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blah blah blah cheap + girlfriend blah blah

Look no further than Carcassonne. It is also cool with more people playing. The expansion packs can keep it fresh if you want to spice it up.

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I've recently been playing Dominion with a friend, also got the Alchemy and Seaside expansions. Seaside is pretty cool, but the fact that my friend mostly beats me is not. I managed to get one draw out of 4 games last time.

I got Arkham Horror, but so far haven't played it much. It seems really cool, but almost complicated enough to require a game master. I kept forgetting to do some stuff.

I've been meaning to attend some local board game evenings to find more people to play with, but I've been either busy or they've been cancelled. Going tomorrow if I remember.

[edit] oops, I missed why this thread was resurrected. This wasn't meant as recommendation of cheap two-player games.

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Bringing this back from the dead to ask for some recommendations for cheap and two-player capable games. It's pretty easy to find the latter using websites like BoardGameGeek, but there's no easy way to search for prices alongside that degree of specificity. Obviously prices aren't going to be the same everywhere, but I just mean relatively inexpensive stuff.

The main reason I ask is because 1) I'm an unemployed college student and 2) my interest in board games is limited to just an activity with my girlfriend. Given that criteria, I hope there's something out there for us.

I've played with the idea of just buying a few premade Magic decks and trading them back and forth to create some variety. I also recently picked up Forbidden Island, which is a surprisingly basic yet potentially complex game that's pretty good with two and supports up to four players. I grabbed that one for only $12, which is definitely in my financial wheelhouse. While that's a pretty high expectation budget-wise, I wouldn't mind paying... maybe $30 for something quite good.

Summoner Wars, I played it with Nachimir a while back and it was pretty good.

If you're going for Magic, it might be a good idea to look up the "Deck Builders Tool kit" which gives 200 something cards for a low price (for MTG) enough to build a few decks and give you a taste of one of the most important parts of MTG.

Recently I've been playing a lot of Battlestar Galactica, Castle Ravenloft, both of which I highly recommend to anyone.

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So I started going to local board game nights every Tuesday. We've played some pretty sweet games, favourites so far are Merchants & Marauders (though I won the first game way too easily by hoarding money) and Formula D.

Also, ordered Merchants & Marauders and Mansions of Madness.

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Tell me how that Mansion of Madness is... Boardgamegeek.com doesn't have it particularly high up there, but that could be because it is new. Ideally, I would love a graceful rule set that allows for interesting emergent narratives as well as some strategy and tactics and WTF moments. I am not a big fan of overly complex rules.

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Arkham Horror arrived this am. I ordered it, then found out about Mansions of Madness (Rock, Paper, Shotgun gave MoM a GREAT review!) Tchoh. Also, after playing Carcasonne on t'iphone etc. finally got round to ordering the physical version. Looking forward to them both!

Edit. Just noticed above link is for RPS. That's two good reviews of a review. Paging Xzibit!

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Lego are releasing a modular dungeon crawling series in their Lego Games range. It's called Heroica.

800px-Toy_Fair_2011_Heroica_setup_1.png

I especially like what appears to be the stats bar/bench.

Which reminded me: Lego could be an excellent (and cheaper) way of representing stuff in D&D, if it just had a wide enough range of phenotypes for all the monsters and enemies. I hope this will make it possible.

Hmm I wonder if my old Lego is still in my parents loft?

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that's awesome...

You know the most awesome thing about it? Because it's Lego, it can be expanded/houseruled with all other lego ever. Urban. Pirates. Indiana Jones. Star Wars. Or whatever you build. Infinitely expandable. My mind is in the process of exploding in slow motion.

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Questions for players of Arkham horror:

When you close a gate that a monster is on it (and the monster has a different dimensional symbol) does the monster hang around?

If a flying monster is in the sky zone, and no investigators are in streets, does he just stay there?

When fighting Yig (who curses you at the start of battle) can you do a roll to remove a curse at the start of each phase when you do the 'Upkeep'?

When waiting at St. Mary's or the Asylum, can you increase your stamina/sanity past your char's maximum?

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Questions for players of Arkham horror:

When you close a gate that a monster is on it (and the monster has a different dimensional symbol) does the monster hang around?

If a flying monster is in the sky zone, and no investigators are in streets, does he just stay there?

When fighting Yig (who curses you at the start of battle) can you do a roll to remove a curse at the start of each phase when you do the 'Upkeep'?

When waiting at St. Mary's or the Asylum, can you increase your stamina/sanity past your char's maximum?

It may be worth looking at the FAQ http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/Arkham_Horror/AHfaq.pdf Fantasy Flight are really good at making these.

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Arkham Horror arrived this am. I ordered it, then found out about Mansions of Madness (Rock, Paper, Shotgun gave MoM a GREAT review!) Tchoh. Also, after playing Carcasonne on t'iphone etc. finally got round to ordering the physical version. Looking forward to them both!

Edit. Just noticed above link is for RPS. That's two good reviews of a review. Paging Xzibit!

More importantly it's designed by Corey Konieczka, one of my favourite designers (Battlestar Galactica, Space Hulk Death Angel, among plenty of others). I ordered it just now along with Gosu, which looks quite interesting being a blend of Race for the Galaxy and Magic the Gathering

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Questions for players of Arkham horror:

I haven't played a lot -- only two games, and months ago -- so my answers are from memory.

When you close a gate that a monster is on it (and the monster has a different dimensional symbol) does the monster hang around?

No. I think it was mentioned in the rules that they get sucked away anyway?

If a flying monster is in the sky zone, and no investigators are in streets, does he just stay there?

Yes. They will patrol in the sky until they see someone, I guess.

When waiting at St. Mary's or the Asylum, can you increase your stamina/sanity past your char's maximum?

I don't think so.

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When you close a gate that a monster is on it (and the monster has a different dimensional symbol) does the monster hang around?

I answered that it gets sucked away, but was suspecting I was wrong so I looked it up. Actually in the main rules it stays. But one of the house rules recommended by the designer say it gets sucked away.

PS. besides the PDF link posted before, here are all the links to rules, faq, house rules etc. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=6&esem=4

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Just got Mansions of Madness delivered to me. Unfortunately, at the moment I'm enjoying the worst headache ever instead of the game. Will be in Santa Clara for EclipseCon for the next week, so it'll be more than a week before I can play it.

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Jake and I played Bacchus's Banquet at PAXeast -- it wasn't this show's Weinhandler, but it was definitely a lot of fun. It's a card game where the theme is that Caligula is having a party and everyone has to eat and drink and bone each other while trying to accomplish their own personal goal unique to their character. You have a belt with a buckle that moves up and down 10 spaces and if it reaches the end, you've loosened your belt as much as you can and you explode from over-eating and are out of the game.

You pass food and gifts in secret around the table: some might help you towards your goal and some might be poison. You go down notches on your belt by having sex or being tickled with a feather.

Goals range from murdering Caligula, just eating and drinking a certain amount, or remaining sober enough to the loot the party of valuables.

Like I said, it's no Weinhandler, but with a theme like that, it's hard to complain.

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I stopped by the Steve Jackson Games booth at PAX East and asked Phil Chapman how the new OGRE is coming along, and he got very excited and pulled out some prototype parts to show me. I snapped a pic: http://yfrog.com/h04h3vuj

It looks really nice. It looks like the same scale as OGRE Miniatures, but with heavy cardboard. The chits are nice and legible, and the OGREs snap together. The maps are double-sided, and you end up with everything from OGRE, GEV and Shockwave all in one box. One huge box, which is apparently going to be $99. It's a hefty price tag, but it looks worth it to me.

I thought people in this thread might get a kick out of it. :)

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Tell me how that Mansion of Madness is... Boardgamegeek.com doesn't have it particularly high up there, but that could be because it is new. Ideally, I would love a graceful rule set that allows for interesting emergent narratives as well as some strategy and tactics and WTF moments. I am not a big fan of overly complex rules.

I really enjoyed my first game. Perhaps one of the best board game experiences I've had (but that's not saying much as I only recently started playing them). I played as an investigator, and I suspect it's best to play all the scenarios as an investigator before playing as Keeper.

The keeper had only played the game a couple of times before and I guess his relative lack of experience allowed us to win a variation of the first story rather easily. He kept spending all the threat as he got it, should have hoarded it more. We were also quite lucky.

I have doubts about the replayability, but then again I play these kind of games seldom enough that it's not a problem for me. But I guess the game really is made for expansions. On the other hand we had some laughs and cool moments that were more like emergent player-generated story (sorry, there's probably a word for that but it escapes me ATM) like you'd see in Far Cry 2. And stuff like that can make this a lot more replayable, I think. Some fun moments were provided by this cane-using old professor character being constantly harrassed by the Keeper. He lost 4 of his fingers to Zombies according to the Keeper's narration and later somehow managed to climb the banister in the lobby.

An interesting factoid I discovered by reading some forums is that MoM was inspired by Arkham Investigations, which is a fan-made add-on to Arkham Horror.

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I just completed my first session as the Keeper. Even more fun! For me at least. A few turns during the game I missed some things I could have done better and near the end I didn't have very much loose threat to spend as I had to spend it moving monsters to have any chance of winning, but it was incredibly fun trying to control the events and take advantage of every little thing that would make the game go more my way.

But the investigators got me. Well, we realized I was pretty much screwed when the timer on the last event card was revealed. I had 3 turns to move a monster 9 spaces. I could have done it if I had incredible luck, but instead the investigators somehow got extra lucky and killed the shoggoth in one turn.

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With a guitar, I hear. I am still anxious about replayabilities.

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With a guitar, I hear. I am still anxious about replayabilities.

Yeah, me too, I've only played 3 games. I guess I can't tell you about that until I've played 20 or so. Which might be a long time from now. I'm hoping some fans will figure out how to create new stories without the need for lots of new cards.

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