Favorite Boardgames or War Games?

I miss Titan and Talisman quite a bit these days. Car Wars was another fun one, as was the original Battletech. Ogre too.

As for boardgames, I've always been a sucker for the Game of Life. Monopoly always encouraged such negative feelings and the games lasted forever.

Oh yeah, Axis And Allies -- the ultimate "beer and pretzels" game.

I would have put Illuminatus in here, but that's really a card game, isn't it?

we played alot of 'high stakes' risk games over many hours of beer...

how?

n/t

no, I haven't...

You won't regret it, I promise.

Axis and Allies is good too. It almost caused my ex boyfriend and I to break up one weekend. We had to put it up.

Two Leos should never play that game.

I really wish there was a way to play Risk online. I've never been beaten.

I love to play Japan. He he

Maybe it will be complete before I die.

was my favorite.

i've always been utterly baffled by it's long-lived success. it's a "steep rooftop" game, meaning that if you fall behind, the odds quickly become heavily stacked against you.

in chess, by contrast, if you make a bad move an lose a pawn, usually there is some compensation; your opponent often must lose a tempo or weaken his pawn structure to pick up the dropped pawn.

in monopoly, there's no such compensation. so the winner (or at least several losers) often becomes apparent early on, but it usually takes a long time to finally reach the obvious conclusion.



titan is a wonderful game, and great fun. what's really great about it is that you can actually explain it to novices and have a good game, unlike, say, squad leader.

i grew up on france 1940, which was very intriguing. the germans, of course, pummel france, but the scoring evened up the game -- france's goal is never "winning", but merely to delay the fall of paris and escape with relatively light casualties. it's a fascinating work of game design, creating an evenly matched game out of such an asymmetric campaign.

does diplomacy count? that's one of the greatest games ever, though much depends on the people involved.

Titan can sometimes become one, but usually the older players are often nice and finish off the weaklings as soon as it's apparent that they don't have a chance.

I wish they had come out with a real world version of the computer game ARCHON. I always loved the mix between Titan and Chess.

Buy everything you land on. After you figure that out, it's just a dice game. A bit more interesting than Candy Land.

You immediately fall behind in property ownership, while other players buy everything up.

Monopoly can be lost in the first two turns by unlucky rolls.

Was probably the hardest-core wargame that I ever played.

Oh yeah, Star Fleet Battles. I didn't play many games, but those that I did were fun.

start off with a very risk-like board, but the risk cards show oil, grain, and minerals instead of cannons, armies, and cavalry.
now add money and a market for the 3 commodities, and throw in some nuclear weapons....

qutie a bit more involved than risk, which can get very dull in my mind.

But I never had a chance to play it. I always wanted to give it a try ever since I first saw it in the store window.

Yep, I owned it. It was a lot of fun, you play nation blocks with a variety of resources.

If you can't win, NUKE THE WORLD! Some people play that way, at least.

out at Texas Tech. It was a tradition during finals week at the end of each semester. It was the first game that really sucked me in to the gaming community out there.

:)

I won 3x in a row when I played a couple weeks ago, suprisingly quick and decisive victories too, I might add. ;)

I also like games w/cards like SkipBo (similar to UNO)..

My mother loves Scrabble but I think it's boring, especially because I always lose.

program on our Apple 2c at the time, it caught all the incorrect values, rolled die, it made building cars super quick. I silkscreened one amazing drawing of a motorcycle getting smashed to pieces but my GD teacher said that the lines made were so fine they'd never stand up to the transfer to screen process :shrug:

:-)

Drive offensively!!

I can't tell you how many hours we spent doing the math to work out jackknifing on an 18-wheeler. I would do it all over again tomorrow. I just loved that game.

That was the best. game. ever.

But I know I would have loved it!

Did they ever have an Autoduel for the PC?

Same weapons, cars, the Atlantic City to Buffalo run, all with a "joystick".

You can find it online for free now, they have released it into PD softwear.

I think that says something about me.

I always have to wonder "What if?"

I like to play either the USSR or the Germans/European Axis.

I had a weekly standing game of Axis and Allies every Friday for nearly 2 years. Every week I played Russia and a friend of mine was Germany. Every week I'd throw wave after wave after wave of bodies at him and I almost always won. It ROCKED!

He got his own back on Saturdays though. We'd usually play Fortress America after dinner and he'd be America and basically the same people who were the Allies on Friday nights were the invaders on Saturday. America always wins in that game. *big pout*

but then again, I always play on a 1939 map.

best navy, and many isLands that are hard to take (weLL not hard, just time and resource consuming).

Germans: SS Panzers, SS Panzergrenadiers, 1st turn Blitzkrieg (2 consecutive turns)
Japanese: Banzai attacks (doubles attack for infantry for 1 combat round, once per turn), may 'sneak attack' (2 consecutive turns) once during game
British: Cheap naval builds
French: start with French Foreign Legionares in half their colonies (but a bunch will go Vichy first turn)
'Murika: Mechanized infantry, can exert 'economic influence' on Western Hemisphere neutral countries
China: Cheap infantry
Soviets: Cheap infantry, Elite Russian Guard units, purges result in one-time production bonus; units produced may attack immediately, but the Soviets may only attack once that turn

Edit: I love my 'sneak attack;' last time I played, I invaded Western Canada! Vancouver was MINE!!!!:evilgrin:

Acquire, which is relatively unknown, is a game of high stakes in high financing.

The premise is simple: you build hotel chains by establishing companies, buying stock, and growing the entity. Chains can be merged, bought out, sold off, etc.

I know it sounds simple and somewhat dull, but it's NOT. It's great fun and very addictive. It only takes a couple of games to learn. Games with beginniers can take two hours, but normal gametime is an hour or less.

I highly recommend this board game!

Keo

And of course I didn't understand it at that point.

I've since read about the game and wish it were still around.

http://www.avalonhill.com/default.asp?x=games/acquire

Click the "where to buy" link to see where you can get it.

Early 70s. I think I may still have it in our game cabinet, actually.

I just liked putting the tiles on and getting big. My dad usually had to do most of the stuff at the end when all the merging was complete.

I have never been beaten. Undefeated, the champ!!! Gonna Fly, gonna fly....

And Kingmaker was pretty fun. Also liked Highway to the Reich, but that was a megagame and tough to play more than a couple of times without getting bogged down in arguments.

The only board game worth playing, and then, if you play it more than once every two years or so, you go nuts.

I have literally see fistfights and lifelong friendships broken over that game.

Then again, I saw a game of Axis and Allies where a guy playng Germany cold cocked the guy playing Japan (who was a complete moron) for not trying to take out the US Fleet at Hawai'i on his first turn.

one of these days, I'll get back into the play by email thing with it...

Axis and Allies for the nights we'd drink beer.

Squad Leader/Panzer Blitz for the nights we'd drink wine.

Talisman for the nights we'd smoke... stuff (hey, it was a long time ago).

Much like Axis and Allies, only concentrated in Europe. Other favorites are Fortress America, Axis and Allies, and Shogun (which became Samurai Swords). I miss them all.

an hour to learn, a life time to master

Its an oh so sweet hobby but its also expensive and time consuming. You play with lots of little painted miniature troops on a table with your own terrain. Here are some pics:





-Alec

p.s. Chess will always be #1

...and I help him sell them! We even have a website (still embryonic): http://www.chaospainting.com .

Tucker

I'm gonna make a Warhammer 40K Chess set out of those miniatures.

Risk without dice. You'll remember a well timed "Back-stab" for years and years.

Ever a Battletech fan. I also like Warhammer (Fantasy and 40k);

I played D&D Minis for a while.

And 3rd Ed. D&D is more a tapletop wargame more than an RPG anymore.

For PC, Lords of the Realm I & II or Warcraft II ("Say hello to my little friend!").

Yeah, computer games, I guess I'm too antisocial for that board game stuff.

I love that game.

All of those are highly recommended:

Bang! - http://kumquat.com/cgi-kumquat/funagain/14267
Bohnanza - http://kumquat.com/cgi-kumquat/funagain/08127
Verräter - http://www.kumquat.com/cgi-kumquat/funagain/05230

And for those who like to play online: http://www.brettspielwelt.de/gate/jsp/base/index.jsp?nation=en

and any of the 'expansion sets'... my fav. expansion being "enemy on the horizon".

there's a new version due out any day now.

of course, i'm referring to the board game, not the 'puter version.

Some Abandon-Ware you guys may be interested in...

Axis & Allies: Iron Blitz Edition:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=3842

Risk:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?gameid=2635

I noticed that A&A and Risk appear to be pretty popular here and just thought I'd let you guys know you can relive all those heart-felt, beer-induced, late-night rules arguments.

Lot's of other games on this site. Lot's of pop-up's, too-- have your pop-up blocker on!

It's really quite fun - you read a word out and everyone has to make up a definition for it (and the "dasher" writes down the correct definition), then you take a vote on which definition everyone thinks is the right one. Sometimes it's amazing how ridiculous the definitions get.

I also like scrabble.

They don't even make it anymore. I guess it's not politically correct.

I know they still exist as a part of Hasbro but it just ain't the same. Grew up in Baltimore where they had a company store, what a blast. Third Reich is great though the computer version is less so. 1776, the Panzer games, War & Peace, Squad Leader, all excellent. A shame most didn't make it to the computer since the onerous record keeping and calculations are just what these machines are made for.
The Prestag series by SSI was also lots of fun as was Imperium Romanum II(where else can you have Julian the Apostate defeat Constantine the Great and save civilization from institutional Christainity?).

An old Avalon Hill board game. I went to the USS Arizona Memorial when I was living in Hawaii. It sparked a life-long interest in WWII History.

My friends and I used to love to play this game.