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[Anvilfolk]

I guess this is now the boardgame discussion thread

It's not about thinking people are dumb. It's just that I know the crowds I play with

For instance, my Game of Thrones sessions run up from 5 to a whopping 8 hours. There's NO WAY we're gonna be able to put a TI3 session after that They're mostly university folk, at CS graduate level. Let's just say they really like exploring all the possibilities... also, the rules for GoT take forever to explain. And people get kind of pissed off if they've made a kickass move that they can't actually do because of some little detail you forgot to explain or that was mentioned for 3s in the middle of the hour it took you to explain the rules (and FF games have a ton of these details!).

I guess the reason I'm definitely not suggesting GoT is that the crowds I usually end up playing with are either the above university folk; or people who aren't too into boardgaming but were brought along by husbands or whatever. Forget about trying to explain Game of Thrones, BSG or any of those. It takes faaaaaar too long for their attention span. Also, I don't think people play that much Diplomacy outside the US. At the very least, I never saw it alongside Risk and Monopoly when I was younger. I've never played it (though I'm curious). So there's not really something to transition from there. Risk's or Monopoly's rule complexity is nowhere near that of GoT (or BSG, or TI3, or any of those) either, so it makes it even harder.

I really enjoyed Ticket to Ride initially, so I guess it might be a nice gateway game, but I'm very disillusioned by it. Again, very little interaction. You get to make a ton of choices, but they aren't really meaningful, which is what I look for in a boardgames. Incidentally, that's also what I think about Catan. At every point, it's pretty obvious what you should be doing, so there are only half a dozen truly meaningful decisions during a 1h30m or 2h game. Too few decisions for so much playtime.

I never realised you could "crack" Ticket to Ride though. We played the Europe edition, and you... kind of just build the obvious thing. It depends on the cards you manage to get really. Never felt there was a lot more to it than that...

[neotemplar]

If you can actually find them:

Dungeon

and

Hero Quest

[timferius]

Sadly, by the time we arrived they were full, and another spot didn't open up for almost 3 hours, by which time we had settled back at my friends house with wine and my copy of Dixit. We plan to give it another shot soon, so I'll keep you all posted. Great list of games so far, some I have or have played, some I've never heard of. Glad to get some good recommendations!

[de5me7]

Can you give any more specifics on your tastes in boardgaming?

Dominion and Ticket to Ride are very popular games, and deservedly so, but they bore me to tears. and Munchkin.. better not to speak of that.

Questions;

how big is the table?
how much time do you have?
What complexity level of rules do you want?
etc

for 2-4 player games (that work well with 2 3 or 4), that are simples, and short i would recommend the following;

Nexus Ops: If you want a risk like war game, but shorter simpler and more fun this is it. Takes 45 mins, easy to explain, and as you win by achieving mission cards there is no ganging up. Fantasy Flight currently publish it, but the older Avalon Hill/Hasbro version is cooler. Has a neat sci fi theme.

Acquire: a game about building an economic empire and trading stocks and shares. Takes 1 hour, is pretty simple. Its a little abstract, you lay tiles and then buy shares in the hotels you think will grow. Fun if slightly cruel financial game. Not sure this works with 2 though.

Fleet; 4 player auction game about building a fishing fleet. If you like bidding in auctions and mathy sort of efficiency this is quite good. Cheap too. Despite being an auction game it works with 2.

Condottiere; A card game with a board about bluffing. You fight battles in medieval Italy by playing troop cards. Its a short simple game of double think and ruse. Cheap


Tale of Arabian Nights; This is sort of like a roleplaying game set in the 1001 Tales of the Arabian Nights. You move around the board, draw cards and have adventures from a paragraph book. Its a bit like a big choose your own adventure game. Takes a while, but you can house rule down the number of vps need to win to shorten it considerably. Its a very random game with minimal strategy.


Citadels; Another short bluffing game. Won't work that well with 2 or 3 though. You secretly select character cards with special abilities then play em and try to screw each other. Also you build buildings in your citadel for vps.

Survive Escape from Atlantis; This is the simplest recommendation i have. An island with your (and the other player) meeples on it is sinking. You have to get em onto boats and to safty. The hitch is theres loads of sea monsters trying to eat you. Great fun, I love killing all my friends most important people with sharks and watching them squirm. Takes 45mins, very very easy to teach.

Dungeonquest; This is a dungeoncrawler but the players are each on their own and racing against each other. get to the dragons room, steal monies, and get out alive be fore the sun sets. Its very deadly (Nethack or Dwarf Fortress deadly), so not for everyone. I find it very amusing.

Discworld Ankh Morpork; This is another very simple accessible game that i've taught to children and old folks. You play cards to control areas of the city with your henchmen and try to screw the other players. You have secret objectives so there is a poker element to the game.

Cyclades; If you want another light war game suggestion this game is good. Set in ancient greece with lots of cool plastic minis you have an auction for powers at the start of each turn (the power to move and raise troops, or build stuff etc). Its not to complex, quite short and looks cool.

Ghost Stories; I don't really like coop games (players against the game system rather than each other) but this is more interesting than some of the more vanilla games such as pandemic and Forbidden Desert. You are a bunch of Chinese warrior monks defending a village from hoards of ghosts. Ghost cards come up and you fight em off, sort of like a tower defense game. Pretty game components too.

If you have just two players, get Sekigahara by GMT games, possibly THE best 2 player game.

[Neonivek]

My two favorite board game types are

Co-op

And All against one.

The problem is most "all against one" games tend to be pretty bad because of skewed wonky balancing. It is actually hard to search for board games like that because there is no official name for "all against one" boardgames.

[de5me7]

i don't mind all vs 1. My issue with coops is that i feel like im playing against a flow chart, there is a solution, i just need to find it and get lucky/be efficient. I need to feel like im playing against something intelligent.

I've played Descent 1 & 2, and Mansions of Madness. Whilst there were things i didn't like about them the all v one thing worked well. There are several all vs one war games too; Maria, Napoleon at Leipzig

[Grakelin]

I guess the reason I'm definitely not suggesting GoT is that the crowds I usually end up playing with are either the above university folk; or people who aren't too into boardgaming but were brought along by husbands or whatever. Forget about trying to explain Game of Thrones, BSG or any of those. It takes faaaaaar too long for their attention span.

Again, I find this condescending. We get away with it because the activity has come built-in with a certain level of elitism. If you told these people that they shouldn't watch the GoT or BSG TV shows because they're too complicated for them, they'd probably be really upset with you.

Also, I don't think people play that much Diplomacy outside the US. At the very least, I never saw it alongside Risk and Monopoly when I was younger. I've never played it (though I'm curious). So there's not really something to transition from there.

They might not play it in Europe. I'm in the same Canadian province as OP, and I get a few people who want to play it all the time. Usually folks who haven't played it all that much to begin with. I think when you're a kid and you hear about Diplomacy a lot, it gets a certain romanticism to it.

Since the industry boomed, retailers in my city and in Toronto have been stocking Diplomacy next to Monopoly/Risk all the time. It's actually a pretty simple game, but there are design flaws (such as having to write your moves on a piece of paper using the game's unintuitive shorthand) which make it take longer than it needs to.

[Anvilfolk]

I guess the reason I'm definitely not suggesting GoT is that the crowds I usually end up playing with are either the above university folk; or people who aren't too into boardgaming but were brought along by husbands or whatever. Forget about trying to explain Game of Thrones, BSG or any of those. It takes faaaaaar too long for their attention span.

Again, I find this condescending. We get away with it because the activity has come built-in with a certain level of elitism. If you told these people that they shouldn't watch the GoT or BSG TV shows because they're too complicated for them, they'd probably be really upset with you.

I guess you've been playing with people who are predisposed to play boardgames, or whose attitude is at least not negative. I'm talking about people who don't really want to but get dragged in by someone who does. I'm talking about people who get bored 5 or 10m into rules explanations of any game They're just different crowds. They're not really open-minded about it, the mentality is trying to get it over with ASAP.  That's why I need to be very careful with the games I pick, to try to change their opinion.

If you're running a group or something, you're probably just getting different sorts of people than I do. The discussion is probably moot, since it's likely that timferius is going to play with someone more like your crowd

Also, timferius' news that the place was too full was both awesome and sad. Awesome because that means boardgames are super popular yay, sad because it means he didn't get to play

[Neyvn]

Dominion

+1

+2
Also better with more players...

[timferius]

Ya, we seem to have a good contigent of board game players up here, and they're getting more and more popular by the year around the world, especially with large nerd icons endorsing them (for example, see Will Wheatons Tabletop webseries). I try not to play with people who don't want to play, I tried to convince my wife to once and that ended... poorly. Boardgames just aren't for everyone.

I know what you mean when you refered to 'singleplayer' games eariler. A good example is Runebound, which is a pretty fun game, but has 0 player interaction unless you alter the rules a bit. On that note, I really do enjoy Dominion, it's one I play at home often enough. I think one of my favourite boardgames is Twilight Imperium, but you need a hell of a lot of time, and some dedicated players for that one haha.

I'm going to change the title now and flip this to a general boardgame discussion thread, since it's served my purposes.

[lordnincompoop]

I'm surprised only themed games have been mentioned so far.

No love for Connect6, Go and Omok (all three incidentally my favourites)? 10 second setup time, works on any coffee table, and all you need is a Go board and accompanying stones. Nothing really complicated about them rules-wise, but very fun to play. It can get very challenging when the opponent is well-matched.

I've been wanting to try xiangqi/janggi/shogi for a while, since I have the board - but I don't know anyone that can play, and online games are generally boring or cumbersome.

[timferius]

Ah, well in that case, I grew up playing chess, but I think I love Quarto! more now that I've played it. A great game to sit down and stare at intently with a good friend.

[lordnincompoop]

Ah, well in that case, I grew up playing chess, but I think I love Quarto! more now that I've played it. A great game to sit down and stare at intently with a good friend.

I also played chess when I was younger, but never really got into it; when I started digging deeper in terms of strategy, I found it far too formulaic and exception-ridden.

A chess-playing friend of mine says much the same, such as that the first 20 moves or so are often cribbed from set openings and thus predetermined. I find that a little repulsive, to be honest.

[Neyvn]

Settlers of Catan is now released on Steam...
http://store.steampowered.com/app/239410/

[timferius]

Settlers of Catan is now released on Steam...
http://store.steampowered.com/app/239410/

There... there's no multiplayer?