Hey, that happened at Christmas at the in-laws’ too! I was like “How bout some Carcassonne?” and you were all, “Hell no! I’ve hated that shit since like 2002, G!”
Oh wait, never mind. It wasn’t you, it was Old Lady Gravy. And it wasn’t Carcassonne, it was sex.
Me too, and for the same reason.
I’m a fan of Cheapass Games, partly for the basic weirdness. For most games, they supply only the boards and cards (often printed on cheap cardboard stock) and you supply the pieces; this may turn off some people. Some of my favourites are:
[ul]
[li]Deadwood: Players are Z-grade actors/extras on a Z-grade western movie lot, trying to make money with roles like “Horse” and “Falls From Roof”.[/li][li]Enemy Chocolatier: Territory capture game. Surprisingly terrific. It looks cheap, but everyone I know who played it – including decidedly non-gamers – immediately wanted to play again.[/li][li]Kill Doctor Lucky: Clue in reverse. Players stalk the title character through his mansion, trying to get him in a room with no witnesses. Unlike the other games, this one was recently re-released as a full board game, with pieces and everything.[/li][*]The Great Brain Robbery: Players are zombies in the old west robbing a train full of brains and cheese. Each car is drawn randomly, so the board changes each game.[/ul]They’re not board games, but Unexploded Cow and Give Me The Brain are also fun and easy to learn. Brawl is a real-time card game simulating a cartoony sparring match (“real-time” because there’s no turns: it takes more time to shuffle the deck than it does to play the game).
You’re welcome anytime, Tom.
So we sat down to play Blokus first, and it’s good enough that everyone took to it immediately and wouldn’t stop playing it to try Settlers.
Cheapass Games may be fine for gamers, but I would never ever try them as a introductory game for new gamers. They are mostly ugly and not that playable, imo. Yes, they certainly are cheap, but that didn’t seem to be what extra was looking for.
Lorini
Their most popular game is (last I knew) Kill Dr. Lucky, which is both quite accessible and playable.
And we’ve had a great time with Give Me The Brain, which I imagine non-gamers would enjoy as well.
Lord of the Fries is another that I think qualifies as fun, playable, and accessible.
The Munchkin series is great fun, but I think it may be tilted a bit more toward the gamer crowd. Still, I’ve seen people who really weren’t gamer types get drawn into it after watching other people play, and it’s the sort of game where it’s easy to deal someone in on the fly.
Very nice! Blokus is a great game. I believe it’s actually educational as well, in that for children it requires a certain kind of abstract spatial, planning-ahead type of thinking.
It’s amazing how fast you start to pick up on the various strategies.
Another vote for Cheapass games. And Evil Stevie - Steve Jackson Games. Particularly for the card games, Illuminati, Munchkin
For card games I would recommend ‘Bang’ over ‘Munchkin’. Munchkin has all kinds of gamer in-jokes most folks won’t get and like a lot of Steve Jackson games goes on, and on, and on, long after the joke has worn itself out.
It needs to be simple
OK, Junta’s out.
Cheapass games has an upscale brand “James Ernest Games” which they use when selling stuff at 3rd-party retail stores. I would also recommend Bang! over Munchkin, since it’s a much better game once the parody/in-joke veneer wears off. If you want your dose of gamer parody, go with Order of the Stick, but it isn’t exactly a simple game.
Guillotine and Bohnanza are two other good card-based games. If you have more people, you might also give Citadels a try.
I like Citadels a lot, but don’t play it with people you haven’t gamed with before. It won’t make you better friends with anybody.
Ouch. Does it lead to the same “how can you be so fucking stupid?” tirades as Pictionary?
If you play right, Candyland leads to those tirades.
Citadels is just a stabbing game. Some people like that, some people get very angry.
I introduced Citadels to my siblings and their respective significant others. It’s pretty much our defacto game when we have enough (otherwise Ra, Ticket to ride).
Citadels can take a while, especially at first when choosing characters.
But I echo the angry part. One game ended rather quickly when my baby sister, soon to be a bride and a little stressed about the wedding, had a bunch of gold stolen and a valuable property burned and things took a quick turn for the worst.
Citadels is a solid game for five players. Given the $20 price, it’s one of the best games for that many i can think of.
Bohnanza’s another good card game that’s a bit less adversarial than Citadels. I feel though that Citadels does a good job of abstracting who’s screwing over who a bit, since most backstabby abilities make you target a character instead of a specific player, and each player secretly picks their character at the start of each round. There’s a lot of strategy in figuring out who’s going to pick what, and figuring out what you think other people are going to think you picked.
My favorite board games, and man I have a ton of them, are:
Carcassone(my actual #1 favorite) - SHAME ON YOU, CHICK
Ticket to Ride
Arkham Horror - it has great expansions too
World of Warcraft - but it takes forever
Puerto Rico
Settlers of Catan
Hell, I like em all for the most part. Those are the ones I can easily suggest, but you have to take Arkham Horror and WoW with a HUGE grain of salt. The others are pretty friendly.
Also: to show you guys how cool I am, check out my BGG profile: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/user/Jason+McMaster