board games!

[G.C.R]

Dang, I kinda like the sound of that game. The only one I remember making up and playing on the regular was the poem game, which Anne the Man and I used to play a lot. I'm sure I've mentioned it here before, you write down five words, as does your opponent, and then you swap and have five minutes to write a poem using those five words. And then you have an insult round, which is the same, but the poem has to be about your opponent, and be as rude as possible. It was not unknown for it to lead to us hitting each other.

[Thermofusion]

That is awesome!

[Dick]

Resurrecting this thread to say my wife and I have been playing board games together a lot lately, so we went to the local game shop to check out some new games.  She was utterly unprepared for the scene I'm sure most of you can imagine.  The only other woman in the shop was a girl sullenly watching her boyfriend play Magic.  We asked the clerk and he was nice and helpful, but tried to gently guide us away from the complicated games.

Which is sad because she really liked the cover on one of the Warhammer 40k games and I could probably have gotten her to pull the trigger.

edit: We ended up buying Arkham Horror.

[Greg Nog]

That's a fantastic game if you want to spend eight hours fighting a losing battle with a terrible creature from beyond!  I like the hobo character!

[Good Intentions]

Which is sad because she really liked the cover on one of the Warhammer 40k games and I could probably have gotten her to pull the trigger.

Gorkamunda? Battleship Gothic? The GW games can be very laddish, but I've had at least one g/f who was  more into their core miniature business than I was (who am I kidding, I had exactly one g/f fitting that description).

[elpollodiablo]

You know I've still never played Catan? Could we do that on Live or something?

[Dick]

Which is sad because she really liked the cover on one of the Warhammer 40k games and I could probably have gotten her to pull the trigger.

Gorkamunda? Battleship Gothic? The GW games can be very laddish, but I've had at least one g/f who was  more into their core miniature business than I was (who am I kidding, I had exactly one g/f fitting that description).

It was one of the board games, I think it was called the Horus Heresy.  I find the warhammer mythos appealing but I don't think I've got it in me to play a miniatures game ever.  I don't like collecting things.

That's a fantastic game if you want to spend eight hours fighting a losing battle with a terrible creature from beyond!  I like the hobo character!

Sounds great!  We're playing now, it's pretty fun.  Lots of tokens!

[cold before sunrise]

has anybody here played bananagrams? it sounds fun. at the library today i saw it on a list of the games available for board game nights and think it'd be really funny to mess with people who don't need to know what i'm really up to by saying, "no i can't go out for shots with you tonight, sorry, i'm playing bananagrams at the library."

[Ashley]

i have bananagrams on my desk.  when i'm bored i open up the banana and take out 7 tiles and put together soem words then take out 7 more tiles and go on and on until i've been doing it for too long.

i like it

[cold before sunrise]

why aren't we facebook friends?

[Ah_Pook]

a friend of mine got me Pandemic a while ago and its real neat, speaking of board games. its co-op, which is nice. you play as a team of scientists trying to keep a plague outbreak from destroying the world. its vaguely Riskesque, would be the easiest way of describing it, but that doesnt really capture it. definitely worth checking out if youve got a group of people to try it out with.

[Thermofusion]

Suggestion for Dick:

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/59959/letters-from-whitechapel

But really you guys should all be playing Dominion

[Greg Nog]

Played Catan for the first time tonight, and holy shit it is fun

[elpollodiablo]

I wanna play! Can you play it online with folks?

[Greg Nog]

I'm not sure!  But I'll be happy to play face-to-face the next time you're in town!

[elpollodiablo]

Hopefully next time I'm in town we can play Settlers of a Small Apartment in Sunnyside.

[Babar]

I wanna play! Can you play it online with folks?

Yes you can and it's free. You can download it here and you must register here. It's as good as board games get and I've played it countless times.

[Thermofusion]

I just managed to track down a pretty embarrassing thing: a negative-skewed customer review I wrote of Settlers of Catan as a teenager (way back in 2001):

You guys are killing this game.

To be more clear, you're building it up way too much in your reviews. Everyone is overhyping this game to a degree that not even the most brilliantly executed, flawless game could meet expectations. Settlers is a good game, with a brilliant concept, but is unfortunately not executed with brilliance, and it is certainly not without serious flaws.

Players take the roles of settlers on the island of Catan. By drawing resources from the island, and trading these resources with other players, they seek to expand their little empire by building roads, settlements, and cities. The first player to reach 10 points through a combination of settlements, cities, certain development cards, and the 'Longest Road' and 'Largest Army' bonuses wins.

While it may sound like an expand-and-conquer game, it is really, at heart, a trading game, for the building aspect is rather mechanical and not *extremely* strategic (most strategies are disappointingly obvious). The trading is unpredictable, but often unfair; unfortunately, as it is the central mechanic in the game, this hurts the game.

A main flaw of the game, in my opinion, is the lack of balance in resource importance. For example: wheat and rock are very valuable, for they are needed for the ever important cities and development cards, but sheep eventually become virtually worthless near endgame, as they are used only for development cards and settlements.

As mentioned in a previous review, the game is also designed in a way that the rich always get richer, and the poor stay poor. I don't really need to elaborate here; if you've played the game, then you probably know what I'm talking about. The playing field should be more even.

Another flaw lies in the over-importance of initial pregame settlement placement. A game can literally be decided just by a lucky 'place-first' die roll and a placement in a super-advantageous location. Even the 'Beginner's Setup', which is supposed to fix this, is flawed; in this setup, the red player has an amazing advantage, having an enviable amount of access to brick and wood. The yellow player, in contrast, has poor access to any worthwhile resources. The red player, in the beginner's setup, will probably win 4 out of 5 times.

Finally, my last problem with Settlers is the art. It's drab, uninspired, and when compared to the vibrant, bold artwork for the German version, Mayfair's diluted, pale, Americanized art is uninspiring and ugly. But aesthetic complaints really aren't the problem here.

The problem is that Settlers is too flawed and too overhyped to be a rewarding gaming experience to most people trying it for the first time. Unlike a lot of you out there, Settlers was not my first German game--not even close--and I think that played a big role in my disillusionment; hearing everyone call this game the be-all and end-all of German gaming is strange when I've got a half-dozen *better* German games already under my belt. Stop overhyping this game. To be fair, it's nice, it's social, and it's easy to learn. But, after close examination, it's neither as good as it's made out to be, nor nearly as good as it could be. Settlers is like a big, flawed gem of a game. Unfortunately, not everyone likes their gems flawed. You shouldn't expect them to, either.

Man...

[Greg Nog]

Ha!  I will say, though, that TeenMo makes some good points, and because the trading is such an integral part of the game, I'm much more inclined to play it in person than online. 

Have any of you played Agricola?  I'm rather curious about that one.

[Ashley]

I have played agricola.

I played it one time, twice in a row.

Now I talk about it all the time because I want it so fucking bad but it's like $80.

[alex]

This is a good revival. One of the nice things about moving in together is that we have  space for a decently sized table for dining and playing, and that our two modestly sized game collections now add up to one more decently sized one.

I like a lot of the games mentioned on this page, but especially Pandemic and Dominion (although, strictly speaking, we only have Dominion: Intrigue, though I was considering picking up a copy of the base game or one of the other extensions to allow for fun new combinations). Though the first game we'll probably be playing on the new dining table is Goa, which we picked up a couple of months ago and haven't played that much yet, but which seemed like lots of fun.

[Thermofusion]

Ha!  I will say, though, that TeenMo makes some good points, and because the trading is such an integral part of the game, I'm much more inclined to play it in person than online. 

Have any of you played Agricola?  I'm rather curious about that one.

There are some games that translate really well to online versions (and possibly even work better online), but, for me, Settlers works best if it's a bunch of grown men and women sitting around a table drinking beer and arguing about sheep. Negotiating trades in that game gets pretty funny when people are drunk.

Also, Agricola is fantastic. One of the best games I've ever played.

[coldforge]

You know, it's funny. I sepnd so much of my time researching and thinking about card games, and I have absolutely no interest in board games whatsoever. I don't know why; but I suppose it would have to indicate that some amount of the appeal of card games to me is their ability to all be spun out of a small number of standardized decks.

[mountmccabe]

Played Catan for the first time tonight, and holy shit it is fun

I am also down for playing; I actually have a copy at the apartment that I haven't broken out since moving here. Same with Acquire, actually.

[kyle]

I have played agricola.

I played it one time, twice in a row.

Now I talk about it all the time because I want it so fucking bad but it's like $80.

This game is aweeeeesome. I call it Agri-cola though. "Farm Soda"