The Thread Where We Are Board Game Geeks

board game arena also has Sushi Go

Terra Mystica isn't bad on BGA.

Puerto Rico is another good one on board game arena. Been playing through the ages with friends too.

Trying out Clans of Caledonia today. Brain melty economic action.

i have that one, its kinda just terra mystica with a farming theme and a goods market instead of the magic stuff

XPS news to me

will check other recommendations out!

I bought my gf's family pandemic for christmas, nobody seems to want to play it for some reason

hah

I've been enjoying the trivia game Half Truth. It's very approachable for non-trivia types yet not too easy ... sort of like my beloved Wits and Wagers in that respect. Pretty good Zoom game since you can just hold the card up the camera or whatever.

loving the Galaxy Trucker app on the iphone, but my partner thinks I'm insane for loving it

Québec's still on a pretty severe lockdown and I kinda hate computer/zoom-facilitated boardgaming, but I realized recently that playing boardgames is one of the healthiest/best ways for my brain to wind down and turn off in the absence of actual "experiences" or human beings outside my household... My partner's not into heavy boardgames but I indulged myself and bought a copy of Aeon's End: Legacy - just for myself! to play totally solo! $100! What an indulgence, but it's been a lifesaver: feels so good to just do boardgame bullshit at the end of a long day, in these hard times.

(I still have a biweekly virtual Gloomhaven/Jaws of the Lion gang.)

i lost about an hour and a half playing solo Deadball the other night (warning: must enjoy baseball)

http://wmakers.net/deadball

Have recently picked up:
-Cascadia (make ecosystems in the PacNW)

-Brass: Birmingham (The industrial Revolution, and you can play as Robert Owen)

-Factory 42 (steampunk dwarves who dress Prussian for some reason but are in a Stalinist/state capitalist production system)

-Llama Land(tile-stacking game with llama meeples!)

-Little Factory (card-based game about commodity production, but regrettable missing flax, linen, or coats)

I miss having socialist board games where we can actually try these out, as I need to learn the two most complicated games here from others

I finally got Galaxy Trucker for Xmas after lusting after it for ages. It is so much fun - like a competetive puzzle game that then turns into a lunatic and hilarious game of (bad) luck.

I’m basic, I just started playing Scrabble and it’s addictive!

If you've been into Scrabble, highly recommend Speed Scrabble (aka "Take 2") as a fun game for mixed-skill players:

https://www.thegamegal.com/2016/01/28/speed-scrabble/

love solo gaming.
i have been playing the hex & counter wargame Blood & Roses by GMT; it's fun. I'm still a wargame noob

Would welcome more solo board game recommendations from those of you who have them.

for solo, Friday is complex for such a small footprint and fun

micromacro crime city is v good recent solo game

I’d recommend everybody check out the TESA Collective. They’re a boardgame co-operative that makes co-operative board games, usually with a leftist activist theme.

https://store.tesacollective.com/collections/games/

Some of the COIN games have AI for solo play -- I like those a lot

(disclaimer: i am not much of a solo gamer but my partner is. i prefer to play 2 people games)

I prefer 2 player co-op, or 3 player co-op my 7yo could join in, pls to recommend.

recently bought the co op game The Crew which was recommended by a couple of friends, yet to play tho

i've played that, it's a coop trick-taking game, very simple yet clever idea

Sprawlopolis is a great little portable solo game. I like to play Robinson Crusoe solo for something more complex. I like Navajo Wars a lot but I feel like I’m still figuring it out. Fields of Arle is a nice solo game with a lot of freedom.

Bartender talked about a single player board game called hostage something or other

I'm not massively keen on the artwork or reimagined world of the new edition of Libertalia, but it's playable as hell.

Played a couple games of Wingspan this weekend. Hits a nice sweet spot of being just complicated enough to be interesting and re-playable without being overwhelming or slow.

looking forward to Frosthaven, which has almost arrived...

and proud to have published my first profile for the new yorker, on Gloomhaven's isaac childres:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-board-game-auteur-makes-his-next-move

Congrats Sean!

Sean, that's great!!

My recent plays are all pretty regular stuff -- Ticket To Ride and Guillotine with the family on thanksgiving, Azul: Summer Pavillion w/ the wife & friends.

I haven't done as much solo gaming since I started running RPGs twice weekly, but I'm hoping to spend time with The Great Battles Of Julius Caesar (GMT) over my winter week off. Also in wargame world, I love "With It Or On It" by Hollandspiele; a very simple system about collapsing lines of hoplites. There's a slightly more complicated but similar game by the same designer (Amabel Holland) called "The Grass Crown" but since my boardgaming time has dropped so much, I'm not sure it's sensible for me to pick up rn.

Next time we have friends over for game afternoon, I'm hoping to run through a Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective case. (can also be played solo.)

Going to repeat my suggestion for Sprawlopolis - it's a tiny portable little game but is really engaging and gets the mind chugging, trying to optimize your roadworks based on the varying victory conditions.

i collect early 80s roleplaying games and $50 is pretty much the going rate for a good condition box set by TSR or FASA or GDW or chaosium

Woof, some of the Call of Cthulhu box sets I'm looking for would be a STEAL at $50.

well done! never got the gloomhaven bug but excited to read that

actually played eldritch horror for first time in a long time over last week's vacation. it was very fun. finally did the thing i've been meaning to do where i pulled out all the expansion cards (six boxes worth) and sorted them into sets (by expansion). playing with only the base cards made things way faster and simpler

i have been looking at root, its expansions and oath quite a bit. the art is irresistible. i already have too many games i don't play, though

I think the cost of the original CoC box rocketed after Chaosium's new old box.

I paid about $50 for a Top Secret box about 10 years ago, think they're routinely double that now. I've got a fairly pristine 1st Edn Gangbusters and the first two (?) modules from when they came out.

xp inflation is a thing. that was definitely a "pre pandemic stimulus check" post!

but prices seem to be are creeping back down. i've been looking at car wars box sets, for example (the deluxe cardboard one with cat # sjg1301, not the little plastic boxes which are being reprinted) and if you're willing to live with punched counters and bent corners you can find them for $30-50

the good news about call of cthulhu is that moving forward or backward between different editions is generally pretty easy. the 1st edition stuff with the endearingly goofy artwork is super spendy, but if you're willing to grab kinda ugly 4th or 5th ed stuff it's a lot cheaper. i actually have the 5th ed softcover (iirc 4th ed softcover was the first one i got, in high school) so that works out ok for me

for example if you can deal with an early 90s copy of masks of nyarlathotep vs an 80s one the going rate on ebay goes from $100-200 to around $50-70. orient express bit harder to find but one just went on ebay for $70!

i would say like any collectibles (discogs, rpgs on ebay) you have to learn to ignore whatever the current general asking price is and focus on the sold prices. i find that on ebay saved searches + alerts are my friend. like i am currently shopping for dungeoneer's survival guide 1st ed (not sure why, aside from map of the underdark it's even more useless than the wilderness survival guide, because i'm collecting i guess) and while there's always copies going up for $75 a fine looking copy for $30 shows up about once a month.

and hey at least we're collecting crappy 80s rpgs and not magic cards. i don't have any interest in mtg but am constantly seeing 1st wave stuff i owned going for $1000 or more!

I've got one of the 90s reprintings of Masks in book form, and the recent reprint of orient express, so I'm not particularly concerned about getting those as original boxed sets. Thinking more along the lines of Dreamlands, Gaslight, some of the old campaigns like Spawn of Azathoth.

xpost, god don't remind me of the MTG cards I had when I was a youth.....

I got my dungeoneers survival guide out of an urge to just have all the the core AD&D hardcovers; this would have been a few years ago, it was $25.

Sorry, I don't want to de-rail this thread into an RPG thread.

I haven't played Eldritch Horror in ages. I like it, but my wife does not so much.

xpost -- I know a guy in the bay area who has a copy of car wars for sale i think. He always picks games up at the Alameda flea if they're cheap.

I want to say my box is 2nd Edn because I'm sure it's got the award winning decal but I could be wrong.

I have no idea why I bought the 40tg Anniversary 2" box but there you go.

lol I bought the reprinted 1" AND 2" boxes. The 2" has a bunch of the early supplements, which I like to read even if as adventures they are a bit old fashioned. The 1" box remains shrink wrapped; I think I thought I was gonna give it as a gift to my cousin but ended up getting her the current starter set instead.

i will derail it for you by agreeing that the campaign sets can be pretty expensive. the dreamlands stories might be some of my favorite lovecraft so that's one i was interested in awhile back and sort of gave up on

i've always been interested in chaosium's elrich and hawkmoon games (stormbringer is the umbrella name, i think?) which are fairly generic 80s percentile dice crap with some nice maps. not super different from rolemaster / merp products, without the amazing crit tables. and those are just always expensive too. idk what it is about them.

i always thought chaosium was an american company (mailing address in berkeley?) but also a lot of these games seem a lot easier to find on uk ebay, more press coverage in uk mags like white dwarf vs. dragon. did they move from uk to usa at some point? feel like this would be easy to look up, but i'm home sick from work today so feeling especially lazy

They are still based in the US but a lot of the current development team is based in the UK iirc.

I think the Elric & Hawkmoon games are expensive because of Moorcock superfandom.

as someone who's thought about writing a jerry cornelius rpg, i can relate to moorcock superfandom.

also there doesn't seem to be a good default ttrpg thread. maybe the "incredible austerity" one?

i can certainly understand not liking eldritch horror. it took me a long time to figure out to figure out the theory of it (well, develop my own, which may or may not be right) and figure out a workable strategy for it. and even with that you're always getting senselessly punished by attrition, for no real reason other than getting punished by attrition is how mythos horror works!

has anyone played Tapestry? my old Iron Crown friends were raving about it last time we hung out

also really enjoying Code Words when we can get 4 people together

Code Names (i think that's the actual title?) is fun; there's a 2-player version that we picked up and it's just not as fun as the 4 player version imo. But we rarely have another couple to play with. Not aware of Tapestry!

It gets mentioned upthread, but I'm interested in playing Eclipse. I like the 4x style of interstellar exploration. There's also the GMT Space Empires game but i think it's between printings rn.