Howdy folks,
I love a good board game and I’m not talking about Monopoly or Sorry. I like those German games like Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne. Does anyone else play these kinds of games and if so which games are you playing? I’m looking for new ideas.
Elenfair and I have an ever-growing pile of such games. I recommend taking a look at Puerto Rico if you haven’t yet.
Most recently **1829 ** and **1854 ** (railway business games) and **VOC! ** (Dutch East Indian Company voyaging and trading game)…
If you are looking for tips check out http://www.boardgamegeek.com
Probably only the last counts as a “German” style boardgame I suspect - they seems to want to get to a conclusion in an hour or two max.
Have heard good things about Settlers of Catan but currently no opportunity to do any gaming…
It’s so funny that this thread just happened to show up now. I just recently starting playing Settlers of Catan with a few friends. I am completely hooked at this point. It is easily the best board game I’ve ever played. We’ve also played a few times with the Cities and Knights expansion, which definitely adds a whole new level of strategy to the game. It’s definitely worth a try, and can be a nice change of pace from the regular game.
Ah… the good stuff… 
I’m a huge Settlers fan, as is my fiancee. Be sure to pick up Seafarers for the full experience. I like Cities & Knights quite a lot, but will skip it sometimes if we don’t have a lot of time. But we never play without Seafarers anymore. We just picked up Siedler: Das Buch from mayfair games. Lots of interesting variants, and a bunch of new pieces.
Carcassonne is another favorite. (with sentimental value because we got engaged at Carcassonne, in France. We brought the little meeple along and have a picture of us playing Carcassonne at Carcassonne)
Puerto Rico is also becoming a staple.
You should probably pick up Bohnanza at some point. Most of my friends consider Carc, Settlers, and “that bean game” to be the big three.
Nearly anything by Renier Knizia is worth looking at. Some of his really great stuff is: Tigris & Euphrates,Samurai,Through the Desert,Taj Mahal, Amun Re.
We’ve been really liking Alhambra lately. A pleasant surprise.
There’s a game called Eschanpur that doesn’t get a lot of press, but everyone I’ve played it with has liked it a lot. (we call it the “buddha buddha” game.) It’s a neat little bidding game about exploring a lost golden temple. There’s a little “laughing monk” figure that we (probably inapproriately) call the buddha that the player in last place gets to hold, which doubles all points that he gets. A neat little catchup mechanism that should be in a lot of other games.
For buying games online, check out www.bouldergames.com and www.funagain.com.
I think Carcassonne’s sequel, Hunters and Gatherers, is even better than the original. If you haven’t yet tried it, you should.
If you can find it around, Elfenland, despite the cheesy name, is a great game. Also, it’s one of the few games that we have that can be played by six players, for those times when the rumors of Game Night spread far and wide, and we end up with a crowd.
My family has been having fun lately with Mystery of the Abbey. We actually played one game where we forgot to set aside a suspect card at the beginning (so no murderer) and still had a lot of fun, up until the final moments…
It’s certainly more streamlined and elegant, ruleswise, and I like a lot of the elements in it. But it bothers me thematically. If it wasn’t called Carcassonne, I think I’d like it a lot more.
Carcassone’s second expansion, Builders and Traders, is excellent.
I also heartily second:
Puerto Rico
Tigris and Euphrates (my favorite)
and
Knights and Cities of Catan
and I’ll add
Galaxy: The Dark Ages, a very odd but fun space-battle-card-game.
Mel, I recommend Kriegspiel. It’s a very basic board game, but I’ve played it several times and have had a lot of fun.
I haven’t had a chance to play Puerto Rico but it’s on my list of games to try as soon as possible. I own Carcassonne and it’s expansion Inns and Cathedrals and I’m thinking about getting Traders and Builders as well. I expect that at some point there’s a point of diminishing returns and extra expansions will detract rather then add to the game. I don’t think I’ll be getting King & Scout the expansion for both regular Carcassonne and Hunters and Gatherers.
I bought Settlers of Catan just a week after I first played it in 1998. When Seafarers became available I bought it but I have yet to use it. That’s the biggest reason I haven’t bought Knigts and Cities.
Has anyone played Attika yet? It’s a new release by Rio Grande games, I think, and it’s a civilization building type of game.
Marc
We don’t have the King & Scout expansion yet, but we play Carcassone with both the other 2. They really add to the game. Hunters & Gatherers is also a lot of fun, but I like the complexity of the original. I first tried Settlers at a convention when Mayfair was first bringing it out. I bought my copy from them that day. We haven’t played it much the last few years because we played mostly Empire Builder games. Now it is Carcassone with occasional railroad games.
I would like to give Puerto Rico a try, but I don’t know anyone that has it and I don’t want to buy it without playing it.
Peyote Coyote:
That’s not ‘Kriegspiel’ as in the-chess-variant-that-uses-three-boards, is it? Cause that game is fantastic. (Although it’s anything but basic, so it doesn’t really sound like what you’re talking about.)
I consider it one of the great tragedies of American culture that so many people here will live and die thinking of Monopoly, Sorry and Trivial Pursuit whenever the subject of board games is mentioned.
Add my voice to those praising Puerto Rico. Don’t be intimidated by all the various bits; the game hums along smoothly once it starts. I think it’s my current favorite of the genre.
Questions you should ask yourself when thinking of games to buy and/or play:
For instance, Settlers of Catan is a great game, but I find the outcome is often decided as much by the whims of the dice as by the players’ skills.
If you like games with goofy themes, you can try Ursuppe, where players control tribes of amoebas competing to evolve and survive in the primordial soup. At the other end of this spectrum, Euphrat & Tigris is a fascinating but fictionally-dry game heavy in strategy – it almost plays like a fancy game of chess.
Other German board games that I like, but which most people I know have never heard of:
Princes of Florence
El Grande
Union Pacific
Silberzwerg
Medieval Merchant
If you’re looking for two player games, I’m partial to Hera & Zeus and Lost Cities. And for times you have six or seven people, Citadels is a good choice.
The only complaint I have about German board games is that there’s not enough time to play them all! 
-P
I’m thinking of buying **Wildlife ** (The struggle for survival millions of years before our time!) from Uberplay; does anyone have an opinion on it?
My brother-in-law is a huge boardgame geek and he’s turned us on to a slew of those games. We just picked up Lost Cities, which is a fantastic 2-person game. Acquire is another classic that is, without a doubt, a must have. As is TransAmerica, for that matter.
If you’re really, really into the games, you play them online, usually against Germans, at the BrettspielWelt site.
My wife and I have been playing Lost Cities, TransAmerica, Metro, and ParisParis lately.
My collection of German style board games is at about 120 so far and I agree with a lot of the titles. If you want to find the ‘best of the best’ of recent years, I would recommend the following:
Puerto Rico - easily the best game of last year (or was it the year before? I lose track too easily). Although it ‘feels’ like solitaire, keep in mind the roles you choose and when have a HUGE impact on your opponents. Varying strategies to victory and the need to adapt depending on circumstances around you keep the game fresh. The expansion buildings released are a nice change now and then, but the original is still very solid.
Tigris & Euphrates - a little tricky to learn the rules, but the payoff is worth it. One of Knizia’s best.
Amun Re - fantastic auction game where the auction is half the fun. I prefer it with five, but enjoy it well enough with four. The game variety is always fresh here too with the way the properties go up for sale. Because it runs a little longer (90 minutes or so), I don’t get to play it as much as I would like, but I will NEVER say no to a game of it.
Attika - my favorite game of this year so far. Competing strategies for victory that are equally viable keep the game exciting. I played the heck out of this on BSW (www.brettspielwelt.de) before buying my own copy.
San Juan - I actually played my first game of this last night, but really enjoyed it too. It is ‘Puerto Rico: the card game’. The English version is due out in a few months, and I would recommend it over the German equivalent because of the amount of text, but it plays like Puerto Rico, but faster. The strategy seemed not as deep, but you cannot have enoug PR.
Tichu - Supposedly the most popular game in the world and another highly played game on BSW. It is a partnership trick taking game where cards are played out of hand ‘poker’ style. I can play a pair and you can try to win the lead playing a higher pair. Same holds true for trips, full houses, straights (not flushes though) and singles. Four special cards add a bit of a twist, as does the fact that before each hand you pass out one card to each player (known as the schupf). This is the one I like to settle into on a regular basis after work, though I have gotten my lunch time coworkers hooked on it too.
If you have questions about any other titles, let me know. I go by TommyTutone on BSW, and play once a week in the Atlanta area at Batty’s Best books and comics (GREAT clean store, highly recommend it).