Board Games

Vaclav_sl said:

Descent: 2E, Arkham Horror

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I do own both of these, but the OP asked for a time frame much shorter than either of these games allows for, but I guess other people may be in the mood for longer games who are reading this thread.

Descent is very good, however I have found as the overlord playing 4v1 against 4 players just as good as you at board gaming is a good recipe to get beat over and over. The games are close, but having 4 minds versus your one is a lot to overcome. Game is still very fun, despite this (and maybe I'm just worse than I think I am).

Still, for everyone, I cannot recommend Lords of Waterdeep and Smallworld enough. Those are a great foundation for a gaming group.

King of Tokyo.Seriously. Awesome fun, easy to learn, goes great with booze. As soon as it even kind ofstartsto get old (will take a while, trust me) pick up the expansion: adds a ton of extra content and "evolutions" that expand the game for the best.

Twilight Imperiumif you can find a group of 6-8 masochistic friends that are willing to participate in a 12-16 hour game. My gaming group gets together and plays once every four months. It's a great mix of strategy, diplomacy, combat, trade, and resource management.

Combat is much like axis and allies. It is well balanced, although high end ships kind of dominate late game. The good thing is that the way fleet logistics work in the game, you can never build a fleet large enough to just run through the galaxy without checks and balances. You can have very large fleets for sure, but you have to be fairly strategic in their usage.

The game's diplomacy system is pretty unique. Creating alliances and trade agreements all happens between the players dynamically over the duration of the game. The built in diplomatic feature is a "galactic senate" of sorts where players get together and vote on various rules and agendas once per turn which can have significant impacts on the game.

Not for everyone because of the time investment, but one of the deeper board games I have ever played.

balroc_sl said:

small world looks like a lot of fun. thanks for the replies.

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If you get Small World (Which I agree IS fun), make sure you get the Underground version. It's basically second edition, with all the same mechanics as the original, plus a couple cool little additions that the community seems to agree are all welcome additions.

Our frequently played games:

- Settlers of Catan (anyone who doesn't like it is a Mexican, Jew-rat)
- Munchkin (cards) and Munchkin Quest (board)
- Dominion (cards)
- Thunderstone (cards)
- Carcasonne (board)

Back in the day: Axis and Allies, Shogun, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k (table top minis, but it counts), Britonia, Diplomacy, and Risk.

Hopefully you have an FLGS (friendly local game store, AKA. independant retailer) near you and they can give you some pointers. They will likely carry everything in this whole thread and have demo/game nights.

Azziane_sl said:

I just bought munchkin quest to play with my 7 year old. The box just arrived so i did not to try yet but the manual is much thicker than i expected. Anyone play it before? How simple is it to get for a kid? Can you start playing right away and learn as you go?

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Umm....might be a bit much for a 7 year old, but you could probably simplify things to suit your needs and just have fun with him/her building the map and fighting the monsters. The card game is actually easier than the board game, mechanic wise, but I understand the visual and tactile appeal of the board game. We love it, but even I had to play a couple times to get it all down.

Quarriors does a bunch of things right. People like rolling dice, the dice are pretty, the art is fun, and the flavor is good.

Today I played History of the World for the first time.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2...y-of-the-world

It was five hours of Risk-esque territory control and dice based combat with additional major random elements thrown in on top. I hated it and would never recommend anyone play it ever. Each turn players are dealt a card that determines what empire they are going to be playing that turn and they can either pass it face down to another player or take it for themselves. Once all the cards have been assigned each player takes their turn in the order dictated by the card and scores after they are done. You get a number of troops, you enter the board on the location the card says, and you rampage about trying to earn points. Combat is six siders with some modifiers and when it isn't your turn your only involvement is maybe rolling one or two dice as the defender. Each player has a deck of 10 cards that do things and two of which can be played per age.

Going in to the last turn of the game one of the players roughly tied for first ended up with what was unquestionably the worst country and four troops to work with everyone else was getting 8 to 18. Thanks for playing.

For me big random elements and long games do not mix.

Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is a lot of fun. Great game for 2 players, and not too long. Fairly easy to learn too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tXufJBFAXIDescent: Second Edition
Sold it for me.

A family friendly game (rule not too complicated, enough luck involved to give hope to weaker players, no player elimination, no backstabbing, games not too long) that is still engaging isKingsburg.

Burren_sl said:

Umm....might be a bit much for a 7 year old, but you could probably simplify things to suit your needs and just have fun with him/her building the map and fighting the monsters. The card game is actually easier than the board game, mechanic wise, but I understand the visual and tactile appeal of the board game. We love it, but even I had to play a couple times to get it all down.

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Munchkin (regular) would have been perfect. Deluxe edition adds a simple board with figures/tokens too. Munchkin quest is a lot of fun still. We played 2 games (could not finish either, due to taking long turns from not knowing the rules too well). My wife was the one losing focus before my kid did though. So I wish I had gone for the regular game but do not regret buying Quest at all.

Our last game lasted about 2~ hours with me fighting the boss for the first time at the end. Nobody had been using curse cards much at all. Once I got level 10 and rushed the entrance they both piled on. I thought I was doing OK with my level 10+ ~10 levels of armor/weapons, thief class and dual race elf/dwarf. Also had 3 potion cards to add a +5 level (still not sure if there is a limit to how many potions you can have/use from your "belt"). Anyway. I ended up fighting a level 30~ monster right before the boss, which had me use a potion and then a level 45 boss (shrieking geek) with some bonus dice rolls from all the curses they had saved throughout the game.

I also don't get the "charity" rule at the end of your turn. I see no reason why you would ever keep any card in your hand. Maybe we just did not get rooms that steal cards from your hand or something. Plus any extra armor or potions can go in your "belt" which has unlimited capacity. So having more than 5 cards in your hand just never happened to us.

Amazon has Settlers of Catan on sale for $23.50 right now and board games don't normally go on sale, correct?

Any expansions I should be grabbing with it?

The additional player expansion for the base game is a good thing to have.

Settlers of Catan is the single greatest board game ever created for one reason: EVERYONE likes it. I've never had a friend/girlfriend-who-hates-board-games/relative/ANYONE who doesn't love playing Settlers after their first game. That's all about Settlers. It's the best board game period.

I'll add some content here with some great old-school board games later on because I am a heavy board-game junky and I own a lot of vintage games.

tarquinn_sl said:

Settlers of Catan is the single greatest board game ever created for one reason: EVERYONE likes it. I've never had a friend/girlfriend-who-hates-board-games/relative/ANYONE who doesn't love playing Settlers after their first game. That's all about Settlers. It's the best board game period.

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A lot of my MTG friends loathe settlers. They basically consider it one step up from Monopoly. The die roll element of the game adds such a high level of variance to the game, and not in a terribly interesting way (as compared to the variance from a deck building game, for example). Now, we play lots of games with die rolls, but they tend to come at the end of a strategic plan (descent, small world, etc) and sometimes probability can make you her bitch, but the game is not based around it.

Now, we do know that this exists

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2...an-event-cards

to smooth the effects of the dice, but we haven't gotten it yet to try it out (our stack of games to play is so high, it's not high on our list).

Our "everybody likes it" game of choice is usually Ticket to Ride. However, settlers is really liked by my "non-gamer" friends, so that's where I get most of my plays of that in. I'd recommend Settlers for people who aren't big board gamers, but if you are, there are definitely deeper games to play.

Eyashusa_sl said:

Amazon has Settlers of Catan on sale for $23.50 right now and board games don't normally go on sale, correct?

Any expansions I should be grabbing with it?

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Cities and Knights has been lauded by everyone I've talked to about it.

Nehrak_sl said:

Cities and Knights has been lauded by everyone I've talked to about it.

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Personally if i was introduced to Knights and Cities before playing base Catan I would like it more. K&C screws with what I like most about Catan. It turns it more chaotic on top of the die rolls and extends the play time by double and then some. The progress cards in K&C alone piss me off.