The Boardgames Thread / Board games

Thanks that's a great suggestion!

Any others from anyone?

just found this thread, i've recently reintroduced my kid and new partner to my incredibly geeky hobby mindset and my group of friends. 40k, sigmar and Magic the gathering. We have all started board games as a weekend activity and are finding ticket to ride and tokiado to be brilliant. Mysterium is tolerable but slow and difficult. Zombicide is just stupid hard. My friends and i play rising sun which is amazing and once the politics start.. hilarious. One of the group has mention Twilight Imperium so thats on the cards for the holidays.

Thanks.
Having not played any warhammer I'm not exactly sure how that works but I'll see if my son can explain.
That's really what they want to do anyway

Heroscape (models are already painted though)

Anyone else planning on riding out the apocalypse with a mountain of boardgames?

Might finally work my way through all the expansions I've bought for nearly every game in my collection.

At very least hoping to get through the very excellent Clank! Legacy and Tie up my Gloomhaven Campaign finally.

Got introduced to Hero Realms last week, really liked it, such a nicely paced game

We're starting Gloomhaven tomorrow!

I kickstarted an 'all of the content' pledge for hero realms and it should be arriving soon, I'm looking forward to trying it out.

having played Star Realms on the ipad (because it has an AI for solo play) I already like the core mechanics, I'm curious how they implement the campaign element in the HR expansions.

Also I've played a ton of solo board games this past year, if anyone is looking for recommendations let me know what kind of games you like..

I'm mostly into the deckbuilding/dungeon crawling genres though rather than euros and what not.

Yes please give us some solo recommendations.

Would also be interested to hear some solo games. Is there anything adventure/quest based out there that you’d suggest? Rather than playing something against an imaginary opponent based on a mechanic?

adventure/quest based out there that you’d suggest? Rather than playing something against an imaginary opponent based on a mechanic?

This is my preferred type of solo game so I'll list a whole bunch of my favourites in separate posts and give some pros/cons for each.

Gloomhaven

Not my no. 1 game but in this genre it's going to be top of most lists.

It's expensive but you'll get about 70x 2-4 hour gaming sessions out of the box easily.

each character has deck which drive all their actions, as you play this gets upgraded and you become more powerful, you then unlock new characters with their own decks as you progress and retire the old ones so there's it keeps things pretty interesting.

scenarios are light on narrative but each one is very unique and tells a story as you move through to the objective.

ai is mostly just monster movement and spawning, this has its quirks but adds to the puzzle of how to manage your own limited actions against their next moves. no victory points in this one.

To solo you just control 2 (or more) characters. hand management is easy enough and the game is slightly easier with open information between the 2 characters (you can adjust difficulty if you want to offset it).

Pros:
lots of stuff in the box, will keep you going for a long time.
it's fun to play
has an unofficial companion app which reduces the bookkeeping and table clutter a great deal
branching stories mean there's replayability though will involve some repetition

Cons:

• Price. You get your money's worth but it's the biggest barrier to entry
  
• Organisation. once you've punched everything, storage is a nightmare. I would say an organiser is a necessity, you can make your own from plano boxes or buy one.
  
• Setup/teardown. an organizer helps but it's just a lot of stuff to sift through to set up and pack away. if you can leave in situ and setup/teardown at your leisure it's much less troublesome
  
• size. you need a decent amount of table space to play as it's quite a sprawling setup. the app helps massively with this though.
  
  

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Tainted Grail

It's a bit mean to include this one as it's kickstarter only and mostly impossible to get your hands on but my copy arrived in early Dec and I've run through the whole campaign twice already and it is far & away my game of 2019.

set in an apocalyptic arthurian setting you play an adventurer setting forth from their village to try and escape the blight creeping across the land.

predominantly an exploration/survival based game you explore your surroundings by moving from location to location and interacting with the surroundings/people and events that happen.

narrative is extremely rich and each location has a number of pages of choose your own adventure style choices to traverse as you engage and perform different tasks.

there is also a book of secrets where plot points unfold and the story really takes shape.

the game is broken into chapters which has an event deck which progresses with each passing turn/day in the game. the goals are somewhat open ended and how you achieve them is often up to you.

additionally you have combat and diplomacy decks for encounters and a pretty ingenious key matching mechanic for success and failure.

Solo can be played with a single character and each character in the box interacts with parts of the storyline in different ways as well as having different skills and attributes.

Pros:
Amazing game.
At least 3-4 playthroughs if you want to try and see all the storylines take shape and even then you wont see every outcome.
amazing quality

Cons:
Good luck finding a copy.

sidenote: No Pun Included did a youtube review on it but it is such a hatchet job (and they dont even like the type of game it is in the first place) that I would say don't even watch it as most of their conclusions just don't hold water having played 60 odd hours of the game. response to the video was mostly people who played the game saying they're wrong and fans of their show saying it must be true if they said it and slagging it off because it was a kickstarter game.

there's more content coming in a second wave from KS with another 1.5 campaigns and already it's my most anticipated release for 2020/21.

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Sword & Sorcery - Immortal Souls

S&S is a dungeon crawler with a pretty decent story driven narrative, the base game contains the first act with about 7 or 8 scenarios and there are a number of other expansions available to up the story content and expand on the enemies you face.

It uses action points to drive each turn with dice based rolls for combat.

there's an awful lot of stuff going on with stats and bonuses/penalties that affect the outcome so luck can be mitigated but it also increase the bookkeeping to the point that I recommend playing solo with no more than 2 heroes to keep it manageable.

pros:
decent gameplay
fun storyline
cost is not too obscene.
expansions available for extra content
acceptable setup/teardown time
enemy ai is pretty straightforward but abilities make each enemy play differently.

cons:
fair amount of bookkeeping during turns, easy to make odd mistake
story content is good but not tons of it, relies on replayability with other characters for value for money
minis are not always the best, some can be a bit bendy.

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Hellboy

This is a pretty lightweight dungeon crawler that relies on the aesthetic of Mike Mignolias' comic book creation rather than a strong story narrative.

action based turns with dice rolling combat. each character has asymmetric abilities but there's not a huge amount of depth to each.

each scenario has you playing against a doom track which is counting down to an impending disaster while you hunt clues and investigate to track down the big bad for a final confrontation.

I find this one enjoyable to play when I want something light but do find the lack of story to be a bit of a turn-off.

also the retail version is extremely light on content compared to the kickstarter version.

pros:
will tick the boxes for any hellboy fans, lots of subtle nods here and there to the comics/GN
not a brain burner, doesnt require you to be at your best to play

cons:
retail version is missing a lot of stuff
not quite enough story for me
dice combat is quite swingy

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Gloom of Kilforth / Shadows of Kilforth

Interesting exploration driven game. you face off against a nemesis whom you must track down by collecting cards with certain keywords which you gain by exploring from location to location and interacting with event cards from the corresponding deck for that location.

each nemesis has a different set of objectives to complete and the card based location grid is randomised each game so there's a lot of replayability but there's also very little actual story outside of the way your actions unfold.

has some interesting mechanics with locations falling into gloom and becoming dangerous places to finish your turn as the land slowly decays around you.

quite a table hog but everything has its place. pretty quick to setup and put away.

pros:
unique game with interesting keyword collection mechanics
interesting challenges posed by action economy and changing landscape
gradual power curve, you get more powerful as you progress so challenges have different heft as you move through game.

cons:
not much story to speak of other than general story plot
replayable but with lots of repetition.

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Lord of the Rings - Journeys in Middle Earth

Another dungeony crawler, this one is unique insofar as it requires a tablet to run the companion app which drives the story through each scenario, revealing new tiles and enemies as well as plot elements and triggering waypoints and clues etc.

turns are action based, skill tests are done using icon based card draws from your player deck to reveal successes. as you progress you can add extra cards with new skills and abilities.

the app allows for dlc expansion content and there will be mini expansion packs with new enemies/characters which can be added to the game and included in the scenarios automatically by the app.

again this is a fairly lightweight game but the app does a good job of handling most of the bookkeeping and drip feeding you the story so it can feel quite immersive as you play.

if idea of pairing up gimli and legolas to go wreck some orc muthafuckers appeals you'll probably like this one.

pros:
minimal setup
easy to pick up and play
lotr is a good universe to play in
app does a pretty god job
expandable content using only what comes in the box with dlc

cons:
app makes lifespan of game questionable
limited action choices make this more about progressing through the scenario and reacting to threats than making big gameplay decisions on how to progress the plot.

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Arkham Horror - The Card Game

This deck construction game is an episodic 'living card game' where you buy the game in scenario sized chunks and gradually build up the pool of character cards from which to construct your player deck.

You pick an investigator from the large pool of available ones and construct a deck based on that investigators character class and any other restrictions they have and run them through a scenario either standalone or as part of a "cycle" based campaign.

Each scenario uses a number of location, act and agenda cards to construct an elaborate theme using the cards in a whole bunch of interesting ways (exploring a mansion, traversing an out of control train, working your way through an alien dimension) so that each scenario is truly unique from any other.

the game is played in turns with your investigators playing cards and taking actions and then the big bad scary does their thing and ruins your plan entirely.

the whole thing can be quite unforgiving and it's not a given you'll survive with insanity and death both quite likely outcomes. but the knife edge you find yourself on gives it a nice tense atmosphere conducive to the overarching cthulu mythos theme.

The base set includes a handful of investigators and 2 or 3 introductory scenarios as well as enough cards to build two investigator decks.

beyond that each cycle of content has a deluxe expansion with the first couple of scenarios and extra investigators/cards (~£25) and then 6 mythos packs (£~12ea) containing a single scenario round out the campaign.

It's not the cheapest if you intend to play all the content and some packs can be hard to pickup as they can go out of print for a while but there's replayability in how you construct your decks for each investigator and tackle each scenario though obviously you'll know what to expect on subsequent goes around.

Pros:
Thematic, clever, unique scenarios that tell very good stories
Very solid gameplay mechanics
Ability to pick and choose how much content you wish to play
Quick to setup and put away

Cons:
As a whole the content gets very expensive quickly.
some packs hard to find
difficulty can be quite high
lovecraftian theme not for everyone

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This War of Mine

A video game to board game adaptation, you play a band of survivors in the midst of a war as you try to eek out survival through a number of days by venturing out to gather supplies from nearby locations, building and repairing your living quarters and defending yourselves from the dangers that emerge in the night.

The game has a cycle of phases that combine into the passage of a day and in each game you perform a number of actions with each survivor to help keep everyone safe.

at its heart it's a pure survival game with resource management and a number of push your luck elements. but peppered through that are snippets of story from a large story book that are triggered by all sorts of things.

this is probably the hardest game I own and it hits the theme so well it's almost depressingly bleak in how it represents the horrors of life in situations like that. I'm almost loathe to suggest it in the current climate but honestly it might even hit a bit harder now and have an even bigger impact.

there's a number of event decks and randomisers to make each game unique as well as plenty of story elements to unearth so this has a ton of replayability but honestly I have to be in the right state of mind to play.

pros:
very interest gameplay mechanics
brutal storytelling
big challenge

cons:
extremely dark

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Cloudspire

Another big expensive box of a game. cloudspire is a MOBA inspired tower defence type game that sees you pitting your faction against one of the other four factions (5 with expansion) with asymmetric units and abilities tailored to each specifically.

This is probably the best put together box of gaming components I've seen. everything is over the top high quality components from the poker chips representing the units, health and upgrades that are stacked and moved around to the neoprene hex tiles that make up the board.

On top of that you get thick plastic reference sheets to explain all the various keywords and faction abilities that go into the accessible but complex gameplay and for solo players not one but two books of campaign scenarios (solo and co-op).

The solo campaign book is split into factions and each faction campaign sees you take that faction through 4 highly tailored scenarios against varying factions with a host of scenario specific rules/tweaks to make it perfectly balanced for playing against the ai.

scenario goals are objective based and include optional achievements which unlock extra bonuses for subsequent games.

difficulty is pretty high and you should expect to fail a few times at a scenario until you find a working strategy to overcome the specific obstacles it throws at you.

pros:
engaging thoughtful gameplay
the best campaign book I've seen
11/10 components
excellent player guides to cover most rules and terms

cons:
lots of moving parts to keep track of.
stacking keywords/abilities can require some brainpower to stay on top of everything.
cost

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And just some general game recommendations:
1+ players:
Spirit Island
take control of asymmetric spirits who protect island and its natives from invaders. uses deckbuilding to amass powerful ability cards and combos to unleash all kinds of havoc on the spreading horde of invaders as the try to colonize the island.

superb game, great challenge with finely grained difficulty curve through differing modes/challenges to follow your skill level. often hailed as one of the best solo games on the market.

Tiny Towns:
basic game where you take resources and use them to pattern buildings on your town grid to generate points and create synergies with other buildings to make combos. a fun challenge that plays as well solo as it does with a group. minimal AI, VP/points based objective, incredibly quick to play.

Aeon's End
One of the most highly rated deckbuilder games, take control of 2-4 mages and face off against a nemesis as you work to save the town from destruction and defeat them and their minions. uses a randomised fixed market of cards for each game against one of a whole host of nemesis. another challenging play but fun.

2+ players:

Clank Legacy.
you each take control of a ne'er-do-well and start a corporate band of dungeon thieves each competing to go out and steal as much treasure from the local towns while avoiding the wrath of the dragon which inhabits the area.

Excellent deckbuilding game with push your luck elements that has had an extremely clever legacy campaign overlaid onto the base clank game which sees you completely change your game in a number of permanent ways over a run of about 10 games leaving you with a uniquely finished board at the end on which to play subsequent games using the non-campaign ruleset.

I got this for my GF & I and while we struggle to find time to play as I'm rarely home in london it is an absolute blast, second best game of 2019 for me.

Copenhagen.
Use card drafting to claim polyomino tiles to lay tetris style & build a facade on the side of your house board to score points for completed patterns. simple victory point race, good for light gaming sessions.

and finally a couple of solo games which use VP but are well worth a look.

A feast for Odin.

This is a nightmare of complexity to look at when you first pick it up and I set it up and immediately reboxed it about 3 times before finally attempting my first game. but it's actually quite streamlined and worth the effort to learn.

using worker placement you gather resources through an insane amount of actions to collect tiles to place on your player board to score points and gain resource bonuses.

there are a hundred strategies to try and each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

plays fantastically well solo after the initial steep learning curve and has pretty decent references to help with the inevitable edge case questions that will pop up from time to time.

best played with the Norwegians expansion rolled in but it's quite hard to find it in stock.

Isle of Cats

This is a card drafting, tile laying game that has a great solo ai and plays amazingly well with a group.

the gist is a big bad is coming to the island and all the cats are in danger, for some reason they've all jumped into the sea and you need to spend the coming days rescuing as many as you can and putting them on your boat to score points with a whole range of bonuses and points combos for placing them in certain ways.

on face value it's quite basic but it will get you thinking. definitely worth a look if you want something you can play with a mixed group as well (it even has a simplified family mode too).

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Great posting, Ciq! All really interesting reviews.

Anyone else playing along with Pandemic Legacy? Just won our March game...