You have not played with somebody who does interrogation as a regular part of their work. Damn, that guy’s good at spotting the traitors. There’s some luck, but clearly a lot of skill. I approach it from the deductive/logic side with moderate success. He approaches it from the perspective of somebody trained in spotting lies and deceit with significantly better results.
That’s how I always play, I literally always tell the truth, but the group is so used to everyone lying that they think “oh no, this time you’re actually lying!” even though I never do. It’s hilarious
I will give you that. The fact that resistance does encompass a bit of teamwork makes a world of difference rather than Werewolves where everyone is trying to decide one person.
I’ll also grant that my annoyance with the games probably stems a lot from my players. There are always the same two people who just take the game over and more-or-less refuse to listen to anyone else, and basically make it their mission to only play against each other.
I love love love Codenames. It’s the best new game I’ve played in ages. The challenge of trying to link as many concepts together as possible is just fascinating.
I only played the game once but I got into it. I remember a couple of times I declared the contents of my bag to the Sheriff and then I offered him a bribe to call my bluff and search my bag.
Some of my current favorites mentioned so far are Splendor, Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, Dominion, and Pandemic. Apples to Apples and Fluxx are good for occasional quick amusement, but don’t hold my attention for long. (I do remember an AtA game where I won “Radiant” with “Madame Curie”; I’ll second the opinion that offensiveness is more entertaining if you have to work for it).
A few others:
Kingdoms: Place tiles and castles on a grid – some tiles give points, some take away points, a few do special things like break rows and columns, double values, etc, and the castles determine who gets which points (each castle scores the tiles, both good and bad, in its row and column). The “help yourself” and “hurt the other guy” options change pretty rapidly.
Lanterns: Another quick tile-placement game – basically, placing tiles gets you cards, and certain card combinations can be turned in for point chits (stacked in descending order so that getting them first is worth more).
Lords of Waterdeep: A D&D themed game with fairly basic “place your pieces to get the resources you need to score objectives” mechanics.
Kingsburg: Another “place pieces, get resources, build stuff” game, with the wrinkle that the dice are your pieces and can be placed based on the number you roll on them (less luck than you’d think, the “low total goes first” rule offsets it somewhat).
In the unlikely event anyone other than myself is in the vicinity of Rochester, NY tomorrow, stop in at the Barnes and Noble in Pittsford Plaza. We’re having an open tabletop gaming event there from four to ten.
Cards Against Humanity has several themed expansions; I even heard rumors of a Donald Trump one.
Just to add another game to the group, Chrononauts is a card game we enjoy. Relativly simple game, each player is trying to alter a timeline their own way.
I have one granddaughter who is 11 and she loves playing strategy games. We started playing Settlers of Catan with her when she was 9, and then introduced her to Ticket to Ride (US edition). My second granddaughter, who is two years younger, does not enjoy strategy games at all, partly because her sister and I are too competitive and run roughshod all over the others in our quest to beat each other.
Anyway, I had heard about the “co-op” style of games and took the eldest one to a game store so we could check some out. We got Pandemic and played it through twice by ourselves to work out the game play, losing both games. Once we knew how the game was played, we asked the younger one to join us, telling her that we either won as a team or lost as a team, and that she wouldn’t lose by herself.
She LOVED the game! In fact, once she figured out that it was perfectly fine to offer suggestions on what to do, she became the most vocal of us. “Papa, if you go to Jakarta, I can swim over from Sydney, and we can do a Knowledge Transfer, and I can give you …”. The three of us won the game, although that was probably due more to the Roles in play than any one person’s contribution to the game. However, her Role was one of the keys to winning the game.
She has already asked when we are going to play again, and I am looking at buying another co-op style of game to keep her engaged.
If you have someone like her who is more right-brained/visual/creative, I suggest you get a game like Spot It! She really enjoys that game.
I really enjoy Dominion (with expansions). For co-op, our group is addicted to Sentinels of the Multiverse. It has colorful characters as well as cool things you can pull off, but it can get dense with things to keep track of.
My favorite “worker placement” game is Manhattan Project. There’s a clever mechanic to make the timing of placing/recalling your guys really important, and it has beautiful period-themed art.
Since this has been bumped, I’ll add that I just played Love Letter for the first time today. A fun game if you don’t have many people or much time. I think of it as a sort of ‘Coup-lite’. I’d play it again, but you wouldn’t want to go for it too often as it doesn’t have any depth really.
We then had time for a game of Coup: Reformation afterwards. As I often do, I played without looking at either of my cards for several rounds (this works best if no-one realises this is what you have done). It means you can’t give away much in the way of ‘tells’ because you genuinely don’t know if you are bluffing or not. It works for me because early in the game you are less likely to be called out on any claims, particularly of the weaker cards. I urge anyone who enjoys Coup but hasn’t got the Reformation expansion to play it as soon as possible - it adds such a lot to the gameplay.
Dominion suffers from being the first in a genre, its descendants are generally much better games.
Try Alien Encounters for a co-op version of Dominion.
Splendor effing rocks, for some reason this game reminds me of cribbage.
Cards Against Humanity (apples to apples) are not games, they are activities.
Catan, if you have (or pick up a copy) one of the early runs where there are actual water tiles instead of that stupid border you can add huge variety to your game play. Regardless I suggest an alternate version I call Rawlsian rules. Instead of the usual set up all players place pieces from all colors and then get assigned a random color to play. This tends to eliminate one player with crazy good numbers and adds a really nice twist. (Veil of ignorance)
Eldritch Horror, co-op play, no player elimination (well at the very very end game it can happen but at this point you are all gonna die anyway) Fair warning its a pretty heavy game but loads of fun.
Terra Mystica, another Heavy. For those of you who would prefer a game that is 100% yours to lose I cannot recommend this one enough. At the very start there is a bit of randomness in setting up the board, after that it is a game of perfect information. Also has no player elimination.
We played Spyfall this weekend. What a blast!
You have to tread the narrow path between revealing too much info in your question, letting the spy jump in with a win, and being so vague that others think you are the spy.
I disagree. Attempts to make the deck-building genre, as pioneered by Dominion, by making the game longer and/or changing the genre are a mixed bag. I kind of like Automobiles and Trains (both published by AEG) but Thunderstone is a two-hour long ordeal. Disclaimer: I work for Rio Grande Games, the publisher of Dominion.
In my opinion, the only thing Dominion* suffers from is that I’ve played it so damned much that I’m over it.
*the base set and the first few expansions. I will agree that it got weaker as it put out more and more sets.
I’m not a bug fan of the deck building genre. I’ve tried a few but I generally don’t enjoy them.
The only deck builder I enjoy and play on a regular basis is Flip City, which is essentially a deck building mini-game.
My favorite board game is called “Lord of the Rings”, it came out before the movies, it’s the only board game I know of where all the players are on the same team and you can actually win by sacrificing yourself for the team.
Dude, you need to get out more. Nothing wrong with Lord of the Rings - I’ve only played it once, but I enjoyed it - but there’s an entire genre of cooperative games out there. Try Pandemic, Forbidden Desert, Flash Point, Bomb Squad, Burgle Bros, Castle Panic. Many of these have all the players on the same team, although you can’t always sacrifice yourself for the team.
Minor spoiler for Pandemic Legacy:You can in Pandemic Legacy, though, especially in the later months.
Co-ops have become popular enough to develop a subgenre; traitor games. This is where all the players appear to be working together to win the game but one player is secretly a traitor, who wins if the team as a whole fails to win the game.
For which see, as already mentioned in this thread, Battlestar: Galactica and Dead of Winter, to name but two.
Some versions of Pandemic have a character who’s actually an undercover terrorist who’s trying to spread the diseases.