The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

Quarantine has clearly gotten to my wife because she loved Terraforming Mars + Prelude + H&E and wants to play it again. Unfortunately, the new Verdun 1916: Steel Inferno didn't grab us quite so much. We will try it again.

However, I'm just in the early stages of a VASSAL game of Imperial Struggle (the prequel to Twilight Struggle) and I like it a lot. Very different mechanics from TS, and of course things might not end well. But the opening is promising, and the game itself is *beautiful*!

UPDATE: Three games in. Imperial Struggle is VERY good. If you play, make sure you get the latest updates and errata from BGG.

Now I'm really curious about the bits in a Cialis board game.

Nevin73 wrote:

Now I'm really curious about the bits in a Cialis board game.

If your analysis paralysis lasts longer than four hours, consult a physician.

(Also, find another gaming group, wow)

I've been interested in Gloomhaven but given how big it is (it would have to pay rent if it wants to stay in my San Francisco apartment) and how intimidating the whole thing seems, I haven't bothered.

Enter Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. This is a smaller box and seems a lot more accessible. Having never played the original, is drop-in-drop-out possible? Basically it would be 2 players most of the time, but at some point we may want to add a 3rd. would we be better off just playing 3 characters with the two of us and if a 3rd ever shows up we just let him take over one of the characters?

Carlbear95 wrote:

I've been interested in Gloomhaven but given how big it is (it would have to pay rent if it wants to stay in my San Francisco apartment) and how intimidating the whole thing seems, I haven't bothered.

Enter Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. This is a smaller box and seems a lot more accessible. Having never played the original, is drop-in-drop-out possible? Basically it would be 2 players most of the time, but at some point we may want to add a 3rd. would we be better off just playing 3 characters with the two of us and if a 3rd ever shows up we just let him take over one of the characters?

I've only played the original online but drop in and out is super easy. The levels adjust for the number of players. Only thing you might need to do is keep a record of that players items and xp etc. Which you do normally anyway.

I enjoy gloomhaven quite a bit. It's basically a DnD campaign that's just 95 percent combat. Very fun. Although if you like DnD for story or role playing it won't fill that niche.

I saw someone else got their copy of D6, up thread, I don't know if you got the deluxe edition or not, but I found the whole system to be a very enjoyable unboxing. I also picked up Wingspan and Patchwork.
I cannot wait for my Vorpal Board Kickstarter to come in September-ish (or for the solution to the COVID crisis) I have too many physical games I want to play with people.

My gaming group is stuck in Tabletopia for the foreseeable future. I personally quite dislike it but the fact it works in a browser is enabling one of them to join when they'd otherwise be left out.

Anyway, I've had a hard time finding games for 5 players, cooperative preferred, and the simpler the better. We're finding that we lack the mental capacity to learn a very complex game right now and we also are not motivated to compete. 'competitive solitaire' is fine though. We've mostly been playing Dominion and Paperback.

Thoughts?

Polypusher, The Crew supports 5. I don't know how well it plays at that number.

Speaking of, I picked up The Crew last week based on the recommendations here. Thank you for the recommendation!

We played 2 players with my wife and the dummy hand (AI). We got 8 missions in over the weekend and definitely enjoyed it.
Co-op, trick taking, and short games were all selling points that all worked out well in execution. The early missions definitely felt like training/tutorial but we did have to retry mission 8 a couple of times which was actually a relief. While we weren't looking for a total brain burner we were looking forward to the challenge picking up some, and now it appears to have.

Also, here's an older "Best With 5 Players" geeklist from 2016
5 Player Games List 2016

Another more recent from 2018
Another 5 player games list
This one sorts by weight (light/medium/heavy) and lists estimated playtime, but doesnt filter for co-op.

From the Light and Medium light categories I can personally recommend:

Forbidden Desert was pretty good as a co-op. It's an iteration of pandemic.

The Grizzled is another co-op that I really enjoyed, but it's about trying to survive World War 1 in the trenches. It's not a wargame but it's about trying to survive the war and camaraderie. It might be a little grim.

These are not Co-oP but also good:
Sushi Go
Dixit
For Sale

My conclusion is that 5 players is a tough number to find good co-op games for.

Tabletopia:
The Crew
Forbidden Desert or Island or Sky
Love Letter or any variant
Fury of Dracula
Welcome To...
Charterstone
Codenames
Hanabi

man I hate Tabletopia (compared with Tabletop Simulator)

I haven't played any of these but they all are listed as co-ops that support 5 players, but none are "best" at 5.

The Reckoners (based on the Brandon Sanderson series, which I enjoyed.)
Aeon's End
Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth (2019)

Game that plays best at five players:
Battlestar Galactica

Semi-cooperative: five "humans"--two secretly are robots who want the humans to fail--trying to survive the path from their destroyed home planets to a new home. Absolutely fantastic game, but out of print so may be a bit hard to find now, certainly the expansions but you don't need them.

Found out were playing Gloomhaven wrong in some ways. Not surprising given the complexity of the game. That said we were playing the game without increasing our characters hp when we level. Oddly enough we never noticed. Had to start raising the difficulty when we started following the rules.

For coop I recommend Eldritch Horror. Just make sure to read out the stories. Otherwise the game gets dull. The Arkham Card Game is also really good coop.

PolypUsher, if your group's common denominator is browser access, have you tried BoardGameArena?

Here's the site's 5p games list:
https://www.boardgamearena.com/gamel...

Unfortunately I don't think any of those are coop.

I'm not entirely sure what you get at the free tier, but I think for about $24/year you get pretty much everything they have on offer, and really only one person needs to sign up.

Zwickle wrote:

Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth (2019)

Journeys in Middle Earth is really good. It's app driven cooperative campaign game. Form a party of Middle Earth appropriate folk and adventure. The story isn't based on the Fellowship's journey to destroy the Ring, it's a new tale and a good one.

You'll decide as a team how to solve each map's problem while withstanding the map's 'time' pressure with ever-escalating sets of baddies trying to stop you. Its intense and challenging without being unfair.

One mission had us interrogating people in a tavern to figure out who knew the answer to a question. Another had us scouring a countryside looking for clues to an object's location

We've been using BoardGameArena and so far I've been pretty impressed. It does not have anywhere near the selection of Tabletop Simulator obviously, but the ease of use is a huge selling point. The games do all the work for you, built in voice chat, it's pretty well done.

Anyone here have even a passing interest in 18xx games? There's a fantastic site with a handful of titles that went up around the onset of Covid. https://www.18xx.games/

If you haven't heard of 18xx, it's a genre of highly interactive business simulations for conniving railroad barons set in the 19th century. Like Food Chain Magnate, there's very low luck in the game, the rules are simple, but the ramifications of the rules and the strategies that emerge are quite deep.

I love it and I've become unnervingly obsessed. LMK if you're interested.

I'm really enjoying playing Rallyman GT on BGA. The mechanics aren't as thematic as Formula D but it's much more fun to play, and you have interesting decisions to make each turn, as well as trying to set up later turns for yourself. Even though we've all played it 10 times or more, there was 1 turn where we all crashed, so there's more ebb and flow than in Formula D. The previous week we were all on adjacent spaces on the turn before someone won

I've backed Rallyman DIRT on Kickstarter (a rally version) which seems quite different.

My wife and I lost the first game of September in our Pandemic Legacy Season 2 campaign.

It was at that point that I noticed that we had been calculating a certain added rule incorrectly which means we now have twice as many epidemic cards in our deck moving forward and the last 3 or so games were accidentally on easy mode. Looks like we might get to open that lose 4 in a row box

Our family has been looking for a good train game, and we recently tried both Stephenson's Rocket by Knizia and Steam (base game) by Wallace. The former no one really liked (what was all the fuss about?) and the latter we liked, but I don't know if it's quite the train game we want . Next up...Wabash Cannonball and, if we make it that far, 1846 from GMT.

Natus wrote:

Our family has been looking for a good train game, and we recently tried both Stephenson's Rocket by Knizia and Steam (base game) by Wallace. The former no one really liked (what was all the fuss about?) and the latter we liked, but I don't know if it's quite the train game we want . Next up...Wabash Cannonball and, if we make it that far, 1846 from GMT.

Ride the Rails from Capstone is great, as is Irish Gauge. But, I do prefer the first.

My friend was in the recent episode of an 18XX podcast.

The regular host that did most of the talking was a good host, if I did play those games all the time I would probably keep listening to more episodes.

https://pca.st/glinb4tf

No Pun Included recently did a great video on 18XX games for newcomers:

I just bought my friend Larry Harris' War Room for his 50th birthday. I can't wait until we can give it a try (after quarantines end, of course).

Colt Express is a great family game featuring trains.

I picked up Champions of Midgard the other day during the Amazon board games sale. My life loves Lords of Waterdeep. I understand there are some similarities between the games. Anyone have any experience with these games and, if so, are they different enough to warrant keeping them both?
Thank you.

Chad

outside of both being worker placement games the only similarity is thematic as some of the actions represent assigning adventurers/warriors to missions.

But the game play is quite different, and personally I find CoM much better.

chooka1 wrote:

I picked up Champions of Midgard the other day during the Amazon board games sale.

You didn't happen to get the Valhalla expansion did you?

It offsets a Lot of teh negative that people could find in this game and makes it pretty awesome.

Looks like I can finally try Spirit Island: https://www.pcgamer.com/co-op-board-...
Has anyone tried this Steam edition?