Which tabletop games do or did you play? (if any)

[Kyriakos]

Given i got my first computer when i was 9, prior to that i used to play games actually with other people (weird times).

Among them were also tabletops.

Apart from the usual Monopoly, Stratego, Naval battle (the one with the grid and the ships) and boring Chess, i liked the following likely less usual ones:

-Hotel. Mostly notable for the nice paper and plastic models of the hotels. It was like monopoly in essence.



-Searching for mr.X (at least that was the meaning of the translated title). About a police search in central London (around Hyde Park and near the Thames) for a criminal. Apparently in the original the title is Scotland Yard.

 

[Bosh89]

haha, that's so great. I am addict of board games. I have played over those games you mentioned. But this one is quite new to me.
I would like to get to know about it and hope there's some stores selling it, or I can purchase it on amazon, hopefully.

 

[Leifmk]

Too damn many; tabletop gaming (both boardgames and RPGs) were my main hobby for over twenty years.

 

[Grisu]

-Searching for mr.X (at least that was the meaning of the translated title). About a police search in central London (around Hyde Park and near the Thames) for a criminal. Apparently in the original the title is Scotland Yard.

It was called Scotland Yard around here....Played that a lot too.

Then there was Sagaland, Monopoly of course, the classic game collections,

 

[azzaman333]

Beer pong is the only table top game I play.

 

[Kyriakos]

Too damn many; tabletop gaming (both boardgames and RPGs) were my main hobby for over twenty years.

Only tabletop "rpg" (it wasn't really one, just had rules as well) i had was:





I think the company was Italian, but had a branch in Greece as well, or it was co-operating with 'El-Greco', the main toy company here, and it was a popular game. But i never played the rpg style of it, just used the figures of human warriors, castles, monsters and siege engines in regular carpet-top game

 

[bhsup]

Don't really play them much at all anymore beyond the annual one at Christmas at my brother's. That is usually pictionary, but this year it was changed up and we did something called apple vs apple or... yeah, I think that was it.

Back in my youth, one of my brother's and I were very heavily into Avalon Hill wargames. Played the following constantly:

Luftwaffe
Bismarck
Dauntless
Flattop! (my personal fav)
Panzer Blitz
Panzer Leader
Gettysburg
Tactics II (fun, easy game)
Outdoor Survival (not military, but fun)
Title Bout (ditto)
Er... there were more...

Brief period of D&D with school friends for a few years.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

That Hotel game looks nifty!

I still have most of my board games (sold a few awhile ago to a collector, including the Mad Magazine game and The Six Million Dollar Man).

I've got regular Monopoly, a "make your own -opoly" kit, Clue, Careers, Pay Day, Billionaire, Life, Eureka (about the Wild West gold rush), Trivial Pursuit, and a bunch more. I've still got a couple of those pop-o-matic dice things from my Cross Over the Bridge game (the board and marbles are long-gone, though).

Other board games that probably would appeal more to CFC-folk:

Scrabble
Dune
Doctor Who
Eurorails
Iron Dragon
India Rails
Lunar Rails
Mars Rails
Another rails game still unpacked; not sure if Brit Rails or Nippon Rails
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
Couple of D&D-type board games
Risk
Diplomacy

I've got others as well, still packed away. There are two board games I've played but don't own (and want): Civilization - the one that came out long before there was ever a computer game, and Escape From Colditz. The latter is of course a game where the object is to escape from Colditz, and one player takes the role of the guards whose job is to prevent players' pieces from escaping.


I've also played table-top RPGs where maps are used, real dice are rolled, and the DM also used miniature props (ie. if the party found a scroll, we were handed an actual scroll; no more fudging about who unrolled and read the thing, since we had to physically do it!).

 

[Leifmk]

Civilization - the one that came out long before there was ever a computer game

Played that a few times back in the 90s but it was a logistical nightmare to actually get a game organized -- mainly because of the time commitment, even back when we were all students with no kids or such, getting enough people to be able to set aside 12 hours at the same time was not trivial.

There was a kinda-sequel called Age of Renaissance which took a lot of the same design elements but was way more streamlined and typically done in less than 6 hours, we played that one a lot.

 

[Angst]

I've been playing Archipelago lately. Very politically incorrect colonization fantasy. Takes 1½ hours or so to learn but a lot of fun. It might be I'm slower than other people btw, because I rarely play tabletop games I'm not used to wrapping my head around them.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Spoiler :

Uh blast from the past. I am surprised how much nostalgia this image evoked in me. Great game

 

[Darkflight]

Mostly Chess, a localized version of Monopoly set in Oslo and Afrikan tähti. I've played a very large amount of board games but except for those three most of those board games wasn't really to my fancy.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Interestingly, I just finished running an avatar contest on another forum, using the theme of game boards. It turned out to be a tie between Clue and Scrabble.

A lot of discussion was also generated, which reminds me that I forgot to mention Crokinole. I have a board that's 50+ years old.

 

[Harv]

I think the company was Italian, but had a branch in Greece as well, or it was co-operating with 'El-Greco', the main toy company here, and it was a popular game. But i never played the rpg style of it, just used the figures of human warriors, castles, monsters and siege engines in regular carpet-top game

My Greek is terrible. What is that? Castles and Catapults?

 

[warpus]

OMG I used to play Scotland Yard in Germany.. Holy crap does that bring back memories, thanks for posting!

The only board games I play are Settlers of Catan, and all the various expansions. I have a monopoly board game stashed away - but I never play that because games never finish and always end in arguments. I also have Cranium, which is a fun party game if you've got girls around, but I haven't played that in years. It generally only gets used during family camping/cottage trips.

When I lived in Germany somebody from Poland came to visit and brought this game called Euro Business. It was like Monopoly, but better.. somehow.. I can't remember.

 

[Kyriakos]

My Greek is terrible. What is that? Castles and Catapults?

Castles and besiegers Poliorketes was that epithet of Demetrios, king of Macedonia in the era of the diadochoi, and the one who used the massive siege-tower Helepolis and battle ram in Rhodes

 

[EgonSpengler]

Back in the day, my nerd friends and I played the hell out of Axis & Allies and Star Fleet Battles.

 

[Antilogic]

ANTI GAME LIST BOMB

Not Personally Owned:

1. Settlers of Catan - I don't care for this as much as my friends do, still has too much die rolling. Combined with Seafarers and Cities & Knights expansion, though, it's a solid game.
2. Carcassone - It's a pretty easy to learn game where you build the board one tile at a time, claiming various fields, cities, roads, and monasteries for points. Recommendation: don't play with the million expansions all at once.
3. Battlestar Galactica - This is one of my favorites. It's basically scifi-themed mafia with a bunch of cards and a board with different action locations you can take to defend the fleet, imprison suspected traitors, etc. Plenty of tension, if you watched the show a lot of the crises and events will be familiar to you, there's usually a heel-turn halfway through the game as somebody who thought they were a loyal human receives a cylon card, overall awesome. I don't recommend expansion overload, though, be reasonable and the game plays great.
4. Dixit - A great game that has taken the place of Apples to Apples and other generic party/trivia games in my group. You come up with descriptions of cards with surreal art on them, and it's a really creativity-focused game because you have to give decent enough clues that some people pick your card out of the pile, but not everyone. Or it's hilarious because you have people pick their most rasist cards.
5. Ticket to Ride - There are a lot of different versions of this game, but I have played Europe the most because it has tunnels. It's a simple game of either collecting train cards or building tracks on a board with limited connections, but the best games are often based around fairly simple opportunity cost mechanisms. I recommend it, especially the Europe version.
6. Love Letter - This is a good light game as well, it plays fast. Basically, you are trying to get your love letter to the princess, and the person who is left with the highest-ranked card wins the round. It's basically a multiplayer memory game with some instant death mechanics thrown in, but it plays quickly enough the player who gets knocked out of a round doesn't get bored.
7. 7 Wonders - This is a solid game, has a bunch of cards and set collecting elements for points. You basically build a classical-aged city around a wonder of the world, and you can get points for science, invading your neighbors, building stuff, etc. You can also buy and sell resources to your neighbor to generate cash. The cool mechanic here is that you pick a card you want out of a hand of cards, then pass the remainder to one of your neighbors, so you are always trying to get what you need while depriving them of vital stuff. Especially if it forces them to buy a bunch of resources from you or prevents them from getting a full set of sciences for bonus points.
8. Coup/Avalon/The Resistance/Some Random Vampire-Themed Version/Some Random Arthurian Legend Version - Played a lot of these, I generally don't like them so I don't recommend them. If I had to pick a favorite out of the bunch, it's probably Coup by a hair.
9. Puerto Rico - Nearly forgot this one because it's been awhile since I have played it. It features a lot of different mechanics, prominent among them is the current player chooses an action, then everybody does it with the current player getting a bonus. So basically, you are trying to build a commercial export empire in San Juan by making your actions as useless for other players as possible and making their actions work for you.

My Gateway Games:

1. Paris Connection - A nifty variation on Ticket to Ride where you either build any train line, not just your own, or buy stocks in train companies. Highest portfolio wins, so if somebody else makes a valuable line, you can still get in on the points. Very clever and easy half-hour game that is based around a clear opportunity cost mechanism.
2. St. Petersburg - Arguably, this should be in my full games section, but it's one of the first games I came across and started playing, so it was kinda my gateway. You have to accumulate the most influence in the Russian court by collecting nobles, purchasing buildings, and building your own little empire. Players take turns buying different types of cards, whether workers, buildings, nobles, or upgrades, and it switches every round so it balances out a bit. There are also a lot of special cards that give you extra abilities to draw more, generate more cash, and turn money into points more effectively.
3. Temporum - The newest addition to the list. Basically, you all have time machines and are travelling through time to collect cards and money used to score points. However, you can change the flow of time throughout the game which changes which actions you can take. So if I'm sitting in the 3rd age, I can shift what happens in the 4th age from a Utopia to an Icy Wasteland. It's a fun and quick time travel game.

My Core Games:

1. Power Grid - It's a game where you auction off power plants, buy resources off a market, and build stations to connect together, well, a power grid. Largest, most profitable power company wins. The game has a solid catchup mechanism so it never feels completely hopeless, it has a variable turn order mechanic that I like because it's basically a hidden battlefield, and there are tons of expansion boards and power plants that add a lot of replay value to the game. Totally love it, if not my favorite then an easy top 3 choice.
2. Factory Manager - Same designer as Power Grid, but you compete in an auction for factory components like control systems, robots, and machines. The turn order auction (this FF guy loves these kinds of mechanisms) is based around an auction with your workforce, so the player who wins and goes first will be able to do fewer actions in the turn. Oh, and it's exactly 5 turns, so it has the every-moment-counts feeling.
3. Great Fire of London - You play as landlords trying to put out fires and defend property while London burns down, except every turn you have to spread the fire so the city is very likely to burn down. Officially, you are supposed to protect the objectives, but you only care about a few in your hand so you start intentionally burning down the others to screw over your competitors. I haven't played enough to develop a strategic insight into the game, but I like it.
4. Tammany Hall - Everybody plays as a corrupt political machine trying to get their boss elected mayor in New York City. Features ward bosses, collecting political favors from immigrants which are used to stuff ballot boxes and slander your opponents, and plenty of over-the-table dealmaking that goes awry. Love it, and thanks Mangxema for buying me a copy!

The Wargames:

1. Bonaparte at Marengo/Napoleon's Triumph - These are the games I don't know how to play well in my collection, they have only made it to the table once or twice. The game looks and plays like an old school battle map with red and blue lines representing formations of troops. It's a neat concept but I rarely find someone to try and puzzle through the rules with so I can't comment on it further.
2. Twilight Struggle - A recent addition to my collection, and a new favorite. It's the Cold War, it features buliding influence in battleground countries, launching coups, and a lot of unique historical event cards that both players draw from the same deck, which is important because the US player ends up with a bunch of USSR cards and vice-versa. Similar to Puerto Rico, you gotta make your opponent's actions work for you and give them as little aid as possible despite playing their cards. It's a brilliant design, reflects the great power politics of the Cold War, highly recommended.
3. Friedrich/Maria - I grouped these because they are basically very similar games in turns of mechanics, but based on two different wars. These are somewhat abstracted wargames where invading powers try to maneuver their armies to capture key cities, and all fighting, recruiting, and event auctioning in the case of Maria, is done via customized playing cards. Another favorite of mine, and Freddy works with 4 players, Maria 3, so it's a good wargame for when you have more than one person to play with.

Miscellaneous:

1. Chess - I have a board, used to play a lot more in high school though. I don't think I have played a proper game in about 5 years, maybe more.
2. Checkers - Came with the chess board, haven't played in maybe 15 years. Maybe more.
3. Monopoly Deal - This is a short set-collecting card game that is way more tense and quick than the original game it is based on. I recommend this wayyy over the Monopoly board game. I also recommend everything else on this list over the Monopoly board game.

 

[Commodore]

I used to play a lot of Battleship, Monopoly, Stratego, and Life. Now I mostly just play Candyland and Chutes and Ladders with my daughter.

I've tried to get into tabletop wargaming several times, but the cost of most tabletop wargames is very off-putting, especially when you have to purchase new stuff every few years when they decide to update the rules.

 

[Antilogic]

If you want a great one-on-one wargame without all the miniatures and rules changes, go for Twilight Struggle.

Seriously, it's that good.