Board Games

[Arroyos]

I don't know quite how to admit this ... but I've never heard of any of the games you all are talking about. I'm still playing Scrabble, Monopoly, backgammon, cribbage, and APBA. And occasionally, if I'm feeling nostalgic, I take out the 1958 Cadaco All-Star Baseball and give the old spinners a whirl.

[Leones]

... We haven't really latched onto anything sci-fi.

Have you had a look at Space Empires?
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/ ... empires-4x

I've played it solo and it looks to have a decent amount of depth. Supports up to 4 players and has expansions 'Close Encounters' and 'Replicators'

[Lions]

I don't know quite how to admit this ... but I've never heard of any of the games you all are talking about. I'm still playing Scrabble, Monopoly, backgammon, cribbage, and APBA. And occasionally, if I'm feeling nostalgic, I take out the 1958 Cadaco All-Star Baseball and give the old spinners a whirl.

Scrabble is the only game my wife has never lost to me in, so it always gets funny looks when I suggest it. I will win someday!

Have you had a look at Space Empires?

I haven't. It looks interesting enough. I have a friend who's been trying to introduce us to Eclipse, but we haven't found a time that we are up for it. Generally speaking, 4x games are too long and complex for most of the folks I game with.

[John]

I don't know quite how to admit this ... but I've never heard of any of the games you all are talking about. I'm still playing Scrabble, Monopoly, backgammon, cribbage, and APBA. And occasionally, if I'm feeling nostalgic, I take out the 1958 Cadaco All-Star Baseball and give the old spinners a whirl.

Me neither, but that's not because I'm not interested. Sadly, it's because I have no friends who are interested.

[Bill]

I don't know quite how to admit this ... but I've never heard of any of the games you all are talking about. I'm still playing Scrabble, Monopoly, backgammon, cribbage, and APBA. And occasionally, if I'm feeling nostalgic, I take out the 1958 Cadaco All-Star Baseball and give the old spinners a whirl.

Geeky board games are pretty niche. You definitely aren't alone. A few of them have become fairly mainstream to the point where you can actually find them in stores (I've seen Ticket to Ride at Target). But most are not.

I still have a version of Cadaco ASB as well (though it's still at my mom's house and a bit newer than your version). I should dust it off and play it with my nephew. He's getting to be about that age.

[richard_v]

I don't know quite how to admit this ... but I've never heard of any of the games you all are talking about. I'm still playing Scrabble, Monopoly, backgammon, cribbage, and APBA. And occasionally, if I'm feeling nostalgic, I take out the 1958 Cadaco All-Star Baseball and give the old spinners a whirl.

I haven't played Monopoly in years, mainly because I'm prone to bouts of "landing on hotel rage"

[Alleghenies]

I don't know quite how to admit this ... but I've never heard of any of the games you all are talking about. I'm still playing Scrabble, Monopoly, backgammon, cribbage, and APBA. And occasionally, if I'm feeling nostalgic, I take out the 1958 Cadaco All-Star Baseball and give the old spinners a whirl.

I haven't played Monopoly in years, mainly because I'm prone to bouts of "landing on hotel rage"

Monopoly is actually the biggest reason that I am now in the boardgamegeek community. I love games that minimize luck where my supposed genius can shine. The problem is that I don't seem to win many more of these games than I did at monopoly. Take Bora Bora for example, it is one of the most complicated, strategic games I own, but I have found myself losing at it quite regularly to my wife who is a much better planner than me. While I love strategy, I just find myself thinking repeatedly through the game: "I should really have planned ahead better and now I need to do 5 things, but can only do 3". For those who haven't played, Bora Bora is a brilliant "worker placement" game that uses dice rolling brilliantly. Traditionally, in worker placement games, you take turns placing workers on different spots on a common board to collect resources or build a building, and normally, no two workers can occupy the same space. So I could take wood this turn, but then my opponent will take the clay, but if I don't take the wood, then they will. Unless they wanted to play an occupation first which in that case I wouldn't be able to do that later this turn...and so on. Lots of good choices and none of them bad. But back to Bora Bora. You roll 3 dice to represent how effective your 3 workers are this round. The first player places his die on a space, say building a hut. If he rolled high, and wanted to build a good hut, say he places a 6 on that spot to build a good hut. Now the opponent can occupy the same space as long as they have a die of a smaller number. So they can still do it, but not quite as good. Instead, you could put a 1 on that space, and build a very bad hut, but you prevented everyone else from building a hut this round. It is a brilliant system that allows even "bad" dice rolls to become interesting decisions. There are also "God" cards that allow you to break the rules of this mechanic and therefore you can further mitigate "bad luck" in the game by collecting these cards in various ways. Overall it is a wonderfully brilliant game!

Gameplay demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIxRia7E5Xk

[roncollins]

Personally, I always found backgammon to be the best game of strategy around because most other folks I hung with viewed it more as a game of luck. :)

[richard_v]

I don't know quite how to admit this ... but I've never heard of any of the games you all are talking about. I'm still playing Scrabble, Monopoly, backgammon, cribbage, and APBA. And occasionally, if I'm feeling nostalgic, I take out the 1958 Cadaco All-Star Baseball and give the old spinners a whirl.

I haven't played Monopoly in years, mainly because I'm prone to bouts of "landing on hotel rage"

Monopoly is actually the biggest reason that I am now in the boardgamegeek community. I love games that minimize luck where my supposed genius can shine. The problem is that I don't seem to win many more of these games than I did at monopoly. Take Bora Bora for example, it is one of the most complicated, strategic games I own, but I have found myself losing at it quite regularly to my wife who is a much better planner than me. While I love strategy, I just find myself thinking repeatedly through the game: "I should really have planned ahead better and now I need to do 5 things, but can only do 3". For those who haven't played, Bora Bora is a brilliant "worker placement" game that uses dice rolling brilliantly. Traditionally, in worker placement games, you take turns placing workers on different spots on a common board to collect resources or build a building, and normally, no two workers can occupy the same space. So I could take wood this turn, but then my opponent will take the clay, but if I don't take the wood, then they will. Unless they wanted to play an occupation first which in that case I wouldn't be able to do that later this turn...and so on. Lots of good choices and none of them bad. But back to Bora Bora. You roll 3 dice to represent how effective your 3 workers are this round. The first player places his die on a space, say building a hut. If he rolled high, and wanted to build a good hut, say he places a 6 on that spot to build a good hut. Now the opponent can occupy the same space as long as they have a die of a smaller number. So they can still do it, but not quite as good. Instead, you could put a 1 on that space, and build a very bad hut, but you prevented everyone else from building a hut this round. It is a brilliant system that allows even "bad" dice rolls to become interesting decisions. There are also "God" cards that allow you to break the rules of this mechanic and therefore you can further mitigate "bad luck" in the game by collecting these cards in various ways. Overall it is a wonderfully brilliant game!

Gameplay demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIxRia7E5Xk

Not going to lie, that looks pretty darned fun.

[Coqui]

OK, I have a fun, quick game to add to the list:

Sushi Go

It's a simultaneous action game, so it takes just a few minutes, and there's enough strategy to make it interesting.

[Mike Dunn]

OK, I have a fun, quick game to add to the list:

Sushi Go

It's a simultaneous action game, so it takes just a few minutes, and there's enough strategy to make it interesting.

That's so funny because I got my daughter this for Christmas. We haven't played it yet, but perhaps will this weekend. She does love sushi!

[Zephyrs]

I purchased Dominion thanks to people from this league and it has really added valuable family time to my life. It gets my kids off their computers and consoles for a few hours a week. Our family of 4 has had some good times playing this wonderful game. This is just another way the PEBA can add value to your life.

[John]

I purchased Dominion thanks to people from this league and it has really added valuable family time to my life. It gets my kids off their computers and consoles for a few hours a week. Our family of 4 has had some good times playing this wonderful game. This is just another way the PEBA can add value to your life.

That's very cool, Scott! I really enjoyed playing Dominion with Tyler and the PEBA crew back in the day. That's one I would do again, for sure.

[Alleghenies]

For Christmas, I bought my wife a game called paperback. It is basically a scrabble version of Dominion. It is really neat for those that like word games but still want something more than scrabble. If you love dominion but want a slightly lighter version of the game and want to get someone involved that loves making words out of letters, I highly recommend checking it out.

Link for runthrough video demonstrating gameplay.
Link for Boardgamegeek.com
Link for website to buy the game.

Enjoy, I've played it several times since Christmas and it is a blast. I've played dominion and while I was a fan, I don't like it as much as paperback.

[Alleghenies]

Actually, speaking of Dominion, I wanted to put in a plug for my new favorite game of all time(at the moment). It is a deck-builder(Dominion) set in the Shadowrun universe(a roleplaying D&D like universe, but this game just has the same setting). You are a "runner" with any number of co-op teammates, fighting evil corporations trying to win missions.

Items that when combined make it my number 1 game:

1. It is a card based deck-builder, like Dominion. I love these games because you start with nothing and build something really cool and fulfilling by the end of the game.

2. The artwork is amazing. Shadowrun is set in the future in Seattle, it has a cyber-punk theme where I was honestly not crazy about before buying the game, but I LOVE it now. I love looking at the cards now.

3. It is co-op. As much as I love beating up on my wife/friends when we play games, sometimes the most fun can be had discussing how to beat a common enemy. It feels AMAZING to pull off lots of great combos with your team to kill the baddies at the last little bit with one health left.

4. It offers persistence. Sure Dominion can be fun, but this game has an RPG element to it. After every successful mission, you get a "karma" reward(karma is their word for xp). After you get so many of these you can level up your character by picking a sticker and slapping it on your character board. These are real stickers, they don't come off, which gives the game a real feeling of permanence and you have to make you choices very carefully. For those worried about running out of stickers and not being able to play forever, well, lets just say it would take hundreds, and hundreds of plays before you run out in the base game, and they offer expansion packs for 10 bucks loaded with new character cards and another set of new stickers. And don't worry about scaling, the game automatically scales perfectly, so as you get more karma, the game gets harder.

5. This game is hard. Winning does not come easy, and you will lose quite a bit, which I absolutely LOVE. Who doesn't love a challenge, right? If you won all the time, what fun is that? I've played about 16 times so far and only won about half of my missions.


In conclusion, if you really enjoy Dominion, I cannot recommend this game enough. I know a few people that have played several hundred games of Dominion. And that is all well and good, I play lots of games that don't offer a permanence effect, but two games this similar, well honestly, I cannot imagine ever really playing dominion over this game when I know I could be leveling up my character. When you hit 70 karma, you can fight a dragon. It will be a long, long time before I can fight the dragon.

Here is a video showing how it plays.

I actually have an extra copy for sale on the BGG marketplace, if you think you would enjoy the game, let me know I'm willing to heavily discount the game and send it out to you for free shipping I love it so much. This is not a sales pitch, I just love the game that much, I'd actually be losing money.