Boardgames I like …

[Ken Warren]

While I play miniature games, I used to play quite a few boardgames many years ago. In more recent times, I’ve started getting back into boardgaming. Here are the current favorites:

Castle Panic – my son & I play this quite a bit

Gears of War – based on the video game, which I’ve never played. I play this with my son, too

World at War – from LockNLoad games, Soviet invasion of Western Europe in the early/mid 80s. I have 2 games in the series so far: Eisenbach Gap and Blood & Bridges.

Nuklear Winter ’68 – also from LockNLoad games. An alternate history wargame based on Germany getting nuked at the end of WW2.

[Mike]

Big fan of Gears of War on the Xbox.
I never did buy the boardgame, the figures being an odd scale put me off, silly really…

[bobm]

I’ve re-started playing board games recently too.

Especially the European type games …..not many of them are military related but good strategic play is the general rule.

Friedrich is brilliant….based on the seven years war, simple to learn but lots of strategy so replay value high

Field Of Glory: the card game…..excellent, very quick play (15 minutes).  None of the headaches that the figure game generates!

Ticket To Ride…..simple to learn railway building game, I’ve got the European edition.  Result in doubt to the very end of the game and only one “action” per turn makes it fun for all as you can’t get it so horribly wrong at the start that the rest of the game is tarnished.

There's 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.....

[religon]

I like many hex-hybrid miniatures-board games: BattleTech, Commands & Colors Ancients, and other Richard Borg games.

I like some of the classics: Ticket to Ride, Axis & Allies, Eurorails and Settlers of Catan come to mind.

I like a few boardgames with long play times: Twilight Empire and Arkham Horror.

Two games I like with the children: Order Up (pizza delivery) and Chinese Checkers.

You know, fightin' in a basement offers a lot of difficulties. Number one being, you're fightin' in a basement! --Lt. Aldo Raine

[Steve Burt]

I rather like the ‘Pocket Battles’ games. Very quick games (10 minutes max) with a ‘miniatures feel’. And the game really does fit in your pocket.

Most of the skill is in army construction and deployment; once the battle starts you have to hope you got those right.

I’ve got the Celts v Romans set, but failed to pick up Macedonians v Persian before it went out of print. There is also Goblins v Orcs if you like fantasy, and all of those can play against each other. A more recent one is Union v Confederate.

 

[Northern Monkey]

Im really enjoying playing Richard III at the moment, and ive done a bit of a review on my blog for those who might be interested: http://ablogofwar.blogspot.co.uk/

My attempt at a Blog: http://ablogofwar.blogspot.co.uk/

[Blackhat]

I’ve been playing Settlers of Catan once a month with the same group of (now ex-) work colleagues for over 8 years….

Has to be the best value I’ve ever had from a game!

 

[Lorne]

My son and I play lots of Carcassone and Memoir ’44, along with Pirates of the Cursed Seas and Plunder. The Gears of War sounds interesting, though. Is it an old game?

 

Lorne

[Ken Warren]

Lorne wrote:

My son and I play lots of Carcassone and Memoir ’44, along with Pirates of the Cursed Seas and Plunder. The Gears of War sounds interesting, though. Is it an old game? Lorne

Gears of War is quite fun. At least for me and my son it is. I also play solo (usually with 2 or 3 COGs). Anyway, the game is from 2011, but should still be available. See the BoardGameGeek site for more details:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/42776/gears-war-board-game

 

[Sim]

I’ve really enjoyed playing some games without any warfare element recently. Zooloretto is a great non destructive game of building rival zoos. Another one I’ve found pleasantly interesting is Giants which was in The Works a few months ago for a tenner. The entire game revolves around claiming and moving Moai heads to coastal positions on Easter Island with the aid of worker placement.

Both games eschew dice for a random shared pool mechanic and offer plenty of strategic play. Zooloretto is the more family friendly one both in theme and rules.

- Simon |
www.wartornuk.com

[Altius]

ASL is still one of my all-time favorite games.

Diplomacy is a fun game too, but it’s not always easy to get the right number of players.

Where there is fire, we will carry gasoline

[Count Belisarius]

ASL – There can be only one! 🙂

Mostly because I had to spend so much money and time in learning and collecting the game there just wasn’t anything left for any others!

I’ve picked up other stuff (like the Great Battles of the Am Rev series) but just never had time to play. Equally, I’ve grabbed a lot of the WW3 type games ostensibly to use as background for my Cold War Commander games but as ever, finding the time…

Pre-ASL AH Russian Front was a fave as was the old SPI WW3 which I played MANY times with my cousin!

And for group games with the right people: AH Samurai, Titan and Dune.

 

A

My Blog: Another Slight Diversion

[Mike]

What is the Dune game like?

[Count Belisarius]

We had some great fun playing it. Mostly as we all knew the books and got in character! I lent my copy to someone years ago and never saw it again… Not sure if there is a new version or just silly eBay prices!

And I don’t have enough people locally now to play it…

A

My Blog: Another Slight Diversion

[John D Salt]

My boardgame collection numbered over 250 the last time I counted it, and it won’t have shrunk since. Most are 1970s-80s SPI era games, with SPI, AH and VG being my top three publishers, in that order. I don’t have much time to play them these days, but still give in to temptation every now and then, as in a recent visit to the Decision Games web site — I needed a copy of Rhineland ’36, but then ran into two more games that looked too good to miss before I could escape from the site.

In the old days I played the classic two-player historical board wargames against an opponent or solitaire. Among my favourites from that era are:

SPI’s “Patrol”, “Tank”, and “Firefight” — modern tactical yumminess, I must have played hundreds of games of each of these.
SPI’s “Air War” — a complex game done pretty much right.
SPI’s “Punic Wars”, “Battle for Germany”, “Arnhem” — simple gems.
AH’s “Platoon” and GDW’s “Team Yankee” — from which I concluded that you should always buy a book or film tie-in game, the publisher will have put in some extra development effort.
AH’s “Storm over Arnhem”, “Thunder at Cassino” and “Breakout: Normandy” — Courtney Allen is a game design genius, I can even forgive him for the dreadful “up Front”.
SDC’s “Hue” and “Jerusalem”, AH’s “Squad Leader” — John Hill is a game-design genius, a shame “Tank Leader” didn’t work for me.
VG’s “NATO”, “Panzer Command”, Hell’s Highway”, “Omaha Beachhead” — old SPI hands revisiting old topics and doing them full justice with quality games.
AH’s “Patton’s Best”, VG’s “Ambush!” series, WEG’s “RAF” — solitaire games done right.
WRG’s “Seastrike” — pure brilliance.

These days the games I actually get to play are more multi-player games suitable for a club night or to play with the family. Niece Georgina has a loyalty card for Battlequest Games, and has already beaten her Uncle Beard at “Memoir ’44” and “Cyclades” (lovely miniatures in that last one, as well as a cracking game).

Though they do not count as wargames, Cheapass Games’ “Kill Dr Lucky”, “The Big Cheese”, “Witch Trial” and others are great fun, “Carcassonne” and “Settlers of Catan” deserve their popularity, and Looney Labs’ “Fluxx” series of card games are absolutely brilliant, as is their “Loonacy”.

All the best,

John.

[willz]

I have not played board games for many years but I am going to re-start playing “Kingmaker” used to play it loads in the 80’s.

[Alvin Molethrottler]

I have only recently started branching out into board gaming (thanks to a friend with an extensive collection) but I found “Tide of Iron” and “Fire and Axe” to be very enjoyable. The former is about the Normandy campaign in WWII and the latter about the Vikings.

There was also a mention of Dune, if you can afford the printing costs this chap does some sumptuous components:

http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/61499/ilya-77-dune-components

[Author]

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