So one of my family members is very sick and wants to play games with the family to bring us together while we’re all still here.
They can’t play any games too taxing or reflexy, and they want games that make us laugh.
So far games we have played are CAH (which I hate but it fit this purpose well), Incan Gold, Zombie Dice, and Love Letter.
Looking for recommendations.
Standard family fare? Concept, Catan, Ticket to Ride? Citadels?
Concept has been a hit with all of my fam.
i got sim city: the card game off ebay for a couple of pounds this week. unfortunately, i didn’t realise it’s a ccg, and what i bought was only a starter deck. and booster packs go for over £20.
I haven’t played it, but I’ve heard that Funemployed is the funniest CAH style game ever - You get a bunch of totally absurd resume bullet points, like “is a dragon” or “can speak the language of pandas” and then you have to do a mock interview for a totally normal job and try and convince the other players that you’re the best candidate.
Another CAH-but-better game is Billionaire Banshee, where you combine surreal “perks” and “quirks” of a potential lover and talk about whether you’d go on a date with that person.
mysterium
Oh yeah, what about Dixit?
Codenames and Deception: Murder in Hong Kong are the two not yet mentioned.
I think I want to get 7 Wonders for family get-togethers. It seems more visually appealing than Fairy Tale, and it also permits more players. I think Fairy Tale is probably the better game; I prefer the way it separates drafting from playing, and I think letting high-value cards show up at any point actually makes Fairy Tale less luck-driven than 7 Wonders. But that same emphasis on luck means Julie won’t automatically stomp everybody if we play the latter game.
Consider Sushi Go Party as well. It’s more overtly aimed at families/children, but its just as good a game as 7 Wonders in my opinion. The theming is actually very attractive imo, and works well with the mechanics (conveyor belt sushi and drafting mechanics actually makes intuitive sense together). It has a lot of room for variety because of how the deck can be customized in between games but the scoring is less tedious than in 7 Wonders.
They’re both good choices for what you want, mind you. Just suggesting an alternative.
I just picked up Arkham Horror: The Card Game and tried out the tutorial level with my girlfriend. We totally beefed it because we rushed through the investigation part and then got wrecked by a surprise boss fight. The game seems pretty cool, but there’s a weird sort of tension - I’m interested in trying out the deckbuilding component, but I don’t know the game well enough at all to build a deck at this point. But it’s a campaign, so if I don’t build a deck now, then I think I’m stuck with the starter deck for the duration. I think that you can do future campaigns where you start over with new characters and decks, so perhaps it’ll work out well that way. Or can you build a new deck for every individual game? Beats me.
I got a chance to play Imhotep. Really good “gateway” game that has interesting stuff. It’s far from perfect but good for a group that is not into playing deep euros.
Speaking of deep euros. Picked up a copy of Troyes and it is fantastic. Feels super punishing for making bad moves which is great and the dice usage is awesome. Only one play so I don’t want to speculate too much about how deep I believe it to be. Good first impression though.
I had a chance to play Troyes just once, years ago. I was pretty impressed with it and would like to pick up a copy one day to try it again. It rarely seems to be available at a reasonable price, though.
I’ve been curious about this one. One of my favorite games is The Bottle Imp, but some people I play games with don’t like that one and I’d like to find another game of that type as an alternative.
its actually unusual for a deckbuilding type LCG
There’s not really any deck building you can do at the start of the game with only one copy of the core set, and what deck building you will be doing costs experience points which you gain from completing adventures. So on the first mission you straight up cant deckbuild at all, and on the second mission you can modify the deck from your first mission slightly (upgrading cards, buying new cards with xp, etc) and as this goes on the deck you have gets really tailored to your playstyle.
It’s a LCG for people who don’t like the info dump of starting a new LCG and having to learn all the strategies before they play.
That sounds amazing, actually! I’m definitely part of the target audience you’ve described. Thanks, this makes me feel much better about starting with the default decks.
just played april in pandemic legacy. we all lost our collective shit when we opened the box containing the zombies
yeah, another arkham lcg tip is you can play three players after buying the dunwich legacy expansion without needing to buy another core box as long as you make sure to cover all five classes between you so you don’t have too few cards for deckbuilding
I do wish the individual “mythos packs” that add new scenarios to a campaign were cheaper though, I’ve only got one and I’m really hesitant to buy more
That rules, I’ll probably pick that thing up!
it’s a cool game, vastly better than regular arkham, but if you aren’t accustomed to ffg stuff already the amount of shit they expect you to buy and the difficulty of keeping it organized in the box is pretty distressing
not sure I’d rate it above panleg but at least it’s not consumed by a playthrough
Speaking of Pandemic Legacy, my game group JUST finished our campaign about an hour ago! The ending was a little anticlimactic, as my group had already been really diligent about vaccinated Faded cities. By the time we got to December, we only had 3 unvaccinated cities on the board! We ended up scoring 851, enough to get the best ending. I was hoping there’d be some giant mid-month twist or something, but it was still a satisfying conclusion.
Overall, this game was fantastic! I’ve played parts of Risk Legacy and Seafall campaigns too, and I’d rank this highest of the three, easily. I do think Seafall is much better than the critical consensus though - the twists are bigger and there are so many more ways to personalize your game. Sadly, my group has stalled out on that campaign though, as two of the players broke up and I can’t get them together into one room any more 
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Play Netrunner with me on jinteki