I can't recommend TableTop highly enough, as you can see how the games are played and decide if you like it, but some things we've got because of or in relation to it:darth_ender said:
doubleofive said:
Thanks to TableTop, Mrs. O'Five and I are getting more board games and the like.
I meant to ask: what games have you been trying out? What have you enjoyed and what have you hated? I always have enjoyed wargames, but I know there are plenty of other fun games out there. I just don't get to try them out often enough. Input from others is useful in figuring out which to pick up.
Ticket To Ride
Deceptively simple. You collect cards of matching colors to lay tracks, gaining more points for the longer routes and having the longest continuous train. the catch is that you have a set of goal routes to connect, say LA to Dallas, or San Francisco to New York City, or Dallas to Nashville. You draw three of those at the beginning of the game, and you're able to discard one if you don't think you can make it. Each turn you can either draw two colored train cards, place a route using your plastic trains, or draw three more route cards (you have to keep at least one). You get bonus points at the end of the game for each route card you've completed, but you lose that many points if you don't complete them. There's light strategy as you can can place trains anywhere on your turn, so if you see someone obviously trying to go for a route, you can block the easy way so they have to go around.
Zombie Dice
Another simple game. You roll three colored dice at a time. Each color has a different combination of brains, shotgun blasts, or footprints. Each brain scores you a point, you can reroll the dice with the footprints, and if you get three shotgun blasts, you lose the points you've gained that round. You kind of take risks and "bank" your points before you get shot too many times. Its a quick and easy game to fill time. I may have my players play it when I have to stop our D&D to set up the next battle...
Lords of Waterdeep
Speaking of D&D, this board game takes place in the same "world" as most of D&D, but its a resource collecting game. Instead of collecting wood or grain, you collect gold, wizards, rogues, fighters, and clerics by sending "agents" to different parts of the city each round. You "spend" the adventurers to turn in quest cards, which give you points, some of which give you bonuses for the rest of the game. The neat part is that at the beginning of the game you've each drawn a different Lord of Waterdeep (which fits into the mythos because no one knows who the Lords are, not even one another). Each Lord gets bonus points for particular types of quests you've completed, so the game score can change drastically at the end.