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[Ziiro]

I'm surprised we don't have a topic about this. If we do, feel free to point me in the right direction, but until then:

I discovered Cards Against Humanity today and it's a fucking tragedy that it's sold out. The general idea is "It's kind of like apples to Apples, but for adults."


So in lieu of that, I feel like I need to make my own set to play with my friends, and as such I need ideas to put on the cards. Obviously I can take a bunch from the website by watching the thing in the top right corner, but I figure you guys might have some good ones as well.

Goddamn, these are amazing. (The actual cards. PDF)

[Defenestration]

Ticket to Ride is pretty great. It's fairly simple and quick while still having a good amount of strategy involved, so it's a good stepping stone for people who are not actually gamers into board games that are a little more complicated like Descent: Journeys in the Dark (also really good).

If everyone ever actually has time to meet up again, a guy got a game called "Aquire" that is based upon buying and selling corporations that's supposed to be good as well, but I can't speak for it yet.

[Classic]

Descent: Journeys in the Dark (also really good)

I do not understand Descent. I have it. I've played some people through a few of the early adventures.
I'm not sure how the dungeon guy is supposed to win.

[Envy]

I still say that Arkham Horror is one of my favorite games though playing with all the expansions starts to take forever. Though, I'm looking at mansion of madness with a few of my friends right now.

[Defenestration]

Descent: Journeys in the Dark (also really good)

I do not understand Descent. I have it. I've played some people through a few of the early adventures.
I'm not sure how the dungeon guy is supposed to win.

I made a few mistakes setting up the first game where I wondered the same thing. Turns out it's pretty balanced though. First, the point income you get is for all the players in the game, including yourself. Not just the heroes. The same goes for the monster ratings. If there are 3 heroes, the monsters should be rated 4.

Also, there's another expansion that is the real reason I got the game; instead of it being a series of one off dungeons it turns into an enormous campaign. Characters can level, seek out gurus for new skills as they wander the countryside to foil the plots of the overlord as they pop up, while the Overlord plays against the heroes in each series of dungeons, but also makes plays and can push into towns that the heroes aren't currently at as well and the monsters also escalate in strength.

I like it because where most dungeon crawling games encourage you to be careful, the entire point of Descent is to hurry the fuck up before the overlord gets TOO powerful. If you take too long, the monsters that were already supposed to be in the next room will be more powerful, there will be more of them, and the door to the room will explode when you open it. And even so, a smart overlord can punish people for being too overzealous.

[Classic]

I think we did that. Or at least we used monsters with the right rating. The thing is that my players abused the shit out of their Line of Sight to completely neuter any even vaguely dangerous monster placements that I might have had. Maybe I wasn't drawing enough threat or doing enough threat cycling, but I wasn't able to get proper monster hordes on them in efficient pincer movements.

The expansion I hear is incredible.

[Defenestration]

My general strategy as Overlord is to abandon every card I can early on (unless there is a situation placed in front of me where they are just asking for something in my hand) for threat including powers that aren't that exciting. The exception is Evil Genius, which lets you draw another card a turn, since it is the best early investment you can make, otherwise just start stacking threat. Everyone else I play with knows this, so they are usually very nervous any time they open a door and it's been strangely easy so far. It's liable to look like one of the monster zoo rooms in Dungeons of Dredmore, except with a lot more red. And the monsters will attack twice a turn. And the ceiling is collapsing.

Also, if you ask me, the best addition for any boss room is monsters and wizards streaming in like they heard they were about to miss dinner.

[Zach]

I played Red November for the first time a few weeks ago. It's one of those cooperative boardgames where every situation probably has an ideal way to solve it. I'm no fun to play games like this with if someone else is trying to be the grand manager who solves everything and tells everyone else what to do.

I'm not saying I actively sabotage the crew's efforts to stop the submarine from falling apart, but I like having agency in a game. Despite this complaint, I hope to play again and see if there's a way to balance teamwork and self-praise.

I wish I was playing Small World right now.

Tanto Cuore was very popular at Gen Con. It's maid to order for a certain bunch of gamers. Who like to game.

[Mongrel]

I can't understand Descent. It's very pretty, but I just keep thinking "Okay this looks like it'll get boring fast.", I can see how the campaign expansion you guys are talking about would make it much more engaging, but my thought at that point becomes "But then why not just play D&D or Skyrim or whatever?".

For good games, there's always Settlers (I'm only mentioning it because no one's given it the obligatory nod yet in this thread) and Dominion (but that seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it game).

Probably the best cooperative game I know is Pandemic.

[Classic]

A last Tuesday (I made a drinking post of it) I played Kingdom Builder. It has a pretty baller pedigree, being designed by Donald X. Vaccarino who is also responsible for Dominion and its many, many, many expansions.

Evidently, I won the game we played at the pub. So it must be awesome. Roast beef and I played it with people who are usually nervous about such games, and get intimidated/bored by a lot of rules fairly easily. Part of what helps is that most of the rules are unnecessary for most game's you'll play. Roast beef also likened it to Go. I think he mostly said that to concur with my slurred assertion of, "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing in this game." But evidently going for short-term points is a good strategy.

[Büge]

I can't understand Descent. It's very pretty, but I just keep thinking "Okay this looks like it'll get boring fast.", I can see how the campaign expansion you guys are talking about would make it much more engaging, but my thought at that point becomes "But then why not just play D&D or Skyrim or whatever?".

Because sometimes you don't want to put in the effort to set up D&D, and you'd play Hero Quest but you're missing the Dwarf.

[Mongrel]

For the record, I have in fact played Descent (but not that expansion you guys are talking about), so my opinion is in fact based on experience and not me just saying "I bet it'd seeeeem like...".

It's funny... for a while Mage Knight had a variant called Mage Knight: Dungeons, which was basically the exact same thing as the stock version of Descent. I... didn't really like that either. 

[Defenestration]

I can't understand Descent. It's very pretty, but I just keep thinking "Okay this looks like it'll get boring fast.", I can see how the campaign expansion you guys are talking about would make it much more engaging, but my thought at that point becomes "But then why not just play D&D or Skyrim or whatever?".

It's actually better suited to kick in the door style play than DnD for reasons I put above. I'm currently with a group where everyone but me and one other can't be bothered to care about anything that's not the action and/or not competitive or put the thought into building a new character.

It doesn't have a lot of the RP tools of tabletop RPGs or the more in depth rules... but this is its advantage. I used to use 4e as an example of something I would only pull out for people that want to kill some monsters and to hell with everything else. But frankly, Descent does that better.

[Classic]

So Cracked.com has an article where they decided to shill for Friedemann Friese's Funkenschlag, which reminded me that I dearly love the damned thing and you guys should too.

[Ted Belmont]

Do you guys read Robert Florence's Cardboard Children columns? You should! This week's is especially good: in it, he talks about why games(mostly board games, although he does touch on vidya games briefly), and to a much lesser extent writing about games, are important.

[Zaratustra]

I'd still like to play Innovation with someone online:

http://innovation.isotropic.org

[Classic]

I know it has a lot of the flaws of many other Cheapass Games, but U.S. Patent No. 1 holds a special place in my heart for being nominally about time travel.