Anyone into any good board games? Do you generally prefer Euro or American games? I'm an avid co-op boardgamer with an emphasis on American games, personally. Case in point, Arkham Horror takes up a sizable section on my gaming shelf. Although, I'd be very pleased if Space Alert hit the table more frequently. As for competitive games, I've been playing Magic: the Gathering since about 2001 and I get to shuffle up about two hours per week. How about you?
Gaslamp Games has gotten together and played Arkham Horror in the office "for research purposes" on occasion. That's some good fun, though I think Yog Sothoth beat us senseless while Daniel knifed some peasant on the Plateau of Leng and I think I got driven mad by some trees whispering at me. When Nicholas gets excited he starts talking in the voice of his character and whenever something eldritch happens he makes eldritch noises (-- think of the ambient portal noise mixed with the vore/shalrath from Quake 1 mixed with the 'ethereal' attack sound from Dredmor. Yeah.) ... man, we gotta do another game of that. I've also been known to play MtG. Got really into them when I was a kid then played off-and-on randomly ever since, though stopped buying cards. Good fun, that. I think my favourite colour is blue.
Resident Evil: Deck Building Game is a LOT of fun. It's deck building because everyone starts off with the same 10 cards in their "deck" and then you have to choose what cards from the resource pile to add to your deck. then you want to remove weaker cards as you upgrade to bigger/better cards. A lot of fun stategy goes on. Bigger guns? or do you go for more card drawing? Should I look for a zombie to kill?
Munchkins is rather simple to understand and I found it enjoyable. Never got around to buying a deck to play with, but the few times I've played with friends has been fun. I wouldnt say its a "Hardcore" card game or anything. But if your just wanting to hang with some friends/family or anything and have an urge to whip out something everyone can enjoy and quickly learn to play, then munchkins is for you.
Munchkin is fun, agreed. Played it over a few years. I was disappointed by the cthulhu deck though and found the jokes / general ambiance to be completely off. Big fail at being a parody of the mythos.
That sounds kind of like Dominion. Everyone starts with an identical deck and buys from the same card pool, but there are limited quantities of each card available. Fun game, though some Village combos get tiresome.
I agree with Munchkin. It's a perfect game for when you get with your friends to joke spend some random time together. Especially when said friends are your RPG group and DM. Other than that there's a game called "Whack a Catgirl" (it's very fun, and often also very amusing, if you can get people willing to play a game with such theme), and if you really have too much time, then also the good old "Talisman". On my own I also know "Dark Eden", which is a rather simple Polish card game that can bring a lot of joy (each player controls a post-apocalyptic army with its own base and tries to decimate the opponents), but it's kind of old and out of print (and in Polish, learning which can be a pain for most people).
My favorite board game is Apples to Apples. I recommend it for slightly larger groups because, while you can play to win, almost all the fun comes from cracking jokes about what everyone played. It's the funniest board game I know of.
Heh, sounds like it can be fun. Another cool game is Werewolf ( or mafia, but the theme is not as fun IMO ). Very nice for parties of 10-15 people. Its good because you dont need much to play it and its always nice to betray and devour your friends.
Any Chaos in the Old World fans here? In brief, you play one of four (five in the expansion) Ruinous Powers, basically gods of chaos who each want to take over the world in different ways, and fight both each other and the setting to do so. For example, one of them gets bonuses, and eventually victory, by slaughtering as many of the other Powers' minions as possible, while another does so by having his cultists corrupt the nobles that rule various regions. The four/five Powers are amazingly balanced (aggregated stats from hundreds of games have each of them winning an equal proportion of the time), and the gameplay is a lot of fun. There are battles between lesser and greater demons, cultists trying to sow as much corruption as possible so their masters can earn points for permanently ruining entire regions, and the constant playing of chaos cards that represent each of their unique powers (from Khorne the Blood God's many techniques to provoke extra battles and herd victims to the slaughter, to Tzeench the Changer of Ways's tendency to have his opponents suddenly find themselves transformed, stripped of their abilities or teleported to the furthest edge of the map).
Reminds me of a cheapo card game some friend found at Gen-con called Trailer Park Gods. The God of Trailer parks died, and now all these old forgotten gods were looking to replace him. You could play the "Televangelist" card to gain followers, or summon tornadoes to kill other players followers. Was a lot of fun.
+1 for Apples to Apples, M:tg, and Munchkin. Games not yet mentioned that kick ass, mostly in order of asskickiness with the best on top. Betrayal at House on the Hill. Ninja Burger. Smart Ass. Dread Pirate. Settlers of Catan. DUH. Bezzerwizzer. Like Trival Pursuit done right. Crack the Case. Scotland Yard. Lunch Money. Chez Geek. Clue Master Detective. (Gotta get it from Europe. It's like Clue only bigger and better.) Yeah, I like my games.
I actually kinda hate Apples to Apples - you can't win it by skill or strategy, but instead must pander, or pray for the chooser to have the correct whim strike him such that he likes your answer. To me, that's not a "game", that's a "diversion" to help you occupy an hour of your time without meaningful challenge or accomplishment. Chaos in the Old World sounds very neat! Arkham is awesome, I like to inflict it on people who haven't played yet. My personal favorite is probably Shootin' Ladders. It's a boardgame laid out similarly to Chutes & Ladders, and you play as Gingerbread Men. But there's cover to duck behind, and you can go up or down the grid as you like to make best possible use of the ammo, armor, and special power pickups, or to ride a chute down to an opponent in order to use a powerful melee weapon. As gingerbread men, you don't "die" until all your body parts have been blasted off, right down to your little gumdrop buttons. Even if you get ganged up on in the beginning, you can hang on for quite some time as you are becoming a smaller and smaller target while you lose body parts - giving you plenty of time to try to rack up as many gory trophies as possible with your Rocket Pops, M&Ms16, etc before you die. Some modes allow for respawn anyways, making it tactically more advantageous to attack the most intact player as he has more chunks you can claim for your score.
I started off with basic board games and fell in love with Risk and Scotland Yard. I had no idea there were boardgames that actually cared about balance and depth... until a couple of years ago. Unfortunately in my country the board game availabilty is extremely limited and what little is available is extremely expensive but I scrambled some money over the years and bought Axis & Allies (2004 Revised Edition). It seemed like a good upgrade from very luck based Risk and into a bit more strategic depths. I have a regular gaming group (5-6 people) and we try to gather as often as we can (1 weekend per month). A month ago for my birthday I bought Arkham Horror because for some reason a local shop decided to actually import Fantasy Flight Games?! We played it day before yesterday and loved it, it is excellent, kinda light weight dungeon crawler with a very good theme. Others haven't read Lovecraft's stories but they still enjoyed it. Another good thing with AH is that I can play it with my sister because we can play together on the same team. A friend is planning on buying BattleStar Galactica if it ever becomes available here or Amazon decides to ship games to Croatia, whichever comes sooner. Soo... I would say we are Ameritrash players but I guess that is only because there are no Euro games in Croatia... Which is strange because we are in Europe after all... But we prefer no luck or low luck games, alas, there are none! Edit: I forgot to mention. I played LOTR TCG for years. It was quite an excellent TCG (I would put it on par with M:TG) but it self-destructed with later expansions and bad business decisions
I must admit that I'm very reluctant to shell out the kidneys and corneas they charge you for a boardgame. I have one set of Munchkin and another of Dungeoneer, but probably the little-box game that's had the most success in spain is "The Wolves of Millers Hollow" (known as "Hombres Lobo de Castronegro" in spanish) I tried Arkham Horror once and it was very cool, but also very cumbersome. I also built for myself a handmade copy of Settlers of Catan - NO WAY I'm going to shell out a price in the neighborhood of 100€ when I can spend an entire afternoon cutting and painting cardboard chits and hexes and stuffing little notes inside MtG sleeved cards. Also I play MtG, but only casually because I really can't stand the whole MtG scene...
Dungeoneer is a fantastic game! Too bad it's next to impossible to find in Canada. I managed to get two sets in a Math Trade through BoardGameGeek.
This last years I've been playing board games a lot, and my favourites are: A Game Of Thrones (board, not cards. it is AWESOME). Discworld The Illuminati (I got it recently, and it is very funny) The Settlers of Catan (Double DUH) Battlestar Galactica (Similar to Game of Thrones: long and lots of things to consider if you want to win) Bang! Munchkin in all its flavors A a ton more of them. I lead an association which organizes events for young people (roleplaying and board games, and things like that) and we have LOTS of games, so I use them as much as I can
I love Bang! Finally found it and started playing it again last week. Can you tell me more about the Discworld game ?
Its full name is "Discworld: Ankh-Morpork", and its based on the city of that name. The board represents the different districts of the city, which can be controlled by players using minions (I'm using words that may not be the same as the ones the game uses, since I play it in spanish). Every player has an objective to achieve (such as controlling several districts, spreading your minions on a number of districts, etc), and a lot of different cards can be played, with lots of effects to achieve your objective, and annoy your opponents. Long story short, it is about zones of influence, managing your hand (cards), and controlling what are your opponents up to (since everyone's objective is secret). If you want more info, I've found a link that explains a lot of things. Since I'm not sure if I can post it here (in some forums it is not permitted), I'll send it to you privately. If it is ok to post it here, someone let me know and I'll do it.
