Just started playing vanilla Catan with wife and eldest daughter thei year, and loving it. The 11-yo hasn’t won a game yet, but it always ends pretty close on the VPs.
Also played Pandemic: The Cure this year - the dice-based spinoff of Pandemic, that was a lot of fun.
Also finally played Dungeon Lords in November, complex but a lot of fun.
Where does Talisman (1983) and Diplomacy (1959) fit into this ? Are they “new generation” board games ?
I’ve never played Talisman, but I’ve played more than enough Diplomacy (in fact, my first exposure to it was through the Dope!).
I think Diplomacy is something of a unique outlier in the board game world. It’s been modded plenty in the last 60 years, but the base game is still popular and playable. This isn’t the case for most older games - usually they either get remade, reimagined, or else fade into obscurity.
Sure, why not? Neither is a typical board game. The Talisman does use a roll-and-move system that is typical of board games but you can choose to move clockwise or counterclockwise around the board and the fantasy adventure theme is irresistible to fans of the genre. OTOH, Diplomacy is for specialized tastes. It calls for seven players (although there are dozens of unofficial variants for any number of players) who don’t mind spending the better part of a day negotiating and plotting.
Talisman probably qualifies, but Diplomacy is more of a war game than a “new generation board game.”
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Brian
As this has been bumped, let me update.
Still playing “Pandemic” with the kids. They are still enjoying it immensely. The balance between winning and losing is fine enough that you can get a good sense of reward when you’ve played and organised a good move or series of moves.
We can regularly beat it on the easy setting, so time to introduce an extra epidemic card I guess.
We’ve been playing the HELL out of Five Tribes the last few weeks. Great game. Pretty easy to pick up, but lots of ways to win the game, so our gameplay is constantly evolving.
Got this for Xmas. The game is rated for ages 13 and up. Not surprisingly, our 10 year old was disinterested when we tried to involve him. Which means that the wife and I have been confined thus far to playing the two player game. Maybe when our son gets a bit older he can pick it up.
The three of us have greatly enjoyed all the ‘Ticket to Ride’ games as well as Catan (vanilla) and Pandemic. I think board games are a great way for families to get face time together and have fun.
Lost a game of Pandemic Legacy lunchtime at work today. (First loss in February - we’re just getting started. No spoilers, please!) I really like this game.
Diplomacy is definitely considered a “classic” board game rather than a “new generation” one.
Talisman is harder to call. Generally speaking, the “new generation” started in the late nineties with games like Settlers of Catan (1995), El Grande (1995), Condottiere (1995), Bohnanza (1997), Tigris & Euphrates (1997), Mississippi Queen (1997), Through the Desert (1998), El Caballero (1998), Ra (1999), Tikal (1999), Chinatown (1999), Carcassonne (2000), Citadels (2000), Puerto Rico (2002), Alhambra (2003), and Ticket to Ride (2004). These were the games that really kicked off the new generation of tabletop gaming.
But there are games like 1829 (1974), Cosmic Encounter (1977), Junta (1978), Civilization (1980), and Talisman (1983). These games are clearly the same type of games that typified the new generation - but they were released before the new generation existed.
The best explanation I can give is that the early games were seen as individual entities. It wasn’t until a bunch of new games were released in close proximity that they came to be seen as parts of a greater whole.
I love Cosmic Encounter, but I don’t think it’s the kind of game that would fit into the new generation. Most new generation games tend to pick one or two core mechanics (worker placement, area control, traitor, hidden information, push your luck, etc.) and tightly balance around that. Part of the reason victory points have become so common is that they tend to create much closer outcomes. Cosmic Encounter is pretty much the opposite of that. The mechanics are all over the place and the power matchups are often wildly unbalanced. It feels like a companion piece to early Dungeons and Dragons, where having characters instantly die to absurd, wildly unfair traps was pretty much the norm.
It’s probably my favorite board game and I’m a little sad I can’t really imagine a game like it coming out in the current climate.
I swear that I am the only gamer on earth who doesn’t like this game. All of my friends love it, but from what I have experienced, the traitor has way too much power to screw over the survivors and score an easy win.
I have recently begun to go to “game night” on Tuesdays. My gaming partners are a married couple with a ten year old son.
The games have to be “simple” enough for a average-to-bright boy to grok. The ten year old, while reasonably bright, (I have come to realize) has no patience for the strategy aspects that some games make you do: I bought King of Tokyo (judged a “hit”), Ticket to Ride (remains unplayed/untried), Jamaica (judged by the boy as a “meh”), and Smash Up (untried). They already owned Monopoly (judged as OK: the boy likes waving his money in the other players faces), and Magic: Arena of the Planeswalkers (the boy is all “Attack! Kill! Kill!” and throw the dice on his turn, and doesn’t like to plan out his movements or special powers cards).
At what age do kids these days generally start to pay attention to strategy? 
I don’t know. Asymmetric powers are still a big thing; look at Smash-up or Terra Mystica. And games like 504 and Trove are exploring variable mechanics.
Cosmic Encounter had a reprint by Fantasy Flight in 2008 and has had five expansions since then. It’s quite popular and well received by the current gaming community. It also follows a fairly standard rules trope that goes as follows:
You’re not the only one. Liz and I played two games with a mutual friend of ours, an old high school friend of his, and the high school friend’s wife. (So 5 people.)
Oddly enough, both games didn’t have a traitor. (There’s something like a 50% chance of a traitor each game.)
We lost the first one. We won (well, 4 of us won) the second (barely). And this was with all players working together (save the individual win conditions). I don’t understand the love for this game. It had some unique mechanics, certainly, but the zombie thing has been done to death at this point. And the luck factor is far higher than a lot of reviews seem to think it is. The individual win condition pretty much guarantees that someone won’t win, even if everyone works together, because most of the time you end up sacrificing your individual win condition just to prevent the horrible effects of the random crisis that is drawn every round. (Contrast to Arkham Horror, which while having its own issues, at least everyone wins or loses together.)
After losing the first game and barely winning the second (and that’s with not exiling anyone) we concluded that if there’s a traitor it’s a pretty much a guarantee that the the non-traitors can’t win. (And the traitor still has an uphill climb, though, since we didn’t end up playing with one, it’s possible it’s easier for the traitor than it seemed.)
I don’t understand the love and/or rave reviews for this game at all.
Indeed, I own that reprint and most of the expansions. What I meant is that it’s very popular as a classic game, but if it had never existed I would have a hard time imagining it being created in the current climate. Most games being developed these days are very tightly focused around a couple core mechanics. Cosmic Encounter’s core rules are this kind of weird, sprawling, amorphous mass of cards, bluffing, randomness, and alliances. There isn’t really any strategic aspect a serious player can sink their teeth into. Of course, that mess allows the game’s rule bending craziness, but I think the current generation of designers wouldn’t be willing to allow that mess in the center.
I don’t mean this as a complaint or criticism. I’m quite fond of board games these days. I just think that Cosmic Encounter is a kind of artifact of its time rather than before its time.
I can’t really think of any recent games that embrace that sort of consistent-rules-be-damned zaniness, can you?
Yeah, I haven’t played Dead of Winter, partly because a couple of people in my usual gaming set seem to have a visceral dislike of the hidden traitor mechanic. It only takes one person like that to poison the experience for everyone. The one time we played Battlestar Galactica with that group went horribly. I don’t even try to introduce games in that class anymore.
Oh, and if we’re mentioning classic board games, I have to mention Titan (1980), which has the interesting mechanic of moving stacks of units around on a strategic board, then when stacks encounter each other going to a separate tactical battlefield to resolve it.
Now you’re talking Kingdom Builder (which is one of my favorite games).