board games!

[silentsigh89]

This thread warms my heart!!!

The worst part about moving to a new city for us was that we didn't have people to play boardgames with. We've found a few now, but in the in between times. We found it pretty easy to play catan with a person on skype / google video! We just sent him a picture of the board and he kept track on paint. It's a little sad, but also a bit more fun (if you're as into smack talking / threatening to burn down people's settlements as I am).

I am still always looking for more good two-player. I LOVE Pandemic. There is another game that is a bit simpler (not easier to beat, just less involved) that is very similar called Forbidden Island that we've had some fun with as well!

The next game I want to invest in Twilight Struggle-- the two player cold war strategy game. I figure it HAS to be good.

[Thermofusion]

Twilight Struggle is very cool. I don't own it, but it uses a similar two-deck card-driven mechanic as a pair of mid-90s Avalon Hill games, We the People and Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage (the latter of which is one of my all-time favorite tactical wargames)

[Thermofusion]

I had some folks over last night and we played a couple games - Modern Art and Settlers. Modern Art is a great auction game, very simple and tense. Then we played Settlers: I had initial settlements on two wheat tiles (one was a 6, the other an 8) and I quickly built a settlement at the wheat port and upgraded the initial settlements to cities. Result: I was producing so much wheat and exchanging it for other resources that I didn't have to trade with anyone else the entire time, which kind of broke the game. There was nothing they could do to stop me, and I was stockpiling soldier cards. I was basically playing solitaire. The final scores were 11-4-4-3. Kind of fun for me, but sort of demonstrated how easily the game can break down and become unfair.

[alex]

Me and S had a conversation about the card game version of Settlers half an hour ago that reached a very similar conclusion. Our last two plays have been fairly balanced, but certainly that hasn't always been the case. I still like the game, but I do understand S's reservation.

We also played a bunch of games this weekend - three or four games of Pandemic plus a little bit of Uno with some visitors (the latter just to bridge the time until it was time to leave for their train), and then a game of the aforementioned Settlers card game plus two games of Blue Moon with just the two of us. I'm completely unable to enjoy Blue Moon, though. Bit of a shame, because S excitedly bought quite a few additional sets of cards when we first got it, and now I just veto it pretty much all the time, and when I don't I end up first hating the game and then the person I become while playing it.

[Thermofusion]

I like the Settlers Card Game much, much more than the board game. The player interaction is so minimal that it really is kind of like playing two-player solitaire, but I think that's part of why it feels so balanced (and also there's built-in balance to the cardplay, like the way Bishops cancel out Arsonists and Brigands). You can definitely put yourself into an out-of-control advantage, though, like if you're producing lots of gold and you have the Mint (and your opponent is unable to burn it down )

As for Blue Moon, I'm pretty ambivalent on that one, too.

[alex]

Quite a bit of board game playing has happened in our household over this summer. Mostly ridiculous amounts of Ticket to Ride Europe, but also the occasional game of Pandemic, San Juan, Lost Cities, Dominion and Goa, and probably some others. It's really become glaringly obvious that we're not busting out the more complex, rule-intensive games that we have nearly as much as the more straightforward ones - two of the most expensive games we have, Caylus and Le Havre, have probably gotten about five games between the two of them overall since buying them. And those were mostly Caylus, we never even really got the hang of Le Havre. It's a bit of a pity, because I really wouldn't mind having a copy of Agricola based on the one or two times I've played it with people, but it seems a bit silly to pick that up if all we're doing with Le Havre is letting it collect dust.

Anyway, the real reason I brought back this thread today is to report that we bought Stone Age today, and that the first two play-throughs were immensely enjoyable. I think this one is going to get some play time here, both with just the two of us and with visitors!

I've also been quite tempted to get Space Alert lately. I like the cooperative aspect of playing Pandemic quite a bit, plus it makes it easy to play together with new people as they can just learn as they go along, but the result often feels a bit random (we once managed to have such bad luck with how the cards were shuffled that we lost on the first turn!), so it'd be nice to see it implemented in a different game.

S. seems to favour Race for the Galaxy as the next sci fi themed game to get though, so we'll see.

[Greg Nog]

Whoa, Stone Age sounds rad.  I may have to check that out!

[alex]

I've played a few more games in the meantime, and still think it's wicked awesome. I'm very mildly concerned that the 2-player version might start feeling a bit repetitive at some point soon - the only way to win the game is to specialise in one out of a limited number of different strategies, and in probably about 7 out of 8 games so far mine was to focus heavily on getting lots of tools for my tribe, while S. has been focusing on letting his clanspeople procreate a lot - but really I've been thinking that since the second game and there's no indication of it happening so far. I like the game mechanism a lot, and the board and components are really nice to look at, too. I like that there's enough luck involved that I have something to blame it on when I'm losing, and just enough strategy that it doesn't feel like it's all just luck when I'm winning. Can't wait to try it in 3 or 4-player mode, I'd imagine it work even better then.

[mountmccabe]

I played Race for the Galaxy a few months ago and really enjoyed it. I would certainly like to play it more.

We should get more board games.