recommend a new (to me) board game

[Dinsdale]

ok, so have been playing Catan + expansions for a while with the family, but need a new game for the xmas break.

have heard good things about Carcassone, Ticket to Ride, and a Pirating strategy game that I cant quite recall the name of.

Looking for something with replay potential, mix of strategy, complexity, luck.

 

[Andre]

Carcassonne is good and with expansions gives multiple paths to victory, plus a different map every time. The more expansions the more complex. Ticket to ride is fun, but more repetitive and fewer strategies.

 

[SnowRoo]

Probably overkill but here are 20 recommendations:

1 - Lords of Waterdeep:

In Lords of Waterdeep, a strategy board game for 2-5 players, you take on the role of one of the masked Lords of Waterdeep, secret rulers of the city. Through your agents, you recruit adventurers to go on quests on your behalf, earning rewards and increasing your influence over the city. Expand the city by purchasing new buildings that open up new actions on the board, and hinder – or help – the other lords by playing Intrigue cards to enact your carefully laid plans.

During the course of play, you may gain points or resources through completing quests, constructing buildings, playing intrigue cards or having other players utilize the buildings you have constructed. At the end of 8 rounds of play, the player who has accrued the most points wins the game.



2 - Medieval Academy

In Medieval Academy, a "family+" game, each player takes the role of a squire who wants to outdo the others in the different training categories to score Chivalry Points. To achieve this goal, during the six turns of the game, the players must wisely draft the cards that are the most useful to them and play them at the right time to move their discs up the training tracks.
At the end of turn VI, the squire who has the most Chivalry Points wins the game and is knighted by King Arthur!



3 - Ticket to Ride

With elegantly simple gameplay, Ticket to Ride can be learned in under 15 minutes, while providing players with intense strategic and tactical decisions every turn. Players collect cards of various types of train cars they then use to claim railway routes in North America. The longer the routes, the more points they earn. Additional points come to those who fulfill Destination Tickets – goal cards that connect distant cities; and to the player who builds the longest continuous route.



4 - Sheriff of Nottingham

In Sheriff of Nottingham, players will not only be able to experience Nottingham as a merchant of the city, but each turn one player will step into the shoes of the Sheriff himself. Players declare goods they wish to bring into the city, goods that are secretly stored in their burlap sack. The Sheriff must then determine who gets into the city with their goods, who gets inspected, and who may have their goods confiscated!
Do you have what it takes to be seen as an honest merchant? Will you make a deal with the Sheriff to let you in? Or will you persuade the Sheriff to target another player while you quietly slip by the gate? Declare your goods, negotiate deals, and be on the lookout for the Sheriff of Nottingham!



5 - Splendor

Splendor is a game of chip-collecting and card development. Players are merchants of the Renaissance trying to buy gem mines, means of transportation, shops—all in order to acquire the most prestige points. If you're wealthy enough, you might even receive a visit from a noble at some point, which of course will further increase your prestige.

On your turn, you may (1) collect chips (gems), or (2) buy and build a card, or (3) reserve one card. If you collect chips, you take either three different kinds of chips or two chips of the same kind. If you buy a card, you pay its price in chips and add it to your playing area. To reserve a card—in order to make sure you get it, or, why not, your opponents don't get it—you place it in front of you face down for later building; this costs you a round, but you also get gold in the form of a joker chip, which you can use as any gem.

 

[SnowRoo]

6 - Kingsburg

In Kingsburg, players are Lords sent from the King to administer frontier territories.
The game takes place over five years, a total of 20 turns. In every year, there are 3 production seasons for collecting resources, building structures, and training troops. Every fourth turn is the winter, in which all the players must fight an invading army. Each player must face the invaders, so this is not a cooperative game.
The resources to build structures and train troops are collected by influencing the advisers in the King's Council. Players place their influence dice on members of the Council. The player with the lowest influence dice sum will be the first one to choose where to spend his/her influence; this acts as a way of balancing poor dice rolling. Even with a very unlucky roll, a clever player can still come out from the Council with a good number of resources and/or soldiers.
Each adviser on the King's Council will award different resources or allocate soldiers, victory points, and other advantages to the player who was able to influence him/her for the current turn.I



7 - Dominion

In Dominion, each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards. In the center of the table is a selection of other cards the players can "buy" as they can afford them. Through their selection of cards to buy, and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck on the fly, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by game end.



8 - Codenames

In Codenames, two teams compete to see who can make contact with all of their agents first. Spymasters give one-word clues that can point to multiple words on the board. Their teammates try to guess words of the right color while avoiding those that belong to the opposing team. And everyone wants to avoid the assassin.



9 - Libertalia

In Libertalia, you must thwart the plans of competitive pirates over the course of three rounds while using cards that show the same crew members as your piratical comrades-in-arms. Yes, not only do they attack the same ships, but they employ the same type of ravenous scum that you do! Can you take advantage of the powers of your characters at the right time? Will you be outdone by a pirate smarter than you? Jump into the water and prove your tactical skills!



10 - Stone Age

In Stone Age, the players live in this time, just as our ancestors did. They collect wood, break stone and wash their gold from the river. They trade freely, expand their village and so achieve new levels of civilization. With a balance of luck and planning, the players compete for food in this pre-historic time.
Players use up to ten tribe members each in three phases. In the first phase, players place their men in regions of the board that they think will benefit them, including the hunt, the trading center, or the quarry. In the second phase, the starting player activates each of his staffed areas in whatever sequence he chooses, followed in turn by the other players. In the third phase, players must have enough food available to feed their populations, or they face losing resources or points.

 

[SnowRoo]

11 - Suburbia

Suburbia is a tile-laying game in which each player tries to build up an economic engine and infrastructure that will be initially self-sufficient, and eventually become both profitable and encourage population growth. As your town grows, you'll modify both your income and your reputation. As your income increases, you'll have more cash on hand to purchase better and more valuable buildings, such as an international airport or a high rise office building. As your reputation increases, you'll gain more and more population (and the winner at the end of the game is the player with the largest population).

During each game, players compete for several unique goals that offer an additional population boost – and the buildings available in each game vary, so you'll never play the same game twice!



12 - Pandemic

In Pandemic, several virulent diseases have broken out simultaneously all over the world! The players are disease-fighting specialists whose mission is to treat disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand.

The game board depicts several major population centers on Earth. On each turn, a player can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. A deck of cards provides the players with these abilities, but sprinkled throughout this deck are Epidemic! cards that accelerate and intensify the diseases' activity. A second, separate deck of cards controls the "normal" spread of the infections.

Taking a unique role within the team, players must plan their strategy to mesh with their specialists' strengths in order to conquer the diseases. For example, the Operations Expert can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases and which allow for greater mobility between cities; the Scientist needs only four cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal five—but the diseases are spreading quickly and time is running out. If one or more diseases spreads beyond recovery or if too much time elapses, the players all lose. If they cure the four diseases, they all win!



13 - For Sale

For Sale is a quick, fun game nominally about buying and selling real estate. During the game's two distinct phases, players first bid for several buildings then, after all buildings have been bought, sell the buildings for the greatest profit possible.



14 - Machi Koro

Machi Koro is a fast-paced game for 2-4 players. Each player wants to develop the city on his own terms in order to complete all of the landmarks under construction faster than his rivals. On his turn, each player rolls one or two dice. If the sum of the dice rolled matches the number of a building that a player owns, he gets the effect of that building; in some cases opponents will also benefit from your die (just as you can benefit from theirs). Then, with money in hand a player can build a landmark or a new building, ideally adding to the wealth of his city on future turns. The first player to construct all of his landmarks wins!



15 - Dead Mans Draw

Dead Man's Draw is a simple and strategic card game of risk and reward for 2 to 4 players. Players take turns drawing cards and combining their special abilities to plunder the most loot without busting their entire hands.

The core of your turn in Dead Man’s Draw is all in the flip: pulling the top card off the deck and using its special ability. Your turn isn’t over until you say it is, though. You can keep pulling cards as long as you like – until you play a card of a suit already seen, at which point you lose everything. Knowing when to stop and "bank" your cards is the biggest decision you make in Dead Man’s Draw, but being too timid lets braver opponents pass you up with bigger, more profitable turns.

The cards’ special abilities are key to success in Dead Man’s Draw, and they build off of each other. Each suit in DMD has an effect that the player can target when they flip a card of that suit.

 

[SnowRoo]

16 - No Thanks

No Thanks! is a card game designed to be as simple as it is engaging.

The rules are simple. Each turn, players have two options:

• play one of their chips to avoid picking up the current face-up card
• pick up the face-up card (along with any chips that have already been played on that card) and turn over the next card

However, the choices aren't so easy as players compete to have the lowest score at the end of the game. The deck of cards is numbered from 3 to 35, with each card counting for a number of points equal to its face value. Runs of two or more cards only count as the lowest value in the run - but nine cards are removed from the deck before starting, so be careful looking for connectors. Each chip is worth -1 point, but they can be even more valuable by allowing you to avoid drawing that unwanted cards.



17 - Cosmic Encounter

In Cosmic Encounter, each player is the leader of an alien race. On a player's turn, he or she becomes the offense. The offense encounters another player on a planet by moving a group of his or her ships through the hyperspace gate to that planet. The offense draws from the destiny deck which contains colors, wilds and specials. He or she then takes the hyperspace gate and points at one planet in the system indicated by the drawn destiny card. The offense vs. the defenses ships are in the encounter and both sides are able to invite allies, play an encounter card as well as special cards to try and tip the encounter in their favor.

The object of the game is to establish colonies in other players' planetary systems. Players take turns trying to establish colonies. The winner(s) are the first player(s) to have five colonies on any planets outside his or her home system. A player does not need to have colonies in all of the systems, just colonies on five planets outside his or her home system. These colonies may all be in one system or scattered over multiple systems. The players must use force, cunning, and diplomacy to ensure their victory.



18 - Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a tile-placement game in which the players draw and place a tile with a piece of southern French landscape on it. The tile might feature a city, a road, a cloister, grassland or some combination thereof, and it must be placed adjacent to tiles that have already been played, in such a way that cities are connected to cities, roads to roads, etcetera. Having placed a tile, the player can then decide to place one of his meeples on one of the areas on it: on the city as a knight, on the road as a robber, on a cloister as a monk, or on the grass as a farmer. When that area is complete, that meeple scores points for its owner.



19 - Alhambra

In Alhambra, players are acquiring buildings to be placed within their Alhambra complex.

The money in Alhambra comes in four different currencies and is available in the open money market. The 54 buildings of six types become available for purchase in the building market four at a time; one building is available in each of the four different currencies. On a player's turn, a player may 1) take money from the open money market, 2) purchase a building from the building market and either place it in his Alhambra or reserve, or 3) engage in construction and re-construction projects with buildings that have been placed in the player's Alhambra or reserve. The game rewards efficiency, as when a player purchases a building from the market for the exact amount of money, the player may take another turn.

Players with the most buildings in each of the six building types in his Alhambra score in each of the scoring phases, and points are awarded for players' longest external "wall" section within their complex. The game ends when the building market can no longer be replenished from the building tile supply, and there is a final scoring, whereupon the player with the highest score wins.



20 - Dixit

One player is the storyteller for the turn and looks at the images on the 6 cards in her hand. From one of these, she makes up a sentence and says it out loud (without showing the card to the other players).

Each other player selects the card in their hands which best matches the sentence and gives the selected card to the storyteller, without showing it to the others.

The storyteller shuffles her card with all the received cards. All pictures are shown face up and every player has to bet upon which picture was the storyteller's.

If nobody or everybody finds the correct card, the storyteller scores 0, and each of the other players scores 2. Otherwise the storyteller and whoever found the correct answer score 3. Players score 1 point for every vote for their own card.

The game ends when the deck is empty or if a player scores 30 points. In either case, the player with the most points wins the game.

 

[Dinsdale]

thanks for the list, but which do you recommend! I recognise the blurbs from their sales pitches, just intested in ones people have played and liked...

 

[SnowRoo]

thanks for the list, but which do you recommend! I recognise the blurbs from their sales pitches, just intested in ones people have played and liked...

The list is in my personal preference order.

Lords of Waterdeep is a great next step, simple to play but with good strategy depth.

I own and play all 20 and would recommend each and every one.

 

[Dinsdale]

The list is in my personal preference order.

Lords of Waterdeep is a great next step, simple to play but with good strategy depth.

I own and play all 20 and would recommend each and every one.

cheers, appreciate it. Just bought "Ticket to Ride Europe"

 

[Andre]

The list is in my personal preference order.

Lords of Waterdeep is a great next step, simple to play but with good strategy depth.

I own and play all 20 and would recommend each and every one.

Lucky bastard. Of those On the list I'd second Lords of Waterdeep. The base game has lots of ways to win and replayability. Add in expansions and you're not going to be repeating the same game over.

Stoneage is fun, but less variability, definitely worth getting, but it's not a 'if you could only play one game only' choice.

Pandemic is a good choice if you like cooperative games. Sometimes it's a good change to play as a team rather than against each other. Every Euro game player should have at least one coop game in their collection and Pandemic is one of the best (off topic, but plan to get Pandemic Legacy in the new year to play through 2016).

Alhambra if you go the Big Box (20 mini-expansions) which you can run as many or as few as you want and you're set for a thousand games always different.

Not as much fun though IMO as Waterdeep, Carcassonne or Stoneage.

So for the OP I'd go
1) Carcassonne (get the big box)
2) Waterdeep + expansions

Plus Pandemic to go with whichever of the two above appeals most.

 

[Chief]

We had about half a dozen games of Codenames with the family. They are Pictionary and Connect Four type game players, and were reluctant to play a game that "made them think on Christmas day".

They loved it.

 

[NTRabbit]

Love Letter is great, but a game only takes 15 minutes

Tsuro of the Seas is very good, and if you don't like the Seas rules variant you can just play regular Tsuro on it, whereas you can't play Seas on the regular Tsuro board.

March of the Ants, Lagoon: Land of Druids and 404: Law Not Found are games that I kickstarted, but haven't had a chance to play yet, though they're well spoken of by others.

Another forum I visit rates Space Alert and Twilight Struggle as the best games ever, and also recommends Dixit, Dominion, Kemet, Coup, 7 Wonders, Resistance: Avalon, Tigris & Euphrates, and Battlestar Galactica, depending on what kind of games you like and how many players you have.

 

[Chief]

We had about half a dozen games of Codenames with the family. They are Pictionary and Connect Four type game players, and were reluctant to play a game that "made them think on Christmas day".

They loved it.

Just to add: I have siblings and nieces/nephews ranging from PHDs to teachers to mechanics to IT workers to journalism graduates to marketing drones to housewives.

 

[Equus]

Rummy is also good.

 

[Goodo73]

We had about half a dozen games of Codenames with the family. They are Pictionary and Connect Four type game players, and were reluctant to play a game that "made them think on Christmas day".

They loved it.

Played Codenames on Boxing Day. Really good!

 

[Goodo73]

cheers, appreciate it. Just bought "Ticket to Ride Europe"

More complex than the original, which adds to it I reckon.

 

[Happy_Hawker]

Ok, bumping this thread, to add my own recommendations, and also a request for recommendations!

I am part of a Boardgame group that meets weekly in Melbourne, and there are many games there available to play! Since I haven't played many of them, it'd be great to get your thoughts on what you think I'd like, based off other games I played... and of course for anyone else.

In any case, the games I have enjoyed/recommend are: (Just 3 at the moment).

1. Dominion (2 to 6 players)
Based on building your own deck so that your deck can buy victory points. The initial rules are fairly straightforward, although some of the terminology is a little confusing. There are many interesting strategies and interactions. I've played it to the point where I just see 3 basic strategies, but with the right cards and different players, you will find new ideas and strategies to the game. Many expansions, with each expansion adding new layers to the gameplay.


2. Settlers of Catan (With seafarers expansion) (3 to 5 players, best is 4 players imo)
This game is great, as it balances the trading and area control elements. Place your own settlements, which produce resources according to dice roll, and trade the resources with other players. Seafarers for me is the best iteration of Settlers, as you get to explore, and you might discover gold... Or just find neverending ocean.

3. Libertalia (best with 5 to 6 players)
You each control a number of pirates, out to get treasure and earn money. Different pirates have different abilities, some are more likely to get the treasure, others have more powerful abilities. Also depends on what your opponents play!

I've only played it twice, but enjoyed it both times! There seems to be high degree of variation game-to-game, as each player has 30 different pirates, but in any given round 9 of those pirates are in play, meaning that you slowly discover the abilities of different pirates. Steep learning curve in terms of strategy - if you win this the first time you play it against more experienced players, you're a genius! But the 2nd time you get more of an idea of how to play and the incentives in each player's mind.

Ok, so that's it from me for now. Looking forward to hear your recommendations too!

 

[Present Not Past]

Has anyone here played Kingmaker? Used to enjoy playing this game with brothers and friends.

 

[Chief]

Has anyone here played Kingmaker? Used to enjoy playing this game with brothers and friends.

1990s PBM games no friends used to talk about this. Never played it myself.


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