I’m sort of peeved that boardgames has gone from a “hey, I get to sit in meat space not staring at a monitor and doing something fun with friends” into a consumerist dog and pony show.

I feel like part of the problem is that the people participating in and boosting the consumerist aspect are the ones with the shiniest toys to show. Like, sure, 1830 is an awesome game (even if I still can’t get a regular group to play it), but you won’t get more upvotes for showing off your 100th game of 1830 than your first game of <insert the newest game>.

An look, I like having new games. I enjoy the feel of new puzzles to try. But in the end, it’s as you say, the best part of the games is getting together with friends and doing soemthing fun for a few hours. Having a collection as a backdrop in my video calls is not the point of buying games.

What I don’t like about your categories is that you’re focusing on the buying and owning games part.

My process used to be:

1. Read the rules before everyone arrives
2. Play the game and have fun
3. Read the rules again
4. Email everyone with everything we played wrong

Now that I have kids I don’t always have the luxury of reading the rules the same day we play the game, so what I usually do is I read the rules a few days in advance, which means I won’t remember as much when the time comes to play, so then I end up complementing that with a rules explanation video.

TtR first journey is great because it’s easy to transition to the “full” game after they outgrow it. Catan junior is similar in this. That’s also my main complaint about Stone Age kids, it’s not really the same game.

The problem with this is chatgpt is shit at facts. You ask it a question and it might just give you bullshit, and you tell it to provide a citation and it will happily invent one. There’s no easy way to verify whatever it says to you, other than going to the source, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of this exercise.

A lot of times. It doesn’t really help to find a problem, but rather when the problem was introduced. It’s a really great tool.

Through the Ages is probably the best example of a boardgame that works better in digital form. Asynchronous in particular.

This looks incredibly shady.

The problem with a single spirit is that the different spirits have different strengths and with just one you’ll be missing something. Like, for example, there’s the storm thing that is super powerful and destroys buildings, but it doesn’t do much against single explorers, and if you don’t have a way to contain those somehow even with your superior building destroying powers you won’t be able to keep up.

That is, it’s actually harder with one than with two.

Seconded Flashpoint. I’ve had success with that game with people from 8 to like 80.

Saturday was our twice a month large meetup. Went with the kids for the first couple of hours, and we played:

• Dodo. The kids love this. It’s really simple, just be fast and remember position of the tokens, and that’s it. But it’s a lot of fun watching that ball roll slowly towards disaster.
• Team3. Interesting communication game, we discovered that if the 8 year old gives spoken instructions to the 5 year old tempers can get a little hot. All other combinations worked well, it was just that one that didn’t.
• Stella. My 8 year old loves it, but the 5 year old still isn’t fully ready. She has issues with mapping the cards to her pad. Still, by the fourth round things went much smoother.

Then the kids went home with mom and I got to play a couple of heavier titles:

• Pax Pamir 2nd Edition. First time playing. I expected this to be good, but it was still much more fun than I expected. The rules seem a little dry, like you’re just moving stuff around, and all the theme will be all condensed in the card text. But then you play it and everything feels very thematic. I’m pretty sure we played it extremely wrong (in the strategy sense, I think rules were fine), but still had a blast. And I think it would probably work better with at least one more player (we played a three player game)
• Beyond the Sun with expansion. I love this game. First time playing with the expansion (the other two players were also first timers, one was also a first time BTS player). I really liked the leaders cards. Also, it was a weird game, in that there was no achievement token in either Empire or Trascendence. One player had the leader that gives you a private achievement, and he completed that, plus the other two achievements that were drawn (4 strength in three locations, fully empty a single disc track), that meant three and triggered game end. He was the second player, and I was the third player, so I maneuvered to be able to colonize a fourth system, while at the same time denying player 2 the ability to do so in two of the systems he had a majority in. Player 1 had nothing to earn him more points than maneuvering over the map, so he did that, and he couldn’t prevent me from colonizing (I had two possible targets and he didn’t have enough ships/jumps), so he prevented player 2 from doing so, since that was a 9 point difference (5 from the planet, 4 from the achievement). Player 2 had his turn busted, so he instead prevented me from colonizing. My last turn was also maneuvering on the map, so nobody got their fourth system, and the achievement stayed empty. And for techs, there wasn’t even a single level three tech researched. The leaders do push you to play more on the map board, plus only a single guild came up, and I chose the terraforming one because others were better prepared to take advantage of the research action. And only a single level 2 tech that could research level three was drawn, but again, it was discarded. So that was it, no level three techs, so of course no level four either. Scores were quite lower than we’ve seen other times, too: 36/32/31. Anyway, definitely the highlight of the night, and as usual after playing BTS I’m left wanting to play more.

I don’t think this is too bad, but the question here is why they set it up this way. Are there any restrictions like no SSH? Also, this would make it hard to clone from an off site location (for remote work).

So ultimately I sold it (to another person in that same group ;-) )

That sounds like an ideal outcome, since you still get to play it.

If I want to play it with a different group, one the people who have it are not part of, then I consider buying it.

I’ve also bought some games that I just had to have because they were just that awesome. And then never played, because other people already have a copy, and sometimes they have more content or whatever. Terraforming Mars, for example, I ended up only playing it a handful of times solo, and then the app came out, and I haven’t opened my copy since. I try to avoid doing this now, because it really doesn’t work out that well.

Although I am considering buying Brass: Birmingham so I can decide when I want it to be available in a meetup. Also Spirit Island, but that’s because I think I can get my kids to play with me.

Always a good opportunity to learn something new.

Werewords is twenty questions mixed with werewolf. If you played werewolf, you understand the rules immediately. The app takes care of dealing with the hidden information. So it’s really simple. And every time somebody says “we’ll play a couple of rounds before going home” I know I’m staying for a couple of hours, because two rounds turns into twenty really easily.

I’ve had four player meets turn into five players a few times. I’d say Hansa Teutonica does great in that situation. It’s a game that doesn’t do as well at lower player counts anyway, so it all works out.

That could be it. Something like Catapult Feud but Worms themed.

Thanks! :)

It was my birthday on Saturday, so I was able to get a few friends to come home and play a few games with me. We got these to the table:

Cross Clues: Fun warmup game. Easy to integrate people midgame, which happened because a couple of people were running late. Also, my kids (8 and 5) got to play too, even if the 5 year old couldn’t think of a clue (and one of my friends had to bite his tongue and not say the very nsfw clue he was thinking of).

Scape Goat: This game shouldn’t work as well as it does. It’s too simple, but still manages to get you paranoid. Also, you need to make sure you read the grid correctly, or you might target the wrong goat, which two of us did. Still, it was fun.

Derby: Simple horse betting game. Not a lot of depth to it, but it was fun. I like the illustrations Maldón (the publisher) usually does, but I think they could have made a better job of differentiating the colors. I wouldn’t play this with bad lighting.

Codenames: Pictures: A classic. Also could involve the kids, so that was fun.

Article 27: I hadn’t played this in ages. It’s a fun negotiation game.

In all, we had fun. Next time I hope I can get something more meaty, but it was still fun.