- Joined
- Apr 26, 2010
- Posts
- 500
A few drinks into the night and am feeling board gamey...
I've been playing board games off and on for maybe the past 8 years or so. I don't have an insane wall of games like some people do. I kind of prefer to just keep games I actually like and want. I really feel that I need to downsize a little right now, trim some fat, and get some fresh games in.
I'm planning on, at some point hopefully this year, getting rid of Carcassonne, Mice & Mystics, Munchkin Quest, Tomb, Dixit, Descent 1st Edition, Small World, and *maybe* even Twilight Imperium. I may even get rid of Doom and the expansion since it kind of goes for a lot now, and Descent 2nd edition is just a modified version of Doom for the most part (minus theme, of course) anyway.
I just ordered Star Wars: Imperial Assault which looks fantastic. It's a modified rule set of Descent 2nd edition and is seemingly more thematic.
In Descent 2e, one of the problems with the game is that all heroes get to go back to back, then the overlord (the person playing the bad guy) plays all of his minions, then it goes back to the entire group of heroes. Star Wars is basically back and forth every single unit, which makes for much more interesting choices, plus the game/dice includes the ability for defensive die to nullify an attacker's surge, which are kind of like special extra attacks or abilities that can be performed if the attack rolls the right dice combinations. Tom Vasel did a really good overview/review of it here in case this game sounds even remotely interesting to you guys, I recommend checking it out.
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game isn't too bad. It tries to take the Dungeons & Dragons gameplay (or Pathfinder, which is basically D&D 3.5) and put it in card format so you don't have to have a DM running your game. It's not bad, but you have to read all of the flavor text to feel the mood of the situation your character is in, otherwise the game just turns into flip a card and roll the dice. Today at Gencon they announced Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game which looks like it will be Fantasy Flight's take on the adventure card game idea that the Pathfinder ACG started. It will be interesting to see if this one feels more involved. I'm sure it will sell well, regardless.
Mage Wars is also a pretty cool game. They're renaming the base game as Mage Wars Arena, and then releasing a newer version of the game that does not use a board (so you don't move characters around) called Mage Wars Academy. Mage Wars Academy only uses cards, so it's almost closer to a typical head to head card game. Android: Netrunner is also fantastic, but if you don't have people to play with, it kind of kills it. The downside of so many competitive 1v1 card games is they will probably never be as big as Magic The Gathering, so what's the point in playing? I think the major appeal of Netrunner, for me, is the theme of hacker vs corporation, and then the game being asymmetrical where the game is played completely different depending on which role you are (hackers have equipment and try to hack servers and get around security, while the corporation sets up servers to complete their agendas and tries to defend them from the hacker).
If you're looking to get into modern board gaming, there are a few games that typically recommend for new players. They are:
Dominion - Easy to learn card game that supports about 6 players or so and can become very cut throat very quickly depending on the random cards that are chosen to play. They have an online version of this game you can play which is very good, however I think they're revamping it a bit and they're in beta on the new client right now. It's free to play the base set and the AI is really good. This type of game is called a deck builder because you start out with a small deck of cards, say enough to draw two hands of five cards, and you use those cards you draw to acquire/purchase more cards. Those cards get shuffled back into your deck and it slowly grows over the game. Do you use cards to get more money to buy more cards, or do you use your cards to buy victory points (points that make you win the game)? The victory points get put into your deck like all of the other cards, and while they are required to win, they are completely useless when you draw them from your deck as they do nothing until the very end of the game.
King of Tokyo - Fantastically themed game where you roll dice to buy power ups so you can kill all of the other monsters. It's very easy to learn and can be quick to play.
Ticket to Ride - Collect train cars and strategically place them along routes to complete your city connections. You can strategically block some routes if you think someone is going for one and completely ruin their game if you do it right. They also released this on iOS, PC, and Android. Plays very well digitally.
There's also a game called Thunderstone which just recently went out of print, but was basically a Dominion style game but with RPG elements and could be played single player or with multiple people.
Blokus is great with exactly four players, and Telestrations is an awesome telephone-meets-pictionary game that is always a hit when you've got 6-12 players. You end up with stuff like this in Telestrations:
We mixed Cards Against Humanity with Telestrations once and ended up with something like this:
Anyhow, there are tons of games out there. Probably most of them are total crap, but there are a lot of really good ones, too.
Anyhow, here's my current collection that I hope to be cleaning up a bit.
I've been playing board games off and on for maybe the past 8 years or so. I don't have an insane wall of games like some people do. I kind of prefer to just keep games I actually like and want. I really feel that I need to downsize a little right now, trim some fat, and get some fresh games in.
I'm planning on, at some point hopefully this year, getting rid of Carcassonne, Mice & Mystics, Munchkin Quest, Tomb, Dixit, Descent 1st Edition, Small World, and *maybe* even Twilight Imperium. I may even get rid of Doom and the expansion since it kind of goes for a lot now, and Descent 2nd edition is just a modified version of Doom for the most part (minus theme, of course) anyway.
I just ordered Star Wars: Imperial Assault which looks fantastic. It's a modified rule set of Descent 2nd edition and is seemingly more thematic.
In Descent 2e, one of the problems with the game is that all heroes get to go back to back, then the overlord (the person playing the bad guy) plays all of his minions, then it goes back to the entire group of heroes. Star Wars is basically back and forth every single unit, which makes for much more interesting choices, plus the game/dice includes the ability for defensive die to nullify an attacker's surge, which are kind of like special extra attacks or abilities that can be performed if the attack rolls the right dice combinations. Tom Vasel did a really good overview/review of it here in case this game sounds even remotely interesting to you guys, I recommend checking it out.
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game isn't too bad. It tries to take the Dungeons & Dragons gameplay (or Pathfinder, which is basically D&D 3.5) and put it in card format so you don't have to have a DM running your game. It's not bad, but you have to read all of the flavor text to feel the mood of the situation your character is in, otherwise the game just turns into flip a card and roll the dice. Today at Gencon they announced Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game which looks like it will be Fantasy Flight's take on the adventure card game idea that the Pathfinder ACG started. It will be interesting to see if this one feels more involved. I'm sure it will sell well, regardless.
Mage Wars is also a pretty cool game. They're renaming the base game as Mage Wars Arena, and then releasing a newer version of the game that does not use a board (so you don't move characters around) called Mage Wars Academy. Mage Wars Academy only uses cards, so it's almost closer to a typical head to head card game. Android: Netrunner is also fantastic, but if you don't have people to play with, it kind of kills it. The downside of so many competitive 1v1 card games is they will probably never be as big as Magic The Gathering, so what's the point in playing? I think the major appeal of Netrunner, for me, is the theme of hacker vs corporation, and then the game being asymmetrical where the game is played completely different depending on which role you are (hackers have equipment and try to hack servers and get around security, while the corporation sets up servers to complete their agendas and tries to defend them from the hacker).
If you're looking to get into modern board gaming, there are a few games that typically recommend for new players. They are:
Dominion - Easy to learn card game that supports about 6 players or so and can become very cut throat very quickly depending on the random cards that are chosen to play. They have an online version of this game you can play which is very good, however I think they're revamping it a bit and they're in beta on the new client right now. It's free to play the base set and the AI is really good. This type of game is called a deck builder because you start out with a small deck of cards, say enough to draw two hands of five cards, and you use those cards you draw to acquire/purchase more cards. Those cards get shuffled back into your deck and it slowly grows over the game. Do you use cards to get more money to buy more cards, or do you use your cards to buy victory points (points that make you win the game)? The victory points get put into your deck like all of the other cards, and while they are required to win, they are completely useless when you draw them from your deck as they do nothing until the very end of the game.
King of Tokyo - Fantastically themed game where you roll dice to buy power ups so you can kill all of the other monsters. It's very easy to learn and can be quick to play.
Ticket to Ride - Collect train cars and strategically place them along routes to complete your city connections. You can strategically block some routes if you think someone is going for one and completely ruin their game if you do it right. They also released this on iOS, PC, and Android. Plays very well digitally.
There's also a game called Thunderstone which just recently went out of print, but was basically a Dominion style game but with RPG elements and could be played single player or with multiple people.
Blokus is great with exactly four players, and Telestrations is an awesome telephone-meets-pictionary game that is always a hit when you've got 6-12 players. You end up with stuff like this in Telestrations:
We mixed Cards Against Humanity with Telestrations once and ended up with something like this:
Anyhow, there are tons of games out there. Probably most of them are total crap, but there are a lot of really good ones, too.
Anyhow, here's my current collection that I hope to be cleaning up a bit.
