I played this. As I recall it had an enjoyable bidding element.
Even a Euro-style game can get my attention if it either strong bidding or negotiation elements.
Yep–the “master builder” role rotates each round. When you’re the master builder, you decide how to rank the buildable rooms from least to most expensive, based on what you think people want, and then they pay you for any rooms they buy. If a room is fantastic for someone else, you might want to put it out of their financial reach just to be a dick, or you might make it barely affordable for them–but if you misjudge, they might not buy anything that round, or buy a cheaper but less desirable room. It’s pretty fun.
Yeah but if you like bidding, why not just play Bridge? 
None a yer bidness.
Agree that Castles of Mad King Ludwig is a good game for all abilities, as it allows for both simple and complex strategies.
Mainly though I’ve come back to mention Concordia, which I played for the first time this weekend. It certainly falls solidly into the ‘Eurogame’ category as described by various people in the thread, but although I normally like games with more interaction, I really enjoyed this one. It’s long though - allow three hours for your first play-through, once everyone is more familiar with it then 2 hours should be enough. The actions are fairly simple to understand but optimising your trading and the order in which you play your hand is interesting.
Just in time for Christmas wish lists! I’m going to cross off the ones I own and hand the rest to my family.
I was trying to get my son and nephew into games (12 and 13 years old) and struck gold with Marvel Legendary. It’s a deck building game, somewhat similar to Dominion except your building a deck of superheroes to defeat various villains and an evil mastermind. It’s cooperative and if you don’t work together, the game can defeat you all, but if you manage to defeat the mastermind the players add up their individual points at the end to crown the winner. Each superhero has different special abilities that for the most part reflect their comic-book powers, but familiarity with the comic books is not necessary to enjoy the game.
I love Carcasonne. Simple rules but inherent complexity. First time I played was one on one with my daughter. It was interesting. Then we played multiplayer, and it got quite interesting- no longer zero sum thinking.
I love Dominion, but my family tires of it.
I’ve always wanted to play Settlers of Catan, but we have limited game time, so I haven’t pursued it.
Last summer we started Pandemic, and we LOVED it. We call it “Stomping Out Disease”. I like the cooperative gameplay (but Monopoly players might not).
I like Illuminati for its cleverness and wackiness. This should appeal to Monopoly players who like sticking it to other players and eliminating other players. I don’t like this aspect of gameplay so much anymore, myself. (I think Monopoly sucks- theme monopoly doubly so)
RoboRally is hard to find, but fun if you like programming and craziness. It goes a bit slow at first, as people learn how to do things. The games can get long as you ramp up the difficulty or include more players. This is American style, although with three “lives” few players will be outright eliminated.
I’d like to here nominate the WORST Euro game I’ve had the honor to try: Brugges (which is my ancestral city). SO MANY MOVING PARTS!! Gameplay- SO SLOW!
Oddly, I really enjoyed Dominion for a very long time. Even though it has some Eurogame qualities (particularly the “solitare” style of gaming), there were a couple things which made it stand out.
-
Every game could be completely random. I had an app on my phone that let you input each of the expansions you owned, set up some parameters, and then it would spit out a random selection of decks. Every game had a different set of interactions and relevant strategies, so a big part was looking at the “board” and figuring out how to build your card engine. That kind of randomness is very much not part of the Euro design space.
-
The game could go really quickly if you were playing with experienced folks. Even though everyone was more or less playing their own game, it moved so quickly that there was almost no downtime. By the time you’d figured out exactly how you wanted your hand to play out, it was your turn again. For some reason it always brought to my mind Jules Verne’s descriptions of Phineas Fogg playing whist at his club.
This is a really solid rule.
So as to not be completely down on Eurogames, by the way, here’s one that I enjoy so much that I actually tracked down a copy on eBay not long ago.
Ra (by legendary designer Reiner Knizia) is an auction game (remember what I said above about bidding) where you are for some reason trying to build a city in Ancient Egypt. The theme isn’t terribly compelling but the gameplay is stellar. It’s a mix of strategic planning, bidding, and with a **really **fun ‘press your luck’ factor built in.
When I pulled the BGG listing I noticed that they’ve apparently just done a new edition. It’s been out of a print for a number of years, so that’s pretty cool. As a gamer who generally hates Eurogames, I can heartily recommend this one.
If you’re looking for a more recent game with a programming mechanism, try Colt Express. The players are a group of Western outlaws robbing a train. So you’re all running around the train trying to grab as much loot as possible while avoiding the sheriff who’s on the train. But you don’t just make your moves when it’s your turn - you have a handful of cards with various things you can do (more around the train, pick up loot, shoot another player, move the sheriff, etc) and you pick one of your cards and put it into a deck. Some cards are placed face up and some are face down so you often don’t know what the other players are planning on doing. Once the deck is built, you flip it over and play out the actions one card at a time. That’s when you find out how much the plans of the other players interferes with your own plans.
Sounds quicker than RoboRally- this is a big plus at my age. I’ll look into it.
I love Sentinels of the Multiverse, but I don’t think it’s a very good game for beginners. Like most open information co-op games, it lends itself to people who already know the game (and those who pick up what’s going on more quickly) telling people who aren’t as confidant what to do with their turn. I’ve seen very few games of Sentinels with several new players where at least one or two of them don’t end up somewhat sullenly waiting for their turn, only to ask “what am I supposed to do now?”
It’s somewhat counter-intuitive, but I’ve found that co-op games that don’t at least have some chance of a traitor mechanic tend to be the worst for introducing people into “advanced” boardgaming.
Okay, I’m gonna nominate the worst, too: Shogun. It has an interesting premise, but a full game takes several hours. Halfway through play, I realized that my position was so bad that not only did I have zero chance of winning, I had zero chance of influencing who won or even who came in second-to-last place. It’s the only time I’ve ever left a game early, and before I left I helped the other players figure out how to deadhand me (wasn’t hard, since in the remaining hours of the game I’d have very few options). But a multi-hour game were losers can be determined that early are, in my opinion, terrible design.
My (okay I’m gonna brag super-smart) 7-year-old has been playing it for about a year now. Her strategies started off pretty ridiculous–“What if I buy only corridors this game? This time I’m gonna buy only dungeon pieces! Maybe I’ll win if I buy the cheapest room every time!”–but she’s a gracious player and doesn’t mind losing, and as she’s played she’s been able to figure out more subtle strategies. One day she’s gonna kick my butt…
Depends on the group… I’ve had good luck with Sentinels, but when I tried playing Pandemic with my family it was the worst sort of “what do I do now, I have no idea what’s going on, just tell me” and I felt like I was basically playing the game myself with three people watching.
As an aside, I find that Sentinels is a bit more challenging to play than I’d like (seems like we lose more often than not) and it feels as though there’s far too much randomness involved.
I love Shogun, but only been able to play it a couple times due to the length and complexity. I have the feeling I’ve only really scratched the surface of the strategy but can’t seem to find anyone else who wants to play it enough times to delve in. I feel it’s one of those that would work a lot better as a computer game to handle all the bits and pieces and counting, too.
Pandemic doesn’t have a traitor mechanic, though. I don’t know if you’ve ever played Shadows over Camelot or Dead of Winter or something where there’s the distinct possibility that someone is actively conspiring against the rest of the co-op team, but people stop asking you for advice when suddenly they don’t know if they can trust you, and it stops feeling like a solo game.
The base version of Pandemic doesn’t have this. But the One the Brink expansion introduced the possibility that one of the players is a secret terrorist who’s trying to spread the diseases.
Personally, I find there’s more discussion about decisions in the game when there’s a possible traitor. Asking another player “What do you think I should do?” is a good means of figuring out their true allegiance.
I tend to not particularly like Eurogames because most of the time there is very little player interaction. You just score points until at the end of the game everything is tallied up and the player with the most points anticlimactically wins the game. Whoo…
There are some exceptions though:
Tzolk’in: A worker placement game where you feel constantly engaged. Other player’s turns have direct impact on your strategy and you have to think several turns ahead so that your placed workers are in the ideal spot on the wheel.
Small World: Conquer the world, but with different conquerors each time you play.
Other games me and my friends have enjoyed:
Koehandel: Apparently the English name is You’re Bluffing. Player’s are bidding on cards to complete a set. The amount of money statys the same during the game (with a few exceptions), so a good player can track the money and estimate their opponents hands. Still very difficult to pull that off.
Last Night On Earth: Personally I find this game far superior to its cousins like ‘Dead of Winter’. The game has clearer goals, I really enjoy the on ‘one player against everyone else’, and the design is gorgeous. It’s almost a roleplaying game, but one that can be finished in about 2 hours.
Bohnanza: A quick game of planting bean fields and cutthroat trading with your opponents.
Love Letter and Coup: Even quicker card games of bluffing and finding out who your opponents are.
Shadows over Camelot and The Resistance: Both are traitor based games. The first one is a full on coop board game, but with a possible traitor. The second one is a quick card game that can be played in under thirty minutes.
Almost all of the games above can be found played by Will Wheaton’s Tabletop on YouTube, which is a great resource for finding out of a game could be to your liking.
Sorry, I never played beyond the base game.
You’re right, I misspoke. There is just as much discussion when there’s a possible fox in the henhouse. It’s fun and fruitful discussion, though, and not just asking for the best possible move to make.
I am very puzzled by people who think American-style games have lots of player interaction while Eurogames do not.
Where exactly is the interaction in something like Sorry, or The Game of Life? Round and round you go, only the dice know, and the interaction is much less than in something like Carcassone or Catan.