Hobbies Board Games Thread

[TailGlowVM]

I'm surprised we don't have any thread for this (or am I the only person here that plays them? Hopefully not.) I was introduced to board games mainly by my father, who used to play them all the time with his siblings when growing up. I enjoy them but my mother and sister don't quite as much, and most need more than two players, so we don't end up playing them as much as I would like to. A lot of the games they used to own are probably worth a considerable amount of money now, but some have been thrown away and others have lost a piece or two over the years.

The ones I'm aware of remaining and have played are an old Monopoly and Cluedo set, which you obviously know of, but can anyone work out what the missing playing piece in the Monopoly set would be? The game is probably from the 1960s or 1970s, is the British version, and has a car, dog, ship, boot and hat. The others have not been produced for decades, and I am likely the only person here to have ever played some of them. There's Ulcers, a game that requires hiring staff for a company, Ratrace, a game of social climbing, Mine a Million, Soccerama, and Campaign (a game of strategic conquest in the age of Napoleon).

My father and his siblings owned numerous others at the time, which I don't remember all of but includes two others we now have modern versions of: the London Board Game, and Escape from Colditz (originally created to tie in with the 1970s TV series, though even if you haven't watched it is probably worth buying if you are also a board game fan.) He also mentions the Dad's Army board game, saying that he remembers it not being very good, but he should have kept it as it would be worth a lot of money now the way the series has lasted.

Is anyone else here interested in these board games, or any other? This is a place to discuss it (and no, I am not selling you any of the games above.)

 

[Blazade]

You know when I saw this I was expecting a thread about like the more modern, complicated, European style board games that have been getting popular in the last 15is years. Your Settlers of Catan, Dominion, Puerto Rico type stuff.

I've been running game nights for a while now and I personally have a decent size collection. I've been playing a lot of Scythe and enjoying it over the Pandemic. I've also quite enjoyed Mage Knight as a solo/co-op game recently. But I'm always looking for more! I'm curious what other people recommend.

 

[Oglemi]

There was an older thread but is probably fine https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/tabletop-discussion.3625891/

Wingspan is easily one of the best current games at the top of the market and I would highly recommend it to just about anyone, there's also a digital version on the switch which is also getting its first expansion in a month

There hasn't been any crazy releases lately, but Frosthaven is kind of looming over the industry rn and I'm just kinda dreading seeing that one come through the door lol

TCGs are really what's dominating the table top market rn, which isn't totally new, but even lesser sellers like yugioh, Mha, and digimon have been popping off when it's usually just mtg and pokemon

 

[Blazade]

There was an older thread but is probably fine https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/tabletop-discussion.3625891/

Wingspan is easily one of the best current games at the top of the market and I would highly recommend it to just about anyone, there's also a digital version on the switch which is also getting its first expansion in a month

There hasn't been any crazy releases lately, but Frosthaven is kind of looming over the industry rn and I'm just kinda dreading seeing that one come through the door lol

TCGs are really what's dominating the table top market rn, which isn't totally new, but even lesser sellers like yugioh, Mha, and digimon have been popping off when it's usually just mtg and pokemon

Wingspan is great because it really is the flagship for an accessible boardgame these days. It's organized, it's pretty, it's fun, it's not too hard to learn, and people tend not to know who wins until the end. It doesn't really scratch the itch that a lot of the more complicated games I enjoy do, but I never feel bad about bringing it out in a new/random crowd. I'm curious to see how it affects newer games now that it's as popular as it is.

I am in the middle of a couple of Gloomhaven campaigns and I do enjoy it. The video game version is much more accessible than the board game is though, I have plenty of friends who would never touch that board game who I was able to convince to try the video game.

I think there's been some kind of weird "collectable" demand increase since the pandemic. Seems like in the last couple years everyone I know and research in the TCG space is treating everything new and interesting like crypto or some other investment which makes it difficult to tell what's legit.

 

[Sijih]

You know when I saw this I was expecting a thread about like the more modern, complicated, European style board games that have been getting popular in the last 15is years. Your Settlers of Catan, Dominion, Puerto Rico type stuff.

I've been running game nights for a while now and I personally have a decent size collection. I've been playing a lot of Scythe and enjoying it over the Pandemic. I've also quite enjoyed Mage Knight as a solo/co-op game recently. But I'm always looking for more! I'm curious what other people recommend.

This is a great board game collection. You have really good games at every end of the range, from quick and casual (coup) to mediumish but strategic (dominion) and then the heftier modern board games.
Also, have you tried spirit island? I haven't played it yet, although I want to, but it seems to fill the same cooperative niche that mage knight does.

Anyways, I came into this thread to recommend two games. The first is Dominion:

boardgamegeek description excerpt

In Dominion, each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards. In the center of the table is a selection of other cards the players can "buy" as they can afford them. Through their selection of cards to buy, and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck on the fly, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by game end.

What the excerpt leaves out is that dominion is a game of comboing cards. You reactively create an optimal deck based on the cards available to you, then ruthlessly pare it down and build synergy until you get to a point where you're playing your whole deck in a turn, raking in victory points, and feeling like an untouchable card game demigod. This game is a staple for many people and is absolutely worth picking up at least the base game of. I will say that if you don't have someone experienced to play with you should probably either look up a tutorial or be willing to stick with it for quite a few games. New players often underestimate the power of thinning your deck and accumulating actions/card draw, and the game can feel sluggish if you don't do those things.

The second is Root. It's an asymmetric war game, where each player (playing a faction of cute little animals vying for control of the forest) has a completely different playstyle.

excerpt from gamesrader review

What's more, Root gleefully cribs the best ideas from the last few decades of wargame development and packs them into a simple, cute package. The Marquis de Cat is playing a traditional wargame of economics. The Eyrie enacts delicate, planned area control. The Woodland Alliance is an insurgency, spreading its influence while avoiding major military conflict. Finally, the Vagabond is playing an adventure game amid the chaos, pitting sides against each other for personal gain.

The asymmetry is done very well, each faction feels fun and complete, and the interactions between players feel meaningful as well. You can haggle with people, make pacts with people, break pacts with people, or just battle people in the traditional board game way.
Also worth mentioning is that the game does its best to be accessible to new players, with each faction having a helpful guide to action order and the general idea behind the faction's strategy.
Admittedly, Root has a lot of things which might deter you from playing if you read about it in a review. There's heavy kingmaking, numerous ways for people to harm you if they hold a grudge, ways to get locked out of the game, a long playtime, some quite complicated factions despite the guides, and the fact that a lot of factions revolve around being as annoying to others as possible.
But all of this coalesces into a game that's somehow really enjoyable. It might be a matter of perspective, but to me these parts of the game feel like obstacles that encourage further engagement and further strategic thinking. Embrace the haggling, embrace the fact that players can screw you in ways beyond just killing your troops, and plan around it while hopefully give everyone else a taste of their own medicine.

 

[Blazade]

This is a great board game collection. You have really good games at every end of the range, from quick and casual (coup) to mediumish but strategic (dominion) and then the heftier modern board games.
Also, have you tried spirit island? I haven't played it yet, although I want to, but it seems to fill the same cooperative niche that mage knight does.

Anyways, I came into this thread to recommend two games. The first is Dominion:

boardgamegeek description excerpt

In Dominion, each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards. In the center of the table is a selection of other cards the players can "buy" as they can afford them. Through their selection of cards to buy, and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck on the fly, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by game end.

What the excerpt leaves out is that dominion is a game of comboing cards. You reactively create an optimal deck based on the cards available to you, then ruthlessly pare it down and build synergy until you get to a point where you're playing your whole deck in a turn, raking in victory points, and feeling like an untouchable card game demigod. This game is a staple for many people and is absolutely worth picking up at least the base game of. I will say that if you don't have someone experienced to play with you should probably either look up a tutorial or be willing to stick with it for quite a few games. New players often underestimate the power of thinning your deck and accumulating actions/card draw, and the game can feel sluggish if you don't do those things.

The second is Root. It's an asymmetric war game, where each player (playing a faction of cute little animals vying for control of the forest) has a completely different playstyle.

excerpt from gamesrader review

What's more, Root gleefully cribs the best ideas from the last few decades of wargame development and packs them into a simple, cute package. The Marquis de Cat is playing a traditional wargame of economics. The Eyrie enacts delicate, planned area control. The Woodland Alliance is an insurgency, spreading its influence while avoiding major military conflict. Finally, the Vagabond is playing an adventure game amid the chaos, pitting sides against each other for personal gain.

The asymmetry is done very well, each faction feels fun and complete, and the interactions between players feel meaningful as well. You can haggle with people, make pacts with people, break pacts with people, or just battle people in the traditional board game way.
Also worth mentioning is that the game does its best to be accessible to new players, with each faction having a helpful guide to action order and the general idea behind the faction's strategy.
Admittedly, Root has a lot of things which might deter you from playing if you read about it in a review. There's heavy kingmaking, numerous ways for people to harm you if they hold a grudge, ways to get locked out of the game, a long playtime, some quite complicated factions despite the guides, and the fact that a lot of factions revolve around being as annoying to others as possible.
But all of this coalesces into a game that's somehow really enjoyable. It might be a matter of perspective, but to me these parts of the game feel like obstacles that encourage further engagement and further strategic thinking. Embrace the haggling, embrace the fact that players can screw you in ways beyond just killing your troops, and plan around it while hopefully give everyone else a taste of their own medicine.

I haven't tried Spirit Island but reading a description of it makes me feel like I should. Thanks for tipping me off to it!

Dominion is obviously a classic and it's crazy to think I've been playing it for over 10 years and still getting enjoyment out of it. It's basically THE deck building board game that so many others are based off of. It helps that the cards you can buy change all the time so it's always fresh even with 0-2 expansions. I used to play it a lot on bootleg websites but I hear the official online version is pretty good these days.

Root is really cool as well, and I really enjoy the asymmetric aspect. I've played the steam version with a few people on Smogon and the only reason I hesitate to buy it in paper is because you really have to play the game as all four factions to have any idea what's going on. The game's good about telling you how your faction works, and you'll have fun screwing around, but I personally have a lot less fun if I can't understand what everyone's doing and have no leg to stand on when it comes to strategy. That could change, though, since it only takes a few plays to get people up to speed I might still convince myself to get it.

Recently I got to play Twilight Imperium a couple times and I gotta say I really love how smooth and interesting the game is for an 8 hour Space Civilization clone with lots of rules and politicking. While there's a lot of rules to keep track of, the game doesn't ask too much of you in any specific moment, the objectives serve as a nice direction that's different every game, and players are showered with various different currencies that explicitly exist to help curry favor with each other and keep things moving.

 

[Myzozoa]

I've played a lot of base game Catan, Puerto Rico (too optimized to play casually imo but if you dont look up any advice it could be fun to play w ur friends), some dominion (it's just too much work to navigate all the expansions). Played a lot (a LOT) of base game wingspan, I think the game is slightly deeper than some ppl credit it for because of the turn limit/round structure means that you have to carefully time everything. I've played Lords of Waterdeep w all expansion, too luck based w the quests arguably but if no one gets a busted plot quest it's quite good.

I recommend the legacy Machi Koro if you want to play through a legacy game, it is competitive imo or will at least scratch the itch which is unusual in a legacy game. Regular Machi Koro is also an excellent casual and decently competitive game with the base sets + some expansions (tip: in the base game there is a card called 'tuna boat' that is very broken so one should raise the cost to buy it as a house rule to make it fair).

Finally Tsuro is a p fun game that can go p fast and has some type of spatial reasoning involved.

 

[Sijih]

some dominion (it's just too much work to navigate all the expansions

by this do you mean in terms of physical space and time constraints? In that case I would recommend the online version of dominion. free base game, expansions cost money, no setup or having to lug cards around.

if you think there's promise in dominion but you don't like how it's done you could also try mystic vale or star realms, but dominion is imo the best of its genre

I want to try wingspan because i know someone with the expansion. also if you like it then you might be interested to know that the designer is releasing a new game called the fox experiment

 

[Redless]

I played a lot of board games in college and when I saw this thread I knew I had to jump in to tell you about my absolute favorite: Tragedy Looper.

The premise of Tragedy Looper is that it's 3v1 and it's a deduction game. One player is the "mastermind" and their goal is to try and cause some tragedy (or series of tragedies) to occur. They know exactly what these tragedies are and they know a lot of secret info that allows them to make them happen. The other three players are on a team against the mastermind, and they know nothing. Their advantage is that they can "time loop" -- when the tragedy occurs they get to reset the gameboard back to the start, keeping any information that they've learned while undoing the tragedy, their mistakes and any progress the mastermind might have made, and then try again while keeping all the information that they gained. They can only do this a set number of times though, so it's a battle of wits with the mastermind trying to stretch out the limited number of secrets and tools that the game gives them while the protagonists try to anticipate what those are, all while both sides fight for control over the ones they already know about. When played at a high level, it's a lot like the early game of Pokemon, with lots of "scouting" and seeing how long you can keep threats unrevealed until you pick exactly the right moment to show them and swing momentum in your favor.

The game is anime themed (uh oh) and has quintissentially japanese characters like the "shrine maiden" and "class rep" who are the various victims and culprits of the crimes that happen. I think this is a homage to classic time-looping visual novels like "Higurashi" which Tragedy Looper takes a lot of cues from (I'm also obsessed with this genre of VNs...). If you get the Spanish version you can dodge the anime theming though (not sure why they made this decision, as Latin America has the most weebs per capita of any region ime, but whatever). It comes with ten scenarios in the box and you can also buy the two expansions which have about ten additional scenarios each. The real meat of the game is when you start coming up with your own scenarios and run them for your friends, though.

I played this game with the same 3 friends every weekend for about two years straight (my junior and senior year of college) and I can tell you that it delivers on the promises of its evocative theming and then some. It was incredibly fun to explore what the game had to offer with those guys. I think it's getting a rerelease in the west in the next year or two (if it hasn't already) so check it out if you see it in your local boardgame shop!

 

[Blazade]

I played a lot of board games in college and when I saw this thread I knew I had to jump in to tell you about my absolute favorite: Tragedy Looper.

The premise of Tragedy Looper is that it's 3v1 and it's a deduction game. One player is the "mastermind" and their goal is to try and cause some tragedy (or series of tragedies) to occur. They know exactly what these tragedies are and they know a lot of secret info that allows them to make them happen. The other three players are on a team against the mastermind, and they know nothing. Their advantage is that they can "time loop" -- when the tragedy occurs they get to reset the gameboard back to the start, keeping any information that they've learned while undoing the tragedy, their mistakes and any progress the mastermind might have made, and then try again while keeping all the information that they gained. They can only do this a set number of times though, so it's a battle of wits with the mastermind trying to stretch out the limited number of secrets and tools that the game gives them while the protagonists try to anticipate what those are, all while both sides fight for control over the ones they already know about. When played at a high level, it's a lot like the early game of Pokemon, with lots of "scouting" and seeing how long you can keep threats unrevealed until you pick exactly the right moment to show them and swing momentum in your favor.

The game is anime themed (uh oh) and has quintissentially japanese characters like the "shrine maiden" and "class rep" who are the various victims and culprits of the crimes that happen. I think this is a homage to classic time-looping visual novels like "Higurashi" which Tragedy Looper takes a lot of cues from (I'm also obsessed with this genre of VNs...). If you get the Spanish version you can dodge the anime theming though (not sure why they made this decision, as Latin America has the most weebs per capita of any region ime, but whatever). It comes with ten scenarios in the box and you can also buy the two expansions which have about ten additional scenarios each. The real meat of the game is when you start coming up with your own scenarios and run them for your friends, though.

I played this game with the same 3 friends every weekend for about two years straight (my junior and senior year of college) and I can tell you that it delivers on the promises of its evocative theming and then some. It was incredibly fun to explore what the game had to offer with those guys. I think it's getting a rerelease in the west in the next year or two (if it hasn't already) so check it out if you see it in your local boardgame shop!

I've played this game a few times and I really like it, but it's a bit of a hard sell to get new people to play. It's a lot to learn for what it is and the biggest wet blanket is that the players aren't allowed to talk when they're playing cards. I know why this is the case for balance reasons but it sucks a lot of the fun out of it imo, and with new players I often as mastermind let them converse and take the L, making it considerably harder for myself.

But the open ended scenario structure and having to use all of your multiple routes to victory over all the loops is very very cool, and I'd love to get to the point where I can make scenarios with people, since that seems like the real fun part.

 

[Redless]

I've played this game a few times and I really like it, but it's a bit of a hard sell to get new people to play. It's a lot to learn for what it is and the biggest wet blanket is that the players aren't allowed to talk when they're playing cards. I know why this is the case for balance reasons but it sucks a lot of the fun out of it imo, and with new players I often as mastermind let them converse and take the L, making it considerably harder for myself.

But the open ended scenario structure and having to use all of your multiple routes to victory over all the loops is very very cool, and I'd love to get to the point where I can make scenarios with people, since that seems like the real fun part.

We ignored the "no talking while playing cards" rule starting about 6 months in. It's not obvious at all, but that rule is actually terrible for balance (as well as having the considerable downside you described). The reason it's bad for balance is because you want to write scripts that are playable with a single person puppeting all 3 protagonists. Three protagonists that can talk with one another is closer power-level wise to a single person than to three people who have to coordinate without talking. So to make scripts that are balanced for any number of people, you need to allow talking with the higher numbers.

Making scenario's is a blast, it's closer to Pokemon teambuilding than anything but it's a lot more freeform since you have more variables to work with. One of the most fun things I've ever done, no cap.

 

[Blazade]

We ignored the "no talking while playing cards" rule starting about 6 months in. It's not obvious at all, but that rule is actually terrible for balance (as well as having the considerable downside you described). The reason it's bad for balance is because you want to write scripts that are playable with a single person puppeting all 3 protagonists. Three protagonists that can talk with one another is closer power-level wise to a single person than to three people who have to coordinate without talking. So to make scripts that are balanced for any number of people, you need to allow talking with the higher numbers.

Making scenario's is a blast, it's closer to Pokemon teambuilding than anything but it's a lot more freeform since you have more variables to work with. One of the most fun things I've ever done, no cap.

Yeah, of course when making scripts it's obviously better to balance so that talking is better. I don't think the out of the box scripts are balanced this way, and those are the only ones I've played.