Advanced board games I recommend

[Res Ipsa]

I second Eldritch Horror which I picked up on Res' recommendation. Collaborative play is fun as an alternative to competing against other players.

House on Haunted Hill is a great quasi-cooperative game with a twist.

The Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective game series is simply awesome. Again, collaborative play where the opponent is the game mechanics. As a group you try and solve mysteries using clues and then score the results against Holmes' ability to solve it.

White Chapel - also good.

Mysterium is a fun game where the players try to figure out a ghost story with one person playing as the ghost.

I'm not sure when a game crosses over from being a miniature game to board game. I'm assume Shades means minis as in Warhammer 40k or the Song of Ice and Fire wargame genre?

I enjoy a number of games where minis play a heavy role but they are board games, strictly speaking. Blood Rage, Rising Sun, and Hate are all games I bought for the minis but enjoy the games in their own right.

Axis and Allies is a favorite. Shades: Do you recall the entire Gamemaster Series of which Axis and Allies was a part? I played Shogun and Fortress America back when that I enjoyed. I seem to recall either seeing or possibly playing the pirate ship one and not liking it as much as the others. Axis and Allies was the only one to survive due to limited popularity but Shogun deserved more love.

I'm happy to hear you enjoy Eldritch. I should note that the 55 characters and 16 ancient ones represents the base game plus eight expansions. But the base game itself is lots of fun.

I enjoy House on Haunted Hill and Sherlock Holmes, but I consider the latter a little unfair. It expects the players to draw connections and make inferences that I don't consider reasonable. For that style of game, I much prefer the Detective series. We just finished Vienna Connection, which is a crime solving/investigation/political game set during the Cold War. It was, in my opinion, the best crime/mystery solving game I've ever played. I've just bought their latest release, which is set in the Dune universe.

Mysterium is another game I really enjoy. The ghost cannot talk to the players, but gives them Dixit style pictures to try and lead them to the correct location, suspect and murder weapon.

So many recent games combine cards, boards, miniatures and storytelling in a way that makes them hard to place in a single type. Board gamers tend to refer to the style of game by the main mechanics rather than a general type.

[Res Ipsa]

I have been advised that Catan is fantastic. I have been told that the number 1 board game, according to the arch game guy here, is gloomhaven. These guys are big right wingers in case that adds credibility.

Gloomhaven is apolitical. It's a miniatures combat, hand management, dungeon crawl with fixed scenarios, unlike an open world RPG like D&D. It has multiple branching story lines, including main quests and side quests. You control your mini by playing from a hand of cards that is unique to the character you are playing. The deck recycles when your hand is exhausted, but at the cost of discarding a card. If you run out of cards, your character falls unconscious and is out until the scenario is finished. Your character levels up by having access to more powerful cards. But, when you start a character, you choose from two random goals. As soon as you complete the goal, that character retires, and you start a new one (or one that has been previously played) from level 1. Completing the goal also has a reward, such as unlocking a new character available to be played. I think the whole campaign involves around 100 scenarios.

It's considered number one because, at least at the time, it set the record for total dollars raised in a kickstarter for a tabletop game. I don't know whether it still holds the record.

They have since released Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, which is a scaled down introduction to the game. It teaches the mechanics in the first five scenarios, and characters can go straight into Gloomhaven. It's a great way to try the game out to see of you like it before dropping a bundle on the main game.

A sequel, Frosthaven, is due out in 2022 or 2023.

[honorentheos]

I've never played Gloomhaven. Of the games in that genre I have two Zombicide games (Black Plague and Green Horde) and Massive Darkness. They are fun, but I find I prefer playing an RPG to that style of game.

This is where the mini/wargame/board game distinction gets tricky to me. I love some of the old tabletop war games. Battletech was a fav that I've seen was rebooted. It used a hex map and figures, dice rolls and sheets that seemed to be closer to what Shades meant by mini games.

Along with Battletech we had gotten into the Renegade Legion series of games. Centurion has perhaps my favorite mechanic using damage templates. I still own almost every game out of that series. I tried to convince a couple of people to play last year, but the crunch was too much for them. Tracking speed, acceleration, modifiers, and all the other factors involved in making a move was not fun to them, and I think most people who didn't cut their teeth on older games would not enjoy that. New games certainly understand that it's more fun to get to the playing rather than penciling out the math of a grav tank decelerating out of a wide turn through smoke charges while targeting another tank moving through dense cover with a sketch targeting computer...But man, the nostalgic satisfaction of a heat round dropping in through a laser hole in otherwise perfect armor to do crit infrastructure damage is not replicated in a game with simplified mechanics, either.

[Res Ipsa]

I think of Warhammer as the classic mini game. You have miniatures of something (armies, people, robots, spaceships) in some kind of setting with movement and combat rules and then they fight. Wargames are similar, but are generally trying to simulate something historical or out of literature. Minis are sandbox style -- pick your units, pick your terrain, and go at it.

I think the most popular minis game right now is X-Wing, at least where I hang out. There is a Star Wars themed ground battle game (Battlegrounds?), but it doesn't seem to have been as popular in my neck of the woods.

[Dr. Shades]

I'm not sure when a game crosses over from being a miniature game to board game.

If the game only comes with figurines, especially ones that you're expected to paint, and DOESN'T come with a game board, it's a miniatures game. Especially if the rule books are sold separately.

I'm assume Shades means minis as in Warhammer 40k or the Song of Ice and Fire wargame genre?

Yes to the former, but I'm not at all familiar with the latter so I can't say.

I enjoy a number of games where minis play a heavy role but they are board games, strictly speaking. Blood Rage, Rising Sun, and Hate are all games I bought for the minis but enjoy the games in their own right.

They come with a board, so they are technically board games, despite the fact that their playing pieces are phenomenal. I played Blood Rage once and had fun even though I lost miserably. For future reference, attack often and always try to capture The World Tree!

Axis and Allies is a favorite. Shades: Do you recall the entire Gamemaster Series of which Axis and Allies was a part?

Oh yes. For those not in the know, that was a five-game series consisting of Axis & Allies (World War II), Conquest of the Empire (Roman civil war), Shogun (Japanese civil war during the Samurai period), Fortress America (An invasion of the United States from three directions in the early 21st Century), and Broadsides & Boarding Parties (A pirate ship and a royal ship do battle in the Caribbean).

I played Shogun and Fortress America back when that I enjoyed.

Me, too. I own "Samurai Swords," an exact clone of Shogun other than the name. Both of those games were bought out by other companies and re-published.

I seem to recall either seeing or possibly playing the pirate ship one and not liking it as much as the others. Axis and Allies was the only one to survive due to limited popularity but Shogun deserved more love.

You're thinking of Broadsides & Boarding Parties, link above.

Oops, I misremembered the Defcon rule. I like the rule because it encourages brinksmanship. If I can maneuver you into a situation in which your only option is launch your nukes, I win because first strike does catastrophic damage to your international influence.

I still hate it because no matter how good the U.S.S.R. is doing, if they draw the "CIA Established" card and can't get rid of it, then the U.S. gets to fish through the discard pile for a card that forces the DEFCON level down one, and since they always keep the DEFCON level at two for just this purpose, they play the card and force the U.S.S.R. to automatically lose--again, no matter how good the U.S.S.R. is doing and no matter how poorly the U.S.A. is doing. So, thanks to this ill-advised rule, the game hinges on which player draws the bad card, NOT which player plays the best.

I think of Warhammer as the classic mini game. You have miniatures of something (armies, people, robots, spaceships) in some kind of setting with movement and combat rules and then they fight. Wargames are similar, but are generally trying to simulate something historical or out of literature. Minis are sandbox style -- pick your units, pick your terrain, and go at it.

I think the most popular minis game right now is X-Wing, at least where I hang out. There is a Star Wars themed ground battle game (Battlegrounds?), but it doesn't seem to have been as popular in my neck of the woods.

With all possible respect, let's save all that for the upcoming miniatures thread, please.

[Res Ipsa]

Sorry, Shades. I meant to address the distinction and got carried away.

The Soviet Union just has to be a little more careful with the Defcon level.

[Father Francis]

WH40K is a fun game, the classic Warhammer, not so much. Takes two hours just to set up and get your archers in firing range. Not to mention all that time I spent painting my Skaven army...

[Dr. Shades]

WH40K is a fun game, the classic Warhammer, not so much. Takes two hours just to set up and get your archers in firing range. Not to mention all that time I spent painting my Skaven army...

Once again, THIS IS THE BOARD GAMES THREAD, **NOT** THE MINIATURES THREAD!! YOU’LL GET YOUR CHANCE A LITTLE LATER! HAVE PATIENCE!

[honorentheos]

I've never played Gloomhaven. Of the games in that genre I have two Zombicide games (Black Plague and Green Horde) and Massive Darkness. They are fun, but I find I prefer playing an RPG to that style of game.

On reflection I own more games in this genre but never played them as I bought them for cheap minis. Those being the Dungeons and Dragons board games that included the same minis that WotC sold outside for RPG play. Those include:

Tomb of Annihilation
https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tablet ... nihilation

Temple of Elemental Evil
https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tablet ... ental-evil

Wrath of Ashadarlon
https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tablet ... board-game

Castle Ravenloft
https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tablet ... board-game

Dungeons of the Mad Mage
https://www.target.com/p/dungeons-38-dr ... A-84114794?

I can't speak to the game play but the minis worked well for painting up for game play.



Disclaimer: Many of those are from other sets than the D&D games. I was needing an orc horde for a campaign arc.

[Res Ipsa]

There's a relatively new genre of board games called "asymmetric" games. In an asymmetric game, the different roles or characters don't just have certain unique advantages or powers: they are playing an entirely different game with a different win conditions. The best of these, in my opinion, is Root. The players each play a faction of forest creatures, each with different mechanics and objectives. It requires each player to not only understand his own faction's rules and win conditions, but the other player's as well. It's an acquired taste, but lots of fun.

Other similar games by are Vast and Oath. I haven't played either.