|
My early gaming days had a lot of bad games, lots of Betrayal At House On The Hill and Fluxx. I tried Puerto Rico once but it was too dry for me. I think Galaxy Trucker was the game that really blew my mind open. Before that I at least had the common sense to, upon playing Arkham Horror, Munchkin, and Robo Rally for the first time to think to myself "This is trash, why are we playing this?"
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 16:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 16:54 |
|
|
I was dragged into the hobby by Arkham and Catan. I think I took well to Arkham because of all the time I've spent with tabletop RPGs, so it felt like familiar territory. Munchkin has never been super fun for me, but I had friends that enjoyed it. So, what can you do? (The first game I actually bought with my own money was Betrayal, though.  )
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 16:19
|
|
|
I bought Fluxx 10 years ago in high school while all my gaming time was put into M:tG. I just moved and found Fluxx in a box and chucked it. Probably a year or so jumping a dead car got me into a gaming group that plays real games.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 16:23
|
|
|
I played a bunch of Avalon Hill games when I was a kid, and when I got Twilight Struggle a while back it blew my mind how fast it played.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 16:32
|
|
|
I own Illuminati and DOOM: The Boardgame. But, in atonement, yesterday I introduced someone to the best worker-placement push-your-luck dice game, Mage Knight. Also Castles of Burgundy.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 16:45
|
|
|
Tevery Best posted:Pretty much the same. I got roped into the hobby by Arkham and Munchkin, and I own a copy of each to this day, because I never throw or trade anything away. I don't regret buying AH, because for all its flaws it's really given me a lot of fun time with friends. I even still drag it out to the table with some of them, even if more and more ironically these days. Are we airing our board games dirty laundry? My first "real" board games were Arkham Horror, Twilight Imperium, Betrayal at House on the Hill, and Talisman, playing with my roommates in college. I didn't find out about eurogames until a few years later when I started hanging out at the FLGS and learned about the magic of worker placement. Somehow I only managed to play Catan like once during that time period, and I didn't really understand it  Anyway, as a result of that I own copies of Arkham, Betrayal, and Talisman with the two smaller expansions. Because I'm a monster. I also have Dungeon Lords, Mage Knight, and Agricola, though, so I'm one of those redeemable monsters like Interview With a Vampire 
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 16:46
|
|
|
Poison Mushroom posted:I was dragged into the hobby by Arkham and Catan. I think I took well to Arkham because of all the time I've spent with tabletop RPGs, so it felt like familiar territory. Munchkin has never been super fun for me, but I had friends that enjoyed it. So, what can you do? Catan roped me in as well but my first purchase was 7 Wonders. I still have a copy of fluxx and munchkin though and I never get rid of games, but i'm also super picky about buying them so despite being in the hobby for some years I still only own like, 12 games (Not including those two). I have a bunch of friends with tons of games so I might buy at an even slower pace due to that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 16:51
|
|
|
Second game of Tragedy Looper, this time the fiancee played mastermind to my protagonist (after doing the first script with me as mastermind and her as protagonist. She won a very close game on the last loop). She tends to get overwhelmed with analysis paralysis, and appeared to be kinda floundering the first loop. Games like this usually aren't her cup of tea, as she prefers kinda "do something right now" games like Castles of Burgundy and Carcassonne instead of "here's a game with a lot of deductive analysis" like BSG and Resistance. Yet by the end she was really into it, and best of all after I won on the last loop independently came to the realization that she should have held back certain privileged information on the first loop to spring at the very end to torpedo me. She realized I won on the last loop because I basically understood every role and could counter anything she tried to do. Should get more and more tense as we go along, and eventually the mastermind will win 
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 17:00
|
|
|
I feel like I'm in an oddly privileged position, because I've been playing designer board games for so long that I got to enjoy things like Space Hulk, Catan, Munchkin, and Fluxx when they were new and there was legitimately nothing better on the market. This probably also accounts for some of my hostility to people who I believe squander the absolutely expansive and bountiful selection of awesome games available nowadays. It also explains my love for James Ernest, as he was the Vlaada of the 90's, the man who taught me that games can be so much more than dice and treasure.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 17:09
|
|
|
deadly_pudding posted:Anyway, as a result of that I own copies of Arkham, Betrayal, and Talisman with the two smaller expansions. Because I'm a monster. I also have Dungeon Lords, Mage Knight, and Agricola, though, so I'm one of those redeemable monsters like Interview With a Vampire No, owning those last three makes you the loving Antichrist. I got into gaming through Games Workshop boardgames in the mid-80s, by way of Fighting Fantasy and at the direct recommendation of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. I never bought into Warhammer, though I did own Adeptus Titanicus and still own Space Hulk 1st edition. So it's hardly surprising that I don't mind a bit of trash in my collection, but at least I can claim pedigree.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 17:32
|
|
|
I was introduced to board games through Hero Quest, X-Men Alert, Fireball Island, and The Omega Virus, but I still played and enjoyed Munchkin years ago. I feel kind of bad ever enjoying it, but I have now taken it as a challenge to be that mentor that guides people away from Munchkin anytime I see someone play it. So far, I have converted so many people at out Meetup. They may never make it to Dominant Species, but they usually settle at least within the range Dominion and Galaxy Trucker. I call that a win. Thankfully, I always thought Fluxx was crap. And I do not care what anyone says, X-Men Alert is still a fun filler game.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 17:33
|
|
|
enigmahfc posted:And I do not care what anyone says, X-Men Alert is still a fun filler game. To the point where I actually went in on X-Men: Under Seige. The minis were really great in Alert, too, with the exceptions of Archangel's wings and Storm's ankles.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 17:36
|
|
|
I played all of the classic crap growing up (and HeroQuest too actually) and then got really fed up with it all for a while before buying Catan a couple of years ago, liking it well enough, but not really pursuing it any further. Bought Space Alert (on the basis of this thread) for my dad on Xmas because he had been itching to play something and I Really Really Really didn't want to play Clue or Risk or again and now I'm a bit addicted and spending way too much money / have a steady group of friends + family to play with every week / signing up for local boardgame meetups.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 17:43
|
|
|
The first designer game I owned (I had played Catan several years earlier a few times) was the WoW board game. Apparently there were two of them, mine was a giant FFG thing that took several hours and involved lots and lots of dice rolling. I don't remember exactly how I made the move past that, but I do remember my group completely ignoring the PvP rules because it was such a huge setback if you got killed (and was heavily luck-based), so in retrospect us moving on to co-ops and euros is hardly surprising. I think the next game I bought, aside from two expansions for WoW that we used literally once, was Pandemic. Pretty sure some YCS people taught it to me on BSW like 7 years ago.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 17:45
|
|
|
Heh, I came into the hobby through Magic the Gathering. A game store opened up across the street from where I went to High School. So after school me and a few of the nerdier people from school would go there and game. In between rounds of magic I got introduced to other TCG's like Warlord and LO5R, and Catan, Tsuro, and every lovely Steve Jackson game under the sun....Munchkin, NInja Burger, S.P.A.N.C. (dear God loving S.P.A.N.C.). The store lasted about a year before going under, and I didn't play many board games for a few years until I moved back to my home city after college and met up with some of my gamer friends, and they started me on Agricola and Caylus and a myriad of other board games. I still hate Agricola, but Caylus has definitely grown on me as have a lot of Euros, especially Ground Floor, not a very well known one but certainly a favorite of mine. Also, if I ever see S.P.A.N.C. in someone's game collection, I am leaving their game night and never going back.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 17:48
|
|
|
I started playing Magic back during the Mirage block. That was about it for board games until I got to college. I played a shitton of Fluxx when it first came out. A lot of Chrononauts, too. Though, a game of UberChrononauts (base+expansion+Gore years) a few years back burned me out on it for the longest time. My first real intro to designer board gaming was Race for the Galaxy. It's kind of like being thrown into the deep end. Actually won my second-ever game of it. Now I'm that dude who's always buying new games.  
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 17:54
|
|
|
I was originally introduced to the hobby by OGRE at the tender age of 9. A hobbyist ran a weekly thing at the local library where he'd introduce designer board games/war games to kids. Some of them were garbage, but I still have fond memories of going there every week to learn a new board/war/minifig game. In retrospect Im kind of surprised he did this considering the price point on some of the stuff he brought and the kids who participated being fairly young. It took me a number of years to get into the hobby on my own since the vast majority of the time with my friends was spent exploring tabletop rpg systems with my friends. We didnt start playing board games until I was in high school. To my shame the first game I bought was arkham horror because I didnt know any better and liked the Cthulhu mythos/Call of Cthulhu.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 17:57
|
|
|
My first two "designer" board games were played at my friend Elliot's house in the mid eighties. Fortress America and Dungeon!  And I have worked my way up and down the genre ever since.I have come to love FrancoTrash a lot more than Ameritrash, at least in terms of my two favorite games. I've never had the opportunity to play a Vlaada game; I would like to, some day.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:02
|
|
|
I have no idea why I was reading a YCS thread where people were posting Dominion: Intrigue spoilers, but it got me to go to the gaming store where I'd only been to buy roleplaying supplies to ask if they carried Dominion. They did, and someone suggested I bring it to the meetup on Tuesday nights and that's how I started spending thousands of dollars on cardboard.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:05
|
|
|
My goal over the next couple of months is to try and ween my parents off Catan. My dad enjoys it but he's not that fussed by it, he's ready to move on to something with less luck and more meaningful decisions involved. My mum loving loves Catan to the point where anytime anyone asks "Shall we play something?" she insists on Catan. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that she wins two out of every three games of Catan we play. It's not saying much but I think Catan is much improved by using a deck of cards instead of dice to determine the numbers, but she hates playing with the deck. Even when I point out that when using the deck no-one EVER complains about resources or the robber coming up too often or too little she quips "But I like rolling dice." and refuses to play with the deck. I'm wondering what to teach them next really. Out of my current collection I was thinking of trying Concordia or Agricola. I know the Cities & Knights expansion for Catan would give a...well, "deeper" game but I only really want to do that as a last resort.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:06
|
|
|
Madmarker posted:Are you......Rutibex? Lets not go crazy here I never owned a Munchkin set and I never will 
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:06
|
|
|
Poopy Palpy posted:I have no idea why I was reading a YCS thread where people were posting Dominion: Intrigue spoilers, but it got me to go to the gaming store where I'd only been to buy roleplaying supplies to ask if they carried Dominion. They did, and someone suggested I bring it to the meetup on Tuesday nights and that's how I started spending thousands of dollars on cardboard. The old YCS Dominion threads were cool, because it was just people laughing at Dominion Comix and making fun of people who bought Villages
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:06
|
|
|
Zveroboy posted:My goal over the next couple of months is to try and ween my parents off Catan. My dad enjoys it but he's not that fussed by it, he's ready to move on to something with less luck and more meaningful decisions involved. My mum loving loves Catan to the point where anytime anyone asks "Shall we play something?" she insists on Catan. Rolling dice is the poo poo, I completely understand what your mom is saying. But Catan is still bad by modern standards, and dice rolling has been used in much better ways since then. Alien Frontiers, while not my favorite game, is really easy to learn, looks nice, and involves lots of dice rolling while still being a better game, but I know it used to be - and still might be - hard to track down a copy.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:09
|
|
|
Or, y'know, Castles of Burgundy.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:12
|
|
|
Countblanc posted:The old YCS Dominion threads were cool, because it was just people laughing at Dominion Comix and making fun of people who bought Villages Woodcutter is a bad card.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:14
|
|
|
silvergoose posted:Or, y'know, Castles of Burgundy. Man there's so much iconography in Burgundy and little bits that it's a huge pain to teach someone who (I'm assuming) is coming from a straight Catan background. Also the game just looks really boring; the components are bad and the player aids are cluttered and feel cheap. I like playing it but I can't imagine trying to pitch it to someone who was already uninterested in moving past Catan.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:15
|
|
|
My first foray beyond Axis and Allies, in high school, was Twilight Imperium 2nd Ed, which was basically hex A&A plus cards. Then Settlers and Bootleggers. In college I experimented with harder stuff, FFG stuff; it's kind of a haze, but at some point I got Dominion and Vlaada in my life and never looked back. Edit: I bought the TI tactical expansion, whatever that was called. PerniciousKnid fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jan 26, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:19
|
|
|
Countblanc posted:The first designer game I owned (I had played Catan several years earlier a few times) was the WoW board game. Apparently there were two of them, mine was a giant FFG thing that took several hours and involved lots and lots of dice rolling. I don't remember exactly how I made the move past that, but I do remember my group completely ignoring the PvP rules because it was such a huge setback if you got killed (and was heavily luck-based), so in retrospect us moving on to co-ops and euros is hardly surprising. I'd post my origin story, but it seems you already did.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:19
|
|
|
Poopy Palpy posted:Woodcutter is a bad card. Thought we were in the Netrunner thread for a second there.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:26
|
|
|
Single Tight Female posted:I played Sons of Anarchy: Men of Mayhem 3 player at about 2am on Sunday as the neighbours were having some kind of rave and nobody could sleep, and despite a few rules blunders, I totally loved it. This sounds like it could be fun with the right crowd, thanks for sharing.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:44
|
|
|
As far as my board gaming history: I guess I got started off playing Chess, Checkers, Scrabble, Rummy-O, and Monopoly (with no auctions and money on Free Parking) with my family. In grade school I started playing Magic and D&D because my friends older brothers where into it. This was back when you could still get Mox or Black Lotus in packs; I remember trading my "useless" dual lands to my friend for some much more useful Air Elementals and Royal Assassins  I played Magic up until the Alliances expansion and I continued with various D&D groups to this day. Our D&D group played Risk and Munchkin on occasion when we didn't have enough people for D&D. Eventually people got kind of bored of D&D (no one wanted to DM) and we just sort of drifted into playing Munchkin, Cards Against Humanity, Risk, and Texas Holdem. I was getting really sick of munchkin and I knew there had to be a better way so I started looking into that funny other section of the comic shop I had long ignored: the designer boardgames. I actually went over there to look for a new Munchkin set that might spice things up, maybe vampires or space. Instead my eyes where drawn to Pathfinder Adventure Cards. Our D&D group had transitioned to Pathfinder instead of 4th edition D&D because it was a more faithful system so I was already familiar with the brand. It promised D&D without a DM so I got it and brought it to our next gaming session; it went over well. We got bored with it quickly though so I started checking out board game stuff like this thread, Tabletop, BoardGameGeek, etc. Over the next couple of weeks I would get a few more games: Fluxx, Lords of Waterdeep, then Agricola. Once we settled on Agricola that's mostly what we played, with occasional one off nights for games like Arkham Horror, Talisman, Catan, Tales of Arabian Nights, etc. We liked playing these "classics" to get an appreciation for all the board games we missed along the way (even if we play Agricola 75% of the time). We never played these games when they came out so we aren't sick of them yet. Arkham Horror is way better than Risk so we're still having a great time. Even if it has it's own flaws it's nice to bust it out for one night to get a feel for why it has a bijillion expansions, same with something like Talisman.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:46
|
|
|
Can someone tell me a little about how Alien Frontiers plays? Like for example where does it fall on scales of cut-throat competition on one side, to multiplayer solitaire on the other? Does it feel like barely keeping your head above water?
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 18:57
|
|
|
A friend of mine ran into me on my first week of college and dragged me to the student org fair. One of the organizations there was a board game group, and I decided to check it out. Played some intro games, but wasn't too interested in buying my own... yet. I then played some more at that group, and also went to a meetup at one of the FLGS here. My first purchase was Catan, and two friends and I played 9 games of it in a row for 13 hours that night (I remember the number because I'm silly like that). I followed that up with Munchkin... then I ended up buying a bunch of other, better games. I have a reputation for being a snob, now. Oops.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 19:07
|
|
|
I started with Catan in high school and moved onto Puerto Rico and Citadels because I had taste and discernment. Was never foolish enough to get Munchkin.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 19:10
|
|
|
I have been playing games as long as I can remember and was lucky enough to have a group of like-minded friends back when (conveniently) GenCon was in Milwaukee and TSR's company store, The Dungeon, was in Lake Geneva. Back then, I loved Talisman and any game with a military/combat feel (Stratego, Risk, Conquest of the Empire, OGRE, Dungeon!, Car Wars). I loved TSR's bizarre minigames, especially Revolt on Antares. I had a friend who was even MORE into games than I was, and through him played a huge array of games, like Kings & Things, Globbo, Minion Hunter, The Rocky & Bullwinkle Role-Playing Game, the TMNT RPG, and dozens more I am sure. He went on to become an actual paid game designer (X-Wing Miniatures Game, Blood Bowl Team Manager, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3E) and I went on to write internet posts about games on my lunch hour. College (contrary to expectation) ended my gaming, since all my college friends wanted to play was Euchre, and I didn't do any tabletop gaming of any kind until a (different) friend declared he wanted to do D&D4e decades later. Once I picked up boardgames again with him, it took about a year to move through Talisman (again), Arkham Horror, Small World, Settlers of Catan, and Shadows Over Camelot, and then I started playing objectively better games.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 19:15
|
|
|
Mister Sinewave posted:Can someone tell me a little about how Alien Frontiers plays? Like for example where does it fall on scales of cut-throat competition on one side, to multiplayer solitaire on the other? Does it feel like barely keeping your head above water? In terms of the worker placement I think it feels pretty standard, there's a reasonable amount of "gently caress you I needed to use that space". The area control element is a bit... I dunno what word I'm looking for, but there's not that many colonies going out, it feels like you rarely have an incentive to directly compete with someone over a territory, often it's better to spread out and take control of one that hasn't been taken yet, and once the board starts to fill up (which is pretty late in the game) you're usually better off trying to get the techs that move or switch colonies around so you can move someone elses colony to simultaneously gain majority in a territory and cause a territory you don't care about to be contested between two other players rather than straight up trying to hold on to something by putting down colonies. It's not necessarily a bad dynamic, but it doesn't really feel like there's any viability to going "I want to control this territory and hold it".
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 19:15
|
|
|
Countblanc posted:The first designer game I owned (I had played Catan several years earlier a few times) was the WoW board game. Apparently there were two of them, mine was a giant FFG thing that took several hours and involved lots and lots of dice rolling. I don't remember exactly how I made the move past that, but I do remember my group completely ignoring the PvP rules because it was such a huge setback if you got killed (and was heavily luck-based), so in retrospect us moving on to co-ops and euros is hardly surprising. Oh god I remember that game. A friend of mine bought it and suckered us into playing it , then we all got stupid and played it again a week later. It was such a colossal piece of poo poo and it took like six hours to play, it was like arkham horror on steroids or something But yeah, I basically started with Munchkin and Fluxx and all that dumb poo poo. Worst purchase I can remember making was a copy of Zombies!!! I'd played it with some friends in a diner and had fun, then I played it again and realized that it was a boring dicefest that took way too long (but it had zombies in it!!) I think I started playing Pandemic on BSW after that, then read about some dudes in YCS playing dominion and gave it a shot, and now here we are
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 19:16
|
|
|
Fungah! posted:Oh god I remember that game. A friend of mine bought it and suckered us into playing it , then we all got stupid and played it again a week later. It was such a colossal piece of poo poo and it took like six hours to play, it was like arkham horror on steroids or something I remember busting open my copy of Zombies!!!, reading the rules, quickly putting it back in the box and gifting it to my brother.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 19:21
|
|
|
My one experience with Zombies!!! was that a friend bought it while at GenCon a year or two ago because we always go on Wednesday and didn't loving bring any games because we're dumb.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 19:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 16:54 |
|
|
Zombies!!!, Arkham horror with all the expansions, axis & allies, nuclear war, everything talisman, betrayal, android, Star Wars monopoly, cosmic encounter, twilight imperium,munchkin, illuminati, chez geek Lol
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 19:28
|
|
