Giorgia

Bookman / VonEvilstein

Split decision, in my opinion: don't like Talisman -- too much luck involved / like pinball -- it takes some skill and great reflexes.

Either of you hear of a game called Illuminati which came out about the same time as Talisman? It's a card game which plays like a board game. I think it had great potential; unfortunately "collectible" card games came along at about the same time, and Illuminati got lost in the shuffle.

And nobody has mentioned Nuclear War? The most bizarre, tongue-in-cheek game even invented -- ever see the bumper sticker "Do you have change for 10,000,000 people?" ? That came from Nuclear War. I especially like the expansion set, with the space platform and the orbiting missles which can land on the launching "nation" if the player forgets to drop them in time.

P.S. to Bookman: If your group likes to play more than one game in an evening, yet also likes long games, I can heartily recommend railroad games. The group in which I used to be active used to start one or two railroad games side-by-side on a very large table; then we'd set up TV-trays between players, and most everyone would then play a two-player game with the person seated next to them (games like Othello, Mastermind, Score Four are good). Players with very quick minds who got bored even playing four games at once would often start another four-player game at another table, and just hop from one to another, while players just learning the complicated railroad game would often stick to just figuring out their move in a single game at a time.

Bookman

Illuminati is a great game. I ought to get that one back out of the closet now that Karin is more interested in strategic games.

Nuclear War is another good one...definately my kind of "beer and pretzels" game. In the same category, I wish I could lay my hands on all the old Tom Wham games, of which I believe only The Awful Green Things from Outer Space is still in print. There's a whole corral of good ones: King of the Tabletop, Planetbusters, The Great Khan Game, Mertwig's Maze, and Snits Revenge all come to mind...I'm certain that I'm forgetting some.

And yes Giorgia, there is a Railroad game in Bookman's closet, and we play it from time to time. I have the last Mayfair edition of Empire Builder (the one that extended the map to include Mexico). It is a very nice game, and really comes into its own with four or five players. It has a bit of a problem with leader runaway, as a good collection of cards in the beginning can really accellerate someone's earnings and put the game quickly out of reach but is still a nice game. I don't like the edition I have; the components aren't as high quality as previous editions. I guess I'm getting spoiled by my nice "German" games like Settlers and T&E.

Based on your previous post, perhaps I should give one of the others a try? Would you care to enlighten me on how they're different? I have played Empire Builder and the old moldy classic Rail Baron. How do the mechanics for your favorites in that theme differ from those?

Bookman

Trinsec

Cribbage! Backgammon! Now those were games I used to play a lot back then.

Colonists of Catan (Settlers of Catan) are what my friends love playing lately.
To answer one of the people's concerns that Catan can't be played with 2 players: It can. You have to buy a different game though, it's more with cards, but there IS a 2-player version out here. Catan is so popular here that there are various add-ons, expansions, and whatnot for sale in this country. Kinda funny, actually.

Lately I'm a bit too much behind the computer instead of playing boardgames. If I would be playing a boardgame right now, it would be.. eh.. um..
Actually, I don't know. Though I wouldn't mind 'Pictionary' and a bunch of friends together right now. Mostly because the online version of 'Pictionary' was fun to play.

Shadowy Man

I am totally sold on this game!! In fact, just played it last night.

I think it makes a great party game... I think it would be great even for those people who don't like games.

Evangelion

Chess.

Risk.

-RRH-

I became a pretty fair cribbage player playing with my grandpa, but I'm a few years out of practice by now.

For nostalgia power, (which likely only applies to me.) there was a game I always played as a kid, called Survive. But the strategy is probably pretty simplistic.

Lately, I've been playing Risk. The game does a nice job of abstracting warfare while still demanding good tactics and/or strategy. And it's another one where everyone seems to have their own house rules.

Giorgia

Oh, my!!! I had completely forgotten them -- I think I have a copy burried somewhere -- it is truely hilarious!! [For those of you unfamiliar with this gem: sometimes a baseball bat or a fire extinguisher turns out to be your most potent weapon, while another perfectly "logical" weapon like a ray-gun of some kind may turn out to be deadly to the user. Also, the "characters" are truely funny.]

We solved that problem with a house rule about trading in the cards which you get dealt within the first round if you feel that they're impossible. Actually, I believe the rules book from Mayfair has a whole segment of "Optional Rules" and that that is one of them. The game can also be speeded up by Super-sizing the engines from the start: i.e., you start with 12-step trains, and up-grade to 15-step trains. The game is just as demanding, it just moves a whole lot faster that way. Oh, and my best friend and I invented a two-player version, if you're interested.

In the newest editions, you don't keep score with paper any more: you use a central log on a wipe-board. I don't like it : I prefer the old paper cards!

Well, the neat thing about British Rails is the shape of the island: there are only a few north-south corridors "easy" to build in: going through forrest or over hills is very expensive. There are also a lot of port-cities with limited access. Therefore, this is a game where you really have to think about your strategy more deeply than you do in a wide-open-spaces game like Empire Builder.

Eurorails adds realistic events like dock-worker strikes, fog or snow storms closing closing down segments of track (effect: lost turn or movement points). You can super-size your train, which allows you to pick up "spec" loads. For instance, you can pick up a load of oranges while you're in Spain and then, when you've delivered your "paying" cargo, you may pick up another manifest which says "bring oranges to Leipzig" -- and there you are, in Munich, with a spare load of oranges! Italy, of course, poses some of the same challenges as England. Then, there are the ferries needed to efficiently get to Ireland and parts of Sweden. It's great if you have track to and from the port-cities; it's not great if a storm in the North Atlantic founders the ferry you're on and you not only lose your turn, YOU LOOSE YOUR CARGO! Getting the best route over the Alps is a good move -- however, many a game has been lost simply by bridges getting washed out down the entire length of the Danube or the Rhein, so you always have to keep at least enough money in reserve to re-build a bridge right before you need it.

And, Dragonrails! Well, add a little bit of magic, add real dragons here and there, add ocean-going vessels, add every imaginable type of terrain from earth (arctic snows, quicksand, volcanoes, shifting dunes, jungle terrain (costs 3 points per mile!), etc. etc.), and you've got a marvelous fantasy game that's strategic in nature. The other nice thing that Americans like about Dragonrails is that geographically-literate people (like those educated outside the U.S.) don't have an advantage in this game: the two continents are completely foreign to everybody!

Silent Dave

I would play lots of board games, but I don't have any friends. Giorgia, will you be my FRRRRIIIEEEENNNDDD??


Dave

Giorgia

Chin up, there! I'm sure you're not going to stay in Fargo forever! In the mean time, once I've moved to my precious, quiet, small town in the middle of nowhere, I'm sure I'll find a way to play my favorite board games over the internet. Just haven't researched that particular life-line yet.

LHP Adept

Sarpedon wrote:
Civilization!
Best boardgame ever.
The computer game is loosly based on it. You move your little settling dudes around, try to find enough food, build cities, defend your borders, acquire commodities, trade, and buy technological advances with them, and hope you don't draw the "Civil War" card. It is awesome!

Bookman wrote:
I respectfully disagree. It is another game with IMO a fatal flaw. IIRC after each turn, each player moves a counter on a little track representing the advance of their civilization. At certain points, there are barriers (representing the transition from Age to Age, Stone Age to Bronze Age for instance) that can only be crossed by reaching certain thresholds like having so many cities or a particular technology.
The problem is that if you get reach one of these points before you have acheived that condition, you'll get held up. At that point you can not reasonably expect to win. In essence, you get to push cardboard chits around for the next several hours for the entertainment of the eventual winner.
I'll pass.

I respond:
Bookman, that's just not so. The ast is only 100 pts per box. Cities are 50 each, and much easier to lose. Buying/not buying a single civ card can mean a difference of over 200 pts.
Playing as Babylon or Egypt, the standard strategy is to accept the fact you're going to bump (your head into the wall) once at the start of the Early Bronze Age and don't sweat it. No biggie.
The bigger problem, in our experience at the Dragonflight convention, is that in an 8-hour scheduled timeblock, we rarely have time to finish a game.