I think The Resistance is probably exactly what you're looking for... but if you want a board game that involves some bluffing, Battlestar Galactica is probably the best. There's a secret "traitor" in the game, nobody knows who it is. About halfway through the game, more cards are dealt out and there's a certain % chance that another traitor gets added to the game as well.
BSG is stupendous. I'm miserable at the Resistance, oddly enough, and I recently bought a game called Alcatraz: The Scapegoat where either everyone loses or one person loses and the betrayal revolving who gets the bitch seat is great.
In post 102, mith wrote:I was kinda meh on Quarriors (having played an absurd amount of Dominion online). The culling rules tend toward a runaway leader problem, at least with the base. (I've seen variants suggested for that, and I'm sure expansions will change things up significantly.)
I played with the Quarmageddon expansion yesterday, and the new culling/scoring rules greatly improve the game IMO. Much more strategic when early good rolls won't lead to an early basic quiddity culling advantage, or if an early big purchase won't be abused for scoring repeatedly the remainder of the game.
I'd still much rather play Dominion, but the improvement plus the novelty of the dice bump it up to a "wouldn't mind adding this to the collection someday, for the right price".
Absolutely. We just bought the Quarmageddon expansion yesterday as well, it adds a LOT to the game. Not to mention, it's nice to have storage options now.
Some of the new creatures are way more balanced, and the new culling rules make it harder for someone to just get a runaway win.
I got fucking wrecked by Greyjoy turn one. He took the Golden Sound with a march+0 on TURN FUCKING ONE. I had the perfect plan, too, to take Pyke turn three. So he fucked up my navy, then took Riverrun, then mustered, then jumped his massive fucking army across TWO SEAS to assault Lannisport after telling me "I just wanted the naval position, I'm not trying to fuck with you".
So I lost my capital and retreated towards Harrenhaal. With nothing left to lose, my goal now became "fuck with everyone's shit as much as possible", so I assaulted Tyrell at King's Landing and inflicted three casualties on him, essentially removing him from the game as well. Greyjoy ended up winning.
I basically learned "assaulting your neighbors early can pay off in dividends"
also our Stark derped hard and just let Greyjoy do all of that and ignored him instead of trying to apply pressure from the north
Crisis management is basically my schtick in board games, Game of Thrones can be frustrating in that regard because you have to count on others to mitigate crises for you lest you overextend. Dominant Species, now THERE's a crisis management game. Damn.
I found a pretty good board game shop; bought shadow hunters +expansion. However, their Game of Thrones appears to be a second edition... And it's ~61 dollars. Worth it? What's the difference between the two editions?
From BGG wrote:In addition to featuring updated graphics and a clarified ruleset, this second edition of A Game of Thrones includes elements from the A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords expansions, including ports, garrisons, Wildling cards, and Siege engines, while introducing welcome new innovations like player screens and Tides of Battle cards.
$60 is a pretty standard price for a board game from a shop for a game of that quality (both game wise and component) and size. You can likely save 5-10 dollars if you buy online new, maybe even up to 20 if you buy used.
Game of Thrones Second Edition is going to be reprinted. In the meantime, it's pretty hard to get. 61 bucks is actually a fair deal and I don't see you getting a better one easily until the reprinting.
In post 195, Staeg wrote:I found a pretty good board game shop; bought shadow hunters +expansion. However, their Game of Thrones appears to be a second edition... And it's ~61 dollars. Worth it? What's the difference between the two editions?
2nd ed. is just a balanced update to 1st edition with the 1st expansion pack mixed in.
Bought SmallWorld tonight. Highly recommend it... it's not my favorite board game of all time (as that honor still goes to A Game of Thrones), but it's a lot of wacky fun. The game is dead simple, as far as basics go. The "complex" part of learning it comes when you have to learn what each race and each special modifier does, but luckily there's a cheat sheet. While there is obviously some bit of randomness to the game (as far as what races show up as available and what special modifier they're paired with), that randomness is minimized by having to pay more victory points in order to access the newly flipped races.
The strategy of it is largely based around what races to pick up, but a lot of it also has to do with redeployment and figuring out where the threats lie and how to properly reinforce your troops. We just played on the four player map and it took about two hours since we were a little slow on the rules, but I'd image the game would take no longer than 90 minutes once you get it down pat.
Anyone else played it/have any favorite race/class combinations?