icosahedron152:
Folks, I haven't heard of any of these games, and I don't have the time to Google every game mentioned in the hope that it might prove interesting.
My definition of 'classics' is Monopoly and Ludo...
If we're suggesting / recommending games here, can we at least employ a sentence for each, to state what the game is about, its type, genre, skill level, age range, etc. Thanks. :)
Absolutely! Let me be your guide through
artisanal board gaming.......
Wingspan -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/266192/wingspan - A casual engine building / tableau building game with minimal interaction themed around birds and being an ornithologist. End the game with the most points, and you win! A game for up to 5 players, with a solo mode.
Engine Building - An idea in modern board gaming that has you building a kind o 'rube goldberg machine' where when you do one thing, it kicks off a chain reaction series of other things!
Tableau Building - An idea in modern board gaming where each player has their own mini-board that acts as their play space. This may include a place to store bits and cards, or a whole different place where mechanics can take place!
Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boar...stained-glass-sintra - Azul, the original was a great little casual game for up to 4 players where you took turns grabbing tiles in the fashion of a Portuguese mosaic to place on your own tableau to construct a kind of sudoku arrangement to get as many points as possible by the end of the round. A variant on push your luck style games where you take turns taking only one color tiles from the middle of the five to choose from, but you risk losing points at the end of the game! This newer sequel has you constructing a pretty stained glass window (with pieces that look unusually like the hard candy Charms) in a bid to earn as many points as possible by the end of the game, without pushing you too far into the negative points reward at the end of the game for taking too many tiles you can't use! A casual game for 2-4 players.
Push Your Luck - A modern idea that's started to show up more and more in dice and card games. Think of it like a spin on Blackjack where you could either stay, and make out because everyone else busts, or hit, go a little bit further, get a bit closer to the sun, and hit the big jackpot.
Betrayal at House on the Hill -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boar.../betrayal-house-hill - A fancy board game take on The Haunting of Hill House and all of it's many spin offs. A group of teens/adults are tasked to spend a night in this spooky house, and it's up to the players to explore it, tile by tile, until their nerves finally snap, and the haunting happens. One or more players turn on the others and are tasked with flipping through a separate manual, and move on to play what feels like sometimes a whole new game of cat and mouse, hide and seek, kill the survivors/haunted ones or more. A
ton of replayability here, and especially as TheatricalHysterics mentioned, there's also a D&D Baldur's Gate themed version!
https://boardgamegeek.com/boar...etrayal-baldurs-gate
Tile laying Many classic Euro board games had a theme of tile laying where players were tasked to build the board themselves in an exciting way that made every game feel different and unique. Modern Euro/American games have adopted this play style and formed it around this concept of having the board almost be a whole new player in that each tile may do something different, unique, or spectacular in how it changes the game.
Legacy - Legacy games, as TheatricalHysterics also mentioned, are a realtively new design starting around the mid 2000's with Risk Legacy. Essentially, you get together with a group of the same people (typically) and play the game several times over the span of a couple months, with each game changing the rules, board or idea of what the game even is doing each time you play. Popular games have been Risk Legacy, Pandemic Legacy or Betrayal at House on the Hill Legacy. Pandemic Legacy is hailed as one of the best implementations of this sort of function, and it's definitely worth checking out:
https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/review-legacy/
Tokaido -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/123540/tokaido - A game about travelling the feudal Japanese countryside. As you move through the map, each space does something different. Some spaces have you collecting money, others give you opportunities to spend money to get different ways to earn more points for the end of the game. It's a very relaxing game for 2-5 players that can really be a good way to ease people into the idea of more abstract, pretty games.
Abstract Games - Modern board gaming has hit this critical mass where games are mostly big, or heavy, crunchy with tons of fluff. The abstract genre grew from that and is beginning to flourish now. Games with just enough fluff to make you smile and really engage, without being very rules heavy, or over complex. Just enough strategy involved to get you to think about what you're doing, and make you want to play again, without feeling like you're being pushed to the side by those nerds at the other side of the table.
Chez Geek -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/553/chez-geek - Admittedly I haven't heard of this one, but it's by Steve Jackson, so it can't be bad! Here's the rundown from BoardGameGeek - In this light, humorous, and fast-paced card game that parodies geek culture and co-habitation, players are roommates just trying to get through life with as little work as possible. A game for 2-5 players.
Steve Jackson - A game designer probably most famous in the Board Game world for his polarizing game called
Munchkin, which, if you're familiar with the term, is exactly what it seems like. You're trying to build the most overpowered little dungeon-delver, even at the expense of your friends.
Robo Rally -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/216201/robo-rally - A game that was recently re-released within the last few years, originally released in 1999. A kind of robot 'programming' maze navigation battle arena.......yeah........yeah that makes sense.
Programming Games - Much like you would program a piece of software, so do you program your units! In a way the little brother, or big brother? To engine building games where you are placing cards on a tableau, or in front of you to have your piece or pieces do something, in order, each turn. Turn left, go straight x2, go right, go straight, ATTACK, RUN AWAY, ATTACK, turn right. Games in this genre usually also have some kind of shared card pool, or push your luck mechanic to really drive home that competitive spirit.
King of Tokyo -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/70323/king-tokyo - You're a huge monster that wants to kill all the other big monsters! Choose your city crushing monster (don't worry, they're mostly the same), roll some big chunky dice, and throw fists! It's a fun and easy to pick up game that is family friendly, and VERY playable over and over. Playable with 2-6 people, but works best at that 2-4 range.
Villainous -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boar...82/disney-villainous - Disney just HAD to jump into the board game market with a fantastic asymmetrical competitive card game. Each player picks which Disney Villain they'd like to play, takes their decks and special boards, and attempts to fulfill their own individual goal which is completely different from all the others. A really inspired game with an expansion already out, and another on the way. The game suffers from some balance issues (there are a couple Villains that are very hard to win with, and a couple that are very easy), but easy to pick up, and a great segue into more complex game design.
Asymmetrical - Another modern game design idea where each player has a different goal to win the game, and may even play the game entirely different from one and other through the use of special rule cards, tableaus, or decks of cards that wildly differ from one and other.
Dixit -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39856/dixit - Another family friendly game for 3-6 players where one person is tasked with being the 'storyteller' and has to choose a card from their hand- the cards are full-size pieces of abstract art- and has to say a work that describes their card, and place it face down in the middle. The other players at the table silently choose a card that is described by that word, and everyone has to guess which one was the Storyteller's card, without pointing out which was their own.
Grimm Forest -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boar.../212402/grimm-forest - Another game that I wasn't familiar with and had to look up to find more. Here's the Boardgame Geek rundown: Using only their wits, a handful of sharp steel tools, and a few stacks of resources gathered at great risk from fields, brickyards, and even the dark and deadly Grimm Forest itself, each player must compete to be the first to build 3 Houses and gain the title of Royal Builder. Players are encouraged to use any of the devious tricks they have read about in the many books of Fables found throughout the land. Some will have their plans wrecked by that villain of old, the Big Bad Wolf, while others will gain bricks, straw, and wood by the cart load.
Sushi Go -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boar...92291/sushi-go-party - A game for 2-8 players, this is a super casual card drafting game that has you choosing pieces of sushi from a hand of cards, placing it face down in front of you, everyone revealing their sushi all at once, then passing that hand to the person beside you and doing it all over again. Simple premise with so many ways to score points, hurt your opponents and have a great time doing so. I linked Sushi Go Party! because it's the base game with all of the expansions rolled into one, and has much more replayability.
Card Drafting - A concept where players have a hand of cards, they choose one, and pass the hand to the next person, receiving their neighbor's hand in return. This is done over and over until no card hands remain to which the round ends.
Settlers of Catan -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13/catan - As others have said, this is a classic of modern game design, and really what kicked off the modern board gaming phenomenon in the US on it's release here in the early 2000s. A series of hexagonal tiles are layed in a circle, surrounded by water, and it's your task as new settlers of this region to build towns, roads, cities, and harvest the many, many resources that are available to you. Card trading, dice rolling, and risky luck mechanics make this a fun game that anyone can pick up and enjoy, with some seriously deep strategy involved.
Pitchstorm -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/254132/pitchstorm - A party game for 3-12 players where players form teams to try and pitch as many hilariously awful movie ideas to probably the universe's worst producers. Great if you need something to pull out at a party and the group is starting to groan at pictionary or taboo!
Splendor -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148228/splendor - A card drafting game that also functions as a very simple engine building game. Buy cards using gem tokens that you get each round that allow you to discount the cost of later gem cards that may have victory point totals assigned to them, until someone finally hits 12 victory points and wins! Extremely nailbiting, games are usually snowball victories, or so close that almost everyone is on the brink of winning every time.
Spirit Island -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boar...162886/spirit-island - Probably the 'heaviest' game mentioned here so far. You choose an island spirit to be your character and, in what has been described as "Reverse Settlers of Catan, with powers and character abilities", you work with the other player spirits to fight the settlers and crush them, pushing them off your island and bringing it back to it's former glory!
Legend of the Five Rings LCG -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boar...five-rings-card-game - A game in the style of other 'living card games' where you can buy one box and be all set to play one game, or many with all of the cards provided! Netrunner and games like Arkham Horror are in this same vein. These style of games usually provide lots of fun and reputability, but really shine when you have multiple core boxes, or the expansions that go alongside them. There are usually large and vibrant competitive scenes that go along with these deck building games as well, as they're usually compared to things like "Magic the Gathering on a budget".
Terraforming Mars -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boar...91/terraforming-mars - An excellent game that recently released that is a mix of engine building and points scoring. I haven't played it yet to better describe it, but here it is from BGG: In the 2400s, mankind begins to terraform the planet Mars. Giant corporations, sponsored by the World Government on Earth, initiate huge projects to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage until the environment is habitable. In Terraforming Mars, you play one of those corporations and work together in the terraforming process, but compete for getting victory points that are awarded not only for your contribution to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other commendable things. The players acquire unique project cards (from over two hundred different ones) by buying them to their hand. The projects (cards) can represent anything from introducing plant life or animals, hurling asteroids at the surface, building cities, to mining the moons of Jupiter and establishing greenhouse gas industries to heat up the atmosphere.
Hope this helps you all find new games that might really ignite a new hobby! :D
This message was last edited by the user at 13:38, Wed 17 July 2019.