When I was a kid, I played the standards like Monopoly(does anyone ever read all the mortgaging rules?), chess/checkers, or battleship. Then I got a PC and largely ignored them for a long time. I recently learned about Go and Settlers of Catan, and have had a lot of fun playing online. It's piqued my interest in board games again, and I've found several that look interesting but it's so hard to find someone to play with, especially for the quirky games like the ones from Cheapass Games.
Board games are great. I go to a group every Wednesday. So far I played El Grande, Primordial Soup, Iron Dragon, and Ra. I'm becoming addicted.
Try http://www.boardgamegeek.com for finding groups in your area.
>>2
Thanks! I found a local group with that link. Do you play any games online?
Just Puerto Rico sometimes. I haven't really looked for others...care to point some out?
Here's a some Settlers of Catan servers.
http://catan.jsettlers.com/
http://tuheps.phy.tufts.edu/
I also recently learned about a new online version of Formula Dé.
http://formulede.online.free.fr/
I play Go weekly. Weakly too :/.
I would also like to play in our local board games group, but it is at the same time as the go club, and go is definitely more interesting than any other game ^^.
Puerto Rico is great and so is Santiago. I love the whole corrupt canal official thing it revolves around.
Hardcore German players to kick you around.
does anyone play shogi?
me play go..
but i play the small board (13x13 if not mistaken(
Go is awesome. I've only been playing for a few weeks, but I can easily see how it's the best game ever. It will take you 5 minutes to learn, and several lifetimes to master. All through the game you're making hard decisions, it's even more tense than something like Quake. I don't like the 13x13 board, only 19x19 or 9x9 if I don't have time for a full size game.
Learn the rules:
http://playgo.to/interactive/
Learn some basic tactics and strategy so you don't get totally owned:
http://senseis.xmp.net/?PagesForBeginners
Play online:
http://kgs.kiseido.com/
Improve your tactical skill:
http://www.goproblems.com/
>>12
Agreed. Go is the only board game that I can stand anymore.
Go is indeed wonderful. I don't play much, but I really like the game. I also like chess, though I think chess is a bit simpler than go.
I play Carcassonne fairly often (maybe too often). I've played Mahjong a bit too.
I could do with starting to play Go. I know the basics and I have a cardboard goban, but it just requires playing it a lot.
>>15
One can never play Carcassonne too often ;) I used to really love that game, but I don't play it much nowadays... no one to play with.
I play quite a few boardgames, meeting with my local group weekly. My favourites currently include Caverna, Agricola, The 7th Continent and Hive. I recently got interested in Riichi Mahjong only to discover that bps is (or was) very active in the online english Riichi community.
People at the local game shop only like to play games about World War II or the occasional Lovecraft knock-off.
>>1
I don't really like Monopoly as a "play seriously" game, because it depends too much on luck. And it's correct that deals and the psychological factor matter as well, but luck stands out too much sometimes. You can easily notice the 2-3 dice rolls that determine the outcome in about the mid to late phase, if you play some games with the same people.
It's still a fun game, though.
Smallworld is sorta fun
I recently came up with my own board game that combines bomberman and chess. 9x9 board, 16 blocks placed on B2, B4, B6, B8 (and so on through the D F and I files) representing walls that cannot be blown up, 27 capture pieces (representing the soft blocks that can be blown up) placed randomly on the board by the players beforehand, with paper tokens representing powerups placed underneath: movement powerup, bomb capacity powerup, and firepower powerup. Can be played 2-4 players. Each player has 3 pieces, two footbombers and one kingbomber. The footbombers can move two squares and can lay bombs, the kingbomber can move one square and can lay, kick, or throw bombs. Bombs are represented by black tokens. When a bomb is placed on the board, the player ends their play, and the bomb blows up after 3 plays (1 and a half turns). The objective is to take out the other character's kingbomber.
If I knew how to program, I would make an online playable version.
Different games can also allow different wall placements. The alternating rows of 4 is only to imitate the layout of the NES game.
I just realized the japanese sega saturn game Bomberman Wars is basically exactly like what I'm talking about except better in every way. Well. Damn.
5 plays instead of 3, more fair, allowing time to respond. Less crowded boards for more tactical movement. Armies of 5 with different strategies per piece and so forth. If I made this board game it would just be cloning this game I suppose.
Remember to use games with a hexagon board.
https://youtu.be/thOifuHs6eY?t=457
Battleship
B4
covid delayed all my board game kickstarters from 2019-2020 and now they're all arriving at once and I don't have shelf space
Lockdown killed my mahjong club and it never really recovered
>>29
I play riichi mahjong in person with a few friends on a weekly basis, and that started BECAUSE of lockdown. I think that while it does take a while to learn, it always feels fresh to play.
Other games I enjoy are History of the World, Hanamikoji and Galaxy trucker. I love tabletop RPGs, but we only ever really play d&d 5e and 3.5e. I want to try cyberpunk at some point.
>>30
I've only played riichi by myself with computer in PC-98 games and I still don't know how to play despite beating a few opponents. The best I could do was count.
Not knowing how to play mahjong is a good thing. Knowing why you shouldn't play mahjong is a better thing. Real mahjong is usually played by 4 people, and you can never know if the 3 people playing with you agreed to prioritize you. Even without actually cheating they can "rob" you.
>>32 it's pretty difficult to engage in a coordinated attack in mahjong without agreeing on it beforehand. There's a 1/27 chance that every player deliberately targets you if they are choosing randomly.
Even if they did agree to target you, if you are playing "real" mahjong like hong kong old style people don't have much control over the flow of the game. In Riichi, which is the main ruleset played by enthusiasts on the internet nowadays, defensive choices like Beatori are your friend if you are paranoid - there's almost no way to deliberately target players (why we have rules like headbump, temporary furiten, kuikae, etc).
Cheating is also very difficult if you have a somewhat decent play environment (and practically nonexistent if playing online). In fact, if you're worried about players acting maliciously at all, I would recommend finding new people to play against.
But what this all really means, though, is that you, >>32, should just stick with Rummikub.