The Board Game Thread

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Just played a couple of hours of Forbidden Island. Great fun for the kids, and the wife even joined in!

Nice to have a collaborative game for a change.

[Satanist]

Family has been down south the last week and I've just heard they were in a shop (Orcs Nest) in London and have bought a few games.

Coincidently Forbidden Island is what my youngest has bought so looking forward to that.

Oldest bought X-Com which sounds interesting and the Mrs got Star Trek Catan which looks awesome fun.

[Keef Monkey]

That Evil Dead 2 kickstarter seemed to go extremely well, funded to the extreme - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evildead2/evil-dead-2-the-official-board-game/description

Haven't kickstarted much in the past (only one videogame), and it was nice that as it blasted past stretch goals more and more was being added to it. Very much looking forward to a big box of Evil Dead goodness arriving at some point in the (probably quite distant) future.

[Link Prime]

Haven't kickstarted much in the past (only one videogame), and it was nice that as it blasted past stretch goals more and more was being added to it.

Visage?

[Keef Monkey]

Hadn't actually heard of Visage, looks cool though! It was Broken Age I backed, which reminds me I still haven't played the second half of that game.

[radiator]

We've been playing a bit of Telestrations recently. It's a fun, simple mashup of Telephone and a faster-paced, far less-boring Pictionary where each person draws a word or phrase, then the next person guesses what the phrase is from the drawing, then the next person draws their guess.... and so on until the pads make their way around the table and back to the original clue-givers, when the drawings/clues are revealed.

It's obviously very light and not much of a 'game' as it's far funnier and more entertaining when clues get hilariously misconstrued and often end up in very weird places.

But yeah, really good fun - recommended if you want an alternative to Cards Against Humanity or Monikers. We were playing the After Dark (adult) version, but the original game is family-friendly.

[Keef Monkey]

Sounds like it could be a good laugh in the right company. We had a post-pub game of Superfight the other night which caused much hilarity. It's a bit Cards Against Humanity-ish, where you play a character card and an attribute card from your hand to create a fighter, then have a second attribute forced on you from the deck, then have to argue your case about how your fighter would beat your opponent's fighter. Then everyone votes for the winner and you keep going round winner stays on style.

We really had fun with it, even if once someone drew the combo 'Hulk + Breathes Fire + There's A Hundred Of Him' it got a bit impossible to beat.

[Modern Panther]

Do any of you chaps know how Pandemic Legacy might play with two players?  I'd like to give it a go, but it'll likely just be me and Mrs Panther.

[Theblazeuk]

Played Betrayal at the House on the Hill last night and lo, it was good. A bit hard to explain to my players who always, always struggle with various concepts. If they aren't insisting on rolling dice to move around a board a la Monopoly, they are bemoaning the double-edged sword of most item pickups in this kind of game (e.g. the double-edged sword). I can't be the only one who starts to get worn thin after the 100th "Just read what it says and do it, there is no why, why is because it says to do it" but must admit that this seemingly complex game was actually so simple I started to get v. frustrated.

But anyway - the game, not my players If you pay attention and have a memory of longer than 5 seconds, this is a game that can wrap up in well short of an hour. You need a big table space as the house on the hill is of strange and terrible dimensions; for as long as there are open doors, the house may grow larger. It's like schrodingers studio apartment. The gimmick of one of you being turned traitor adds a lot of tension as the 'haunt' draws ever likelier, and your resources may suddenly be turned against you. The flavour text is amazing throughout too.

In short - recommended.

[radiator]

Any fans of Love Letter that can help me to understand this game?

I've owned it for over two years and have tried to bring it to the table multiple times (most recently this past weekend), but it never quite clicks and I always come away feeling that I'm missing something.

I just can't see the strategy, or what makes the game tense or fun. It seems like you can get knocked out straight away, through no fault of your own, and you rarely have more than one option of what to do at any one time.

For a hidden identities game, it really isn't a patch on Coup as far as I can tell.

[Satanist]

Big fan of Love Letter here though we have the Batman version so unsure if these differ. We use it as a warm up/travel game as it's so quick and easy to play. I'd say the strategy comes from knowing there are only so many of each card and figuring out what's left though I admit you can go out in first round due to a lucky guess. You should always have 2 cards in your hand and so for the most part 2 options (though not always as some cards work with each other)

I like Coup as well but find they are both very similar except you can lie bluff in Coup.

[Tiplodocus]

We have HOBBIT LOVE LETTER and quite enjoy it for a quick simple game on camping trips.  It doesn't take too long to get the hang of it though so we limit ourselves to fairly small doses.

(Also play PIRATE FLUXX when under canvas.  But those games tend to last a long, long time).

[moldovangerbil]

Do any of you chaps know how Pandemic Legacy might play with two players?  I'd like to give it a go, but it'll likely just be me and Mrs Panther.

I played this through with my wife (who's not really a gamer) and we thoroughly enjoyed it.  On the plus side, you get more turns and start with more cards, but on the downside you get to bring fewer roles to the table.  Do the 2 balance out?  I'm not sure and there's some debate over whether the game is easier with fewer players, but we had a great time and had some real jaw dropping moments along the way.  I'd have no problems recommending it for 2 players - we're looking forward to Season 2!

Cheers

[radiator]

Big fan of Love Letter here though we have the Batman version so unsure if these differ. We use it as a warm up/travel game as it's so quick and easy to play. I'd say the strategy comes from knowing there are only so many of each card and figuring out what's left though I admit you can go out in first round due to a lucky guess. You should always have 2 cards in your hand and so for the most part 2 options (though not always as some cards work with each other)

I like Coup as well but find they are both very similar except you can lie bluff in Coup.

But that's just it - in Coup you have options. You can try out different strategies. In LL, you very rarely have more than one option at your disposal. In Coup, getting away with lying to everyone's faces and bluffing your way out of certain defeat generates a real buzz, and winning is utterly triumphant. Every game we play, people are laughing hysterically, grudges are formed and played out.

Each and every time we have played Love Letter everyone just shrugs like "Is that it?". "I guess I won." etc etc. There's no tension, no stakes.

I suspected I was missing something, and really want to like the game but maybe it's just not the game for our group. No big loss, it was only $10.

[TordelBack]

There's not a lot to Love Letter, but it definitely helps to view each hand as an opportunity to win points, rather than a game to win or lose: and to set the winning total based on attention span of players. We have the Batman version, with Bats in the Guard role. If you make a correct guess with Batman (other than Robin), you automatically gain a point - which spices things up nicely. Judging why your opponent has just played down Harley Quinn is about as com!ex as it gets, though.

It's quick, it's easy to teach to kids, it's ultra-portable.