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[heydude6]

During the holidays I was hanging out with a part of the family I don’t see very often, and they introduced me to the wonderful world of board games.

As for what makes board games special, I think this quote sums it up quite nicely:

Board games are what you do when you have too many people for computer games, but not enough for a good tabletop RPG...

There’s a lot more out there than your typical Hasbro game of chance. Though dice are involved in a lot of them, there are many games out there that reward strategy and skill. But considering the fact that this is Bay12, I’m pretty sure you guys have heard some of them already.

What are some of your experiences with board games?

[martinuzz]

I used to play a lot of Axis and Allies back in the highschool days. Great boardgame, for when you think Risk is too simplistic.
You can find it online nowadays, think there's a project called triple aaa or somesuch. Ofcourse, not the real deal like playing a boardgame with friends, but it does save a lot of time setting up the game pieces.

[Telgin]

I was recently reintroduced to the idea of board games, complete with me asking, "What, you mean like Monopoly?"

I was surprised to see just what's available these days.  I had a lot of fun playing the games at the local game store with some friends, but don't do it as much lately as I used to.  I wish I could remember the names of half of the games we played, but Pandemic is the big one that's easy for me to remember, and pretty enjoyable.  I like it because it's cooperative instead of competitive.

Beowulf (based on the more recent movie, I take it) was pretty fun too, but competitive and a little too random for my tastes at the end game.

[heydude6]

The two games that made me realize there was more to board games were “Settlers of Catan” and “Betrayal on the House on the Hill”.

Catan is a resource management game where you colonize an island and attempt to be the first to have the most developed infrastructure.

Betrayal was this game where you explored a procedurally generated haunted house with your friends. What made that game special was that at some point, one of your friends will betray you and turn into a random monster. There were over 30 different types of monsters and each monster caused a radical shift in the rules. The traitor would be given a special rulebook for his monster and then he would have to study it and plan out his strategy. There was actually a version of that game run on this forum, but everyone there was super unlucky and got some of the lamest monsters possible. After enough unlucky rounds, people decided that they weren’t having fun and it stopped.

[Doomblade187]

Played Blockus and Dominion, as well as Cards and Marbles lately. The last one doesn't have an online presence that I know of, but is a wonderful treacherous game. Get your marbles from A to B, via 3 52 card decks.

Blockus is a competitive puzzle game, get all your pieces on the board, but is really fun, while Dominion is a deck-building game, when you build your deck during the game.

[birdy51]

Ah hey! Board games are excellent. I've played a bit of Betrayal. I could definitely play a lot of rounds of that, but everyone tends to get burnt out after a round or two. My personal favorite is "Ticket to Ride", which is about building a train company across Europe or the U.S. You get points for the longest rail as well connecting lines between cities on your point cards. It's beginner friendly and both times I have won involved beer, which is nice.

The only board game I actually own though is "Nuns on the Run", where you play novices in a nunnery being naughty. Your goal is to get a secret wish item before the Abbess or the Prioress catch you and make it back to your bed before dawn. It's a fun little game for all of the shenanigans that go down that are fun to review after the game. For example, the moments where you learn how many girls can fit in one confessional!

[Tack]

+1 for betrayal at house on the hill.

Although i’d go against the “not enough for DnD”
I’d say a sweet spot for tabletops is four or five players.

Games like Mysterium are made to handle six
(Awesome whodunnit game where the “ghost” is only able to communicate using trippy dreamscape cards with fantastic art)

Plus a game i’ve Got and haven’t yet been able to play is Two Rooms and a Boom, which seems like Mafia turned into a drinking game and involving two rooms of people.

[feelotraveller]

Two households of my extended family independently acquired new copies of Catan over the break.  In one not a single inter-player trade occurred  whereas in the other the majority of the gameplay (at least in time) revolved around negotiating trade deals.

Also played a bit of Cluedo including a new kids version that was more confusing than the all ages version...

A third that occupied a lot of time was Climate Evolution where you attempt to grow and evolve a bunch of species with regard to the climate, surrounding species and food supply.  Simple mechanics but very complex interactions between various traits and other factors, highly recommended. 

[Cthulhu]

My dad's girlfriend's family dies board game nights, but they're still in the shit game stage, games with no interaction like exploding kittens. Considering picking up betrayal at house on the hill as a fun goofy gateway game, or maybe epic spell wars

[Telgin]

I've been playing Zombicide with some people lately and it's really fun.  It just teeters on the edge of complicated enough that it could be a computer game though.

My only real complaints about it are that it's like $90, and that you can go from winning by leagues to holy crap we're screwed by drawing a single card.  Namely, if you have two zombies in a tile with you that you're easily able to kill on your next turn, you can still die if during the zombie phase you draw a card that gives them an extra turn.  We've lost two games that way, both times with 4-5 zombies walking into a room of 2 survivors, then someone drawing that card and said zombies immediately killing them.  Half of the players were then dead and winning became impossible.

[heydude6]

Is it a cooperative game then? Or is there another player controlling the zombies?

[Telgin]

It's cooperative.  After every player goes, the zombies have a phase that's governed by some usually simple rules.  Zombies move one square toward the nearest survivor, or if they can't see one they move toward the loudest source of noise on the board, which is caused by fighting or breaking down doors and marked with little tokens.  If a zombie is in a square with a survivor they hit them instead.  Two hits and you die.  Some special zombies get two actions and can kill you in one turn if they start in your square.

[Tack]

Yeah i’ve played the medieval zombicide as the barbarian and ended up being the sole survivor with a 2+ weapon just whirlwinding my way across the board which got boring as I couldn’t ever actually complete objectives because failure to blender = death.


Played a little imperial assault and Dark souls- both what i’d call “rpg-lite”, but a friend recently got gloomhaven and it’s in a league of its own. Something super liberating about playing a game with cards instead of dice and having no random draw hands.
Means the game has to be super tactical though and it is (also means you’re not allowed to directly communicate strategies so hey)

[MrRoboto75]

The big issue is I keep getting big complicated board games but no one to play em with.

[heydude6]

To be fair, I don’t think that issue would be resolved if the games were less complicated. It’s hard to find people to play board games with in general.