Recommend me a board game?

[Jasper_Phillips]

Wow. You guys apparently play Agricola at a level way beyond anything I’ve experienced personally.

It’s a deeper and subtler game than it at first appears, and you definitely get better at it the more you play. The winning scores from your first few games wind up being dead last later on; I don’t consider myself to have done well anymore unless I get 50+ pts, perhaps 60. When I first played I don’t think I broke 20.

Gave it to my friend and played a family round yesterday. I was rules guy for the first game, and of course I missed explaining a couple of rules, so the result wasn’t exactly fair. It was quite obvious I played completely sub-optimal (overdid the fields), though, and both of us underestimated the major improvements.

Yeah, the Major Improvements (all of them) are quite useful. Well, except perhaps the Horse Slaughterhouses from the Moors expansion? I suspect I just haven’t figured out how to use them well though.

[Dean]

We had her play Battlestar Gallactica last summer, with some success (or i think so since she asked me to bring it for Xmas…), some maybe we could play several “short” sessions…

I’m more worried about TI3 mechanics actually since she’s “only” 12…

One of the guys in my regular group used to bring his 12-year old daughter. She was all blond haired blue-eyed niceness, but she became a brutal galactic overlord when TI2 came out. We’d have to warn newbies not to go easy on her.

And TI2 was an order of magnitude more complicated than TI3. If she can handle BSG, she can handle TI3.

[Lorini]

BSG is a hell of a lot easier to play than TI3. You don’t even really have to know all the rules in BSG to play, as long as most people know the rules. This is not true in TI3, since it’s not a cooperative game. Most BSG games can be finished in 2 hours. You aren’t even getting started hardly in TI3 after 2 hours, and this is the crux of the issue with a 12 year old. Can he or she really sit and play a board game for the 5-6 hours TI3 is going to require?

Now all that being said, my 10 year old son got mad at myself and his dad because we quit playing TI2 after having played for 6 hours. He did not like TI3 at all, resulting in me having to sell it.

[Dean]

So, uh, we have anecdotal evidence from two sources that kids are different.

[SlyFrog]

BSG is a hell of a lot easier to play than TI3. You don’t even really have to know all the rules in BSG to play, as long as most people know the rules. This is not true in TI3, since it’s not a cooperative game. Most BSG games can be finished in 2 hours. You aren’t even getting started hardly in TI3 after 2 hours, and this is the crux of the issue with a 12 year old. Can he or she really sit and play a board game for the 5-6 hours TI3 is going to require?

Now all that being said, my 10 year old son got mad at myself and his dad because we quit playing TI2 after having played for 6 hours. He did not like TI3 at all, resulting in me having to sell it.

Let me just mention again that there is a possible alternative, if you have the space for it. These games do not need to be played in a single 6 hour marathon. I play with my 11 and nine year old, and we routinely play longer games for an hour or two, leave it set up on the table, come back to it two-three days later for another hour or two, etc. It even helps me - aside from boredom, I rarely have six hours straight to play something uninterrupted.

I would rather play these games in smaller blocks, rather than give them up because “who has 10 hours to play?”

In fact, my wife and I are doing a Descent: Road to Legend campaign right now that has been on a table for the last week. Games like that are impossible to play in a single setting for anyone, but we still play them. Lots of grognardy examples like that, including the big monster wargames or ASL campaigns like Red Barricades.

[Skinner]

Let me just mention again that there is a possible alternative, if you have the space for it. These games do not need to be played in a single 6 hour marathon. I play with my 11 and nine year old, and we routinely play longer games for an hour or two, leave it set up on the table, come back to it two-three days later for another hour or two, etc. It even helps me - aside from boredom, I rarely have six hours straight to play something uninterrupted.

I would rather play these games in smaller blocks, rather than give them up because “who has 10 hours to play?”

In fact, my wife and I are doing a Descent: Road to Legend campaign right now that has been on a table for the last week. Games like that are impossible to play in a single setting for anyone, but we still play them. Lots of grognardy examples like that, including the big monster wargames or ASL campaigns like Red Barricades.

I’m going to have to try that. I’ll make some space to set one up so it can stay a while

[Timemaster_Tim]

The original Ticket to Ride is the most straightforward, so it is the easiest to introduce to non-gamers. It plays from 2-5, so it accommodates both couples (although some other versions are better for 2), and larger groups.

Thanks to all for their opinions. I picked up Ticket to Ride yesterday, so we will see how this plays out with the family. I played a game against my wife last night to get an understanding the rules. She beat me by 8 points at the end when she had the longest continuous route by 1 segment. But more importantly, she had fun playing the game.

[Skinner]

Thanks to all for their opinions. I picked up Ticket to Ride yesterday, so we will see how this plays out with the family. I played a game against my wife last night to get an understanding the rules. She beat me by 8 points at the end when she had the longest continuous route by 1 segment. But more importantly, she had fun playing the game.

That was a good choice. You won’t be disappointed.

[Nephrinn]

Just a few thoughts on a bunch of games I’ve played recently:

Cyclades: Pure awesome. Works great with 2 players. Simple, yet deep strategy. Beautiful components.

Merchants & Marauders: Fantastic game. RPG mechanics interwoven into a pirate theme is bliss. The game seems to be fine-tuned almost perfectly, in which case it’s easily adaptable to variants.

Twilight Struggle: I really liked this one. The first game was kind of rough as you’re adjusting to the rules, but I’m seeing some deep strategy from this one.

Civilization The Board Game: I can confirm that this one definitely has a ‘one mistake and you’re dead’ kind of feel if you’re only playing 2 players. I made one stupid mistake in forgetting that my opponent could move 3 instead of 2 (because he just got horse riding) and he stomped all over my one army and scout. From then on it was just frustrating as I tried to catch up to my opponent running away with culture, coins, tech, military, and everything else. It was ridiculous just how badly I lost after that one mistake. I guess it was a bad mistake though.

High Frontier: Played this one again and got a little further before the rules did us in again. I really hate the bidding mechanic to get more money. It takes forever and it just gets monotonous. I don’t want to spend 30 minutes of my time doing that just so I can build a rocket. You might as well just give everyone 20 water tanks and be done with it. I’m guessing this is just one of those games that only works well with 3+ players.

Earth Reborn: Great game after playing 2 scenarios. I just hate that I have to play almost 10 scenarios to learn all the rules and it takes a good 20 minutes or so to setup a new scenario. Maybe I should just skip the scenarios, read all the rules, and play the auto-generating scenario system. Hmm…

[rossm]

So my group sat down to play a game, and we unwrapped and punched out pieces for Caylus. After skimming the rules we decided to check out a youtube rule summary I had seen before buying the game. Long story short, we ended up giving up and not even playing a single turn. It was just too dense for my group. I doubt they’ll ever be interested in trying it. Ah well :(

[Calistas]

Gotta come here and ask before picking stuff up! Caylus is a dense Euro with some solid “F YOU” mechanics.

[mkozlows]

Rossm, oh, I have been there. Die Macher (understandable) and El Grande (sigh) both sit on my piles of games that people have been convinced are too complicated by trying to read the rules when we weren’t really in the right mental place for it.

Reef Encounter nearly made the list, but I dictatored it up and DEMANDED that we play through a sample turn, because I thought the rules were just making it seem complicateder than it was. That turned out to be true, of course, and really, it’s nearly always true.

My advice is, whenever you’re getting bogged down in rules, just move ahead to playing a sample turn. That turn will take forever, and at the end of it people will realize what they did wrong and you’ll want to restart the game, but sometimes it’s the only way to really understand what the rules are saying.

[Lorini]

If the game you are playing is fortunate enough to be covered by Jeremy Salinas’s Component Breakdown series, be sure to watch it. Jeremy does a great job at explaining what’s in a game and also gives you a good sense of how to play it. I highly recommend them.

[Timemaster_Tim]

Thanks to all for their opinions. I picked up Ticket to Ride yesterday, so we will see how this plays out with the family. I played a game against my wife last night to get an understanding the rules. She beat me by 8 points at the end when she had the longest continuous route by 1 segment. But more importantly, she had fun playing the game.

Bad form quoting myself but oh well. A good time was had by all playing this at Christmas. Four adults and my 11 year old nephew were playing. He beat us all, and pretty handily too. He managed to successfully horde cards and claim a bunch of long routes to get a lot of points, and he also managed to get them connected to score the longest continuous route bonus as well as completing 2 out of the 3 destination cards he held in his hand.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. WE got him Labyrinth last year which he really enjoys playing. And it has also honed his decision making skills in judging when to forge ahead towards his own goals versus taking time out to screw over the other player. If you’ve got kids, Labyrinth is a fun game.

[Calistas]

I also got Ticket to Ride (unplayed, but I have played it before and my wife knew it would be good for my collection), as did another friend (who enjoyed it a lot) and Mystery as well (by the looks of my Facebook wall). It really is a great and popular gateway game!

[Jason_Lutes]

Merchants & Marauders: Fantastic game. RPG mechanics interwoven into a pirate theme is bliss. The game seems to be fine-tuned almost perfectly, in which case it’s easily adaptable to variants.

Tried this last night myself, and I agree. It’s basically Sid Meier’s Pirates! in boardgame form, but even better. More plays will tell, but it feels like an instant classic to me.

[Blips]

I recently got gifted with both the 2-player version of Risk: Balance of Power and the larger version of Risk: Balance of Power.

I know that Risk is a classic game, but the two player version is quite fun so far.

Warning about the Canadian edition however: the box is missing about 1/8 of the instructions.

[frank_austin]

Does Last Night on Earth ever get fun? I played two games of it in a row today, and both of them were pretty bland for all 3 players. We felt like we weren’t doing anything worthwhile on our turns and time was just ticking by while we waited for something to happen.

[Eduardo_X]

Does Last Night on Earth ever get fun? I played two games of it in a row today, and both of them were pretty bland for all 3 players. We felt like we weren’t doing anything worthwhile on our turns and time was just ticking by while we waited for something to happen.

I have always loved Last Night On Earth! It was fun for me from the get-go, though having 2 people control zombies is pretty boring.

[frank_austin]

I have always loved Last Night On Earth! It was fun for me from the get-go, though having 2 people control zombies is pretty boring.

Our main complaints were that we felt like we were constantly sacrificing movement to search for stuff (since we weren’t getting weapons or were constantly replacing broken ones), and that the combat itself wasn’t remotely interesting. We lost our first game within about 4 turns because of the 2-health heroes going down so easily, and then we ran over the zombie player in the second game just by getting some weapons and constantly running away.

What do you like about it? It may just have been a bad first impression.