Board Games

[BleuPanda]

Anyone else here into board games? I've become really obsessed over the past few years. I got 7 new board games for Christmas and realized it's gotten out of hand.

My current collection:
http://boardgamegeek.com/collection/use ... dgame&ff=1

I hope that link works.

Favorites so far:
Agricola
Caverna
Power Grid
7 Wonders
Dominion
Through the Ages

[GucciLittlePiggy]

I don't play many, but Settlers of Catan is the shit!

[BleuPanda]

Settlers of Catan was my gateway game. The problem is I'm really good at board games, and Catan has a mechanic that benefits social interaction, which means when I play Catan everyone intentionally avoids trading goods with me (because they know I'm good at making deals that benefit me more than them). So Catan is virtually unplayable for me by this point. I also hate the reliance on dice.

I think my favorite game on that kind of level is Power Grid. Almost completely eliminates luck and the social interaction is competitive instead of cooperative while still focusing on the idea of giving your opponent just enough to benefit you more. Another good entry level game is Dominion, which was the second game I bought after Catan and I still play to this day. The only problem with Dominion is it lacks a real sense of playing with others.

[Maschine_Man]

I'm in love with the fact there is a website that you can track and rank board games.

I don't play many board games, sadly. I did play a Monopoly rip off last week called Beanopoly. It was coffee themed.

[BleuPanda]

Board games have become serious business over the past decade. It's kind of started making up for the failure of multiplayer video games (i.e. the reliance on FPS as the leading genre with very few alternative options).

I also love that Monopoly is ranked in the bottom 100 on the site.

[Jirin]

My favorite ones are the super-long strategy games with a lot of chaos and complex rules.

Cosmic Encounter is probably my favorite, though the good versions of that game are kind of expensive on ebay now.

[Gillingham]

I prefer board games in which the luck factor is low and the strategy and/or interaction level amongst players is high.
Used to play monopoly, hotel and risk quite a lot as a youth, but now I hardly ever play those luck-based games.

[Nassim]

My favorite game is probably Time's Up. While I do like the fact that having an above average culture help, I like even more the fact that you have to be witty and guess how people will think or what they are trying to convey, sometimes you can get people to guess a person faster by giving wrong information than the complete biography. And you often have to find a 2nd or 3rd way to make people guess if the 1st didn't work.
So I like all these kinds of game, Pictionary is a good example of the same effect, I am very bad at drawing but I am good at guessing what people mean or finding way to convey an idea through poor drawing. In this type of game, I'd call Concept the 2nd best I've played though.
For similar reasons Dixit or Balderdash can be quite fun too.

I am not the biggest fan of the german school of boardgames, Catan or Agricola are a bit too stern for me. Especially all the "worker placement" games like Agricola, Caylus, Keyflower, Stone Age... That's ok but not my cup of tea.
I'd rather play 7 Wonders or Small World (or Small World ancestor which was called "L'age des Dieux", so I guess there must be some "Age of Gods" for English speakers... really loved that one). Discworld Ankh Morpork have the best of all worlds : fun settings and cards, lots of strategy, a bit of deception...
That being said I remember really enjoying Power Grid, and Kingdom Builder despite its very stern presentation is very interesting too.
I also like co-op games like Flash Point, Ghost Stories or Arkham Horror (and to a lesser extend Pandemic and Knights of the Round Table), though the risk of them turning into "1 or 2 players are giving orders to the others" is huge. I beat most of them on hard settings (usually right after someone told "but we never win with those settings"), but I still can't imagine how it is possible to win a Hanabi game...
Dominion is fun, though I am not as convinced as some others of its longtime replayability.
Luck is ok if it is nicely done and not the only criteria, Shogun for instance can once in a while be ruined by luck but usually the victory goes to someone who played well.
And once in a while strategy games like Tsuro, Blokus, Hive or old ones like Othello are nice too, more relaxing.

I played a lot of games like Resistance or Werewolves in Australia, I used to dislike them but after a while you get better at finding behavior patterns and reading the other persons. I'd say strangely those are the games which are funnier with people you don't know too much, because no personal grudge come into play.

Some of my very favorites are hard to categorize on, first Cards Against Humanity never fails to make me laugh (or Apple to Apple with people a bit less into bad taste).
RoboRally is a little known gem where you have to program robots to go through mazes... nothing ever goes according to plan and it can become very chaotic very fast.

The only games I really dislike is those where bargain have a prominent part. I hate Bohnanza for instance.
I also have issues with unbalanced games, I know of lot of people loving Takenoko for instance but the points earn by each type of objectives is really not balanced with the time it takes to make them.

Hard to remember everything though, especially games I only played once or twice, so kiddo to K2, Alhambra, Niagara, Primordial Soup, Rattus, whatever what this game with oil rigs and trains (though too much bargaining...) and of course Ticket to Ride which is probably one of the main responsible (with Catan, I know) for the boardgames resurgence.