Board 8 > thirty-one tabletop games, ranked

(+) Yeah! (+)

I got my kickstarter copy of the 7th continent yesterday

woo
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i was considering making a shorter list- played 24 or so games in the past year- but i just don't know if i can rank entries from completely separate genres

it would be a good excuse to talk about them, i guess
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I am gonna have trouble remembering all my games played if/when I rank them

most of them are things I've played once or twice from somebody else's collection
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also I like every game
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Even the social ones
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*shudder*
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might be time to let this one purge? idk
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do any of you have advice in terms of 'gateway games' that are good for getting friends deeper into the hobby?

i've begun branching my 'social deduction group' out with carcassonne, which i think has been going over pretty well

in general i just like to just play what people are already interested in, but after a while it's nice to branch out
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anyone play race for the galaxy 2 player? is it as fun as 3/4
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Only played RFTG once, and at 4. That said:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28143/race-galaxy

The fans say 2 is the best player count for it.

banananor posted...

do any of you have advice in terms of 'gateway games' that are good for getting friends deeper into the hobby?

i've begun branching my 'social deduction group' out with carcassonne, which i think has been going over pretty well

in general i just like to just play what people are already interested in, but after a while it's nice to branch out

one of the most important factors for this is player count and attention span, i think? ticket to ride and catan are two of the canonical answers here, though as a rabid avalon player, my favorite games early on were blood bound (social deduction, but less "pure" and more into symbols/player powers) and forbidden island/desert (co-ops)

if they like carcassonne, a less cutthroat step up from that could be isle of skye
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I just bought King of Tokyo + Power Up, never played them before but heard good things. I like Yahtzee and it sounds like this is a casual but pretty fun game, which is what I'm hoping for.
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SeabassDebeste posted...

Only played RFTG once, and at 4. That said:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28143/race-galaxy

The fans say 2 is the best player count for it.

banananor posted...

do any of you have advice in terms of 'gateway games' that are good for getting friends deeper into the hobby?

i've begun branching my 'social deduction group' out with carcassonne, which i think has been going over pretty well

in general i just like to just play what people are already interested in, but after a while it's nice to branch out

one of the most important factors for this is player count and attention span, i think? ticket to ride and catan are two of the canonical answers here, though as a rabid avalon player, my favorite games early on were blood bound (social deduction, but less "pure" and more into symbols/player powers) and forbidden island/desert (co-ops)

if they like carcassonne, a less cutthroat step up from that could be isle of skye

Sushi go into 7 wonders =)
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banananor posted...

do any of you have advice in terms of 'gateway games' that are good for getting friends deeper into the hobby?

i've begun branching my 'social deduction group' out with carcassonne, which i think has been going over pretty well

in general i just like to just play what people are already interested in, but after a while it's nice to branch out

The games I have used most effectively as Gateway games are:

Ticket to Ride
Dominion
Alhambra
Takenoko
Sushi Go Party
Captain Sonar
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Fyi, fire tower kicked its kick starter off yesterday. I'm generally not wild about crowd funding and try to avoid it.

I played it twice at the latest PAX, both the free for all and the 2v2 variant. It's a ton of fun, and the husband/wife dev team are two people that I had a lot of fun hanging out with for an hour.

Here's the link, and the description:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/575448464/fire-tower/description

Smoke rises on the horizon. A fire rages somewhere in the heart of the forest. From the height of a fire tower, you command the efforts to defend your tower and take down your opponents. With each turn, the inferno grows. Harness the power of the wind to push the blaze towards the other towers, clear tracts of land to fortify your tower, hinder the plans of your opponents with torrents of water, and unleash an arsenal of fire cards upon your foes. Each card has a unique pattern with its own tactical advantage. You must effectively direct the resources in your hand and use sound spatial planning to deploy them.

I preferred the 2v2 variant, because as has come up here, being removed from a game and having to wait for the other players to finish can be a buzz kill.

It's $39 for a copy of the game, so it's in the lower price range for games of this sort, I think.

And if you enjoy playing with game pieces in your hands, you'll adore the fire pieces.
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Also, for those interested, it sounds like Gloomhaven will have a third printing available in the summer.
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I'm in a FB group that is obsessed with Gloomhaven
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Some games that I've found to work quite well as a gateway game:

Splendor (engine building)
Sushi Go (drafting)
Stone Age (worker placement) alternatively Lords of Waterdeep could work as well if they're into dnd (it's a bit more complicated though)
Saboteur (hidden role)
Flamme Rouge (racing)

A lot of games are fine though as a introduction, just avoid playing something that takes more than an hour to an hour and a half. That way, if they are getting crushed or just don't like it, it won't take too long and you can try something else. Obviously avoid something super heavy as well, or a game that you are very good in and have played a bunch of times.

Explaining the game well and trying to excite them for the theme is a big factor as well. You can't make every game sound exciting (looking at you, Splendor), but most games have a big enough hook.

Also, know your audience. I know that I don't even have to try to bring something a bit more complicated to family gatherings at my fathers place, so I only bring games that have very little rules, little to no interpretation and virtually no exceptions. Otherwise they'll get too focused on all the little rules, and they won't enjoy it. So something with too many moving pieces/ideas/resources would be too much (like Lords of Waterdeep or Terra Mystica).

So try to find out what kind of players your friends are like and go from there. One of my friends is all about efficiency, so a game like Galaxy Trucker isn't his cup of tea, but he really enjoys 18xx games. While most of my friends would probably fall asleep, or start drinking heavily, after half an hour while playing the latter.

The games I listed had success with pretty much anyone, save for Flamme Rouge, as its theme was a bit off-putting for some of my friends. You can't go wrong with Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne or Catan either. Unless, in Catan's case, your friends really don't like dice.
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yay for splendor
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I love me some Lords of Waterdeep. On one of my Discords I'm even known as "The Building Lord."
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I came very close to buying Waterdeep the other day but did Near and Far instead

did really like Waterdeep the one time I played it tho
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but I think I said that already
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sometimes you gotta stretch for bump material okay
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i bought food chain magnate

immediately want to buy the $35 insert + $10 shipping, too
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underrated
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Planning my GenCon wish list and using this list to find games to try!
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Thanks for continuing to bump this, since I've been meaning to use this list to note which games I need to try in the future.
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:D
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Tonight I learned Bruges and Castles of Burgundy.

My head hurts
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they asked me which I liked better and I couldn't remember the first game well enough to have an opinion

but now that I'm awake I think it was Bruges just because there was clearer iconography
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I still might do like a quicky ranking post itt
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Good
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random thought: can anybody name games with asymmetrical win conditions? I'm interested in the idea of people trying to do different things, not just shifting diplomacy as people race towards an objective. The only thing I can think of is the version of Risk that has missions, and maybe Mafia and that family if there are enough roles like SK or Survivor or Jester.
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Vast: The Crystal Caverns
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Really tough question.

Chaos in the Old World is an area control game for four players. It has two or three different victory conditions that each of its four factions can pursue, but due to the asymmetry of the player powers, each player should be pursuing a different one.
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What put the idea in my head originally was when I was brainstorming ideas for those Grail Wars we used to do. I was trying to come up with alternate win conditions for each character- everybody's trying to win the game by wiping out everybody else, but maybe one guy is also trying to visit every location on the map, one guy has a specific target they need to directly kill, one guy is trying to prolong the game past a certain point, one guy is trying to figure out everybody's identity. Stuff like that. I never got anywhere with the idea, but I thought it would be interesting to see implemented in something.
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Ooh for asymmetrical stuff, the first thing that always comes to mind is, Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, dunno if you've heard of that. It's an outrageously well-designed 2 player game, somewhat like stratego, but a million times better than stratego because it's more interesting and somehow much faster than stratego.

Anyway, one player is sauron's side, one player is the fellowship, and both sides have completely different win conditions--fellowship just needs to do whatever it takes to sneak Frodo into the Mordor space (way in the back of the opponent's side), and the other player needs to either kill Frodo OR get 3 pieces into the Shire (way in the back of the fellowship's side).

And not only that, but both sides have completely different pieces too, and every piece in the game has a unique ability as well. The fellowship's pieces are good at retreating from bad situations, or sacrificing themselves for benefits. The sauron pieces are ridiculously strong, but the objective is harder.

(Unrelatedly, it has what I like to cite as one of the greatest rules in a board game ever: you can only move pieces forward, not sideways or back! You literally can't turtle.)
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Tom Bombadil posted...

random thought: can anybody name games with asymmetrical win conditions? I'm interested in the idea of people trying to do different things, not just shifting diplomacy as people race towards an objective. The only thing I can think of is the version of Risk that has missions, and maybe Mafia and that family if there are enough roles like SK or Survivor or Jester.

Android Netrunner - but it's only 2 player.
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tragedy looper
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Any co-op game with a hidden (or not so hidden) traitor mechanic would qualify for this, right?

So off the top of my head you have:

Betrayal at House on the Hill

Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game

Pandemic (with the Bioterrorist role from the On the Brink expansion)
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Colegreen_c12 posted...

tragedy looper

I want this game so bad

redrocket posted...

Any co-op game with a hidden (or not so hidden) traitor mechanic would qualify for this, right?

Sorta I guess, although isn't that usually just the group is trying to do X and the traitor is trying to stop them? I've not actually played any of those
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Betrayal at House on the Hill.
Co-op game to start, no one knows who the traitor is going to be or what the win conditions will be until half way through the game.
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cool
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Dead of Winter. There's a group objective and a personal objective, and you only win if you achieve both. Unless you're a traitor or get banished, in which case the group objective doesn't apply.
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oh cool!
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Played Puerto Rico yesterday for the first time in years. That is still a great game that holds up pretty well.
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so 'tis! I've only played it digitally but it's a good time
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My brother bought tragedy Looper. It looks crazy complicated
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I am probably buying it if I can ever find it

Anybody use Tabletopia? That was not a thing I had heard of until this morning but it's blocked at work so I can't investigate it yet >_>
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oh it's one of those systems where you have to manipulate the game elements yourself

for whatever reason I am just not about that life
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