-alert) (which is also designed by Vlaada Chvatil (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/789/vlaada-chvatil)) is pretty much the most frantic game I've played. Dealing with enemy ships, obstacles, infiltrators, and malfunctions with a time limit? And you have to communicate with everyone else to actually make sure everything is getting taken care of and you're not just stumbling over each other? Yikes. Every game's hijinx leads to us shaking our heads and laughing. And sometimes we actually come out (barely) alive.

I thought the building phases in Galaxy Trucker would be a little more like that ("OH GOD I NEED ANOTHER SHIELD WHERE IS IT?!"), but not so much. It still has that nice "let's see just how big of a clusterfuck this turns out to be" factor though, along with that sense of achievement when you get through alive on a particularly rough course with a decent amount of cargo, so it's still a lot of fun to me.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 23 May 2013, 10:03
After messing about with The Big Expansion, this changes the game in a whooooooole lot of fun ways. There are now ways for players to interact during the game, sabotage other players, fire at them, pick on people with targeted meteor swarms, explosive cargo and so much other stuff. The new ship parts are great and add an extra layer of ship building with some rather powerful parts that require other parts to interact with, such as a furnace that can use cargo as fuel to charge an attached battery, and what is likely just a lot more chances for you to be happy you got to the end of your trip with a ship at all.

Also, the rules for the alternate ships are just marvelous.

We haven't played with this much mind you, but it looks like a wonderful thing to get peole into playing the base game and then brutalize everyone with mayhem by introducing the expansion.

Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 24 May 2013, 09:36
So what I hear you saying is that the expansion turns Galaxy Trucker into Space Mario Kart: The Board Game... and I'm totally down for that.  :-D
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: lepetitfromage on 28 May 2013, 08:13
As all the mentioned games have been strategy types, I guess I forgot to think of Scrabble - which I do play from time to time without getting riled up the way the other games make me.


......I don't know about you but Scrabble gets me VERY riled up. Nick refuses to play with me after we played a game that ended 400-something to 200-something.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 29 May 2013, 10:06
After messing about with The Big Expansion, this changes the game in a whooooooole lot of fun ways.

I got the opportunity last weekend to play with a few of the elements that are in the second expansion. It adds more tiles (of course). More cards: invaders (didn't get to use them), harder/more rewarding versions of previous cards -- even open space is more dangerous, and some fun ones that add cards to the deck ("Oh, you're in round 2? Well have a couple round 3 cards anyway!"). It also adds "specialists" to your crew. They come with fun little abilities that help you in building or getting more credits. The new ships include a tubular ship (as in you have to imagine the ship wraps around into a cylinder shape), an amorphous ship (30 of the spaces are labeled 1-6... you roll two dice... the spaces corresponding to the numbers rolled CANNOT be used), and on the backs of those are halves of ships that can be combined to form a sort of "randomized" ship.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 07 Jun 2013, 08:21
I think you were playing with The Other Big Expansion, since The Big Expansion does not include alien invasions.

Shut Up & Sit Down reviews the Anniversary Edition of Galaxy Trucker using all of the expansion components. With only two players, the ship building is nowhere near as frantic as it could be, but nothing beats watching people's shoddily built space death traps fall apart.

https://vimeo.com/67845608
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: GarandMarine on 10 Jul 2013, 16:32
The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen is by far the best and most sophisticated game ever.
Unplayable game, but amazing read:

"A Game of Wagers, Wine, and Competitive Lying

Players, preferably gentlemen from good families, challenge one another to recount, as outlandishly as possible, their many exploits, occasionally wagering against the narrator's ability to incorporate complicating circumstances into the tale.The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen contains a full set of rules, background, a revolutionary system of mechanics that does away with dice or cards and uses money and fine wine instead, two combat systems ('duelling' and 'duelling for cowards'), quick-start rules and a great many insults against the inhabitants of various nations, but principally the French. This game can be learned in under five minutes, requires no GM or preparation, and takes about an hour to play. You will require pencil, paper, imagination, a manservant, money, a selection of fine wines, noble blood, a sense of flamboyance, and at least one attractive member of the opposite sex (optional)."

Seriously, it's awesome:

"Make sure that each player has a purse of coins before them equal to the total number of players... If your company numbers less than five, then give each man five coins. If your company numbers more than twenty, then think not of playing the game: instead I advise you to pool your purses, hire some mercenaries and plan an invasion of Belgium"
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Schmee on 19 Jul 2013, 06:38
Why I don't play Settlers of Catan:

Quote
Friend 1 -  Hey, does anyone have some ore to trade?
Me - Yeah, I have some.
Friend 2 - Me too.
Friend 1 - Oh good, I'll just play this monopoly on ore then.
*screaming, gunfire, explosions*
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: cesium133 on 19 Jul 2013, 06:41
Heh. I've done that a few times (and had it done to me a few times).  :evil:
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: GarandMarine on 19 Jul 2013, 10:34
So apparently my company is releasing a Firefly themed board game at GenCon this year, it's already sold $1 Million worth of product, so I think that's a sign that it's good.  :psyduck:

In nerd news for me holy shit:

Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Sploosh on 07 Aug 2013, 07:18
I'm really interested in playing some board/tabletop/card games recently, especially D&D (which my friend is trying to get a group together for). I read an article on Penny Arcade Report about Mansions of Madness (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/83330/mansions-of-madness) and for some reason another friend decided to buy it. It looks very cool, and we spent quite a while setting up, sorting out cards, putting pieces together, etc etc... I went out for a cigarette, and everything was packed away! Haven't yet had a chance to get together and play yet, still waiting for me to pack in my bar job, and read over the rules all together. (If anyone has played and can help me out, that'd be great :D)

Something else I got in to was Android: Netrunner (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/124742/android-netrunner), which is quite fun. Two player game, and it can last a couple of hours. I'm still in my early days of getting to grips with it, so I fall for some traps (damn Jinteki), but definitely recommended from me. :)
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 07 Aug 2013, 08:06
I've only played a handful of games, but I love Android: Netrunner. It really highlights what makes asymmetrical gameplay interesting. Two forces with entirely different methods aiming to score the same resources to win the game. And yeah, seriously fuck Jinteki... I'm not sure if a card scares me more than Project Junebug. XD "Must maximize hand size before EVERY run... just in case." It's also an example of why I like the idea of LCGs over CCGs.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ev4n on 07 Aug 2013, 08:33
I need to find more coop/casual games.  My wife plays Dixit and Pandemic, but not a lot else.

Which is too bad, because I love Dominion to death.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Sploosh on 07 Aug 2013, 09:00
And yeah, seriously fuck Jinteki... I'm not sure if a card scares me more than Project Junebug. XD

Haha, it's become a bit of a joke between us when we trick each other IRL to say "Jinteki!" He's since picked up a HB deck, where every other sequence is "Do 1 Brain Damage"... That was painful...
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ankhtahr on 07 Aug 2013, 09:26
I don't know why I never posted in this thread. My mother has been playing Catan since it was released (the German release in 1995). We have many of the expansions (mostly before the redesign happened). When I look into our games shelf I'll find the original "Die Siedler von Catan", the "Seefahrer Erweiterung" (seafarers expansion), the "Städte & Ritter" (Cities and Knights) expansion, "Historische Szenarien I" and "Historische Szenarien II" (Historical Scenarios), the "Händler & Barbaren" (Traders and Barbarians) expansion (post-redesign), the expansion set for 5 and 6 players, a book with additional rule ideas and the required material for it, and "Die Siedler von Nürnberg" (Settlers of Nuremberg). That's all the original Catan series stuff. Then we have "Struggle for Rome" which is Catan based, we have the Travel-Edition of the original Catan, we have "Die Sternenfahrer von Catan" (Starfarers of Catan), with the expansion for up to six players, and "Sternenschiff Catan" (Starship Catan), and among my favourites: The card game. I just love this card game. It is a two player version, and we have all the expansions for it. Sadly they've discontinued it and released a simplified version of it called "Rivals of Catan". Especially when moving out I'd have liked to buy a set for myself. Maybe I'll have to have a look into the new version. With the expansions some of the simplifications get reversed.

We also have Alhambra and three expansions for it, I just can't remember having ever played it. We have the card game "Blue Moon" with some additional sets of cards, a game I loved to play. Carcassonne with multiple expansions is also lying around here.

Still, my favourite is the Catan card game.

Well, and I play Magic the Gathering, but that would stretch the topic of this thread a little too much.

Oh, and I was member of a chess club for several years, played some ranked games, lost many of them. I haven't played for about 4 years now though.

Edit: I had almost forgotten: There is a open source clone of Catan, playable on most operating systems, called "Pioneers" Maybe I could set up a server for the game on the same server the Mumble is running on.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Grognard on 07 Aug 2013, 11:56
I really enjoy board games.
I've played Risk, Axis & Allies, Chess, and Stratego.
But I'm a huge fan of:

(http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n219/steve_ronin/HISTORICON%202012/100_4767.jpg) (http://s113.photobucket.com/user/steve_ronin/media/HISTORICON%202012/100_4767.jpg.html)
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Grognard on 07 Aug 2013, 12:00
oddly enough, I've never played SETTLERS of CATAN or MUNCHKIN.  I've seen them played, and keep meaning to sit down for a game, but....

Big Walking Panzers happen...
(http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n219/steve_ronin/HISTORICON%202012/100_4772.jpg) (http://s113.photobucket.com/user/steve_ronin/media/HISTORICON%202012/100_4772.jpg.html)
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 13 Oct 2013, 14:13
So Quinn of Shut Up & Sit Down wrote an article for Kotaku about what games are best if you want to ruin your personal relationships. It's great seeing this from a hobbyist largely because he understands that games like Game of Thrones have mechanics specifically for backstabbing, and going in you should be aware of this and expect it. The true horror comes from other factors.

5 Boardgames That Really Will Ruin Friendships (http://kotaku.com/the-top-5-board-games-that-really-will-ruin-friendships-1443867215)

The Gawker commentors, of course, immediately start bringing up Monopoly.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: CardinalFang on 15 Oct 2013, 10:53
I was all prepared say 'feh!' And wave my hand at that list but then I saw that it included Diplomacy. That game has destroyed many friendships.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Emperor Norton on 18 Oct 2013, 19:24
I have a reasonable collection of board and games (though, not the shelves and shelves you see in some of the people's homes who do online review videos).

I have a real weakness for Deck Building games... though I actually don't like Dominion. I have the Resident Evil DBG with all the expansions, which I enjoy, and also the Marvel Legendary one with the Dark City expansion. My brother has Thunderstone and an unreasonably large amounts of expansions for that, so that gets played on board game nights too.

I also have a few games that I like to play with my kids, Ticket to Ride and Tsuro for instance. I have everything ever published for Small World except necromancer island.

I also own Twilight Imperium... though I've never gotten to play it because I have not been able to devote a whole day to playing one game. I hate being a busy adult sometimes.

Also, I recently got into the Lord of the Rings LCG, because I do like to play co-op stuff and my wife is a huge Middle Earth fan.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: GarandMarine on 18 Oct 2013, 19:53
So I just kicked the shit out of my coworkers in the Firefly boardgame. It's awesome and if you are a fan of board games, you should definitely pick up a copy.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 18 Oct 2013, 21:29
Twilight Imperium is basically my White Whale at this point in time. I'm funemployed, so dedicating the time to it is easy. The real problem is finding multiple other people to rope into it.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Emperor Norton on 18 Oct 2013, 21:43
The real problem is finding multiple other people to rope into it.

That is the other issue with it. Even when I have a free day, you have to find several other people with free days.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: snalin on 19 Oct 2013, 03:21
Oh man, just slightly related, but my Numenera books came in the mail just now and I need to get a group together asap, because that setting is pretty awesome.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Emperor Norton on 19 Oct 2013, 17:35
Oh man, just slightly related, but my Numenera books came in the mail just now and I need to get a group together asap, because that setting is pretty awesome.

Numenera is on my short list for my next campaign I run. Love the setting, love the system.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ackblom12 on 19 Oct 2013, 17:45
Numenera looks like an incredibly interesting setting. The racial designs and such look fantastic as well.

Speaking of, I now have Last Night on Earth and I have paints coming in the mail. No one to play with right now, but goddamnit it's going to have painted minis.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 23 Oct 2013, 07:55
So is it safe to say we'll be able to see your completed zombies and townsfolk either here or in the minis painting thread?  :-D

Seriously LNoE is my favorite thematic game and would probably worm its way into my top 5 games, even if some of the expansions makes things kind of wonky and I've had a handful of one-sided games. Hope you get the opportunity to actually play soon!

Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 24 Oct 2013, 07:52
Speaking of Flying Frog Productions.... they have a kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1034852783/shadows-of-brimstone) going for their latest game. Looks like I won't be buying any new fun stuff for myself for a while. The number of stretch goals and add-ons they're doing is ridiculous and I want a lot of them...
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ChaoSera on 25 Oct 2013, 02:09
That sounds awesome. Now if I only had 75$ to spare, I'd be totally in. Hm... maybe I can round up a few friends and we can pledge something together.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: mtmerrick on 25 Oct 2013, 17:11
So I think I may have found d a DM and one person to play D&D with. Maybe, just maybe, we'll have a game starting in the semi-near future. =D

Also the hypothetical DM helped me start up a character (at least, as far as you can without dice). I wanted something unique so with his guidance I created a doppelganger cleric of Erythnul. He will be an awesome character, can't wait to play as him. Need a name though.  :psyduck:
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ChaoSera on 26 Oct 2013, 02:26
The cleric in my group is called Choleric the Cleric. He gets angry at times.

We haven't been able to play in quite some time because we never seem to be able to find a time where everybody is available anymore. :( Also one of the players quit and we haven't found a substitute yet.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Lines on 26 Oct 2013, 22:26
Why did I not know this thread existed...

I'm very much into board games, although I tend to prefer deck building games (lots of ones similar to Dominion even though I have not in fact played Dominion). Just had a small group of friends over for dinner, Cards Against Humanity, and Smash Up (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/122522/smash-up). CAH is obviously fun, but no one else has mentioned Smash Up yet and it's very fun and the combinations can get very interesting. Personally I am a fan of trickster-dinosaurs, trickster-pirates, and believe that dinosaur-bear cavalry would work nicely. (Tonight I played wizard-bear cavalry and wasn't a huge fan.) My husband is in love with robot-wizards. It's kind of silly but has enough of a challenge in tactics to keep it interesting.

I'm also a fan of Small World, Race for the Galaxy, Pandemic, Settlers of Catan, and Ticket to Ride. And I think Castle Ravenloft was the first board game I played and I quite liked that one, too.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ChaoSera on 27 Oct 2013, 05:28
Oh man, Pandemic. It's a nice game, but we had to convert it into a browsergame for a project at university. That kinda ruined the game for me.  :psyduck:
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Emperor Norton on 04 Nov 2013, 11:26
I just received a new shipment of board games Saturday (I've almost gotten to the top level of discounts at Coolstuff! I spend way too much money there). Included in this package was several coop games (Space Hulk: Death Angel, Pandemic, Wrath of Ashardalon) and a social traitor style game (The Resistance).

The only one I've managed to get out so far is Death Angel, which I played with my wife last night. The game is AWESOME. It drips with the theme of being ridiculous parodies of psycho macho soldiers ripping up Aliens style hordes of things that want to chew us up on a derelict space station. We started with 8 Space Marines, and as we moved room to room we slowly lost more and more as the swarms of Genestealers got bigger. We made it to the last room, with only 2 surviving marines, one of mine, a badass using claws named Brother Claudio, and one of hers, the flamethrower using Brother Zael. All we had to do was activate the control panel in time! I activated it to give us the 1/3 chance on the roll to win, after which Claudio was eaten by a horde of 11 Genestealers, she activated it to make the roll... and failed. After that Zael tried to flamethrower some, but it just wasn't enough, and Zael went down in a bloody mess.

It was really really fun. I liked the pacing, I liked the feeling of slowly being whittled down and things getting progressively more and more aggressive and that we ALMOST won. like 2 inches from winning. It was also really well thought out and innovative, there wasn't a lot of drawing or hand type stuff, its really a different style of card game, lots of innovative mechanics and the set up and breakdown is really really fast once you know how it works.

Oh and also the box is tiny, I love tiny box, big fun games.

I'll come back again when I get to try out the other 3!
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 05 Nov 2013, 07:00
Pandemic is a lot of fun but Z-Man Games really pissed me off when they decided to make a new edition that is incompatable with the old version. All the card backs are different and the art changed, so either I sleeve everything and deal with the art differences, I buy an "upgrade pack" that trades out the proper cards and pay for a crazy shipping rate (crazy for domesitc shipping, anyway), or I rebuy the base game and expansion. Wouldn't be a big deal except soon after they came out with a new expansion that adds a lot of nice stuff from what I hear. Guess I won't ever have it.

I don't even understand why they felt the need to do all this, aside from trying to appeal to a greater audience with the artwork (which they could have done without alienating their current audiences). Oh, and force people to buy everything over and make money... yes, I'm bitter and will find it hard to buy another Z-Man Game.


Rant over. I'll be positive now: The Resistence is a lot of fun and I feel makes Mafia/Werewolf more appealing to people who want hard data to analyze and discuss. I tried to turning it into a forum game on here before (I'll have to link to it later) and was met with mixed results, but in person it's wonderful.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Emperor Norton on 05 Nov 2013, 08:07
Yeah, I had read about the redesign of the pieces and all, which obviously doesn't affect me since I just bought it for the first time last week.

It is a little bit weird. Its one thing for a game that has been out 10+ years to get a redesign, but Pandemic is what like 5 years old?
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Blue Kitty on 05 Nov 2013, 18:37
I just remembered the Uncle Wiggly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Wiggily_(board_game)) board game that I used to play with my mom back in the day
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Emperor Norton on 06 Nov 2013, 18:25
My brother and his gf came over! We played Pandemic first.

We had cured the blue disease and completely eradicated it, cured yellow, and someone had the cards and was just moving to the research station to cure black...

But then there was a cascade of outbreaks and we lost. I think had we played a bit more conservative and used the quarantine specialist better we could have won, but we took one too many risks. Still fun game, and I am looking forward to playing it again.

After that, we played a 3 player game of Space Hulk: Death Angel. AND WE WON! Pretty spectacularly too, my brother had one of his two combat teams wiped out, and I lost half of one of mine, but out of the 6 combat teams who went in, 4 1/2 came out the other side! We had a lot of back and forth on strategy and who could do what, and after playing it again with multiple people, I realize just how it hits all the right parts of a coop game. We were constantly talking, planning, and trying to position everything in the best way.

Still yet to play from my last purchase: Wrath of Ashardalon, The Resistance.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ev4n on 07 Nov 2013, 11:30
I do love Pandemic, but sometimes, the cards fall wrong and the game can be unwinnable.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Emperor Norton on 07 Nov 2013, 11:52
I do love Pandemic, but sometimes, the cards fall wrong and the game can be unwinnable.

Just had the exact opposite problem on our second playthrough. By the time we had cured blue, there had only been one blue card even drawn. It was eradicated by the about the third turn. And it was all downhill for the diseases after that.

During the last phases we had 3 diseases completely eradicated and had cleared the last few off the board before curing the last one. I think it helps that it was a two player game and the two roles we drew were Medic and Scientist, which both seem badass.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 07 Nov 2013, 12:48
I had to look up quarantine specialist since it's part of the new edition and that just made me want to either upgrade my set or sell it and get a new one. Curse you for having fun.  :wink:

During the last phases we had 3 diseases completely eradicated and had cleared the last few off the board before curing the last one. I think it helps that it was a two player game and the two roles we drew were Medic and Scientist, which both seem badass.

Sounds like you need to ramp up the difficulty next game. Can't have you saving the world EVERY game.  :evil:
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 20 Nov 2013, 08:26
I'd never heard of this until recently, so there are probably others that haven't either: The Jack Vasel Memorial Fund (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/164052/jack-vasel-memorial-fund-auction-2013/page/1?=), in short, is set up to help people within the gaming community facing tragedy and financial hardship. The first post in the link I posted has links to the charity's site and provides more details. You can help by donating directly on the site or participating in the auction. In the auction, you can offer goods or services (there's a lot of good examples and interesting stuff listed) and/or bid on the items already listed. It seems like a pretty worthwhile cause.

It's ending on the 25th so if you have something you'd like to auction, I'd read the information for it and get it on there FAST. Same goes for bidding, but that's easier in my mind. You're NOT at all likely to find a good deal on anything, but if you see something you like and can afford to, definitely bid. Even if you're outbid, at least you helped drive it up!

It's too short notice for me to go through my collection and decide if I want to figure out shipping stuff (I rarely resell things), so I'm sticking to bidding on stuff and getting the word out this year.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ankhtahr on 23 Nov 2013, 10:10
Had the opportuniy to play a bit more lately. My group of the introductory week at university has a biweekly games evening. Played Munchkin for the first time e.g.. I also attended a "board game day" organised by a local board game club. There I played Alien Frontier. That was surprisingly much fun, but it seems to be impossible to buy now. Made me a bit sad.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ChaoSera on 03 Dec 2013, 04:08
God damnit. I won an auction on ebay for the 3 Core rulebooks to D&D, and now that it's over I notice that they are not 3.5 but 3.0. Fuck. Paid 60€ for rules I don't need (So far I never found a single book for anything below 40€, so I thought it was a great deal). Now I know why nobody else bid. I hope I can sell those to somebody again, once they get here...
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: snalin on 03 Dec 2013, 04:48
The 3.5 reprints are $50 each for the Players handbook, DM guide and Monster Manual on the official shop. Plus shipping. I can find them for ~$30 USD each on ebay, used, which is not as great a reduction as you could hope for.

Or, you know, you could "look around" for pdf versions on "the internet".
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ChaoSera on 03 Dec 2013, 05:04
I already have them as pdfs, but it's kind of annoying having to look them up at a laptop all the time. And printing them out would take a metric shitton of ink and paper, which would probably be even more expensive. For now I messaged the seller and asked him if we can cancel the transaction, offering to pay for his ebay fees. We'll see what he responds.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 03 Dec 2013, 10:29
Got the Legendary: A Marvel Deckbuilding (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/129437/legendary-a-marvel-deck-building-game) game recently. I love it a lot more than I thought I would. The game is both cooperative (you have a big bad you and a scheme you need to work together to stop) and competitive (you get points and, assuming heroes win, they're used to determine the individual winner). So there's a fun balance between trying to be a glory hog and setting differences aside for the greater good. It's also got a solo mode, which I appreciate. Difficulty ranges from super easy to pretty damn hard, depending on the setup for the game -- some combinations are way harder than others. 

The villain schemes are all really interesting and change up different parts of the game, including the loss conditions for the heroes. You lose to the legacy virus if the team takes too many wounds. You lose to the Super Hero Civil War if the hero deck runs out. You lose to the Skrull Invasion if too many shapeshifting skrulls escape the city disguised as heroes.

Overall theme and strategy are there, making for a good time. My favorite game so far was fighting Loki, who was trying to release the legacy virus... for some reason... My head canon says it's some really twisted scheme that's complicated and requires the elimination of a bunch of mutants. What made it crazy was how many different enemies continued to wound us. We needed so many different things to prevent those wound that my partner and I had to throw the individual scoring out the window and work to try to get our decks as anti-wound as possible. But it wasn't enough and Loki won. It was brutal, but so awesome to see that the challenge was there (the first game setup is really easy and the solo game I played before that was super easy thanks to Black Widow being in my party).

Also... I meant to just post I got a cool game... not give a poorly written mini-review... oh well!  :roll:
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Emperor Norton on 13 Dec 2013, 20:17
I already have them as pdfs, but it's kind of annoying having to look them up at a laptop all the time. And printing them out would take a metric shitton of ink and paper, which would probably be even more expensive. For now I messaged the seller and asked him if we can cancel the transaction, offering to pay for his ebay fees. We'll see what he responds.

Where do you live. I have a set of the 3.5 core books that I would mail to you if you could pay the shipping (not sure how reasonable shipping would be though). They are just collecting dust in my basement and I have no use for them.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Emperor Norton on 13 Dec 2013, 20:19
Marvel Legendary is pretty awesome. Probably my favorite deckbuilder at the moment (and I love deckbuilders). The variety in setup, with the various schemes and villains and heroes and the mostly coop play is a huge plus, and I just love marvel superheroes.

I have the Dark City expansion as well, need to get the Fantastic 4 expansion at some point.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ChaoSera on 14 Dec 2013, 04:44
I already have them as pdfs, but it's kind of annoying having to look them up at a laptop all the time. And printing them out would take a metric shitton of ink and paper, which would probably be even more expensive. For now I messaged the seller and asked him if we can cancel the transaction, offering to pay for his ebay fees. We'll see what he responds.

Where do you live. I have a set of the 3.5 core books that I would mail to you if you could pay the shipping (not sure how reasonable shipping would be though). They are just collecting dust in my basement and I have no use for them.
That would be awesome! I live in Germany, last time I ordered something from the US, it was about 25 bucks or so in shipping. Plus customs duty it would probably sum up to about 40, but since that's pretty much the price I'd have to pay for a single one of the books I'll take that deal any day.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 17 Dec 2013, 21:41
So I saw a kickstarter today offering all sorts of storage solutions and bits for several card/board games. Have a look here (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1144387021/board-game-storage-chests-tokens-inserts-and-more) if you find yourself wishing you have better storage for some stuff (looking at you Dominion  :-().
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Grognard on 18 Dec 2013, 06:39
I've been burned enough by KS.
Still waiting for 2 other projects to ship (originally promised in October)
And now I hear that Robotech Tactics won't ship until March 2014 at the earliest.  :(
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 18 Dec 2013, 06:44
I've been avoiding KS for similar reasons, but of course, someone linked to this on BGG. Apparently I should just avoid forums altogether....
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Emperor Norton on 30 Dec 2013, 17:00
I already have them as pdfs, but it's kind of annoying having to look them up at a laptop all the time. And printing them out would take a metric shitton of ink and paper, which would probably be even more expensive. For now I messaged the seller and asked him if we can cancel the transaction, offering to pay for his ebay fees. We'll see what he responds.

Where do you live. I have a set of the 3.5 core books that I would mail to you if you could pay the shipping (not sure how reasonable shipping would be though). They are just collecting dust in my basement and I have no use for them.
That would be awesome! I live in Germany, last time I ordered something from the US, it was about 25 bucks or so in shipping. Plus customs duty it would probably sum up to about 40, but since that's pretty much the price I'd have to pay for a single one of the books I'll take that deal any day.

Crap, completely forgot about this (Christmas time and all that jazz was super distracting.) PM me your address so I can figure out exact shipping costs and I'll get things worked out. They should be in really good shape unless something disastrous happened in my storage room in the last month or so. I'll go ahead and dig them out.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ChaoSera on 31 Dec 2013, 04:34
Don't worry about it, I forgot as well. Wrote you my address.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ev4n on 06 Jan 2014, 07:03
Got carcasonne big box for my birthday.  Can't wait to try it out.

I've played the game once before, at a con.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Emperor Norton on 13 Jan 2014, 05:46
Don't worry about it, I forgot as well. Wrote you my address.

UGH! My basement flooded a couple of days ago and some of my collection got trashed. Fortunately nothing that I actually use (I have those on my bookshelves upstairs) but my 3.5 core books were in the waterlogged grouping. Sorry about that ;_;.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ChaoSera on 13 Jan 2014, 15:47
That is unfortunate.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 20 Feb 2014, 09:47
Someone on BGG does a weekly Marvel Legendary challenge thread (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1008529/weekly-challenge-subscription-thread/page/1) that has some fun scenarios (the community there in general is pretty awesome when it comes to custom content and ideas for variants). Boyfriend and I are playing through them and having a blast... at least we were until #$*(%*$ Apocalypse showed up in week 3 trying to fulfill X-cutioner's song!  :x We had decided we wouldn't move along until we won each scenario, but holy crap, this feels impossible. The worst was last night when Death showed up in the sewers, kidnapped a Nightcrawler, gave us a scheme twist to KO the Nightcrawler, and then got a new Nightcrawler! This happened three times in a row in the beginning.... Got to love it when a game manages to troll the crap out of you....

Anyway, I totally recommend it if you have Legendary and Dark City (Fantastic 4 gets added later). I'm also pretty pumped for the Spider-Man expansion (mostly for Spider-Woman, Moon Knight, and Mysterio and the sinister six as a Mastermind/villain group combo).
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Blyss on 13 Mar 2014, 09:32
So, my friends and I have a game night on saturdays - where we deliberately stay away from video games - and play board games, or cards against humanity.  I've been looking at adding another game to our rotation, and I wanted to know if anyone here had heard of it/had opinions before I drop $50 on it.

The game I'm looking at is Last Night On Earth, and it's basically a zombie apocalypse board game.  Anyone know of that I'm talking about here?  Thoughts?  Opinions?

As always, I appreciate anything you guys give me.  :)
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 13 Mar 2014, 11:30
I absolutely LOVE Last Night on Earth (I have it and most of the expansions). With that said, it very much depends on what you and your gaming group likes.

I'll start with the cons... Fighting is based around rolling dice and both zombie and hero players are at the mercy of their respective decks to draw what they need to stop the other side from reaching their goal. So if luck being a pretty strong factor in your games is a problem, you may want to avoid. That doesn't mean skill and planning isn't rewarded or that there aren't interesting choices to be made, though. Both certainly happen, though people might disagree on whether it happens enough. I definitely think it does for what the game is trying to be.

For the pros... Flying Frog Production games are all about theme and LNoE is dripping with it. The components are also of really great quality. If you're the type that likes games that feel like they're telling a story as you play, this is a great choice. If replayability is a concern, then you should be pretty happy with the modular game board, different heroes available, and scenario choices. A few extra official scenarios are available online for free. When you get sick of all that, there's plenty of expansions that add even more of everything, including different mechanics you can mix and match. And if you really wanted to, you could create your own custom scenarios, heroes, and rules, or go to the board game geek community and look at all the stuff other people are sharing.

Also, there are actually two standalone games: Last Night on Earth and LNoE: Timber Peak. Timber Peak is an expansion that has everything you need to play it standalone. The only thing you'd be missing out on is the soundtrack (yes, FFP incorporates atmospheric music with their games). Of course, the soundtrack isn't amazing but can be fun to pop in your first plathrough at the very least. Timber Peak adds a leveling system and some other stuff (spreading fire!) that hadn't been seen yet in the series. I only played TP once, so I can't say whether to get it over the original. I think most would, though I'm concerned about the zombie side being weakened (again, may have just been that one game).

But yeah... hopefully that rant helped. I can definitely answer more about it if you're still on the fence. 
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ev4n on 13 Mar 2014, 13:09
Bought 7 Wonders for the family to try last week.  In one week, we've played almost 4 full games, which is a lot for us.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Blyss on 16 Mar 2014, 02:19
Game and Watch Forever, thanks so much for the input.  I'll most likely pick it up and give it a go.  :)
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Masterpiece on 26 May 2014, 01:37
Played DSA for the first time yesterday. Was REALLY WEIRD. Super complex. I'm intrigued though.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Lines on 26 May 2014, 05:45
DSA?
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Masterpiece on 26 May 2014, 05:51
"Das Schwarze Auge". I don't know what it's called in English.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ev4n on 26 May 2014, 06:21
Translation is "the dark eye" which doesn't help me.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ankhtahr on 26 May 2014, 06:40
It's the biggest German Pen&Paper Roleplaying game. The rules are a bit different from DnD, but at least to me it seems very interesting. Sadly I never had the opportunity to play it. The only Pen&Paper I ever playad in Person was Midgard, the first German Pen&Paper. That was very nice.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Lines on 26 May 2014, 09:39
Oh ok. And yeah, in English it's called "The Dark Eye". What's discussed on Wikipedia makes it sound similar to D&D or Pathfinder.

I'm a big fan of tabletop RPGs. My husband is trying to sort out Shadowrun mechanics so he can make a game for it. We played it briefly before and it was pretty fun, but very different.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Neko_Ali on 26 May 2014, 12:53
I do love Shadowrun. I'm playing the second campaign for the computer version, but you really can't beat the pen and paper games. Shadowrun, Champions and D&D have always been pretty much my go-to systems.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Barmymoo on 26 May 2014, 16:20
I want to play board games. I went to my brother's house this weekend and his housemate had organised a board games party, but she and I ended up spending almost the entire evening in her room (not in that sense; she's dating my cousin) so if any board games were playing, we did not partake.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ev4n on 28 May 2014, 13:05
I have a bunch of board game apps on my tablet.  May prove useful tonight when I have some time to kill.

I love 7 wonders more than any person should, probably.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Lines on 28 May 2014, 15:09
We were very close to playing that, but we had 7 people and only 2 knew the rules, so we went with Resistance instead.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Barmymoo on 28 May 2014, 16:42
I've moved this thread to the ENJOY section instead of CLICK, in case anyone was looking for it and confused - it seemed to make a bit more sense over here!
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ev4n on 29 May 2014, 06:39
The mods are mad with powar!!!

I kid.

The best thing about 7 wonders is that it scales wonderfully.  It plays identically, and at the same speed, with 7 people as with 3.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Barmymoo on 29 May 2014, 06:49
Watch it, matey, or I'll change your default profile title to something ridiculous.

(click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Blue Kitty on 10 Jul 2014, 15:28
Mouse Guard is getting it's own board game (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/burningwheel/mouse-guard-swords-and-strongholds), based on a game in the books
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: lepetitfromage on 11 Jul 2014, 07:00
Watch it, matey, or I'll change your default profile title to something ridiculous.

(click to show/hide)

I read title as "photo" and my first thought was "Please do. Change it to a banana!"


It would be hilarious to come in one day and just see everyone's avatar changed to a different piece of fruit.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Lines on 17 Aug 2014, 12:07
So I got the latest Smash Up expansion at GenCon and it's monster themed and looks interesting. (Also the Giant Ants cards are all/almost all named after Queen songs.) I think it'll be released sometime in the fall. And they've released a Big Geeky Box this month (the booth was out) to store everything in that comes with a Geek deck featuring those from Geek and Sundry. Must get.

One of the games that I played at GenCon that is inappropriately hilarious was Tentacle Bento (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/124833/tentacle-bento). It's like some weird mash-up of tentacle porn, rummy, and CAH. I was the only girl in the group playing it and boy did I have fun making it awkward for everyone else. (Dramatic readings with eyebrow wiggles.) Also it got kicked off of kickstarter, which kind of makes it even sillier. But for having a weird theme, it's actually not a bad game, but it's definitely for players that have a sense of "questionable" humor. I am going to have to get it.

Another that we did buy was Star Realms (http://starrealms.com/) that is a fun 2-6 player deck building game. We demoed the 2-player and it was a lot of fun. Each box is a two player game and you can combine up to three boxes for 3-6 player games. There are also rule variations for 3-6 players to change up the game that sound interesting.

We also demoed another game, but I'm going to have to find the card I took for it. It was fun, but there was a shipping problem and they didn't have enough games in order to sell them at the convention. As soon as I get the name I'll share it.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Grognard on 17 Aug 2014, 20:13
RoboTech Tactics ???

I wanted to go to GenCon so bad.

:(
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 25 Sep 2014, 09:30
So Small World fans looking to have it electronically (PC/Mac/Linux/Android) should totally head over to Humble Bundle and get it while it's relatively cheap! It even comes bundled with DLC that you'd have to have been a kickstarter backer to get.

And then you should friend me and play games with me, becuase I want to play against people!  :-D I just need to find my DoW username and post it at some point....
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ev4n on 25 Sep 2014, 09:51
Ooh thanks for the reminder.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Blue Kitty on 27 Sep 2014, 20:56
A new game store opened up nearby and my girlfriend and I finally got the chance to go inside. We had a look around and thought this looked interesting, mainly from the art style on the box, so we picked it up
(http://cdn.miniaturemarket.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/f/n/fnftkdus01.jpg)
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Barmymoo on 28 Sep 2014, 02:41
I have been thinking for a while that I want to buy Monopoly for parties, and am really dithering over whether to get the special version made for my city or just the normal one. Anyone played any of the geographical variants, and any thoughts?
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Pilchard123 on 28 Sep 2014, 05:01
Do you want to keep your friends?
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Barmymoo on 28 Sep 2014, 10:51
Well, yes. Is your problem with Monopoly in general or the Birmingham one in particular?
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ev4n on 28 Sep 2014, 13:49
Haha.  I can't really pick on any particular place in England, because I don't know where all my grandparents are from.

That said, I think the point was Monopoly.  People can be cutthroat, though of course the people matter more than the game.

I own Monopoly, but against the newer style board games, I don't think I can see ever playing it again.

(If you're curious, watch some TableTop - it's very well done.)
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Orkboy on 28 Sep 2014, 16:38
Well, it's not really a board game, but Cards Against Humanity is a great way to see who's going to hell fastest.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: cesium133 on 28 Sep 2014, 17:06
I've never seen a game of Monopoly or of Scrabble that didn't end in bloodshed.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Akima on 29 Sep 2014, 23:16
Diplomacy has the worst reputation for making people hate one another, doesn't it?
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ChaoSera on 30 Sep 2014, 00:46
Found a new D&D group at last, first game was on Saturday. 15 Minutes in I accidentally almost killed one of the other characters. I like where this is going. :-D
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Barmymoo on 30 Sep 2014, 01:00
I've played Cards Against Humanity with various of the party attendees, but I'm not sure it'd be right for the particular group coming to this party - many of them haven't met each other yet, and there are varying senses of humour.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 30 Sep 2014, 07:20
Yeah... that has potential to go really poorly.... or really well.  :evil:

My big issue with Monopoly is that the game has potential to outstay its welcome, has player elimination, and ends often in a two player roll-off to see who can avoid the other's properties until one finally bleeds the other dry. That's at least in my (admittedly limited) experience. I do have fun with it, but as ev4n said, there's other games I'd rather play.

Unfortunately, none of what I said actually helps with what you asked, May.  :-\ Is your interest strictly in Monopoly for now or are you interested in other games that work in party environments as well?
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Barmymoo on 30 Sep 2014, 12:40
Both to be honest. I was thinking about getting a few classic board games, and saw the Birmingham Monopoly and greatly coveted it.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: The Seldom Killer on 30 Sep 2014, 14:32
I generally find with Monopoly that a fixed time limit of an hour or two plus three rounds is a good way to limit tedium and acrimony. Have some anime or Boondocks to entertain any early eliminations.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Barmymoo on 30 Sep 2014, 14:56
I feel like adding the eliminated players to a support team for the remaining players could be fun. Monopoly by democracy/shouting match.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Welu on 30 Sep 2014, 15:05
I enjoy Trivial Pursuit because in my circles it leads to loads of banter. Although getting people past the "not wanting to look silly for not knowing things" can be tricky, even when I am one of those people.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ev4n on 01 Oct 2014, 10:42
Further to the Tabletop recommendation, he stays away from games that involve elimination mechanics.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Fig on 02 Oct 2014, 07:35
Huge boardgamer here.  I cut my teeth with Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride a few years ago and I haven't looked back at mass market games like Monopoly ever since.  I've been to Gencon three out of the last four (stupid weddings getting in the way) years and have about 40 games in my collection (not including the expansions I have for said games).  Over the last few years I've aquired a preference for heavy theme, Amerithrash style games.  I do enjoy an occasional Euro game but more often than not, I'd reach for a copy of Cosmic Encounter instead of Settlers.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 04 Oct 2014, 09:29
May, I realized I'm being dumb in not suggesting what I normally do when I'm not sure about a game I want to get. If you're still debating:Birmingham Monopoly BGG page (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28197/monopoly-birmingham). Based on the description, it sounds like there's no real difference beyond the expected cosmetic differences. If that's enough to bring you and others more into the game, then I say go for it! If there are any gameplay differences I doubt it's anything significant and can probably be house ruled if you don't like it (and so many people house rule Monopoly without knowing it, anyway  :laugh:). Also, don't pay any mind to the rating... in case you haven't noticed, many hobby board gamers have their critical opinions on the game and the rethemed versions don't get the benefit of people that actually like the game signing on to defend it.

And for anyone that's interested - a listing of party games I think are awesome. Criteria for me was that it play well with 6 players and for it to be easy to learn and teach. Recommended Party Games (in no particular order):

Cards Against Humanity (4-whatever players)

Okay, that's out of the way...

Dixit (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39856/dixit) (3 to 6 players)
(click to show/hide)

The Resistance (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/41114/resistance) (5-12 players)
(click to show/hide)

Wits and Wagers (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/123239/wits-wagers-party) (4+ players)
(click to show/hide)

Clusterfight (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/144993/clusterfight) (3-12 players)
(click to show/hide)

Also, Dixit, Wits and Wagers, and The Resistance have all had tabletop episodes for them, so if you want to see actual gameplay of them, I recommend searching for those!
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Barmymoo on 05 Oct 2014, 03:08
Yeah looking at the two comments for the five ratings, one person has never played the themed game but has given it a rating of 4 because their rating for original Monopoly is 6 and they don't like themes. The other hates Monopoly so gave it a 2. I don't really think I care about their opinions!
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Pilchard123 on 05 Oct 2014, 06:00
About as much use as people who rate things 0/1 because the delivery was late.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Detachable Felix on 05 Oct 2014, 14:20
I had a chance to play the Game of Thrones board game with some friends recently. Hoooooly hell, making alliances in that game will destroy friendships.
(I won, by the way. Managed to slowly build my army up down south without anyone noticing. It was sweeet)
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Orkboy on 05 Oct 2014, 18:44
Played the Battlestar Galactica boardgame today.  I never watched the show, but I managed to kill them as the only hostile cylon.  The other cylon was a human-loving toaster.  Clearly inferior.  I managed to shoot the fuel tank on literally the last turn before the humans won and drop their fuel reserves from bare minimum to zero. 

The phrase "Beep boop, motherfucker!" may have been used. 
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: ev4n on 06 Oct 2014, 02:59
Played Carcasonne and Dominion with my kids today.  Pulled them off electronics, sat them down, had a fantastic time with them.

Fleeting...
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Barmymoo on 07 Oct 2014, 10:20
About as much use as people who rate things 0/1 because the delivery was late.

I once read an Amazon review of a Thermos flask that complained that the food was cold after a couple of hours, but also stated that they hadn't pre-warmed the Thermos or filled it more than half way. I had to respond and point out that the problem wasn't the Thermos but the user - if you do not follow the instructions, then of course it will not work properly.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 16 Oct 2014, 22:12
I got the latest Legendary: A Marvel Deckbuilding Game expansion today! It's themed around The Guardians of the Galaxy, of course. Thanos is available to fight, as are the infinity gems! Boyfriend and I played a game where the Kree Supreme Intelligence wants to collect the gems to form the Infinity Gauntlet. We lost. HARD. The worst part is that I can't even comprehend how the Supreme Intelligence will even use the damned thing! HE HAS NO HANDS!!!!

(http://www.tvfort.com/files/captures/the-avengers-earth-s-mightiest-heroes-4aacf3/Screen-4345871.jpg) + (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v142/Achraziel/infinity-gauntlet.gif) = (http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/1365193232_Guy-with-Question-Mark-over-his-headFotolia_102829_XS.jpeg)

Does he just stick it on one of his "hairs" and call it a day? Augh.

Also, I got Love Letter and I was surprised by how well it played two player! Reading the rules and looking at the cards, you might be tempted to think it'll be over fast and feel kind of lame. The former is true, but the latter couldn't be farther from the truth. Definitely a fun game to either kick off a board game night or play in between games.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Lines on 21 Oct 2014, 00:27
May, the last time I played monopoly or was of my city and it did make it more enjoyable. But this was over 15 years ago. M and I did just but a Legend of Zelda version, though. I say if you like the game, it won't hurt to buy it.

Also I second getting Dixit! That was that story telling game we played with Edith that had the pretty art. I've been meaning to pick it up for a while now.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: Game and Watch Forever on 11 Mar 2015, 21:45
So a game I kickstarted came out not too long ago: Billionaire Banshee (http://www.gameyayfun.com/)

It's quite an entertaining little party game. It has a deck of 'perk' cards and a deck of 'quirks.' By drawing a card from each, you get a potential life partner for yourself (assume you're single). You secretly vote whether you would date that person and everyone else guesses. Once everything is locked in, everyone reveals their guesses, makes justifications, and then the answer is revealed and points are given out for correct guesses.

The cards can be realistic ('owns a super yacht', 'is a compulsive liar'), fantasy ('teleports when eating vanilla pudding', 'is a kappa'), or sexy ('will act as your personal dom', 'has a foot fetish'), so the variety is amazing and can be customized based on the group playing. I do think the game was designed with the idea that a lot of the cards are more 'neutral' than anything, so some of the perks really could be negative things for some people and some of the quirks could be positive. You also may learn something about your friends! Highlights for me:

I got a combination of 'cleans for you' and 'asexual.' Which prompted a friend to practically throw her date card at me since she (apparently) wanted that combination for herself. Turns out she identifies as asexual, which I didn't know!

On one of said friend's turns she got the perfect combination of 'professional racecar driver'  and 'thinks they're a car.' We all had to take a time out to die laughing and speculate what this person must be like.

Another combination I got was 'has a pouch you can ride in' and 'has a foot fetish.' The perk card felt the need to specify that the pouch also had a fully-functional nipple... my reaction while reading that line gave everyone easy points, but we got a laugh out of it.

I'm seriously looking forward to playing with more people and seeing more of the cards and combos they can make.
Title: Re: Board Games
Post by: cesium133 on 11 Mar 2015, 21:51
For some reason that made me think of a game show I saw on TV once called "Baggage." It was a dating show where three players revealed "facts" about themselves and then another person had to decide which of them to date...

Another combination I got was 'has a pouch you can ride in' and 'has a foot fetish.' The perk card felt the need to specify that the pouch also had a fully-functional nipple... my reaction while reading that line gave everyone easy points, but we got a laugh out of it.
Kangaroo with a foot fetish? Sounds kinky.