SRoper
Puritan Board Graduate
It's been a while since our last board game thread! What games have you been enjoying lately? I'll go first.
Some old favorites:
Dominion
Dominion is still my favorite game. It has some vague medieval theme about expanding a kingdom, but it is really like a cooking game show where each contestant has to make the most excellent dish from ten random ingredients. Sometimes two players will go for a variation on a theme, and those games come down to the one who has the deftest hand with the spice, but the most fun is when the approaches are completely different. If you have the game and enjoy it, I recommend picking up one of the many expansions. They really open up the possibilities.
Pandemic
This is a game that always seems popular with new gamers. Players team up to stop the spread of disease across the world. For many it is their first time playing a cooperative game where everyone plays as a team against the board. It is not all rainbows and unicorns, though--the game is extremely brutal. We lose about half the time on the medium difficulty and are too afraid to try it on hard.
And a new favorite:
Galaxy Trucker
Most board games are turned-based affairs--you do something and play passes to the next player. Others have simultaneous turns where all players act at once. Galaxy Trucker has players frantically grabbing tiles (with one hand) from a pile in the middle of the table and desperately adding them as parts to their pathetic space ship. The second phase of the game is really a scoring round where players see if their ships that are held together with duct tape and baling wire can survive the hazards of space. It is bonkers and requires players to hold on to their precious ships (and its crew and cargo) rather lightly. I find it a blast, but at least one person I regularly game with will not play this with me.
Some old favorites:
Dominion
Dominion is still my favorite game. It has some vague medieval theme about expanding a kingdom, but it is really like a cooking game show where each contestant has to make the most excellent dish from ten random ingredients. Sometimes two players will go for a variation on a theme, and those games come down to the one who has the deftest hand with the spice, but the most fun is when the approaches are completely different. If you have the game and enjoy it, I recommend picking up one of the many expansions. They really open up the possibilities.
Pandemic
This is a game that always seems popular with new gamers. Players team up to stop the spread of disease across the world. For many it is their first time playing a cooperative game where everyone plays as a team against the board. It is not all rainbows and unicorns, though--the game is extremely brutal. We lose about half the time on the medium difficulty and are too afraid to try it on hard.
And a new favorite:
Galaxy Trucker
Most board games are turned-based affairs--you do something and play passes to the next player. Others have simultaneous turns where all players act at once. Galaxy Trucker has players frantically grabbing tiles (with one hand) from a pile in the middle of the table and desperately adding them as parts to their pathetic space ship. The second phase of the game is really a scoring round where players see if their ships that are held together with duct tape and baling wire can survive the hazards of space. It is bonkers and requires players to hold on to their precious ships (and its crew and cargo) rather lightly. I find it a blast, but at least one person I regularly game with will not play this with me.
