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Having played a bit of Kingsburg with friends, I can say that the expansion adds a lot of good stuff.

I got my family playing Cluedo last night. Old game but still good. There are so many ways to fuck with people's heads.

for instance, by brother became utterly convinced that it was Colonel Mustard in the Lounge, just because I kept saying it was him in there and changing the weapon. He didn't realise I had colonel mustard and the lounge, and was trying to eliminate the weapon. He went and accused the good Colonel and had to leave cos he lost. fail.

For reference, it was actually Mrs White, in the Consevatory with the dagger.

Robert Florence thinks Cluedo is one of the worst games ever created, and I can't disagree with Robert Florence.

Twilight Imperium is good, I bought it on Sunday when I went up to Sydney to visit Vympel and Chris O'Farrell. We played it all afternoon and into the evening before Chris had to bail. Just getting the tokens and plastic minis out of their frames ate hell of a lot of time, and learning to play as we went along probably caused a few delays as well.

But it's fun. A 4x game for the tabletop, with friends. P. rad.

Stofsk wrote:Twilight Imperium is good, I bought it on Sunday when I went up to Sydney to visit Vympel and Chris O'Farrell. We played it all afternoon and into the evening before Chris had to bail. Just getting the tokens and plastic minis out of their frames ate hell of a lot of time, and learning to play as we went along probably caused a few delays as well.

But it's fun. A 4x game for the tabletop, with friends. P. rad.

It really never, ever goes faster. Whenever my friends get together to play, we always plan to be up until 4 AM.

Well i suspect it goes a lot faster when everyone knows what the hell they are doing and are familiar with the rules and aren't learning, like we were.

Also at least from the main game's rules it's possible to win the game in five turns if the same player consistently selects the imperial strategy card every turn and nobody else does as well. Of course, admittedly, this is highly unlikely to pull off in practice.

Nah. See, any time gained from no longer stumbling on rules is instead spent staring at the board strategizing and squinting at your neighbors suspiciously, because now you understand the rules.

The base imperial strategy card is a bit broken, especially in 3 or 4 player games. The expansion (the original one, not the new one coming out now) more or less fixes it.

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:Nah. See, any time gained from no longer stumbling on rules is instead spent staring at the board strategizing and squinting at your neighbors suspiciously, because now you understand the rules.

Heh.

The base imperial strategy card is a bit broken, especially in 3 or 4 player games. The expansion (the original one, not the new one coming out now) more or less fixes it.

Yeah, I suspected as much. Getting Shattered Empire is next on my list.

See, that sounds a bit like Chaos in the Old World. I was teaching some people to play it last night, and while they had the mechanics of the game down quite quickly, they still took a while to do their turns because they had to sit and think about what they were going to do and what everyone else was going to do.

Twilight Imperium is an "okay" once you have the expansion, but it's a strictly "set aside a day" sort of game. Much of its appeal though, is that it's one of the very few 4X space strategy boardgames out there, and it's definitely the one with the prettiest pieces. Mechanics and balance wise, it's mediocre at best.

If you can't set aside a day but want to play space 4x on tabletop, your best option is probably Galactic Emperor, which is in many ways TI-light. The pieces are fairly good, albeit there are no Death Stars .

GMT games is also coming out with a new space empires game (named Space Empires 4X, I kid you not), albeit this one doesn't have any pretty pieces. It sounds much more sophisticated than TI mechanics-wise though.

Did anyone ever played Thud! and how was it?

I spent most of my field trip playing chess. It's been years, but I did rather well. Can't beat the classics.

I found I had been somewhat spoiled by other newer strategy games though. Such as those offering a nuclear arsenal as your first choice for an attack

Eternal_Freedom wrote:I got my family playing Cluedo last night. Old game but still good. There are so many ways to fuck with people's heads.

If you want a really good remake on Cluedo then Days of wonder has "mystery at the abbey".
http://www.daysofwonder.com/mysteryofth ... t/history/

Where they have removed all the bugs in the original but still kept the game mechanics true to form.

wautd wrote:Did anyone ever played Thud! and how was it?

Crap. It's fun 2-3 times then it gets really boring fast.

I just tried and fell in love with Thunderstone. Deck building game kind of like Dominion, there's only one action per hand though, so there aren't any of those draw-play-draw-play super hands that crop up in Dominion. There's also 3 resources in the game. Gold for buying up heroes, action cards, weapons and equipment. Light to help you take on monsters. And Combat power to kill the monsters. Victory points are collected by venturing into a dungeon and killing a monster. The basic combat mechanic is to take all of your heroes in your hand and all of your weapons (each hero can only wield one weapon) and compare it to the combat power of the critters in the dungeon; you also need to bring along some amount of illumination depending on how far down in the dungeon you go (You need to bring 1 illumination for each level of the dungeon you go down). The Monsters add 2 strength to their combat power for each missing illumination. If the combat power of your hand is equal to or greater than the target monster's combat power you kill the monster and add it to your deck (critters often have unpleasant abilities that'll decrease your combat power, or require specific conditions to kill them). Critters in your deck are the only way to collect victory points, also killing them gives you some amount of experience, which you can use to upgrade your heroes, which is usually more convenient than outright buying the high level heroes. The multiple types of resources you manage seemed to me to be an improvement over Dominion.

I've been meaning to enter this thread, but I never really know where to start - too generic. I've got a beautiful collection of classic and modern titles ranging from obscure entries from the local hobby shop to the usual selection off of the top-100 BGG titles. To purely collector things like 1950's editions of classic American games that I inherited from my parents, who were also board gamers back in the day.

A few entries that I like that nobody talks about anymore: Robo Rally (best game by someone who would go on to create Magic: The Gathering), Twilight Imperium: Armada (best Diskwars-based game for people who got into Diskwars too late to buy Red Alert flats), Citadels (best game where you're never sure who you're screwing over at any particular time), Mall of Horror (best game where you may disown all of your friends for being assholes), Gloom (most giggles in a single game played by grown men), and Igor: The Mad Scientist's Lament (best game that shouldn't be fun at all, but is anyway due to my play-group's quirks and personalities).

Thunderstone is very good, but I would suggest that you get Wrath of the Elements. Aside from balancing the game, it also comes with a handy organizer that was missing in the original base game.

Robo Rally and Citadels are also both very good for what they are meant to do.

Also, you can start by pointing out how many games you've played or owned. I'm in the "played 60+ of the top 100 games in BGG" category.

Does anybody here know Circus Maximus? I remember it being a pretty faced-paced, toung in cheek salute to roman chariot racing.

Is this the one with the cardboard buildings? I have a copy.

irishmick79 wrote:Does anybody here know Circus Maximus? I remember it being a pretty faced-paced, toung in cheek salute to roman chariot racing.

Do you mean this
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244/circus-maximus
or this
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37345/circus-maximus

Also the old one has the 79 edition and the more famous AH 1980 edition. They differ.

Zinegata wrote: Robo Rally and Citadels are also both very good for what they are meant to do.

Largely what Robo Rally seems to have been intended to do is make your head explode.

If you want a similarly braincooking experience with robots, try and find a copy of Ricochet Robots, which manages to have about three rules and still turn out some fiendish brainteaser situations.

Vendetta wrote:
If you want a similarly braincooking experience with robots, try and find a copy of Ricochet Robots, which manages to have about three rules and still turn out some fiendish brainteaser situations.

Agreed. Ricochet Robots is great fun. There seem to be two versions though, with the previous version having some better rules. The first version had a diagonal colored line blocking every goal. Only the robot matching the color on the line could pass through. All other robots bounced off at a 90 degree angle, essentially a free move. It made for some interesting solutions. And the lines were easy enough to ignore.

The version my friend has, which I think is the original as it has german only rules, has a reversible board so you can play without the mirror squares or with them, (or with a mix of with and without by quarter)

Spoonist wrote:

irishmick79 wrote:Does anybody here know Circus Maximus? I remember it being a pretty faced-paced, toung in cheek salute to roman chariot racing.

Do you mean this
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244/circus-maximus
or this
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37345/circus-maximus

Also the old one has the 79 edition and the more famous AH 1980 edition. They differ.

Yeah, I'm definitely thinking of the '79 edition. I'm pretty sure it was just a regular board with some plastic pieces for the chariots. It was pretty fun - I remember some spectacularly brutal crashes. If I'm remembering correctly, it was possible to posthumously win a race, with your team of horses basically dragging your lifeless corpse across the finish line.

Cargo Noir was pretty decent when I've tried it this weekend. One of those games you quickly get the hang of it, but you have enough tactical decisions to make to keep it interesting. Nice artwork too. I don't know about its replay value (only did one game) but it's a good warm up game that doesn't take too long.

Today's gaming activity reminded me to pimp Dwarf King's Hold from Mantic, which is a fun little fantasy Space Hulk game, which has the salient advantage of being a lot cheaper than Space Hulk, and really fast to learn and fun for people who aren't normally into games with little plastic mens. (There's also a second starter box coming out soon, the initial one is Dwarves vs. Undead, the second is Orcs vs. Elves).