f13.net

I'm trying to get a game night going with some friends. I had this game at one point in time but my set seems in disarray. Anyway, wondering if anyone has played any modern versions that follow the same line. Quick to get going, fun, not a ton of rules all over, hour sessions, playable by non DnD nerds, generated dungeons, somewhat ganeric.

HeroQuest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeroQuest)

PS: Didn't we have a board game section at one point? *shrug*

I played the shit out of Hero Quest in middle school.  Still have the whole set and every expansion except for the Elf-centric one (could never find it).  Was pretty cool because it didn't have the stigma of being DnD so you could get regular people to play, and those people could pick up the game rules within seconds.  I also dug the old school art and furniture and general  80s fantasy "vibe" of the whole thing.

I just went to Toys R' Us over the weekend for the first time in over a decade and was surprised that they didn't have anything similar.  I know at one point they had something called "Hero Clix" but that came out after I was sort of too old for that kind of stuff (not that I wouldn't play HeroQuest right now if I could find anyone who wouldn't be weirded out).  

Do you remember Battlemasters?  That was a sweet game too.  Still have it.

Descent.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17226/descent-journeys-in-the-dark

Although 1 hour sessions is unlikely.

Descent comes to mind, but I haven't played that and my understanding is that it can be a bit long and somewhat rules heavy.
Maybe Castle Ravenloft or Runewars.

This kind of shit used to be sold at toy stores and now you have to go to hardcore specialty shops.

I don't know if it fits the bill, but I played a game called Shadows Over Camelot with some friends that was really good. It is a co-op game which is pretty well done.

www.boardgamegeek.com  has reviews etc on a ton of board games.

www.boardgamegeek.com (http://www.boardgamegeek.com)

All of the specialty board game shops do ebay selling/shipping these days as well, if you can't find a local shop. Talisman is always a fun option for this type of game.


*Guess I should have typed faster

I have heard that Castle Ravenloft is very playable.

Those of you suggesting Descent, have you played it? Is it a good social game? Good for those that don't normally play such games? There may be various intoxicants involved, is it friendly to that?

That website is all kinds of sore on the eyes.

 :ye_gods:

Substance over style is their mantra, I think.

You can get a pristine copy of Hero Quest on Ebay for like $50.  Just buy HQ again.

If you can snag a copy of "Warhammer Quest" (out of print) please to be buying it.  Good luck finding a reasonable price though.
It fills a niche that's very tight right now... that being short, simple co-op dungeon crawls.  Descent is an Epic-style game; rules are fairly light, but the games last quite a while unless you go online and tweak the game.  If you want Descent in space, play Battlestations (awesome game, but low production quality unless you expand).

Skip Ravenloft, not hearing good things about it.  The tiles are bland, art is minimal (nay, unfinished really) missions fairly repetitive even if "different", players die way too much, and there's not much worthwhile strat. it seems.  Tbh the game was designed in typical WotC style, which is to pawn expansions off on the public to fill in design voids.  I suppose it's a decent buy for entry-level folk, but I hear there's frustration even amongst the muggles.

If you want kind of that "dungeon crawl" feel but w/o the standard hack 'n slash you could try a game like "Defenders of the Realm."  It's is a lot like co-op games such as Pandemic or Ghost Stories, but set in high fantasy with a bit more depth and options.  Middle Earth: Quest is also highly regarded, but not as much of a crawl as one might think... there's still resource management and the race against souron, etc.

The reality is, these are your choices:
1)  Score a copy of WHQ
2)  Alter Descent to a shortened version
3)  Play DnD 4e with a lite scenario
4)  Enjoy Ravenloft the best you can and wait for the xpac

note:  your 1-hour playtime puts a serious crimp on what's out there.  Also, if you dont mind stepping away from fantasy, "Mansions of Madness" should be releasing Q1 2011, which is a cthulhu-esque type crawl in the vein of Arkham Horror, designed by the genius that did BSG.

Have you considered Munchkin Quest?  It takes a little getting used to but the game flows pretty well once you get the hang of it.  As for a single hour?  Dunno.  I would rank it above Order of the Stick since that game seems grindy thought it can be fun.  While it strays from typical board games you might try Slasher, the final cut. http://www.pen-paper.net/gamedb.php?op=showothergame&othergameid=67 .  Not sure where you might find a copy though.

Since we are talking about Board Games, does any one remember a game where you entered a dungeon, and each room you entered you had to pick a tile and lay it down and it would uncover the dungeon and be completely random. You had only a specific about of turns until the sun went down and you all died (or something).

Sounds like DungeonQuest.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/472/dungeonquest

Also is kinda like Ravenloft.  Players are slowly dying over time and if they dont get out quickly they die and lose.


Well, if we're goin into card games that pretend to be boardgames then I recommend deckbuilders like Thunderstone or Heroes of Graxia.  The latter of which has the most rpg feel.  There's lighter faire like Ascension (designed by some of the creators of MtG) also.  None of them, including MQ, are co-op though.

I'm assuming the OP wants a co-op crawl.

There's also Talisman which gets a new print run every so often, and I think there's even a World of Warcraft boardgame. No idea what it's like, but it might work for you.

Descent and Castle Ravenloft are pretty much it right now for the dungeon-crawl genre boardgames.
Runebound and Talisman are both fantasy-based word-exploring boardgames and both good, but not dungeon-crawly.
Warhammer Quest is hands-down the best dungeon-crawler I've played, but it can be difficult to find and expensive.  I bought my copy and the expansions before it went out of print, and cherish it.  My friends and I have an ongoing WQ game that we play every week or two, it's good mindless fun.
HeroQuest has a downside in my opinion in that one player has to be the 'dungeon master', so you need one person willing to sacrifice the dungeon crawl to manage all the monsters and stuff.  That aside, it's another easy fun game, and cheaper by far to get than Warhammer Quest.

I will go straight to the point:

DungeonQuest (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/472/dungeonquest) is what you want. It's the game that can take five minutes or two hours. If all you want is some mindless roll'n'move and draw cards and watch eachother die horribly, it's the game with a capital G. Best of all, all the rules needed to be explained are "on your turn, draw a tile, flip it over, follow the instructions. The one getting out with most gold wins." Someone needs to know all the actual rules, but it's very very quick to get started.

Whatever you do, don't get Descent. It's inane for reasons I can elaborate on if you like. It, and four expansions, is in my Shame Box, which I put games in that I never intend to play again unless someone really, really nags.

I have a shame box too.  And it's not filled with games.   :pedobear:

I already own that, like the real game, the rules are a mess.

There's two World of Warcraft board games (and more than that if you count just "warcraft" board games).  The first one was a big box game that was incredibly convoluted, the second is "World of Warcraft, the adventure game" which is more like talisman.

How much time do you want to devote every game night, how many players do you have, and do you want just dungeon-crawling or fantasy adventure in general?

Munchkin Cthulu (http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/munchkincthulhu/) (Steve Jackson Games) - "Kill the Monsters! Steal their Treasure! Stab you buddies! Go MAD!"

Never played it, but looks like some kinda fun, specially the "Go MAD!" part.  Not sure how long it takes to play.

Expect this from every Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) gamedesign.

Edit:
Clarified that it's something that affect only their in-house games, not necessarily the ones they reprint... although they generally botch those up aswell.

Actually, there's also "Dungeon". Which I guess is probably out of print. Same dungeon every time, but who/what's inside is randomly generated from the cards you place in the rooms and flip over when you get there.

Again, if you're sad you lost the original HQ and are looking to spend money on a game as close to that experience as possible, then, ebay is your friend.

http://cgi.ebay.com/HEROQUEST-HERO-QUEST-GAME-SYSTEM-MB-1990-complete-/320619473101?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4aa668e8cd

$21 for a complete boxed set.

"Betrayal at House on the Hill" could be considered a short, crawlish type co-op game.  Although, I'd be willing to bet that Mansion of Madness will be better.
Kinda important if we wants FFA play, pvp, and/or co-op.  I see a lot of FFA suggestions here.

Ravenloft is quicker, and simpler, but there are lots of fan scenarios for Descent that are designed to be short.

Talisman is the ultimate beer and pretzles D&Dish game.

Yeah, it's the fantasy hobby equivalent to the Game of Life, Snakes and Ladders or Candyland.

I love the idea of Descent, but holy shit is it a pain in the ass to actually play - set-up, which takes place in stages throughout the game, is such a chore.

Also, if you're DM, unless you get some good ganks in early (which can be pretty easy) you are screwed once the heroes start to gear up. As DM I found that unless I ease up on the heroes they were going to get housed early, and that's no fun.

Yeah, once they figure out that they can just invest in real estate the game really loses steam.

The big question is if you fancy the "dungeon crawl" feel of Hero Quest. I think we have already established that you do.

Do you like the split in DM and party or are you more interested in the cooperative mode of play?

If its the former the already suggested Descent is a good choice (although a single setting usually runs for two or three hours instead of one). Fantasy flight games have made a number of titles that are basically variants of Descent in different settings. Be warned that the rules and rule manuals are usually pretty obtuse so beginner players can become confused when trying to decipher the meaning of certain rules.

There was a sibling to Hero Quest called "Space Hulk" I believe which offers the same style of game play but is set in the Warhammer 40k Universe but I don't know if it's still available. There's also Talisman which doesn't feature cooperative play is fine nonetheless.

Another game would be Memoir '44 that features a similar style of play as Descent but is set in WW2 and Missions are styled as WW2 campaign settings.

A game I personally like very much and that offers cooperative play is Arkham Horror which is set in the Cthulhu universe by HP Lovecraft and in which the players have to team up to prevent an old one from rising. It offers a few expansions and can be quite challenging yet a game usually only lasts for an hour.

I'd also recommend the Originial Lord of the Rings Board Game (distributed by Kosmos in Europe and Fantasy Flight Games in the US), in this game the players team up to try to bring the One Ring to Mount Doom before Sauron catches up with them. Please be careful, though. In recent years a lot of new games have come out that also use Lord of the Rings as the setting, avoid ordering the wrong game.

If you like some suggestions for traditional board games in which the players play against each other I have more suggestions

Space Hulk is a wargame, also no longer in print, even the newest release goes for over $200.   Memoir44 is also a pvp wargame and nothing like Descent, which is a straight up holy trinity fantasy crawler.
The original LotR is more of a generic resource-grindy coop math eurogame.  The LOTR element is mainly a thematic layer.  The xpacs supposedly open things up quite a bit though and are highly recommended as the 1st release is essentially just a tutorial.  BUT, an epic dungeon crawler it is nowhere near being.

If Arkham is desired it'd probably be smart to just wait for Mansions of Madness to come out or just splurge on Arkham and be sure to buy the preferred xpacs. 

Even Descent is not a Holy Trinity dungeoncrawl. There's absolutely no point in having things like tanks (because there's no support for keeping fire off of weaker characters) and there's no way to make a healer unless you're extremely lucky with loot cards. There's also no consistent way to CC unless you find very specific items. There aren't even any spells to speak of. Descent is, at best, a multiplayer Diablo session where you have to do all the bookkeeping manually. Except it's not like Diablo, because the DM will do everything in her/his power to avoid getting her/his monsters killed, including running behind corners and generally "exploit" rules to the contrary of the hack'n'slash genre.

It's like someone played D&D, ripped out most of the fun (the puzzles, the strong theme, the non-combat abilities, the character development and the group dynamics) and spent a fortune on designing chits and miniatures to replace those darn pesky character sheets. Realizing the game now only took an hour to play, they proceeded to throw enough contrived rules (DoTs, weird monster abilities et c.) back in to bump the sessions back up to four hours.

I think Warhammer Quest is the closest anyone has got to a genuine co-op dungeoncrawl. It's only a shame it uses Warhammer FB's combat rules as something much more streamlined would have suited it better, which rather ironically is one of the only things Descent got right. :-P

Yes, yes it was.

Seems there is a remake in the works. (http://the-lost-and-the-damned.664610.n2.nabble.com/FFG-Remake-Dungeon-Quest-td5217378.html)

I thought the expansions addressed most of this... especially Tomb of Ice  (adds feats), Well of Darkness (taunt and more Overlord "power") Road to Legend, and Sea of Blood. i.e. in a campaign you have more time to develop a trinity-like strat.
Most reviews of expanded games I've found (I've only got the base set) have actually harped on the fact that a good Overlord against a tactically-unbalanced group will wtfpwn them every time.
This is all subjective of course, every encounter is different... but I'd always thought the potential was there.

Anyone ever play Small World (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40692/small-world)?


Has an iPad version too, though DL'ed, haven't messed with it much yet.

Small World is a lot of fun but basically nothing like what MrB is asking for here.

I own this one (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17223/world-of-warcraft-the-boardgame), its a mess.


Is this the Ravenloft you guys were suggesting?  (http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/games/e692/)I recall playing the original DnD setting, and liking it.

Correctomundo.

I did a run-through of Descent at my last 'gaming night' with a buncha muggles.  Surprising the strats people come up with when encountering some hardship (everything from LOS spawn-blocking to potion deliveries), even from those who have no business playing epic games.  We didnt finish the game and probably went for a semi-solid 3 hrs., but I can see a good sized quest being done in 3 with a competent group.  We played with 5 heroes and it wasnt too bad, but I could tell the odds are severely against the overlord in this case unless he's got serious skills or houserules some stuff.

Setup and play wasnt too bad because I've got every bit organized into tackle boxes, which you HAVE to do in games of this ilk.

I thought max was 5, including the DM? If that's true and you have 5 PCs on the board, that may explain why the odds were so stacked against you.

Nope.  Max is 5 heroes (plus any familiars), hence why the monster stats go up to 5.
The biggest problem with having 5 PCs is finding LOS to spawn, but much of this is my fault since I didnt close the entry-door, which would've allowed a small spawn area.   Also, the strat must be to swarm the weakest player with everything you've got.  And since LOS is blocked by other units, the more PCs there are the less LOS there is.

note:  all of this B.S. I'm spewing is basically an excuse for my lack of skillz  :oh_i_see:   It really just boils down to tactics.  By the 2nd room though I'd fallen into a groove.

It's 5 players, including the DM, I am almost positive.

I believe the stat cards start at two, correct? That would be 1 hero, 1 DM. I've DM'ed a 5 hero game before, and it just breaks down once they get any kind of gear.

Great thread. I was just looking at Descent last night at the local game shop, for the same reasons Mr.Bloodworth was. Something to play, to get non-D&D friends involved in.
So it sounds like the over all opinion is a thumbs down though?
They had something similar that they said came out a month or so ago? They didnt know much about it or have any reviews.
Any ideas?

So what would be like a top 5 list to look into buying? Not Ravenloft though, never liked the campaign setting.

Edit:

I think the newer one we were looking at was Runewars or Defenders of the Realm. Anyone know anything about either of these two?

And then on the website posted, Boardgamegeek.com, I saw there was a game which combined elements of board playing with the Forgotten Realms campaign setting called "Heroscape". Anyone played that?

Have not played Defenders of the Realm yet, but I have a friend who recommended it. It is a co-op fantasy game, but not a dungeon crawler, basically you're trying to stop various monsters from getting from the outside edge of the map to the center city.

Heroscape is a tactical minis game, not really in the vein of this stuff at all. Also collectible so wallet impact is going to be large.

Cool thanks for the feedback. So Heroscape is off the list. Any info on Runewars?
This is going to be a Christmas present from the wife to me which is why Im curious on getting reviews/feedback.

FFG's recent release would probably be DungeonQuest, if talking dungeoncrawlers.

- Castle Ravenloft doesn't really have much to do with the campaign setting - it's just a branding and an excuse to be in a castle so it can be a dungeoncrawl. It's mostly a mechanical game with not a lot of thematic colour, which is what I like about it.
- Runewars is a tactical war game, other than that I don't know much about it except that it's absolutely not what you're looking for.
- Defenders of the Realm is a fantasy adventure game where you and your fellow players cooperate to beat the game. The game progresses by drawing cards and you have to kill the enemy leaders before any of a number of things (100 ways to lose, one to win.) It should be said it's very hard to win, even sober.
- HeroScape gives me environmental angst with its senseless use of plastic. Otherwise what Ingmar said.

Really, to parrot myself, DungeonQuest is a light, quick and fun dungeon romp. It does, however, require a certain crowd, one that doesn't mind losing and have a little sense of theatrics (a large part of the fun stems from dying horribly in amusing, pitiful ways.) The new edition is pretty good if you replace with the overdeveloped combat with rock, paper, scissors (as it was in previous editions) or it will drag on too much. I will not recommend Descent to anyone unless they ask me where to get decent cheap miniatures. Other than that I don't think there are four other games I'd strongly recommend, from what I've played.

Actually, I'd recommend you (and everyone) to stay away from pretty much all original FFG designs. They've published or re-published some pretty good games without touching much of the original mechanics (like DQ,) but everything they've produced in-house is laden with chits, cards, dolls (miniatures) at the expense of ease of play, elegance and balance. Now, that doesn't mean they can't be fun, but it's more playing with toys than trying to crack a game. If board games were computer games, FFG would be Lionhead.

PS.
You can also find good video reviews which summarize the rules, gameplay and give verdicts for many of these games at http://www.thedicetower.com/thedicetower/index.php/game_reviews

This thread needs more Hero Quest. 

Tarami, thanks for the link to the Dice Tower site. Im going through their reviews now. Pretty cool site.

DiceTower (where I get most of my game info.) consistently ranks Descent in the top 5 boardgames of all-time.   :oh_i_see:  Thumbs down??  I think not. 

Ravenloft and DungeonQuest???  Vassel hates them both for what seems like good reason.
Granted, he's always been one to prefer crunchier, more epic style gaming, but the faults he finds in many games are valid. 


You're right.  So I guess I've been gimping myself this whole time.

Anyways, now that I have my regular gaming group going I'll probably go and purchase the 2 best xpacs and the 'Sea of Blood' campaign xpac, which gives ship combat and much shorter game scenarios that can be saved.  My biggest gripe is if you dont defeat analysis paralysis the games can go waay too long; the campaign xpacs solve this.

Ghambit, I'm not going to argue Descent's merits and flaws with you when you make such a non-argument. If you think Descent deserves being the fifth best game of all time, motivate it better than Tom Vassel thinking so (eventhough he places it ninth and not fifth as you said.) DiceTower/Tom Vassel likes Descent, good for him. I don't think it belongs on a top 100 list for anything but components.

Furthermore, he doesn't hate neither Ravenloft nor DungeonQuest. He dislikes DungeonQuest (http://www.thedicetower.com/thedicetower/index.php/game_reviews/d/dungeonquest) but argues it might be for some people. Also, the mortality rates of DungeonQuest have been grossly exaggerated. "Dying on the second turn" is an extremely rare occurance. On the other hand, Ravenloft he thinks is very good (http://www.thedicetower.com/thedicetower/index.php/game_reviews/c/castle-ravenloft-d-d-board-game). He also argues it's not much alike Descent, which is also true, but they're both dungeoncrawlers which is why they've both been mentioned here.

Ravenloft is a game I can bring out in almost any crowd that jives with a fantasy theme and have a good time beating the game. However, it has heavier gameplay than DungeonQuest which is very pick-up-and-play, which is why I recommend the latter for a group of non-gaming friends. In Descent people are likely to be antagonized (the overlord) and feel bullied (the weakest hero.) It's extremely cut-throat and sensitive to attitude of the players. This is the reverse of HeroQuest, where this discussion began, which has a benevolent DM who is supposed to challenge but not chastise the other players.

Regarding Road to Legend (the campaign expansion for Descent):  My bet is you are never going to finish a campaign where the heroes win. Either Tamaril is going to be sacked very early, or you're going to start over or quit playing. This is the experience of everyone I've ever heard try it (myself included.)

I too heard that about RtL having too many early sacks of towns, which is why I opted for Sea of Blood.  I havent bought it yet, but plan on it (along with ToI and WoD which add feats, treachery, etc.) once my group gets comfortable with vanilla Descent.  They're still requesting to play it, so that's a good thing I guess.  The biggest complaint so far is gametime and the lack of being able to truly grow their characters over time.  The other complaint, when they lose it's fairly non-dramatic (unlike DQ).  One of em dies and I take their tokens... game over.   :oh_i_see:     It's fairly obvious that the game is fairly lacking without the expansions, so if you're not willing to drop $200+ I wouldnt recommend it either.

Once I get my redesign of "BattleStations" done though, all my other games will likely go up for sale.  It's the perfect crawler in spaaaaaace with RPG capability, but the original production quality and some of the rules are just  :uhrr:

In other news, I just bought a copy of "Earth Reborn."  Only game I've ever owned where there's a literal minigame involving simply unpacking it.  Seriously, the designer built a puzzle into packing the box after unpunching everything.   :why_so_serious:   I dub this a tetris poker pvp story-driven rpg crawler resource wargame.  If it sounds complex, you've heard wrong... it's worse.  Absolutely beautiful game though, and one of the most beautifully designed if you figure it out.

As long as we're talking boardgames, anybody here ever do Twilight Imperium? I'm kind of getting an impulse-interest in it after getting out my old AH version of Freedom in the Galaxy, which wasn't an absolutely great game but it was pretty fun in its own way.

I played it once - it was hugely fun, but probably takes 8-12 hours to play.

Is it based on the book and movie series?

I have it.  You pretty much need the expansion, which introduced several rule changes that improve the hell out of things, as well as some very very patient friends.  The games are loooooooooong.  Like, 'start after lunch, end after dinner' long.  But if you like 4X turn based space games, TI is a very faithful member of the genre in board game form.  I like it.

For a shorter PvP space board game, I recommend Cosmic Encounter.  It's a pretty basic game but can have surprisingly deep strategy and negotiation among the players.

How about the Cthulhu board games? A coworker has been running a non-computer gaming night for a couple years now (at the library) and I've been meaning to drop in, but they tend to play a lot of gimmicky lame stuff (I did almost show for the Carcassone night).

Have Cosmic Encounter. Play it occasionally. I do like it, though there's some serious imbalances if you're playing with people who know which powers to really exploit.

One of my roomies owns Arkham Horror and its expansions.  It's fun.

I enjoy it a lot too, but it should be noted that it takes quite a long time to play and if you don't like overproduced games with a billion little bits and cards and such, you won't like Arkham Horror.

It's not quite Cthulhu, but Betrayal at House on the Hill (second edition) is pretty damn fun.  You start with 3-6 players exploring a haunted house, and at a randomly determined point in the game one of the players switches sides and starts working against the rest of the players.  Nobody knows who the traitor will be until that event happens, which keeps it interesting.  There's about 50 different possible scenarios, with different goals for each side in each scenario. 

Only takes an hour or so to play and it was on sale at Amazon for $20 during the holidays, which means it probably will be again at some point.  Definitely worth it. 

Old one or new one? The old one was wicked fun, sadly the new one reduced the number of players to four, so it wasn't fit for our playing group anymore.

We always let the players draw their race (one out of three) and removed the "I win" ones from the game. Oh, good times.

The new-new Cosmic Encounter starts with 5 players, the Cosmic Incursion expansion brings it to 6, and the upcoming Cosmic Combat expansion brings it to 7.  The one that was limited to four players was the Avalon Hill version, which was beautiful but unfortunately not supported worth a damn.

Ah, off to buy a my third version, then  :awesome_for_real:

Didnt the latest edition fix a lot of the earlier issues?


As said before, Mansions of Madness (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/83330/mansions-of-madness) should be coming out soon which is essentially Arkham Horror meets Betrayal at House on the Hill. 

In other news:
I wiped the floor as Overlord vs. 5 Heroes the other day, on an easy quest no less, and in the 1st room.  'Course, I have extra monsters and I gave myself an extra card at every draw.   :grin:
Assuming this icestorm abates enough I should have the ol' StarTrek Adventure game (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3095/star-trek-the-adventure-game), High Frontier (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/47055/high-frontier), and Dominant Species (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/62219/dominant-species) comin in the mail by the end of the week.  If anyone is interested in Dominant Species, check out "rsolow" on BGG.  He's the only retailer in the world really that has any in stock, even though the site might say he doesnt.  DS is a frontrunner for game of the year and it's OOP, so hard to find.

I might break down and buy Merchants&Marauders (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/25292/merchants-marauders) tonite after seeing a few reviews.  (sigh)  At least this shit is cheaper than goin to da' club.

This conversation made me pull my old copies of City of Chaos and Divine Right off the shelf and look through those. Both fun if flawed.

Yes, it did.  I had the previous edition of Twilight Imperium and the latest one is a definite step up from it.  But it's still an empire building game with a lot of players vying for control, and all of the time consumption inherent with that.

So, I take it this has turned into the general board game thread?  Good, because I've just started getting a group of people into them finally!

How is Shogun?  Looks pretty good from what I've read so far.  I've gotten people into settlers of Catan, and we a had a good time.  Though they also want to play a more combative game where you fight off other players as well.  We've only had risk to fill that gap, but Shogun looks like a good mix of the two.  Any thoughts?  Also, are any of the expansions to settlers worth it?

How is Puerto Rico?  Like I said, got people into settlers, and while they like it, I can tell they already are interested in trying something with more depth.  This game is highly rated and seems to fit the bill. 

Finally, for a co-op game, been looking at Pandemic, which is also rated pretty high.  How does that play out?

I am very sad, for I have no people around down here who would be interested in gaming.  :cry:

This thread should be retitled to the The Boardgame Thread or something. I've gotten so many good suggestions from this so far.

There you go!

Had a heart attack for a moment, I thought you were made a mod.  :ye_gods:

Then I realized it was your own thread.

I would not want to be a mod. Sorry for your heart.

Puerto Rico is a great game, if you have a group that is serious about thier board games. Playing it well requires a lot of strategy/resource management and a lot of prediction/manipulation of what your opponents will do. Unlike Catan, there is almost no random element at all. I strongly recomend getting the expansion and randomizing which buildings are used each time you play - that really helped get us out of the groove of playing a "standard strategy" that the base game eventually fell in to.

I love games like it and Agricola, but they are the sort of game I can only play once in a night or my brain overheats.

Other games my group typically play include: Catan, Race for the Galaxy, Dominion, Small World, Alhambra, Power Grid, and for the odd change of pace, we still crack out the Magic cards and play two-headed or gathering style.

This thread has gotten me pretty excited about trying some board games.  I haven't played any in a long time.  Now to find something that the wife would like to play and is decent with 2-3 people....

Catan. It's the default gateway drug of modern boardgames.

Yes, I finally said fuck it and got a copy of Catan, and made several people play it.  Now I've got them hooked, and looking into more advanced board games (Thus my questions before).

How is Small World?  Thats another game I was seriously looking at.  How does it play?

I love Small World. Plays very well I think, and has a lot of dick your neighbor potential. The race/ability drafting makes it quite varied too.

Once you play Catan online (Catan World) for free in 20-45 minutes, the boardgame can seem tedious. I love me a 20 minute 3-man Catan.

As far as board games, Santa gave my 8 year old son Heroscape: Marvel for Christmas and he loves it. I find it entertaining as well, but it is a bit simple for serious boardgamers.

My group has been looking at Small World for awhile, but we are wary of the cost. We have Arkham Horror which has alot of chits and was somewhat expensive, but we don't really enjoy it or play it, so shelling out for another pretty game with alot of chits has us wary.

Killer Bunnies.  Best card game ever.  No seriously.

http://killerbunnies.com/

If you want an area control game, look no farther than El Grande. Happens to be my favourite game. ;D No, it's not very nice looking nor thematic. It is interesting though.

I have a hard time with chits and bits myself. Much of the time what they add in depth seems to be invalidated by the bookkeeping that they add. Sure, some bits are needed to track various things, but games that have 10 types just to keep player state I find laborous, especially if they are paper chits. Atleast cubes are easy to handle.

Card games we like to play: Fluxx, Bohnanza, Three Dragon Ante, Sticheln, Nicht die Bohne (we loves us some bean games). Fluxx in particular is very easy to understand and can be radically different each time you play it, especially if you've got more than just the base deck.

Also: Smallworld is probably my favorite game. It's not the most balanced/strategic game (like Puerto Rico or Agricola) but I love it for some of its zany power/race combos. (oh god it's the flying sorcerors)

How can you say that in a world where Dominion and all of its beautiful expansions exist? 

Pandemic is great - you probably don't need the expansion right away unless you really want the petri dishes, but there's plenty of challenge and replay value in the base box set.   

Can you try to sell me on dominion?  It looks fun, just not so sure about it.  Way it was described said there is little player interaction, and its more of a race to see who can devlope fastest.  I think games with a good social aspect would work best for the people I play with (another reason Catan worked so well as an introductory game).

Also, thanks for the info on Pandemic.  Think that may be the next game I buy.  That or Smallworld.

How about something for a pretty bright five year old?

Most of what you guys suggest sounds either too old or too long for a kid attention span. I'm almost tempted to see if she'll play Ravenloft (she likes zombies and stuff).

Heck, even Catan seems to be 8+.

The Kids of Carcassone. (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/41010/the-kids-of-carcassonne)

It's a fun game, both for kids and adults.  The adult version has been my gateway board game of choice for my non-gaming friends, and my fiancee, and it has worked flawlessly.  5 might be a little low on their recommended ages (4 - 10) so they might not grasp all of the strategy involved, but they should definitely be able to play and enjoy it due to its puzzle-like feel.

The Magic Labyrinth (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/41916/the-magic-labyrinth) has also gotten some pretty great reviews, but I can't vouch for it.  It just looks like fun.

Spy Alley is a great boardgame for kids and adults--kind of a variation on Clue with a bluffing/misdirection element.

The player interaction comes and goes depending on what cards are on the table.    If there are no attack/wacky table cards available, then yes, it can boil down to all about strategy and execution.      In general though, I find that there's a lot of table talk and general watching your opponent even without the attack cards that while it's not the most social game, I wouldn't call it solitaire.  Also, since the game plays quick enough to easily fit in 2-3 rounds in a short night (20-40 minutes per game), you can have a variety of game types - with one game being completely brutal and cutthroat, the next being build design, the third being a mix of the two.  

That's probably one of the best things about the game - while the basic rules are straightforward and simple, the card interactions and potential strategies differ in each game (well, after you start randomizing the decks anyhow).    

Just a heads up - Looks like Tanga is also having a sale today on Pandemic + On the Brink for ~40 bucks including shipping
http://www.tanga.com/products/pandemic-and-on-the-brink-expansion-game--2

[edit for side note]

Blokus.

Seconded.  Hey! That's My Fish! also wins at my house. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8203/hey-thats-my-fish

I will second That's My Fish. There's also Quoridor.

I miss playing this with my old gaming group. It was definitely an all-day affair though.

Shogun has mostly gravitated online these days.  Has a pretty good following.

Pandemic has fallen out of favor for more thematic coops such as "Ghost Stories" or even better "Defenders of the Realm."  Really, save yourself the money and just buy one of the latter with Defenders as another frontrunner for game of the year.  And tbh, Pandemic wont get nearly as many plays as GS or Defenders.

It's 1st generation deckbuilding, so meh.  There are some REALLY great newer titles out there that also add much more interaction and engrossing themes.  Thunderstone+expacs is probably the best, essentially a crawler in the cards.  But, there's some even newer stuff out there like "7 Wonders" (if u can find it) that really push the genre to new directions.  The latter being, yes, yet another game of the year frontrunner.

If you want really light, quick, and simple (more tactical) deckbuilding faire then go Ascension.

Although a bit convoluted and overly "choicy" I'd have to say of the newer stuff that "Dominant Species" tops the list.  We finally played a few sessions and the game is just an amazing design.  There are no less than 12 different choices people can make on each turn, not including card choices that swing the game.  All these choices effect the others and so on, basically the bloomin' onion of boardgames.  Easy to teach, impossible to master.  Real brainburner.

Everyone should own a copy of "Earth Reborn."  It's starting to steal the lustre from "Space Hulk" even (I've actually had people try to trade SH for my ER).  So, nuff said.

If anyone is looking for a good "card game" I'd reccomend 7 Wonders.
I Just picked it up this past week and I enjoyed it immensely.
The games my group play the most are Peurto Rico, Agricola, Dominion, Small World, Race for the galaxy, Settlers and Magic. (in no particular order) 

The reason that I really like 7 Wonders: can be played in under 30 minutes, has multiple strategies to victory, has some player interaction and is re-playable . It also requires very minimal set up.
This game hits all the right targets for me.

Where'd you get it from???  U.S. reprint's not till March it seems.

Have loved Munchkin for years.

This Xmas bought my brother Munchkin Quest the boardgame.  Only played part of one game.  I was worried the boardgame would be a dumbed down version of the card game, turned out to be a bit of the opposite actually.    Too soon to have a verdict, but I think I will enjoy this.

I was looking for a new game. I Checked BGG, watched a few videos and then after deciding that I wanted that I headed over to my local game store and grabbed it :)
I had heard it was hard to find, but I thought that may have been earlier in the year. Funny thing is that the guy who owns the store (an avid gamer, obviously) only thinks 7 wonders is "meh"

He enjoys more silly fun games though like Roborally, (great game btw) Pandemic, Galaxy Truckers etc.

This thread has ignited a little purchasing frenzy at our house. Picked up Pandemic, Arkham Horror, and Castle Ravenloft. I wasn't really aware of the whole "cooperative game" concept other than group roleplaying.

We love Pandemic. We can't get enough of it and have played a game every night since we got it. It's fast. It's simple enough that we don't have trouble walking away to tend to the baby or something like that. And it seems to work fantastically with only two players, though which specialist you play seems to have a huge effect on how easy the game goes.

Castle Ravenloft is good, but flawed. It gets the cooperative D&D experience, but with a trap obsessed dungeon master with a death wish for their players. One of the things I found a bit irritating is it seems like it would be best with a full party and I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of CR players are probably like us, couples or triads who would play the real thing (or something better like Heroquest-Glorantha or Call of Cthulhu) if we had a full group. Supposedly there's going to be a sequel, I wonder if it will play a little different with fewer traps and such.

Still haven't tried Arkham Horror. It looks extremely complicated, but it may just be the way the rules are written.

It's the way the rules are written, and the numbers of bits it has with it. The reason our group doesn't play it much is the same reason we also don't play the really pretty fully painted WoW boardgame that was donated to us by a member of our association. It looks really complicated, takes awhile to set up, but the actual gameplay is really simple. Almost TOO simple.

It can be a really good game, we just tend to play other games over it. someone tends to get bored of it and after that the game just feels like it is eating time rather than being fun. But that is more our group, if you are actually patient and willing to invest time into getting immersed into the game, you'll get alot out of it.

Isn't that what AD&D was all about?

Is there anywhere online you can play this? Trying to figure out all the rules with no one to confirm or explain details it's kinda hard to get going.

http://www.brettspielwelt.de/ - it may be listed as Funkenschlag, though.

Play goes pretty damn quick in most games, but make it clear you are learning and someone will likely help out.

Also check out http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Power_Grid_FAQ

One of those games that is worth finding a youtube vid of how to play - the instructions were written by the guy's dog.

I didn't think the rules were that bad, but I just use the player aids instead.  It's handy when everyone has their own summary of the rules for reference, and helps teaching as well.

Something like http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/32681/power-grid-players-aid-set-up-guide

Thanks everyone, now I don't feel like a complete idiot trying to play it!

I have no idea why I continue to follow this thread - it just makes me sad due to a lack of tabletop gaming due to not having my gaming buddies within commuting distance.  :oops:

No shit.  I'm glad my wife will deign to play games with me. 

I had the same problem until I just nutted up and setup an organized weekly game night.  People started coming out of the workworks once they knew I had one, even folk who have no business in hobby gaming.  FB helps a lot also; I just formed a private game group with prospective invitees and handle RSVPs/invites from there.

It isn't quite the same, but there is always http://www.brettspielwelt.de (http://www.brettspielwelt.de).  I play there with a number of friends, and they have an excellent selection of boardgames to play online.

Anyone ever play the Battlestar Galactica game? http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-galactica (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-galactica)  The idea of one player being the Cylon and everyone else trying to weed them out could be a lot of fun.

In that same line of thought one of our favorite games to play is http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/438/scotland-yard (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/438/scotland-yard) one player is Mr. X moving around the board and everyone else is a detective trying to catch them.  :awesome_for_real:

The mechanics are not good, but otherwise it is a very fun game if you have the people and the time to play it.  Games can be longish, but not Republic of Rome long, and it can be too easy for the Cylons to win.  They got the atmosphere right though, and things can get pretty competitive.

Played it once and enjoyed it - I like Shadows over Camelot better for "coop game with traitor" but you could definitely do worse than BSG.

I've heard a lot of great things about the BSG game.  Haven't tried it yet, but want to.

We have the BSG game and all it's expansion, new expansion just very recently came out and we got it last night, gave it a try, and the game just got even better. Far better than the last expansion. I don't 100% agree with it being too easy for the cylons to win comment, but we play ALOT of BSG, so we are pretty experienced players, so bias.

The BSG game is all about politics and player interaction basically, and it makes for some really really cool group gameplay. Constantly on your toes not sure who is a cylon, it captures that perfectly.

I've been eyeballing a game called Imperial for awhile at one of our local shops. From what I've gathered this game was in development for decades before it was finially commercially released. It's a german style game where all players are in the game and can win/lose make other lose even if they don't win, till the very end. It sounds like alot of fun and something that will improve over a night of drinking. However I'd like some first hand feedback from anyone who has actually played it. Is it as much fun as it sounds or is it just boring?

Imperial is full of cockery, it's a great game.  It's a wargame of sorts (questionable), with a nice economic wrapper that really works well.  There are many ways to fuck people over in this game, I loves it.

Time to pimp VASSAL for trying out games before you buy, or for when you don't have anyone avaialable for f2f gaming.  Excellent piece of software.

No Imperial module, sorry - guessing they don't have the rondel mechanism in place.

 http://www.vassalengine.org/index.php (http://www.vassalengine.org/index.php)

Shadows Over Camelot is awesome.

Actually, most the games from the company that makes it I have played are pretty good.

For card games that are fun and easy not mentioned, Guillotine is a good one.

Game I hate that everyone I know loves: RA.

Thanks, that is basically the kind of confirmation I was looking for. Buying it this week and testing it out this weekend.

Anyone played Le Havre?  I've been thinking about trading up for it.

Game of Thrones as an LCG is decent.

Picked up Sirlin's Yomi last night. I don't like the guy, he's an amazing jackass, but the game seems decent and fast enough.

I've started surrounding myself with card games, just because.

Did you buy the entire set?   :uhrr:
I couldnt bring myself to pony up for the entire thing, and I couldnt justify only buying a few decks.  Quite a quandary.

Had to buy the whole set, the couple decks @ $25 just seemed stupid.

http://boardgameexchange.crystalcommerce.com/

Netflix-ish for boardgames.  Would work out well for a group, I would think.

What they have Heros quest?  :ye_gods:


Hows this sustainable?  :ye_gods:


Now I know.

Not actually a bad idea for a service. Tho pricing needs some work. 50-60€/$ for the first month then lower costs per month after could work out well. Maybe as low as 5€/$ or so. Just enough to cover shipping plus some.

That way if someone keeps your 30-60€/$ game after the first month you aren't losing out and still make most of the time.

You're still better off taking the same amount of dollars and building your own personal collection, then using BGG to trade/sell/buy.  The only issue I have with BGG is typically games only move if they're the "new kid on the block" or are some kind of collectible.

I picked up Arkham Horror when I traded in my magic cards for paints, had some leftover credit and like that you can play solo or with a big group (for library gaming nights).

Like you guys said, lots of fiddly bits, but I guess I like that - I always played lots of games with counters when I was a kid (even developed a couple...and discovered a couple of the counters in a bits box I had in storage, I'll have to upload them). I like all the cards and of course the subject matter is dear to me.

Game is way too big for the coffee table, but luckily the cat was passed out in front of the fire and uninterested in eating fiddly bits. Played several turns trying to absorb the rules before I had to go to bed. Seems like a pretty cool game, though. Haven't board gamed in forever!

Was thinking Mansions of Madness.

Broke down and bought a copy of hero's quest off eBay. Now for some expansions.

Advanced hero's quest looks hot too.


EDIT: This should keep me going for a while as far as quests http://www.heroscribe.org/

Yeah, I'm a bit late.

Played Le Havre a couple times.  It's somewhat Agricola-ish in that stuff piles up until you take it, but it doesn't have as much "i'm screwed because someone took the sheep" that Agricola does.  I'd compare it more to a simplified Caylus, not nearly as much calculus required.  It's decent but falls short of great imo.

I ordered a copy of Mansions of Madness off Amazon.  I'm stoked.

Careful though.  Supposedly some warped boards and they've already had to disseminate a FAQ/errata.

My box had an errata note and some reprinted cards included, so it looks like I got the patched version.   :awesome_for_real:

If anyone is looking for something not too deep to maybe play with some mostly non-gamers or just something quick and fun that doesn't require too much brain twisting, I can fairly highly recommend 7 Wonders.

It's deep enough to require some strategy but there's enough luck in there that everyone has a chance.

Mansions of Madness is really fucking fun to play but a beast to set up.  I went out today and bought a "hobby box" with a zillion compartments just so I wouldn't go nuts trying to keep track of all the little counters and stuff.

I'm very intrigued by the Mansions of Madness game.  Question though:  It says that it has several pre-made scenarios you pick to play through.  Does that mean once you try one, its sort of ruined if you try to play it again?  As in, you know what to expect and (if you beat it last time) how to win?  Or is it still randomized heavily?  I really have no idea how the rules work or how you setup a game.

There are something like five scenarios, and each one has a handful of variations that the GM can switch between to alter where the important clues are and what the win conditions are, so that even if the players know the scenario inside and out they'll still have to guess which of the possible variations the GM decided to run.  The scenario I ran had three choices I had to make in setting it up, with two or three options each, so in theory that scenario could play out a dozen different ways.  You get the idea.

There's also a lot of potential to use what's in the box to come up with your own scenarios.  From what I've seen so far the core system seems very robust.

SOOOO....

I now have a copy of Heroes Quest, Munchkin Quest, Wow Board game, and Outdoor wilderness survival. Each Board-game night has been a blast.


+1 to me!

Just got back from a big gaming shindig played a lot of games there. One I had not played before that was very amusing was Alhambra one of my friends had the big box of Alhambra set which is the main game and all expansions and we played that a bunch its pretty fast and amusing.

 

Before leaving for work I got to play "Merchants and Marauders" and man, gotta be the best pirate boardgame ever made and likely one of the overall best in my collection.  Helluva lot of fun and well worth the relatively cheap price of it.  It's essentially a eurogame/ameritrash hybrid, like so many newer games these days.  Excellent value.  And it's easily the most requested boardgame for trade that I have.

Looked it up, that does sound fun.

Honestly, I truly believed the game was gonna suck hard.  I mean really?  If I wanted a resource-gathery pirate rpg, I'd just fire up PotBS for free.
Only reason I played is 'cause my brother couldnt resist the game, so I begrudgingly sat down.  Well wtf, it was a helluva lot of fun.  I died early on after being hunted by a pirate frigate and pissing off the navy... but came back with the force with a better captain and a more refined strategy.  The gold was flowing into my hold, my brother got panicky, and started raiding haphazardly, only to get spawncamped by an aggroed Navy man-o-war.  Took my bro. apart in 1 turn.  OH THE TEARS!    Imagine developing a captain, building up your ship, filling your hold with gold (that if you dont stash at home you lose) perhaps a fleet, etc... only to get blown out of the water.   :grin:   Sux when it happens to you, but it IS possible to make a comeback oddly enough.

Main gripe?  There's so much to do in port that downtime is very very bad.  Variations include porting actions on someone elses turn.

addendum:
If anyone is in the D.C. area, there's a pretty popular gamenight called "DCGameNight"   :oh_i_see:
They typically game in various bars, cafes, or shops downtown.  Find em on FB...  seems less neckbeardy and more swank than usual.

So I played "7 Wonders" last night and it didnt disappoint.  Explains why the game is tough to get right now.
Pretty much a victory point based empire-builder game using cards, only turns are simultaneous so there's no downtime.  There's an interesting "rummy" element in that you're only allowed to keep 1 card per turn even though you're given 7 or less.  The cards you dont keep are passed to your neighbor (to the left and right alternating).
Game lasted about an hour but mentally felt like 4.  Many many layers of strat. and tactics and plenty of seedy pvp, but a simple game to learn.

Also played "Ascension."  Liked it, but Thunderstone is better.  Great pickup style game though.

I haven't really played any board games since I was a kid, with the old Strat-O-Matic baseball sessions during long winter nights.

I was poking around and did see this though, due in four weeks:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/ikusa

Looks good, although I know little about Japanese history. Play as a warlord in feudal Japan- how cool is that? I'll maybe pick it up if i can get some friends excited enough.

Pretty sure that is the old Shogun game, which then got the utterly awesome renaming in to "Samurai Swords" :uhrr:. Apperently they've renamed it again?

It was a half decent 1st ed Axis and Allies era war game. Not my favorite of the bunch though - with more than three players, the layout of the map tended to limit how many opponents you could actually interact with. If you got stuck on one end of Japan and the guy on the other end played poorly, you could actually lose the game to someone you never actually met in battle.

I just ordered the Game of Thrones card game and some M:TG cards.  I haven't played M:TG in a long time, so it should be interesting.   :awesome_for_real:

My daughter and I have been playing the Ravenloft board game, as well as the newish one called Wrath of Ashardlon. She tends to pick PCs like you would expect a kid to pick. She just chooses the coolest looking girl. Once she learned that having a wizard rush a monster spelled death, she began to get the hang of tactics.

Solid fun for the two of us. I am hoping that when her mom works out her work schedule, we can get an actual D&D game going.

Finally got around to playing Ticket to Ride with the wife.  It's a good little game that won't blow through an entire evening and is pretty light fare.  And the subject matter won't scare away those types that might be scared away from "gaming" easily.  I definitely recommend it. 

I have also bought Dominion and it's multitude of expansions and several other card games.  I purchased some card sleeves to go over the cards and am trying to decide if it's even worth it at this point.  The sleeves make the games not fit in their trays and are a real bear to actually game with, not to mention being fairly expensive.  You can get the Mayday ones for 3.50 or so for 100, but the FF ones run 5 plus per 50. 

Finally got the chance to play Battleship Galaxies - there's actually some strategy and tactics to it, the ships and cards look good, and rolling the dice for coordinates is pretty damn fun.     Once we got over the learning curve, it moves along really nicely.

Yes, sleeving them is a pain in the ass, but totally worth it if you play it a lot. I still have nightmares about the weird mank that built up on our Settlers cards over the years. I'm pretty sure it was an even mix of dirt, grease, and skin cells. It was thick enough to scrape off with you fingernails.

We keep Dominion in a standard ccg card box rather than the original game box, as you really don't need the rules once you memorize the starting card counts.

I'm always surprised how many people can find groups for this stuff.  I need to move the fuck out of the bible belt capital.

I have grown to hate Dominion.  Fun at first and it works well but it's just not for me.  It's a perfect storm of boring downtime while a player goes through +100 actions, hoping nobody draws cards that further increase downtime, not having a way to directly affect a particular player, and only occasionally having to change a decision based on what someone else drew. I prefer games with hidden objectives / information, no downtime (simultaneous turns!) and a way to bash somebody while keeping them in the running to win.  Basically the opposite of Dominion.

(Edit)  Might as well add one of my favorite games for contrast:  Vineta (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/27532/vineta).  Handles up to 6, simultaneous turns, the board changes as people's island pieces and villagers are destroyed, hidden information, chaotic and trying to predict what other players will do while usually failing.  Hardest part is learning what the pictures on the cards do but it gets easier with time and player sheets.

:vv:

Can get RL groups eager for board game play, but except for very few, most shun these sorts of games (even Catan), preferring more the "Apples to Apples" or Trivial Pursuit variety of board game. Scrabble or backgammon is about the most strategic these folks will get.

Sweet.  I just won a new copy of Twilight Struggle on Ebay for 93 bucks with shipping.  The last two went for well over $100.   :awesome_for_real:

Just got Conquest of Nerath the other day (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/drdd/20110615).  I had previously got Dominion but couldn't get into a game strictly based around cards.  Conquest of Nerath is like a slightly more in-depth fantasy Risk and it scratches the "watch your armies spread across the land" itch I had.  There is a progression component (think teching up like in Civ) that consists of Treasure cards which are gained by dungeon delving and destroying difficult and classic DnD monsters.  There is also a random element that consists of personal cards for each faction with different powers that can be played at different times.  Each faction also collects a base income modified by additional territories accumulated.  Then of course there are all the different unit types and a simple dice driven combat system (I like that it comes with so many 6/8/10/12/20 sided dice.  All in all, a great game.  I got it on Amazon for $50 which I consider a great price considering it comes with hundreds of minis, hundreds of cardboard tokens, scores of cards, and a nice board.  The icing on the cake is that it works well with anywhere from 2-4 players.

(http://www.perpetualgeekmachine.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ConquestOfNerath-04.jpg)

How is this for a 10 year old boy who like Catan/Risk/Heroscape?

Well worth the price, especially if it is the deluxe edition.  Fantastic game.

It says 12 and up.  If he likes Risk, Catan, and HeroScape, this game should be fine.  The combat system is rather elegant.  You need a to roll a 6 to score a hit.  Different combatants roll different dice, i.e., 6/8/10/12/20.  I find the game offers enough depth to be engaging to me as an adult in his late 20s without mentally taxing me to the extent that it becomes an arduous chore to learn the rules/navigate turns.

Seconded.

I just picked up Labyrinth yesterday at my FLGS (also OOP evidently).  Same designer and system, only more tweaked and set post 9-11-01.  Btw, the guy who designs these games actually lives in D.C. and trains analysts for the CIA.  He's a hardcore GOP warhawk evidently.  His next game will be focused on post-FARC Colombia with some drug smuggling thrown in.

Btw, if you're into solitaire type games (I believe these can be played Solo) I highly recommend the printNplay game "Dungeon of D."  It's free and a lotta fun.

My wife is probably going to find out where Bloodworth lives and kick his ass for starting this thread.  I've spent waaay too much money lately on board games/card games. 

I also found a new copy of 7 Ages today at a local game store, and you can't even find it on Ebay or Amazon at all.  That was a pretty sweet score for a kick ass (albeit very long) game.  I also now own all the Arkham Asylum expansions.    :grin:

If you have Le Havre and are wondering how it works:  Linky (http://hw.libsyn.com/p/a/7/3/a737b13e53cbebd5/Le_Havre_01.mp3?sid=cc6d294ff6573e5e8084f1f54b8ceddb&l_sid=23912&l_eid=&l_mid=2161682).


I found this game to be a little difficult to deal with only with the instructions.  This helped some.  Good game. 

It appears as if Fantasy Flight has gotten the Star Wars license and will be publishing a couple of games (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/3900/fantasy-flight-games-announces-star-wars-license-t), including a card game (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/103886/star-wars-the-card-game). 

The Star Wars nerd in me thinks that this will be really fucking awesome, but I've been a little disappointed with some of Fantasy Flight's efforts.  Sure, some of their stuff is excellent, but I am expecting a rehash of Game of Thrones LCG and I'm sure they'll put out some kind of War of the Ring or Twilight Imperium knockoff.  That would be fine if I didn't already own those games.

I'm sure I'll buy whatever they put out regardless, because I'm just that weak minded.   :grin:

So, I decided to get back into board/card (not TCG) games after reading this thread.

Spefically, I'm also trying to involve my girlfriend (and eventually, I hope, two or three of our friends), who is a total neophyte, so I don't know if I'm going to succeed  :oh_i_see:
---

Regarding the card game, I opted for Dominion (and purchased it) which, from what I gather, is fun enough to play between 2 players as well; I'm still uncertain about the board game (one of the following):

- Talisman: I played it A LOT during my youth, and enjoyed it greatly;
- Small World: looks fun and simple, the guy at the store quickly showed me the rules (he had an unboxed copy at the store, where they hold a lot of different tournaments both of card and board games) ;
- DungeonQuest

They are all "entry level" games, relatively easy learning curve, should not be a bore to set-up and quick to grasp the rules.

- While in the store, I also noticed two games that look interesting for a novice: Dungeon Lords (basically a "Dungeon Keeper" boardgame) and Cave Troll...Can you tell me more of these two?

While I'm sure they have very good gameplay, for now I would like to avoid economy/resource management games, like Puerto Rico and suchlike, also because they are more complex.

Carcassone, Ticket to Ride, Catan...Don't really like the settings of those, even though they're quite popular.

Then, of course, Arkham Horror, which looks fantastic, but first I would like to gather a larger group for it :/

Games like Carcassone, TtR, and Catan are actually really good options for introducing newbies in to the current board game world, before melting their brains with games like Puerto Rico or Agricola. Dominion was also a great choice.
I really enjoy both Small World and Talisman, but they are very "nerdcore" type games with the fantasy setting, and can be a turnoff for friends that aren't in to nerd culture. Really though, we hardly play them in comparison to the more Euro style games - the Euro games are just so much more about strategy.

If you're going to introduce your gf, I'd suggest a Eurogame for sure.  For some reason, most women LOVE the empirebuilder/resource management games.  Anything where they make/lose money, shop, and build things.   I'd recommend the game "Asara" (a tower building game) for this, though as most eurogames they play better with more people.  Fidgety ameritrash games, though fun for the hobbiest, usually are turnoffs for sophomoric gamers.

Dungeon Lords and Cave Troll??  Cave Troll has gotten better reviews than dungeon lords.  I've read that DL has some issues.  CaveTroll is a game in the same vein as munchkin, and very simplistic.  Definitely an acquired taste and definitely need more than 2 people I believe.

I can recommend DungeonQuest though for a beginning gamer, but again... it's more american-style.  Kinda theme-parkish and random.

For you and your gf, if you dont mind coop I'd suggest the new LotR card game.  It's actually a eurostyle resourcey quasi-deckbuilding dungeonrunner and not hard to learn.
Tbh, it's tough to play 2-player pvp games w/o gettingi into wargame territory (battleship:galaxies?).  Just the nature of the beast.  SummonerWars is a helluva great step in this regards; not too wargamey.

Other suggestions?  "Dominant Species" is a must for any collection.   Period.  End of story.  And women/new players love it. 
And in place of Dominion I'd get Thunderstone+all expansions.

Ticket to Ride is really a pretty cool game.  It's probably not what you're expecting, if you don't know much about it, and is going to be a nice light game to start with.  All of the deck building games feel pretty similar to me, and Thunderstone is pretty fun, although I don't know if I'd rush to trade it for Dominion if you've already got Dominion.  Le Havre is thought of as a thick game, but I think it is easier to grasp than Agricola.  It's not a bad choice.  Camelot Legends is fun, if you want a card game that isn't a deck builder but is a bit different.  My wife likes it because she's into the whole Arthurian Legends deal.  Don't rule out Arkham.  It's realy fun even with two-  but you'll get pasted a lot.  I would echo the recommendation of Dominant Species.  All of the LCGs from FF are pretty good.  Lost Cities and the Lost Cities Boardgame are also decent intro games. 

Agricola is definitely a bad choice as an intro game for sure because it really lacks a lot of the interaction that the other games mentioned have, and interacting with the people you're playing with is pretty key to getting someone new interested. Dungeon Lords is a little on the complex side for a first fix too.

Cast my vote for Small World or Carcassonne as the intro games that will get the best traction with new players, TTR is good too if you think the medieval and/or fantasy stuff will turn someone off initially.

Or if you just don't like the train theme Airlines Europe (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/90419/airlines-europe) is kick ass. 

Thank you guys for the suggestions! :)

Eventually, I'll look up to the ones I haven't seen previously mentioned: tonight or tomorrow we'll try Dominion for the first time, and for now I'll stick with it (damn, this stuff is quite expensive, card or board game :P). Starting from the end of september, I plan to organize a "board/card game evening" at my place with 3 or 4 of my close friends, hopefully it will work out (one already said yes)  :)

I would throw a few of the "interactive" cards in with the first set of Dominion draw piles you set up.  It gets pretty boring with their initial recommended 10. 

Actually, after reading something on the Net (and watching a few youtube videos too), I think we'll randomize the 10 right from the start, I guess we'll learn soon enough if something is particularly unbalanced or not (hopefully we'll both enjoy the game: I've read good things about the first two expansions, Intrigue and Seaside, especially when it comes to an added interaction with the other player/s, so I may purchase them at a later date).

That's how my group did it - I've never tried any of the recommended sets.

So, after a "false start" yesterday (we messed up the "c" phase and realized it halfway through, among other things :P), tonight we (that is, me and my GF) played our first game of Dominion and enjoyed it. She brutalized me 47 victory points to 31  :oh_i_see: :heartbreak:

Ahem, match lasted around 2h30m...You know, double-checking some card effect, re-reading a couple rules, going very slow...But yeah, quite an interesting and addictive game. If it doesn't get boring after only a few games, I think we'll be definitely inclined to purchase "Intrigue" and "Seaside";  I'm sure there are "power-strategies" out there that you can rush to (but I'm not really interested in reading them), but the randomizing effect of drawing any group of 10 mitigates it somewhat, I guess.

You've entered into a dark place once you start getting into the deckbuilding genre.  Seems like every other game these days is a deckbuilder.  Btw, if you like MtG and Dominion... definitely try Ascension+expansion.

Yeah, I second Ascension, it's in a good middle place between those two.

Yes, I prefer games where the deck is the same for everyone, I've never been into the trading card crazyness (nor I intend to). I'll have a look at Ascension :)

The LCGs from Fantasy Flight are decent if you're looking for a different kind of card game.  They have three (Game of Thrones, Warhammer Invasion and Call of Cthulhu) and are set to come out with one from Star Wars :grin:.  These are decent because it gets rid of the "trading card game" problems.  The cards are standard so you're not buying a shit ton worth of packs or expensive singles.  

LCGs are still customizable.  It's not a system where "everyone has the same deck."  It's just a system where there's no trading/resale/rarity involved.  e.g. when you buy a pack it's the same pack for everyone... but you can still build your own deck.  Typically I've found the cost of entry into LCGs is still pretty high if you really want to get into it, since you cant just buy a starter pack and make an informed opinion on the game.  Also, it's grossly dependent on your local tournament support... otherwise it's pointless to collect.

This is why I preferred deckbuilding games, because you just buy ALL the cards at one time and build the deck as you play. 

Yes, but it does get rid of a lot of the irritation that people have with the collectible card games, i.e. the actual collection procedure and costs.  I have found all the LCGs to be very interesting and playable right out of the initial box.  There's no need to buy anything else, really.  As far as everyone having the exact same cards, I'm not sure that this is necessarily a benefit.  Anyway, I'm just throwing it out there for Lucas in case he's wanting something different than a deck builder. 

Not sayin it's a bad genre, and actually I'd highly recommend W:I if you're interested in getting into it, but dont go in thinking you can just buy a core set and you're done.  The starter is just so you can basically choose a faction you like, then dump more money into said faction.   :oh_i_see:

That really depends on how you want to play it.  My wife and I just play back and forth at home and there's no real need to keep up with any sort of competitive play style you might find with a big group.  My personal plan is to get together reasonable decks for all the factions (I bought the Ulduan expansion) so that we can just choose a couple and dive in.  But we're not super competitive about things.  


Edit:  The Lord of the Rings LCG is also a really nice cooperative game that might be up their alley.

I stumbled upon this game recently and was intrigued...never was able to get my people into Arkham Horror due to it's complexity and time-sink.  Do you think MoM improves upon these things?  I've read that the setup is indeed 'harsh', but once the game gets started, how's the flow?  What's the quickest game you've played?

I bought Dreadfleet today, the new GW ship combat game. It uses wargame conventions like measuring ranges and so forth but it is self-contained and (so far as I can see) non-expandable. The bits in the box are amazing, the 'board' is a printed cloth mat and the press-to-assemble miniatures are stunning. It's pricey at £70 and it's limited to 70k copies worldwide but it looks to be well-worth shelling out for.

If you dont like GW there's also stuff like "Uncharted Seas" (which GW ripped off of) and "Firestorm Armada." 
Also, Battleship:Galaxies has been getting pretty good reviews and is obviously a lot simpler.  (I havent bought it because I just got Star Trek: Fleet Captains).

I've been fighting the minis-wargaming urge the past 8 yrs. or so and am slowly slipping...  must resist

Btw, Malifaux is a pretty appealing game too.  Small skirmish game, card driven, high quality.

It is pricey and I'm slightly tempted.  You know, where I'd like to take me time, read some reviews, and pick it up in a few months when I have extra cash during christmas/bonus time. 

Instead, GW is trying to force this rush of demand (same shit they did with Blood Bowl) and I flat out do not have the cash right now to pick it up, so no sale.  And since they're incapable of actually figuring out how to gauge supply and demand, it's sure to sell out long before I have the extra cash to drop on a game, I"m more than likely never going to actually play. 

As for Battleship Galaxies - it is a bit on the simplistic side, but I really enjoyed the test game I played of it.    I think I put up some unboxing pics earlier in the thread.    I definitely want to play more of it at the least, and it screams for some expansions.

I am going to come back and read the whole thread later, but I wanted to say that last week we beat Arkham Horror and intend to rectify this via expansion packs.  I drew Jenny on both plays, although on the winning second I started out with the shotgun and didn't get to go shopping even once!

Just wait for a couple of years and pick it up for $350 on Ebay.   :why_so_serious:

I have a standing rule that I don't buy games anymore without pre-painted miniatures, or painted ones easily available (like City of Thieves).

I don't mind the painting so much as putting shit together.  If Games Workshop stuff was better (fucking finecast) or metal was less irritating to deal with I might do more of the putting together aspect. 

So I have purchased A Touch of Evil (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35815/a-touch-of-evil-the-supernatural-game) and Fortune and Glory:  The Cliffhanger Game (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/95103/fortune-and-glory-the-cliffhanger-game), both by Flying Frog Productions and I have to say that the quality of the production is high class.  I'm very impressed.  I can't wait to play them, although it may be a while until I can get a ply worked in. 

The ships in the box are press together. Most are in three parts, some of the bigger ones are in about 5 or 6.

I got my copy of the Gears of War boardgame this weekend. It's very nice. The mins are super detailed, and the general quality of the game is high.
I haven't been able to play with others, but I did the solo rules a couple of times. It's a lot like the latest D&D games where enemies follow scripts on cards, so it's co-op versus the "AI".
I reccomend it.

The Dice Tower raped GOW on the review, so I was a little hesitant to purchase it.  I would be interested in hearing how your plays have gone.

I played Battlestations (http://www.battlestations.info/) at a gaming con this last weekend and enjoyed it so much I just ordered a copy off Amazon.  It occupies the same sort of gray area between boardgame and RPG that Arkham Horror does, so I figure it goes in this thread.

It's a tactical space combat game where each player controls a crew member on a ship, and you have to run around manning different stations to keep things running.  The ship layouts are assembled out of modular board pieces, so different scenarios will call for ships of different sizes with different capabilities.  When I played at the con it took us about four hours to go through one combat, but most of us were new to the game and the guy running it by all appearances had ADD, so I think with a group of normal human beings who had played it before it'd have been about half that.

I put out the request to my wife tonight that for my birthday next month, I want to bring the family (parents, bro and his wife) together for a game of 7 Wonders.  Wife says I ask the impossible, since all of them have never played anything outside of the double-digit IQ-level games like Life, Monopoly and Uno.  

Challenge accepted  :drill:

Hm. I watched the Dice Tower review. I don't agree with his complaint about the cards as health mechanic. I think it's a great abstraction if you can get away from the "Hit Points = Health" schtick, and view it as pushing your character until he's open to a burst from the bad guys and gets put down.
I think his other complaints are vaild, but I like that in the game personally. In my games, I usually have died because I pushed too far and wasn't in cover, while a Boomer put 6 hits into my dumb ass.
Unlike the DT reviewer, I'm eager to play more and see if I can get better at the game.

Started so well.....

I have BS plus the 1st two xpacs.  It's a game that's screaming for a re-design since either as a boardgame or RPG the rules are just too fiddly...  more fiddly than even Descent (which is being redesigned and re-released btw).  So basically, it's one of those games you have to have experienced players devoted to the game to play with.  Definitely more on the RPG end than boardgame.

I actually started a project to somewhat redesign the game; upgrading the components and making it semi card-driven ala WFRP3e.  Was actually going pretty well until life intervened.

I like Battlestations.  It's not all that fiddly, and there are lots of options.  Lots of replayability.

I bought the wife The Hobbit (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/83629/the-hobbit) for her birthday and we finally played it last night.  I have to say that it's a nice, short game that is going to be family oriented.  I wonder about the replayability though as there's really only enough cards to get you where you need to go.  It would have been nice to have some extras of the event and adventure cards for variability.  Overall I was fairly impressed.  

Got my 2011 reprint copy of Twilight Struggle in the mail last week.  Read through the rules and cards, and the game seems pretty bad ass.  I can't wait to get some games in with friends.

That's the same version I have, it is very nice.   Played it twice only, but it seems pretty fun so far.

I'm teaching the wife to play Agricola tonight.  It's lots of fun and hard as shit. 

Twilight Struggle is great. Too bad there's no 3 player actually, you're conveniently located for us.

Yeah, there's a reason Twilight Struggle is rated the best game on Boardgamegeek.  It's pretty stellar. 

I'm sure somebody out there has made some crazy rule conversion to add in the Non-Aligned Movement faction for 3 player games.   :awesome_for_real:

There's no mention of a 3 person variant on boargamegeek.  There's enough crazy people on there that if something like that exists I think it would be up. 

Just going to throw this out there, Penny Arcade: Gamers vs Evil is the best of the deckbuilding games I've played. It's incredibly streamlined and can be played pretty quickly. Granted, the only deckbuilding games I've played are Ascension, Nightfall, and Game of Thrones (which isn't really deck building, but just Magic with an extra chromosome).

This is true, but you'd best be prepared for a 3+ hour slog if the USSR doesn't stomp on the US with its jackboots fairly early.  3 hours of brainburning, it can be exhausting.

Thanks for the opinion.  I've been thinking about picking it up.  That pretty much settles it.

So I'm currently buying up as much Heroscape stuff as I can since WotC has decided to shitcan it.  Some of the sets are getting pretty expensive, but it's a kick ass game. 

Also finally got my Commands and Colors Ancients and Napoleonics sorted and stickered.  That was a bitch.  GMT makes some nice games though. 

Just ordered the following for research on my own game:
Twilight Struggle
Grimoire
Arcana
Super Dungeon Explore

I really need to start a boardgames/card game blog thing of some sort. Or open a board game sub-forum. With the lack of magic players here though, it may need to be a totally separate new thing.

Twilight Struggle seems like an odd bird when paired with the other three.  It is pretty awesome though, and a great game to emulate. 

Some of us do play Magic - just not "competetively". My entire coffee table has been taken up by half built decks for about a month now.

Don't really talk about it here because the only place I've seen it mentioned is buried in a sub/sub forum thats supposedly about the online version (which I don't play).

Been playing regularly again since about the Alara block. Biggest difference I've found compared to when I first played, is that now I play almost exlusively two headed or gathering formats, because there's usually four or five of us around on Friday nights when we play. Trying to play a deck built for five player as a one on one deck usually ends in disaster.

I did build a one on one deck last weekend to try against Stewie (he's the one member of our group with strong one on one decks), see if I could beat him with an out of the ordinary tactic. Deck was 19 islands, 2 Black Vices, 2 artifact retrieval cards, 6 Scry/draw cards, 23 unsummon/boomerang cards, and 8 unsummon creatures.

Killed his zombie deck 20 - 0 without getting a Vice out.

It's a nice example of a card-driven boardgame, though.  Or maybe Schild's game is about how the Arcane Grimoire Wizards of the Great Communist Regime have to Explore Dungeons to find the Mighty Relic of Lenin, and the CIA is always getting in the way, causing pesky coups with Death Squads in Bolivia.

Anyone have a copy of Antiquity lying around they'll never play again? Talk about a shot in the dark.


Nailed it. I am making a game only Lum would play. And neckbeard number 7,132 at BGG.

Super Dungeon Explore looks pretty awesome, so if you combine that with Twilight Struggle I think you'll have a winner.  I'm pretty sure I would like whatever you end up with.  

Edit:  Oh, and mustaches are the new neckbeards.

Picked up Pandemic for $20 on some Amazon sale.  Great game, works good 2-4 people, games run pretty fast but can get very tense.  Possibly my favorite boardgame I own at the moment.  Only complaint really would be that sometimes games feel a little dependent on which roles you get.  (No dispatcher in a 4 player game?  You're probably done already.)

Picked up a mess of stuff for my studies. Instead of posting the new stuff. Here is a list of everything I've picked up. If you can think of anything to add to this for some mechanic or something I'm missing out on, let me know.

Ascension + Expansion
Escape from the Aliens from Outer Space (LE + Regular)
Twilight Struggle
Penny Arcade: Gamers vs Evil
Munchkin Cthulhu (1-4, Munchkinomicon, Munchkin Fairy Dust)
Tanto Coure
Eaten by Zombies
Resident Evil DBG
Cadwallon, City of Thieves
Quarriors + Expansion
Chronicle
Elder Sign
Get Bit!
Cards Against Humanity
Super Dungeon Explore
Arcana
Ticket to Ride //Nordic Countries
A Few Acres of SNow
Food Fight
Grimoire

I think that's everything.

Unrelated to anything, I'm trying to remember the name of that game with the hexagon board where you traded resources.

Catan?


7 Wonders

We're halfway there. Why?

Well, it's won a couple awards...


Besides all that, it's a card drafting/civ building game that can be played out in less than 45 minutes.  With the various ways to achieve points, no two games ever play the same.  Scales extremely well from 3 to 7 players, and also has an official two-player variant.  I love it a lot, and the family approves.

I will admit that while 7 wonders might not be the deepest game strategy-wise, the smoothness of it's play is something that all games get held to for our gaming group these days.  Waiting for people to take turns after playing the fast and engaging simultaneous-turned 7 wonders becomes almost unacceptable.  Almost.

I'm gonna suggest a non-boardgame here:
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd ed.  

I dropped over $150 buying shit for that game and I had no intention of really even playing it as I despise the Warhammer 'verse.  I bought it because mechanically imo it's the best dicepool RPG out there.  You COULD take its dicepool system, abstract ranging,  and party mechanics and apply them to a boardgame.    Other than that, the gritty career paths are the best parts of WH and the meta the game uses for that is very well done also.

Other games?  Hmmm.
-"Dungeon of D"  (great solitaire game)  You'll learn some great resource management stuff and game engine mechanics with this one.  And it's free.
-"Ghost Stories"  Better and deeper coop game than Pandemic imo.  Also doing very well with expansions.
-"Mystic Empyrean" rpg.  It's a kickstarter but the .pdf and basic mechanics should be available.  From this, you steal storytelling/world-building mechanics that are by and far way better than something like "Burning Wheel."
-"Summoner Wars" and "Imperial Crusade Armada"  These are examples of card-based wargames, Imp Crusade being a new one.  Summ. Wars I know you know of already, so I'm not gonna explain.
-Star Trek Fleet Captains.  Has a bit of everything but not hard to learn.  I'd prefer card-tracking rather than clix though; but it gives you that option.  Interesting mechanics?  The power adjustment system and how it relates to tests.  And how the cards you choose and deck you draft play into this.  It's a brilliant game.
-"Domiinant Species"  By far the best interactive PvP game of 2011. From this, aside from taking the geometric resource mgt./worker-placement, I take the common pool of cards that drastically alter the game.  Instead of hidden hands/decks like in Struggle or Labyrinth, you get a pool of faceup cards that everyone picks from.  This creates all kinds of tension and strat. to mitigate outcomes.

Anybody tried Risk Legacy? It's gotten some pretty good buzz at BGG and other reviews I've read.

I want to buy a boardgame for my cousin for secret santa and would love some recommendations.

The main thing is that I guess it has to be playable by a family group that is not necessarily anywhere near as nerdy as I or my cousin (who plays Warhammer something & was state champ recently). I bought Diplomacy about 12 years ago, and while it was great fun for a day and we played a couple of games it has NEVER been played since, and I want to avoid that.

But I still want it to be a bit strategy, not just a social game.

7 Wonders sounds like the right style, do you think that would work? Any other recommendations?

I really need to pick that up. We pretty much spin up game nights with a round of Forbidden Island, which I believe is the follow up from the dude that created Pandemic? It's such a quick, fun and accessible game, and everyone loves it. Great to play a co-op game before getting into something cutthroat. I've got a feeling we'll enjoy Pandemic even more.

I don't really care for Pandemic. There's just not really enough game there for me.

The natural progression from Pandemic is Ghost Stories and then Defenders of the Realm.  Just depends on how much group AP you're willing to put up with.  Easily solved with a timer though, which is why I like "Space Alert."

Forbidden Island (mentioned a few posts back) has a very enjoyable cooperative players-vs-the-RNG mechanic.

Alien Frontiers (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/48726/alien-frontiers) has a bunch of fascinating mechanics
- dice as tokens (representing ships)
- creation / destruction / recycling of various types of resource tokens
- using resource tokens to consume communal/contested resource "slots" until the next turn
- many different actions available on your turn, but actions you can take are limited by:
1. what resources you have accumulated
2. what numbers you have rolled, which determine where your ships "fit" (some resource areas need doubles, sequences, etc)
3. resource areas may be "occupied" by another player

I'm a big 7 Wonders fan. Certainly has strategy elements - especially in paying attention to what the people to either side of you are doing. Nice replay value in that you start with random civilizations. Also liked the Leaders expansion for it, added a couple new elements and expanded the randomness and replayablity

Thanks for the info.

I want to get Ghost Stories, for me, but my initial search shows sold out or $70 Australian. Maybe I should demo it on the iPad version.

Get the "On The Brink" expansion.  Adds three new scenarios for more varied gameplay, along with 5 players support, and several new roles.  Also fixes the Engineer to be more helpful, and a 5th 'mutation' disease.

Panzer General might be worth taking a look at, combines deckbuilding with moving your dudes on a board, and the cards have a nice dual role thing going on where you can use them to modify rolls or for their regular printed effect. I've only played the Live version, not the actual physical game.

Since I had to look it up (on BoardGameGeek), am I correct that "AP" means analysis paralysis?

Sovereign: Open Source Board Game
http://www.opensourceboardgame.org/index.php/game-rules-revised/

That is correct.  I assumed people would infer it given the context of a timer.   :grin:

I wasn't familiar with the term, but now I have a two word phrase that perfectly defines my gaming style.

Then, if you like your friends, never play Tikal.

I think it's worth picking up Race for the Galaxy (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28143/race-for-the-galaxy).  It's got a great mechanic that I believe is different than anything you have here and it's really well done all the way around.  We've been playing it a lot lately  and it's quite fun. 

We really enjoy Race for the Galaxy, but we have run in to issues since adding the expansion that include "prestige". We found that if you don't get lucky and start the game with an easy to get out prestige card, you end up falling way behind someone who does. The expansion also made the play deck so big, that its become far harder to actually intentionally look for a theme, and instead we've found you have to rely more on luck in getting crads that work together. So again, the guy who get's the good early draw usually wins.

We haven't made it into incorporating any expansions other than the first one yet.  I can see that being a problem, though. 

The first two expansions aren't a problem.  You can even include all the cards from them without using their optional rules without any real problems.  It's that third stupid expansion that causes all the issues because of the new mechanic.  I bought a long while back, and still haven't mixed it in with my regular deck since it makes teaching the game to new people significantly harder, and the way the cards are marked, it's a pain to find and remove them when I don't want them.  Outside that one expansion, I really like Race for the Galaxy though.

So, I've been playing Ghost Stories on the iPad a bit. It's pretty fun!

I don't know how it would go in a group setting unless everyone are gamers, as it's not the most simple and it doesn't mind beating you if you stuff up, but it's pretty good. Seems to be harder the more players you add, though maybe that's just me being a bit slower in working out the best way to play with more numbers.

Ghost Stories is excellent, but it's goddamned hard to beat.   :uhrr:

Turn one: Draw a ghost, get a draw a ghost ghost, get another draw a ghost ghost, get another draw a ghost ghost, get a defense 4 curse ghost.

 :awesome_for_real:

I do have a copy laying around that I don't play much, actually.  Splotter games are sort of my grail games though, so... hmm.

One of: Chicago Express, Logistico, or Age of Steam (not Steam)
Modern Art for auction bits
Container or Power Grid (to bind them all) or...
If you can get your hands on it, Master of Economy is a fantastically unique beast that also jams together a bunch of bits.  Get a euro to help you out, and be ready to pay through the nose for shipping. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/75441/master-of-economy (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/75441/master-of-economy)

My copy of War of the Ring is shipping today.   :awesome_for_real:

Now I can just hope I can get hold of Eclipse.....

Wait, the reprint's out finally?

What edition is it, and what sort of price are you looking for.  Also, I sort of have some odds and ends video game rarities, so we may be able to work something out, shoot me a PM.

Saw it in stores a few days ago.

Yep.  Order quick or you may not get one.  Same with Eclipse (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/72125/eclipse), if you're interested in that one.  Both have sold out at the publisher level (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/6426/sold-out-at-the-publisher-level-what-does-that-me) already.

Not a reprint.  New publisher/edition.

Anything changing in the rules/map/etc?

That makes it a reprint...

Yeah, they've made lots of improvements to the system.  You better get rid of that collectors edition fast, while it still has some value.  I'll take it off of your hands for $100.   :grin:

Cold dead hands.

So my copy got here and I opened it.  The components seem pretty awesome.  I'm definitely looking forward to looking over the rulebook.  I also picked up Mage Knight from the store today.  Holy shit the components on this one are spectacular. 

Speaking of that, how was the production on Super Dungeon Explore, schild?

Superb, haven't even had a chance to put it together yet though.

It really looks awesome.  You'll have to let me know how it plays when you get around to it.  I've bought too many games lately and one more means the wife will have my head on a stake.  So it better be a damned good game to lose my head.

Not sure if I should spin this question off or not, but are there any decent TCGs for kids, specifically a pretty bright 6yr old?  I was wondering about Magic, but I think that's teen rated.  Any advice would be great. 

Pokemon?

It's deep for a six year-old, but less mature than Magic.

Kinder Bunnies (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14441/kinder-bunnies-their-first-adventure)?

Any good suggestions for (board)games for folks...who should be smart enough to pick things up, but aren't gamers in the classic sense? The two I'm looking to get now (just because they're generally well liked by anyone) is Catan and Loaded Questions, but more game-y options would be nice too. Also, they need to be purchasable via Amazon, and cannot contain batteries (not likely to be an issue here, but just in case).

If they like fantasy themes then Talisman (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/27627/talisman-fourth-edition) might be a decent choice.  Carcassonne: The City (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12902/carcassonne-the-city) I have also had decent luck with.  Some other decent choices are Ticket to Ride (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9209/ticket-to-ride), Castle Panic (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/43443/castle-panic), Dice Town (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40793/dice-town), King of Tokyo (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/70323/king-of-tokyo), the Hobbit (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/83629/the-hobbit), Lost Cities: the Boardgame (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/42487/lost-cities-the-board-game), or Small World (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40692/small-world).  A couple of decent card based games are Incan Gold (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37759/incan-gold) and Lost Cities (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/50/lost-cities). 

Got a copy of War of the Rings and getting Eclipse delivered later this week, so those are now covered. Everything's peachy except there's been a  sorting mishap on my WOTR figurines, I have one too few Nazguls and one too many Dwarf Leaders  :ye_gods:. Mailed Ares, we'll see how this plays out.

There's also a series of designer notes going over the stuff they changed and changes they tested but decided to not do, at http://www.aresgames.eu/category/articles/designers-notes (http://www.aresgames.eu/category/articles/designers-notes).

Anyone have any experience with Dominant Species?
It looks like it ticks all the right boxes for us in terms of resource management, strategy, interaction etc, yet I have read that it can be a bit long.

any first hand input on this game would be appreciated.

It's really damned cool.  I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for though.  It is long, but fun.  Kind of a Euro style game, but not really.  Lots of cool mechanisms are involved.  The board is neat.  I dig it.

It looks like there is competition for space like Settlers, competition for actions like Puerto Rico and lots of interaction.
These all appeal to the group I play with.
What kind of time frame should I be expecting to play. I've heard up to 4 hours, but we are a fairly experienced group of gamers. Is a 2 hour game a reasonable expectation?

I am hoping the missus gets it for me for xmas, if not I may buy it myself.

I think 3 hours may be a better expectation, but 4 or longer if you get any of AP people involved.

Amazing what a copy of 7 Wonders will get you in trade.  I got tired of it pretty quick, so I traded for the OOP LOTR Trilogy Risk and the new LOTR coop LCG.  $80 in games for a $35 one.   :oh_i_see:



AP is a problem in the planning phase, but if everyone agrees to kinda live with it, maybe munch on some chips/drink and talk shit, it's okay.  I wouldnt rush the turn or else the gameplay suffers, since the game is based heavily on ruthless interaction.

I bought dominant species the other day.

I'd exchange it if I could. Game is too slow, too fiddly and a bit ugly. When the mechanics of the game are so intrusive its no good that everything else is fun. And it is fun: It seems like a very deep game that will reward for a number of plays. But the execution is pretty off putting. I doubt I'll get many games out of it for those reasons. I goes way past any general play possibilities. If I knew what it was like I would have bought something else. (I wanted to get Earth Reborn, but went for DS on the thinking - maybe I can convince family and friends to play DS. I now think I'd have equal chance with either.)

Also everything doesn't fit easily into the box, which is super annoying.

If you are thinking of getting it I would read this: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/710530/feeling-based-review-after-one-2-player-game-ds

It makes good points that I agree with. It feels like a good game, but with serious obstacles.

Late replies, but figured I would try and contribute something.


Having played about six games, we have introduced most of the mechanics and such.

tl:dr If you like Risk AND have a consistent gaming group, it can be rewarding and is the best Risk you will find. However, it is still just Risk.

Sure, some places will become more valuable, or harder/easier to defend/capture, but you still just get some dudes, put em on the board, and roll dice. Yes you will scribble enough dick jokes on the board to make a Goon proud, but for the most part, it's still going to be the same board you have played on since you were twelve. I can give it a soft recommendation it if you have a consistent gaming group. The give and take (especially the possibility of permanently screwing your friends favorite strategy over) can be rewarding over several games and lead to investment in the world. But if you tend to play with different people frequently then no one will really give a damn about the changes they had nothing to do with, much like in real life.


I don't recommend Catan. Everyone in my group found it tedious. However, the version on the 360 is alright as the computer does all the tedious bits for you. There is a demo.

My default recommendation for a intro boardgame is Shadows over Camelot. Of the twenty or so games our gaming group owns, we all agree SoC is our favorite.
First, it just looks good. Colorful, well drawn boards and cards. Good quality pieces. It is not a cheaply made game.
Second, it is really fun. You start off playing totally coop against the board. But once you get a couple games under your belt and grasp the simple mechanics you then introduce a traitor who secretly works against the rest of the players, adding a great political element.
Third, it is fairly simple to teach. Each turn you only have to do two things, and all your options are in front of you on your hero card for easy reference. But figuring out the best course of action and getting everyone to work together is a real challenge.
Finally, it is a good setting to get you and your group into in a nerdy frame of mind, whilst still waiting a bit to ease them into d20's and space orks.
Hold off on the expansion til you try the base game. It does not add a whole lot, but is moderately worth it if you find you love the game.

Edit: Video review if you are interested. http://boardgamegeek.com/video/3601/shadows-over-camelot/drakkenstrikes-shadows-over-camelot-components-bre

SoC was one of the most fun things I've ever played, once I figured out what to do  :awesome_for_real:

Played Smallworld yesterday for the first time. Was a fun little game with some interesting strategies. I like that the races and bonuses are randomised so that the game changes dramatically with each replay. We were 3 players but I'd imagine it gets a lot more interesting with more.

DS is not a 2-player game, not even slightly.  You need 3+ for it to be enjoyable and ideally gamers.  Earth Reborn is ONLY a two-player game, with some team rules bolted on.
That being said, I do believe ER is the better game, but it requires a much deeper commitment to learn/play as it's basically a storytelling wargame.  It's also slower to setup then even Descent.

You could likely trade DS for ER on the geek if you wanted.

That looks cool...too bad I don't think I could enough other folks to play.

I know me and one other guy here would play just about anything (though with an infant he kind of has a 2 hour time limit). The problem is finding other folks who would play anything beyond, I don't know...Trivial Pursuit?

Going to the store for Earth Reborn and coming home with Dominant Species is a bit like going to the store for a shotgun and coming home with a tea set.  They're totally different games, and I wonder if that didn't make it more off-putting for you.

Just so you know, Earth Reborn is totally kick ass.   :grin:

But then again Dominant Species is pretty awesome too, they're just nothing alike.

They're alike in that getting other people to play them is hard, and that I was interested in them.

You really only need one other person to play Earth Reborn.  Surely somebody around would be willing to play that with you. 

In other news, Fantasy Flight is reprinting Fortress America.  I'm excited. 

Haha, that's awesome, I hadn't realized they were.  New set looks pretty nice as well, though I kind of miss the old box cover.

I know literally no one who shares my nerdy interest in games irl (moving to a new city a couple of years ago didn't help this). I've actually been thinking of trying to find some sort of club to remedy the situation.

Also, after getting a little bit more out of the games I played this holiday season:

Dominant Species: A fun game. I find it a bit long, with the last hour or so dragging on a bit, but it's also lots of fun. I managed to play three games in the end (2,3 and 5 players) and most enjoyed it (each person who played it came back the next time). It was a bit frustrating in that for such a long game the final few turns can make or break a player, and the luck of what cards and elements are turned over then can have a large effect given the final turn scoring ("here's three elements of your type - hello wasteland! goodbye survival strategy"). Might just be some novice play, though. My brother liked it enough to go and buy it himself.

Pandemic: Fun and quick, enjoyed a lot by nearly everyone who played it. It was played the most of the lot, with a lot more willing/able to give it a go (only my brothers and cousin played DS, but my sisters and aunt and brother in law all managed to have a game of this). Can be dominated a bit by one or two people, and the fun can be determined by the cards a bit too much - a number of games were boringly easy, and a number were impossible. However when everyone is enjoying it and the cards are turning over in a nice way it can be heaps of fun: one game was won memorably with no cards left in the deck after three turns of advance planning involving most of the special skills. A much better family game given there is less conflict between players.

Carcassonne: I bought this for my cousin and it was ok. Not really my kind of thing in the end but diverting for a game or two. A bit simple for me. I never played it with just two people and it looked like that might have been the best way to play it.

Go: I really enjoy this. I wish I had a proper board. Makes all the other games look a bit silly in a way.

If anyone is in need of a party game along the lines of Bang or Mafia, then I highly recommend 'The Resistance'.  5-10 players.  No one is ever removed from the game (unlike the previous examples) so no one gets bored.  Tons of fun as long as your group is social and likes to argue with one another.  It's definitely my favorite as far as the secret role/deception games go.

Might be interesting to get a forum game going of mafia/ww/the resistance if people are interested.

This idea interests me...go on.

/monocle

I'm honestly surprised we don't have a Vassal subforum somewhere around here.

I would have been interested, but the semester is starting in a week and there is no way I can make the commitment, unless it was a fast game.

They play werewolf on 2+2 (poker forum) all the time.  It is a ton of fun but also can be very time consuming if you have a large amount of people playing and want to take it seriously.  Also the people there are far too good at it and eat noobs like me for breakfast.

For what it's worth, I think mafia/ww is probably a better forum game than the resistance, while the resistance is the better party game.  Mafia/WW's main problem is that once people get eliminated it can be lame with bigger live groups.

So we played Dominant Species for the first time on the weekend. Really enjoyed it, nice mix of mechanics - Agricola's planning mixed with some basic wargame strategy. Problem was, we all think too much. Now admitedly, we were also watching the fight, learning the game, dealing with other people, etc - but it took us 5.5 hours to finish the game.

Did you ever get around to playing Super Dungeon Explore?  I've been thinking about buying it, but the reviews are mixed.

Friends put their own copy together, played it, loved it. It's very "light" they said, but enjoyable if you can tolerate lightness.

I'm too lazy to put the fucking figures together with the other games on my shelf.

Picked up the Ascension Expansion (Storm of Souls) this week - which is excellent - and Prêt-à-Porter, which I haven't had a chance to play yet.

I wasn't particularly impressed with the base Ascension game. 

I picked up super dungeon explore for my wife over the holidays.  We've only played it once, but I like it a lot so far.  It's extremely similar to descent, but for me felt \ more gamey than descent which felt more like dungeons and dragons.  The only comments I would make would be that the mini's might be hard to assemble (one of the bigger ones in ours had a bent stem which was somewhat hard to fix and get seated in the base, and that the rules and base characters are clearly set up for many expansions further down the road, none of which I can find any info at all about right now nor appear to be immediately on the horizon.  Without expansions to add more monsters, the replayability might get a bit old.

What is the playtime like?

Depends on the set up you're using.  3 heroes is around an hour, 5 isn't supposed to be much longer.  There are more or less built in timers in the game rules to keep game length reasonable.  There's basically a track that counts wounds done by heroes or monsters, and eventually spawns the boss mob, although that's not the only way, but the other way would be the end result of a steamroll from the hero player(s).  Turns actually go pretty fast once you have an understanding of what you can use your turns to do.

Schild-  a couple of other games you might want to look at for your research are The Ares Project (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/65534/the-ares-project) and Blood Bowl Team Manager (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/90137/blood-bowl-team-manager-the-card-game).  Both are card games that are semi-drafty and might give you some good ideas.

Six losses in a row to Arkham Horror.  No lessons learned last night other than our character picks were shit and we are not as smart as a pile of printed cardboard.

If you're playing a game that's supposed to be representative of Lovecraft and you feel that you are "winning" on any sort of regular basis, the game is doing it wrong.

I've heard of this game more than once, but is it still any good if you have never read or had any interest in any Lovecraft stuff?


This looks like a lot of fun and something the people I game with would enjoy for sure...but ouch at the price tag.  Does stuff like that go on sale very often or is the $100 pretty locked in?

You should really read the Lovecraft stuff.

Depends on how many were initially printed and how well it does, and if it sees another printing.  Could very easily only ever actually go up in price.  I have no clue how many copies were printed, but the print run didn't seem that large if my game shop and amazon were any indicators at christmas.  It's actually gone up in price since I bought it, since I found it for $85 a few weeks ago.  Amazon seems to be down to 3 copies, one of which is from the manufacturer of the game, so unless they do a reprint, it's likely to get expensive for a while.  That said, the game is clearly set up for expansions, so not reprinting the base set would be shooting themselves in the face.

You're also losing the metagame.

I haven't read any Lovecraft.  At all.  The appeal is that this is by far the most complicated game that any of us have played.


This is what two of the other players say.


Agreed.  We decided during the first play that the game was indeed designed to drive its players mad.  That is still fun, but that was the part about last night that wasn't fun... which was that it wasn't fun!  It's fun to lose, normally.  Usually we have a plan that we throw together as we play that is based on the characters we draw, but this time we picked characters and came up with a plan beforehand.  I'm not sure if that contributed to the lack of fun but we either need to get smarter about playing or just go back to random characters and running around Arkham and Dunwich like idiots.

Well, one thing that contributed was definitely the Dunwich expansion, since we have not won since we got it.  Besides the usual horrors from space and slowly-awakening Old One, the god-damned King In Yellow and the Blights can really pile on the hurt.  We can't get another expansion until we win this one twice, but we may amend that rule.

Are you playing with multiple expansions or just one at a time? Because we found that with multiple expansions - especially multiple map expansions - it got really annoying for various reasons.

We are playing with two expansions.  Beat the base game a few times and got the Dunwich Horror, then King in Yellow.  Now stuck. :oh_i_see:

We would have gotten the first expansion, Curse of the Dark Pharaoh, except it's been revised in 2011 and so we placed it at the end of the series and instead added Dunwich Horror, then The King In Yellow (I earlier forgot it was a separate expansion, it is cards only while Dunwich adds a board).  So I suppose next would be Kingsport Horror per the timeline (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkham_Horror#Expansions).  Which we would add, not substitute with.

We do need a bigger table, yes.

I wrote a longish review on Dominant Species over on BGG. I will share it here for those interested. I have emphasised the negative aspects in the review, as there are lots of good reviews which mention the positive stuff.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/749141/good-cop-bad-cop-dominant-species

Well, I've only played it twice now, and while I can see where a couple of your points come from - I would generally completely disagree with your review.

I actually like the asthetic look of the game. I do. Really seems like a silly thing for people to rag on about. Is it long? Yes. Our second play through cut it from five hours to about three though, which for a five player game isn't that bad. We can probably get it under three hours if we pay attention.

I like the fact that there is enough randomness to force some change of strategy mid game. Yes, it can lead to over-analyzation, but at least you won't feel like you've lost the game two turns in because someone picked a strategy that's trumped yours and its too late to change (see Puerto Rico).

Yes, we did refer to the food chain list enough to justify its presence on the board.

One issue I do have - there are a few game steps whose functionality are not entirely obvious by their name - Wasteland, Depletion, etc. Some you have to pick to protect yourself, some to actualy trigger on someone else. Those did require some of us to constantly refer to the rules card to clarify their function, because if you didn't and you missed what was coming up, it could completely screw your game.

My experience is that once you get 2 map expansions out at once, it doesn't work very well - you have horrible travel time issues going from map to map to map to get to portals, and the deck gets so large that the special features of each expansion tend to get diluted to the point where they don't fire off very much.

Travel is already an irritant with just one added board, and it just makes things worse that you have to pay $1 to move between (normally).  But if we weren't looking to be punished, we would play Chaos in the Old World or something. :oh_i_see:

I have gone from loving Arkham Horror to hating it, and back to loving it. The problem I was having is that unless someone at the board knows the game very well, people just wander off and make poor decisions in their own percieved self interest. The solution for me was to play a few games with 1 or 2 other people I could trust to stick with a plan and communicate when the plan needed to change. Or just play a single player game. Now I can play a succesful game with just about any interested group.
A few of my own rules of thumb:
1. The doom track fills up quick to begin with. Relax.
2. If the doom track is long, work to seal. The doom track is usually long.
3. Evade is often the best strategy. If you can't fight it or make the horror check, run. It also doesn't stop your movement.
4. Mandy. As a game with success determined by probability, rerolling failures is HUGE.
5. Activities you should prioritize: Seal common gates > gather clue tokens > seal uncommon gates > monster population control > fish the shops for weapons/elder signs > trade stuff around > closing uncommon gates > giving a blessing to another player > get some allies
6. With 1 or 2 exceptions, spells usually are not worth the sanity cost. Find gate is easily my favorite.
7. Blessing yourself is usually a mistake.

Those folks that try an play AH with all the expansions are fucking psycho.

 :heart:

It's hard enough to get the Mrs. to play the base-game.

"Hey honey, wanna play Pandemic, 7 Wonders or AH?!"

"Pfft, yeah, no.  How about Phase 10?"

"Ugh, fuck it.  Let's just go to bed and do the dirty."

A seven-point list makes it all sound so easy. :oh_i_see:

You do realize AH makes something like Monopoly or Life look like Checkers and Tic-Tac-Toe, right?  I mean, good lord, stay the fuck away from Mansions of Madness then  :why_so_serious:

Mansions of Madness is easier than AH, IMO.  The setup is a little daunting when you're first learning the game, but only one person needs to know how it works, and once you get good at it you can whip through a game in a couple of hours, whereas AH always seems to take all goddamn day.

A bad comparison then...the point is, AH isn't supposed to be 'easy'.

Something can be hard without being complicated, though.

I am currently designing a card game. It's a nice process.

By "easy" I don't mean easy to win (I pretty reliably destroy everyone when I'm the keeper in MoM), rather easy to set up and relatively quick to play.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/chicken_regret_nothing.gif)

We are playing it because it is hard.

Started playing Mage Knight an hour ago. Halfway through the instructions and I want to go to sleep. It seems awesome, but jesus. Is King's Bounty really this complex?

Mage Knight as in the Wizards of the Coast wargame that is now defunct?

WizKids, not WotC.

Ahh, yes.

Last I checked the manual for those is a dozen page pamphlet that really should only be like four pages.  In practice the game is pretty fast because almost everything you need which is important is right on the figure base or on a two page card.

I presume he is talking about the new Mage Knight board game which is very different than the collectable mini combat one.

Yes, speaking to the board game. It's basically King's Bounty turned into a board game, except it takes much longer to trudge through the rules than it did to learn King's Bounty.

Mage Knight is pretty goddamned thick.

Played a little A Few Acres of Snow the other night.  It's pretty awesome.  I think I like Martin Wallace games.  Too bad most of them are 3 players plus. 

I haven't gotten around to firing up a Few Acres of Snow. This week is Mage Knight. Next week is Pret-a-Porter.

You're going to play Pret-a-Porter over A Few Acres of Snow?  Really?   :ye_gods:

All in the name of science research!   :why_so_serious:  :drillf:

I'm more interested in the economics and board progression of Pret-A-Porter than I am in the flow and ridiculousness of the Halifax Hammer in a Few Acres of Snow.

Anybody tried Fortune and Glory? It *looks* amusing.

I have not been able to convince myself to buy any game that used LARPing as art on the product.

Halifax Hammer sounds more like a bad porn stage name than a strategy.  Even with the Halifax Hammer, A Few Acres of Snow is very good.  

Also, I have Fortune and Glory but have yet to play it.  All Flying Frog games are exceptionally well produced and this one seems to be relatively well received on BGG.

Oh, all the Flying Frog games look well produced and BGG does in fact like a lot of them.

I simply can't get past the LARPers that grace all their shit. Hire a goddamn artist.

I think it adds to the campiness that they are trying to get into their games and is different from the crap you typically see.  I much prefer this to the computer generated shite that a lot of companies are putting out (Battleground Fantasy Warfare, bleh).

I keep trying to convince my wife to let me spray paint "WALLACE IS GOD" on our house.  She will cave, eventually...

Maybe you could convince her to get a tattoo?  Tramp stamp maybe?

Have you played "Tempus"?

fify

:awesome_for_real:

Broke out Star Trek:  Expeditions last night.  It is a decent game from Knizia that, even though the rulebook is a little weird, is very easy to play and seems to go pretty quickly.  We enjoyed it and will play again.  I do worry a bit about the replayability, however, as the number of Captain's Log cards is limited and I just don't see any expansions coming out for this due to the lack of popularity. 

I kinda liked Expeditions also, but with Captains comin out along with the deckbuilder I passed.  Captains has elements of all that in one game.  Now, if only the production quality wasn't such ass.

In other gaming news, I finally was able to trade for Dungeon Twister 2.  Anyone had any experience with it?  I was thinking of maybe going competitive with it if there's still some glory to be had there.  Evidently there's a pretty huge league.

Yeah, with my Fleet Captains it wasn't bad enough that the tiles were thin pieces of shit, they had to cut them wrong so that they don't match.  These stupid Clix figures drive up the price on the game so much that everything else has to be a complete piece of junk.

I have Dungeon Twister, but haven't played it yet.  That's next on my list of games to play.

Anybody got any good ideas for the storage of Dominion other than the trays in the boxes?  I love the setup with Thunderstone (meaning the index tab cards) and I've condensed everything down into two of the boxes.  I have too many games and need to consolidate some more.

You have now touched on why I refuse to own Dominion. You should see the alternative boxes Gary Games came up with for Ascension.

It's a shame Rio Grande Games doesn't know what an "accessory" is.

Thunderstone, Ascension and Nightfall all have very nice storage mechanisms.  I'm a bit worried about how they'll do when I sleeve them, however. 

I guess I'll have to come up with some decent separator cards on my own, but I just don't want to put a lot of work into it. 

I was talking about these: http://www.ascensiongame.com/store?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=5&category_id=1

Oh wow.  Those are nice. 

As popular as Dominion is I'm surprised that some third party hasn't come up with a good storage solution.

I've found that since your average part for a board game is worth exactly dick compared to say Magic cards, that board game players don't care about that sort of shit. Also, they relish in knowing that they have 8 giant fucking boxes all contributing to the same game.

In other words, they're awful. Ascension was designed in part by Magic players, they probably demanded both card size, storage solutions, and sleeves upon release.

Really?  Most board gamers that I have been associated seem to be the "collector" types, as so many of these games go out of print.  Of course I really doubt that Dominion will go out of print anytime soon.  

Collector type, yes. Most organized or efficient type? Not a million years. Look at the sleeves made available for Board Games. Fantasy Flights are shitty and inconsistent. Mayday Games sleeves are absolute trash in every way imaginable.

I LOVE it when I open a game and cards are Magic sized. That should be the gold standard for cards in any card game. Mostly because there's a million great ways to store cards of that size.

FFG can eat my ass with their card sizing. I don't care if a game comes with 400 Magic-sized cards. It's better than 200 tiny illegible cards.

What?  You don't like Talisman 4th edition sized cards?   :oh_i_see:

I need to put together a few entry level Magic: the Gathering decks.  Any thoughts?

Go to a store, ask them for the free Planeswalker decks. They are the definition of entry-level.

What?  Free?   :heart:

Correct. They're 40 cards, common and uncommon. Between the 5 packs (one for each color), it has all relevant core set keywords, I think. At least they did 2 years ago when I last looked at a pack. They update them every year too!

Cool.  I'll check that out.  While I'm thinking about it, what card sleeves do you typically recommend?  To sleeve something like Dominion in its entirely I think it's probably Mayday or nothing due to the cost.   :ye_gods:

I buy KMC Matte Blacks by the case for Magic, which I in turn use for almost everything else.

80 sleeves per pack for 10 packs (so 800 sleeves) at $53 is an amazing price: http://www.potomacdist.com/list.asp?code=4040&f=1

Potomac Distribution only sells by the case/(or 1/3 case). Here's the board game sleeves, which are Ultra Pro: http://www.potomacdist.com/list.asp?code=4072

On the left side they also sell FFG sleeves and such at amazing prices. Full disclosure: Guy who runs it is a family friend, but I didn't know that til after I'd ordered from him.

I have a bunch of the black ultra pro standard sized protectors (http://www.potomacdist.com/detail.asp?itemid=upbladpb), they seem pretty good.

The KMC sleeves are pretty expensive here. ($10 for 80 v $4 for 50)

If you shuffle a lot, you'll want to stay away from Ultra Pro. Also their quality control has gone down. I go through tens of thousands of sleeves a year, KMC Matte sleeves are where it's at. They wear evenly, show less finger schmutz and feel amazing.

That's a lot of sleeves. You must spend a lot of time putting stuff in and out of 'em. Any recommendations on clear standard poker sized sleeves? (2.5in x 3.5in or 63mm x 89mm) I need to get a bunch so I can test out double sized card stuff.

Edit: Excuse me for being an idiot. Haven't played with physical magic cards in a long long time. Didn't realise they were those dimensions.

I doubt the guy in our group that owns Dominion even knows where the box it came in went. He had to get special sized sleeves for the cards of course, but did.
Now its kept in a standard long white card box, sorted alphabetically with 26 handmade little divider tabs, plus a few more for the coins/points/etc. We keep the deck of single samples in a seperate card box, and just pull ten out of that, sort a to z, and pull the matching cards from the box.

That's what I'm probably going to have to do.  I just hate those white cardboard card storage boxes.  

And I think the key here to schild's hatred of certain sleeves is the shuffling.  Some games are okay to sleeve with not so great sleeves because you aren't shuffling them a ton (e.g. Race for the Galaxy).  I'm going to order some of those and check them out.  Thanks for the recommendations.  


And I know this is Mayday, but here is a very comprehensive list of what size cards/sleeves you will need (http://maydaygames.com/sleeves.pdf).  Again, if you aren't shuffling a lot sometimes the cheap Maydays are the way to go. 

Out of nowhere, EEE has said they have received more copies of Cave Evil. Immediately purchased.

http://www.cave-evil.com

It looks like this:

Looks like an interesting game, but god, those colours and the card layouts? I've got a headache already.

Yes, they did a great job sticking to the death metal theme.

Yeah, I bought a copy.  Should be here soon.   :awesome_for_real:

Glad my post sold another copy. I'm not sure what the demand is for ridiculous shit like that. I'd imagine, not very high.

Damn you Schild for making me notice the abnormal card sizes in some of my games.  Makes me like Dominion less just realizing that (although I think we are mostly over that anyways, got "meh" pretty fast)

Now I'll probably be research that in anything else I buy before I even consider it.  :awesome_for_real:

That Cave-Evil looks....interesting.  But I just don't think we game enough to spend $70.00 on a board game.  :sad:

Oh, Dominion is super overrated. I'll take Ascension any day over it.

A Few Acres of Snow, however, is absolutely amazing. And the card size is awkward and shitty.

Godammot schild, stop posting these other things and post super dungeon explore pictures and reports instead.  I've waited decades for a good heroquest successor.

I'm missing figures from my fucking box and gluing them all together has taken 2 weeks and I'm not done yet.

That game's construction is bullshit.

Wow, that is pretty bullshit.  I'd heard that some people had gotten minis that were difficult to assemble, but not outright missing parts.

Anyone have thoughts on FFG's Lord of the Rings LCG?  I'm considering acquiring a copy to stave off my card/board-game addiction without having to drag the Mrs. into the fray every time I need a hit.

A friend is trying to get me into Warmachine.

I got the base game as a gift for xmas. I pretty much never play board/card games, but I thought it might be nice to try something new. The Fiancee and I have played maybe 5 or 6 times. We like it! Once we had the rules and mechanics all figured out, I was pretty surprised at how much if felt like an RPG. We have yet to try the 3rd quest, but I'm sure we will soon. As a neophyte to any type of game discussed in this thread, and playing with someone who has pretty much 0 experience I would recommend it. YMMV.

We also got the Penny Arcade card game, but have yet to play it.

I'm done buying MayDay Games stuff. They just have the worst quality control on Earth. Ordered Terra Evolution from their Kickstarter Campaign. They sent the wrong goddamn sleeves for the game (but now they'll discount the right size heavily if you order them) and my box - of which there were very few copies of the game available to begin with), came dented, torn, and creased.

I can tolerate low quality worksmanship (particularly on things published on a shoe string - see Cave Evil), but these sort of fuckups just drive me absolutely bonkers.

Oh, you don't get the credit for it.  I bought it several weeks ago.   :oh_i_see:

The only thing I get from Mayday is their cheap sleeves, which seem to work pretty well for me.  I much prefer them to their "premium" sleeves.  But yeah, almost everything else they do is shite and their packing for shipping is horrid.

Sounds like someone who has never bought anything from Splotter!

Splotter has an excuse.

Don't do it man.  Even with the pricepoint being way less than GamesWorkshop, it's 'spensive, time-consuming (assembly and paint), and you've got to be interested in league play to make it worthwhile.
I'd recommend Malifaux if you're not really into getting serious at your local FLGS, although that game is also gaining some steam lately.
And remember, that stuff is its own "hobby" not just a game.

On another note, I FINALLY got to play DungeonTwister2 and it kicks ass.  Gotta play tourney style with a timer though or it right sux.

I bought some of the KMC perfect fit sleeves for my Thunderstone set and they're almost too perfect of a fit.  I may have to back up and use something else.   :oh_i_see:

Edit:  AND my copy of Cave Evil got here today.  It looks positively awful.  I can't wait to try it out.   :awesome_for_real:

Okay.  They're really making a Star Trek Catan (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/117985/star-trek-catan).   :oh_i_see:

Yea. Thankfully, I don't even like Catan.


... or Star Trek.

But the two together should be sublime. 

Sublime shit that other people can waste their money on, sure.

It is highly irritating that Ascensions older cards are a different size than the newer cards. 

Mage Knight has what is, quite possibly, the worst rulebook in history.   :ye_gods:

Now that I agree with. It also has a terrible walkthrough of the first play.

It starts out okay, but then they just stopped.  "Okay, you're now ready to play."  What? 

You play Cave Evil yet?

Not yet.  What about you?  I had a CE meeting this weekend.

I haven't gotten my copy in yet. They ship... slowly.

I got my brother 7 wonders for his Birthday as I thought it was something that'd be fun with just us and his girlfriend. Had our first game tonight and we enjoyed it, the game's pretty fluid and quick but still requires a bit of thinking.

I asked a while back about tcgs for my kid (she's seven) and got a few responses on Pokemon.  We've played it a bit with some starter decks, and the game itself is somewhat boring to both of us.  It's just too damn simple with the starter decks we have bought.  The "depth" of the game is in building a deck, which my daughter doesn't quite understand yet. 

Is there another tcg, or maybe not even a "Tradable" card game that is slightly deeper in play, but doesn't rely on deck building so much?

I'm starting to wonder if we should just wait a few years and get into Magic. 

If you like customizable card games but hate the 'collection' aspect, try the Living Card Games, like Lord of the Rings, Penny-Arcade, and Game of Thrones.  It's all the fun without having to buy booster after booster hoping to get the card(s) you need.

On the flip-side, yeah, Magic.

Your only option for a CCG is Magic. Pokemon and YuGiOh are awful.

I can't really recommend Penny Arcade to you for a child because it has characters like Scrotuum. It's pretty clearly aimed at adults. Ascension is probably the "easiest" to understand of what's out there right now. Arcana is pretty easy but I haven't yet found the fun in it.

It seems like you could build a "simple" Magic deck that would be playable by a child that could play Pokemon.  

The only reason that Magic is super expensive to play is because of the whole aspect of buying more cards to kick ass down at the geek store.  If you don't really care about that the game can be very fun just with the base cards. 

I picked up the Lord of the Rings LCG and love it.  I highly recommend it for the 'non-collector card-game' player.  Also works great in a duo of two people, which the Core set supports right out of the box.

The LotR game is on my list, I'll have to bump it up a notch.  Also, maybe I'll snag some starter Magic decks to see if we can get it to work. 

Thanks a ton for the advice, all!

My eleven-year old who likes and understands some quite complicated boardgames and pen-and-paper RPGs found Magic confusing, which I thought was interesting.

Magic can be very complicated when you get all the poison counters and life links and what the fuck else their new rules entail.  But for the most part the creatures, the instants, and sorceries are very easy to get.  Something like a simple goblin only deck, with minimal counter production, should be very doable by a 10 year old.

I learned Magic when it was a rules nightmare when I was 12, the rules are pretty spelled out these days. I'd wager a 10 year old could roll with it.

Don't they still sell the Starter Deck "Intro to Magic" boxes? Comes ready to play bereft of any of the advanced game mechanics and a picture rulebook too. Simple land, creature, instant, etc.… cards.

I'm very interested in trying to put together a list of "kids" games that can also be considered enjoyable for adults.  A couple that I've gotten for the boy that I like include Hiss (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7708/hisss) and Animal upon Animal:  Balancing Bridge (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/84464/animal-upon-animal-balancing-bridge).  Both of these can be highly enjoyable for me to play with the boy and he likes them as well.  I have the Kids of Carcasonne (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/41010/the-kids-of-carcassonne), which is okay (may improve as the boy gets older) and Go Away Monster (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6714/go-away-monster), which is putrid.  Of these, I actually have played Animal upon Animal with the wife (bring on the jokes  :why_so_serious:) and it is quite a good game.  Anyone else have any recommendations?

Dixit (1, 2, 3, Odyssey)
Coloretto

Survive!  I played it when I was a kid, even.  Has a nice reprint now and is still fun.  And contains the valuable life lesson that some people are more important than others.

Heroscape is doable for kids and the collectibility/buildability is something they can get into.

Had some credit at Amazon to spend.

Picked up Power Grid on the high praise of multiple friends.  Looking forward to trying it out.

Too bad this one is going out of print.  You can pick up some of the sets now for reasonable, but some of the sets (like the one with the trees) are going for over a hundred bucks new and over 50 used on ebay.   :oh_i_see:

This was too awesome of a game to let go out of print.

Edit:  Fuck, I just convinced myself to buy another Swarm of the Marro and two castle setups.   :oh_i_see: :oh_i_see:

Yah I knew it was OOP but it's still relatively easy and inexpensive to get into.  Part of the reason it went OOP in the 1st place.  They'd reached a critical mass of players and it became unprofitable to pump out that much crap for a system not that many new folk were getting into, and if they were ebay and BGG were picking up the slack if not just proxying.

You COULD if you wanted to completely DIY it.  You could alumilite-clone the pieces, but you'd have to paint them of course.  There's 3rd party stuff to print battlefield layouts and view unit stats/pics also.  But really, a lot of the game is public domain stuff anyways.  You dont even need the box set.   Plenty of minis and terrain you can get that'll work.

This is true.  It's a great game.

In other news, FF has delayed the shipment of the Star Wars LCG until the fourth quarter of 2012 (http://fortressat.com/index.php/news-new-and-upcoming-games/3078-star-wars-the-card-game-ffg). 


This is shocking.  I can't believe that, with all the LCGs they already have out and the scads of deck builders currently out, they are having difficulty coming up with some novel ideas for their card game.  This might be one of the first Star Wars things that I completely skip. 

I played the new Uve Rosenberg offering, Ora Et Labora, at a con over the weekend.  It's a good heavyweight offering like Le Havre and Agricola. 

It is largely about building a point making machine, and gives you plenty of time to do so.  Lots of diversity on how you get points though.

Bottom line:  If you like Agricola but could do without the certainty that you don't have time to do even half of what you need to,  then give it a look.

I was waiting for this as well before I invested into the LotR LCG.  I kinda understand why they're doing it though; most of the people that attended the cons and demoed the game say that it basically LotR with a Star Wars skin.  :oh_i_see:

I feel like Fortress America is more important than some licensed crap.

Yeah, I wouldn't advise buying the Star Wars LCG out of the gate.  I bet they'll fuck it up somehow.  FF is getting to the point that they're running out of any original ideas, hence the reprinting of all sorts of good games like Fortress America and Wiz Wars.  They also redid Nexus Ops.  They remained pretty faithful to the original, but the tiles look like fucking power point backgrounds.   :oh_i_see:

Ugh - glad I managed to snag a copy of the original Nexus Ops on the cheap then a few years ago.  

As for Fortress America, it looks ike it's going to be a reprint with little to no rules changes, which means that they didn't bother trying to fix any of the balance/design issues.  Bleh.  

Nexus Ops was kind of shitty anyway.

The plastic parts are spectacular, as you'd expect from a FF production.  It's also got a less campy feel to it.  I don't mind it, other than the tiles. 

I'm pretty excited to see what they do with Rex, the Dune re-theme.  I like the Twilight Imperium setting, so the re-theming shouldn't bother me too much.

I still have the original burried in my parents' basement. We played it maybe three times - could tell right off that it didn't have the well balanced play the original Axis & Allies did. Oh well.

Blokus, Metro, Hive, Tsuro.

Blokus 2P is one of the purest of all joys.

You could probably sell that for a pretty penny, if it's in decent condition. 

A quick check says they go for $60 - $90. My buddy paid twice that for an original Talisman a few years back. Theres an unopened, shrinkwrapped FA on Ebay for $350 though.  :uhrr:

Huh.  I figured you could get more for it than that.  Well, hang on to it then and see if people still want it if FF's version is shite.

I got through my second solo learning playthrough of Mage Knight this evening.  It's not really that complex, once you get down to it, and it looks as if it will be a lot of fun once I learn it enough to bring in more players.  I think the "deck building" portion of this is overblown though.  I haven't played the deckbuilding variant in the rules yet, but the deckbuilding portion of the game is fairly limited so far.  I definitely recommend getting a copy if you can track one down though.  Apparently it is also sold out at the publisher level. 

Could the Cave Evil folks ship a game any fucking slower? Yeesh.

Send them an email and ask what's up.  I did and they gave me a good approximation of when I would get my game.

Edit:  Alternatively, since you're retired, I could take a day off and come up and you could help me test my copy out.

Where are you located? I could come to you if it meant a $10 dental checkup. I have no insurance and my teeth are awful.

I'm just an orthodontist, so I don't really do those sorts of exams any more.  I don't have the radiology necessary to do a good exam for cavities.  I can do a screening xray for free for you though, if you think something is wrong.

As an FYI for anyone that is considering it-  Mage Knight is awesome.  Once you get past the rules that is.  If you can get a copy, I recommend it.  Apparently it's already been picked up for another printing in March.

We tried out Eclipse (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/72125/eclipse) recently with three players. Setup and learning the basics took about an hour, the game itself about 4.5 hours, next time will probably go faster. First impressions were good. The game seemed more focused on economy than combat, but afterwards we noticed the victory point rewards from even unsuccessful combat have much more impact than we initially thought so next time we'll probably focus more on warfare.

Setting up the supply board with a crapload of markers was very annoying, so a decent storage system for the various bits and pieces is recommended. Also, accidentally moving the player boards and losing the marker positions can easily mess up the game.

The rulebook was good for the most part, but some things were left somewhat unclear. For example, during last turn I won the fight against the galactic center but ran out of influence markers on the player board. The rulebook didn't state if the marker (after successfully clearing out an area) has to come from the player board or if you can move one from another map tile.

Anyway, we'll definitely play this one again. I see it's gone up to rank 7 at Boardgamegeek, that seems a bit high though.

Here's a picture taken after scoring (the galactic map pieces have been spread out a bit during counting):

5 second review of Eclipse (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/video/14243/eclipse/eclipse-in-5-seconds). 

 :rofl:

Here's a proper review that sums it up pretty well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muPjBNQO6XM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muPjBNQO6XM)

Here's a whole list of the 5 second reviews (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/130137?commentid=2771636#comment2771636).  It's worth watching them.  Some of them are pretty damned funny, Dominion in particular.

Cosmic Encounter played at its most basic is within the kid-zone I'd say.   Alternate advanced rulestuff like the research cards should be omitted since they can make the rules fiddly in places, but aside from that it's all good.

Picked up Cave Evil and got an advance copy of Lords of Waterdeep.

Which one do you all want to hear about more?

Also, picked up Wiz-War, Locke & Key, and 1960.

Those are options also.

You ever need players feel free to hit me up schild.

There's enough people here from Texas that we should do an F13 game night up in Austin. 

I bought a second copy of Earth Reborn today to have enough pieces to come up with some really cool custom scenarios.  I'm also planning on devising my own third faction and some new characters for the initial two factions.  If you haven't checked Earth Reborn out, it is really damned good. 

Other purchases:

1.  Gulo Gulo
2.  Hawaii
3.  Wiz War
4.  Pret a Porter (against my better judgment, dammit schild  :oh_i_see:)
5.  Kingdoms
6.  Chaostle

The only one that I've gotten into at all yet is Chaostle, and that is just to look at it and try and figure out the rules.  It is a badass game.  It reminds me of something out of our youths, like Heroscape combined with crossbows and catapults or some such.  It's got really cool plastic castle pieces.  I can't wait to give it a real spin.

Anyone tried this?  :awesome_for_real:

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-north-africa (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-north-africa)

Playing time: 60000 minutes.

It plays with 8-10 players over a course of 1200 hours.......

At three hours per night, every night, that would be 400 days.   :awesome_for_real:

I still have most of it somewhere in the attic.  I ran through some of the smaller scenarios solo to learn the basics but never had anyone else interested in learning.   So much paperwork was involved.  Purchased for $50 new around '81.

I don't play actual war games. I find them dull and the people involved with them worse than your average Warhammer nerd and way worse than your average RPG nerd.

A Few Acres of Snow and Twilight Struggle are not war games.

Apparently you could sell it for about $350 if you could find all the pieces. 

Wargames don't particularly interest me, either.  Memoir '44 or Commands and Colors is about as deep as I would like to delve into that realm.  GMT does a very good job with card driven games that are about war, but aren't really wargames per se.  Labyrinth is badass, as is Washington's War and Path's of Glory.  I don't think I'll ever be an Advanced Squad Leader person.

You get your copy yet?

Yea, just haven't had a chance to fire it up. Going to Dallas for Magic tournaments Friday - Sunday of this week and practicing most of the week.

Ah.  Good luck at the tournament!

Post your thoughts on Cave Evil when you do play.  With the new baby on the way it is highly unlikely that I'll get a chance to play mine for a while.

Are they webcasting?  Magic tourneys are mildly entertaining TV when you can find em.

I'll post a link here when the address pops up for SCG Open Dallas/Ft. Worth.

I'm thinking that, as of this moment, I am going to forego buying Thunderstons: Advance and the revised version of Descent. 

 :dead_horse:

I see no need to ever buy Thunderstone myself as it just looks like Magic's younger, far more retarded cousin.

Descent I simply don't care about now that I have Mage Knight, Cave Evil, and Wiz War.

I still haven't gotten around to playing Lords of Waterdeep.

Thunderstone is enjoyable.  I think it fills a niche for folks like me-  that don't want to go out and spend a billion dollars trying to outfit a decent Magic deck or five.  The original descent is also enjoyable.  It's a completely different deal than any of those games you mentioned.  With Road to Legend it almost can approximate a light RPG. 

Thunderstone has much more in common with Dominion than it does with Magic.  It's essentially Dominion with a little bit of Diablo on top.

Between the two, I'd say I prefer Dominion, though.  Same core gameplay with less shit to keep track of.

A lot of people don't like Dominion, but the gameplay is fairly elegant.  I love a game that I can zip through in 30 minutes and enjoy. 

Count me in, it's the only board game I've bought in recent memory that I plan on putting on eBay or something because not a single person I've played it with cares if we ever played it again. (myself included)  I don't know if I just had too high of expectations but the game just seems so simple it's boring to me, out of your initial selection of cards you could just remove half of them in most games because you know exactly which ones everyone will be going for.

Just not for me I guess.

I wasn't saying Thunderstone is actually like Magic. I was saying I can grab one of my 10 Magic decks and get any of my friends together and have more fun with it than the light, poorly-drawn fantasy of Thunderstone.

Dominion is horribly overrated. I'll take the horrible hentai knockoff Tanto Cuore any day over it, or Ascension is I want a quick DBG fix. Penny Arcade GvE is even better.

Anyway, everyone that praised Dominion for the past year or two should be playing A Few Acres of Snow now anyway if they're into removing things to be quicker and more degenerate than your opponent.

If I bring Tanto Cuore into my house I'm getting divorced. 

My girl just ignores the fact the theme is awful, as do I.

Yeah, it's a much easier sell for the wife with Dominion.  She's into King Arthur and all that sort of shit, so little japanese maids won't work.

Just purchased: 

1.  Sentinels of the Multiverse-  looks to be very fun, but the fuckers could have provided a box that would actually hold all the cards when sleeved
2.  Android-  fucking awesome
3.  Phantom league-  also fucking awesome
4.  2 de Mayo-  meh
5.  Looping Louie-  for the kid.  Looks fun
6.  Toc Toc woodman-  very fun
7.  Last Will-  looks interesting
8.  Rex-  I'm not sure about this one yet.  I liked the old theme better (Dune)
9.  Jaipur-  some 2 player fun that's pretty simple, ala Lost Cities

I suspect all of these will get a lot of play, other than Phantom League.  Space themes are a tough sell sometimes. 

Sorry if you already said before and I missed it, but Ghost, wtf do you do?  Are you a game store owner or something?  Google employee 8?  How can you have possibly played all the games you've mentioned so far in the thread then just threw the cash down to buy 9 more.   :ye_gods:

(not that that's a bad thing, I'm just in awe)

Sorry.  I have a bit of a problem with buying things.   :ye_gods:

Thank goodness my wife likes me. 

If you don't know what ghost does for a living, you must not read f13 very much. :why_so_serious:

Spacehulk 3rd Edition looks oh so tempting.  It's a good thing I can always tell myself I'll have to paint the minis if I get it and avoid purchasing.   :oh_i_see:

Got my copy of Rex today, which is the re-theming of the classic Dune boardgame from the 1970s.  Has anyone here ever played the original?  Rex looks pretty badass, but then again I like the Twilight Imperium universe.  I like Dune, too, but apparently they couldn't get the Dune folks to agree to let them have the rights.

Played Cave Evil last night. What a superb game. Just fantastic. The whole game drips the theme from beginning to end and was just a general joy the whole time. I ended up getting lucky right at the end and winning despite having to give my opponent a larvampyr which kept me from rolling dice during combat.

Anyway, this will be the FIRST game I pimp out, ever. Maybe the last - because the quality of parts is pretty, pretty bad other than the cards themselves.

Get them to do a Kickstarter for a higher quality well produced production run since everyone is so big on Kickstarter right now.

Hm. I wonder. I've been in contact with them before. Let me poke them and see if that's possible.

Edit: Just Emailed them.

So, just had my birthday this weekend, and my friends knowing that I love both Game of Thrones and board games, got me the Game of Thrones board game.  Looks delightfully complicated.  Anybody play this yet, or have any opinions?

If it's the board game, no. If it's the card game, yes. It's kind of like Magic for idiots.

I liked the board game quite a bit, but it's hard to say how much that has to do with me being a fan of the series.  I will say, however, that it really only shines with a bunch of people at the table.  And by that I mean the maximum amount.

The card game wasn't good, as schild pointed out, and I wasn't a fan of Battles of Westeros either, which is a much more traditional 2-player wargame.

Its this one:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/103343/a-game-of-thrones-the-board-game-second-edition

I've played and liked it. It is kind of Diplomacy-ish, but with more random elements. As Ruvaldt says you really want a full table.

I've played the first edition. I'm hoping they tweaked a few of the balance issues. The game was published with rules, that if you were playing five player, effectively let Greyjoy conquer the Lannisters on the first turn before than Lannisters got to move. Then they put an errata online that basically said - we f'd up, change the starting turn order for five player.

Yeah, this is the second edition, and even says on the box they tweaked the game rules and added in extra stuff, so I'm sure that was probably included.

Got a chance to play Lords of Waterdeep yesterday, and was very pleasantly surprised by it.  Game play seems to move fairly briskly (except for the last 2 turns or so which become a bit of a slog as everyone suddenly goes into end game/kingmaker mode). 

Episode 1 of "The Tabletop" is out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9QtdiRJYro&feature=g-u-u&context=G2c5074bFUAAAAAAAHAA

 :uhrr:

That was incredibly fake, too long, and I forgot my third criticism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa2osQtM11A&feature=g-user-u&context=G23b8275UCGXQYbcTJ33bxJQMONdEhHe3GuLFHUB0Blutn81QR8JU
Here you go. The Untitled Flash Based Review Thing. How to properly do a game video.

Everything involving this sort of meta-nerd religion that revolves around Wil Wheaton, Joss Whedon, and that stupid horrible redhead could go down on a plane flight to PAX or something and I'd be ecstatic.

It's all unfunny, most of their opinions are bad (and somehow, wrong), and everything they do is the height poor delivery.

God, it's fucking awful.

Reminds me of those late night poker things you'll see at like 3AM where it's a bunch of pro-poker players just sitting around playing.  Except somehow even less interesting....which is really sad considering how much I enjoy good board games.

Too long and too fake does sum it up nicely imo.

:Love_Letters:

No, I seriously can't even explain how much I fucking hate it.

It's like all of their fans are the same assholes who think new Dr. Who is brilliant and dumb motherfuckers who think Red Dwarf is the height of comedy.

Also, fat weaboo girls.

Fuck, I hate it.

My fav. thing was the table.  Pretty sure it was GeekChic and yah, damn you celebrity 'meta-nerds' for affording one. 

I threw it on the tv (we are one of the lucky few to have the grandfathered youtube channel on our Roku) while we were cleaning up after dinner and getting our daughter ready for bed. It's perfectly fine for that kind of thing--go on in the background. I think of it as a geek chat show with a game in the center. Without really paying attention, I got a sense of the game. Perfectly fine for what it is.

I am part of the Joss/Felicia brigade though.

I think the problem with that Wheaton one is he seems so forced, like he's trying extra hard and it just comes through as hammy.

He always comes across that way, he's a terrible actor.

You just described most tabletop geeks.  So in that sense the show is perfect.   :grin:

On-topic:  I FINALLY traded "High Frontier" for "Le Havre+expansion."  Anyone have any time with either, specifically the latter?

I'm skipping Le Havre because it seems to fill some unnecessary gap between Lords of Waterdeep (a very light Euro) and Pret-A-Porter (a relatively heavy one).

But more tabletop geeks aren't making web shows.  I've seen some other game demos on Youtube made by regular Joes that are much better than what Wheaton did.

On topic:  Got talked into playing a game called Urban Sprawl.  It was terrible.  The multipliers for scoring seemed way off.

What makes a board game Euro style?

The instruction manual is translated from German  ;D

Euro style is everything but monopoly, which eliminates 99.9% of US board games.

I'd have gotten LoW but it's too new and trade value is too high.  I have too many goddamned games so it's either trade or no sale.

American (aka Ameritrash) tends for more luck - such as die rolls  and player conflict.

Euro tends to be more cooperative and about the execution of game mechanics and strategy.

Think Axis & Allies vs Settlers of Cataan

Also the mechanical ties to the game's theme tend to be a lot stronger in American games - Euros are generally more abstract.

Yeah, that's another big part of it.  Ameritrash is a lot more theme centric (Mansions of Madness being considered just about the height of Ameritrash in newer games) than Euro style.  I enjoy many Euro games, but think I really tend to favor Ameritrash.

This is why I come here.  :inluv:

Girlfriend picked me up Antiquity at Fun Again Games since it was only $129. Will have it by Thursday unless they DON'T actually have it in stock. I am STOKED.

I eagerly await your upcoming post about managing enormous stacks of tiny chits.  If ever a game needed digital conversion, it's Antiquity.  Fanastic game other than that complaint.

There's a guy on BGG who does cheap ass acrylic laser cutting.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/775525/laser-cutter-online/page/1

I'm gonna have him work up total conversions for the chits in Antiquity and the chits in Cave Evil. Cave Evil, btw, after playing a 4 player game, is still a stunning achievement in Ameritrash gaming.

Antiquity shipped! Here's to hoping the thin ass box isn't all jacked up.

That's a great price.  Get ready for a billion little bitty cardboard pieces that you'll have to sort.  I recommend getting a plano box before you even get your copy.

Also, why skip Le Havre?  It's badass.  Definitely my favorite Rosenberg game (I haven't played Ora et Labora yet).

LoW is only $31w/free shipping now.   :uhrr:
http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Waterdeep-Dungeons-Dragons-Board/dp/0786959916

must.... resist

Oddly it's up on quite a few folks' trade lists though.

It's a very, very light Euro and the best gateway Worker Placement games. The only reason it would be on someone's list is they're either A. Stupid or B. Only like heavy games.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39720/bgames/antiquity/CHITS.png)

Mother of god.

I warned you......  :why_so_serious:

Good thing it's awesome.

I have a Plano 3700 box coming in from Amazon today. It should ease things on the horror scale of trying to fish shit out of little baggies for every action.

Oh man, that looks fun.

Empire building style?

Heh, that was my initial reaction as well.

"I have no idea what that is, but it has tons of pieces and a hex grid, it must be fun!"

City-Building, but yea. I'd been tracking down a copy for a long, long time. Someone on f13 offered me in purchase but I didn't really want to remove it from someone else's collection at the end of the day. Finally a store (Fun Again) got a pile of copies in. If I hate it, I can just dump it for more than I paid. Splotter games hold value, intensely.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13122/antiquity

I don't know how many copies they have left, but I can tell you four things about Antiquity:

1. Getting a mint copy box-wise is near impossible as the boxes aren't the most well-built things. Mine came super mint.
2. Getting a copy at all is incredibly hard in America.
3. Getting a copy for under $150 is highway robbery.
4. The rules are super straightforward, there's simply a lot of pieces.

Buy it here: http://www.funagain.com/control/product?product_id=018861

I'd love to pick it up, but that price is just way outside my entertainment budget.

We're still getting mileage out of Agricola here, and that was expensive for me.  I'll put it as pie in the sky for when my bro is visiting and we have 3 players every night.   

Looks like Ogre is up on Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847271320/ogre-designers-edition).   I'm not sure this is one that I'm all that interested in, but I'll probably buy it anyway.   :oh_i_see:

I really need to get off my ass and flesh out some fun game mechanics.  So much of this shit just needs to go straight to ipad and forego the expensive and time consuming board game process (no need to kickstart).  I love board games, but frankly I'm finding half of them work much better as pc games where keeping track of all the rules, scores, and chits is handled for you much more enjoyable.  If you have a neat idea for a board game, just make the damn thing electronically first...

This presumes that the social aspect is unimportant, though.

It very well is important, but you can still be social with the electronic version (be it passing around the ipad, multiple ipads, or using voice chat over pc while while playing the game online), while being able to get a great playable game out to the world.  Production and distributional of a digital board game is massively easier than attempting to do it the old fashioned way.  Make your money doing that, then get your physical version out if you must.  I just find it somewhat interesting that all the board games I see on the app store are electronic versions of real games, when at this point I could easily see it going the other way around.

I agree, but disagree only in that a MUCH better platform for digitized boardgaming is XBL and PSM (built-in achievement system, voip, couch play, etc.).  Cataan is a prime example, though it's lost steam as of late.
That niche is WIDE open for a smart dev. to exploit, as there's very little in the console market boardgamewise.

Yeah, I really meant any digital platform.  Was mainly referencing iOS because I've been playing it a lot lately, but any platform would work. 

On the topic of producing physical board games, I found this site recently:

https://www.thegamecrafter.com/

It's basically CafePress for games where you upload digital art and they do all the production -- you can use it to make a one-off prototype for yourself, or you can set up a "store" for your game, have them sell it for you, and get a cut of the sales.  Seems pretty awesome to me.

An iPad app or whatever is going to be easier to rapid-prototype and sell, but you definitely don't need a big chunk of Kickstarter cash or a big publisher to produce something physical.

Litko, boards&bits, and meeplesource are great for the all the bits you'd need.

Played Antiquity yesterday.

That is one hell of a game. Now I need to not buy Indonesia, Roads & Boats, and Greed Incorporated.

Roads and Boats and Antiquity are very different sorts of games, I believe. 

There's an elegance in Splotter design that I've come to adore that I noticed, but hadn't experienced when looking through their directions. They've got their shit together.

I wish the component quality of my Antiquity copy was a little better.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/1287586/bengkohn

I'm gonna ask if he'll slightly modify some, but that guy is doing great fucking work with his laser cutter.

Let me know what it sets you back, if you get it done.

He said $70 in a post, so I'll probably get it in a few weeks.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/8942065#8942065

So, that's 480 pieces for 48 of each resource (of which there are 10). Seems good considering the cardboard alternative.

The tokens sound a little large for the board at .75"

The Serpent's Tongue - Become Magi:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/500894669/serpents-tongue-a-new-magick-experience?ref=users

 :why_so_serious:, but I'm buyin it.   :grin:  Comes out July, and for the money you get quite a damned lot.

edit: tagging for exposure.  I want my free timer.

That looks very interesting.

I totally skipped that because their English was so poor I didn't trust them to make up a language.

I dunno, it looks pretty damn fun. I stumbled on it last night and ended up kicking in for it. 

Eh, it's pretty cheap, all things considered.  I'll roll the dice on it.

Heh.  They hit their 4th Tier stretch reward already with 11 days left.  Now there's a few more cards, more art, all books are signed (if we reach the next stretch), and a free digital timer is included.  They're also sending out beta versions in May to those who want it.  I guess the plan is to do a lot of the testing via Roll20 (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rileydutton/roll20-virtual-tabletop-gaming-that-tells-a-story) also... which is something I would've donated to if I'd caught it in time.  Looks to be the best free online tabletop out there.



Anyways, in other news:  'Le Havre' is now the most requested game at the table.  Granted, these are largely newb gamers I'm playing with lately but yah.  Helluva game.  Tomorrow I aim to tackle 'Space Alert' if we can get five.  Rune Age ('cause I needed another deckbuilder) is in the mail also.  Anyone have experience with either?

Rune Age is simplistic, but fun, and benefits from good art. The rules however, even being quite simple, are a bit poorly explained in the manual.  It could use an expansion, but will probably never get one.  Huzzah, one was just announced! (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3245)

I think they had a couple of expansions in the pipeline from the beginning, similar to already done DLC for video games.  This game screamed unfinished.  So now they're getting us to spend another 20-30 bucks to complete it.

Maybe so, but to be fair, the base is a budget game ($22 on Amazon, I paid less weeks after release). So even if they put out a pair of $15 dollar expansions the total cost is still fairly reasonable in my opinion.

The economics might actually be a good idea on FFGs part. Releasing yet another deckbuilder at $40ish pricepoint they would find it hard to compete with Dominion and the zillion others. However, release a stripped down version for the cheap, people likely buy it because it is a cheap but good example of the genre, then want more and end up buying the expansions, netting FFG their $40+ pricepoint.

I guess that is sound reasoning, but there has been a lot of gnashing of teeth on BGG and FAT about the unfinished state of the game.  It's Fantasy Flight, man.....they could have made a minimal profit on an excellent base game with the idea of selling quite a few expansions in the future. 

Expansion is priced at $25 according to the FF website.  This is probably the favorite game of my current gaming group.  We're helluva pumped.

I picked up a copy of Gulo Gulo (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6351/gulo-gulo) and also Loopin' Louie (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/327/loopin-louie) for the boys.  These are both kick ass games and would probably be enjoyable for any group of adults, particularly while drinking.

Yay.  Got me a copy of Space Hulk today.   :awesome_for_real:

Gaming news seems surprisingly dead right now.  Anyone got anything neat that they've gotten new recently?

Picked up De Vulgari Eloquentia. Haven't played it. Have an order with Tournay and Nefarious coming in today.

My copy of Cave Evil is worth $Infinity apparently.

The Penny Arcade guys have been raving about Lords of Waterdeep (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/110327/lords-of-waterdeep) lately.  

I'm looking forward to the new 7 Wonders expansion, Cities, myself.  Should out next month.

There's a copy of Cave Evil on ebay for $350.  What have you had offered for yours, just out of curiosity?

I have Lords of Waterdeep but have yet to get any plays in.  I've also heard good things about it.

I liked Waterdeep a good deal.

$300 cash has been offered for my cave evil. Wouldn't take less than $500 though. I like it too much.

Lords is probably my personal favorite game to play right now (which isn't say all that much since I don't get to play it all that often).  But it's really solid.

How does it hold up against the Mage Knight reprint?  I'm torn between the two.

Also news:  Roll20 went into open beta and 'Serpent's Tongue' has open testing material to play with.

I've heard decent things about Mage Knight, but haven't played it.  Roll20 isn't bad, but I'm liking Tabletop Forge a bit more (going to put it to the test this week by having a friend join us remotely using it).

What makes you like Tabletop Forge better?  I'm in  :heart: with roll20.

Mage Knight is badass.  I think that Waterdeep and MK are fairly different games though. 

A big part is because I'm running Scales of war right now with pre-rendered grided maps and it won't let me scale that background image so that I can get that to match up properly with their grid, which messes up token movement. 

Eh?  When u make a page you just shut the grid off, then drag/drop your grided map.  Then just match your tokens to the scale.  You just lose the snap-to.

I know - but right now I can snap-to with Tabletop Forge.  I liked the idea of doing it in the G+ hangout as well, but I see that Roll20 seems to have recently added that in as well, so I may need to play with that as well since there are some oddities in TTF that are annoying me (loading tokens seems to be locking them in place for some reason)

You can also press the 'alt' key (when resizing) to unlock the map size constraints.  This way you can get it to line up.  Pain in the arse, but the price one pays for free web-based drag/drop of any art asset you want.

Yah - been poking around it a bit this afternoon and came across that. 

I finally broke down and bought a copy of Super Dungeon Explore.  I am not looking forward to gluing together a bunch of minis.  I can handle the painting, it's the fucking glueing and modeling that gets me down.

I also got some of the new Dust Tactics SSU stuff (among other things).  The models for this game are really nice.  I've never actually played it other than a couple of solo runthroughs, but it seems pretty enjoyable.

I also found a bunch of my GW models from about 10 years ago.  Not only was my painting a travesty, the models themselves have not aged very well.  I'm really glad they've been going with some new interesting sculpts for a lot of this stuff. 

And lastly, since I've been getting a shitton of minis lately (there has to reach a point at which you'll never, ever get them painted in your lifetime and I think  I've hit it) and have therefore been lurking on Cool Mini or Not.  I've learned a lot there, not the least of which is the fact that I'm a terrible painter. 

I had my painting phase and then I finally just resolved myself to simply apply dark primer, a nice metallic (gold, bronze, or silver) or stone (for a chesspiece like feel), then a varnish.  Going with a conservative 'statue' type paintjob goes a long way in some circles and keeps the game classy.  The trick is getting enough black in the shadowy spaces to add depth.

My problem is that I'm too goddamned anal to leave well enough alone.   :oh_i_see:

I'll always see the flaws unless I get it just so, and even then I'll see flaws that bother me.  The shitty painting on Heroscape drives me bonkers, even though I'm a fan of the game.

Anyone have some good suggestions for two player games?  Games that are actually fun to play with just two players?

I can find tons of highly rated/reviewed games that are 2-4/6/ whatever players.  But I know from experience that nine times out of ten a game that says 2-6 players sucks with only 2.

2+ Player Games:
Ticket to Ride - Specifically 1910. Suddenly becomes cutthroat and amazing. TTR Switzerland/India are good options also.
Ascension (and by extension, Penny Arcade Gamers vs Evil) - Both are more fun than Dominion, whether or not they have better designs (they don't)
De Vulgari Eloquentia - Learn the language of Volgare! But seriously, worker-placement titles that are fun with 4 player become absolutely evil games of min-maxing with 2 players.
Zong Shi - See above.
Wiz War - See above, except it's Ameritrash combat.
Antiquity - Fucking stunning. Totally worth the cost of admission.

2 Player Only (they say you can play more on some of these, but don't):
Omen: Reign of War - A wonderful little card game that should appeal to you due to your knowledge of Magic.
Hemloch - A different sort of card game that is also fun, from the makers of Omen (small box games)
A Few Acres of Snow - Though be warned, the game has a major design flaw in terms of victory % of a certain strategy.
Twilight Struggle - If you want to roll deep. Full disclosure: I love this game in theory. I've yet to make it through 2 turns. Mostly because there are other, less impenetrable games that stroke that sort of card-driven gaming we like here.

If you can't tell, I fucking hate extremely random games.

To add a few different games to schild's list:

The Kosmos line of games (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/78/kosmos-two-player-series) is pretty good for 2 player.  You can't beat games like Lost Cities or Odin's Ravens.  Also Jaipur (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/54043/jaipur).  Summoner Wars is cool.  Dungeon Twister is cool.  Battle Line is fun.  I like Carcassonne:  The City for two player, although regular Carcassonne can do the same thing.  War of the Ring is a two player game.  Race for the Galaxy is really fun with 2.  Most of the deck builders play well with 2.  Mage Knight is badass with any number.

Pandemic, Lost Cities, Ingenious

That's great for me, I hate any game where I feel like the entire thing could be replaced by "flip a coin, whoever gets heads win the game".


Might just go buy this right now to try.  The people I board game with the most are the same people that I went to Magic tournaments with when I was big into it. (*edit* Or maybe not, don't really have $50 to drop on it at the moment.  Will have to wishlist it for later. :sad:)  Or is it really good enough to be worth getting over 2 other games?


Lost Cities is less than $20? Sold.  I've looked at Race for the Galaxy before, might give that one a try as well eventually.


I was very excited to play Dominion from all the hype and reviews.  I was very disappointed and quickly bored of it once I played it a few times.  But you think Ascension or the PA one are better?  One over the other?

It's pretty fun, and the production values are pretty good as well.  Overall, I'd say it's worth the purchase over two cheaper games. 

Can say that Ticket to Ride, 7 Wonders, and Lost Cities (the 2-player card version) all went over well. Catan was ok, but one of the kids insisted on using house rules which sort of break the game. Also, the stupid board pieces do not perform well in a high-humidity environment.  :oh_i_see:

Now I have to figure out what else would work...

I'd put this in the Kickstarter thread, but since it's a boardgame put together by Mike McVey and only has a few hours left. Just a heads-up for anyone interested in this sort of thing.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/sedition-wars-battle-for-alabaster

Got a chance to play a few games yesterday.  Lost Cities is fun, but way too simple to be lasting with me and most of the people I game with.  Might be a good one to play with the wife though.  Ascension is looking to be a big hit though, played half a dozen games of it yesterday and still want to play it more.

Lost Cities is great because you can play it in 20 minutes and people that don't generally game tend to like it (so good with wives, etc.).  It's never going to be super tactical, although it can be very cutthroat.  And it's very portable, which is nice.  Some games are just too unwieldy to take on trips.

Played a few games of Kingdom Builder with the wife last night.  It was our first time playing.  I'm not sure why this game gets so much shit.  It's a very light abstract with a theme pasted on, but it's fun.  It's not srius bznzz gaming, it's something you pick up to enjoy for what it is.  If you need serious business pick up Le Havre.  I also bought Nefarious (both this and Kingdom Builder are by Vaccarino of Dominion fame) at the Austin Dragon's Lair.  It's a much better shop than the one in San Antonio.  It's even got a kids section, which is awesome.  Nefarious looks cool, but I haven't gotten a chance to play it yet. 

I also, on a lark, bought ShadowRift (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/112092/shadowrift), which seems to be an interestingly done cooperative deckbuilder.  I've yet to play it, but the dude who designed the game actually emailed me and told me that he'd packed it up for me and hand delivered it to the post office so that I would get it before the 4th.  That's pretty cool, and the game looks interesting once you figure out how to sort all the cards out. 

Gonna take the dive this week and pickup Lords of Waterdeep.  Should be fun :D

The San Antonio DLair has rape rooms. It creeps me out.

I know it's only an hour and 15 minutes away, but why the fuck have you ever been to the SA Dragons Lair, schild?  It's like going from San Francisco to Birmingham.  

Addendum-  the SA Dragons Lair is still a decent store.  It's just that the people are weird.  But I get that feeling everywhere I go here, so I just chalk it up to redneck.

We had a game store like that too. Matchplay (formerly Neutral Ground) in Mt. View, I think it closed a few years ago. Probably pushed out of business by the NON creepy game stores.

I was going somewhere with the girlfriend in San Antonio, she had a meeting, and I noticed that shit DLair across the street from the office she was going to.

God, that place was creepy. The only game store I've ever walked into and became immediately aware "I am the only woman in here and the nerds here do not like it." Other game stores, I might be a curiousity (although not very often), but there's never hostility. Matchplay was a lot more like "WHO LET SOMEONE WITH A VAGINA IN HERE."

All the best gamestores I've seen were actually female-owned and/or employed.   :oh_i_see:

The sad thing is that the Dragons Lair in SA is by far and away the best store in town.  There's nothing that even comes close to comparing. 

At one point when I was near the tail end of playing MtG in the 90s, a new shop opened up in town. I went in and there were two folding tables, a shelf with a few boxes of cards, and a pile of garbage in the corner, mostly doritos bags. Shitty stained carpet, they just moved into the building and opened up without doing a damn thing.

I think it lasted about three months.

There's like 4 or 5 of those in town, at the moment.

I don't want to hear stories about people quitting Magic unless they are actively boxing their shit up and sending it to the f13 donation box.

But really, those stores still exist. As Ghost mentioned, SA is full of them. SA is also just generally the shittiest place on earth... besides Houston and Dallas.

I understand Austin is suppose to be really cool and all, but I still can't figure out why the fuck those of you in Texas are still there, based on the way you post about it (and, well, based on every single news article I see come out of the state).

Their unemployment is a lot lower than ours and so is their cost of living. So, tradeoffs.

You have no idea how much we all wish Austin was in a different state.

Yeah, and unlike most of these folks I actually had a fucking choice.  But I'll be unmaking that choice ASAP. 

To drag the thread slightly back on topic...

Just picked up Scotland Yard for the Ipad...ok it's not exactly deep boardgaming but a faithful reproduction, easy to use. Fun to play with the kids.

Scotland Yard is one of my favorites even if it is pretty simple, so satisfying if you actually manage to get away.

Is there anything decent in the way of gaming stores in the greater mountain view / palo alto area these days?

Best game stores in the Bay Area:

Game Kastle over by the San Jose Airport
Gator Games in San Mateo
Black Diamond Games in Concord
Endgame in Oakland

Also, for Magic only, Superstars in San Jose

GK is probably your best bet in our neighborhood, it's a great store.

I would kill a small monkey to have access to Superstars 7 days a week.

Edit: If you love Scotland Yard, try to track down a reasonably priced copy of Letters from Whitechapel.

I love Endgame (lived 5 minutes walking from them for a year), but I feel I should point out Games of Berkeley is just as good, and all there stuff is at least 5 to 10 dollars cheaper.

Endgame has a better play space and (IMO) a better crowd. Granted it's been a number of years since I've been to GoB at this point (I went to Cal and later played DDM with a number of guys from that store).

The few times I've been in the (underground) game area at Games of Berkeley I have been seriously paranoid that any medium+ earthquake would squash everyone in there like a bug.  It is quite... dungeony.

Endgame is by far the best game store I've ever been in anywhere from a play-area point of view.  It's not big but what they have is nice and airy and well lit and out of the way.  I seem to recall they don't like Magic, though.  That might be helping, for all I know.

I was at Endgame just last weekend for the Good Omens Con.  They definitely win in the game tables and events category; I've never not had a good time at one of their mini-cons.  Games of Berkeley generally wins on inventory, though.

We should do a Bay Area game thing some time. If we get 7 we can play Diplomacy and hate each other forever.  :why_so_serious:

We suddenly get this idea literally the day before I fly off to Washington to join the foreign service and potentially live abroad for the rest of my life.   :oh_i_see:

So you'll be playing Diplomacy every day from now on!

Finally played Lords of Waterdeep with the Mrs. and my brother-in-law.  While the bro enjoys a good fantasy or sci-fi game, the Mrs. is not by any means much of a gamer, and fantasy stuffs just kind of turn her off even more so.  She does enjoy the classic American-style stuff and puzzle/brain teasers though.

That said, I tried to mask the game as a "variation of Monopoly", and after cutting our teeth on the first few rounds of play, they both picked up quickly on the whole 'worker placement' concept (without me even having to utter the phrase), and the rest of the game played smoother than I'd anticipated. 

Bro-in-law loved the game.  The Mrs. rated it a 3.5/5, which is good, considering she gave Pandemic a 4/5 when we first played that many moons ago.  Still working with her on 7 Wonders; she's having a time trying to wrap her head around the whole "building a city using cards" thing.

Legends Comics & Games in Vallco is the last one that I know of in that area. Gamescape in Palo Alto closed a while back as did Match Play/Neutral Ground in Mountain View somewhat more recently. The once venerable San Antonio Hobby Shop is gone too (though they were never the same after they banned D&D-type stuff on religious grounds back in the 80s).

Never cared for Legends much myself - worth the extra 10 minutes to go to GK. Legends's focus is much heavier on the comics side than the game side.

That's true.

At least you guys have choices!  I'm selling all of my Magic cards because the options around here became - The crappy store that hardly anyone plays at or the really crappy store that more people go to.

You are selling them to schild, right?

If he wins the Ebay auctions, sure.  :oh_i_see:

Some tabletop gaming with local F13 folks sounds like fun.  I don't do nearly enough table top gaming, though I have been playing some MFZ and assorted other stuff with some coworkers every now and again.

Link? I bet I can tell you within $20 of where they'll end.

You're already looked at my stuff.  I know what it's worth, just need to get it sorted out and taken care of.

Fucking idiots deserve to get closed down for that sort of nonsense. 

 :grin:

So we just played Eclipse for the first time on Friday. Good sized kitchen table, plus three TV Tray tables, and we were still to the point that we had no where to roll the dice without hitting something. Despite that, seems a pretty cool game. My plan of being everybody's friend failed miserably, but I think I'll have a better idea of the basic strategy on a second run through.

I would just like to reiterate that Earth Reborn (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/73171/earth-reborn) is pretty badass.  It is well worth the cost of admission.  I only hope they do an expansion and add in some more units but it doesn't look likely at this point.  

Also, is anyone planning on purchasing the updated Descent?  I'm still on the fence on that one.  The original is pretty awesome.  I'm just not sure I need a simplified version of it when I have Super Dungeon Explore.

It appears that Tom Vasel of the Dicetower has finally given up the day job (http://www.gamesalute.com/?p=29703/dice-tower-news-will-be-moving).  I'm not sure how I feel about this, as I've always found his reviews to be fair and useful, even if I don't always agree with his judgments about games.  Now I already look at his reviews with a grain of salt.  How much is he getting paid to review these games?  

As an aside, I also had no idea that he was a complete bible thumper nutjob (http://www.dicesteeple.libsyn.com/), but I guess that is kudos to him for not mixing his religioning with his gaming too much on his reviews.  



Addendum-  I've noted that in a couple of their reviews they have noted that it is a paid review.  I like that and hope they will continue to show where there may be bias. 

I just had my copy arrive friday. Haven't had a chance to crack it open yet, but looking forward to doing so at some stage. Finally found a copy of Descent 1st Ed and had that arrive as well. Gonna pick up as many of  the expacks as I can, and get 2nd Ed down the road. Probably.

Some of the expansions for Descent 1ed can run you 3-400 bucks, new.  Sometimes you can get them on Ebay in a lot for less money, so I'd try to get them all at once in that sort of deal. 

Any recommendations for a good 2 player board game for my 11 year old and I to play? As I continue to train him to be a geek like me (there is hope, he currently thinks Baldur's Gate is the best game ever, 'even if it's really old Dad') and I'm looking for something that's a step up from Talisman and the Halo board game we have currently.

Anyone from Calgary Alberta that knows of a good place to grab boardgames from? Used to go to Hairy Tarantula and Snakes and Lattes in Toronto, but I'll be moving and need a new place.

Any thoughts about genre/theme and play time?  There's a million choices out there.  Also, it would be nice to know what his "level" is for an 11 year old.  Some 11 year old kids can play games that are meant for adults, some can't.  

If you're looking for something that is a little bit of "dudes in a corridor" type game but isn't way expensive (like Space Hulk) try Earth Reborn (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/73171/earth-reborn).  It can get a little complex, but the rulebook is awesome and walks you right through everything, adding a new concept or two in each scenario.  If you're looking for a Euro type game, Stone Age, Agricola and Le Havre are all pretty awesome.  Mage Knight is also super fun, if you can find it.  It is good solitaire, as well.  

Here are some other thoughts:

Race for the Galaxy
War of the Ring
Castles of Burgundy
Summoner Wars
Claustrophobia
Memoir '44
Merchants and Marauders
Arkham Horror
Descent 2e
Edited to add-  Twilight Struggle is really awesome, and a good historical tutor


I was going to link these from BGG, but there's too many and I'm lazy.  There all there in the top games list.  If you aren't familiar with it, just go to the link at the top that says "browse" and click on games and it's automatically sorted by rank.  

Order from Boards and Bits.  The prices are crazy cheap and the guy has a good selection and good customer service.

Looks like their will be another run of Letters from Whitechapel as a 2nd edition possibly this year yet that will be available in the US.  No idea if the price will be reasonable or not though.

Having played it now, 2e Descent is definitely an improvement on 1e I think. They streamlined a lot of the slower stuff. (Also de-objectified the female character art if that is something that matters to you. Really the character art is just better in general.)

The only reason I mess around with fantasy stuff is for the chicks in the chain mail thongs.   :awesome_for_real:

Update on Roll20 virt. tabletop:
Now comes with an LFG tool built into the interface.   http://app.roll20.net/lfg/search/

Regardless of how dominant this webapp is, I have yet to game on it.  It's really left me with no excuses though.  One of these days I'll throw up an f13 SavageWorlds campaign.



I still say a properly expanded (SoB, ToI, and WoD), rules adjusted 1st edition seems a much more powerful experience then the objectifying 2nd. edition (at this point).  Yes, it suffers from bloat and ridiculous buy-in but still.  If you're on the fence about jumping in obviously the 1e complete sets are dirt cheap now used and BGG-ers are dumping em in trade cheap too. 

I can make this judgement because Descent+expac is on most people's top 10 games of all time, yet placing 2e in that mix isn't possible at this point.  Down the road perhaps, depending on what they add.

I thought that the real point with 2e was to have an experience that doesn't last for 8-12 hours per sitting.

Yeah. It's farther from being a game of D&D, which is a good thing. If I want to play D&D, I'm going to play D&D. This is much better as a casual weeknight couple-of-hours thing, and they've got the campaign stuff integrated from the beginning and it's all  just a much cleaner design I think.

They also have a conversion kit you can buy for all the monsters/characters from 1e, which is a nice touch.

I didn't see much point in the conversion kit, but then again I've not played a lot of 1e-  just dont' have the time.  Maybe it would be a great thing.  There seems to be enough game in 2e that it wouldn't matter that much.  I would have preferred a conversion to implement the 2e rules in the 1e stuff, but that will never happen. 

Basically it just adds a lot more variety in the character powers and monster options. There really aren't that many different monsters in the core 2e box.

I was under the assumption that they'd be coming out with shittons of expansions.  This is Fantasy Flight we're talking about here.   :awesome_for_real:

If you've got the 1e campaign settings (RtL or SoB) the games are as long as you want them to be.  You can even swap players if you'd like mid-campaign.

Does this game length change with the campaign setting transfer over to all the scenarios, e.g. the startup scenarios from the basic box?  I own all this shit but have never had time to play.  I'm just waiting around until the kids are old enough to play, I suppose. 

Aside from providing boxes and charsheets to track the players and overlord (which is all that really matters), no.  But remember, you only reveal rooms they've went into therefore if they've cleared a few and have half a scenario remaining there's no reason you couldn't stop there.

This is why I never understood the complaints about game length.  With competent players, the proper errata, a few sets of extra dice, etc. the game flies.  And if it doesn't, then just pickup where you left off before you open the next door.  Hell, a game of Dominant Species or Le Havre sometimes takes longer if you subtract setup time.

The campaign settings (and 2e quest book too) have decidedly shorter missions obviously, which is really no different than an uber-long custom scenario (they have some that take days to complete and every expansion to do), that's cut into chunks.  The 1e basegame scenarios are designed to walk the player through all the rules and basic tenets of dungeon-crawling... which is sometimes pretty painful obviously, depending on the player.

Not having to stop and spawn monsters and check LOS every time you enter a room is a big speeding up factor. Also it just feels a lot better to end at an ending than halfway through a scenario. A lot less note taking required to recreate the game session next time as well.

I have both editions because I can't stop spending money.   :oh_i_see:

The 1e stuff won't get played until the kids are old enough.  I don't see it working until then.  I just don't have time.  The 2e may be something that the wife would play, if it can be reasonably short.  As an aside, I picked up Alter of Despair and Road to Legend at my local game store about a year ago for list price.   :awesome_for_real:  I never get deals or get lucky like that. 

Personally I think 1e missed the entire point of dungeon crawling. It has fallen into the same design trap as many a computer game - the game will become fun as soon as we add some more rules.

I mean, the compiled Road to Legend rulebook is something like eighty god-damn pages with zero fluff. That's longer than the rulebook for Advanced Third Reich. Then add the bazillion rules that appear on cards. Yet moving four spaces and rolling your attack dice make up the vast majority of your turns. The brutal amount of rules text just isn't proportional to the degree of player choice.

RtL was an abortion supposedly...  I've never played it though.  Sea of Blood is just flat out awesome, especially when combined with ToI and WoD.  At that point you have everything you need to do whatever you want.  This is why I find it difficult to buy into 2e and go down another path of expenditures.  Cant do it.  Won't fall into the trap again.

At this point I have such a large collection that I've largely moved into "collecting" mode and don't mind buying stuff like 1e, that I know will gain in value as time goes on. 

Maybe we were doing 1e wrong, but I remember Descent being 1) terribly long to play, and 2) balanced in such a way that it was very difficult for players to win. Even after opening up the trading and inventory rules a bit, I found I still had to practically throw games in order to not rampage over the players. The ability to spawn stuff wherever the players do not have LoS can be especially brutal.

That spawning thing is entirely gone in 2e - each scenario has a specific spot where reinforcements spawn in, if it even has reinforcements at all. I can't speak to the player/GM balance yet, but a lot of that is going to be down to how much cooperation there is amongst players and varying skill level, etc.

And........right on cue, Fantasy Flight announces the first expansion for Descent 2e-  Lair of the Wyrm (http://www.gamesalute.com/?p=32046).   It apparently will only come with 10 plastic figures, which seems much fewer than expansions for 1e (I'm under he impression that each figure will be doubled up into a red and white version, thus being only 5 new unique models). 

It could be fewer, depending if one of the new ones comes in groups.

My brother literally won't play against me unless it's by himself.  :oh_i_see:   Can't say I blame him as he's having to rely on a relatively poor group of gamers to back him up.  To combat this typically you just tweak the difficulty for newbs by lowering threat, etc.  As they get better you toss in ToI.  Then when they think they're good you add WoD.

All of this requires a regular gaming group (or competent gamers) is the problem where 2e seems to be able to learn and effectively play in 1 sitting.  I have similar issues with Space Alert.  W/o a good crew the game eats you.

It also has the problem that so many co-op games have, where a player who knows (or thinks he knows) what he is doing will just tell everyone what to do. (Guilty.) 2e of course doesn't solve this.

So would you guys say Descent (2nd ed, I guess?) would be a good choice for a fairly light mini-based game? Now that I'll have a pile o minis from Reaper and others, I'm thinking of getting back into board gaming. Something with way less BS than a D&D type rpg, but still fun and interesting.

Right now the two board games I have are Arkham Horror and Blood Bowl.

Castle Ravenloft is actually pretty nice for what you're talking about, Sky-  and the minis are really high quality for painting :grin:. 

Picked up Puzzle Strike over the weekend.  While it is fun (basically a deckbuilder with little chips instead of cards) It's awfully damned fiddly for what it is.  Clean up is a serious PITA as you've got to sort through all the different chips that you have.  This is much more difficult with the chips as compared to cards.  I'm not sure that it will stick with my collection. 

Does anyone have experience with D&D-like boardgames and kids? 

I bought my 7yr old daughter Catan Junior, thinking it would be something to ease her into games with a strong strategy.  Well, she had the rules down by the end of the first game and has legitimately won 2/3 of the games we've played with her.  She's a fairly bright kid and picks up on systems quickly (I've mentioned before how much she loves Minecraft). 

So Catan Junior is a bit boring, and I'm likely going to pick up the real Catan because I think she will understand it. 

But what about a D&D-like game, such as Castle Ravenloft?  Would there be simply too many rules, or might it be a bit too boring?  I can get a solid 30-60min attention span from her.  Are there any other options that a young but bright kid might enjoy?  We had HeroQuest when I was a kid and played the heck out of it.  I think she'd like something in that vein.

Any advice is appreciated.  Thanks!

Castle Ravenloft would be fine for her.  It's less complex than real Catan, in my opinion, and has lots of cool miniatures that she'll really dig. 

If you had her playing Catan and want to maybe dip into fantasy, why not try "Lords of Waterdeep?"  It's pretty much a eurogame in D&D clothing.  HeroQuest is still out there in the aftermarket too if you want to get back in.

Then also, there are D&D collectible minis games you can get into.  "Dungeon Command" is the new kid on the block or you can just play vanilla.  Looks like "Dungeon Command" is kinda like "Battlegrounds: Fantasy Warfare" only with some minis instead of just cards.

I finally got a copy of Tumblin Dice.  It's super fun and worth the investment.  It's also something that non-board gamers would play and is probably a pretty good party game.

(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7129/7858344160_5c35da22d2_z.jpg)

That looks like a Ouija board for D&D Geeks.

I suppose it kindof is, really.   :awesome_for_real:

Managed to get all of them brand new except for Road to Legend (which seems to be the big one) for a few hundred.

Yes, get one of the D&D Games.

No, this has a use.

What? Ouija was awesome for getting laid by hippy chicks.

Tumblin' Dice won't get anyone laid, ever.   :oh_i_see:

Nope, but it lets you avoid getting laid by hippy chicks.

There are some hot hippie chicks.   :awesome_for_real:  I met one once, I swear.

In my "hawt girls of tumblin dice" search this is all I was able to come up with.

(http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic575105_md.jpg)
(http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic454101_md.jpg)
(http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic454986_md.jpg)
(http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic642370_md.jpg)


.... Meh

Oooooook. Don't do that again.

It's like a Russian porno.  When does the anal start?

It's kinda hilarious how people post pix of girls playing boardgames to try and bump interest (I guess I just helped/harmed the process).  We could probably start an entire thread on it.
Speaking of girls and boardgames... anyone played "Quelf?"  I keep hearing good things about it for parties.

Trust me.  It doesn't matter how may pictures of hot chicks (not saying those were) playing Tumblin' Dice, it still isn't getting you laid.

Very cool!  Just took my kid to our local Pink Gorilla here in West Seattle because she wanted to look around, and they finally have their board games in stock.  Lots of good well-known games, Arkham Horror, Ticket to Ride, a bunch of Catans, Dominion, some of the D&D board games.  Really nice having that so close to home (7 blocks!).

Ok geniunely interested in how the hell you play that game given the pics posted.  Do you have to hit the players at the bottom with the dice.

You flick the dice from the top tier and try to get them to land on the lower tiers without going off.  You get points for each tier based on the tier.  For example, the lowest teir (the little areas) are worth four points.  Then you multiply the four by whatever number is on the dice, so you'd like to see a 6 sitting on the four tier.  People that go after you can knock your dice off of the tier you are on and dice that are on the earlier tiers can block people from getting a good angle at the better tiers. 

Don't they have these dopey things in Scotchland?

(http://www.wryandginger.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/skee.jpg)

I bought Forbidden Island today to play with my kid.  We'll see.  Strongly considering running back to get Castle Ravenloft.  Maybe.

EDIT:  Just played a first game of Forbidden Island.  Pretty fun overall.  It's a bit too luck driven for a coop game, but I can see us playing it occasionally.  Our first game took 45 minutes, and I think we can shave that to 20-30 with practice.  We managed to capture three artifacts before our landing pad sunk.  :(

Holy shit, got my Glory to Rome Black Box today, schild.   :awesome_for_real:

I'll be demoing Mage Wars and Netrunner next week hopefully.

well holy shit I guess I'll go look. Was your box all fucked up?

Nope.  It was in great shape.  I bought it through coolstuffinc.  Didn't kick start it myself.

Addendum-  the quality looks awesome.

Cards Against Humanity is finally back in stock, along with a new expansion.  Just placed an order for the whole kit and caboodle.

If you haven't played Cards Against Humanity, it's like Apples to Apples except it's actually fun (if you have a sufficiently juvenile/dark sense of humor) because the cards are things like "inappropriately timed Holocaust jokes" and "two midgets shitting in a bucket".

Picked up Power Grid and the Quebec board.

Pretty stoked. Has paper money in side, that gave me a laugh before I threw it out and replaced it with coins. Paper money is stupid.

Have you played Quebec yet?  I've been looking at it, but just haven't pulled the trigger primarily because I have a house full of this shit right now. 

I haven't even played Power Grid yet, I'll get to it eventually.

So I was thinking of picking up Race for the Galaxy...but then I saw BGG had a link to a downloadable version, which is neato...

Except for the AI wrecks me every time - how do people end up playing this thing? I don't think I've ever done this poorly at a board/card game before...

Seems interesting as heck, but if I'm no good at it, how am I going to explain it to anyone? :oh_i_see:

I absolutely abhor Race, so I have no advice for you.

RFTG is pretty decent.  Don't get all the expansions, if you're going to get it and go wild.  Only get the first one.  Odds are good that whoever  you're playing isn't going to be amazing at it either, so I wouldn't let the AI scare you off.  2 player is much more enjoyable for me. 

Oh, I misread your post.  I though you meant you picked up Quebec the board game, not the Power Grid expansion. 

Sorry, too little sleep lately.   :uhrr:

Been playing a lot Xiangqi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi) (Chinese Chess) lately. Decades ago, used to play a lot of "western" chess, but the advent of the internet age soiled me on it. In fact, it was with an old AoE (Shaitan) forum community, where I last went at it with someone online in a match (in betwixt AoE DM contests). There was some snickering in the spectator chat room scuttlebutt and then later someone informed that the person I was playing was cheating with a chess program in another desktop window. That kind of soured me on playing even with RL opponents, especially since when pitted against CPU opponents, the game seemed so drab and lifeless, no matter the adjusted skill level.

Anyway, picking up some bowling supplies at a bowling shop, I noticed a crowd outside a Chinese restaurant in Phoenix all huddled up around a game. I couldn't recognize the Chinese writing on the checker pieces, but looked it up online and ordered a/some set(s) off Amazon. And family members seem to enjoy it as much, though one of the sets I purchased features picture icons (http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Elephant-Chess-Inch-Vinyl/dp/B0048AC6H8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346727914&sr=8-1&keywords=xiangqi+vinyl) on the flip side of the pieces.

It's a superior chess game for a number of reasons, though this guy is correct in detailing how the default gear is a grave discouragement (http://www.crockford.com/chess/xiangqi.html) for the rest of the world to experiment with.

* More board real estate -- 9x10, ~40% more space than the 8x8 western chessboard.
* Greater aesthetic purity -- no special 2 piece moves like castling, no pawn promotion (though once they cross the "river", 5th rank, they can move sideways), no queen that dominates, no stalemate draws (stalemate means, unlike western chess, you lose)
* Games are settled quicker -- only 5 pawns on the board, meaning battle begins sooner, and there are defensive pieces so there is offense and defense happening at the same time

The pieces are similar to western chess, though the only one that is exactly the same is the chariot ("rook"). There is a "horse" that moves like the knight, but unlike western chess cannot jump over a piece and thus can be blocked. A "cannon" that is unlike anything on a western chess board in that it moves like a rook but must jump over a piece (any one piece, yours or opponents) to capture. Kings, or governor/general and advisors are confined to 3x3 palace. And there is an elephant piece that cannot cross the river, only moves 2 spaces diagonally -- at first glance, appears to be an incredibly useless piece, but it is vitally important.

Perused this excellent English Xiangqi site (http://www.xqinenglish.com/) to get up to speed, but there is no substitute for playing.

This homily is not sponsored by the World Xiangqi Federation.