Thanks all for the ideas! I’ll check them out.
Bohnanza is a game about bean farming that has a cartoon-y aesthetic but still has quite a lot of depth (it’s by Uwe Rosenberg, the designer of Agricola, if that gives an idea).
Puzzle Strike has Street Fighter style characters made cute (big heads, small bodies) that gives it a video-game-y, somewhat childish appearance. It’s definitely no joke on depth. Basically a more complicated and aggressive version of Dominion.
Bohnanza is often used as an intro game so would probably be a nice stepping stone from Ticket to Ride. Puzzle Strike is probably another step or two up in complexity. It’s also very antagonistic which can be bad for new board gamers, but might be a good next next step.
hepcat
5643
Total agreement about Puzzle Strike and King of Tokyo. I love those two and they’re very easy to learn/play.
After studying all of these on BGG, and watching some Tom Vassal videos, I ended up ordering both King of Tokyo and Forbidden Island. Coming in a close third and fourth were Puzzle Strike and Mice and Mystics.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I’ll keep the names for when her birthday rolls around.
You and your daughter will like Forbidden Island. And once she has mastered it, you can jump up to Pandemic, which is nearly identical in mechanics, but has some subtle changes that make it much tougher to beat.
Now you need to order the just-released expansion. ;-)
Would it be better to play a few games with the base game and wait on getting the expansion or is the expansion so good that it makes the base game better?
I’ve heard mixed reviews on the expansion.
hepcat
5649
The expansion to King of Tokyo is fun…but doesn’t add a whole lot to the base game. You get a chance to fire off some extra power(s) but that’s about it. I wouldn’t rush out and get it, but I can’t see any downside to adding it to the base game if you do get it.
What – no one got board games for Christmas? This thread had scrolled off the board!
KoT arrived on Christmas and we finally sat down to learn/play this morning. The learning part was easy. The playing, well, it never stopped. My wife, daughter and I played much of the afternoon and then again after dinner. A huge hit, this King of Tokyo, so thanks to the Qt3 hivemind for the recommendation.
Tomorrow we’re going to try the other new arrival, Forbidden Island.
SlyFrog
5651
Ummm, way too many. “Gifts.” That I bought for myself. Oh yeah, and for the family. Yeahhhhhh, for the family.
Got Space Empires, 1830, Lords of Waterdeep, the War of the Ring expansion, Race for the Galaxy expansions, and Claustrophobia.
I got Flash Point: Fire Rescue and Fantastiqa for myself for Christmas!
Flash Point is a co-op game about fire-fighters, and in general it plays how you would expect. It operates roughly like Pandemic, but the world is now a house and you’re trying to remove victims from the dangerous areas. Some nice mechanics. For instance, you can spend your actions hacking through walls with your axe to make passages to blocked areas. You put black cubes on walls that have been damaged (either by hacking or by fire). But if you ever run out of all the black cubes, then the building has collapsed and you lose. SO far it seems challenging, like a co-op game should be. Unless you’re allergic to co-op, I would recommend it.
Fantastiqa is a deck-building game with a charming fairy tale (or, more accurately maybe, Wonderland) setting and some wonderful nineteenth century fine art. You use cards in your starting deck (like a spatula that doubles as a sword) to capture creatures while traveling around the map to add them to your deck. Then they’re used to capture more creatures or complete quests for points. Some quirky rules, but overall high quality and fun times.
I just got Clash of Cultures. It looks very nice and appears to be a more accessible Civilization style game.
Mage Wars is a pretty awesome game…
Tactical Magic: The Gathering on a gameboard, without the shuffling (you have a spell book, and as long as you have the mana, you can choose the spell [card] to cast)
I have one copy of the core set, and a 2nd copy of the core set is due to be delivered today. The game comes with 4 mages (Wizard, Warlock, Beastmaster, Priestess), with lots of different spells (cards). The board, which is designed to look like an arena, is gorgeous, and the spell books are pretty cool to have (although, the base game only has 2, one of the reasons I bought a 2nd copy of the core set). The artwork is fantastic, the gameplay is great, and the game is just incredibly fun.
Early 2013 will see the release of an expansion that has two new mages (Forcemaster and the Warlord).
Here is the link to BGG’s page for the game:
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this one.
After a hiatus on buying games for a while, I just grabbed a few:
Pirate Dice: is basically RoboRally: the dice game. It is a little more chaotic than RR (if you can imagine that!), but plays much, much quicker. A nice little filler game.
Eclipse- Rise of the Ancients: More Eclipse! I haven’t played my copy of the expansion yet, but did a friend’s a few times with the copy she brought back from Essen. Good stuff- if you like the base game, this is just more of it- more races, more tech, more sectors, more more.
Merchant of Venus: Actually got it a few weeks ago, the new reprint of the classic. Have played the redesigned ‘streamlined’ game a couple times. Still took hours. Fun, though.
And last, but muchly anticipated Archipelago: the one that I haven’t gotten to play yet. Heavy, thematic Euro by the guy who did Dungeon Twister and Earth Reborn. Kind of a semi co-op (with possible traitor), exploration/civ-builder. Looks super interesting. My Essen-going friend actually brought this back, too, but her copy was in French, so we hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I was surprised to see it in English so quick, so I snatched it up.
I also want to grab the expansion for Mage Knight, but haven’t seen it around anywhere yet.
Over the week, I played Seasons and The Castles of Burgundy for the first time. I also got Netrunner, but haven’t played it yet.
Seasons doesn’t seem like a very interesting game (but I’ve only played it once, so I’ll need to give it more tries). It’s a competitive wizard game with hardly any player interaction. It does open with a draft which seems like the most interesting part of the game. Basically, you spend 30 minutes drafting 9 cards, then an hour playing those cards and maybe 2-4 more. Die are rolled to see which resources are available on each turn, but once you see what’s there, the decisions are all pretty simple. You’ll usually have at most 3-5 cards in your hand (often less then that), and figuring out which order to play them in doesn’t seem particularly tough. There’s some good combos between the cards that are fun to play, but it seems like the only way for another play to stop your combos is during the drafting phase (if you happen to draw a combo later, like I did, it’s a game-making moment). Overall, it seems like a highly random econ game with way too little interaction to be interesting. After playing it, my girlfriend said she’d rather be playing Puzzle Strike, so it may be hard to get it out for more play sessions.
The Castles of Burgundy, on the other hand, was really fun. I got this for my father, and while he probably can’t teach it to his friends (too complicated for them), he and my mom both enjoyed it so they plan to play 2-player in the future. The theme is exceptionally boring euro-game-y: You’re some rich guy in the 16th century trying to build a more awesome estate then all your neighbors. The moment to moment gameplay is really interesting, though. Each player rolls dice that determine which actions they can take in a turn. The number of actions per dice is usually really large, so they’re not particularly limiting. Plus, as the game goes on, it gets easier and easier to influence die to be whatever number you need. It ultimately feels a lot like Agricola where the strategy is maximizing your own board while grabbing the central shared resource your opponent needs to make a million points. There’s a lot of variety in the setup, so I imagine the game plays out quite differently each game. I don’t think I’ll buy a personal copy since it seems so similar to Agricola (which I already own), but I might change my mind on that. As soon as the game was over, my head was spinning with different strategies I wanted to try, which is always a good sign for a board game.
z22
5658
We played the new FFG Fortress America on Friday night. The rulebook made the game seem a lot more difficult than it is, and almost turned me off of the game. It wasn’t because it was too detailed, but that it was really obtuse and left a lot of seemingly simple concepts and mechanics either confusing or incomplete.
We did have a great time playing it though. Fun game, albeit an old-school you-go I-go game.
I got Kingdom Builder for Christmas and have played it a couple times now. At this early stage I really like it. The variation that different setups of victory conditions and board layouts provide should give it plenty of longevity. I’m also enjoying that, while very strategic, the game has a luck element to it with the card draws. I find myself enjoying games much more when I get curveballs thrown at me every so often, rather than just charging down a pre-thought out plan.
Overall I see Kingdom Builder getting plenty of attention from my gaming group, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a good, medium-weight game.
arrendek
5660
Played some new games at a games party:
Seasons - Like it a lot. Not terribly difficult but fun and easy to teach and play.
Flashpoint - Played this one twice. If you’re a fan of co-op games (esp. Pandemic) then you will like this one. It’s a ton of fun.
Aeroplanes - Not a fan
Libertalia - Very light, had a good time but I think it’s a group game where the right group is very important. Definitely a last game of the night winner for low complexity and quick play.
Manhattan Project - I liked it but I’m not sure I’ll keep liking it. There are a couple of mechanics in the game which bothered me significantly.
