Yes, my friend has a couple hundred games in his collection and we play pretty often. How is that Pandemic? I haven't played much since the first expansion. How have they changed the game in the recent releases?

I haven't since I moved, but still have a shelf full of games. Whenever I stop serially shopping machines I will have to reach out and find a new group of gamers here in KC. Still have an unused copy of Legendary Encounters, single play on dark darker darkest, 2 games on fury of dracula, and the list goes on lol

I have a decent collection. Mostly entry level and party games because my friends aren't really as into complex or lengthily games. Some games to the sides of where those pictures display are: Cards Against Humanity, Codenames, Love Letters, Memoir 44, One Night Werewolf, etc.

We took a long break from Pandemic after finishing up Legacy, but my wife have recently started playing again with the On the Brink expansions. Our typical setup is with six epidemic cards, virulent strain, and mutation. We played a game last night, but had things under control the entire game. When you guys play do you choose roles? We do a random draw, but when the dispatcher is in the game, I almost feel we need to add in an extra epidemic card. That is my favorite role, but I find it too powerful.

Finally discussion point. I'd really like to start seeing board game licenses used for pinball. My top two would be King of Tokyo and Pandemic. Neither is my favorite game, but I think both would translate extremely well into pinball. Shadows Over Camelot could also be fun, but honestly I don't even need it based on the game. I'm just surprised that there hasn't been a pinball machine based on the Knights Of The Round Table. What board games do you guys think would make good pinball themes?

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Not into lengthy games and you have mage knight?!?

I sold my copy off because it was really hard to justify spending an entire saturday (11-12 hours) to play 1 game.

I was thinking of starting a thread for this. I'm into old board games. Can I still join the club? I'll post pics of my most recent finds later.

Have to do random roles in Pandemic. When the dispatcher comes up, you know it's going to be a lot easier, that's for sure.

I also think 7 Wonders Duel is a very good port of the original.

Stratego!!!!

The key there is "my friends". Mage Knight is an complex and long. I bought it specifically because it's rated as one of the better games to play solo. It's also significantly shorter if you play solo. While I'd prefer to play with others, I've realized that my friends are never going to be interested in playing games with that level of strategy.

7 Wonders and Duel are both great. So many pathways to victory. I feared that it would cause decision paralysis in my group, but in didn't.

We play quite a lot, and Carcassonne never seems to grow old. It requires a fair amount of strategy, and every game is different. The expansion packs also make it more interesting and add variability into the mix. It requires more than 2 players though, Blokus is a fun game that only two can play

It's funny how slot of pinball guys are into board games as well. I didn't even know it was a thing until I met a board game fan through a pinball meet. I my house by the end of monopoly someone would trash the board. Played risk a few times it would end up with just 2 people slogging it out forever and everyone els getting board so not sure if we ever truly finished a game.

For those that want a quicker game, check out Coup (simple card/bluffing game). It's fun/simple/quick, so easy to introduce people to. Also really enjoy Splendor -- a bit more involved than Coup but also pretty quick.

While I love Ticket to Ride, Catan, et. al., sometimes just too much work.

The IM or FG of board games!!!

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I made my wife a custom version of Coup. It is a quick little filler game. You could probably play it with a standard deck of cards and some poker chips. Just make a cheat sheet.

Definitely a board gamer here! I run a monthly game night and try to attend others around town. My favorites in my collection include Caverna: The Cave Farmers, Fields of Arle, both Arkham/Eldritch Horror, Dominant Species and Robinson Crusoe. I tend to lean towards heavier Eurogames. Hoping to add Scythe to my collection once the price gouging stops.

A game I do own but really can't get into is Pandemic, which has been mentioned here a lot. My friends like it so I've played the standard Pandemic dozens of times and the entire Legacy campaign once, but in the end Legacy is still Pandemic. A game where even the best strategies can and often are totally ruined by random bad luck. Our Legacy crew has played a metric ton of Pandemic if you add all the individual's hours and we still only won about 70% of the time. I dislike it if you can play each turn optimally and still just lose a third of the time to things that were impossible to save against. I'm more understanding if it's a game like Caverna where everyone is against each other. Having 4 people working optimally on the same goal and then losing because "shuffling results in two epidemics within 3 turns" is demoralizing and aggravating.

One of my other hobbies is board games. I've designed a bunch. The most popular is 1775: Rebellion. Check it out: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/128996/1775-rebellion
I also have a new game in the Birth of America series that has just gone to the printers 1754: Conquest.

I love playing a variety of games from lighter kids games, to social games to heavier games like 18xx series of train games.

Jeph

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Is there an example of a coop game that doesn't have an element of luck? I almost think there has to be, otherwise it's just the same game over and over. Once you know the solution, you've solved the puzzle. I guess I can understand the frustration with that, but perhaps that does a better job of replicating the response to an actual Pandemic. There are unknowns. Would it have been any better if you won 100% of the games?

PS: Most of the games I introduce to my group have to have an element of luck. To be quite honest we are at different skill levels, I fear in a game without an element of luck the same people would win every time. This is another reason I was worried about 7 Wonders.

Pandemic Legacy almost was designed to adjusted to your skill level. The game would progressively become harder and harder until you could not beat it. Every time you lost there would be upgrades to make the game easier. I thought that aspect of the game was especially well designed.

I mean almost every game has an element of luck, but Pandemic has such wide swings it's completely ridiculous. To me. One turn everything can be completely fine and three turns later the game is completely upside down and you've lost.

Robinson Crusoe that I mentioned does have elements of luck in the events you draw every turn, and what dice rolls you get once the storms start hitting, but with proper preparation and optimal play I'd say about 90% of the time you can be prepared to adequately react to the things that happen. When you lose it's more because "we didn't properly prioritize hunting and building a structure" instead of "we drew this card so we lose". Which allows you to learn how to prepare better next time. I can't learn from "we drew two epidemics in a row so we lose".

Eldritch Horror is another really good example. There is randomness for which items will appear in the reserve, what events you will get when you do the expeditions, what monsters will appear, and what mythos you'll have to face. But through proper movement, character selection, and actions, you will almost always be prepared for whatever comes. You just have to play and lose enough times to know what to prepare for. Usually when I lose now it's because I ran out of time because I spent the mid game waffling around trying to get more upgrades.

Pandemic does have wild swings. Things can really spiral out of control quickly.

Our cat is really "into" Pandemic...

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I'll have to teach my cats to do the same What's funny is I AM still planning to buy the Legacy Season 2 next year. While I'm a little sour on the game's base mechanics, I like how they handled the story progression in Season 1, and my friends really do love the game. I don't want to deny them of the continued experience. I'll just keep a grin on and curse in my head and look forward to our big group nights where Pandemic doesn't make the table

Anyone have a comment about champions of Midgard? Looking to get it for a friend who really likes Lords of water deep.

That second picture set of titles reads like a roll call for Wil Wheaton's tabletop show.

Just backed the Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5 kickstarter today. This is what I get for browsing BGG. I was perfectly content not knowing this game exists, and now a few hours later I've backed an expensive project. On the bright side, the publisher has already released the game before this and the project has already earned 81x the required funding. I feel like the risk of not receiving the game is very, very close to 0 at this point. So I basically just have to sit back and wait for my 20 lb game to arrive sometime in mid 2017.

... and then pray I can get it to the table 25 times.

I've had the classic Dark Tower since purchased new in 1981. Haven't played it in ages, but anxious to do so.

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And the original TV ad starring Orson Welles...

35 plus year board gamer, with three years publishing games and a lifetime of pinball playing. My day job for the last 15 years has been restoring and repairing pinball machines. Of course it was a matter of time before I combined my two interests. Pinball Showdown, where players play pinballs during multiball is now on Kickstarter.

One of my backers mentioned that I should have posted here about it here. I did send out press releases, but somehow had missed Pinside (DOH!). You can find out more about the game here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1919693711/pinball-showdown
The Kickstarter runs until next Thursday 2/9.

Diane

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Welcome to Pinside Diane,
Great first post here on the forum.
Nice collection of pinball machines you have there also.
Will we see you at Texas Pinball Festival in late March, or any other expos/festivals around the country in 2017?

Talisman! Love this game and the expansions!

We play a lot of Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride is a good one. And Risk of course!

just picked up Ticket To Ride

Was just playing this with my boys this morning (they're too young to really play but love laying out the train routes).

My kids are young so we play shorter games.
I would love to have a local group, but no luck.
I have a group of old friends that have exposed me to a lot of great games. We meet 1-2 times a year for a long weekend at a rental cabin and binge play.

Bootleggers - multi phase assets aquisition and resource game based on prohibition. Great "screw your buddy" game!
Five Tribes
They love pandemic and zombiecide. There are countless others I can't remember. A few guys bring tuns of games each time.

At home I have:
Munchkin
King of Tokyo
Mars Attacks (dice and cards)
Castellan (2 sets)
Run and Bones (a kickstarter set)

And the usual monopoly, life etc.

Splendor and Dominion are our current favorites. Check them out for sure if you haven't!

Over the past 4 years or so, I've mostly played:
Scrabble (and on the phone: Words with Friends).
Ticket to Ride - USA.
and Ticket to Ride, Europe version, with the new pack of routes and train cards if I am remembering that correctly.

Since the new year I've picked up Last Will, Biergarten, Quadropolis, Raise Your Goblets, Unfair, Lanterns, New York 1901, Dead Men Tell No Tales, and just yesterday Vast.

Gotta say they're all great! Haven't played Vast yet, but it's incredibly unique. 5 player asymmetrical game, from what I've seen each role plays like an entirely different game.

I forgot ticket to ride. My youngest loves it. It's available on iPad and he plays it all the time.

Yeah! I've been on a real Dominion kick recently, now that dominion.games is live. Sucks that the license changes hands every year, but I still seem to have some kind of a subscription from when I signed up years ago...

If you like Dominion, I highly recommend Ascenscion. Same type of gameplay.

For all you TTR players I strongly suggest the expansion boards that consist of a double-sided board with two different maps and new cards. Rules differ per map. Great way to get two new games for less than the original (which is required).

Anyone else have Loopin' Louie in their collection. It's a kids dexterity game. I just hacked my game with a 3v power adaptor and potentiometer. Basically, I no longer need batteries and have full control over the speed, from zero to double the original speed. A decent hack for under $15.

Stratego....first game I learned to cheat at The bombs were easy to find if you touched the face of the piece with your finger, while "contemplating" if that was a square you wanted to take. Thankfully I grew up and no longer cheat

Risk...we built our own board out of 4x8 sheet of plywood. We added Atlantis which was a continent in the middle bordering NA, SA, Europe and Africa. 10 armies for holding that one. We added Antartica which was below Brazil and North Africa and connected to Greenland through the bottom-top. Added Hawaiin islands which connected to Central America and Australia, giving a path from West to East besides NA to Asia. I had the original wooden pieces set, and it was great to stack those into nice uniform armies...hated the plastic stars and roman numerals they came out with later. Each wooden color set had an miscreant piece (some defect) and they became coveted and leaders...Napolean, Rommel, Washington, Patton, Khan. And some territories gained legendary status like Madagascar and Irkutz. You only dared to take those territories if you had a 10-1 advantage.