Gaming

Hi! This is my first post here so I hope I don't make some mistakes. If you like Heroquest you could look at other dungeon crawlers, like the dungeons and dragons boardgames (my favourite is "waterdeep: the dungeon of the mad mage"), or my beloved Star wars: imperial assault or Lord of the rings: Journeys in the Middle earth. If you want to expand to other genres, since you like AH you could try Arkham horror: living card game. Absolute masterpiece.

The latest addiction to my game library is Earthborne rangers and is quite a refreshing take.

I hope that some of these resonate with you!

My favorite, and most played game is absolutely Arboretum.

It plays quick, it's small enough to stash in a bag, it's easy to teach, and it feels like it has endless play and variation. The game also lets me do one of my favorite things in a board game, which is let me go for high risk high reward "shoot the moon" strategies. Absolutely lovely bit of tension and backstabbing fun, but concentrated all into the reveals right at the end so it doesn't drag the entire experience. Great at every player count, especially at 2 players which is important given that most of my board gaming is just with my wife.

Plus you get to look at lovely art of trees while you playing (with the original edition at least, the newer one has worse art IMHO).

Frosthaven! We’ve also really loved playing Quacks of Quedlinberg - it’s a great one for friends who are less into board games

I run a board game store so my list will be rather lengthy.

But short answer is Gaia Project... Until Age of Innovation drops

My single favourite board game is the Game of Thrones. No dice. No luck. Pure tactics and the occasional alliance.

I have apparently terrible luck so games that involve dice, especially d6's do not interest me.

I've been absolutely loving a couple of the Button Shy games at the moment! They're really nice because I can just slip them into my work bag and play them at lunch. In particular, I've been playing a fair bit of Sprawlopolis and Food Chain Island, both of which are really great solo games.

With other people, I've been playing a whole lot of Spirit Island, which is probably one of my all-time favorites. The amount of diversity in how each of the spirits play is mind-boggling and makes every game feel very different. My regular play-group is also getting pretty excited for the new expansion that's coming out in the next couple of months.

I like the ones that platform socialisation and banter - things like hidden role games, party games, etc. Less focus on the game's strategy and more on the people you're playing with.

Codenames (and Codenames Duel) is slower-paced but an engaging word-based game.

Just One is a simple word game that even drunk people can play (and likely have more fun in).

Detective Club is a bluffing hidden role game, where all of you are using weird art cards to match a prompt, but one of you didn't have the prompt and is spinning bullshit - guess who!

Concept is Pictionary for people who can't draw.

And my all time favourite:

Telestrations, a blend of 'the telephone game' and illustrations. If you're familiar with Gartic Phone, you already understand the gist. Every event that I've brought it out, it has been a good time.

It might be Marrakech now that I think about it. It's not too time taking and friendly to casual players yet not completely luck based. Also placing the rugs just feel so good. Are there other board games that comes with neat little items like Marrakech?

My city is an astoundingly good game. My wife and I are playing it basically every weekend at the moment. Super easy to learn, tactically rich, the art is lovely and you make your own city story to some extent. It's just wonderful.

The Red Dragon Inn is fun, especially when you drink real alcohol when you "drink" in game

I have a huge shelf of shamepportunity (see what I did there? Now no one can correct me! 🤣) what I like vs what I get to play with my friends/SO vary greatly.

Some of my favorites

• Undaunted Normandy
• Trails (my SO and I play this one a lot at bars)
• Tak, a lovely abstract strategy game
• Spire's End and Spire's End Hildegard
• March of the Ants
• Cosmic Frog

Magic Maze is a collaborative game that’s always fun. Everything is done in “silence” because you’re unable to consult with each other to escape the maze. Warning is that it could get quite chaotic

Never been much for boardgames, but the one I've always loved is Atmosfear. We had the old DVD version when I was a kid and it was just great.

It never takes too long due to the timer. No playtrough is the same due to the randomisation. And the way you need to work together against the evil guy on the DVD or everyone looses, while having work against each other to win over other players is just so well done. It's also complex enough to stay interesting, but not too complex to make it hard to play for non-die hard boardgame players.

I have very little experience with board games so I'm using this thread for ideas to try out. But I did play Betrayal and liked it so I'll say that one is my favorite.

My favorite long game (as in over a couple of hours) is Merchant of Venus. For shorter games I like Azul, Splendor, 7 Wonders Duel, That's Pretty Clever, Lost Cities R&W, Star Realms, and more.

Not sure if this counts as boardgame, but I've been enjoying Farkle a lot (a dice game) thanks to Kingdom Come Deliverance xD

I never really like this kind of stuff but Farkle is quite simple and fun!

My group doesn't have much time for board games, so we like 5 Minute Dungeon. The 5 minutes is a limit using a timer, and it's co-op so it's everyone against the clock.

We love Villainous. Azul is awesome, I quite enjoy Quacks of Quedlinburg myself.

I'm mostly into deck builders and I haven't seen these mentioned before so I'll drop two of my favourites Dune: Imperium and (TBOI:) Four Souls! Also an honorable mention to Dominion but I haven't played that in a while.

Some of my favourites right now:

-Wingspan: 1-5 player game about birds from all over the world (with the European, Oceania and Asia expansions). Build up your board of birds and make future actions you take have more effects. There's a solo mode and Asia expansion introduces a special 2 player and 6-7 player mode. As a birder myself, can't recommend this game enough.

-Parks: Small but in depth 1-5 player game about exploring US national parks. You buy gear and set your hikers off on a trail that changes every round, to collect tokens and visit national parks. Games last up to an hour that feels like it flies by. Box design is the best I've seen, everything just fits together perfectly in a tiny box, making it much easier for travel.

-Terraforming Mars: Most complex game I own, for 1-5 players. Games can take 2-4 hours sometimes. You play as a corporation and compete with others to terraform mars the fastest. You raise the three global parameters (temperature, oxygen level and water) and increase your terraforming rating, all while managing your resources by playing various project cards. Has a challenging 1 player mode where you're racing against the generation counter to terraform mars in under 14 generations. Expansions are a bit expensive but I can recommend Prelude and Hellas & Elysium, for extra cards that can be played at the start of game to kickstart your resource generation, and a double sided map you can use as a replacement for the base game board.

Other notable mentions are 7 Wonders, Tokaido, Mystic Vale and Ticket to Ride

My favorites shift far too often, but Twilight Imperium and Merchants & Marauders are aleays ones I get to the table when given the chance.

A game which has been unexpectedly evergreen for my friends and I is called Infiltration. It's a cyberpunk heist game set in the same universe as Netrunner. It's cooperative and competitive, you enter a complex where the room order is random (determined by the placements of room cards which start face down) and you move through stealing data. You have to escape before the alarm dial goes off, only those who get out are eligible to win and the winner is the one with the highest value of data stolen. So do you press your luck and delve deeper, or make for the exit before your allies do?

I love it because it's a good length (about an hour), has enough randomness to feel different every time but enough tools for strategic lootin and shootin.

Carcassonne and Rummikub.

Dune imperium is really fun - worker placement with some deckbuilding and bumping tracks (as the brothers murph says).

If you like campaign games you might enjoy something like Kingdom Death Monster - dark, boss battler/settlement builder. Definitely mature game though.

Marvel champions is a ton of fun but it can be very expensive if you want to keep buying more and more packs. Baiscally a deck bilding game similar to arkham horror LCG but for marvel and not a campaign unless you buy the campaign expansions.