Thread: Board Games Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Over on the Difficult Relatives thread in Hell, the conversation has drifted to board games, and rather than upset the Hell hosts, it seemed a good topic to bring here.

We played Ticket to Ride, Maponimoes and Pandemic over Christmas in a Youth Hostel (having failed to take anything interesting the year before).

The challenge for me is finding something that works for the two of us, and then works when my daughter takes it back to her games playing flat to play with 6, who already have a number of the usual games.

Ticket to Ride - building trainlines across Europe (there's an American version too) I loved - but I was good at that one - you pick up challenge cards and work out how to achieve the routes given. I think the dynamic would be very difficult with 5 players;
Maponimoes, the English version, we turned into a co-operation game trying to work it out and learn the counties, particularly of Wales and Scotland;
Pandemic - trying to role play to beat an virus spreading across the world, really challenging and difficult to win. Another co-operation game.

I also liked the look of Backpacker

Any other suggestions? We are away again at Easter.
 

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Posted by Patdys (# 9397) on :
 
Catan is great for 4-6 players. Good strategy and plenty of opportunities to scheme.

If you are wonderfully politically incorrect, then Cards against Humanity can be hilarious. (Be warned, it is not work/family or sanity safe)

Munchkin, again a card game, is a lot of fun for silly people who like making stuff up as they go.
 

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Posted by Mrs Shrew (# 8635) on :
 
We have had a lot of success with bananagrams. My husband describes it as "solo competitive speed scrabble". Its great fun and can be played with most ages (you might need a team or extra house rules for kids under 10 if not confident spellers).my grandmothers love it.

Also popular is Jungle Speed (basically a fiendish multiplayer snap type card game).

Both of those work well up to six or seven players.

For a calmer games, Tsuro holds 8 people comfortably .you take turns to build a path across the board, trying to survive whilst knocking opponents off the board.

If you enjoyed Pandemic, then forbidden island and forbidden desert might work. I can't remember how many they hold though. They might be five player limits.

Eldritch horror is also a cooperative, but a bit darker themed- set in a Lovecraftian world, trying to stop an evil power loosing itself on the world. Its a great game but as I say a bit different in feel from the others.

Final suggestion for now ( I'm a big board game fan, so sorry for such a long post!) Is Dixit. This game has incredibly beautiful cards. On your round, you choose a card and say a word or phrase to describe it. Put the card down in front of you, and everyone else adds a card from their hand which they think the word or phrase describes into the pile. They get shuffled out, and everyone guesses which card belongs to the person whose round it is.
Holds six, or buy the expanded version "Dixit odyssey" to hold more players easily.

Looking forward to reading all the other suggestions.
 

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Posted by Adam. (# 4991) on :
 
I rarely get to play anymore, but my time in math land introduced me to German(-style) strategy games, like Ticket to Ride. I never became that fond of Catan, which is shame because for some reason it was very popular in the seminary. I introduced people to Powergrid, which is a game that scales well between smaller and larger groups (the rules vary a little bit, so it ends up preserving the feel of the game as the numbers vary).

I think Caylus is actually my favorite game, especially for a small number of players. Gameplay alternates between building the board and playing through what you've built.
 

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Posted by St. Gwladys (# 14504) on :
 
In college, we played a lot of backgammon, as two of our group were very good players. We introduced it to our St. John cadets and to Lord P when he was old enough. The great Game of Britain is another railway game, which wasn great at Darllenwr's parents over Christmases past, as Darlenwr's father was a railway buff, as are Darllenwr and Lord P.
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Apart from Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly and Risk we don't really play boardgames.

We do, however, play backgammon, cribbage and Mahjong - and the children still play racing demon.
 

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Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on :
 
Chinese Checkers is a strategy board game that can be played with 2,3,4 (maybe 5) or six players. My sister and I played the 2 player version. We also played Halma which is another strategy game but only suitable for 2 or 4 players.

Jengie
 

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Posted by Siegfried (# 29) on :
 
I would add for certain--Carcassonne playable for 2-6 or more (with the expansions).

[ 08. March 2015, 14:59: Message edited by: Siegfried ]
 

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Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :
 
Scrabble is my game of choice. The normal set comes with pieces for up to 4 players. Has anyone ever tried combining the tile racks from 2 sets in order to play with 6 people. Does it work just as well? It's certainly a brilliant game.
 

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Posted by Niminypiminy (# 15489) on :
 
Carcasonne is a brilliant game, very easy to learn and playable at lots of different levels.

I like Labyrinth which is quite fast to play but again is playable at various levels -- four competitive adults could get fiendish at it.

I also like Qwirkle which is like scrabble but numerical.

And if there are four of you, Maj Jong is a wonderful game. Apparently in Chinese, the sound of Maj Jong tiles being shuffled is called 'the twitter of swallows'. You don't have to gamble on it, though, as the Chinese do.
 

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Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
No, I'm not fond of Catan either but I do like Carcassonne.

German board games are very good. One of our favourites is 'Burg Appenzell' - you play a tribe of mice whose job is to run round the castle looking for four different kinds of cheese. The first person who gets four different kinds wins the game, but it's not as easy as you might think to find the cheese without being dropped into the dungeons by the other players.

It's OK for two, though it's better for three or four <rereads OP> Oh, sorry, no good for you if you want up to six players, it has a maximum of four. I suppose in that case the two-player card games such as Jaipur and Lost Cities aren't what is wanted either...

I used to like the Cheapass games (Kill Dr Lucky, etc.), but I don't think you can get them any more.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
I have a drawer full of games and no-one ot play them with. My best friend doesn't do games, so no chess, draughts, hnefatafl or any two player games, let alone multiples.

I remember being shown a game that had been worked out by ordinands at Canterbury, long, long ago, by the name, I believe, of Eschatopoly. Many f the subtleties escaped me - and I wasn't given the opportunity to play it, anyway.
 

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Posted by Pearl B4 Swine (# 11451) on :
 
I made a wooden playing board, carving out pathways, holes for the pieces, and even whittled the pegs. I painted them red and white.

Don't dismiss this game as too elementary. While the playing rules are extremely simple, there is a lot of strategical thinking and planning involved. Besides, it's fun.

Evidently nearly every civilization has had this game, which tells you something about its fascination. Kids get hooked on it pretty fast, after they find out it's not a 'baby' game.Nine Men's Morris (Merels)

[Small link fix]

[ 08. March 2015, 19:08: Message edited by: jedijudy ]
 

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Posted by Pearl B4 Swine (# 11451) on :
 
Sorry. Try this: [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Men%27s_Morris]Nine Mens Morris[/url]

[Link fixed in above post-
jedijudy-mighty link-fixer]

[ 08. March 2015, 19:10: Message edited by: jedijudy ]
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
We have Scrabble, Monopoly, chess, draughts, backgammon and cards at home. All of which do get played, but youth hostels often have at least some of these so we don't bother carrying them. (And then spend time in a hostel that doesn't have anything to "larn us").

I also have Mancala and Jenga at home, now.
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
Pearl, you might like to try Preview Post to avoid that kind of thing happening. If it still happens in Preview Post, then Tinyurl is a good way round it, because some characters like apostrophes in urls won't code with the ordinary UBB code, however hard you try. But they will if you use Tinyurl.

Nine Men's Morris

Thanks
Ariel

[ 08. March 2015, 18:06: Message edited by: Ariel ]
 

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Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Pearl B4 Swine:
Don't dismiss this game as too elementary. While the playing rules are extremely simple, there is a lot of strategical thinking and planning involved. Besides, it's fun.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Cards Against Humanity

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This is a magnificently crude game. You have to have the right group though - it relies on players having the appropriate amount of politeness to really wince at the answers. It'd be interesting at a Shipmeet.

Games that work well for 2-6 players are quite hard to find - it seems tricky to scale a larger game down to 2 people, even if the box says it'll work. You might have some luck on Boardgamegeek. It's huge, it's excellent, and it has ratings for how well games play with different numbers of people.

(One of my favourites is Gloom. Best with two or three people though, it'd not work with six.)

[ 09. March 2015, 01:13: Message edited by: Hiro's Leap ]
 

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Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :
 
Two that I've enjoyed over the years are:

Mille Bornes, where you must lay down cards representing a journey of 1000 miles while your opponent deals you flat tires, speed limits, accidents, stop lights, empty gas tanks, etc. Each such "hazard" has a "remedy" that you must play before you can resume your journey.

Waterworks, where you must lay down pipes connecting a valve to a spigot while your opponent deals you pipes pointing in the wrong direction as well as leaks, which you must repair before proceeding.
 

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Cards Against Humanity

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This is a magnificently crude game. You have to have the right group though - it relies on players having the appropriate amount of politeness to really wince at the answers. It'd be interesting at a Shipmeet.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
Mille Bornes, where you must lay down cards representing a journey of 1000 miles while your opponent deals you flat tires, speed limits, accidents, stop lights, empty gas tanks, etc. Each such "hazard" has a "remedy" that you must play before you can resume your journey.

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Ooooh, a childhood fave. Can't get anybody to play it with me these days, but my mates and I spent many a rainy day playing Mille Bornes all through school.
 

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Posted by Lord Jestocost (# 12909) on :
 
Truth & Triumph is for people who want to drag their Trivial Pursuit skills into new realms of piety. Similar sort of concept to TP, with only 4 categories: Old Testament, Wisdom, Life of Christ and Church Age. Fun but you need to make sure all players are evenly matched. It got embarrassing when my mother and I played against my dad and sister. We got one question right and proceeded to clean up the board for the next 20 minutes.

It is thanks to this game that Nicolaus Zinzendorf will ever be more known in the Clan Jestocost as Zigazig von Ludendorf.
 

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Posted by Wet Kipper (# 1654) on :
 
I was fortunate to receive Camel Up for Christmas - it won a "Spiel des Jahres" ( German - game of the year) prize in 2014 and is great fun

I play quite a lot of games, including with a circle of friends who meet once a month for that purpose.
Love Letter is a card based game which is easy to pick up and good for social gaming as you don't need ages to think of your next move and can quite happily chat without losing track. Citadels is similar, though a bit deeper

For full on, hours long gaming sessions I'm a big fan of the Empire Builder series where you "build" your railways using crayons on a dotted board, and then take contracts to ship commodities from one place to another. friends have Empire Builder (USA map) and we have EuroRails with a european map.

There are lots of other "real life" style games where you have to run a farm/port/bazaar/black market business or build a castle etc where it takes an hour to explain the rules and each turn you take needs a good 10 minutes of working out what next - and you only get good at the game once you've played it 3 times (each time needing the same hour to explain the rules to someone ele who is new) - I'm less of a fan of those.

Another intriguing game I got for Christmas is Hanabi - a collaborative game where you can see everyone else's cards but not your own, and you have to work out how to play your cards based on the clues others give you. Hanabi
 

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Posted by Bob Two-Owls (# 9680) on :
 
I tend to play De Bellis Antiquitatis most of the time which is a traditional miniature wargame but using a 24" square board so it is often misfiled with board games. We often play a square grid variant with card counters which makes it even more boardgame-like. Apart from that it is mainly Talisman, Cosmic Encounter and the odd game of Catan.
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Entdecker is a standby - simple to learn, but with enough randomness to keep it interesting.

(It's an exploring game - sail the seas and find islands basically).
 

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Posted by jbohn (# 8753) on :
 
Two favorite games 'round here have been Poo and Nuts! (OK, both are very silly card games, but I think they're within this thread's remit.)

What could be more fun than flinging (virtual) poo and stealing/defending your (virtual) nuts?
 

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Posted by jbohn (# 8753) on :
 
Another I just remembered is Fluxx - a card game (with a bunch of pop-culture variants) where the rules and conditions of victory change constantly...
 

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Posted by St. Gwladys (# 14504) on :
 
Darllenwr's parents had a Mah Jong set and we managed to get a set of our own. Darllenwr still tells the tale with glee of how we went into a large department store in Brum to try and find a set. We couldn't see one, so he decided that they didn't have one. Me, being female, works on the principle of "If you can't see it, ask, as it might not be somewhere obvious". Darllenwr stood and giggled as I tried to understand the broad brummie shop assistant and she tried to understand my Valleys accent. We eventually got a set in Cardiff.
 

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Posted by Sarasa (# 12271) on :
 
This thread is giving me lots of ideas of what game we need to get next - we enjoy playing board games. My son likes Catan, but I'm not sure sure, but we all like Rummikub. We have several games in the Logo Games series. Lots of product placement, but good fun with a lot of people at Christmas and a glass or two of wine.
I rather fancy getting Mah Jong.
 

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Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :
 
Settlers of Catan (we like the seafarers expansion best)and Carcassone (with river expansion) are favourites here, and we also play Citadels and Agricola. Love letter we played a few weeks ago as my bil brought it to a get together. Board games are our usual Sunday family activity.
As an easy to learn card game we like Bohnanza.

[ 09. March 2015, 19:57: Message edited by: Heavenly Anarchist ]
 

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Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
We have about 45 different board games, with our Scrabble game dating to 1980 or so, with all of the score sheets kept with a description of where and when we played, e.g., Me and her, Lake of The Woods, 6 June 1987 in the pouring rain, in the tent, hot and mosquitoey.

Carcasonne has already been mentioned, I think it is the winner for most numerous thus far. We have expansion packages: the River, Inns and Cathedrals, Princess and the Dragon. Highly recommended

Catan - we have the Star Trek version.

Upwords - a letter stacking game to make additional words. If you like word games like scrabble.

Crokinole - not sure if anyone plays much outside of Canada. Our board was made in Manitoba. Description and pictures

Rummoli is another board game with lots of action. We use old buttons for tokens.

Worthy active card games are Asshole (also known as president), Spoons and Thirty One.
 

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Posted by marzipan (# 9442) on :
 
Our local (ish) pub has a board game night every fortnight, and we've discovered a few fun games there - some already mentioned (carcassonne, love letter, cards against humanity). We've also played Dixit which is quite fun but difficult to describe, and Forbidden Island which is a 2-4 player cooperative game.
 

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Posted by To The Pain (# 12235) on :
 
I have played and enjoyed a number of the games already mentioned, but haven't heard of others, so I shall be using recommendations from this thread to look up potential birthday presents for my boardgaming friends.

One not yet mentioned is Bang! - basically a shoot-em-up in the form of a card game and works really well for 5-7 players.
 

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Posted by sharkshooter (# 1589) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Chorister:
Scrabble is my game of choice. The normal set comes with pieces for up to 4 players. Has anyone ever tried combining the tile racks from 2 sets in order to play with 6 people. Does it work just as well? It's certainly a brilliant game.

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quote:

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:

Worthy active card games are Asshole (also known as president),

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A variant on that one from my college days is the reason I can no longer stand even the smell of Southern Comfort (aka Sudden Discomfort)...

[ 10. March 2015, 12:33: Message edited by: jbohn ]
 

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Posted by Metapelagius (# 9453) on :
 
Has anyone else tried "Here I Stand"? As long as you have plenty of time to spare ....
 

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Posted by luvanddaisies (# 5761) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Penny S:
I have a drawer full of games and no-one ot play them with.

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Me too.

I've got a whole bunch of different sorts of game, from Chess to oddities that I've never even had the chance to play once, including some from Cheapass Games that looked a lot of fun, I bought a couple for an orchestra tour back in my musician days, hoping people might give them a go. They wouldn't.
 

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Posted by Talitha (# 5085) on :
 
We play lots of board games, as a couple and with friends, and we're beginning to teach our eldest (4) some of them.

I agree it's very hard to find games that work well for both 2 and 6 players. One option is Lemminge (i.e. Lemmings, but it's only published in German atm. It doesn't matter, as the game is non-verbal and there's no text on cards.) You're racing around a track made of several different terrains, and you play cards from your hand that let you move a certain number of spaces across a certain terrain type, and you can make it so that you can add some of the previously-played cards to yours and make huge moves.

Dominion is very popular. You start with a deck of 10 cards, and you take turns to use the cards in your deck to gain more cards, and at the end you score for the victory-point cards in your deck; but early-game you don't want to clog up your deck with those, you want to buy money and actions instead, which will help you get more and better victory cards later on. It's officially for 2-4 players, but if you have two sets, or the base set plus the Intrigue expansion (there are lots of other expansions too but they don't contain the base cards, only Intrigue does), then you can play with 6.

I'd also recommend 7 Wonders, a relatively simple resource-management type game where you build buildings that give you the resource income to build better buildings and so on. It works with 2 to 7 players, and the gameplay is simultaneous so you don't have lots of downtime playing with 7. Admittedly, it's best with 3 or more, and the rules are slightly adapted for 2-player.

Moving away from the 2-6 player constraint, I second the recommendation for Hanabi, the cooperative card game where you can't see your own hand and have to give each other clever clues.
 

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Posted by Ferijen (# 4719) on :
 
Just got into Agricola here, although its the sort of game you need to learn from somebody as the instructions are mind boggling but the playing is more straight forward.

I like Carcassonne, and also have the South Seas variant, which is different enough to be like a completely different game. I also enjoy Settlers of Catan, and have Settlers of America (only I bought it in Italy so reading some of the cards is somewhat tricky...)

I also like Fluxx, and I confess to enjoying the iPhone variant of Ticket To Ride more than the real life version. Also have Pandemic, and at Christmas played another collaborative game, Forbidden Island. It takes about 45 minutes, and either every one wins, or everyone loses, which challenges the usual winner dynamic. Might be useful in families where there is a particularly bad loser/victim. don't know any of those myself, of course...

If you've only ever played 'traditional' board games, I would definitely recommend some of these interesting newer ones (start with Carcassonne, in my opinion)- particularly the German ones. Really interesting, but not in a 'take all the hours of a weekend away in a game which kills your spirit' Monopoly style. I can't imagine ever wishing to play Monopoly again..

Its amazing how fairly random people can be into board games - put something on your local Facebook page or something to see if you can find fellow players. Its a bit geeky but geeks are cool now
 

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Posted by JonahMan (# 12126) on :
 
For 2-6 players I would go for:

Party type game: Apples to Apples (for 4-6 anyway)

Tile laying: Carcassonne (need the 1st expansion for 6 players)

Race game: Ave Caesar - superb chariot racing with ample opportunities for screeching to a halt in front of your opponents and blocking them. I should imagine this is out of print but second hand copies can be had fairly easily

Card game: 6 Nimmt/Category 5

Civilization Building:7 Wonders

Silly Monsters: Fearsome Floors

If the restriction on needing it to be viable for 2-6 players is lifted, then there are many many more options for accessible games, such as Kingdom Builder and Notre Dame, both of which are easy to pick up but have a lot of replay value.

Board and card games are definitely recommended for holidays, they are usually the things I pack first and with the most attention to detail!
 

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Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Mrs Shrew:
We have had a lot of success with bananagrams. My husband describes it as "solo competitive speed scrabble". Its great fun and can be played with most ages (you might need a team or extra house rules for kids under 10 if not confident spellers).my grandmothers love it.

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I played it for the first time today. It's where you get a naked man in a zipped up yellow suit to.... (oh, wait, that was back in the 1980s) - the game played with letter tiles is much more worksafe. And fits the purposes of the OP rather well as it can be played with only two people or a group of 10 or so. It can be quite intense, though - interruptions can be seen as quite an inconvenience, so might seem rather too serious for those who usually like to have an informal chat between moves.
 

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Posted by JonahMan (# 12126) on :
 
We got really into Bananagrams at Christmas, one of my relations brought a set to our big family get together. At points there was a game going on fairly continuously, but people dipped in and out a bit without it being a problem. We weren't really keeping score though, just playing rounds. So although the play is relatively intense, it need only be so for a few minutes at a time.
 

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Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
I'll have to look out for Bananagrams.

Another game I like is 'History of the World', though that doesn't really work for two players; it's best with 3 or 4 though I think you can play it with up to 6. It aims to cover the whole history of the world in 7 turns - you play a different group of people in each turn and your aim is to take over the world! Bwahaha!

It's fun being Genghiz Khan...
 

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Posted by AngloCatholicGirl (# 16435) on :
 
The old standby of The Game of Life always goes down well at our board game nights with the neighbours and it's not bad for two players.

When we were kids we had Rat Race

which we would spend ages playing either with two or the whole family. Massive amounts of fun and family arguments resulted. Sadly it looks like they don't make it anymore ]
 

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Posted by Siegfried (# 29) on :
 
One that I just recently bought after seeing it on Tabletop is Sheriff of Nottingham. It's for 3-5 players and is built on the idea of traders trying to bring legitimate and smuggled goods into town. One player each round acts as the sheriff and tries to decide who is bringing just what they said they are, and who is trying to slip something more in. Bribery is perfectly fine. Quite a fun play!
 

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Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
Ooh, that reminds me of Nuns on the Run - novice nuns sneaking around the nunnery in the middle of the night whilst the Mother Superior and Prioress try to catch them and send them back to their cells in disgrace...

2-8 players, but doesn't work as a solo game because you need at least one person to play the Mother Superior/Prioress and at least one person to play the novices. Great fun.
 

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Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :
 
We had a lot of fun when we first bought 'The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Game' - you have to choose which option to take when presented with a very sticky situation, such as being lost in the desert, first on the scene at an accident, etc. The aim is to move around the board making the best choices, but there are also laughs at some of the more silly choices.
 

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Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by jbohn:
... A variant on that one from my college days is the reason I can no longer stand even the smell of Southern Comfort (aka Sudden Discomfort)...

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Would that have been Pass Out? I have (admittedly rather vague) memories of playing it with some of the chaps in the choir in Belfast when I was young and daft enough.

Like Monopoly, but with drink.
 

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Posted by JonahMan (# 12126) on :
 
The Marston's variant of Diplomacy is along the same lines..... whenever you take supply centre, you have to drink a pint of Marston's beer. Probably makes the game even longer as successful players tend to pass out!
 

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Posted by Wet Kipper (# 1654) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Jane R:
Ooh, that reminds me of Nuns on the Run - novice nuns sneaking around the nunnery in the middle of the night whilst the Mother Superior and Prioress try to catch them and send them back to their cells in disgrace...

2-8 players, but doesn't work as a solo game because you need at least one person to play the Mother Superior/Prioress and at least one person to play the novices. Great fun.

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