Good Board Games

[Thunderhawker]

I am not talking about the standard Milton Bradley fare or anything of the like. I am talking about games that may actually be unique. For example, at my LGS a friend of mine brought in this little gem:
Betrayal at the House on the Hill

We played three times that night and it was fantastic.

The basic premise is you and your friends or acquaintances are at this strange old house, and you draw tiles to see what rooms you enter. There are cards for omens, items, and events. these determine what items you have and what happens. Eventually circumstances cause a random player to \"betray\" the others then its everyone vs. the betrayer. Then the game gets really interesting. And did I mention it comes with little plastic minis that you could repaint yourself?

What game would you recommend?


EDIT: BTW pay no mind to the price on Amazon... thats just stupid.

 

[MPJ]

Well Talisman (by GW/Black Industries but changing as they sold off the game part of BI) remains my favorite board game of all time. Just picked up the 4th edition a few weeks ago and still loving it. Have taught it to the kids and they can\'t get enough.

I\'d have to say my second favorite game of all time would be Gladiator. It\'s quite a unique old Avalon Hill game where two opponents play... yep, you guessed it Gladiators. It\'s fast and simple but enjoyable. I\'ve actually been looking to see who has the rights to it as I\'d love to purchase them and re-publish the game myself with minis instead of cardboard stand-ups for gladiators.

 

[freakinacage]

i enjoy articulate and another game that i forget the name of. basically it\'s articulate, pictionary, charades and a few others all rolled into one. great laugh

 

[MPJ]

Ooh, I found a link to information about Gladiator on Board Game Geek. Good site BTW. :drunk:

I actually own two copies of the game (one isn\'t quite complete). :drunk:

Thinking about it I like almost all the old Avalon Hill games.

 

[Sukigod]

Originally posted by MPJ
Well Talisman (by GW/Black Industries but changing as they sold off the game part of BI) remains my favorite board game of all time. Just picked up the 4th edition a few weeks ago and still loving it. Have taught it to the kids and they can\'t get enough.

I second the selection by MPJ, Talisman\'s one of my all time favs too. Wish I hadn\'t sold off everything a few years back (although I got a TON of money for it). My kids got the newest edition for me for Fathers Day last year, I forgot the Finger of Death was in an expansion! Gaah!

Gammarauders and Junta are some good ol\' classics I\'m particularly fond of too.

Illuminati, although technically a card game, is still amazing and relevant.

Diplomacy can be a great twisty game too, speaking of betrayals...

 

[Naukhel]

Shogun. Also sold as \'Samurai Swords\'.
It comes with 5 ARMIES of little plastic men you can repaint.
Unfortunately, all the armies have the same unit availability and numbers,
so it gets pretty monotonous.

Still, feudal Japan. Ninja assassin. Hard to pass up on it.

 

[Friar]

Cosmic Encounter is pretty fun each person has 5 or so planets to build and place ships on in an attempt to conquer other players planets. Each player gets a random alien card at the start of the game each race has a special power / effect. Simple and fun.

Cosmic Wimpout is a fun dice game.

I always loved Axis and Allies it was a fun board game tho it took almost as long to set up as play

 

[Gilvan Blight]

Wow where to start.

I\'ll suggest the basic Eurogames: Settlers of Catan and Carcasonne, both of which are now sold through major retailers like Toys R Us, and can usually be found in most shops that sell minis and/or roleplaying.

After getting your feet wet with those I suggest Puerto Rico, Hacienda, Caylus, Power Grid, and Attika. If you found Catan too much you could try Ticket to Ride, Bang! or any of the Munkin Games.

If you are into more strategy, wargaming style games I strongly suggest Battlelore, Memorior \'44 or Tide of Iron. All three of these are amazing bardgame alternatives to fully painted miniature wargames. If you prefer more \'hardcore\' strategy wargames take a look at Squad Leader or Hammer of the Scotts.

If adventures are more your style check out Descent: Journies in the Dark and Runbound from Fantasy Flight, both of those I find way more deep and engaging then Talisman (a good game, but gets very boring in the mid game, and one player usually steamrolls to the end).

If you can give some more specifics on the types of games you enjoy I can probably suggest something a little more narrow.

Oh, just remembered you liked ... House on the Hill... Then check out Arkham Horror and maybe Tannhausser.

My current personal favourite is Shogun, but not the one called Seven swords, the one that is a multinational edition of Wallenstien.

I\'m a boardgamer, can you tell? I\'m up to 230 games in my collection which grows by the week.

 

[Wren]

Betrayal at House on the Hill is now out of print, so prices have been going up on Ebay and through used sellers. I\'d check for it first in local stores that might not be aware of that. Original retail price was $40, and a lot of game stores don\'t keep up on board games as much as CCGs and RPGs, so if they have it in stock they probably have it regular price. Check Board Game Geek for some additional haunts if you get tired of the many included in the box. Also check it for the FAQ/errata which is legion, there were a lot of printing errors.

If you like that, I recommend Last Night on Earth. Plays 2-6, with 1-2 players of zombies and the others are heroes. The board is modular and there are several different scenarios (try to burn them out, get out before dawn, find the keys and get to the truck, stuff like that.) The figures are sculpted by Gael Goumon, so you can combine board game and mini love with this one. It\'s pretty new and from a small company, but if you can\'t find it locally there are lots of online purveyors of board games.

Arkham Horror is a great game too, though it\'s purely cooperative, with all the players against the game. So if one of the players becoming the betrayer was a big part of what you like, you might prefer LNOE. Arkham takes 2-4+ hours to play with a larger group, and interestingly you can play it solo, which is helpful for learning the rules to teach others.

My game group is heavily Euro/designer biased, and I on that front I would recommend a lot of what Gilvan mentioned. I personally don\'t like Settlers of Catan, but loads of people do and it sells really well (I used to work in a game store, it was pretty much the best selling game.) Ingenious is another game I really like, plays 2-4 and is a good quick play on game nights where you\'re waiting for a few late players. Carcassonne is on XBox, so you can download a demo and test play it to try before you buy the paper copy. I think Settlers is too, if it isn\'t it should be soon.

Board Game Geek is a fantastic resource that lets you read reviews, look at pictures of components, get rules errata, all kinds of stuff. It does have a heavy Euro game bias and some people who can be snotty about stuff on the forums, but there are lots of fans of classic American style games like Talisman and so on there too, you just have to look around a bit through the different threads.

 

[lizcam]

My favorite board game of all time was the old Judge Dredd board game. Cut throat, quick, funny. Mine was lost ages ago but I\'d love to get another but it\'s not in print any more.




I think Wen still has one.........Maybe I\'ll go over and play this weekend!

 

[Shadzar]

Snit\'s Revenge

 

[pez5767]

I\'m with Wren, Ingenious is a great game... especially since the original german pronunciation of the game sounds dirty and you get to shout it during the game.

Cave Troll is one of the best fantasy themed games I\'ve ever played. It\'s on the fast and furious side of things.

Epidemic is a brand new game where the players play cooperativly to stop the spread of global diseases... fun and incredibly hard.

Space Hulk can be a real treat, however I\'m totally partial to the 1st edition of the game. As for GW I also like Advanced Hero Quest a great deal... if you can find it.

Fairy Tale is an interesting card style game that can be played in a relativly short time and has lots of fun manga style fantasy art. (lodoss war style)

Hmmm that\'s all I can think of atm. I\'d love to play this Betrayal game...

As a blatant plug for those on the West Coast of the U.S., this is why I absolutly love Kubla Con (coming up soon). They have board games, mini games, painting seminars, card games... YOU NAME IT. And the con is still small enough that it feels like all your geek friends doing it up proper one weekend. Okay end plug.

 

[Wren]

Originally posted by pez5767
Epidemic is a brand new game where the players play cooperativly to stop the spread of global diseases... fun and incredibly hard.

I think this one is actually called Pandemic. Good mention, it\'s going over really well with lots of different types of gamers that I know. I was at a small board game convention last month that had three or four copies of this, and they never sat idle.

Fairy Tale is fun, nice art and a way to get your CCG draft fix with a single deck.

 

[Highbulp Billy]

Apart from the obvious things like Monopoly and Scrabble I can recall a few boards games from my youth that I really loved. Journey Though Europe was one, you drew random cards with different destinations and had to navigate your way through all of them and back to your starting city in the quickest route. I really like it because you got little flags with pins.

Another on was Dingbats where you had to guess sayings from visual word clues but I got banned from playing it when I memorised them all.

 

[pez5767]

Originally posted by Wren

I think this one is actually called Pandemic. Good mention, it\'s going over really well with lots of different types of gamers that I know. I was at a small board game convention last month that had three or four copies of this, and they never sat idle.

Fairy Tale is fun, nice art and a way to get your CCG draft fix with a single deck.

Yep you got it... pandemic it is... Lots of fun if you can get your mits on a set.

 

[mud duck]

Twilight Empire by Fantasy Flight. Risk with a changable map. And a mess of rules for things like trading and dipomancy. I think that it is something like 3-6 hours of play time.
I think that I\'ve haven\'t found one of FF line of games that I haven\'t found fun

Run Candy man, run. Candy land with destoriable pieces and machine guns.
The Zombie line
Kill Doctor Lucky

 

[War Griffon]

A few of my favourites:

origonal Talisman (before all the add ons came out and spoilt it)

Space Hulk (already mentioned)

Railway Rivals, a game where you built railroads and then raced them for money (bit like Railroad Tycoon)

Dungeonquest, a great favourite with my Ex\'s daughter.

The origonal Mighty Empires.

Wizards

Samurai

Warrior Knights (game had far too many bits for its own good)

Risk

Strategico (excuse the spelling)

 

[ktooloo]

-Cranium for party games (might be Freakinacage\'s forgotten game since it is every classic party game rolled into one and then they add some new stuff to it too).

-Arkham Horror for co-op

-I haven\'t played Diplomacy in years, but it\'s really good. Just make sure that everyone goes into knowing what to expect or you may lose a friend or two over a game.

-Some of the Risk variants are really good, the SciFi one being my favorite.

-I haven\'t played it, but the board game group here at work LOVES Space Trucker.

-I have heard really good things about Tide of Iron as well.

-GUNS & CASH!!!!! go buy it now!!!!! : )

-If you can find them there are some really good OOP games, like; WizWar, Mutant Chronicles, Dungeon, Hero Quest, Warhammer Quest, .... so many....brain hurts....and I feal slightly teary eyed while I reminisce. : )


:beer:

 

[Gilvan Blight]

Catan is out on Xbox Live arcade and you can download a trial game for free.

Coming soon is Ticket to Ride, though no clue exactly when.

I have to second Judge Dredd, I used to love those games. FYI Fantasy flight has already released two of the class Games Workshop boardgames, Warrior Knights and Fury or Dracula and they recently got the rights to all of the GW boardgames as well as their two role playing games, so I wouldn\'t be supprised to see other classics like Warlock of Firetop Mountain or Curse of the Mummies Tomb making a come back.

I\'m also a Fan of Fairy Tale, though it\'s much better with the \'darker\' expansion. For card games nothing beats Bohnanza and The Great Dalumuti. Those are the two staple games at our local gathering of gamers at the local pub (well one of the local pubs).

 

[MPJ]

Originally posted by War Griffon
A few of my favourites:

origonal Talisman (before all the add ons came out and spoilt it)

Space Hulk (already mentioned)

Railway Rivals, a game where you built railroads and then raced them for money (bit like Railroad Tycoon)

Dungeonquest, a great favourite with my Ex\'s daughter.

The origonal Mighty Empires.

Wizards

Samurai

Warrior Knights (game had far too many bits for its own good)

Risk

Strategico (excuse the spelling)

FYI War Griffon the new Talisman is pretty much a direct copy of first and second edition without the addons.

Apparently GW has released the original rules for Mighty Empires so that the new Mighty Empires set thingie can be used with the original rules. These rules are a free download on their site or so I\'m told by the manager of the GW store (I too very much enjoyed the original Mighty Empires game).