Non traditional board games

[iviv]

Boardgameguru for me. They were set up and are run by one of the guys at the London on Board meetups! He saw that there was a market, and now makes a living from it!

As for people requesting games, I wholeheartedly recommend Galaxy Trucker Anniversary edition! (If you can find it, I think they are doing a second printing of it soon)

In galaxy trucker, you have a ship:



And you have a pile of components:



Someone says go, flip the timer over, and you have to grab a component from the middle of the table, look at it, and either attach it to your ship, or put it back on the table face up, so anyone can see and take it. Eventually you either finish your ship or the time runs out, then you have to fly it around facing enemies taken from a deck of cards (there's something like 30 cards per round deck, you use 8 cards from each round deck each game, so there's enough that there's a good variety. And then you hopefully make money, or at the very least survive. At which point you do it again with a bigger ship!

(All images are clickable for larger. They were also all taken from bgg, so credit goes to the original users who uploaded them!)

 

[iviv]

Galaxy Trucker looks insanely fun.

Aaaaaargh, the itch! THE ITCH!

It is insanely fun. Played the base game once then went out and bought the anniversary edition. Comes with the base game, the 2 expansions, plus a couple of mini and freely available online expansions, and all in a big box to hold everything. Its amazing

 

[iviv]

Just played Stoner Fluxx with the wife (except with red wine) as an introduction to the games mentioned in this thread - was loads of fun

Now need pizza

She has agreed to get TTR and Carcassonne so result!!!

Great success

How many people will you be playing TTR with? If its just the two of you, consider one of the smaller maps designed for 2 players. The larger ones like Europe and the original US map are better with 4 or 5 players, with just 2 or 3 they get a little cramped.

 

[iviv]

Go LoB!

 

[iviv]

Played a couple of games of Resistance at LoB and unfortunately I've never gotten into it. I think it was because the game is so popular that there are always 8 people playing, and when you play the game with such a large group it is impossible to gain enough information in time. In a smaller 5 player game I imagine the game would be very different.
Also similar to Resistance is Avalon. Same game idea, except with a couple of optional extra characters. Its a King Arthur themed game, with most players being knights of the round table, there are a couple of assassins, but there are extra characters like Merlin who is able to see who the assassins are, but they can't see who he is. Again, this is something that I can only imagine being useful in the larger games where you want more roles for people, but it is an interesting twist.

Has anyone played PowerGrid? I have heard good things about it.

One of the staple games I come back to every couple of weeks. It takes a couple of hours to play through a game, and it works best when you have more players, but it is interesting working out which power plants to bid on, determining if you should buy an extra city which will bring in more money next turn, but ruins your position in the turn order, so all the resources for your plants may be really expensive when it comes around to your turn.

 

[iviv]

Munchkin is a really good game. However, it can sometimes drag out. And ultimately the endgame turns into a case of 'Someone is about to win, throw all your cards at them'. You stop them and then the next person is about to win, so you throw more cards at them. And you rince and repeat until everyone runs out of cards so you manage to win.
That's not to say it isn't fun, I love the game. I just can't play it too regularly now. Though while at uni I was playing it weekly, so maybe I just ended up playing it too much!

 

[iviv]

Had a 6 hour game of thrones yesterday, which confirmed my original dislike for the board game. Don't get me wrong, mechanically the game itself is good, matches the theme very well and the gameplay is sound. The problem is that for that 6 hours, I only spent about 2 hours actually playing the game. The rest of it was watching other people agonising about their moves.

The way the game works is that each turn, you all give orders to all of your armies at the same time. These are hidden, and played with counters which you put face down on the army. You have 3 each of 5 different order types, so you can only move 3 armies per turn, then there's defense, support, raid and consolodate. Working out which of your armies to move and what bonus to give them is obviously very important, so some players can end up taking an age figuring out which armies to move. Then you flip all the counters up and resolve each move in turn. Again, more agonising as you look at what all the other players are doing, try and figure out who is going to invade you, and figure out which army you want to move first (Player 1 carries out 1 move order, then player 2 carries out 1 move order and so on, repeating though everyone until they have all been played). Again, this can take a very long time for some players.
Finally, if you have a battle, you have to play a character card which gives you a bonus. The cards everyone has is common knowledge so you can see all their cards and they can see all yours. So you then have to figure out who will be leading their army into battle, and who to counter with. Once you've played a character, they go to the discard pile and can't be used again until you have no characters left in your hand (each player has 7). Again, more time spent agonizing over decisions. The cards are played face down and revealed together. Someone wins, and then the next person does this again.

Its a shame, but I can't bring myself to sit through another game of it.

 

[iviv]

I mentioend the program Vassal a few pages ago, and have suddenly come down with an itching to play something deep and play by email with it. For those who don't know, or are too lazy to find my post, Vassal is a java engine that lets people play board games. They generally contain everything that is needed to play, though they can be fiddly to work out how exactly they work, and are occasionally tempromental (I tried playing Carcassonne with a friend and the auto-score system was a little crash happy so we simply kept manual score instead, not an issue at all.
Depending on the module, the games can require the players to do everything themselves, whereas others automate a lot of it. Also, any Fantasy Flight Games will have some cards blanked out as a method of 'copy protection', meaning that players have to own a copy of the game to play it completely. However, as long as one player has a copy of the game then they can edit the vassal module (It is essentually a fancy zip file) and replace the censored cards with the non-censored version. Just obviously these can't be hosted on the official Vassal website.

Anyway! Anyone fancy a PBEM game of anything? I'm open to pretty much anything, though would be interested in giving Twilight Struggle (2 player) a go, of for something with more players, how about Blood Bowl: Team Manager (2-6 players) a go? Its a card drafting sorta game. Rules for both games can be found online with a quick google search, or I can help explain. (BB:TM is also FFG, so I can help with that if there is desire to play)

Of course, there are lots of other modules available for play as well!

 

[iviv]

Given its popularity, does ticket to ride count as a non traditional boardgame?

Simple concept, quick turns. Nice filler game.

I'd say that if it isn't published by Waddingtons or Hasbro then its probably a non-traditional board game XD

 

[iviv]

So I had a few rounds of this at the weekend with my wife. Personally I think it needs to be a 3+ game as the 2 player is a little bland. Furthermore it seems far easier to smash people of their 10 HP rather than trying to accumulate 20 VP.

Would be interested to hear from people that have played the game quite a bit for your thoughts on it.

You'll find that changes in large groups. Because the person in Tokyo attacks all of the players not in there, if you leave them alone then they will simply keep damaging everyone down. Equally, if you attack the person in tokyo and they let you in, suddenly you're the target that everyone attacks, so if you let your life get too low then suddenly attacking is a really bad option. Attack someone with only a few hp left and they'll let you in, knowing that another player could well kill you with a good roll.

 

[iviv]

Ok, another attempt to get a play by email game going, this time because I just played my first game of Eclipse and loved it! For those who don't know, Eclipse is a 4x space game, and it works extremely well.

http://www.vassalengine.org/mediawiki/images/6/63/Eclipse_screenshot.jpg

The map is made of hexes with wormhole links to allow you to travel between them. Taking actions and controlling planets is done with such a simple but perfect system. Looking at the player board (the large window in the top left), along the bottom you have a number of orange circles, some have -ve numbers on them, others have counters. Each action you make, you take a counter from that track and put it onto the space for that action. This reveals a larger -ve number, which is the upkeep you will have to pay at the start of the turn. Take more actions, you have to pay more upkeep. After paying upkeep, most of the counters go back onto that bottom track, however you also use those counters to indicate which hexes you control. Have more hexes and you will be paying more upkeep, makes sense.
Most hexes also have a selection of planets, either orange, pink or brown. Each turn you start off with 3 colonisation ships, and can flip one of these over to colonise a planet. This means you take a cube from the respective coloured track (above and left of the income track) which reveals a larger number, which is the number of that resource you get at the beginning of each turn. Own more planets, you have more cubes on the board so will get more income, research points and manufacturing points.

The game also has technologies to buy which generally make your ships muhc more powerful, better targetting computers, weapons, engines, etc. Technologies are randomly available - all the tiles are put into a bag and a number pulled out each turn, which indicate the techs available to research that turn. If you're acting last, all the guns may have been researched before you get the chance, so you'll have to wait for another gun tile to come out of the bag.
And the ships at the top of the board are fully customisable. They each have a number of slots which you can place upgraded pieces once you've researched them. This means you will always have a different set of ships in each game, because the techs available for you to research will always be different.

I'd heard good things about Eclipse, but didn't realise it was quite so similar to a PC 4x game, and I want to play lots more of it. So help me out here!

Rule book: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5496950/Eclipse-rules/Eclipse_rules_EN_compr.pdf
Vassal Module: http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Eclipse

 

[iviv]

Dominion is a great game, but once you start getting a few expansions it becomes complicated just due to picking the cards to play with each game.

Personally, while I enjoy playing dominion, because of the way it works with having to keep track of the number of buys and actions and so on, I find that it works better as a PC game than an actual card game.
(I use dominion .net)

Also on the Dominion note, I've recently played lots of Quarriors. To simplify it extremely its dominion but with dice.


Instead of building a deck of cards, you build a bag of dice. Each turn you draw 6 and roll them. You have basic die which will give 1 or rarely 2 money, and then all the spells and monsters. 1-3 sides of those die will have money on, the others all have abilities. If its a monster, it shows the level and attack strength of the monster, and the cost to summon it. A really good fun game, lots of luck involved, but I just really enjoy rolling loads of dice.

Also, 7 wonders was mentioned above and I love that game,though don't play it as often as I want to. Only annoyance is that I tend to end up in games where one person spends ages agonizing over the card. Which is ok occasionally, more annoying when its every turn.

Finally, I think I'm in love with Vlaada Chvatil. Galaxy Trucker is a game I'm still madly in love with to this day, and Space Alert is so frantic and stressful but still a great laugh. And today I got to play Dungeon Lords for the first time. And while I've only played it once, it seems so well designed (Though needs exactly 4 to play it). A little bit of worker placement, tile placement, a really clever turn order mechanic where you all kinda pick where you place your workers at the same time. Its like the Dungeon Keeper of board games!

 

[iviv]

Been paying munchkin and kingmaker recently! Heard good things about settlers of catan but unfortunately a lot of my friends don't like playing 'complicated board games' and its hard to convince them to get in on it. It's a shame - board games are fun. Are the london meets still occuring?

http://www.meetup.com/LondonOnBoard/

We meet 5 times a week. Usually 3 times a week at the Red Herring bar near St Pauls underground. And then two weekend sessions at the Old Starr right outside of St James Underground. If you come on a saturday then odds are I'll be there. Hit me up and I'll force you to play Galaxy Trucker!

Also, anyone else is free to join. Only problem is that due to the massive popularity of the group you'll generally need to RSVP several days in advance. Unfortunately we don't have any larger venus, so register on meetup and get your RSVP in early!

7 wonders looks really good but im confused about how you work out what city produces what (brown cards)

The main city you are will produce either a basic (brown) or advanced (grey) resource, as shown in the top left corner. During age 1 you want to play a few more resource cards, depending on what options you have to your left and right. You'll also really want one of the east or west trading posts so you can get basic resources from your neighbours for half price, and maybe some of the basic research buildings to let you get the advanced ones for free.

The free building mechanic is such a good one because it means you always have a different game. The cards you get early on can disctate your strategy and you can either go with them or fight against them. If you see your neighbours don't have any millitary, do you want to get a cheap unit for some easy points? But then your neighbours will build military to defend themselves and they'll be beating you, so you need to build more to make the initial investment worth it, and so on. Or you may beat them all three rounds with just one unit because they would rather focus on other things.

 

[iviv]

Played Smash Up today, was looking forward to it after seeing it on Tabletop. Its an interesting idea, and a nice quick game, but I didn't really enjoy it all that much. The whole idea of the game of it is good, but the actual gameplay is kinda eh. I found we spent more time reading over everyone elses cards rather than playing. So you would play something then had to read over everyone's cards to make sure that you could still play that card and that nothing reacted to it, and the game seemed over pretty quickly. I'd give it another couple of games to see if its something you just have to get used to, but it was more interesting on Tabletop than it was actually playing it.

 

[iviv]

Great game, isn't it?

I'm eagerly awaiting the release of Star Trek: Attack Wing from Wizzkids. Space battles with ships from the Star Trek universe. Uses a modified (and licensed) version of Fantasy Flight's flight path system, as used in X-Wing.

Played Star Trek: Fleet Captains today along with the Romulan expansion. Works for 2/3 and 4/6 players, 2 and three players with one person taking one faction each, and 4/6 players where you split the ships between two people. Its a clix game with lots of ships!


Seemed pretty fun, probably moreso when you're playing with just the 2/3 people since you have a better idea of what you want to do rather than trying to communicate with your teammate who's on the opposite side of the board, making sure they are trying to work towards the same goals that you are. Then again, that could add to the fun as you have two captains of smaller fleets and communication is key!

 

[iviv]

It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I do quite enjoy Epic Spell Wars Of The Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre.

Its a simple game, but good fun if you're with a group of people who don't take their gaming too seriously and like to joke around with things. The game is 2-6 players, each person is a wizard and you are all fighting to become the last wizard standing. At the base of Mt. Skullzfyre.

Each player has a hand of 8 cards and 20 health, all together you look through your hand and create a spell made of 1-3 cards. Each spell can have a source, a quality and a delivery. Smaller spells are faster to cast but less powerful, so generally you will want to use all 3 cards. Once everyone has picked, you all reveal at the same time. The delivery of the spell has an initiative which is how long it takes to cast that spell, so the fastest spell goes first, and so on. Resolving the spells is simple, just do what it says on each card. Also, you have to say the name of the spell as you cast it, in a deep wizardy tone!

And you make spells like:



On the delivery where you need to roll a die (And some source and qualities as well) the number of dice you roll is determined by the number of components which match the same element as that card (Such as arcane, death, primal etc).

The game is hectic fun, you can't control who you target because it is down to the cards. And while you can have a rough idea who the strongest foe is when you pick the cards to play, if you have a low initiative and lots of other spells resolve before you, its likely that there will be a different strongest foe when you do cast.

As I said, its not for people looking for a serious game, its more a silly filler game, there isn't tons of strategy, the only question is usually if you want to cut a card from your spell for the initiative, but even then it isn't a huge choice, but with 8 cards you can make some interesting spells, and there are some that let you chain off ridiculous combos too.

 

[iviv]

Played a 2 player game of Quarantine on Sunday night. It didn't seem to play very well as just 2 players but had the making of a good game with 3 or 4 players.

That's the hospital one, right? I really want to try it, it looks kinda like a board game version of Theme Hospital!

After it's been sat on my shelf for a while, I finally managed to play a game of Mahattan Project - Oof, wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. Worker placement where you try to build a bomb. Great game!

Played that once and really enjoyed it. I remember the thing that stood out was that it was possible to play your workers on other player's boards. And there is one action that pulls all your characters off the board, so you needed to time that carefully to make sure that nobody could then block your production lines before your next turn so you could use them yourself.


On a different note, I have heard loads of good things about Android: Netrunner. Its a Fantasy Flight Games card game, specifically an LCG : Living Card Game. It differs from the usual TCG/CCGs in that you don't buy a started deck then spend a million pounds on booster packs which may or may not contain the rare cards you want to make your ideal deck work. Instead, you buy a starter set, and then FFG release what are essentially expansions. Each expansion contains a set selection of new cards, and 3 of each card (The maximum you can have in a deck). That way you can go online and see what cards are in the expansion, or 'data pack' and choose if you want to buy it, and you'll only need to buy it once.

Anyway, that's the idea, now for the actual gameplay. What I really like is that it is asymmetric. One player plays the corporation, a big company attempting to complete various agendas, while the other player is the runner, a hacker attempting to break into their systems and steal the agendas for themselves. Corps can play ICE firewalls to try and stop the runner, while the runner has several options, they can run at a face down card that has been played, if they can make it to an agenda they capture it for their own points. Alternatively, they can run on the corps discard pile if there is an agenda on top, their hand (pick a card at random, keep it if its an agenda) or their deck! All of these need to be protected!

On top of that, within each side there are separate factions each catering to a certain style of play. FFG have got a very good tutorial on youtube:

Anyway, I really want to play some games of this online, and the best way to do this is through a program called OCTGN, which is like a virtual tabletop that lets you play card games online (MTG players may know of Lackey - It's like that, but better as it actually has the rules of the games and the cards programmed into it). Here are the rules to get it set up:
http://octgn.gamersjudgement.com/wordpress/anr/installation/

Anyway, would anyone be interested in building some decks and playing some games of this online?

 

[iviv]

I should recommend Game of Thrones.

Ugh!

I like the idea around the game, but having played it twice - no more. The game takes around six hours to play, but with the time spent waiting while others um, er, decide where they are going to march, if they want to march, and which card they want to use in battle, I only ever ended up playing the game for about 2 of those six hours while the other 4 were spent waiting for things to happen that would have little to no influence on me.

 

[iviv]

Really? In my experience it is a rather fast paced game since everyone essentially take their turns at the same time. And if someone took more than 10 seconds to decide their battle card I'm pretty sure I would have to reach over and slap them.

Maybe it's just the group I play with, but that said that's why I tried it out a second time, with different people, and still came to the same conclusion.
There's lots of thinking around the cards since the played cards are common knowledge, and the thinking between what possible cards the opponent has available, and then which one they are likely to use, therefore which one you should use, and so on.

 

[iviv]

As others have said, munchkin can be extremely hit and miss. At uni the gaming group there absolutely loved it, at the new group in London I play with, just mentioning the name is grounds for a lynching!
The problem the game has is that it can drag a little. Once you get towards the end of the game it becomes a game where you throw all your cards at each other to prevent someone winning, until everyone finally runs out and someone is allowed to win.

It used to be a weekly staple for me, now it's something I enjoy every now and then, but I don't think I could take it that regularly.