GWJ Online Boardgame Group

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Official Game nights are Wednesdays starting at 8PM Eastern Standard Time Meet up in the Ventrillo Server.

Official Games for this upcoming Wednesday: Check the end of the thread, as the OP will likely not be updated with them for the time being.

Official EU Game nights are ALSO Wednesday at 8PM Greenwich Mean Time!

Feel free to organize other evenings and/or get other games going during the official evenings - especially games we've played before! 7 Wonders, San Juan, Pandemic, Power Grid, etc - all games we've played. Check the thread for rules explanations and such - they're there somewhere.

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Play by Email games are ongoing!
Right now, there are games of Tikal on SpielByWebongoing, as well as Wallenstein and Through the Ages.

Check the thread regularly for new PBEM games opening, or create your own and post it in the thread! So far we've had great turnout.

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Steam Group is up! http://steamcommunity.com/groups/gwjbg

GWJ Vent info can be found here. Meet here and/or in the Steam Chat for events!

Long story short - the goal of the group is to enable a platform for announcements and events to get people together to play boardgames online or by email using the variety of different platforms online, and to help each other learn to use both the games and the platform.

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Sites to play online board games:

BrettSpeilWelt - The biggy, with the most selection. Register and download the client. List of games is here.

Board Game Arena - a nice simple site, with good UI, that supports Dominion, Race for the Galaxy, Stone Age, Puerto Rico, and others.

Days of Wonder - official site, but allows you to play Ticket to Ride, Memoir 44, and Gang of Four online. If you have a DoW game you can get a full account, and there is a pay for play credits system

Game Table Online It's the single best in Rabbit's opinion. 1960, axis & allies, battle cry, acquire, etc ...

Isotropic - An excellent, quick, and simple place to play Dominion and all expansions

Yucata - Lots of lesser-known games.

Boite A Jeux - Has Agricola, among other things.

http://www.slothninja.com/ has Martin Wallace's After the Flood and the hard to find Tammany Hall.

JSR - web based interface for playing 7 Wonders. In French, and tricky to navigate at first (see BGG thread), but good when you persevere. Note: Turns are asynchronous unless you get a group together. Also probably superceded by the BSW version.

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Sites for Play By Email Games:

SpielByWeb - Probably my favorite of the bunch, the game interfaces are great and it does a good job notifying you when it's your turn. Tikal is awesome PBEM.

MaBiWeb - Small selection but good interface.

Yucata - Lots of lesser-known games.

Through the Ages - Fantastic implementation of Through the Ages. Unfortunately the site tends to go down somewhat frequently.

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Resources to learn to play boardgames

Board Games with Scott - Video Tutorials of Board Games

The How To Play Podcast- Audio Tutorials of Board Games. Some of these are quite long, but that's because he actually goes into some basic strategy and thoughts about these games as well, which I find helpful as it goes beyond just a rules explanation.

Both are excellent resources, but both are unfortunately incomplete lists - these guys do these in their spare time so not every single game available is out there!

For games not available on those two podcasts, you will likely be able to find a PDF online by googling, or a youtube video with an explanation. There is also an iPhone app that has boardgame rulebooks on it, though I forget what its called.

I recommend that everyone interested in participating learn to play Dominion and Seven Wonders, as these are nice, short games to play while we're waiting for someone, or while some people are being explained the rules to another game.

I'd love to do this! Unfortunately there are no suggestions here as I haven't played any boardgames online, but definitely interested.

Count me as interested as well.

I haven't tried it recently but as I recall, BSW is kind of arcane and not all that friendly to the idea of setting up private games and stuff. It may have improved, but I remember that even getting over the language hurdles to find out can be tricky.

Mm. You may be right, I only tried the client for the first time yesterday and found it really obtuse. I was hoping we had some BSW vets on the site who could show the rest of us the ropes.

Sounds like an excellent idea.

I used to play on BSW a fair bit, but have fallen out of the habit as better browser based options, stand alone clients for a game, and meat space gaming picked up a bit.

BSW is ugly, difficult to penetrate and a little aloof, BUT it's catalog of games cannot really be rivaled. I would certainly attempt to give it another go, will probably have to relearn the interface.

Some other sites I have used for games:
Board Game Arena - a nice simple site, with good UI, that supports Dominion, Race for the Galaxy, Stone Age, Puerto Rico, and a handful of others

Isotropic - an excellent, quick, and simple place to play Dominion and all expansions

JSR - web based interface for playing 7 Wonders. In French, and tricky to navigate at first (see BGG thread), but good when you persevere. Note: this is asynchronus turns unless you get a group together. Also probably superceded by BSW version

AsoBrain - maybe a bit old now, but was a good place to play Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan clones

Days of Wonder - official site, but allows you to play Ticket to Ride, Memoir 44, and Gang of Four online. If you have a DoW game you can get a full account, and there is a pay for play credits system

I'm sure there are more sites out there, looking forward to finding some new ones!

I would absolutely love to do this. I have an extremely hard time finding people to play board games with.

I'd get on board with this. Time is always tricky, but I'd love to see where this goes and try to get in a few games.

I'm very much interested.

Tagged for when I have time again

Torq wrote:

Sounds like an excellent idea.

I used to play on BSW a fair bit, but have fallen out of the habit as better browser based options, stand alone clients for a game, and meat space gaming picked up a bit.

BSW is ugly, difficult to penetrate and a little aloof, BUT it's catalog of games cannot really be rivaled. I would certainly attempt to give it another go, will probably have to relearn the interface.

Some other sites I have used for games:
Board Game Arena - a nice simple site, with good UI, that supports Dominion, Race for the Galaxy, Stone Age, Puerto Rico, and a handful of others

Isotropic - an excellent, quick, and simple place to play Dominion and all expansions

JSR - web based interface for playing 7 Wonders. In French, and tricky to navigate at first (see BGG thread), but good when you persevere. Note: this is asynchronus turns unless you get a group together. Also probably superceded by BSW version

AsoBrain - maybe a bit old now, but was a good place to play Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan clones

Days of Wonder - official site, but allows you to play Ticket to Ride, Memoir 44, and Gang of Four online. If you have a DoW game you can get a full account, and there is a pay for play credits system

I'm sure there are more sites out there, looking forward to finding some new ones!

Thanks for the rundown Torq. In terms of more sites, there is this list from The Dicetower Podcast from Feb 2010 which lists a few. The variety of different sites for different games is why I thought a Steam group would be a good idea - gather in Steam, decide which site to go to.

Since it seems there is no existing infrastructure for this, I'll start a Steam group tonight and invite everyone who expressed interest so far. Post your Steam ID if you haven't.

I'm interested. Time is the biggest problem I have though. RiverRatMatt on Steam.

LockAndLoad wrote:

I'm interested. Time is the biggest problem I have though. RiverRatMatt on Steam.

Time is a big issue for me as well. The good news in that regard is that online board games tend to go a lot faster than live board games, due to the computer handling a lot of the mechanics. Also, Ideally we'd get a fairly large and diverse group to enable a lot of ad-hoc games at different times - though scheduled events are probably a good idea too.

Hmmm...following. Is time an issue? Does it have to be a board game?

The Days of Wonder site seems well done. I played a quick game of TTR a few months back after I bought the hardcopy.

Depending on when we play, I would be interested.

Please invite me to the group! Interested!

I'm much more interested in the PBEM sites than live play like BSW. Here are some PBEM sites I've used:

SpielByWeb - Probably my favorite of the bunch, the game interfaces are great and it does a good job notifying you when it's your turn. Tikal is awesome PBEM.

MaBiWeb - Selection is pretty small but the interfaces are good for the couple I've tried. Mykerinos is fun.

Yucata - Great selection of games, but the interface isn't as slick.

Through the Ages - Fantastic implementation of Through the Ages. Unfortunately the site tends to go down somewhat frequently (like as of this posting). Still, when it's up it is awesome.

I'd be down for games on any of those sites and am happy to help explain rules if you want to try and learn something new!

I would be interested.

Friend me up, dog.

I'd be interested, although my time is limited and the time difference might be hard for live games during the week at least.

Dreaded Gazebo wrote:

I'm much more interested in the PBEM sites than live play like BSW.

I'm in this camp as well. If people start something that's PBEM, lemme know!

I don't see why this thread and the Steam community page couldn't be used for PBEM games as well. All it takes is someone to start one! The main issue I see from the links that Dreaded Gazebo posted is that the PBEM games currently available seem a bit obscure, so learning the rules might be a challenge. It's easier to explain the basics of how to play a relatively simple game like Seven Wonders when you're in Steam Chat or Vent with someone playing it live.

That being said, there are always online resources for learning these games, like Ryan Sturm's excellent "How To Play" podcast.

I'll update the OP later on with a bunch of the links we discussed, a link to the steam group, etc.

What we really need are some BSW veterans to guide us noobs through the interface!

Any G+ members, I would be interested in using google hangouts during this too.

Interested as well.

Group is up!

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/gwjbg

So far I invited everyone who expressed interest on the page and who gave their steam ID, and who was on my friend list. I sent friend requests to others. I'll add more people as admin so it's easier to get invites. Image is a placeholder!

I have a friend coming over tomorrow who'se played on BSW, I'll get him to show me the ropes and then see if we can get something going soon enough, I'm thinking 7 Wonders is a good place to start as it's an easy to learn game that will lend itself well to online, I think. Or we could go with Dominion, since a lot of people already know it.

PBEM would be interesting. http://steamcommunity.com/id/poppinf...

Thanks!

Interested.

You can add me into the group Steam id [GWJ] Yoreel

If you want to start with Dominion then it should definitely be played on Isotropic instead of BSW. Extremely easy to use interface plus it has every single card implemented.

Also I got the friend invite but not the group invite.

[GWJ]bighoppa

gregrampage wrote:

If you want to start with Dominion then it should definitely be played on Isotropic instead of BSW. Extremely easy to use interface plus it has every single card implemented.

Also I got the friend invite but not the group invite.

I would second the suggestion of Isotropic over BSW for Dominion. Interface is much easier.

Regards the invite, I think you have to be a friend first before you can be invited to the group. Is that right?

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