What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[Mars1912]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

I never thought Lords of Waterdeep needed an expansion. I think you're looking for another light Euro game, based on my sense of who you game with & what you've said. There are others, too, though I'd look for one that can play two.

You could get a few things, if you wanted:

Dominion (it would work for your group, even if it's not my personal favorite, plays 2 - 3 just as well)
Love Letter (plays 2 - 4 and is the perfect little game)
Bananagrams (very fun word-making game where it's always your turn)

The whole package might be under $50, and they're all excellent games. In my first draft of this post I had San Juan instead of Dominion, but apparently that game is out of production.

Pandemic is also a good choice if you want to give coop a try. You do not need the expansions for that game. Or, for that matter, for Dominion. You don't need an expansion for any game, really. The one game that comes closest, in my mind, is King of Tokyo. By the time you get to the point with any game where you might want the expansion, you can always choose to get something else. But all the recommendations I've seen in here are for good, solid games, our minor disagreements notwithstanding.*

As previously stated I already own Pandemic. We also have Bananagrams somewhere but I don't really want to play word games with my mom. (She is scary at scrabble) I have the app version of Lords of Waterdeep w/ expansions and I enjoy it so that is certainly an option. Still looking at Dominion.

Originally Posted by capsocrates

Personally, I think Dominion is fun without expansions. They just expand the game further. Dominion by itself lasted my wife and I 2-3 months playing it several times a day almost every day when we first got it.

Catan is also fun without any expansions, although it was originally intended to be combined with the Seafarers expansion as one game before suits split it up--the elements in Seafarers that are missing in the original game do affect game balance some, but not in such a way that you would notice until after many plays.

Good to know.

Originally Posted by Hahma

Eminent Domain is a really good game that plays well by itself without the expansion.

Eight-Minute Empire is a nice light and quick area control game.

Hanabi is a neat little game.

Coloretto is a fun game too.

Thanks for the ideas, Eminent Domain and 8-Minute Empire sound interesting.

[Gurei-Ornery]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

No doubt. I was just looking through CSI and Amazon putting together a price list for our Martian friend. I was surprised it wasn't even listed at CSI, but then I understood when it was $120 at Amazon. Weird, considering it's a small, light, quality game.

I have an unplayed copy of San Juan somewhere. I could never get anyone to try it with me. It was one of the first games I bought during my second era of boardgaming (The Rebirth). I believe I threw it into my first CSI order 6 or so years ago for free shipping and because it was rated well.

Played another scenario of Zombie 15' last night. We are strating to get into the more difficult scenarios. We got lucky by finishing just before a 15 zombie horde showed up. I am surprised how much my son likes this game. He requested playing as soon as I got home. It is a winner in my book, even if we only play through the campaign once.

[MegaSilver]

8-Minute Empire was Miniature Market's Deal of the Day for $10 but it's already sold out...

[Hahma]

Yep, that was quick.

[Ixe]

I went to the local game story for another nice board game night last night. I started with a 5-player game of Lords of Waterdeep (without expansions), which was my first time playing.

I have been keeping up my recent history of learning a game for the first time and absolutely crushing at it, though I am underplaying the amount of luck involved. In this game, my Lord gave me extra points for Skullduggery and Warfare quests so I proceeded to play small ball on those (which there were a ton of available), eventually completing another quest that gave me more points for Skullduggery quests and just feeding the beast from there. I was in third before we tallied up the extra scoring (gold, adventurers, and lords) and then just rocketed by everyone else who had earned most of their points slaving away on a few huge quests.

Overall, Lords of Waterdeep is definitely a nice, light worker placement, though I do see some of the criticism I've heard about it as compared to a game like Agricola. Basically it's not quite as "jostley" and challenging as a heavier game like Agricola can be, although you can hardly count that against it for when you're looking for something lighter.

We then played a game of Gravwell, which is a game that I absolutely recommend. I've only played it a few times now and I'm not sure how much longevity it has for a dedicated play group, but it is a fantastic opener, is easy to learn, and has some wonderful mechanics that keep the game close. The game I just played was a tense one where another player and I got out ahead of the other two and were clawing our way back and forth. I was three spaces away from the exit at the start of one round and could have potentially propelled myself through it, but I knew my opponent had a card that would get her there as well and resolve before mine. I instead jumped back behind her to ruin her play, but in our antics over hopping back and forth a first-time player came up behind us and rocketed through for the win.

Lastly we busted out my copy of Cosmic Encounters, another game that I heartily recommend. While it can at first be a little daunting, the game itself is actually not that complicated and can be taught fairly easily. With new players, I leave out some of the trickier elements like Flare Cards and just play with the most basic (green) alien races. I've played it a few times now and I've only begun to scratch the surface of all that's in the box with it's absurd number of cards and alien races that can provide all sorts of crazy combinations and new experiences for each time you play. The game has expansions on top of that, but you'd need to play the base game a ton of times before that is really you'd need those.

[caps]

I recently acquired some Mech minis. They are some kind of metal, pewter I guess, and most of them are painted. They are stamped with dates in the '80s and all of them I've looked at so far say "Ral Partha." My wife said something about them being BattleTech minis. Does anyone know anything about them? Would anyone be interested in trading for them? I'm not sure what to do with them, although they are cool.

[Tornado]

Those sound like the classic Ral Partha Battletech mechs I coveted as a teen and could never afford. I only had a few plastic mechs that came with one of the boxed sets and a bunch of cardboard stand-ups.

You might want to post over in the Mech Bay thread. Someone might be interested in those. I would like to see pics if possible.

[Taeblewalker]

Shermandavies, Chas and I played Empires of the Void. I pulled ahead very far with victory points in the mid game but they did a great job of nearly catching up to me. We used an expansion available online (I forget the name). It adds a secondary action chart and some new races and other good stuff.

Then yesterday we played Mansions of Madness. I won as the keeper. We played the Herbert West scenario that comes with the Forbidden Alchemy expansion.
After that we tried Elder Sign. Cthulhu woke up and we almost defeated him but he prevailed in the end.

[caps]

Originally Posted by Tornado

Those sound like the classic Ral Partha Battletech mechs I coveted as a teen and could never afford. I only had a few plastic mechs that came with one of the boxed sets and a bunch of cardboard stand-ups.

You might want to post over in the Mech Bay thread. Someone might be interested in those. I would like to see pics if possible.

Done. Thanks. I'll see about pictures later.

[chas]

The Empires of the Void PNP expansion Taeblewalker mentions above is Key To The Universe. I also recently found pieces for 5-6 players (units, counters, and homeworld board sections) in the Files section of the main game by a fan, which mount on cardboard perfectly fine (he provides paper surfaces for both sides, but I just did them one sided). Since they are exact copies in new colors, I'd imagine they are with the designers permission. All you need to do to use them is to remove some of the Event Cards and thereby subtract some turns from the game so it doesn't go too long (I'd say 9 turns instead of 11).

You can also find the race card for the Kickstarter extra Pirates of Cidran, and add them to your game--my FLGS copy came without it.

Ryan Laukat of his own Red Raven games has come back on the bgg board after a long time away (making more games), and says he has ideas for further developing EOV, his first and signature game. He'll be at GenCon with some kind of update (I won't be there).

By the way, the final score for the 3 Player EOV TW mentions was:

Tablewalker: 66
Sherman Davies: 63
Chas: 60

The interesting thing is that we all tried very different combos and strategies, and all proved to be competitive. Its a very fluid game. We only played until the second of three scoring periods, (it went six hours because it was their first game and my first time in a year or so). Had we moved faster and been able to continue, relative scores would have kept fluctuating. Normally its supposed to take about half an hour per player.

[Hahma]

Ryan Laukat also designed Eight-Minute Empire and Eight-Minute Empire: Legends, and he also designed and did the art for City of Iron. I have EME and CoI and think they are good games. He just got done with another kickstarter for another game I can't recall at the moment, but he seems to be on a roll.

[chas]

What are the topics of these other RL games?