I play risk about once a year and never seem to win. Oh well,it's still a jolly good time.

Just tried 7 Wonders with Hellblazer. Very good fast pace game. You control one of the legendary city of Antiquity (Rhodos, Olympia, Alexandria...) and your goal is to build the wonder of your city while maintaining a good economy, military and making scientific progress. A game is around 30 mins and it's fun to play several games in a row. Highly recommended.

N-Nuuuuuuuuurds.

I enjoy a little Monopoly with friends every now and then. Relaxing shit.

Played Mansions of Madness a while ago with some friends. It was fun, but the first time we played it, so we took it at a slow pace to familiarize ourselves with the rules. We ended up letting an elder god out of a freezer and dying horribly, which was probably the best possible end at that point, since we were getting a bit too tired to continue. Should be a fun one to try again!

In which parallel dimension, exactly, is monopoly "relaxing shit"?

The game is an open warzone. Declaring martial law is a formality that accompanies distribution of the money at the start of the game.

I guess sarcasm is not for everyone.

I was just playing Arkham Horror the other day with a friend. That game is fucking hard. We got owned in less than an hour. Planning to give it another shot on Friday.

Also played some Runebound recently. Fun & easy.

EDIT: Should read past posts first before posting. Just read the previous discussion on Arkham Horror. Question: What's the best/easiest number of players? It was just two of us playing and we got owned pretty quickly, but in our defense, it was my first time playing it and my friend hadn't played in years.

Also, Rule Question: Is it true that every time a gate opens you have to place a doom token on the Great Old One? In that case, if he has say, 11 doom token spots on him, he is guaranteed to show up after eleven mythos card draws. Is this correct? (can you take any doom tokens off? With elder signs i think?)

Thanks!

Yeah, playing with only 2 people is not a good idea, you could play with 2 characters each though, I played with 3, 4 and 5 people and it was very cool and we won. For the rules I guess, you'll have to wait for Hellblazer

It'll get easier once you get the hang of it, start to realize which are the best characters and what are the best courses of action in general and for each character. Also, some of the ancient ones are just stupid hard though I don't think any of them can be found on the regular edition. The easiest number of players is definitely four. With five+, you get the extra monsters and extra mythos card in the beginning so it gets more difficult. Never tried with eight so can't be sure if it's easier with so many players. Though then the terror level will start to ratchet up pretty fast.

Yes, every time a gate opens, you have to place a doom taken on the Ancient One. No, actually he isn't. Since whenever the gate open-event would happen on a location where a gate is already open, there is a Monster Surge-event instead. You place monsters equal to the number of open gates or players (whichever is higher) on the open gate locations. No doom tokens are placed on the ancient one. And when you seal gates, if a gate opening-event happens on a location that you have sealed, nothing happens. Unless you're playing with the Innsmouth Horror-expansion, but that's a whole other matter. You can remove doom tokens with Elder Signs, yes, but it's not really a necessary course of action, though farming the Curiosity Shoppe for Elder Signs is a wise course of action if you have five dollars or more.

Oooh, how did I not see this thread before?

Anyway. I play boardgames with a large group of friends (including metalheads) at least once a week; we're all into geeky stuff, and even run a boardgame/RPG society at out university. We've also got a few separate RPG groups running (a couple of D&D teams, and a zombie narrative that's quite fun). I'm queen of the nerds, baby.

Personally, I enjoy Dominion and Arkham (especially the Innsmouth add-on), which have been mentioned here, as well as:
- 'Betrayal at House on the Hill': Truly awesome; I'd play this every day if we hadn't gone through every single scenario already. The players find themselves trapped in a haunted house of their own creation: aside from a starting point, each room of the house is on a movable card or 'tile', which are drawn from randomised stacks, so the layout changes each time. This can lead to amusing situations like the house falling upwards through a hole in the top floor, and the unpredictability ensures the gameplay constantly has to adapt, which is highly entertaining. Anyway, once certain events occur during the exploration phase, one of the players becomes the 'traitor' who unleashes a 'horror' that is determined by the circumstances under which the traitor was 'revealed'; after the 'betrayal', the traitor and the other players receive different manuals that stipulate their respective win conditions. The various players' stats may change after the betrayal, and the traitor often gets familiars or accomplices - ranging from cultic disciples to monsters. It is a lot of fun, and easy enough for even RPG beginners to understand without making the game too dumbed-down; the unpredictability of the randomised layout means that even experienced players won't be able to just power through. And the scenarios are hilarious, especially when alcohol is liberally supplied; runaway hyperdimensional tentacles, anyone? http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10547/betrayal-at-house-on-the-hill
- 'Thurn and Taxis', a strategy game in which players compete to run Germany's postal service. I know, sounds about as much fun as reading a phone book, but trying to coordinate map areas and resources via tokens, cards and the board (it's more a conquest strategy game) is tricky without being overwhelming. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21790/thurn-and-taxis
- 'Power Grid', another strategy game; here, players compete to supply power to the cities of either Germany or the US (depending on the map used) by bidding for power plants, buying fuels in a cut-throat market, and trying to accumulate cities. It can get quite competitive and pleasingly complex when you try to balance your income/costs across several cities whilst pissing off your opponents by raising their costs. Again, this is even more fun when people are drunk enough to try to break the game by illegally trading cities, haggling, stealing, and messing with the overly-earnest dude's tokens. Kinda like the real world. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2651/power-grid
- 'Primordial Soup'- players control species of amoeba that struggle for evolutionary dominance. Players' ability to attain resources/space is boosted by earning useful 'adaptations' and abilities, such as the ability to eat opponents; combining these adaptations efficiently, ensuring that your amoebas can excrete as well as consume resources (which is quite tricky), and knowing when to let one creature die to benefit the others makes the standard strategy resource competition more entertaining. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/124/primordial-soup
Of course, all these have innumerable expansions and add-ons.

And, for the record, Magic: The Gathering is a tragic social sickness that can only be cured when we all realise that this is a plot by the future Idiocracy to keep the smart kids from reproducing. Or possibly a tool of the elder gods to faciliate their entry into our dimension by making non-players so frustrated that they open a multidimensional portal, just so that they never have to hear "and I'll tap that" in a non-sexual context again.

You add a doom token whenever a new gate opens. So, if you seal the gate at the Witch House, and later draw a mythos card that says a gate opens at the Witch House, you can ignore it since it's sealed, and therefore no new doom token. Also, if a gate is already open at the Witch House and the mythos card says the gate opens there, you get a monster surge, but no new doom token. And yes, when you seal a gate using an Elder Sign, you can remove one doom token from the track.

Edit: fuck, I didn't notice MacMoney had already replied.

Thanks for the replies & advice guys (and girls). Very helpful! Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be able to find 2 more people to make it easier. I reckon none of our friends would be even remotely interested in participating. Guess we'll have to play with 2 characters each. Will give it another shot on Friday.

Anybody play the Legend of the Five Rings card game? The new set came out and I already built a deck, it's really fun and extremely complicated. I guess I belong to the Spider Clan now, and I need to work on talking like a Japanese person during gameplay. Always room for improvement!

Man I'm surprised this game is still going. I have a bunch of boxes of cards, from 1996/1997 (or somewhere around there just lying around over here), doubt they can still be used in gameplay now. And the hell, Spider Clan!? News to me, I was always more of a Crane Clan guy, even though I thought Scorpion Clan had the coolest looking cards.

Crane are fuckin diplomats, dude! How un-cool is that? But yeah judging from how many cards are illegal just from last set, I'm sure your 90's cards are illegal by now. I was surprised to see people at the game store playing this as well, I had a deck in like 2001 or something and couldn't figure out how to play the game with the cryptic rulebook they had. The new edition has a very expansive rulebook in all the starters so that's definitely an improvement, and I saw something about playing online, maybe that would be a good way to play if anyone's interested.

In other words Crane are smart and sneaky, just like a crane. Besides, the cards are/were blue, that's cool enough right there. I might pop into a comic book store this weekend and pick up a couple of starters, will let you know about playing online then if it looks feasible; obviously I'll have to get up to scratch with the rules before that can happen but as it stands I'm keen. Doubt I'll be playing Crane this time around though, they're far too smart and sneaky for the likes of me.

Right on well after work I will try and find info. about playing online and post it here. The forums made it sound like you don't need actual cards, so once I investigate hopefully we can get some games going. My Spider deck kicks ass in the games I've played so far. Also the whole rulebook is on their website I think along with multiplayer rules.

I played Game of Thrones: board game today with my university mates, it was really cool. It's a mix of Risk, Diplomacy with the houses and characters of ASOIAF. It's max 6 players and we were 6, so it was a very nice first game. The houses are quite well balanced, I was the Baratheon though and I was stuck on my island almost the whole game, but we all know the rules so the next game will be better. The combat is interesting, there's no dice to roll, you have cards + your units on the board, so it's not relying solely on luck, something I don't like with Risk is the dice rolls, actually. The influence concept is fun, you can bet to gain higher powers (the players turns can be changed by the throne room, you can gain a better chance to defeat your opponents in battle or the opportunity to play certain more powerful orders). The first player to conquer 7 castles/fortress wins the game or the player who has the most after 10 turns wins. It's not so long, I'll say about 3-4 hours, but it's always interesting and never boring. Play with people with no anger issues though, it's fun to piss off your "allies" and attack them instead!

Highly recommended, we had the 2011 expansion, I think the first one doesn't include House Martell and it's max 5 players, so be sure to check that out if you buy the game.

I played that for the first time a couple of weeks ago - it really is a lot of fun, once you work out how the details work. The battles could be a little more exciting; it seems like the result is generally quite predictable, judging by what's on the board and what the other player is likely to do at various stages in the game. Still, it's a fantastic game, and I get the feeling I'll like it more once I really comprehend all the aspects. And it does remind me of the series, actually - I played as the House of Lannister and ended up betraying/destroying the one House I'd made an alliance with... In my defence, it was out of utter ignorance about the consequences of what I'd agreed to.

I've had that Game of Thrones boardgame for a few years now and only played it a handful of times, really cool game! Me and some friends finally got down to playing Mansions of Madness and it's AWESOME. Had a shitload of fun as the keeper and the flavour text on some of the cards is just perfect. A great mix of Cluedo and D&D with a Lovecraftian twist

I am amazed at the amount of love Arkham Horror is being shown here, in a good way! I have a few friends who I play it with time to time but they prefer other games because they generally find it a bit too complicated (I can't really blame them...) It's a fantastic game anyway, though very difficult when you're too busy explaining to people how to take their turns to actually plan what to do!

Has anyone here tried out the Battlestar Galactica board-game? I was utterly bowled over by how unique it seems compared to other games I've played. It's a brilliant mix of co-operative with competitive, with some people working against you (as Cylons) from the very start, but you never know for sure who's on your side. It also gets increasingly more hilarious if people are drinking and shouting wild accusations at each other for the most ridiculous of reasons The secrecy is surprisingly well done as well, you pretty much can never definitively tell if someone's a saboteur and I've been in games where the Cylons have taken over the entire ship before anyone noticed (in fact I was one of them ). Unfortunately it can end up being too easy if you play with the same group of people all the time and get to know their tells, but that takes a while.

Also, Space-Hulk:Death Angel (technically it's a card-game but basically acts more like a board than a card-game) it's incredibly simple yet fairly challenging. It's a good budget-game too, I picked it up for only £15 or so. It's another co-op game and it's quite surprising the amount of tactical co-operation it can require when you get thrown unexpected developments.

Oh lastly, for those of you who mentioned Risk, the Godstorm version is amazing. A little gimmicky yes, but it adds a nice variation in having God-fights as well as the option of taking over the Underworld when you die.

That's probably enough recommendations by now...

Most of the Avalon Hill games were great; games like Machiavelli and Diplomacy were always a great time. Also, a quick way to end a shaky friendship in some cases.
But one of the best games I've ever played as far as the time it takes to play, ease, and over all fun would have to be Nuclear War. Hours upon hours of fun.

Awesome first post, Pyroscope. I played a version of Death Angel with Hellblazer, I don't recall the name, he'll need to help me on that but we agreed it was pretty boring. We might have to try it again though, but he buys so much new games that we probably won't!

We tried Small World recently on a recommendation from Grand Master Napero, it was very cool, one of the best board game I played. You basically control one of the many races (sorcerors, giants, trolls, humans, many more) and you conquer the "small world" (the board can change depending on many players you are, 2 to 5 iirc). The races are chosen randomly (each race possesses a special power) and you can go in "decline" when you feel like it and choose another one. Each comes with a special and also randomized ability. You are given points after each turn in light of your conquests and the winner is the one who has the most as the end of all the turns. Highly recommended from me, Hellblazer and Napero!

That looks super cool Antoine, I might try to buy that this summer.

Wow! It sounds kind of like a demented Risk spin-off in a way. I'm curious how the rebuilding works out, how do they manage to balance it out? I'm guessing counting points after each turn discourages too much rebuilding on a whim?

Shame about your experience with Death Angel Metantoine, what made it boring for you? It is quite simplistic so I can easily imagine the mechanics might not be intricate and varied enough for everyone.

Wow I want that Game of Thrones board game! It seems pretty cool!

One of the guys I play with thinks it's funny to make a reference to sexual "tapping" every time he taps a creature. It was funny the first time, but it gets old really fast.

Yes, it does; though it's (almost) worse when none of the players get that kind of reference because they take Magic so seriously...

And, Tony et al, I love Small World It's a truly excellent game.

Reminds me of when I play Settlers of Catan with some of my friends. We never manage to make it through a game without someone smirking after requesting that someone "give them wood". The sad thing is that I'm still mildly amused by it when it comes up...

Yes, I laugh at that too, actually. That game brings out the worst in me.

You mean the decline mechanism? Well, how the game works is that you have a limited number of tokens per race to make your conquests with, and each conquered region gives points ever turn. When you put your race in decline, the tokens for that race still stay on the board and continue to give you points, but you can't control them anymore. You can only have one race in decline though, so if, say, you put your second race in decline, then you have to remove all the tokens from the first declined race. Also, the action of putting your current race in decline takes up your whole turn, so you can't make any new conquests during that turn. We only played it once for now (more tomorrow!), but there seems to be a lot of strategy in deciding on the right time to go into decline. For instance, when we played I had my second race stretched out and getting its ass kicked, but I still held on to it for a few turns at the end, because my first race was still pretty well established and racking in points - having the second race go into decline would have cancelled that and made me waste a turn.



The game just seems extremely lacking in depth to me. Your options are very limited, the enemies are always the same, the "different" areas offer little significant variety, and there just doesn't seem to be many different strategies to try.

Oh, I also got Thunderstone Advance recently, which seems pretty cool (only played once up to now). It's a mix of Dominion mechanics with a dungeon-crawling theme. Basically you buy cards and cycle through your deck exactly like in Dominion, but instead of also just buying cards that give victory points, you need to go into the dungeon and use your hand of cards (heroes, weapons, spells, and the like) to defeat monsters. It's (mostly) the monster cards that you take as trophies that give the VPs. It's pretty fun, and while I don't think it will completely replace Dominion as our deck-building game of choice, it's a nice variation on the same gameplay ideas that should offer some variety to our gaming sessions.

I also bought Betrayal at House on the Hill, per the earlier recommendation in this thread, but haven't had a chance to try it yet.

I'd have to agree about knowing when to go into decline being the key factor in a successful Small World strategy. One good way to keep your declined races earning you significant points is to go for ones that receive extra points from special territories. Recently, I lucked out with a combination of race and trait that received extra points for any territories adjacent to water, and, while the other players' moves made me decide to go into decline more quickly than I'd wanted to, that bonus point condition enabled me to win even though the race I played as next was rather inefficient. Granted, the water-lovin' race appeared towards the end of the game, so I didn't have to surrender those tokens by letting my next race decline as well, so timing also plays a crucial role; I'd hate to have received that opportunity at the start of the game.

Thunderstone is a pretty good game - definitely not as open to different strategies as the various Dominion expansions, but it can be very entertaining. However, I am quite terrible at the game - I always forget to buy enough 'Light' cards to ensure my heroes can actually fight the monsters, and by the time I do, the less powerful monsters will have been slain and I'm up against the difficult ones. I also forget that you need to use up your XP to upgrade, rather than store it (as I was used to doing from other games). Btw, it's actually a rather funny coincidence - Thunderstone is the game whose name I'd forgotten and was trying to find yesterday; I kept Googling 'Stone of...' and clearly failed to find it, so thanks for unintentionally helping me!

And I hope you enjoy Betrayal - I've played it so often now that I know most scenarios without looking at the guides, but it is still highly entertaining and probably one of my all-time favourites.

Sucks that you live in the other side of the world, we're always looking for new players

Yes, it does; I'd love to play. One day, I will succeed in persuading my faculty that going overseas purely to play boardgames and listen to music in various locations does count as a legitimate research trip.

Or you can come to study at McGill

Have you played this game: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/15033/australia ??? Won a Game of the year award, must be good...

No, I haven't - looks pretty good, though; I love those resource/industry-competition games, sounds a bit like Powergrid or Thurn and Taxis. Thanks, I'll have to check it out!

Actually, quite a few students from my uni go to McGill on exchange, so you never know... We've also got a lot of Canadian exchange students here, too, so if you ever feel like getting some sun...

Warhammer 40k anyone?

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2129/crossbows-and-catapults This was unreal as a kid, I used to play it with my bro a lot. A table is not sufficient room, we covered the kitchen floor with various castles and stuff.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4864/scene-it-movie "Scene it" can be a bit of fun if you're a trivia + movie buff. It says in that review that it's suitable for up to 20 players. Wouldn't recommend it though. 4 or 5 max probably.

Ooh almost forgot. ABSOLUTE BALDERDASH. Easily the funniest game I've ever played. http://www.productreview.com.au/p/absolute-balderdash.html

Last board game I played was monopoly, just me and a mate. Fucks with your head, I beat him easily, once or twice in a row and it was so obvious he had the shits big time lol. Thought to myself "as if you'd get worked up over this shit" - then the tables turned and in game 3 it became apparent quite early on that he was gonna kick my arse and I just couldn't help feeling a growing rage build up inside me Ended up picking up the thing and throwing it across the room.

Monopoly So mainstream!

Recent BGN with HB, before and after the Witch Mountain/Castle show
-Smallword
-Dominion
-Carcassone
-Catan the card game
We were supposed to play Betrayal at the House on the Hill, but I was too tired, so we'll play it next time.

It was my first time playing Catan, it was pretty cool, but a bit complex at first, we played like 3 games and I was kinda destroyed by Hellblazer I'd like to play the board game too.