The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

Luggage wrote:

So I come here before you as a board/card game novice with a somewhat peculiar request. In a mission to rid my family of the traditional Christmas rummy games enforced by my mother, I've been getting a new game for the last two Christmas'. Last year I got Dominion, the year before it was Bang.
This year, I would like to go a little further and get a board game. It needs to support 4 to 6 players (teams of 2 could also work). Ideally something we can play cooperatively. It should be either easy to pick up with 1-3h rounds or the rounds need to be shorter (less than an hour) while having a medium complexity rule set. In general, it should be playable while tipsy.

Open for all suggestions, guidance or links.

Pandemic seems like a logical choice. With the expansion, you can play with 5. Last time I checked, boardsandbits.com still had the expansion in stock.

If you want a longer playing time, but simple mechanics (and the chance of a traitor,) Shadows Over Camelot may work well, and it supports 3-7.

Saboteur has a traitor mechanic, but it seems well received by all the people I've played it with. I recommend playing with the option where only people with working equipment share in the spoils.

Getting back to Claustrophobia, I think it's a great two player game. The mechanics are fairly simple, but elegant. I don't really play that many two player games, but Claustrophobia really brings something good to the table. I'm told that there are a lot of scenarios available on the web, but I've only tried the ones in the book. As for the similarity of the humans, if I remember right, you just have to match the hair colors. Not great, as the distinction isn't obvious, but it worked.

+1 for Pandemic. Everyone has a different definition of complexity, if it turns out Pandemic is a little too much there's also it's little brother Forbidden Island. I believe it only plays 4 but since you said teams are ok and it's entirely cooperative anyway you could definitely have 6 involved in the game.

I haven't personally played it but from everything I've heard 7 Wonders would be perfect if you weren't set on cooperative.

I'm going to +1 Elder Signs, but go against the grain and -1 Pandemic. I don't know why but I haven't had fun with it in my experience. I think part of it is that strategic choices are very important so it felt like we were deciding everything to do by committee, rather than making individual decisions. That's true for more or less every coop game, but I felt it especially true for Pandemic. Hell, it's probably true for Elder Signs as well, but I like that theme much more.

My choice would be to go for one of the D&D games like Ravenloft or Legend of Drizzt. It's VERY accessible and you feel much more like you're playing YOUR character as you are moving him/her through the map. Tons of fun and scales well to multiple people.

Elder Signs is great too, definitely. Thematically that could be a turn off for a typical family though.

nvm, I'm a jerk.

Luggage wrote:

So I come here before you as a board/card game novice with a somewhat peculiar request. In a mission to rid my family of the traditional Christmas rummy games enforced by my mother, I've been getting a new game for the last two Christmas'. Last year I got Dominion, the year before it was Bang.
This year, I would like to go a little further and get a board game. It needs to support 4 to 6 players (teams of 2 could also work). Ideally something we can play cooperatively. It should be either easy to pick up with 1-3h rounds or the rounds need to be shorter (less than an hour) while having a medium complexity rule set. In general, it should be playable while tipsy.

Open for all suggestions, guidance or links.

Betrayal at House on the Hill or Forbidden Island are the two that immediately come to mind.

Luggage wrote:

So I come here before you as a board/card game novice with a somewhat peculiar request. In a mission to rid my family of the traditional Christmas rummy games enforced by my mother, I've been getting a new game for the last two Christmas'. Last year I got Dominion, the year before it was Bang.
This year, I would like to go a little further and get a board game. It needs to support 4 to 6 players (teams of 2 could also work). Ideally something we can play cooperatively. It should be either easy to pick up with 1-3h rounds or the rounds need to be shorter (less than an hour) while having a medium complexity rule set. In general, it should be playable while tipsy.

Open for all suggestions, guidance or links.

I vote Ticket To Ride. Not coop, but a great low stress game. It's fun, straight-forward, has some luck involved but enough strategy to make it feel like its not a total toss of the dice. I give it 22 out of 4d6.

I'll second Ticket to Ride. I agree with Chumpy's points, plus the setting is more familiar to non-gamers than something like Small World (which now that I think about it, if they handled Dominion, might not be so bad.

Another idea is 7 Wonders. Or Cargo Noir.

Ticket to Ride is the first game I'd thought of as well. I just didn't include it because of the co-op request. Seems like a game that engages everyone, is easy to pick up, and it's a great game on it's own merits.

7 Wonders is also a great game, but I'm not sure how easy it is if everyone is new to gaming.

Poppinfresh wrote:

Ticket to Ride is the first game I'd thought of as well. I just didn't include it because of the co-op request. Seems like a game that engages everyone, is easy to pick up, and it's a great game on it's own merits.

7 Wonders is also a great game, but I'm not sure how easy it is if everyone is new to gaming.

7 Wonders was pretty easy to pick up, assuming you go with the simpler side of the Civ cards.

Defenders of The Realm with the Dragon Expansion allows for more than 4 people playing cooperatively vs. the board. It's a Richard Launius joint (See Pandemic) and uses many of the same rules, albeit with a deeper fantasy genre bent to it.

It's our current go-to for our cooperative mid-level challenge game niche.

Luggage wrote:

So I come here before you as a board/card game novice with a somewhat peculiar request. In a mission to rid my family of the traditional Christmas rummy games enforced by my mother, I've been getting a new game for the last two Christmas'. Last year I got Dominion, the year before it was Bang.
This year, I would like to go a little further and get a board game. It needs to support 4 to 6 players (teams of 2 could also work). Ideally something we can play cooperatively. It should be either easy to pick up with 1-3h rounds or the rounds need to be shorter (less than an hour) while having a medium complexity rule set. In general, it should be playable while tipsy.

Open for all suggestions, guidance or links.

Easiest game that fits most of your criteria that immediately comes to mind is Ticket to Ride. It's not cooperative, but it's easy to pick up, less than one hour to play, and definitely playable while tipsy. GREAT introductory game to board games outside the traditional ones.

NSMike (sung to the tune of The Chimney Sweep Song) wrote:

Skim skimmery, skim skimmery, look up 5 posts/
I've something to say and I'll say it the most.
Skim skimmery, skim skimmery, it's such a pain/
Someone beat me to it, so I'll say it again!

FTFY.

Fantasy Flight holiday sale

Nothing that really interests me but thought some people might want to know about it.

gregrampage wrote:

Fantasy Flight holiday sale

Nothing that really interests me but thought some people might want to know about it.

If you're a Battlelore fan, there's some good stuff there but it's going fast.

edosan wrote:
gregrampage wrote:

Fantasy Flight holiday sale

Nothing that really interests me but thought some people might want to know about it.

If you're a Battlelore fan, there's some good stuff there but it's going fast.

I might pick up the Tide of Iron scenario book for $10. That's definitely one of my favorite tactical war games. Scales well from small to large engagements (and time), and it strikes a good balance between features & simplicity.

I'm tempted by Android, Tribune and Warrior Knights. But do I really need another worker placement game (Tribune)? Probably not. Where will I find 3 other people willing to sit down for 3 or 4 hours and hammer out a complex strategy game (Warrior Knights)? Not around here. Plus a friend of mine already owns Android and never plays it.

Sigh. I'm still tempted, and it is a great deal. Any enablers want to chime in?

Don't bother with Android. It's an awesome concept that tries too hard. Too much complexity gets in the way of the fun. Sort of represents all the worst qualities of Kevin Wilson's designs.

Warrior Knights is somewhat similar. I love the core mechanics and gameplay, but I feel like the winning conditions are really lackluster. The expansion adds some options to help with that a bit, but I haven't given those a test run yet. There are plenty of other games that better accomplish what Warrior Knights sets out to do, so those just get played instead.

Tribune is pretty cool. That said, I did get rid of my copy because it was just another worker placement game I wasn't tabling up It also suffers a bit from lackluster victory goals... the game just sort of "ends" and you see who wins. I like having some more interesting tension or buildup to the end.

So, there you go. Some solid disabling!

Thanks Dreaded Gazebo. I think that was exactly what I needed.

Anyone played Star Trek: Fleet Captains? A close friend was contemplating getting it for the holidays, and he's a big Star Trek fan, but also frugal. He's read the BGG reviews, but he doesn't know exactly how to calibrate that with his own views. Out of my collection, he's loved Dominion, Wrath Of Ashardalon, and Small World. Any thoughts?

DanyBoy wrote:

I'm tempted by Android, Tribune and Warrior Knights. But do I really need another worker placement game (Tribune)? Probably not. Where will I find 3 other people willing to sit down for 3 or 4 hours and hammer out a complex strategy game (Warrior Knights)? Not around here. Plus a friend of mine already owns Android and never plays it.

Sigh. I'm still tempted, and it is a great deal. Any enablers want to chime in?

Nail in the coffin time...

Warrior Knights flat out cannot compare to even most of the middling multiplayer strategy fare. Beautiful presentation, but the design flounders iun Euro-muck. I've played the base game once and then with the expansion and was seriously underwhelmed each time. I'm VERY leery of the designer, who apparently needed a few tries to rev up his design portfolio (I did enjoy Runewars, actually).

Tribune I liked very much and bought it and the expansion, which I haven't played. But decent worker placement games are ubiquitous nowadays...my favorite currently being Age of Empires III.

argh - edit problems.

For those that are interested, I'm giving away two copies of Eminent Domain on my blog:

1000th play - and a contest!

Feel free to enter

Aside from Claustrophobia I heard of another, less simple two-player board game. It has sci-fi elements and stuff. Anyone know what this is?

Strangeblades wrote:

Aside from Claustrophobia I heard of another, less simple two-player board game. It has sci-fi elements and stuff. Anyone know what this is?

Probably Earth Reborn. It's a really interesting game with some cool mechanics but I'm not entirely sold on it. There's a pretty steep learning curve and I feel like the concepts in the game are much more interesting than the execution.

That said, I never did get to the random scenario generation which is probably where the game really starts to shine. I think if you had two people who really loved the game and played quite a bit it could be fun. For more casual play, though, I'd stick with Space Hulk or Claustrophobia.

Dreaded Gazebo wrote:
Strangeblades wrote:

Aside from Claustrophobia I heard of another, less simple two-player board game. It has sci-fi elements and stuff. Anyone know what this is?

Probably Earth Reborn. It's a really interesting game with some cool mechanics but I'm not entirely sold on it. There's a pretty steep learning curve and I feel like the concepts in the game are much more interesting than the execution.

That said, I never did get to the random scenario generation which is probably where the game really starts to shine. I think if you had two people who really loved the game and played quite a bit it could be fun. For more casual play, though, I'd stick with Space Hulk or Claustrophobia.

Thanks for that. Also it's $99.99 for Earth Reborn and it's only $50 or less for Claustrophobia.

Do you know or anyone know of a Canadian seller of Claus.? Amazon.ca does not have it and I'm not paying Amazon.com's super-high cross-border fees.

Strangeblades wrote:
Dreaded Gazebo wrote:
Strangeblades wrote:

Aside from Claustrophobia I heard of another, less simple two-player board game. It has sci-fi elements and stuff. Anyone know what this is?

Probably Earth Reborn. It's a really interesting game with some cool mechanics but I'm not entirely sold on it. There's a pretty steep learning curve and I feel like the concepts in the game are much more interesting than the execution.

That said, I never did get to the random scenario generation which is probably where the game really starts to shine. I think if you had two people who really loved the game and played quite a bit it could be fun. For more casual play, though, I'd stick with Space Hulk or Claustrophobia.

Thanks for that. Also it's $99.99 for Earth Reborn and it's only $50 or less for Claustrophobia.

Do you know or anyone know of a Canadian seller of Claus.? Amazon.ca does not have it and I'm not paying Amazon.com's super-high cross-border fees.

German Games

The only place a Canadian should ever buy games from. Great flat rate shipping, good prices, awesome customer service, and it's a Ma-Pa run shop.

http://www.germangames.com/game.asp?...

El-Producto wrote:
Strangeblades wrote:
Dreaded Gazebo wrote:
Strangeblades wrote:

Aside from Claustrophobia I heard of another, less simple two-player board game. It has sci-fi elements and stuff. Anyone know what this is?

Probably Earth Reborn. It's a really interesting game with some cool mechanics but I'm not entirely sold on it. There's a pretty steep learning curve and I feel like the concepts in the game are much more interesting than the execution.

That said, I never did get to the random scenario generation which is probably where the game really starts to shine. I think if you had two people who really loved the game and played quite a bit it could be fun. For more casual play, though, I'd stick with Space Hulk or Claustrophobia.

Thanks for that. Also it's $99.99 for Earth Reborn and it's only $50 or less for Claustrophobia.

Do you know or anyone know of a Canadian seller of Claus.? Amazon.ca does not have it and I'm not paying Amazon.com's super-high cross-border fees.

German Games

The only place a Canadian should ever buy games from. Great flat rate shipping, good prices, awesome customer service, and it's a Ma-Pa run shop.

http://www.germangames.com/game.asp?...

Nice! Thanks for the info. I have zero experience with German Games but I'm getting good vibes from it. Just ordered another present for my wife and I under the tree.

I've ordered probably over $300 worth of games from them on multiple occasions. Great spot.

Another good one if they don't have what you are looking for is www.fungamescafe.com, similar Ma-Pa run shop.

Black Friday/Cyber Monday, my birthday, and Christmas are all within a 1 month span. Thanks to this my board game collection is growing these days. LOTR card game, Game of Thrones card game, Pandemic, Agricola, and Quarriors have all entered my house lately or are going to soon. Oh also the MTG cards I got from the donation drive contest.

Going to be a fun Christmas break.

Update: Apparently I also got The Resistance today.