Board Games!

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Its very heavy and incredibly long.

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Why ever chapel and money lender? money lender seems superfluous with a chapel strategy doing a better job of trashing copper.

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Bohnanza is a really good game with the right group.

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Basically all rock-tumbled dice aren't weighted properly. Its a byproduct of how they are produced. Properly weighted dice will always have hard edges.

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So I don't like "get" Puerto Rico. I've played about five games online and I'm still really unsure how to win. I just try to build a lot of buildings and get a lot of doubloons, even though I think the focus is on shipping as much as you can. :S

Shipping is the primary strategy, but there is a building strategy.

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Power Grid is annoying because endgame has fuckall to do with what you've been doing all game. I hate that kind of 'strategy' game. Also, it takes too long to be that swingy.

Thats just not true.

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I kind of want to try designing a card game, if anyone else is interested, feel free to aim or pm me.

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mtg/heartstone/soulforge type. Key features being:

A hand of cards giving you options of what to play
Some cost for playing cards
A split between immediate effects and effects that develop your board position for later benefit.

More specifically I'd also likely include some sort of 'vanguard' system ala magics vangaurds/heartstone/and net runner.

I'm torn between heartstones 'everything happens on your turn' design feature, and magics you always need to be paying attention one. Heartstones method really simplifies magics priority and allows people playing it on the computer to more easily mulitask while playing the game, on the other hand simple isn't always a good thing and the reduced options for interactions really shows in heart stone.

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I've never played kingsburg. 7 Wonders seems to be at about the level of game you are looking for though. Despite its flaws its reasonably fun, its biggest issue is being low on interaction.

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I quite enjoyed Lords of Waterdeep as an intro to worker placement games, as a note.

Stoneage is the other typical worker placement introduction game. Less flavorful but no more complex than Lords of Waterdeep, so if they found that too many options paralyzed them in Stoneage I suspect the genre just isn't theirs to enjoy.

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They are pretty consistently -not- the best game that came out that year, on the other hand, they are also still pretty consistently enjoyable games.

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I"m always up for BSG if I'm at my computer and you are playing a real game (fuck attribute).

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"Actiedobbelstenenvoorraad"

My dutch is at the level such that I can't tell if this is gibberish or actual dutch.

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My whole group dislikes 7 wonders now more or less. Game play got very boring very fast.

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I want to give an RP a serious try eventually, I just need people that are willing to work with my lack of experience.

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What kind of score range have you guys been getting, out of curiousity?

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What kind of score range have you guys been getting, out of curiousity?

Same to you guys reck.

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We start at 20 points so that early magic actually has a point cost. Out scores are normally like 120-140. So your numbers sound about right.

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Is there still room for bsg tomorrow? considering joining in.

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I'm not actually mina. So you can go play destiny guilt free.

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I could be convinced to bsw.

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I'm surprised you dislike bohnanza and The game of things so much.

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so, anything happening?

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reck appears to be 15mins into a game of lol, maybe when thats done.

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Juls, reck needs your info or something. I don't know how this site works.

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We've invited you on that site juls. (Reck is writing up a quick explanation, I haven't played either).

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blargerer

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Can you create the game and invite us grey?

nvm I got it.

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reeeeck

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It is fairly random, me and my friends don't like to pull it out too often for that reason, the drafting mechanic helps a bit.

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Every game has elements of luck, even Terra Mystica (the luck is just not as encoded in the game). For sufficiently skilled players I assume it mostly comes down to picking races/bonus tile things.

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The problem with the randomness in options(in seasons) is that people aren't given equal access. You just have to hope you roll what you need, or that someone else rolls a lot of what you need if its in high demand.

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I just mean that elements of randomness will come out between sufficiently good players, look at chess win %'s. White dominates black like 2:1.

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I would love to try through the ages. I've been considering buying it but haven't played it. Getting a game under me would help me decide one way or the other.

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My nephew (5) will lose interest in a game if he starts losing. I don't know how to deal with that so I've mostly stopped trying in the hopes he grows out of it.

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TBM picked up suburbia, not sure what I think of it so far. What comes up feels kind of random at points. A little too hard to plan ahead effectively.

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The game is more tactical than strategic.

Basically my issue I guess.

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Suburubia: Ho. Lee. Fuck. This game. This fucking game. First off, WOW it takes way longer to complete than I originally thought it would. It took us about 2.5 hours to play, with a quick 5 minute smoke break in the middle. But that first playthrough was like constant revelation after revelation. I can see how deeply strategic this game is... and the way it takes the drafting mechanic from Smallworld and re-appropriates it here is absolutely beautiful. What a gorgeous game, by the way... it's so well designed. It's a game where the theme/flavor is equally as strong as the mechanics, and I fucking LOVED it. While waiting for my turn, I'd just read through the different tiles and chuckle at how clever some of the flavor -> mechanics translations were. The last round, when we were in the C tiles, everyone was jittery and nervous, waiting for that 1 More Turn tile to flip. And when it did... man, everyone went into a panic on the last turn. And man, the reveal of the secret goals at the end was fucking great! I sort of wish you had more than one secret goal to go for, a la Keyflower, because only having the one feels a little bit like... the game is decided before final scoring. But this was great, and the mechanics were great, and while it took a little bit too long (compared to Keyflower, which takes like an hour tops) I think part of that might've been us not knowing the tiles and having to read them all over and over again.

Oh yeah and the speedbump mechanic... holy shit, that is GENIUS! Not only does it stop games from becoming snowball runaway victories, but it forces an interesting balancing mechanic in your strategies. I accidentally (seriously, without trying) kept getting reputation gains in the early game, so eventually my reputation was at +6 while everyone else had +1 or 0, which meant I was hitting tons of speedbumps. Eventually I had to buy a tile and place it STRATEGICALLY for the negative effect to bump down my reputation so I could build up a little bit of income.

It wont take that long to play through in the future, we can do a game in < an hour. It feels pretty railroady to me though once you play a couple games, the options you are given each turn feel incredibly small with how that extra cost can build up fast.

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Have you played with the expansion?

I have, but not as many games.

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Gamma didn't like it because he didn't think there was a ton of strategy

Them's fightin' words.

I don't think he's entirely wrong. I think the base game is light on strategy elements, it's mostly tactical. The exception being mercers, scribes, and the fall resource scorers. Nothing else is worth enough points to really be worth it.

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I've mostly played 3 player (and with the same 2 other players, one of them being TBM) We've played enough and are generally competent enough as gamers that I doubt we've just been missing some key strategic element of the game but it's possible (and the 3 player thing could easily have an impact). My issue with dynamic strategies in keyflower are both that you don't know the entire tile set so it's difficult to make long term plans, and even if you did know (or you see key things early enough) you still don't know that you'll win those winter tiles. It can be obvious when someone is going all in on a given tile and you can either disrupt them (movement being easy to disrupt in a lot of setups) or just go wide when placing winter tiles and force them to spend to many resources protecting their only point source.

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I don't think streamlining it actually works. Its interesting because it just defies any sort of conventional streamlined model and goes full in on flavour.

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BGG.CON IN TWO WEEKS! (Well, in 13 days, as I'm getting there a day early.) One of these days we'll get more than just old-time scummers like mith, MeMe, and petroleumjelly there.

I'd never go just to go to the con, but if there is ever a mini scummer meet happening at one, let me know and I'd strongly consider it. Too short of notice for this year though.

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roll for the galaxy > race for the galaxy, imo

2nding this. Roll for the Galaxy is the better game (which is really what one should hope for out of a sequel).

I strongly disagree

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I feel like roll is way less interactive.

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Which is why removing interaction from it is such a serious blow to it in my opinion. I feel like Race is about as uninteractive as you can get and still call it a multiplayer game with a straight face.

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You can't get blocked off in power grid, you can pay multiple connection costs at once.

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I played with all new players and we started at 2 am the first time I played Argent.

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The term is poorly defined and I think first came about to separate the european board games coming out in the early 2000's from the traditional like monopoly. I'd differentiate it from 'ameritrash' games in the following ways:

Indirect competition rather than direct competition (I'm going to out bid you for something, or use a limited resource before you can, not steal territory from you, or kill your units).
No elimination, you play to the end even if you are doing terribly.
Some abstracted victory condition like Victory Points rather than something like player elimination.

You can probably find counter examples where I'd ignore 1 or more of those though, like powergrid is euro as heck and doesn't use victory points.

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I don't think a euro game needs to be heavy. Like I think Catan qualifies and it's almost closer to the pop-o-matic you described rather than the Eurogame you described.

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The term is poorly defined and I think first came about to separate the european board games coming out in the early 2000's from the traditional like monopoly. I'd differentiate it from 'ameritrash' games in the following ways:

Indirect competition rather than direct competition (I'm going to out bid you for something, or use a limited resource before you can, not steal territory from you, or kill your units).
No elimination, you play to the end even if you are doing terribly.
Some abstracted victory condition like Victory Points rather than something like player elimination.

You can probably find counter examples where I'd ignore 1 or more of those though, like powergrid is euro as heck and doesn't use victory points.

I think that's all fairly accurate?

I would also say that in Ameritrash game, the "theme" wins out over the mechanics.

Like, Betrayal At House on the Hill... Ameritrash. Heavily themed, and the theme is most of the charm. Same with Arkham Horror, Battlestar Galactica, Cosmic Encounter.

Eurogames are way more "strategic". I don't even think Eurogames have to be particularly complex, it's more that they're all about the tactics/strategy and less about the journey.

That eurogames are more mechanism first and ameritrash games more theme first is a really good point that I overlooked. It should be on my list for sure.

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Keyflower is my suggestion. (I've become a self parody).

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Lords of waterdeep sucks though. I'd suggest keyflower.

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keyflower is in no way, shape, or form a simple worker placement game.

I agree. I just also think lords of waterdeep isn't simple. If I wanted to suggest an intro worker placement game with simplicity in mind I probably would have suggested russian railroads.

I just think keyflower is a much better game than lords of waterdeep.

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I only played it a few times. But I seem to remember it fundamentally having similar elements. Like I guess added elements of complexity are the roads, resource movement, and that you can reuse tiles at an increased cost.
I don't know, I played keyflower pretty early into my advanced board-gaming days and we handled it without too many rules errors.

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Keyflower is rated on BGG a whole pointment higher in complexity than LoW, basically in the same ballpark as agricola.

Fundamentally I think lords of waterdeep is just a bad game, so I have trouble recommending it to anyone. With that said, I don't think its fair to compare keyflower to Agricola either. Even if they were of similar complexity, the skill floor to not feel terrible when playing Agricola is just not comparable. There is plenty of room to fail at the keyflower mechanics but still be playing the game. I nearly ended with negative points the first time I played Agricola.

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I wouldn't suggest stone age. I have no idea for kanagawa.

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It being from a somewhat hot designer hurts it a bit imo. For it to have that as a recognition vector but to still be so lowly ranked suggests its just actually not a very good game.

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Just watched an overview of the game, play seems fine, but I don't think its a worker placement game at all in the vein of lords of water deep or Keyflower or Agricola.

Edit: to elaborate on what I mean, in worker placement games I'm used to the worker placement options being communal and driving actions. Where as kanagawa seemed to be drafting driven, and the workers just limited options, and only had private spaces.

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Playing carcassonne well can be hard, but the rules are quite simple. Just draw and place a tile.

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https://goo.gl/n8dIQi

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I've played five tribes once and it seems like it would be the worst candidate ever for analysis paralysis. How do you fight against that?

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The biggest argument for that list not being absolute is the game in position 11. What a crap game.

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Looking for a suggestion for my family's yearly week long vacation. Need to add a

5 player game

(6 players is also great, but 5 is our most normal number of players). We play a lot of board games while on vacation, but it's been sort of particular on what games have found major success.

Here have been games that we've ended up playing a lot of:
1. 7 Wonders. By far our most played game, it involves strategy, the concurrently playing mechanic works nicely, it never feels too much like any individual player is "out of it,"
2. Ticket to Ride. We don't play this one any more because we overplayed it, but it was a good match.
3. Castles of Mad King Ludwig. In particular my wife likes this game.
4. Dominion. We've had fun with this, but even with 4 players it really moves too slowly.
5. Five Tribes. Inexplicably doesn't have five players.

We've played a lot of games that have been enjoyable but haven't really caught on like Smallworld.


Types of games that won't work:
1. Cooperative games. If the game ever risks having a quarterback, it won't work, with or without a traitor.
2. Thematic games (games that rely on their theme, story telling, etc. to make the game fun.)
3. "Silly" games like party games. It has to have some element of strategy.
4. Games that last longer than 2 hours, and it'd preferably be 60 or fewer minutes though it's not required.
5. Non-repeatable games. Likely goes along with thematic
6. Preferably no games with shifting alliances. I don't want to hear my father and his brother try and convince us to gang up on the other the entire game (e.g. no cosmic encounter).

I've thought about adding a worker placement game, but not sure that's the best road to go down.

I think keyflower (perhaps key to the city: london given the desire for a faster game) and Race for the galaxy(you need the first expansion to go up to 5 players) could both be good fits.

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I think race for the galaxy is just a better version of roll for the galaxy. I don't think I'd ever recommend roll instead of race.

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Is it your opinion first hand? I think I could provide plenty of counter examples. Its certainly true of my game group, for instance, but I also think original race is one of the most played games on boardgame arena? I also think its substantially higher ranked on BGG.

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I played Castles of Burgundy, it was real fun

What? Ok we have incompatible tastes. This is the worst game in the top 100 on BGG.

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I admit I haven't played everygame in the top 100. I -hate- some games in the top 100. (dead of winter to name 1). Its worse than all of the ones I've played or seen played. That includes captain sonor.

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I'd probably try and go with 4.

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I think you need to do a lot of heavy editing to make a watch and play work, much like tabletop does.

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I think you likely need some sort of gimmick. (such as tabletops C-list celebs) if you want to pull in even a slightly bigger audience.

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Editing, host personality/chemistry, and game selection determines if I would watch or not.

(I'm not sure this is true of everyone but I realized it's what you are actually here to hear from people).

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I think a rotating cast would be a rather large detractor for me. (unless I hated the main cast, that would be a bigger detractor)

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what does a topper do thats useful?

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following his link, it appears to be a table top designed for gaming, felt padded etc. I just don't know what utility that actually provides over a normal table.

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The solution to that is just not play munchkin.

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"my way of having fun is better than yours"

I keep my mouth shut about plenty of games that I don't enjoy. Munchkin is just objectively not good. I'm convinced that anyone that enjoys it would enjoy other games in a similar genre better if exposed to them.

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I've only played through about a third of charterstone, but my experience so far is that it's ok, but ultimately a pretty generic and bland worker placement game that leans heavily into its legacy mechanics to keep it interesting at all.

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You could try werewords.

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From what I've heard the online version helps stream line things. The physical copy certainly isn't not clunky.

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It's apparently based on the board game she's talking about. The first is from the 80's. They just did 2 new versions over the last couple years. Presumably when the Sherlock Holmes IP entered public domain.

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When I play Sidereal Confluence I feel like the game is playing me. There is of course some degree of control in the quality of trades I can make, but ultimately I find I have very little control over what resource I produce, or what resources I want. Ultimately it still plays great in terms of 6 player games, but I don't get the love for it.

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Code Names duet is a bit better for the 2 player experience I think. (I'm not a huge fan of either).

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I don't know why, but its weird to me that they are using actual games.

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I'm not a huge fan of Scythe, despite liking most of Jamie's designs. Admittedly not my favourite genre either, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

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also Yggdrasil, but it's out of print and thus stupid expensive

There is a new version of Yggdrasil at this years essen.

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this game started at 20:30 or so and the post-postgame ended at like 02:15 how did this become my life

This has been my biggest complaint with the game the few times I've played it, seems to take forever for the experience I get. But it's always been with newish players (myself included). Hearing that it still took you this long makes me never want to play it again.

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Just One.
Telephone Pictionary
Decrypto
Code Names
(these are all party games)

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Argent is so fun.

People who have TTS can play it online if they want? Cpuld setup an MS game night for Argent.

I have TTop, and have played Argent with it.

Playing the game with five people or with more than two new players would likely stretch the definition of game "night" fwiw.

I hate myself enough to consider doing this depending on when.

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I've played the game a couple of times, though its been years.

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I think the bigger issues with Catan are about how the robber works and how there is no variety in strategy. Randomness is third. I'll never play the game again after doubling up on a 10 in my opening placement and a 10 never being rolled for the whole game.

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I think a big issue with 7 wonders as an intro game is the amount of hidden information. Makes it hard for new players to ask questions.

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This isn't strictly a legacy game depending on how you define it (its also expensive) but I'm a huge fan or Arkham Horror LCG.

(There are 3-8 mission campaigns but nothing is permanently altered between campaigns).

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Just the base game isn't too complex, but as the card pool expanded the player cards got more complicated, and the newer campaigns are more complicated in general than the first 3.

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That's a pretty big rule to miss, but we've had games we played for years that we got minor rules wrong for. One instance would be keyflower, played it for years before realizing green meeples used to bid go back to the general meeple bag rather than the green stock.

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Spoiler:

I think I could tell you more scenarios with forest imps if you want

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I think there is actually more than one that has the requirement he talked about, and one is shit imo.

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We just kind of house ruled that you can retire when you want if you've been trying to do your goal forever.

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Oh wait I'm thinking of dominion

I've played a fair number of deckbuilders. I don't think any come close to being as good as dominion is.

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Oh, yeah dominion is a 2 player online game. It is way too slow in person or with 3+. If that is the experience most people have past an initial introduction I can understand disliking it.

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I've heard really good things and that's why I bought it but it's just so intimidating how much there is in the rule book. And it's competitive so unlike Gloomhaven where we're just working together to figure it out as we go, my fiancée and I are a little worried about getting that one right

Brass is an amazing game for the right kind of person (which I am). I know lots of people that hate it. Be careful when picking who to play with. It can be quite mean.

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How much board gaming have you done? Should i be recommending classics like dominion in terms of deck builders or have you played those mostly.

Given how thematic all his listed games are, I'd guess he wouldn't be a big fan of dominion. Dominion is extremely solid mechanically, but has 0 theme (and a lot of that mechanical strength has just been straight up copied by more thematic games).