Board Gaming Thread!

Looking to see if there are any fellow board gaming enthusiasts in the Killer Instinct Community!

When I was a kid my parents used to occasionally set up family board game nights, but at that time the games were more traditional; Sorry, Monopoly, Scrabble etc. I eventually grew tired of these games because they really got old after a while. I got into Magic: The Gathering for a while, but eventually stopped playing this as well. Years later my best friend introduced me to Warhammer Fantasy, and my love of wargaming began - I’ve played Warhammer Fantasy, then left that for Warhammer 40,000, and left that for my current wargame obsession, Warmachine/Hordes. I’ve also played Dungeons and Dragons, but not recently.

A few years back, I started investigating the realm of modern board games after experiencing a game of Last Night on Earth at my local hobby shop - this was a real eye opener, as I’ve since learned how fun, immersive, and enjoyable board games have become. I’ve since begun collecting board games as I learn about them, usually through a demo at my local store, the Tabletop youtube series, or the glorious black hole which is known as Kickstarter! These games have really cool miniatures and components, and make for a great way to get family and friends around a table to play something together, even if on first glance they might not think they would enjoy it, as my gaming group had to be practically forced to play Last Night On Earth, which was the first modern board game I purchased.

Board games are also great for when you have too many people to play a video game together, or are without power (camping or during a power outage)! I’d love to hear about your experience with board/wargaming, and your collections!

My current collection consists of:

Wargames:
Warmachine (Khador) and Hordes (Circle of Orboros)
Freeblades (Haradalen, Kuzaarik, and Trilian)

Card Games:
Smashup!
Lunch Money
Munchkin (original set + expansions)
Gloom
Cards Against Humanity
Get Bit!

Board Games:
Shadows Of Brimstone - Kickstarter backed
Zombicide: Black Plague - Kickstarter backed
Last Night On Earth + expansions
Castle Panic (Munchkin edition)
Pandemic + two expansions
Arkham Horror
Zombie Dice
Wits & Wagers
Monster Fluxx
King Of Tokyo
Forbidden Island
Lords of Waterdeep
Betrayal at House On The Hill
Qwirkle
Munchkin Deluxe
Dungeons and Dragons - Castle Ravenfell
Dungeons and Dragons - Wrath of Ashardalon
Dungeon Roll

** OP to be updated with more later **

Tabletop games have potential to be really fun if you have the right group of people to play with. Things like D&D, World of Darkness, Magic, and even Cards Against Humanity are good for hours if not days of entertainment of you’ve got the willpower and the time.

I play a descent amount of chess.

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Magic the Gathering is my thing! I have an entire box of cards and several very awesome decks that includes a green/white Sliver deck, a blue/black library-milling deck, and a red-blue, direct-damage, card-drawing deck. the latter deck includes the cards Gelectrode, Niv-Mizzet, and Ophidian Eye, among others and is really fun to play. I have all of the Xbox games too, if anyone wants to play me some time. :slight_smile:

Tabletop roleplaying is my brother’s thing (he’s played a lot of different ones including Dungeons & Dragons: Advanced, D&D: 3rd Edtion, D&D 4th Edtion, D20 Modern, Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, (2 separate editions), and many, many more - right now though, he’s a Pathfinder aficionado). He takes after me and calls himself Raving Dork. We are a pair. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

The reason I bring up my brother though, is because he recently started going to a new hobby shop in town and has been buying a lot of stuff. One of the things he bought was a new board game called Pandemic. To celebrate his purchase, he decided give up 1 of his tabletop roleplaying sessions to allow him and his friends to give it a try. Everyone was intrigued, myself included, so I got to participate.

The game is all about various players playing cooperatively in certain roles to stop a multi-viral world-wide outbreak. It’s basically a race against the clock with multiple ways to lose and only 1 way to win. It’s incredibly hard, but also incredibly fun and oh-so satisfying if you actually win. The rules are rather simple too. We were able to figure it all out easily by the end of our 1st play session.

…and I say 1st play session, because since then, we’ve had many more. My brother has even picked up multiple expansions for it, 1 of which that even allows us to play as the viruses itself in an attempt to, well…

TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!! :smiling_imp:

I’m sorry; was that a bit much?

In any case, I highly recommend it and it won’t break your bank, like say the Warhammer series will. :wink:

I’ve heard of Cards Against Humanity, but have never had the chance to play it. :’(

If you like trivia, an old game I used to play a lot was called Mindtrap. I’m sure it’s still available if you look it up online.

Every once in a while my friends will play a board game called Arkham Horror. I don’t like it though, since I personally think the rules are too complicated. Still, I felt it was worth mentioning if any of you wanted to look into it.

I also like to play traditional card or board games every once in a while too, like Texas Hold 'Em or Scrabble. Can’t go wrong with the classics! :slight_smile:

There was a card game on the Sourcefed Nerd channel on YouTube that I watch that they used to play, that I can’t recall the name of (feel free to look it up), where they would draw 3 cards, each with 3 choices of: A) person/hero/villain/fictional character, C) a power or ability of some sort, and C) a nerf/drawback/hindrance of some sort. Each player would get a set of these 3 cards and once they knew who they had, buffs and nerfs all, they then had to discuss who they thought would win in a fight. Some of the buffs and nerfs and character choices were absolutely ludicrous and laugh-out loud funny. Eventually a judge would be called upon after the discussion, be told about each player’s character and their powers. He/she would then decide who won that round. If you won a round, you got a point. First to 3 wins. Although I never played it personally, it looked like a whole lot of fun. I’d give you a few examples of the cards that were pulled, but it’s too early in the morning for that (I’m just too tired to really think about it).

While I haven’t actually played the table-top board games, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing Carcassone and Catan on Xbox Live. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to actually play them with the actual pieces. :blush:

That’s all I have for now, but I’m sure it’s enough anyways. I’ll add more in futre posts as I think of them. :wink:

This was a huge roadblock that a lot of the people in my gaming group (many of whom were not gamers to start with) seemed to have - the way I solved this was by becoming the “rules guy” and making sure I spend time reading the rulebook so I can explain things to everyone, even if it means I’m spectating the first couple of games with the rules in hand. You’d be surprised how simple it is to actually play some of the more complicated games when you’ve had some practice with the normal mechanics.

We have Arkham Horror, but haven’t played it much. Pandemic is a common sight on our table, with two expansions so far. That game can go from “everything’s fine” to “everything’s on fire” so fast, particularly if the yellow disease stacks up in Africa…

I think the superhero game you’re referring to is called “Superfight,” which reminds me a lot of Cards Against Humanity. It’s fun to debate over the sometimes dubious combinations that come out of that one.

I own several of the games you’ve listed, as you’ll see in my updated OP! I probably still have other games to list too.

When it comes to being a rules lawyer, my brother is king, especially where tabletop roleplaying is concerned. He’s owned well over 300+ books for the previously mentioned roleplaying games and is intimately familar with the rules, classes, races, feats, skills, etc. - in other words, pretty much everything. It’s 1 of his favorite past-times (kind of like with me and video games). As a matter of fact, he’s a well known figurehead in the RPG community on the official D&D Wizards of the Coast forums and official Paizo Pathfinder forums. He’s created hundreds of characters that he’s shared on those forums too, that if you were so inclined, you could download for yourself. He’s helped numerous people and has even corrected the writers of the books on more than 1 occasion. He’s basically their version of @Infilament. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:


www.paizo.com

I personally dislike this term, at least in the way you’re using it. To me, being a rules lawyer implies a certain stubborn, ■■■■■■■ quality to a person who also ensures every single rule is followed in exact detail - such as forcing you to end your turn in a friendly game of chess because you took your hand off of the piece you just moved.

My main focus as the “rules guy” is to learn the game fast so I can explain and guide the other players in the process so that everyone can have fun and learn to play even the more complicated games. I have a lot of exposure to board/tabletop/wargames, so I’ve actually been able to make on-the-fly readings and comparisons to previously played games, sometimes allowing me to offer the comparison to the other players based on something they already know how to play; for example, there are a lot of ways you can compare the game Qwirkle to games like Scrabble or even yahtzee, and I’ve used analogies from both of those games to explain how to play it.

If you like Arkham Horror, Eldritch Horror is a faster version of the former (2-3 hours) with a merger of AH mechanics and Elder Sign ones. Plays really well.

Lots of good ones in your list, @xSkeletalx

Thanks!

The Arkham Horror pickup was all my wife’s idea, which was really amusing. Not that I dislike the game, but I knew it was one of the more complicated ones, and she typically needs a lot of instruction to enjoy tougher games like that because she sometimes gets overwhelmed by lots of rules. A friend of hers mentioned it (as we were playing Betrayal At House On The Hill around that time) and she was extremely excited about it. I think we’ve played it twice - it was probably the most challenging speed read of rules as I was playing the monsters and trying to learn what I could do, and what the players could do!

I find that the more complicated games can be the most fun when you learn them correctly, and that it’s important to explain to people that the games may be more complicated at first glance, but after a bit of practice they’re a hell of a lot more fun than what traditionally pops into someone’s mind when you say the words “board game.”

I’m currently chafing at the bit to get my hands on my copy of Zombicide: Black Plague, and it will be my first attempt at fully painting a board game. I’ll be getting a huge amount of miniatures from the Kickstarter, so it will definitely be a project; I already enjoy painting for my war games, though, so I know it’ll be a fun one, and will just take me a little while to complete.

@TempusChaoti, what are the favorites among your home group?

Ouija board :smiling_imp:
I have one on my coffee table

I got a walking dead board game last year but never had enough ppl over to play it.

Not enough interest among your friends/family, or just haven’t got around to it?

Just dont have alot of friends that come over to play board games lol…38 years old…we all have kids and work… Me and my fiancee played but doesnt work well with 2 ppl

Why you play Ouija???

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So no Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and VanGuard on this thread? :confused:

I would YuGiOh buy my deck sucks and too much Necroz that ruined my life.

Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! are terrible and only for kids (the card games, that is). Magic the Gathering was the 1st, is the best, and will always be the most poular of the 3 card games - it has a world-wide following after all. :wink:

I would do other stuff but I don’t know anyone who pkays card games except YuGiOh and Pokemon.

Go to any hobby shop on a Friday night, and watch as Magic The Gathering lives up to its name in every sense of the word. :sparkles:

Magic stopped being interesting for me a while back - the first Ravnica sets were released at the point in time where I was the most immersed in the game, and I think Ravnica was the best thing they ever did. I stopped playing due to the extreme amount of cards in the game and the shifting tournament format, mostly.

I eventually got into two other card games; Warlord: Saga of The Storm (which has since been abandoned by the publisher for some reason) which played like a tabletop war game, and Shadow Era which to me is a faster, better version of Magic. I still enjoy the Magic video games, though. I think I like those because they’re more restricted in what cards are available, meaning that building a deck is a bit more simple and straightforward.