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The New Board Game Thread (Newcomer Friendly)

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P

platypotamus

Member
Staccat0 said:
Just ordered Robo Rally. I'll catch up with the cool kids someday :D
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Not if you put your movement cards down in the wrong order, you won't!

(I wonder what percentage of human beings would understand that crappy joke?)


.............


Anyway... bit of a puzzler on my hands here.

Friday, some time (in theory), my order arrives (Glory to Rome, Innovation, Founding Fathers, Fresco).


Friday night (possibly before the order arrives, which would be tragic!), board game night. This actually isn't part of the puzzler, since it's my wife's turn to pick the game, I just thought I'd mention it.

The puzzler: Saturday, some folks are coming over to game. The group consists of myself, a fellow super hardcore gamer (less experienced perhaps, though), a fairly hardcore gamer, and a almost complete gaming newb. Also possibly my wife, if she has enough energy to join us after work (she's hardcore too). Pretty sure I can pick games from my existing collection that will work, at least after interrogating interviewing the newb. The dilemma is that I want to try one of my new games! GtR/Innovation are both so different from what I normally play, that I'm totally unsure about how tough they'd be for a newb. Founding Fathers seems pretty out of the question. Fresco is kind of a maybe, but really not sure of its heaviness yet either.

I wouldn't MIND playing TtR, Dominion, or Puerto Rico, but man, I'll have to put the new games in the other room or something so they don't make eyes at me all night long.
 
A

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Fresco is pretty light. I'd put it barely above Stone Age in terms of heaviness. Only plays up to 4 though. Most of those are fairly intense though for a boardgaming newb though, unless they have some other strategy-game experience.
 
N

narcosis219

Member
platypotamus said:
Not if you put your movement cards down in the wrong order, you won't!

(I wonder what percentage of human beings would understand that crappy joke?)


.............


Anyway... bit of a puzzler on my hands here.

Friday, some time (in theory), my order arrives (Glory to Rome, Innovation, Founding Fathers, Fresco).


Friday night (possibly before the order arrives, which would be tragic!), board game night. This actually isn't part of the puzzler, since it's my wife's turn to pick the game, I just thought I'd mention it.

The puzzler: Saturday, some folks are coming over to game. The group consists of myself, a fellow super hardcore gamer (less experienced perhaps, though), a fairly hardcore gamer, and a almost complete gaming newb. Also possibly my wife, if she has enough energy to join us after work (she's hardcore too). Pretty sure I can pick games from my existing collection that will work, at least after interrogating interviewing the newb. The dilemma is that I want to try one of my new games! GtR/Innovation are both so different from what I normally play, that I'm totally unsure about how tough they'd be for a newb. Founding Fathers seems pretty out of the question. Fresco is kind of a maybe, but really not sure of its heaviness yet either.

I wouldn't MIND playing TtR, Dominion, or Puerto Rico, but man, I'll have to put the new games in the other room or something so they don't make eyes at me all night long.
Click to expand...

Probably a good idea to play TtR or something light. You don't want to play a new game that's fairly heavy and have the newb just sit there not knowing what to do and not having any fun ( and possibly draining the fun for everyone else because there's a dead player in the game ).

TtR is great for everyone anyways. As is Dominion.
 
A

Artadius

Member
Dropped in on another groups game night last night (met one of the guys through BGG and he's now one of my groups regulars).

Got in a game of Alhambra and one of Citadels.

Alhambra seems straight forward and pretty lightweight... but then you realize the strategy has many different facets and layers between your city walls and your layout, the number of different colors you have vs. other players, trying to time when the first two scoring cards come up, drawing money effectively, trying to chain actions, etc. Really surprised me how deep the game ended up being.

Too bad the overall feel for the game and it's theme didn't really WOW me. I mean, its a good thinker/strategy... but its not a super model you know?

I ended up getting second place. I think I would have won but I had two tiles in reserve because I wasn't smart about my tile placements and the end of the game snuck up on me.

Citadels on the other hand oozes style. The card stock is sturdy and the illustrations are very well done. We were playing with five players which I found to be a pretty good number of people considering the mechanics of hiding one role at start of draw and end of draw (+ the one face up at start as well). It really made for some moments where you had to think "Well if Player A takes King, and Player B thinks they take king... they'll take Assassin. Is it safe for me to take Merchant or will the Thief steal from me?"

My strategy was to focus on properties which gave bonus gold (Blue first, then some Yellows, then a couple of Greens) and then to cycle around the roles which got the bonus money from them. Never drawing the same role over and over so I wouldn't get assassinated or thieved from. This usually worked and kept the extra cash coming in allowing me to be the first with eight districts. I won with 31 points. I think second place was like 21 or so.

Nice fun, quick, light game.

------

My group's night is this Saturday. We're featuring Battlestar Galactica again because it was such a huge hit last time. We're also starting at 6pm instead of the usual 7pm so we might also throw in Betrayal at House on the Hill as well since we have yet to play that one.
 
A

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Artadius said:
Citadels on the other hand oozes style. The card stock is sturdy and the illustrations are very well done. We were playing with five players which I found to be a pretty good number of people considering the mechanics of hiding one role at start of draw and end of draw (+ the one face up at start as well). It really made for some moments where you had to think "Well if Player A takes King, and Player B thinks they take king... they'll take Assassin. Is it safe for me to take Merchant or will the Thief steal from me?"

My strategy was to focus on properties which gave bonus gold (Blue first, then some Yellows, then a couple of Greens) and then to cycle around the roles which got the bonus money from them. Never drawing the same role over and over so I wouldn't get assassinated or thieved from. This usually worked and kept the extra cash coming in allowing me to be the first with eight districts. I won with 31 points. I think second place was like 21 or so.

Nice fun, quick, light game.
Click to expand...
Yep, there's nothing like ducking numerous stealing and assassination attempts and cackling maniacally as your opponents whiff or (even better) take out some poor innocent player they weren't even going after.
 
S

Seth C

Member
Cyan said:
:lol

Jesus Christ dude. I would've hated you if I'd been playing in that match.
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It's okay, I hated myself for it. Before that turn (the previous one was almost as bad) the guy I was playing against sent a message that just said "Mercy."

Last night at the Rusty Scabbard I got in my first game of 7 Wonders. There were 8 of us, and only 2 or 3 had played the game before and they did a TERRIBLE job of explaining the game, so most of us had no clue what we were doing until right up around the 3rd age. Some things involving scoring they had forgotten to share with us right up until they were scoring, so I could have done better but had sold off a card at the end because I thought it was useless but in reality would have added 3 victory points. I still finished 3rd (with 48 points). The game seems like it would be fun, but I'm not sure it's something I'll invest in. I doubt most of my non-board gaming friends would be interested in playing it so aside from the local gaming night I'd never get to play, and that group already owns several copies of the game.
 
B

BattleMonkey

Member
Mashing said:
I'm curious, how long are ya'lls typical gaming sessions? Mine are almost always 10+ hrs.
Click to expand...

Depends on the games being played. Lot of board games can be done in less than 3 hours. Roleplaying games tend to go for us about 6-8 hours, and miniature gaming anywhere from 3-6.
 
M

Merino

Member
Can I just give a tremendous applause to UGG (European GMT) for being the fricking best company in the world.

Not only do they sell the best games in the world for an easy 15% discount but it took them only 1 day to ship my order from Germany to the Netherlands. I was expecting it tomorrow at tops and was actually counting on Saturday.

Now time to start opening them up and grinding through the rules

8z2vy1.jpg
 
F

fenners

Member
Mashing said:
I'm curious, how long are ya'lls typical gaming sessions? Mine are almost always 10+ hrs.
Click to expand...

Mid-week game nights start at 7, usually a game gets picked by 7:30, game until around 11-12, depending on the game. If a buddy's over for a 2p game on Yoga nights, it's 8pm-11-ish, with lots of chit chat going on.

10+ hours just doesn't work for me very often with family to deal with.
 
Y

Yaweee

Member
Boardgame night at work is 2~4 hours, and gaming with friends is always 3~7 hours, but drinking and non-BG gaming is often involved
 
A

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Seth C said:
I'm lucky if I can get people to hold things together for 3 hours.
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This. If I have friends or family staying over, yeah we can go for 6+. Only time I really get to play for 12+ hours is if I'm on vacation at a convention.
 
J

joeyjoejoeshabadoo

Member
Merino said:
Can I just give a tremendous applause to UGG (European GMT) for being the fricking best company in the world.

Not only do they sell the best games in the world for an easy 15% discount but it took them only 1 day to ship my order from Germany to the Netherlands. I was expecting it tomorrow at tops and was actually counting on Saturday.

Now time to start opening them up and grinding through the rules

8z2vy1.jpg
Click to expand...
Holy cow, that Dominant Species box is huge.
 
S

Seth C

Member
Have any of you guys ever considered doing a GAF board gaming gathering somewhere? I'm not sure if there are enough of us within a reasonable distance to bother, but it could be fun.
 
J

joeyjoejoeshabadoo

Member
Seth C said:
Have any of you guys ever considered doing a GAF board gaming gathering somewhere? I'm not sure if there are enough of us within a reasonable distance to bother, but it could be fun.
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A bunch of people met up at BGG.con last year. We seem pretty spread out to do anything on a more regular basis though.
 
U

UpperCaseN

Member
Mashing said:
I'm curious, how long are ya'lls typical gaming sessions? Mine are almost always 10+ hrs.
Click to expand...
I usually avoid gaming on weekdays but the one time it happened, we went for 4.5 hours. On my regular weekend gaming sessions, it can go for 8-10 hours but dinner (which is no game time) is included in that

edit: Played a 2player game of Forbidden Island to test it out last night, it's perfect for an appetizer game! Quick to setup, learn, teach, etc. It's not too deep so it'll be perfect if part of my group shows up early and we're waiting on others.

Got all 4 treasures and 1 person on the helipad, but the island sunk before the other person could make it, so close!
 
M

Mashing

Member
joeyjoejoeshabadoo said:
A bunch of people met up at BGG.con last year. We seem pretty spread out to do anything on a more regular basis though.
Click to expand...

I'm definitely going to next year's con. I'd like to meet some of my fellow boardgame gaffer's.

Anyway, to clarify. I have month meetup's that either start 12pm or 3pm. These meetup's end at around 10pm, but then we go to another location for more gaming. These can go till about 5am.

I had a gaming session a couple of week's ago that was from 3pm - 9:30am the next day. Yeah, we got some hardcore gamers. I just love playing new games and my favorites are actually one's that take a long time to play anyway.
 
S

Schmattakopf

Member
Mashing said:
I'm curious, how long are ya'lls typical gaming sessions? Mine are almost always 10+ hrs.
Click to expand...
I'd say five hours. We're a noob group, led by one person who just recently got really into board games, but still, it's primarily a social thing and some of us have weird schedules.
 
S

Seth C

Member
joeyjoejoeshabadoo said:
A bunch of people met up at BGG.con last year. We seem pretty spread out to do anything on a more regular basis though.
Click to expand...

That's what I figured, but thought there may be enough of us in the Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky area to get together every now and then. I'm thinking of going to GenCon this year. Would anyone be interested in that?
 
P

platypotamus

Member
AstroLad said:
Fresco is pretty light. I'd put it barely above Stone Age in terms of heaviness. Only plays up to 4 though. Most of those are fairly intense though for a boardgaming newb though, unless they have some other strategy-game experience.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, maybe I'll sneak it in if the wife doesn't join us then.

narcosis219 said:
Probably a good idea to play TtR or something light. You don't want to play a new game that's fairly heavy and have the newb just sit there not knowing what to do and not having any fun ( and possibly draining the fun for everyone else because there's a dead player in the game ).

TtR is great for everyone anyways. As is Dominion.
Click to expand...

Damn you and your voice of reason! You're totally right though.

Mashing said:
I'm curious, how long are ya'lls typical gaming sessions? Mine are almost always 10+ hrs.
Click to expand...


MOST of my sessions are with a couple that has two young kids, so our sessions go from kids' bedtime to mom's bedtime... so like 7ish-10ish at the latest. Usually one game, sometimes multiple rounds of it if the game is short and fast (Dominion we can usually double/triple up on).

I miss nice long multigame sessions, but they are pretty rare for me, sadly.




EDIT: This whole thread needs to come game with me at PAX in September!
 
E

echoshifting

Banned
Ooooo Labyrinth looks cool. One for the list...of games to buy and teach my daughter to play in several years because my wife would never, ever play it. ;p

I'd never even heard of it.
 
A

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Seth C said:
Oh, right, PAX. I may do that actually. I've been wanting to go anyway.
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Yah BGG.Con is the hot hotness. I dunno if I'll be able to make it this year but it was fantastic last year. Also went to PAX East last year and met Flynn there and I believe there are 3-4 gaffers doing it this year. I'm planning on going to both but we'll see. I do know that several people in this thread go to GenCon but I don't think they meet up since GenCon is way less focused on open gaming and such.
 
S

Seth C

Member
AstroLad said:
Yah BGG.Con is the hot hotness. I dunno if I'll be able to make it this year but it was fantastic last year. Also went to PAX East last year and met Flynn there and I believe there are 3-4 gaffers doing it this year. I'm planning on going to both but we'll see. I do know that several people in this thread go to GenCon but I don't think they meet up since GenCon is way less focused on open gaming and such.
Click to expand...

I totally forgot PAX East was coming up so soon. We should get a last minute group together to hit that up. I love Boston anyway.

I suggesting GenCon because it is so close for me (3 hour drive) and I already have a friend who goes with a group every single year. I've always passed because, well, they are D&D nerds. Still, if I could get my board gaming on I'd consider going this year.

Dominion, anyone?
 
S

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
I'll be at BGG-Con, but it's a 3 hour drive for me so it's something of a no-brainer.

It will probably be a very different experience for me this year now that I have a bigger gaming group that will almost all be there.
 
S

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
Mashing said:
BGG-Con is like a 5 hour drive for me, or I could fly (I think flying from Houston to Dallas is rather retarded though).
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a tough call.

If you go, you'll want to drive if you can because then you can buy games at the flea market/math trade and not worry about getting them home.
 
U

Unison

Member
Hrrm... PAX East is during the lead up to my Spring Break week at school... I could probably go, given that I live in NYC.

How much boardgaming is at the event? I assumed it would be videogame-centric?
 
M

MichaelBD

Member
Unison said:
Hrrm... PAX East is during the lead up to my Spring Break week at school... I could probably go, given that I live in NYC.

How much boardgaming is at the event? I assumed it would be videogame-centric?
Click to expand...
There is a lot of board gaming. So much so in fact that they changed the venue because there weren't enough tables to accommodate all the players. I remember not being able to find any space when some friends and I went to play some games.
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Mashing said:
I'm curious, how long are ya'lls typical gaming sessions? Mine are almost always 10+ hrs.
Click to expand...
Usually between 6 - 8 hours on average. But throw in a dinner break somewhere in there.
 
A

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Got some friends in town on Saturday. Going to play some Carc, Ticket to Ride, some mix of the usual gateways. Then I'll definitely dig into some more Puzzle Strike on Sunday or something. Still need to play Tammany Hall . . . was surprised by how short the rules were.

MichaelBD said:
There is a lot of board gaming. So much so in fact that they changed the venue because there weren't enough tables to accommodate all the players. I remember not being able to find any space when some friends and I went to play some games.
Click to expand...
Wait did you go to the non-main rooms? The ones they used for the tourneys? Because there was always room in those afaicr. Only the main one was always really busy.
 
D

DieNgamers

Member
So we bought and played Dominion yesterday. What a fun game! Great for posing and talking big ;). One player had thrown away all his "bothersome" estate cards throughout the game and was left with only one single victory point in the end, haha! Today it's going to be Carcassonne and maybe Arkham Horror!
 
U

UpperCaseN

Member
I'll be at PAX East, along with another Gaffer and some friends. I don't know how I feel about sitting down to play games though, I feel like my time would better be spent experiencing the rest of the con, you know?
 
A

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Gryphter said:
I'll be at PAX East, along with another Gaffer and some friends. I don't know how I feel about sitting down to play games though, I feel like my time would better be spent experiencing the rest of the con, you know?
Click to expand...
dsfdf
 
A

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Gah, sorry posted early and I guess I didn't submit my edit.

Anyway, meant to say: dsfdf but open gaming is one of my favorite things to do at a con. Helps that last year I was there with my wife and she is way into open gaming and really not particularly interested in the other stuff though she does enjoy "exploring." They have cool panels but the lines are pretty long so we stayed away. The tournaments I thought were pretty sloppily organized but still fun just in the sense that you got to play with lots of random people, the majority of whom were cool. Nothing beats my wife and I learning Agricola from Flynn at 1 AM though. The nice thing is the hours are really long so yeah you are spot on that there's tons of time for everything really (unless you get caught in several of those really long lines -- in which case it can become a convention about going from line to line).
 
A

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Dominion anyone? dominion.isotropic.org

Where are you guys staying for PAX East? Went to the Colonnade last time but thought it was pricey for what it was.
 
L

letsbereasonable

Member
Just a heads up to Boardgame GAF with a local Barnes and Nobles:

There's a 50% off in store Barnes coupon good until 1/30/2011 that yields some decent prices. They sell games at MSRP, but 50% is still a pretty good walk out the door discount.

My local store had Dominion at 22 and Ticket to Ride at 25 after coupon, which was pretty good. More stocked stores have Arkham Horror, Civ, etc.

Here you go: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/email/nav.asp?r=1&PID=37345&r=1&cm_em=
 
E

echoshifting

Banned
I'm pretty sure they're all the same. It's just an e-mail coupon.

I worked at Borders for several years; if this coupon is anything like the coupons we used to see, there is no way you'll get a board game for 50% off (note that it gives a potential range). That's for books. A big item like a board game is probably 10-20% off.
 
E

echoshifting

Banned
I'm up for getting my ass kicked in a couple Dominion games, AL. Heading to iso now to look for ya.

edit: never mind! Sorry. Something's come up =[ Next time.
 
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