My step-brother bought me The Settlers of Catan for Christmas, and my friends and I have been hooked. I've recently bought Dominion and an expansion, which is also awesome. I've been wanting to try some deeper board games, though I don't know what would be good for my group of friends. I could probably deal with any type, but the friends I play with would probably not try anything too complex. Any ideas?
I'm assuming no one here really plays board games? It's strange, I find these two strangely addiction, figured there'd be more overlap between video and board gamers.
I just didn't see the topic. I'd talk your ear off about board games if you wanted me to.
7 Wonders might be exactly what you're looking for. You pass around a hand of cards and draft out of it, trying to play cards that give you the most points. There are several different ways to get points, and each strategy seems to be reasonably viable. What I love about it is that you can play with anywhere from 3 to 7 players and the game doesn't drag out since everyone plays their cards simultaneously. This gets rid of the waiting on others / shuffles that Dominion gets slowed down by. Fairly simple game (everyone will understand the rules perfectly after their first play).
I'm a huge fan of Shadow Hunters. Everyone I've played it with has loved it. Each player has a secret identity and (generally) the goal of the game is to determine who is on your team and who is against you can kill the opposition. It's a fairly quick game (~30-40 minutes) and plays well with 5-8 players. Has a few balance issues, so it isn't so much a strategy games, but it's good fun nonetheless.
Pandemic is a strategic cooperative game. Players play against the board in an effort to stop little cubes of diseases from killing the world population. Like most cooperative games this can be dragged down if one player starts "offering advice" that quickly turns into him playing the game solo. Still, the rules are simple enough where I think it's what you want.
Shadows Over Camelot has a similar play-against-the-board theme as Pandemic, except it is more interesting since there's a traitor among your team. Each player has information that isn't shared, which makes it so everyone gets to make their own decisions which saves it from Pandemic's problem. I've only played it twice, but it's a neat game and pretty light from what I recall.
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No amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck.
Agricola/Power Grid are very deep games that require a lot of thought. Dunno how well they'd go over with his friends. Arkham Horror takes 3+ hours (right?) so that also might not be a huge hit.
Carcassone is nice and simple though. Ticket to Ride is also a good suggestion, though I'm biased against it since I find it a bit boring.
Core Worlds and Helvetia are pretty fun. Helvetia's kind of similar to Settlers, but as far as I know the only edition sold is a German one. The instructions are readily available in English online though.
The "well-designed, deep board game that doesn't immediately drive away all of my friends with its complexity" is a difficult problem.
Someone else suggested Shadow Hunters which is a pretty sure bet. That's one our board game club breaks out a lot when we need a reasonably fast and easy to learn game that supports a lot of players.
Arkham Horror is cool, but beware, it's also f***ing long, like possibly in the realm of 3 hours. It's also not exactly light on rules, although people can play it without much idea of what they're doing.
Risk: Legacy is an excellent spin on Risk that I can't recommend enough if you enjoy vanilla Risk at all.
Oddly enough I play board games pretty much all the time and yet I always struggle to recommend any. But most of the greats have already been mentioned in the topic.
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Not changing this sig until the Bengals, Bills, Browns and Lions win the Super Bowl (10/10/10) The most American Canadian on Board 8 - #9 Bro on Board 8
Has plugins for most of the games mentioned here. No AI, obviously, but if you want to try and organise some B8 sessions of Arkham Horror, Zombies!, or Betrayal at House on the Hill, they're there.
Along with the Legend of Zelda board game.
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"I'm Commander Shepard, and you're standing in the biggest library in Citadel Space. Look me up."
Dominion was my most-played game for a while. I still play it and enjoy it from time to time.
Cosmic Encounter is my current addiction. You're invading other players' home planets. They'll fight back of course. The game follows a fairly specific turn phase but each player represents an alien race and each race has a special power that bends or breaks the rules in some way. And with an abundance of varying alien races, no two games will be the same. There are also plenty of variants (new decks to draw from, double powers, etc.).
Shadow Hunters is great. Plenty of different characters to play as (if you get the expansion characters) and not terribly complicated for newbie board gamers.
Bang! is also a good game if you like Shadow Hunters. Similar to Shadow Hunters but with more cards to play with.
Betrayal at House on the Hill is also good for casual gamers. You explore a haunted house, bad things happen and someone will betray the group and try to kill them (usually).
Cosmic Encounter is tons of fun and surprisingly simple to learn. The characters are pretty imbalanced, but my feiends and I are always laughing our asses off at the crazy s*** that happens.
Bang is a fun card game, though it can wear thin pretty quickly.
Other than that, I actually tend to hate most board games. I lose interest fast when I have to cram my head full of rules for a "casual" game.