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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Board Games

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08:13 / 02.11.05

There seems to be a lot of threads about pc/playstation/etc games but what about the humble board game? Scrabble has been discussed here to great effect but what about some of the others. What’s your favourite?

Fairly recently Robo Rally has been re-released, good job too as the prices on ebay for the old copies was rather high. I am too young (heh) to remember it from the first time around but it is a great game to play with a group of 3 to 4 friends, even more fun if you can’t tell left from right as you guide your poor abused robot around the factory.

Basically you and your friends are a super computers and when the factory shuts for the night you lot get bored. So, to while away the hours until the factory open you race robots around the factory floor, trying to get to all the flags. Your robots are armed with lasers and can damage each other

but remember that the factory floor is littered with things to damage your robot too. As your poor bot gets damaged it affects it’s moves meaning more and more chaos. It’s great fun and I highly recommend you get it.

Anyone got any great games to play/recommend whether for groups or individuals…..

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

08:37 / 02.11.05

Robo Rally is great.

I played a game called Shadows Over Camelot the other day, it's an Arthurian-setting game (probably very obvious) where there are knights and possibly a traitor, looking to break curses, win quests, defend lands, etc. Or bugger them up horribly, if they're a traitor. It's reasonable, but I don't think I'd put down the money to buy a set. Took about an hour and a half to play.

I've been playing Puerto Rico quite a bit, too. It's pretty good, there's lots of opportunities to completely screw over someone else's chance to sell their goods/ship their workers in/etc. A fairly rules-heavy game, it takes a while to get into, but runs pretty fast once people know what they're doing. It can go from one to three hours, sheerly depending on the level of dithering. Which, to be honest, is not really a great feature in a game.

This here website is full of reviews, play session transcriptions/descriptions, discussion, etc, about this very topic. It's worth checking out if you're that way inclined.

09:05 / 02.11.05

It can go from one to three hours, sheerly depending on the level of dithering. Which, to be honest, is not really a great feature in a game.

The nice thing about robo rally is the timer for people to hurry them up, something that I have done with other games before. Everyone agrees (depending on game) that it keeps things flowing nicely.

I saw a game called Cat Attack which looks fun, anyone tried it yet?

P. Horus Rhacoid

09:05 / 02.11.05

I was recently introduced to Settlers of Catan, and it rules. You play on a randomly assembled board (hexagonal pieces arranged to form a larger hexagon) of different kinds of land surrounded by water. Each kind of land gives different resources- sheep, ore, brick, wheat and wood as I recall. There is a number value assigned to each piece of land, and whenever that number is rolled, people with settlements or cities adjacent to it get one of that type of resources. There are also port locations where resources can be exchanged for each other. Resources are used to build settlements and cities, roads between them, and cards that do various things to benefit the cardholder or screw over other players. Players amass victory points through various means- each settlement is worth one, having the most roads, various cards give them, etc.

There's a lot of strategy involved and a lot of screwing over other players (there are certain situations where players must discard half their cards, or where a piece of land doesn't give resources). Alliances form. Trash is talked. It's great fun.

09:47 / 02.11.05

The classic bliss and joy that is BLOCK MANIA!

Based on the Judge Dredd comics its a joyous little two-person game from the days when Games Workshop actually innovated rather than pump out the Nth iteration of W40K or WFB.

You take command of a citi-block, and your mission is to destroy the neighbouring citi-block before the Judges turn up to stop your fun. All of your block's citizens are involved. From the elderly (Crocks) to the surly gang-kiddies (Juves). You've got maniac superhero vigilantes and those politically-correct Fatties, as well as gun-happy Citi-Def militia. All lovingly portrayed on cardboard squares.

Endlessly amusing game to while away a rainy day on. Blowing up your opponent's water reservoirs and then starting as many fires as possible. Bombarding them with missile launchers. Hiring alien Klegg mercs to do your dirty work for you. Then finally getting your asses kicked when the judges turned up in their PAT wagons.

By Grudd it was a good game.

Sjaak at the Shoe Shop

10:51 / 02.11.05

Settlers is great, but gets even better with the expansion packs. Cities and seafarers are heartily recommended. They provide more routes to victory, so different players can choose to pursue different goals. There is also a pre-historical version with slightly different rules and objectives which is equally fun.
LOTR board game is not too bad, mainly because you are playing as a team against Sauron. Quite cleverly done.
I love Serenissima, a bit obscure game, but basically it is about 4 cities fighting over sea trade on the Med. It is limited to max 12 turns, so keeps the duration down to about 3 hrs max.
Tried to play Axis and Allies a couple of times, and while it is a cool game it took us the entire evening just to set up the board. Only suitable for when you're still a student.
Other favourites are Shogun and Carcasonne, although Shogun is also a killer, timewise.

11:34 / 02.11.05

Another vote for Settlers here, also Twilight Imperium which I believe has also been re-released.
Long out of print and definately worth a re-issue is Dune.
Another blast from the past and a relatively quick and simple game that I used to enjoy is Junta.

14:49 / 02.11.05

This here website is full of reviews, play session transcriptions/descriptions, discussion, etc, about this very topic. It's worth checking out if you're that way inclined.

Hadn't seen that site before and rather interesting reviews for some of the games.

Not quite a board game but any of the munchkins card games are pretty fun to play on a dull afternoon.

madfigs #32, now with wasabi

16:56 / 02.11.05

Another fun strategy game is Diplomacy, which I really like but don't get to play very often because you need seven people. It's set in WWI Europe with England, France, Germany, Austria/Hungary, Italy, Russia, and Turkey. Sort of like Risk but you can only have one army per territory. It's a no-dice game, so all the attacks are based on how much support you can get from armies in adjoining territories. The real genius of the game is that you only make one move every hour or so, the time in between being spent having secret meetings with the other players and trying to find out what they're going to do. Then everyone writes down their instructions, and you watch as all your plans fail because everyone lied to you. Still a lot of fun, though.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:08 / 02.11.05

Block Mania was ace, indeed.

Anyone got that Zombies! game? That looks lots of fun, and I'm reeeeally tempted to get it. Tile-based, I think, and with plenty of expansions available, so it seems.

17:08 / 02.11.05

Another vote for the excellence that is Settlers of Catan.

Zombies!!! has a similar game mechanic to Settlers, but with zombies instead of resources. It also has expansion packs, and comes with 100 little zombie figures!

The basics: There has been a zombie outbreak. You must make it to the helicopter and escape. Sadly, there is only room for one person on the helicopter.

The players create the city one turn at a time, laying down tiles that have one city block. Each block comes with its own small hoard of zombies. Players move their character, pick up health, ammo, and special weapons like chainsaws and skateboards. Then they move the zombie hoard, usually in the direction of an opponent. There is also a deck of cards with back-stabbing goodies like Claustrophobia, (targeted player can't enter buildings) and Blind Panic. (you get to move an opponent during their turn)

While enjoyable as a two-player game, it really needs 3-6 players to achieve maximum chaos.

17:09 / 02.11.05

Jinx, Stoatie.

18:30 / 02.11.05

A lot of good suggestions here - RoboRally, Settlers, Shogun, Carcasonne, and Diplomacy are all great. Train games are also good, although I think that most of them are out of print at the moment - EuroRails is the classic one of that series.

Friends and I also used to play Cosmic Encounters back in college, which is another time consuming good time.

Zombies sounds like something I need to pick up.

semioticrobotic

03:31 / 11.12.05

Another fun strategy game is Diplomacy.

Best. Board game. Ever.

No votes for Samurai Swords? Stake your claim in fudal Japan. Hire ninjas to assasinate your enemies (i.e., the other players). Have sword fights!

16:12 / 11.12.05

Samurai Swords? (Or Shogun, depending on when it was printed.)

Best samurai game ever. Too bad it's out of print. I have a friend who owns it, never plays it, and doesn't want to sell it... He is now my motal enemy. Bushido demands I own this game...

Anyway, yes. Very awesome. Unlike Axis and Allies, what countries you begin with are random. You could be concentrated, or spread all over Japan.

10:08 / 13.12.05

Only just got round to posting here. Man, I love boardgames!

Axis & Allies is a wonderful game in that 'takes ages to set up, stand back and admire yer handy work and then smash it all up' kind of way. Nothing like finally finishing it and then retiring with a brandy to a leather bound chair in front of an open fire to reminisce about how close I had come to the gates of Moscow. If I had a leather bound chair. Or an open fire.

It can get a bit samey after a few games though, as things seem to unfold in a pattern (Russia only really gets to buy infantry and Japan always attack the US fleet in the pacific, for example). It's also at its best when there's 4 or 5 of you to take all countries. And it obviously owes a huge debt to Risk.

I have to agree that Block Mania was a classic. I reckon GW hit a golden patch around that time - the games were top notch - Warrior Knights, Talisman (the original stuff), Chaos marauders not to mention Chainsaw warrior, The Fury of Dracula and Curse of The Mummy's Tomb, all by the great Stephen Hand. Thems were the days - £15 for me birthday and off to get a game.

Its strange really how the popularity of boardgames stay so high. They can't really outshine computer games for their visual impact, or in terms of 'reality' within the game. I suppose it boils down to a mix of human interaction and nostalgia.

semioticrobotic

11:44 / 13.12.05

Anyway, yes. Very awesome. Unlike Axis and Allies, what countries you begin with are random. You could be concentrated, or spread all over Japan.

This is key, yes. Both A&A and Diplomacy have set-up placements defined in their rulebooks, and the first few opening moves of these games always seem vaguely familiar. As if we've done this once or twice before. Or every time.

20:43 / 13.12.05

Zombies and Carcasson are both great fun. Carcasson seems to win out when my pals and I aren't playing our favorate game MARE NOSTRUM, a wonderfully fun and subtle game that blends civilization building with army warfare and economic warfare.

There's a new Mythology expansion which brings the max number of players from 5 to 6 and adds a few new dimensions to the game. The game's got so many ways to play and win that it always seems fresh. Tactics that you'd use were you to play one civilization, (like Greece) would be very different were you to play a different civilization the next game (like Egypt).

I highly recomend it.

13:04 / 14.12.05

They're not really board games in the strictest sense of the word but I used to enjoy the old GW games like Space Hulk, Advanced HeroQuest and Blood Bowl, they were always good fun.
Risk is the classic, and I'm suprised no-one's mentioned it yet.
The problem I have with board games at the moment is finding enough people with enough free time (and the inclination) to get a game going.

13:23 / 14.12.05

Space Hulk counts as a board game IMO. That was helluva fun game. The blip counters representing the vague lifesigns on the Space Marine's scanners. Once they came into view of the marines the counters were flipped over to reveal the number of genestealers it was replaced with.

Always fun to leave one of your squad on overwatch blasting away at an endless corridor of alien monstrosity as the rest of them made their escape.

"For the Emperium!"

14:39 / 14.12.05

...and yet Space Crusade was rubbish. I wonder why?

11:05 / 15.12.05

Wasn't Space Crusade a co-production with MB or some other "proper" board game publisher? iirc it may well have been aimed at a younger audience. I remember quite liking Heroquest when I was wee. The cardboard furniture came in handy later on when I was GMing some hack n' slash dungeon crawls.

11:47 / 15.12.05

The cardboard furniture came in handy later on when I was GMing some hack n' slash dungeon crawls.

And it all went nicely in my Barbarian themed dolls house.

I don't know why Space Crusade/Heroquest were crap really, the rules of SC were similar to Spacehulk, perhaps a slightly more complicated - I think the shoddy presentation of rules, figures and board didn't help.

MB were the co-producers.

Anyone ever get into Dark Future? I always loved the Mad-Max post-apocalypse thing anywya, but it also gave my toy cars a new lease fo life. Couldn't play the game properly for the life of me. Way too complicated.

· N · E · T ·

08:22 / 23.12.05

Thee ultimate board game!

G O

Ok, I'll stop clogging up teh gaming forum with my GOspel now.

14:51 / 31.12.05

I've played a lot of A Game of Thrones lately (based on the books by George R.R. Martin) and find it to be a well balanced strategy game. Even friends that haven't read the book loves it so it's not just for fans.

Age of Renaissance is probably my favorite strategy game. Sort of a sequel to Civilization that isn't, it has lots of different strategies going for it. Probably a bit more random than Civ, although if you know the game, many of the random disasters can be reduced/avoided with a bit of planning.

14:21 / 02.01.06

Spent some time actually playing Thud! this christmas, which was great, it's not often I find someone willing to play it. Of course I proved how effective the troll side can be compared to the dwarfs, great fun!

Mongoose now own the rights to Thud! so it has been re-released but now also includes some 'quick' play rules. The original game is like chess in a way, can't comment on the quick rules as I haven't got a set of them and therefore haven't tried them.

16:45 / 02.01.06

Well, I got Settlers of Catan from Christmas. I was looking for the Catan cardgame, but it's apparently out of print. Anyhow, I finally got four people (me, Girl, Mum & Dad) around a table and we had an enjoyable first game. Once we got into the swing of it, it was a good laugh, especially because it's such a sociable game. Interesting how everyone gets to 5-7 quite quick, but the last handful of points are tricky (because the board's filling up). In the end, I had 7 (and was about to sprog a city) when Mum managed to upgrade to a city and build a new settlement in one turn - and the Chapel she'd picked up the turn before sealed her ten points. Great fun.

Anyhow, now it's time to check out the two-player variatns, and find new friends to play it with. Any recommendations for two-player games? We already love Carcasonne as a head-to-head game, but other suggestions would be welcome.

Not in the Face

09:50 / 06.01.06

Two of my fave board games that take only a couple of hours to play and are excellent fun are

Monsters Menace America Players each play a B-movie monster wandering the US eating cities and such like and a section of the US military trying to destroy the monsters. Invariably comes down to a 2-3 superpowered monsters facing off to each other

Cults Across America, a Lovecraft inspired game where the players try to make sure their cult comes out on top in ruling the US by taking over cities and forming a chain across America.

Although the absolute time-absorbing monster of a board game must still be Blood Royale. Even as students we never had the time to finish a game but our genealogical trees were a joy to behold

All Acting Regiment

11:55 / 06.01.06

I think boardgames are effortlessly more entertaining than a good many videogames and "hobby" type games- it's that social thing that does it, and the lack of any real third party beyond the players.

Though it may well not count as a boardgame proper, I do remember, as a child, having an awful lot of fun playing very small, simple games of warhammer and the like: just having one or two squads of guys on each side. Of course, that was back in the day, before early adolescence and the slow, creeping realisation that you were living in bourgeois land came along, and people who had more money used to always get better stuff and show it off, or decide you couldn't join in because you didn't have enough stuff (and you couldn't say anything because you knew, deep down, that the reason they had a predator battle tank and you didn't was because they came from a middle-class broken home and their parents were each trying to buy affection).

Divorced from the pokemon mentality that pervades the actual "hobby" in it's official form, I stand by warhammer and 40k as solid, well designed little games that had a direction and a sense of to and fro, and could still be fun if it wasn't for the dirty hairy hand of profit touching everything. No, really. I used to be really into, you know, this roll of a dice could mean death for our brave little Dwarf, and his homeland'll get razed by Orcs or something.

And now I go to the pub instead and it's all a distant memory. Such is life.

*

16:58 / 06.01.06

I really don't like board games, but people have been making me play Settlers, and it's been fun. And I just ordered Polarity, which I expect will be entertaining, if not enlightening.

10:56 / 10.01.06

"I've been playing Puerto Rico quite a bit, too ... it takes a while to get into, but runs pretty fast once people know what they're doing."

We played this for the first time over the weekend and found that part of the difficulty in understanding the game was in the way the different roles are named. For example the 'settler' role allows players to create plantations whilst the 'mayor' role allows players to import settlers, life would be a whole lot simpler if the 'settler' role was called 'farmer' and the 'mayor' role was called 'settler' i.e. settler allows you to import settlers and farmer allows you to create plantations. The rules are quite poorly written too, they put all the detail upfront without providing a decent overview of the game's flow.

As mentioned above though, after a few turns the game moves along quickly and is well worth the initial frustration.

11:50 / 10.01.06

Although the absolute time-absorbing monster of a board game must still be Blood Royale. Even as students we never had the time to finish a game but our genealogical trees were a joy to behold

That was the best thing about the game, but for a slighlty tighter game of dynasty building, check out its counterpart: Warrior Knights

Oh boy! Just ordered Mare Nostrum. All I need now is friends....

19:57 / 12.01.06

This summer some friends and I found a boardgame at a garage sale called "Ubi". The back talked about how the ghost of Julius Caesar was haunting the game and gave no description of how to play. But, seeing as it was made by the same people who brought us Trivial Pursiut, we gave it a try. The game board is a huge world map divided into hexes, and within those hexes, triangles. Imagine Trivial Pursuit but not only do you have to know the answer to the question, you have to be able to plot it geographically somewhere in the world.

This game has consumed many nights, easily lasting 5-6 hours and never getting boring. I recommend it if you want a trivia game that's just the other side of unbelievably difficult.

22:31 / 12.01.06

Just to clarify; Space Crusade was nowhere near as complex, ruleswise, as Space Hulk - or indeed Advanced Space Crusade, which was really good. GW games, hahh: funny, think exponentially more time was used learning all the rules and painting the figures than actually playing the games.

But, anyway, as I remember Advanced Space Crusade - the few times I played it - was really quite atmospheric and exciting.

08:21 / 13.01.06

I don't know how much more complicated the original Spacehulk (without add-ons)was over heroquest/space crusade (which in effect used similar game mechanics). Spacehulk boiled down to spending APS to move and one/two/three dice to shoot or conduct combat.

Advanced Space Crusade/Advanced Heroquest were a lot more in-depth.

I wonder where the complexity threshold factor becomes a factor for people? Relatively simple games like risk/diplmocay allow for scope outside of the simple game rules, but its the flow of the game that really improves without the need to look at rules, etc. But for this you exchange 'realism' - that probably mainfests itself the most in tabletop wargames that are often highly detailed to reflect historical accuracy. But does that detract from the enjoyment of the game for people?

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