The Boardgames Thread / Board games

I couldn’t find this thread so I posted some games to sell on another thread.

So let me know if anyone is interested

What expansions would you recommend?

I have Europe and Germany and GB already.

I don't think there's one that I could recommend unreservedly. I mostly don't like the little extra rules that they include, although that's not a strong dislike, just enough to lead me not to recommend one over the other. I mean, I enjoy playing all the ones I've played so far, but there just isn't one that stands out for me.

As far as the maps are concerned, I think my favourites are the 2-3 person expansions for Switzerland and the Nordic Countries, but the problem is that as games these both have one fatal flaw. It won't spoil your enjoyment you until one of you discovers it, but it's a shame, as those could have been much, much better.

I'd probably only recommend getting the original USA one.

Having lurked here for various recommendations I wanted to give an initial view on a few games we've been playing a lot:

Monopoly Deal - fantastic mechanism, compelling, it feels like it stands up really well to heavy repeat playing, the ability to mess up your opponents strategy us always attractive and helps retain interest. Definitely played 100+ times and will happily come back for a few games whenever an appropriate window presents itself.

Jaipur - had this for a little while, only played a few times, feels like more of a children's game, not much in the way of strategy and doesn't particularly hold the attention? Nicely presented and not dull to play, but halfway through a game seem to always wish I was playing monopoly deal.

Ticket to Ride Europe - really enjoyable, lovely presentation and mechanism, can very happily play a game, but rather blown out of the water by....

Everdell - bought a couple of weeks ago, never played anything so complex and with such a range of mechanisms within the game. Took 3 slow plays through (each one 1.5hr+) to even get a general handle on strategy and the possibilities of various mechanisms and how they could be exploited. The world-building and visuals are also wonderful (at least to this childhood fan of Brian Jacques books and lover of the British countryside) and playing the game actually feels like a journey that you want to take over and over again to have different experiences.

I wonder if my enthusiasm for Everdell is in large part due to it being the first more complex game I've played - I imagine after you've played a number of similar games you'll recognise and pick up many of the mechanisms and strategies much faster and maybe the game would feel less original? I also appreciate that in the grand scale of boardgames it isn't that complex (2.8/5 on boardgame geek's complexity rating) - would love any recommendation for similarly gripping games at around the same or slightly higher complexity? Pandemic seems to be highly recommended but the original game is 2.4 complexity I think and I'm sort of inclined not to go down the scale....

Good to hear, picked up Ticket to Ride Europe as a Xmas boardgame family present.

monopoly deal is class. such a great game to take on holiday. is just perfectly bite sized and moreish, with enough of a mix of strategy and luck to make it lots of fun. such a marked contrast to its big brother

I would imagine perfect for family play, very easily picked up and enjoyable by all, with elements of excitement/drama.

Exactly this - SO much better than the board game, and has filled in many quiet times on holiday/travel. Also largely entertained us through lockdown 1.0. Goes well with drinking as you can play at whatever pace, interspersed with chat and nonsense etc.

Agri hazard sounds amazing. I love monopoly but get far too into it.

We’re entertaining my mother in law this Christmas. She’s into farming and country side. No idea what board games to get

Strategy in Jaipur is all around cornering the market, and requires remembering how much of each resource is available on both cards and tokens. It gets better with time, especially if both you and your opponent have played the same number of times.

I bought Ticket To Ride Europe a couple of weeks ago and have played with my daughter and wife a dozen times so far.

It's great - my eight year old took maybe a couple of games to get the rules, but can now play the full rules fairly competitively and really without any help. I've been avoiding blocking her routes so far, but I'm going to start soon :D

Received my latest kickstarter game "Etherfields" on thursday from same people who made tainted grail (which i reviewed in here a while back) my favourite game of 2019.

This game is a different theme but still has an apocalyptic gothic kind of feel to it.

the gist is you're a "dreamer" and that's all you really know. you wander around the dreamworld (bottom map tiles in plastic holder) and enter in and out of slumbers (mini encounters with entities which you have to overcome) and finding keys to enter into the bigger episodic dreams, each of which is a self contained "dreamscape" with its own story, rules and goals. as you progress you unlock more of the main storyline, new game mechanics and items. most of the game is interacting with story points on the map tiles which refer you to a story book which has a bit of a choose your own adventure kind of vibe.

on top of that you have some light deckbuilding, hand and resource management and some puzzle solving.

it's a coop game so all players (1-4, 5 with expansion) work together, I'm playing it solo with 1 character and it's very well paced, playing with more you each take turns performing main actions and a number of smaller actions until you all pass before the turn card triggers an effect and ticks down the number of turns remaining to solve the dream/slumber before something bad probably happens. i think it would be fun with a group but with a lot of moving parts it's only for groups who like to juggle lots of things at once and discuss everything as a group to make decisions.

picking up the game has been pretty slow going as the rule book only covers the main themes and there's a lot introduced on top of that but 3 main dreams in (0f 33 total plus 2 future expansions coming next year with more) and it's really quite good. should hopefully have enough in the box to keep me entertained up to christmas.

That looks complicated...

Has anyone played Root?

Looks like a lot of effort went into making that game.

Would Jaipur be enjoyable for a six-year-old?
Any other recommendations for this age would be much appreciated!

I had Root and all the expansions but Leder Games and I just don't seem a good fit so I got rid of it practically unplayed recently.

The game has quite a high barrier to entry as all the characters are asymmetrical so everyone is playing a slightly different kind of game with different rules and strategies so teaching it is hard if you've not played all the factions already and understanding the necessary strategies to win requires additional plays to pickup.

When getting ready to play it solo against the AI player I would always have lost the interest in playing by the time it had been setup as it just seemed like a lot to keep on top of (which given what I just posted I'm playing may tell you something). I ordered all the expansions as they were planning on improving the AI and expanding it to include other factions controllable by the AI so you could play against multiple opponents which I thought might fix my doubts but in the interim I played and sold 2 other Leder Games titles (Vast) because of how badly they played against the AI so I wasn't interested in trying anymore when they finally arrived.

With the right group (and by that I mean a serious group willling to play through a few times before it might click at all) I imagine it can be fun but if you're looking for something to pull out for a fun game night it's not going to be smooth sailing.

I didn't pay much attention to it myself but maybe look up their latest game Oath on kickstarter, it's ended now but it'll give you enough info about the game to see if it's worth trying to pickup when it hits retail (which it will). it certainly had a lot of buzz around it during the KS campaign but as 2+ player game it wasn't on my radar.

Isle of cats is worth a look. The family mode is for ages 8+ but with some help I think a 6yo could pick it up.

the game revolves around rescuing cats onto your boat before the bad guy arrives in 5 days (rounds).

the cats are all polyomino tiles with different colours, you take turns selecting cats from the random assortment pulled from the bag each round and you score points based on their placement and grouping at the end of the game.

it's a fun tetris'y style puzzle which is simple but the "proper" version adds some extra game mechanics to give it plenty of strategy and meat on its bones when not playing with the kids.

there's also an online play version where you can remotely print out boats from a pdf and play with others by showing the game pieces on a webcam and they fill out their boats with coloured pens. works much better than you'd expect and supports any number of players.

Family Rules if you wanted to see how complicated it is:
http://thecityofkings.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/TIOC-Family-Release-v1.0.pdf

Cheers man much appreciated!

Anyone recommend a good 2 player (minimum) card game? Sort of like battles / collecting type of thing.

Dominion,
7 Wonders (or the Duel variant),
Keyforge
Smash Up!

Or you could buy my Netrunner collection off me, because although Netrunnet is the best game of all time, I'm realistically never going to get to play it again, and would prefer if someone else got the pleasure.

Not come across netrunner. How much you after?

Netrunner is meant to be amazing and is out of print now so worth jumping on that if you like the sound of it.

I play a lot of a game called keyforge which is 2 player. each deck is programmatically generated from a pool of cards and no two decks are identical. plays in about 30 minutes.

I was just having a tidy up in my keyforge cupboard and i have way too much stuff so i've set aside a dozen random opened but still sealed decks and some unpunched token sheets I have from various kits i've opened over time which is all you need to play and enough to keep you occupied through xmas easily. If you're interested call it a tenner to cover p&p and a cup of coffee for my troubles and i'll pop them in the post for you.

Shut up and sit down do a decent balanced review of the game here:
https://youtu.be/rRYst-Roqsg

Yeah ok, sling us the PayPal address and I'll send it over. Thanks

Anyone have a suggestion for a zoom murder mystery?

I've been playing the Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective series over Zoom and it's been excellent.