Shinji has it I think.

Ticket to ride is an excellent start game. You literally do one of three things in a turn and you only choose one of them. simple as gump and very fun.

Dominion is also not very complicated to play and fun. You can summarise a turn as ABC (play a card with Actions, Buy some stuff, Clean your cards up).

I got netrunner the other day slowly working through the mechanics and seems like it could be sneaky and fun. Basically one guy has all the information and uses cunning and tricks to get the other guy to fall into traps.

I've got an all day Arkham Horror session scheduled for Sunday. Gonna be about 5 of us battling Cthulu, with a couple of expansions, an illbient soundtrack, booze and snacks. Can't wait.

Also, I just bought this! (and will finally see the bloody film this week).

SG went out and got the Alchemy expansion for Dominion. I think that only leaves us with 2 or 3 to go between us.

Had a bash last night. Fuck me Possesion is an annoying card. (Possibly not helped by my having just returned from the dentist.)

We tried a hand with all Alc just to see what they did, but it was obviously very limited. Adds some interesting mechanics, but it's not as ott and powerful as Prosperity, so it's hard to go back to. Still, as another addition, and to add a couple of extra wrinkles to the play, it's all good.

The Waterstones a few doors from my office has a copy of King of Tokyo that keeps winking at me whenever I pop in there. My collection doesn't really have a dice game at the moment.

Face - as you have now played most of the expansions for Dominion, what would you recommend as the next step from vanilla? I know many say Intrigue, but is that too similar to vanilla? Would Prosperity or Seaside be a bit more of a refreshing change?

Id agree with this. My girl also beats me consistently. Its ridiculous how good she is on what appears to be a random game (esp in 2p)

One thing to consider with intrigue is that a bunch of the pack is just base cards. If you have friends who play encourage them with intrigue and steal/swap kingdom cards.

They should really do an intrigue mini expansion.

So, I spent 7.5 hours (!) playing Arkham Horror yesterday. 

Quite a session, 5 of us trying to stop a giant Cthulhu worm god from waking, closing portals, battling monsters, barely holding on to our sanity.

It was a valiant attempt, with many setbacks and success but in the end Arkham was destroyed by an earthquake as the worm entered our dimension, killing all.

Despite the disastrous end, it was a lot of fun and i'd highly recommend playing it if you get the chance. Or there's a stripped back spin-off iOS & Android game called Elder Sign: Omens if you fancy it.

I have played a few games of Alien Frontiers on the iPad this week, really fun worker placement and resource management game.

Will probably have to stick to the ios version rather than invest in the box, as the space theme probably won't appeal to many of my gaming circle.

You start with 3 dice, which are your ships (you can expand your fleet to get more ships, and therefore more options), depending on the die roles and whether you have say, 3 in sequence, or a pair etc, you can put them in different docking stations that grant you a different power or resource, fuel or ore. Once you have enough resources you can use different stations that allow you to colonise a section of the planet, of which there are 8 or so, and it is these that earn you victory points.

Nice little brain burner, and I like the element of luck from the dice, and having to best utilise the hand you are dealt, so to speak.

Was in London on Monday and managed to find time for a quick visit to Orc's Nest, so picked myself up a copy of Citadels, hopefully get in a couple of games of that over the weekend.

Finally got round to buying Mage Knight today. Gazed at the contents of the box and went for a stiff drink. Will get stuck in tomorrow.

Just finished up game number 4 of Mage Knight. I played the first two solo, the 3rd with two and the 4th with three people. I reckon I'm touching on 10 hours so I've a fair grasp of the basic mechanics of the game.

I love it oh so very much. It pretty much has everything I'd want from a game (board, video or other). The exploration is great, especially at night when everything is so much riskier. The levelling up is brilliant. All characters start off pretty much the same (there are small differences in the starting decks) but through levelling up you get to choose how your character develops. Interaction with the locals is also handled very well.

And then there's the combat. The combat seems complex and overwhelming at first. There are 4 stages and you've usually only got 5 cards to get you through the whole thing. But once you get the general idea you start planning ahead. You start juggling possibilities, trying to minimise damage taken while making sure you defeat the enemy. 

It's a bit of an investment (time and money) but if you've got a few people you could bring along it's completely worth it.

Don't see why not.

Kiltedmoose wrote:

Good to hear you're having a good time with it, Shinji. I've played through the walkthrough twice and even though I'm always checking back over the rules to check stuff, both experiences have been highly enjoyable. Took me a while to set up but worth the effort once you start playing. Need to find more time to play, but I have some time off work in the coming weeks, so that will be an ideal time to play. Also wanted to ask, is it OK to talk about iOS ports of board games in this thread? Playing some of them on iPad is the reason I've rediscovered board gaming and thought I might not be alone.

Please talk about ios ports because I don't have friends willing to play physical board games so I am after some iOS ports.

I've heard good things about Ghost Stories but never played. There's also an iOS version: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37046/ghost-stories

Shinji wrote:

Looking for some Halloweeny boardgame goodness. I'm thinking either Last Night on Earth or Level 7 Escape. Leaning towards Last Night, looks like a whole heap of zombie fun. Any other possible recommendations?

By most accounts city of horror (or city of zombies its called) is pretty awesome. Its a zombie game where you have to talk and decide who to throw out to the zombies every turn. Probably better with more people