Boardgames

[Johnny]

This forum has way too little discussion about board games. Let's do something about this.

Here's my (way smaller than I'd like) collection:

 

 

From left to right, top to bottom:

• Mage Knight: Board Game
  
• The Settlers of Catan
  
• Hive Pocket
  
• Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game
  
• Small World
  
• Citadels
  
• Small World Realms
  
• Munchkin Bites!
  
• Munchkin Axe Cop
  

Not pictured is my pathetic Magic: The Gathering collection as well as additional expansions for Small World and Munchkin Bites!

Out of these I would recommend Small World, Civilization (The 2010 game by Fantasy Flight Games, not the 2002 game by Eagle Games), Citadels, Hive and Mage Knight.

 

Because I have too much time on my hands, here's a quick overview of each of these games and why I think they are great or not so great.

 

Citadels

 

Citadels is a card game for two to eight players which takes anywhere between 45 and 90 minutes to play.

The objective of the game is to build the city worth the most victory points by playing district cards you draw from a shared deck. The game ends when a player places his eight district and the points are tallied up by counting the gold cost of each district plus any relevant bonuses. Simple enough.

That, however, is not the true game. Sure, playing the right districts is part of how you make gold to build even better districts, and those districts determine the winner at the end, but they are not the focus. The focus, instead, is on this other deck of cards: the character deck.

 

At the beginning of each round the players pick one character each which determines their turn order within that round as well as what special abilities they will have available to them. For example, the Assassin can kill a character, making the player controlling him skip their turn that round. The King gains one gold for each noble district in the controlling player's city as well as gaining the Crown, which lets that player take first pick of characters until someone else picks the King. You can never be sure who controls each character until they play their turn.

It's really less about city building and more about mind games. If I know that David sees me as a threat and has enough gold to raze one of my expensive districts with the Warlord, should I then pick the Bishop to make myself immune to the Warlord's special ability? Or does David realize I want the Bishop? Did he instead pick the Assassin in order to assassinate me and ruin my rather obvious Bishop strategy? That's the game, right there. And that's why it's brilliant.

 

Citadels is cheap and the components seem high quality, without taking much space. The third edition - sold by Fantasy Flight - comes with the expansion, which I choose to not use except for the card that allows an eight player, as most of the expansion cards just make the game less balanced.

 

 

Hive

 

Hive is a fast and short abstract strategy game for two players. The objective is to surround your opponent's queen bee with other tiles belonging to yourself or the other player - usually a mix. You place or move one insect each turn. Simple to learn.

There are a few points where Hive differs from other games of the genre. You can't eliminate pieces. There is no board - the pieces you and your opponent play makes up the actual playing field. Every piece must form a single mass at all times. I can't fully do this game justice through text, so I'll refer you to a video review instead:

 

 

Like Citadels, Hive is cheap, and the pieces seem extremely sturdy (made of bakelite.) Hive is also sold as Hive Carbon, which is entirely in black and white, and comes with the two expansions. The pocket edition also includes the expansions, and takes extremely little place, each piece being 33% smaller than in the other editions, and including a bag to store the pieces in, which easily fits in a pocket. I recommend Pocket above the others because of its lower size and cost.

 

 

Munchkin

 

Munchkin is a card game for three to six players. The players take on the role of a character in a typical D&D campaign, but instead of roleplaying, your goal is to game the system in order to achieve level 10 before any of the other players. You fight monsters to acquire levels and loot, which can either be used to enhance your own power, or to ruin another player's combat to get ahead.

Munchkin is a very simple game in terms of rules, but requires a fair bit of reading as the cards themselves can invoke complicated effects. As such, it works fine as a game for players new to card or board games - assuming they don't mind reading cards a lot - and for a few games it's great fun to temporarily ally and then betray your friends for a chance at as much loot as possible. Then the situation rears its ugly head.

The situation with munchkin is that it plays the same every time, with strategy barely evolving between rounds. Generally what will happen is that most players will save up on the cards they can use to mess with other players, and as soon as one player approaches the win condition, everyone launches their spells at them. This repeats until people are out of nasty cards, at which point the player who next approaches the finish line wins.

It's not very fun in the long run and for this reason I can not recommend Munchkin. It's an okay "gateway" game, but there are better games out there for that purpouse.

 

Munchkin comes in varying themes, most of them having expansions themselves. Axe Cop Munchkin is obviously the best version. Because it's Axe Cop. So if you do disregard my advice and still want to play Munchkin, that's the one I'd recommend (though it has no expansions.) The expansions do not tend to add too much. Except for the Dungeon expansions for various sets. Those are cool.

 

 

The Settlers of Catan

 

In The Settlers of Catan, you take on the role of one of several settling tribes (3-4 players with the base game, 3-6 with certain expansions) vying for control of the island Catan. Your goal is to gain victory points by establishing cities, building roads, and buying cards out of a development deck. Unlike what you'd think, there is no combat to this. Instead, Catan is a game about trading. There is never enough resources for anyone to make do on his or her own; instead the players will have to negotiate with one another. How badly do you want my brick resource? Are you willing to pay with two sheep? Maybe even three?

The engine of Catan, so to speak, is powered by the mechanic of dice rolling. You place settlements on the intersections between resource areas, each area corresponding to a number between two and twelve. At the start of each turn, the active player rolls two dice and adds the numbers together. The tiles that correspond to the resulting number generates resources to each player with a settlement or city nearby. Then the active player gets to build or trade with other players. That's all there is to it.

 

A lot of the time, this works out well. The dice adds an element of randomness to the resource allocation, making the game less math and more about taking risks, and luck will often even out enough that the best negotiator walks away with a win. However, other times resource allocation can be completely pants on head retarded. I recently played a game where sheep were generated 10 turns in a row, immediately followed by fifteen turns of stone. Finally, one player received both clay and wood at the start of his turn, and proceeded to use that small momentum to win him the game.

That's another point worth noting: Catan is liable to snowball. Hard. If one player is favored strongly by the dice at the start of the turn, he can spread out and vastly improve his odds while the rest of the table groans in frustration.

And then there's the robber. Every time a player rolls a seven, he gets to move the robber to a new tile. That tile will then not generate resources until it is moved again. Depending on luck. this can completely shut down a player who is viewed as a threat, and is easily the most frustrating part of the game.

 

For these problems, I can not recommend Catan to experienced gamers. However, it is a relatively light and simple to understand game with little reading required, so introducing new players to it - even ones new to board gaming - should not be a problem. If you can stand the idea of chance fucking you over, The Settlers of Catan can be recommended for the purpose of playing with people new to the hobby, even though I personally have a distaste for it.

 

As a final complaint I want to add that the component quality is akin to a joke. Taking the pieces out of the box the first time, it was hard to make everything fit for the low quality cardboard kept bending all around the place.

 

 

Small World

 

Small World is a wargame about board control for 3-5 players which places itself right in between the gateway games and more serious affairs like Civilization.

Each player picks a race and attached special power - randomly generated every game - from a pool on the side of the board, starts at any tile on the border, and starts conquering. Conquering a region is as easy as counting if you have enough units to attack (2 base cost + 1 per defending unit), and then moving said units to the chosen region. Once a player has spent all their army tokens they redeploy their troops as they see fit, and cash one victory point per occupied region. Super simple stuff.

 

There are a few twists though. Once you feel that you've done what you can with your current race, you can use an entire turn to send your current army into decline. You can no longer control them and they only get to have one defending unit per region, but they continue to generate victory points. You get to pick a new race on your next turn.

As comeback mechanics go, this one is brilliant. Weak players constantly bolt back up to full strength, but it still awards players who manage to do well because at the end it's not the size of your army that counts - it's the victory points you accumulated.

Despite all this user friendliness it's not all laughs. Many Small World race and power combinations can be completely brutal in the hands of a player who knows what he's doing; I've often seen players who are doing well get over-confident, spread their defense thin, and have their entire race taken out by the other players in a single round, forcing them to enter decline immediately. Because you can only ever have one race in decline, this also removes their previous race, causing them to earn no victory points at all until they can deploy a new race. In a game that is over after seven to ten rounds (depending on the number of players), this can be a devastating blow. In addition, as the name hints, Small World is not played on a very large map so there's not an option to not interact with other players. You fight, or you lose.

 

Unfortunately there are some bad sides to Small World. A lot of the strategy at play comes from the various race/power combinations and while this helps keep the game fresh for quite a few rounds, it can start to feel a bit stale once you've explored most of the races and powers. Additionally, there are some balance issues. Skeletons paired with a combat-focused special power, in particular, seems to absolutely trash most races unless very specific counters are used or the players gang up on them . On the other side of the spectrum you have the Dwarves who are so few in numbers that their victory point bonus when occupying regions with mines hardly ever becomes relevant.

 

Despite these issues, I found Small World well worth the money and so far I have not played with any player who disliked the game. It's an excellent compromise between easy of learning and strategy, which I'd recommend it to just about anyone who likes games with heavy player interaction.

 

Small World expansions: Grand Dames of Small World, Cursed!, and Don't Be Afraid...

 

Not much to say. These expansions add more races and powers to Small World. Useful if the base game is running a bit dry, and they are each pretty cheap. If you do get these, get Don't Be Afraid... first, because it actually comes with a plastic tray for storage (that fits the other two expansions as well.) If you lift out the plastic insert from the base game's box, you can fit this tray inside the base game box, along with the tray containing the base races.

My main criticisms would be that Grand Dames and Cursed both add very few things, and the Were- power from Cursed feels very clunky and "gamey" compared to the rest.

 

 

Small World Realms

 

 

Realms is an expansion for Small World which adds modular map pieces so you can make your own scenario, and a manual filled with instructions for as how to assemble scenarios designed by - predictably - the designer. It's also compatible with the standalone expansion Small World Underground and for owners of the regular Small World, it introduces some mechanics that were not found in the original game, like Popular Places, giving the controlling race extra bonuses. Realms is priced around 25 dollars in the US (like you'd expect, slightly more in Europe...) and I'm not sure that the novelty will last my group long enough to even try all of the 12 included scenarios, but it's a nice way to break up the pace, and some of the included scenarios seem very cool. Well worth a pick-up for any group that likes Small World but feels like it's running out of variety.

Do note that it dramatically increases setup time, which might be a problem for some people. Also: more fiddly pieces, yayyyy.

 

 

 

Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game

 

Unfortunately I have only been able to play a single full game of this - most of my friends aren't interested in something as big and complex as this beast - but that one match was a blast.

We played with four players and based on that one game I'd say the board game is actually better than the PC game. Sacrilege, I know. It actually forces you to constantly mind the other players, whereas the PC game often feels much more like a solo affair whenever you aren't at war.

 

Robert Florence has an article over at RockPaperShotgun about what makes this game great; it's what made me buy it.

 

 

Mage Knight: Board Game

(Yes, that's really the title. There used to be a Mage Knight collectible card game.)

 

So, Mage Knight! Like Civilization, I've not really played enough of this to say with certainty how good I think it is, but my impressions so far are amazing.

It's like a mixture of Heroes of Might and Magic, and the board game Dominion. The players walk around this randomly generated world filled with villages, monsters, dungeons, magic shrines, cities and monasteries; fighting monsters, leveling up, taking over forts and cities. It's a weird beast, fusing many different genres and mechanics, filled with rules upon rules. There's your Deed Deck, your Hand Size, advanced actions you can buy, spells you can acquire, artifacts, mana of different colours, two specific types of mana that only work during the day or night. Yeah, it has a day/night cycle, affecting such things as how many movement points it takes to move over certain terrain (desert is easier to traverse during night, forests are harder), as well as if you can identify certain enemies before you decide to attack. You start out with a default Deed deck which is the same as every other player except for one specific card based on the character you're playing. When leveling up you get to choose advanced actions from a public pool, and special abilities designed for your character. You recruit followers and buy spells and eventually you shape your starting deck (which you will cycle through a number of times in a game; once per day, once per night) into a monster customized for your specific strategy.

 

Combat is an affair in several phases; first, if you have enough ranged attack cards to play, you can kill an enemy before he can even approach you. If that fails, the enemy rush and attack you. You must then block, playing either cards that give a block value, or any card for a bonus block of 1. After you've blocked, you get to strike the enemy with a combination of melee and ranged attacks, hopefully killing him. If you take damage, you have to pick up wound cards. These cards stay on your hand, counting towards your maximum hand size, and can't be voluntarily discarded unless you spend an entire turn to rest, or somehow manage to heal your wounds. If you do rest, your cards go into the discard pile. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Wrong. They'll come back to haunt you the next time you cycle through your deck, as you shuffle your discards into your pile.

Then there's enemies with special attributes. Fortified enemies can't be hit with normal ranged attacks. Swift enemies are twice as hard to block. There are enemies that deal twice the damage (and thus give you twice the amount of wounds you'd normally take), and there are enemies who poison you on hit, inserting extra wounds directly into your discard pile, which can't be healed until the next time you go through the deck, many turns later!

 

If it sounds overwhelming, it's because it kind of is. At first. Mage Knight luckily has a robust tutorial scenario for one to two players, teaching you how the game works. It even has a separate rulebook designed for use within this scenario.

None of this at all would work if the game wasn't designed as well as it is. Everything fits the theme and generally makes sense. There are no points where the rules conflict with the theme or basic logic, and it's just overflowing with these clever little design decisions making the game much more manageable than it has any right to be. Despite the complexities, I (and my more serious gaming group) found the rules easy enough to remember once we'd located them in the rule book.

 

Do note that even though the box says 1-4 players, 2 players really is the ideal. 3 players also works, but that starts to slow the game down. I haven't played it on 4, but as long as the game already is I don't even want to try that.

The play time is 1-4 hours depending on the scenario and number of players. And that's when you already know the game!

All the components are of extremely high quality. Some of the prettiest cards and miniatures and tiles I've seen. Mage Knight in it's entirety just feels robust and high quality down to every detail.

 

Despite how overloaded Mage Knight is with rules, it's also one of the most fun times I've had with board games. I'd recommend Mage Knight for players who want depth and complexity. It's a gamer's game, and people who are only casually interested in gaming should stay far away.

 

 

Resources:

 

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/ - The main board games website. Buy, sell, discuss, look up information. It's your first and last stop a lot of the time.

http://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames - Not incredibly active, but one of the friendliest places I've been on reddit. Often some interesting discussion going on.

http://www.coolstuffinc.com/ - US-based board game shop

[TheMightyEthan]

Oh man I want that Civ game, but I doubt I could ever find anyone to play it with me.

[deanb]

I want to pick up and play some of the non-monopoly type boardgames but I'd have no one to play them with either. Only got my mum n a 9 year old n 4 year old, with occasional family members round. Though unlike some...snobs.. I like Monopoly n Game of Life n stuff like that.

[TheMightyEthan]

I like Game of Life. Monopoly just takes too damn long.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

Forbidden Island is my current favorite; it's a fun, light, cheap co-op that acts as a great little introduction to "designer" board games. We also play a lot of Monopoly Deal, which is a really fun card game for parties and such.

 

I have been trying to pick up copies of Ghost Stories, Castle Panic, and Last Night on Earth for a while to get some co-op game nights rocking. Trouble with board games is that they don't really drop in price as video games tend to; in fact, they get more expensive once the initial print is gone. As for competitive games, I will probably check out Small World, which Johnny already posted above.

 

Edit: If you have trouble getting a game night together, many games come with instructions for solo play. If they don't, then Board Game Geek often (usually?) has solo variants posted.

[Baconrath]

I like to use all my road pieces in Catan so nobody can take Longest Road from me, unless everyone steals all my bricks which is ALWAYS.

[Mister Jack]

http://cinemassacre.com/category/boardjames/

 

James Rolfe does a series of web videos about various board games. Both informative and entertaining, just bear in mind that it's James Rolfe so there will naturally be some rough language.

[Mercurial]

Only boardgame I own. I never play it cause people are impatient assholes.

[Johnny]

Oh man I want that Civ game, but I doubt I could ever find anyone to play it with me.

 

I've had it for the longest of those, but I've still only completed a single match of it. Just takes too much space and time and people to do it properly.

 

Maybe when I get my own apartment...

 

Though unlike some...snobs.. I like Monopoly n Game of Life n stuff like that.

 

Haven't played Game of Life, so I can't comment, but Monopoly is the worst kind of luck of the die-based bullshit. Doesn't matter how solid your strategy is, the dice can still fuck you over on a whim.

 

Forbidden Island is my current favorite; it's a fun, light, cheap co-op that acts as a great little introduction to "designer" board games. We also play a lot of Monopoly Deal, which is a really fun card game for parties and such.

 

I have been trying to pick up copies of Ghost Stories, Castle Panic, and Last Night on Earth for a while to get some co-op game nights rocking. Trouble with board games is that they don't really drop in price as video games tend to; in fact, they get more expensive once the initial print is gone. As for competitive games, I will probably check out Small World, which Johnny already posted above.

 

I regrettably do not yet have a pure co-op game in my collection. Been eyeing up Ghost Stories, Pandemic and Space Alert. Space Alert just seems like such a mad thing that I can't help but want it.

 

Edit: If you have trouble getting a game night together, many games come with instructions for solo play. If they don't, then Board Game Geek often (usually?) has solo variants posted.

 

Often true for co-op games, usually not for competitive games.

 

Only boardgame I own. I never play it cause people are impatient assholes.

 

Could help if you had a game that is slightly less of a huge slog than Risk. Not that I've any experience with the Metal Gear Solid version.

 

http://cinemassacre....ory/boardjames/

 

James Rolfe does a series of web videos about various board games. Both informative and entertaining, just bear in mind that it's James Rolfe so there will naturally be some rough language.

 

Thanks, I'll check them out!

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

Often true for co-op games, usually not for competitive games.

I've seen some variants for the competitive "civ-building" games especially, since with those you're usually trying to amass Victory Points to hit the win condition, and that can be done solo easily enough. Definitely not as fun without other people screwing you over though.

[TheMightyEthan]

Though unlike some...snobs.. I like Monopoly n Game of Life n stuff like that.

 

Haven't played Game of Life, so I can't comment, but Monopoly is the worst kind of luck of the die-based bullshit. Doesn't matter how solid your strategy is, the dice can still fuck you over on a whim.

 

That's because it's Capitalism: The Game. And I'd say it's pretty realistic.

[Mister Jack]

When I was a kid I would play a custom rules version of Monopoly that involved taking exorbitant bailouts from the bank whenever I didn't have enough net worth to pay rent.

 

Guess I was a little prophet and didn't even know it.

[Johnny]

Adhering to a strong theme is praiseworthy, but only if you actually manage to make your game fun in the process.

[Mister Jack]

Saw: The Board Game.

 

 

I had this one. Was pretty fun but I couldn't tell you the rules if you put a gun to my face. All I remember was that glorious death machine.

[Johnny]

I had that as well! Brilliant toy. Like most toys, probably really quite a shitty game. xD

[Mister Jack]

Had this one too.

 

[Nexus]

Munchkin is good. I have Cthulu Munchkin

 

Ascension is also fun, as is Red October.

[MasterDex]

I like boardgames but looking at your collection, Johnny, I feel like I missed out on some great nerdy ones. Being the only nerd in my family meant boardgames were of the trivial pursuit, monopoly and scrabble variety.

 

That being said, I bought Risk when I was around 10 but never got to have a full game of it because my siblings and parents weren't into it. I have played many a tabletop game however - love them - but sadly, far too little. Being an Irish nerd is fucking hard!

[Johnny]

Updated opening post.

 

Also, I don't really know anything about where to get board games in countries other than Sweden, so if anyone knows any good websites, I can add them to the post on top.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

Amazon seems to be the best in the US as far as low prices go, unless a game is out of print. Your big box stores stock hardly any designer board games. I have only found Ticket to Ride, Catan, and a small assortment of Fantasy Flight games at Target: Deadwood, Rune Age, and Lord of the Rings. Wal-Mart doesn't stock any designer games.

[Mister Jack]

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

Finished a three-hour match of Killer Bunnies & the Journey to Jupiter last night. It's... fun, but hardly balanced, and the rules can be a mess. Kinda wish the relative who had brought it over had started us with the core card game with no expansions before dropping the board game on us.

 

[Johnny]

That's one of the rules of introducing people to a new board game: Skip the expansions. There are some exceptions, like Small World where the races and powers expansion stuff do not add significantly game-changing mechanics, or munchkin where the game is so simple that even in its most complicated form it's no issue, but for most games it's true.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

I ordered the A Game of Thrones card game (includes some board game elements) so I'll report back on how it is once we get it in.

[Mercurial]

I've been wanting to the game of throne card game for awhile.