Recently, Lydia and I have been having some regular board game nights with our friends Nate and Nikki. They're huge board gamers and have introduced us to a ton of great games. I'm not going to go too in depth here, but will give a brief overview of the games we've played with them so far! I've played several other board games outside of this group, so expect more updates along these lines and of course on the podcast!
While not strictly a "board game", Dominion was a huge hit with us! In fact, Lydia loved it so much we ordered a copy for ourselves, and have played it several times with just the two of us. Dominion has some very interesting game mechanics. Firstly, it's a "deck builder" game so as the game progresses you buy cards to add to your deck which you can then play in subsequent turns. Secondly, what cards are in play is totally random meaning the combos, capabilities, and even strategy for victory are different every time. The starter deck comes with something like 24 different cards (10 copies of each), of which any 10 are used in a game. Nate and Nikki have nearly every expansion, so the "card pool" for them is ridiculous. No two games are alike!Click the image for purchasing options
The drawback to that is, of course, that some combinations make for very difficult games. In the 6 or 7 games I've played so far, 2 were very long and drawn out since the cards didn't work all that well together. In all, this has probably been Lydia's favorite game of the bunch, which makes it high on my list!
KING OF TOKYO by Richard Garfield
This was a silly, lightweight game where each of the players represent a gigantic monster battling over Tokyo. The game is more dice-game than board-game, but features quick game play that's easy to grasp. You either win by completely destroying Tokyo or being the last monster standing. It got plenty of laughs from us, and is definitely something I'd happily play again!KINGDOM BUILDER by Queen Games
Kingdom builder is made by the same designer as Dominion. It's a bit like Settlers of Catan meets Monopoly meets Dominion meets Ticket to Ride. The game board is random, as are the victory conditions which adds a lot of replay-ability. The object is to strategically build your Kingdoms on the map, earning points based on the random victory conditions (such as- bonus points for the longest horizontal line, or your largest area etc). We only played this once, and I don't think I fully understood the victory conditions so I made quite a few mistakes, but I liked the game play and it's definitely something I'd like to play again.
Here's some pictures from a game of Mage Knight-
Mage Knight was okay, it was fairly complicated and didn't really do it for me, but it has some cool components so I'd love to try it again and write a more detailed review! For now, here's some pictures of our gaming group:
Mage Knight was okay, it was fairly complicated and didn't really do it for me, but it has some cool components so I'd love to try it again and write a more detailed review! For now, here's some pictures of our gaming group:
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| Lydia- not a fan of Mage Knight. |
