OT: Board Games

[Omnirizon]

hoo: what qualifies a board game as female friendly? are some board games female antagonistic? a misogynistic board game? i don't get it.

[DonCorazon]

i interpret hoo's comment as game's you can get your wife / gf to play with you. unless you are "lucky", it has been my experience and that of my buddies that our wives / gfs won't be too psyched to sit down for a game of Battlelore.

funny how similar people's experiences are in this as the only game i have had any traction in getting my wife to play is also Lost Cities.

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive played many but my all time favorite is still
Magic Realm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Realm
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=22
Its so unfortunate that it feel just prior to the birth of computer games so that its wonderful efforts at creating a random game-board, and random placements of treasure and opponents went unnoticed. Also its a shame that its never been computerized (altho there are open source efforts along that line)

Also I loved Car Wars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Wars
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2795
which did eventually get computerized for the Commodore. Id love to see a remake.

By the way; in the discussions of board games, links to Board Game Geek can be helpful.

[JimMorrison]

Omnirizon said:
hoo: what qualifies a board game as female friendly? are some board games female antagonistic? a misogynistic board game? i don't get it.

Yeah, I've never been successful at getting women to play "Pimp Dat Ho" with me. >.>


But anyway. Is there a requirement that it be a physical board game? Because my favorite "short head to head strategy" game of all time absolutely has to be MULE, or E-hORsE or however they do it. I haven't tried that version yet (shortage of opponents to justify the cost), but if it's faithful to the original, it has everything you could want from a board game. Except no dice rolling, and no sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads.

Also, 3M used to make a bunch of very interesting 1v1 games that I had a blast with. For 1v1 strategy, Feudal was particularly engaging.

[Aezeal]

Magic realm sounds nice.. 2 bad it's out of print.. how does it compare to say talisman or runebound btw?

[Beorne]

Aezeal said:
Magic realm sounds nice.. 2 bad it's out of print.. how does it compare to say talisman or runebound btw?

It compares it the way it is greatly more complex, immensely more depth and very less graphic (about half of the characters are very bad drawn). It's an Avalon Hill golden age, you know.
If you watch on bgg there is a good guy that has completly remade the graphics and they are beautiful. There is a discussion about how to publish all the new components.
Also, the very difficult original rules have been rewritten and "translated" in plain english.

Btw, speaking of wonderful pdf games, for those who love talisman and have a good color printer, I heartly recommend Djarhun (look on bgg).

[Gandalf Parker]

The remade rules and graphics for Magic Realm, plus some major extensions making the game bigger, are also part of the open source project on it. So besides BoardGameGeek.com you might also check SurceForge.net for your favorite old games.

[Saulot]

I've managed to get some friends to play some lighter strategy boardgames, such as Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, San Juan, LOTR Risk, and Arkham Horror... but unfortunately it's hard to get a decent group together to play something with more depth/serious or time consuming (though Arkham Horror is plenty time consuming, and chess doesn't count).

Also, I can recommend Doom the boardgame, I played a beta version several years back at a con, and if it's anything like that, it should be great.

Btw, what's RA?

[hoo]

Omnirizon said:
hoo: what qualifies a board game as female friendly? are some board games female antagonistic? a misogynistic board game? i don't get it.

Simple rules, quick to play and not a war based game. Simple rules doesn't mean simple strategy (see Citadels, Ticket to Ride or even Ra). Other females I know have liked Lost Cities enough to purchase the game to play with their significant others.

This is a gross simplification but I've encountered very, very few females who want to sit down and read the rules to Star Fleet Battles, or heck even Axis and Allies or so. I don't know many who want to play a tactical or strategic war game. Granted there's not a lot of males who want to do that either, but the pool of women who want to play a detailed wargame is pretty darn small.

OTOH hand, trading games, building games or games that can be relatively quick and taught easily are quite popular.

If you are trying to get together a mixed sex game group, Settlers or Ticket will be much more successful than a Talisman or War of the Ring (statistically more likely to be successful anyway).

RA = if not the best auction style game ever made in the top 3. http://boardgamegeek.com/game/12

[Saulot]

Heh, thanks... I thought it was an abbreviation for something, and I couldn't figure it out.