What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Gary Sax wrote: My sense is there aren't too many people around here who dislike Catan, but I agree, it's popular to dislike it at BGG.

Settlers is so disliked at BGG that it is only rated the 126th most popular board game, out of 71,298 games currently listed there.

I played Settlers once, and I won. I don't need to ever play it again, because I was bored within 10 minutes by this over-rated and damn near themeless set of procedures. Aside from trading, there are few meaningful decisions, and the trading can fall completely flat with the wrong group of players.

Lack of meaningful decisions?!?!? I need to check the URL here!

I think Shellhead does tap something I don't like about the game, it can drag with new players pretty severely if they're not focusing on scoring points and trading meaningfully.

Stonecutter wrote:

Legomancer wrote: It's still a great game and the hell with the haters.

Yeah, not here it aint. Catan is and always will be the shit.

Yuuuup.

In a better universe, the post-hybridization board game would derive its most basic ideological cues from Catan. That being, of course, the simplistic-but-meticulous design of old-style German games married to the dice-chucking, wheelin' & dealin', trash-talking and leader-targeting of classic Ameritrash.

I love Catan. For me, the ideal way to play it is with a group of friends, with mics, over Xbox Live. You can fit in an entire game in about 35-40 minutes while preserving the entire breadth of unbalanced-trade-proffering, on-the-fly alliance-making and leader-screwing that makes the physical version so timeless. The Xbox version also has the added bonus of some truly terrible soundtrack music consisting of two (2) repeating tunes: a horrible jaunty piece of shit with fake pizzicato and synth harps, and a plaintive piece of crap that sounds like Pure Moods taking a dump all over the Largo from Dvorak's New World symphony. On the plus side, there's a well-done trade interface and a ridiculously exhaustive set of statistical screens. And somehow bitching about virtual dice approaches if not exceeds the satisfaction of bitching about the real kind (with real dice you can't go on a badly misinformed, profane rant about randomization algorithms).

Also, regarding the Xbox version, my buddies and I do a thing multiple times a year where we'll run a tournament with a dubious "sponsor" and "grand prize." I'll even maintain a spreadsheet to track our point totals across 40-50 games or so. See below for an example of our Fall 2012 tournament, "sponsored" by legendary Midwest fast food purveyor Maid-Rite. The grand prize was a "Maid-Rite Party Pack" - a nearly $90 value!



Anyway, if any of y'all have the Xbox version, you should play with us. Sadly it was recently delisted from the Marketplace, so snooze ya lose I guess.

Played quite a bit last night. We had a new player who was unfamiliar with pretty much everything, but he picked things up quickly.

King of Tokyo - 2 games of this, both of which I lost but at least I got to take people out with me
Resistance - 3 games of this, and it was probably the most fun I had all night
Spartacus - I was Tullius for the first time, and I had a really good shot at victory but I rushed it, which led to my getting yanked down 3 Influence in one turn. Stupid stupid stupid. It's amazing how much this game rewards careful planning and not over-extending yourself.
Epic Spell Wars - It had been a long time since this has hit the table. Still a blast, and the card art still makes me laugh. I hope the expansion for this one is great.

Played Bang the dice game and Arctic Scavengers today.

I didn't like Bang, never played the card game and i'm not big on dice games so i'm not sure i have a lot of merit to say about it. I noticed that almost always everyone used all their shooting dice regardless of what theories they had on who each players hidden ID was, so it seems like deduction takes very much a back foot to just shoot and hope with my group.


Arctic Scavengers is alright. I also don't like deck builders. I'm a very impulsive player and tend to make poor decisions early that put me out the game. I like the themeing a lot in this game. It is pretty similar to dominion but far more chaotic. It does have an auction each round though (the combat) and it feels thematically desperate which i like.

Played a three player game of Viticulture. I almost left during the rules explanation of the game and after looking at the board honestly - the theme does nothing for me and everything about the game was boring at first to me. I'm very glad I didn't leave because it is a very tight worker placement game with a variety of options. The game took about 2-2.5 hours, owner of the game had played it twice before and nobody else had any experience. I'd recommend it. The game ramps up quite a bit from the start to the end.

Who is this Black Inferno and where has he been all my life. The Catan tourney is genius.

"The Old Fashioned Taste of Colonialism". That almost made coffee come out of my nose.

An old friend of mine hosts a big Settlers tournament at his house once a year, on April 20th. That's because he finds Settlers to be the best game that he can play while high. Get it? 420. Anyway, it's a big old house, so he was about 40 people playing, with games going on in almost every room.

Shellhead wrote: I played Settlers once, and I won. I don't need to ever play it again, because I was bored within 10 minutes by this over-rated and damn near themeless set of procedures. Aside from trading, there are few meaningful decisions, and the trading can fall completely flat with the wrong group of players.

maybe we get bored easy? Catan bored me to tears, too. Bleh. Yeah, I can appreciate it, I sure as hell won't play it.

I like Catan. But using the phrase "dice-chucking" for a game that involves a single die roll every round... no.

Another game of Thunder Alley today, with noobs. They took to it quickly and there were some great plays, even by the 11yo. You can do a lot with the cards, more than you think at first. I came in second by one point

Really interesting dynamic, like no other racing game I've played. Still not sure where in the ranking to put it, and I've played a lot of racing games.

S.

Coup: Played this yesterday a couple of times. It's really a fun game, but teaching people how to REALLY play it is kind of hard. The first game, nobody bluffed but me and they all realized quickly that I was the only BSer, so I was eliminated quickly. The second game, they realized it was more Poker than Blackjack, and so then it was a bunch of liars lying. Much better.

Escape: Curse of the Temple: Played this four times yesterday. It's really good for a frenetic, simple game of chucking dice. Easy to teach, easy to play. I think I like it better with the Treasure/Curse tiles mixed in. I also think adding 2 gems to the starting total makes it hard enough that there's a chance of losing. I'm going to play again today, with the Sands of Time hourglass to make shit much harder. Or at least I think it will be harder. Fun little game.

8 Minute Empire: Played this 2 times. Holy shit. Great game. I think I like it better when the little tokens are on the board as it adds "a reason" to go after certain territories. Really, truly fun.

Glad you are happy with Escape. I liked that one quite a bit. Glad it got a good home.

SuperflyTNT wrote: Coup: Played this yesterday a couple of times. It's really a fun game, but teaching people how to REALLY play it is kind of hard. The first game, nobody bluffed but me and they all realized quickly that I was the only BSer, so I was eliminated quickly. The second game, they realized it was more Poker than Blackjack, and so then it was a bunch of liars lying. Much better.

Escape: Curse of the Temple: Played this four times yesterday. It's really good for a frenetic, simple game of chucking dice. Easy to teach, easy to play. I think I like it better with the Treasure/Curse tiles mixed in. I also think adding 2 gems to the starting total makes it hard enough that there's a chance of losing. I'm going to play again today, with the Sands of Time hourglass to make shit much harder. Or at least I think it will be harder. Fun little game.

8 Minute Empire: Played this 2 times. Holy shit. Great game. I think I like it better when the little tokens are on the board as it adds "a reason" to go after certain territories. Really, truly fun.

Escape expansions are both really good. The game is too easy though, and we typically add 2-4 gems when we play.