Current Events > Tabletop Board/Card Games

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What games do you all typically like? My friend introduced me to Boardgamearena about a year ago and I have learned so many new games with her.

I don't really like games heavily invested like DnD, but there are simplistic games out there, like Can't Stop, The Mind, the EXIT series, and more.

I decided to start collecting board games myself to have. They are very fun when you have a get together.

What games would you say are your favorite, top 3, top 5, or if you have that many, top 10?

Mine would be:

• Room 25
• Saboteur
• The Mind
• Telestrations (AKA Gartic Phone/Broken Picturephone)
• Codenames
• Burgle Bros
• Can't Stop
• Railroad Ink

If there's one game I have to knock though, it's Hanabi. Apparently it is a very well-loved game in circles, but the randomness of the card draws can really ruin a game.

Ultimately, there's so many games out there. In this last year, I'd say I've learned over 50 new games. I'm interested in seeing what games other people here are fond of.

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Munchkin is pretty simple and fun, even if a lot of it is luck.

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Aeon's End

Mystic Vale

Dominion

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Pazzak

mattymad posted...

Splendor is fun too.

Splendor is a great game for getting people into board gaming, simple game and it looks really good.

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My friends and I enjoy the classics.

Uno (we prefer a variant called Uno Flip)
Sequence
Sorry
Clue
Yahtzee
Codenames

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Lego Heroica

My favorite board game is Betrayal at the House on the Hill.
It's made by Wizards of the Coast, the same people who make DnD and Magic the Gathering, in which 3-6 players work together to explore a tile based house that's different each time you play the game. The house is full of spooky things, cursed items, and traps. But at some point someone will find something SO CURSED the entire game changes! Usually it becomes a 1vRest at that point, but sometimes the house itself is against you! The base game has like 50 different possible scenarios and there's an expansion that adds another floor and another 50 scenarios. I feel it's best if you have one person act as kinda the DM so the rest can just make their own decisions and enjoy the game.

Outside of Betrayal, the board game I've purchased the most as a gift is Forbidden Island. It's the perfect game for families and groups where 1-2 people aren't really into board games. It's 4 players, fully cooperative, in which a tile based island which is different every time you play is flooding. You must work together to keep the island afloat long enough to collect the 4 treasures and escape. You will sometimes run into the issue of one person trying to tell everyone else what to do, but if you can avoid that it's a great game.

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i don't think our interests overlap much, but i'll list my top 10. i have been out of the board gaming loop for about 2-2.5 years, though, so some of these might be hard to find (#1 definitely is)

Battlestar Galactica (with 2nd expansion)
Stone Age
Village
The Hanging Gardens
Five Tribes
Dominion
Carcassonne
Concordia
Keyflower
Azul

MyMainAccount posted...

Munchkin is pretty simple and fun, even if a lot of it is luck.

ugh. i've played exactly one game of Munchkin in my life. the first 20 minutes were great. everyone was having fun, levelling up towards winning. then, someone hit level 9. and they ate all the hate cards. and then so did the next one to get to 9. and the next and the next and... suddenly this game that seemed quick and light and fun has turned into a two hour slog.

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Medussa posted...

ugh. i've played exactly one game of Munchkin in my life. the first 20 minutes were great. everyone was having fun, levelling up towards winning. then, someone hit level 9. and they ate all the hate cards. and then so did the next one to get to 9. and the next and the next and... suddenly this game that seemed quick and light and fun has turned into a two hour slog.

I can see that happening at some tables, perhaps. Saving all the attack cards for the end probably isn't the ideal strategy though. Not sure it would happen like that all the time.

Have you tried Ticket to Ride?

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MyMainAccount posted...

Ticket to Ride?

That's one that everyone seems to love, but I find it dull as hell.

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LanHikari10 posted...

My friends and I enjoy the classics.

Uno (we prefer a variant called Uno Flip)
Sequence
Sorry
Clue
Yahtzee
Codenames

You should try Solo on Boardgamearena. It's Uno, but with a few twists:

• There are cards to shift hands to the person next to you, depending on the direction of play is currently going.
• There are cards to let you swap with any player in the game.
• You can play duplicates out of turn. If you have a green 5 and someone on the other side of the table plays a green 5, you can act fast and put your green 5 down on top of it and continue the cycle from your position.

My friends and I prefer it to Uno. It adds such a crazy element of excitement to the game.

AldousIsDead posted...

That's one that everyone seems to love, but I find it dull as hell.

A friend of mine hates that game. She'd probably rather cut her hand off than play it.

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MyMainAccount posted...

Have you tried Ticket to Ride?

yeah. it's fine, though not one i'd ever ask to play

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Dominion is easily my top choice, no question. We have every single expansion and almost every single promo card. So many combo permutations! Love.

Then stuff like Race for the Galaxy, Power Grid, the entire Arkham world by Fantasy Flight (Arkham Horror, Eldritch Horror, Eldritch Sign, Call of Cthulhu, etc), Battlestar Galactica, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Forbidden Desert, Pandemic, Plague Inc. Vanilla Catan is boring but gets a shout-out for being my gateway to much better board games - Traders & Barbarians is my fav expansion since it lets you mix and match different aspects, plus the free oil and Frenemies expansions are worth printing off.

Dixit it my favourite party game, then stuff Bang!, Codenames, Coup, Fluxx, Anomia, Scattegories.

Welcome to the hobby haha, ive been collecting for almost two years now and i can't stop.

Top 5 for me so far would be:

Nemesis
Western Legends
Roll Player + Expansions
Star Wars: Outer Rim
Unmatched

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MagnusX posted...

Dominion is easily my top choice, no question. We have every single expansion and almost every single promo card. So many combo permutations! Love.

Then stuff like Race for the Galaxy, Power Grid, the entire Arkham world by Fantasy Flight (Arkham Horror, Eldritch Horror, Eldritch Sign, Call of Cthulhu, etc), Battlestar Galactica, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Forbidden Desert, Pandemic, Plague Inc. Vanilla Catan is boring but gets a shout-out for being my gateway to much better board games - Traders & Barbarians is my fav expansion since it lets you mix and match different aspects, plus the free oil and Frenemies expansions are worth printing off.

Dixit it my favourite party game, then stuff Bang!, Codenames, Coup, Fluxx, Anomia, Scattegories.

My group tried Bang, and we couldn't get into it. Fluxx is surely a classic, but one of our friends won't touch it, so it's rare we play that one.

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Checkmate

Spacefarers of Catan is fun, me and the wife have like 7 different Ticket to Ride boards also. Heaven and Ale is a fun one that isn't brought up much.

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My top 10:

1. Terraforming Mars
2. Clank in space / Clank (technically two games but really similar)
3. Spirit Island
4. Sentinels of the Multiverse
5. Takenoko
6. Evolution
7. Above & Below / Near & Far
8. Pixel Glory
9. Heart of Crown
10. Kingdom Death: Monster

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dolomedes posted...

i only own a few board games and they're nature themed because i'm predicable.
the most notable one i have is photosynthesis, which looks cool on a table and is rather quick and easy to play

my old group liked that one. another nature-y one they loved was wingspan. both sold well, though i don't have any personal experience with either to offer a true opinion.

edit:

MagnusX posted... Battlestar Galactica

so say we all!

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Pokmon & Magic

We play a lot of Settlers of Catan, although I'm getting bored of it. When the dice aren't in your favor for like the entire game, it takes most of the fun out.


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AldousIsDead posted...

Splendor is a great game for getting people into board gaming, simple game and it looks really good.

And 3/4 of the expansion are amazing too!

Sushi Go! and Cacao and Lanterns and Azul and Blokus are some my favs right now.

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<3 hive. top tier abstract strategy game. but the only regular i got to play it with was quite a lot better than i was, lol.

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Above and Below / Near and Far are amazing games

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Medussa posted...

so say we all!

So say we all! Been thinking recently about rewatching the series.

Played a game with 5 players, but the guy setting it up messed up and added an extra Cylon card. Cylons def won, but for the first half of the game we were all wondering why the humans were getting crushed and playing so poorly haha

dolomedes posted...

unfortunately the cat theme is only on the box and some of the artwork

It's a boardgame, what else is there to "theme" but box and artwork?

MagnusX posted...

So say we all! Been thinking recently about rewatching the series.

Played a game with 5 players, but the guy setting it up messed up and added an extra Cylon card. Cylons def won, but for the first half of the game we were all wondering why the humans were getting crushed and playing so poorly haha

"you're a toaster" "you're a toaster" "everyone's a toaster!"

i did the same thing once, but the other way. should have been 2, but only 1 made it in the deck. we still almost lost... kidding, it was the smoothest game the humans have ever had at the table. the lone cylon was not happy.

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Anyone here have Tabletop Simulator on Steam? It's a good way to play tabletop games online. It's got workshop support so you can add your own games too.

I discovered a game via TTS called The Box that's actually a lot of fun. If anyone here ever wants to play I can send you the link to my discord (shameless advertising lmao) where I always chill out at.

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I really liked Sentinels of the Multiverse but it's cooperative.. Secret Hitler is quite the opposite!

MarbyIsBack posted...

Anyone here have Tabletop Simulator on Steam? It's a good way to play tabletop games online. It's got workshop support so you can add your own games too.

I discovered a game via TTS called The Box that's actually a lot of fun. If anyone here ever wants to play I can send you the link to my discord (shameless advertising lmao) where I always chill out at.

I used to play TTS a lot with my friends until we found that BGA offers a lot of the games we play, with less commitment to booting up the game, expecting everyone to have bought it, and hoping everyone's PCs could take it. Plus, BGA is a fully scripted game site, so it works all around better for us.

However, we do play some games still there, like Spyfall, Codenames: Pictures, and Chameleon. I am sure there's others as well. We used to play Celestia a lot on there as well.

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Man people really hate my suggestions. Ha ha. Here's a completely different couple then; these are more family game style games perfect for casual gamers. Scattergories and Balderdash. The first one you have to write words that fit categories within a time limit that start with different letters, but you can't double up with someone else. In the second you make up fake definitions for strange words to try and earn points by tricking people into choosing them instead of the right answer. Beyond Balderdash is that but it adds dates, people, acronyms, and my favorite; fake movie summaries. Balderdash is great fun with a creative group. I laugh so damn much.

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Just ordered a game called 'Duplik' last night. It looks fun, after watching some Japanese comedians play it.

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Sayoria posted...

Just ordered a game called 'Duplik' last night. It looks fun, after watching some Japanese comedians play it.

wildly different tastes, lol. but if that kind of thing is your thing, i know the artists in my old group liked one called A Fake Artist Goes to New York, which seems kinda similar (to my aesthetically stunted eyes, anyway)

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Medussa posted...

wildly different tastes, lol. but if that kind of thing is your thing, i know the artists in my old group liked one called A Fake Artist Goes to New York, which seems kinda similar (to my aesthetically stunted eyes, anyway)

I want some art games. Like, my friends and I all like drawing in some capacity, so I think this one would be a blast. I'll have to look into that one. The only other one I have is Pictionary.

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Sayoria posted...

I want some art games. Like, my friends and I all like drawing in some capacity, so I think this one would be a blast. I'll have to look into that one. The only other one I have is Pictionary.

basically, each round there is a prompt, but not every player sees it. you then go around the group, with each player adding a single line to the drawing. after a set number of lines (i forget exactly, but i think it's roughly 15), the players simultaneously vote for who they think didn't know the prompt. i think there's another part where that player can score points by guessing the prompt from the picture. but i don't remember the exact scoring details.

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Top 5 my friends regularly play:

1. Betrayal at the House on the Hill (and the Legacy version is even better)
2. Dungeon Mayhem (specifically the Monster Madness version-- playing as a dragon who sics his lawyers on people is hilarious)
3. Love Letters (so simple but so incredibly fun)
4. Arkham Horror (big Lovecraft fan)
5. 5 player Pitch aka Razzle Dazzle (a trump taking card game with a unique mechanic where you never know who you'll be playing against/with from hand to hand)

Honorable mention: We used to really love Pandemic.

Here are some of my favorites of the top of my head.

Dominion
Oceans
Wingspan
Lewis and clark
Terraforming mars
Arkham horror 3rd edition
Arkham horror lcg
The lord of the rings: journeys in middle earth
Mansions of madness
Carcassonne
Marvel champions
Viticulture
The quacks of quedlingburg
The taverns of tiefenthal
Concept
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Medussa posted...

basically, each round there is a prompt, but not every player sees it. you then go around the group, with each player adding a single line to the drawing. after a set number of lines (i forget exactly, but i think it's roughly 15), the players simultaneously vote for who they think didn't know the prompt. i think there's another part where that player can score points by guessing the prompt from the picture. but i don't remember the exact scoring details.

Omg, that sounds amazing.

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Just played a game called The Belgian Beers Race.

Jist of it is, you have three days to travel around Belgium and visit as many breweries as you can and try as many different beers as you can, and this will give you victory points but you can also get them through objective cards.

But the funny part is, you can travel by bicycle, bus, or hitchhike (you can bribe the driver with beer to make this easier) - but the drunker you get, the harder these options are and the only way to lower your blood alcohol level is to buy cheese and eat it at certain breweries. And if you end the day with your BA level really high, you are hungover the next morning and you lose time while everybody that isnt keeps going lol

End of the game comes when the 3rd day ends - if you're at the finish line in Brussels, you add up all your victory points and a winner is declared. But if you didnt make it back, you get a pretty harsh VP penalty.

Edit - also all the breweries are actual breweries. There's a seperate booklet describing all of thier histories. Pretty neat.

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