Board games anyone?

[novax6]

There's a full size expansion coming out in a couple months, Forbidden Alchemy, which should have lots of new things.

How do you get your board game news? Do I just have to learn how to use BGG better?

Ha, no I just happened to see that after heading to FFG's site looking for the Mansions of Madness FAQ. I'm sure BGG has a news thread or something you could subscribe to though.

[Izawwlgood]

Played 7 Wonders a few days ago and was very impressed. However, I feel that long term strategy is a bit harder to account for, and the game really comes down to optimizing each round, instead of planning ahead. Anyone else feel similar?

[Vaniver]

Played 7 Wonders a few days ago and was very impressed. However, I feel that long term strategy is a bit harder to account for, and the game really comes down to optimizing each round, instead of planning ahead. Anyone else feel similar?

As in, you can't go into the game going "I'm going to get all blues!"? Yeah, the cards that you're dealt matter a lot.

The main long-term strategy I've picked up is a sense of the value of different cards down the line. Resource cards can be a lot nicer than they originally appear, and the leaders (from the expansion) who reduce resource costs seem to be the best ones. Building chains can be very nice, especially the science -> military ones. A resource / blue / dabble in others strategy seems to do well most of the time.

[Izawwlgood]

Yeah, aside from looking for building chains, I felt the random component is pretty heavily random. The game seems to favor adapting to the situation and maximizing your VP return in any given round than sticking to a single strategy.

[ConMan]

The other thing is to work out early on is which points you're going to aim for. Typically you manage one or two well with no better than minor attempts at the others out of the possible four {wonder, buildings, military, science}. And military is a real arms race problem - if your neighbour gets into it, your choices are typically to go completely over the top or take the hit (fun fact - in one game, I beat my neighbour at military in every round despite him having the Colossus).

[BoomFrog]

The other thing is to work out early on is which points you're going to aim for. Typically you manage one or two well with no better than minor attempts at the others out of the possible four {wonder, buildings, military, science}. And military is a real arms race problem - if your neighbour gets into it, your choices are typically to go completely over the top or take the hit (fun fact - in one game, I beat my neighbour at military in every round despite him having the Colossus).

But did you win the game?

I think the advanced skill is seeing what everyone at the table is going for. If there is little pursuit of science then go sciency, if there is a lot of pursuit of science then go for resources. Although I'm far from an expect and usually lose so take that advice with a grain of salt :p.

For military I generally aim to beat the player I am currently passing to. If I get two military cards pass both, if I get only one and it would put me over him then take it since he will not have a counter unless I pass him one. It does depend on the military of the players two spaces to your right and left as well to try and predicte your neighbors plans.

[Izawwlgood]

For military I generally aim to beat the player I am currently passing to.

Who you pass to alternates in each round. In the two games we played, we seemed to just base our military on whatever our neighbors did.

In our games, buying goods from neighbors also played a very small roll.

[A Lurker]

Hello all,
So my girlfriend and I both really love boardgames. Unfortunately we don't know very many other people who seem to like them very much, so we end up having to try and play many of them with just the two of us. Most board games don't really seem to be designed to be aimed at this number of people though. So basically what I'm asking is what would be your recommendations for games that can be played between just the two of us?

When it comes to types of games we are pretty much open to anything. Reading through this thread I've heard a lot about Race for the Galaxy being good with two people. Is there anything else that you guys would recommend?

[ConMan]

If you want to try a cooperative game, Forbidden Island works reasonably well with two people (although you may want to start the tide marker a bit higher).

[Chen]

Dominion works pretty well with 2 players.

[mister k]

lost cities is explicitly two player, and is pretty fun. Dominion is a solid choice, RFG is terrific if complicated, San Juan is kinda like RFG lite (well, Puerto Rico lite really). Apparently On the Underground is pretty fun two player, Ticket to Ride is reasonably, Carcassone gets cut throat, but is fine- similar for citadels.

[A Lurker]

Okay, thank you all for the quick replies. I'll look into all of the those.

lost cities is explicitly two player, and is pretty fun. Dominion is a solid choice, RFG is terrific if complicated, San Juan is kinda like RFG lite (well, Puerto Rico lite really). Apparently On the Underground is pretty fun two player, Ticket to Ride is reasonably, Carcassone gets cut throat, but is fine- similar for citadels.

Which game is RFG? Thank you again.

[Izawwlgood]

Maybe Race for the Galaxy. It's not that complicated, but I would say it might have a steep learning curve. There are a lot of symbols that may be daunting at first.

[A Lurker]

Maybe Race for the Galaxy. It's not that complicated, but I would say it might have a steep learning curve. There are a lot of symbols that may be daunting at first.

Oh right, that would make sense. Thanks =)

[Chen]

Maybe Race for the Galaxy. It's not that complicated, but I would say it might have a steep learning curve. There are a lot of symbols that may be daunting at first.

I find it very difficult to play with new people after having played a TON with my GF. There is a HUGE advantage to knowing what cards are available, even if you're not playing with the searching ability from the latest expansion. Without knowing the deck contents it makes it quite difficult to look at your hand and realize what the chaff is compared to the good stuff.

[Vaniver]

I find it very difficult to play with new people after having played a TON with my GF. There is a HUGE advantage to knowing what cards are available, even if you're not playing with the searching ability from the latest expansion. Without knowing the deck contents it makes it quite difficult to look at your hand and realize what the chaff is compared to the good stuff.

This is true, but I find that people start to understand how things work together after 3-4 games, and since it only takes ~15 minutes a game, that's not that much of an investment.

[Izawwlgood]

Anyone play galactic encounter?

[novax6]

Anyone play galactic encounter?

Comic Encounter? Or is this a different game?

[Izawwlgood]

Cosmic, my bad.

[clockworkmonk]

Its a very good game, Cosmic Encounter, and has an interesting history. the Fantasy Flight version fixes a lot of the issues older copies had, and keeps the game-play true of a simple rule-set that is broken somehow by every player.

And this seems as good a place as any to bring this up.

In Austin Texas, there are a board gaming groups in case anyone is interested. The one that comes to mind is SAGN(South Austin Game Night). It meets starting at 6 pm on Tuesdays at The Rocking Tomato near where Lamar and Manchaca intersect, in the same shopping center with a Half-Price Books.

[Jack21222]

I just spent 92 dollars at Amazon on Arkham expansions... stupid game... why u addict me so hard?

[emceng]

I need to stop reading this thread. All it does is make me want to buy games I will never play, or get depressed because I have no one to play them with.

[SurgicalSteel]

Hey guys, I'm looking for an opinion on a game: 221B Baker Street. First, the obvious question: is it fun? And second: I'm looking to get it as a gift for my dad, who is a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, but a lesser board game fan. Is this a good game for someone who's not a huge board game geek?

[marcel]

If you want to try a cooperative game, Forbidden Island works reasonably well with two people (although you may want to start the tide marker a bit higher).

I will disagree with this one. Though Forbidden Island is a quick fun cooperative game, it is a bit too simple, and I mostly consider it a co-operative game for kids or occasional play for adults.

for co-operative games, I would recomend pandemic, same designer as forbidden island, or flash point: fire rescue over forbidden island.

A 2-player game I like a lot mysel is Basilica, published by rebel.pl. By the smae publisher, there is also K2, which plays well with 1-5 players.

[emceng]

So played Arkham Horror yesterday for the first time in two years. It was fun, but we had issues. I was using the quick guide, and that says elder signs can be burst through - though I didn't see that in the manual after we quit. So instead of having 2-3 sealed gates, we had gates popping open. It essentially got to the point where we were treading water, and hadn't gotten anywhere. Doom track was only at 4, but we'd been playing for 3 hours, and had 3-4 gates still open, and no chance of getting them all closed, without more opening. . Then had two rumor cards that were just going to demolish us in a few turns, and quit.

[pseudoidiot]

When I used to play semi-regularly 4 or 5 years ago a friend had written up a really handy procedure document. What order to go in, different decision points, etc. It was pretty handy for when we were unsure on a specific thing.

A month or so ago I pulled out Arkham Horror for the first time in a few years. If not for that handy document I would have had no idea what was going on. I only vaguely remembered some things and was pretty wrong about a lot of things. Definitely easier than trying to re-acquaint myself with the rulebook.

[clockworkmonk]

is this a document you can easily make available? cause that sounds rather handy.

[pseudoidiot]

I'll try and remember to poke around when I get home. Luckily I had the forethought to keep 4 or 5 copies printed out, which were in the box.

Worse case I could see about making a scan of them.

[Gopher of Pern]

http://www.headlesshollow.com has a whole ton of game sheets for different games, including Arkham Horror. Very handy, I've started using them since I found them.

As for the gates bursting, that happens with one of the expansions, and only on certain cards. Not just any gate opening means a gate burst. If you haven't shuffled well, they'll all be at the top!

[Vaniver]

http://www.headlesshollow.com has a whole ton of game sheets for different games, including Arkham Horror. Very handy, I've started using them since I found them.

I strongly recommend their Arkham Horror sheet. It's amazing how better laid out it is than the Fantasy Flight rulebook.

[Catmando]

Do online board games count? I know it's not the same playing a board game on the computer, but it can improve on games like Risk (who wants to roll 20 times every time they move?). Afterwind is a particularly good example of an online strategy game. I don't play often at all, but from the experience I've had it's great.

Continuing the online theme, a friend of mine made a Pente game for us to play. It's a great game, if very simple. I eventually got pretty good at it, though I was never able to consistently beat him. It's definitely worth trying, though, if you like games like checkers, and there are real boards as well, of course.

[Kaiman]

There's a lot of arguing on the best "simple game". Simple for me. It's The Resistance.

You are all in the resistance, but some of you (less than half) are secretly government agents pretending to be in the resistance. You have 5 missions to perform sequentially, each of which has a different leader. The leader selects who the team is (it's never the entire group) for that mission. Each person on the mission secretly votes to perform the mission or sabotage it - 1 sabotage means it fails (except the 4th mission takes 2 sabotages), otherwise it passes. If 3 missions succeed, the Resistance wins. If 3 missions fail, the Government Agents win. That's 90% of the rules right there.

Do online board games count? I know it's not the same playing a board game on the compute

Yes they do. As an avid avid avid (as in my dad and I attend the World Boardgaming Championships in Pennsylvania every year and I would go to the Essen Spiel if I could afford to) boardgamer, I wish more board games would use this well to expand their market. Plus, there's also mixing them with playing turn-based games using PBeM aids (play by e-mail) where you send move files to each other (or explain your move in text for simpler games) and use neutral sites created for that purpose to roll the dice or draw cards.

similar for citadels.

Good game but you have to put time limits on picking the characters each round.

Has anyone here played 7 Wonders? Is it amazing?

Good game but everyone is sort of playing their turns almost at once and you don't really know what's happening on the other side of the board which can be annoying if you're like me and what to interact with everyone.

Hmmm, interesting. That's the issue I see with Risk. Too often I've seen games come down to which of the two superpowers can take out the third player, and usually the third player gets a large say in that. So instead of skill or strategy(yeah I know it's a dice game) victory is based on how much someone likes you.

There isn't much skill or strategy to Risk anyway, it's up there with Monopoly as far as overrated popular games that sadly serve to prevent potential boardgamers from exploring quality games more because they think most games suck based on their limited experience.

Junta
Betrayal at House on the Hill

Problem with Junta is the coups take so long to resolve compared to a normal game turn that most people don't want to try a 2nd one after the 1st one has happened.

Betrayal can randomly lead to horribly imbalanced haunts where the monster either has a near auto-win or has almost no chance but fully resolving it will take a while. If you play it for pure strategy you'll be disappointed. If you get into the theme of exploring a bizarre haunted mansion, you'll probably really like it.

Bang

Great little game. Unless you have an 8th player, don't bother playing with the expansions though. The basic game is the best version.

haven't played the Axis and Allies expansions though. Any good?

A&A: Pacific is a nice change of pace, especially since you get to have the big semi-historical naval battles that A&A is often missing (because the US and Japan each usually have better strategies).

A&A: Europe sucks. Germany can go for London or New York, but either is a losing business. So either they take Moscow and win, or they get to the point where taking it is impossible and know they will lose, and then the last 2 hours of the game is horrifically boring for the German player who has no chance, so he might as well surrender, which sucks for the USA player especially to not get the thrill of the endgame. I mean seriously, imagine playing 1944-1945 of WW2 out as a German general knowing you had no hope of winning.

One of the hallmarks of Eurogames (read: better games) is that all players are in until the end of the game- they might have a 0% chance of winning after a point, but they still have things they can do and are able to influence and enjoy the game.

Oh please, no need to get smug about Euros. Plenty (actually most) modern war games have the same factor. You might really love Successors - the premise is Alexander the Great's generals are squabbling over who inherits his empire. If you don't mind longer games with a lot of rules (thankfully, they are simple rules, there's just lots of them), this one is great because not only is nobody elminated, it's a 5-turn game (although auto-victory is usually a threat) and there's really no such thing as having 0 chance to win until at least the start of the final turn.

Successors is one of many very underrated niche games that even most who style themselves boardgamers don't know if that are simply fantastic designs. Some others include Age of Rennaisance (once you get past the crappy rulebook - it's a tech/resource games), Twilight Struggle (Cold War - THE best wargame-eurogame mix EVER and also one of the best at making the game match its theme), Victory in the Pacific (US vs Japan WW2), Russian Campaign (Germany vs Russia WW2), Here I Stand (The Reformation), Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage (guess what it's about), Hare and Tortoise (race game with virtually no luck elements), Football Strategy (brilliant simple, 20 plays cross index with 10 defenses on a matrix), Fury of Dracula (hide and seek hidden movement, 1 player is Drac, the others hunt him down) and possibly Imperial (I waver on this one, it's definitely good just not sure if it's quite as the standard of greatness of these others).

Have you played any Eurogames? How many board games have you played? Because, as telcontar42 pointed out, a lot of the most famous Eurogames beat Risk at your criteria

Sight. So do most wargames.

Most of my favorite games that I play as board games are unconventional, such as Blokus, Balderdash and Scattergories. They all technically involve boards...

Balderdash is one of the top 10 games of any sort ever created in history.

I just played Pandemic, and it was pretty awesome. You and your friends are a team of specialists trying to save the world from a killer disease. I lost twice and finally won the last game.

I'm very competitive but cooperative "beat the system" games are underrated. There's a great Lord of the Rings cooperative game out there that is really hard to win even on the easy setting but really fun.

The entire series of games (There were 4) made by the axis and allies company were all decent. I think one was called Shogun, in which you control armies in feudal japan and try to conquor, and there was also a Roman version game - again dominate the map

There were actually 5 in the Gamemaster series, not 4. The other two are Broadsides & Boarding Parties (really silly) and Fortress America (the best one of the five. It's finally getting a reprint pretty soon here.)

So I need a tip or two on a small issue I have concerning board games.
You see. I've never played anything that isn't Risk, Monopoly, etc. Games that everyone and their mother plays at a time or two in their lives. To me, such simple games are just no fun. On the other hand I've got a huge problem of finding anyone that plays such games near me.
So to my question. How do you find other people that are interested in such games that are close enough to actually play with on a regular basis? Is there some sort of online meetup board for different cities?

You might find some on http://www.consimworld.com

few years ago I played an old English board game called King Maker - it lasted about 6 hours, but was rather good

I don't mind the length, but KingMaker had the worst mapboard of any game ever. The idea was great but the execution needed some work.

Interesting thing about smallworld is that the vps are hidden information. I actually prefer it to be the other way round- as with all these kind of games its always technically possible to count, which is worth doing, because frequently I've been picked on because other players assume I'm ahead, when I'm really not. Having open information means people can actually do the maths correctly

I agree 100%.

[Vaniver]

There's a lot of arguing on the best "simple game". Simple for me. It's The Resistance.

You are all in the resistance, but some of you (less than half) are secretly government agents pretending to be in the resistance. You have 5 missions to perform sequentially, each of which has a different leader. The leader selects who the team is (it's never the entire group) for that mission. Each person on the mission secretly votes to perform the mission or sabotage it - 1 sabotage means it fails (except the 4th mission takes 2 sabotages), otherwise it passes. If 3 missions succeed, the Resistance wins. If 3 missions fail, the Government Agents win. That's 90% of the rules right there.

I played two games of The Resistance with ~7 people, and both games were trivially won by the Resistance. We were not impressed. If you get lucky the first mission and select only legit people, then you're almost guaranteed to win, and that happened to us twice in a row. (We calculated that as pretty unlikely, but that was excluding ability to read faces, which may be significant.)

You might really love Successors - the premise is Alexander the Great's generals are squabbling over who inherits his empire. If you don't mind longer games with a lot of rules (thankfully, they are simple rules, there's just lots of them), this one is great because not only is nobody elminated, it's a 5-turn game (although auto-victory is usually a threat) and there's really no such thing as having 0 chance to win until at least the start of the final turn.

Is there a significant difference between the editions? They have wildly different BGG ranks.

Twilight Struggle (Cold War - THE best wargame-eurogame mix EVER and also one of the best at making the game match its theme)

So far, I haven't been very impressed with TS. (But I've only played it ~3 times, and so it might grow on me.) I think my main issue is the way the game is balanced- it seems like the USSR has a 20-30% chance of an early win, and then if they don't get that, the US has a 60-80% chance of a late win. It's good at recapturing the spirit of the era- the US player is terrified at the start, and then the USSR player faces a long decline into death- but it's not clear to me that makes for a good game.

[novax6]

There's a lot of arguing on the best "simple game". Simple for me. It's The Resistance.

You are all in the resistance, but some of you (less than half) are secretly government agents pretending to be in the resistance. You have 5 missions to perform sequentially, each of which has a different leader. The leader selects who the team is (it's never the entire group) for that mission. Each person on the mission secretly votes to perform the mission or sabotage it - 1 sabotage means it fails (except the 4th mission takes 2 sabotages), otherwise it passes. If 3 missions succeed, the Resistance wins. If 3 missions fail, the Government Agents win. That's 90% of the rules right there.

I played two games of The Resistance with ~7 people, and both games were trivially won by the Resistance. We were not impressed. If you get lucky the first mission and select only legit people, then you're almost guaranteed to win, and that happened to us twice in a row. (We calculated that as pretty unlikely, but that was excluding ability to read faces, which may be significant.)

Are you sure you guys were playing correctly? The reason I ask is because I just played this game a few weeks ago, and out of 4 games, the resistance barely won the last one, and the spies dominated our first three games. We screwed up a few rules the very first game though, the first being that after everyone has put down their vote for the mission team, you don't mix the cards, and so you can see who voted what (very important), and also that the leader changes after each failed voting for a mission team (along with after each mission).

If you get lucky on the first mission, than once it comes to team voting for the 2nd mission, not only do you need more people for the next mission, it's also different leader, and the leaders almost always want to choose themselves to go, because they know they aren't(are) a spy. So my guess is there was a rules mix up, maybe you weren't changing the number of people who have to go on each mission?

It's been great fun for us so far, easily one of the best large group games I've played.

[mister k]

There's a lot of arguing on the best "simple game". Simple for me. It's The Resistance.

You are all in the resistance, but some of you (less than half) are secretly government agents pretending to be in the resistance. You have 5 missions to perform sequentially, each of which has a different leader. The leader selects who the team is (it's never the entire group) for that mission. Each person on the mission secretly votes to perform the mission or sabotage it - 1 sabotage means it fails (except the 4th mission takes 2 sabotages), otherwise it passes. If 3 missions succeed, the Resistance wins. If 3 missions fail, the Government Agents win. That's 90% of the rules right there.

I played two games of The Resistance with ~7 people, and both games were trivially won by the Resistance. We were not impressed. If you get lucky the first mission and select only legit people, then you're almost guaranteed to win, and that happened to us twice in a row. (We calculated that as pretty unlikely, but that was excluding ability to read faces, which may be significant.)
.

Well yeah, if you do happen to get two legit people (or three, depending on numbers) on your first mission, it'll help, although a success does not mean that there are no traitors: Imperials do not have to sabotage a mission, and as they know who everyone else if, they may well act nice so they can get in on other missions. Its actually quite hard to gain information in resistance because traitors are allowed not to betray a mission.

[Vaniver]

If you get lucky on the first mission, than once it comes to team voting for the 2nd mission, not only do you need more people for the next mission, it's also different leader, and the leaders almost always want to choose themselves to go, because they know they aren't(are) a spy.

The 2nd team requires as many people as the 1st team, I believe. (This may be a quirk of playing with 7 or 8 people, but I think it's general.) If the first team succeeds and the second team leader nominates themselves instead of the original team, they are a spy, no questions asked. Vote down their selection and counting voting down anything besides the original team. You need 5 failed votes in a row for the spies to win, which will not happen (since there are only 2-3 spies, and hopefully all the rebels aren't idiots). On the third round, you need one additional teammate, but you also need 2 failures to lose (if I remember correctly, might have been the fourth). You vote in the original team and it doesn't matter who the last person is.

Imperials do not have to sabotage a mission, and as they know who everyone else if, they may well act nice so they can get in on other missions. Its actually quite hard to gain information in resistance because traitors are allowed not to betray a mission.

We considered that, but it's not clear to me that spies benefit much from letting the rebels win any rounds. I think you're better off scuttling the first mission, and then hoping you can get a spy on the second mission, and then you're almost home free.

[novax6]

If you get lucky on the first mission, than once it comes to team voting for the 2nd mission, not only do you need more people for the next mission, it's also different leader, and the leaders almost always want to choose themselves to go, because they know they aren't(are) a spy.

The 2nd team requires as many people as the 1st team, I believe. (This may be a quirk of playing with 7 or 8 people, but I think it's general.) If the first team succeeds and the second team leader nominates themselves instead of the original team, they are a spy, no questions asked. Vote down their selection and counting voting down anything besides the original team. You need 5 failed votes in a row for the spies to win, which will not happen (since there are only 2-3 spies, and hopefully all the rebels aren't idiots). On the third round, you need one additional teammate, but you also need 2 failures to lose (if I remember correctly, might have been the fourth). You vote in the original team and it doesn't matter who the last person is.

Yeah I think that's where you guys had a problem, it's never the same amount of people on the 2nd mission. If you're playing 7/8 people, the first mission requires 2/3 and the second mission requires 3/4, and after that it increases by 1 again two missions later. So it should never be an easy walk in the park for the Resistance.

About the leaders voting for themselves, I don't know about your group, but in our plays, any leader who didn't' vote for himself was usually considered to be a spy, trying to throw people off, because why wouldn't they include themselves if they weren't a spy? Our spies could and did intentionally let a first mission pass so that in later rounds they would be considered 'safe'.

On the third round, you need one additional teammate, but you also need 2 failures to lose (if I remember correctly, might have been the fourth). You vote in the original team and it doesn't matter who the last person is.

Also I think you may have been playing this part wrong too, if i'm understanding it correctly. No matter what mission it is, only one person on the mission team has to sabotage it in order for it to fail.

[Gopher of Pern]

re: The resistance:

I've only played it online (Actually here in the mafia forums) but it does seem slanted towards the resistance. It's been played 4 times on the forums, with only 1 spy win, which was due to an experienced spy team and inexperienced resistance team. 1 game finished during the 2nd mission because all the spies had been outed due to the powers falling favourably to the resistance. Another game had a very bumbling resistance still win, although it did come down to a 50/50 choice in the end.

I got Battlestar Galactica and Dungeon Lords this week, so I'm looking forward to playing them this weekend. Also received Game of Thrones for xmas, which was a fun game to play, although the balance might have been a bit off, but we only played with 5 players, 6 looks like it might play fairly well.

[Chen]

I got Battlestar Galactica and Dungeon Lords this week, so I'm looking forward to playing them this weekend. Also received Game of Thrones for xmas, which was a fun game to play, although the balance might have been a bit off, but we only played with 5 players, 6 looks like it might play fairly well.

I love BSG though I do find it takes pretty long with 6 players. Dungeon Lords I find is far too long for what it is. The balance isn't bad but there's not a whole lot of player interaction and there is a lot of "playing with yourself". The attacking part (second phase of the round) is pointlessly long too I find.

[Jack21222]

So, I just bought my final Arkham Horror expansion... I saved Dunwich for last (even though most people get this first) because I had made up my own injury and madness cards. This game is addicting... and a tad expensive.