Imperial 2030

Where's my rope?

Diplomacy and chess

Hadn't heard of imperial before, looms fun to play. Also, not about military conquest : P

For the People is a dazzling game about the War of the Rebellion.

The old Machiavelli board was cool

Power Grid, hands down.
Closely followed by so many area control + action management games it's too much effort to list them all.

Roborally.

Modern Diplomacy. Diplomacy combines some of the best elements of chess, Risk, and poker. What can be better than that?

Power grid is awesome. Ticket to ride, also awesome. I loved catan until I quickly realized that the 1st person to place a settlement wins nearly every time.

Ticket to Ride is great. I have another game that few of you have probably heard about. It's called Dread Pirate. It's a lot of fun. Dice rolling combat I'm afraid, but tstill alot of strategy involved.

You guys are great board game connaisseurs.

Axis and Allies, chess, and Fortress America. And poker. Great games. I'm looking to try Twilight Struggle too. Anyone tried that?

CHESS

I also used to quite enjoy Catan, but it really does come down to "who settled both the 9s before it was rolled 4 times in a row" rather than any real skill.
I've tried Twilight Struggle and really didn't like it. Combination of 2-player (can't diplomacise your way to victory if there's only one opponent), cold war (just not an interesting setting for me) and gameplay itself (drawing cards to effect parts of the board) just didn't gel at all.

The Game of Thrones boardgame is great fun (the unknown element in combat is 'which of the known cards in their hand are they going to play?' rather than any element of chance). Dominant Species, Blood Rage and Scythe are all interesting and varied takes on combining area control with action economy (and other elements).

But yeah, at stated earlier, Power Grid is just awesome in general. Only chance is what plants flip, and even that it mostly known before the turn starts and so can be accounted for in all planning for that turn. From there it's all down to out-planning your opponents and sound budgeting.

I found Catan improved a lot when you use a "dice deck" (gives you average dice results). There's actually an expansion that is a dice deck with some special events on it. Burned out on Catan a long time ago though, but it was my gateway "German game".

Modern Art's a classic. Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage is a great card-driven wargame, and there's a kickstarter for the new edition that just launched (renamed Hannibal & Hamilcar). Napoleon's Triumph is a masterpiece, although tricky to learn. Ra is a nice, simple, quick auction game which pretty much anyone can enjoy. But my all-time favourites (aside from Diplomacy) are actually card games: Race for the Galaxy and Dominion.

Britannia, Railway Rivals, Kingmaker, Football Strategy and Elephant Parade. Card games, since zurn's mentioned them, Poker, Bridge and Ogallala.

Anyone here like Knightmare chess? It's a cool card twist on chess.

Dune is the best boardgame of all time. Fantastically balanced. I liked the old Machiavelli too but impossible these days to get enough people to sit down for 8+ hours. Kingmaker also is up there. I guess I'm showing my age.

I had some fun with Knightmare chess for a while (got 1 and 2). Queens become *even more* important though, since many cards don't affect them.

Love me some Dune and Britannia. Kingmaker was wacky. Loved assigning those cards to nobles though. And the goofy advanced combat.

For combat and turn based strategy games, I'm still an Avalon Hill fan. ASL, Panzer Blitz/Panzer Leader, and 3M/AH Feudal.

Oh yes, Britannia. Missed many lectures because I couldn't tear myself away from a game. But Dune - simply the best.

Zurn, the Warring States variant looks good... any chance of that being considered here? And why has no-one put forward a LoTR map variant? That would be great to try...

ASL, World in Flames, 1830, Advanced Third Reich, Civil War, Republic of Rome, Wooden Ships & Iron Men, Advanced Civilization, Napoleon's last battle, The Guns of August, War & Peace, Terrible Swift Sword, Russian Front, Anzio, Serie Europa... and obviously Diplomacy.

I thought Wooden Ships & Iron Men was just a computer game. There was an AH board game of it too?

Yes the board game WS&IM there was since 1976.

Thanks Mikey99! I think it might be possible to implement the Warring States rules changes on vdip/webdip, and I'm keen to look into that one day (especially now that there's a running variant lab). I was happy to see the change-army-to-fleet order already implemented for Known World. I was also looking at making some balance changes after the first two playtests; of course I could always run an email game, I'll let you know if that happens. But it's definitely nicer to have it automated on vdip. It results in more playtesting and nice stats breakdowns.

I've had a copy of WS&IM for years and never tried it... I really should, heard great things. Civilization, that's a real classic too, miss playing that.

Operation Barbarossa , and most Avalon Hill Games..

Blitzkreig , i aslo enjoyed the board game verion of Mech Warrior with the houses ,

I also like original basic D&D ..actually I am tyring to collect the original modules to play. Anyone happen to have any copis laying around ??

I have the basic through to Companion sets,

I may have played Machiavelli once in college...is it similar to Diplomacy? I'm remembering a Diplomacy-esque game with supply centers, some of which were "cities" and had to be besieged, and ducats as some sort of currency...am I on track at all?

I heard about Machiavelli,but never played it.Yea,it is kinda similiar to Dip as I remember.

That sounds interesting

Machiavelli has 3 turns for year, cities can have a garrison and must be besieged, Ducato is the currency that you can earn every year from cities and territory you can mantain with it your units, you can bribe or disband with it the enemy's units, you can try to hire an assassin to kill your enemy with it... Really Rinascimento's time in Italy.

I use to go to convenrtions for FtF diplomacy in late 80's early 90's. Talk about adrenalin, that was superaddictive! Unlike here though no option for anon games, once you got a reputation takedowns became a problem.
Other games my group played that stood out; Fury of Dracula, Blood Bowl, Civilization (yes the board game) Space Hulk, Escape from Colditz, Talisman +expansions (has been remade)

Now if we are talking D&D, Smokey, I was always into Gamma World. RPGing in the post-apocalyptic future with radiation mutations and aliens and stuff.

Acquire is one my faves, even if it does have more a of luck element involved than I typically like.

Reinier Knizia's Samurai is probably my favorite 1x1 or 3 player game. Fantastic strategic tile placement with a small luck element involved.

Alhambra (with some expansions) is a great replayable game for 4-5 players. Involves card drafting, money mgmt and tile placement mechanics.

I'm sorry, Smokey; I gave my imported copy together with Greyhawk and Blackmoor (bought after an Owl and Weasel basement playtest back in about 1975) to a teenage daughter of a friend into LARPing and Cosplay. (At that time the UK Dip hobby and Jackson and Livingstone had a more than tenuous relationship.) I was regarded as a Neanderthal even then as I continued to run my dungeons on those freer form rules rather than the cumbersome glossy AD&D set...

Yes to all Reinier Knizia's games, Dune, Acquire and how could I forget Cosmic Encounter and 1829, ghods, and Civilization (the Hartland Trefoil game). Acquire, and Civilization I played up until 2004. There is another game I miss, Dallas, (not the racetrack game, but the one with the diamond shaped board) - some of these I bought and lodged with some very close friends - v sadly my best friend with whom I played these died and they were given away. Not that it mattered; I no longer have access to a congenial group of friends with whom to play these.

Acquire is a lot of fun, there is some luck. I liked the old 3M version better though. Have always loved 3M for that. Plus the fantastic sanding paper.

Games which are much loved and played relatively often (in no particular order):
Cathedral
Kingdom Builder
Power Grid
Gravwell
History of the World
Machi Koro
Alhambra
Dominion
Tsuro
Chess
Hex
Mancala
Backgammon

Games which are loved but not played nearly often enough:
Twilight Struggle
Pandemic
Shogun
Smallworld
Space Alert
Tokaido
Carcasonne
RoboRally
TakenNoko

Games once loved, but no longer played much:
Settlers of Catan
Zombies!!!
Squatter
Twixt
A Game of Thrones
Stratego

Games sitting around either never played or played once:
Arkham Horror
Earth Reborn
War of the Ring
Road Kill Rally
Alexandros
Conquest of the Empire
Midgard
Zombicide

oh, and Ticket to Ride gets a fair workout as well.

kaner: to get the same enjoyment as you would from playing Arkham Horror, buy a deck of lovecraft-inspired playing cards, invite 3-5 of your friends around, and pick one of them to play solitare with that deck of cards.

Arkham Horror was a bust for me, although Eldritch Horror is an improvement. War of the Ring is quite fun, probably the most fun Middle Earth board game I've played. Works well 2, 3, or 4 player.

The one thing I remember of the partial game of Machiavelli I played eons ago was being able to outright bribe an army (and SC) right out from under someone. Gotta make sure to pay your troops...

Shogun lol we wore out the board...

re: Arkham, I tried reading the rules. Twice. And thought f*ck that for a joke. Figured if anyone actually wanted to play it then they would read the bloody rules and not rely on me to interpret. TOO MUCH WORK!

re: Shogun - glad to hear that others have actually played it! I love the combat resolution system that the game has.

Earth Reborn is a really cool game, but I can't find anyone to actually sit down and learn the game with me :(

Anyone here play Hex? I'd love to play a game against you... there are servers out there...

re: RoboRally - I would definitely play this game much more except my wifey loathes the game... something to do with actually being able to read a map... lol :)

I was also thinking about buying Tigris & Euphrates... anyone played it?

There is an excellent online retailer that sells second hand versions of many games. I've bought old copies of Machiavelli, Dune, Kingmaker and Cosmic Encounters from them. Just do a search for Noble Knight games.

Tigris & Euphrates is a classic. Kind of a brain burner, but that comes from the aggressive tactics, not the rules, which are simple. Haven't played it as much as it deserves.

@ Mikey - I've purchased from Noble Knight too. Good company.