What board game are you playing - chat thread

[frenchfancy]

I thought it would be nice to continue on the discussion about board games.

Our favourite game is 7 wonders.

Our favourite card game is Bohnanza.

We are currently learning to play Puerto Rico.

Anyone else.

What card games would you recommend for a 13 year old, vikjul? I'm also looking for a card game stocking present, something fun or silly and easy to learn that doesn't take too long to play. I've looked at Archaeology. Are Cockroach Poker and Nobody But Us Chickens worth looking at too for that age do you think?

For a 13yo I would perhaps go with Port Royal, we love it! Very addictive, no set up time and plays in 15 minutes! Or Monopoly Deal perhaps? We must have played that hundreds of times, but tired of it eventually. We prefer both of those to Archaeology.

Nobody But us Chickens and Cockroach Poker are both bluffing games that are fun for all ages, but we have played Port Royal and Monopoly Deal much more.

I am thinking about Hive Pocket for DSs stocking, that might be an idea. Lots of people seem to like Zombie Dice or Ninja Dice, but I haven't tried those. Or Coin Age perhaps? Not sure how fun it is, haven't tried it.

Oh, Guillotine is another card game I have heard lots of good things about! I am saving it another year or two as I want to make sure my 8yo can join, but might be good for a 13yo?

Hi again crankyagnes, just thought of For Sale as an option as well, great fun and lovely silly art! We have had several friends with dc in the 10-14yo range go and buy it after playing it. Apparently there is a travel edition too.

Sorry for getting a bit carried away... Pretending to be a card game expert is proving a very fun way of procrastinating from dissertation writing...

Thanks for all the recommendations, your procrastination is v helpful .

I shall look at For Sale and Port Royal first I think, they sound great. We don't have any bluffing games yet either, so praps I should look at those two as well. I'm leaning more towards a card game than a dice game. We haven't got any purely dice games, not really sure why. I'll swerve Monopoly Deal though, it will only encourage ds1 to want to play the board game version, which I'm not a huge fan of.

We already have Guillotine, I'd've thought an 8 year old could play it quite easily, as long as they're not squeamish about chopping people's heads off ...

Great idea for a chat thread, love all the suggestions! Superb gasme to play and use some maths too is: City of Zombies... the tag line is you need brains to survive! It is excellent...tonne of reviews/awards

Bumping the thread just in time for Christmas

We have a lot of games this Christmas:
Colt Express is our annual family game purchase, DH chose it.
Dinosaur trivial pursuit - DD will love this, it was a panic buy as the other game I ordered (Dino Hunt Dice which I believe is the same as zombie dice etc) is still out of stock.
Monster Cafe for DS.
Across Africa - cooperative kids game that I found really cheap.

DSCs came round yesterday and they gave us 7 Wonders! Wow! And a card game called Randomise which looks fun.

They were thrilled to open a ticket to ride expansion and Star Wars dobble

Oh I bought Nefarious a few weeks ago too! It went on amazon deals. I had been unsure as I'd read a review that said the quality of the pieces was much worse in the new version. But I couldn't find a copy of the old one, so as it went cheap I thought it worth the risk. It's a great game, and I don't particularly agree that the pieces were poor quality - not as beautiful as some games certainly but not shoddy. So glad I risked it!

Sleeping Queens has kept my two amused over the past year.

Great practice for some maths too is City of Zombies...love the tag line for this..."You needs brains to survive!"

My two love sleeping queens :) my DD's best friend is getting it for xmas too.

Had a friend round today and played Randomise - really cute and to my amazement both kids actually "got it" and joined in well. They are almost certainly both autistic and I often feel like they don't get concepts like this but to see DS willingly drawing etc was brilliant. Definitely taking it New Year's Eve when we are seeing friends, there will be 4 kids and 4 adults and I reckon boys against girls

We also had an attempt at 7 Wonders - blimey its complicated! We played sort of open handed (three adults) and muddled through, we didn't understand all of it (possibly because I didn't discover the symbol list until near the end ) but it seems like one of those games that needs to be played a few times to really get it. And for a complicated game it is actually quite quick so that's a bonus. Really pleased with it, the concept it great!

Happy Christmas everyone

Big thanks to vikjul for recommending Splendour aaaages ago – because it’s been a week between school breaking up and Christmas we opened Splendour early and we LOVE it. Only played it with ds1 so far, but looking forward to taking DH on as well soon. And ds1 got Port Royal in his stocking and For Sale under the tree, which you also recommended, so looking forward to playing those soon.

And I wasn’t left out either, I got Lords of Waterdeep which I’ve wanted ever since Chillywhippet mentioned it with photo – that was back at the end of last year . I also got Takenoko, which I’ve seen mentioned on other threads and looks to be something a bit different to our other games so looking forward to opening that soon too.

Hopefully they will give us a good few hours of fun - once we've got our heads around the rules and had a play through to get the hang of them ...

Merry Christmas! Glad to hear that you enjoy Splendor crankyagnes! Hope Port Royal and For Sale are successes too!

We have some new games too, have only tried Rhino Hero so far, silly fun for all ages :-). Ds11 got Memoir 44 and Takenoko, dd8 got Dragonwood and we got Indigo and an expansion for Animal upon Animal for the family. Oh, and we got an expansion for Port Royal that I am looking forward to! And ds11 will be getting Survive Escape from Atlantis from his grandmother. So lots to try!

DS (8) was given one night ultimate werewolf for Christmas, really enjoyed playing that!

@vikjul (no idea if this 'mention' thing works!) what expansion did you get for animal upon animal please?

I am going to look into Splendor as I see it mentioned so often. Pleased to see Takenoko and Indigo getting gifted too, I adore them!

We played Monster Cafe today which was a nice quick filler type game. I think we could end up developing more strategy over time. It's a bit like coloretto in that you want to collect more of some things but if you end up with too many different things you lose points!

Cagliostro, it's not actually an expansion but a different (2-player) animal stacking game from Haba, that I have seen recommended as an expansion for Animal upon animal:

boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39210/tier-auf-tier-das-duell

You need to buy two, though, in order to get new animal pieces for four players. (I think it is out of print, but I bought it on German eBay.)

Ah! Thank you that makes sense. :)

Turns out Lords of Waterdeep has similar mechanics to Stone Age - worker placement, choice of resources - so that's actually been a lot easier to learn than I thought, thankfully We've played it a couple of times and both ds1 and I like it.

Takenoko has been a bit harder to get our heads round so we've been watching tutorials on youtube for that one and I think we've got the hang of it now. The little panda token is SO cute Who knew growing bamboo for a panda to eat could be so fun?!

Next up, Port Royal!

It is flipping adorable isn't it? And the little stacking bamboo pieces 😍

DH went back to work yesterday so we haven't played anything since. I have been editing my games wishlists. I had lots of different categories because I just add anything that's mentioned but I've now changed to a proper wishlist, where I know that I really want to buy them at some point (so those I've read lots about or played before) and another that is called "research required" 🤓😂

OK so I've edited my wishlists and the proper wishlist has the following:
Ticket to Ride expansions x3
Machi Koro expansion
Keltis
Loot
Bohnanza
Tatsu
Cacao
Roll for the Galaxy
Patchwork
Bananagrams Zip It
Quiddler
Quadropolis
Night of the Grand Octopus
Parfum
Barragoon
Kabaleo
Orongo
Arboretum
Fungi
Boss Monster
Celestia
Pandemic
Roll for the Galaxy

And my 'research required' list has...

215 games!

We got Pandemic for Christmas and planned on playing it yesterday but the mammoth instruction book put us off. It sounds soooooooo complicated...is it worth the effort?

In a word - yes! 😁

I have only played once and granted it was much easier thanks to playing with people who'd already played it (my friends who owned the game) - this also worked for us when we got ticket to ride a couple of years ago, we didn't play it until we had a friend over who had it at home and she taught us) is that an option for you?

I've never played Pandemic, so this might not be helpful advice, but if we don't know anyone who knows how to play we go onto youtube when we have a new game to learn.

Either we watch something like Wil Wheaton's Table Top or Rahdo Runs Through, where you can watch them play the game so you can get a feel for it and some idea of the rules.

Or, we search for a 'how to play' - there are some awful ones on there but there are also some gems and it is SO much easier to learn a game by watching someone show you than by trying to read the rules in the box IMO.

I know Pandemic comes very highly recommended by lots of people on this thread and when I can persuade ds1 to play a game where we co-operate rather than try to destroy each other we'll get a copy.

We got Ant and Dec's Saturday night take away. Our lotloved the forefits and mini competitive things in between.

We did get Santa vs Jesus. Never managed to play it but a friend said it was hilarious.

Dragonwood a great success, dd8 loves it and so do the rest of us! Dh and I really like the Port Royal expansion, we must have played the base game at least one hundred times, so very nice to add some new characters and mechanics. Dh and ds11 have spent hours trying to understand and set up Memoir 44, but haven't actually played it yet, dh very enthusiastic though!

Hurrah, so glad that Dragonwood has gone down well! :)

I have got my 'research required' list from 215 to 66. Most of the difference were games I deleted as on further investigation they didn't look like my kind of thing.