Board/Card Games

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Imperial Knight
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Board/Card Games

Post by Imperial Knight »

Note: I'm not sure whether this really belongs here or in Almost Anything Goes. I certainly won't be offended if it gets moved.

In the past decade or so, I've really become quite interested in board games as I learned that there's a lot more to the board gaming world than the traditional games I was exposed to as a kid. A big catalyst for me was being exposed to what are sometimes known as German-style games or Eurogames, which tend to have a lot of features I like such as relatively short playing times (say, 30 minutes to two hours) and no player elimination but still enough depth to be interesting. For a while I was taking part in a weekly board game night. Although I don't do that any more for a variety of reasons I still play games when I can. Here are some of my favorites, presented in alphabetical order so that I have a convenient excuse not to try and rank them.

Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game by Corey Konieczka (Fantasy Flight Games). Normally I'm skeptical of licensed games, be they board or video, since experience has taught me that they tend to be inferior products aiming to make a quick buck off of the license. This is definitely an exception. It succeeds not only in tying in with its license really well, both in terms of content and in overall feel (it's based on the 2004 remake, not the original TV series) but also being a compelling game in its own right even if you haven't seen the show. In fact, a few friends of mine started watching the show because they enjoyed the game so much. The game is played by 3-5 players, some of whom are humans and some of whom are Cylons (this is a an oversimplification, but basically evil robots trying to wipe out humanity who have the ability to disguise themselves as humans). What makes the game so much fun is because the Cylons can disguise themselves as humans in the story, the players don't know who's a human and who's a Cylon, which can make for tense games with lots of paranoia and accusations flying back and forth (which, again, is very true to the feel of the show). The game is a bit more of a commitment than most of the others I play (a typical game takes 2-3 hours) so I don't get to play it that much but when I have the opportunity it's often one of my first choices.

Dominion by Donald X. Vaccarino (Rio Grande Games). This is a card game where, in theory, each player is competing to have the largest and most impressive kingdom, but the game doesn't really take itself that seriously so the theme isn't really that important. The big mechanic of the game is that players build decks in the style of a collectable card game (think Magic: The Gathering) but do so over the course of the game from a common supply of cards using in-game currency so you have all the fun of setting up combos and getting a deck that functions like a well-oiled machine but without the arms race of having to spend more and more money on the game to keep up with other players that turned me off of CCGs. This is probably the game I play most simply because the combination of short play time and working well with two players makes it a good game to play with my wife.

Race for the Galaxy by Tom Lehmann (Rio Grande Games). This is my favorite game but also really hard to describe. I don't think there's any way I can do it justice here so I'll start off by noting when I first heard the game described (and even when I read the rules) I didn't at all get what it was about but once it clicked with me I was hooked. It's a card game where players are trying to have the most impressive/prosperous space empire, doing so by colonizing (or conquering) planets, researching technology, building an economy, etc. Each round theoretically consists of a number of phases each of which allows you to do one of these things (or helps set you up by getting you more cards). I say theoretically because each player secretly chooses one phase that will occur that round so if everybody chooses the same phase then that round will only consist of the one phase. A big part of the game then is trying to figure out which phases the other players will select and making sure you can benefit from them. Again, I don't think I'm really describing this very well, it's more fun than it sounds.

The Settlers of Catan by Klaus Teuber (Mayfair Games). This may be the most important game to me in that being introduced to it was what sparked my interest in board games and Eurogames in particular. The game is played on a board that represents an island where the players are competing to become the most prosperous settler by building roads, cities, etc. Players build by spending various combinations of five resources (grain, lumber, clay, wool, ore). Players obtain these resources by having settlements adjacent to fields, mountains, etc. They can also be obtained by trading with other players. A neat aspect is that the board is randomized at the beginning of each game and certain spaces will be more productive than others, meaning that in a given game certain resources may be very scarce. This sets up an interesting little economy where it's often advantageous to settle in a certain spot rather than one which is more productive simply because you're getting a resource others will be willing to trade for on terms favorable to you. It makes every game a little different.

Anyone else here like board/card games? If so, what are some of your favorites?

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Sonic#
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Re: Board/Card Games

Post by Sonic# »

I have played and enjoyed all of the games you mention. Battlestar Galactica especially - I love the combination of teamwork and interpersonal intrigue. The game is also very well paced, with an incremental (but not guaranteed) jump track and with a slightly unequal power balance to amp up the paranoia. (One player is president and another is the admiral, each with special powers that, controlled by a Cylon, can really hinder the human players.) I wish I had more people to play Race for the Galaxy with.

Here are a few of my favorites, in the order they come to mind.

Shadows over Camelot: this game is somewhat like Battlestar Galactica, but it's a little bit shorter and (of course) medieval-themed. Players play knights of the round tale, trying to cooperate and succeed in quests to bring peace to Camelot. One player, however, may be the Traitor, working undercover to sabotage the table. The game is beautiful. More importantly, it plays very well.

Innovation: a civilization-themed card game. Players take turns drawing, melding, using, and scoring cards from 10 technology levels (Ancient, Classical, Medieval, etc.). Each card has a particular ability that allows one to draw more cards, score cards, claim achievements, or even win given certain conditions. The game is very procedural and text heavy like a CCG, but without the emphasis on combat. (At most, you can take cards from opponent's boards.) While it is fairly easy to be clearly losing, it is also fairly short - no more than a half-hour for experienced players.

Ascension: So, I like Dominion well enough, but it's not my favorite deck-building game. Ascension is a deck-building game which relies on a randomized deck instead of pre-selected cards for play. That amount of randomness doesn't decrease the amount of strategy involved at all - gathering points (honor) and building an efficient deck are still very important. I also like that my score isn't in my deck like in Dominion, but is instead in a separate pool.

Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation: Most games I play today are relatively accessible to newcomers and casual, because I'm the most enthused of my friends in board games. This one is a 2-player oppositional game that I play with my brother sometimes. One player is Mordor, and the other the Fellowship. Each controls nine large Stratego-like pieces which remain unknown to the other player except during combat. The Fellowship is trying to get Frodo to Mordor without being defeated. The map is stylized diagonally, the Shire in one corner and Mordor in the other. Zones go from 1 tile - 2 tiles - 3 tiles - 4 tiles (mountains) - 3 tiles - 2 tiles - 1 tile to represent moving through Middle Earth on the way to Mordor.

I give all this detail to convey how well-made this game is. On each turn, each player moves a piece one tile forward. Each piece has a particular ability - Boromir can sacrifice himself to defeat an opponent, the Balrog always wins while guarding the pass of Moria, and so on. When they collide, their relative powers (1-5 usually, with a few being higher) are compared and then each player simultaneously reveals a card, which might add power (1-5 for the fellowship, 1-6 for Sauron's forces) or have some other effect (negate the other's card, etc.). It's an excellent rock-paper-scissors-like dynamic. The game can be brutal (I can usually outguess my brother) but is mercifully short.
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"Than seyde Merlion, "Whethir lyke ye bettir the swerde othir the scawberde?" "I lyke bettir the swerde," seyde Arthure. "Ye ar the more unwyse, for the scawberde ys worth ten of the swerde; for whyles ye have the scawberde uppon you, ye shall lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded. Therefore kepe well the scawberde allweyes with you." --- Le Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory

"Just as you touch the energy of every life form you meet, so, too, will will their energy strengthen you. Fail to live up to your potential, and you will never win. " --- The Old Man at the End of Time

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Kizyr
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Re: Board/Card Games

Post by Kizyr »

I've actually heard of several of these. I've similarly heard very good things about the BS:G game, and some of my friends have talked up Race for the Galaxy and Dominion. The only one of those I've played is Settlers of Catan.

Anyway, a couple ones that stand out to me...

Firefly: The Board Game: It's a bit complicated for the first play, but I think once you go 2-3 rounds in one game you get the hang of it. The basic setup is that each player is commanding a Firefly-class ship. You hire a crew, get gear, do the job, and get paid. There's one core objective everyone is trying to achieve (it changes each game -- you can pick different game cards that can make each game take on a slightly different dynamic) -- but to achieve that, it usually takes a lot of resources that require going about the 'verse and doing plenty of side jobs to get up to the point where you can tackle the big one(s). The random events that happen, crew you encounter, gear you grab, and people you have to deal with, all call back to different parts of the series and movie.

The main down-sides are that it takes 2-3 hours for a game, and it requires a fair amount of space to comfortably set up.

Boss Monster: This is a fun and usually quick game where you're an NES-era boss monster building a dungeon, attracting heroes, and trying to make sure they die in your dungeon before they ever get to lay a hand on you. There's all sorts of rooms, room upgrades, spells to temporarily boost your effects, and spells to dick around your opponents, that make it interesting. First to claim 10 souls wins; anyone who lets 5 hits land on them loses.

Netrunner: This is technically a card-building game, but not a CCG. There's a common deck, but you only take so many cards with you when you play against other people. The setup is kind of a cyberpunk backdrop, where one person is the hacker (...or decker... I want to call them deckers...) and the other is the corp (...megacorp...). The decker is breaking into the megacorp's systems, while the megacorp is installing and activating security measures to stop them. The interesting thing is that it's balanced asymmetric gameplay (like the LotR game that Sonic# described) -- each side has a very different objective and a different way of playing to win.

Oh, Galaxy Truckers gets an honorable mention because the game often gets a little silly by the end. KF
~Kizyr (they|them)
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Re: Board/Card Games

Post by Sonic# »

Boss Monster: This is a fun and usually quick game where you're an NES-era boss monster building a dungeon, attracting heroes, and trying to make sure they die in your dungeon before they ever get to lay a hand on you. There's all sorts of rooms, room upgrades, spells to temporarily boost your effects, and spells to dick around your opponents, that make it interesting. First to claim 10 souls wins; anyone who lets 5 hits land on them loses.
Yes, I really like this game. I've only played with two players, and think it might be better with more.

And Galaxy Truckers... I've heard of that but never played it. That's the game about building ridiculous spaceships, right?
Sonic#

"Than seyde Merlion, "Whethir lyke ye bettir the swerde othir the scawberde?" "I lyke bettir the swerde," seyde Arthure. "Ye ar the more unwyse, for the scawberde ys worth ten of the swerde; for whyles ye have the scawberde uppon you, ye shall lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded. Therefore kepe well the scawberde allweyes with you." --- Le Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory

"Just as you touch the energy of every life form you meet, so, too, will will their energy strengthen you. Fail to live up to your potential, and you will never win. " --- The Old Man at the End of Time

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Re: Board/Card Games

Post by Leo »

Just throwing this out there...

I think it'd be cool if somebody would leave Triple Triad as it is but replace the characters and baddies with ones from the Lunar universe.

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Re: Board/Card Games

Post by Imperial Knight »

I didn't mean to abandon this topic after the first post but I've been pretty busy lately. Anyway, the other day I played a rather unusual game of Dominion. I scored 131 points--all on the last turn. To put that in perspective if you haven't played Dominion in a typical game a winning score will be somewhere in the thirties and its often impossible to score more than six points in a turn. Of course, had I not been able to pull that off that turn I easily could have been on the other side of it soon after. The setup was conducive to ending the game on one big turn.

The key cards were Colony (10 points each), Bridge (+$1, +1 Buy, all costs reduced by 1 for the duration of the turn) and King's Court (play an action card from your hand three times). I had managed to trash most of my deck and then on my last turn hit four Bridges with King's Court. That made every card free and along with some other cards I had played that turn it left me with 17 buys, which I used to buy up all the Colonies and Provinces (6 points each).
Sonic# wrote:I have played and enjoyed all of the games you mention. Battlestar Galactica especially - I love the combination of teamwork and interpersonal intrigue. The game is also very well paced, with an incremental (but not guaranteed) jump track and with a slightly unequal power balance to amp up the paranoia. (One player is president and another is the admiral, each with special powers that, controlled by a Cylon, can really hinder the human players.)
Yup, I love all the intrigue. Part of why I love playing as Baltar or Boomer. That extra chance you have of being a Cylon makes things very interesting. Oh, and nothing's more terrifying than if someone you can't trust 100% manages to be President and Admiral at the same time.
Shadows over Camelot: this game is somewhat like Battlestar Galactica, but it's a little bit shorter and (of course) medieval-themed. Players play knights of the round tale, trying to cooperate and succeed in quests to bring peace to Camelot. One player, however, may be the Traitor, working undercover to sabotage the table. The game is beautiful. More importantly, it plays very well.
I've played this one a couple of times and enjoyed it. It was my first introduction to the hidden traitor mechanic.

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