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2006 Board Games Gift Guide
SlantyBard writes "As per previous years, the Morning News has published their annual guide to Good Gift Games. You can also always check out BoardGameGeek's gift guide to boardgames or Funagain's all time top bestseller list for great gifts for your family and friends." From the Morning news post: "Occasionally I'll play a new game so elegant in design that I'll come away amazed that it hadn't been thought of before. Hey! That's My Fish! is the most recent example. Sixty small hexagons (each showing one, two, or three fish) are assembled into an ice floe. Players then place their penguins onto the board, and play begins. On a turn, a player moves one of his penguins and then claims the hex the penguin just vacated, scoring points for the fish shown thereon. The ice floe slowly melts as more and more hexes are taken. Eventually there will be no more legal moves, and the person with the most fish wins. It's extremely simple and remarkably strategic."
Step 1: Get the Wizards of the Coast catalog
Step 2: Open it to a random page and put your finger down
Step 3: Order that
If you haven't tried Settlers of Catan, you should.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
since the article didn't offer one :
p ages/pha6017.htm
Its from Mayfair games :
http://www.mayfairgames.com/
and they use friggin frames so this is the best link i can give. using the main page you can find it in the a-z listing.
http://www.mayfairgames.com/shop/product/phalanx/
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
I usually don't like boardgames that take hours to read the rules. I just want to sit down and play it once in a while.
When I was at some friends house this weekend we played Cartagena, a very simple but intresting game!
Has anybody else played it?
My blog: http://www.redcode.nl
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disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Ticket to Ride - Outstanding quality and very fun to play.
Acquire - Great fun
Nuclear War - A simple and wonderfully addictive card game.
Because there is no chance involved in that one at all.
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
There's enough crap out there that encourages everyone to "go for the win". If you're buying board games, especially for kids, I'd suggest looking into some cooperative games (check out Family Pastimes). I've been trying to get into these for a while, but unfortunately my friends have never been into them (they refer to "Our Town" as "Communist Monopoly"). But whatever, it's worth a look.
I didn't even know they still made that Scotland Yard game. I had a lot of fun with that when I was a kid. I'd also recommend CAG. Plus if you love strategy and have some hours to kill I'd highly recommend Advanced Civilization or Diplomacy. In my opinion Diplomacy surpasses Risk because the only element of chance involved is your opponent.
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
Universally hated by those with endless hours to kill and maybe three like-minded friends, perhaps. When you want something to take maybe an hour, have lots of people who would like to play, want people to be able to drop in and out at will (such as at a holiday party), there's nothing quite as much fun as fluxx. There's next to no learning curve (the rules are all on the table, for crissake) and there can be as much or as little strategy to it as you want. Yeah, you get the odd hand with nothing but lame cards, but I can't think of any game where you don't at least occasionally wind up completely constrained by the contents of whatever it is you have to work with.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
I've played the game Apples to Apples many times, and what I love the most about it is that you have enough cards for practically everyone at the party to play, especially if you have all the special sets combined into one large set. There have been times where we've had 10+ people in a circle, all playing the most absurd things that they have in their hand. Plus, I love how if you are the judge, you can choose *any* criteria you want for voting the best one.
There's one house rule that we always use, and this always makes for more entertainment: we play two descriptor cards instead of just one. Trying to match one thing is ho-hum, but trying to match two adjectives makes the game much more interesting.
Puerto Rico. The only randomness in that game is the plantation availability and that is a relatively minor factor (especially when compared to e.g. the ressource rolls in a Settlers game).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Monopoly-by-the-book.
First and foremost, this means no money gets put in the middle for Free Parking, ever; it goes to the bank where it belongs. You CAN buy on your first time round. If you choose not to buy unowned property when you have the chance, the property goes up for auction, and you can bid for it even if you turned it down at the list price. There is no double salary for landing exactly on Go. If there are no houses left in the box and somebody wants to build, too bad, they can wait till some houses get freed up, and if some bastard hogs all the houses by refusing to upgrade to hotels, that's his right and he deserves everything he gets if he gets the Make General Repairs card.
Nobody plays Monopoly by the rules, but the Free Parking Jackpot kills the game stone dead, and auctions (a) get all the properties owned much more quickly and cheaply, and (b) raise the backstabbing factor by about a billion.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I guess I just don't have the time to be too snobby about gaming. I've played everything from SFB to Silent Death to Dragon Dice to various versions of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. Most of which require a large investment of time. So Fluxx is nice because it lets you play with people who wouldn't otherwise be doing any type of game and its relatively fast. And, I am still curious as to what games you like and enjoy, especially since you're an admitted snob;-) Not trolling, but genuinely curious because I'm heading down to visit a gaming friend next week. We were going to be playing several of the above, but if there's another one out there that you like and play, then I'd check it out.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
1. Chez Geek/Goth
2. Apples to Apples
3. Killer bunnies
4. Things
5. Munchkin (any)
6. Settlers
7. Illuminati
8. Hacker Deluxe Edition
9. Ninja Burger
10. Maharaja
I own more but this is what gets played the most!
$DO || ! $DO ; try(); > try: command not found
As of late... Age of Steam, Twilight Struggle (IGA winner 2006), Traders of Genoa, 1830, Power Grid, Friedrich, War of the Ring... mostly interested in economic / stock market simulations and war games (GMT Games, MMP Games). I do play chess, poker and some other lighter fare...
If I was suggesting a gift / newbie games in the ease to teach / pick-up realm that you place Fluxx then I'd suggest For Sale, Bonhanza, Bang!, Coloretto, That's Life. Though I've had success converting people with much deeper games... the ones I list are fun, quick to play, high replay value and easy to teach / learn. You can look them up here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/
pronoblem
They were 20 years ago, but not anymore. They suck in comparison to just about any game that has been released since.