Category: Syndicated

I still play it every now and then and I quite like it. The many modes is actually a real benefit, but is a bit of a problem, too, especially for solo: many cards have abilities centered around interaction. That is true for both faction cards and publi…

I recently went into digging about Magic the Gathering: Arena of Planeswalkers. Looked quite fun, it is based on Heroscape and gives a nice and fast arena-style mini skirmish game. A new expansion is already announced with two more planeswalkers. I did…

exactly. If it gives you more information than you had before or if someone reacts to it (and therefore giving you information on his secret tools probably), it’s too late. until then, if you can reliably backtrack, I am fine with you doing so. I win o…

Yikes, you are right. I probably need two now 😉 – finally a good finisher for a mill oriented Mimeoplasm?

Yeah, slobad is happy about another colorless exile spell with a hunk attached. Especially since it does not disturb his welder shenanigans. I don’t know how I can justify that thematically, though, because normally he only throws phyrexian stuff at pe…

I almost always go solo. Two handed takes up too much table space for me. There are a few quests that really need multiple hands, but since I have everything available, I just play different quests.

With your selection I would suggest **Smash Up** – good ice breaker and easy to teach, in part preconstructed like SotM and funny. And even if you have multiple sets, easy to pack tight.

I had great success to get people into board games with **Waggledance**. It has a super cute theme, managing a beehive with a dice-worker-placement mechanic, has very quick turns and each turn has a moderate options to take, so AP usually doesn’t raise it’s ugly head, even with muggles. I brought my back-then-no-gamer wife into it with just two plays, or just recently got my parents to play it who normally only ever played stuff like “Mensch ärger dich nicht” or Monopoly. It’s really easy to get into and provides enough depth for when people start to strategize. And even if there is a gamerly gamer in that play group, still less competetive gamers have a chance to win. Oh, and it’s really fun to play. Another good one is **Paperback** – again, I had great success to get muggles to play it and usually it just takes a few rounds for them to grasp the basics. Sure, they won’t fully leverage the card abilities, but the good thing about the game is that you can make good points just by finding scoring words. And stuff like “draw +3 cards” are quite obvious after they seen it just once happen and so will soon start to look for abilities, too. A blast to play and the favorite game of my wife. **Kashgar: Händler der Seidenstraße** is another good one if you can read german or get the english translation from BGG. What I love about it especially is that it has deck building mechanics, but in open viewable decks. So it is easy to help people in their first rounds, since there is no hidden information. It’s very visual due to the three caravans layed out openly and most abilities of members of the caravan make sense directly. It gives a much better connection to the power of deck building than actual deck builders, because you can directly see how your caravans change. And it allows to create ridiculous engines that make people smile when they get it going. **Forbidden Desert** is still my favorite game to get people into coop games if they never played any, because it looks great on the table, has simple rules and still gives a ton of discussions about who should do what – while still throwing wrenches into the wheels of your plans, so you have to re-plan (and therefore re-discuss, which is the whole point of coop games) allmost every turn. And unlike many other coops, it’s theme is not obstrusive, but again, unlike many other coops, it’s theme sticks around. Coops like Pandemic: The Cure often detoriate to pure puzzle solving where you don’t talk about your abilities or about epidemics anymore, but only about yellow or red cubes. With Forbidden Desert, the mechanics are nicely integrated with the theme in a way that keeps it alive, if only because it is still simpler to talk about the storm and the sand and the city instead of “tiles” or “number of tiles shifted”. The worst offender in this regard could be seen in Elder Sign, because it is very very simple to reduce it to just Yahtzee with boons and banes and totally ignoring the actual theme (my wife plays it that way and therefore never really had that much fun with it thematically, she just preferred it because it was a simple dice chucker without much need for deep thinking).

Start with this link: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1108855/back-basics-killer-deck-using-only-cards-single-co – it gives you a multi-sphere deck you can run solo against most of the core set quests and the Mirkwood cycle (actually holds up nicely in…

It’s just my favorite game that I actually get to play, so I guess if I ever find a more favorite game than LOTR:LCG (and actually get chances to play it regularily), I will change my flair.

Aside from all the other suggestions I can add that **VivaJava: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game** might have a stupid name, but is a fun dice filler and a nice take on yahtzee mechanics. If you want dice with some mire game attached you could go for **W…

My favorites is **Robots and Steampunks**, because robots. and steampunks. Well, and Steampunks draw cards like there is no tomorrow and protect stuff, so I can often get my robots going fast. But mostly it’s because of the robots and steampunks.

Well, I like it because of the group puzzle – coop games without a group puzzle to solve together are hard to like 😉 Saying: S:C might just not be a game for you, because the puzzle is the game.

**Hyperborea** is a bag builder where you move miniatures around a board and build a bag of cubes for your actions you can take.

I’m actually not yet sure if I like them – GtR found it’s way into my collection solely due to the “use cards for a multitude of things”, but never got to the table so far, due to it’s “far too many multitudes to use cards for” problem 😉 Which is why I got Innovation, which just came out in a german version and which is thematically something we usually like. But man, if I ever have seen something with pasted on theme, it’s this game. It actually succeeds in having cards whose card effects are even more disconnected from it’s theme than Valley of the Kings. So that could be a hard sell with my wife.

yep, was my first thought, too. It’s a really small box, only takes up moderate table space, is a real beast to play against solo and makes a great coop game, because your space marines must play cooperatively if they want to have a chance.

Try to go wild. It’s what I do if I play a game against my wife where I usually would win due to my deeper knowledge of the strategic space of the game: I just try out some weird and wild strategies. For example with **Paperback**, I just decide to not…

Nations: TDG is one of my favorite dice games, too. It’s kinda funny, I got it as a light civ-themed dice chucker that plays quickly and isn’t too deep – but rarely get it done under 1.5 hours with my weekly group. It actually is too heavy for them for…

Imperial Settlers is on my to-get-list for quite some time, still haven’t pulled the trigger, because I allready have a bunch of civ-building games and so think I should build out my collection into other directions before going for it. But the cute ar…

For me it was a week of vacation and travels with my wife and parents, so only light gaming. But we still got a game of **Waggledance** in with the parents, which was fun and again showed me that this game is really great to bring muggles into modern board games while still providing lots of fun for more gamerly gamers. Additionally there was our usual share of playing **Paperback**. For some new stuff, I got **Kashgar, Händler der Seidenstraße** to the table and I really like it. It has a great deck building mechanic combined with engine building andf VP hunting, where the cards and their actions really make sense within the theme. My wife liked it, too, so I hope to get this one to the table more often and introduce it tou our weekly group, as it’s complexety level should be right for that group (and due to the open and visible nature of the engines, it is easy to help new players). I do play online, kinda, sorta. Mostly it’s implementations of board games for Android, though, and allmost always games with good AI implementations. So in a way I do play online, but offline 😉 – I do play MTG online from time to time, and due to the nature of Magic Online that is against other people. I go for random queues, playing whoever wants to. It would be fun to have some people to play regular games of San Juan or Ascension or Star Realms against, though, but haven’t really bothered so far to build up online play groups. Funny enough, the best deal I’ve ever gotten is right up there in my plays from last week: **Kashgar** seems to be on clearance sales with some shops, so I got it for 12 Euro. Definitely a steal at that price point.

I’d probably go for **Myrmes** for the same reason as you – and because I allready have **Waggledance** and found that to be a really good entry-level worker placement games. There is something about organizing insect states that goes really well with …

**Lord of the Rings: The Card Game** – because it allready is a game for the rest of my life, just not the only one 😉 – it scratches several itches for me, one being able to play it solo and one being to be required to pre-game build decks to compete …

by TheGargoyle
Yay, this game suddenly became much more interesting!

**VivaJava: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game** is a nice and casual dice chucker that includes some stuff to later spice it up if you want to go deeper. Yes, it is yahtzee-like, but adds enough twists to really be it’s own game. I really like it and thin…

An Iron Gods base set for PACG would pull the money right out of my bank account.

Wizards probably would make the core set only including 1-3 cards of each card and so forcing you to buy two core sets minimum to have full play sets. And of course, never reprinting those cards in the expansions, so you really have to buy two core set…

Yeah, I totally follow that on more complex games where you have some kind of game ramp-up. In those cases, asymmetric player powers really help to diversify a game where otherwise you would fall into the same track on every occasion. For example Domin…

Can’t speak about Nations, since I never played it, but Nations:TDG really is a filler dice game. It’s not too deep, it plays fast and the theme is more pasted on than anything. Don’t get me wrong, it is fun and I like to play it, it feels quite differ…

I really don’t follow this “asymmetric boards give more replayability” argument. Yes, boards themselves are the same aside from color. But the tiles are all randomly layed out and right after your very first round of buying tiles, boards will be different anyway. And really, your player “powers” are defined by random dice rolls and available chits, so even before you buy the first tile, your situation will be different than anybody elses situation. It’s not as if everybody rolls the very same dice results and then buys the exact same tile 😉

the recently released Tides of Time looks interesting, but is only two player. But really intrigues me, because there aren’t many drafting games that work with two.