FAKE ARTIST IN NEW YORK: This is a really great “imposter” game, where everyone contributes to a drawing, with one person not actually knowing what the subject is. Has some clever rules to bypass some problems this genre has, and is just a really good laugh. Plus the box is really cute
AGE OF WAR: One of the better dice games I’ve played recently. There are bunch of cards on the table, and you roll a dice then decide which one you want to go for, having to match each row of icons on that card. There are a few other rules but the main thing is that you can try to steal other peoples cards, though it’s a bit hard since you need an extra icon. It was a very exciting game, with lots of cheering, though I’m not sure if I’m completely sold on it. I think we may have had too many players for it to be strategic at all, but it was a fun party game.
What dice games do people recommend here?
SAY BYE TO THE VILLIANS: Basically a co-op Cheaty Mages, as I mentioned earlier. This was the first time I played it for real. It’s… okay. I mean, I like it more than most co-op games because it bypasses the quarterbacking problem by not letting players share all their information, but I feel like it won’t get to the table often when we have things like Hanabi which do the same thing in a more elegant way. But still, I dislike most co-op games, so the fact that I think this is good at all says something. Maybe I’ll keep it.
lol, Mage Knight is a pretty good dice game too in that case!
Castles of Burgundy the card game is a pretty decent “dice” game, though it doesn’t have any actual dice. Instead you’re dealt a hand of cards at the start of each round that have dice printed on them, which you can use for various actions.
Alien Frontiers is a “dice placement” type game (ie roll dice and use them to take actions, different numbers of pips have different functions) which I enjoyed, but which kind of breaks down in the endgame into rather silly area control jockeying.
Steampunk Rally is a combination of die rolling and 7w style card drafting where you’re putting together a racing machine and rolling millions of dice to power the components. Great casual game since it’s easy to teach and rather tactile with all the dice, though there are some ambiguous rule situations.
I really like Castles of Burgundy (the original version with actual dice; I have not tried the card game).
Las Vegas is one that I wouldn’t have given a chance had a friend not introduced me to it. It’s a lot of fun and one that just about everyone seems to like/tolerate. I always play with the neutral player variant, since that adds to the strategy. I also sometimes add in the displacement rule from the expansion even though I don’t have the expansion.
I also like Discoveries, the Lewis and Clark dice game.
I only just played Roll for the Galaxy yesterday and liked it, but I can’t necessarily recommend it because Marco Polo is strictly better as far as dice-based action selection/worker placement goes.
Unrelated to dice games, I played Isle of Skye yesterday as well and greatly enjoyed it. It was designed by the people who made Broom Service (which I gave such high praise to a while back). In this case, we have a tile-laying game that feels halfway between Carcassonne and Castles of the Mad King Ludwig, except that the way tiles are scored, and thus the strategies pursued, are different from round to round, and randomized from a larger set at the beginning of each game. From Carcassonne, it brings the square tile format and the occasional emphasis on completing areas and connecting roads, while from Castles of the Mad King Ludwig it has a phase similar to the Master Builder setting prices: every player assigns prices to the three tiles they draw, and then every player has an opportunity to purchase one tile from another player at the price that was set. Any tiles that go unpurchased go into your own pool but the money that was set aside to mark its price is lost back to the bank. Overall, there is no surprise that it won the Kennerspiel des Jahres this year. It has an elegant design but upsets the notion of developing a rote, programmatic meta because of the scoring variance.
The next three games I get will likely be Imhotep, Onitama, and Scythe. I’ve played each once, and I found myself wanting to try them again.
The criticisms I’ve heard regarding Scythe are probably accurate (that the game kind of plays itself for the initial turns and that you are stuck with your faction’s designated strategy). But I can see myself playing it enough to justify the purchase regardless. The game sure is attractive.
I got a copy of Scythe through the KS, but the more I think about it the more I’d rather just go back to playing Kemet, which I think does basically the same thing but better and faster.
Isle of Skye is probably my new lightweight longer-than-filler game of choice. Even at full player count all of my games have taken like 45 minutes at most. Also, if you liked that auctioning sytem, you should check out Key Harvest, which is the first game I played which used that mechanic. It’s quite an interesting blend of worker placement/drafting, set making, and auctioning.
I’m playing my first game of 1880 tonight, though we’re almost certainly not going to be able to finish.
Kemet is kind of bad and it’s kept me away from Cyclades and from being more excited about Inis. The “it’s an area control game that feels like a wargame and is over just as it’s getting going!” thing is totally their trademark and I like it in theory but in practice it’s never that much fun as playing something lighter or heavier, and the information design of Kemet in particular is really bad. I don’t think I’ve ever played a supposedly quick game that required so much cross-referencing of the manual.
That’s why you make copies of the references for each player. I don’t see it as being particularly worse than most iconography-heavy euros, like say Race for the Galaxy or whatever. That all of the power tiles are available from the start, frontloading the information for new players is one thing and definitely a matter of taste, but I wouldn’t use that as an inherent basis for calling a game bad.
Elder Sign is another Yahtzee-like from FFG and it’s maybe my favorite of the genre, provided you are playing one of the expansions that make it even a little difficult
I have been playing the Pathfinder Adventure Card game like 3 times a week. My crew just got through the first box and started in on the third (fuck pirates) the only thing you really do in that game is roll dice.
NASTY 7 is still one of the best party games I’ve played, still highly recommended (but it’s broken with six people)
SPYFALL is a game I like less each time I play it. There are just too many things wrong with it, from people not having a reference card, to getting screwed if you have to answer a question first. Plus our group has found good ways to speak in code which makes it way too hard for the spy to survive. It’s especially bad compared to…
A FAKE ARTIST IN NEW YORK which fixes pretty much everything wrong with Spyfall. Get this instead of Spyfall. It also makes people laugh much more than Spyfall.
My younger sister is asking for board games for Christmas but she doesn’t play the games and is not super interested in anything more complex than like Sorry. So, I need the info on the good party games. She told me she plays in groups of 2, 4, or six.
I’m gonna get her Hanabi, but I figure I should grab something else too.
mysterium is great as long as you have at least four. scales up and down really well but three is too few.
pictomania is good for as few as three. two player competitive games rarely work though – I feel like inserting some bogostian insight about how it’s too difficult to take the rules of the game for granted with just two people – you’re better off with cooperative stuff like sherlock holmes or pandemic legacy.
I feel like I’m echoing SUSD too much with that rec so let me just stipulate that agricola and eclipse are two of my favourite games and they won’t pay either the time of day because they’re too medium-tight for their tastes, and I love medium-tight.
