I’ve been getting into Go/Baduk lately, it’s a shame how few people there are playing it in the US! Would love to play in-person instead of always online
this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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Gaming
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Go is the most amazing game I know. I often regret not sticking with it as a kid. And IRL games are wonderful. The feeling of the stones on fingertips, the rattle of prisoners, the clicks and clacks when placing stones on the goban...
We've been playing Camel Up a lot. It's nice because there is some skill and a good amount of luck involved, so no matter your board game experience, you have a shot at winning.
Agricola is my favorite but it is pretty complex so we don't play much.
Went through an Agricola period. It's so fun but brutal.
Some of my favourites right now: -Wingspan: 1-5 player game about birds from all over the world (with the European, Oceania and Asia expansions). Build up your board of birds and make future actions you take have more effects. There's a solo mode and Asia expansion introduces a special 2 player and 6-7 player mode. As a birder myself, can't recommend this game enough. -Parks: Small but in depth 1-5 player game about exploring US national parks. You buy gear and set your hikers off on a trail that changes every round, to collect tokens and visit national parks. Games last up to an hour that feels like it flies by. Box design is the best I've seen, everything just fits together perfectly in a tiny box, making it much easier for travel. -Terraforming Mars: Most complex game I own, for 1-5 players. Games can take 2-4 hours sometimes. You play as a corporation and compete with others to terraform mars the fastest. You raise the three global parameters (temperature, oxygen level and water) and increase your terraforming rating, all while managing your resources by playing various project cards. Has a challenging 1 player mode where you're racing against the generation counter to terraform mars in under 14 generations. Expansions are a bit expensive but I can recommend Prelude and Hellas & Elysium, for extra cards that can be played at the start of game to kickstart your resource generation, and a double sided map you can use as a replacement for the base game board.
Other notable mentions are 7 Wonders, Tokaido, Mystic Vale and Ticket to Ride
Dune imperium is really fun - worker placement with some deckbuilding and bumping tracks (as the brothers murph says).
If you like campaign games you might enjoy something like Kingdom Death Monster - dark, boss battler/settlement builder. Definitely mature game though.
Marvel champions is a ton of fun but it can be very expensive if you want to keep buying more and more packs. Baiscally a deck bilding game similar to arkham horror LCG but for marvel and not a campaign unless you buy the campaign expansions.
Some of our favorites are Catan, power grid, ticket to ride, azul, and bananagrams.
Ticket to Ride is so fun.
My favorites in no particular order:
Dune (either the original AH edition or the 2019 GF9 edition)
Battletech
Descent (first edition)
Mage Wars Arena
Battlestar Galactica
Food Chain Magnate
Scythe
Blood Bowl
Twilight Imperium (fourth edition)
War of the Ring (second edition)
Millenium Blades
Exceed
BattleCON
Cosmic Encounter
Sidereal Confluence
Sekigahara
Triumph & Tragedy
Iron Ships & Wooden Men
Cloudspire
Forbidden Stars
Go
Twilight Imperium, really? I only played it once and it was the longest, most boring experience. Each turn just takes an enormous time, almost as long as a Warhammer 40k turn and I played with 5 other players. When you were done with your turn you could go for a really long walk and when you came back you wondered how the hell they just finished 2 turns...
I really really enjoy boardgames, but not ones that take a weekend to play...
(this isn't meant to insult you, I am just seriously wondering if my experience with it is a lot different than yours or if you like boardgames that you play an entire weekend)
My group can get a game of 4th edition finished in four to five hours. We are seasoned players, though. Twilight Imperium is both a strategically and tactically rich 4X game, which is why it's one of my favorites.
That said, I am not opposed to long games. I recently played Fire in the Sky, which took me and my opponent 4 four-hour sessions to complete.
I look at it as no different than a campaign game such as Gloomhaven. Gloomhaven took my group two years to finish.
Well with gloomhaven its multiple clearly seperated missions though.
My limit is at about 4-5h with a game that I've never played before. If I played the game before the limit is at about 3h I'd say 🤔
Villainous
Camp Grizzly
Tales of the Arabian Nights (It's long but so fun)
Everyone is John (not really a board game)
Gloom
Dixit
Mysterium
Dread (role playing game with Jenga tiles)
Talisman
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (Easier to play the digital version on Steam because it is murder to set up but it's very fun)
Tokaido
Wingspan
We play all the dune games at work. The new remake of 1978, done betrayal and dune imperium. And sometimes twilight imperium.
With friends we have bought spirit island, which is fun but really difficult. We also play dead of winter and some DND spinniof games. My mate works at a Games Store so he has lots of games i haven't played yet. Oh and I've joined a poker home game.
My favourite is twilight imperium if we can ever find enough people who can spend their whole day playing a game.
You have (in my opinion) a great taste in games.
There's nothing quite like a session of TI. It doesn't get on the table a lot but the few times it does it's amazing every time.
Unfortunately I personally get to play big games all to seldom as I mostly play with my SO and she prefers them a bit lighter and with a bit less conflict. Some of the games we've enjoyed and played recently 2 player..
Viticulture is the one we fall back on alot of the time. It really is a great worker placement.
Castles of Burgundy is a new one in our collection but probably not new to a lot of people in the hobby. Really don't know why I've not picked this up earlier because it is a really good game.
If we want to go for something fast we usually bring out Azul. No setup time and no teardown is a trait I value more now than I have in the past. Sure Gloomhaven is fun but the setup alone makes me want to cry.
If you haven't tried it, I'd recommend Cascadia for a couples game. Also, Tuscany adds some pleasant complexity to Viticulture .. Not that you were asking for recommends, I just couldn't resist..
Not sure if this counts as boardgame, but I've been enjoying Farkle a lot (a dice game) thanks to Kingdom Come Deliverance xD
I never really like this kind of stuff but Farkle is quite simple and fun!
I'm mostly into deck builders and I haven't seen these mentioned before so I'll drop two of my favourites Dune: Imperium and (TBOI:) Four Souls! Also an honorable mention to Dominion but I haven't played that in a while.
We have a wider circle of friends who are boardgame enthusiasts, so we go through a rather lot of them. Some stick, some don't. These we play regularly and have a lot of fun:
There are more that made an impression on me, I remember playing them a few times, but do not want to play them again (Do you know that feeling? :D ), eg. Eclipse (the galaxy-wide battle 4X preparation-takes-as-long-as-playing-and-playing-takes-a-whole-day strategy), Agricola, Mice and Mystics...
Brass Birmingham is a masterpiece. I absolutely love that game. It's and absolutely heartbreak that my SO dislikes it.
Have you tried Lost Ruins of Arnak? It's great!
Is there any love for solo? I like games with quick and easy set up: Agropolis, Cartographers, Voyages, Aquamarine. Sometimes Spirit Island (still learning how to play). When I have time and I am in the mood, I play solo RPG, but that's a different subject.
Spirit Island is great, both solo and co-op.
I am still learning the basics. And it's time to make it a bit more difficult!
If you have Tabletop Simulator, there's an excellent Spirit Island mod. I believe people organize games there on the Discord (linked from the subreddit...) but I've never played with strangers.
I saw some messages about it, but the main reason I play solo boardgames and TTRPGs is to stay away from screens after spending the whole day at work 😅
Fair. :) What else do you find works well solo? I don't have many local friends, so I'm either solo or online.
It's a bit of a learning curve, but I find I like Spirit Island playing two spirits at once better than a single spirit.
For solo RPG? The standard suggestion nowadays is Ironsworn to be honest. And it's free! I wasn't a big fan at the beginning, so I started with Scarlet Heroes, it has everything you need to play pretty much any OSR game.
Then there are lots of specific games for solo, especially journaling games. Or using game master emulators you can play almost anything (Mythic GME is the most famous for a good reason).
What would you like to try? I'm quite new on this area but I might be able to suggest a couple of books. There are a lot of tools available to play anything available in the market.
I was thinking more solo board games -- I have roughly no TTRPG experience, though I'd be willing to try. (I last played D&D probably 20 years ago in high school. It was one of those things that I felt I was supposed to be into, but, when push came to shove, it wasn't my jam. Now, that was also true of computer games and I like some now.)
I started with no TTRPG experience at all around a year ago. There are some games (like D100 or Four Against Darkness) closer to a boardgame than an actual TTRPG. You throw dice and go with the results, no need to roleplay.
Regarding solo boardgames, I would say games where you play alone together, like each player doing it's own thing in the board with minimal interaction or minimal rules modifications. Spirit Island already mentioned is one great example, Cartographers, Sprawlopolis or Agropolis, Resist!, One deck dungeon... seriously, there is an amazing amount of options depending on your taste (deck building, throwing dice, etc.).