Recommendation for boardgame for x4000? :)

[x4000]

Hey guys,

So I'm in the market for a new boardgame.  The biggest criteria is that it has to be fun for 6 people, and the second-biggest criteria is that it has to be enjoyable within a reasonable amount of time (1-2 hours).  Bearing in mind that this particular play group of mine (me and my wife, my parents, my sister and her boyfriend) is pretty slow on the games that we play because we're chatty while playing, paired with the fact that we're collectively obsessive over playing the Perfect Game each in our own obsessive ways.

Way more than you wanted to know about my play group and what we're looking for
We really love the game Descent: Journeys In the Dark and I have the first three expansions to it, but even playing with my fast tactics variant of the game that winds up taking us 7-9 hours per average campaign.  Road To Legend is certainly more bite-size, but I also find it much less interesting per session.  Given that we only get to have a few sessions per year now that my wife and I have a son, and given that our sessions are now vastly shorter for the same reason (those 7-9 hour sessions in the past were straight playtime all in one day), that really makes Descent not an option.  And frankly I was starting to feel like the strategy and tactics of that was not living up to the depth I had hoped for, anyway.  It's a great game, but not one you can play indefinitely, and we got a solid three or so years out of it.

So, Descent says it can be played in 240 minutes, but our average time is almost twice that.  With games like Dominion, I've found that instead of taking 45 minutes that takes more like 90 minutes per game for similar reasons -- thoroughness and chattiness.  More the latter than the former with Dominion, but that's because when you play with 6-8 players you wind up with it not being your turn for a loooooong time.

The nice thing is when turns are short or when all players have something to consider at all times.  That's what is great about Descent, is that there's a lot of table-talk where everyone strategizes on everyone's turn.  So a game like Princes of Florence is nice for both those reasons: the bidding means everyone has to watch everyone at all times, and everyone can be planning their moves while others go so that turns proceed quickly.  Sadly, it's only 5 players and can't really be modified to support 6.

The other thing that bugs me in particular is excessive use of chance in the sorts of games.  Some chance is fine, and randomized game elements are absolutely awesome.  But randomized die rolls in Risk bug me a little, and hugely-random card game hands like in Five Crowns bugs me a lot.  On the other hand, the card came Xactica is a favorite light game of ours because while being random it's also hugely strategic (especially with our house rule that if you bid 0 and get it, you get 1 point).

What I've Considered Strongly So Far
Over in this thread, there were a ton of good board games mentioned.  So I started there, and these are the games people mentioned:

Power Grid and Pandemic
These looked pretty neat, but Power Grid is apparently tedious with 6 players and Pandemic only supports 4 players.

LOTR Risk or Risk: 2201
Already have both, and both are really fun but neither support 6 players.

LOTR Boardgame (co-op)
Five players only.  And it looks long, from what little I looked at it.  Very fun, but long.

Battlestar Galactica
Oh my god does this one look awesome.  But it's advertised as taking 240 minutes.  I know that's a dirty, dirty lie for my group.  There's just no way that would work for us these days.

Shadows Over Camelot
This is a really good game, but we already have it.  Well, my father in law does, and we play it with him.  It gets a bit repetitive, though, and I don't think it would be much fun with more than the 3 players we usually have for that one.

Settlers of Catan
We have that, plus the expansion for 6 players.  I know a lot of people really dig this game, but we've just never gotten into it too much.  It's pretty fun, but it's slow with our group and while it's deep for a boardgame of it's type, I can't help but feeling it's a shallow imitation of a computerized 4X.

Puerto Rico
Five players only...

Betrayal at House on the Hill
This one seems super interesting, and it's the way that I'm leaning at the moment.  But I have reservations.  Mainly in terms of the large role that chance plays, as mentioned in various reviews.  The problem with many boardgame reviews, though, is that it depends on the player.  But it sounds like this one has killer variety and it's listed as taking 60 minutes, so we could presumably do it in 2 hours with my group.   I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on this one, though, or more from vordrax if he sees this.

Arkham Horror
Wow this also looks like fun, but it also looks like cooperative Descent.  And the time listed is 240 minutes, and there's a massive number of chits.  Helloooo, Descent!   It just wouldn't fit our new time constraints.

Agricola
Only 5 players, and anyway it reminds me of... another game we have whose name escapes me right now.  Also 5 players, and about basically pioneers in the new world and such.  It was okay, but the structure of a limited number of turns with specific things on each turn kind of bugs me personally -- if a game would otherwise run long I'd rather have it run long.


And that's the list of stuff that I've been looking at.  If you've read this far, thanks very much for doing so -- man this was a long post.  But hopefully also useful for anyone else looking for a list of good board games -- this is a really good list of games, despite that all or most don't work for my group for some reason at the moment.  And the reason that I went into such detail is because both my local games store staff and board game geek have basically let me down -- it's so hard to find just the right game!  Mainly because the list of games we already have is so freaking long, but anyway.  I'm looking for a lesser-known gem, so I know where to turn.

[vordrax]

I can give a short review on Betrayal at House on the Hill, and I'll answer any questions you might have.

The Player Group, or "Mood": This is somewhat important, though I'm sure you won't have any problem with it. Betrayal is basically a build-your-own survival B-movie horror. This means that, while the atmosphere isn't nearly as integral as Call of Cthulhu, it does benefit from a certain mood. Night, lights low (not dim enough so that you can't read the cards though), with the players listening intently to the current player. Bonus points if you can narrate your Events and Omens decently. While the game session doesn't die at a giggle-fit, it certainly isn't helped. You don't need to take it super serious- it's too campy- but it's definitely not Munchkins either (which is another great game, I haven't tried the boardgame but the card game is amusing.) Another thing to consider is that everyone needs to be comfortable filling the "villain" role. It's decided by the last Omen picked up and the room it's found in, so potentially anyone could be the Traitor. If your group is only interested in a purely cooperative game, skip this one.

Board Setup: Very easy, much easier than most boardgames I've played. The box is nicely partitioned (at least the old one, I would assume the new release is as well), and since you build the board as you play, the hardest part is finding a nicely-sized surface. Which is a concern- if you don't have a big table, you'll be playing on the floor (or issuing arbitrary limits to exploration, which is fine too.) It's not even really that mandatory to shuffle the cards, as most tend to screw you in unpredictable ways regardless of what order they come in (I shuffle every few play sessions, you definitely won't go through any of the decks in one sitting.) But this brings me to one issue...

INITIAL Board Setup: Wow, is this a pain. Again, I don't know what the new release is like, but in mine, there were dozens, perhaps over a hundred, little tokens and such in two pop-boards (I know there's a real name for those sheets but it's not coming to me.) I think they went severely overboard with them, and there's no good place to put them. I just grabbed a few ziplock bags and tried to separate them myself. Honestly, I think fewer, higher quality tokens would have sufficed. If this doesn't bother you, it's not really a concern, since it doesn't really affect gameplay, but it's something you need to take care of before the session. I actually haven't popped all of mine out, and sifting through them during the session is annoying enough that I just pick up whatever tokens I find and announce, "These are now zombies," or what have you.

Turn Length: Since you're playing with six players, this is kind of a big deal (and the main reason I'd never recommend Runebound to you, fun as it may be.) Fortunately, individual turn length is mercifully short, especially given that the game is essentially a dice-roller. The rules are simple and easy to understand when it comes to rolling, and everything is generally laid out on the cards. During the Haunt, which I'll explain later, the Traitor can sometimes have moderately lengthy turns if they have to perform a lot of actions (such as moving monsters) but it never gets to the point where everyone is just sitting and waiting on their turn.

Number of Players: This is a game that gets better the more players you have. I haven't played a game with 6, but it was notably better with 5 than with 3. The game rules are designed to scale with the number of players; for example, Haunts with monsters often create a number equal to the number of players on the board. Or the strength of larger monsters will be based on the number of players.

Basics: Anyone who has played a dice-based system will feel right at home, which I assume is all of you. Everyone has two physical stats (Strength and Speed) and two mental stats (Knowledge and Sanity). These are represented on a character card you choose, and has easy-to-use tabs to help you keep track of them. Different characters have different stats, of course, and their progressions are also different (and I can explain this to you if you want, but once you see it in play it's very easy to understand.) Whenever you roll a stat check, you roll that number of dice (i.e. a character with 5 strength will roll 5 dice on a strength check.) The dice are 6-sided but they go from 0 to 2 to create a very interesting effectiveness curve. Whenever you take damage, it is generally physical or mental rather than directed at a particular stat, and the player taking the damage gets to distribute it however they choose. So if you take 2 points of physical damage, you can remove 2 from either strength or speed, or one from both. Another important aspect of Betrayal is its two-phase system- the "Exploration" phase and the "Haunt" phase. I won't go into these too much without being prompted, but you can't die in the Exploration phase (though you can get to the point where you'd wish you were dead), and the period between them can run anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour, which may be a concern for you (it involves reading and setting up the board some more.)

Annoyance Factor: This is always a big one for me. LoL developer Ginsoo (IIRC) described it as "fun vs anti-fun." For the most part, Betrayal is fun. There is some unbalance with some of the Haunts (which I think has been fixed in the update) that caused us some grief, creating unwinnable scenarios for one side or the other. There is one Event card that causes your flashlight to go out, which prevents you from moving more than one space at a time, and you are unable to explore new rooms, until someone ends their turn in your space. If this is still in the updated game in this form, I'd honestly suggest just removing it, because it is by far the worst thing you can have happen to you beyond getting killed. It doesn't sound that bad on paper but in practice, it is very frustrating. No one wants to end their turn in an explored space in the Exploration phase, and doing so in the Haunt phase could easily get both of you killed. And if they don't choose to land in your space, you are incapable of doing anything worthwhile. It's the boardgame equivalent of being turned to stone or Polymorphed in DnD.


Everyone I've played this game with has expressed a great deal of surprise at the complexity and enjoyment of this game, even hardcore gamers. The biggest potential pitfall I see in your group is that you tend to be the "Game Master," and there isn't really room for a predetermined one in this game. You aren't guaranteed to be the Traitor, and the quality of the Haunt is often determined by the competence of the Traitor, so if you have anyone in your group that can't play that role well, approach it with concern. It's not a difficult role, and the rules and advantages are laid out very clearly, but I do know there are people who just can't play a bad guy for the life of them. And that's fine, but if they pull punches or don't look for every way to screw over the players, it will become very dull very quickly.


EDIT: I just noticed you mentioned chance. This game is very dependent upon chance in the Exploration phase. You can luck out very nicely or or you can screwed, though you can't die. Once the Haunt begins, player skill and planning takes a much larger role, since the game becomes very goal-oriented. Chance still plays a part since the game is dice-heavy, but often you can mitigate it in some way or another (such as having your strongest player take the strength-based weapons for combat, et cetera.)

[zespri]

There is a variation of Pandemic to play with 5 players, for 6 you are out of luck though.

[Nalgas]

I can give a short review on Betrayal at House on the Hill, and I'll answer any questions you might have.

That sounds potentially pretty fun with the right people.  Too bad I don't have anyone to play something like that with at the moment.  Gotta work on that...

it's definitely not Munchkins either (which is another great game, I haven't tried the boardgame but the card game is amusing.)

Heh.  I also haven't gotten a chance to check out the boardgame (didn't know it existed, actually), but Munchkin is a great pick-up-and-play game that scales up well to groups of that size.  Actually, the last time I played was with six people.  Not exactly a serious/hardcore game, but it's just so hard not to have fun playing it with the sense of humor it has, especially when introducing new people to it.  The rule that "the owner of the game has the final say on rules decisions" can be really funny sometimes, like when you realize that the person who technically owns the copy you're playing with forgets they left it behind when they moved several states away, but the rules do say you have to get them to make the call...

[Cyborg]

I'm curious why Dungeons & Dragons is not on the list? A lot of game shops carry all kinds of books and campaigns. As long as you know your ruleset, you could get a lot of mileage out of these campaigns. They don't all have to be completed in one sitting, you could just do one dungeon at a time(okay, a small dungeon).

There is a lot of dice-throwing and random chance, but the way you build your characters and the decisions you make as a group is all skill and gives you the probability of winning.

[keith.lamothe]

Power Grid is fun, and reasonably short once you get the hang of it, and has a pretty good balance between direct and indirect competition.  But it does bog down a bit with 6 players unless you make a decent effort to play without excessive delay.  On the other hand, the math and mechanics of the game is such that you can basically "precompute" what you're going to do in future phases of the turn while you're waiting for other players to finish the current phase.  There's only a mild degree of chance (the order of the power plants in the deck) and it's mitigated in the early game by a prescribed initial layout and even when the randomness kicks in it tends to affect the players as a whole rather than anything like an individual "rolling a natural 20".

Pandemic is also a lot of fun, but yea, 5 players max with the expansion and in our experience the game gets somewhat harder the more players you have (but you get more distinct roles so it can be a bit of a wash).

I haven't played Space Alert but RPS's recent post about it definitely has me interested.  It's only 4-player but it's co-op to a degree that you could probably all participate in the decision making and still have fun.  Also, the actual decision-making part of the game only takes about 10 minutes.  From what I've read it's more like "make crazy mistakes for 10 minutes, then figure out how badly you died".

[x4000]

I think that Power Grid just wouldn't do well with my group, for the reason that people would be chatting instead of precomputing in the main, so it would bog down.  It does look like a lot of fun, though.

Space Alert looks pretty interesting, but I've never been a fan of CD-based things just since it seems like it would not have much replay value.  And in this case we're really looking for something that can be played quietly because the baby will be asleep in a nearby room when we actually get to play.

D&D is an interesting point, actually.  I've played it so much digitally, but the only pen and paper RPG that I've played directly has been the GURPS system: Mage and Werewolf and Vampire.  I guess my fear with D&D in a pen and paper sense is that it would require a lot of prep time and would also require a lot of play time.  If we're only having a couple of sessions per year, and only a few hours in each session, I just can't imagine that satisfying D&D could fit into that sort of time slot.  But am I wrong?  I know that they did a lot of revamping with 4th edition, and really streamlined things.


Last but definitely not least, vordrax, thanks for all the detailed thoughts and review there.  That is super awesome stuff, and really good to hear.  It sounds like an interesting way of handling chance, not something that would be frustrating.  I think I might go with this game, it sounds really good.  I do have one remaining question, though (a wonder that I have only one, but it's thanks to your awesome thoroughness there).

My question is this: to what degree are things really secret between the two sides?  Exactly one player becomes the bad guy, right?  And everyone knows who it is when the haunt begins?  Then once the haunt is underway, what does that player know that the others don't and vice versa?  For instance, in Descent the overlord knows the layout of the dungeon when the others might not (if it's your first time on that quest), and the overlord has a small hand of cards that is known only to them.  But beyond that the board, and everything about the heroes in Descent, is known to all.

The reason I ask is because of your comments about "make sure anyone can be the bad guy."  I think anyone in the group could do that credibly, but we have the most fun when we're all working together to figure out the best moves.  In other words, as overlord in Descent I tend to help out with player strategizing, though they take what I say with a grain of salt since I could be tricking them (and very occasionally do, just to keep it interesting).  The others don't tend to help out much with overlord strategy since they can't see enough to say much, and since I tend to have my turns precomputed by the time they come around anyhow, keeping them super short.

Is there really much chance for that sort of dynamic with Betrayal at House on the Hill?  That's not a dealbreaker, but if so it sounds like a definite win to me.

Oh, two other notes:

1. I read that in the revised 2010 edition of the game they vastly cut down the number of chits, making various things combined.  So I expect that was in response to your annoyance factor, and hopefully that cuts that down.

2. Thanks for the tip on the flashlight card, I'll definitely take that out if it's still in the revised version. Stuff like that really can kill an otherwise great game session, you're right.


EDIT: And I meant to say, to everyone, thanks so much for your thoughts and help!

[Frozen Critical]

Starcraft : the board game

http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/StarCraft:_The_Board_Game

I had only been able to play with another person mostly, sometimes it's a full blown six, trust me, it's epic, there is no good or fixed strategy, adapt and think fast

Replayability is infinite, there are millions of builds and strategies out there, as long as there is someone else to play with, I could slap this board on any day, I mean, no strategy is perfect and will work every time, if you found out a perfect strategy, you could probably stand in a thunderstorm without getting wet anyway

[x4000]

Oh yeah, Starcraft!  Thanks for bringing that one up, too. 

It looks really really good, and I had my eye on that and the WoW boardgame a few years back, but both look like super time sinks along the lines of Descent, which kind of defeats them for my purposes at the moment.  But I do really want to play that at some point, it looks awesome.

[Bas92]

What about War of the Ring (the board game)? It's a game for 2 to 4 players where you either try to destroy the One Ring or conquer all of Middle-Earth. The only downside is that all the "good guys" are painted blue and all the "bad guys" are painted red. So it becomes a bit hard to distinguish your units, but you could simply paint the units yourself to solve this problem.

I've only played Settlers of Catan from your list. It's quite fun but it doesn't really go in-depth. It's a perfect game to play with your family, but if you want something more "advanced" to play with friends, I wouldn't recommend it.

[x4000]

Yeah, there's a lot of good games for 2-4 players, which is always disappointing because we always have 6!

[Nalgas]

Yeah, there's a lot of good games for 2-4 players, which is always disappointing because we always have 6!

What's kind of funny is that my situation is usually that a lot of games I have laying around are only any good with 3+ players, but a lot of the time it's just me and my girlfriend.  We have the opposite problem where we need to go pick up some more games that scale down well to the number of players we have, but at least we have more to choose from.  It does kind of suck that most games that claim to be "2-x players" would be more accurately labeled "2-x players but not actually fun with only 2 because 50% of the mechanics don't even come into play in that case", though.

[x4000]

Yeah, I've been in that boat plenty of times before, too.  My wife and I used to play games just ourselves (2), and then we'd play with her and me and her dad (3), and we'd play with her and me and my parents (4), and then add in my sister and her boyfriend (6).  So we've really run the gamut of trying to find games that work at all the various  numbers of players, which is why we have so many.

If you're looking for something interesting that you can play with two players, you might check out Carcassonne or Elfenland.  There can be interesting strategy in both, and it keeps moving well with two players better than with more.  Clue: The Museum Caper also works well with 2 players if one plays the thief and the other plays 3-4 investigators.

[Echo35]

I haven't read through every post here, so pardon if I make any repeats, but I'm a HUGE table top gamer, so I have some advice here

Looking over your game list there, I can tell you right now you'll get a TON if mileage out of Battlestar Galactica. Especially with the Pegasus expansion thrown in (I haven't had enough play time with Exodus yet to pass judgement, but Pegasus is definitely the on to get). Betrayal at House on the Hill is neat, but I much prefer Arkham over it, though with all the Arkham stuff thrown in, it gets pretty massive (I have ALL of its expansions. It's an nightmare to play, but completely worth it). I've played Agricola before, and I want to like it, but I really don't like it much, and the expansion is complete garbage. If you like that kind of game, go for Caylus. It's far better Settlers is a tried and true classic, but I'm not too wild on the other titles there.

As far as new suggestions go, I was going to suggest Dominion, but seeing as you have that already, I'll say 7 Wonders, the previously mentioned Caylus, and Formula D. All Excellent games that are light weight enough (Well, except for Caylus) to support your large amount of "Table talk" and also supporting 6+ players.

[keith.lamothe]

Space Alert looks pretty interesting, but I've never been a fan of CD-based things just since it seems like it would not have much replay value.  And in this case we're really looking for something that can be played quietly because the baby will be asleep in a nearby room when we actually get to play.

Yea I don't know how that works but I think it basically just tells you to draw an internal-threat-card or an external-threat-card at certain time intervals, and thus you could just have a timer and the cards and skip the CD, but I'll have to actually play it to find out

D&D is an interesting point, actually.  I've played it so much digitally, but the only pen and paper RPG that I've played directly has been the GURPS system: Mage and Werewolf and Vampire.  I guess my fear with D&D in a pen and paper sense is that it would require a lot of prep time and would also require a lot of play time.  If we're only having a couple of sessions per year, and only a few hours in each session, I just can't imagine that satisfying D&D could fit into that sort of time slot.  But am I wrong?  I know that they did a lot of revamping with 4th edition, and really streamlined things.

Doesn't really address your situation but one thing that piqued my interest lately is: http://www.obsidianportal.com/ .  Basically a wiki for D&D campaign communication (though it's not tied to a particular system, it seems.  Sounds like it could be used to handle everything but the actual battles in an asynchronous fashion and give the DM time to process what the players are asking and so on, and then you could go synchronous (in person or on skype or whatever) for the big fun encounters.  If I had time for actually playing games that might be where I'd put it