Hobby Board Games

So I joined a game guild and either my guild buddies are accountants, or they have very strange ideas of what constitutes a board game.

Imagine all your life you think of geeky tabletop games as Dungeons And Dragons, the Warhammers both Fantasy and 40K, Magic The Gathering - and generally geeky board game versions of similar concepts, like Talisman for example. I love that game because it's a competitive adventure PVP board game set in an MMO like universe, only more 1980s.

My guild mates on the other hand drink beer instead of Coke and play trading/shipping board games with a little bit of building. I think the main issue here is that I've actually encountered a species of nerd far different to what I normally encounter. Hence my accountant game guild possibility.

This is the hobby board games thread by the way.

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

So, Settlers of Catan?

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Medinoc please set me straight: French people play board games other than Risk and various Napoleonic setting wargame board games right? And they drink wine at the table instead of Mountain Dew?

Please stop me if you are morosely offended.

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

In my RPG gaming circle, we drink Coke and orange juice. We play RP Gs, card games (Élixir, Munchkin, Bang!, Citadels), or Settlers of Catan (plus a bunch of Wii Video Games).

In family we don't play board games: We play Tarot. Except when me and my brother were kids, when we played Amazing Labyrinth, Mille Bornes, Clue, and the dreaded Monopoly. I have very fond memories of Amazing Labyrinth.

I've never actually played Risk, until I found Risk II on my cousin's laptop. My cousins were already in the "Tabletop Games" crowd when I wasn't: They played Risk, Warhammer Fantasy, Blood Bowl, A James Bond RPG...

edited 24th Nov '10 5:53:35 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Wow, I just discovered there's a name for this kind of games.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

I'm trying to get a games club off the ground at my school. I want to play a variety of games.

^^^

This Tarot, right?

Can't see you link (proxy), so I'll precise this one. We recently switched from our Tarot Nouveau deck to a fancy French Tarot deck based on regions of France.

edited 25th Nov '10 5:07:53 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

In other words, the exact same set of rules that I linked (though my hotlink was to pagat.com)? I have a couple Tarot Nouveau playing cards packs (one I ordered online and another I got at a specialty shop), but to be frank I don't play often.

edited 25th Nov '10 8:45:25 AM by SantosLHalper

It is: Personally, I don't play Tarot, it's mostly my parents. I have played Tarot a lot in high school, though (but I prefered Egyptian Ratscrew in junior high).

edited 25th Nov '10 5:06:36 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Hey, there is a web page in English about the deck I was speaking of! The Internet has yet to cease surprising me.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Thread necromancy!

So, I never quite got into some of the various "geeky" board games out there - they always looked too expensive and such. But that's what friends with more disposable income are for.

Castle Panic: Along with Settlers of Catan, my only board game purchase, which I got for my oldest kid's last birthday. Good game to play, simple enough that my 6 year old can join in the game and lots of fun. Also a cooperative game, which is nice for kids because then they aren't fighting with each other. (Trust me, my kids are cutthroat enough playing Uno and Phase 10 - they don't need cutthroat boardgames.)

Last Night on Earth: A zombie-survival board game, where you play one of the survivors in a small town, or you play as the zombie master. There's a couple different scenarios; we played "escape in a truck" and managed to win. Zombies can spawn in almost any round, and they can come straight through the walls of any building to attack you[[hottip:*:but you can't then turn around and go out through the hole they used, so these zombies must be some incredible construction workers after they get turned.

Betrayal at House on the Hill: I loved this game, my wife not so much. Starts off as a cooperative exploration of a haunted house, suffering through various events and picking up bizarre enchanted/haunted items, then one person gets picked out as the Traitor, and they use a scenario (decided at random by which omen card triggers it) to then try and trap/kill/whatever everyone else in the house. Quite fun, we played it twice and the heroes won both rounds*

. A game I am certainly going to look into purchasing when my kids are a little older, as it's definitely too complicated for my highly intelligent children.

Arkham Horror: What has been described to me as the "ultimate" horror boardgame, if your definition of ultimate is a marathon. One game took us nearly four hours, and the first hour of that was setting up the board, cards, and explaining the rules to the two of us who had never played it before. Still, it was a fun game, both when we were kicking monster butts and when we were in fear for our lives/sanity. We played it without any of the expansions, as they each supposedly make the game even freaking longer.

Pandemic: Haven't played it yet, borrowed it from my buddy because he said it should be simple enough for the older kid to play. Will post after I do so.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

My mates and I play:

• Settlers of Catan
• Puerto Rico
• Traders of Genoa
• Machiavelli
• Poo!
• Arkham Horror (only a couple of expansions, but I don't feel they really add enough to warrant using)
• ZOMBIES!
• King of Tokyo
• Some radioactive zombie-RPG-ish one that I can't remember the name of (because it's one of the few I haven't actually played)
• Pandemic

And we generally drink beer and whiskey at game nights, and we eat kettle chips. And cookies. Lots of cookies.

EDIT: Added Pandemic. Also worth noting, the people who love Puerto Rico and Traders of Genoa are not the people who love Poo! and King of Tokyo, but everyone loves Machiavelli for some reason (might have something to do with the one we play being in German, and therefore we all start playing with faux-German accents while still saying things like "Condotierre" and "Cooptman" and stuff).

edited 26th Aug '12 6:18:55 PM by disruptorfe404

I love Arkham Horror even though my group is not really a boardgame-type group. We also dabbled with a little Settlers of Catan. No alcohol on game nights because we all know that this ends in tears for everyone involved (but is also mind-bendingly hilarious).

There was this one air combat board game (jet engine era) whose name eludes me at the moment; I've always wanted to try it.

Wise Papa Smurf, corrupted by his own power. CAN NO LEADER GO UNTAINTED?!

My roommate is freakishly obsessed by hobby games, so we play them fairly often.

Ones I like:

•Arkham Horror •Mansions of Madness •Sentinels of the Multiverse, though I'm tapped out on it at the moment •Shadows Over Camelot •Defenders of the Realm, sometimes •Once Upon a Time

He just got the game Android for a wedding present, and I'm dying to check that one out.

Dust Tactics, anyone?

The hits keep rollin'!

OK, so we have tried Pandemic, with the On The Brink expansion. At least playing with the "easy" rules, we have won both times with 4-5 players, and only just barely both times. Still, it's quite a fun game.

We also played a six-player game of Catan last weekend. The freaking six-year-old wiped the board with the rest of us courtesy of really bizarre dice rolls.*

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Settlers of Catan - the G-rated way to spend an hour answering the question "Who's got wood?"

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

More thread necromancy!

I recently bought a game called Super Dungeon Explore and take it every time I hang out with my board game buddies. Everyone loves the game, even if they’ve only played it once or twice.

Essentially, it’s a dungeon crawling game where a group of players play Heroes against a GM of sorts that controls the monsters in the dungeon. Players try to kill all the monsters, summon the boss, and kill it too, while the GM just tries to get rid of the players. It’s ridiculously simple, but strangely enticing and a lot of fun. I almost never gave it a second glance due to the chibi-like Anime-esque characters on the box, but that was fairly easy to get over.

Buy Cosmic Encounter. People say wargaming or Game of Thrones is cut-throat have no idea what they're talking about if they haven't played the fully-expanded Cosmic Encounter.

The hits keep rollin'!

This has basically become my life.

We've got a club called Gamer's Society at college, where we have a shitton of board games to dick around with.

Most of the time we play Betrayal At House on the Hill or Arkham Horror, but we just recently got a huge shipment of games we're trying out. Stuff like 7 Wonders, Super Dungeon Explore, Dominion, Power Grid, Pandemic...

It's really too much fun. I love it.

edited 11th Mar '13 1:31:05 PM by Deathonabun

One of my few regrets about being born female is the inability to grow a handlebar mustache. -Landstander

We have also recently gotten the Carcassone Big Box, which has the base game and all the expansions. It's pretty awesome, though you can't add all the expansions in and still have a playable game. The kids like it too, though at least they have a much harder time beating me.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Aw man, so I'm the only person here who plays Ticket to Ride? A game so tension-filled that makes my normally calm and collected father throw down his hand in frustration when I block Nashville/Atlanta yet again. A game so elegant in its simplicity I'm frankly shocked it wasn't invented ages ago, and my beloved, but not gaming-oriented mother cannot only play it, but enjoy it and win it.

I guess the $50 price tag is pretty daunting, but it's worth it. Lots of replay, and if you get tired of the same ol' same ol', the expansion packs are both cheap and worth investing in.

I also discovered my other favorite Eurogame, Dominion, is now free online. Meh, I didn't need that free time for other things anyway.

edited 15th Mar '13 1:41:34 AM by Doryna

Duel in the Dark is an elegantly designed and nerve-wracking game. All you need is very good poker-face. I cannot recommend it enough.

The hits keep rollin'!

I haven't played Ticket To Ride, but my gaming club just got it recently, so it's on the list.

I have, however, played Power Grid, and that game is absolutely fantastic. Eurogames, man. They're a hell of a drug.

One of my few regrets about being born female is the inability to grow a handlebar mustache. -Landstander