Chalks
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I went into toysrus for the first time in my life the other day. I walked out after spending 40 bucks on one of my favorite games of all time: Axis and Allies (the boardgame, not the computer game). This game is one of the best boardgames I've ever played and I would recomend it to everyone! A great 2-5 person game that is set in WWII. Very very cool.

next, I've spent way to much money on a brand new boardgame:
Heroscape. A neat game that lets you pit the forces of good and evil against each other. An awesome game that can be anywhere from 2-?? players. I've spent over $200 on it though (way to many expansions).

best boardgame of all time:
Settlers of Catan. just play it.

another great:
Railroad tycoon. If you can find it, buy it...you will not be sorry.


I'll post discriptions of those two games in a bit, but I'm at work so I can't now... Post some of your fav boardgames here folks (and I don't want normal ones, ie monopoly).

Chalks
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FINALY! I'm off work! So...to clarify my post:

I want to know what some of your favorite board games are. I have listed several of mine. Here's a better description of them.

Axis and Allies: Game based on WWII. You can play one of the five following, (allies) America, Russia, England, (axis) Germany, Japan, or you can play one of the sides. Then in turn order you wage war against one another. sweeeet action. This game is very in-depth and will take many years to master. 6+hr gameplay...sweeeeet.

Heroscape: Fully customisable (spelling was never my strong suit) map with individual tiles that you can put together in any way you please. Has more than 100 units with different stats. A great strategy game that generates a thousand different "house rules". woot. 30min-2hr gameplay.

Settlers of catan: There is no way to describe this game. it just rules. I believe that this is ranked as 4th or 5th in SOME top 100 games list (way to be vague, right?). You can also try it out online at settlers.cs.northwestern.edu/. 30min gameplay.

Railroad Tycoon: A neat game that (I think) is no longer in print. The basic idea of the game is to buy up all the railroads in 1950s america and become the biggest tycoon. quite fun. 45min-90min gameplay.

Znirk
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My list tends towards the German publishers for geographical reasons

Dog. Essentially pachisi on a shortened board, but instead of rolling dice you determine how far your pieces move by playing cards from your hand. Some cards have special effects -- e.g. sevens can be distributed between different pieces, fours can be moved backwards, a jack exchanges one of your pieces with an opponent's, etc. An "attractive" balance between luck and tactics, good also for playing with non-gamers.

Die Siedler von Catan is highly recommended, yes. That goes for both the board game and the two-player card version.

Bohnanza. Actually a card game, with no board. A game about bean farming, with much player-to-player trade because often you don't only want something the other player may have, but you also urgently need to get rid of some of your cards (one rule is that you have to play through your hand left-to-right, and you don't get to rearrange your cards). Very interactive, and for up to 7 players.

Zendo. Described by a friend of mine as "a bit like Mastermind, minus the boredom". Players compete to deduce a rule the game master has made up, and everyone gets to construct hypotheses out of shiny plastic pieces. Originally zen-themed, but I tend to play it with linguists; so instead of asking the Master whether a koan has the buddha-nature, we ask Chomsky's Brain to decide whether a sentence is grammatical.

So many games ... so little time ...

krammer
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I used to play loads of board games. Here are some I always enjoyed, some famous, some very obscure, in no particular order:

Risk: Has the disadvantage that if you play properly it takes ages. For this reason I usually play the computer, however it's always more fun with real dice.

Scrabble: Scrabble seems to be all my family ever play now as it's the one game we all enjoy. Always worth playing.

Mine a Million: This is one from my mother's childhood and seems very little known, but it's great fun. You are all mine owners ands your objective is to make $1 million, starting with 10 grand in pounds sterling. And you build up your mine to the point where you can hire barges and ships to take your goods abroad to be sold for nice shiny dollars.

Careers: Another 60s game. Create a secret success formula involving cash, fame and happiness, then go around the board taking on various jobs to try and achieve that success. Careers you can choose range from space travel and Hollywood, to sailing and farming.

Thud: The Discworld board game. But in no way requires knowledge of DW to play, it's more like chess. 2 players, entirely strategic, great fun. And if you're really enthusiastic you can buy expensive hand-painted editions.

Labyrinth: Ingenious game where the board is made up of little tiles that form a maze, and each turn the maze alters by shifting one row of tiles.

Sorry!: Reading Znirk's post reminded me of this game that I haven't played for years. Intended to be a kid's game, but if you play vindictively it's great fun. Like Ludo, except you play by drawing a card which tells you how many squares you can move. Like Znirk's game, 7s can be split, 4s must go back, and a Sorry! card sends any opposing piece back to their start.

And "game I least like but everyone else loves" award goes to Monopoly. Repetitive, dull, and guaranteed you can guess who will win after about 3 rounds.

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Znirk
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And now you reminded me of another one, and then another, and another. (And yes, Monopoly is tedious and takes far too long. Another game I just don't get is Abalone.)

Ayanu, an abstract strategy game for two players. The aim is to reach a target square behind the other player's "home base". Each piece consists of two parts: a base, which determines its range of movement (1-3), and a head, which determines the directions it can move in. After each move you have to exchange the head of the piece that just moved, which means that most moves change the situation in three separate places on the board: where the moved piece came from and went to, and around the piece it swapped heads with.

OOOOOH! Carabande! That one's a car racing game where you take turns flicking wooden discs Carrom-style over a fiberboard racetrack. Great fun, particularly if you have enough players to really get into each other's way.

Adel verpflichtet has its moments. Much double-bluffing and thiefery, and the collectables have their charm.

Kill Dr. Lucky is OK, but only becomes really fun if you start trying to work out why certain weapons do extra damage in certain locations. Still, best played late at night and half drunk.

Mattcrampy
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My family used to play Cashflow, which is like an interesting version of Monopoly, and sometimes Scruples, which I personally hated because everyone else had decided that I was the most moral of people and was overruled every time I objected.

They don't play much anymore, as all the kids have moved out. Although for some reason last time I visited we played Sardines, which is basically a cumulative hide and go seek - everyone seeks until they find the hider, and then they have to jump in there and hide in the same place. It works better than regular hide and go seek, because usually more than about three people in the one spot gets ridiculous enough that the game wraps up pretty quickly.

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mrimer
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What a great list of games here!

Regarding Monopoly, in my experience this game only takes "too long" if the players don't play by the rules. You know, adding your own house rules like getting the taxes/fines people pay back at Free Parking, getting extra money when landing directly on Go, not requiring interest payments when unmortgaging properties, and letting people borrow money from you when they're going under. (After all, what purpose exists in spreading extra money around except prolonging the game?) When playing the game the intended way, I've never seen a game go over two hours. I'm pretty satisfied playing it the normal way.

____________________________
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Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 10-13-2005 11:41 PM]

trick
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Anyone heard of a game called Scotland Yard ? I haven't played it in over 15 years, but I remember I used to think it was pretty good. There has to be at least 3 players, I think. One is called "Mr. X", and is invisible. The rest are detectives. The aim of the game is for the detectives to catch Mr. X within a certain turn limit or somesuch. The detective that catches Mr. X wins, unless the turn limit is reached, in which case Mr. X wins the game. Each turn Mr. X and the detectives move around the board, either by foot (slow), bus (faster, but limited paths) or subway (fastest, most limited). Mr. X has to tell what he's using, and maybe reveal his position every few turns. There were some more details, but I don't remember everything. Cards were involved too, I think.

I should probably try it again sometime.

Also, Labyrinth ("The Amazeing Labyrinth", I think it was called here (sic)*) is great . Haven't played that in forever either, though.

* Actually it was called "Den Forunderlige Labyrinten", but the rules still had the english name

- Gerry

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[Last edited by trick at 10-13-2005 11:18 PM : Forgot to mention that Mr. X is invisible, etc]

Oneiromancer
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I remember Scotland Yard! I used to play that a lot...it was fun.

In the same vein as Settlers of Catan, Amun Re and El Grande were two non-MB games that I had the pleasure of playing a few weeks ago. Complicated to learn, but quite fun.

The Doonesbury Game is actually a quite fun party game. No knowledge of the characters in the comic strip is required, and the game is pretty apolitical. It's all about acting things out and speaking aloud while people vote on your speech or guess what words you're going to use. Not much strategy in it, but good to play with friends.

Game on,

____________________________
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Chalks
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trick wrote:
Anyone heard of a game called Scotland Yard ? I haven't played it in over 15 years, but I remember I used to think it was pretty good. There has to be at least 3 players, I think. One is called "Mr. X", and is invisible. The rest are detectives. The aim of the game is for the detectives to catch Mr. X within a certain turn limit or somesuch. The detective that catches Mr. X wins, unless the turn limit is reached, in which case Mr. X wins the game. Each turn Mr. X and the detectives move around the board, either by foot (slow), bus (faster, but limited paths) or subway (fastest, most limited). Mr. X has to tell what he's using, and maybe reveal his position every few turns. There were some more details, but I don't remember everything. Cards were involved too, I think.
- Gerry

I haven't thought of that game in years. I think the last time I played that I was 7. Now I have a desire to go find it on ebay or some such place.

Znirk
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Scotland Yard! Of course! I think that was the first game where I was conscious that some person had actually had to invent all these rules and work out how they interact -- probably because the different roles got me thinking about game balance.

And a 2-hour game of Monopoly ... ugh. Let's just say it's not a game that holds my interest for longer than, say, fifteen seconds.

krammer
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Amazing. I have Scotland Yard sitting at home somewhere too. (Except that being the proper London version, the transport was taxi, bus, boat along the Thames or Underground.)

Great game of Britain is good fun too, although I don't expect that's very popular in other countries. You travel round the country having to visit places randomly assigned to you going along the various UK rail networks. But changing networks requires running risks - you may get on an express, but you may end up miles away from your intended destination.

And Mike, regarding Monopoly - it's true that being generous prolongs things, but we always play official rules (except the auctioning properties rule) and it always takes a lot longer than 2 hours. But even then it doesn't change that whoever gets most sets wins 99% of the time. (Yes, there are exceptions, but usually a good set like orange or light blue plus an expensive set like green or yellow guarantees a win. Park Lane and Mayfair do not, despite what some people think...)


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Blondbeard
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Settlers of Catan is one of my absolute favourite games (and I like it even better with the cities and knights expansion). But another very good game is Puerto Rico. It's perhaps the most well balanced game I've ever played. It's a colonization game, and it's absolutely fantastic. I also think Robo Rally deserves to be mentioned. Playing it with time limitations can be really funny. Ahh... And I guess I could mention that I too like Bonhanza

Oneiromancer
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krammer wrote:
Park Lane and Mayfair do not, despite what some people think...)

Heh, the names must be different on your version. It's most likely Park Place and Boardwalk for us, since I think you're talking about the final two properties before Go.

I almost never play Monopoly with the bidding rules. And usually if anyone gets to the point where they have to start mortgaging things, they just concede. Our games never last too long, because people get bored, I think.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

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[Last edited by Oneiromancer at 10-14-2005 03:51 PM]

trick
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krammer wrote:
Amazing. I have Scotland Yard sitting at home somewhere too. (Except that being the proper London version, the transport was taxi, bus, boat along the Thames or Underground.)

Oh, right, it was taxi, not walking! I remember the boat along the Thames too, now that you mention it. Seems I played the proper London version too . Never got to play it much, though .. the guy who had it was a friend of a friend, and we didn't spend much time at his house. Whenever we were there, apart from Scotland Yard, we also played Larry 1 (the input prompt went rounds whenever we got past the age protection) and shot at doors with airguns.

- Gerry

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[Last edited by trick at 10-14-2005 08:39 PM]

bradwall
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mrimer wrote:
What a great list of games here!

Regarding Monopoly, in my experience this game only takes "too long" if the players don't play by the rules.

I agree with you, Mike. That, and when people refuse to make trades. It really isn't that long of a game.

Same goes for Risk... when people just save up and save up armies the game will go on for a long time. But, if people just start to play and fight, it turns out to not take that long.