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Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2019 10:06 pm
by MrNovember
Nerd post alert!

I remember a few years ago when I used to think of board games as somewhat a somewhat childish past time; something to do when the family gets together at grandma's house. And it was always Monopoly or Clue. But, there's definitely been some sort of renaissance the past few years. For us, it started with Settlers of Catan. Then the Farming Game and Ticket to Ride. Now we have a small bookcase full!

Our favourites lately are:
Betrayal at House on the Hill - horror based survival game with huge replay value. I absolutely love it. We played it with friends a few weekends ago and my girlfriend just bought me the standard and Legacy editions for my birthday. Only downside is that it's best played with 5 people
Dominion - a strategy based deck building game. Also has a ton of replay value. We just got the Adventures extension and it completely changed the game with some really cool new mechanics
Seven Wonders - another deck building game. Definitely played best with a bunch of people, but it has a 2-player variation that can be fun too
Binding of Isaac: Four Souls - if you've played the video game, you'll love the card game
Ticket to Ride: Rails and Sails - a classic that we can play over and over again

Anyone else into board games? What are your favourites/recommendations?

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2019 12:24 am
by odontophobia
We have played a lot of Dominion which we love.

We enjoy Catan and another game similar to it. Kingdom Builder maybe.

Pandemic is fun.

Also, not a board game but we really like rumikub.

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2019 1:34 am
by Benn Roe
I own a board game shop, actually, and I'm a big gamer in general. Right now I'm really digging Spirit Island and Photosynthesis. The former is sort of a reverse Catan, in that it's a cooperative game where everyone plays a nature spirit and you all work together to protect your island from colonizers. Mind you, it's a little rulesier than Catan and doesn't play anything like it, but thematically it's an interesting mirror. Photosynthesis is a really fun game where you try to grow trees better than everyone else by trying to better capitalize on exposure to light and soil fertility. It's better than it sounds, and really beautiful.

Other games you guys might want to check out are Carcassonne, Citadels, and Splendor. They're some of my go-tos that are still easy enough to teach to muggles. Again, none of them are super exciting thematically, but they're all super fun games. I like Smash Up a lot too, but it can be a little frustratingly unbalanced at times.

Man, there's too many great games out there. For heavier stuff, the Battlestar Galactica game is a phenomenal semi-coop game, and Dead of Winter's another great one (with a zombie apocalypse theme, no less). For deck-builders, check out Star Realms and Mystic Vale. Tokaido's really fun, Scythe is great, Power Grid, Robo Rally, etc., etc. I could go on all day.

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2019 1:42 am
by 3205
My wife and I really like co-op games. We're just scratching the surface here, but we're fans of XCOM and Hogwarts Battle.

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2019 2:10 am
by MrNovember
Pandemic is great! If you're at all into co-op games, I'd highly recommend it! We started off with the normal version and have gotten to a point where we can sometimes beat it on the hardest difficulty (that's actually a pretty great achievement; the first few times we played it were pretty brutal!). We ended up getting the Legacy version on a whim and it has been amazing; probably some of the best gaming experience we've had. We really love the evolving rule set and the built in story line. I'm really excited to start Betrayal Legacy. I was immediately hooked when we played Betrayal, so the Legacy version will be even better!

I've heard great things about Photosynthesis and want to try that one out. We've played Carcassonne and Power Gird, both of which are great games too

Kingdom Builder sounds pretty cool too. We'll have to check that out next time we're at a board game cafe.

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2019 3:46 am
by coldbrightsunlight
I love board games!

I had a game group doing pandemic legacy that collapsed just as it was getting really interesting.. love the game though.

Betrayal is one of my favourites for sure.

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2019 12:44 pm
by sears
I really appreciate some of the recommendations on this thread. My kids are playing Cosmic Encounter in the basement right now. It's my favorite game. Carcassone is truly a strategy game.

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2019 4:07 pm
by Benn Roe
I love Cosmic Encounter.

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Sun Jul 21, 2019 9:25 pm
by MrNovember
So recently a friend of mine brought Terraforming Mars over and I loved it so much that I instantly bought it and two of the expansions. I'm actually really excited to try out the game solo too. I find it pretty interesting to have solo mechanics in a board game; I didn't even realize that was a thing! So I was looking up a few others that have a solo mechanic and saw Scythe and Gloomhaven, both of which I've heard of, but never really looked into. Scythe is definitely at the top of my list of next games to buy.
3205 wrote:My wife and I really like co-op games. We're just scratching the surface here, but we're fans of XCOM and Hogwarts Battle.
We played Hogwarts Battle with some of our friends the other day and my girlfriend (a huge Harry Potter fan) had to buy it as well. It was pretty fun, but it doesn't seem to have as much replay ability as some other games

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2019 3:32 pm
by Disarm D'arcy
OOUUUH CONVENIENT BUMP

Really been getting into board games lately and I've started a small collection of good stuff that I've added to the few board games I played when I was younger that belonged to me and not my brother :
  • Ticket to ride Europe
  • 7WONDERS
  • MONOPOLY GAME OF THRONES (I always choose the wolf, get used to it)
  • Carcassonne + the princess and dragon edition
  • BANG - The Walking Dead
  • Rush Hour
  • SKULL
I'm looking to grow the collection with collaborative games such as This War Of Mine or Pandemic. I'm really enjoying 7WONDERS and Carcassonne so these are getting some expansion packs. And I have a couple bigger games marked down for when the holidays come around because I'm that much of a nerd such as SCYTHE or Terraforming Mars or UBOOT. Tried UBOOT in my local shop and I was blown away by the depth of it (sick pun).

I've also gotten back into game books, did you guys play the Fighting Fantasy series and the like? It's been so much fun revisiting the ones I played way back.

Looking forward to nerding in this thread :zen:

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2019 3:49 pm
by MrNovember
We have the Cities expansion for 7 Wonders and I'd highly recommend it. It adds another player, a few more interesting rules like diplomacy, and overall increases the amount of interaction between players.

We also bought Skull awhile ago. It's such a simple but fun game!

I'd be curious to try and list out all of the games we've got stashed away. Might try to give that a shot sometime. Will post the results when I do

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2019 3:51 pm
by Disarm D'arcy
I was looking at the Armada extension. Because ships.

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2019 4:12 pm
by MrNovember
Armada looks pretty interesting too. Adds a whole new mechanic, whereas Cities really just adds more cards

Ended up being able to list most of our games from memory:
7 Wonders
7 Wonders: Cities
Bears vs Babies
Betrayal at House on the Hill
Betrayal Legacy
Binding of Isaac: 4 Souls
Binding of Isaac: 4 Souls +
Cards Against Humanity
Dominion
Dominion: Adventures
Exploding Kittens
Exploding Kittens: NSFW
Exploding Kittens: Imploding Kittens
Harry Potter: Clue
Harry Potter: Codenames
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle
Joking Hazard
Mindjob
Pandemic
Pandemic Contagion
Pandemic Legacy Season 1
Pandemic Legacy Season 2
Rick and Morty Total Rickall
Settlers of Catan
Settlers of Catan: 5-6 Player Expansion
Settlers of Catan: Cities and Knights
Skull
Spot It
Telestrations After Dark
Terraforming Mars
Terraforming Mars: Hellas and Elysium
Terraforming Mars: Prelude
Throw Throw Burrito
Ticket to Ride: Rails and Sails

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2019 6:16 pm
by VREEEEVROOOOOW
Posting here mostly to remember to keep up with this thread. I've played *a lot* of board games. My favourite by far is Eldritch Horror. Preferably without any board expansions. (The other expansion packs are nice though.)

Re: Anyone into BOARD GAMES?

Posted: Thu Jul 25, 2019 2:28 pm
by nogodsnobedtimes
My wife and I play a lot of Betrayal and Ticket to Ride with her friends. Super fun games. At work we've been playing a lot of Secret Hitler and Codenames during lunch, which has been hilarious.

If anyone has Tabletop Sim on Steam you can get all sorts of games to play online, which is convenient when your group chat ends up on the topic of table top gaming but everyone lives in different places now.