Be Excellent To Each Other

For drunken silliness 'The Really Nasty Horse Racing Game' is rather good...bet on horses and then nobble them as they go round the track.

I'm quite fond of the rather obscure game Quoridor, especially when drunk as it's quite brilliant at starting arguments.

I had a Willow (ie. the film) board game when I was younger.
That was okay, I seem to recall.

As a fan of Hero Quest as a nipper, we tried 'Key to the Kingdom' as a change of pace.

Time taken assembling the board: 30 minutes
Time before my brother won the game: 10 minutes
Time taken for Dad to give game to neighbours: 1 hour.

Well, I read that wrong.

Gay.

That looks brilliant, and gains extra marks for being suitable for two players. Might see if I can obtain that at some point.

Yeah, it's best with two players. Four players can be better arguments-wise as everyone starts talking smack about people blocking their path, though

That was the one yes ! Fantastic stuff.

What was pleasing was that we (myself and the friend I used to play it with) came to find when reordering the case cards that the company who supplied them was only three miles from where we lived. So we used to pop along and pick them up

Ah yes here we go Blucey will know this well..



They used to be based in Colliers wood, but I think the part they were on (in the industrial bit opposite Phipps Bridge) has been flattened now for council houses).

I have played this after buying it for my brother. It is fun.

Even more fun, is teh absolutely superb 'Abalone'. My brother and I once spent pretty much and entire 2 day Xmas stay playing this non-stop. Exceedingly addictive (2 players, btw).

ALso there are the simple but excellent 2 player games such as Stratego and Chess (to use a strange definition of 'simple').

Then there's the games such as "Kill Doctor Lucky", which is ace fun if played in the spirit of the game, as are the likes of "Devil Bunny Needs a Ham".

And then there's the epic games such as 'Axis & Allies' and 'Shogun', which I started about 562378 times and probably enver finished, as everyone always plays defensively and you can never compeltely win unless you have about a zillion hours in which to play. Still fun as a nipper though!

Blast Off! is shit.

Unless you really like Snakes and Ladders, because it's just an overly complicated version.

Gawd you just reminded me of of this.

http://vzone.virgin.net/vintage.games/shop/totopoly.htm

REVIEW!!!

Zombies!!!! is good fun. MrsA and I had a game and it took about 90 minutes, but I think it will be quicker if we don't keep consulting the rules.

To win, you either make it to the chopper, or kill 25 of the undead. Each turn, you place a tile which builds the city up, place zombies on it and any health or bullet tokens. You then move, fight or both then move zombies one space.

The city builds quickly enough Abd you have cards which you can play at anytime to help you or hinder other players.

I'd recommend this, but buy more zombies as the starting 100 isn't sufficient. With mire players it would be even more fun.

Overall, 8/10 and earns its place alongside Ticket to Ride and Carcassone.

I've added Ticket to Ride to my Amazon basket - might click "order" soon. Looks ace. Haven't played a board game for years.

Sorry for slightly changing the subject of the thread Dr Lave; but surely we should all at least be listing the XBLA Boardgames we have...you know for organising games and such like?

For me it's:

Ticket to Ride
Catan
Carcasonne
Risk: Factions

I own Zombies!!! and have two expansion packs for it. I rarely play it though it is good fun. I just don't play board games much. Should we have a board games meet I'll fetch it. If I come.

Which I probably won't.

Because I hate you all.

Obviously.

I really enjoyed it. What I did wrong last night was going to the hospital (was next to the starting tile) to be able to play the First Aid Kit card in front of me and then going 3 tiles over to go to another shop to play the +3 bullets card. MrsA then stopped me moving for one turn, and in the subsequent three turns I rolled a 1 and two 2s for movement. MrsA had cleared out a whole bunch of zombies in her wake and had 18 in her pile with 5 bullets and 5 health. in the next few turns she went down to no bullets and four health and was making for the chopper. She also stopped me moving. Again. We had 100 zombies on the board at this point. So I decided to play the card to make her move 5 spaces and sent her through 5 zombies. Amazingly, she rolled a 4 or higher for all of them, and then was on a score of 23, with 4 health. I played the Alternative food source card and tried to make a break for the chopper knowing that it was ll over soon. I rolled a 1 for movement and then tried to get the zombies around her away. It all failed miserably, and she won with 25 kills to my 8.

next time, I'm going to swap my cards out more often, and keep moving through the city and only go into stores if they are close and I have the card.

I got Catan for my birthday. Really looking forward to playing it.

Oh, that is good news.

if we're talking board games, only Go counts. Not the travel game


And drunk with friends, settlers of catan is hard to beat...

I've been playing dominion. I'm now waiting for my own copy to show up. It is tremendous. Full review later...

I saw Dominion mentioned in this thread. I own Dominion. It is brill. All buy Dominion.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/collection ... dgame&ff=1

This is how it is in Green Box Hunters and Gatherers, I think.

Except that has aurochs and deer and shit to multiply the value.

I echo this.

Tis wonderful.

It's magic the gathering but less aggressive and minus the hideous business practice. Game of the year contender for me. Astonishingly good.

It was already game of the year in 2009. It says so on the box!

I might buy all of the expansions, except the Alchemy one which I've heard is a bit rubbish.

I saw this and thought of you:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/121/dune
including how to make your own board:
http://boardgamegeek.com/image/495528/dune
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/2 ... 7-v1_1-rar
AND
a windows emulator:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/2 ... ator-v2-34

From the BGG marketplace: New €299.00 22-Oct-2006 flag
BARGAIN.

In the interview for my current job my divisional boss started talking to me about the Dune boardgame.


I really want to play Merchants of Venus. It's no where near as expensive as Dune (I watched one go for £50 on ebay the other day) and there's some print-your-own versions on BGG.

Played Cosmic Encounter tonight. Played 3 games. It is mega-fun. 9.5, I think.

oooh, jealous. Been dying to play CEs since watched the downtime town episode on it br rab of consolevania!

So have I

It's been out of stock everywhere though. But a spare copy appeared on http://www.shiregames.com/khxc/index.php and I snapped it up! I ordered the expansions today as well (one only came out the other week), just to ensure I don't miss them.

Plus, they add pieces for a 6th player which will definately multiply the fun by a million.

We bought Dominion and on the whole I would say that Dominion: Intrigue is the better game (Both excellent mind). And as they are both stand alone (as well as working together) I would recommend anyone to jump on board with Intrigue.

We also got Thunderstone: Dragonspire! Which appears to be Dominion + Magic: The Gathering. You build a deck of heroes and equipment and spells and use it to trash up a dungeon. Not played it yet mind. Again this is a stand alone expansion - and Boardgamegeek seems to recommend this as the jumping on point.

Thats 2 board games this year. Glad I'm not tracking boardgames in WongaWatch, that said the GF will split the cost of board games - so it isn't too bad.

Dominion Review: Or Why you should play this game.

You start with a few copper coins (worth £1 each) and a few estates (worth 1 victory point each). This is your deck. Each turn you draw five cards, play 1 action card and buy 1 card with the money in your hand. At the end of your turn you put everything, including the card you bought, your money and your hand, into your discard pile and draw another five cards. Once your deck has run out you shuffle your discard pile and it becomes your new deck. Thus your deck grows with time. For this is a deck building game.

The aim of the game is to get the most land for your little kingdom, or in other words have the most victory points before the game ends. But Victory Points cards do nothing apart from fill up your deck, making it harder to get a decent hand. So you have to find balance between buying more money, buying VPs and buying actions.

ACTIONS! Actions are great because 1) they break the rules outlined above. They give you more actions, or more money, or allow you to buy more than 1 card a turn. Or make your opponent discard cards. Or allow you to curse your opponent and so on.

So far I've only described the controls in this review. It's like I've described the controls to Pac Man DX. Whats this game actually about?

Well. the masterstroke is that there are 25 sets of these action cards, but you only ever play with 10. Selected randomly. Therefore the options open to you are different everytime. You and the people you are playing against make engines and then pitch them against each other.

You look over the cards at the start and try to patch together a series of combos or an elegant method to acquire a bunch of Victory Points before your opponent. The cards are excellently designed to give many different approaches to achieveing this. Some cards seem useless, but then with added experience between extremely powerful.

For example, Chapel allows you to trash up to 4 cards from your hand. Trash means they don't go into your discard and are removed from game. At first seems terrible. But then your realise that by trashing weak cards like coppers, you streamline your deck and so increase the chance of drawing the important mechanics of your engine.

I've played Dominion and Dominion Intrigue probably 15 times so far. The games are quick - over in about 30 minutes, and it only takes someone a single game to get to grips with how to play. So new players are very quickly competitive, and if your bold and ambitious engine falters you're not stuck with it for long. Another round will be starting soon.

And thats the beauty of it. You are trying new approaches and seeing how they work in a completely different situation. Very, very highly recommended.

Important Note: If you think you might get this game - get Dominion: Intrigue instead of vanilla Dominion. It has a better selection of card and is much more interactive.

The recieved wisdom I've heard is that first Dominion is the easiest for new people, as Intrigue involves much more interaction and not as many +card +action type stuff. But I wouldn't know as I don't have any expansions yet. How many peopel are you playing with?

Of course, really people should just SHUT UP AND BUY BOTH ALREADY and then play the game with them both. (Says the person who doesn't own Intrigue, and technically doesn't own Dominion..)




I have no idea what a WongaWatch is but it sound sordid. Anyway, without trying to one up you, I've bought two this week alone. CRY for my addiction and bank balance.

edit: Re Reviews:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ENsEhRbVIM - Base
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbYsjNbDOiU - Intrigue


I've always found an easy way to describe the game (and also used when teaching new people) is the ABCD mantra.

Gameplay goes clockwise around the players, with each player doing their ABCDs.
A - Action cards.
You have one +action to play, though action cards may generate you more actions. For each +action you have play an action card from your hand. Read the card aloud from top to bottom and do as it says. examples of things cards do: tell you to draw more things from your deck into your hand, give you free bonus money for this round only, other crazy shit. If the card is generous enough to give you +actions, then you can continue to play more action card. Keep playing actions until you run out of +actions or you no longer have any action-cards in your hand.

B - Buy phase.
You have one +buy phase, buy action cards played in your A phase might give you more.
For each +buy you can buy one card from the stock and put it on your discard pile. The cost of the card is paid for by the bonus money from action cards + any treasure cards you currently have in your hand.

C- Cleanup
Pick up all played action and treasure cards (from the action and buy phases, respectively) and put them on your discard pile. Put any cards that remain in your hand on the discard pile.

D- Draw.
Draw 5 cards from your draw deck into your hand. If at any time your draw deck depletes, simply shuffle your discard pile and use it as your new draw deck.


Just keep saying ABCD to new players and they'll pick it up dead quick.

Squee.

How big a room would you need to play that?

Played my first three games of Catan this weekend. Really enjoying it and getting the hang of the game mechanics. It was a bit crap in my last game when my hexes weren't producing for almost 10 turns in a row and I had nothing to trade, but it wasn't detrimental to my enjoyment of it. However, asking people if they have wood will never cease to be hilariously funny.

Cal Henderson! That name rolls back the years! Didn't he design/code b3ta?

Me and my girlfriend combined out Catans last night to make a cheap version of seafarers (we have 'custom' yellow, purple and black pieces that came with boats). Looking at the contents list of a real seafarers, all I need to make myself is 5 extra tiles + a few more production numbers and I'll have a cheap, identical version

What the fuck?

(Also - yes. And Flickr)

[edit]Oh wait, I get it now.

I didnae really get on with Catan, I like the getting folk together aspect (same as every other boardgame) but found the game itself a bit meh...

We totally need a Beex boardgame meet up. We should work on this.

I could bring any of these:

So these are my games:

From the top:
Thunderstone - improved with plays, but the desire for theme (storm a dungeon, kill monsters get loot) has made the mechanics clunky. And boardgames are all about mechanics. That said the last game I had was a belter. I had a load of Phalanx heroes that bolster each other. By thinning my deck I was pulling 3 to 4 of them a turn and hammering everything in sight. Light or no light.

Dominion - & Intrigue and the brilliant Prosperity expansions. Leagues ahead of Thunderstone, with divine mechanics. Do you know when some artsyfartys new game journalist waxes lyrical about how wünderbar Outrun 2 or Pacman DX is? How the mechanics are polished to perfection and that? Thats how I feel about Dominion. Tremendous.

Alien Frontiers- A bit like settlers of Catan, you role dice and have to use them to produce resources and eventually colonies to score points. Great fun (we've played it twice) but seems a bit random.

Settlers of Catan - The GF spent time in Germany when the whole boardgame thing kicked off so loves this. I'm not that impressed to be honest.

Cosmic Encounters - I'm really excited about this. Random and mental, but full of strategy and bluffing. Apparently. You need a min of three players so yet to play it.

Small World - A mix of Risk and fantasy minus luck. Each race gets a random perk that changes every game so each game is different. You have to decide when to send your race into decline and start a new one. Great stuff. Interesting has different boards depending on the number of players.

Lost Cities - Simple but ace 2 player card game.

Bohnanza - lamest themed game ever (you farm comedy beans) but a wonderful game of trading between players. Ace, if slightly long.

Carcassonne - It's carcassone.

Spy Alley - better than it has any right to be game of bluff and luck.

Not seen are borros Risk, Monopoly and the satirical War on Terror (ft. evil balaclava for terrorists to wear)

Rllmuk made me aware of http://www.meetup.com/LondonOnBoard/. So these people meet up in a pub and play games.

So it seems to me we could do something like that if people are interested. Or someones house if people are feeling brave (and it would be less embarrassing). That said a Sunday evening playing boardgames in a pub sounds like a plan to me....

Are you coming to the Cottage Meet? There's was quite a lot of boardgaming done at the last one.

Yes, the cottage is effectively 'board games meet' combined with rather a lot of drinking.

I love this game. I have both expansions, each allowing one extra player. But with anything more than the standard 5 it's a bit tiresome. You'll only get 1 or two goes.


Also: Everyone in my group seems to go alliance-offering mad. Do they not see that an important part is not giving other people the chance of colonies?!

Tempted by the cottage but the cost/dates put me off. Can't remember which. Either way v.jealous.



I actually also have the old Mayfair version with only twenty aliens, rules for two players and really fiddly pieces.

It's more that worth the money.

In many games, I've found, people don't like to upset the other players and so on, by denying them things. Especially if it is a friendly game, rather than the all out war that erupts when mrsA and I play something.

it's better than Christmas on a desert island with Mila Kunis.

/googles
No. No it isn't.