Boardgames (and Other Tabletop Games I Guess)

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Trynant

Manic Brawler
Jan 31, 2002
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Let's talk about boardgames in this thread! And other tabletop games if you want!

There was a thread in OT before the forums got split, found here, and we can just resume conversation from there.

SleepyHe4d said:
I bought Settlers of Catan the other day since it was the only one of the "better" board games I could find in stores. While playing it was a LOT more enjoyable than Monopoly, I still didn't like that I got raped by dice rolls pretty much the last 3rd of the game and lost. :lol:

I'm gonna have to order and try out Dominion like you suggested, and some other games that were mentioned in here.

How has Dungeon Twister held up now that it's been a couple months?

Also, have you tried any of the expansions or stand alone versions like the "prison" one? I hate how a bunch of these more advanced games have all these different versions, it makes my buying decisions harder. :mad:

Sorry for lack of response for past few months. Nevertheless, here's a belated reply:

Catan is okay. It's a good "gateway" game to the rich world of designer boardgames, but once you start playing beyond it, Catan wears out its welcome fast. If you have a Barnes and Nobles nearby, that store tends to sell some of the weird boardgames out there (at least the store near me does). Dominion is much better than Catan.

Dungeon Twister is still my favorite game (although it might be tied with two other games, see below). I actually started with the Prison standalone game and ended up getting all the expansions barring the French-only ones. Basic is probably the best starting point, but Prison is fine too. The only thing is I don't get much playtime recently because, well, you need another player willing to play the game, and frankly I don't have too many friends that like Dungeon Twister. Also, I've been distracted by a few new games I've gotten.

Aside from Dungeon Twister, I really love Caylus. It's a worker-placement game (you spend a round taking turns with other players placing workers on various action squares), and it has 0 luck with the possible exception of what the other players are doing, if you call that luck. Caylus is an amazing game, but it's fairly complex. Try something simpler like Dominion first.

The game that is blowing my mind at the moment is Earth Reborn. Earth Reborn is designed by the same guy who made Dungeon Twister, and while ER is a tactical minis game, it has a good amount of differences. Earth Reborn is a scenario-driven post-apocalyptic shooty game (imagine X-Com the boardgame with more available options for what you can do), and you assemble the board using a bunch of Tetris-like tiles for rooms.

While I only got it recently so I'm stilled hyped up, Earth Reborn is fucking amazing. It has so many different things you can do that it's almost a role-playing game, but it still retains the gamey values of a boardgame. In Earth Reborn you can:
  • Destroy the environment, i.e. doors, walls and objects
  • Surprise attack enemies that walk into your Line of Sight
  • Carry and use loads of different equipment, including the US Constitution and a Zombie Virus
  • Fire nuclear missiles
  • Woo a 500-year-old golem with your hot female character to join your side
  • Spy on the enemy
  • Scramble the enemy's radio
  • Control a mech
  • Hijack a mech
  • Torture characters for information
  • Procedurally generate your own missions
  • Get scoring points for getting one of the characters to a bathroom (he has irritable bowel syndrome)

Among other things. It's fucking astounding. I'm doing a big session of the game today and it should be a blast. Or I'll play Twilight Imperium (it's Sins of a Solar Empire the boardgame).
 

dragonfliet

I write stuffs
Apr 24, 2006
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I've been curious about picking up Arkham Horror (the Lovecraft boardgame ), has anyone had any experience with that?
 

Trynant

Manic Brawler
Jan 31, 2002
2,019
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38
Quiet Island
trynant.wordpress.com
I've been curious about picking up Arkham Horror (the Lovecraft boardgame ), has anyone had any experience with that?

Arkham Horror imho is meh. It's very dice-heavy and is more about coming up with an interesting story about Lovecraftian horrors than feeling like you're in control. It has lots of fancy pieces at least >.>

If you want to play a cooperative boardgame, may I recommend Space Alert?

[m]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5fHzYtuHBA[/m]
 

QuistTerry

New Member
Dec 16, 2011
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I've been curious about picking up Arkham Horror
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Balton

The Beast of Worship
Mar 6, 2001
13,428
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Berlin
I got myself Settlers of Catan and had some very botched up 3 player rounds... if I didn't have such shitty work hours I could get a 4p round going, oh well...

I'm looking to buy some additional boardgames, any ideas what I should look for(even though I know that you know that I am very hard to persuade)?
 

Trynant

Manic Brawler
Jan 31, 2002
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Current Favorite: Earth Reborn

Balton, this is pretty much the best introduction-to-boardgames video I've found:

[m]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPi_uNWUJy0[/m]

Aside from that, without knowing what kind of game you'd like to play (catan I guess?), I can't give much advise other than saying what I ended up getting early on. Catan was my first purchase along with Carcassonne, which are about the same level of complexity and game type (medium-light strategy eurogames). The 'next step up' so to speak for me was Puerto Rico, which is easily one of the best boardgames I've ever played and absolutely love it (also the same kind of genre as Carcasonne, although less about trading and more about indirect screwing-with-eachother).

So yeah, if you liked Catan, Carcassonne might be worth checking out. If you want even more from boardgames, go for Puerto Rico. There's plenty more in the world of tabletop gaming, but these are good starts (along with that video).
 

Trynant

Manic Brawler
Jan 31, 2002
2,019
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Quiet Island
trynant.wordpress.com
Supposedly you're supposed to make a thing called a 'deck' and use this 'deck' in a 'game' with other 'players.'

EDIT: Since this thread got bumped, I just want to interject that board games are still, indeed awesome. Current favorite toys are Earth Reborn, Ora et Labora and King of Tokyo.

I'm even making my own! It's in such an alpha state that I can't even say it sucks yet!
 
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SleepyHe4d

fap fap fap
Jan 20, 2008
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I wish I had friends to play board games with. :(

I need to get rid of all these damn trading cards, not play with them! It seems like such a hassle to find the prices of the good/rare ones and sell them off though. Has anyone had experience with doing this?

Also they are so old I don't even know if they are in play anymore, they are always making new decks and old ones get outdated and stop being used. :(

On another subject, this is why computer games are so awesome. You can have customized, random "boards" set up instantly, play with people around the world, and have all the calculations and rolling done in the background. Too bad it's so freakin hard to find video games that have a feeling like true "board" games, and even harder to find a good one.
 
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Trynant

Manic Brawler
Jan 31, 2002
2,019
1
38
Quiet Island
trynant.wordpress.com
DERP

Well since I made a nice long post in the wrong thread I'm going to quote it here.

EDIT: God dammit, this was meant for the thread in the Gaming section. derp.

Imma going to bump this thread. Sorry, here's a video to make you happier:

[m]http://youtu.be/ycM844Bfzsk[/m]

Anyways, I spent half a week playing a bunch of boardgames and I remembered this thread. Time for a

GAME REPORT

*cough* anyways,

King of Tokyo
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This is a fun party game. You're a monster in Tokyo. You fight other monsters. First to 20 points or last monster standing wins. Need there be any more said? You roll dice and play cards and move your standup Cyber Bunny against King-Kong and Cthulu wannabes and have a fun, silly time. And the game lasts for at most half an hour. Fun fact: this was made by the creator of Magic the Gathering (but don't worry, this is much more fun :p).

Flash Duel
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A game made by that fighting-game dick personality, David Sirlin. It's a rip-off of an older game called En Garde!, but that doesn't make this 5-15 minute filler game any worse. You and your opponent have your pieces lined up on a track and play cards to move and strike at eachother. First person to land a hit wins. Good game about distancing. Also has lots of different game modes and such. And it's not that expensive compared to many games. Good stuff.

Dungeon Lords
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This is a fun game in of the 'worker-placement' variety. You know that videogame Dungeon Keeper from way-back-when? Imagine if it got turned into a boardgame and this might be the result. You're a titular dungeon lord trying to build the best dungeon within a couple of years, but at the end of every year some annoying adventurers try to ransack your dungeon. The game does some cool things, but it's definitely not a beginner/gateway game like Catan is. Worth playing though.

Space Alert
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One of my top 5 board games. If you like the notion of cooperative play over player versus player, grab this. You will be playing with your friends as a crew on a Sitting Duck class space-ship trying to fight off aliens and cosmic hazards for ten minutes. The twist is that these ten minutes are played in real time via a CD soundtrack that will shout out various events and dangers at you. Play your cards and survive! The soundtrack element to this game creates an unique and wonderful time. Also, the game can be played in half an hour; although you will want to play more than once. Seriously good fun.

Earth Reborn
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My number 1 board game. Imagine X-COM's tactical battles turned boardgame and you might get this. Each player commands their own team of unique characters and battle through various scenarios on a board that you'll construct out of various floor tiles (there's even a scenario auto-generator for near-infinite playability). Guns will be shot, zombies will be raised, mines will be blown up, and one guy will need to take a dump (I'm not making this up). The best part of all this is that the great and cheesy post-apocalyptic zombies-versus-marines theme has great gameplay behind all of it. A true gem of a game.

Twilight Struggle
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A card-driven-game (CDG) about the Cold War. One side is US, the other is USSR. Each player is going to be playing cards as either events that cause things to happen or as operations to spread their superpower's influence across the world. This is the number-one-ranked game on boardgamegeek.com, but I never got a chance to finish a full game of it. I had fun from the little I've played, but it seems to reward repeated plays (this can be hard to pull off sometimes). I'll have to wait and see how it really plays out.

Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization
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This is Sid Meier's Civilization turned into a card game. And somehow this is a good thing. Also rather long and extremely complex; it is a civ game after all. You'll be upgrading your tech, building wonders, managing your workers, maintaining your populace, waging wars, etc. Also I suck at it, but that's okay because the game is still fun to play.

Mage Knight: Board Game
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Another rather long, rather complex game that is awesome. The problem with this one is that it suffers from Analysis Paralysis (AP); the game will take forever if someone takes too long thinking about their turn. Another player and I decided to sit down and exclude other people from play because the game can drag so much with newbies/slow players. As a result we had a fun four-hour romp as adventurers rampaging across the land trying to out-level eachother. Fun stuff.

Overall a successful boardgame week. Fun games all around.