Favorite board/tabletop games

[Negrek]

I saw an intro vid to magic and apparently there are decks shops give out for free. Is that true? Because then I'd totally get into it.

Yup, they give out sample decks for free, although I'm not sure what stores would have them... assuming just your traditional game store/card shop, not like, Target or whatever. I haven't ever seen one myself; they started doing that way after I began playing. If you want to try the game out, you could also try the digital version, Magic Duels, which is free on Steam/IoS/XBox. join usssss

 

[Music Dragon]

Oh man, more Magic players! What kinds of decks do you like to play?

She's awful. I always make these really intricately designed decks with synergistic cards and cool themes, and then ultraviolet is like "My deck is birds!" and then she just plays some boring-ass swans or whatever and hits me for 2 Flying each turn until I die. I hate all birds now.

 

[Zero Moment]

Oh man, more Magic players! What kinds of decks do you like to play?

I have this cool rainbow artifact deck I like to play with.

 

[ultraviolet]

Oh man, more Magic players! What kinds of decks do you like to play?

When I'm doing my own thing I like to make blue, blue/white or green decks. I'm still a bit of a noob so I haven't made anything that complex, but I did make a pretty successful green/black deathtouch deck a while ago. A lot of my friends play magic, and we do drafts, tribal, and keyword games periodically so I get to make something a bit more interesting and play against people who are quite a lot better than me. It's great! I'm hoping to make a really good faerie deck one day, but all the best faerie cards are rare and expensive!

She's awful. I always make these really intricately designed decks with synergistic cards and cool themes, and then ultraviolet is like "My deck is birds!" and then she just plays some boring-ass swans or whatever and hits me for 2 Flying each turn until I die. I hate all birds now.

This was a blue/white bird tribal deck that I actually wiped the floor with, which was amazing. I played a four-player game against two zombie decks and a lifegain cat deck and I beat everyone pretty hard because people could rarely block my creatures, so the zombie decks didn't have anything in the graveyard and the lifegain deck suffered from being hit very hard at every opportunity. It was great!

omg I thought I was the only person who didn't care for CAH, but yes, all of this??? I mean, I think it's generally pretty funny for like 15-20 minutes, but the problem is that games... kind of... last for hours? Somehow? Is nobody else really bored here? It doesn't help that my sense of humor is some blend of "kind of strange" and "actually that's really offensive even for CAH, holy shit" that doesn't tend to work well with CAH, I guess... I tend to do better with Apples to Apples, and in my experience people are better about letting that game end when it's over. Although the most angry I've ever made someone about a board game was with Apples to Apples, not CAH, so probably I'm really just tone deaf with humor and should not be given any additional outlets to express that.

I guess the thing about CAH is that it's just kind of surface humour like, wow!!! this is offensive, haha!! and once you get past that it's really not that funny? like if there were a lot more opportunities for smart/pun jokes or something that references an in-joke between friends or something like that and then sometimes ~offensive humour~ then it'd be way more fun, but the way CAH is set up like once you've seen all the cards then it ceases to provoke any kind of reaction.

also a lot of the random racism and shit in CAH is so unnecessary? like i get that it's literally an 'offensive humour' game but none of it actually offends me it's just kind of a ':/ i guess' reaction that gets hard to sit through for several hours.

 

[Sandstone-Shadow]

It would be cool if there were more games we could play online as a group. I know there's a free app version of Coup that I just downloaded. (I'd never played it before and I was a little underwhelmed. Maybe it's because the app version has cartoonish cards instead of the real, pretty cards. Or maybe I should play with more than two players!) I wonder how hard it would be to find/create an online version of a game?

I kind of agree about Cards Against Humanity - I've never really enjoyed crude humor (witty humor is much more my thing as well) and I'm uncomfortable reading a lot of the cards, ha. The flaw with both it and Apples to Apples is you pretty much HAVE to use every card you get (which stinks when you don't know what the card is - it's not as funny that way).

Though, I did win a game when playing with some band friends. Everyone was very shocked and I was kinda proud of that.

 

[kyeugh]

i've ended up with an aversion to board games because my family is so goddamn competitive, but i do still enjoy a few despite the aggressive competition, mainly apples to apples, cards against humanity, and... monopoly. i like monopoly. i said it. i feel free!

the pokémon tcg is quite good as well! i've never enjoyed tabletop games such as d&d very much at all unfortunately, they're way too involved and long for me. :/

 

[mewtini]

i've ended up with an aversion to board games because my family is so goddamn competitive, but i do still enjoy a few despite the aggressive competition, mainly apples to apples, cards against humanity, and... monopoly. i like monopoly. i said it. i feel free!

the pokémon tcg is quite good as well! i've never enjoyed tabletop games such as d&d very much at all unfortunately, they're way too involved and long for me. :/

i came here to say apples to apples and monopoly, so thanks for having my back in a world of hostility!

 

[Murkrow]

I don't play many games except for things like Monopoly either. I really want to try the more in-depth tabletop games but I don't have anyone to play them with. I only play monopoly and stuff when I visit my parents. We also play games like Balderdash and Articulate which we all love.

Balderdash has an added element of strategy since 90% of the questions were intended for am American audience so when we make up answers we try to make them sound convincingly American. The person who knows most about politics/geography over there has an advantage but at the same time might fall for someone else's answer if their answer is also Americanly accurate enough for it to sound real based on their own knowledge.

Also it annoys me when people say Monopoly has no skill and is just luck. It's not snakes and ladders! You have to decide which properties to buy and when to accept trades with other players. It's well known enough that buying the orange squares are a good choice, that's proof that there's some amount of thought to be put into it!

 

[kyeugh]

lso it annoys me when people say Monopoly has no skill and is just luck. It's not snakes and ladders! You have to decide which properties to buy and when to accept trades with other players. It's well known enough that buying the orange squares are a good choice, that's proof that there's some amount of thought to be put into it!

in this house, you will not win monopoly if you are anything short of a conniving, cold-hearted bastard. monopoly breaks friendships

 

[Phoenixsong]

Sure, I play a few. I don't get a ton of opportunities but my extended family's pretty fond of them, and I'm trying to get into some tabletop RPG stuff but keep lazing around, oops. One of my cousins in particular is really, really into all sorts of games and so I've been exposed to a fair few things that he either has or that we've bought for him as gifts.

Settlers of Catan: Tried it once, couldn't get into it. Two of the other players were really, really good, and when I have to simultaneously pay attention to what the good players are doing and just learn the basics of the game in the first place I tend to zone out. It's not that I mind losing or learning from more experienced players, but it's kind of hard to enjoy a game while you are both confused and actively being curbstomped, you know? (Much more fun to learn a game when no one has any bloody idea what's going on, imo, so you can all laugh about how confused you are together! Plenty of time to learn the finer strategic details and ruthlessly destroy one another later.) That said, the setting and mechanics didn't quite click with me anyway, so I doubt I'd have been really excited about it even if my cousins had slowed down a little more.

Pandemic: Have not played it yet, although I do own it and would like to at least give it a shot. My cousin said it was just kind of okay, but I'm still curious.

Deckbuilders: Haven't played Dominion before, but I did play Ascension once and rather enjoyed it! I'd definitely be up for trying more deckbuilders if the opportunity arises.

Coup: Pretty good! Nice and quick, in contrast to most of the stuff we play, and a good way to wrap up a game night when you want to do just one more thing before everyone leaves. My brother and cousin have been particularly into it ever since I got it a while ago. I'm tempted to get the expansion for it.

Mafia and similar: So one year I made the mistake of introducing my family to Mafia, and now they badger me into bringing the cards I made to basically every gathering we have so I can sit back and listen to them yell at each other! They're normally so quiet and friendly and only get slightly competitive about games, but Mafia makes them all mean and shouty! They're not even particularly good at it; they're mostly just loud. I have created a monster, alas. I just wish that most of our gatherings included slightly more people—I don't actually mind running the games all that much but I'm getting tired of the standard cop-doc setup and would like to introduce more/different roles. In general, though, IRL Mafia-style games are great! Also I bought Resistance and we tried that a while ago; it went over well enough, so hopefully that can be used to break up the MAFIA MAFIA MAFIA MAFIA [KRATOS] DID YOU BRING MAFIA IT IS TIME FOR MAFIA every once in a while.

Cards Against Humanity/Apples to Apples: I've somehow managed to never play CAH! That's not the sort of thing my family would be into playing with me, and I miss most of my internet friends' calls for online games. I was never sure it would hold my interest for very long, though, so I'm glad to see I'm not missing much. I did try Apples to Apples one time at a Christmas party. It was pretty good, I guess!

TCGs: When I was a kid/teenager I was really big on Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, but I can't drum up much enthusiasm for TCGs these days. I've tried Magic on and off, but in spite of the fact that it seems like it'd hit all the right notes with me in terms of theme and strategy I just can't get into it (sorry, Negrek!). I used to want to create my own TCGs all the time, though! For a few years straight my Christmas lists included packs of cheap playing cards (so I could use them for proxies while testing) and I'm sure my poor family was so confused, bless them. I had ideas for original games and a Fire Emblem one and some kind of ridiculous "Nintendo TCG" that would've included characters and items from like every franchise, although of course the latter two were never going to happen outside my head, haha. Then again, I've never been good at TCGs in the first place—and what the hell do I know about actually balancing them—so realistically none of them were going to go anywhere. Ah, well, they were fun to dream up! I like imagining games of all sorts even if they never get made.

Tabletop RPGs: Only became interested in these recently! Negrek has heard me talk about trying to get into Pathfinder multiple times, although so far I don't have much to show for it other than playing a few Pathfinder Society sessions at the local con, which of course is only once a year, oops. (I just found out that the anime con my brother and cousin go to has some tabletop stuff, though? Hm, perhaps I can bump that up to a whopping twice a year...) I routinely forget the very basics of the game in between sessions! Sooo I really need to stay more on top of that, maybe find an online group that runs some Roll20 tables, actually get off my ass and try to make it to one of the PFS nights that's at a restaurant I think I can get to without a car. Soon! Eventually!

Speaking of, if anyone is considering trying D&D-style RPGs but isn't feeling up to campaigns that go on for weeks/months/years, Pathfinder Society consists entirely of sessions meant to be completed in one sitting! It doesn't require the same level of investment as a big campaign, and you don't have to play with the same people or characters every time if you don't want to/can't. Plus you can earn points to make your characters cooler I guess, but mostly I like the short games. I'm not averse to the idea of a big campaign and would like to try one sometime, but I think PFS's one-shots made the whole pen-and-paper muddle a lot easier to get into. Whether or not they have society play, I'm pretty sure most tabletop RPGs have one-shot adventures of some sort!

Some other popular(?) ones no one's mentioned afaict: My cousin also introduced me to Talisman, which is long but usually fun. I got the Steam version and fire it up every once in a while. Not recently, mind, not after the AI player locked me into a weird stalemate situation that dragged the game out for an additional hour before I could finally get through and win. I've also recently tried Save Doctor Lucky! Everyone was very confused while playing it but seemed to have a good time. I'd meant to get the original Kill Doctor Lucky (Save Doctor Lucky is technically a prequel) but it's currently(?) out of print. They have a free printable version of the original while they prepare for the next edition, though, so if I can assemble the pieces for it maybe we'll try that one next time.

And then yeah, you have the more "casual/traditional" board games like Clue and Balderdash and so on. Haven't done Monopoly in ages, although it's less because I think it's "all about luck" and more because everyone around here (including me) is just sick of it and hasn't managed to shake that burnout even after many years, haha.

tl;dr I've dabbled in a lot of games and most of them are pretty enjoyable, and I want to play more! In addition to Pandemic I've also got Smallworld sitting there as-yet-untested; my cousin keeps telling us about The Red Dragon Inn and saying it's pretty fun; and I have an app version of Carcassonne on my tablet, which I hear is supposed to be some sort of classic so I guess I should get around to trying it eventually!

 

[M&F]

You know, I'm thinking that maybe only getting to play CAH online might have actually been what prevented me from losing interest as much as other folks seem to have. I've never played for too long with the same crowd and there's always been a good amount of custom decks mixed in, so that's kept the game fresh. Even the basic offensive humour takes a lot longer to go stale when you can keep applying it to different things. If I always had to play with the same single deck, though, it'd definitely get old fast.

Also, MtG is distantly tempting -- it's TCG and it's constantly brought up as a shining example of game design which speaks to my latent interest in game design -- but finding out what the deal is there sounds like such a commitment that I'll never be able to make unless I find a good excuse, let alone playing it (specially if it requires the money I'm too busy spending on Pokémon cards). I've similarly only stayed into YGO for as long as they put out the World Championship games.

So far my brief experience with tabletop RPG (in this case, custom FATE) is "it's cool but it clashes with my extreme aversion to keeping things on a fixed schedule". I hope I can make it work eventually, if only to justify the fact that I read multiple webcomics about tabletop RPG. Looking into those one-shot sessions might be a good idea.

Monopoly can be made enjoyable -- I've definitely played a few memorable rounds -- but you kind of have to squeeze the fun out of it, be it through house rules or through sheer improvisation. In itself, it was designed as social commentary and it's actually meant to become tedious and depressing. At the very least, the game should stop when you get to the part where it's entirely plain to see who's going to win.

Also, anyone game with playing cards often? I've grown pretty weary of most of the traditional game styles (please never put me through another goddamn round of poker), but recently one of my neighbors learned a bunch of more interesting games you can do with playing cards and spread the word around.

(For those of you who can't afford too many games, I recommend you look into local game stores and see if any of them have weekly gaming sessions with their own games. I think a lot will. The UK is also seeing the rise of boardgame cafes, which are exactly what they sound like, and they're great too.)

I strongly agree! support your local boardgame cafes! in fact, a lot of boardgame cafes tend to become havens for videogame players and they also tend to host a lot of smash bros/pokemon tournaments!!

Knowing that those are things that exist changes everything. If I ever find out which corner of my city those things might be hiding in, the outcome may be dangerous to behold.

(And geez, so many games that seem really interesting and that I've never heard of. I'd really like to know where all this stuff had been hiding. I might just have a lot of delving to do.)

 

[Negrek]

Also, anyone game with playing cards often? I've grown pretty weary of most of the traditional game styles (please never put me through another goddamn round of poker), but recently one of my neighbors learned a bunch of more interesting games you can do with playing cards and spread the word around.

I used to all the time back in high school; for some reason they were really big for a period of time. The only one I can remember how to actually play is Egyptian Rat Screw (basically the same as Slapjack, I think), and other than that I can only recall playing Speed and French Toast a couple times. I used to know five or six different games, though (okay, not counting War)... they're definitely out there.

 

[Phoenixsong]

oh man card games were all the rage during lunch when I was in eighth grade. Egyptian Ratscrew, BS, Spoons, Gotcha... those last two were particularly great. Everyone would try to be sneaky when taking the first spoon (or pencil, or whatever it was): they'd hang back and pretend to keep playing like they hadn't already won, waiting to see how long it took for someone else to realize "...huh, why are there only two spooOH SHIT—" and then send the rest of the table scrambling and slapping and clawing for the remaining ones. And coming up with signals for Gotcha became increasingly ridiculous as games went on. We'd start with simple stuff, oh I'll fix my shirt collar or I'll turn and look out the window, but then people started using baseball signals, and then coming up with a bunch of ever-more-elaborate decoy signals to try and trick the other team into calling you out... and then at least once someone would just not even bother coming up with a signal, instead screaming "[TEAMMATE] SAY GOTCHA!" and hoping the teammate would recover from the shock and say it faster than the other team would. Wild times.

And I'm sure there were plenty of others, though I don't remember most of them. I think Speed was also popular but I never really played that one much.

...now I miss all that stuff and want to play again. :( I'm sure I don't remember any of the rules to those, either, though!

 

[Music Dragon]

Hmm. You know, we should try to organize something here on the forums! Besides Mafia, I mean.

 

[Negrek]

Egyptian Rat Screw, BS, Spoons, Gotcha... those last two were particularly great.

omg I don't know how I forgot about BS and Spoons! Yeah, of course I've played those, and they're a ton of fun! One time I really annoyed a guy in BS by calling him out every single time he tried to cheat... I could read his entire hand in his mirrored shades. XD

One thing I've found, though, is that a "basic deck of playing cards" actually isn't the same everywhere in the world. When I was in Germany I wanted to teach my host family how to play ERS (since we US students were playing it constantly whenever we were together), and when they brought me a deck of cards it was like "wait what the fuck is going on here what are these weird face cards what." So some of these games might only work with the US-style deck. (Or poker deck? idk if maybe that's a distinct thing in some places.)

Hmm. You know, we should try to organize something here on the forums! Besides Mafia, I mean.

Well, we've got the RP section for D&D-style things, and most board/card games wouldn't work well play-by-post, I think. Unsure what happened to the Apples to Apples mod on IRC, but in theory it would be pretty easy to get something like that up and running again?

 

[Phoenixsong]

Hmm. You know, we should try to organize something here on the forums! Besides Mafia, I mean.

I'd be up for trying something, sure! Although I'm not much of an IRC person, if it came down to something that could only be played there.

One thing I've found, though, is that a "basic deck of playing cards" actually isn't the same everywhere in the world. When I was in Germany I wanted to teach my host family how to play ERS (since we US students were playing it constantly whenever we were together), and when they brought me a deck of cards it was like "wait what the fuck is going on here what are these weird face cards what." So some of these games might only work with the US-style deck. (Or poker deck? idk if maybe that's a distinct thing in some places.)

Ah, yeah, that is true. I remember having looked up playing cards on Wikipedia for some project or other and realizing just how many variations on "standard" playing cards and deck sizes there are. I think the bigger issue would be the number of cards in a deck rather than the suits and face cards, though? Spoons just requires making four of a kind and with Ratscrew you could just agree on which values to assign which face cards, but if nothing else it would rather change the length of the game if a deck only contains 24 or 36 cards.

 

[I liek Squirtles]

I've played with two types of decks: Briscas (which are really fun Spanish cards and it's an excellent game, too) and the "normal" deck with the faces. You could modify some games for Briscas cards because there are four suits (1-7 in traditional decks, some have 8 & 9, then 10-12).

 

[Sandstone-Shadow]

Pandemic: Have not played it yet, although I do own it and would like to at least give it a shot. My cousin said it was just kind of okay, but I'm still curious.

The nifty thing about cooperative games is that if you want to, you can play them by yourself and just have multiple hands :D I've done this with Forbidden Island a number of times and Pandemic is pretty similar so it's probably doable. It's basically like a single player puzzle game!

(edit: I maybe already said that actually. Too lazy to go back and check. Oh well I guess I'm really enthusiastic about cooperative games.)

I used to all the time back in high school; for some reason they were really big for a period of time. The only one I can remember how to actually play is Egyptian Rat Screw

Yesss I also forgot about these. Wow. My friends and I had to ban any sort of hand/wrist jewelry for the duration of these games because people were getting injured haha.

 

[opaltiger]

One thing I've found, though, is that a "basic deck of playing cards" actually isn't the same everywhere in the world. When I was in Germany I wanted to teach my host family how to play ERS (since we US students were playing it constantly whenever we were together), and when they brought me a deck of cards it was like "wait what the fuck is going on here what are these weird face cards what." So some of these games might only work with the US-style deck. (Or poker deck? idk if maybe that's a distinct thing in some places.)

This seems really weird to me. I can't imagine anyone in western Europe not knowing what a standard deck of playing cards is. (Certainly not to the extent that they plain wouldn't know they were different.) Were they tarot cards, perchance? Those are used for games in continental Europe. (But, again, they'd explicitly be called a tarot deck.)

I have witnessed the greatest ever CAH play (The Oedipus complex: kid-tested, mother approved) and thus have no further interest in the game.

I play a lot of games with very similar decks to the standard, but slightly different (so they have an excuse to sell you a deck of cards, I guess). Haggis, Tichu, and Abluxxen (Linko in English) are my favourites.

 

[ultraviolet]

Unsure what happened to the Apples to Apples mod on IRC, but in theory it would be pretty easy to get something like that up and running again?

when it stopped working i asked around and the situation seemed to be 'it broke :(' but i don't know more about it than that. if someone was to make a new one then i would be incredibly grateful because i miss it so much :(

didn't ye olde tcod have some kind of arcade? this was very shortly before i joined in like 2008 and i remember MD had several awards or something.