I’ve gotten my friends into asymmetric board games like root and spirit island. We are still have a lot of fun with those board games. But I have been thinking about board games that put one player up against everyone else. I haven’t been able to find many games like that, does anyone have any suggestions?

The site has been down a week now. (Returns a Connection is Not Private net::ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID message). I know there used to be a separate forum page but I can't find it anymore. Does anyone have info on what's going on?

I've been playing Through the Ages there for 10+ years. It'd be sad to lose that community and history.

Can you move opponent knights to the castillo?

I want to play some Betrayal on the House on the Hill for the first time. I've never played the game myself, but I want my first time to be with my kids aged 10 and 9. My 10 year old can follow directions very clearly and rarely has moments of not following directions.

My 9 year old will play and will play ball, but sometimes will miss a word or misinterpret a direction.

I know the game will have a twist in the middle. Are the instructions clear enough that it's nearly impossible to mess up on?

So i've been seeing a lot of people having this game in their top 10. I love the concept and it looks very interesting but, with it being an almost 10 year game, does it stand the test of time? Are there any alternative that would be better? I am sort of new to the board game scene and mostly play with more casual friends although we are up for a bit of a challenge.

Problem with Belle Star
I have a question to which I have been looking for an answer for about an hour. Today I played Bang and one of my opponents was Belle Star. It is written in the rules that blue and green cards do not apply to her when she is on her turn. But when does it count as a turn? Does that mean if I can only reach her with card schofield (2) I can't hit her because once she has to play miss it's basically her turn right? But at the same time, if she still has a mustang, then she is basically immortal, right? I read somewhere that it's even different when he's in prison, and I don't understand that at all. Can someone please explain this to me?I have a question to which I have been looking for an answer for about an hour. Today I played Bang and one of my opponents was Belle Star. It is written in the rules that blue and green cards do not apply to her when she is on her turn. But when does it count as a turn? Does that mean if I can only reach her with card schofield (2) I can't hit her because once she has to play miss it's basically her turn right? But at the same time, if she still has a mustang, then she is basically immortal, right? I read somewhere that it's even different when he's in prison, and I don't understand that at all. Can someone please explain this to me?

Legion or Shatterpoint. I've been debating with myself on which one to buy?

A work friend is getting married and we're putting together a collection. He's a board gamer and has said likes modern games, but we don't know what he already has and are thinking gift card. Is there a place in the SF east bay that would be good for this, or if not somewhere online other than Amazon?

Hello r/boardgames!

I just attended my first murder mystery party the other day, and while I had fun, I couldn't help but feel like the suspense was missing.

I am a huge fan of whodunnit movies & games. Clue, Among Us, Knives Out, Secret Hitler, Scream, etc...

While doing some research to figure out what I'd need to do to modify a murder mystery into one where the killer can strike again, and solving the mystery is of grave importance, I discovered the party game "Mafia/Werewolf" which seems more along the lines of the experience I'm looking for. Some of the info I found on the games came from this subreddit, so I figured this was the appropriate place to ask.

It seems like this game is played in one room in a circle, using closing eyes to simulate the night mechanic & maintain the mystery.

I rent a room in a fairly large house, and could curtain off rooms & hallways to restrict information...and I'm trying to conceive of a way to combine a murder mystery with mafia/werewolf in a way where the spatial layout matters, ie if it becomes night and you're in a room with the killer - they can get you. And knowledge of whereabouts can be a clue to help the survivors.

I guess my question is: how do I balance this game in a way which achieves the suspenseful feel without handicapping any player's experience, or allowing large loopholes in design which unfairly reveal information. I've got ideas such as killed players wearing ghost masks and not being allowed to gesture or give information to survivors. One player strategy I'm unsure of how to handle would be clustering in a single room for safety.

Found metal piece near my collection. Arcs tarot card for scale

So Tea Garden was a...OK game. Basically you're playing a deck builder mixed with this economy of leaves that either upgrades or deteriorates between rounds. A lot of the rest is pretty common euro stuff. Turn in icons for cards with better icons, build a tableau of matching tiles to score more points. Trigger pleasing combos for longer turns. Move down a river, spread your pagodas. It's like euro greatest hits with....an interesting resource stuff going on. IDK I parted with it after one play. This new designer is a hit maker though..SETI and Galileo Galilei are grrrrrreat. Ant questions ask away.

There were different colored animals, like an orange lion, a yellow giraffe, etc and there were different maps and you had to match the animals to get them across the “river”, and some maps were harder than others. It was definitely a kids game. I can’t remember the name or find it anywhere. Can anyone help?

So Tea Garden was a...OK game. Basically you're playing a deck builder mixed with this economy of leaves that either upgrades or deteriorates between rounds. A lot of the rest is pretty common euro stuff. Turn in icons for cards with better icons, build a tableau of matching tiles to score more points. Trigger pleasing combos for longer turns. Move down a river, spread your pagodas. It's like euro greatest hits with....an interesting resource stuff going on. IDK I parted with it after one play. This new designer is a hit maker though..SETI and Galileo Galilei are grrrrrreat.

Northgard, when played " pure " is a great two player game. Why pure ? Pure means no Clans, no creatures and no expansions. Same start for both.

We made three little rules for our two player games.

Every tile a player lay on the beginning, must connect to the starting tile. Players start with two vikings on their tiles. So both players are confronted right from the start.

A small building requiring 2 wood, a big building 4 wood to build. In a two player game you need the higher cost. In a 3 or 4 player the standard rule is best.

A battle is a great risk, cause you can win, but if you are unlucky you have a lot casualties. So the reward is questionable. We give the winner of a battle, 4 victory points. That is a good reward and, of course, encourage a little more aggresive playing.

We played it this way now for weeks, and for us this is one of the best two player games we own.

When the graphics guy had his day off and the intern took over.

Gave it a whirl solo against the AI first (and got my butt kicked thoroughly) before playing it with 3 friends (and also got my butt kicked, although not quite as much). Pretty good worker placement/area control game ; nothing new in terms of mechanics but it all works well! Looking forward to the next session to try different strategies.

Can anybody please tell me why I didn't get any points for two of my routes (Barcelona > Bruxelles and Barcelona > München). As I see it my train station in Marseille will go to Barcelona and Paris and my other station in Frankfurt will go from Bruxelles to Essen, making my Marseille > Essen ticket possible. But why won't I get points for the two other routes? It's on Boardgamearena and I am blue.

EDIT: I now understand you can only use on route from a station. I have always played that you can use on route in and one route out from a station, the Danish rules make it sound like that.

https://preview.redd.it/x4lfeyo5f4yd1.png?width=766&format=png&auto=webp&s=29f5e7eec6bbbd7d0582c09c3e59fbbadb32fa77

https://preview.redd.it/wzdhhwn7f4yd1.png?width=452&format=png&auto=webp&s=8e80f5f88edb232885093716818f3e93e5cac4c9

See the above question. I am doing a massive purge of pretty much all of my games and just keeping a handful that I love that can fit into a single large suit case. Between El Grande and Tammany Hall, which would you keep and why? Thanks.

I haven't really kept up with following new games coming out for the past ~5 years. What have I missed?

Here's what I'm looking for in a game:

- Competitive not Co-op. Semi-Co-Op like Shadows over Camelot is okay, but I don't really like games that allow quarterbacking or artificially restrict communication.
- Ideally plays well at 2 &/or 3 players. Don't care about solo mode. Occasionally might play with 4-6, but most games will be 2-3.
- I tend to like games medium-ish complexity games (~3.5 on BGG)
- I don't really care about theme, mini's, etc. Art and production value matter in so far as they effect how easy it is to visually understand what's going on mechanically (like if the game uses really similar drab colors for different things bc of the vibes, but it makes the game less obviously readable, that's a downside).
- Not a fan of memorization as a mechanic. I love a lot of what Keyflower does, but I don't like the fact that a player can gain a big advantage by memorizing/tracking the number and color of meeples their opponents have available. Similar issues in other games include like El Grande and T&E.
- Similarly, I don't like games that ask for a large memorization component up front. Carcassonne is a wonderful game, but knowing which tiles are still left or even exist in the first place can be a big advantage. Games that rely on a large deck of unique cards can suffer this to a smaller extent (Wingspan, Terraforming Mars, Race for the Galaxy, etc.). Some of these might give players bigger advantages for knowing what specific cards exist, while others allow players to get away with just flicking through the deck a couple times and knowing the general types of cards they might see; I find this far more forgivable on the latter side of that spectrum.
- I like very interactive and directly competitive games that are 1v1, like area control games. Dominant Species at 2 players is maybe my favorite games of all time. However, I tend to prefer more indirectly competitive game for 3+ players, as it often avoids the problem of "king making"; Tzolkin is one of my favorite 4 player games.
- Easy set up is nice. This includes setting up new rounds. I'm totally willing to spend a little bit of time on initial set up & setting up new rounds for longer games; its the ratio of play time to set up time that matters to me. Castles of Burgundy essentially has you repeat the initial set up 4 more times, but still the ratio of play time to set up time isn't too bad. Note that I'm not counting starting decisions as set up time, like where to place at the start of Terra Mystica. that's playing the game.
- I do appreciate some variance in the set up and some small elements of randomness while playing the game. This is far more important in 2 player games. Abstract Strategy games like Chess and Hive are cool games, but they aren't really for me. Onitama and Fisher Random Chess are a bit more my speed with at least getting different set ups, but I still really value a bit of randomness and not being able to calculate too too far into the future in my games. Five Tribes and Istanbul are good examples of games that I find way better at 3&4 players than 2 players. There's great starting variance, and there's a little bit of randomness at 2 players, but not enough that it doesn't feel kinda Chess like in the calculations. At 3-4 players, you can't really make those calculations anymore.

At the end of the day, I really am just curious about what new innovations have happened, and please feel free to post games that you think did something revolutionary or are otherwise just important/stand out games from the past 5 years even if they don't line up with my tastes.

Thanks!

Personally, I've been playing the Royal Game of Ur! (Hence the bad pun)

I don't own any spooky board games myself, but I thought others here definitely would!

The Royal Game of Ur played with candy

(If anyone knows any board games I could set up using pen and paper for 2, that would be cool too!)

Hello!

We are Mike DiLisio (massive_asterisk) and Dan Hughes (cabbagedan) - two friends who have worked together on a number of projects over the years.

We currently have a game we designed together on Kickstarter - I Made You a Mixtape - a quick moving I-split-you-choose card game set in the 80s and 90s where players compete to make the most epic mixtape of all time

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cabbagedan/i-made-you-a-mixtape

We also co-host a podcast together Sporadically Board, which is available everywhere podcasts usually are available.

Mike is a full time member of the Dice Tower crew, and Dan used to be a contributor there with his daughter Cora. Dan also is the co-designer of the kid's dungeon crawler, CoraQuest - again, with his daughter Cora.

We are happy to answer questions on anything at all!

Thats it from us - Mike has to go back to work and I've a dog to pick up from the vets. We'll keep an eye on the post though and try to answer anything else that gets asked.

Thanks!

I have never used player mats but almost every time I back a kick starter I see them as an add on option. However most of the time the mats are custom to the game. Honestly the closest I’ve ever gotten were those paper ones for pokemon when I was in elementary school.

I was wondering for those who use them, are they worth it? Do you have custom ones for every game, or do you just have blank ones that are big enough to accommodate all your games? Do you use them for every game?

For those who don’t, have you considered them? Did you used to and now don’t? What is the main reason you don’t?

I’ve boiled my all-time favourite competitive board games down to 4 choices:

• Through the Ages
• Ark Nova
• Dune: Imperium
• Agricola

I want to focus on getting better and play one of these at a high level, but I’m curious which game you think has more strategic depth and active competitive scene.

I’m also open to some other suggestions that I may not have considered so long as they are accessible on BGA or mobile.

Thanks!

And maybe there is something like this on BGG but I find that so many games that say “2–4” or “1-5” players but then come to find that the 2-player game has a dummy player - I generally dislike these types of 2-player implementations. I find that I can’t really trust the player count posted on the box - I need to see if it’s a dummy 2-player implementation.

Is there some tag in BGG for this?

Publishers - can we start a new box tag for “True 2”? 😁.

Hey all, I'm new to the sub and I'm looking for some help for a project I'm doing. In my project we have to use walkie talkie to demonstrate our communication skills and utilize the phonetic alphabet. I'm trying to find good board games that are quick and easy to play that allow players to use walkie talkies to communicate while being in a separate room? I am a broke college student so please no games that are extremely expensive as I have to provide multiple stations for the project. Thank you!!

EDIT: Looking for a co-op game preferably. Also, something short. I really appreciate the comments.

Recently friend “Bob” introduced myself and friend “Jim” to Cosmic Encounters. Bob is an experienced player, and knows most of the alien species and how they work. While playing, during multiple negotiations directly between myself and Jim (both of us first time players), Bob would repeatedly pause the game to figure out what my plays were. I had 2 winning moves thwarted by Bob figuring out what I was doing and coaching Jim to make a different choice.

It really frustrated me and I’m wondering if I’m just too competitive, or if Bob’s actions were justified.

Thoughts?

Edit: thanks everyone for the comments! I’ve realised I was a little salty and Bob was playing in a way I probably would’ve too.