My friends and I (all in our forties) have jumped on the board game bandwagon in a big way. A friend got Catanmaybe 4 or 5 years ago and we’ve played that a ton.
They’re way more expensive than Monopoly, Scrabble or Clue, but they also require deep strategic thought and have high quality materials and interesting game dynamics.
Is anybody else playing these types of games? Any favorites? Any thoughts on strategy or game play in general? We’ve found the play through videos on youtube super-helpful for learning the basics of games.
yes, I’m a huge modern board game fan.
There have been some recent threads on them.
I recently got the kickstarter deluxe version of Orléans- I do not regret it.
Am holding off buying because my game group does secret santa and don’t want to get a game that my santa gets me. (we delay until January partially to make Essen games more easily obtainable).
Oh my, yes. I have a small but well-curated collection 35 or so games. My most recent pickup is a gem called Codenames, which is equal parts simple and fun.
Of all my games, there are two which have together seen more table time than the rest of my collection combined: Battlestar Galactica and Fury of Dracula.
I go to local meetups at libraries and game stores on the weekend to play with similar minded geeks. I regularly play Dead of Winter and Legendary with my wife. We spent an evening together with family playing Avalon over the holiday break (which went over very well for a group of non-gamers). I’m also a fan of the already mentioned Battlestar Galactica (perhaps the best use of a licence for a board game ever), Five Tribes, Power Grid, and Seven Wonders.
Yes, I have over 100 board games, which is small potatoes compared to the real collectors. I play weekly at work, and attend a monthly game night plus various pickup games.
Some recent favorites are Brew Crafters, Five Tribes, Lanterns, and Splendor. I just received a copy of Innovation in a secret Santa exchange, and hopefully will manage to play it this week.
Not anymore, as I’m displaced from my regular gaming group. Haven’t had the time or the energy to start something where I am now. We have a game store in the city, but I play board games just as much or more for the company as for the games, so I’m reluctant to check it out.
Looks like I need to put Battlestar Galactica on my list.
What’s the most you’ve spent on a game? I lust after this. Real metal coins!! But, bids are around $300-$400. I got the 'Big Blue Box for Carcassone and its beautiful. It ran about $100.
The “new generation” is quite popular at the big gaming conventions (GenCon (assuming you can find a hotel room anywhere near the convention center), Origins, and WBC).
Did you know there was an attempt to create The Cones of Dunshire through Kickstarter? Mayfair came up with a playable version that was demonstrated at GenCon 2014, but the Kickstarter plan failed because they asked for far too much money (something like $300, I think) for someone to get an actual copy of the game. Even if the game had been made available for retail, the designer said that, because of the components, it would have cost over $100 a copy - and now that Parks & Recreation has ended, nobody really cares about it.
Question: does Dominion count as a “board game”? At least with a game like Seven Dragons or Chrononauts, the cards are placed on the table to form a board of sorts.
I consider deckbuilders like Dominion, Ascension, Star Realms, etc to be board games. Why not? You could absolutely have a board with the placement of the piles and then no one would question the name.
Games like Splendor and Sherrif of Nottingham don’t have traditional boards either, but I don’t think there’s a reason to not call them a board game.
Maybe boxed game is better name? Differentiates it from video games, which is probably the most important thing.
The problem with that is, you need to differentiate these from games like Fluxx, which are, for lack of a more appropriate term, “Non-Customizable Card Games.”
They’re board games in the way a tomato is a vegetable: not by any metric except usage.
If I’m having a “board game night” and you offer to bring an LCG, I’m going to be completely on board with that. Magic or Pokemon could very well be out of place, though.
I like Innovation, but it’s not to everybody’s tastes. Early on, it will seem very random, but there is very definitely strategy to it. It’s about managing the chaos, creating an advantage, and utilizing that advantage. If you’ve played Glory to Rome by the same designer, you’ll also get a taste of that managed chaos.
BSG is a very different game than those you’ve mentioned, so it may be a “try-before-you-buy” game. It’s best played with 5 people, and I find it pretty lackluster with fewer, so make sure you can get that group to the table. The games you listed in your OP are what I think of as “elegant and deep” games. That is, the variety of components are fairly minimal, the rules are simple, and the gameplay is deep. They’re not “fiddly.” BSG is fiddley. There are lots of different pieces, decks of cards, special abilities, ship locations to know. It’s also a hidden betrayer game, which I know some people hate.
Like I said, I love it. Based on the games you’ve mentioned, I can’t be sure you will, but encourage you to give it a try.
I have a “big tent” approach and include hobby card games in the board game category. I already mentioned Legendary, which is a superhero deckbuilder. It has a board, but could very easily be played without one. Similarly, Avalon has small boards, but they didn’t make the Thanksgiving trip due to size and we managed perfectly well. I don’t think many people would object to calling Five Tribes or Carcasonne board games, but there is no board in those either.
As a family we enjoy a game or two and as the kids get older (8 and 10) we are trying to introduce them to something a little more advanced. We play 221b Baker street as teams of two but for this Christmas we’re taking “Pandemic” on holiday with us. I’ve heard good things about it and it is a co-operative game in that we all win or lose together so hopefully there’ll be few tantrums (from my wife :D)
I have played it before a couple of times, but now I own it. I have also played Glory to Rome (but I don’t own it), and I own Mottainai, and have played it about a dozen times. Carl Chudyk is definitely all about the card-based chaos. I have not played Red 7 yet - have you?
I think boardgame is mostly understood to be big tent for all the types of games we’re listing. So King of Tokyo for example falls into boardgames, even though the “board” is only nominally involved.
The games we have are way too numerous to list, but in the past month we’ve played Race for the Galaxy, Alhambra, Guillotine, Agricola, Titan, and Modern Art. I’m hoping to get Twilight Struggle in this weekend.
My favorites are Dominion, Five Tribes, and Pandemic. I also just recently bought Castles of Burgundy and am really enjoying it, but I want to give it a few more plays before I decide where I stand with it. My three sons and I just finished Pandemic Legacy and it was probably the best board gaming experience I have ever had.
I received Agricola for Christmas last year and it just has not grabbed me like other games I have bought like Five Tribes or Alchemists. That said, it is a game many players rate as their absolute favorite, so I guess it just depends on how much you enjoy the tension of being forced to do certain things in games, but not feeling like you have enough time to do everything you need to.
I sometimes listen to podcasts and generally watch GameNight from Boardgamegeek. I also watch a lot of the reviews from the Dice Tower. I especially seek out Zee Garcia’s reviews since his taste seems to match up with mine (Pandemic is his favorite game and Five Tribes was his game of the year for 2014). I also am watching the Dice Tower’s playthrough of Pandemic Legacy, but only the months we had already finished (of course, now I can watch them all).