There’s another thread on the Tabletop webseries, so I figured why not start a thread on the general topic?
Ten of my favorites:
Castles of Mad King Ludwig
Fidelitas
Istanbul
Kingdom Builder
Le Havre
Machi Koro
Smash Up
Suburbia
Troyes
Zombicide
I like variety. Brass is one of the few games that has stayed in my “will almost always play” list. Maybe add “Castles of Burgundy.”
Right now I am most eager to play a full game of Arkwright. Played the “Spinning Jenny” simplified rules which was probably wise but am eager to get more meat.
Haven’t played Le Harve in a while, need to bring that out again.
Looking forward to getting Orleans (played once at BGG@SEA)
I don’t like the “master builder” aspect of Ludwig. It adds player interaction, but it is a hard thing to do (esp early in the game when you don’t know what folks want) But otherwise I like the game
Brian
It’s gotta be Cosmic Encounter.
It’s definitely not super balanced and victory is often more luck dependent than anything else, but it’s always a delight to play with the right crowd. The sheer variety of possible powers and combinations pretty much guarantees every game with contain a solid mix of clever plays, dramatic reversals, and shocking betrayals.
They weren’t boardgames but in college in the early 90s I played the hell out of Illuminati and a Mobster themed card game. I would like to play more tabletop games but my friends don’t share my interest.
My all times favourite is “Republic of Rome”, a competitive and cooperative game (if Rome collapses, which can happen for a number of reasons, everybody loses). Long, complex, very subtle.
Unfortunately, the old edition from the early 90s is rare and costly, and the new edition from the late 00s is apparently deeply flawed.
Pandemic is the game I play most frequently because it is challenging but the rules are easy enough for a newly introduced player to grasp. Russian Railroads, also from Z-Man Games, is a good step up from the basic Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan type worker placement games. I thought I’d really like Power Grid but I’ve honestly found it kind of repetitive, sort of an adult version of Monopoly. The game I wish I could get more people to play is Trajan which is a great resource allocation game with an appealing setting and a lot of replayability, but you really need three or four players who don’t mind spending three or four hours pondering over strategy. I don’t own it, but a friend has Viticulture and the expansion which I’ve found fun to play the first couple of times but I suspect would wear thin after a while after exercising the various strategies (focus on making wine, making money from other sources).
When we have a group over that just wants to bash around the table for half an hour or so, King of New York (an expanded version of King of Tokyo) is good mindless fun with a lot of opportunity for trash talk. Last Night on Earth is basically just as mindless (search for items, avoid or kill zombies, achieve the scenario objective) but takes a little longer to set up and play (usually runs about an hour and a half in my experience).
Not exactly a board game but Machine of Death: The Game of Creative Assassination looks like it would be a blast with the right group, but as with Fiasco it just sits on my shelf waiting for a collection of players who don’t mind being morbidly risible and absurdly silly.
Stranger
Eh, I thought “huh, weird, that sounds a lot like the old Res Publica, did they make two of those games ?!” - but they’re the same game, they just changed the title in France :).
I still have to play that one - a friend of mine has the original box and wanted to get a game going, but so far it’s been annoying to get everybody’s schedule nice and sync’d.
As for myself, you’ll always get me with an opportunity to play the Game of Thrones boardgame. Also Dune because I swear, someday my Bene Gesserit prophecy will pan out and it will be *so *sweet.
As you can see by my list, I take a pretty flexible view on what’s a boardgame.
Yep. That’s the issue with this kind of games
That’s any good? I tend to assume that any game published after a book, movie or show is automatically going to be crap, and wouldn’t even have considered it.
The Pillars of the Earth, “based” on Ken Follett’s novel, is a really good game.
I’m loving Smash Up right now, loads of goofy fun with some nice tactical depth.
Shadowrift is a hard-as-hell cooperative deckbuilder with style.
Coup is a quick, nasty little social deduction/deception game. So is Mascerade. So is Shadow Hunters.
Battlestar Galactica is a longer, nasty big social deduction/deception game with space ships.
You’re right about 90% of the time, but GoT is an exception. So is, oddly enough, Spartacus.
I like the fact that the different decks have significantly different abilities (although I think they’re reaching the point of running out of workable possibilities). That and the way you combine two decks means there are always a lot of different tactics in the game, which keeps it fresh.
No love for the classics? Backgammon is the best game ever!
Then you missed out on Dune, which is an excellent game.
Haven’t played in decades, but my two favorite were Supremacy and Kingmaker.
Ra: The Dice Game is an awesome game that I always go back to. I have not even played Ra, but the dice game is great.
Carcassonne: The City - the original grows stale, but this two player game is great.
It’s pretty good, yes. Think *Diplomacy *mixed with Condottiere, with a smattering of Knights of Camelot for seasoning.
Family Business?
In recent years I’ve seen a fair bit of Seven Wonders and Power Grid. Nuclear War is good for those who just want to watch the world burn although it’s Cold War-era black humour and so a little dated now. One on one, I had a lot of fun over the years with Squad Leader and ASL. More recently, I played Dead of Winter for the first time a few months back and the sooner I get another crack at it, the better.