Why we still love board games • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we still love board games

#41

Post by bmj » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 1:38 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #17

lmm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dominion lets you spend all the time making decisions rather than waiting for other people by having hardly any interaction between players; at times it can feel like a time trial race. I tend to prefer Tanto Cuore; while it's largely a direct rip-off (and the art puts some people off) it gives you more attack options, and the balance shifts to allow a wider variety of strategies (Dominion I find duchies are almost e…

The "flavor" of Dominion play is hugely dependent on the cards you're playing with. If you feel like there isn't enough interaction between players, I'd recommend giving Intrigue a try. Alchemy generally is a weak set, except for Posession, which is just a completely miserable damn card to have in game for the amount that players can use it to mess with eachother. Prosperity also brings an entirely new way to win to…

I concur about Intrigue, but I don't mind the Alchemy set. During one game with the Familiar, my brother-in-law and I actually managed to deplete the Curse card supply.

Re: Why we still love board games

#42

Post by qznc » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 1:39 PM UTC

qohen wrote: post #28

yycom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for telling us about your favorite hobby, how many you have played, where it fits in your personal spectrum, that it has been around for many years, and giving us some titles! But, what is a German-style board game?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-style_board_game As mentioned in the article, and here in the comments, the term "Eurogame" is often used to describe them: http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Eurogame (That term, in fact, redirects to the Wikipedia page above.) Also, FYI, in contrast to Eurogames, there's a style of game colloquially known as "Ameritrash", which you can read about here: http://boardgamegeek.com/wi…

"Simply put, Eurogames tend to focus on streamlined, well-balanced play, with a mimimal theme and more abstracted game mechanics, while Ameritrash focuses more on theme and dramatic gameplay." -- http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Ameritrash

Sounds like a reasonable definition.

Re: Why we still love board games

#43

Post by jgeralnik » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 1:42 PM UTC

luu wrote: post #3

What's interesting to me is new board games aren't just variants on existing games; there's noticable innovation in board game "technology". If you ever play board games from the 80s and 90s, they often feel dated and clunky, even more so than video games from the same era. I recently went back and played some classic Avalon Hill games that were popular when I was a kid. I can't believe me and my friends spent so muc…

While agricola does have significant luck in the inital game state, this is lessened by drafting the initial cards which almost all advanced players do. This ensures that at most players will only have 1 extremely powerful card, and adds another level of skill with managing the draft. The game itself is extremely skill based, to the point that an experienced player with a poor hand should be able to beat a less experienced player with an awesome hand most of the time. Unlike in caylus, the best players are only able to win 60-70% of the time

Re: Why we still love board games

#44

Post by hendrik-xdest » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 1:46 PM UTC

qznc wrote: post #24

DanBC wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German style board games are so named because of the influence of a few designers in Germany, and because of the popularity of some games in Europe. Luck is reduced. Planning and skill is increased. They can be short fun easy to learn games for a wide age range (Carcassonne; Bohnanza), or they can be harder more in depth games that take longer to play (Le Havre). Usually there's an element of competing against the ga…

I think you rather classified "modern" board games, not "german style". On the other hand, do you know a modern non-german board game?

There are quite a few. From the top of my head: Pandemic. Even non-European is not unheard of. For example my all-time favorite: Robo Rally (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboRally)

Re: Why we still love board games

#45

Post by bergie » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 1:59 PM UTC

hendrik-xdest wrote: post #44

qznc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you rather classified "modern" board games, not "german style". On the other hand, do you know a modern non-german board game?

There are quite a few. From the top of my head: Pandemic. Even non-European is not unheard of. For example my all-time favorite: Robo Rally ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboRally )

Space Alert is another interesting one: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38453/space-alert

Sort of cross-over between Pandemic and Robo Rally... you play and win/lose as a team like in Pandemic, but much of the mechanics is "programming" your actions like in Robo Rally.

Re: Why we still love board games

#46

Post by PuercoPop » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 2:01 PM UTC

jere wrote: post #39

lmm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dominion lets you spend all the time making decisions rather than waiting for other people by having hardly any interaction between players; at times it can feel like a time trial race. I tend to prefer Tanto Cuore; while it's largely a direct rip-off (and the art puts some people off) it gives you more attack options, and the balance shifts to allow a wider variety of strategies (Dominion I find duchies are almost e…

Maybe check out Puzzle Strike? David Sirlin claims to have sidestepped several of the problems Dominion has (slightly nsfw pic at beginning): http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2010/11/28/puzzle-strike-and-domi...

Well not having played dominion I can only vouch for Sirlin's Puzzle Strike. Another plus it is very easy to play. My girlfriend gave it to me as a present and my little brothers learned to play just after watching us play a couple of times. Plus the mechanics are solid, they keep the game from having a clear winner and then just having to wait for it (I'm watching you, Monopoly). They updated the rules recently with the new expansion but I haven't played the new version yet so I can't comment on the improvement. But it is definetly a blast for 4 players.

His other game Flash duel is also really good. It tries to capture a fighting game (a la street fighter II) with the board game. It succeds in the zoning part imho.

Re: Why we still love board games

#47

Post by bergie » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 2:03 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #22

yycom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for telling us about your favorite hobby, how many you have played, where it fits in your personal spectrum, that it has been around for many years, and giving us some titles! But, what is a German-style board game?

German style board games are so named because of the influence of a few designers in Germany, and because of the popularity of some games in Europe. Luck is reduced. Planning and skill is increased. They can be short fun easy to learn games for a wide age range (Carcassonne; Bohnanza), or they can be harder more in depth games that take longer to play (Le Havre). Usually there's an element of competing against the ga…

Sort of unrelated: but Ticket to Ride is a great example of how well German-style board games can translate to tablets.

You can either play with friends as pass-and-play, or with bots. Different maps are in-app payments.

We've killed time on some long train rides in Germany with it: http://www.daysofwonder.com/online/en/t2r/ipad/

Update: seems you could also play it between iPads online. We only have one iOS device so haven't tried.

Re: Why we still love board games

#48

Post by bergie » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 2:05 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #9

lmm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, try some modern, German-style boardgames like those described in the article - settlers if you play with people who pay attention, something slightly less interaction-heavy (san juan?) if you don't. You'll be amazed how far game design has progressed since the ones you remember from childhood.

Couldn't agree more. German-style games make Monopoly etc look positively archaic. Two great starter games are Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne. I'm a big fan of Ticket to Ride as well. There are a couple of things that make these games so good. Firstly, they're extremely well balanced - unlike Monopoly, it's rare for one player to pull ahead to the point that it's impossible for anyone else to catch up with them. S…

Agreed. For me a big part of these games is that often you don't really know who is going to win until the very last turn. Especially with the games that have a collaborative element, people teaming against whoever is "doing too well" equalizes the gameplay a lot.

Re: Why we still love board games

#49

Post by JimWestergren » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 2:08 PM UTC

I absolutely love board games and card games. And I love to think about game mechanics. If I would not be a web developer I would love to work with this kind of game development.

I have developed a version of Magic the Gathering which is played with a normal 52 card deck (one deck per person) with much more simple rules and good strategy (better?) and less luck. I have played it around 100 times and the rules are finalized. I think I should translate the rules to English.

A note about Monopoly, the new card game Monopoly Deal is actually quite good as a family game with simple rules and around 20 minutes.

Re: Why we still love board games

#50

Post by stephengillie » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 2:10 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #17

lmm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dominion lets you spend all the time making decisions rather than waiting for other people by having hardly any interaction between players; at times it can feel like a time trial race. I tend to prefer Tanto Cuore; while it's largely a direct rip-off (and the art puts some people off) it gives you more attack options, and the balance shifts to allow a wider variety of strategies (Dominion I find duchies are almost e…

The "flavor" of Dominion play is hugely dependent on the cards you're playing with. If you feel like there isn't enough interaction between players, I'd recommend giving Intrigue a try. Alchemy generally is a weak set, except for Posession, which is just a completely miserable damn card to have in game for the amount that players can use it to mess with eachother. Prosperity also brings an entirely new way to win to…

We've been using the Prosperity, Alchemy, and Dark Ages expansions, and they really add a lot of depth and enjoyment to the game. We use the Platinum treasure cards and Colony victory cards from Prosperity in each game, which can speed up the game and change how it plays. Maybe the game was designed to prevent players from "topping out" by limiting how much treasure or victory they can buy in a turn, but we don't like feeling limited.

Our house rule is we can't play with more than 1 stack of "+2 action" cards, because most of us will just buy those and combo them with "+ draw" cards, which give us "+ action" cards, eventually allowing the entire deck to be drawn, and ~30 victory points gained each turn.

For an interesting variation on this idea, try Quarriors -- it's like Dominion but with dice, with some faces being treasure/currency, and other faces being the creature/attack spell.