The Thread Where We Are Board Game Geeks

MS Batory looks fun.

Fam was into Mansions of Madness. For the first couple of hours, anyway. We started what was supposed to be the introductory game (60-90 minutes) and it wound up taking the entire night, and then we paused it at 2am and it's just waiting for us downstairs. My sister has almost certainly tapped out at this point. It's fun, but goddamn it would've been nice to have a more realistic idea of what we were getting into.

codenames

a horse is not a " vehicle "

any mouse guard players here? it's a RPG about mice.

if it's realistic most of the mice get eaten

it's not realistic at all but i'm sure some of the mice do get eaten

I'm going to try get dominion back in my group's rotation.

we're currently working our way through (the very fun) pandemic legacy season 1. dominion would be a good palette cleanser/aperitif I think

Went round to a friend's house the other day and he considered introducing me and our other friend to Mansions of Madness but in the end settled for Citadels, which turned out to be an excellent game that I won

My friend then played MOM on his own with a computerised dungeon master and lost

I'm doing Pandemic Legacy at the moment, excellent but difficult. I think we've won 3/8 games or something like that.

Shout out to Citadels as well. Always takes ages when my group plays as everyone starts doing different stupid voices for the different characters.

ha, we played pandemic legacy and kept failing until the value of the dispatcher became clear
the ending of that game is cool though - try to stick it out!

Oh we will for sure - it's an exciting exprience even if you lose. Co-ops should be tough.

Got my partner Azul for Xmas, which is proving great fun. And I bought my brother Galaxy Truckers, not least because I wanted to play it. He's not a huge board games fan but I'm hoping this could sucker him in. Also, my daughter is a big fan of Rhino Hero, but I might like it even better than her.

Also I have really gotten a taste for Shut Up And Sit Down, even though their delivery feels like they've watched every episode of Top Gear multiple times (also what is up with that Quinn guy's eyebrows?)

I missed out on games totally in 2018 because of personal circumstances, not least my inability to go cold into a games cafe and pick up a game with strangers.

I am going to Marie Kondo my games collection this year for sure.

plz marie kondo your games collection to me

i have decided i really need to track down a copy of the early 80s battlin' bugs hex map game Chitin. I used to list for it in the pages of Dragon at the time, completely forgot about it til last week.

speaking of early 80s hex games, i have been itching to get copies of steve jackson's OGRE and GEV ... anyone remember those?

and on another early 80s note, anybody played "twilight imperium lite" aka REX by fantasy flight games? supposedly a re-skinning of an old dune boardgame that was supposed to be the shit.

They got taken over by the version of OGRE that got put out a couple of years ago which was the size of a small car* and so the prices are ridiculous afaik. He's also been trying to whip up enthusiasm for a similar giant box Car Wars without progress despite desperate pleas.

*Not necessarily an exaggeration

i'm seeing very good condition copies of ogre for like $40-$60 used. is that ridiculous?

i collect early 80s roleplaying games and $50 is pretty much the going rate for a good condition box set by TSR or FASA or GDW or chaosium

i actually recently paid more than that for a shrink-wrapped star frontiers *module*

i had no idea about the new ogre! looks pretty sweet, and easier to foist on my group than gloomhaven.

what's the diff between the "designer's edition" and the "sixth edition"? just a pile of minis? or extra rules too?

I would have thought $40-$60 for a game with paper maps and 1mm cardboard chits was a bit steep, but then I'm not as connected to the market as you. Also Britain might be a slightly different market - I got the smallbook Traveller box + about 6 extra books for about $20 a couple of years ago and a beaten up but complete Top Secret for $10 about 3 weeks later.

No idea about new OGRE, sorry.

those are great prices for traveller + top secret!!

when i say good condition i mean fresh looking copies w/ uncut counter sheets, possibly still shrink-wrapped ... you can definitely get complete boxes w punched counters and/or box wear for about half what i said

I spent many nights soloing Ogre, GEV, GEV's expansion, and the unplayable spin-off Battlesuit in the mid-80s.
As wargames go, they were all pretty undemanding (I was wargaming WWIII via the GDW series at the time).

At moments, I'm tempted, but 20 years ago I committed to expelling all wargames from the collection save for Craig Besinque block classics (Napoleon, Rommel in the Desert, EastFront etc), and the peculiar chess-like Simmons designs (Bonaparte at Marengo, Napoleon's Triumph). If someone bought my copies of Ogre and GEV for $2 and is selling them for $60, more power to em.

I'm working through a longer bout of social anxiety at present, and have considered joining local gaming meetup groups. Any encouraging anecdotes from others returning to the hobby with strangers would be welcome. I just remember being in my college gaming group, with some greying visitors with questionable manners and hygiene lurking, and I don't want to be that guy.

well, just don't join a college gaming group and you should be fine?

I paid $90 for a complete but not unpunched copy of Kings & Things* and that was in 2002!

*the edition with the David Trampier monster art, if that even needs fucking specifying

btw Eklund's Neanderthal is one of the best games i've ever played

What board games have good quality online versions? Looking for stuff I can play with friends, especially on android.

I play Patchwork on android via the internet
for pass and play, Ticket to Rid, Carcassone and Camel Up all have good apps but not via the net unfortunately

Cottage Garden is available but I find it a bit fiddly

that said cottage garden is a 4 player game whilst patchwork is just 2

What do you mean by not via the net? Ticket To Ride and Carcassonne appear to have online multiplayer modes, don't they?

My family and I tested out Boardgamearena, which is free in the base version. Text chat only - supposedly Premium adds video, but we just paired it with Zoom. Did a test game of Can't Stop, which worked fine altho it automated one too many steps IMHO. The interface and graphics are all like playing a browser game in 2003, ymmv as to whether that's a good thing. We're gonna try it again with something more substantial, probably Stone Age as everyone in the family loves that one. But they def have a few other well-known Euros sprinkled amidst your Backgammons and such.

I've been playing lots of Dominion. Pretty good free interface.

Me and the boys have been talking about getting a Diplomacy game going. While I’d love to play in real time (as opposed to correspondence) I think a multi-hour marathon of a boardgame sitting in front of my computer is a big ask even for me.

board game arena also has Sushi Go

Terra Mystica isn't bad on BGA.

Puerto Rico is another good one on board game arena. Been playing through the ages with friends too.

Trying out Clans of Caledonia today. Brain melty economic action.

i have that one, its kinda just terra mystica with a farming theme and a goods market instead of the magic stuff

XPS news to me

will check other recommendations out!

I bought my gf's family pandemic for christmas, nobody seems to want to play it for some reason

hah

I've been enjoying the trivia game Half Truth. It's very approachable for non-trivia types yet not too easy ... sort of like my beloved Wits and Wagers in that respect. Pretty good Zoom game since you can just hold the card up the camera or whatever.

loving the Galaxy Trucker app on the iphone, but my partner thinks I'm insane for loving it

Québec's still on a pretty severe lockdown and I kinda hate computer/zoom-facilitated boardgaming, but I realized recently that playing boardgames is one of the healthiest/best ways for my brain to wind down and turn off in the absence of actual "experiences" or human beings outside my household... My partner's not into heavy boardgames but I indulged myself and bought a copy of Aeon's End: Legacy - just for myself! to play totally solo! $100! What an indulgence, but it's been a lifesaver: feels so good to just do boardgame bullshit at the end of a long day, in these hard times.

(I still have a biweekly virtual Gloomhaven/Jaws of the Lion gang.)

i lost about an hour and a half playing solo Deadball the other night (warning: must enjoy baseball)

http://wmakers.net/deadball

Have recently picked up:
-Cascadia (make ecosystems in the PacNW)

-Brass: Birmingham (The industrial Revolution, and you can play as Robert Owen)

-Factory 42 (steampunk dwarves who dress Prussian for some reason but are in a Stalinist/state capitalist production system)

-Llama Land(tile-stacking game with llama meeples!)

-Little Factory (card-based game about commodity production, but regrettable missing flax, linen, or coats)

I miss having socialist board games where we can actually try these out, as I need to learn the two most complicated games here from others

I finally got Galaxy Trucker for Xmas after lusting after it for ages. It is so much fun - like a competetive puzzle game that then turns into a lunatic and hilarious game of (bad) luck.

I’m basic, I just started playing Scrabble and it’s addictive!