Favorite Board Games

[TheGoldenGriffin]

I play Mario Party DS

[brayton]

mario party, thats fun mini games(only with friends). i rally liked playing 2 player on it, and the more the merrier.

that "Zompocolypese" looks fun, ill look it up

[Eijolend]

I recently stumbled over another fantastic board/card game called MageWars (mainly for 2 players): What is MageWars?

It feels a bit like MTG with an actual arena but without the random card drawing. I still have no idea what I'm doing but it's great fun to play.

[CombatEX]

Thanks Eijolend! Looks awesome (not to mention Mages are always my "go to" class in any game). Too bad the only boardgame my friends play anymore is Catan. I don't know anyone willing to play these more involved games. Maybe there will be an online version someday...

Anyway, here is a game I came across a few months ago when it was on kickstarter.

Infinity Wars

It's not a physical card game, but a digital one. I played MTG briefly during Mirrodin block (something like 8 years ago?) but haven't bothered with a TCG in a long time. This game looks interesting though so I'm going to keep an eye on it. Some of the cool things about it are:

+ No getting mana screwed
+ Cards that change the terrain with visual feedback
+ Animated cards
+ Each faction has a distinct flavor
+ Each deck has 3 commanders*

*These are cards that can be chosen from any creatures from a common to a rare or epic. You can play your commanders at any time for their cost and they have haste. This makes for some very interesting strategies. You don't need to rely on drawing your commanders and the fact that you can use their ability or attack/defend with them on the first turn opens up a ton of possibilities.

Another interesting idea is morale. You lose the game if either your base health OR morale goes to zero. I'm not sure how much this adds to the game, but I like the concept so far from the cards I've seen that involve it. Essentially you lose morale when your creatures die. This opens up some new avenues for victory like a deck that focuses on destroying creatures (or 'characters' in this game). Again, not sure if this really contributes much, but we'll see.

My primary turnoff for this game is the fact that it is a TCG and I've grown out of the idea of spending money on cards (especially digital cards?!). In fact for the last few months I played MTG my friends and I just made decks that were pretty much entirely filled with proxies. All the fun with none of the spending. So anyway, I'm not sure I'll actually bother with it, but I figure for people who are still fans of TCGs it's worth mentioning. Some interesting concepts and the graphical feedback from morphing terrain along with animated images is nice.

[GoHeat 3]

Monopoly.

[CombatEX]

I guess I never actually said what my favorite board games are. There have been many over the years. The first one that really took off amongst my friends was Tower of the Wizard King. I completely changed the rules though and that was the variant we always played. I don't think I ever even played the intended way even once. I also used to play Risk extensively, but again, that was with rules I made and just the basic premise of continents and battles with die remained. Each unit was unique though and you could build fortresses to fortify certain parts of the map (played on LotR Risk board with castle pieces from another game). Some other games we played a lot include Star Wars: Epic Duels, Pirateer, and Scrabble. A friend of mine and I made a variant of Epic Duels but with gods from Greek mythology... I wonder if I still have that somewhere.

Then there is Catan which is the only boardgame I still play with my friends from time to time (once every 3 months or so). Usually we just us Cities and Knights even though we have the other expansions.

There are so many awesome games that I've seen on boardgamegeek, usually made by Fantasy Flight, but I don't have any friends that are into more involved boardgames so I've never gotten a chance to play them. There's a person on youtube who does videos on boardgames you might want to check out if you actually know people willing to play them with you and want to get a good overview of them.

[spacechef]

Tom Vasel seems to be the king of reviewers. I've got a core group of friends that play board games, among other activities. We've even been to Pax Prime the last few years. Otherwise I wouldn't be playing so many board games. We've also started going to a local board game meet up, it's great for meating new people, and playing new games without having to buy them.

[Coolio]

(01-05-2013 03:18 AM)Emuchu Wrote:  I've been looking at the game "Eclipse", it's a strategy game played on an expanding grid of Hexes that you place as you go. I saw some shots of the game in action, the field gets totally covered with little ships and boxes, which I like. Also, there's apparently "no bookkeeping", so I guess all the important information is on the field.

Another very unique one I came across is "Risk: Legacy". It's basically Risk on the first play through, but after every game, depending on what happens and who wins, the game changes. There are packs of cards and hidden compartments all over the box that you're not allowed to open or look at until you satisfy these conditions. And in the review I read, they accidentally found a hidden pack of cards taped under the cover of the lid that read, "Do not open. Ever."

Can you guys recommend any good tabletop strategy games? I've been looking. I used to play Heroscape, since I liked building the map each time, but all the combat damage is assigned through random die rolls, so my ability to strategize is severely limited.

Never thought I'd find someone else who played heroscape....