To look at the games you’ve suggested, these are some I’ve played, the others I can’t speak for: Colossal Arena A betting game whereupon you wager on certain monsters to win, and try and scupper your opponents monsters. I’ve only played it a couple of times – A bit of a laugh.
Shadows Over Camelot - A tremendously fun cooperative game based around Arthurian legend. You all play Knights of the Round Table, each with various key cooperative skills, and aim to complete quests to thwart the side of evil, which crushes you relentlessly in really nasty ways. Also, there may be a “traitor” among you, which ultimately can really screw you over.
Caylus - One of my favourite games, and recommended highly as an absolute must buy. The premise involves building a castle, and as more labourers flock to the village, it grows around the castle. A resource driven game with several directions for victory, it gets played relentlessly in my gaming group.
Lost cities – Only played it once – A nice two player card game. Not bad to fill in time.
Colouretto – I’ve only played Zooleretto, which won last years Spiel Des Jahres. They’re made by the same guy, so I presume a similar mechanic of collecting similar colours probably. Fun and lightweight. Totally recommend Zooleretto.
Power grid – Just buy it. Brilliant game, and if you don’t own it, I will make a spazzy face at you. A classic resource driven eurogame, it is based around securing various power stations and increasing your power grid across the country. The main game gets you Germany (surprise) and USA, but the expansion give you Italy and France. A game of managing your money for bidding on the best power station, and successfully managing your fuel to best effect. Brilliant game.
Arkham horror – I’ve known people be split on this game. I really like it. If you like Cthulhu Mythos then it is a must buy frankly, because it accurately represents all your favourite aspects of the stories/rpg. It can be a long game with long rules (as per Fantasy Flights long rulebook policy!) but once you get into it is fairly simply to play through quickly. Given a few plays you will likely kick it’s ass (not so Shadows over Camelot), but given it’s love of releasing expansion packs, you’ll not grow bored in a hurry.
Gloom – A card game, which if I recall correctly, involves finding desperately depressing ways to plague your characters before eventually killing them off. It’s a quite amusing, short card game, but one would imagine it has limited play life.
Infernal contraption – A game of goblins making various contraptions, and them setting them going. It looks great, but frankly, I don’t like it at all. I played it a couple of times. It is based around the idea that you are trying to exhaust your opponents deck of cards, and your machine does this. It can be a little clinical tbh, and I want a card game where you put random shit together and your machine blows something up, or blows you up, or chops off an arms or something. The theme of the game seems at odds with the mechanics. Still, a bit of fun.
Once upon a time – A storytelling game where you place cards to continue the story – Never really bothered with it, as it seems a bit whimsical. If you can find the card game “Dark Cults” then it does a similar thing but much better. If you do, I’ll buy it off you.
Thurn & taxis – A fun game of establishing postal routes across Bavaria, and one that I played a couple of times and thoroughly enjoyed. I understand that it can be compared to Ticket to Ride, but they are two very different games. It won Spiel Des Jahres in 2006, and it is a nice medium weight game, which sees you making routes and placing houses in various towns in order to claim the bonuses associated with them. There’s less means of blocking your opponents than in Ticket to Ride, but there is a means to take cards that you think your opponent requires for a route, so it’s not entirely lacking in interactive aspects.
Other games you might enjoy – Obviously Settlers and I would advise Seafarers (But not Cities and Knights, which I think over complicates a beautifully simple game). Also Carcassone is a must – It’s superb. Puerto Rico – One of the best, if not, the best board game to have come out in a long time. Always topping the Board Game Geek charts (with Power Grid close behind) and it doesn’t look like shifting. At heart the game is a resource production game, whereby you produce various goods and sell/ship them to gain money/victory points. VP win the game, but money allows you to make better and bigger buildings to push your strategy forward. You have various roles each round, and clever players will attempt to manipulate and second guess their opponents to get the best outcome. Superb game. Race for the Galaxy – A card game set around racing to a set amount of cards in your “tableaux” or to exhausting the Victory Point pile. With similar “choose roles” mechanics to Puerto Rico, you aim to choose the best role each round to further your strategy. You pay for things you need in cards from your hand, so you must strike a balance between keeping cards and spending cards. Cards interact in many clever ways, and discovering the best strategy is tough but fun to achieve. I suppose it depends how big your group is, but you should try and remember that most games will play for 4 players to 6 players. Arkham Horror can manage 8 I think. Twilight Struggle is an excellent two-player game, and I hear that 1960: The Making of a President is also good. Our gaming group loves Through the Ages – which is basically Civilisation 2 for all those who used to play that computer game. There is a basic game, an advanced game and a more epic game, as you go further “through the ages”. Definitely worth a look. Also, another cooperative game we like is Pandemic, which sees you all work as a team to eradicate and find cures for various diseases that spread like wildfire round the globe. Good fun game. Looking back on the other comments, I have to agree with Betrayal at House on the Hill, which, while not serious in the least, is a game with plenty of play in it, guaranteed to lead to hours of fun game play. It has a fantastic mechanic in which one of you unknown to everyone, is the traitor. At a certain stage in the game, the traitor is revealed, and promptly tries to achieve their own dastardly aims. There are 50 scenarios to play out, and game circumstances dictate which this is. It’s a lot of fun. To wrap this up, not least because you probably spent your £200 months ago when this thread began, and I’m wasting my time, I will put a lot of love for Junta, which has recently been re-released, and is a great backstabbing, money grabbing game set in a corrupt banana republic where budgets are fixed, backhanders are rife, and the troops are moments away from storming the palace. Definitely buy this game, then get a load of cool military hats for all of you to wear. I don’t know where this University is, but if it’s in Kent, then I’m happy to meet up and play/discuss games etc. Cheers, Alex
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