Time for a nod to traditional tabletop gaming.
What is your favorite?
What would you recommend people to try?
And what homebrew rules do you live by?
I’m playing Catan with seafarers, cities and knights and Traders and Barbarians expansions.
If you haven’t played yet I highly recommend cities and knights expansion.
Risk is my favorite for sure. Have you tried LOTR risk? They added an additional aspect where the “good” side are trying to move the ring to Mordor to end the game. The “bad” side is stronger to balance it out. I prefer to just play normal rules on the LOTR map though
I really like settlers, especially when you combine the boards to play it 8 player. I’ve never tried the expansions
Monopoly is fun too, with a fun group at least. I haven’t played many others besides the usual chess, scrabble, etc
Have you seen Risk Legacy? I want to play that one so badly.
The idea is you buy the game, but you can only play it a limited number of times with the same group of people.
The outcome of one game modifys the board and affects the conditions of the next as the game is essentially chronicalling a series of conflicts from generation to generation.
They also have a Pandemic legacy (If you haven’t played the original version, Pandemic is another game definitately worth playing with friends). Where each game represents 1 month passing in an ongoing infection. Failure to control the various diseases in 1 game means that the disease will be more difficult in the next. Outbreaks in cities will have consequences in future games and players who are caught in outbreaks too many times retire due to being tramautised at which point that character card is torn up and the class removed from later rounds.
Both sound interesting, but I haven’t heard of either. Hmm I don’t think I’ve seen it around anywhere either
Risk is the most memorable board game I’ve played by far. I’ve played a game with friends that spanned 3 days. I would leave to work and come back and continue. It was quite fun 
When I asked about Pandemic Legacy they said they had a shipment coming in but a waiting list about 26 people deep.
They had a copy of Risk Legacy, but I don’t really have anybody to play that with. I sometimes play Pandemic with my family when they visit, but I don’t seem them getting too into Risk, or atleast not enough to make the purchase worthwhile.
I have seen LOTR risk ocassionally being sold, but more often see Dr Who Risk, which looks… intresting?
Adjusting the mechanics rather than just reskinning the game sounds awesome.
As a side note, is it possible to set up a LOTR map in warlight?
In a similar vein, I have a copy of Star-trek Catan.
It plays more or less like vanilla catan, but has the addition of character cards that give players unique abilities based on the original cast. You can use the character cards abilites twice before they are returned to the deck and a new character is drawn.
My favorite character there is communications officer Uhura whos ability is a Trade avantage that is able to force another player to agree to a proposed trade.
My favorites are: Catan, King of Tokyo (or New York), Epic Spell Wars 2, Secret Hitler
Warlight has a number of maps, including LOTR, Warcraft, Game of Thrones, and a bunch of others. It’s always fun playing on maps from a different “theme”
Adjusting the mechanics is cool, but here’s one of the things I didn’t like. At the end of each turn if the ring is on a spot controlled by evil, evil has a chance to roll the three attack die. If they get 3 sixes, though unlikely, evil wins and the game is over because they took the ring. I’ve seen it happen once fairly early in a game and it was kind of frustrating because you spent all of this time setting it up just to end it all on pure chance. I know the whole game is based on chance but that particular aspect has 0 strategy involved.
At the same time I understand why that aspect is there. The ring is moving turn by turn from the Shire to Mordor. A few spots along the way require good to roll the die to move the ring. If they don’t meet the required roll, the ring sits in that territory until the next turn where good will once again try to move it. So the overall strategy becomes if you’re good, you try to hold out until the ring reaches Mordor. If you’re evil you’re on a time bomb so you have to wipe good off the map before the ring reaches Mordor. This is a fairly difficult task, even though evil starts with more territories on the map. Hence, evil has the chance to take the ring by rolling 3 dice, because the “waiting game” favors the defense. All in all, it’s a decent description of the movies. Evil trying to take over good, and the only real hope good has is the ring reaching Mordor. In theory it’s possible for good to win by just destroying evil off of the map, but that’s very difficult to do.
What’s a Secret Hitler??
Id love to get into Risk again. Loved it for a long time before a certain friend ruined it for me. Always talking himself up and trying to make us all feel like idiots compared to his incredible war-gaming skills. It got old fast. And no…he wasnt joking lol. He actually believed the things he said, joking or not. SMH. Would love to start fresh though.
I absolutely love Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride with friends and family.
the board games I own and currently try to play are Settlers of Catan (5-6 player vanilla expansion, Cities and Knights, cities and knights 5-6 player explayer expansion), Ticket to Ride America, Forbidden Desert (very fun coop game, though very easy, maybe I am playing it wrong), Once Upon a Time, and I am trying to break into pathfinder. Also I have magicka tactics board game which I have yet to open and learn how to play.
I have a copy of Civilization produced by Fantasy flight games in conjunction with Firaxis.
I tried playing it once with my family, but it was far too complicated for them so I have never actually been able to play a round.
Par for the course with Fantasy Flight games I am afraid though, the BSG board game has also been on my radar for years, but I am sure that would also be to complicated for them.
Yah I need to set up a set time to meet up with like minded friends for board game night. I am thinking of setting boardgame night up on a friday. Maybe start it at 18:00 etc.
I haven’t played much since Risk/Monopoly years (decades?) ago. Board games are a fun, quick way to prototype games.
Risk Legacy sounds awesome.
I follow this site to keep up to date about interesting board games (there are a lot of them): Shut Up And Sit Down
In order of how quick and simple they are:
Bang! The Dice Game, Pandemic, King of Tokyo, Settlers of Catan, Dominion, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Castle Ravenloft - Wrath of Ashardalon - Legend of Drizzt, Descent, Krosmaster Arena*.
*complexity is relative to how many champions you own and how you decide teams.
What is the legend of Drizzt like?
I remember reading the books a long long time ago, they themselves are based on DnD.
Just payed once upon a time today for the first time and it is really really fun.
Is it a DnD like the source material or more traditional structured game following the theme?
Or maybe a hybrid of the two similar to Talisman?
its like story telling and being forced to include certain elements cause cards.
