Board Games Bonanza!

[AstroManLuca]

Oh yeah, they've been whoring Catan out since it became popular. Not just with the expansions but with standalone games, and now they're going the Monopoly route and making a rethemed version that's essentially the same as the original (Star Trek Catan).

Yeah, those don't do anything for me. Pure money grabbing. Changing terrain hexes to "sectors" or whatever and replacing settlements with space stations doesn't change anything about the game... just as reskinning Monopoly doesn't make the game any less terrible.

I've made a point of having games in my collection for both groups. I have a game group that I play with regularly, and we play gamers' games. For my non-gamer friends I have some party games and simpler games like Ticket to Ride.

I do have to wonder what Donald X was thinking with the Alchemy expansion for Dominion. Other than that I have all of the expansions and really enjoy the variety of cards.

Yeah, what is with Alchemy. Seems like most of the cards are just overpowered versions of regular cards that are "balanced" solely by their high price (when you account for potions). Possession is one of the most-vetoed cards on Isotropic, and if I'm ever in a veto game I always knock out cards from the Alchemy set first.

Anyway regarding those simpler games, a good one is Mexican train dominoes. Pretty simple game, not a ton of strategy, but lots of fun and good for a lot of people. Very quick to learn.

Any other simpler games you can recommend?

 

[FYIImaSpy]

Stone Age!

+1 Stone Age is a great gateway game.

I've got Dominion (orig + Intrigue + Prosperity), Pandemic, Ticket to Ride, At the Gates of Loyang, SmallWorld, but Stone Age seems to get most playing time.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Descent. Had a 13 hour game last week. Tons of rage and fun, mixed with more anger was had by all.

 

[Fingolfin269]

First it was Munchkin (thanks to one of these threads) and it delivered. Now I'm intrigued by Dominion. Is Dominion the kind of game you can play with 4 or 5 people and be done in an hour or so?

 

[Possessed Freak]

Monopoly.

/thread

Played it on Friday with my normal gaming group. Ended up winning when I was down to 2 dollars to my name and the only properties I had up were Boardwalk and Park Place with no houses. After getting $400 from rounding Go and landing on a go to Go on the same turn, I made some quick coin. The others had some deals going on with immunity and partial payouts so the only way they could make a buck was me landing on them. I made money on all 3 of my opponents. I *love* Monopoly and if it takes you a 'long' time to play, then you are doing it wrong.

Oh yeah, they've been whoring Catan out since it became popular. Not just with the expansions but with standalone games, and now they're going the Monopoly route and making a rethemed version that's essentially the same as the original (Star Trek Catan).

I still hate Settlers, but play it with the group whenever they feel the need to bust it out. I know I like Monopoly but the random factor of piece advancement is highly exaggerated when you consider the deal making ability. Settlers, you are absolutely screwed if your numbers are not rolled. No amount of deal making will get a 5 rolled.

 

[JTsyo]

I absolutely love Dominion. I have the base game and the Prosperity expansion. Imagine a customizable card game like Magic, but instead of buying and building your deck beforehand, you construct your deck as you play the game. Every game is different because you only use 10 different cards at a time, but there are hundreds of cards to choose from (24 in the base set, but numerous expansions).

The other ones I have are Catan and Ticket to Ride. I've gotten a bit burned out on Catan lately but it's still fun. My brother has 7 Wonders and I love it.

Alhambra is a cool one too, fairly simple. Kind of similar to Ticket to Ride actually.

I felt prosperity breaks the game. If we play with it, we only use 2 or 3 cards from it. The rest were fine.

Another one that has me intrigued is Imperial but it seems like it would take too long to play.

 

[Possessed Freak]

First it was Munchkin (thanks to one of these threads) and it delivered. Now I'm intrigued by Dominion. Is Dominion the kind of game you can play with 4 or 5 people and be done in an hour or so?

After the initial learning of the base game and how to chain actions/buying/etc, the game is pretty darn quick. I would not play it with more than 4 players as the end game scenario happens quicker and quicker.

My favorite dominion card is Chapel, it suits my play style so well.

 

[mugs]

First it was Munchkin (thanks to one of these threads) and it delivered. Now I'm intrigued by Dominion. Is Dominion the kind of game you can play with 4 or 5 people and be done in an hour or so?

Yes, but honestly Dominion is better with 3 or 2. The reason being that attack cards affect every other player, so instead of having 1 or 2 other players who can attack you before your next turn, you have 3 or 4. Since attack cards are intended to slow the other players down, having this happen round after round will slow the game down.

 

[cirrhosis]

I have just a few:
Twilight Struggle
Earth Reborn
Eclipse

 

[Linflas]

Mousetrap.

/thread.

Haha I still remember getting that for Christmas and playing it as a kid.

 

[vi edit]

Yes, but honestly Dominion is better with 3 or 2. The reason being that attack cards affect every other player, so instead of having 1 or 2 other players who can attack you before your next turn, you have 3 or 4. Since attack cards are intended to slow the other players down, having this happen round after round will slow the game down.

Yeh, if you have 4 or 5 people and they are playing Milita's, theifs, sabatuers, ect it can take FOR EVER to complete a game. There was one game that we must have went 20 turns before somebody had a chance to pop the cherry on the Province deck. Toss in a witch card and you can easily have people in single digit game points. Brutal.

 

[Drako]

One of my current favorites - Carcassonne

 

[Nemesis13]

the lord of the rings game where everyone is a different hobbit was alot of fun

 

[BoberFett]

Maybe if they make an iPad 4 with 48" Retina Screen. Otherwise I'll stick with real boards, they work even when the battery runs out.

Look up demos of gaming on the Microsoft Surface from a few years ago...

 

[randay]

played lords of waterdeep this weekend, good game, but GREAT box design lol. 5 stars on packaging.

 

[alkemyst]

how do some of you play board games without any friends?

 

[oogabooga]

I just have Settler's, want to pick up Dominion soon to try that out as well. I used to be into CCG games so I think that could be pretty fun.

 

[GotIssues]

I *love* Monopoly and if it takes you a 'long' time to play, then you are doing it wrong.

It depends on the type of people you play with. If people don't want to trade, then it gets to be excessively long and boring.

Part of the game is the half-swindling that goes on during trades. Assuming I have/am getting a monopoly, I go for their money to put them on the brink of mortgaging and get houses/hotels up. It works especially well when they get one or two much more expensive monopolies.

I still hate Settlers, but play it with the group whenever they feel the need to bust it out. I know I like Monopoly but the random factor of piece advancement is highly exaggerated when you consider the deal making ability. Settlers, you are absolutely screwed if your numbers are not rolled. No amount of deal making will get a 5 rolled.

I've won games I shouldn't have and I've lost games I shouldn't have because of this. It's frustrating. One game I did my initial placement very poorly - I had a great mix of resources.... but it turned out to both be on the same 3 numbers. The beginning of the game sucked because they never came up, but toward the middle, it's all that was rolled and I became an unstoppable juggernaut and eventually won.


Been playing Battlestar Galactica recently. It's fun

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Typical games we play on game night:
Gnomes on a Submarine is great.
Risk (LOTR, Godstorm, 2210 which sucks, and classic... working on a custom version which has a lot of potential)
Zombies! (which is ok, but requires a lot of space and wasn't as fun as I was hoping, but not a bad game either)
Primarily though we do MTG.
This friday we are doing Battletech/Mechwarrior heroclix which could be fun.

I want to get:
BSG
Powergrid (played it and loved it)
Citadels, Descent, and 7 wonders are also ones I'm thinking about.

 

[Possessed Freak]

how do some of you play board games without any friends?

I dunno, I guess you can always play with your pet.

 

[AstroManLuca]

I still hate Settlers, but play it with the group whenever they feel the need to bust it out. I know I like Monopoly but the random factor of piece advancement is highly exaggerated when you consider the deal making ability. Settlers, you are absolutely screwed if your numbers are not rolled. No amount of deal making will get a 5 rolled.

That's true, I've had stuff like that happen a lot. Settlers seems to be a bit TOO random, and the problem is that there are no alternative strategies. Every strategy requires you to stockpile resources to buy things - so while you can focus on expansion, trading, or development cards, you still won't get anywhere without dice rolls in your favor.

I felt prosperity breaks the game. If we play with it, we only use 2 or 3 cards from it. The rest were fine.

Prosperity is the only expansion I own outside of the base game. I think it's a good expansion, but it has a LOT of power cards. And games with Platinum/Colony can get unnecessarily long.

Yes, but honestly Dominion is better with 3 or 2. The reason being that attack cards affect every other player, so instead of having 1 or 2 other players who can attack you before your next turn, you have 3 or 4. Since attack cards are intended to slow the other players down, having this happen round after round will slow the game down.

Yeh, if you have 4 or 5 people and they are playing Milita's, theifs, sabatuers, ect it can take FOR EVER to complete a game. There was one game that we must have went 20 turns before somebody had a chance to pop the cherry on the Province deck. Toss in a witch card and you can easily have people in single digit game points. Brutal.

I think the key with Dominion isn't just to limit the number of people playing, but to limit players to people who know the game well. If you're playing with more than one noob at a time, it slows things down a lot. I guess that could go for any board/card game.

 

[AstroManLuca]

I just have Settler's, want to pick up Dominion soon to try that out as well. I used to be into CCG games so I think that could be pretty fun.

IMO Dominion combines all the best aspects of CCGs and board games without the downsides. Like CCGs, you have lots of deck-building strategies. But like board games (and unlike CCGs), everyone starts the game on a level playing field. You can't simply buy better cards to make victory easier - every card in Dominion is balanced against the others, and all of them are equally available to everyone who plays.

 

[Possessed Freak]

IMO Dominion combines all the best aspects of CCGs and board games without the downsides. Like CCGs, you have lots of deck-building strategies. But like board games (and unlike CCGs), everyone starts the game on a level playing field. You can't simply buy better cards to make victory easier - every card in Dominion is balanced against the others, and all of them are equally available to everyone who plays.

Dominion's first draw is crucial if a good 5 cost action is available.

I would also argue that there are some REAL crap cards in Dominion. Example: Loan. At best you have slowly cycled copper out of your deck at the expense of having a copper in your deck. At worst, you have cycled useful actions and better money to your discard pile while retaining the copper.

 

[trigun500]

Nun's on The Run is a lot of fun imo...If you liked Clue you'll love this game.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Dominion's first draw is crucial if a good 5 cost action is available.

I would also argue that there are some REAL crap cards in Dominion. Example: Loan. At best you have slowly cycled copper out of your deck at the expense of having a copper in your deck. At worst, you have cycled useful actions and better money to your discard pile while retaining the copper.

Yeah when I got Prosperity and saw Loan I wondered what it was for.

On the one hand, it's an easy way to trash copper early on without using up an action (since it's a treasure card). On the other hand, it pretty much sucks for trashing copper if there is any other trashing option on the board... trash-and-replace cards like Remodel are useful in the late game and actually give some benefit, Moneylender gives you a large boost to buying power early, and Chapel (among others) let you trash a lot faster.

Fact is, some cards are just bad compared to others, but even a bad card can be useful if it provides a necessary function that isn't available on any other card in a particular match.