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posh_somme

Board Games?

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besides obvious ones like monopoly, risk and scrabble, i don't really know anything about board games. it's always been something i've really wanted to get into but I don't have any friends that i think would particularly enjoy playing them at length so i've never really looked into it.

 

recently though i've made a couple of friends who like playing/would like to play board games, so I thought for christmas I might get some, but like I said I have no idea about board games. I guess I'm looking for something that's ideal for 3 players and fun, nothing too complicated but of course we'd be willing to learn. I remember playing "werewolf" in a chat room many years ago and enjoying the social aspect of that (despite it all taking place in a chat room), so I guess something that involves lying and actual human interfacing would be cool. 

 

this could probably also be a topic where people talk about board games in general if one doesn't exist already? sorry if I missed that

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Ah, Board Games. I have played many in my short years on this earth, more than most people my age have played. First off, what KIND of Board Game are you thinking about? Large-Scale play? One-on-One? Do you want a Board Game based on something, like a movie or licence, or no? And, when you say 'Board Game', does it necessarily NEED to have a 'board'? Would a structured Card Game suffice?

 

First off, the classics are just that: Classics. Monopoly, Sorry, Scrabble, Life; these games continue to be mainstays for 'Board Gaming'. Of course, these games can also get boring, which is why there are so many other, less-known games out there. In a way, Monopoly and Scrabble are like the Super Mario or Board Games; sure, it's still fun to play, but that doesn't remove the fact that it's essentially the same game over and over.

 

If you want something more 'new', I suggest a few games. First off, I'll recommend the game 'Zombies!!!' by Twilight Creations Inc. It's a really interesting game, played with 2-6 players. Essentially, the 'board' is actually made up of separate Tiles, which are drawn from a pool and placed on a table/flat surface. As the game progresses, the town get 'explored' and the board grows. The object is to make it to the Helipad (which will eventually be drawn and strategically be placed), or to kill 25 zombies, whichever comes first. There is a lot of back-stabbing involved with this games, mostly used with the Cards you draw to either screw over the other players or bolster your own survivor. It should be noted, though, that you will probably need a fairly large area to play this, as the board can get quite large, especially if you play with any of the 12 expansions.

 

If you don't necessarily NEED a 'board', I think a good alternative is a game like 'Munchkins'. One of my favorite games of all time, Munchkins is basically a card game that parodies old-school DnD. You could be a Gnome Warrior with the 'Boots of Butt-Kicking' or an Orc-Halfling Bard wearing a Fake Beard (thus getting treated as a Dwarf) wielding a Really Big Rock. This game relies more heavily on teamwork, or the lack thereof, than 'Zombies!!!' While you can assist another player (possibly for a reward; there 'aint no such thing as a free lunch!) you can just as easily backstab them by buffing up the monster he's fighting, or even throwing another monster into the combat. All in all, a game of Munchkins is a good time.

 

Now, I'm going to recommend this game mainly because I love it. I doubt you'd actually get it, as it's kind of an obscure game at this point. The game I'm talking about is "Escape From New York: The Game". Whether or not you like (or remember) the movie, the Board Game is pretty fun. Played between 2-4 players (though the more, the better) each player has to try to rescue the President, or retrieve the Recorder, and escape the city before the other players. Using gear cards, you can augment your abilities throughout the game. What's interesting is that not all of the 'enemies' you fight are hostile; you have a chance to convince many of the gangs (and some of the characters from the movie) to ally themselves with you, thereby strengthening you for further conflicts. All the while collecting clues to where the Recorder, or the President, is being held. However, this game has been long out of print, and should only be bought by those with either a long-love of the Movies, considerable means, or if you thought my endorsement was SO good that you were compelled to look for a copy (which I doubt. I mean, I'm not that good).

 

Lastly, I'll recommend any of the games from Cheapass Games, at www.cheapass.com.  As the name implies, these games are cheap, and cost either very little, or nothing at all. These kind of games are for all those do-it-yourself-ers out there, since many of them require you to make your own Boards, Cards and pieces (following their directions, of course). This can prove fun, since you can always use that little figure of an Army Man with everything above the waist melted off as your game piece, or the cards just printed-out labels put on some of your old Pokemon cards you've been meaning to get rid of. And, though the game may be inexpensive, they are definitely fun.

 

In addition to the games I've listed, one thing you could do is visit a local hobby or gaming store and look around. Ask other people in the store what they like, and what they'd recommend. There are so many games out there, and so many favorites. Just keep looking!

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Monopoly gets way better if you play by the actual rules that nobody ever reads.

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What Gormongous said.  I don't play many board games either so the only one I can really vouch for personally is Ticket to Ride.  It's easy to learn but a lot of fun.  I would recommend getting one of the later versions of the game like Ticket to Ride Europe.  They add additional mechanics without making the game super complicated.

 

If you want to see some of these games in action and be entertained in the process, I'd recommend watching

.  It's a series hosted by Wesley Crusher Wil Wheaton where he plays board games with various other geek personalities.  They also do a pretty good job of explaining the rules.

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Monopoly gets way better if you play by the actual rules that nobody ever reads.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I have no idea how Monopoly works. Like, at all. The only times I played it, I was young enough that my parents decided to use some very watered down rules to deal with my tiny child brain.

I've never put down a house or hotel or whatever and have no idea what they actually do. I've never read the rules. ...now I kind of want to find someone to play Monopoly with, and actually read the instructions and stuff.

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Here is the key rule that everyone forgets that shortcuts like half the game: when someone lands on an unowned property, and they don't buy it, it goes to auction. This gets the properties into the game really early without having to wait for everyone to go around the board and get an income to afford to buy things at full price.

 

Once you own all of a colour (so wheel and deal, collecting properties you don't want in order to sell or trade them to people who do want them to get the stuff you want), you get double rent from them, and you can build on it, which increases the rent you get from that property further.

 

There is also nothing in the rules that states you have to collect rent, only that you're entitled to it if you ask. This allows you to make deals with people where you say that you won't ask them for rent on a particular stretch of property so long as they do something for you - and then backstab them when it starts getting into the closing stages.

 

As for board games, probably the best available ones of the new ages of board games are Settlers of Catan (a trading game), Carcassonne (a strategic tile game where you build up southern French countryside, and try and put your men on the bits most likely to score you points), and Ticket to Ride, either the original America map or Europe (a card-collecting game where the cards let you fill in train routes between cities, to get from one side of the country to the other). All three work well with three players.

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You might enjoy Betrayal at House on the Hill. It's a game about a bunch of people exploring a creepy old mansion, and it's cooperative right up until someone turns into a traitorous murderer and then it's all versus that person. There are ~50 scenarios for how the that goes down, and the one that's used is picked by the game, so you can replay it a bunch with pretty low odds of a repeat.

 

..and of course if you have a regular group there's Risk Legacy! :)

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HNNNG, I second Ticket To Ride. It's the best boardgame I've ever played, very evenly paced and at the end everyone feels they've accomplished something, rather than having dramatically lost. It has a better end game than Catan, which tends to just end abruptly and without a satisfying bang.

 

Other really cool games: Macchiavelli! A card game where you assume renaissance roles and try to construct a city. Every round everyone switches roles, which decides the order of play, special powers and the coin you collect. It's an AMAZING game, very fun and highly devious. Best played with 4-5 people though, 3 is a little weak and 2 not worth it. But GET IT AND PLAY IT. It's cheap and great.

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Machiavelli is known as Citadels outside of the Netherlands I think. Very good game indeed.

Ticket to Ride I'm not so hot on, though I find it hard to articulate why. Maybe it's just because I did poorly the last few times I played it. I'm a sore loser if I didn't get to affect the game in any way.

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The Europe edition of Ticket to Ride has tunnels on the map, which give it a tiny, lightweight gambling mechanic which I think just makes the game complex enough while still being easy for new people to pick up.

 

I also find it lets me be sneaky: The last two games I've played, I've managed to complete a ton of routes, that look like they're not going to connect up, then near the end of the game make a continuous line of all of my trains snaking through the map for a bonus.

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You might enjoy Betrayal at House on the Hill. It's a game about a bunch of people exploring a creepy old mansion, and it's cooperative right up until someone turns into a traitorous murderer and then it's all versus that person. There are ~50 scenarios for how the that goes down, and the one that's used is picked by the game, so you can replay it a bunch with pretty low odds of a repeat.

 

..and of course if you have a regular group there's Risk Legacy! :)

 

Betrayal is super super unbalanced. The second edition fixes some problems - my favourite is a misprint where the underground lake can only appear on the top floor - but the game is just inherently unbalanced. Fun, though.

 

For utter ridiculousness you cannot go past Arkham Horror. It has billions of pieces and goes for like four hours but it is utterly unique.

 

Our group is also fond of Lords of Waterdeep, which looks like a D&D game (because it is branded as a D&D game) but when you open it up you discover that it's actually a fairly sophisticated harvesting game, like Agricola. You play a Lord of Waterdeep, out to gather the most influence, which you do by recruiting adventurers and sending them on quests. The trick is that if someone else is recruiting adventurers from a specific place, then you have to send your agents somewhere else - and there's also skulduggery, building new buildings (which lets anyone recruit more adventurers than usual, but you get income from the building too) and jostling for new agents and the right to go first. 

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Machiavelli is known as Citadels outside of the Netherlands I think. Very good game indeed.

 

The name Machiavelli really does get across far more about what makes that game interesting than the name Citadels does, it really is one of those games where the mechanic's just provide a fun structure around which social interaction can occur.

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The name Machiavelli really does get across far more about what makes that game interesting than the name Citadels does, it really is one of those games where the mechanic's just provide a fun structure around which social interaction can occur.

100% agreed. I once manged to make one of my friends ragequit by managing to steal from/assassinate him three turns in a row as he was about to win.

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Me and my group rarely play with the assassin anymore, switching him out for the witch instead. The expansion brings a few new characters that do away with slightly unbalanced things. The construction master (?) for instance is better replaced by the conquistador.

 

The conquistador has added value because of a flavor rule I introduced: when you announce yourself, you have to shout "HAHAAAA!" to really underline the bravado of the character.

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There is also nothing in the rules that states you have to collect rent, only that you're entitled to it if you ask. 

 

That's not what the rules say! The rules say you must pay rent, with 'must' in bold. 

Merus -- Wrong about Monopoly. Wrong for America.

 

Anyway, I'm using Monopoly in my thesis so I had to go check. You are totally right about the auction bit. The players in my study didn't do that and it takes goddamn ages until the first player can build houses.

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Also, putting the tax money on free parking is a big reason why Monopoly games take four hours instead of an hour or two.

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Did you play the Star Wars Monopoly video game?  That's the only one I've played, but I liked it more than any game of normal monopoly.

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thanks everyone! taking all of this into consideration. been doing some of my own research too and found king of tokyo to look like fun. also want to get netrunner at some point, though I know it's 2 player only

 

Also, putting the tax money on free parking is a big reason why Monopoly games take four hours instead of an hour or two.

 

I hate when this rule is played. makes the game owe way more to chance than usual

 

 

You might enjoy Betrayal at House on the Hill. It's a game about a bunch of people exploring a creepy old mansion, and it's cooperative right up until someone turns into a traitorous murderer and then it's all versus that person. There are ~50 scenarios for how the that goes down, and the one that's used is picked by the game, so you can replay it a bunch with pretty low odds of a repeat.

 

this seems like the kind of thing we'd like, will probably get this, thank you!

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That's not what the rules say! The rules say you must pay rent, with 'must' in bold. 

Merus -- Wrong about Monopoly. Wrong for America.

 

Anyway, I'm using Monopoly in my thesis so I had to go check. You are totally right about the auction bit. The players in my study didn't do that and it takes goddamn ages until the first player can build houses.

 

Yeah, that is exactly why the auction rule is so important, the game drags and drags until people start getting colour groups. These days, they'd probably distribute some title deeds to players before the game starts.

 

Anyway, I'm looking at the Monopoly rules right here, and this is the pertinent rule:

The owner may not collect the rent if they fail to ask for it before the second player following throws the dice.

If you don't ask for rent, you don't collect it, so you are entitled to make a deal with another player that you just won't ask. Also a fun thing to try: sell your Get out of Jail Free cards!

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King of Tokyo is a good fallback when my friends and I can't think of something better to play. Picking it up is definitely a good idea just for something to have on reserve.

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King of Tokyo is a good fallback when my friends and I can't think of something better to play. Picking it up is definitely a good idea just for something to have on reserve.

 

Yeah, no one dislikes King of Tokyo. It's like an inkblot test: people who prefer randomness focus on the chaos, people who prefer planning focus on the strategy. Everyone wins! But one person wins more than others.

 

The other guaranteed hits in my closet are Galaxy Trucker (the "failure is fun" entry in the board game space), Resistance: Avalon (so fast and lean than even people who hate traitor mechanics have a good time), Pandemic (the most cooperative of my co-op games), and Love Letter (fast, easy to teach, and chess-like in elegance). Love Letter has especially proved to be a great opener. If there were any justice, people would be playing it or Tichu instead of Uno and Skip-Bo.

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