Betrayal at House on the Hill is a strange survival horror game of sorts. I've only played it a few times but it's been great and very surprising.
Warrior Knights is my latest purchase and I haven't had the chance to play it yet. Reading the manual though and looking over the components have gotten me realy exited. This might be my greatest game thus far.
Warrior Knights. That's a blast from the past. If it's the same one I remember (from 20+ years ago!) I loved it. You started out as different Barons (up to 6 players as I recall) and had a starting amount of gold. You could bid, in secret auction so you could over-pay a lot, for various mercenary armies each turn but had to have the funds to keep paying them or they'd leave. You could also fund trading ships and, if they returned, you'd get a good gold return on those. Great game & the secret auctions were quite tense when everyone wanted the strength 400 Lombards army group. You'd get random happenings like cards where all Milanese troops would desert so players who were unlucky enough to stack the same nationality of mercs (because they were cheaper) could be punished hard!
Betrayal is great as well, mainly thanks to all the numerous endings that game has.
Anyone played "7 Wonders"? Sounds like a good, fast paced game for up to seven players...
Yes that about sums it up. It plays very quickly for a 7 player game as there are only 3 Ages to worry about. Many ways to win (or lose) as well. A recent game I played I was stacking well with building modifiers and technology points but the two players either side of me had built up a substantial military and kept beating me in fights and claiming victory points, which meant I ended up last!
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.
That's a shame but it is a problem with the types of board games out there now. For people brought up on Monopoly or Risk it can seem intimidating and I have similar problems trying to persuade my friends to join in too. I suppose when you're having to spend 30 minutes setting up the game and explaining the rules then it gets a bit scary. The best way is to spend time getting to grips with the rules yourself, inside and out, and then just play a few quick "open" turns where everyone can see the basic mechanics and then try and go from there.
I loved board games as a kid but grew out of them as I got older. But I've recently joined a board games club in my local area (check out your local area, you might have similar!) just after this year's International Tabletop Day (April I think?) and I've met some really nice people and gotten to play a lot of new and interesting games. And that's caused me to go out and splurge on games myself.
My collection currently includes:
Smash Up (with all expansions bar the Pretty Princess one...)
Dead of Winter (zombie-themed co-op survival game)
Firefly (authorised board game from the show), with Pirates & Bounty Hunters expansion
Sentinels of the Multiverse (superhero themed co-op card game), with Rook City, Infernal Relics, Shattered Timelines & Vengeance expansions.
Game of Thrones (1st edition!)
But thanks to the board games club I've managed to play a lot more, probably more than I can even remember to list here! I did like BSG (but the cylons always win!)