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Pandemic is a fun little boardgame. Up to four players working together to cure nasty viruses and save the world. It's fairly abstract but could serve as a gateway into something more wargaming / mini-related.

Twoshoesvans wrote:what new game?

After a long track record with GW games im finally getting out. Im planning on keeping 2 of my WIP armys just to give me some modeling work but its time to move on. With time friends move away, grow up, and get bored leaving me with a pile of books and models that are never getting used, but when i trade away my life where do i go in the gaming world.

I was wondering if anyone had played games that incorporated some friends that were not traditionally war gamers. I love the hobby, especially the modeling and friendly Saturday night gaming, but what good is a game without an friend to share it with.

Any ideas folks?

Currently looking at grindhouse games (incursion and the developing Junk), FOW, ATZ...

there are plenty of good games out there (including a bunch already listed above) but you have to jump feet first into them knowing that there is a not so slim chance that they won't be around in 5-10 years. one of the few good things i can saw about GW is that i was able to jump out of their hobby and get back into it 6 years later without much of a problem. sure, i had to amputate a few limbs here and there and rearrange squads but my armies were 95% or more usable (not necessarily optimized after multiple codex/rulebook revisions but usable). that's not true of other games that i have in my gaming storage corner in the basement. my vor stuff? useless. heavy gear? they double dip their editions every 2-3 years so those books are out of date. warzone box and army books? pretty much dead. and those are the high quality mass market (for gaming at least) stuff i'm talking about... there's still the demonblade stuff, b5 fleet wars, chainmail, etc... that is mostly dead. granted, no one is breaking into my basement and not allowing me to use them but the fact that the games are out of print or the companies are out of business means it will be incredibly difficult to get new people into those games and even to find old timers that still have their old collections.

if you go with bigger companies' games like warmachine and FOW, you'll probably be safe. the other recommendation i'd make is buying stuff that is generic enough fantasy/scifi design that it can be used for other games. for instance, if you buy a company's dwarves, try to get some that are not so specific that they can't be used as dwarves in WHFB or mantic game rules or hordes of things or reaper's rules, etc.

notprop wrote:Warning Deathwatch is a gateway drug to full blown WH40K addiction.

One D100 and you could find yourself needing a hit of MOAR SPACE MARREENZ. Just one sprue, honestly guvnor..........

after around 8k of marines, i think i'm safe.

If you are into dungeon crawls my gaming group has had a blast with the Castle Ravenloft boardgame. Its D&D with removing what little bit of RP it contains.

If you buy a boardgame like Twilight Imperium 3, it won't mysteriously vanish in a few years, even if Fantasy Flight Games goes bust.

The great advantage of boxed games is that you get everything you need in one box. As long as you take care of the components, you can carry on playing the game for the rest of your life.

Oh, for dungeon crawls you can't get much better than Warhammer Quest.... if you can find a copy. I still have my Chaos Warrior somewhere Hours of fun!

Capt_Bowman wrote:Oh, for dungeon crawls you can't get much better than Warhammer Quest.... if you can find a copy. I still have my Chaos Warrior somewhere Hours of fun!

Descent from FFG is pretty good at that as well. And its in print, so no hunting down copies for silly prices.

I may have to take a look at that.

Mate, your best bet is to go for Ex-Illis, a part videogame, part tabletop miniature wargame based in the Middle-Ages with some fantasy elements combined!

If you think you'd like board games I'll recommend the ones I enjoy the most:
Puerto Rico
Race for the Galaxy
Dominion
Thunderstone
Pandemic (w/ expansion)
Battle of Westeros
Power Grid
Agricola
Dungeon Lords
Revolution!
Formula D
Castle Ravenloft

Just a few . www.boardgamegeek.com is a great site for board games and reviews. You can usually find solid reviews and video reviews of most popular games (thedicetower for one is decent). If you think you might like skirmish miniature games try Warmachin/Hordes or Malifaux. Flames of War is great, but I'm not sold on early war yet. Late war is really fun though, but we have a great local community for it.

Hope you find something fun, there are a ton of board games out there.

Jon

I'd second Descent and most of Xizindar's list but it can get very expensive adding on all the expansions Descent has.

12thRonin wrote:I'd second Descent and most of Xizindar's list but it can get very expensive adding on all the expansions Descent has.

Yeah, I got the Well and Altar expansions, then Road to Legend, and stopped there.

I've considered getting the rest, but we haven't even completed a campaign for RtL.

Im a huge sucker for Catan! My friends and I have played enough Catan to make the game mere pennies per play. Even the non-wargames and girlfriends will play Catan. We ammend the rules on occassion to make things interesting now that we have played soooooo many games. Even with two expansions, (total spending 100 bux) we are literally at a penny a play. We ve gone to denny's and sat there for hours and hours drinking our refillable drinks for hours while we play.

themrsleepy wrote:Im a huge sucker for Catan! My friends and I have played enough Catan to make the game mere pennies per play. Even the non-wargames and girlfriends will play Catan. We ammend the rules on occassion to make things interesting now that we have played soooooo many games. Even with two expansions, (total spending 100 bux) we are literally at a penny a play. We ve gone to denny's and sat there for hours and hours drinking our refillable drinks for hours while we play.

agreed... although i generally play on xbox live. after over 500 games for $10, i've definitely got my money's worth. AND, i get to play while i eat dinner! no more messes like when playing call of duty while eating spaghetti.

The board game has sooo much more than the xbox live version. Cities and Knights expansion is the best. Adds good dynamics to help keep one person from getting too far ahead. Seafarers was decent, we liked island hopping, traders and barbarians expansion we really havent played that expansion too much. We still go back to the classic cities and knights pretty regularly when we play Catan.

My biggest problem is the randomness of Catan. Nothing irks me more than getting 2 or 3 great locations with 8's and 6's only to have 10's and 3's rolled for like 4 turns leaving me with 0 resources. You can effectively be out of the game by then. No thanks - I should sell my copy, there are far better games in my opinion. But hey that's my opinion - I love Agricola and there are plenty *cough* Russ Wakelin *cough* who just hate it. To each their own. Although in fairness Catan was the first game - a sort of gateway drug to my 2 giant filled bookshelves now, but probably haven't played it in over 2 year now.

Jon

That is very true about Catan. I have one friend who loves sheep. It didn't matter what numbers he had, 11, 2, 12, and the rest of us would all be on the 6's and 8's the guy would be rolling in sheep every game. It didn't matter he always has sheep and the sheep trade oddly enough. He would place terrible, and then low and behold he has enough sheep to build everything. He's been banned from Catan for doing indecent things to sheep. It happens sometimes you just get screwed. But that's why I like the cities and knights expansion, you can move that robber around and block the higher ups till your numbers are rolled.

themrsleepy wrote:The board game has sooo much more than the xbox live version.

absolutely true but if nothing good is on tv one night and i just take my board game out and set it up in the living room... i just sit there alone without significantly more effort on my part. with the XBL version, i turn it on, press a few buttons, and the opponents come to me. i don't play daily, but its a nice end to a night every once in a while.

themrsleepy wrote:That is very true about Catan. I have one friend who loves sheep.

We got a guy who used to come around the store like that too. Oh, you meant getting the sheep in the game...

Yeah, it's easy to get resource screwed fast. That's why I always try to get to one of the wildcard ports if at all possible.

What I found out from this thread: there is an xbox live version of Settlers of Catan. Good to know

Sorry to derail the thread but why do the scottish wear kilts? Cause sheep can hear a zipper a mile away!

The english used to wear something very similar.

We stuck to kilts while you guys switched to tights.


or

you guys?! i take offense to that jk... I am a wee bit scottish there laddy..... played some catan last night. Great fun again! even after hundreds of games.

Xizindar wrote:If you think you'd like board games I'll recommend the ones I enjoy the most:
Puerto Rico
Race for the Galaxy
Dominion
Thunderstone
Pandemic (w/ expansion)
Battle of Westeros
Power Grid
Agricola
Dungeon Lords
Revolution!
Formula D
Castle Ravenloft

Just a few . www.boardgamegeek.com is a great site for board games and reviews. You can usually find solid reviews and video reviews of most popular games (thedicetower for one is decent). If you think you might like skirmish miniature games try Warmachin/Hordes or Malifaux. Flames of War is great, but I'm not sold on early war yet. Late war is really fun though, but we have a great local community for it.

Hope you find something fun, there are a ton of board games out there.

Jon

These games are great Puerto Rico gets played weekly at my group

I second Dominion.. each game is disctincly different, and there are hundreds of possibilities depending on which cards out of your boxes make up the individual game pool.

Played it for 24 hours straight last weekend..

toying around with getting Last Night on Earth and Betrayal at the House on Haunted Hill (whatta mouthful that name!)