I totally agree with Squad Leader. None of those are bad games, but I was expecting more uncommon, strategic games. There are many German (and European in general, but mostly German) that are very good. Their concept is often entirely different. Squad Leader has already touched on some good war games, so I'll do more peaceful ones. 'Settlers', 'Tikal' and 'Crossing the Desert' are all great games that are already classics, IMO (though the oldest is barely a decade). Newer games that I'm enjoying are 'Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers' (I, sadly, have not played the original yet), 'Octiles' (sort of a mix of the 'Labyrinth' game from Ravensburger and 'Chinese Checkers', though more strategic and interesting than either, IMO [now
that's synergy
]), 'Fire and Ice' (very elaborate 'tic-tac-toe', in a sense) and 'Tigris & Euphrates' (a real 'Civilization' sort of game, clearly set in the Fertile Crescent).
I'd like to go into a small degree of detail about an amazing game, particularly for us civ builders
, called 'Big City'. I recently borrowed it from my dad and it is great. Many strategy games tend to fall apart with only two players, but my dad gave us this one because my girlfriend and I really like to play games and we're often the only two available. Though it is best with the maximum five players, it still works very well as a two-player, albeit greatly higher-scoring. Essentially each player is a city-planner, all trying to build a city. However, points are gained indiviually by placing buildings, so the city grows in unusual and (often enough
) annoying ways. Various buildings and other things (like streetcars) that can act as multipliers or requirements for future improvements to the city come along at the player's discretion. An all in all great game that's fairly easy to get the hang of and with a handy sheet with all the points for each building as well as the modifiers. Once players know how to play the game usually only takes 30 minutes, so it can played on short notice. I reommend it to anyone with even a slight interest board games.
EDIT: Oh, and I know a guy who sells many of these boardgames and tons of others out of house in town. He ships them in from Germany, so their kind of expensive, but I don't think they're anymore expensive than most other games I see these days (Getting 'Stratego' cost $50 [Can]
).
www.germangames.com