Please, Carcassonne Was My Father's Name: The Board Game Thread

King of Posters
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I got some Christmas money and was invited to hang with my roommate and another friend tonight, so I said let’s get some board games! I ended up with three from a nearby comic shop, and they all seem different and interesting. They are The Captain is Dead, Drixit, and Forbidden Island.

I had played Forbidden Desert before so I thought for expediting the onboarding stuff to go with that for our evening game, and we did end up having a great time. We won but technically that’s not true. At the helipad with all the treasures, we learned by reading one small sentence on the final page of the manual that we had to keep one of those two damn air lift treasure cards. This was a fun moment because it made us imagine how much harder the game we just had would have been with this rule in play. It inspired ludic awe and wonder!

The others seem cool but we didn’t get around to them. I know Drixit is respected, but has anyone played The Captain is Dead? The star trek episode in crisis theme sold me on it mostly blind.

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Played a few rounds of A Royal Will tonight, which is a simple two-card game about modifying the payout of a will. You all play weird aliens with extreme intergalactic power and voracious greed for money. It’s a lovely little box with beautiful art and nice pieces for a small price, designed and manufactured by people here in Seattle I suppose! If you like fast games that are easy to learn and inspire players to risky schemes of sabotage and deceit, then check it out! I can tell there’s more meta social strategy to the game than we realized in just our two rounds, so I’m sure this game has legs if you can develop some familiarity with it among your friends. There is clearly a lot of room for sneakiness, but I think there’s room for trust too!??

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getting into boardgames… played Dixit with my gf’s family for Hanukkah’s first night and had a cute time… we also played Mexican Train (just a dominos game) which was really fun, and cool because it’s like their staple family game.

I spent some gift card money on a few more. Horrified (looks really fun!), Fake Artist, and a Mexican Train set of my own.

Dangerous habit. I’m really hoping one of my friends starts to invite one of their friends so we can move up from 3-player games to 4.

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Fake Artist is one of my favourite party games of all time, good pick there. Technically you don’t need to own the game to play it, but the box is so cute!! Also I like to pay designers who do good work!!

Heard good things about Horrified too.

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Mexican Train is the family game of both sides of my family and I really, really, sincerely hope you can continue enjoying it lol

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Lighting the last-minute christmas gift beacon. What boardgame do I get my brother that he can play with his (usually) 3 friends? Brass: Lancashire was well received a few years ago when I got it for him thanks to a @Tulpa recommendation so something more complex like that works at least. Main issue here will be the limited options though due to time. If neither of these stores have it I’m likely not gonna be able to find it from somewhere else in time (although having it arrive after christmas isn’t completely off the table):

https://www.webhallen.com/se/category/3777-Bradspel

Since my parents want to get in on this as well I can afford to get something more expensive even. He mentioned that he had heard good things about Dune: Imperium?

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Eclipse is a good one.

https://www.webhallen.com/se/product/318779-Eclipse-Second-Dawn-for-the-Galaxy-Eng

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i still remember @tulpa describing brass as being set in “the shitty part of england where loki lives”, lol

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it’s great, max (& best with) 4 players. competing on influence, conflicts, card market, & action spaces. the base game is snappy, a few boring actions that got fixed with the Rise of Ix expansion (that also extends the game noticeably), but totally enjoyable without it. I’d get the expansion after the original game grew dreary

Eclipse is fun but long + big + expensive. Mage Knight fills kind of a similar slot

Power Grid is the obvious suggestion for similar, it’s also what I’d suggest for a medium-heavy game in general. if they’re enjoying Brass and want something heavier, options are limited from those retailers (Spirit Island)

quick look at the retailers, here’s what I’d pick to play

The King is Dead: player manipulation, tiebreaking
Oceans: player interaction, engine building, cool fish
Terraforming Mars: competing for points/spaces, some engine building
Spirit Island: co-operative disaster management, some engine building
Power Grid ← auctions, competing for access
Lords of Waterdeep*: worker placement
Viticulture*: worker placement
Concordia: area control, resource management
Agricola*: (very) competitive worker placement, some engine building
Wingspan: engine building, competing for scoring conditions

[*] with all the expansions

And here’s what I’d choose from elsewhere, with the last three heavier than Brass

Irish Gauge: fast, uncomplicated 18xx
London: more Wallace, competing for cards/spaces
Hansa Teutonica: network building, action upgrading, spoiling other player’s moves (nicely)
Food Chain Magnate: 18xx? with no companies/trains and predatory pricing?? tee hee???
1830: 1830
Dominant Species: 6 player worker placement + area control

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If it’s OK that it’s in English, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion is a fantastic co-op dungeon crawler that is quite approachable but has a ton of depth to it. It works great with 4 people but you’re going to want the same 4 people every time because it’s a campaign. It’s essentially the abridged intro version of the famously massive and expensive original Gloomhaven. But it doesn’t feel abridged, it feels like a fully realized and well-scoped campaign.

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I actually got to talk to him today a bit and just straight up asked him what kind of board game he was interested in. He said that while Brass has been a lot of fun he was hoping for something with a bit more player interaction but at the same time similarly complex and long (though not much more which makes me think Eclipse may be out). Also not too interested in anything cooperative.

Of the ones listed and available to me in physical stores (Oceans and Concordia was sadly not in stock near me) then maybe the best choices may be between The King is Dead, Terraforming Mars, Power Grid and Agricola? This is me just assuming that most that most Worker Placement games aren’t high on player interaction as well as Wingspan’s Competing for scoring conditions.

If any of the games not listed in those physical stores fit the description real well though then ordering from any online store for it to get here next week is fine enough and only a little bummer.

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terraforming mars doesn’t really have a lot of player interaction. it’s kind of similar to brass in that respect, in that it mostly comes i the form of getting in each other’s way while building stuff on the board

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I would recommend Power Grid. I consider it a perfect board game and I’ve been playing it for many years without getting tired of it (using a variety of maps, of which there are many).

Eclipse isn’t quite as complicated as it looks, but it is long. Especially with higher player counts.

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Root may be a good call for high-interaction competitive games. It’s like a lighter, fantasy furry themed version of the COIN games (such as Cuba Libre, A Distant Plain, Fire in the Lake, and Falling Sky)

Asymmetrical factions with asymmetrical victory conditions lead to a strategically rich game even though the rules seem simple on the surface.

There’s a decent digital port of it too

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Roommate and I learned and played Cascadia this evening and I was delighted that he said he really liked it after we were finished, because I’m trying to convert my friends into autonomous gamers. Cascadia seems really nice. I am excited to teach it to my mom and her bf this weekend, and for the chance to play this beautiful tile layer game on a table bigger than our dinky coffee table that we have in our living room. The game itself seems fun, and strategically depthful enough, but it will take more play sessions to really get a sense if that’s actually true.

Has anyone else played this? As a PacNW native it does have some familiar appeal.

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Root is very good but I’m mostly using this as an opportunity to tell the story of the time I was delivering the mail to a kinda weird commercial building and delivered to their office. Exciting times for a letter carrier.

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Has anyone played the old Dune game (rereleased in 2019) or the new one Dune: Imperium? BGG says the 2022 game is a little less complicated than the old one. I’m looking for something strategic to play with friends but things like Power Grid look a bit too much for us atm.

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I played a bunch of new (to me) board games this week. A few highlights:

Framework

This is by the designer of Patchwork. I’d been looking forward to trying it and a friend ordered me a copy from Germany a few months ago. I didn’t actually see that friend until after the English edition was out, so I ended up getting around to playing it later than I would have had I just waited. I like the Nova Luna-like mechanics.

Welcome to the Moon

This is the third in a series (the first two of which you can play on Board Game Arena). It’s a roll-and-write (but with cards, not dice) and it comes with a large selection of what amount to different games. I played the first two, and I can see myself buying this at some point.

Dice Realms

This is an odd game by the designer of Race for the Galaxy. It’s very expensive because it’s basically a Dominion dice game, and you customize the dice constantly as you play by switching out faces. It looked awkward to play initially but it really isn’t. I’d definitely like to play it some more, but I doubt I’m going to find anyone local who owns it and I’m not ready to buy it myself, in part because I imagine I’d have a difficult time finding others to play it with.

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Yeah! I played this once at a friend’s place. I had a good time with it, especially since I’d just read the book. Of all the IP based board games I’ve played, this one was the most effective at adapting its source material. It’s deeply asymmetrical, with everyone playing a different faction from the book and fighting for their own particular win condition using their own particular abilities. I was playing as the Fremen and I really felt like the Fremen. The game very effectively models the military situation on Arrakis.

I think I would actually rank it as higher complexity than Power Grid, though. But, it’s a lot more flavorfully themed, which can make a big difference for some players. I don’t remember it being especially difficult to learn or play, but I’m also a hardcore board game sicko.

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