The most underated Euro card game is....

Last week I posted about the most over rated Euro. Which I suggested was Powergrid. This weeks question is what is the most under rated Euro card game?

My vote is for Boomtown. But please suggest other underated Euro cards game. Sometimes we all need a light fun filler hopefully with a lot of interaction.

There are few things that get Eurogamers and AT gamers together better than a couple of beers, a few saloon girls and game of Boomtown. Boomtown is Euro cardgame from 2004, developed by two fat bearded French game designers Bruno Faidutti (Citadels, Warrior Knights, Mystery of the Abbey, Mission Red Planet) and Bruno Cathala (Mr. Jack, Shadows Over Camelot, Mission Red Planet). Actually, I have no idea what these guys look like but I just picture guys named Bruno as fat and bearded for some reason.

The pasted on theme of Boomtown is about gold mining in the wild, wild west. In this game most of the cards have gold mines on them. Each mine has a color, a pay out amount, and dice numbers to determine payouts. Other cards include salons, salon girls with big guns, Indian hot chicks, stage coach robbery, dynamite, etc.

On each turn you’ll deal face up 1 card for each player in the game. Players will then bid to get first choice of the cards dealt. The high bidder then takes the money that he's bid and hands it to the player on his right. That player takes half, and passes the remaining money to his right, who takes half, etc. After everyone selects a mine, the winner of the bid will roll 2 dice to determine if any of the mines will payout (similar to production in Settlers).

Once one player has 2 mines of the same color, he’ll become mayor of the town. After that point anyone who takes a mine of that color must pay the current mayor a number of gold coins equal to the number of mines that person currently owns. This makes the bidding very cutthroat. A player can lose being mayor if somebody has more mines of that color than the current mayor.

The other cards in the game like the saloons and saloons girls let you take squeeze in on the other players action. You can probably guess what the dynamite does. Yes, it blows up somebody’s mine.

The game ends when all cards have been taken. At the end of the game you count up your gold coins and add in 5 gold for each mayor you control. Who ever has the most gold at the end of the game wins.

This is a game that has something for everyone. The Europlayers will like the auctions and quick play. While the AT gamers will like the dice rolling, hot babes and player interaction (like blowing up other peoples mines).

Landlord.

No competition.

Lost Cities.

Lost Cities is underrated?!?
I'd vote for 6 Nimmt! but that too is not underrated.

Woah, read the question wrong! I meant Lost Cities was over rated.
Condottiere for underated then.

CONDOTIERRE is a great one- that's a nasty, nasty little game if you play it with folks who know what the hell they're doing. The FFG reissue improves the game, I think, with just a couple of extra cards that give it a little more depth.

I actually really like Knizia's IVANHOE and I think it's almost his best game. It's kind of similar to CONDOTIERRE in a couple of ways, it has that pick your fights/play all your cards or save 'em kind of thing but it mixes things up with the different tournaments and whatnot. ILIADE kind of took the same game and messed it up with a bunch of stupid shit.

I think BOHNANZA is actually kind of underrated, maybe because it's going on 12 years old now...that's a really fun game, and it all about wheeling and dealing. The expansions are kind of goofy, but not bad. The BOHNAPARTE thing is really silly- turns it into a war game.

The SETTLERS card game is HUGELY underrated- I think it's almost as good as the board game and for 2 players it's the only way to settle. It really captures everything about the board game but it adds more depth, more choices, and some really awesome expansions. The trading is mostly gone, but it's replaced by some welcome direct competition.

WYATT EARP is good if you like Rummy games...it's the best of those MYSTERY RUMMY titles.

MEUTEURER is always interesting, haven't played it in a while but we got some mileage out of that one.

BOHNANZA is fucking excellent. It's quite highly thought of tho so year, 'underrated' may more be a case of it just being old.

Michael Barnes wrote:

The SETTLERS card game is HUGELY underrated- I think it's almost as good as the board game and for 2 players it's the only way to settle. It really captures everything about the board game but it adds more depth, more choices, and some really awesome expansions. The trading is mostly gone, but it's replaced by some welcome direct competition.

Yawn. Playing too much Agricola must have sponged your remaining brain.
The Settlers card game is just plain boring. I still remember the first World Championship Finals that ended in a 8-way draw with shared price money because all finalists had the same tactics: Sit back, do nothing but hitting the timer and wait until your opponent reaches the VP treshold so you can start directly damaging him.
No insult or pun intended, but this game works best as insulation or fire starter.

Stichlen.

Maybe No Thanks.

Even Jericho is a possibility, even given the Tanga giveaways...

The Settlers Card Game went straight to the top of my list of favorite two-player games when it was released. Even back then, though, I recognized that is was a bit lacking in any sort of direct conflict.

That "problem" (and it really wasn't even that big of a deal) was solved big-time with the release of the expansions, which add all kinds of ways to mess with the other guy. I've been playing the expansions from the moment they arrived on these shores, originally going through the labor of translating (via Babblefish; I'm not sure that's even around any longer) the cards into English, then carefully pasting the translated text onto the actual cards.

I consider the Settlers Card Game, with expansions, to be the perfect two-player game: it's deep without being overwhelming, it's thematic without being about farming, multiple strategies have a chance of winning, and it is -- God forbid -- actually fun. It's even good for total n00bs, since the production die-rolls guarantee that each player will receive at least one resource per turn.

(Oh, and the "turtle strategy" (which, by the way, wasn't even close to the best strategy available) was fixed fucking years ago. Anyone who's actually looked at a rule book in the last few years would understand that.)

I like the SETTLERS card game too. I haven't played in years, but I wasn't soured on it by any stretch. I hear good things about UNSPEAKABLE WORDS, too. Anyone played that?

Hmm--that makes me think--what the fuck is a Euro card game? One from Kosmos?

Anyway, I like EN GARDE and SCHOTTEN TOTTEN/BATTLE LINE too. I got a RAGE deck at Target for $3 and you can play a shitload of games with that thing.

Yeah, it's funny Duke, because when I got the SETTLERS card game I thought it was total crap. It sat on my shelf for a couple of years and I never touched it. I was talking about it with Robert Martin one day at AGF and he was telling me how much he loved it and I gave it another shot, with the expansions. The expansions really added what was missing, I thought.

I can, however, see where "pro" players can sink it...

BTW- Hanno, can you let us in on any plans for AGRICOLA: THE CARD GAME? How about AGRICOLA: THE DICE GAME? Or those rumored player screens so you don't even have to see the other people you're playing the game with?

Michael Barnes wrote:

I can, however, see where "pro" players can sink it...

The most thorough series of ass-kickings I've ever received in my entire gaming history came at the hands of some German and Austrian players back in the old days of playing the card game online.

At one point, a science-based deck that produced all kinds of ore and wheat (and, thus, cities) was all the rage. I swear, one guy must have made something like 17 moves on me in one turn (play this card, get three wheat, buy city, play that card, turn gold into ore, buy city, play the arsonist on you, etc., etc.). He was very polite about it, though.

It was always a pain to connect to the service, though, so I eventually stopped playing. Well, that and my lack of German. And I got tired of all the German players rushing to play me because I was considered "easy points."

You know, I haven't actually played in a while. I wonder if the ore-wheat-cities strategy is still the top dog? Hmmmm ...

Michael Barnes wrote:

Yeah, it's funny Duke, because when I got the SETTLERS card game I thought it was total crap. It sat on my shelf for a couple of years and I never touched it. I was talking about it with Robert Martin one day at AGF and he was telling me how much he loved it and I gave it another shot, with the expansions. The expansions really added what was missing, I thought.

Gotta agree with Hanno (except that I never saw a turtling problem). Do the expansions really fix the fact that it's extremely slow moving, there's incentive to memorize every goddamn deck, the resource system is fiddly and makes it difficult to see at a glance what resources you have therefore slowing the game down further, and it's actually *so* common to lose a knight/development due to action cards and event cards that, when it happens, there's pretty much no drama? I never liked the game and always thought it was pretty boring, but the last time I played it was just so boring I couldn't take it and just begged my friend to let the game end. I hear the expansions make it better...but I wouldn't really want to throw good money after very very bad.

Condottiere plays great with a large number of players.

Played Landlord once and it was kinda fun in strange way.

I always liked Lawless as it has cowboys and gunfights.

Frank's Zoo is a great little game.

And Breakaway Rider is a frustrating some-how tactical race game which gets you swearing at each other when someone puts a sprint on and you have only low cards.