Guillotine is actually a game that the kids and I can get my wife to play with us. She loves trivia and word games, but doesn’t have the desire to sit and listen to a two hour rules explanation, so I tend to look for games that we can jump in and play fairly quickly, or else stuff sits on the shelf unplayed. I also gather 7 Wonders is pretty easy to pick up.
7 Wonders takes a few minutes to explain but it doesn’t really kick in until the game ends and you do the scoring. Fortunately it’s a pretty quick game and once people see how the points add up at the end it’s easy enough to convince them to try a second time because now they have ideas about how they want to approach it.
PeterK
3283
I recently played 7 Wonders with some people who had never played it before and I was surprised by how frustrated they were playing for the first time. It wasn’t that the mechanics of the game were hard to understand, but that they had no idea what were good choices to make.
Yeah. In that case I’d probably lay out a bunch of cards in front of me as a theoretical end game state and just show them how I’d score that. That’s what I tend to do with stuff like Kinizia games where the scoring is a little bit of a math challenge.
I’m VERY excited to get my hands on the new Talisman expansion, Dragons. I have all the expansion for the latest version of Talisman and it’s just the most fun board game we have right now, consisently getting 4 or 5 games in on a weekend when I get the boys down for some gaming fun. Dragon should be out in time for our next outing, so I’m saving up for it.
Is there a quick writeup somewhere like BGG where a five minute rundown of the rules can be found? My attention span may just be shot, but after dicking around with the tutorial in the iPad app I shut it down and played Carcassonne instead since I already knew the rules to that one, then never went back to it.
Edit: Or even a YouTube video? I never bothered with Rolling Through the Ages for months after trying to get through the awful tutorial for it. Then one day I watched Tom Vasel do a review of it and it all made sense. Fun game, though I wish they’d update it to add AI for single player multiplayer games. (If that makes sense.) I play solitaire and enjoy myself but never really know if my score means I did well.
For Small World? Would this help?
He goes through the rules during the review (skip 6’20" in).
Wendelius
I can’t watch YouTube at work, but the moment I mentioned Tom Vasel I thought to myself ‘I bet Tom Vasel has a review on YouTube that would do a great job of explaining this to me’. So I’d be willing to be that whatever that is, it will do just dandy.
This one is from Board Games with Scott. He spends time going over the flow of play.
Tom Vasel also has a review for Dice Tower here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RQ9iI3ORig
Between the 2, you should be covered.
Wendelius
Went to my FLGS to maybe pick up Quarriors since some friends want to get together this weekend.
Discovered my FLGS isn’t very F.
Maybe I’ll head over to Cambridge tomorrow and check out Games People Play or Pandemonium.
So it’s actually a front for the new Looking Glass Studios?
Games People Play is a Hostile Local Games Store.
Pandemonium is just ridiculous in too many ways to describe quickly.
I was so frustrated with Boston’s game stores that I drove to New Hampshire to check out Myriad Games, which people praise on BGG. It deserves the praise. Awesome selection, clean and tidy, and friendly and professional service. I pray they open a store down here.
I went to Eureka in Coolidge Corner tonight. It was an Indifferent Local Games Store. Or maybe a Staffed By Two Dudes Who Were Way More Interested In Hitting On Passing Newly-Moved-In College Girls Than Selling A Guy A Game Local Games Store.
Which is too bad, cos back when it was located in the same building as Brookline Moviesmith (or Videosmith? Whatever. RIP.) the guy who owned it was in all the time and he was one enthusiastic fellah.
Since they moved out of the Garage something like four years ago I’ve actually only made it over to pop into Pandemonium two or three times and every visit has resulted in me slowly backing out, hands held up, palms out, hoping I could make it to my car.
Reldan
3294
It’s not simply due to card count that I call it a 2 player game. As for a multiplayer variant to the game, I prefer the one I created which to date is the highest upvoted multiplayer system for the game on BGG: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/580081/multiplayer-glory-points-variant
However, I’ll be the first to acknowledge that it’s a bit clunky. The issue at hand is that all multiplayer variants for Warhammer:Invasion are clunky because the game simply was not designed with multiplayer in mind. AGoT was, and therein lies the significant difference between kludge and good design.
Wow, I didn’t connect the dots to see that was yours. It definitely incorporates the best ideas I’ve seen for multiplayer, and I appreciate you (and others) doing this sort of work, but the cards just can’t handle it unless you’re really careful about only allowing those that don’t break the multiplayer system. This gets more difficult with each expansion release, and I frankly don’t see the point when, as you mention, there are LCG’s like AGOT available that are designed specifically for multiplayer.
That said, kudos for coming up with something so elegant and clever.
Lorini
3296
Wow, Games People Play is still open? For awhile in the late 80‘s/early 90’s it was the only place in the US that imported European games. I used to talk to the owner all the time. Her prices were insane of course, but so was importing German games through London.
Just wondering if anyone has any experience with Merchants and Murauders?
Dean
3298
I once asked if they had a copy of We the People in Games People Play and I was told that it was out of print, but if I wanted to waste my time I could try looking back in the wargames section, but don’t waste his time asking him to look anywhere.
Fuck Games People Play.
I love Pandemonium even though I don’t like talking to the employees (although I’ve also been mistaken for an employee, but that’s what happens when you’re a fat, bald guy wearing a “13th Annual Classic Videogames Tournament” black t-shirt).
Our weirdest day at Pandemonium was when we were playing Arkham Horror and the employee who we came to call the Arkham Nazi would shout rules clarifications across the room at us. Whenever he thought we were going astray, he would bark the rule at us, and we’d thank him, abashed.
There used to be a game store in Malden that was really good (and big), but I can’t find it on google now, and there’s another one all the way out in Westborough called The Wiz that has a front that’s a gift shop (like the Hallmark kind) that keeps them in business, but in back there are board games and even a gaming area.
Mr_Popov
3299
Recommend me a boardgame!
I have a group of friends (5-6 of us regularly) who have been dabbling in Role-playing games. We started with D&D 4e, then tried World of Darkness before going back to D&D 4e, then back to WoD: Mage and now we are kinda struggling with that.
The problem we have with RPGs is that our group dynamic just doesn’t flow well in my experience. So much of our gaming time is spent goofing off, cracking one-liners, and basically trying to play our character as the biggest bad-ass possible. I am very quickly burning out with it and I suspect about 2 others are as well. We have a decent selection of boardgames at our disposal between us. I own Agricola, Illuminati Deluxe Edition, Ticket to Ride Marklin, Guillotine, and Twilight Struggle (obviously only 2-player so it doesn’t have much of a chance). Additionally I have a friend who owns Arkham Horror, Castle Ravenloft, and Age of Conan. However, we have one player who is dead set against boardgames. The reason he gives is that his ex-girlfriend (and both of his babies’ mother, so lots of baggage there) was into them, and now the thought of them repulses him. He insists we keep trodding along with WoD despite the GM being one of the people getting burned out a bit.
I guess this is turning into less of a “recommend me a boardgame” and more of a rant, but I guess I was hoping for coming up with a game that you all think this player might be more inclined to like. I would have thought Arkham Horror would be a hit, but it just seems to make a few players very frustrated with the mythos cards always setting us back, and that tends to sour the mood as they complain and whine.
I feel really frustrated because I love boardgames and with the huge variety out there these days, there has got to be something we can really get into instead of trudging through this World of Darkness campaign that just is really feeling like a waste of 4 hours every week.
I have recently gotten onto AH with a couple of friends and honestly the harder the Mythos cards screw you over the better the games tend to be. AH is a bit dry when it all runs smoothly (think Far Cry 2).
Just tell your friends to stop being whiny little bitches and man up. ;) (I actually recommend those exact words)
