/BGG/ Board Game General

Okay guys, i asked before on /v/ and leddit but i never really got an answer so might as well try on the board that i usually go to for recommendations on board games.
Does anyone know the rules to this game? I dont speak Taiwanese so i cant understand the rules to this damn Tibetan board game Kirby sweets party.
Does anyone know any resources/experience with this game > Its probably not that great but i bought this for the cute kirby theme more than anything

>What's your favorite theme or setting for a game?
I like generic fantasy, especially for strategy.
Some games I bought on theme alone (War of the Ring), some I bought because of the awesome mechanics (Lords of Xidit)
That said I kind of dislike abstract games. Even when the theme is pasted on like in Neuroshima: Hex I'd prefer that over a multicolored-hexes-with-numbers game.

I could use some advice
my family has asked me to find a game that we could all play at thanksgiving
im thinking of something along the lines of sentinels of the multiverse or red dragon inn but one that doesn't require eighty billion bonus packs to really enjoy.

how many people?

probably around five or six

Dominant Species

You're welcome.

my family has a lot of biologists, this sounds great
thanks a ton user

Godforsaken Scavengers.

>I need help, what are some casual board games to play with friends to waste about 30 minutes of free time? (Pic unrelated of course)
I definitely recommend The Red Dragon Inn. Make sure not to pick up 1 or 3 as I hear one character in each of those is overpowered.

> Dat Image

We can't use that! Everyone will think this is the 'Pathfinder' general. ;)

*****

And speaking of the holidays - anyone have any recommendations on books covering either board game design or the history of board gaming? (I got some excellent suggestions here when I ask about books for learning about statistics.)

Try /jp/
Real weebs hang out there

Anyone here play Wasteland Express Delivery Service?

>fav theme
I definitely favour less explored themes like cannibalism (Zimby Mojo and Ferox), underworld monsters beating the shit out of each other (Cave Evil) and history that isn't focused around war (An Infamous Traffic, it has wars looming but it's extremely abstracted)
>importance of theme
doesn't really faze me, but I try to avoid overly ugly games because I want to be able to play them with my friends. graphic design (especially clarity of board state) and component quality (thick, easy-to-understand counters) are far more important than theme

yeah, I wouldn't expect that to happen as they are a very small publisher. sorry man, I still recommend picking it up though

Alright. Which one of you jokers bought Evolution: Climate from MM? There were 5 copies left yesterday and now they're sold out.

I mean, really? Two days before their holiday sale?

You heartless bastards.

Never ever ever wait on a purchase from MM if they have less than 20 of something. The last clearance they did a month or two back, I had items in my cart 10 in stock, gone after I'd refilled coffee from the pot 10 feet away. Someone is always willing to jump that shit

Can someone explain BGGs forum structure to me?

You have their main forum, and a forum for each individual game.

Added to that, their main is subdivided into dozens of guilds and niche forums you don't ever want to visit.

If you're looking for general discussion they really don't have a good place. Specific game forums are generally okay, since you'll find people who want to talk about the game you're interested in and people who want to bitch don't have time to track 60,000 game forums to find offensive comments.

If you're looking for drama? Just go to their main news posts (anything Eric Martin posts) via the front page module, the main shitbags all congregate there, and things escalate pretty quick. There's one particular asshole who used to work at google in the early days, he's particularly fond of telling everyone they're idiots and only he, the game "journalists", and the publishers know anything.

Seriously don't go there, it's awful and not even the funny kind of shitstorms like you see posted in screencaps from reddit. It's just endless poo flinging that you have to scroll through and comments that make you want to put holes in your monitor

Sounds great

is it possible to have too many abstracts?

I have Hive with all the expansions and I just bought Santorini. I kind of want tak as well but im starting to think it might be too many. Whatcha think?

Whatever floats your boat hombre.

There are people who will play nothing but abstracts, there are hundreds of games and game variants.

Good now i have an excuse to save up and get a really nice tak set.

My advice: Play Hive and Santorini until you aren't playing them as much, which is probably a result of 'solving' them. Play those suckers as much as you can, and enjoy it! I still play some games I bought 2 years ago, every week because I find new strategies all the time.
Don't buy games you can't play. What you're buying isn't a game, but a time investment. At some point you won't have enough time anymore and too many games wasting money and space.

You can make a cheap one yourself at home

It sounds sort of like an 'Us vs. the Insects' version of "The Grizzled".

Can I buy a gamer group instead of new board games this holiday season

Depends. Is prostitution legal wherever you are?

My favorite game setting is rapidly becoming the Android setting. I loved the original Android board game, Netrunner is great, and I finally got to play New Angeles today and blew me the hell away (and I won as the Federalist!).

More generally I find myself drawn towards sci-fi of all kinds, though the definition there can be pretty broad -- Tragedy Looper's kinda sci-fi with the whole time travel schtick, Eldritch Horror and Arkham Horror LCG are SORT OF sci-fi (since Lovecraft in general is SORT OF sci-fi), Forbidden Desert's got a bit of a Jules Verne/H.G. Wells vibe and of course there are tons of great Star Wars games (and Space Alert). Also I like Cosmic Encounter.

With enough money you can do anything user, even buy friends. Don’t stop believing.

I love android (the board game) too. But it just ends up being way to long of a time commitment for most of my group, I wish I could play it more. I really want another board game for the Android universe. New Angeles was way too good of a game for there not to be another big board game follow up.

I just visited the Slugfest games website to read up on some rules and other shit. I had no idea Red Dragon Inn has Organized Play kits. Apparently they have tournaments of this every year.

OP kits have exploded in the last 4-5 years, half because of how tabletop gaming has taken off, half because of places like B&N having demo nights. If you have an LGS that's friendly check them out at year end and if/when they run a charity event. Any unused kits tend to end up for sale/in auctions, and you can get a lot of promos for cheap.

>Any unused kits tend to end up for sale/in auctions, and you can get a lot of promos for cheap.
I had no idea stuff like that happens. I think in my place, they just save the kits for next year.

ok user i usually don't post, just lurk. but i gotta say tak is fantastic. i have a bunch of abstracts myself and consider tak one of the best.

>If I had to pick one theme I suppose it would be 2nd world war
Shit taste.

>What's your favorite theme or setting for a game?
The historical setting of Kemet.

>How important is theme to you?
Very. A good theme only adds to a game. But I still play pure abstracts.

Never heard of it.

Dat mental image of a neckbeard soliciting 3 prostitutes to play TI3 doe

If Corey Feldman can hire them to be in his shitty band, I'm sure you could hire them to play TI3/4 with you.

love netrunner setting as well, I would love a 3-5 player card game of sorts (or an expansion to play netrunner with 4 players of sorts.)
I think there was a game, called infiltration, but its out of production now. Anyone knows why?

Are there any good board game Kickstarters running right now?

Nothing appears to grab my attention and I need my KS fix, Help an addict out will ya?

Have any of you been able to check out Richard the Lionheart? Judging by the videos I've seen on it, it seems like a solid game, but for that price point I don't know if it holds up.

Yeah, it's over-priced and over-produced (why does this game need fucking miniatures for Christ's sake). It seems more like a $40 game, not $70. Fucking CMoN.

Root seems solid albeit kinda niche. It's supposedly COIN lite.

Do you want crazy amount of miniatures?
Monster slaughter.

I'm thinking about backing this one because it's super noob friendly and I have many friends who are new to board games.

The Minis DO look nice, but I hate the CMON way of overproducing. But mainly I wanted to know whether the game is good or not, as I don't mind paying a lot for a good game when I buy two games a year at most, even if part of the price comes from unnecessarily good components.

I need a dungeon crawl fix, what do you guys recommend? Is the D&D Ravenloft game a good option? My experience with the series begins and ends with the Ravenloft PC game which was in '94 and based on 2nd edition but I need some dungeon crawling. Don't say Heroquest, I can't afford that.

One deck dungeon if you're forever alone
Clank if you're not
Avoid boss monster
I've got drakon from the asmodee sale and that's supposed to be tile crawl but at least one user like cave troll better, same author also on sale. Haven't tried either but $10
Last you can run basic rules d&d 5e for the real thing, just look in /5eg/ trove link

Why yes I am constantly alone, I think I'll take that first recommendation to heart.

Rules forum under specific game are generally good in that someone has had the same question and a lot of designers/publishers hang in their own game forum at least when it comes out.

5e is bad for dungeon crawling.

This seems like a good place to ask. My mom's MS has gotten bad enough that she can't get out of bed. It's also made her very confused and it's hard for her to really process things. I've started to play board games with her so she's not as bored and so it helps her mind focus on something. So far it's been great, we've been playing Mario Monopoly and Uno, but I want to gradually branch out into games that are a little more complicated and have some sci-fi or fantasy themes.

Do you guys know of any other games that aren't too complicated to pick up and play?

>suggesting Drakon as a dungeon crawler
have you played Drakon? I'd call that anything but dungeon crawling

I also have an itch for Dungeon Crawlers. I liked Gloomhaven very much but I hate the Legacy aspects, that each "mission" has a timer and that you'll be running multiple characters. If you're fine with these you should check it out.
Love Letter
Pandemic (any coop for that matter)
Welcome to the Dungeon
Sheriff of Nottingham if you have 3 or more people
Codenames if you have at least 4 (it's probably best at 6+)
Kingdom Builder is pretty cool
Lord of Waterdeep is apparently pretty easy to pick up but I haven't played it

Also good luck on that MS, my coworker has it - sometimes the weirdest things could trigger epilepsy. Try different things even if it seems like quackery, my coworker manages MS by diet (some hardcore vegan diet without grains) I heard that people respond to different things. Good luck

Also check out Patchwork

Thank you! I really appreciate it, I'll check all those out. She's had it for over 30 years, so this is unfortunately the end game for her, but I think we have at least another year or two with her.

I hope things go well for your co-worker, they just came out with a new drug that helps out with later stages of MS, so hopefully they have better life quality with it.
Thanks! I'll add that to the list.

Hey look, yet another casual plastic pusher KS campaign.

Blokus might be a good choice too. It's a simple abstract strategy game and is only about $20 retail most places - including big box stores.

You might get in as a late backer on 'Near & Far / Mines of Amber' or if you really hate your wallet - there's Chip Theory's 'Too Many Bones' recent KS as well.

Anyone expecting anything from KS soon? I'm pretty stoked! The 2nd expansion for Exodus (Event Horizon), Empires of the Void II, and Helionox Deluxe should all be here by the end of December / beginning of January! Awww yeah!

I've been trying to get people here to check Helionox out for a while now, it really deserves more recognition.
I didn't back the 2nd print KS, gonna try to get the expac once it hits retail.

White Wizard is doing Sorceror

Cash n' Guns is pretty cathartic, you get to mock kill all those annoying relatives you hate IRL and are forced to tolerate for the holiday, then laugh it off when you put a foam gun to their head.

Some kind user here (maybe you?) recommended it. And after checking out multiple reviews and play through videos it looked really appealing and I jumped on it as a late backer. I emailed the designer a couple of days ago and confirmed that the late backer copies will ship with the regular KS stuff. :)

Anyone have or has played Ascension Valley of the Ancients? Bought it at PAX Unplugged and need some clarification on the temple keystones

>Legacy aspects
Can you extrapolate on this?

Not him, but I'd advise against it. I got the game as it looked like a funny opener or just a game when there are more people over who inevitably don't like heavier games.

While half the people I played Cash and Guns with were into it, the other half (me included) found that its just... a boring game. There's foam guns you can point at each other, that's nice. The problem is that there is very little exciting game packed around that gimmick

I should mention that none of us were 'oh god guns are bad' nor gun nuts

You should use real guns and see if it adds to the tension.

I'd probably lose half my group to suicide

You have stickers that you put on cards and the game map

Is that good or bad?

Fuck I hate stickers.

Gloomhaven must be played campaign style, script and gamestate and PCs are permanently afected by choices til the end of the game. Rules added, cards torn, stickers stuck, components trashed and all that jazz, because consequences, srsbsns and muh experience!

>cards torn, stickers stuck
I was under the impression that Gloomhaven's campaign only used stickers which could be unstuck.

Yeah, and the word out there is that there are (or will be) 'reset kits' available so you can run the campaign multiple times instead of putting the box away forever. Can't confirm tho.

>instead of putting the box away forever
Doesn't it also come with a scenario book so after the campaign you can still play it as a dungeon crawler?

>What's your favorite theme or setting for a game?
I'm actually pretty theme agnostic, as long as the setting has some kind of interesting texture or twist on generic expectations.
Slight preference for scifi over fantasy, but I'll take interesting fantasy over generic scifi any day.
>How important is theme to you?
It's pretty high on my value structure. I can and do still enjoy a good abstract, but a theme married well to the game's mechanics goes a long way towards drawing a group into the game.

Twilight Imperium is the better game, but "which should you buy" is entirely going to be answered by the playercount you can bring to bear on something that long. Simply by virtue of being two player, Rebellion is going to be a lot easier to field for most people. But it's absolutely not a TI replacement.

>Holiday 'Wish List'?
As inane as writing up a wish list is, it's useful to have some stuff in mind for if/when unimaginative relatives ask you what you would enjoy as a present, with a respectful eye to what kind of budget those people typically allocate to gift-giving.
For me this year? Mostly just small expansions I haven't bothered to pick up for myself yet - Star Trek: Ascendancy, Sheriff of Nottingham, that kind of thing. Maybe some small trays for tokens and other components.

I've generally found anything centered on bluffing mechanics to be the most successful across the board at family events, but that's pretty anecdotal. Things like Sheriff of Nottingham, Mafia de Cuba, or Resistance/Avalon/Secret Hitler.

>Too many abstracts
Only when you can't find your bed anymore.

For a setting largely constructed out of references to other settings, Android really is pretty fun. Though I do kind of begrudge the original game being a murder mystery with no deductive elements.

This is about how I felt about CnG - but the team spirit expansion really fixed it for me, much more tactical.

Fully agree on the part about theme. Mechanics that work well with the theme truly are wonderful, but I don't mind abstractions... but theme can also drive me off. Great Western Trail, from all that I've seen seems like a very good game I would LOVE, yet I loathe the west theme so much that I can't bring myself to buy it. I'd try it if someone else bought it, of course.

Also, this made me realize how little diversity in theme there is in boardgames (for the most part). Though I suppose I too am at fault for that

Just an FYI but Castles of Burgundy and other Ravensburger games are on sale at Amazon

>Doesn't it also come with a scenario book so after the campaign you can still play it as a dungeon crawler?

There's nothing stopping you from rerunning one of scenarios as a one-off. There is also a deck for generating random dungeons.

>Rules added, cards torn, stickers stuck, components trashed
You got 1/4 of that list right.

anyone here play power grid?
I just got my first game in with the china map and it was.. rough
wasn't able to buy a power plant for the first couple rounds due to limitations and being forced to buy aggressively to stop myself from being blocked in. spent the rest of the game playing catch-up, was never really in the running apart from forcibly bidding up everyone and ensuring very high plant prices all game

Thanks! I grabbed CoB and Notre Dame.

Thanks user! To follow up:

amazon.com/s/browse/ref=gbmh_mob_s-1_c732_8b949ed2?node=13524054011&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&dealid=8b949ed2&pf_rd_p=df0b8ae4-28ff-40eb-a654-61aa8be4c732&pf_rd_s=slot-1&pf_rd_t=35801&pf_rd_i=23&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=8X2XPM97TAT11ZXTYJP2

That's because I was pulling things out of my asshole and assuming it was the same as Pandemic Legacy.

>ravensburger sale
Broom.
Service.
Get it now. Thank me later.

I bought it for $17 from CSI daily deal on a whim, I have no idea why it was apparently so unpopular.

At least you admitted it.

>I have no idea why it was apparently so unpopular.
It wasn't unpopular, just overpriced. $20 is about right for what you get in the box. Plus the art kinda sucks.

Get the game anyways, it's great. One of the few dudes-on-a-mapish games that scales well at 2-4.

Guess it's the theme that's so unappealing, but the game is a fantastic delivery game with a nice strategic fuck you mechanic.

I just ordered Exodus: Proxima Centauri on an impulse to satisfy my grand space opera need. Convince me why I should cancel or keep the order.