
Ask YC: What Is Your Favorite Board Game? - xirium
Chinese Checkers is a great game which scales from two players to six players, but what do you prefer? Chess? Monopoly? Risk? Escape From Colditz?
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sanj
Settlers of Catan.

With the "penny rule":

On any die roll where you get NO resources that isn't due to the robber, you
get a penny. During your trading round, you can turn is as many pennies as you
have victory points showing for a single resource.

This reduces the game's tendency to knock someone out of the running three
rounds in because of a set of bad rolls.

~~~
boredguy8
<http://games.asobrain.com> will either be a blessing or a curse for you,
then. (Play -> Xplorers, must register).

Also, I like resource scarcity - under your game, I have a high incentive to
pick 'bad' locations because I stand to profit more. Initial deployment is a
key part of the game--as is trading resources!

~~~
sanj
Not really. It turns out that you still end up falling behind, just not as
quickly.

Run to the wood and brick and get those roads built!

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dkokelley
Monopoly is great, unless your friends refuse any sort of trading/negotiation
not explicitly laid out in the rules.

None of my friends would hear anything along the lines of "Ok, I'll trade you
this, and in return, you'll be immune from paying for this long, or you'll
only have to pay 30% forever, plus you'll receive this property that you can
use to trade Tim for that property so that you can get a monopoly too."

My friends didn't like to think that hard. "You pay what's on the card. If you
get this then you'll have a monopoly and that's bad. Boardwalk is the best
one."

I always liked thinking a little bit beyond the basics of that game. The
railways have the highest yield out of anything, plus there are 4. Monopolies
of only 2 more valuable properties are not really as valuable as a monopoly of
3 "average" properties. Utilities are crap.

I'm hoping that in the real world people are a bit more susceptible to
"negotiating."

~~~
dfranke
The way I read the rules is that you're welcome to make any deals you want --
immunity, whatever -- but they aren't enforcable. The person you make the deal
with is free to reneg the moment it's to his advantage.

Really, vanilla monopoly is a very carefully balanced game. I've never heard
any house rule that doesn't make things worse.

~~~
SwellJoe
I have to agree. Monopoly is a blast with a group of friends playing straight
by-the-book rules. It takes a while, of course, and sometimes one or more
players will be out pretty quick and then things seem to drag on forever
between two equally funded and propertied players. But, mostly it's nicely
balanced and provides a challenging but relaxing evening of entertainment.
Good humor required, wine or beer optional.

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csmajorfive
Scrabble -- pretty much due to Scrabulous (take that Mattel/Hasbro!). I just
like the type of thinking required to consider and place permutations of
letters. Learning new words is nice too.

~~~
jdavid
unlike pg suggests that good hackers have good grammar, i can't spell, even
though i was in advanced english. written language is not like code at all. i
am finding it easier to learn Japanese than i did English.

~~~
jgrahamc
What's your mother tongue?

I think a lot of hackers are interested in spoken and written language and
like to play around with words and puns, etc.

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Prrometheus
Does “Magic: The Gathering” count?

(My green and white deck from 2001 will kill any deck you have)

~~~
myoung8
Agreed. I feel like everyone has a green and white deck that rocks. A well-
crafted blue deck can destroy green/white, though.

~~~
hochmann
I love Magic, and I absolutely love playing blue. I used to have an amazing
counterspell/bounce/venom deck that would piss my friends off to no end. :-)

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aggieben
risk. What could be better than psychologically manipulating 5 guys sitting
next you into letting you dominate the world?

~~~
mcu
Not having your success hinge on random chance. Try Diplomacy for a less
hollow victory.

~~~
aggieben
Ah, but see...that's life. That's the beauty of a great Risk strategy - it
takes into account probabilities that bad (or good) things will happen.

~~~
euccastro
Good and bad unpredictable things happen in Diplomacy too, with the advantage
that its randomness generator is entirely carbon based ;). After the powers
are adjudicated, there is absolutely no dice rolling, and still you are on
your toes until the last minute, and every game is different and surprising at
some point. _That_ is beauty.

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mullr
Depends on the mood I'm in:

1) Go. Emergent gameplay, endless depth. Studying this game will teach you how
to think strategically in the real world.

2) Magic Realm, a '70s Avalon Hill fantasy game. It's a fantastically
complicated hack & slash dungeon crawl board game. But it's still simpler than
D&D, and takes less time for you and all your geeky friends. The creator of
the game is (or was, last time I checked) still active on the fan mailing
list.

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vegashacker
Balderdash.

Settlers.

I've also been playing some Clue lately (if you haven't played since you were
a little kid, I'd recommend trying again -- but with scratch paper to make
notes instead of just the puny sheets that come with the game).

I and some friends were super into Risk a few years back (we even drove from
Rhode Island to Pennsylvannia one evening to enter the Risk Tournament of
Champions <http://www.risktoc.org/>)

~~~
ghiotion
If you like Clue, check out Mystery of the Abby from Days of Wonder. It's the
deepest mystery board game I've ever seen.

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bhb
I'm surprised that Puerto Rico hasn't been mentioned. My hacker friends and I
dabbled in both Settlers and Carcassonne, but ultimately ended up playing
mostly Puerto Rico. Great game. Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck getting
my non-hacker friends to play.

A big hit in almost any group of people has been Speed Scrabble. Quick, easy
to play in teams, and just great fun overall. If you like Scrabble, try it
out.

------
enki
Go

~~~
dood
I'm consistently astonished by how much I've learnt from Go, and how much I
have yet to learn.

I'm a big fan of games of all varieties, but Go stands above and beyond
everything else for me.

~~~
jgrahamc
I both love and hate Go. It's daunting realizing that I'll never come close to
mastering it.

~~~
kryptos
Same feelings... but its only recently i started playing GO more often( after
a hacker gifted his GO board to me )so maybe i'll get better... prior to that,
it was only CHESS

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walesmd
Mouse Trap is a great one too. Been playing it with my daughter as of late,
and it definitely brings back fond memories of childhood.

I seem to remember a "Grape Escape" or something like that from childhood as
well. You were little clay grapes and as you ran around the board you were
smashed, cut, squeezed, etc.

Good times.

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daniel-cussen
Chess.

~~~
german
Chess for me too, it would be interesting to start an online YC chess
tournament. :P

~~~
aquateen
Where does everyone play at? ICC? FICS? Yahoo?

~~~
mightybyte
I play at FICS, but I'm mostly interested in chess variants, specifically
atomic and suicide.

~~~
jdavid
i have a 4 player chess board.

------
aleclair
Personally, I'm a Carcassonne man.

That said, when I have a good day to kill, History of the World is a lot of
fun.

~~~
Tichy
I think Carcassonne is the best, too.

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avibryant
Diplomacy. The hard part is finding exactly seven players.
<http://phpdiplomacy.net/> seems like a good online implementation, but I
strongly recommend playing with friends rather than strangers.

~~~
eru
Play on the DPjudge. www.diplom.org is the place to go online for Diplomacy.

~~~
euccastro
I found PBEM too draining. While a game was going (and it can take months or
years, e.g. atlas@USTR), it's something I couldn't take a rest from, at least
not often enough. Even when I was not compulsively checking my mail or looking
at a map, I would keep a background process munching my tactical and,
especially, my diplomatic situation.

I left the hobby altogether because of that (and the fact that I can't find
other 6 players for a live game [1]).

I plan to some day [2] implement a client/server to play remotely but in real
time, with good communication interfaces [3]. So you can set apart an
afternoon every other weekend or so, play a game for a few hours, and then the
game ends no matter what and you're done with it.

[1] There are some variants with more or less than 7 players, though. I found
Iberian (5 players) to be enjoyable, and Hundred3 is quite playable if you can
only find 3. If you want to lose your life, try World2, played by 17 (!)
players on a wraparound world map.

[2] And seeing so many upvotes to Diplomacy comments around here, that day
might come sooner!

[3] There's RTDip, a community for realtime mail games, but communication is
forbidden in those games, so it's not nearly the same.

~~~
eru
You can play real time on the DPjudge. But you would probably like to set up
VOIP calls in addition.

You are right about the background munching though. I kind of like it to have
a lot of time to ponder my moves.

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moog
Escape From Colditz, if I remember correctly, has a 'Do or Die' card you can
play. Basically, you roll the dice x times and must escape in that many moves.
If you don't make it you are shot dead. Kinda like a startup.

~~~
adnam
You just reminded me of wet holidays stuck in a caravan in Wales.

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mcu
Twilight Imperium, Drakon, A Game of Thrones, The WarCraft (not WoW) board
game is excellent, Pillars of the Earth is a great game for programmers (think
knapsack problem), Arkham Horror, RoboRally, Khet, Starfleet Command, Basari.
The StarCraft board game is actually quite fun.

<http://boardgamegeek.com/>

~~~
mcu
Also Ticket to Ride.

------
Locke
I run a turn-based games site, so I like quite a few board games. Right now my
favorites are probably Connect6, Breakthrough, and Phutball. I've recently
(re-)discovered Dots and Boxes which is quite a bit more interesting than I
remember it being when I was a kid.

If you want to try any of these, my site is Vying Games (vying.org).

------
eru
Diplomacy.

<http://www.diplom.org> for a great magazine and to play online
<http://www.floc.net/dpjudge> (from the same people)

~~~
eru
And it's written in Python.

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imperator
Samurai Swords, which was formally called Shogun. You battle for control over
feudal Japan. Unlike Risk, you don't have armies on every territory. Rather,
you have three armies that you decide the composition of, and you leave
garrisons in the rest of your conquered land. Also, there is a set of
interaction that isn't just army v. army, like killing an enemy general with a
ninja, hiring Ronin to run surprise attacks, and building castles.

------
jojoleflaire
Just one?

For two players: Scrabble or Carcassonne. For three or four players: Settlers
of Catan, Puerto Rico

If you can find them: Titan Talisman 2nd Edition and Illuminati are also
totally awesome.

------
ivankirigin
I've seen a trend where people "Get it", and love a ton of board games, or
they don't.

I play a lot of them, and can't pick a favorite.

I love chess. The first time I beat my Dad was an event. I love Go, but
started to beat everyone around me, which actually sucks.

Risk 2210 is excellent. Settlers of Catan and it's variants are a delight.

Monopoly isn't worth the paper money it's printed on :)

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scooter53080
I love Bohnanza. Anybody played that? I know the premise of the game seems
silly, but I've taught it to many (adult) friends, and it is pretty
universally liked. I'm going to check out Puerto Rico based on some
recommendations here...it has gone under my radar until now.

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misterbwong
Star Munchkins. More of a card game but not like magic in that you don't build
decks.

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admoin
axis and allies

~~~
chez17
Far and away the best board game ever. If you like Risk and you haven't played
this, you should definitely give it a try.

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bayareaguy
Our family enjoys lots of games but our favorites are Settlers of Catan,
Sequence, Talisman, The Apprentice and Risk 2210.

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Flemlord
War on Terror the Boardgame. It appeals to my sense of political irony and
it's actually a pretty fun game.

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bobbylox
Mousetrap was my favorite. I pretty much ignored the actual game though...

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jdavid
i am good at chess... (thanks dad) but that does not make it fun to play.

i actually like "settlers" a lot right now. "tides of iron" is pretty cool "B5
CCG" is a blast to play twice a year

but my all time favorite is RISK

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doubleplus
Chutes & Ladders

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walesmd
Monopoly.

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cardmagic
Go

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andr
Chess.

