Boulder Games had Space Alert. Funagain might have had it too. Keep an eye on those sites if you are still interested in the game.
Perfect timing - Rio Grande just announced Space Alert’s making it to the States really soon ;)
Doom is great don’t believe the hype about Descent. Doom is much better with the expansion so if you like the base game at all I highly recommend the expansion.
Here are the games I own. shieldwolf | User Collection | BoardGameGeek
If you’re looking for good card games, Dominion hands down is great fun and full of depth. Race for the galaxy is another great game. Both play up to 4 as the base games.
A great 2 player game I just discovered that’s very easy to play and teach is CIA vs KGB. It’s got a great theme and is compact good for travel.
If you’re looking for coop. I would suggest Shadows over Camelot or Battlestar Galactica if you like the show. Pandemic or SPACE ALERT if you can find it, or the recent Red November (don’t be put off by the size or look of this game) it’s a great coop game.
Some of my favorite games in no particular order are
FFG’s WAR OF THE RING
LOUIS XIV
MYKERINOS
DOMINION
AVE CAESAR (great screw the other players chariot race game)
CASH N GUNS (best party game ever)
STONE AGE
PILLARS OF EARTH
HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER.
ARE YOU KIDDING!!!
I just bought it online. MF!!
Oh well my came with glass pieces for what that’s worth.
Finally- I’ve been checking Funafain and Boulder every day for weeks now. I actually got my copy of Planet Steam from Boulder- I had gone there because they supposedly had copies of SA. By the time I got there, SA was gone, but PS was still in stock. They were gone, too, in less than a few hours.
April, huh? Can’t come soon enough!
If you’re fond of Puerto Rico, Race for the Galaxy is a great game, and multiple games of it can be played in an hour.
Also, Android is not quite like Arkham Horror, as you are playing both the Detective and the Director. The players have hidden cards that say Suspect X is guilty and Suspect y is innocent. As they gather evidence, they put it on the various suspects so that they get the victory points at the end of two weeks. The goal of the game is to outscore the other players at the end, not just play a game of clue. It’s very nice set of mechanics.
Funagain has Planet Steam right now if you hurry. Only $125. (!!!)
With drilling out the stands a little to make the pieces fit more smoothly and sorting your stuff away in little compartmentalized boxes…yes you can get the set up down to 15 mins, easy. Less for most scenarios.
Clean up then becomes longer though if fastidious sorting is your answer for the need for quick play :)
There is a price to be paid for cool terrain and plastic fun. That’s the way it is.
Civilization (plus Expansions) and M:tG
Planet Steam already sold out at Funagain.
Yeah- like I said, it’s rare and sought after, so I think I could unload my copy on the bgg marketplace for most of what I piad for it ($110 at Boulder). I was really excited to play becuase of the M.U.L.E. connection, but while that’s definitely there, it really isn’t a game I can see myself playing very often. I like it, and am good at it (I’ve won 2/3 games), but…
And now copies of Space Alert are popping up on the BGG marketplace. Do I pay what will probably be an extra 30 dollars now, or do I wait the two months? Hm. Decisions, decisions.
World in Flames… just kidding.
Hero Quest: Yeah, it’s the Games Workshop (made by Miton Bradley) kiddie version of Warhammer or Morheim or D&D, whatever you want to call it, but it introduced me into non-classic board games and started me on fantasy gaming.
Puerto Rico: One of the best econo-strategy games out there. Lots of fun when you’re smashed.
Settlers of Catan: Another great econo-strategy game, but not as fun as PR.
Battle Masters: Kiddie version of Warhammer. Tons of fun when you’re 8 or 30 years old. Stupid cannon.
Apples To Apples: Not a boardgame, but drunk or not it never gets old.
Twilight Imperium: I’ve brought people to tears in this stupid game. It’s Fantasy Flight and it’s fun, but there is a following in it that is just fanatical. If you ever play anyone that knows what they’re doing and only plays to win, it’s not worth playing. Other than than, great game.
Throwing in a reccomendation for Age of Gods which is a great world conquering game with a lot of player to player interaction and a few fun twists on the game type. Players basically assume the role of gods and have several fantasy races that they want to see win. The biggest twist is that nobody knows who wants which races to win and players can give orders to any of the races on the board.
Of course, I haven’t played it since I was 8, but I doubt my tastes have changed much since then.
These threads are dangerous, there are just so many interesting-sounding games. I generally like the games from Fantasy Flight, but I am a bit wary of aquiring Android since it sounds like the screw factor is just too big. I am intrigued by how the game seems to have different “modes” depending on what type of case the players are trying to solve.
My current favorites include:
Agricola
A simulation of 17th century farming in Germany might sound boring, but this is a great resource/action management game. The possibility of someone getting a very unbalanced combination of cards with too great synergy is present, but in my experience it is not a huge issue. Dealing everyone 9 or 10 cards of each type and letting them keep 7 of each is an okay fix that gives everyone a bigger chance of getting better synergy.
Royal Palace
Try this game! You place and maneuver servants in the royal palace in order to recruit nobles to your cause. If I ever get into boardgame publishing, I’ll buy this gem of a game and reskin it as a cold war spy/espionage game. A lot of interesting choices to make, and randomized game boards that give excellent replayablility. The major drawbacks for the game are the atrocious choice of colors for seals and a somewhat counter-intuitive placement of the scoring fields in the garden.
The Princes of Florence
An interesting auction-based game. Don’t try too hard to plan the optimal placement of stuff in your domain; go play Tetris if that’s your thing. The game has a nice balance between planning how to optimize what you can get from the cards you’ve been dealt and adapting to what the other players do since you can’t reliably get everything you want.
Caylus
I still like this, especially after discovering that it actually works well with two players. Sadly, some of the choices and strategies are just worse than others, but it’s not as bad as Puerto Rico (which I also like, just not as much) in that regard. We’ve tried playing with the favor track giving 1-1-2-2-3 prestige points, but we haven’t played it enough with that modification to see if it is a workable solution to the prestige-favor grab tactic.
Dominion
I like how each game can have a very different feel, and it’s fun to play successive games with the looser replacing the decks they don’t like. I prefer playing with at least two or three attack cards in order to have some interaction. Try playing with a lot of attack kingdom cards and no Moat if you haven’t; it’s a fun variation. Also remember that you can Remodel a Curse card to an Estate :)
Stephenson’s Rocket
This game is really all about how to intimidate your friends to leave you alone, cleverly disguised as a game about developing the railways of Great Britain. This is a game that I have trouble optimizing in, which might be why it intrigues me. Try it if you can get hold of a copy.
Shogun (Not the one also called Samurai Swords)
The board might remind of Risk, and you attack provinces neighbouring yours - and luckily that’s where the similarities end. A clever game where you need to balance conquest with the gathering of rice to supply your provinces and developing and protection your core regions. Combat is resolved by throwing armies represented by cubes into the magical™ tower, which provides easy and somewhat balanced random. If you are on the lookout for an excellent wargame that isn’t a dicefest or a 4+ hour event, try this game.
A couple of people expressed some interest in Here I Stand. It’s apparently very playable via email through Cyberboard. Would folks be interested in a Qt3 game?
I tried Caylus yesterday and I gotta say I liked it a lot. Interesting decisions and opportunities to mess with others are things I like in a boardgame.
I definitely do not recommend Shadows over Camelot - I have the same issue in that its choices are far too constrained and not very exciting to begin with, plus the only time I’ve ever won it was accomplished by a degenerate strategy involving deliberately acquiring bad (black) swords for the Round Table. We already had all the white swords we’d need to win and it was going to be far, far harder to complete that table by generating more white swords than to let it fill up with black. Especially before one of the loss conditions kicked in.
Also, don’t get the World of Warcraft Adventure Boardgame - easily confused with the World of Warcraft Boardgame - it’s far less fun.
I do heartily recommend several things other people have brought up - Arkham Horror, Talisman, Agricola, WoW: The Boardgame, Race For The Galaxy, etc. And I am also very fond of some others, such as certain older Steve Jackson Games - Hacker (wherein you try to build up chains of accounts on various internet systems, preferably root accounts to get you bonuses in acquiring more) and Illuminati (where your goals vary, but you are typically wanting to develop a web of conspiracies under your ultimate control as part of the process - in practice very different from Hacker, but there’s a certain degree of commonality in the underlying mechanic.).
Or Cosmic Encounter - which involves conflicts over planets between alien races, each with a single rulebreaking power. Of course, I prefer a variant where each player picks a power out of a small random handful and then passes another one on to another player, thus generating two powers per player but hopefully no enormously abusive synergies. One power just isn’t exciting enough for me.
And then there’s the Tales of the Arabian Nights, which should have a reprint coming out one of these days, but I’ve been playing the original 80s version. There -are- ways to win the game, but it’s usually not something anyone actively strives towards because the whole point is to have crazy adventures, generated from a paragraph book based on random dice rolls, card draws, and your choice of reaction and available skills. Complete with a wide variety of exciting status effects. My favorite combination would probably be Imprisoned (which roots you in place and requires you to encounter a random hunchback off Table C every turn until you’re freed) and Envious (which requires you to pick Rob as your encounter reaction whenever it’s available - and every hunchback on table C can be robbed. doesn’t usually get you out of jail, though.). Though it was also pretty hilarious when after a string of horrible luck while lost, my insane, crippled, diseased beggar became vizier of a local city.
I had so much fun with Descent last weekend with my son and my friends that I am ordering the first two expansions for it for the next time we play!
Also, I just played Prophecy with my son this weekend for the first time. It’s charming and fun, though I’m not sure it’s better than Talisman (just different). Very fun way to kill a few hours on a Sunday afternoon though, for sure.
The reprint has been pushed back like fifty times. Last I heard, it was going to be around April, if we’re lucky.