The Board Game Thread

[Wascally Weasel]

Yeah, I'm aware through friends who take this stuff seriously that there are loads of actually well-designed games out there.  I've not played any myself.

There are few things in life as unpleasant as enforced fun in social situations.

Indeed, enforced fun is no fun - wouldn't want to play games with anyone that didn't want to.

[geraldc]

Backgammon. Love playing against my phone. I can consistently win. Also it doesn't laugh at me when I have to count aloud the number of places I can advance unlike my friends.

Jenga. It's essentially now a full contact sport, and generally ends up with someone on the floor getting punched.

Battle Ships. Miss. Miss. Hit. Hit sunk. It taught me the word salvo.

Not a great fan of chess, but I like watching it on TV http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_g_ZbGquSM&noredirect=1

[L CC]

Being brought up in a lefty household, we had a copy of the Marxist alternative  to Monopoly - Class Struggle. It had rules like "The order of play shall be determined by allowing the richest, white, middle aged males to go first". But like Monopoly, once the point had been made, it had little entertainment value.

I feel all deprived. How come I didn't get Class War with my lentils?

We played cards, mostly, or mahjong.

The biggest problem is finding people to play with, it would seem. I've often found that really, the game is a bit incidental to the company.

[Tigerrr]

I think I can recall a game derived from 'the man from Uncle'.  Not sure though. I was a freak for that show. Had the gun, the annual, the pen, the whole thing.  It made Xmas for me one year.
'Dover Patrol' was good too.
Mousetrap was truly awful. One of life's greatest disappointments, almost as bad as chemistry sets.

[geraldc]

I'm a year younger than my brother. I spent my entire childhood playing against him. I don't think I ever beat him at anything board based.  That extra years intelligence at is very telling.

[GothonaBrompton]

The absolutely worst one I have played was the Logo Game last Christmas when we were round family for Boxing Day.  It's just one big advert for whatever companies paid to put their logos in the game - including sickeningly obvious questions based on brand straplines etc. 

Not a board game, but related to the family thing - the silliest - but funniest if a few people are a bit tipsy, that we play is Killer Wink.  Apparently this was a favourite of hubbys parents, so was most probably a very old game.

Basically you all take a piece of paper and sit round the dining room table.  Two bits of paper have names on - detective and murderer.  The murderer has to wink at people around the table to 'kill' them without being spotted by the detective before everyone else is killed.

If hubby is a bit drunk he will randomly wink at people regardless ....... 

[Basil]

Another Backgammon fan here.

I used to play a lot of Monopoly and Risk as a kid, but I haven't played board games at all in many, many years. (Except backgammon when I can actually find someone to play)

[citoyen]

a quiz one based on the monumentally-dull-if-you-don’t-like-sport TV programme ‘A Question of Sport’.  It was monumentally dull because I don’t like sport.

I can confirm that AQOS is monumentally dull even if you do like sport.

[citoyen]

Add me to the list of yacf backgammon fans. I first got into it at uni after one of my girlfriend's housemates came back from a trip to Egypt with a set. That house was a hotbed of backgammon madness. Among other things.

[Kim]

Cluedo!  A vintage set with real lalalalalalalalalala-lead-piping.  That was good.

[geraldc]

The nice thing about backgammon, is that it's skill and luck. A few double sixes and you're in with a fighting chance against anyone.

[barakta]

I have always found Cluedo the boardgame to be very dull.  Monopoly can at least be funny and evil in all the ways it is designed to be.

I have been put off some of the good boardgames in recent years by a friend who manages to make explaining them excruciatingly boring and humiliates people who make mistakes - not intentionally but that's the result.  I prefer to be allowed to read instructions in peace and boardgamers I know seem to be more keen on SHOWING ME HOW CLEVER they are instead

[mattc]

We had a more fun alternative to Mousetrap: http://planetpm.webring.com/hauntedhouseuk/hauntedhouseuk.html

I can't remember much about it, except I think you could obliterate opponents with a ball-bearing dropped down some stairs (predating Indiana Jones!!!), and it was good fun. For 8yolds.

I think Monoply works really well while you're still learning the strategies. As young kids this takes quite a while (i.e severa Christmases). Perhaps the numerate adults posting here have forgotten this!

Cluedo - seemed to work quite well with all sorts of age-groups.

I miss playing board games. [I don't count Ch**s, which is great for what it is i.e. a completely different form of pastime - although let's be clear, it ain't a sport either.]

Friends (with some German heritage) introduced me to Settlers of Catan a few years ago (the German version  ). I thought that was an exellent upgrade of a Monopoly-ish game, and it solved most of the problems M'y. I expect Mr Weasel can critique it better than I!

[hillbilly]

I'd rather play videogames.

[interzen]

I've got Settlers Of Catan on my Xbox360 - it's the sort of game I should enjoy but I just can't seem to get my head around the strategies involved.

Maybe I need to play against actual humans ...

[ian]

I have the attention span of a distracted caenorhabditis so understandably I'm not very good at board games. I've squeezed through toilet windows to escape games of Trivial Pursuit. Monopoly we used to play as students, but that was cheat Monopoly, where you could hold up the bank, embezzle, and run protection rackets (like in real life, jail was no hindrance). I think the board caught fire once in what might have been a very literal insurance scam or a misplaced Marlboro Light. To think, I once turned down a job with a major and now defunct investment bank.

Chess. I learned the rules once, but really who has the time to think several moves ahead. I had an Intellivision console and a Tron cartridge. You can't derezz en passant.

[Biff]

The best game of Monopoly I ever had was a home-made Welsh version when visiting a few mates at Bangor Uni on a drunken weekend. War nearly broke out several times even before the game started because they couldn't agree on whether Blaenau Ffestiniog was more upmarket than Merthyr Tydfil and whether landing on a house in Aberystwyth should cost you more than Prestatyn with three hotels. I remember the worst penalty was 'Go to Rhyl, go directly to Rhyl.....' Happy days.

[L CC]

We had a Harry Potter game that was quite good- a bit cluedo, a bit trivial pursuit (with Hogwarts questions). I say "quite good" in the context of not-too-tedious for adults while maintaining the interest of children aged 7-9.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Current favourite is actually Munchkin, because it is fun even when you are being roundly thrashed by other players. A game has to be fun when you can suddenly turn tables on someone by playing a Humungus Fungus or a Monster's Mummy.

Least?  erm, probably Warcraft, the board game. 40min to set up and then each player takes about 5min to move, which is enough time for me to fall asleep, empty several beer bottles in frustration and play several games of indoor frisbee. I'd rather watch back-to-back episodes of Scrubs, and that is like having my brains removed with toilet cleaner.

[Chris S]

Pass the Pigs was a one-time favourite - but not exactly a board game.

[tiermat]

Pass the Pigs and Yahtzee were favourites of mine as a kid, but then again, as Chris says, hardly board games.

Monopoly bores me, guess what TLD wants for Xmas?

Connect 4 is a good time waster.

[Wascally Weasel]

Well, ‘beer and pretzels’ games will do – good as any other descriptor and covers fun games like ‘Pass the Pigs’, or card based games as well as games that have an actual physical board.

I like board and paper map based wargames too, but they’re more out of the remit of what I’m talking about here, although my actual favourite games of all time are probably mostly wargames of differing levels of complexity (‘Advanced Third Reich’ and ‘Pax Britannica’ being two all time favourites), it’s just very difficult to get people together to play those as the time commitment is generally ridiculously high. 

This is another of those things that computers were supposed to be good for but there doesn’t appear to be a big enough player base to support decent development – Avalon Hill tried to produce computer versions of several of its titles, with mixed results before going bust after somewhat unrelatedly diversifying into girl’s magazines.  The enemy AI/expert system seems to be the problem with computer wargames.  Probably the best WWII stuff out there was Norm Kroger’s ‘Operational Art of War’ series.

Wargames are a different kettle of fish when it comes to ‘enjoyment’ too and are generally much more competitive, in that you have to focus much more if you want to do well and your goal is much more about defeating your opponent than winning the game, not something that everyone enjoys (I don’t always enjoy it, which is why I’m probably not that frequent a wargamer).

A game like Ticket to Ride (another great game) I’ll just play and enjoy it – I’ll enjoy it a bit more if I win or at least do well if I’m honest but in general I’ll have fun playing it, even if I’m last. 

Wargames like ‘A World at War’* need concentration and time - it requires a fair amount of playing commitment just to learn the rules (196 pages).  But if you’re playing against a decent opponent it’s an incredible game, tense, exciting and rewarding.

I think ‘Junta’ is probably my favourite mixture of boardgame and competitive wargame – just silly enough to be fun, serious enough to be challenging and a fantastic game when done with six players.







*I have just bought the updated version of this from the US for $Lots.  Grand strategy global WWII, based on Advanced Third Reich game – simulates the European and Pacific wars at corps level, with counter level down to individual (named) capital ships.  Any game that lets you sink the Bismarck is ok by me.

[clarion]

Pass The Pigs had a passing moment when I was at University in the 80s.  It was OK, but lacked anything to maintain the attention.

Yahtzee was popular with some friends' families when I was young, but I never got the hang of it.

[Pedal Castro]

Fave games: Diplomacy, Rail Baron, Apocalypse, Awful Green Things From Outer Space.

Other great games but difficult to find like minded opponents, Third Reich (as mentioned above), and lots of STI war games, particularly Borodino which was one of their easiest to play due to a less complicated rule system.

Also play a lot of chess, backgammon and mah jong, usually in waves of interest.

[drossall]

This is a cycling forum. Why hasn't anyone mentioned Breaking Away, Devil Take the Hindmost, the Great Victorian Cycle Race (snakes & ladders on bikes), or Homas Tour?