1987

My girlfriend and I just played our first game of Spirit Island. I enjoyed it (I think she did too - she said she did), but we also got absolutely clobbered. :)

1988

Depending on what you’re both into, something like Pandemic Legacy could be great. Or the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. Hard to pin down without more info really.

1989

Hogwarts Battles is a good coop deck building game with variable challenge settings. My wife and I really like it.

Of course the Harry Potter theme will likely make it either a ‘must buy’ or an ‘ill pass’. It is a good game, shockingly so since the developer is USAopoly. Yes, that one. The one that you e inevitably gotten gifted multiple themed monopoly sets from, since that one family member knows you’re into board games.

We also love the one shot escape room games, Exit being the best but Unlock having some fantastic offerings as well. Likewise things like Time Stories or Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective are also co-op.

1991

Regular Pandemic (not Pandemic Legacy) is a great place to start if you’re new to modern boardgaming. Accessible, clever, and reasonably priced.

1992

I would recommend Flash Point over Pandemic. I feel like they have similar approaches but Flash Point has more variety, replay value and theme. YMMV.

1993

I also prefer Flash Point over Pandemic for the same reasons that malkav mentioned. This is quite a bit of variety in the different boards and different abilities of the players.

1994

I just got it, has anyone played ‘Who goes there?’ board game yet? This is a game about the Thing, but based on the book. This feels more like the Thing game that I was waiting for. Its initially a cop-op game that turns into a paranoia trip as taking certain actions can cause you to draw V-cards(which means you may get infected), which mean you become infected, if you do get infected your job/goal is now to infect other players.

You start out trying to survive in the artic base, and must co-operate to get things done, including bunking with someone every night for safety. However, once people get infected teaming up to get things done means you can become infected as well. So it is an interesting twist as a game mechanic to create paranoia.

Just wondering now that its hit stores if anyone else has played it?

1995

Also played Western Legends this weekend with some Qt3ers this weekend and had a great time. Definitely the best game Ive played about the old west since AH Gunslinger :) Open world game where you can play as a miner, card shark, sherrif, cattle herder/rustler or outlaw and of course gun fights at High noon :) Enjoyed it a lot!

1996

Wife and I went to the game store to try some titles for us to buy for our nieces and nephews. Not all brand new but had some fun times trying them out.

Dragonwood The big winner of the night. We are looking at this for our youngest niece to play with her siblings. The push your luck of picking fights, statistics of knowing dice rolls and balance of building your engine versus going for points was a nice challenge but still simple to teach.

REEF Imagine a sequel to Azul. So many of the rules and mechanisms reminded me of Azul. However, I liked this one a lot more and my wife really would rather play Azul, so very mixed. I liked the picking cards, but the cards when played do two things, choose your coral to place, but also give you a scoring pattern. This means you are often building a hand with patterns but need to balance with cards that will give you the coral required. The big downside for me was the very low level of interaction with other players. It really felt like multiple solitaire games.

Forbidden Sky Wow, I was excited by the rocket and components in this one. It is the third in the Forbidden series, (Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert). It is a co-op that is really more solitaire like. I didn’t like it though, the requirement to find platform pieces, lay them out, build wires and components and do it all in the time frame with all the lightning and wind knocking you around made it very hard to actually plan or strategize. And again no need for co-op, even less since no geography to even converse about .

Finally, we decided to play a game just for us. Letters from Whitechapel because I thought it would be fun for her to be Jack the Ripper. The rules said the most experienced player should be Jack though, so she chose to play the 5 detectives. She did not enjoy this that way. I think it was too much to deal with the 5 detectives and no one to bounce theories off of as well. I think it would still work, but have her play Jack next time.

1997

I’ve played this a couple times with my 6yo and it’s worked well. If you come across anything else in this mold, please let me know!

1998

Not sure if this is the best thread to mention it. I have a auction going on at board game geek. Anyone picks anything up let me know you are a member here and Ill give 10% off your total

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/247682/college-tuition-sale-big-trouble-little-china-sedi

1999

Played a new game last night, Archmage. You move your guy around a randomized hex map, exploring (flipping) the hexes, then dropping off followers to control the hexes (which basically give you income, but also end-game VPs). You also need to use your (limited) followers to learn spells (which is an action some of the map spaces give you). There are 6 basic spells (represented by 6 colors in a wheel); then you can promote your followers that are in adjacent spaces on the wheel to learn a 2nd level spell (of which there are 6, one for each combination of two adjacent colors); then you can do the same again to learn a 3rd level spell (six of those as well).

Basically you are managing your resources (‘relics’ in each of the six colors) which you need to learn spells and cast them; and your followers (which you need to control spaces and learn spells), and trying to maintain board control for end-game points, because the other players can come and kill your followers. You also get points for knowing spells at the end. The game is a fixed number of turns.

Overall pretty good. It has a bit of a downtime problem, since it is hard to plan your turn ahead of time (the board changes too much), and the last turn is particularly brutal in this regard. Still, an interesting game, would play again. We played with 3 players. It supports four, but… I might stick to 3 if possible.

2000

2 player game was great. That said, we played it wrong, more a tracking thing then gameplay. It was very tight and competitive but felt like you could go in different directions. REMEMBER YOU NEED BEER!

2001

David,
Haven’t played WGT yet, but did play The Thing at Outpost blah blah blah. Both games seem very similar with WGT spending more gameplay into creating suspicion that you are the thing with the bunk mechanic. I was excited about WGT especially after playing the other one, but… and it’s a big but, both games come down to a vote of who get’s in the helicopter. WGT adds a dice roll which sounds even worse. Also WGT is a longer game. There are some comments on BGG and Tom V has a review, but I wasn’t overly impressed. Which is a shame, because it looks so so so pretty.

Question for you about Western Legend. Have you played Merchants and Marauders? It sounds like it is a light version of that, but cowboys. It almost sounds like it might be too light. Were the decisions you make meaningful? My concern is that the game is too light and at the end of the day my group will want to just play M&M

2002

Ive not played M&M (not for lack of interest!) but I will say that this did not feel light. Plenty of thematic choices, and the poker card draw mechanic is inspired. It certainly lends a tactical element that I appreciated.

Each of the three players took a different approach, however not all abilities seemed equally good, though this may have been lack of experience and not playing with personal objectives and a few other things probably contributed.

We didn’t use all of the options either. Nobody did any mining, cattle rustling was not enabled, playing poker or the cabaret were limited, though very profitable, actions.

There is a lot to like, and I think it has an interesting mechanical approach that feels very thematic. Overall I’d say it’s an appropriately weighted game.

2003

Well it’s on my list. I’m trying to trade for it so here’s hoping.

2004

M&M has a little more meat to it, but you always seem to have interesting choices to make in Western Legends, actually WL feels a little more open than M&M IMO.

The one thing we did wrong was you are not supposed to get your character abilities till you’ve earned your first star!. Whooops!:)

2005

Wait, what?!

That’s huge, I don’t know that it impacts the outcome, though given your bandit vacuum cleaner service, it may have.

I think a rematch is in order. Get a 4 player game even, and see how it shakes out.

2006

Young fella, put on your sitting britches! If you’re looking for trouble, I’ll accommodate ya! ;)

2007

Hey, why didn’t anybody tell me there was such a thing as Axis & Allies & Zombies? This looks awesome! I like that it also seems to add a time limit to the game, those games could drag on.