The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

Given the current situation, one thing I'd like to do is set up times to play board games online with my extended family. I think it'll be a good way for us to stay connected and pass the time in a more positive way.

I'm hoping the folks here might have suggestions. I'll add a few rough guidelines too:
1. Assume the grandparents do have computers or ipads but definitely not high end machines.
2. May have Macs and not PCs. (I don't want to limit this for others but it would help to call out if it's a platform specific thing)
3. One to one connections is good but bonus points if you can get more than two households involved.

I know at a crude level some games can be done with just video like chess if we both had a chess board but I'm looking for something that can maybe involve a few more people.

Thanks!

Does everyone have an iPhone or iPad? My wife and I play Carcassonne for iOS and it’s quite good. Not sure if they allow cross play with Android or computers.

One of the best things about Carcassonne is that it’s fairly guided and easy to play since it gives you options of where to put the meeple, etc.

Tabletop Simulator might be a little complicated for stereotypical grandparents, but its incredibly rewarding for those who can wrap their heads around the interface. Its a little clunky, but the payoff is basically being able to play everything. EVERYTHING! The community has created versions (sometimes multiple versions) of virtually every game. You can connect with I think up to 8 people. The games, with a few exceptions, are not really scripted in any way. Its up to you to know how the game works and to keep track of things but there are some great mods out there that are exceptions, giving you shortcuts to setup, turns, tracking etc.

The best I've seen is this mod for Star Wars Legion. It helps you with army building, token management, dice rolling, line of sight, model movement, unit cohesion, round-to-round tracking... it has every model released for the game, dozens of stored pre-made maps, tools to let you create your own maps... its stunning. It does things I didnt know you could do in TTS.

iOS used to have a good version of Ticket To Ride (TTR) that was perfect for groups.

iOS Pandemic is also great, not sure if it's multiplayer.

iOS Lords of Waterdeep might not be good for novice modern boardgamers, but we used to play it asynchronously, very similar to TTR. I think there was a GWJ tournament years ago.

Tabletop Simulator is fantastic; the one time I played it, it was brilliant. After 30 minutes the interface mostly disappeared and we were just playing. I want to do more, but finding time and planning ahead can be tough.

We're being very careful and avoiding as much exposure as possible, except my office hasn't closed yet. We're getting some extra family gaming in. So far we've played Scattergories, Werewords, and Cheeky Monkey.

Played Jumanji this morning with the kiddos before my wife got up. Let them move double moves so it wouldn't take forever.

I've been thinking about board games we could play remotely for our weekly game night. I've started leaning towards co-op games, since it's open information and thus one host can lay out everybody's hand on a webcam. Pandemic might work like that but it's a little too real right now!

My friend and I were also trying to come up with a way to play The Mind remotely!

I'd like to figure out how to play Wingspan remotely, since it's pretty chill. Having an open hand doesn't affect things that much. But reading the small text on the cards is probably impossible.

Wingspan also has the advantage of everyone having their own player board. The trick will be managing the cards.

I've got a session of Betrayal Legacy scheduled Tuesday. Anyone know any good tools to make it remote play for two of the five players?

Three of us are a household (my wife, myself, and our downstairs neighbor) but two are external.

My plan was to set up a camera on the board, maybe Twitch stream it, and have the two external people call in with their moves.

As it is a legacy game, I imagine there are complications. I probably need to track down PDFs of all of the various haunts, as one of the external people might end up being the traitor. But it seems manageable/doable. Tips certainly appreciated though!

Just a reminder for online play to check the first page of this thread for various sites on which to play games.

Not sure why yall are reinventing this wheel Tabletop Simulator, seriously! It even has an official Wingspan DLC. Generally only the host needs to own DLCs as well.

Hopefully Valve or Berserk will recognize the need for a Covid-19 sale and do 4 packs of TTS

spikn wrote:

Pandemic might work like that but it's a little too real right now!

Playing with in easy mode with very few epidemic cards might be refreshing, though. Take that viruses!

Natus wrote:

Just a reminder for online play to check the first page of this thread for various sites on which to play games.

Just started a game of Tzolkin this morning on Board Game Arena.

Solo gaming here I come!

My game group is still coming together. We've only had one confirm case in our county. My old venue closed down for the time being and we are meeting up at another venue. I'm guessing it will close down soon. After which I'll tell my group to get together in small groups. (30ish active members in my group)

Hey guys, I will be organizing a virtual game nights with my Wichita group. I wanted to reach out to you guys to see if you want to join in. Join our discord if you are interested.

I got a new game in the mail the other day; Tang Garden. And I'm here to tell you it's good!

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In Tang Garden you are all garden engineers trying to build a garden that would make the people visiting it as happy as you can. You do this by placing tiles and decorations and building the garden step by step until one of the stacks of tiles (which are rock, water, forest or tao tiles (basically a mix of all the previous 3)) runs out. As you place tiles or decorations you earn coins for each path you connect and elemental power ( I think it's called?) for each of the elements of the tiles you connect. So place a tile, earn coins and / or power OR draw two decoration cards and pick one to place in the garden. The decoration cards also double as a set collection game within the game. Place one bird decoration and get 0 points at the end of the game, but place a bird AND a lotus flower and gain 6 points at the end of the game. That kind of thing.

As you play you will have people visiting the garden that want to see certain items or tiles. Eventually you can start placing these visitors down in the garden and you draw a line from where they are standing straight out and the more decorations and types of tiles they see in a straight line, the more coins you earn from them. Usually in a game, you will get to place 3 or 4 characters so you have to balance all their needs while trying to stop other players from grabbing certain tiles or landscapes and gaining points from them.

It's real easy to teach (I explained it to my wife in < 5 minutes and she beat me in our first game), looks beautiful on the table and once you have played a few rounds of it, you will start to see how everything you do has depth and some hard choices on what to do on your turn. Since you can only do one thing (place tile or place decoration) together with 3 free actions every turn becomes a difficult choice. Do you play a water tile because you need your water element to go up to gain more visitors, or do you place a decoration so you can finish your set collection. Tile it is, but water or tao tile? Argh! Yet, the game flows so quickly and easily that AP never enters into play and if you miss out on doing something one turn, you pretty much always have another chance in a subsequent turn.

I loved it and my wife who I rarely get to try out games with said she loved it and wants to play more of it. I can only whole heartedly recommend it to everyone who wants a tile laying set collecting game.

PS. Yes, I know there are some internet people who are up in arms about certain things in the game not being exact in their depiction of the Tang Dynasty. If you are careful about supporting games that take freedom with that kind of thing, it may not be for you.

Sounds great! Love to see some pictures next time you play!

Guess I'll have to keep an eye out for it at the local shop, they're usually pretty good about having at least one open copy of a game for rental/demo purposes. And if not, it can be requested!

My game group only had one other person show up yesterday and we schedule a virtual scythe night this Friday.

Fredrik_S wrote:

I got a new game in the mail the other day; Tang Garden. And I'm here to tell you it's good!

Yes, I agree. My wife and I rather enjoyed it. I honestly had lost interest since the KS, but I have to say it fits a nice little niche in my library now. Not unlike Kanagawa in that it is a good casual game with a reasonable level of strategy.

FFG announced Arkham Horror starter deck on their instagram.

Such a great idea. Keeps the game accessible with the massive amount of content but still give content to players who deck build.

Played my first game of Space Base last night. I’d fobbed it off for ages as I found Machi Koro dull. It’s pretty great with virtually zero downtime. Contemplating grabbing a copy for myself now.

Also played a really good game of Lords of Vegas. I already have it and the up expansion, but depending on the price point for the upcoming Kickstarter I may have to look at flipping my copy to offset Kickstarter cost.

In other news finally “finished” our Gloomhaven base game. The big bad wasn’t too hard but it was enjoyable, and my friend Kris who is leaving for his home in Latvia soon (when Covid 19 allows) should have struck the final blow but I saw him leave it for my wife. He would never admit to doing such a thing, but I noticed and it was really sweet.

We still have the expansion to play although I doubt we’ll finish before he leaves and I’m excited for Frosthaven, but don’t know how well I’ll go getting it to the table without Kris around to make us play whenever we have a spare moment

Played a couple of games of Dune today, probably the last in person games for the foreseeable future.

I really enjoyed it. I had tempered expectations because of the age of the design, but we had great fun. Both games ended fairly early due to aggressive plays. I suspect greater familiarity would lead to more subtle play.

F this virus. That is all.

I played a game of Spirit Island via Tabletop Simulator last night. Many technical problems (including a hard crash of steam on my machine hosting it), but basically worked okay. Definitely seems like it will take a few tries to really get the hang of it.

Luckily the crash came when it was already pretty late and I think we were all ready to finish up and go to bed anyhow. I guess a 60% chance we would throw out the colonists.

Tabletop Simulator saves very frequently, like too frequently. You may be able to restore your auto save and pick up right where you left off.

Yeah, probably, but we were all fairly done with it I think. We thought next time we should do a less fiddly game.

I'm tired of cross posting, so look at this instead. (or is this cross posting? IDK, and call me a filthy skimmer if you must)
https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/...

Spoiler:

Sale on 4packs of Tabletop Simulator till April 2.

Sell your Burgers online (Async implementation of Food Chain Magnate on boardgamecore.net)

Hey all,

Shameless plug, but I just wanted to give my Goodjer Brethren a heads up on the Kickstarter I'm helping kick off on the 20th of April. The current line is in Metal and this is for a new edition that will fund all the new minis and getting a good chunk of the existing line switched to resin.

This is a pure love letter to 80's cartoons, TV and pop culture and a fun strategic/tactical skirmish game, but don't take my word for it as I'm biased having helped write the rules

Check out the Facebook group

and the website

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Cross-post from the 3D printer thread:
https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/comme...

I have both printers unclogged and have been printing about half of the hours in the day for the last 5 days. My brother bought Wingspan (board game) and we are printing out pieces to replace the cardboard chits.

He's also reskinning Scythe (board game) with an animal theme. He bought a blank board and is using Photoshop to create the new hexes. I've been printing animal tokens for him along with a few "Hero" animals.

It's good to have the printers being put to good use.

-BEP

Last night I finally taught myself and played my first game of Unbroken. It was alright and I barely won on easy, so look forward to trying it again on normal and against different monsters.