[Infernarl]

[wourme]

[Infernarl]

Here is a list of computerized versions of board games that are free and have AI opponents.


THEY ARE ALMOST LIKE VIDEO GAMES

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/8323

[FortNinety]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the board game version of Tetris is pretty damn fun.

dmauro, you and I are gonna go head to head in it at the next gameNight.
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[wourme]

There's a Mega Man version of Settlers of Catan.



Also,













(Images are from BGG.)

[Toups]

whoa



this mario's got SASS
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[Mikey]

Wourme, my mind is blown.

[firenze]

Anyone have opinions on the "new" Risk and Axis and Allies games? They made a futuristic Risk 2210, and a mythology based Risk Godstorm. There were also a bunch of new A&A games, mostly from Avalon Hill - D-Day, Battle of the Bulge, Pacific, Europe, and a revised/updated A&A. I've never played any of these but I have always wondered...

[dmauro]

[Mikey]

I'd also like to discuss card games using the standard 52 card deck.

I like Kings in the Corner, as a light diversion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_in_the_Corner

And When I was younger I used to play a game we called Show I.D. (for sometimes outrageously high stakes).

Essentially it was a 2-4 player game where every player is dealt 13 cards.

Whoever has the lowest valued card in their hand (in this case the absolute lowest card is the 3 of diamonds - Deuces are higher valued than aces in this game. Also, the suits are valued from lowest to highest as follows: Diamonds, Clubs, Hearts, Spades, so the 2 of Spades is the most valuable card) goes first, by laying down that low-valued card. Each player then beats the last card played with a higher valued single card until nobody can beat the last card played.

That player gets to go again. They lay down onto the table either a single card, a pair, or a 5 card hand (straight, flush, full house) on the table. The next player attempts to beat whatever is laid down with something higher ranked, but it must be the same amount of cards the last player laid down, (i.e., you must beat a single card with a higher-valued single card, etc.). If nobody can beat what they just laid down, they put down whatever they like again, and see if anyone can beat that. The goal of the game is to empty your hand of cards first.

It's surprisingly strategic, because if you used up all your good cards to early you'd probably get stuck at the end, but if you play a low valued card/hand at the wrong time it'll create a huge opening for someone to sort of go off on a combo or what have you.

My friends and I would play for money, by just having a fixed betting pool for 3-4 player games (say, everyone tosses in a buck before the hand). But if we were playing one-on-one, the betting structure was as follows: The losing player would pay a predetermined amount to the winner for each card they have left in their hand at the time they lose the game. So if you have twelve cards in hand because you really got your ass kicked and the payout is 5 bucks a card, you're paying out 60 dollars for that hand. For a bunch of 16 year olds we racked up some serious debts to each other.

This game is best played by 2-3 players, as it leaves uncertainty as to whether anybody has the 2 of Spades (which in the early game sort of negates strategies like breaking up high ranked pairs in a gambit to get priority).

[CubaLibre]

Sounds like a fun game, but fixed pre-game betting sort of defeats the whole point of betting, doesn't it?
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Mikey]

Well we treated the betting less like you do when you play poker and more like you do before a contest of skill. "I bet you X you can't beat me." It tied in with all the other betting we used to do when we played pool.

Also it provided a reward for the loser, in the one-on-one variation: If the payout was a dollar per card you had left in your hand, having only one card left because you played well is reflected by the fact that you don't have to pay out much. It's sort of like an acknowledgement of a good performance, like a silver medal.

[wourme]

I recently went to a sort of board game convention and played a lot of new titles, some of which (I found out later) are too new to be available for purchase. Highlights included

Eldritch Horror

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/146021/eldritch-horror

I'm told that this is more streamlined than Arkahm Horror, but I really can't say because I've never tried that one. I liked this game a lot, though. I would say despite losing, but it was in part because of losing. You don't "win" in a Lovecraft story, after all. I really like the way the game handles character deaths. Rather than being eliminated or just trying again, you take a new character and your old one remains part of the game. The old one has wither died or gone mad, and you can potentially retrieve that character's items.



(photo by Jon Ben at BGG)

Samarkand

This one looked like Through the Desert at first, but it's more elaborate. You orchestrate the trade route expansion and intermarrying of merchant families in the desert.



(photo by "Ender Wiggins" at BGG)

Nations: The Dice Game

Unassuming and not terribly deep, but I like the mechanics of purchasing dice and re-rolls. One guy I played with said that he preferred Nations: The Board Game, but I have not tried that one myself.

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/157809/nations-dice-game



(photo by Toni Niittymaki at BGG)

Will add more later. One other thing I got to play that I've always wanted to try is Wallenstein. I have Shogun, which is the same thing but in Japan, but I rarely get a chance to play it because it's too much and too long for more casual board gamers.

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3307/wallenstein-first-edition

[wourme]

Also,

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/the-hottest-new-board-games

[Tulpa]

Oh hey this thread.

I've been playing Space Alert recently. It came out in 2009, Space Alert is basically the board game equivalent of FTL. Randomly generated missions, desperately trying to survive and overcome the threats coming at you. Single, poorly assembled space ship vs. the universe. Co-op game where you all try to decide your turns in real time while a computer announces threats, communications break down, and every imaginable disaster happens at once. After the real time phase ends (whether or not you were able to place all your actions in the turn order), the resolution phase kicks in and you get to see how it all went horribly wrong. On occasions, I've ended up continually blind firing the port laser cannon despite running out of fuel 4 turns beforehand, another player has forgotten to reactivate the robots after dealing with an internal security threat and just wandered around doing nothing for the next few turns, lights going out because someone forgot to wiggle the mouse on the main computer and the screensaver came up, etc.

It's amazing. An entire game is played in about 40 minutes: 12 minutes real time panic attack and the rest laughing at all of our horrible mistakes.

Coup is a masterpiece. A super quick to play game of deception, sudden reversals and intrigue. Each game lasts from 5-20 minutes and every turn has at least one interesting decision to make. Features player elimination (the game ends when only one player is left) but this isn't really a negative when the game plays so quickly. Highly competitive, very lightly random and heavily skews towards tactical play.
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[Talbain]

Coup is indeed fantastic. Fastest way to make friends.
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[The Blueberry Hill]

Maybe we should add a boardgame page to the wiki?

It's something I'd find pretty useful at the moment. I'd love some more co-op and co-op+backstabbing recommendations!

[Robosaurus]

Ah, I can contribute here. I'm growing a pretty solid collection. The biggest hits in my social circles are fairly common recommendations, though: Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, 7 Wonders, Love Letter, the Resistance, and Splendor, to name a few.

I love Pandemic for co-op, but it doesn't work for everyone and definitely requires the right group because you need to function as a committee to make it work properly. And there's no backstabbing, just bad guesses. Sometimes incompetence can feel like betrayal, I suppose. For bluffing shenanigans, I've been eager to try One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Two Rooms and a Boom, and Sheriff of Nottingham, but we haven't gotten around to them yet. I have them, though. Saboteur is a fun and light hidden role game with a bit of backstabbing. It's not a perfect design, but a lot of my friends seem to really dig it.

Cube Quest has been good, if you like dexterity games. You flick your dice at your opponent's dice to knock them off the board. It's violent. We play in teams. I'd say board games have nearly killed multiplayer videogames for me, but really we've all just gotten married and whatnot and card games are far more accessible. I'm rambling, but I do hope this topic takes off!

[Ronnoc]

Space Alert sounds great, I will have to check that out

[Tulpa]

Hanabi is one of the best coop games out right now. It avoids one of the major problems of the genre (expert players telling everyone what to do) by constraining what kind and how much info can be exchanged between players.

Mascarade is a fun and light hidden role backstabbing game that feels like a more random, chaotic take on something like coup.
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[Felix]

Space Cadets is another spectacular-trainwreck space co-op game that I like a lot, but it's so deliberately overcomplicated that it's hard to get a group of 5+ together who actually want to play it. I've only managed a whole game twice in the year I've had it but it's pretty terrific.

my standbys are Galaxy Trucker, Cosmic Encounter, Chinatown, Agricola, Tash Kalar, and String Railway. just ordered Mysterium (eastern european game that hasn't been localized yet but there are english rules available and it's not too hard to find a copy to import) and Alchemists which I'm eager to try out. also a big fan of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective (genuinely good mystery co-op, great writing, good pacing, etc.) and Eclipse (literally the only tabletop 4X I've ever tried that isn't convoluted/overlong/unbalanced or doesn't abstract away several of the elements in order to still put together a good game without running into those problems, e.g. Through the Ages, and while there's nothing wrong with that, Eclipse is still a major achievement for getting it all in there so well).

[8128]

agricola is so fucking great
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[Felix]

yeah, it's ridiculous well-rounded and well-paced. I kind of don't think it's possible to do a straightforwardly better eurogame, but that's OK because most eurogames don't go for straightforwardly better

[peetee]

Samurai Spirit was released a couple months ago! it was designed by Antoine Bauza, who did Ghost Stories (one of my favorite games of all time) and Hanabi, interestingly enough.

(he also did 7 wonders and a number of other games)

Samurai Spirit skews closer to Ghost Stories in its co-op style, in that there aren't rules that limit the information the players can discuss with each other, but rather, the puzzle the game presents is so complex that the players are almost forced to collaborate. it's an interesting way to "solve" the problem of the Experienced Player, but it definitely only works if your group supports that style of play

when it works it works SUPER well though -- Ghost Stories always had those moments of dramatic reversals against difficult odds, and Samurai Spirit, by being a kind of cooperative blackjack game, distills those moments further by changing the way the players engage with the antagonists. blackjack is already pretty dramatic, so Bauza upped the tension by making that moment where you "beat the dealer" really important for the players' success and then structured the player interactions around getting someone to beat the dealer over and over again

and it comes in such a cute small box! which makes setup/teardown super easy and makes it really easy for me to carry the game around! that's super underrated imo

[Tulpa]

[Felix]

love me some Vlaada.

I've heard Caverna described as Agricola but bigger, and while I see nothing wrong with Rosenberg wanting to make a followup and that being the most sensible way to do it, I almost don't need it to be any bigger than it already is. but a friend has it and I will probably try it soon.

there's a primarily mail order shop run out of a guy's basement nearby me here in Vancouver called starlit citadel that is mostly notable for having Amazon-competitive pricing in Canada, which is never an easy feat for any product, but particularly valuable in this niche when it's often the difference between spending like $45 and $70 on a given game. they are surprisingly good about having popular-obscure games for purchase between NA print runs (I got sherlock holmes no problem on a whim when it seemed to be out of stock everywhere, and their price for the Polish import version of Mysterium is way cheaper than the Ukranian copies on ebay, albeit with no guarantee of when they'll come in).

[peetee]

I'm also not the biggest fan of Bauza's "Asian themes", and I've definitely had moments where I wonder whether the designs he comes up with are independent of the theme or not

it's almost like a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum where I question the themes' role in the ruleset designs -- if he didn't think about play experiences in terms of ninjas and samurai, would he have come up with designs as compelling? I hope so. and 7 Wonders and Hanabi seem to indicate that I needn't worry too much

[8128]

i don't have much of a board game team nowadays so haven't played caverna, but le havre is very dope too
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[wourme]

[luvcraft]

We've started playing board games at my work, which is awesome. I brought in Mascarade and it went over really well, and we've also played a few rounds of Escape from the Curse of the Temple (and never won). Today at lunch we played Forbidden Desert and won; it was my first time playing that game.

Everyone should play Mascarade, preferably with 9 or more players. It is the most elegant hidden-identity game EVAR.
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[Tulpa]

lol I ended up buying tragedy looper and it looks right up my alley. The criticisms online mostly come from a place of board-gamer stubbornness: There's only 10 scenarios in the base game and once they're beaten you'll have to make or get more because they're generally non-repeatable. Even though the game provides exacting tools and instructions for how to make additional scenarios. Given that I have an RPG background, this is a non-issue for me.

EDIT: I ran Tragedy Looper tonight. You can tell a co-op game is going to be a continuing source of fun in the future when the protagonists only barely managed to survive the tutorial script (there's no random element in this game, it's all deduction and mind games). Can't wait to throw an actual challenge at them.
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