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Board Games (Reviews, Rules, Regulations, Random)


The Gnat

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I know we have a few board game players in the forum, so I thought it would be fun to have a thread for board games.

To get it started, what are your top 10 board games?

 

  1. Pandemic Legacy Season 1 - Awesome game, great story to the game, it's cooperative, and what happens in previous games affects the future games.
  2. Blood Rage - Another awesome game, you are a Vikings tribe and trying to get the most victory points, you're battling over areas, building up your army, and it's just really well done.
  3. Betrayal At the House on the Hill - Semi-cooperative game. You start out working together and then someone becomes a traitor, not a perfect game, but I like it every time that I play it.
  4. Dead of Winter - A zombie game, but it's not about the zombies (though they can kill you), it's about keeping the colony alive.
  5. Smallworld - It's a fun version of Risk, which turns people off from the game. It is a great game where you are trying to get the most points with crazy combinations of fantasy races and powers.
  6. Pandemic - Just the regular version of the game is great as well, would probably be higher if you counted how often we play it, but with Legacy being better, I move it a touch lower now.
  7. Tsuro - A ton of fun, super fast board game that can handle 8 players, a game that you want to play again once you've finished it.
  8. Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game - This game is fast, it has a wonderful balance of powers, it is almost always close, and the mechanics are a ton of fun.
  9. Lord of the Rings - This game feels like playing Lord of the Rings, but it doesn't take as long as the books.
  10. King of Tokyo - Fun simple game, you play as monsters who are punching each other, I want to get the expansion that makes the monsters unique.
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8 minutes ago, MightyMouse07 said:

Settlers of Catan is another fun game. 

Yeah, it's one i haven't played in a long long time. I played it a lot about a decade ago. Now there are other games that do parts of what Catan does better and are more enjoyable. I do want to get it back to the table again sometime, I just have so many others I also want to get to the table.

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I don't know if i could name 10, but here are some that i really enjoy.

  1. Smallworld - I compared it to Risk as well, but it's pretty simple and can be played quickly.  Inexperienced players pick it up quickly.
  2. Pandemic - Fun cooperative game
  3. Dominion (not a board game, i know) - great card building game, but i've found experienced players have a huge upper hand.
  4. Splendor (not a board game, i know) - another great card building game, but again experienced players usually kill the less experienced players
  5. Dead of Winter - can be cooperative, or competitive depending on how you set it up.  Best played at night with creepy music.
  6. Power Grid - I'm not even sure how to describe it, but it's fun.  Elements of Catan (expanding your empire) with bidding for power plants and buying resources to power those plants.
  7. Catan - A game of expansion with some randomness thrown in from the dice.  

All games that i or my brother own and play regularly when we get together.  We started getting into board games a few years ago, and i'm slowly building a collection of ones i enjoy.

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Yeah, I qualify Dominion and Splendor as board games, or table top games. I feel like those can be used interchangeably and mean any card/board game unless it's a really light card game, so any card game where you have cards laid out.

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Don't know how easy it'd be to do a true Top Ten list, but games I've been playing recently that I really enjoy:

Pandemic Legacy - So much fun. Super tense pretty much the whole time and you get a lot of gameplay out of it. The cooperative aspect is really nice.

Pandemic (and Expansions) - The base game is fun. The expansions add a lot of flavor, especially since you can mix and match them.

One Deck Dungeon - Playable with 1, 2, or 4 players, but I've never done 4. It works well as a solo game, which is kind of nice when you're bored and need to fill time.

Betrayal at the House on the Hill - Agreed, always a good time playing this one.

Lords of Waterdeep - Relatively standard euro-style resource management game with a few additions for flair, just set to Dungeons & Dragons/Forgotten Realms intellectual property.

Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle - Cooperative deck-building game. Really fun with a lot of replay value. Can be played with 2-4. I've done it solo playing 2 characters pretty successfully (tried 4, but it's a lot to keep track of). Does a nice job incorporating the IP of the Harry Potter world.

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1 minute ago, fretgod99 said:

Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle - Cooperative deck-building game. Really fun with a lot of replay value. Can be played with 2-4. I've done it solo playing 2 characters pretty successfully (tried 4, but it's a lot to keep track of). Does a nice job incorporating the IP of the Harry Potter world.

This is one on my list of games to get. My wife is less of a board gamer than I am, so I try and find games with IP's that she'd like or games like Pandemic. The Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle looks like a really fun game.

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1 minute ago, The Gnat said:
3 minutes ago, fretgod99 said:

Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle - Cooperative deck-building game. Really fun with a lot of replay value. Can be played with 2-4. I've done it solo playing 2 characters pretty successfully (tried 4, but it's a lot to keep track of). Does a nice job incorporating the IP of the Harry Potter world.

This is one on my list of games to get. My wife is less of a board gamer than I am, so I try and find games with IP's that she'd like or games like Pandemic. The Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle looks like a really fun game.

Writing this one down.  My wife is a huge harry potter fan and likes cooperative games.  May be a good anniversary present.

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I'm also looking at that HP game for the wifey.

We own Arkham Horror. It's a little heavy and can take a while but it's really fun, it's a coop game too. Usually our group consists of my wife, her brother and I, sometimes my mother in law too. You can also play alone which is really nice for learning the game so you can explain the rules to others, but I've never felt so alone as playing Arkham Horror and drinking whiskey at 10am, all on my lonesome.

Munchkin is a card game, but we bought the Deluxe edition which comes with a board to keep track of everyone's levels and provide labels for your draw piles and discard pile. 

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A couple of our friends introduced us to that one. It's great pretty much for all the things you've all mentioned: It's an existent, fleshed-out world already; it's a cooperative game, so all the competition is directed at the game (which I think makes it much more enjoyable for couples); and, it's just really fun. It's like $40, so it's not cost-prohibitive, either. Plus, there's an expansion set to come out later this year!

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1 minute ago, domepatrol91 said:

Munchkin is a card game, but we bought the Deluxe edition which comes with a board to keep track of everyone's levels and provide labels for your draw piles and discard pile.

Yeah, Munchkin is fun, too. Can be a little cut-throaty though, so there's that. An added perk of Munchkin is all the crossover material. We play Pathfinder (a Tapletop RPG) and there's a version of Munchkin for Pathfinder (as well as a number of other games/genres). So it can be a fun way to mix games you enjoy.

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3 minutes ago, fretgod99 said:
7 minutes ago, domepatrol91 said:

Munchkin is a card game, but we bought the Deluxe edition which comes with a board to keep track of everyone's levels and provide labels for your draw piles and discard pile.

Yeah, Munchkin is fun, too. Can be a little cut-throaty though, so there's that. An added perk of Munchkin is all the crossover material. We play Pathfinder (a Tapletop RPG) and there's a version of Munchkin for Pathfinder (as well as a number of other games/genres). So it can be a fun way to mix games you enjoy.

You've been doing Pathfinder the RPG not card game? I've tried out the card game and that was pretty enjoyable, but I've heard that there are issues with it long term.

I haven't done the RPG, but that's because I jumped on D&D 5th Edition when I started RPG's.

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3 minutes ago, fretgod99 said:

Yeah, Munchkin is fun, too. Can be a little cut-throaty though, so there's that. An added perk of Munchkin is all the crossover material. We play Pathfinder (a Tapletop RPG) and there's a version of Munchkin for Pathfinder (as well as a number of other games/genres). So it can be a fun way to mix games you enjoy.

Definitely can be cut-throat, but we play a few times in a row so there's plenty of time for revenge. Generally it all balances out by the end.

And the expansions are very cool, gonna be getting my brother in law a few for Christmas this year.

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Muchkin itself, I agree, it's a bit cut throat, so the first person to do really well won't win, but the second person often does because everyone blew their hand on the first person. I have the zombies version, we still break it out once in a while.

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1 minute ago, The Gnat said:

You've been doing Pathfinder the RPG not card game? I've tried out the card game and that was pretty enjoyable, but I've heard that there are issues with it long term.

I haven't done the RPG, but that's because I jumped on D&D 5th Edition when I started RPG's.

Yeah, I've been play Pathfinder RPG since shortly after it came out. I dabbled in D&D when I was a kid when it was AD&D 2nd Ed. When 3.0 came out (and quickly transitioned to 3.5), I got back into it with my brother and friend and we brought my wife along. When D&D moved to 4E, we stuck went with Pathfinder (which is just a tweaked version of 3.5). I haven't played the card game, I think mainly because we have a hard enough time trying to find opportunities to play actual PF. Might look into it, though.

I've been reading through the PHB for 5E and it looks good. If I had the time and a group available, I'd love to give it a go.

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