What's your favorite Board Game? - Page 2

There was a game from the early 80s called 'Dark Tower' that I regret losing (I think that I left it over at a friend's house and never got it back).



We used to play this game over and over again when I was 11-12 years old. Any of you other oldtimers remember this one?

The Dark Tower kicks ass. I found a flash game online for it a while back...now that was a time waster.

I love Axis and Allies like nobody's business. A summer ago, after my girlfriend and I took the bar exam, we would get drunk and play Axis and Allies all the damn time. That game rules!

This is a game called Tsuro, a deceptively simple and really fun game I got introduced to recently. Players take turns laying down tiles with paths on them. Then any player pieces have to follow the path on any tiles placed next to them. If the path takes you off the board, you're out, and the winner is the last one standing. Towards the end, you're often left with no options that don't take you off the board, so you have to figure out a play that takes as many other players with you as possible. An average game only takes about 15 to 20 minutes to play, and it's simple enough for younger kids to get into.

Oh yeah, count me in on the Trivial Pursuit. When I used to play with friends, whenever I got all my pie slices and got to the middle, they made me have to answer an entire card instead of just one question. They feared me.

BRIGANDS! [cue battle cry music]

Oh yeah, and before Talisman and Descent, there was this bad boy:

I'll need to track down that flash game, thanks for the tip.

Did anyone else have this bad boy?

I don't know how many hours my buddies and I wasted trying to get to the top of the tower and close the trap. Parenthetically, I was ALWAYS Venkman (just like I'm always the Dog in Monopoly).

I am a huge board game fanatic. I like Eurogames, Ameritrash, table top battles etc.....

But my favorite, because it is one that I can bring to the table at family functions without getting sighs and complaints is this one:



Low learning curve, has potential for strategy, at times heavily tactical, and very fun.

Other favorites:

Ameritrash
Last Night on Earth
Descent: Journeys in the Dark
Memoir 44

Eurogames
Settlers of Cataan
Torres
Agricola

Here's another one for you old timers: 'Squad Leader'.



It's another one of those great Avalon Hill games from the late 70s/early 80s. You could play as American, Germans, or Russians. I always played as the Russians so that you had the chance of having your soldiers go berzerk (marked by red tiles) at which point they became well-nigh invincible. Every once in a while, we'd play this and 'Panzer Leader' to add in some tank action:

Dungeon kicked a fair amount of ass as well.

Yeah and then Advanced Squad Leader. Or as I like to call it: chit hell.


Fuck Cranium. Fuck it in it's creative cat ass.


Arkham Horror is great if you have people that already know how to play it and have four hours to kill. And lots and lots of table space.

A great game that I bought recently that is basically a Euro wrapped in Ameritrash clothing is Drakon. It's a fun abstract tactical game with a light coating of fantasy theme.

There's nothing like accidentally knocking the table and sending hundreds of cardboard chits flying every which way...FUCK.

Space Hulk


Conquest of the Empire

My gf doesn't really like boardgames but loves, loves, loves Ricochet Robots. A game I cannot stand because my brain folds in on itself every time I try to play. Spatial reasoning skills on a timer: not my forte.



One I absolutely love that I've not seen mentioned yet is Aquarius. Yeah, it's technically a card game, but you basically create your own board.: dominoes with a cool bluff component and pleasant aesthetics. One of the few games I've played that is challenging but yet does not encourage cutthroat competition amongst the more bloodthirsty types.



And if we can finagle a way to play TP over CHUD, I'd give up a pinky toe or two to get in on that.

BTW, Dickson, thanks for reminding me about Tsuro. I've been meaning to pick that up for a solid year.

Count me in for a CHUD game of Trivial Pursuit as well. We used to play it in teams for shots back in college:
- Our team gets it right, we pick a person on the opposing team to take a shot.
- Our team gets it wrong, the other team chooses a person on our team to take a shot.

If you were the only pledge in the room, you were going to get hammered. Good fun.

I am beginning to think this is what the Chat room was made for. Shots optional.

We'd need someone to schedule, and we'd all need to agree on a single edition.

Gears are turning...

And how do we know someone isn't going to be sitting there with Wikipedia open?

Time limit to answer, that way it keeps you guys honest. Answers springing from immediate knowledge should only take 10 sec.

Honor system, dude, it's the only way.

I still have this..haha the wife and I drank a bit too much wine last month and played it! haha

I'm going right to ebay for Squad Leader..I must have this game..

Avalon Hill, baby!!
...also


If I could count the seconds I enjoyed playing these two games it would come out at 8 weeks, 6 days, 19 hours and 37 minutes.
(not that I'm keeping count...)

^ what the hell...^

where is my Enders Game board game?!

Speaking of games with a billion little cardboard counters....


I never had anybody to play the LOTR game with, but I'd spend an hour or so setting it up just to look at it and simulate battles by myself. A friend in college had Freedom in the Galaxy, and we set it up in the lounge of our dorm over a weekend. Played for about eight hours total and were nowhere close to finishing.

Richard, that LOTR game is quite a bit of fun; I forgot about that one.

Got to go with ZOMBIES! on this one. I'm not a big board-gamer but when someone says they're going to play some ZOMBIES!, I'm always in.

Speaking of games I never had anybody to play with:

I liked that you could do a simpler game with just the Fellowship vs. Sauron, or you could go nuts, add a third player as Saruman and throw in all the armies on top of the individual characters.

I liked that the LOTR game wasn't necessarily YOU vs the other players...it was all of you working together to beat the game. I never played it where one person became Sauran or Saruman. It was a pretty well designed game, actually.

A friend and co-worker of mine got me into some serious boardgaming last year. There's a local boardgaming club we are a part of that games the first Saturday of every month. I've discovered some really cool games over the past year.

Some of my favorites:

Zombies!!!
Last Night on Earth
Arkham Horror
Red Dragon Inn
Betrayal at House on the Hill

And, this isn't technically a boardgame, but it's one of my favorites and is always a hit with friends and curious onlookers - Ca$h and Guns. A friend and I even got actor Tony Todd interested in the game at Horrorfind this year.

Count me in for a chat and honor based Trivial Pursuit game.

Don, the makers of Last Night on Earth have a new game out called "Touch of Evil". I haven't played it yet, but the production values are on par with LNOE and the bits are wonderful.

Rulebook is easy to read and understand too.

Ah, Betrayal, that's another one I can actually get realatives to play.

I love it's imperfect, not thoroughly playtested soul.

My friend and co-worker who got me into boardgaming just got Touch of Evil today. I'll (hopefully) be able to play it on the first of November. It sounds like a fun game and your input on it makes me look forward to playing it more.

Chess (this is the alpha and omega for board games for me)
Trivial Pursuit
Balderdash
Axis and Allies
Apples to Apples
Trouble (with the pop-o-matic bubble) with my son

I've made a separate thread for the Chewer Trivial Pursuit Game here:

http://chud.com/forum/showthread.php...44#post2413144

Go sign up if you want to participate.

Or is there a free online version somewhere?

they just dont make board games like that anymore..the kind that takes HOURS to play...or do they still make them? been awhile since i've been in a game preserve

MoonBaseNick (or anyone in this thread, really), go to www.boardgamegeek.com and take a look around.

I love boardgames, but can't stand ones that require you to memorize a phone-book sized instruction manual. Thus, games like Scotland Yard and Ticket to Ride are about the right speed for me.

NOOOOOO! Dickson! I want to keep the conversation focused here. Besides, those guys really take their gaming too seriously.

Descent can be a long game, especially if you use the Road to Legend campaign expansion. Which I highly recommend.

Arkham Horror can go on for the better part of four hours and beyond.

War of the Ring can be lengthy too.

Wasn't trying to undermine the discussion here, just pointing out to MoonBaseNick a place to find some of those kinds of games he thinks aren't made anymore. There's tons of them out there, you're just not going to find them at Toys 'R Us.

I was mostly just teasing.

Another great game for those who used to like Clue (or Cluedo for our UK friends)

Mystery of the Abby. Much better game.

I haven't seen this one mentioned yet:



It was first released in 1962, and there have been several editions, but the one pictured above is the best. The new edition went back to cheap 2d cardboard counters. Fuck that. I want plastic buildings.

I've been playing Carcasonne on a regurlar basis.

When with a larger group who likes startegy, A Game of Thrones (so much better than the fucking books) is always is welcomed, and replaced the endless Axis & Allies. It ends withing 3 hours.1

Cranium is fun, but there's no real challenge there. So is Munchkins, but it's a non-collectible card game.

Heard about Tsuro, but with Dickson's input that might be worth checking out.

And I tried Diplomacy once, and that nearly resulted in 2 divorces...

So, beside A Game of Thrones, is there any fun, non-bloated military strategy game worth buying?

Memoir 44 is a nice light-medium military strategy game.

Or Tide of Iron, but at 80.00, may not be everyone's cup of tea.

But man oh man, the bits are awesome.

I can't believe that I forgot about this one: Iron Dragon



Here's another one of those 'let's kill an afternoon' type games that you could play with 4 others, ideally. Watch the 'fuck yous' start to fly after about the 1 hour mark when you're debating whether or not to allow someone to use your track...GREAT fun.

Tide of Iron is Fantasy Flight, and since it's the same guys as Game of Thrones, I'd try that. Thanks!

Iron Dragon is good fun, and I've liked what I've seen of Tide of Iron.

Now, the ultimate time waster:



Awesome Formula One racing game. As you shift into higher gears, you roll higher dice (d4, d6, d8, up to d30) to see how far you go each turn. Turns are tricky, and you can blow your engine or lose a tire. Really a lot of fun, and there's plenty of different maps available -- we actually had a racing circuit where we did different tracks each week and kept point standings. Really awesome.



Now, if you want a racing game that's simple and fun for everyone:



It's French and pretty steeply priced -- my friend that has it had a friend in Canada get it for him and ship it for less than it would cost to get here in the States. But all the pieces and the tracks are made of good sturdy wood, so it's worth the money. You take turns flicking your cars around the track, and it's amazing how competitive you can get while playing this. And even if you're in last place, a well-done flick by you or a poorly-done one by the leader can put you right back into it. We easily killed about four hours the first time we played this, and there was a 6-year old and an 8-year old who took right to it and had a blast with it. There are several different track layouts for longer or shorter races, and there's also an expansion that adds a figure-eight and a jump.

Ah, car-based board games. My favorite, as a kid, was always Thunder Road.

Per Boardgame Geek, "Thunder Road is Hasbro's answer to Car Wars. You rocket your team (three cars and a helicopter) down a stretch of post-apocalyptic highway and try to either wipe out the other teams or outdistance them and leave them in the dust. Each turn consists of a dice roll to determine car movement and a combat phase where you try to shoot or ram your opponents. The gameboard consists of two pieces of highway and when the lead car exits the front piece of highway, the back piece is placed in front (after dumping all the wrecks and slowpokes off of it) thus creating a never-ending gameboard."

We used to have a lot of fun with this one.

My friend Troy is a total board game nut, and every year on his birthday he holds "TroyCon", which is a 12-hour orgy of board games. I got into three games myself today:

-- Shogun, which casts you as rival warlords in feudal Japan. There are ten phases to each turn, always the same actions but always in a different order, and the last five phases are hidden to start, so you really don't know what's coming when. The combat mechanice is really neat -- you drop colored cubes representing your armies into a tower with all kinds of crazy cut-outs inside that can trap your pieces. So you might drop nine cubes in and have only three come out, and later drop four in and have the six that got trapped before come out as well. It really adds a dynamic feeling to the combat rather than rolling dice or just using numbers. Throw in revolting peasants and a bid process for turn order and it's a really fun, unpredictable game.

-- Smallworld is a very simple fantasy-based conquest game. To capture a province, you simply move in tokens equal to two plus any enemy tokens already there. Where the twist comes in is every player is a classic race -- orks, trolls, giants, halflings, etc. -- combined with some sort of characteristic with an in-game benefit. You also have the option of putting your race into decline, where you basically abandon that race and pick a new one. When and how you do so can give you quite an advantage. It's quick, easy game that feels ideal for introducing younger players to these kind of games.

-- Agricola, the game that ended Puerto Rico's five-year run as the top-rated game at Board Game Geek. This is definitely not for beginners -- the sheer number of pieces and cards is overwhelming to begin with. Players compete to build farms, and game actions can only be taken once per turn, so you have to really carefully consider not only what you want to do but what your opponent might be building towards. The goal is to score as many victory points by not only improving your farm, but by diversifying what you produce, since you lose victory points for empty spaces on your farm and for every item you don't grow. Took us a while to get the feel for it but it was worth it.

What I love about all these games is that there's no one way to win. There are plenty of different strategies and ways to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Wonder if "Awful Green Things From Outer Space" was as cool as I remember.