Board Game Fun

I used to play a few board games from time to time. Always loved them. Last year, I picked up an iPod when Circuit City was going out of business and started looking around for some podcasts to listen to on the way to and from work. It was always more interesting than listening to music. I found one called the d6 Generation (I've mentioned it a few times before, and I'll keep mentioning it in the future, thank you very much!). At a time when there was a lull in board games in our group (due largely, I think, to a general dissatisfaction with 4E D&D), I started bringing in a lot of the board games I heard of on the podcast and elsewhere. Some were hits (Battlestar Galactica, Arkham Horror), some were luke-warm (Small World) and others were duds (Cutthroat Caverns). I just wanted to take some time to talk about a few of my favorites:

Battlestar Galactica - I know it sounds really geeky (and it is), but this is just a stand out game. It's a basic cooperative game with a traitor element mixed in. Everyone's trying to reach Kobol with enough fuel, population, food and morale. But there are Cylons in the mix. Sometimes they show up in the middle of the game, sometimes they're there from the beginning. Sometimes they're playing it close to the vest, other times they're overtly against you from the beginning. The best part of the game is when the accusations start flying and people are getting tossed in the brig left and right. Good fun...

Arkham Horror - This is a game for an entire evening. The sheer weight of pieces in this game could probably serve equally well as a ship's anchor. It's a great game for our group because it can use up to eight players, and we sometimes run on the large side in terms of players. An entirely cooperative game, in this one we each play an investigator trying to stop one of the Ancient Old Ones from entering this world and destroying everything. There's so much flavor to the game it's fun even when you're losing. My only problem with this is that, despite most people writing about how hard the game is, our game has a hard time losing this one. We treat it as a puzzle and each person takes the optimal path to victory. I'd love to figure out how to ramp up the victory without making it too hard. If we could get it where we win only 40-50% of the games, I'd be really happy. Right now we're up at around 80-90%.

Bananagrams - Not an overly popular one among our group at home, but Laura and I were introduced to this one through my college buddies and it's an absolute blast. Using scrabble tiles, you try to build a "crossword puzzle" of all your letters as fast as you can, while grabbing more letters as you go. As soon as the last letters are taken, the first person to use all theirs wins the game. Usually you can get a game knocked out in 5 or 6 minutes, so even if you're down one game, you can just be ready for the next one. My family is hooked on it now too, so we still get to play it a lot.

BANG! - I crack up playing this game. A quick card game set in the wild west where everyone's got a job but nobody knows who is who. We've got a sheriff (who is revealed to everyone and has to just survive the game), and then outlaws (who win if the sheriff dies, regardless of whether they live), vices (who win if the sheriff wins, regardless of whether they live), and the renegade (who has to kill everyone but the sheriff, then kill the sheriff). While the idea of playing secretive is cool, usually you can pick out who's who in the first couple turns, because as the outlaw, if you're not going after the sheriff as soon as you can, you're not likely to win. It's a simple game that we usually play when we have 10-15 minutes before a roleplaying game or we're waiting on someone to start a different game. Good times.

Settlers of Catan - An oldie but goodie, this is a game that I was introduced to through my brother. It has an element of economy, an element of trading, and an element of territory-grabbing. All three mixed together solidly to create a nice 1-2 hour board game. It plays best at three players or five players (with the expansion) I think. With four or six, the board gets too crowded and generally one player is left behind.

Werewolf - Not sure if I should really call this one a board game because it lacks a board, but here it is. This is the one we play when we have a big group (12+ people preferably). One person sits out of the game as the GM while everyone else is either a villager or a werewolf. Each night, the werewolves eat someone. Each day, the villagers (which include the werewolves) all argue and vote on who they think is the werewolf and lynch them. Wash, rinse, repeat until the werewolves are all dead or the villagers are outnumbered by them. It can create some really bizarre conversations, and trying to second-guess strategies. "If he was a werewolf, he'd pick me first, but knowing that I know that, would he not pick me to throw me off the scent, but knowing that I know that I know that, would he..."

Perudo - Also called "Liar's Dice", this is the pirate dice game. Everyone gets five dice and rolls them, covered so only the player knows what they rolled. Then you go around bidding on how many of certain numbers you think there are among everyone's dice, increasing the risk each time. Once someone doesn't believe you, they call you on it and everyone reveals. If there were that many, the person who called you on it loses one of their dice. If there weren't, you lose one. Depending on the number of players, it can go pretty fast or take an evening. I like it because it takes little set up and involves BS-ing people.

Anywho, those are some of my favorites. Until next time...