low barrier to entry favorites
Ingenious! (2-4p)-tile color matching, deceptively simple, really ups the buddy-fuckage with four players and is really easy to teach.
Lost Cities (2p): really easy to teach, borrow some superficially similar mechanics from solitaire, but again adds that Knizia detached screw the other guy twist.
Mr Jack (2p): slightly more complex than the other two, great theme (Jack The Ripper) adapted to deduction gameplay.
[B]Hive /B: One of my favorite games. Evokes an excellent sort of analysis paralysis in people as they agonize around the next step. It’s a highly asymmetrical encounter based game that looks a bit like dominos and plays a bit like chess, but has no coherent resemblance to either. Learn it in like 2 minutes, and the mandatory overpriced expansion (7$ for 2 additional pieces) even felt worthwhile.
[B]Pandemic /B: seemed bland at first, but once we got past the rookie version of the game, it’s actually pretty fun. All coop gameplay means that it’s one that you want to run a short demo game first and then actually start once people know what they are doing (more or less), because otherwise they will fall into a groove of following. Once you are playing blind to each others cards and doing your best to talk through an outbreak, it’s excellent.
[B]Dominion /B: Don’t own it but I like a lot of what I’ve played. Rotating decks, asymmetrical player strategies in collision, and very easy to pick up and play.
More involved:
Agricola (2-5p?): People will disagree with this and claim it’s a great intro boardgame. I don’t think so, I think it’s got a lot of details, setup, and other stuff that makes it a little daunting vs the above. It’s a good time once you get it going, I just find it hard to be interested in the theme connections you are supposed to be using to handle the gameplay mechanics. Basically ,I don’t like farming, but I can still enjoy the mechanics.
Galaxy Trucker (2-4p): Build your own spaceship in a somewhat frantic draw session, gather yourself, and launch that piece of crap through space in order to try and get as much stuff from point a to b intact. The game scales nicely as you get to know it better, and has a really great nerd gratification quotient that can be very seductive, even for those in denial. Here, have a bonafide nerd explain it to you.
Arkham Horror: You’ve already got that right. I loved the base game, or thought I did, but Dunwich Horror is a fantastic expansion. The scalable nature of the game means you can modify difficulty level and amount of variables you want to control with little effort, particularly once you have an expansion or two to sub in and out. The setup/cleanup time is ridiculous, and the game itself can easily take most of a day with only 2-3 players. In terms of value, I would go with most of the conventional wisdom and rank the expansions like this: Dunwich, Yellow King, Kingsport, Dark Pharoah. I have not gotten the newest ones, but I would say Dunwich parts (not the board addition, which I can give or take) are absolutely essential to how I like to play the game. Nevertheless, you should be fine with the base game, there’s plenty to chew on there for a while.
[B]Neuroshima Hex /B: I like it. The new Z man version is a nicely packaged deal, with all of the requisite fidgetiness of a war theme game but little of the tedious detail rules that drive me nuts. They ruined Hammer of the Scots for me, and proved a massive barrier to even getting through a single play of Manoeuvre or Fortress America. I know they’re good games, I just can’t seem to gather the nerd critical mass for long enough to get it done when so many easier-to-explain games are available. NH is about as far as I can get down that road for now.
Still waiting on the international edition of Twilight Struggle (that will have an actual board instead of papery stuff), and I have yet to find anyone that will take me up on 1960.
Also, I buried the lead: Here’s the massive Arkham thread where lots of people contributed to me having a closet full of awesome games in no time at all.
