Favorite board games

[Warhammer]

Cor said:
Primordial Soup: You get to play a tribe of ameobeas at teh dawn of life on earth, your goal is to evolve and multiply. Who does not want to roleplay ameobeas?

A little write up I did on one of my games of Primordial Soup:

Students, today I would like to touch on a little known period of evolution. Typically, paleontologists are interested in big fossil finds. However, today, we are going to talk about the first amoeba from which all life evolved. As you know, they all began in the Primordial Soup. The amoebas were defined by color, Blue, Yellow, Red, and Green. For simplicity, the yellow amoebas will be called the Furrballs, the green amoebas the Furrbies, the red amoebas will be the Mr. Andersons, and the blue ones the Whammies.

The gentle easterly breeze forced the amoebas towards the eastern edge of the soup, but soon after, some amoeba learned developed a form primitive locomotion, henceforth known as Movement I. While this did not move them in the exact direction they wished to move, these amoebas had greater freedom of movement then the others. The Furrballs developed a way of rolling through the soup, while the Whammies used primitive pseudopods. Mr. Andersons developed reproduction by spores at this time. Meanwhile, the Furrbies initially had slightly greater numbers than the other amoebas at this time.

As the easterly breeze continued, food began to become scarce in the eastern end of the soup. At this time, the Whammies learned to use their pseudopods not only for movement, but also as a means to eat other amoeba! Mr. Andersons began to reproduce at a prodigious rate, most likely in a response to the ravenous hunger of the Whammies. The Furrballs due to their round shape, seemed to use less energy in movement than the Whammies at this time. Finally, the Furrbies began to show discriminating tastes in their food, and their appetite grew. At this time, all populations grew. However, this soon brought disasterous results.

Even though the flow in the soup changed, there was still very little food, not enough for new population. The Whammies showed a great taste for the Furrbies. The one Furrby that was left, learned how to escape with great speed from the Whammies. However, another threat soon emerged, the Furrballs learned how to roll over the other amoebas and eat the stricken amoebas. Mr. Andersons began to show traits of long life. The Whammies also learned how to reproduce as fast as the Mr. Andersons!

At this point, the blue amoebas seem to have gained a large lead over the other amoebas. With not many Furrbies to eat, and those that were left were tough to catch, it appears that they shifted their predations Furrballs and ate a lot of their population. Additionally, with so many Mr. Andersons in the soup, they were easy targets as well. The Mr. Andersons became scavengers, springing up where any decaying amoeba died. The Furrballs soon became aggressors and turned the tables on the Whammies, and began eating them every chance they got, until the Whammies learned how to escape their predations. The Furrbies became a timid and frugal amoeba, moving with the flow, but never in great numbers, being very selective and frugal in what they ate.

Then, everything changed. A solar flare came, and although there was very little loss of life, the Mr. Andersons lost their longer life span, the Whammies lost the ability to escape, the Furrballs lost their ability to move quickly, and the Furrbies escaped with little harm.

Shortly thereafter, another flare came and reduced the Whammies ability to escape from their predators. They came from every angle. It looked black for the Whammies, except suddenly they evolved. No longer were they single celled animals. They then turned and ate all the other amoebas until they drowned in their own poop.

It was a very close game, as I got out to an early 7 point lead. I maintained this for the rest of the game, however, the end game was tense. Mark and Lawrence were 4 and 3 points behind me. Fortunately, Mark had to eat BOTH Lawrence and me to win. He did this, and I had to eat one of my own amoeba to survive the turn with enough amoeba to keep 5 on the board during scoring. This enabled me to barely end the game. Had it gone on another turn, I would have lost as most of my amoeba were on their last legs, and both Lawrence and Mark were gaining fast.

Additionally, it was interesting to see the spores/division rate/longevity strategy in play. Without Mark and I eating him, Lawrence may have well passed me on the last turn.

[Gandalf Parker]

My favorite of all time is Magic Realm. It had such a unique way of doing the board and the setup. Very "computerish" considering it was pre-PCs.

By the way, Shrapnel does board games also. If you are really a board game person then you shoudl sign up for their beta group so you can help beta test new ones.

[Cor]

Warhammer, I am glad to hear someone else actually has heard of the game. Great AAR.

Gandolf, I would love to play test, but would I need people to do that with? I have no friends , just kidding I have no friends in Hawaii where i am moving in a month.

[Warhammer]

Again, for magic realm, go here:

http://magicrealm.dewkid.com/rspeak/realmspeak.htm

You can play Magic Realm solitaire, TCP/IP, etc. It works great. Playing solitaire, the WH scored some obscene score like 112 points or something. It was incredible.

[Kristoffer O]

Yesterday I was speaking with a friend regarding the use of boardgames to educate my students. I'll be teaching more history next year (after summer), and had an idea of using History of the World to get my students into the chronology of the world. Unfortunately the game seems to be out of print. I have the game, but I would prefer if the school could purchase, say four, games

Other games we discussed were Pax Britannica, Maharadja, Britannia, Repiublic of Rome and Diplomacy.

Of these I think HotW suits my needs best, but PB and M could be useful regarding colonial history and the the case of PB the motivations of states and the reasons behind the WW1.

Republic of Rome would probably be good for a few students, but a bit too deep for most of them. There is a lot of history hidden (or not hidden) in that game.

Other ideas?

[capnq]

When I try to pick a favorite boardgame from my collection, I usually go with Avalon Hill's _Merchant of Venus_. The designer started out trying to make a game about the 16th-17th century Spice Trade, but found that it was easier to get the sense of exploring unknown lands seeking exotic trade goods by switching to an SF setting.

Of games that are still easy to find, my current favorite is probably _Carcassonne_.

[Cor]

A game to teach students? Its only about the Cold War but it is the most accurate game i have seen as far as history and understanding why events happened and when, it Twilight Struggle. In addition to all that its fun to play. However its only 2 players.

[Beorne]

Kristoffer O said:
Yesterday I was speaking with a friend regarding the use of boardgames to educate my students. I'll be teaching more history next year (after summer), and had an idea of using History of the World to get my students into the chronology of the world. Unfortunately the game seems to be out of print. I have the game, but I would prefer if the school could purchase, say four, games

Other games we discussed were Pax Britannica, Maharadja, Britannia, Repiublic of Rome and Diplomacy.

Of these I think HotW suits my needs best, but PB and M could be useful regarding colonial history and the the case of PB the motivations of states and the reasons behind the WW1.

Republic of Rome would probably be good for a few students, but a bit too deep for most of them. There is a lot of history hidden (or not hidden) in that game.

Other ideas?

I have all of them excluding Maradja, ad the best is absolutely RoR closely followed by Pax Britannica. Unfortunately these are old school AH games, with rules written in legalese and not too easy (but wery well developed) game mechanics. Setup isn't that easy too. I'm hoping FantasyFlight or some other republishes them. Britannia is very great if you want to teach Brit history to children, especially if you want to show how much you norsemen smashed the heads of britons. It has the advantage that has been republished by Fantasy Flight that has cleaned the rules and polished the graphics a lot.
Merchant of Venus is pretty, but there is almost no player interaction.
For games that mix conquest and diplomacy my thougts go to age of Thrones and Warrior Knigts, both published By FnatasyFlight, but you don't have historical settings.
GMT games has a lot of very well done conquest/diplomacy games that focus a lot on the historical details. All are very high quality product on a single period of european or american history, but they a are usually a little too complex.
But if you want historical settings, well there is no match, the old AH's Civilization is the absolute winner.

[Kristoffer O]

It turns out there is a mega-version of civilization, with up to 16 or 18 players or something, with adapted rules and additional map regions including the far east. We will check this out tomorrow. We will scan and make a couple of homemade HotW (unless we can find additional versions on ebay.

RoR is a great game, probably my favourite of the ones mentioned here. With five or six players it is a gem of a game. There was once a nice article in AH''s General magazine on 100 ways to loose in RoR. Nice way to show how much depth there was in the game.

As you say the rules are not easy and I think it would be more difficult for the students to understand the rules than the history behind the games