Hobby Board Games

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

Typically just called Euros or Eurogames.

www.boardgamegeek.com will have information on about every kind of game out there.

There's also a book edited by James Lowder called "The 100 Best Hobby Games" which includes some of the stuff mentioned here (Cosmic Encounter, Machiavelli), and all sorts of stuff - RP Gs like Call of Cthulhu, to racing games like Formula De and Circus Maximus (both of which I really want to try out) - and ranging anywhere from simple done-in-an-hour beer-and-peanuts stuff on one end of the spectrum to historical strategy games such as Here I Stand which is all about the Reformation Wars and has a 30 page rulebook and can take 8-10 hours to play the full scenario on the other end. Great resource for having write-ups about a wide variety of what's out there.

Recently I got my ass kicked at Small World, and got better at Race for the Galaxy.

Oh, and my family now has Cities and Knights of Catan, this promises to be fun.

Cities and Knights adds a level of difficulty that was initially hard for me to process. The third die, and the cards you draw from it, make sudden reversals in fortune ridiculously easy.

My friend is letting me borrow the deck-building game Legendary. I think it's pretty damn awesome, and wish it would not cost me $90 to get my own copy of the game and the expansion. My only problem with it is the amount of time putting it away takes - all the cards have to be separated out properly into their groups, which (especially in a 5 player game) can take forever.

I recently got a number of games of Ascension under my belt, and it's quite enjoyable (though I keep feeling like it's aimed directly at Magic players, and that's even if I disregard the game's creators).

Though I'm not a fan of the expansion with the energy/cyrstal shards. Feels too ridiculous once someone gets a small lead because it snowballs very rapidly into a blowout win (sometimes on the same turn).

The expansion with Soul Gems is cool, but somehow not as good as the original.

Actually, does Ascension even count as one of the games we are meant to talk about in this thread?

I would say Ascension counts simply on the basis that Ascension is a self contained deck building game as opposed to the CCG style of Magic.

On a seperate topic, my board game collection has expanded to include Vinhos, Dominion, Agricola, and Puerto Rico. Vinhos is currently in the category of "game I don't enjoy too much because I'm absolutely awful at it", which naturally means I should play it more in order to not suck. Agricola and Puerto Rico I have not played yet and I am really trying to get my friends to join me on those two. And Dominion...Dominion is just great. Gotta love deck builders.

edited 1st Aug '13 5:22:33 PM by Deathonabun

Puerto Rico is pretty awesome, I have to say.

If a little long and needing the right group of players.

Huh. I've played Catan and Carcassonne, but not really any of the others mentioned...

Does anyone else play: Moonshot? Nuclear War? Khet (AKA 'Chess with Lasers')?

I play Khet.

This does not mean that I am good at it.

Same. :P

I discovered at one point that one of the starting positions allows you to claim victory on your opponent's first turn, provided the exploitation isn't noticed.

My opponent discovered that if the exploitation is noticed I have just exposed myself to immediate defeat.

Short game either way. :P

Learned to play Hanabi recently (it was purchased from a board games shop in France).

Very interesting cooperative game.

Playing a game of Tokkaido will make you feel so much better with the world.

I've been watching Tabletop recently, and thought of this thread.

I really like the idea of Tsuro, and Small World too.

So there's this game I can't get enough of. It's called Battlecon.

Essentially...it's designed to be a fighting game in card game format. It takes place on a 7 space board to represent a fighting game arena. The goal (as you might expect) is to reduce the opponent's 20 life down to 0 with attacks. Attacks are played in a double blind format, so you won't know what your opponent has played this turn until the turn is already underway. Attacks consist of 3 values: power is how much damage it does, range is the range it can hit, and priority determines who goes first in a turn. Priority is pretty important: going first means you have the chance to get out of the range of the opponents attack so they can't hit you, and it also lets you stun the opponent. Stun is an interesting mechanic: if you get hit by an attack, you will be stunned and your attack will not go off this turn...unless your attack happens to have "stun guard x" listed on one of your cards, which protects you from being stunned by attacks of x power or less.

Each attack consists of a style and a base card. The styles are always a descriptor and the base is the attack name, so the attack you play tends to have a cool name like "Clockwork Strike" or "Relentless Runeblade" or "Hunter's Drive" or something like that. You add up the values on both cards plus any additional effects to form the attack. Each character has the same 6 bases, used to represent common fighting game moves. Projectiles, dashing attacks, grabs, evasive maneuvers, etc. However, every character has different styles that represent the differences between fighting styles; for example, Cadenza, who is a close range heavy hitter, has very slow attacks that do a lot of damage, and he also has a bunch of stun guard to avoid getting stunned. Each character has 5 styles and also one base that is unique to them; for example, Cadenza has "Press", which will deal damage to the opponent equal to X + 1, where X is the amount of damage dealt to Cadenza this turn (assuming they're in range and he doesn't get stunned, that is).

Each character additionally also has an ability completely unique to them; using Cadenza once again as an example, he has 3 "iron body" tokens that can be used to gain either "stun guard infinity" or "stun immunity" depending on when he uses them. However, he can never get them back, so he must choose when he uses them wisely.^note For those who are wondering, some attacks stun through stun guard; stun immunity prevents that. While the styles and bases do a fairly good job of defining a character, the unique ability is what really makes a character. They vary wildly, from Cadenza's stun guard tokens, to a character who can transform between an Explosive Overclocking elemental form and a more defensive human form, or a character who simply has 4 more bases than the other characters (but must leave 4 bases out of his hand at the beginning and pick them up as the match goes on). They do an excellent job at making every character unique.

I really wish I could describe the game better, because it really is such a beautiful and elegant game. Each match is so full of mindgames and strategy, and when you lose it's because you were outplayed more than anything else. From what I've played so far (9 characters), the characters really are quite well balanced too; so far, everyone has had more than a reasonable shot at winning.

Oh, also, if you're interested, there are 9 characters you can download for free and construct your own demo of the game.

...Whew. That was a lot of typing. tl;dr: really really cool card game that plays like a fighting game.

edited 2nd Oct '13 5:07:43 PM by Deathonabun

@Deathonabun: My neighbor has that, but I never really got into it. A quicker version of a card game that plays like a fighting game? Either Jab or Yomi.

Found this post in the northern Virginia area: http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva/tag/4169234743.html

Thinking of picking up Dominion and/or Catan but it IS a bit out of the way for me. If any of you lives close to there, feel free to make use of it. BTW aren't there different versions of Dominion?

edited 6th Nov '13 3:07:35 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

I played Cards Against Humanity for the first time on Saturday. I want this game so badly, except that means I have to find something to do with the children while doing so.

Fun story. A few years back my uncle came to Europe. When he came to Finland he brought us Die Siedler Von Catan. Of my family only my mother speaks German. Now four of the few words I know in German are Road, Settlement, City and Development.

Two years later I'd bought all the expansions

edited 29th Jan '14 12:09:31 PM by Qeise

Oh, catan, I love that. I've got all 3 expansions. Only ever played Seafarers though.

Played 7 Wonders recently, and loved it!

Easy to learn, easy to play!

EDIT: Also, I'm considering getting myself a copy of Ascension. I'm planning to pick up the Apprentice edition, since I don't expect a huge number of friends to play at once. With that in mind, does anyone know if the expansion (the first one, Whatever of the Fallen) can be integrated into the Apprentice edition? Looking at the contents and the way it's designed, I'm thinking yes, since Apprentice is just the original game but for 2 players instead of 4.

edited 3rd Feb '14 1:33:52 PM by disruptorfe404

I've been spending the week playing Race for the Galaxy with friends. Fun facts:

• One friend seemed to hog all the "awesome power in Develop phase" cards in all games. In fact, I never got the Interstellar Bank, and only got the Credits late in the week.
• Most of the time my initial hand chose a military strategy for me, and I ended up as Imperium conquering a lot of rebel worlds.
  • Including one I actually won, due to having both Imperium and Rebel 6-devs.
• The scores in our final game were: 42 with lots of cards, 42 with three cards (me), 42 with no cards, 41, and 26. None of us had ever seen a game this close before.

edited 17th Feb '14 2:04:56 AM by Medinoc

Dominion. Sweet sweet Dominion. I love how resilient it is to being played over and over again.

[Sorry, new accounts cannot post external links.]

This morning, while trying to go back to sleep, I was laying in bed with my brain inexplicably focusing on how to turn Adventure into a card/board game along the lines of Arkham Horror or Betrayal At House On The Hill.

edited 12th Nov '14 10:06:43 PM by BlueNinja0

So in the last few months, my family got the tenth edition of Ticket To Ride. I got to play a few games of it before I went on deployment. The biggest different between the 10th edition and the main game is not the uniue pieces - which are pretty cool - but the tickets are now in groups, so if you can complete one ticket from each group you get extra points for that at the end too.^note Which, not realizing this, I ended up doing the first time we played and it pushed me into first place.

I'm looking at buying Fluxx 5.0, possibly with either Cthulhu or Monty Python versions. Anyone else played enough of the game to give an opinion on gameplay?

Does nobody play board games anymore?