The Boardgame Thread

[Hawkbit]

Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert. We only played Desert once or twice, but Island we played 25+ plus when my kid was 7-8yo.

My kid also grasped Dominion, 7 Wonders, TTR and Catan at that age enough to play with us. Her strategies were not the best, but she understood the rules. I never played it, but I wonder if a deckbuilder like Legendary might be in your wheelhouse? Bonus, it's co-op so you can work together to play. https://www.amazon.com/Upper-Deck-Legendary-Marvel-Building/dp/B00A4KHEK0

Smallworld would be okay, but we did not like it. It's a fiddly game with all the little tiles.

[Rasix]

If he likes Risk, you could do worse than Small World.

Would second/third Castle Panic.

Also in a year or two, Legends of Andor - a fantasy co-op that is neither a pandemic clone nor an ameritrash sea of tokens and fiddly crap.  

Mice and Mystics always comes up as a dungeon crawl for young gamers - but I've never tried it.


How was ticket to ride first journey? I have nieces and nephews to infect.

Yah, I watched Table Top episodes of Castle Panic and Small World. Both seem like he might like them. Rules didn't seem too bad for either.

Ticket to Ride: First Journey was fun I thought. My first exposure to the game as well and the rules weren't that hard. He got some bad routes but managed to win with only a few suggestions. He gets really despondent when he's not winning, and the win kind of just fell in his lap when I was pretty close to winning, so I don't know if he relished the victory that much. Map seems a little cramped, but I thought it flowed well and I would play it again with him.

[Shannow]

I've got Mice and Mystics. Can't say I'm fond of recent board games and their ridicolous amounts of rules that are poorly written. Seriously is it some sort of trend to make this shit harder than it should be? (And I can decipher the World in Flames rulebook so it's not me) I also picked up the LOTR LCG for myself for some 1 player fun. Spent 10 minutes with the rulebook and gave up.

Pandemic is awesome, replayable and pretty easy to pick up plus being perfectly fine as a solo game (yeah I have no friends, whatsittoyou)

[Soln]

LOTR LCG is hard at first but worth it IMO.  There's great play throughs on Tragic the Blathering's channel on YT.  Starts from the Core Set and first adventures.  They helped me.  Also there are some useful player aids on BGG.

[ghost]

My son had a rather boardgamey Christmas. I managed to sneak a few newer (to us, go easy) board games (King of Tokyo, Sushi Go Party, Ticket to Ride: First Journey) into the slew of Hasbro boredom.

One of the games he seems to like a lot is Risk, which has a rather nasty setup time and is somewhat of a chore to play. Wife can't stand it and the cats like to randomly wreck games. Any suggestions on something that would be easier to just pick up and play? He's 7, so nothing scary or horror related. He seems to pick these games up pretty well. Better than my wife who seems to cap out strategically at Clue.

This has really made me wish my son was older or my wife was into this crap or had friends that weren't your standard suburban parents. Some of these games look rather neat. Only one of the newer games that has any traction with my boy so far is King of Tokyo, partially because he just hates losing and still doesn't take it well. So, something cool co-op wise would be neat as well.

The newer Star Wars Risk is actually pretty damned good.  And it's two player, which means mama won't have to play if she's not into games.

[Rasix]

That actually looks pretty cool.

Any other 2 player co-op/solitaire games other than the LOTR, Legendary games mentioned that people would recommend? I do not mind playing alone.

[Soln]

The newest solo friendly/CoOp game also by FFG is Arkham Horror the LCG.  It's apparently more story driven which is a plus for me.  I'm jumping into it.

[Goldenmean]

The newest solo friendly/CoOp game also by FFG is Arkham Horror the LCG.  It's apparently more story driven which is a plus for me.  I'm jumping into it.

The big winner for me there is that it's campaign driven, so unlike the LotR CCG where you're constantly tearing down and setting up different decks to deal with each specific scenario, you're limited in the changes you can make after every mission by how much experience you got, and you can level up cards to more powerful versions. Your deck is much more tightly tied to the theme of being who you are, and each character feels unique as a result of their unique cards. It's pretty swanky. It also gives more reason for cards that give vp, because now that becomes exp instead of just bragging rights in LotR.

Another game I've liked for potentially solitaire play is Aeon's End, which is another cooperative deckbuilder with a sort of apocalyptic fantasy vibe. Evil nasties from other dimensions have destroyed all but one city on your planet and the players are mages trying to drive them back. This is sort of Sentinels of the Multiverse meets Dominion. You always pick a nemesis, each of which has its own custom deck and is run basically the same way it is in Sentinels, whereas the players build their decks over the course of the game like Dominion. One neat thing it does is solve my least favorite thing about deckbuilders, in that you never shuffle your deck. When you run out of cards, you just flip over your discard pile, which means that being good at the game means setting up combos that will be available to you the next time through your deck while you're discarding.

Most of my solitaire gaming is just running through sample games so I'm better able to teach my game group, but one thing I've been actively playing solitaire and enjoying is One Deck Dungeon. This is a rogue-like in a box, and one set of it will seat 1-2 players, where you can theoretically play with four out of two sets. It really works solitaire though. Like the name implies it's just one deck of cards (and some supplemental character cards and the like). You lay out some cards face down to represent doors in the dungeon, and then you pick one, flip it over and either go "Oh hell no" or deal with the monster/trap on the other side. The actual play of the game is dice rolling. You get different colored dice for different skills and there are boxes you need to fill on the monster sheet. Any boxes you don't end up filling do something bad to you, either making you waste time, or dealing damage. If you're still alive, you slide the card under your character sheet in a few different ways to represent either an item you found, or a new ability, or some xp to help you to the next level. This is really a rogue like in the classic meaning. You'll lose this one. A lot. But even with the randomness of the dice, every time I've lost I've had a "Huh, ok, I see what I did wrong there" moment and had plans to iterate next time and have steadily been getting better. For being a single deck of cards, there's a lot of replay here. There's even a campaign mode which will let you level up with new passive skills in between games. They're also meant to be kickstarting an expansion in February I think.

For two player, this isn't quite available for non-kickstarter backers yet, but should be soon, Santorini is a good little game. It's a retheme/revamp of an old abstract game. Basically you've got two builders and every turn you move a builder and then build a level of a structure. Builders can jump down any number of levels, but can only move up one. The goal is to end your movement with a builder on a third level of a structure. The base game itself is decent, though a little dry, but they also added about 50 god cards. Each player gets one of those at the beginning of the game and they give you a new ability, or a new victory condition, or *something*. For being such a simple game, these powers vary quite a bit and each match-up I've played has felt different. Like I said though, this is competitive, so maybe not right for you.

[Rasix]

Family liked Sushi Go Party.  Boy wasn't super great it, but he'll get better once he learns to play a bit more strategically.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

[Soln]

Another great family game is Jamaica.  It's a roll and move, but with some special abilities.  Very approachable, fast, fun.

[eldaec]

If he likes Risk, you could do worse than Small World.

Would second/third Castle Panic.

Also in a year or two, Legends of Andor - a fantasy co-op that is neither a pandemic clone nor an ameritrash sea of tokens and fiddly crap.  

Mice and Mystics always comes up as a dungeon crawl for young gamers - but I've never tried it.


How was ticket to ride first journey? I have nieces and nephews to infect.

Yah, I watched Table Top episodes of Castle Panic and Small World. Both seem like he might like them. Rules didn't seem too bad for either.

Ticket to Ride: First Journey was fun I thought. My first exposure to the game as well and the rules weren't that hard. He got some bad routes but managed to win with only a few suggestions. He gets really despondent when he's not winning, and the win kind of just fell in his lap when I was pretty close to winning, so I don't know if he relished the victory that much. Map seems a little cramped, but I thought it flowed well and I would play it again with him.

On the 'not winning' thing, as well as co-op you might find it helps to look for games with hidden scoring.

Ticket to ride can be played that way if you don't score routes till the end, small world is hidden scoring.


Legendary is pretty fun but personally I wouldn't recommend for kids. First off you are parsing a lot of rules on cards that means reading needs to be well above 7 year old level, plus the card text isn't written all that well. Second, ymmv on this but the female character art is not ideal (at least the Marvel version) - none of it is way over the line in unacceptable territory - but a lot of it is not stuff I'd choose to be introducing as a parent. Think poor imitation of Rob Liefeld.

[schild]

Kingdom Death can blow me:


You pledged $1,535.

[Goldenmean]

Were you missing some old expansions or did you get a lot of the pinup/promo stuff? I just got all of the new stuff that actually has game content for 1225$

[schild]

$777 tier + all the old expansions, plus the 4 crossovers, the whole plastic board horseshit, plus one set of dice

[Sky]

I made it out a bit cheaper (since I had spent more in the 1st KS).

777 + 2nd upgrade kit + crossovers + bases + board + frogdog shirt.

[Goldenmean]

Yeah, I just went silver lantern + all of the new expansions separately. I could have gotten the same stuff a little cheaper by picking up a frogdog pledge a few days back but I also would have gotten all the pinups, which I actively do not want.

Skipped the board. Was mildly tempted, but I don't need to be storing a 2' x 3' thing that doesn't add content in addition to everything else.

[schild]

I just figured he's not releasing anything for 3 years and I want to get back into painting minis as it's zen as fuck.

[schild]

Amount pledged
$1,535.00

Pledge status
Collected

That's what pain looks like.

[Rasix]

Yikes. You guys are crazy. I mean, it looks awesome, but damn.

[Sky]

Yeah, we won't talk about my KD collection. I spent a bit less than Schild this time, but more last time...and both combined are less than the resin collection...

But the crazy money is trying to chase out of print resins. No thanks!

[ghost]

That actually looks pretty cool.

Any other 2 player co-op/solitaire games other than the LOTR, Legendary games mentioned that people would recommend? I do not mind playing alone.

Star Wars Rebellion is awesome. 
Memoir' 44 is a lot of fun and has a nice historical context.  My 8 year old loves it. 
Twilight Struggle...

[lamaros]

Co-op/solitare?

[Rasix]

Co-op/solitare?

Games I could possibly play with my son or solo if he doesn't want to play. Or just solo in general if the content is too mature or just not in his interests. He's not into any pop culture stuff, so that's pretty much all lost on him and the mechanics count for more. I'm not sure the wife will do anything but roll dice or play simple card games, so she's not a given for anything. I should have had another kid.

Apparently now the my wife's parents refuse to play games with him, so that's fantastic. I wanted to try some 6 player Sushi Go Party but they just won't do it anymore. I would bitch in more detail but.. eh. Can't expect a kid to be mature all of the time.

He just does not like losing. Lost to a kid in a his last match at a chess tournament and just wanted to be gone. Never mind that the kid was 400 points higher, and he was at the end of a very long day, but losing a possible medal was a tipping point. Ended up missing the award ceremony were he actually got a trophy for placing.  

[lamaros]

Yeah I was just questioning Ghosts suggestions. They're not co-op or solo games.

I can't really help as I don't play any solo or co op games...

Hopefully he'll get used to losing eventually, so much more to enjoy if it's about the process and not just the result.

[ghost]

Losing is tough for kids.  We went through that with our guys and they've come out of it quite a bit.  Coop games are actually quite helpful with that, even though I don't really like coops.

I was actually listing a couple of two player games for him, not coops. 

[jgsugden]

Still playing Seafall.  5 games done.

My suggestion: Only play with hardcore gamers that don't give up when they're losing. Space games by about a month.  Some games will be more interesting than others.

This isn't a top game for me, but it is good enough to rotate into the mix for a while. I'mnot regretting playing. However, I'm not eagerly awaiting the next game each night like I was for Pandemic Legacy.

[Teleku]

Sigh.  I finally got a group together and busted out the Conan board game I kickstarted.  Was actually pretty fun, and we were having a great first match.  Then the wife of the guy who's apartment we were playing in came back from a girls night, with several of her friends in tow.  They all pour big glasses of red wine, and sit around us to see what the hell we are doing.  One of them promptly knocks her entire glass over across the board, overlords control plate, and item card deck.

 

[Rendakor]

Ouch.

[eldaec]

It is worth sending that story to the publishers. Board game producers can be pretty generous with this sort of thing.

[Teleku]

Really?  Hmm.

[jgsugden]

And this is why Conan is so hot on hearing those lamentations.

[Ragnoros]

I've not dealt with wine specifically, but most games these days have enough plastic coating to simply wipe them off and continue onward. Not the case here?

[Teleku]

Game board stained and warped a bit.  Same for all the tokens and monster cards that come from punch board.  I mean, it didn't hurt them too badly and they are still usable, but it's still card board.  The actual item cards themselves.... The ones that got fully drenched practically desintegrated.  Heavy damage to any part that got wet on the others.

[Soln]

Tell the fripette to replace the game.

[Lucas]

I'm starting to really get into the LOTR LCG, no matter the fact I'm still stuck at the beginner core set quest (passage through Mirkwood) 

Anyway, I finally bought all the adventure packs of the first cycle minus "The Hunt for Gollum" which is undergoing a reprint here in Italy.

Still, I'm determined to beat at least the first quest without using any of the cards from the Adventure packs, and I feel I'm almost there with a Spirit/Lore deck I was quite unlucky with yesterday during a couple of playthroughs. I really really like the whole experience, but damn, it's brutal if you want to play by the rules (meaning play "single-handed" when solo without simulating another player, or sticking to the "tournament" deck size of 50 which is penalizing with some of the useless cards of the core set).