Any Board Gamers Here?

It's still fun playing classic games like Life, Stratego, and Clue. My favorite is13 Dead End Drive. I think it's better than Clue. You get to kill off your opponents' characters in secret. Also, The Omega Virus is an interesting talking electronic board game. The Virus' taunting voice can get irritating after a while, though.

Yes, OP. I use Pogo for Risk and Monopoly, but Pogo said they're going to discontinue them this year, so I'll have to find another site.

Yep. Got about two hundred games and no one to fucking play with right now. Virtual just isn't the same, even though some of the virtual games are really, really well done.

Same here, r4. I have many card games (Guillotine, Poison, Mafia) that require several people, but only 1 person remotely interested and how do we do that via Zoom, anyway? My favorite multiplayer board games (Nuns on the Run, Eketorp, Rattus, Carccssonne, and Torres) are sitting unloved in the shelf, collecting dust. 😞

r3 I just started buying last year and I have over 150 at last count. What are some of your favorites? Frankly, the most shocking thing to me was the sheer number of games out there. I used to think "board games" meant the stuff I played when I was a kid: Clue, Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly, Risk, et. al. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there are literally THOUSANDS of board games out there now.

Here's what I've been playing (mostly): Ticket to Ride, Castles of Burgundy, Port Royal, Puerto Rico, Vindication, Lords of Waterdeep, Rajas of the Ganges, Imhotep. I also play the Phase 10 card game one-on-one with a friend most mornings (online, of course.)

One of my board game groups found an application that let him set up Cards Against Humanity to play online. And we've done Jackbox games--those work well remotely because you use your phone or tablet to play.

r4 Carcassonne is on Board Game Arena (free to join.) You can play with friends or strangers.

r1 I've never played 13 Dead-End Drive but it sounds like something I'd like. I see that it's playable on Steam, but it's in French.

Settlers of Catan is a good one -- the games are often nail-biters. Terreforming Mars is an epic game, really well done, but I've played it about a dozen times and I'm still getting the hang of it.

Thanks, r6, but I don't like playing games online. The interaction isn't the same as playing with foul-mouthed friends you can screw over with impunity.

I enjoy a good round of the Ouija Board, but my bed keeps shaking after I play.

r9 But you can play with friends and connect to them via audio and/or video (Discord, Zoom, etc.)

I've enjoyed playing The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Game. Someone made a game out of guessing the cartoon's caption. You try to guess who wrote which caption.

R5, I've been collecting games for a little over a year. I'm a scrounger. I've very rarely paid full price for anything. I'm shocked at what games people get rid of at Goodwill, resale shops, and places like Half Price Books.

I like Carcassonne, Guillotine, Cards Against Humanity, Love Letter, Dixit, Telestrations, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, The Resistance, Codenames, Dude, Mysterium, Patchwork, Castle Panic, Minuscule, Tsuro, Spontuneous, Double Ditto, Qwirkle, Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, etc.

I'm not really into too many heavy games because I mostly play with kids and/or teens with the occasional adult game night. I also like social deduction and cooperative games, so being stuck at home has really hindered any kind of game playing. I think it's going to be a long time before a group will get together to play again. My two loves, gaming and going to or watching movies with a group of friends/family, ruined by Covid.

R11, it's not the same interacting through a screen, looking at digital images. I game mostly for the comradery. I also like the physicality of holding the cards/game pieces and looking at the same board as everyone else. None of my regular gaming friends play online, anyway.

No board games for me,(except Scrabble) but I am a crossword puzzle aficianado. I used to read books in bed until I dropped off to sleep, but I would get hooked on a good novel and be up till 4 or 5 am reading. I find puzzles are self limiting. Also if you don't want to use up too many brain cells while trying to get to sleep, just do the easy ones. Do the harder ones during the day when you are bored or have time to kill. I have done Crosswords such as the NYT for as long as I can remember. I have a large vocabulary, but not from crosswords, since they get repetitive after many years.

Balderdash is fun where you got to make up definitions for words

Ironically, one of my favorite board games used to be Pandemic. I think it will be awhile before I want to play that one again (if ever).

Others I enjoy: Agricola, Dominion (there are several different iterations and I have several of them), and Splendor.

Then there are the card games: Flux (SO many iterations of Flux and I've enjoyed every one I've played), Gloom (the artwork is fantastic), and Sushi GO! Party are some of my favorites.

I enjoy video games too, but I agree that there's something about analog games...

I play online Dominion sometimes. Usually just vs the AI but you can play against people too. Base set is free but you have to pay for the expansions.

For anyone who's never played it, the website has progressively harder AI matches that teach you how to play then expose you to different strategies.

Been meaning to look into Board Game Arena.

My mom, my husband and a friend of ours have been staying together since we were in Costa Rica roger in March. We play board games almost every night after dinner. The top 5 have been telestrations , wits & wagers, scattergories, cranium and taboo. It has been a lot of fun.

r13 I've played a lot of those: Splendor, Carcassonne, Dixit, Cards Against Humanity, Codenames (the regular, the "adult," and the picture versions), Love Letter, Tsuro, Qwirkle. Splendor has a decent app you can play on a phone or tablet, but I've never played online against others. There's a "faux" Splendor that's free and lets you play online against others-- I had it bookmarked but now I can't find it.

Has anyone gone to any of the board game conventions? I went to the big one in LA last Labor Day weekend and was planning to go to the one that was scheduled for this weekend (but was cancelled for obvious reasons.)

I've been to GenCon, OP. It's a bit overwhelming (it's massive), but interesting and fun. You can try out tons of games there for free, even play-test games still in development. There's also stuff there that isn't strictly board game-related: general fantasy, sf, steampunk, etc. merchandise and panels and such.

I used to be a Monopoly player, because growing-up in the midwest, there was nothing else to do on frigid Sunday afternoons. My family went for the jugular in this game...my mom would relish foreclosing on anyone she could...so the competition made it more interesting. Now the only thing I play is Scrabble, but its really only fun to play with someone intelligent.

I haven't played actual Scrabble in years, but I play Words With Friends on Facebook. And I just started doing the LA Times crossword puzzle every day (online) when the lockdown began.

Do Magic: The Gathering and D&D count?

I love the Gloom decks too, r17!

Sometimes I like to change the rules.

Yahtzee you get three roles of the dice each turn, however when I play, for example if you get a full house on the first roll and take it as a score you bank the remaining two roles that can be used at any other time in the game. So any unused rolls are banked instead of being lost. It completely changes the strategy for the game. You can keep track of the extra rolls by handing out something like paper clips.

In Monopoly everyone always hated paying income tax, it slowed the game down while money and properties were counted and math was done, so we just make it a free spot, nothing happens. Helps speed up a game that already takes forever.

I always enjoyed the classic older board games, but I'm unfamiliar with the newer generation of them, although I'm willing to learn. I really miss the old, classic card games with which I grew up. I was recently detained for a bit of time, and would have liked to participate in some of the card games which I used to know. I needed to overcome my shyness and take some of the guys up on their offers to include me.

I don't like a lot of the newer board games because they have more complicated rules and play procedures that I can't remember easily, or have a lot of resource management facets that I'm easily bored by. Even Ticket to Ride is a bit plodding for my tastes, but my autistic client loves it.

I prefer playful card games like Mafia and Guillotine, which move faster and contain a lot of good-natured "screwage factor." Eketorp was a good transition for me from cards to respurce management, because the raids make it more fun.

In the Ballroom I suspect Professor Plum with the Lead Pipe.

No! It was Miss Scarlett in the Conservatory with a Candlestick

Video games are played with other humans sitting down, dummy.

My partner and I are Scrabble players.

Do these online sites let you play the games with friends, or do they just randomly assign you to people around the world? And is there sound so you can hear your friends talking, or is it just silent as each person plays?

r33 You can play with friends or with random strangers. I do both. Some of the apps (Board Game Arena) have built-in sound connections. They all have chat functions with texting. But with any of them, you can use another app like Discord (free; video and audio) or Zoom, Google Hangouts or Meet to speak while playing. Or you can do a conference call on the phone.