I've been hearing about it for a while now but never tried it because the vast majority of board games bore me... this one though... it's way too damn fun. my roommates and I have been hooked for the past week
I bought Catan during a summer break about 3 years ago. On the first day we played it 3 times in a row. I couldn't believe how fun it was. I've now played at least 500 games of catan if not more, plus a few online rounds (although I find the online versions about a tenth as fun). This last winter break my friend, sister, and girlfriend and I (that's 4 different people btw) played a round every single night (even on Christmas!). It can't be stopped!
Since Catan I've bought a bunch of other games and it's not the only awesome one. I've got my eyes on dominion and agricola next <_<
-- People who don't finish their sentences I'm a Team Fortress 2 superfan! Ask me anything!
From: cf is best | #011 Another vouch for Dominion. It's WAY better than Catan.
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Four Civil Union Ceremonies and a Funeral just doesn't have the same ring to it - yoshifan823 http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/1508/masterplumgm3.jpg
Race for the Galaxy is my other favorite game along with catan. It's a card game where you play cards for victory points and some cards synchronize in cool ways. What's holding it back is that it is missing a lot of player interaction that Catan does have through trading and building roads. There's an expansion coming in a couple of months that adds a board and may fix it and it might become my favorite. Lost Cities is an extremely clever 2 player card game made by a math PhD. Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne are really fun but not worthy of hundreds of plays like all of the above games are. I have some other games like Puerto Rico that I don't like but I'm not sure why so I'll save judgment.
You have to be pretty careful getting board games though because I think there are two types of people who enjoy board games. One type is like me, and I like games where everyone can express themselves through their strategy, and I'm willing to let unpredictability into the game to help make divergence an advantage. There are games out there like power grid that (IMO) have no strategy and depend only on how well you can do mental math, and I think people mistake this for deep gameplay. I hate Chess for a similar reason in that it's based on how well you can think about how the board will look a few turns ahead, which might as well be a different kind of mental math. It's only a matter of time before these games are 100% solved by computers just like connect 4 and checkers, as there's no difference besides complexity. I expect Power Grid and Chess do have some subjective styles of play from different players but I'm pretty sure it's only visible at the highest levels of play, and at low levels the best you can hope to do is to either recognize a good move or not recognize it. I don't really want to fight anyone who likes Power Grid or Chess because I haven't played them much. Some games like Scrabble have the same boring flaw where whoever has played the most has an unstoppable advantage, but are still good games because of other traits (learning vocabulary is fun, the game is party-friendly, and the game is strictly linked to the real world. Trivial pursuit is another example of a game that isn't beautiful but is still fun).
What I'm trying to say is to be careful when looking for board game recommendations on the internet. Some people just love being competitive and they'll play anything they can use to battle and match egos with each other even if the games aren't inherently interesting. Nothing wrong with it, just can be disappointing to get a game that isn't made for you. I think Catan is inherently beautiful and I would gladly play it and lose terribly a thousand times and never get bored. If you're like me then stay away from games that don't have any cards or dice.
I'm pretty much talking about boardgamegeek's board game popularity rankings and how I've bought some games I've been disappointed in.
-- People who don't finish their sentences I'm a Team Fortress 2 superfan! Ask me anything!
my experience with dominion(online) is that its not as fun as catan. The combos get too long and tedious too often
i played with the basic set of cards (no offensive stuff except the militia card) with a bunch of drunk college dudes and chicks and it was spectacular
probably i was the only one who still retained the mental acuity to do long combos
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"Duel audio? You mean like rap battles?" - termina_rzident KrahenProphet and Kana are on opposite ends of the Awesome Spectrum.
You can play for free on www.playcatan.com click play with people on and on the left there's a list of operating systems. I don't want to play though, just a heads up.
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Run, run, run, or you'll be well done! [NO BARKLEY NO PEACE]
catan is great, but every once in a while you get that game where one number comes up an inordinate number of times, and one guy just runs away ridiculously because he happened to build on both 9s and it's just awful and unfun and really disappointing
but aside from that it's good, it's definitely better with an expansion or two!
that said, dominion is definitely a step above. especially when you get a few expansions involved there, things really get crazy and the variety goes through the roof.
I just played it for the first time a few nights ago with 2 other people, and it's really fun. I lost because they had played a few other times and I had no idea how to develop an early strategy. Placed my first settlement on a 12 and it literally got rolled one time the entire game. I also put my first two across the map from each other so I never had a shot at getting longest road. I did keep it kind of close because I knew controlling ports would be helpful. Can't wait to play again.
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Well played, SuperNiceDog. Well played. http://gif.mocksession.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/TEBOW-ENRAPTURED.gif
oh hey this reminds me, anyone know of the board game I'm thinking of? it involved about four players exploring a haunted house (iirc), each moving independently collecting gear and building the map by exploring new rooms (you drew the rooms from a deck), and about halfway through an event would happen and one of the characters would betray everyone else and gain control of a bunch of giant spiders, man eating plants, etc and try to kill everyone else or accomplish some goal?
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"Duel audio? You mean like rap battles?" - termina_rzident KrahenProphet and Kana are on opposite ends of the Awesome Spectrum.
I remember when a whole bunch of us here used to play Catan online on the knockoff version Xplorers, before the owner of the website went crazy. Good times...
Best boardgame I've played recently, although it's a much deeper, prolonged experience than Catan, is Imperial 2030. For people willing to spend 3 hours on a single game I couldn't recommend it highly enough!
-- James - Board 8's Resident Warm And Safe, Slipper-Wearing User & The Cream of Porcupine Tree Fanboyism
Settlers gets old quickly, like most dicefests. Some folks enjoy those types of games though.
Recommendations for "heavier" strategy games:
Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery Age of Steam Arkham Horror Brass Caylus Goa Le Havre Louis XIV Railroad Tycoon (England+Wales) Through the Ages: A Story of Civlization
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Parachute? Moar liek pair-a-somethin' else amirite SuperNiceDogTanuki, Pom Poko