Board Games

[Trestkon]

I love board games, particularly ones involving strategy. I've been searching for some good board games recently but it's surprisingly difficult to find anything that I like. Some of my favorites:

2 Player
-Chess
-Backgammon
-Go (Othello)

Multiple Players
-Cranium
-Balderdash

Does anyone happen to know of some other interesting games in these categories? With the price of most board games, it's nice to have one recommended, rather than shell out large sums of money only to find out something is no fun.

[EER]

Formula De was very cool, the only board-racer I know of. Unfortunately it was discontinued before I could purchase one so I have to live with my memories, knowing that I will never play it again. Tragic, tragic loss for the board gaming community.

Anyway, I'm more of a Monopoly person, but I'm sure you already know it. Cluedo is always fun (somehow this is especially popular with women, I don't know why). "The Game of Life" is quite fun I find, the goal is to make loads of money, so it's a bit monopoly-ish, but you're not in real estate, you're just living your life. Stratego (it's okay I guess) .. Ludo (don't like it, made it in Excel once on a lazy sunday) ..

Other than that ... I don't really play board games.

[Jonas]

I'm assuming you know Risk. It's one of my favourite games, but it tends to take an entire day with 3-4 players, and it has an annoying habit of ending with the last two players duking it out for hours after the rest of the players lost, which is pretty boring for them.

I got Tantrix for christmas, it was the almond-gift and I got the almond (I have no idea if that custom exists outside of Denmark, and frankly I can't be arsed looking it up right now). It's for 2-4 players, and while I've only played it once and we were all struggling to get into the rules, it was lots of fun. It's mostly about strategy, but it has a small element of luck as well to ensure the most experienced player won't win all the time (only most of the time). And it really does require quite a lot of forethought, similar to chess. So I recommend that.

[chris the cynic]

I would direct you to chessvariants.com, they have nine full pages of games that can be played with a ordinary chess equipment. Much, much more if you're willing to use a different board or different pieces. Apparently they're switching servers at the moment, if I'm reading right they thought they've be done a week ago, so I'm not sure when they'll be back.

When they're back in working order if you go here: http://chessvariants.com/Gindex.html and follow any of the links under the Chess variants with usual equipment: heading you'll get links to descriptions of, and rules to, games that you'll not have to pay a cent for. Some are good, others suck, such is life. See if any seem likeable to you.

It also has my first attempt at translating chess moves into three dimensions. Really needed more work, I still haven't worked everything out.

[m3rc1l3ss]

An awesome board game was Rail Baron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Baron unfortunately it is out of print. Tomorrow I am playing a massive World War II game so if anyone is intrested I can talk about that...

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

Risk is my most fav game, I want the black ops edition badly as it'd be interesting to play risk in the modern world. I also love Monopoly.

I've always wondered how awesome it'd be to breed Risk and Monopoly together, could you imagine the freak child they'd have lol. (Civilization 4 comes to mind)

[Jetsetlemming]

I love Othello.
There's a board game I can't remember the name of, where you had an army of ~30 pieces in rows, placed where you want, they number from 1-10, bombs, spies, and a single flag. Higher numbers kill lower numbers, spies kill anyone it attacks and dies to anyone that attacks it. You took turns moving one piece at a time (in any direction), and your goal is to capture your opponent's flag. That game was awesome, I remember playing it when I was in elementary school with my little brother.

[EER]

I love Othello.
There's a board game I can't remember the name of, where you had an army of ~30 pieces in rows, placed where you want, they number from 1-10, bombs, spies, and a single flag. Higher numbers kill lower numbers, spies kill anyone it attacks and dies to anyone that attacks it. You took turns moving one piece at a time (in any direction), and your goal is to capture your opponent's flag. That game was awesome, I remember playing it when I was in elementary school with my little brother.

That's Stratego

[Ajare]

Stratego is awesome fun, I played a really old French version called L'Attaque, which was essentially the same, but without the water channels. I'm currently addicted to a computer version of Risk, which passes the time between banging my head against the keyboard crying about render textures.

Oh, and fuck Monopoly, I've never known a board game cause more arguments and general stress (at least, when our family plays it).

[EER]

Oh, and fuck Monopoly, I've never known a board game cause more arguments and general stress (at least, when our family plays it).

I love the social interaction, disagreements on the ruleset, trading between players, loansharks, bankrupting the bank... oh, great times. Such a shame that I don't know many people that are up for a game of Monopoly (and that a game takes quite long).

A few weeks ago I saw a game 'anti-monopoly' which was interesting, but I decided not to buy because my family generally dislikes boardgames (or games in general).

[Jonas]

In my opinion (and, I might add, the opinion of many game designers), Monopoly is FUBAR. It's a game that was invented to portray the many negative effects of monopolisation in the real estate market, and the effect this has on the actual damn gameplay is that as soon as the initial land-grab is over, the game descends into a downward spiral of un-fun. One player (or if you're really lucky two players) will very quickly become very rich and push everybody else out of the game, except after you've lost, you don't leave the game, you get to spend many many turns slowly losing everything and becoming poorer and poorer, and there's nothing you can do about it.

It's terrible.

Stratego, on the other hand, is brilliant. Ah, the feints you can pull off in that game if your opponent thinks they know you. The bomb pieces are a brilliant tool to fool your opponent because if placed in a particular pattern, they will automatically make most players assume your flag is in the middle of the bomb field (since that is a very sound strategy). Placing them just behind the front line is often effective as well, but I like to throw one in completely randomly just to throw my opponent off guard.

Stratego also comes in a four-player version, but I've never really played that enough to know if it's any good.

[gamer0004]

Those two rich players somehow - in our Dutch version - always have either Utrecht or Amsterdam. Which is really strange. Because Amsterdam is the most expensive street and Utrecht is like half-way through :S Utrecht seems to have some magical attraction to all players. It is a matter of bankrupting the guy with Amsterdam before you accidentally hit it...

[Jonas]

In the Danish version we have, it always raises a smile that the most expensive fields are streets in central Copenhagen and the two least expensive ones are Hvidovre and Rødovre - entire suburbs. One of which I happen to live in. Apparently owning all of Hvidovre is worth less than owning one street in central Copenhagen? I somehow doubt that's true, but of course ours is a very old version of monopoly.

[EER]

Those two rich players somehow - in our Dutch version - always have either Utrecht or Amsterdam. Which is really strange. Because Amsterdam is the most expensive street and Utrecht is like half-way through :S Utrecht seems to have some magical attraction to all players. It is a matter of bankrupting the guy with Amsterdam before you accidentally hit it...

Actually, if you have Utrecht and Groningen, you will win. I remember there was a computer simulation that showed that the square most likely to be hit is Heerestraat (because there is also a chance card that directs you there). Den Haag is completely irrelevant, as is Rotterdam. The chance that Amsterdam is hit is rather small even if the earnings are incredibly high, so even if I have the Kalverstraat I will trade it for any three-space city, especially Groningen or Arnhem (which is another hotspot of dice throwing activity).

[Ajare]

It's the orange properties that offer the best cost/rent ratio, once you start building houses on those, you've basically won. What Jonas says is pretty spot on, the mechanics are a terrible mess.

Not strictly a board game, but Mah Jongg is wonderful. The game is mostly luck, but somehow you don't care because it's so enchanting (and the luck actually adds a strong element of excitement to it).