Board games! What are your favorites?

[XRay]

So, which board games have you played? Which are your favorites? You developed any custom or house rules?

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My absolute favorite so far is Unicornus Knights.

The Empire of Legania has overrun the Kingdom of Astoria, with Emperor Lionel sitting on the royal throne casting a long shadow over Astoria's capital and future. Her Royal Highness Princess Cornelia of Astoria has escaped the initial onslaught to the eastern fringes of the Kingdom, and is raising a new royal army to continue the resistance and rebel. While she and her royal army has an indomitable will and can practically crush most Imperial armies to smithereens, she and her royal army are blinded by their thirst for vengeance and impatience, and is actually quite fragile. Her lack of experience means that while her zealots' banzai charges are super effective at crushing opposition, they are also very suicidal and cause mass casualties. Princess Cornelia maybe powerful, but she is not invincible and she cannot take back her Kingdom alone.

In the name of Her Royal Highness, you and up to five of your buddies will take up arms as Unicornus Knights and lead your armies to support the Princess and her royal army. The Princess will beeline straight for the capital; she would not even hesitate for a split second in the face of mortal danger and will charge straight into the enemy even if it means death. The fate of the Kingdom rests in your hands as you try to keep the Princess in check and safe. The Princess's urgency is right though, since if you do not kill the Emperor and have the Princess retake the capital in 10 turns, all hope is lost as the Imperial army will be able to call in massive reinforcements to crush the rebellion.

Sounds totally epic, right?

In our first complete game (our second; we did not complete the first game), my friends and I gave ourselves some pretty big handicaps, like going over 10 turns and each player has an extra action or two per turn.

I came up with some additional heroes/knights for our third game, and although some of them seem overpowered at first, the best of the original characters are still more overpowered.

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Other board games I have played include Axis and Allies: 1942, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Codenames, Creationary, Life, Risk, Risk: Europe, and Sakura Arms.

This is how I would rank them:

Unicornus Knights

Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition

A Game of Thrones: The Board Game Second Edition

Risk: Europe

Risk

Betrayal at House on the Hill Second Edition / Betrayal at Baldur's Gate

Creationary

Sakura Arms

Axis and Allies: 1942

Axis and Allies: 1940 Europe / Axis and Allies: 1940 Pacific / Axis and Allies: 1940 Global (The last one is basically the combination of the first two; I have not actually played this yet, but 1942 already takes up way too much time even though it is the smallest in the series, so I am not sure if I will bother to take these two out of the box.)

Life

Codenames

Edited September 21, 2019 by XRay

[Captain Karnage]

The one I really like that I've been able to get my family to play is Splendor, I haven't picked up the expansion pack yet.

I'm also quite fond of Betrayal at House on the Hill, nothing is more fun than one of your friends becoming a maniac and have to survive whatever powers they were give. (My favorite so far is where I got to collapse the house into another dimension)

[Karimlan]

1 hour ago, XRay said:

Risk: Europe

*stiff salute*

Fun to play sober. Better when slightly drunk. I have fond memories of playing through the North African campaign with friends.

Edited July 31, 2018 by Karimlan

[coldhand25]

The one I play most of the times with my family is Dixit, even though I sometimes get bored (like, 4-5 rounds a day is too much for me from it) it's still insanely fun, and I recommend it to everyone I meet and know they are into board games. There is also Story Cube, which is kinda similar, as you have to tell stories. With my cousins we always play Bang!, it became quite a tradition. I became interested in Legend of the Five Rings: Battle for Rokugan recently, but I have yet to find someone to buy/play the game with. Of course there are a lot other (everyone in my family likes board games, so we always played together when I was little), but these are the ones that usually get considered when we are about to play something.

[Tryhard]

Gloomhaven is really fun, but expensive.

 

[NinjaMonkey]

Monopoly followed by Scrabble and Upwords.

[MacLovin]

i prefer checkers,  the drinking game

[Darros]

Love Scrabble and Ticket to Ride. There are a lot of indie or niche games I enjoy too. One of my favorite things to do is go out to a boardgame cafe and just play random shit off the shelf that looks appealing rather than basement games.

[Hawkwing]

Wilderness Survival is a fun game that can be played alone or with friends. It's also nice that you can add or remove some elements that make the game more random.

Clue is also a fun game, although it depends on the board. My Grandma has a 50th anniversary addition where the mansion is HUGE and you could base strategies on you who accuse to mess with other players. However, our board is so small the dice are pretty much pointless.

There's also an old game called SURVIVE, where an island is sinking and you have to try and get as many people to safety on the islands to the side as you can. It's interesting how you try to both help other players, and backstab them, as sometimes you'll have to share boats or pick up swimmers, while other times you'll mess with them by sinking boats with whales or eating swimmers with sharks. There's also a tile (the main island is made of them, and you take one away each turn) that ends the game immediately, and kills everything on the board that isn't already on a safe island, so you can't dilly-dally.

I have a crap ton of old board games in my room from when my father was a kid. They're the kind that have book-long manuals that not only explain the rules, but the background and history of the events, considering some are based on WW2 or other historical era's. I really need to try them out sometime, even though they're the kind of games that can go on for hours on end.

[Flee Fleet!]

Ludo, obviously.

Its simple, but its pretty fun. I usually play it with my family and we all have a grand time.

 

Do Internet board games count? If so, then there's Board Game Online which is ridiculous, but very fun.

 

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Monopoly, Die Siedler von Catan, Carcassone

[XRay]

21 hours ago, Captain Karnage said:

I'm also quite fond of Betrayal at House on the Hill, nothing is more fun than one of your friends becoming a maniac and have to survive whatever powers they were give. (My favorite so far is where I got to collapse the house into another dimension)

I only played it once, but it left a really good impression on me. I think the haunt we got was everyone turning small and we have to escape the house via toy airplane or something. 

21 hours ago, Karimlan said:

*stiff salute*

Fun to play sober. Better when slightly drunk. I have fond memories of playing through the North African campaign with friends.

Yeah, it is better than normal Risk, and it is a lot faster than Axis and Allies. I generally play as Berlin or Stockholm since I like to be aggressive, and then move my way east and take Kiev if no one is playing as that.

20 hours ago, Edgelord said:

Gloomhaven is really fun, but expensive.

 

I saw that video too. I wanted to try it out, but it looks like it takes a huge amount of time, so I am not sure if my friends are up for it.

11 hours ago, Flee Fleet! said:

Do Internet board games count? If so, then there's Board Game Online which is ridiculous, but very fun.

I would say they count. I never heard of Board Game Online before, so I will definitely check it out.

 

[Tryhard]

On 8/1/2018 at 5:49 PM, XRay said:

I saw that video too. I wanted to try it out, but it looks like it takes a huge amount of time, so I am not sure if my friends are up for it.

You're not wrong, it's a time investment. In some ways it's more like a puzzle than a traditional cooperative board game.

The nice thing is that they've just announced a video game adaption for the end of this year/early next year. I'll probably end up getting it just to play more conveniently. It was mentioned it will only be single player at launch at the least but it's an interesting concept and deserved (game sold very well).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/780290/Gloomhaven/

[Belisarius]

its pretty tough to get people together to play a board game. ive only played risk:game of thrones recently and thats only because it was a christmas gift ( so "recently" was 7 months ago). but its a neat platform for risk. been a while since ive played anything else

gloomhaven does look like it has potential though

[Hawkwing]

It's a card game, but I got back from a "game night" with some friends we visit once a month. They had the card game version of the Oregon Trail, and I have to say, I found the computer version much easier. It's a team based game, so everyone has to work together, but supplies are limited and are ridiculously easy to loose. Not to mention that some cards can kill a player outright, and some have situations that can cause an immediate game-over for everyone. Still, it was interesting how kind everyone was, often jumping at the opportunity to save a fellow traveller, and we lasted longer than we thought we would after a river stole all our supplies.

As for an actual board game, Flashpoint is a pretty good firefighting game. Played it once during New Year's Eve at a friend's house, but we had a lot of fun. It's another team based game were eveyone has to work and plan together in order to save the people trapped in a burning building. The death count outnumbered those who got out alive, the house collapsed, and all our firefighters were inside the building when it did, all on the beginner level, but we had fun regardless.

We're never going to let one person live it down that, instead of entering the building normally and opening the door to the bathroom to rescue someone, he opted to skip a turn to have maximum movement points on the next one, ran to the side of the building, broke through the wall, and saved the person that way. Seeing as it only weakened the buildings structure, we kinda blamed him for speeding up our demise. I also joke that, as my firefighter was right next to the door with a rescued cat with another firefighter beside me when the building collapsed, that my firefighter grabbed the cat and his buddy and leaped out of the building with a Michael Bay level explosion behind him.

[XRay]

Quick update. Over a year has passed and I have added Game of Thrones, Magestorm, and Dungeons and Dragons to my collection during that time. I have not actually played Magestorm, so I did not rank it; I thought I would play it at some point, but Betrayal on House of the Hill and Dungeons and Dragons are the most popular games in my group so that is what we play mostly. Dungeons and Dragons is really good, but I think I still like Unicornis Knight over it since there is less work for me to set things up.

Edited September 21, 2019 by XRay