Board Games

I just bought the "Frenemies" add-on for Settlers of Catan. Great for those players that don't like being mean as you can earn favour tokens in exchange for being friendly (such as giving people resources or moving the robber away from everyone). Perfect for my daughter who hates the robber...

Fried Egg said:

I just bought it (7 Wonders) and had my first game last night (with my kids aged 8 and 11). Went quite well although there is a bit of a learning curve...mainly because there are so many different ways to score victory points. Definitely one you need to play a few times before you can understand how to formulate a strategy...

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This has been a long-lasting favourite with my kids. Once you get past the apparent complexity, it plays quickly. Ticket to Ride has been the most durable of games in our family.
We have also had fun with some fairly quick and loud card games: Bohnanza is very clever, Hanabi is fun, as is No Thanks! All have far more depth than is apparent at first glance.

Yes, "7 Wonders" does play quite quickly once you all know what you're doing.

I've bought "Star Realms" the other day; a two player head-to-head deck building game that plays a bit like Dominion but quite unique in its own right. Very good fun...

ooh, Star realms, I want to get this, am I right in thinking it only plays 2 player, or can you have 4 player?
Also are there some kind of small expansion packs?

It is two player but you can simply buy another set of cards for each 1-2 players additional you want to play with. As each deck of cards is pretty cheap, this isn't as prohibitive as it sounds.

I haven't looked into any expansions yet but there are a variety of "crisis" packs that cost only a few quid each that add a variety of different elements. There's so many different types of ships/space station cards in the base game that I'm still getting used to them; I don't feel any need for an expansion just yet.

Something some of you may find useful. It allows the multiplaying of board games over the net or is handy if you don't have the room to set up a 'monster' game (you can set it up virtually and not have to worry about pets scattering pieces).

You still need the original game (mainly for the rules and legal reasons).

http://www.vassalengine.org/

I have recently acquired the following board games:

"Agricola" - A competitive farming game. Doesn't sound like fun but it is surprisingly so. A game for 1 to 5 players (allow about 1/2 hour per person) that involves each player trying to develop their own little farmstead by competing for access to a common pool of actions/materials which means what one player picks pay deprive another. Plenty of alternative strategies and challenging decisions face the players in which every turn is a trade off between growing your farm for the future and simply warding off starvation for your family.

"Castles of Burgundy" - A kingdom building game for 2 to 5 players in which each player attempts to develop their kingdom in ways which maximise their points, making the best of their die rolls and competing for access to a pool of common resources. A variety of strategies are viable in an enjoyable and somewhat sedately paced game.

"Ghost Stories" - A cooperative game for 1 to 4 players in which you play Taoist monks attempting to drive out a variety of ghosts and demons from a village and eventually defeat the ultimate nemesis causing all the trouble. An incredibly difficult game which you should expect to lose the first few times you play. The game punishes sub-optimal decisions heavily. Tense and exciting fun.

Oooh, sounds good Fried Egg, I'd like to try Agricola and Ghost stories sounds like fun.

I have received a few games since my last post, I turned 37 and everyone knows that 37 is the board game birthday.
I got Concept, Dominion Prosperity and Dead of Winter and Star realms. All of them are great although I've found that whilst games like Dead of Winter are fine for me that they are too heavy for my wife and friends, so I wont get much chance to play it.

Also I picked up Ingenious and Incan Gold from charity shops in the past few weeks.

Is "Dominion Prosperity" your first expansion? I'd be interested to know how well it sits with Dominion without any of the other expansions...

"Dead of winter" sounds interesting; having both cooperative elements and secret solo missions. Doesn't sound like a family game though so I might avoid it for the time being...

Prosperity is my first expansion, and it is the one I chose because it sort of gives you dominion but larger.
I found that sometimes we would play dominion as a 4 and the game wouldn't take long at all, I wanted something that extended it.
Whilst on holiday we played this about 4 times and 1 game was almost excruciatingly long, it took ages, but the other three were much better, one was quite short but the other 2 were of a decent length. The new cards (which we only played with, no base game cards - except the coins and property) did have some interesting effects and we used most of them, the game were interesting for us 4 as we had all played dominion basic plenty of times. I think if you'd like Dominion to be a bit longer or bigger then this is a definite expansion to try. I looked into all the expansions and this came out on top for me, maybe intrigue next, but I'd like to see how it works if we have a true mix of both base and expansion cards, might end up a bit hotch-potch.

Dead of winter was great, everyone but me won, they all had easy targets like having a few medicine in hand, I had to ensure there were loads of barriers at the basecamp and they all got destroyed and overrun by zombies on the last go, but as I said it was late and only one other player was really enjoying it, so it might not come out for a while. I thought it was good and a nice long in depth game of it would be great to play, hopefully I can convince my wife to play it with me - once we get Avalon to sleep a decent amount of time.

I just picked up copy of Space Cadets recently. It has an amazing premise where you and your crew(friends) work together to complete unique tasks so you and your team can finish the mission much like the classic Star Trek series. I also have been watching Star Trek The Next Generation, and after watching all of the first season I am hyped to play this game. I ran through a trial run to familiarize ourselves with the game and can't wait till you next boardgame session which I can bring it out!

"Space Cadets" looks like an interesting game; great concept.

Okay, latest acquisition is "Rivals for Catan"; a card game adaptation of "Settlers of Catan". I wanted something compact I could take away on holiday with me.

Have you played it yet?
Yesterday I got Tokaido, we played a two player game - which involves a third player played partly by both players.
To be honest, I was hoping for more from this game, it got a little better as we approached the end, but I expect it is a game that works best with 4 or 5 players.

Hopefully Five Tribes is arriving today, so excited about this one, we have been playing mancala and this uses that 'mancala' mechanic so hoping it will be worth the wait.

Also, I've allocated myself some funds to buy another game, but I'm not sure which, there is a new dominion out, and 7 wonders always intrigued me, but I'm unsure of what I should buy. Any ideas?

Yes, I played one game of "Rivals of Catan" with my daughter and it was good. I forgot to mention that it is a two player game ("Settlers of Catan" is 3 - 4 players).

As for recommendations; I would what number of players are you aiming at?. "7 Wonders" is great for 3 - 7 players and (once you're all up to speed) can be played in half an hour irrespective of the number of players. But it doesn't play very well with 2 players (in my opinion).

In the end (and from advice from the very sarcastic and seemingly uninterested owner at the Exeter game shop) I went with Agricola: all creature big and small, which is a stripped down 2 player variant of Agricola.
We've only played once, but I enjoyed it. It's a worker placement/resource management and it plays in about 30mins, also it doesn't take long to set up so that is a bonus.
Still haven't played 5 tribes even though I've had it over a week now. Oh well. Soon it will hit the table.

That's funny; he was giving that game the hard sell when I was in there buying "Rivals of Catan" the other day. If I wasn't already a bit Agricola'd out I might have gone for it.

I am really enjoying Rivals though; many viable strategies and a lot of variety offered by the three theme decks included.

Man I totally forgot about this. I was going to contribute but I was so busy lately I forgot about the deadline. Well, hopefully I can get myself a copy!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1293726726/exoplanets

That game does look interesting...

I've started playing board games a lot more with a local meet-up group here. I'm not sure it really qualifies as "board" (as it's really a card game), but I'm really into Shadowfist.