I'm moving into a new house. I was unpacking my books and putting them on a shelf when I looked around and noticed how much more overall space I have now. For some reason this led my mind to thinking about collecting board games as a new hobby. I just think they could look cool on a shelf.. and come in handy as a source of fun during certain times (power outages, family get togethers, etc.)

I guess the direction I'm trying to go with this post is to ask these questions: Do any of y'all collect board games? Do you have any recommendations on certain ones? Hidden Gems?

Dumb question: Do you run into issues buying used? Missing pieces.. etc etc

I dabbled for a while, and there is a wider range of board game types, styles, themes, lengths, and difficulties than you could possibly imagine.

Generally, Pandemic is a good go to entry level game, and it's collaborative, so if you play with folks who know board games and total newbies, there's no real stress of competing.

If you like fantasy and maybe just a small step up from monopoly/life/etc., Clank is a lot of fun. Players are trying to steal treasure from a dragon and have to build a deck of cards with various powers to help along the way.

For sci-fi, I love terraforming mars. I've played more games of the solo mission on my ipad than any other game, on any other console. Players assume the roles of corporations that have their own special abilities for making Mars habitable based on different conditions you can raise like temp/O2 level/# of oceans. It's a step up in difficulty, but if you played MTG or any other card game, the mechanics are very similar.

For quick and easy, Star Realms is fun. It's a card game, no board required. You start with some cards that give money or deal damage, and you and the opponent go back and forth buying cards from the middle row and attacking until the other person dies. I used to play this one with a friend while we were waiting for other folks to show up to play a big game.

If you are or have ever been a D&D person, Gloomhaven is pretty awesome. It's a continuous game with a whole book of maps and missions that you can decide to do or skip where each player is a different race with magical or physical powers and you have to battle from room to room to achieve some objective. I never played D&D but I have been told the game is D&D with miniatures and cards to remind you what to do.

That's a start, but if you have any ideas on what exactly you're interested in, I'd be happy to see if I know other good recommendations. Board Game Geek is go to for checking reviews, recommendations, etc.

I've got quite a large collection. Over 100 for sure. Also have a bunch of kickstarter games coming next year. Board game geek is your friend. Getting a kickstarter addiction isn't.

Scrabble, Monopoly, Pictionary, Yahtzee.. those are the ones I remember most from childhood. I've played others, but nothing sticks out in my memory as much as those four mentioned.

Where's your store?

Azariah said:

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Boardgaming is my life. I own a store and pride myself on helping people find the perfect boardgame for themselves.

What games have you played in the past that you like?

You just have to be super careful with pieces. They can become lost and that sucks.

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I would love some recs on lesser known horror games. I have a few, atmosfear, betrayl, dracula, stuff like that. The more obscure the better, but I really just love all horror board games.

irock2513 said:

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Where's your store?

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I'm in Kingwood

Andrew Dufresne said:

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Scrabble, Monopoly, Pictionary, Yahtzee.. those are the ones I remember most from childhood. I've played others, but nothing sticks out in my memory as much as those four mentioned.

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These are the more traditional board games that most of us grew up with. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you are spending time with loved ones playing games, then I'm all on board.

That being said, there are many newer games that offer better and more streamlined gameplay than what you're used to.

First, I wouldn't just pick up games to fill space. Treat it like a wall of special memories (like photos?) that you are building over time. Start with a couple of games and play them. Keep the ones you like and sell or donate the ones you don't. It's extremely easy to end up with a ton of board games you never play.

For someone without a lot of experience with modern board games, there are two I would suggest to start off with. They have their roots in those earlier games while offering a glimpse into what new games look like.

• Ticket to Ride is a modern classic where you are attempting to build train lines across the country for points. You have a board, like Monopoly has a board, with a map of the United States and a bunch of spaces to place plastic trains. You collect cards with train colors, gin rummy-style, trying to lay your trains out on the board to score points.
• Azul is a newer game where you're trying to fill your own board (each player has their own board) with matching sets to score points. Rather than cards, however, there are a number of little discs out in the middle where you're randomly distributing colorful tiles. On your turn, you choose to take all of one color from a disc to place on your board. This is a game you can play just taking tiles you need, or you can go into a deeper strategy of trying to take what you need while denying your opponents the tiles they need.

Those are my first suggestions for you. See if you can play those regularly to gauge what your playgroup will be like. If it takes off, great! You can keep playing those and add in more games. If gaming turns out not to be for you and yours, you aren't overly invested.

Probably should be looking at Mansions of Madness and Arkham Horror/Edlritch Horror for the classic Cthulhu stuff. Letters from Whitechapel and Whitehall Mystery are both fantastic. It's been out of print for a while but Chaos in the Old World is a bit monstrous.

OP, how heavy/thinky of a game are you willing to look at?

Tibbers said:

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Azariah said:

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Boardgaming is my life. I own a store and pride myself on helping people find the perfect boardgame for themselves.

What games have you played in the past that you like?

You just have to be super careful with pieces. They can become lost and that sucks.

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I would love some recs on lesser known horror games. I have a few, atmosfear, betrayl, dracula, stuff like that. The more obscure the better, but I really just love all horror board games.

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Horror isn't my thing. The wife has no truck with horror, so it's not something I've ever spent time with. Sorry I couldn't be more help.

Azariah said:

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irock2513 said:

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Where's your store?

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I'm in Kingwood

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I'm in Porter/New Caney/Valley Ranch area monthly visiting family. Would love to stop by sometime!

tallgrant said:

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OP, how heavy/thinky of a game are you willing to look at?

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I'm open to all of the suggestions.

Catan, Ticket To Ride, Pandemic

Pandemic has a mobile phone version that I think is free or very low cost. You could try that out before buying.

Another fun coop and great party game is 5 Minute Dungeon. Players have 5 minutes to work together to defeat an increasingly difficult boss.

That's exactly it. I love playing the Brain burner Euros like Le Havre or Dungeon Lords, and big epic card driven games like Here I Stand. But its better to ease into some of these rather than jump into stuff that may be too much.

If you want to do classic Euros I'd highly recommend Amun Re or Taj Mahal. If you want to try worker placements Caylus and Agricola are well regarded and rightly so. And newcomers often overlook something like Twilight Struggle because it is missing fancy art/components and miss an incredible design.

I grew up playing AH, SSI, and Yaquinto wargames. My favorites were the AH games based on the Panzerblitz model. Unfortunately, the rules became increasingly complicated and frustrating to teach to new players. I've had some success with the Undaunted series, though. That's a fun and easy wargame for WWII buffs that want a modern game mechanic for small unit actions. Squad Leader it definitely is not. (And that's a good thing, frankly.)

On the other end of the spectrum, my wife loves Splendor. That's become our favorite go-to game.

aggiez03 said:

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Catan, Ticket To Ride, Pandemic

Pandemic has a mobile phone version that I think is free or very low cost. You could try that out before buying.

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They removed the app from the store about a year ago. Which sucks, because my kids are too young to play and I don't know many others that like to play board games.

+1 ticket to ride
Wingspan is a favorite in my household
I love boggle and scrabble
Codenames is a really fun and simple game
Parks is a beautiful-looking game of moderate complexity
Monopoly Deal is a quick and easy card game that my wife and sister really like
Munchkins is the most delightfully spiteful game you'll ever play

Aggie_Journalist said:

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+1 ticket to ride
Wingspan is a favorite in my household
I love boggle and scrabble
Codenames is a really fun and simple game
Parks is a beautiful-looking game of moderate complexity
Monopoly Deal is a quick and easy card game that my wife and sister really like
Munchkins is the most delightfully spiteful game you'll ever play

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Wingspan is great. The iOS app is just about perfect, and it does Automata play with adjustable difficulty, too.

Andrew Dufresne said:

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tallgrant said:

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OP, how heavy/thinky of a game are you willing to look at?

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I'm open to all of the suggestions.

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I think you'll find out fast there are way more games out there than you will like. If you want some more targeted suggestions let us know:

1) What player count(s) you will be playing with and average age (adult, teens, < teens, etc). Don't forget solo.
2) Preferred session length (less than an hour, a couple hours, etc)
2) Do you (you'll) enjoy confrontation? Combat (virtual!)? Cooperation? Solitaire?
4) Do you (you'll) like reading a lot of text or not a lot of text during the game?
5) Themes you particularly like (Comics, space, etc)?

Difficulty level is a hard question. Yes, most people can generally play even the hardest of games. But do you really ENJOY them? I find myself not enjoying some of the harder games and prefer a mid-weight game (most often around 3-3.5 on the bgg scale). The bgg complexity rankings though can be misleading sometimes. After you get experience you learn to base your buy decisions off of mechanics and other things (watching playthroughs, etc).

When thinking about these questions, think not only about yourself but the people you will be playing with. For example my wife would never play Twilight Struggle so I don't own it.

Feudal is a fun game. It's sort of chess-like, but more involved.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/847/feudal

I have a copy that still has some of the original pieces in the package.

My wife and I have been having game night the vast majority of Friday nights either just the 2 of us or with her parents for the majority of a decade now. I'd say our game collection consists of games that meet the following general criteria.

1) not overly complex. For new games, we want to be able to get the setup done and either read through the directions or watch a semi-short video on the game play within 30-45 minutes. We usually start around 830-9pm and no one wants to get bogged down with the rules.
2) either cooperative or not terribly cut-throat in terms of strategy. Obviously with almost any game you can go after your opponents, but most all the games we play you can have fun and even win without being super aggressive towards others. I've found feelings get hurt too easily with those types of games.
3) allows for conversation without disrupting the game flow. Game night is our time to catch up with each other and no one wants to be thinking so hard about the game that conversation becomes a distraction.
4) Variety of game play. Almost all the games we have allow for everyone to be in contention for most of the game the majority of the time. Either through game play or just playing games that it's just harder to gauge who's gonna win.
5) general lasts between 1.5-3 hrs at a nice leisurely pace. For us, generally that's doubling what the box says.

That being said, here's a list of the games that we play on a regular basis that follow the above criteria.

Settlers of Catan (original only. We got rid of expansions years ago because we just defaulted to original)
Ticket to Ride
Century New World
Century Spice Road
Isle of Cats
Kingdom Builder
Summer Camp
Survive (exception to the cut throat rule. Everyone has to be so it's not a big issue)
7 Wonders
Cascadia
Tiny Towns
Trekking the National Parks (truthfully not a great game, but we've been working towards visiting all the national parks eventually. We enjoy reading about them with the gameplay)
Cascadia
Splendor

We own Wingspan and need to get around to learning it. Heard nothing but good things about it.

Games that my wife enjoy playing as 2 player only include:
Reef
Trails
Ticket to Ride Nordic Countries
Plus others in the above list.

Anyone have a copy of Camp Grizzly?

Andrew Dufresne said:

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tallgrant said:

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OP, how heavy/thinky of a game are you willing to look at?

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I'm open to all of the suggestions.

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I'll second Splendor. I was able to teach my 7 year old how to play that one. Azul is good too, along with Catan if you limit it to 4 or less. Mysterium is also good, it comes out about once a month at the game night meetup I host. I also like Diamant, which I think may be exactly the same as Incan Gold but with better game pieces.

If you want to dip your toe in D&D, I can't recommend D&D Wrath of Ashardalon enough. It is D&D, but your characters are premade, so you don't spend the first night doing character creation. The included book has multiple adventures, some more complex than others.

My family, all of whom are not big board game people, enjoy it.

Edit to say, it is worth watching a youtube video to see how to play if you aren't familiar with D&D games.

Find out if there is a local game store near you. Go browse the shelves. Ask if they have recommendations. Go to a board game night if they have one.

Over the last 20 years I've built a collection of about 200 games. Collections take time

Most importantly find games that your family will play; if that's monopoly and Yahtzee so be it

That's a classic Sid Sackson design. It's still in print and still great to play.

Another ticket to ride vote.

Start with the original, then get a different map. We have the European map version as well. It adds a few elements that make it more fun once you've played the original a lot.

I'd start OG personally. It's Good to have for introducing newbies and kids.