Excellent idea, played it with my family to unanimous adoration.

Order made, cheers for the recommendations. I'm always looking for a chance to stab my son in the back.

I'm not sure I want it any more.

I always hated Wesley crusher.

I didn't realise there was any difference apart from the map. I've bought the Europe version but which would you say would be the better version to start with?

I got around to playing Small World last night. Lots of ambiguities in the rules due to a poor translation from French. When you score you earn Coins per territory, but that doesn't mean 'physical coins' it actually means 'coins to the value of'. We figured this out after running out of tokens, luckily it is super easy to rectify this mistake. The actual game is fairly sound, with my family all thrashing me through my carefully guided hand.

The premise is simple - occupy and conquer territories with a limited number of tokens. You pick a race and it comes with a random special power. So they might be the Pillaging Orcs or the Merchant Dwarves. These combos determine the number of troop tokens you get and each race (bar ratmen) has a special ability, and there are double the number of special powers to keep combos unique. They involve things such as scoring more for certain types of conquest, or the ability to withstand attacks etc.

All attacks are done by pure numbers. 2 tokens to take an empty territoy +1 token for each obstruction, so if there is a mountain with a fort and an opponent token in it, you'd need 5 to take it. Through expansion and loss of troops to your opponents, you will eventually end up with a lack of momentum. When this happens you just go into decline and skip your turn and pick a new race next turn. Brilliantly, your in decline race stay on the board and still contribute to your scoring, albiet without any bonuses.

Using certain combos can change things up though. If i'd acted sooner, I could have won easily as I had a magnificent combo which allowed me to have 2 in decline races on the board, which was further helped by my rapidly advancing 'stout' Skeletons (stout enabled them to attack and then go straight into decline, not losing a turn) who were rounded off by a paltry incursion of Merchant Dwarves, the merchant power enabling me to gain a bonus coin for each territoy controlled, by active or declining races. If i'd expanded more I'd have comfortably won.

Brilliantly simple once you get into the swing of things, and a lot of fun when people realise that going into decline is not a bad thing, and just enables them to start picking off their neighbour with more force.

Heartily recommended.

Another long session of Dominion last night. Got to try some vanilla/intrigue combo decks.

Some good stuff. The recommended ones were quite cool, but we had the most fun when we just picked our fav cards for a power session.

harems added to the 3 reg victory cards.

Pawn, Workshop, Steward, Feast, Militia, Council Room, Tribute, Mine, Festival.

Starts out fairly heavy action, with people building stuff, and then there's a point about a third of the way through where everyone is set, and suddenly the victory cards are being snapped up super quick. I actually got to buy 2 provinces on one turn at one stage. takes about 15 minutes to play through and is just super fun. For all those cool actions though, I won twice because I didn't lose sight of the importance of Gold. You only really need one of most of those big action cards (2-3 Festivals can be cool though), and then you just rely on Gold + festivals plus the odd other action card.

I can't afford another set for a while, but I think Sg is gonna dive in for another expansion soon. Excellent.

Now I've tried the variants, I really struggle with vanilla. I also struggle with just intrigue, tbh. It's all about combo uber decks and different victory cards. I particularly like Dukes and Duchys. mainly because you can actually fight back from someone dominating the Provinces.

Hey face, I'm going to assume you read this at or before work tomorrow.  How do you feel about popping into mindgames and buying the next expansion/sequel to Dominion, and if you do I will give you the cash in the evening when I come around?  Buy 600 card sleeves from good games too so we can have some spares!
Let me know via text if you do

Semi-interesting board game related article on Eurogamer

I have the iOS version of Summoner Wars, it really is awesome. The different factions seem so well balanced even though they all play so differently.

Indeed, the board/card game doesn't have the tactile element of actually rolling the dice when you attack, which must be a big part of the experience. It's another one on the very long wish list.

Just about to play our second game of Pandemic, fingers crossed we can save the world this time.

The urge to buy a board game or two is building my nethers.
It's been an extremely long time since I have played one so I haven't a clue what is good nowadays.
Can people suggest any modern 2 player games that are fun but not too complicated to pick up please?
Nothing too tactical i.e. tonnes of stat points as the missus might get a bit bored.

I have (on my phone) Summoner Wars, Dominion, Ticket to Ride, on my xbox Carcassone, Catan, MtG.
So I really dont want to duplicate those in paper form no matter how good they are.

I was really tempted to get that Game of Thrones board game but there is no way I can get 3 or more players around a table.

I used to love this:

I've never won a game of Pandemic, the eff? May sound condescending but are you playing it right? It's awfully strict on when you can trade cards, you have to be on the same city and then you can only trade that city. That can make getting 5 of one colour a total nightmare for two people.

Well done, you're better than me, ha!

Pandemic is great fun. The missus and I have played it twice, the first time we got destroyed, too many outbreaks, the second time round we beat it fairly comfortably. That was with 4 epidemic cards, so next time we will try 5.

Planning a new purchase this week actually, the short list comprises 'Small World', 'Ca$h & Guns' and 'Tobago', anyone played all or any of these?