[Loremaster]

A Touch of Evil

In this board game, all of the players choose one of eight characters that have life points, a couple of stats, and a few abilities, and you try to hunt down one of four Villains in a Vicorianesque town. You can play either competitively (you try to be the one to defeat the Villain and ruing the others' chances), or cooperatively (you all work together to defeat a stronger Villain). You walk around and find clues, gaining Investigation points that work like currency, drawing cards by searching areas, and fighting token Minion creatures. The Villain gets turns too, whenever a Mystery card is drawn. Basically, the town has six Town Elders that can get killed, and the town has a Darkness meter that starts at twenty. If the meter ever reaches zero, game over, the Villain wins! The game even comes with a soundtrack CD!

Players fight one of FOUR possible Villains, and each has a separate host of token Minions.
Players themselves control one of eight Heroes, each with its own miniature figure.

Very few drawbacks: somewhat token intensive, and a little much for anyone under 12. Somewhat easy if you're a gamer and know how to dive for the right cards, but that's why you play competitively. Rather expensive at around $50, but the cards are super-glossy and the Character/Villain cards are thicker than coasters. Bottom line, you probagbly get a lot of use otf the game, and it's durable. GET THIS GAME!

The company, Flying Frog, put out a sister game called Last Night on Earth, a zombie game. I'll review it later.


(Update)

Here's a short review at BoardGameGeek.com:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35815

The company's official web site. YES, each game has add-on web content, some free and some for sale:
http://www.flyingfrog.net/

[Uzo]

Probably my favorite game, and has been since I first played it in the mid 90's, has been Blood Bowl. Made by Games Workshop, Blood Bowl is a crazy combination of American football, rugby, chess, mindless violence, and Dungeons and Dragons. Each player fields a team that they've built from the available rosters of a wide variety of different races and teams. GW's standard races of Orcs, Goblins, Dwarfs, Chaos Dwarfs, Wood Elves, High Elves, Dark Elves, Skaven, Lizardmen, Undead, Chaos, and Humans are included along with some offshoot ones such as variations on the Humans and Undead teams. Players take turns moving all of their miniatures in an attempt to score or prevent their opponent from scoring. However, if they commit a turnover (multiple meanings in game. ie failed block, tripped trying to dodge, fumble, throw interception, fail to pick up ball) then your turn ends immediately. Moving your pieces and deciding when/where to block/pass therefore becomes very important and tactical. Also, when played in a league format, there are RPG elements as players progress in their careers. They earn new abilities and their stats improve. Also, they might age or become afflicted with a niggling injury that could hamper them or make them retire. This game is great fun and really enjoy playing it. The only unfortunate part is finding players locally to play with. However, a version is being worked on by Cyanide Studios that will be released for PC this June and other platforms this fall. Also, there is a Java based version that can be played at www.fumbbl.com

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/712

[Da Gamers Den Boss]

One of my favorites was also a Games Workshop game called Necromunda. Basically you form a street gang and vie for territory. It also, like Blood Bowl, had an RPG element where you gang gained skills, or injuries, got kidnapped, got better weapons etc. I think it was probably one of my favorite GW games cause you could get into it for about $60. A lot better than the $300-$500 or so you needed to spend for an army of Fantasy or 40K. It was also one of the best miniatures leagues that we ran at the Den.

[Loremaster]

And now, for something completely different.

My wife and I call it "the Cow Game". No, I'm not talking about the secret level in Diablo II. Nor will you find this game on the shelves of your local game store. This game is called "Life on the Farm", and is very much in the traditional style of boardgames. To buy it, my brother found it at Orscheln's, or you can get it online. A Minnesota farm family had it published.

Like Monopoly, you collect or lose money based on spaces you land on around the board, and many of them cause you to draw Farm Income or Farm Expense cards. The board is a course layout, like Monopoly, and you earn more money each time you pass Start. It's not directly competitive, but you try to save and invest money wisely.

You start out with a $10,000 loan from the bank, so that you can run your own farm. Now, running the course of the board has lots of farm-theme activities. You have to buy gas for your tractor, sell eggs or corn at market, fix the combine, and take your animals to the vet. Your day-to-day expenses come and go like the tide, but you don't make much money. The real income is from buying cows, which you can only do when you land on a Cattle Auction, at $500 a cow. (Holstein cows, the black-and-white ones known for milking.) The more cows you have, the more milk money you get, when you pass Start; you get $100 per cow. Save your milk money, buy more cows. BUT... if you invest too heavily in cows, and big bills come in and take all of your money, you have to slaughter your cows (as a fast effect) for $300 each, so you're losing money. Buy too few cows, and you fall behind as others make more milk money faster. When you get sixty or more cows, you then earn up the $10,000 to pay back the loan from the bank, and you win the game, knowing you can safely retire and live off of the milk money.

You can play this game with nine-year-olds and have a ball, and they can read most of the cards, and they seem to like the theme. However, four or more players makes for a three-hour game, so I start them out with 10 cows each, plus the ten grand. It's getting past the 20-cow bump for the money to really start rolling in. Also good for teaching basic consumer math and being one of those game that wouldn't offend anyone even if you tried. Well, I did write funny pet names on all of the cows... "My life's changed, ever since I discovered stackable livestock" (The Far Side).

...I've never played it, but there was a Cheapass Game called "Unexploded Cow", which was supposed to be a solution for mad cow diseased cows in England and undiscovered land mine fields in France. I'm guessing you walk your cows out on a grid hoping blow they up??? Anybody ever play this one?

[lowfly]

Some of the games i miss are...

Steve Jackson's Car Wars & Steve Jackson's Toon

Car Wars was simply cool and TOON was a kids dream...Playing as a cartoon charactor with the ability to do what ever you wanted to do and if you had the right GM they could make the game even more fun.

[peteramthor]

Silent Death from ICE was a fave around here for a while. Me and another of our group played a demo at a con once upon a time. After that we were hooked on it and the guy running the demo gave us a rule book for free. We came back and started getting others hooked on it. Now the interest didn't last long as we were all die hard rpg players as well. But that short time we played it we had a blast. Always wished some computer game company would buy it and put out a cheap online emulator for it. But that's as likely as cows flying.

[Loremaster]

Tomb

I went into Geek Out and dropped the $50. on a game I'd been staring at a little while, beacuase it looked like the kind of game that I wanted to play or make myself. It's a dungeon hack, where you build a party of adventurers, collect some equipment and spell cards, then invade the dungeon. You open tombs that may have monster, trap and treasure cards. It's a competitive game where you race the opponent for the most XP from banked monster, trap and treasure cards to win.

It's a freakin' powergamer abuse machine with very little game balance.

The game comes with (I think) 84 possible characters, which players draw from a bag and choose from to build their party. But don't get too attached to them. Character HPs are low, so they easily get squished. You can equip five kinds of color-coded cards to your peeps: Item, Tactic, Spell (Wizard), Prayer (Cleric) and Treasure (found) cards. You can start at the dungeon's entrance and cross a 1-inch grid to the door of many card-sized Tombs. Boot in the door, then one of your opponents becomes your GM, revealing first Traps, then Monsters you have to overcome, before giving you any Treasure cards within. At the start of the game, everyone chooses cards that go into the Tombs, so you get to place a few goodies and baddies.

Understand now, oh dungeoneer, this is no lighthearted cave romp. The monsters are badass; most of them are able to thump your whole party in a turn or two. The characters are weak on HPs but have strong individual abilities, and many of the cards you draw are just plain broken. There are so many ways in which a character ability plus the right card (sometimes any card will do) to make a cheapass Munchkin-like abuse machine. The only way this uh, "balances" out is that other players will try to find a way to kill that character thru abilities of their own characters. Opposing players' parties can't engage each other in combat, but they can attempt to steal items, use certain effects to try to kill a character, and of course, run them down with Traps and Monsters when they're the GM. in other words, if you play nicely, you quickly give away the game. So if you gareoverly competitve or play with gamers who don't like getting punked, this game may causes some bad feelings. But if you can treat your characters like summoned monsters in Magic--and *NOT* like PCs you design in an RPG, where you trust the GM isn't going to thump you for looking at him wrong--you'll be okay. If you think game balance is overrated, and you should be able to killshit-at-the-highest-level to your heart's content, you'll enjoy this game.

I enjoy the variety of this game. There are so many characters that the game incudes a poster of all 84 of them. There is a variety of cards to draw, but most players end up digging through the whole stack before long. And there's 300 Tomb cards, so you won't see the same monsters or treasure showing up every time you game. Best of all, the dungeon board is two-sided, with a simple gray dungeon on one side, and a more complex brown maze on the other. So there's plenty of variety to go around. Dice are d10's but color-coded. Green dice succeed 3/10, blue dice succeed 5/10, and red dice 7/10. You may roll, for example, three green dice and one blue die when a certain character attacks, or his Skill score to dodge traps is three red. Monsters are the same way.

By the way, has anyone played these games? These are cult-favorite that some gamers swear by:
- Monsters Ravage America (or newer, Monsters Menace America)
- Robo Rally
- Diplomacy
- Carcisonne (sp?)
- Great Dalumti, or similarly, Dilbert: Corporate Shuffle card games
- Mille Bornes

[The_Elf]

I spent High School playing Diplomacy with my friends, and spent my childhood playing Mille Bornes with my family.

Diplomacy is extremely simple; it's the players that make it complex. It is essentially a WWI simulation game, with players taking control of up to seven nations (the more players, the better the game.) You start with three (four if you play Russia) armies and navies. That's total...England starts with two Navies and one Army, Russia starts with Two Navies and Two Armies, etc. One Army vs. One Army results in a stalemate. To win a battle you have to either be unopposed or able to support it with another army. Navies can convoy armies across seas. Certain places on the map are "resource centers" and allow you to deploy one more army or navy. Many of these are neutral and able to be taken in the early game to set up the battles in the later game. At a certain number of resource centers owned, you win. As players, though, you are encouraged to make and break alliances. Other players' armies can support yours in battle, and this makes for some fun realisations--either for your enemies when someone they thought neutral chooses a side, or for you when you make plans requiring allied support only to find they've witheld it against their word.

When I say I spent high school playing this game, it's not much of an exaggeration. We probably pulled it out every other weekend or so. My friend Mickey, who owned the game, was the undisputed king. Strategies alternated between allying against him (which only led to infighting amongst ourselves later on) or hitching our stars to him, hoping to overtake him when it came down to the two of us (which would often lead to him winning.)

Mille Bornes I remember less about; I was a kid, after all. I remember that you were trying to accumulate a number of miles through cards, first one to 1000 miles won the game. Along the way, opponents would play "hazards" on you to stop you from accumulating miles or to set you back. Some hazards can be circumvented by special cards that you play on yourself. The snazzy part, for me as a kid anyway, was being able to play these protections as a hazard is played. The one I particularly remember is that "Flat Tire" hazards could be avoided with "Puncture Proof Tires." If your opponent played "Flat Tire" on you, and you had "Puncture Proof Tires" in your hand, you play the tires and call out "COUP FOURRÉ!" It was a blast.

It was an easy game to play as a family game; I was probably about ten when we were playing it. The games also didn't have to be very long, so a few games could be played out in an evening, allowing for "rematches" almost immediately.

[Loremaster]

I've heard of Diplomacy games sometimes taking an entire weekend, with turns lasting an hour and lots of subterfuge and spying going on. People would meet in different rooms of a house, and try to spy on each others' plans, and oh the backstabbing! A little bit of pawn-moving and a lot of conjecture and plotting went a long way.

[Loremaster]

What's your favorite board game of ALL TIME? What's the game that you could never tire of playing?

It's hard for me to narrow it down, but probably at the top of the list is Settlers of Catan. I played it a bunch with a friend, then dropped a hundred dollars (ten of it shipping from Fargo, mind you I was living on student loans at the time) on Settlers, Seafarers and the 5-6 expansions for both. I took a couple of days playing with the sets, figuring out how to get a good land-to-water ratio on a random board. So when most people were playing scenarios, I brought a randomized board that, after playtesting, was very popular. I'll post it on request.

There's not many games that I know I've played 200 hundred times, but Settlers is one. It's one of those games that non-gamers would look at and think its weird, and then sit down and really enjoy it.