Hello! This is a curiously specific post, I know, but looking at my frankly quite impressive board game collection, I realise that I’m keen to share it with more people than I currently do. Don’t get me wrong, I greatly enjoy playing with our regular board game group — this very weekend we’re taking a trip away to do nothing but play board games for several days — but as a group we have specific tastes that means certain games get to the table more often than others, and certain other games rarely get to the table at all. Everyone has different tastes, of course, so it would be good to try out these games on a selection of people — plus it’ll give me some practice in teaching them to people, as well as the opportunity to socialise with people a bit more than I do currently. (Part of the reason I wanted to move back to Southampton, of course, was so I could see my friends more often — something which I could probably do more of now I’m here!)
What I thought I’d do, then, is outline the games in my collection in one or two sentences each rather than detailed writeups, then if any sound interesting or appealing to you, dear Southampton-based friend, you can let me know and we can arrange an evening of gaming good times. Sound good? Of course it does. Let us begin, then.
Here’s what I have to offer you:
Advanced Heroquest: More complex version of Hero Quest. Explore dungeons, fight monsters, solve puzzles. Best played as a long-term campaign in which your characters grow in strength over time.
Agricola: A game in which you play a medieval German farmer. By carefully assigning your family members to perform various activities, you must build up your farm to be as successful and profitable as possible while ensuring you can still feed everyone. You will probably beat me at this.
Arkham Horror: A long, cooperative game in which everyone teams up to battle one of the Old Ones from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Relatively complex, but a lot of fun — particularly if you enjoy some light role-playing.
Ascension: A “deckbuilding” card game in which you gradually acquire more and more cards which can be played to either buy further cards or defeat monster cards to score points. Simple to learn, quick to play but a surprising amount of depth.
Blokus: A simple, abstract game in which you have a selection of oddly-shaped Tetris-style pieces and must arrange them so that they only touch corners. Meanwhile, your opponents are doing the same, and whoever uses the most of their pieces by the time no-one else can put a piece down wins. Available in four- and two-player formats.
Catan: A building and trading game in which three or four players compete to settle an island. Acquire resources, trade with your opponents and attempt to be the first to score ten points. I also have the Seafarers expansion, which adds a few extra mechanics and more variety.
Catan Card Game: A two-player card game loosely based on Catan in which players compete to build the best kingdom before their opponent does.
Carcassonne: A simple to understand but highly competitive tile-laying game in which players compete to control the most areas of French countryside by the time all the tiles have been laid.
Cards Against Humanity: One of the best “icebreaker” games I’ve ever seen — in Cards Against Humanity, one player asks a question or provides a “fill-in-the-blank” phrase from a black card, while all other players submit their answers using white cards with various words and phrases printed on them. The answers are then jumbled up, and the one who asked the question chooses their favourite, who then scores points.
Chess: It’s chess.
Chez Cthulhu: A gang of Old One-worshipping slackers must make use of their items and spare time in order to gain as much “Slack” as possible without going mad… or while going as mad as possible.
Cleopatra and the Society of Architects: A beautifully-designed game in which you collect various cards in order to construct Cleopatra’s palace. Similar in many ways to Ticket to Ride — see later.
Cranium Cards: I’m yet to play this, but it looks like a fun party game. Lots of vaguely cerebral, creative and improvisational challenges.
Defender: A board game adaptation of the ’80s arcade game. Yes, really. Not really the best game in the world, but I keep it around for novelty value.
Descent: Journeys in the Dark: While resembling a “dungeon crawler” (a la Advanced Heroquest above), Descent is actually more of a team-based strategy battle game. A team of “hero” players, each controlling one unique character each, take on the forces of the Evil Overlord player to complete various scenarios which can optionally be linked together into a story-based campaign.
Dixit: A simple game about creative descriptions, knowing your friends and bluffing. Each player is dealt a hand of unique cards with pictures on them. The player who is currently the “storyteller” secretly chooses a card and describes it with a word, phrase or sentence. Everyone else then picks a card from their hand they think relates to the sentence, then the storyteller shuffles and reveals them. Player then vote on which one they think the storyteller’s card was, with points being scored according to various criteria.
Dominion: A card game somewhat similar to Ascension in that you gradually build up a deck of cards as you play, but where instead of fighting monsters you are attempting to build up a kingdom. A lot of variety due to the fact the game doesn’t use all its cards in a single play — instead, a random selection is chosen for each session.
Dungeons and Dragons Adventures: The Legend of Drizzt: A simple cooperative dungeon crawler loosely based on the popular Dungeons and Dragons role-playing system. This is strictly focused on exploring dungeons and battling monsters rather than role-playing, however, and makes use of an easy to understand system that is quick to play.
DungeonQuest: A heavily-random, brutally difficult game in which four players compete to make it to the dragon’s lair at the centre of the board, nick as much treasure as possible then escape without dying in the process. Harder than it sounds. Not very strategic, but amusingly fun.
Flash Point: A cooperative game in which players control a team of firefighters as they attempt to rescue survivors from a burning building. Each player has their own special abilities, so collaboration and cooperation is a must.
Fluxx: A card game whose rules change as you play.
Gold Thief: A simple card game in which you use various “character cards” to add or remove to your personal stash of gold coins in an attempt to have the specific amount requests on a “goal card” at the start of your turn.
Guildhall: A simple, quick card game in which you must collect “sets” of cards with the same job on them in order to purchase cards with points on them. Each card has its own special ability that becomes more effective the more copies of it you have in your “Guildhall”.
Hero Quest: Super-simple dungeon crawler with a wide variety of quests that can either be played as one-offs or as a longer campaign.
King of Tokyo: A very silly dice game in which you play one of several B-movie-style monsters as they attempt to take over Tokyo. Shouting “RRAAARRGH” while playing is optional, but encouraged.
Last Night on Earth: A survival horror game in which one team of players controls the survivors in a small American town, while the other controls the zombies as they attempt to eat their brains. Several different scenarios give this one a good amount of variety.
Lord of the Fries: You are a zombie that runs a fast-food restaurant. Compete against your friends to be the first to create various dishes and score points.
Monopoly Deal: How do you make Monopoly good? Ditch all the rules, pieces and board and turn it into a card game with lots of screwing each other over. Simple, quick and fun.
Munchkin: A humorous card game based on the “kill enemies and take their stuff” formula of most dungeon crawler games. Not to be taken seriously.
Mystery of the Abbey: Cluedo for grownups. Taking on the role of a monk in the titular abbey, you must use your deductive skills to determine who the murderer is while going about your usual monkly duties.
Mystery Express: It’s Murder on the Orient Express: The Game. To be honest, I am yet to play a complete game of this, so I wouldn’t mind busting it out with some people who would like to learn it.
Pandemic: A cooperative game in which players team up to battle four virulent diseases that are taking over the globe. Like Flash Point, each player has their own unique special ability to contribute to the team’s effort as a whole.
Pit: A game in which you shout at each other in order to trade cards and attempt to be the first to collect a set.
Risk: It’s Risk.
Scrabble Dash: A simple word game in which you must be the first to lay down letter cards from your hand to make a word that meets the requirements.
Smash Up: A simple and hilarious card game in which you combine two “factions” together to make a single deck of cards, then use these factions’ abilities to smash the crap out of various bases and score points. The factions include zombies, pirates, ninjas, robots, fairies, dinosaurs, aliens and wizards. So yes, you can be robot pirates. Or dinosaur wizards. Or ninja fairies.
Shadows over Camelot: A cooperative game with a twist: one of the Knights of the Round Table might be a traitor secretly scheming to undermine the others’ hard work questing around the realm.
Space Crusade: The classic Games Workshop game in which up to three Space Marine players enter an alien spacecraft in an attempt to take down the forces of the Alien player and complete a specific objective.
StarCraft: The Board Game: A board game adaptation of the popular computer game that actually has relatively little in common with its source material save for the factions and units. In StarCraft, you’re competing against your opponents for control of the galaxy and its precious resources while attempting to wipe your rivals out.
Ticket to Ride: A fun, easy to understand game in which you collect sets of coloured cards in order to claim train routes across America and score points. Bonus points at the end if you complete specific routes on cards handed to you at the outset; penalty points if you don’t complete them.
Uno: Simple card game, popular with naked people on Xbox Live.
Warhammer Quest: Variant on Advanced Heroquest and its ilk. Warhammer Quest is quite heavily randomised, but a lot of fun and friendly to both individual sessions and ongoing campaigns.
Whack a Catgirl: An anime-themed card game in which you lure an adorable catgirl over to you with various “bait” items, then whack her over the head with other amusing items to score points.
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