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Fun Tabletop Games?
Mr. Ghost asks: "My friends and I have recently been in the market for a good new boardgame or other tabletop game. We have worked through the gamut of games like Axis & Allies, Supremacy, and War! Age of Imperialism. More recently we have been playing tile based games like Carcasonne and Settlers of Catan. I am looking for some suggestions on some new games we could get into."
i can higly recommend the civilization boardgame
-- never underestimate someone who overestimates himself
Blow football.
two straws and a rolled up bit of paper.
Or work up to dice. Shake em up shake em up shake em up shake em. Nothing beats that shit.
Does anything ever really beat RISK? I've been ready to kill people over that game.
When me and my buddies want to play board games, its either: 1 RoboRally (with all the expansions, especially Armed and Dangerous), or 2. Cosmic Encounter, which was the inspiration for Richard Garfield to create Magic: The Gathering
If you havent tried go, then I think it is about time to. It has a great handicap system for new players, yet allows people to improve over a life time.
Warhammer and Warhammer 40K are pretty fun. They do require a bit of a commitment though.
Steve Jackson has a "Munchkin" series of beer & pretzel games. I picked up Munchkin Fu, and it's a riot.
http://www.sjgames.com/munchkin/munchkinfu/
I was racing to post civilization, it's one of the best board games ever. No dice, pure skill.
Risk is the type of game that rises above the board when you're playing among other adults. What starts out as a game of pieces and movement generally becomes one of political intrigue, making alliances, and casting doubt upon other alliances. We've reached the point where everyone has to go to the porch for a smoke break at the same time because no one feels comfortable about what strategies might be birthed behind their backs...
I think most geeks would like Robo Rally. You use movement cards to "program" the movement of your robot in a race against other robots. Great fun!
This is not a sig.
Check the top rated games at BoardGameGeek. My personal favourite is Puerto Rico.
I remember in PC Gamer a while back they were talking about an Age of Mythology board game. While I've never played it, they seemed to like it and it sounded pretty cool.
if your friends are of the complementary sexual orientation, there are some very, very, nice games you can play on the table top...
LIFE?
Set is a cards game, not exactly a board game, but yet one of the best games I have played - based on visual perception, and can be played by almost any number of players - playing it alone or in a group of 10 is possible, as well as any number in between, very easy to learn, and can be fun for hours.
Munchkin Fu homepage
There are literally thousands of hex grid wargames out there. Avalon Hill, the long defunct SPI, etc. Many of those are still great games. Also many rules for tabletop miniatures which give hours of fun painting the figures, building scenery, etc
IceHouse is awesome! It's a game construction set and has rules for lots of games, and you can make up your own. It's perfect for the creative geeky type, for the easily bored type, check it out!
Looney Labs has lots of other neat games too, Fluxx, Aquarius, many more.
Shae Erisson - ScannedInAvian.com
Get your geek on at BoardGameGeek where we have enough games to scratch just about any itch for tabletop games. If you really liked Axis & Allies, you might be interested in moving up to grognard-level wargames.
mod me down to hell if you will, but might I suggest you try an old and established game: the game of go
http://igs.joyjoy.net/
simple rules, yet computers have no chance against any decent human. addictive.
If you like Settlers (and who doesn't?), you should pick up the expansions: Seafarers of Catan adds ships, a new resource type and a bunch of different board layout options. Cities & Knights of Catan ads so much it's like a whole different game. Also, check out the game Puerto Rico. Lots of Catan players migrated to it when it was released a few years ago.
That game was introduced to me about 3 years ago and my now fiance and I play it whenever we have friends over. Since I live in lovely Florida, we had about a month off of work for all the hurricanes. I showed my folks how to play, now my family has been hooked.
Try getting one of the expansion, Knights of Cattan or Seafarers of Cattan.
Another good strategy game thats fairly quick is Sequence.
It's not new, it's the best.
For quick games, Modern Art is exellent. A game takes about 20 minutes, IIRC (it's been a few years). It may not be what you want for your centerpiece game, but it is really good. You're basically buy and selling art pieces (cards) via different auctions. At the end of each round you total the value of the pieces in your collection plus whatever cash you have left over from the buying and selling part of the round. There's more to it than I make out, though, as the value of the work of each artist is based on the average value of all of the artist's pieces sold during the first half of the round. It's a subtle, well-balanced game, and unlike most of the big games, it is quick to play.
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
Fun Again Games is a great site to buy this stuff.
Recommended games: Loco, Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, Tigris and Euphrates, and RoboRally.
Though its hard to find Machiavelli anymore either of these games are great and playable for hours on end.
because you know you want to believe that the Goldfish Fanciers are secretly controlling the Robot Sea Monsters that are actually behind the Republicans :-) fantastic game...
There are several versions of risk. castle risk, and a risk set in the future where there are undersea cities and colonies on the moon. that's a blast.
eric
Off the top of my head:
Civilization
Republic of Rome
Diplomacy
Eurorails (and all of its offshoots)
Cold War
Illuminati (the original, not the trading cards)
Cosmic Encounter
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
2. Strip-poker.
I don't know if you can still get them, but they were among the best, and very portable too; I don't know how many lunch breaks I spent playing those at school. Ah, memories...
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
includes a lot of interaction, treachery, lies... fun at its best! not all too tactical but fun. or try blood bowl (also online at fumbbl.com)
www.weberseite.at
I don't have time to get tired of games. Too much else is going on, so i don't get much chance to play.
no big sig
Ping-pong (or table tennis).
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
if you want to get the most of it, find a copy of the game by eon (the oldest i think) and as many of the expansions as you can find (nine i believe). the other good version is by mayfair and it starts with the basic game and the expansion is 'more cosmic encounters'.
there are two other versions, one by gdw (i think) and one by avalon hill. i don't know much about the gdw version but the avalon hill version doesn't have all the options.
eric
A pretty good resource for board game reviews, discussion, and other stuff is www.boardgamegeek.com. I recommend it.
Chris Mattern
Acquire is another simple, but well-balanced strategy game. It's somewhat as if a game theorist made Monopoly. (It's nothing like Monopoly). Very fun.
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
My geeky friends and I were into Diplomacy http://boardgames.about.com/od/gamehistories/p/dip lomacy.htmfor awhile in high school. Great fun, but don't play too much. The required backstabbing can wear on friendships. We also used to play a great deal of the dice game Cosmic Wimpout http://www.cosmicwimpout.com/.
If you're after a tabletop game, I'd suggest Warhammer 40k. It's set in the distant future, when the Imperium of Man is going up against all sorts of weird alien/evil creates.
You get to choose an army (you can pick from space marines, bugs, eldars, necrons, and a handful of other things), then you buy a whole load of models, assemble them, then paint them. After you have a sexxxellent army painted up, you find yourself an opponent and fight with a complex-as-all-hell rule system.
These games can take anywhere from two hours to days, depending on how many models you and your opponent take to the field.
The game is pretty involving. The only downside is that the models/books are *very* expensive. The prices have always been a point to moan about on forums dedicated to it.
Alternatively, you could play one of GamesWorkshop's similar games, Warhammer Fantasy or a Lord of the Rings game. Fantasy is more medievil (nights, skavens, dragonsessessess, and the like), and LOTR speaks for itself.
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
RoboRally is a lot of fun.
you have to "program" small robots to navigate through a factory. programming works with paper cards (one foward, turn left,...). you have to program three turns in advance. all players have to navigate the same route. collisions with other robots lead to disturbance of your program. furthermore the robots have "lasers" to shoot at each other and there are a lot of opstacles and "actionfields" in the factory you have to cope with.
there are also a lot of expansions available for roborally!
http://wwwroborally.com/
Star Fleet Battles
My son and I invent our own. The inventing process is at least 50% of the fun - and just occasionally, we come up with a really good one. For something totally off-the-wall, try 'Kniggits':
n ig gits
http://www.sjbaker.org/paper_and_pencil_games/k
(The URL is poorly chosen - it's not actually a paper and pencil game).
Gotta agree with the earlier post about the old Avalon Hill games - there were hundreds of them and 95% of them were really good. You should be able to find a zillion of them on eBay.
For something fairly simple, we've had a lot of fun with 'HeroScape' (from Milton Bradley) - but complexifying the game no end by adding our own rules. Also 'Pirates of the Spanish Main' from Wizkids (buy at least 10 packs to maximise the fun).
No list would be complete without mentioning Dungeons and Dragons - which is as much fun as the people you play it with - and is quite compatible with large quantities of alcohol.
www.sjbaker.org
Mordheim is a fun tabletop game from Fanatic Games (part of Games Workshop), set in a ruined town in the Warhammer Fantasy world. Each player takes up the control of a warband of a few models (4 to 8, usually) and starts battling each other through scenarios, earning experience points (for levels), gold, skills, and all sorts of unexpected things (especially when dying).
The basic rules are much like those in Warhammer, with the same kind of stats, but with a few additions to make it more fit for skirmish.
All you need is a few buildings, some models, and some pens and sheets, and then you will be ready for playing.
And best of all, the rules are freely avaible on Mordheim's website
Go is the most intense, addicting game I've ever played. Japanese rules are the rule-set we play by and it is amazing. If you have Mac OS X, check out Goban. For Linux, check out GNU Go. It is THE game.
I play lots of tabletop games, but I regularly come back to play "Hacker" with a group of other nerds. Although it is a few years old (early 90s, IIRC), it still doesn't feel outdated.
...
...
http://www.sjgames.com/hacker/
Most fun played with 5 or 6 players, IMHO. Depending on how you set the goal, the game can be over as fast as 60 minutes or a whole evening/night can be spent. Prepare to use a BIG table for the latter
And never underestimate the fun of a good old game of chess
Herwig
"Life is a heuristic guided depth-first search without backtracking"
I also find that Mouse Trap is a great way to pass the time.
Other options are the classic Cluedo, or if you really want a blast the exciting Trivial Pursuit is always a crowd pleaser.
Personally, sometimes I find many of the above games just a little over complicated and confusing and tend to stick with the all time family favourite, Tiddlywinks !
Hooo Boy, there's a bucket load of fun to be had with those bright little plastic disks !
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
.. Totally different games in style and theme, but both are tons of fun.
And, TTR won the 2004 Spiel Des Jahres!
Age of Renaissance is even better. Its like a improved version of Civilisation.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/26
http://www.ticket2ridegame.com, by Days of Wonder. We've been playing it at least once a day for the past month. Haven't worn it out from overuse yet.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
can;t be beat..
t .html
http://www.wunderland.com/LooneyLabs/Fluxx/Defaul
it's only a simple card game, but then it rapidly becomes a complex card game...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Pomengrant
In games of slivers
spots and papers
opponents are
the generators
stones go capture
all their brothers
so check your faith
in one another
one by one
jump your connections
two by three
jumps with direction
about the face
turns the election
the perfect game
needs no reflection
All you need to play is some colored stones and a flat surface with lots of intersecting lines. Oh yeah, and you have to be clever enough to extract the rules from the poem.
The play is sort of like a version of super go, with elements from other popular deterministic turn based games.
If you liked Catan and Carcasson, you should really check out Tikal.
Szo
Red Leader Standing By!
Foremost, you may enjoy Illuminati by Steve Jackson games - it's a really fun and once you get it, really simple, game about world domination - it's very tongue in cheek, very funny... and depending on the players, it can be extremely amusing seeing people try to manipulate eachothers actions.
;) A little Bloowbowl tourney is always fun :)
Another bet is Blood Bowl if you're into football at all
Reminds me of Kerplunk!, Hungry Hungry Hippo, Dizzy (Dizzy) Dinosaur, Chutes and Ladders, and Mouse Trap.
Does anyone know the game where you make architecture with curved interlocking pieces and watch the marbles fall through them?
--pyro_dude
Risk is a great game. very fun, but the LotR version is just too fun (too geeky?)! Risk LotR Edition on Amazon
Why not look at the highest user-rated board games in existence, many or which are new, and then read the comments about the games in order to determine what sounds appealing to you? Board Game Geek.com has all of this information readily available right here: game rankings
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
It's an oldie, but grab it if you can find it. It's a fantasy strategy game, played on a hex map but with card draws to keep it unpredictable. Very fun when several people are playing.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Betrayal at House on the Hill is a fun tabletop game. It's from Wizards of the Coast but was originally in development by Avalon Hill. There's an online demo here. Great replayability, although there can be a lot of rule interpretation bickering.
is a fun game. You can get it from the kind of store that stocks Settlers.
But don't play it by yourself. That's depressing. And a little creepy.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
Looney Labs (and their weekly blog) make some excellent games that might fit your audience. They are perhaps best known for their card game Fluxx (my personal favorite), but also have a number of other games which are more board-game like.
The one that sounds most similar to what you're looking for is Chrononauts, the card game of time travel, which involves a time line that you build and control on the table. It also has an "Early American" version.
As already noted, they make the Icehouse pyramids which are most noted for games like Zendo and Ice Towers, but are also used for quite a few others.
Enjoy!
In Scotland Yard, one player takes the role of "Mr X" and attempts to evade the detectives. The playing area is a map of London, with routes marked in taxi, bus, underground, and ferry routes. Each player has a set of tickets they can use for each type of route. There are x of taxi tickets, y of bus tickets, and z of underground. Mr X is less limited. Mr X moves in secret, but every few turns, he must show himself.
I always liked this game, when I played it as a kid. As an adult, I found a copy of it in the game store. I told Chris, the owner, that I had played it as a kid, but forgotten about it. When I saw it on the shelf, I had to have it. It didn't matter that it cost around $30 at the time.
Chris informed me that this was a standard story. The game was rarely, if ever, advertised. Everyone who bought it did so because they had played it somewhere else, and found it hard to balk at the price. He said they had trouble keeping the game on the shelves. I believe it.
The beauty of the game is that every person who plays Mr X will do so differently. Inspectors are individuals. Every game is different, though the map stays the same.
Another favorite of mine is Empire Builder, but we're heading out to the truck stop for breakfast, so you'll have to do your own research on that one.
Visit Lockjaw's Lair. He won't bite.
I find a good game of Mousetrap tends to stimulate the mind.
'nuff said!
This is a fun 2-player game that is something like a board version of capture the flag. Each piece has a value, 1-9 or bomb, and you must navigate your pieces across the board to try to find the other player's flag. When two pieces collide the values are revealed (you can't see the other player's pieces' value) and whoever has the lower number value wins. Lower rank (higher number) pieces are more plentiful but are also defeated more easily. The catch is that only Miners (#8, I think) can dismantle bombs.
I've had a lot of fun playing this game and recommend you try it out. The only bad thing is that if you lose one of the pieces you can't make another one to fill in for it (everyone will know what value it is!)
This sig left blank for page turns.
I've written on these guys before, but let me do so again in a more straightforward manner:
Buy everything you see here. I assure that you will NOT be disappointed.
Days of Wonder is a great company who takes brilliant designs the world over and shares them with a geek-like audience. Me and my wife love Mystery of the Abbey. Think of it like a really interesting, deep version of Clue. No candlesticks, no ridiculous characters, and it actually has -strategy- incorporated, and everyone who has played it loves it immediately.
And no, I'm not even getting paid to say that (though of course, it would be nice).
You can also read some (tabletop) gaming blogs:
- BoardGamePlayer.com
- BoardGames-To-Go
- Chris Farrell's Gaming Blog
- Jeffro @ Mindsay
Lastly, I'd like to say that me and my wife's favorite non-boardgame is Bang!, an easy-to-learn great mechanic-filled game that anyone over the age of 7 will adore.
Oh, and of course, get all the recommendations you can handle over at the always fantastic BoardGameGeek.com.
Have fun!
Evan
CCGBlog.com - CCG Design, Theory, and Commentary
you may want to take a look at the tabletop game, Blood Bowl. I've played it for years, and it's a real hoot. http://www.specialist-games.com/bloodbowl/default. htm
This seem obvious, but have you tried chess?
Fun for the whole family.
... you might be interested in moving up to grognard-level wargames.
... where Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) by MMP (originally the game is by AH) is still the king of the hill.
Online training at:
http://vasl.org/
Of multi-player (>2) games Puerto Rico and Settlers are the best IMHO. Elfenland, another Game of the Year winner from Germany, like Settlers, is OK but not up on the other two. For two-player, I recommend The Castle --- a two-player version of Carcassone.
"Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get" - Jerry Avins
How about Icehouse or Mahjong?
A couple times a week my coworkers and I get together at lunch to play these games. Icehouse is an abstract gaming system where you can play many different games. Our favorite Icehouse games include Pikemen, Martian Chess, and RAMbots.
The hardest part about playing Mahjong (the real Mahjong, not Mahjong solitare)is finding a place that sells the pieces. It is fun and addictive, but you need 4 people to play.
http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/wdc/
This game has a few issues, but it is an interesting combination RPG board game. These are the guys that made Zombies, which is alos fun.
It's survival horror, with an interesting, simple mechanic for combat.
Try to make people snort soda.
1000 Blank White Cards
What about flip cup? It's played on a table top, cheap, interactive, and only becomes more challenging as you play. Remember to have a designated driver.
espo
Each baseball card-sized pack comes with everything needed to play the simple game (my 7 year old loves this version) and lots of on-line expansions are available to add new scenarios, rules, etc. to make more complicated grown-up games. You can keep everything needed to play in a shirt pocket. Quite cool!
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
MWDA is a streamlined version of Battletech. The minatures contain the record sheets. The game plays pretty quickly and you can pick up second hand minatures on eBay cheap. An expensive game to play at the tournament competitive level - but cheap if you are just looking for something with your friends.
Of course you can play Classic BattleTech - though this requires a longer investment of time. Things are quite detailed and it can take quite some time to resolve rounds.
I play more MWDA now because although I miss the detail of classic BattleTech, being able to fight a company vs company level engagement in 2-3 hours (versus 2-3 days) is a big plus.
There is a new edition of Twilight Imperium out. Highly complex and takes a while to play - but a deep and rewarding experience.
The "future" version of Risk is quite fun as well.
http://boardgamegeek.com/game/9609
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
You might check out http://www.boardgamegeek.com/. It can be a bit daunting at first as there is a lot of information to go through. And be forewarned, there is a definite bias against traditional American games (i.e., Monopoly). But if you enjoyed Carcassonne and Settlers, its hopefully a bias you'll agree with. Most games have a review or two (many written by reviewers that are very good at what they do), plus session reports of various depths and often times player aids.
A3R is kinda in a way almost a primer to getting into a 'huge' game like WiF, but both games work very differently, so you may like one a lot better than the other. Civilizations, as people mentioned is also a fun game to play once every year or 2... :}
I actually prefered Babylon 5 wars. Though the system was rather complex and it took forever for a sizable battle to take place. Sadly, the company that produced both games has gone out of buisness.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
If you're into the tile based games, Zombies is kind of interesting, although IMHO it's a little overly random, and not nearly as interesting as the other games you listed. Still, it's fun.
A game we've been playing lately is Filty Rich, a "3D" board game by Richard Garfield (creator of, amongst other things, Magic: The Gathering). The idea is you open shops, and then collect income from them, with the objective being to be the first one to buy three luxuries (trophy spouse, patent of nobility, private jet, etc...). The "game board" is a binder with four 3x3 plastic card-protector sheets inside. When you open a shop you place it's "sign" into the card-pockets on the sheet (a sign could span multiple pockets), then you roll some dice to see which pockets get visited, and collect income, and then there's a 50% chance you'll move to a new random page.
The game is "3d" since on a given page you can "see through" to pages underneath. It's quite a clever and fun little game. You can see the rule-book at the link above, if you're curious.
oh I fergot to mention, for these games you need to have a 'room'/Table(s) where you leave them setup as you play them on a continuing weekly basis, (don't forget the beer or to go out for beer/wings after etc).
First, some suggestions on places to find info on what games are good:
The newsgroup rec.games.board is a great source of info on enthusiasts' opinions on board games. Someone maintains a database of ratings of games, as rated (mostly, or originally) by readers of the newsgroup. Search for "INTERNET TOP 100 GAMES LIST" (posted to the newsgroup every 2 weeks). Here's the current top 10, along with rating (1-10 scale) -- here's the link: http://scv.bu.edu/~aarondf/Top100
1 8.494 Puerto Rico
2 7.865 Euphrat & Tigris
3 7.756 Die Siedler von Catan
4 7.742 Die Fursten von Florenz
5 7.504 Modern Art
6 7.503 El Grande
7 7.451 Carcassonne
8 7.409 Ohne Furcht und Adel
9 7.399 Goa
10 7.387 Vinci
You'll see two of the games you mentioned on the list - Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan (note that the bulk of the best boardgames are German in origin -- the original German names are used in the list). I would guess that if you liked Carc and Settlers, that you match the taste profile of the contributors to the list fairly well, so you'd probably like many of the games on the list.
I've played maybe half the games on the top 10. Personally, I like Settlers, Euphrat & Tigris, and Modern Art particularly well.
One important question is: how many players do you have? 4 seems to be considered to be the optimal number for multi-player games (which are the most fun). If you have a different number, then there are specialized lists you should refer to. However, from your post, it sounds like you have several players, so the above list should be suitable.
Another question is: what type of games do you like? There are economics-style (e.g. Settlers), bidding-style (e.g. Modern Art), deal-making (e.g. Chinatown), path-connection style (e.g. Streetcar), war games (e.g. Axis & Allies), race games (e.g. Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix), etc. etc. I guess you'd call this the genre.
Another thing to look for is the game designer. If you like a book by a certain author, you're likely to like other books by the same author. It's the same with games. Settlers was designed by Klaus Teuber -- a prolific game designer. So, you might look for other Teuber games. Many of the top-rated games were designed by Reiner Knizia -- I like just about every game of his which I've tried.
Another consideration is the complication of the game. You've mentioned Axis&Allies, which is relatively simple, and Settlers & Carc, which are moderately complex. Some of the games on the Top 100 list are fairly complex -- generally, at least as complex as Settlers and Carc.
Then there's game duration. If you like Axis & Allies, then you're probably not turned off by long-playing games. I'd think most games on the list would be OK.
There's a great website for boardgame enthusiasts, which you'd probably find useful in looking for new games: Boardgame Geek -- http://www.boardgamegeek.com
Finally, bearing all the above in mind, and considering the little scraps of information I have about you and your group, my tenuous suggestions:
I think you have maybe 4-6 people in your group. You have a taste for long games, and war and deal-making are appealing themes for you. Two classic games stand out in this category: Civilization (the board game which inspired the computer game), and Diplomacy. These are games which I would _most_ love to play, if I had a large enuf group of like-minded people available, and an unlimited amount of time. If you try Civilization, I recommend Advanced Civ over Civ.
I envy you, just starting to really delve into boardgames, with a group of enthusiastic players. You have some really great gaming to look forward to!
Good luck!
If you like board games, give Acquire or Tigris & Euphrates a try.
Magic: The Gathering. Type I, maybe I.5... Type II is totally gay. It's a geek classic. And it sort of takes place on a table top.
ciao
Risk 2210 is actually a lot of fun. I was sceptical when all the new variants of Risk started coming out, one for everyone and their uncle, but having played this one extensively I must say that it's very satisfying, and going back to the original on the occassions that, for whatever reason, we had to go back to the original, was met with a lot of grumbling.
It's way more complicated than the original Risk so it takes a while to get into, but some of the complexity goes a long way to alleviating the problems that made the original such a pain in the ass to play some times, like exponentially increasing army sizes and the potential for the game to never end. The rest of it is just fun.
If you haven't played this version but played the original, here are some highlights of what's new/different:
Having said all that, there's nothing preventing people from being very very bad losers, throwing pieces, getting whiny... I hope the next version comes with a tazer.
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
Fireball Island is the only game you'll ever want to play once you play it once. You move your little men up and down a volcanic island. Every once in a while the island will kick out a volcanic fireball which will literally roll across the board and burn unsuspecting players who will have to recover in a lava pit. Occasially the fireballs will knock out a bridge you're walking across and you'll be literally knocked into a river or ocean. Oh man what a game.
Ok, maybe it's not hat great, and maybe I haven't played it in ten years, but I sure remember it being great.
--
RumorsDaily
Based on George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, play A Game of Thrones. It's like Risk but deeper and better. Even better, A Clash of Kings, the expansion.
The books do not have to be read to enjoy the game but you will be missing out on some great books.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
For 3+ players, or those not wanting a game they have to study to get good at, I recommend Cosmic Encounter. Think Risk where each player is allowed to cheat differently. No game is ever the same. I have the original with 9 expansion sets, and prefer playing with 2 "alien powers" per player. I haven't tried the most recent edition, but it would be hard to screw it up.
A while back we had a 2004 Board Game Gift Guide that linked to some good resources. You might try those folks.
Here are some other games that I have played and enjoyed -
Tikal: One of a set of three board games published by Rio Grande Games, the other two being Mexica and Java. Having played all three, Tikal is probably my favorite. In it you play an archeological team unearning mayan-esque ruins for the win. Lots of fun, 2-4 players and about an hour and a half or so needed. Family Friendly.
Cosmic Encounter: Definately a more "hardcore" title, the best way to think of this is like Pax Imperia or Galactic Civilization in boardgame format. Requires a large table and has *lots* of little pieces, but it's incredibly fun if you have the time and patience. 2-4 players and about 3 hours (or more, depending).
Dos Rios: An incredibly fun game about diverting a pair of rivers such that you have the most plentiful harvest, while avoiding the bandits and your fellow players. Family friendly fun, 2-4 players and about an hour and a half or so.
221-B Baker Street: An oldey, but a good game nonetheless. Each time you play you're solving a different case. You travel from location to location finding clues and trying to stop your fellow players from doing the same. Family Friendly, 2-4 players, 60 minutes or less.
way thurough....great site for all things boardgame....http://www.boardgamegeek.com/...
I haven't seen it mentioned yet, so i'll toss one into the ring: Shogun, aka Samurai Swords, is an excellent wargame. If you at all enjoy risk or A&A style games, give this one a shot (assuming you can find it because I don't think anyone makes it still). I remember having SO much fun playing it... its an absolute riot with the right people. I really loved the for being strategic, yet simple to follow. The majority of the action will always involve one of your three Daymo's (armies), rather than being a complete mess of independant units (ala risk). Every turn was a surprise too, because all players had to secretly distribute their resources (koku) and then reveal their 'plans' simultaneously (seeing who won the ninja/assassin was always exciting). Then you got to draw swords to determine that rounds playing order. Like I said though, people make a difference too. When we weren't moving stuff around on the board, someone was always whispering behind someone else's back... forging temporary alliances, playing all sides, plotting to stab your friends in the back. I think that was the part I liked the most - screwwing with other players heads as a part of the game. You were constantly plotting to double team the most powerful player, and then at the same time ruin your ally to come out on top yourself... only to be drug back down by the heads you stepped on to get to the top. Some games would last for days in a seemingly endless cycle of alliances, betrayals, feints, and strategic wizardry. :)
Many a sunrise-too-early crept over the blood stained fields of feudal japan when we dug out that game. Good times!
Game of Thrones is pretty good. It's like a cross-breed of Risk and Diplomacy.
If you're looking at a game for more people I'd suggest looking into Rio Grande Games. Something like Princes of Florence, Traders of Genoa, Puerto Rico, El Grande, Euphrat & Tigris or even Bonhanza. Board Game Geek shows many of the most popular games. Ticket to Ride and Carcasonne are pretty good simple games that are great to start with.
If you are not already aware of it, I would highly recommend Risk. Here is the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_%28game%29k -history.htm
You can read up on the history of the game here: http://boardgames.about.com/library/weekly/aa-ris
I believe there is even an on-line, Linux compatible version.
I can thoroughly recommend Uno Extreme (possibly known to you yanks as Uno attack). It's absolutely hilarious, at times turning into a sort of card version of russian roulette, and can also be played with children. Great for playing down the pub, or even at home.
Skiing? Check out The Independant Skiers Portal
I can't begin to mention all of them but there are a couple of very good ones I'd suggest.
Depending on your gaming group size, the near fist game I'd suggest is Diplomacy. No dice, no randomness, and a good chance someone gets punched in the face. The game is exactly as it says. Europe pre WWI and 7 major powers inhabit in the baord. In between each turn you have 15 minutes to discuss your plans. All unit orders are made in secret and all moves resolve at once. There is nothing binding you to anything you say in the in between phases. There are only 3 possible moves a unit can make. Attack, Hold, Support and you may support units not your own.
If you can find a copy of Games-Workshop talisman, give it a spin. It's, in my opinion, one of the best productions GW ever did next to blood bowl. It can kill you a solid evening. It's not as strategic as some of the others.
Now my mind is failing, so I'll give this advice but someone else is going to have to recall the name of the game. There is a space colonization game on the market, been out there a while. The board can support I believe up to 5 players. The board has a central circle, from that circle up to 5 arms spiral off it where your ships start. Each unit piece is a plastic colored shuttle and they stack together. The concept is fairly straight forward, forcefully colonize others space. But you can get aid from friends on the attack or the defense so a good bit of strategy involved.
The only other thing I hesitantly suggest is a classic. If you have the patience and a math degree, try out star fleet battles. Just get the captain's edition and maybe advanced missions. After you start to get all the other modules the rule set bloats up so large you'd need a lawyer to tell you what you can or can't do. It' insanely documented and can get very strategic.
I stole this
Might I sugest the Tetris "board" game?= showPro dDetail&id=10&categoryId=5 :)
http://www.radicagames.com/index.cfm?event
Havent tried it, but who doesn't like tetris?
The basic premise is that you are robots racing in a factory where there are many perils (crushers, pits, lasers, etc.). You program the robot by selecting cards to tell it what to do (move forward, turn right, etc.).
It's very hard to plan the perfect path since you sometimes don't get the cards you want. Also, there are conveyers and spinners that will eventually screw you up big time.
I love the sound of distortion in the morning -- webcommando
I recommend any game by Avalon Hill or Steve Jackson Games.
Illuminati is a favorite.
Diplomacy is a blast! It's like Risk, but without the ramdomness of dice. This game is ALL about making/breaking alliances.
I used to really like a game Avalon Hill used to make called Titan. They don't make it anymore though and it's hard to find now.
Star Fleet Battlesis always a fun game if your up for reading binders upon binders of rules. I never bothered learning any other rules than for the Starfleet vessels though.
The geek is a fantastic website with so many features, but it remains the best source for info on boardgames. What you want are modern german games. Search for any of these games: Attika, Tikal, Java, Mexica, Alhambra (yes, all german games are based on exotic placenames), Metro, Drunter & Druber, Through The Desert, Streetsoccer, Lost Cities, 6 Nimmt, Transamerica, Ticket To Ride (yes an American game is currently the Spiel des Jahres, THE prize to win), Cartagena, Clans, Manhattan, Karibik, Trias, Santiago, . . Puerto Rico has an average rating of 8.7/10. Yup, that's the AVERAGE rating. Got to the geek! http://www.boardgamegeek.com/
Euphrat & Tigris
Samurai
Through the Desert
El Grande
Ah, Settlers of Catan. That one goes down in my book as the best board game ever. A perfect combination of luck and strategy, and extrememly replayable. You should try Seafarers of Catan and Cities and Knights.
Also, the third edition of Twilight Empirium just came out. You'll have to drop about $75 on it, but it's a fantastic game. Hexagonal pieces, space combat, very dynamic, lots of ways to win. Expect to commit a few hours to a single game.
Carcasonne also has a few expansions out if you want to consider more with that series.
Although mostly card games, check out Cheapass Games. Lots of bang for the buck.
This company makes a ton of wierd, fun, -cheap- games. Prices range from free (on their website) all the way up to $7.50 or so (with most being being 5 bucks or less). They should be in stock at ayour local game store, if you have one. http://www.cheapass.com/
Check out Acquire. Very simple game to learn that isn't so simple to win. Description: In the beginning, the companies are small. But they grow. And merge. And reform. And merge again. Those who buy the right stocks and merge the right companies thrive. Those that don't, fall behind. This classic business game has never looked better. An all plastic board with plastic tiles that fit snugly to it add a three dimensional quality that brings the game to life. Now corporations are capped with skyscrapper roofs that create a mini skyline. The companies have been renamed to reflect a 21st century economy but no rules have changed. The game can be learned in minutes. Which tile to play, which company to invest in, and when to merge two companies is a skill that takes many games to master.
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
You could try any of Games workshops range. While expensive to start you can pick one of the smaller games and have just as much funmuch cheaper.
Necromunda is cyber punk and you control (and level up) a gang.
Bloodbowl is Rugby only the aim is to hurt the other team as you play.. it's quite fun and again you gain levels on players and such.
Battlefield gothic is a space ship based game, it's got alot of races but will cost more then the two above.
Modernheim is a game set in a destroyed city where you control a warband and try and become rich and famous...
All would take a bit of work (painting models) but they are fun tabletop games you might want to try out.
I like muppets.
http://www.cranium.com/
I'm suprised no one mentioned Monopoly. Yeah, I know, too many Bush haters here, but come on! It's just a game!
--Jim (me)
Diplomoacy is a game of negotiation, with up to seven players controlling the seven empires in Europe in 1870. None are powerful enough to survive if others turn against them, so alliances are necessary. The game rules are relatively simple, so the game is all about intrigue: it's about the deals you make with the other players, and whether they believe they can trust you. In each round, players go off into corners or other rooms, negotiate, refuse to negotiate, make public gestures, make agreements (verbal or written, open or secret), keep or betray confidences, gether information, sound out rivals, and perform joint military planning. Then they hand the written orders (for their troops) to the adjudicator. All players moves (including any betrayals) are all revealed simultanously, and the outcomes of all movements or conflicts are resolved. No dice are used. Easily the best group board game I've ever played, because of its cleverly psychological nature. It inspired a Chess variant I once designed along similar lines.
Thieves Guild by Iron Sun Games. Highly recommended!
I keep remembering old favorites. I should have waited and put them in one post...
I wasn't able to find a good link for this one, but here is some info about it. It is a card-based naval battle game. Pretty random, medium strategy, medium negotiation. Good fun. Also out of print, but there might still be copies kicking around...
That link was to a page with Word files presumbably containing images of the original cards. I didn't have time to check.
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
Doom: The Boardgame
Anything with 3 Cyberdemon figurines has to be good.
See here.
:D Especially bad is if you only take one turn per day or two days. The intrigue and political tension could kill. Also don't play it during exam season. It could really wreck your concentration.
But it might not be suitable for playing with your friends -- at least if you want to keep them as your friends.
Seriously though, it is a quality game, and probably close to being unique in that there is no element of chance. Everything is deterministic. The more you play it, the more you appreciate the level of play required. It's not like chess or go, in that pure strategy will never win -- you have to play in alliances.
See here. To save you the time, here's a list of stuff I found from that story, games that sounded interesting or worth checking out.
.
First, I decided I should really get into Go. Some links from that Slashdot story: here, The Second Book of Go here, here, here, here, and here.
Other games:
Apples to Apples - got this for my cousin, they liked it.
Settlers of Catan - got this for myself, very nice game, try a local hobby shop or here or try Amazon.com
Others: Puerto Rico (Similar to Settlers of Catan), Lord of the Rings board game was mentioned, Kill Dr. Lucky, Deadwood, Give me the Brain, Lightspeed Games, Fluxx is fun, very random and quirky.
There's more! Mind Trap
Munchkin , Heroscape, Ticket to Ride, Mystery of the Abbey, Memoir '44, Queen's Necklace at Days of Wonder, Bang!, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Articulate
Killer Bunnies (and Quest for the Magic Carrot), Illuminati , Acquire
Some other reviews/top game lists here:
here
here
here
Happy gaming!
How about "The Awful Green Things From Outer Space"?
http://www.sjgames.com/awfulgreen/
Loads of fun!
the best game ever
Over 13,000 games are on that site, and there's tons of support files, reviews, session reports, rankings, etc. Everything you could want, really.
good math-puzzle type game.
Third Reich is in the same vein as Axis & Allies. It simulates, with an amazing degree of detail, the second World War in Europe. It's so detailed, it has three entire pages of manual dedicated to the surrender of France! It also takes quite a while to play, so I wouldn't recommend it if you're the impatient sort, but if you can make it through an entire game of axis & allies, you'd probably like it.
i always liked mancala.... it's somewhat mindless, but then again my friend max thought he was a god at it and wasn't prepared for someone (myself) to actually develop a strategy....
:) (i know im easily satisfied)
chess is also a very good game
"if only i had known i would have been a locksmith." -albert einstein
I can't recommend Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings boardgame highly enough. As with all of Reiner's games, it's extremely well designed and very well produced. It's unusual in the sense that each player takes the role of a hobbit, and the group plays cooperatively to attempt to destroy the Ring. It's quite complicated, and better to have it explained to you by someone who knows it, than having to play it from just the rules in the box, but that is possible. There's enough in it to be able to play it again and again, and an additional two expansion packs are available if you want an even greater challenge.
The game is complete in itself, but does stay remarkably faithful to the book. Consequently a working knowledge of the LoTR story is helpful, but certainly not necessary.
Who needs anything else?
It's a card based game in which you try to broker investment deals. However, it's setup so that two or three players can't easily split a deal. Someone will get the shortend of the stick. Also, you can't be too greedy if you are the other players will srew up your action or not include you in deals.
As with other Sid Jackson games (ex: Acquire) it really comes down to who's better at keeping a mental score of other players' cash.
If you're just getting into German-style board games, then you should really try Ticket To Ride. You can try it out online for free at ticket2ridegame.com.
or Parker Brothers?
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
I cant believe with all the conspiracy/monopoly nuts we have around here that they missed out on the chance to BASH Hasbro Inc.
Hasbro spent the 80s and 90s buying up everything. They were even smart enough to buy The Avalon Hill Game Company. AH held the copyrights to a huge stack of games. I mean hundreds and hundreds of games. AH had in the early 80s bought the rights to all the old SPI games. James Dunnigan had created and edited hundreds of games and simulations for SPI.
Yet Hasbro has not rereleased ANY of these games in their original forms. And apparently plans not to.
They Live, We Sleep
I picked up some of the GIPF (http://www.gipf.com/) series of games about a year ago from a local game store.
They are 1 on 1 games, but carry serious strategy with them. The rules are simple enough that my 5 year old can play Zertz, but at the same time, the game play rises to the level of the players.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
You have mentioned a good amount of the medium-length games out there. You can go up from there to full wargames (I love the Second World War at Sea series from Avalanche Press which takes about 1 day for a game).
For shorter games I like Acquire and many German-style games. Some of my favorites are Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Goa, Alhambra, Bohnanza, Citadels, Samurai, Java, Liar's Dice, and Bang!.
I buy most of my games from GamesInABox.com. They have almost as good of prices as FunAgain Games but they have much more reasonable shipping costs and they have always shipped same or next day.
You said board or table top games. So how about Dungeons And Dragons
Been playing it off and on for 13 years and still love it.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Bulls and Bears, Stock market trading game, published in the 1930's. You can still get it on ebay from time to time. It was published by Parker Brothers, Inc. but due to a falling out between the creator and Parker Brothers it was withdrawn. It can be a really loud, game, we had the cops called on us once. Best played with 4 or more players.
Campaings - Waddingtons, abstract Nepolian era
Formula 1 - Waddingtons, car race game up to 6 players
Buccaneer - Waddingtons pirate game with real ships treasure and crew, 1 to 6, players.
Robert
robert@crbn.com
My friends and I play a lot of games and here are some of our favorites:
Nuclear war is a great game. The only game where 2 out of 3 times there is no winner.
Lunch Money is a card game about little girls beating each other up on the playground. The artwork on the cards is pretty cool.
RoboRally is a great game about programming a robot to get through a (very complicated) maze.
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
If you want REAL political intrigue, double-crossing and some strategy, try Junta! from West end Games.
You are the ruling families of a banana republic (it sounds so eighties!) and the aim of the game is diverting the most foreign aid funds possible in your swiss account.
Hours of fun, for people with a sense of humour!
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
Diplomacy, unlike most other board games, is a game of primarily skill rather than chance (the only thing left to chance is where you start on the board). At the risk of insulting the game it's like a board game version of survivor.
Why has no one mentioned table-top RPGs yet?
:)
If you have even a tiny bit of imagination and a creative Games Master (you can rotate GMs in casual play, too), why not play some one-off games of Call of Cthulhu?
Or if you fancy something a little bit more 'campaign' like, I can highly recommend Deadlands (http://www.peginc.com), or perhaps just straight D&D 3.5
Shogun (Samuri Swords)
British Rails (sweet game, but you need to lamenate your board and use washable markers)
World at War (a cheap expansion to AaA by another company, fun game but many more rules)
Settlers of Catan
Risk (pretty simple, but it is what got me into board gaming)
HeroQuest
Monopoly (once more a simple thing, but was cool when I was a kid)
I just could not come up with ten, that's how few games really inspire me.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Board:
Diplomacy
Talisman
Tile:
Illuminati (not the CCG)
Card:
HONOR OF THE SAMURAI
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
...is Balderdash. For anybody who is a fan of The Superior Person's Book of Words, this is a must.
The Farming Game gets a lot of play in our family. Be prepared to invest about three hours, but it's a lot of fun.
It's a fairly simple, easy-to-play, diplomacy-style game based off of the book series by George R. Martin. An excellent excellent game.
In fact, anything by Fantasy Flight Games is almost certainly going to be good.
Nuclear War, a classic, still in print (and it has a couple expansions). Good for 4+ people, fast to set up and play. There's not a terrific amount of skill involved, but there's a high "screw you" factor, if you're into that sort of thing :)
And if you can find it, Family Business by Mayfair. Another fast game for 4+ people, and lots of backstabbing. Too bad it's not in print any more.
And I'll throw my "Me Too" behind Cosmic Encounter which IMHO has an absolutely huge replay value, particularly the old Eon version.
You think you have all your pieces safe, and wham- your opponent pulls off an attack from out of the blue.
Originally licenced to Parker Brothers, but now sold directly by the original developer. Has a freeware (win31) version to get a feel of it.
Here's a URL for those who are interested:
http://www.webstart.net/conquest/
You want the nice cast pieces version if you can spring for the extra cost.
My family and I used to play a game called Acquire, which was centered on the idea of hotel chains growing and merging, and trading in stock on them. (Sadly, there were only mergers, no spinoffs or going out of business allowed.)
Still, it was great fun, far better than Monopoly, and we would play it maybe twice a month for years.
One I used to see folks having a great deal of fun with at a coffee shop I used to frequent is Cults Across America. (For reference, these same folks loved to play the stuff put out by Cheapass Games.)
- The Diplomatic Pouch
- The Stabbed
- diplomacy-archive.com
I've played with people all over the world at Diplomacy 2000, and I've never even owned a board. There are quite a few open source boards/adjucators (they do the logic behind the moves to determine movement success/failure). Of those, I recommend jDip, a feature-rich cross-platform java version.The game can get a bit involved, and there's a slight learning curve (very slight, especially if you've done Axis & Allies). Not for everyone, but it's worth a try if you like Risk.
However,
I run a monthly board-gaming day, and there are NO END of good choices. Here are some categories with examples:
True "board" games- Cosmic Encounter - the new one is not as good as the original, but still excellent
- Robo Rally - The programmers board-game. This is tons of fun, and can be a huge, days-long event or an hour-long game depending on how you set it up
- Titan - The mother of all day-long strategy games. Fun, but harsh!
Non-Collectable Card Games- Chez Geek/Dork/etc. - This is a fun and funny line of games which I recommend to anyone living in a dorm or group house of any sort!
- Munchkin - A great game (and line of spin-offs) which pokes fun at fantasy role-playing.
- Flux - This is a wild game, but not very serious. Lots of fun once in a while
Collectable Games- Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures - The new minis game they put out a couple years ago is going strong and lots of fun from what I hear (I buy them for a D&D game I run, not the collectable game)
- Shadowfist - I keep hearing about this card game, and everyone says it's the best many-player game ever.
Games on the Net- New Eleusis - A fun game for people who like puzzles. You just need cards and something to keep score on.
Enjoy!I'll sound off and concur with others that:Settlers of Catan and Looneylabs games are flarging awesome and nearly universal. It's easy to get geeks and "others" alike playing *and* enjoying.
You can't get it new anymore, so that might be a barrier, but the original Crimson Skies boardgame (not to be confused with the new game with the weird clicky bases that cost to much money) is lots of fun. Some friends and I played a lot of it in college and it doesn't seem to get old. You can play long campaigns with the same pilots (as long as they survive, that is) and create your own planes, so it has a lot of replay value.
My favorites include some of the Cheap Ass games (http://www.cheap-ass.com/). They are wacky, usually have an interesting play dynamic, and cheap ($10 or less usually). My favorites include:
. I really enjoy this game, but it could be because I win often among my friends. :)
Falling - Awesome, fast card game based around the idea that everyone is falling, and fighting. The winner is the last person to hit the ground (so in effect, everyone is eventually a loser, because everyone eventually hits the ground). Games usually take less than 5 minutes, so you don't feel so bad if you lose.
Spree - Another really fun one. The theme is a competitive shopping spree in a mall, with guns and cars. It gives you lots of opportunities to screw over your opponents. It's one that I always request at parties.
Kill Dr. Lucky - This one is a bit like reverse Clue. You try to get into the room alone with Dr. Lucky, and out of sight of other players (via windows and doors into adjacent rooms), and try to kill him. It has an interesting psychological component, because other players may have cards to stop you, but they don't have to use them, and can pressure other players to use up their stopper cards instead. If there is too much manipulation going on, they might actually lose the game for themselves. I like this one a lot, too, but it's not as hectic as the previous two mentioned (which is one reason why I like them).
I have one other favorite that I always request, too, but it's not a Cheap Ass game. It is called Ricochet Robot, and it is basically a competitive pathfinding game in which you try to get one of four colored robots to a particular square on the game board. Each round is timed, and the person who bids the best path first (better paths have less steps), and proves it after the time runs out, gets a point for that round.
Here's a link to what appears to be the product website: http://www.riograndegames.com/games/rio122.html, but the description isn't that much better than the one I gave above. There is a picture, however. Here's a link to an online Java applet that appears to have the same game dynamic: http://www.braunston.com/kevin/rrobot/rrobot.html
I believe Ricochet Robot is out of print, however, so it may be difficult to find. I've seen a used copy in one of my local hobby shops, and my friend has a copy, so maybe it's not -that- hard to locate. I think I also heard a rumor that it was going to be reprinted, but I haven't checked up on that.
hackshop.com - My tech hobby project hub
1-5 HOMERUN
oh come on people.
the pinnacle of Steve Jackson games. is a great board game with violence and fast paced action.
cripes it was a staple in my life in 1984-1987.
cant believe you losers do not know about it.
Unfortunately, it's out of print, but don't let that stop you from searching for a copy.
Titan Fan Site
There is a Java version of the game on Sourceforge, but the fun of rolling 12d6 just isn't hasn't been caputred yet, I'm still waiting.
Colossus
Colossus Fan Site
I would recommend Chez Geek, very simple cardgame but very funny.
Though it's more of a card game than a boardgame, I'm surprised no one has mentioned the classic Nuclear War published by Flying Buffalo. It's relatively simple, pretty fast paced and just a little bit crazy. When you add in the expansions Nuclear Escalation, Nuclear Proliferation, and Weapons of Mass Destruction, you can have untold hours of fun blowing up the world. And it's easy to add your own cards if you want more zaniness.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
For a good strategy based board game, that minimises the use of dice, my favorie for many years is a board game based upon building, merging and takovers of hotel chains, and acquiring the majority stockolder positions. The game is a cross between monopoly and risk. The game is based both on positioning on the board, and one's shrewdness at buying, building and merging at the appropiate times. The winner is the one with the most money at the end of a game.
The game is appropiately called Acquire. It was originally released as one of the 3M bookshelf games. It was considered the best of their set of games by many people. It is still available from Avalon Hill.
For a good board game reference site with lots of pictures and user ratings etc. try www.boardgamegeek.com
A good place to look is http://www.boardgamegeek.com/. The GeekLists are an especially entertaining way to browse game-space.
Here are some games I've played and had a lot of fun. Sorry about the links, but BoardGameGeek is convienient.
Rollout. By the company that make Supremacy (which I also like). Global sharemarket and high finance game.
Machiavelli. Risk like game based in Renaissance Italy.
Empires of the Middle Ages. Classic economic/warfare game set in Medieval Europe from 771 to 1467.
Illuminati and various expansion packs. All the conspiracy theories battle it out.
OGREand various expansion packs. Purely tactical based game. armour/infantry/hovercraft/gevs/OGRE battle it out.
Talismanand various expansions. Snakes and ladders in a fantasy world but with spells and battles.
Nuclear Warand expansions. Blam blam blam blam. Megatons of fun.
Judge DreddFight crime in a huge 22nd century city.
Attack takes everything I like about Axis and Allies (different units with offensive/defensive capabilities, an economic system, naval combat) with everything I like about Risk (picking your own territory and more or less random unit placement for a less predictable tactics and strategy) and manages to avoid most of the bad stuff from both. It can be found at Toys R Us currently for about $20, or you can order it from http://eaglegames.net/ for $30.
Best of all, if you like the basic game, which contains all the economic cards, land units, cards representing naval units, and a board representing the western hemisphere of the world, you can buy an expansion. The expansion contains plastic naval units with more complex combat rules, a political system (your governments can be fascists, communist, monarcy, or democracy, with different bonuses and strengths for each), and a board representing the other half of the world. The basic game is good for six players and three to six hours of play, the full game can support 10-12 for some all-day sessions.
The games rules are fairly easy to learn in one go, although the implications as far as tactics go take a while to sink in. The units and board look great, and are large and detailed. The game single handedly reawakened my group's interest in the genre, bridging the gap between beer and pretzels and more serious wargaming. (I don't want to mislead the grognards, its still pretty beer and pretzels, but if all you've played is Risk and A&A, it can stretch you a bit.)
Speaking of Risk, I also like the new Risk 2210. Its classic Risk, but with "hero" units that can roll eight sided die against the standard six, sea and moon bases to conquer, some battle and diplomacy cards (somewhat similar to Castle Risk), and nuclear devastation tokens that can completely alter the board from game to game. Its a pretty fun diversion for Risk fans.
Like my comments? Try my podcast: http://www.baldmove.com
It's like Risk, but without all of the random elements. Diplomacy is all about making those alliances, rivalries, and back-stabs without having to roll the dice. Your strategy works because you planned correctly, keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. Or it doesn't work because someone decided to turn on you one turn before you planned on doing the same to them.
Once I played Diplomacy, I never went back to Risk.
OK, the computer program is officially called shareware according to the web site. I'm pretty sure that it's just a computer port of the original (classic) 2-player board game version, without the catapults, and so forth. No single player mode, as I'm sure that the AI would be very hard to do.
:)
I've only played the original 2-player version, without the catapults, etc.
Chris Butterfield (if you're out there), we should get a game going sometime.
Still lots of fun.
Tony Naef.
- Bohnanza (Iraqi negotiations - you will lose)
- Settlers of Catan
- Puerto Rico
- Citadels
- Carcasonne
- Carcasonne: Hunters and Gatherers
- Condotierre
I strongly recommend Fun Again Games for any orders you place. They were very helpful when one shipment was lost en route.Plus, Curt Schilling is one of the owners of MMP. How cool is that?
I HAVE CUBIC WISDOM THAT TRANSCENDS AND CONTRADICTS ONE DAY GODS
Vinci is a great game. To me, it plays a lot like History of the World but without HotW's problems (lack of balance, takes too long, plays poorly with certain numbers of players).
Another game I didn't see mentioned is Titan. It takes forever to play but it's a heck of a lot of fun.
Here is the URL to a group which games on a regular basis, and a list of the games we play - there might be such a group in your area. http://www.gamesclubofmd.org/GamesWePlay.asp
Another option would be to find a Science Fiction club in your area. I have yet to find a club which did not attract an active gaming population (and not just D&D, but every game noted above and them some.
Third (and please forgive the blantant plug), check out http://www.gamepuzzles.com Kadon Enterprises sells some very unique and challanging games - all very high quality and with different levels of strategy.
Good luck on your search
Like the subject said, Duel of Ages!
... you set a time limit, and whichever team has the most points at the end of that limit. In the likely event of a tie (only 2 available points, remember) you continue in sudden-death mode to see who gets the next point.
... all at once. There's expansion packs galore, enough to keep you entertained with "fresh" feeling games for years.
... beer money might end up in short supply for a while as you try to juggle financial priorities ;-)
There's a tutorial online if you want to get a sense of the "flavour". One of the neatest features is that there's only two points in the game
The game encourages cooperation, back-stabbing, strategy, risk-taking and bluffing
The downside is the the expansion packs are addictive
"The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth." -- Bene Gesserit Precept
Also, for a different kind of strategy, you might try out 1313 Dead End Drive. It's a game about inheritance. You start the game with a WHOLE bunch of heir game-pieces, dealt out to the players at random and in secret (any player can move any Heir piece during their turn), which must be moved out of the house/board in order to recieve their share of the loot. There is also a deck of action cards that let you do things like trip one of the many booby-traps within the house (thus eliminating an Heir, which causes their share of the loot to descend to the next Heir in the hierarchy (right down to the dog and cat)) or swap an Heir card with another player. The game ends when the deck runs out of action-cards, and the winner is the player whose heirs (the ones that made it out of the house alive) inherit the most loot.)
What is the difference between a small revolutionary change and a large evolutionary change?
Even before you buy the game if you manage to find it, the above site will give you an idea about it and help out with expansions and rule changes for the better of the game. They have done a HECK of a lot of work on continuing the development of the game, adding comodities, calamities, technologies, expanding the board, adding more players, rule changes, etc., which all create an even more interesting game.
I will say this, if you can not get the Advanced Civilization expansion set, the game is not NEARLY as good. But this is what makes it so hard to find. The regular Civilization game shows up on Ebay about 1-2 times a week and usually goes for around $80 depending on condition. However, Advanced Civ only shows up 1-2 times a month and goes for between $100-200 depending on condition. That is a lot of money to spend on a game if you are not sure you like it. I was lucky enough to play it about a year after it stopped being in production and absolutly loved the game. I was also lucky enough to actually find a store which still had it in stock (I called up every game store I could find, and found a place 80 miles away which still had it, they held it for me and I bought them, if I recall for their retail price of between $35-40 each, which is an absolute bargain now).
Another GREAT game is Republic of Rome also by Avalon Hill. Again, this is also no longer being made and is fairly rare to find. I didn't want to pay more then $150 for it and it took me 7 months to win an auction on Ebay for that price. Yes, there were several that went for less then that, but those were games that the sellers did not know if all the pieces existed anymore.
I would also check out other great Avalon Hill games like "Merchants of Venus" and "Blackbeard". Not everyone likes Blackbeard, but we do. We made some rules changes to add another player, it also seems to balance the game better (basically you do not really go in "turns", the person who's current turn it is pulls a card at the end of the turn to find out who goes next (the cards have a place on them for the number of players in the game and either a "blank", "player 1", "player 2", "player 3", or "player 4"). The game was designed for 4 people max, and if the blank come up, it remains that person's turn OR if it come up with your number (say player 3), it is also your turn. The blanks are there for the single player version of the game... Anyway, we changed the rules so you use the line for the number of players that you have minus 1 (i.e. if you have 4 players you use the 3 player game line), and if a blank shows up, it remains your turn, but if a certain player shows up, it is the player who is that many from the left of the person who drew the card (i.e. if player 2 is shown on the card, the person 2 people to the left of the current player now has a turn). I really helps balance the game more as well as give all the people at the table more turns instead of it being the same players turn 3 or 4 times in a row while everyone else does nothing but sit there...
Again, civilization is probably one of the greated board games ever created, especially if you have a large number of people (8-19 or more with the civproject.net expanded rules). Now it will take some time for you to get/make the board, pieces, cards, etc., if you use the civproject.net's expanded board and rules, but it is worth it to do. The regular Advanced Civ game is for 2-8 players and is really good as well (we play this the most, we only use the extra board/rules when we have more players).
I know I didn't talk much about Republic of Rome. It is too hard to describe. Basically I will give you this paraphrased quote from the rule book "The complexity of this game will make games such as 'Diplomacy' seem like 'Shoots and Ladders'". And to give you a hint, "Diplomacy" is a complex game.... You will proba
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
there is a fun homebrewn cardgame called programmer's nightmare. a set of PC instructions are set out on the table in a circle (the program loop) and each player places tokens (bits) on the cards before the game starts. As the game goes along, players win or lose tokens based on the instructions that are excecuted. pretty fun. google it.
There is a whole series of railroad management games published by Mayfair games. The best of the lot is Eurorails. This is an outstanding game. You draw your rail network on the game board as the game progresses, trying to manage cargos with rail building cost and reusability of the rail, and trying to compete for access to mountain passes and other limited access areas. Picture Railroad Tycoon, but in a well balanced multi player board game format. The average game lasts about 2 hours and plays well with 3 or more players. The other rail games in the series are a mixed lot. Nippon Rails is very difficult. Australian Rails fairly good. Empire Builder (North America Rails) is a bit too easy. Iron Dragon (the fantasy version featuring orks and trolls and such) and a fun diversion. Out of the all, Eurorails is the most balanced and has the most replayability.
My families favorite game is Solar Space Quest, which we got at a thrift store.
Basically it is like Monopoly with gravity wells and rocket fuel depletion. You travel through the solar system buying planets, moons, and space stations. Movement through space costs rocket fuel. If you cannot escape the gravity of a planet, you might end up visiting several of its moons. A fun strategy is to monopolize Jupiters moons, and rake in the money when someone gets stuck in orbit. Also there are space battles and under certain circumstances you can steal other players properties.
Zombies!!! from Twilight Creations rocks! Plus it has alot of really cool expansion paks to it.
http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/zombies/
If you can dig up an old copy of Hero Quest too you'd probably like that.
If you can get your hands on a copy of it, Robo Rally (by Wizards of the Coast) is board game perfection. Unfortunately it's out of print, so procuring a copy can run you over $100.
Emails between myself and friends usually have the subject line 'Build?' I've been playing these great rail games for about 6 years now and have several of them. Iron Dragon is available for computers, but the AI is pretty crummy as it strands itself, can't manage bankloans well and doesn't adapt to different goals (i.e. 8 cities, 350 to win)
Basically you build rail between cities and towns, and draw demand cards which have a certain payoff based somewhat on distance and difficulty. Good logistical skills help avoid costly dead-heading (running without any loads.) They're great games for 3-4 players, although 4 or more players on Iron Dragon can take 6 hours!
You can view all the Empire Build games here.
Latest purchases were Lunar Rails and Russian Rails. Fun!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Imperium Romanum
'nuff said...
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
Absolute gem of a game I picked up at GenCon in the early-mid 90's. Your victory depends on three elements being either on or off... thing is,BEING on or off does something different in each game, and YOUR motivation depends on what character your draw from a deck of cards. For instance if your goal is to be the king of a particular country, and someone whose goal is to control the monster seals the three elements while you own its token, you're likely to win... as would the monster controller! That's right, multiple people can win or lose if the outcome is favorable for their highly individual goal. Vicious battles to control the state of the bell book and candle arise, with incomplete knowledge of what will happen! It's brilliant!
Rare as heck I'd imagine, but worthy of an intense hunt. No! You can't have my copy!
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1738
Checking further, it is still in print. (!)
http://www.cloudkingdom.com/
Star Fleet Battles (SFB) is a tactical wargame of starship combat designed by Amarillo Design Bureau (ADB). Although based on the original Star Trek episodes from the latter half of the 20th century, SFB divirges from the original source material to provide players with an intricate and well-balanced selection of races, starships, and weapons. An admittedly complex, but well-designed system of rules governs the interactions between ships, and allows players almost unlimited flexibility in making command decisions.
Play is conducted on a two dimensional hexagon grid with die-cut counters (or miniatures) representing ships, terrain, fighters, etc. The most common scenario is a duel consisting of two players; however, there is no limit (except time) to the number of players or ships which may engage in simultaneous combat. At its heart, SFB emphasizes speed and maneuver coupled with the timing and rhythm dicated by the weapon systems of the ship(s).
For more info, visit the SFB homepage at: http://www.starfleetgames.com/
The games you named are good, as is Puerto Rico, Metro and the new War of the Ring.
Though the game taking up my time isn't a board game but Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings game, Evil Empire though they may be it's actually fun
That should help. Or watch the annual german board game price. If you can, fly over there and visit the exhibition in Essen. I think, it's somewhen in October.
Rail baron takes about 6 hours to play and is a bit like monopoly, but its fun because it uses real rail lines. Some even exist today.
Iron Dragon is very freeform. You have to draw out your rail lines in crayon on the board. There are, of course, a lot of game legalities you and your friends will argue about until you establish house rules. Once you get into the swing of it, its about a 4-hour games.
If you are into fast, fun, less strategic games try Doom: The Boardgame. It's easy, you can design your own levels and scenarios, figures are nicely modeled and *big* and it pulls its design and atmosphere from the original Doom 3 game. Players are putting new scenarios online all the time. There are some issues with marine strengths and the overwhelming number of Invaders in bundled scenarios but all of that can be fixed with already posted difficulty levels or house rules.
It's really something to run in retreat with your marine friends, holding off Imps and Spiders and then get cut off by a Hell Knight. They kicked my ass in the computer game and they are no less intimidating on the board
Never / COBALT-CORE
A great Go variant that is easy to learn yet challenging for years is Pente. Based on Go-moku and played on a Go board, the object is to be the first get 5 stones in a row. It was out-of-print for a couple of years, but is now made by Winning Moves
Fun game, with scrabble-like wordplay, but with cards.
I don't care about your karma, I don't care about what's hip. --Weird Al
Go is nice. :)
It will take you 15 min to learn the rules and rest of the life to actually learn the game.
cheers!
be sure to check out crossfire, or at the very least battledome
The World Boardgame Championships are held every year in August, and it has moved to Lancaster, PA as well. For more information, go to http://www.boardgamers.org/index.htm#wbc
I wish I had mod points. Go Diplomacy! You can even play online until you decide to buy the game, with an easy to use web interface, here : Diplomatic Pouch
My website
Might I humbly recommend a game called 'Alhambra'? http://www.boardgames.com/alhambra.html http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/6249 It's a tile/card based game that sort of reminds me of carcossone... but not really. I guarantee you'll love it.
Since you don't appear to have any aversion against long games I would highly recomend Any 18XX games. Most readily available are 1856 and 1870. Of these two I would prefer 1856 due to it's more vicious and fast paced nature.
For those not familiar with these games, they are primarily a economic games disguising like train games. The basic idea is to be the one with the most money on hand at the end. Do note that this is not the same as generating the most money for your company. (Indeed you might want to drive a company near bankrupt then dump it on a unsuspecting opponent)
They play best with 5-6 players and take 4-8 hours (depending on experience)
For a lighter train game I would recomend Age of Steam, a very well paced game that works well for 3-6 players and take approx. 2 hours.
Also of note FFG just released Twilight Imperium 3rd ed. Which is worth a look.
There is an open source computer version of Titan, that covers many varients and can be played online or against rather weak AI, called Colossus. If you feel like playing against a human opponent, email me. I can also recommend Carolous Magnus (also out of print unfortunately, but more easily obtained than a copy of Titan.)
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
One of my all time favorites.
Racing cars around the track (2 come with the game, more available to purchase) doesn't sound like it's overly interesting, but it's a surprisingly complex and strategic games. Dice represent each gear - 1st gear will only let you move 1-2 spaces. 6th gear has you moving 20-30. So, as you enter the corner, do you risk staying in 4th gear, or play it safe and gear down?
It's easy to get into, and relatively easy to strategize for, but a good ro bad roll can dramatically alter the race.
Hex! Also known as Nash, after the late mathematician John Nash.
. htm
From this site:
http://www.mazeworks.com/hex7/about/invent
"The game Nash was in fact Hex, which Nash had invented in 1948 independently of Piet Hein. (According to Martin Gardner, some of the students also referred to the game as John, because it was often played on the hexagonal tiles of bathroom floors.)"
More info here:
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~javhar/hex/
KDE version here:
http://hex.retes.hu/six/
Enjoy!
Shogun, from the makers Axis & allies. Very fun stategy game.
not that you or many other people will get to read this (second page, anonymous, etc.), but I have to wholeheartedly endorse Jungle Jam. Its quick, fun, and definately something a little different for you to enjoy-- it is one of the only tabletop games I've played that has all of the players jumpy and twitchy near the end. Basicly, everyone has a stack of cards and there is a wooden 'totem' in the middle of the table. Everyone flips over a card and if your card matches someone else's card then you try to be the first to grab the totem. There is more to it, but that is the basic gameplay. So I hope someone out there gives this fun game a chance!
One of my favorites has always been Pathfinder. It looks a little like Battleship, but instead of shooting at invisible battleships, you're trying to navigate through an invisible maze.
Each player has two grids - one orange, and one green. Each player makes "his" maze on his orange grid, and this one is hidden by a partition from his opponent. Each player's green grid IS visible to his oponnent, and this is where he keeps track of where he has been in his opponent's maze, and what where he knows walls exist.
Each player's maze hides a pawn. When you find your opponent's, you win!
Great wargames include the "block" series by Columbia Games including the venerable "EastFront". Relatively quick and easy (for wargames) they are a lot of fun.
While usually considered a miniatures game, the boxed BattleTech set has Cardboard mechs that can be used on the hex maps. Simple and fun if you like the genre.
Out of print but still available are the underrated Centurian future ground combat game and Interceptor space combat game.
The games by Cranium are also a lot of fun.
The Grandaddy of all this type of game; it pre-dates Risk and the others. Avalon Hill bought the game in the late 70s when the original publisher went out of business.
It is unique not only in having no die, but in the players not taking turns. A gamesmaster collects the players sealed moves, and at the time-limit for the "turn" all players moves are revealed simultaneously.
The game really hinges upon diplomacy, actual diplomatic machinations between the players. And since all moves are revealed at the same time, you can never be certain what your purported ally is doing.
Because alliances are the meat of the game you need to allow a good long time for play. You also need a way for players to meet and scheme without other player seeing or overhearing their meetings. Plan on playing in a good-sized house with many rooms, or with large wooded grounds, or perhaps a hedge maze, anything that will allow secrecy.
Play starts in the year 1910 and continues through 1918. There are 18 turns to the game, divided into Spring and Fall moves, the object being to control Europe. Figure about 30 minutes per turn, that's not unreasonable for a real-time game.
Because players move simultaneously it is a particularly good game for playing through the mail. The gamesmaster collects the moves via post and mails the combined move to the players each month. The print Diplomacy 'zine has been replaced by online versions, but the finest was probably John Boardman's wonderful Graustark.
When Avalon Hill acquired the game they Bowdlerized the rules slightly by removing what was originally the ultimate rule. But it is really that original, final rule that exposes the spirit of the game. It read, "Anything not expressly forbidden is allowed."
The closer you are to the code, the happier you are. - Ancient Geek Proverb
We recently did a test run of Soldier Emperor for use a simulation for a War & Peace class, as a possible replacement for Supremacy. Among a large group it was not practical, however among a smaller group the gameplay would be excellent, with the possibilbily of drawing the game out for several days/weeks if you so desired. For a large group I'd still recommend Supremacy.
While I've seen a few mentions of Sid's works here (Most notably Acquire), there are other works by him which are worth looking into. Specifically, I look at this statement:
We have worked through the gamut of games...
And wonder if you are aware of Sid's wonderful book, A Gamut of Games which contains protoypical versions of many of his best games, including Focus and Solitaire Dice, as well as some great discussions on gaming from a gamers POV, from a collector's POV, and from a designer's POV. The book is sadly out of print, but used copies can be found in all the old familiar places.
Next, you'll likely want to pick up a copy of Sid's answer to Clue, that being Sleuth. I find it superior to even Mystery of the Abbey (Which I would probably like better if I could figure out a way to keep track of where stuff is after mass), and it only costs $15 retail.
Another really interesting game by Sid (and currently being published by Face2Face games, who publishes the current versions of Sleuth and Buyword as well) is I'm the Boss, which is purely a dealmaking game, with plenty of cutthroat action.
I'd recommend Buyword too, except I've never played it.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
For all things Diplomacy, including how to play by email through the automatic adjudicator, see The Diplomatic Pouch, run by the mighty Manus Hand.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
FRAG: the first person shooter, without a computer. I'd truely advice you this one. Falling (more then 4 players hihghly adviced): Yes, I know. It's a card game... but a really good one. Also has a /very/ high pace.
Don't forget India Rails, British Rails, and Lunar rails. These are good tools for teaching geography. Also, no dice, just skill required to whomp the other guys! Takes about one hour per player. (Wild with 6 players!)
:) You do need a whole day to play.
I have played these longer than I have computer games! Still fun.
(Warning: you need friends in the flesh to play these games)
Also, any of the 18xx games (1830, 1835, etc) make Monopoly look simple. Good way to get your mind around how the suits think.
is perhaps the most consistently interesting and impressive feat of popular boardgame design I have had the pleasure to play, and gets big bonus points for following the source novel content and incorporating it into the game mechanics.
I really like Abalone. http://uk.abalonegames.com/
Can't think of a more fun tabletop game than this
There is a game made by Avalon Hill called Betrayl at House on the Hill. It's a tile game. The game is split into two phases. For the first part you build the haunted house and basically collect items and beef up your character. Eventually something triggers the "haunt" and the game shifts gears. There are 50 different haunts. One player becomes the traitor and the others band together to stop him/her. Every haunt has a different objective and the game is a ton of fun.
----- Mike Sklens Staff Writer, Planet GameCube.com
http://members.aol.com/wergames/ahreprom.htm
http://grognard.com/titler.html#r6
Searched for it in the discussions, but didn't find it mentioned. It's by far the best tabletop game I've ever played.
It's more a game of politics than a war game, but it has its share of war scenarios. The political intrigue of Roman times is well captured, and the battle aspects are a result of political decision making.
FRAG by Steve Jackson games, basically a FPS converted to a board game, tons of fun and has expansion packs and fan created maps and mods as well, check out the site.
Also check out the rest of the games from Steve Jackson, lots of good stuff..
A top 10 game at boardgame geeks site. Very good game and widely popular with different players.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Contrary to what GW wants people to think, there are vastly more wargames around, almost all of which are *much* cheaper than GW. There are games for all tastes, from Sci Fi, historical, fantasy, naval, etc etc. Check out The Miniatures Page for a great resource.
Mercator Grid is a networked real-time strategy game that incorporates actual GIS map terrain and NATO map symbology (MIL-STD-2500B). Mercator Grid can be configured to include several player roles including fire team leaders and commanders.
If you're looking to buy any of these games here is a nice site for quickly looking up prices at many of the online game stores. You should also strongly consider supporting your local game shop if you have one (check the phone book). They can be a great resource for finding new opponents and some shops host a weekly board game night.
Republic of Rome by Avalon Hill is an excellent game.
It offers real interaction and diplomacy even rows between players, much unlike other games where you simply plow along.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Someone else may have mentioned this, but Risk 2210AD is another genius game from Avalon Hill. I never knew how boring the orginal risk was until I played this far better remake.
I would highly recommend the card game Set. You can check it out at http://www.setgame.com/set/index.html (for the rules) and then, if you want to actually try the game: play my applet of it at http://samoht621.tripod.com . It is even more fun with a few friends...
Diplomacy is a game of pure neogtiating skill and strategy. It's really a unique game because your success is entirely based on your effectiveness at manipulating your friends :).
I remember a game I played where one of the people involved was completely honest and open with everybody. However, when he talked to them, he always sounded like he was just about to stab them in the back. So of course people would betray him before he got the chance.
Of the tabletop style games, this is the only game that my wife will actually play. She can't stand Axis and Allies, etc, but with this game she has had quite a bit of fun.
One word of caution: NEVER EVER DRINK WHILE PLAYING DIPLOMACY. A game that is primarily based on back stabbing can get people really cranky when they've had a few.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
You could see http://www.davincigames.com/, it's the website of a relatively new italian boardgame developer.
They produced Bang! and Lupus In Tabula, both very good games (lupus could be a great drinking game).
I recently bought Mr. Bill that it seems a good party game.
The best site for boargame information is www.boardgamegeek.com.
Classic Battletech - it's one of the very few things that can pull me away from my laptop. (Except when I use the Artillery Resolution Tracker program in conjunction w/ the table top game) Takes damn near forever to do anything, but that's part of the fun. I recently got back in to Battletech after a decade or so hiatus, and was really disappointed in all the new stuff - after FASA sold BTech, it seems to have gone downhill. Regardless, you can still pick up all the old stuff on ebay and pretend that the new stuff never happened.
Cosmic Encounter remains my all my time favorite board game for larger groups--it takes about 6 people to really be fun and you can easily play with over 10 if you have enough expansion parts.
The only similarity to Magic is that each player draws a card at the beginning of the game that determines which type of alien you are and therefore your special abilities. Your style of play totally changes based on which of the aliens you are, which is part of what keeps it so fresh for repeats: it's never quite the same dynamic.
I recommend The Mutant Chronicles. Easily available on EBay, and lots of fun with groups of 4 or so. Give it a look.
Tom Jolly has designed some interesting board games. Wiz-War is tough to find these days. I've been playing it since around 1990, and have a huge custom set of my own which my friends are addicted to. So addicted that I can rarely get them to play Drakon, which sadly also seems to be out of print. Drakon takes about 30-60 minutes to play and is very accessible.
Cave Troll is also very accessible and playable in under an hour. I recommend Drakon and Cave Troll wholeheartedly.
This is a fantastic game if you have a few hours, spare, a group of friends, and in interest in history.
Puerto Rico
Goa
Tikal
Ticket to Ride
Power Grid
Or if you want card games:
Guillotine
San Juan
Bang
Wizard
Bohnanza
And if you're playing Carcassonne now, make sure to get the Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders expansions. I'm a huge fan of funagain.com, they have a great website and they'll even do price matching if you find something cheaper somewhere else.
It's played on a table, so it qualifies, right?
It's not a bug, it's a feature
set
very cool, very geeky. even one glass of beer or wine will totally destroy your ability to play this game.
you should be able to find a deck at the game store at the mall.
I clearly recommend Diplomacy, which has been discussed a few times already.
I also recommend Dune. Complex and interesting. I especially like the fact that each player (there has to be exactly six) plays in a slightly different way. I found a website with a copy of the rules and a good picture of the board here: http://www.geocities.com/sherlockazulu/pbem4/. Also, there is a good description and interesting ressources here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/121
I like Twilight Imperium by Fantsy Flight Games, and HeroScape. Be warned though, twilight imperium can last well into 12 hours:)
Boggle! Shake it up and find words. Can be very competitive and very fun.
It seems as though you enjoy political game sin which you build, debate, etc. My list follows: Talisman (best fantasy adventure game) Puerto Rico (Fun colony building game) Allegiance: War of Factions (Political city building game - I helped with the game design) Bohnanza (cool bean farming game) These are all the games I am currently playing. I also suggest you head over to the Board Game Geek to see what else is availible out there. - Patheos
My favorite is still Cosmic Encounters but it is in it's third edition now which pales in comparison to the earlier two. Originally introduced by Eon, I am unclear why Mayfair and later Hasbro had to release simplified versions although to be fair the second edition from Mayfair does have a lot less ambiguity in the rules.
The earlier two editions can still be found second hand.
Merchants of Venus may also be worth looking into if you can find it and the various current train boardgames are fun as well.
Very good game. I like the daimyo system because 1) the game progresses even with 4 or 5 evenly matched players and 2) there's much less of the tedius unit-moving that occurs in axis and allies.
Other cool features: turn order varies from round to round, some tasks are done synchronously is Shogun which were done one-at-a-time in A&A (like buying units), and armies contain hand-to-hand units (samurai, spearmen) and ballistics (riflemen, bowmen). The ballistics get to roll first, and any hand-to-hand units killed can't fight back.
I've always thought it might be fun to play shogun on a risk board, but I've never tried it.
After spending more than 2 hours in the board game store in my mall, I came across a game called Nautilus. Roughly an hour and a half to play through, it involves a number of different levels of strategy. The concept is simple: All players take turns laying down tiles which make up an undersea base, complete with living and 5 different kinds of work "modules." Then launch your submarines and explore the ocean floor, attempting to not only collect the most items, but also to have the most researchers in the research modules. With a fixed number of researchers, and the number of researchers in each module type influencing the way your sub can act, the game gets rather strategic. Plus the game looks damn impossible to understand to people who walk in on you playing it, which is always a plus. Incidentially, if there's a "game shop" near you that specializes in tabletop or board games, talk to the guys there, at the game store near me, they get a customer every 6 hours or so, and spend the rest of their time gaming against each other.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Close, you're referring to the late Sid Sackson. He's perhaps one of the graeatest and most prolific American game designers. Of his titles, check out Acquire, I'm the Boss, Can't Stop, Metropolis, and his book, A Gamut of Games. He also produced another 50+ games, and influenced a whole generation of game designers.
"Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
I am lazy to read them all, but I suggest: www.gamesworkshop.com
Even if you don't end up liking one of their many games they will waste plenty of your time and money while you learn their games.
I think probably all of these have been listed already, and boardgamegeek.com is a good place to go. I'll just a couple more votes for a few of my favorites:
* Puerto Rico
* San Juan (kinda a faster paced, simpler, less direct-competition version of Puerto Rico)
* Carcassonne
* Chinatown (not in print in US; had to get this imported)
* Bohnanza
Carcasonne, Settlers, Puerto Rico, Tikal, ... each of these is a representative of a refreshing trend that has held on for at least a decade now: The decade of a new generation of german boardgames. It's the first time we actually see leasure products being translated en masse from german into english. I can say that any of these games are good for perfect passtime.
http://www.brettspielwelt.de/ is a website that has many official web/internet variants of these types of games with english versions aswell. It's main gaming client runs with java and gives a chance to test games that you might want to purchase as hardcopy. If you find a game that you like I can strongly recommend getting the german version and a seperate translation of the rules, as german boradgames, especially the new generation, are of an impressive quality.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You should check eBay for old Avalon Hill wargames, published mostly during 1970's. Simplest one is definitely Diplomacy, a game for max 7 players, playing which is also the simplest way to lose a friend:)
A bit more complex is Panzerblitz, a brigade-level armoured warfare on the WW2 eastern front, together with its clone, the Arab-Israeli wars. Note that these are for two players only.
If you are ready to spend a week or two studying rules, best and final wargame solution is definitely Squad Leader (and later Advanced Squad Leader), a simulation of WW2 warfare on tactical level. In (A)SL you control up to bataillon-sized units. Check www.advancedsquadleader.com for ASL modules, which are being re-published now.
Of course, these are NOT something you play in a lazy sunday afternoon - warfare simulations are stressful, they make you bite your nails, become paranoid and probably hate your oponent... No, you can't make your girlfriend play Squad Leader:)
My buddies and I are hard-core Risk players. (basically three get-togethers a month for the last seven years).
:)
I decided to pick up Risk 2210 as a change of pace and we absolutely love it. Basically, think of all the fun that you've ever had playing Risk, add three levels of (easy to learn) game enhancements and strategy to it and you've got Risk 2210.
As we were learning the game, our group came to the conclusion that Avalon Hill (publishers) must have play-tested the heck out of the game, because every situation and question that we had about the rules was addressed in the rulebook or FAQ.
The only drawback I find is that games are longer as it takes us about three hours for a game so we usually only get to play one (compared to three or four games of classic Risk). Still a definitely good buy!
Another nice thing about the game is that you can also play the standard version of Risk on the same board (so it's basically both games in one), or you can play 'classic' Risk with all the extra territories (69 instead of 42..).
YMMV
But the two times I've tried this game, it's been a complete failure. The tasks are too easy, and lack any depth. It's like an american version of a cool foreign film.
JMHO
Speaking of "robot" games. A good one is Ricochet Robot (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/51). Luck only affects the game, not individual players. Once each round is started only the skill of the player affects the outcome.
And Samurai Swords is the equivalent re-release of Shogun from MB.
If you're into something deeper than risk and A&A you might wan't to look into the potentially adictive/expensive world of tactical miniture tabletops. Heavy Gear has one of the best rulesets and is generally considered the better "giant robot wargame". If this is your type of game, be shure to check it out before you seek the dark side (read: Batteltech fraction ;-) ). :-)
Yet both can be(come) addictive and very time consuming - especially if you start into miniature painting and landscape building and all that. You have been warned.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Thank you.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
For a good game I would recomend Warhammer40,000. It can be found at http://gamesworkshop.com .
I recommend the card game "Nuclear War" - which is still available from Flying Buffalo (www.flyingbuffalo.com)...it's a great beer-n-pretzels game, but there is a lot of strategy involved in this game as well (especially if you mix in the cards in the Escalation and Proliferation expansion sets)...
;)
Oh - and it helps to have a sense of humor about this, too - not everyone is going to laugh out loud when you play the Supergerm card and kill 20 million people
For shame. The best game they released. Easily. If you can get a few friends together and start playing round robin tourney's, its a hell of a lot of fun. We used to play 5 people with two teams each, to round out league numbers.
Yay me!
I always like Hero Quest, lot's of expansion opporotunity, and if you're feeling creative you can make up your own levels. Best when played with 3 or more people.
Distribution of boxes with hot air is always limited to geographic markets, so maybe you cannot get this game in your country.
Acquire: try to acquire a mayoraty steak in companies you found en merge based on tiles on a board. Bit much randomness, but a fun game with red ears.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Karem board is where it's at. What is Karem board, you ask? Any Desi people here care to elaborate?
I don't have the time to play long and complicated board games these days (plus we have cats and anything left out is helpfully rearranged for us overnight...) so go for things geared to run for shorter time periods. I can definitely recommend Railway Rivals and Union Pacific as good games, easy to get into and (important for us) short play-time duration. Union Pacific says play-time one hour on the box and the only time we took longer than that was the very first game we played!
Didn't see anything in here on them, so I thought I'd toss out the venerable Rail Builder series. Empire Builder, British Rails, Iron Dragon (my fave), and several others all feature the same basic idea: build track, operate train(s) on it, carry goods from place of production to place of demand. Sounds simple, right? It can be fiendishly complex, cut-throat (especially with more than 3 players), and unbelievably entertaining. Five stars from someone who's been gaming for nearly 40 years. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Very interesting. Apparently the current rules help the defender slightly, but both models (and I mean the game models, not your webpage) are seriously bugged in the sense that a large attacking force usually wins against an entrenched enemy of greater size. This is almost never the case in real life, so I'm very surprised that that's how risk works. In the handfull of games I've played (all under the old rules), I assumed having an equal army meant I was safe from attack. Apparently my opponents made the same assumptions, because they only attacked me with larger numbers.
...
...
...
...
I'll spare you the trouble of trying random numbers on the link provided by the parent. Here are the cutoff points where equal, -1 and -2 attacking armies usually win.
Old rules:
A1 vs D1 = 42%
A2 vs D2 = 51%
A7 vs D8 = 48%
A8 vs D9 = 50%
A9 vs D10 = 51% (10 v 10 = 61%)
A13 vs D15 = 49%
A14 vs D16 = 50%
A15 vs D17 = 51% (17 v 17 = 65%)
Current rules:
A4 vs D4 = 48%
A5 vs D5 = 52%
A10 vs D11 = 49%
A11 vs D12 = 51% (12 v 12 = 58%)
A16 vs D18 = 49%
A17 vs D19 = 50%
A18 vs D20 = 51% (20 v 20 = 63%)
It's unrealistic but probably necessary for a fun game. If the defender were greatly favored players would just slowly increase the number of defenders on their territories making them nearly impossible to capture. The mechanics make it so that attacking is preferable to sitting and doing nothing.
Tigris and Euphrates (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/42) is undoubtably a good choice based on the games you have enjoyed.
I can only recommend the games I own or have played a bit - good info on boardgamegeek.com for all of these:
Power Grid - good for 4 players (2 hours)
Puerto Rico - good for 3-5 players (1.5 hours)
Goa - involving 'solitaire' for 4 players (1.5 hours)
Maharaja - better with 4 or 5 players, but I haven't played enough of this yet...
Acquire - oldie but a goodie - 4 players+
Modern Art - good with 4 or 5, 1 hour max.
Citadels - Card game. can support over 7 players. 1 hour per game, roughly.
I've also really enjoyed playing Princes of Florence and Tigris & Euphrates.
Settlers of Catan doesn't really compare to some of these games like Puerto Rico or Power Grid, it's too simplistic and random in my opinion.
I got HeroScape (http://www.hasbro.com/heroscape/) for my son (who is 8) for Christmas. We've played a couple of games and it's really very fun. So far he's been kicking my @$$ but it's great to have a game that nearly anyone can play. The fact that you can build your own battle grounds makes the game scenarios limited only by your imagination.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but I'd recommend Magic: The Gathering. It's a great game that (usually) involves logical thinking and it really appeals to the male "use something I built to destroy something you built" drive. Not only is it a fun game to play with friends, but most comic book/gaming stores run tournaments on a weekly basis (I actually just got home from one), where you can meet and socialize with other players, trade cards, play for prizes, etc.
;)
Anyone considering trying MTG should be warned however, that it's a very addictive game with a bit of a learning curve. It takes some time to become familiar with the game mechanic and the over 2,000 (and growing) available cards. You will lose a lot of games and spend a lot of money, but it's a fun game that causes you to *gasp* use your brain, and relatively speaking, there are much worse things you could be doing with your time and money.
Mexican Train is a domino game, not board game. If easy-to-learn games are OK with you, it's a very fun game. The basic idea is that there is something like a card in the middle of the game, with people building "trains" of dominoes out from there. It's apparently popular with the RV crowd, but I (an non-RVer) have loved playing. Check it out!
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
I suggest you try your hand at "Wooden Ships & Iron Men" an old Avalon Hill title. They don't make the game anymore, you'll have to fight on eBay for one of the few complete copies of it. I'm in the middle of revising the rule book and adding a computer simulation addendum. I'm also updating and re-releasing the 'ships (6)' command line version of the game. My bookmarks related to wsim are on del.icio.us.
Agreed, although I do have a friend who always - and I do mean always - wins. So I'd say not completely luck.
Although, still too much luck for me. Try Diplomacy!
Be sure to play this game with people whose friendship you do not mind losing (or who enjoy getting stabbed in the back). I played this game when I was in college with a group of friends, and there are some who still will not speak to each other. Some of the lies, deceptions and betrayals made Survivor look like diplomacy for dummies. I still have the same copy of the game, unopened lurking in my closet - like Jumanji.
It's great fun. Love it.
The meme police, They live inside of my head
Two board games I warmly recommend, if you like german logic-based games like Settlers is Drakon and Maginor.
There is a game called "Frag" which is a tabletop version of an FPS-game. Get your hands on the rocket launcher and start the bodycount.
Then we have the Steven Jackson cardgames, like Illuminati and Chez Geek. If you haven't tried, yor definitely should.
Finally, there is a new swedish made game that you should try to get your hands on. "Kablamo" is russian-roulette as tabletop. Try to get your opponents to blow their brains out, one by one, while keeping track of your own barrel. Insane amounts of fun!
A thousand more is out there, this is just from the top of my head.
It is very simple in its concept but very complex in how it is won.
Check it out.
It isn't new.
It doesn't have 3d graphics.
You can buy it in most game stores or in any Chinatown near you.
My friends and I have been playing a game called Rally Sport. http://www.rallysportgame.com/ It's also a fun game to play with the ladies too.
- Munchkins (Steve Jackson Games) a D&D type RPG spoof card game, good fun. Citidels (Silver Line) - city and guilds card game. Throught the Desert (Reiner Knizia) - it involves camels (need I say more?) and Titan (OK - I know you can't buy this anymore but I still think it's great!)
"The creator, absorber and destroyer of light, love and fluffy things..."
It's a great game, though you can only play it with two people. It helps to have a good poker face and be able to bluff, and the game is always different each time you play it. I used to play that game with a friend for hours.
If you can read this then I forgot to check "Post Anonymously"
Iron Dragon
You need a PhD to actually decypher the rules, but the game play is actually fairly simple once you get the hang of it.
Believing something doesn't make it true. Not believing something doesn't make it false.
This game is suprisingly GREAT. There's a really cool bidding phase, and a great planning phase. There are random things that happen (cards), but those same random events apply to EVERYONE, so you're able to build your strategy on what other players might do, and based on which random things will happen to EVERYONE. It's possible to have a game where noone gets reinfocements (for instance). Likewise it's possible to play a game where everyone get's reinforcements EVERY round, or maybe just for the first 3 rounds, and then never again. Everyone puts down little markers and then everyone flips over their markers at the same time to determine actions. The best of Diplomacy, even easier! It's also a set 10 rounds, so you build your strategy accordingly.
Atleast i think thats what it was called. It was table top game where you raced chariots around a colosseum. I played it at an RPG group gathering when I was in college (mid 90s). It was a ton of fun, Don't remember exactly what it was called but Colosseum sounds right.
Many moons ago while in college, I was the webmaster for the Hot Death Uno Homepage. It's probably lost forever since I don't think the Wayback Machine archived that long ago. Regardless, I'm almost positive there are still drunken college students playing this game, so Google it.
For the price of two decks of Uno cards and a Sharpie, almost endless hilarous entertainment is available, especially if combined with appropriate quantities of alcohol. With cards like the Holy Defender and Harvester of Sorrows, how can you go wrong?
... but learn how to play it RIGHT!
Nearly everyone adds retarded rules that ruin the game, such as the Free Parking jackpot. The FP is supposed to be a "free landing space" according to the rules. The FP Jackpot adds far too much money to the game's economy, adds too much luck to the game, and makes the game take longer. (Playing it right, I've had full games as short as an hour.)
Also, be sure to use the auction rule, which many people ignore. If anyone lands on a property and refuses to buy it, it gets auctioned to the highest bidder.
Also know about hosing shortages. There can be 32 houses and 12 hotels in the game but no more. (Many people naively use other objects for houses and hotels when they run out.)
Get the book The Monopoly Companion, endorsed by Parker Brothers. It has a very good, thorough explanation of the rules.
Im would recommend another Wizards product, namely Betrayal at House on the Hill.
a yalhouse
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/betr
You can think of it as "The Un-Official Scooby-Doo" game. The premise is that the players are exploring a haunted house. About halfway through the game, one of the players is randomly determined to be the traitor who now usually becomes the adversary. I say usually because there are 40 different betrayal scenarios based on which items have been discovered, and where they were discovered. Each game runs about 45-60 mins, and because of the multiple scenarios, you can play this game all night.
Game of Thrones is the way to go. Whether or not you've read the books, this is a wonderful fantasy/medieval strategy game. You certainly don't need to be familiar with the setting to play, though the board game is a perfect fit for the novels. It's especially fun because the game supports as much or as little roleplaying/powergaming/diplomacy/whatever-else your gaming group wants. The game is ideal for 4 players but works fine for 3-5 (or a sixth if you toss in the expansion, which I have to recommend.)
Since playing GoT I have had no desire to play any other board game at all.
Slap the lever to eat the most!
Betrayal at House on the Hill
:-)
New from Avalon Hill. Fast and Furious, and fun to play, tile based, with good replay value.
3-6 Players and lasts about an Hour.
We just bought this and played 4 straight games we enjoyed it that much
Hero Scape is a new table top game that is great!!! Lots of fun to setup and play!!
Theres a demo of the game on the site see below
http://www.hasbro.com/heroscape/
If you like Dominoes? Try Mexican Train.
It very similar to doninoes but allot more fun.
We came up with the idea of having everyone throw in $5 before each game and then burning the money if there was a nuclear winter... but we never tried it :-) Other games to try:
Diplomacy: 3+ hours
Classic back stabbing Risk-like European warfare game without dice
Web of Power: 90 min
Simple European warfare resources/influence game
San Jaun: 45-60 min
Puerto Rico light (no board or pieces, but uses cards)
Bang: 30-60 min
Awesome wild wild west card game
Great Dalmuti: can play any amount of time with 4-8 players
Like Asshole, but is fun sober
Fortress America: (out of print) 3-5 hours
The best of the Gamemaster Axis and Allies type games; America under attack in 1980s
Axis and Allies Pacific: 3-5 hours
The second best of the Gamemaster Axis and Allies type games; Pacific theater with lots of ships and planes
Dune: (out of print) 2-5 hours
Really interesting game about the books in which you can play one of the major powers
Try to find a local gaming group. Not only will you find good players, but I'm sure they will have no shortage of opinions on what games are worth playing ;-)
DallasGames.com for those in DFW. Anyone can play and we're really friendly. Just jump right in.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
I recommend Beer Pong and Flip Cup.
If you are playing games like Settlers of Catan, I assume you have 4-6 people regularly playing?
Personally, I really miss playing Settlers. We used to play it all of the time, but with everyones schedules, it is usually just the 2 of us.
But I think this is an important question. If you are looking for 2-player, 4-6 player, or 2-6 player games it makes a huge difference which ones I would recommend.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
We'll note that the 1:2 roll is still a "one winner" roll, but it's not very wise.
And the following can have up to two winners (read carefully; this is where the grandparent's results are probably flawed).
Applying the current rules of Risk (involves building a table to prevent exponential recursion) and using the maximum possible rolls, these numbers produce significantly different results than the grandparent's website; however, they don't change the fact that the attacker has an advantage for A9 / D9 (even), A19 / D20 (-1), A31 / D33(-2), A42 / D45 (-3), A54 / D58 (-4), A64 / D69 (-5), A76 / D82 (-6) and A86 / D93 (-7).
Astute readers will notice that those cutoffs fall along a line: 8111 * (A - 3) == 7441 * (D - 2). Those numbers are significant in that the cumulative expectation of winning in a 3:2 roll are (2 * 2386 + 3339) / 7776 = 8111 / 7776 (or 104.3%), while the cumulative expectation of losing is 7441 / 7776 (or 95.7%). Together, these means you expect to take 1.043 enemy armies per every 0.957 armies lost, which translates to about a 9% bonus to the attacker on 3:2 rolls.
Cheers. I hope this helps. :)
Well, another incredibly great game is DnD(dungeons and dragons) and/or D20 modern. There are no limitations as to how you want to play it. Whats even better is that you can find all the information you need at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/s rd35 and basically anywhere else on the WoTC website. Also, www.enworld.org is a very useful forum for additional info/questions.
Texas 42 or just 42 is a bride like dominoes game using the standard set of dominoes. One full game take about 4 rounds and that takes 1 hour. Requires 4 people.
http://proft.50megs.com/42home.html
I've been playing 2 miniatures battle games:
DND Miniatures - more complicated overall gameplay but better for strategy.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/minis
Star Wars Miniatures - Faster easier gameplay but easy enough rules for an 8 year old. Figures look extra good and can be used for other games.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=swminis
Each requires 2 or more players and takes 30 to 45 minutes per game.
Merchents of venus is a very fun Avalon hill game that doesn't take all day to setup and can take up to 5 hours to play. I highly recommend it.
http://www.princeton.edu/~mafia/rules.htm Very noisy game!
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
http://funagain.com/control/product/~product_id=00 4487
Many a lunch over this game.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of Go. The rule set isn't very clean, ie, there are many exceptions to the main rules. Hex is mathematically similar to Go, but its rules are very clean (maybe only exception being the swap-rule), and you can't get a draw.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junta_%28board_ game%29">Junta! is a classic, but does require the wearing of fake beards and the smoking of Cuban cigars while playing.
"...we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." B.Spears 2003
I am fortunate to have some really avid board gamers as friends who have introduced me to a number of cool games. As other posters have mentioned, the game "Zombies!!!" is a lot of fun... "Lord of the Fries" can be a quick and fun game as well. I *really* enjoy playing "Drakon" which has a random element, but requires a lot of strategy to play well. In Drakon, players must collect gold and escape Drakon's dungeon while placing room pieces and growing the size of the dungeon maze.
I really enjoy the card game "Munchkin" a lot for the humor. Not a board game, but a lot of fun. :)
If you enjoy fantasy/adventure board games, I highly suggest Runebound! A lot of fun, best played with more than two players, but is totally playable with only two. The game can take several hours, depending on how you play. :)
I got some good exposure of some good board games on the website GameTable Online that eventually caused me to buy an actual copy of the Drakon and Lord of the Fries. To give you some more gaming ideas, a run-down with pictures and descriptions of top games listed on their website include:
Good luck in your search!I've found this one to be very fun. Yhe card packs are under $5 each, and they've just released an expansion pack.
You can spend a lifetime and not master it, but you can learn the basic rules in an afternoon, and they haven't changed for some time. That's a game worth playing. Okay its only 2 playe. Get yourself a copy of Chessmaster 10 too. Excellent tutorials and not bad for game play.
Your approach to the problem is very similar to mine: I also used dynamic programming to calculate sub-goals in a sparse table with relevant probabilities to keep the time complexity polynomial. However, I am pretty confident that the results my web app gives are correct. :-) Please, email me (address is found on my web page), and I'll show you the Java source code and the algorithm. We can then discuss the possible problems with more insight to how the calculator really works.
- Ismo
My self, my wife and several of our friends play Munchkins regularly and very much enjoy it. It's a stab your friend in the back sort of game, where you go crawling through a dungeon with your party, and try to get to level 10 before the rest of your party. Preferably by killing them all off multiple times. The cards are hillarious, and will make anyone who has ever played a dungeon crawl in D&D giggle. There are a number of expansions worth getting, such as star munchkins (my wife especially likes building impressive laser weapons, such as x-rayser-laser-dazer-phaser-goawayzer with improved special effects. She still lost tho!) munchkin bites (vampire munchkins, yay), munkin fu (martial arts munchkins... hi-ya!) and add-ons to the original munchkins (Sluggy fans: Watch for Pete Adam's monster contribution)
:)
Highly recommended, fun for you and all your friends too. Until they hate you for winning that is
Minupla
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
My favorite boadgame for two players is definitely go. The rules are easy to learn, its fun even for beginners, but the strategy has enough depth to give the game beauty and lets you improve over a lifetime. It can also be played in a shortened version(smaller board) that goes fast if you are in a time crunch. And the boards are fairly cheap. I also recommend Magic: The Gathering. It takes a bit more of a financial investment to get started, but its a lot of fun and is extremely versitile as it can be played by one-infinite players(though it starts bogging down and goes slowly with over 6) and has several variations.
Board Game Ratings posts a list of the best board games each year. This year they picked Memoir '44, Ticket to Ride, and St. Petersburg. I really like St. Petersburg.
Gamefest and Board Game Ratings.
Everyone must own this game of construction and destruction. It's somewhat like jenga, except someone wins.
Game of the year for Germany in 2002.
More info via wikipedia.
Yeah, I used to play Illuminati too. Here's my new thang:
http://www.sjgames.com/ninjaburger/
Ninja burger is good geeky fun for us all. Play it or die with dishonor!
did you win a free ipod? build a case for it here
You can't go wrong with the following games:
These games have stood the test of time for a reason. If you don't try them then you are missing out on some serious fun.
In the mid to late '80s when I was in college I played a LOT of table-top / board games. Mostly hex-board games such as BattleTech or grid based like Steve Jackson's Car-Wars (et.al.) Incredibly stimulating, largely based on skill and tactics with enough random chance in there to make it interesting - and massive time sinks. I'm talking a real-life hour to do one in-game minute of combat (6-8 people playing.) Eight hours was a fairly average session with a few games lasting 72 hours or more.
... you name it.) Generally four machines is the minimum, and with eight boxes things get very interesting. It's expensive, but it will last you easily two years before you even start to consider something else - and if your circle is tight enough just spread the cost around. $2,500 for a 4 seat setup, or about $5k for 8 seats - expensive, but spread it across 8 guys over two years and you are talking about $10 per weekend per guy (over two years.)
Now all of those games have been recreated on the machine with fairly accurate attention to detail - and instead of playing rules lawyer going through all the books for twenty minutes to find out whether or not a 2600 lb car with slicks, spoilers , doing 70mph around a corner in a city will be able to maintain traction or spin out when he suffers a near-miss by a pocket artillery round - it just happens. Instead of getting through a single session / combat / game in 8 hours - you can get through an entire campaign of 80 combats in 8 hours. You get a lot more bang for your buck, as they say.
For about $600-$700 per seat, you can outfit your 'game room' with totally capable networked desktops that can handle just about anything out there (MechWarrior3 or 4, NASCAR car race games, Air Combat Sims from every era, CounterStrike-Source, Quake3, UT2004,
Believe me - if I had friends, I would build a setup like this at home in a heart-beat.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
This happens to be my favorite game in my house at the moment. I have lots, and lots and lots of games, but Betrayl is great because it takes so little time to play the rules are easy and it is fun over and over again. My wife bought it for me for Christmas because she could not find the game I actually wanted and I have never been so happy about not getting what I asked for before.
You can play Settlers of Catan, Carcassone, Puerto Rico, and others before you buy them at:
http://www.brettspielwelt.de
It is a bit of a game figuring the website out, but I am sure people are up to the task. There is also a meta-game involved, which is a tad like old MULE on the computer.
The whole thing is free to, and I believe it is coding in Java, so will work on all platforms. It is a must visit.
For those who like Hex or Go, and want to find a similar game (albeit lighter) for 3-5 players, consider "Through the Desert": http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/503
It has elements of Go and Hex in it.
Fluxx = Nomic light, in a cardbox. It is a metagame game, where you change the rules to win. Link to Nomic:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/14451
We play Acquire with these house rules.
All money and stock ownings are public knowledge.
You either array your stocks so others can see
your number of shares owned, or anyone at anytime
may ask "what are your" stock holdings and $$$.
If you don't like your tiles, on your turn, after
you lay a tile, instead of buying stock, you may
toss ALL tiles, shake bag and redraw 6 new tiles.
We allow kibitzing. Games take about 2 hours.
Crokonole is a fun but simple game up here in Canada.
Talisman...
From Games Workshop. It's out of print and you'll have to search on eBay for it - but it's worth it.
Get all the expansion modules... City, Dungeon, Timescape, Expansion pack, Dragons, etc...
Too bad I don't have time for it anymore - but I really really enjoyed it when I did...
Set = teh awesome.
I bought my wife Ticket To Ride for Christmas. She loves it. I love it. Not to sound cliche, but it's extremely easy to learn, but difficult to master. :-)
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Scotland Yard is incredibly fun. Though I've never played Empire Builder, one of my families favorite games these days is Eurorails.
Each player is responsible for building a rail network through Europe, then driving a train picking up loads from one city and dropping them off in another. It combines the strategy of moving your train to take advantage of your current contracts, along with the strategy of expanding your network. Great fun.
I recommend Eagle Games.. they published some pretty nifty board games, most of which are quite excellent.
Age of Imperialism (converted to a PC game) is pretty solid.
"History of the World" is another good, and mildly innovative (in play style) game. I beleive it's put out by Avalon Games..
Aside from that, honestly check out some of the german companies..
"Zombies!!!" is a fun tile-based games based on zombie survival.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
My all time favorite is Talisman with or without all the add-on boards and cards.
You may or may not be able to find it nowadays. Games Workshop revived the basic set in April 2003.
If you purely like the strategy/world conquest themes, then you may not like Talisman. It's more of a RPG board game.
It's been close to 10 years since I've played Magic, but I'm certain I never drew a card to determine what type of alien I'd be.
Comment Zap.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
As to the comment: "...without any of the luck or the 'I know who's winning in the first five minutes' syndrome..."
Our group likes Settlers because the game isn't over until the fat lady sings. If all of your games are decided in 5 minutes then you're giving up too early.
Almost every game we play comes down to most players having 8 or 9 points including at least one person who looked doomed from the start.
I can't count how many successful comebacks I've made or seen that started with very depressing early games.
This game rocks. Everyone in the family loves it, from the 5 year-old on up.
;-)
There is even an online version when you need a T2R fix
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
I've always found that the tabletop can be used for many fun games. A couple such games are beer pong (rules)and flip cup (rules).
I find Cosmic Encounter works best with 3-5 players. With 6 or more players it gets rather boring - especially if all one's powers are main player powers.
About a dozen years ago I played a game with at least 8 people (maybe there were 10 or 13, I can't really remember). Most of the game was spent waiting to be able to do anything (for a half hour at a time). Of course, that was with Matt's set - which started out as a regular set, before he added hundreds of powers, and cards, hazzards, and other non-standard elements.
My favorite never-ending game rule was played with a standard eon set (including all 9 expansion sets). I suggested power hour. We started with about 3 powers each. Each hour, on the hour, we each got an additional power. The longer the game continued, the more powers were in play that prolonged the game...
For many years I didn't play CE, but recently I played in another odd game - for extra-game reasons. One of the players was the son of the creator of the game. When there was a rules debate, he would call his dad to get a clarification. According to his dad, when plant plants Terrorist, he gets to create a list of bombs - so there are in affect 2 terrorists. Due to time constraints we used the house rule that plant gets to see the list of terrorist bombs, and if the last one explodes while plant is terrorist, he gets to create the new list.
It is rather coinsidental that this slashdot topic came up a week after I played CE for the first time in many years.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
Mare Nostrum (in print) has a three player mod (Triumvirate) available from boardgamegeek.com that is similar to Republic of Rome.
D&D miniatures are quite cheap and make for a great game. Two players can get a decent start for $20 or less base starter set.
Star Wars Miniatures is great also given that the gameplay is easy to learn and the figures are well done and cheap.
Carrom is an asian board game. I first discovered it about 8 years ago in a squat in Hackney (London, scary city to visit). It was a lazy Sunday morning after a party, and I saw this great mandala/yantra hanging on the wall. I asked my host about it.
a ssociation.com/m .htm
Wow! It was actually a carrom board, and he taught me the basics there and then.
Superficially, it's similar to pool and billiards, but it is much smaller; the board can fit onto a coffee table. Instead of using a cue to knock balls around, you use your finger to flick pucks around. A shooter puck is used (like a cue ball) to knock other pucks into corner pockets.
I mention it here because most replies have focussed on board games like Civ (or whatever). Lengthy games in abstract spaces. Carrom, by contrast, is a game of physical skill.
A game might only last ten minutes, but it's wickedly addictive.
Carrom sites:
http://www.carrom.org/
http://www.carrom
http://www.valuezone.co.uk/carro
Comment removed based on user account deletion
$15 for a set. Play it online first to check it out. http://tantrix.com. I have no affiliation, I just think it's a great game.
I highly recommend the Avalon Hill game, Wizard's Quest. It's great fun, but for a REAL challemge, you merely need to change one rule: no maximum for orc pieces (they're the "NPC" army on the board). The way the game generates them every round turns this into a real race-against-the-clock! We have had games where the orcs won.
If you'll accept another card game, the one based on Groo is a sure-fire hit. Very silly and very fun!!!
(I also have to agree with the person who suggested CheapAss Games. "Kill Dr Lucky" is a classic)
There's always Roborally, the boardgame of racing robots, flame-throwers and pitfalls. (Published by wizards of the coast).
:)
Alternatively there are the cheap-ass games. Some of the most original and fun games out there
I saw the first set mentioned a couple of times in sub-posts, but I thought they deserved their own topic.
The "Rails" games -- Empire Builder, Eurorails, Iron Dragon, and several others are good games with which to spend a few hours. I'd guess 3-4 hours for four people. My favorite is Iron Dragon, and that's the one I'd suggest, but Eurorails is good as well. All are easy to learn and luck plays only in which cards you draw. (Okay, there are events that can happen, but I've always left those out.)
If you're into complex games, the 18xx train games are enjoyed by many (1835 is one, don't remember the others). But they tend to be *long* games. Plan on a good eight to twelve hour stretch for a group of people. I can't tell you much because they just last too long for me to have time to play them. But they do have a big following.
Sean.
There are a few different companies that sell Piecepack sets, or you can make your own from the published specs.
Days of Wonder and Looney Labs got plugs here, so I thought I would also mention Rio Grande. Their business model, so to speak, has been to keep an eye on what's published, popular, and prize-winning in Germany (and let's face it, until very recently Germany was "who's who" in game publishing, with everyone else in a distant second place). Much of what RG has published was first printed in Germany, was nominated for or won an award there, and then was translated into English.
The rules are somewhat more revealed in the further expansions, although they just add more confusing rules (part of the fun). My only main gripe with the game is that the ending is only tangentially related to how well you do in the game. But then again, that's not the point of killer bunnies. Can anyone say Quintuple Lucky Bunny with a Halo?
He effected a bored affect.