The Gaming Den

Since Monopoly seems to be causing a lot of discontent in the Design Principles thread, I'm going to spin off a new thread here.

By the way, all of those people saying that you hate Monotony? I agree with you. It's an awful, miserable game that only gets by on its own inertia. It's one of the few games where you're glad to get knocked out of the game early because that's the only vaguely exciting party.

Despite all that, I'm going to have to say that Risk is a worse game. Yeah, Monotony has worse rules, but the upside to Monopoly is that you can at least play with your aunt and your cousin and your grandma at the same time--so if you're not able to watch TV you can prevent yourselves from killing each other. But Risk has no family bonding excuse. Anyone who plays Risk has to admit to being at least slightly nerdy. And if the seeds of nerddom have already been planted, why don't you fuckers play a better game? Like Axis and Allies or Scrabble or Settlers of Catan?

Risk wouldn't be so bad if people engaged in some elementary diplomacy (the only thing that makes the game remotely fun), but everytime I played it people want to be lone wolves, which turns it into a mindless grind fest. Then again, playing with diplomacy might turn the game into a Monotony-style lockdown. So who knows.

What strange universe do you live in where Axis & Allies is a better game than Risk?

I can finish a game of Risk in half an hour. I can't finish a game of Axis & Allies in a day.

Also, I think your first principle (that Risk is an inherently nerdy game) is incorrect.

Playing Risk with heavily diplomatic people just makes the game take longer. It's a game that generally favors aggressive players, but alliances tend to result in people sitting on their hands for a while, trading a country a round to collect cards and calling it a day until they have a whole board full of armies. At which point some grand final battle is supposed to happen, which really means rolling dice about a hundred times when the results are basically pre-determined.

At least Risk and Monopoly both have some basic decision-making involved. You could be stuck playing Parcheesi.

If we're including non-board games, I'm going to have to throw out Go Fish.

The new Risk is decent. Certainly an improvement. Risk 2210 remains awesome. Godstorm is a very good variant but requires a few houserules to work correctly.

My list:

KINGMAKER. What a piece of shit this thing is. The game encourages brinksmanship and headhunting of the vilest kind, followed by epic ass-beatings with a shitty battle minigame. Takes way too fucking long.

BATTLE ROYALE. Create complicated lineages, play medieval lawyer with your friends for hours and then get stomped because some asshole came up with a few +X Strength Princes who make a mockery of your military and the game's unit stacking limit.

ILLUMINATI. Complicated and fiddly for a game that should be fun and lighthearted and quick.

POWER GRID. Yes, Power Grid. This game ought to be called, "Resource Management: the Game". It's a flavorless exercise in bidding. Runner Ups in the flavorless category are: Through the Desert and Blue Moon City.

TWILIGHT IMPERIUM (without the expansion). It's not a sci-fi empire game, it's a Cold War simulator. You get a ton of ships you will never use because the base game rewards bullshittery and turtling, with actual blast-you-from-space strategies resulting in basically no Victory Points... unless the "you win if you attacked everyone" card randomly comes up. Utter turd. Much much much better with the expansion.

TSURO. Fun if you don't know how to play, but once you realize the strategy is "avoid the edges, go to the center" you might as well be playing multiplayer War.

I love A&A, and I love the boardgame (mostly from a nostalgia point of veiw; I haven't played it in nearly a decade), but I think the computer version is much more playable.

First of all, the setup time is instantaneous. Secondly, it neatly tracks your movements as you ponder where to move your forces. Thirdly, it automatically remembers and applies all the obscure rules of the game, like Amphibious Assaults. Fourthly, the resolution is much faster.

Another nice plus is the settings page incorporates quite a few house-rule and revision options.


Edit:
Good call in Illuminati, M_L. That's another game that I like the thought of, but it always takes longer than what I want to devote to the game. I think I've played Illuminati once or twice since I've bought Munchkin.

mean_liar wrote:ILLUMINATI. Complicated and fiddly for a game that should be fun and lighthearted and quick.

Not to mention that the different societies are poorly balanced at best.

You might find this thread at Board Game Geek interesting (bad games people love). Some have been mentioned already (Monopoly, Risk, Kingmaker):
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/1 ... e-t/page/1

hogarth wrote:Not to mention that the different societies are poorly balanced at best.

Yeah. If you don't ban Bavaria, someone ends up running the table with it.

RobbyPants wrote:

hogarth wrote:Not to mention that the different societies are poorly balanced at best.

Yeah. If you don't ban Bavaria, someone ends up running the table with it.

And after that, I consider the Gnomes of Zurich the second-best.

They're also very good, particularly with those free transfers.

I think part of what makes Bavaria and the Gnomes so good is that their secondary victory conditions (either gaining power or gaining money) are directly in line with what you'd do anyway. It's when you play something like Cthulhu where you have to go against your instincts and destroy groups, or collect Weird groups for Discordia that you have a harder time achieving victory.

Of course, free privileged attacks for Bavaria is fucking insane!

Edit: I'm not sure the privileged attacks are "free", but you can do it every turn, which is what's scary.

I got over Candyland quick once I realized there was no strategy involved.

How about Chutes and Ladders?

Lately I have played online monopoly (pogo.com) with my friends over skype. We have played a fair number of games (20+) and the player count on a game is usually 4 (the max; though sometimes there are only 3). Because it's computerized it's able to run much much faster than normal monopoly, no counting out bills and so on. My assessment compared to normal monopoly is that when the players aren't forced to count out all the cash they're handing over to other players each time it can maintain a much lighter and more humorous atmosphere.

We've also played a lot of Risk (tabletop). Usually we have a large player count and we stick two boards together to attain a proper country to player ratio. Two-Board Risk is a pretty slow slogfest just like normal Risk is. The one major rule change we use is a 15 army limit per territory (with +1 per card set that's been turned in so far as a more recent rule update).

I've played Illuminati only twice, and it was kinda alright. Only one player really knew how to play and the rest of us were just beginners so it never got very heavy. It did seem like it could turn bad eventually.

The non-RPG game my group plays the most (other than Magic) is probably Munchkin, which I think is pretty awesome. I've personally got the fantasy set with several add-on packs, and my friends have the kung fu, western, and cthulhu sets. I've also played with the space and supers set. Some sets are better balanced than others (space is really shitty on balance), but overall it's a pretty fun game I'd say.

RobbyPants wrote:How about Chutes and Ladders?

It's Snakes and Ladders over here, and I wish to issue a warning: in real life you can climb ladders (both ways, even!), but do not try to slide down a snake. You will be bitten and die.

Snakes and Ladders over here too, I think the Chutes bullshit was added in recent decades to make the game more kid friendly or something.

Anyway, am I the only one who actually enjoys monopoly? Course the game rarely reaches a conclusion when other people start rage-quitting so maybe I just haven't experienced enough of its torturous ministrations to have built up a sufficient hatred for it; or maybe I'm just an unusually laid back dude.

Koumei wrote:

RobbyPants wrote:How about Chutes and Ladders?

It's Snakes and Ladders over here, and I wish to issue a warning: in real life you can climb ladders (both ways, even!), but do not try to slide down a snake. You will be bitten and die.

Oh, right, Australia. Here, the most venomous snake is practically a joke and will make an obnoxious noise long before you even see them. My ex used to pick up snakes and play with them (something they were very displeased with).

Calibron wrote:Snakes and Ladders over here too, I think the Chutes bullshit was added in recent decades to make the game more kid friendly or something.

Or distance it from that bad movie.

I didn't know was using a realm game in it. It was in On Demand a month or so ago.

-Crissa

Every Risk game I've ever played in has the controller of Australia or South America win by a landslide. Not fun when you play random placement and you don't have any territories in there.

Kithkanan wrote:I got over Candyland quick once I realized there was no strategy involved.

Did you know they actually nerfed it? The game I taught to my siblings is not the same game I get to teach my son.

Maj wrote:

Kithkanan wrote:I got over Candyland quick once I realized there was no strategy involved.

Did you know they actually nerfed it? The game I taught to my siblings is not the same game I get to teach my son.

Wait, what? How? How can you nerf "draw a card, move to next same colored space"?

Calibron wrote:Snakes and Ladders over here too, I think the Chutes bullshit was added in recent decades to make the game more kid friendly or something.

Anyway, am I the only one who actually enjoys monopoly? Course the game rarely reaches a conclusion when other people start rage-quitting so maybe I just haven't experienced enough of its torturous ministrations to have built up a sufficient hatred for it; or maybe I'm just an unusually laid back dude.

Snake and Ladders here too.

Monopoly isn't terrible. But if you've played more advanced stuff it is woefully primitive compared to lots of other games mechanics-wise.

The original Risk is a primitive dice-fest made bearable by metagaming. You may as well play Diplomacy. The new Risks allow for much more tactical flexibility. 2210 is fantastic. Godstorm is ok. Star Wars has the Order 66 thing, and LoTR is fine except for stupid Fellowship pathing.

Axis & Allies... never played it before but honestly I kinda dislike it. It's not bad, but you regularly end up with anachronistic stuff like Japanese tanks going into Siberia.

Also, I don't really hate a lot of board or card games. I do have one game that makes me go into a rage though:

Fits.

It's fucking Tetris in a boardgame format. Why? WHY?

They shortened the board, removed the shortcuts, replaced cards with a spinner. The newest one doesn't have a static board, which is the first good idea they've added in years, and is a bit longer than the re-release in 2002. There's a pretty good demo on the hasbro site.

(Strangely, we have these 'new looks' because of the work of such as Meg Whitman, although I think of her marketing ability more as an ability to surf popular trends. I don't think she'd make a good Governor, as she's pretty deep in Republican winger-land and greased-palms.)

-Crissa

mean_liar wrote:POWER GRID. Yes, Power Grid. This game ought to be called, "Resource Management: the Game". It's a flavorless exercise in bidding. Runner Ups in the flavorless category are: Through the Desert and Blue Moon City.

Power Grid isn't that terrible. I'm a wargame sort of guy and I enjoyed my first playthrough.

Mainly because I justified to myself that I was helping to electrify the German war machine for its eventual attempt to overtturn the injustices of Versailles.

Okay, yes, admittedly if I play it again I might start strangling people.

Zinegata wrote: Axis & Allies... never played it before but honestly I kinda dislike it. It's not bad, but you regularly end up with anachronistic stuff like Japanese tanks going into Siberia.

I'm not a fan of Axis & Allies but I'll play it.

And you're absolutely right about Japanese tanks in Siberia. In fact, the last game I played, I split my fleet in the Pacific, avoided tanking in pearl harbor, and had my "Battle of Midway" within range of my bombers and fighters with the US. I stomped all who opposed me,, the stomping was swift, the stomping was painful, and in all my stomping I showed no mercy (Amen). The pacific fleet parked off the coast of the US to mop up any real opposition that the US could afford, and essentially took the US out of the majority of the game.

In the meantime I created an armored column that would be the envy of the Soviet Bloc and sent it straight through Siberia, gutting Russia, crashing through Europe to provide reinforcements, and shoving the UK and Allied Europe back across the channel.

I admit, lucky rolls helped me smash the US player who was the strongest, but the rest of my tactics were nuts.

I also hate that the allies not only outnumber the Axis powers, but generally outproduce them too every turn. If the Allies are competent, I can't see how they *can* lose, save by the hatred of the Dice Gods.

That being said, I'll admit to being completely and totally burned out on Munchkin even if everyone around me seems to love it. I don't find it entertaining any more. 90% of the time one player gets a lucky combination of cards and is unstoppable for the rest of the game.

TheFlatline wrote:That being said, I'll admit to being completely and totally burned out on Munchkin even if everyone around me seems to love it. I don't find it entertaining any more. 90% of the time one player gets a lucky combination of cards and is unstoppable for the rest of the game.

I have a couple problems with munchkin now: first: the last like twenty god damned times I've played, it's been with the same friend and just that friend, so there's never much new about another game, unless I just bought a new set. second, I love mixing and including lots of expansions, and all that, but it gets hard to decently shuffle that many damned cards.