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  • I didn't see a board game thread so I'll start one

    What games does everyone play?

    Recently I've been playing Battlestar Galactica, Descent, Puerto Rico and Race for the Galaxy.
  • Candy Land. Lord Licorice like a motherfucker, bitches!!

    http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v519/Dreg/16421956_58bf672488.jpg
  • Topically, some friends introduced us to Pandemic recently. That's a fun game.
    Zombies!!! is always good.
  • Battlestar Galactica and Age of Conan have been popping up lately with my group (although I haven't played Conan myself), and Agricola, Shadows over Camelot, and Race for the Galaxy are old favorites with us.
  • Carcasone and Puerto Rico.
  • Scattergories, Life and Jenga. Keep is simple nah.
  • I haven't played a board game in awhile last one was Settlers of Catan.
  • Settlers of Catan and its expansions (including Starfarers) are slowly being subverted to my getting better at Carcassonne. Memoir '44 is also fun if you've got an interest in WWII.

    My non regular Board gaming group seems to like Risk because they're CRAZY.
  • I'm a big fan of Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings and Power Grid. Any game published by Rio Grande is worth checking out.
  • as I prefer to revive an old thread rather than start a new one I'll bring this back.

    I've been going to Board Game Night at the local hobby store and its been really fun. Mostly Euro-style games like Dominion and Settlers of Catan.
  • We have something like that in Columbus, CABS (Columbus Area Board-gaming Society). I use to go all the time with a friend of mine from school. We would mostly play risk 2210, which was good fun, but I also remember playing a pretty sweet game based on the War of the Roses.
  • Oh, wow, how little the me of April 2009 knew. We play, like, none of those games now.

    Dominion is a staple with my group now. It's probably the best game overall in terms of how easy it is to learn, how well people tend to take to it (even people that aren't really board-game types), and replayability (there are dozens of interesting variations that change up the optimal strategies, and that's before you throw any or all of the 5 or so expansions into the mix.) Lots of fun. If you or your group has never tried it, you absolutely need to add it to your lineup.

    Space Alert, on the other hand, might be my favorite board game ever. Cooperative, panicked running around aboard a spaceship as you all desparately try to work together and avoid getting the ship blown up is a special kind of enjoyable. I don't play as often as I'd like, but I'm happy every time I do.

    And most recently, Mage Knight has been a source of fascination for me. It's fiddly, constrained, long, and complex, and just thinking about it makes me want to take another crack at it. Maybe a PvP scenario this time...

    Also, in a day or two, I'll be getting a copy of Star Trek: Fleet Captains, so that should be good.
  • I really liked 7 Wonders and Race for the Galaxy, probably because I like really complicated strategy games even if I place dead last all the time because I'm bad at strategy.
  • I've heard about Space Alert and it sounds pretty great. I seen your comment over at Rock Paper Shotgun re: Mage Knight. Sure do make me want to pick it up. Hearing them describe it as "King's Bounty on a Board" made my ears perk right the hell up.
  • I've been playing Ascension during break. It's pretty cool.

    Did you say King's Bounty? With tiny figures? That sounds crazy awesome.
  • Ha anyone here played Galaxy Trucker? It's fun.
  • Got 'Em! is pretty simple and fairly strategic.
  • Space Alert vs Mage Knight: They're both good, and by the same creator. I like Space Alert more overall, but for comparison:

    Space Alert has shorter games - the "play" part is time-constrained to 10 minutes (13 with the expansion) and resolving the outcome takes maybe 15 minutes, so it's about half an hour for each attempt. Mage Knight, by contrast, usually takes us about 3 hours, and we haven't even tried the full-length scenarios yet (although we're getting faster.) Neither is really a pro or a con, except insofar as you might prefer long games or short games,

    Space Alert scales from 1-5 players, Mage Knight from 1-4, but my impression (without direct experience) is that Mage Knight scales down better. I've never tried 3-or-fewer-player Space Alert, but apparently it involves adding fake additional players that anyone can give orders to (which actually sounds like glorious, miscommunicative, "I THOUGHT YOU SAID THE ROBOT WOULD BE IN BLUE ZONE, WHY IS HE STILL IN WHITE" fun, now that I think about it.)

    Space Alert is always co-op; there's no competitive scoring or secret traitor. Mage Knight can be played either competitively or cooperatively, but co-op only goes up to 3 players.

    Space Alert does have one additional issue, which is that it didn't go from "lots of fun" to "my favorite game ever" until the expansion pack The New Frontier arrived, which added a sense of persistence and character advancement over the course of multiple playthroughs, as well as some other good twists. Also, achievements. It's only a $20 add, though, and it's probably worth playing SA without it a few times first to get the hang of it before trying to add the expansion material in. No idea if Mage Knight will be getting an expansion or not (although it seems ripe for just such a thing.)
  • I keep reading Dominion as Dominoes and everytime I'm like he'll yeah some Dominoes. Although I dont think that counts as a board game.
  • Update: a 4-player game of Mage Knight just took us ~5-6 hours to complete. That game can take a LONG time if you're playing with the kind of person that sits and ponders their turn for a while.

    Also, to clarify the King's Bounty descriptions in case anyone was getting the wrong impression, it's like King's Bounty in terms of "range around, find things to fight and places to quest/conquer, and hire units and get spells along the way", i.e. the whole game. It's not like King's Bounty in terms of "tactical turn-based grid combat."
  • I want it. :(

    Also I am regretting my fiscal responsibility in not buying Descent a couple months back for $80, as it is now $250. At the very least I could have cut a sweet profit.
  • Apparently there's a new version of Descent coming out sometime this year?
  • So I hear. All the more reason I could have pocketed a cool couple hunny.
  • apparently there's a Gears of War board game, but would the Gears crowd really be pumped for a board game based on it?

    edit: Apparently if you're serious about board/card games you're supposed to buy sleeves for the cards.
  • It can depend on the game. We don't sleeve all of our cards, but the Mage Knight cards were a little worryingly thin, so we sleeved them right away to forestall any damage.

    The Gears game interests me, just not enough to have bothered to pick it up yet.
  • Reading the rules for Space Alert is completely intimidating. It actually seems pretty simple, but the real time component is wigging me out.
  • Today I learned how to play Mahjong which I guess classifies as a board game, it was pretty fun.
  • I used to play weekly with some friends a few years ago. I love the game but it's pretty much impossible to find people to play.
  • The real-time component is the best thing ever about Space Alert. It completely obliterates any of the "hmm, no, let me stare at my cards in frustration for 5 minutes and make everyone wait for me" junk that almost every other game hits at some point, because everyone knows that if they do that then you will LOSE. Just embrace the madness.

    On the subject of other games, I just finished my second game of Star Trek: Fleet Captains. I like it so far! I've won both times, and I can't tell exactly how much is due to skill and how much is just due to luck, but the game just bubbles over with Trek feel. In my first game, the Defiant engaged its cloaking device to slip away from an attacking Klingon warbird and explore a wormhole I had previously scanned but not explored, clearing the path for the Equinox to divert all power to engines, dive through the wormhole, and pop out behind enemy lines to achieve a secret goal deep in Klingon territory. In the second game, my Klingon ships engaged in a pitched battle with the Federation, and were moments away from achieving warrior's deaths before they suddenly received new orders and had to grudgingly cloak and fall back, while the Federation hounded me with a Galaxy-class cruiser they had briefly lost to - and reclaimed from - a mysterious alien takeover.

    Component quality is definitely a little low, but it has two dozen little plastic ships, so I can't complain too much :D
  • We did the first three tutorials last night. Space alert is awesome and super fun.
  • It completely obliterates any of the "hmm, no, let me stare at my cards in frustration for 5 minutes and make everyone wait for me" junk that almost every other game hits at some point, because everyone knows that if they do that then you will LOSE.


    Jesus Christ 5 Whole Minutes!? I played a game of Ticket to Ride in which one person took 15 minutes to play one turn, that was painful.
  • Got Mage Knight. Soooo... does this guy not write his own instruction manuals or something? Because the Space Alert manual is really elegant and has like 7 tutorials to teach you the rules, while I've been staring at the Mage Knight manual on and off all night and have learned next to nothing about how to play this game.

    What I -do- grasp of it sounds pretty awesome. I like the CCG-esque hand of cards to use as actions, where damage is inserted into your hand as "wound" cards, thus damage gives you garbage cards (i.e.: a smaller hand).
  • Maybe this will help.



    Or you could give this a read. http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/746781/rulebook-and-walkthrough

    Apparently a lot of people are having trouble with the rules. The game designer, Vlaada Chvatil, discusses the rules and mechanics in the Board Game Geek forums.

  • Yeah, the Mage Knight manual is pretty lacking, especially in contrast to Space Alert or Dungeon Lords (another Vlaada Chvatil game, and another one with extensive tutorials).

    Definitely play through the starter scenario, but I'm betting the video choux linked will help, too.

    And yeah, I love the way wounds work in this game, it's one of the cleverest mechanics I've seen.
  • Last week I picked up Wings of War, and Ascension. Wings was a lot of fun, and I'll be picking up some of the expansions soon. Ascension was okay. In terms of deck building games, I think Dominion does it better. Also, I recently went through my games and realized I haven't played Chaos in the Old World in over a year, so it's up for grabs if anyone wants it.
  • Wait, are you giving away a board game?

    Edit: If so I would be very interested.
  • Yup, I'm giving it away. I'm not crazy about the game mechanics, and no one else in my gaming group wants it. So if you'd like it, just PM me your shipping details and I'll pop it in the post.

    Edit: Actually, you can just email Olivefincher@gmail.com, I didn't notice any button for private messages on this forum.
  • There is a private message function, but it's broken. :/
  • Fuck yesssssssss... I think I fixed private messages.

    By 'fixed' I mean they seemingly changed how they worked in some update by making it an option plugin I had to enable.
  • So apparently there's GGPO for board games and its called Vassal, thoughts?
  • That seems pretty neat.
  • We stared our faces off at the Mage Knight rules and I can confidently say that after 2 hours of painstakingly rule-checked play, our last hour and a half was played with ALMOST a sense of flow.

    Game's really cool. When Graz's character leveled up and she got a skill that let her play wounds as 2 point actions we were like: image "MAH... MAH GAWD."

    It was as if the universe suddenly changed all its rules.
  • Yesssss :D It's been over a month since I last played, I need to sit down for a session again.

    If you ever try out the competetive version, the elf has one of the meanest PvP powers - she reduces her own movement costs and increases everyone else's movement costs for a round. Because moving wasn't hard enough already.
  • I just bought Axe Cop Munchkin over the weekend. While not a board game, I think that it fits pretty well for this thread. I've played vanilla Munchkin before, but the cards are almost all hilarious.
  • Card games and board games go into the same category if you ask me.

    Anyway, tonight I had the cool opportunity to playtest a game in development. The game is called Born to Serve (I think) and its a super-hero themed Worker Placement game, it was pretty cool. Being a game in development it was super broken especially when you get the super broken power, and you get ganged up on for having the super broken power.
  • Does anyone play Risk anymore? And not the Transformers or Halo ones but the one with cannons?
  • There's a Transformers/Halo Risk?

    Anywho, I love me some Risk of any type. Pretty much all the classics like Monopoly, Chess and Risk are OK in my book (except for Clue, I don't know why).
  • Vanilla Risk is terrible, though.
  • Oh I disagree. If you tweak the rules just do, it's great.
  • If you like (or don't like) Risk , you should check out Antike. It's got the Risk element of taking over land, but is much more involved. You play one of twelves nations, and get attack, currency, or technology bonuses for advancing your nation during gameplay.
  • I remember playing the hell out of Risk 2210. That game was so much fun.