Topic: Board games

There was an old board game thread, but it's closed.

I've been getting into them a little again recently. I got Lord of the Rings as a youngster, and I found it so complicated to the point I never played it. I always regretted that a little so found a copy on ebay at the end of last year for a few quid and finally got round to giving it a serious go a few weeks ago. The game came out around the year 2000, and I didn't realise until recently but it's actually a bit of a landmark title in that it's (I don't want to say the first?) but an early co-operative "European style" board game. As a result it's all quite mechanical in a way more modern co-op board games are not. I say that with limited personal experience and more as a result of a few videos I watched. The upshot is I have played as far as I could (eventually getting beat) a few times on my own to get my head around the rules and I am looking forward to playing through with someone else, but it is going to be a tough to win.

There are a couple of expansions, the first of which I think is worth picking up but I am not sure how much it costs. A quick glance on ebay is saying £100+, so I might not bother. There is also an anniversary edition of the base game which is about £20, it has new artwork and pieces but isn't compatible with the expansions.

I also picked up Escape the Dark Castle, this is another co-op game. You and another player have to escape 15 “randomly generated rooms” within a castle (15 cards from a 60 card deck), each room has its own scenario and it has a choose your own adventure vibe. There is a nice risk/reward between options in the scenarios, items and weapons you can collect to help you and a cool combat system, along with a boss at the end. We’ve only managed to win 1 in 6 attempts so it’s pretty tough, but super easy to get into. The game has expansion packs that each have 15 new chapter cards, bosses, items, player characters, support characters and new mechanics.

Another game I'm interested in is Strike HQ, by the same team as Escape the Dark Castle. Based on games like Command and Conquer it's a real time table top wargame. It's just launched on Kickstarter, looks pretty cool and I am likely to back it:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/themeborne/strike-hq

Last of all, I'm very interested in picking up Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth. It has heavy app integration (probably 50/50), lots of cool campaigns, exploration and battling. Looks like a lot of fun.

Anyway that's what I am playing right now and looking to get later on this year. Any other recommendations?

I do have a LotR game on Steam that I think was part of an Humble Bundle that had lots of Asmodee games. Not sure if it was exclusively Asmodee though.

Physical game wise, lately I've been playing Quacks of Quedlingberg with my partner. It's a really fun game but cost a bit (about 80-100 quid) to get the game and all the expansions and some coin protectors for the tokens. It can get a bit manic and also quite tense. Good game with a lot of variations to it.

Next time we play, we are going to introduce the Herb Witch expansion and lastly the Alchemist expansion

I've been playing a game called Forgotten Waters with a group of friends for the past few months. It's like a game where you roleplay as pirates and you get a little booklet with your backstory in, except the back story has lots of numbered blank spaces in it. Before reading your backstory, you have to answer numbered questions with whatever answers you want (normally it was incredibly NSFW in our playthroughs) and then you refer back to those numbered answers when you hit a blank space for much hilarity.

You also get points to tick off in order to read more of your backstory/conclusion/etc with more of your substituted blank spaces. It is supposed to be a co op game but everybody's desire to read their sheet out can result in some amusingly selfish decisions during tense battles with other pirates!

Finally, I bought the recentish reprint of the Dune board game. It sounds mental and so complicated because it's asymmetrical so you can't really just copy what the player next to you is doing.

When I eventually get the time, I think I am going to have a few two player practise playthroughs of it with my partner where we try out the different houses before I eventually invite 4 more friends over for a full game. I think if we get familiar with all the different houses first then we might be able to nudge people along in the right direction when we play with more people.

Played a few board games a few months ago as I was in a board game mood. Just played the classics Life and Clue. I have been running a Dungeons and Dragons campaign as of late during my free time.

Played a bit of Carcassonne yesterday with my partner and her sister. Had to refresh my memory of the rules as I hadn't played it in so long but it was quite quick because it's a simple game to learn and play. We also played the simplest rules you can on it.

Good game to pick up and play even when it's somebody's first time with it.