I'm Board of Games like Monster Hunter

I thought it was about time we had a thread about board games. If we aleady had one oh well, tough, its dead, move on.

One of the most popular games in the Summerhayes household is Settlers of Catan, and for Christmas either my dad or my brother got the Pirates and Explorers expansion.

If you've not played Catan, its all about settling undiscovered lands. You collect resources like wood, rock, livestock and so on based on the types of land you have access to use them to build roads and locations so you can collect more resources and so on. There's trading, bartering, compettion but little actual conflict.
It has quite a unique feel, and there are lots of tactics that can win. The expansion adds sailing out and exploring new islands, as well as pirates and the battle with them. Both times we've played I've seemed to be in last place then very quickly pulled out a convincing lead. Interestingly, just like in Ian M Banks' The Player of Games, I think my victories have represented the validity of my real ideals. I've always played as a pacifistic, benevolent socialist: sure up the lands I've already got, stay out of fights with other players or the pirates, and expand when I can afford to without jeopardising my citizens.

Anyway, Catan is a board game and if you've got four people willing to get stuck in, well worth an hour or two of your time.

Weirdly enough, ever since I've picked up the Jackbox games on Switch I've found that my family has played fewer and fewer board games as we're much more keen to bust the Switch out and have some fun times making stupid drawings or silly slogans.

The board game that I likely spent the most time playing was this bad boy:

I've watched a couple of videos of that but never had the pleasure of physically playing

I used to have the odd Risk night at my flat, and me and Muss went halvsies on the XCom board game only to get one night where anyone would play with us then never again. On the other hand, we had a glorious summer of playing Battles of Westeros every single night.

Jaime Lannister single handedly captured Catlyn Stark and bested the Baratheon army

I have only played settlers of Catan once, the standard version. it was a really fun game that I came a distant second or third in. Would like to play it more for sure.

Aye, I've played Settlers of Catan once - last Christmas - it turned out alright, it did. My sister and her fella are board game nuts (possibly to a fault) but I did like playing Alhambra

Long story short, you have to make a nice town! It's a bit more complicated than this... but I can't remember in what way!

Jo and I played a bit of Monopoly the other day on the retro board I got her for Christmas. Things were going well until I bought one of the stations: Jo had been wanting to get them all. That upset the apple cart and no mistake. I built up a small run of properties with the yellows, both utilities and the station on that side - five things together. However, Jo got both the blue properties and began to build houses. Despite the blues being only two properties, I seemed to land on them more often than not and start having to pay exorbitant sums, surviving only on my £200 for passing Go and the occasional bit of charity from the Community Chest/Chance cards. I ran out of cash at 11:35pm, which was good, because I had work the next day.

I'm opposed to Monopoly on principal, so I was never too fussed about losing. Haven't played in a long old time, probably last played it with an ex five or six years ago. Since my family got well into board games, Monopoly doesn't even get considered.

I thought you had to play with more than 2 people with Monopoly really. I did play it at Christmas it was my Nans house, I rarely lose but I think the two times I've played it where my Aunt has played shes won.

I would love to play more board games but no one really to play with unless I try the new board game cafe in town.

A couple of nights ago Jo and I played Scrabble. I beat her by about 260 points to 200... but I did get the J, the X, the Q, the Z and a K. I like Scrabble the best near the end of the game, where you're all boxed in and really restricted as to where you can go.

Have you ever played Bananagrams? Works similarly to Scrabble, but I much prefer it. If you've got a Scrabble set, you could probably look up the rules online and play a pretty decent approximation of Bananagrams (I'm sure the letter selections are tailored to the two games).

Basically, each player starts with X number of letters and races to fill their own grid. Whenever someone uses up the letters they've got, everyone grabs one more and you keep going until there are no letters left. No board or complicated scoring system necessary!

Have any of you enjoyed any board games recently?

I've been on a bit of a run myself, with Roll for the Galaxy, Everdell, and Brass Birmingham (unopened) picked up this year, and the beautiful Sleeping Gods on the way. We were due to get the expansions for Tapestry and Spirit Island, but those Christmas presents will turn into whenever the fuck we can see people again presents!



I'll start with recent stuff. For Valentine's Day I bought Everdell.

It's a picturesque worker placement game with a tableu building element. This gives it a nice twist above traditional worker placement games, which are often heavily focused on ruthless efficiency. You still need to play efficiently here, but the cards give the game a nice mix of things to build towards.

You see, each player is a woodland creature awkening from their winter hibernation, and it's your job to help build up a new woodland paradise as the game moves through its seasons. You'll need to place your workers strategically to earn resources, which in turn allow you to play cards. These cards represent your city, with critters and buildings alike, each of which gives you their own bonuses. So the game transitions from the clunky, put worker here get resources x and y, into a game of trying to make the most out of your hand and building synergies.

Each game randomises to some extent the resources you'll be able to gather, meaning food might be a premium in some games and pebbles in others. Although the object of the game is to score the most points by having the most valuable city at game's end, there are also varied bonus objectives to collect each game too. This makes each play varied enough to encourage players to experiment with different tactics.

So there's some depth to Everdell, but it's a pretty simple game to play at heart. You can find it for about £40-50 online, and I'd recommend it at that price. It's a 2-4 player game that seems to scale well at all player counts. Easy to setup, takes about 45 minutes to play, and there are plenty of decisions to make without it ever being too taxing.



Via Tabletop Simulator (Steam), I've tucked into a campaign of Pandemic Legacy with Andy, Jay and Kelly.

Legacy games are board games that have players attach stickers to the board, rip up cards, and play through a whole campaign over the course of many individual games. Regular Pandemic is a really slick co-op game that's great fun to solve with friends. It's an open-hand puzzle where you work with your teammates in a bid to cure various disease strains before too many outbreaks have occurred. I don't want to go into too much detail about it, but it has a very clever setup phase that ensures a really good tempo during play.

The legacy elements of Pandemic Legacy are working well. We're only a couple of games in but we've seen our share of twists with the traditional pandemic formula already, created new characters, and seen the state of our board deteriorate with repercussions for the next game. New elements are being added between each game (sometimes half way through a game), which is a really nice way of adding hints of extra complexity without it being overwhelming.

Coming from a video game background, I've always liked the idea of legacy games with campaigns, but I've also been a bit deterred by the idea of ripping things up (The board game itself costs £70). Happily, its mod over on TTS is free, and while the software is clunky, it's been a nice way to spend a few evenings. It seems like TTS will run on pretty much any machine (mac/PC), so if anybody has an interest in board games and fancies trying some remotely, then you could do far worse than TTS.

JayMoyles wrote:

Weirdly enough, ever since I've picked up the Jackbox games on Switch I've found that my family has played fewer and fewer board games as we're much more keen to bust the Switch out and have some fun times making stupid drawings or silly slogans.

The board game that I likely spent the most time playing was this bad boy:

Kelly's parents took that game down from their roof and left it with us. We gave it a go a while back and oh boy, can't remember it being great! I might feel differently if I had nostalgia for it though. I'll hear no bad words about Ram n' Slam.