Other Games

[Jason Waddell]

By the way, I just read your review of the Catan Dice Game. If you (and your wife) want a free, tense, improved, thematic dice game, look here:
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/501166/so-knizia-invented-a-really-good-game-and-heres-ho

Decathlon is a masterclass in simple game design. I printed a bunch of scoresheets small enough to fit in an Altoids tin, along with the eight dice, and it's perfect. Seriously, This Is The Yatzhee You Are Looking For.

Good suggestion, I read about it a long time ago and tried to convince my wife, but we never got around to it. She's the type that doesn't want to play games for LONG periods of time, then will randomly want to do nothing but play games for a 24h period.

Another issue is that she loves Yahtzee so much, if I suggest a similar type of game her response is along the lines of "why don't we just play Yahtzee?"

 

[Eric Chan]

Sigh. I can't convince my wife to play any strategy board games. Cranium, she's all over, Taboo, she can't get enough of, drawing games like Pictionary, she's able and willing. But thirty minutes into a lightweight board game like Settlers of Catan, her eyes are glazing over, and the look on her face tells me she'd rather be sitting in the dentist's chair awaiting some sort of involved drilling procedure.

 

[Rob Dennis]

Oh, man. Great topic. I could write gobs about this, but because I'm at work, I'll just start with a brief list:

• Dominion is excellent. Grandfather of all the deckbuilding games, and still amongst the best, even if it leans more towards the solitaire end of the spectrum than its successors. Great for both Magic players and non-Magic board gamers alike.

• I tried Sirlin's Puzzle Strike, which is also a riff on Dominion (as much as the designer denies it), but it didn't catch on in our group. Part of its issue is that the first edition was completely balanced around 1v1 play, and didn't scale well for multiplayer, which is how my board game group plays all our games. I've read that multiplayer has since been "fixed" in newer editions, but I don't really feel like dropping more money on this one.

• 7 Wonders is a good, lightweight drafting game. Unlike Dominion, it's less a deckbuilding game, and more of a Magic booster draft. The quirk is every player plays each card as soon as they draft them, so there's no matches afterwards - the draft itself is the game. There's a fair amount of depth and variety to be had, but its main failing is that in a full seven player table, you have no effect on people sitting across from you, and they can run away with the game while you're helpless to watch.

these three have particularly taken up a lot of our time at work over the years, especially Dominion and 7 Wonders:

• 7 Wonders has continually over-performed my expectations for it's replay-ability, and if I had to guess, I've been involved in 250-300 games for 4-7 people.
  • the expansions DON'T make the mistake of adding a ton of time to the whole thing, and the Leaders expansion, at a minimum is a must have if you're playing more than a few games
  • the main way to interact across the table is to "hate-draft" and it's relatively cheap to do (play a science or guild as your wonder stage) so there's probably a bit more play in my opinion than what Eric implies
• Dominion is great, but I'll just toss out that I really miss isotropic, and I've been unable to get in a critical mass of games since Dark Ages
• We got the third edition of puzzle strike at work last week, and not having played the first two, I'm unsure the changes, but it seemed to be balanced fine for multiplayer, with the main downside (to me at least, compared to dominion or 7 wonders) that it does seem to reward politcking.

couple newly mentioned ones that I thought were fun:
Noire: Killer vs Inspector
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/102148/noir-killer-vs-inspector
two player deduction game that's pretty thought provoking for a 20-25 minute game
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12942/no-thanks
No Thanks!
sort of a competitive pricing game where you're advantaged if you correctly assess your opponents acceptable level of risk. Extremely simple, yet deep. Highly recommended for 3-5 players (it's possible that this works better with a particular mindset versus "all gamers" but for a roomful of software devs, it hit the right spot)
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28143/race-for-the-galaxy
Race for the Galaxy
Kind of another deckbuilding game, although more based on Puerto Rico. I thought the base game was pretty fun although don't have a lot of insight into the expansions and if that unbalanced anything. I feel like dominion/7 Wonders hits most of what this provides, but it is different enough to be interesting

 

[Jason Waddell]

Found a play group for Netrunner, and will be getting some hands on time this weekend. Also, apparently you can play online via OCTGN. Does anybody else use it? Looks like a pretty easy interface.

 

[tomchaps]

I played a bunch of Netrunner this weekend with my son; I get the rules but still have no idea what skilled play would look like with the basic decks. I'd be up to try playing over OCTGN, if the time difference isn't too great.

Oh, and to be a boardgame pedant: Race for the Galaxy isn't a deckbuilding game, but a tableau-building game. Very different feel to developing your VP engines in each type of game, typically.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Belgium is a 6 hour time difference from East Coast, 9 hours from West Coast. This basically means that only weekends are viable, if you're free then.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Tom, if you're looking for the card images for OCTGN, this appears to be very useful: http://ni.reddit.com/r/Netrunner/comments/1etxu9/update_octgn_netrunner_image_tool/

 

[Lucre]

Sigh. I can't convince my wife to play any strategy board games. Cranium, she's all over, Taboo, she can't get enough of, drawing games like Pictionary, she's able and willing. But thirty minutes into a lightweight board game like Settlers of Catan, her eyes are glazing over, and the look on her face tells me she'd rather be sitting in the dentist's chair awaiting some sort of involved drilling procedure.

If I come cube some time I'll bring one or two of my favourite party games. Sabateur is a constant hit with new faces at boardgame nights and I've never had a partner that couldn't get into it. I loooooooooove hidden enemy mechanic games or mafia games. Have a couple drinks with some new people and just watch hilarious suspicions and animosity bubble.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, we've dabbled a bit with both Werewolf and Saboteur. Those games get intense. My favourite has to be the people who, when they're assigned to be the "villain", just can't lie to save their life. Dumb bad guys are the best.

We'd love to have you at my next cube event. See if you can drag Chris out here, too!

 

[Jason Waddell]

For anyone using OCTGN, my name there is "Trunkers". For the rest of you, you all should learn Netrunner. It's a fun game!

 

[Jason Waddell]

Man, the OCTGN Netrunner plug-in is well made, great looking and easy to use (after a couple practice games). I like using this thing a lot more than MTGO. Can't wait to get better so that I can dip my toe in the deckbuilding waters.