Favorite Games

[Max Rockatansky]

For all you Monopoly haters, there is this that came out in 1973:

And they came out with a new version that I saw is available in several department-store websites:

I'm curious now, has there ever been a Communism variant on Monopoly that anyone is aware of?  Considering the time period the game came out and was popular there must have been at least one.

[webny99]

It is not a question of like or dislike, but rather that Monopoly is not a particularly well-balanced game, owing to the fact that it relies on a 2d6 system and doesn't really do anything to mitigate the roll-frequency bell-curve that is inherent to a 2d6 roll. So a Monopoly game comes down to basically a question of has anyone playing figured out how to exploit this, and if multiple players have, who manages to do it first. The next several hours are then that player slowly sucking money out of everyone else.

People can still have fun with a badly-constructed board game, but that doesn't make it a good game. Most people having fun with Monopoly are more having fun with their friends and not with the game itself, and that's okay.

(quoting from this post rather than going back to your first post)

I agree with what you say about Monopoly, and am curious what some general principles are that avoid stuff like this happening with board games. In other words, what do some of the "better" board games have in common? It seems to me that most board games I've played tend to be either exploitable or primarily luck-based, or sometimes both, whereas I prefer something with more strategy and only a dose of luck, hence my preference for card games.

Where would a game like Life fit into the spectrum of board games? Or Risk? (Both games I like better than Monopoly, but by no means the best out there...)

[webny99]

Boggle

Scrabble

Agree with both of these, especially Scrabble. I'm mostly familiar with Boggle because we used to play it in English class.

I used to play Scrabble, but I haven't since my ex left.

Well, at least you didn't get stuck with them. Losing eight points sucks.

I see what you did there...

[Scott5114]

It is not a question of like or dislike, but rather that Monopoly is not a particularly well-balanced game, owing to the fact that it relies on a 2d6 system and doesn't really do anything to mitigate the roll-frequency bell-curve that is inherent to a 2d6 roll. So a Monopoly game comes down to basically a question of has anyone playing figured out how to exploit this, and if multiple players have, who manages to do it first. The next several hours are then that player slowly sucking money out of everyone else.

People can still have fun with a badly-constructed board game, but that doesn't make it a good game. Most people having fun with Monopoly are more having fun with their friends and not with the game itself, and that's okay.

(quoting from this post rather than going back to your first post)

I agree with what you say about Monopoly, and am curious what some general principles are that avoid stuff like this happening with board games. In other words, what do some of the "better" board games have in common? It seems to me that most board games I've played tend to be either exploitable or primarily luck-based, or sometimes both, whereas I prefer something with more strategy and only a dose of luck, hence my preference for card games.

Where would a game like Life fit into the spectrum of board games? Or Risk? (Both games I like better than Monopoly, but by no means the best out there...)

First off, I think it's worth noting that the taste in board games is extremely diverse and a game that plays really well for certain players' taste will not be favorably received by other players. Degree of luck and skill is one part of it, but there are also a number of different game mechanics that go into a game, and some of them you'll like and some of them you won't. For instance, I've found I really don't like card games that involve a hand-size limit. This enforces a use-it-or-lose-it sort of play style on the players, and having to choose a card or action I have to discard, or forcing me to play a card at a suboptimal time, stresses me out. I'd much rather play a game where I can hang onto that until the right time to play it presents itself. There's really no way of learning your personal taste without simply going out and playing a bunch of games to refine your "palate" and see what kind of game you like.

Also, there are entire genres of games that aren't represented among the classic game set because they've been invented more recently than the classic games have. There's worker-placement games, where you get a limited number of "workers" and you have to determine the optimum place to put them on the board (Agricola by Uwe Rosenberg is often cited as the best of the genre, but I find Carcassonne by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede is a good introduction). There's deckbuilders, where you start with a limited number of cards in your personal deck, and use money cards to buy additional cards over the course of the game that you add to your deck, which allow you to take more actions (Dominion by Donald X. Vaccarino is a great first deckbuilder). And there's even more. Again, you just kind of have to try them all out and see what you click with and what you don't.

Every game falls somewhere along the continuum of luck versus skill. At one end, you have something like a slot machine that has no skill at all. At the other, you have something like chess, where there is no random chance at all. I find that to accurately judge where a game falls on continuum, it helps to imagine how hard it would be to intentionally lose the game. (How hard it is to win is different–you may just not know enough about the game to win, or you're playing against someone better.) There is no way to intentionally lose at a slot machine, for instance, whereas it's definitely possible to intentionally lose at chess. Is there any way to intentionally lose Life? It'd be kind of hard, because there are so few decision points in the game. And people tend to have very personal opinions about where the sweet spot on that continuum is for a good game.

It's important to note that the mere presence of random chance doesn't mean a game is necessarily primarily luck-based. Instead, the skill may come in managing randomness. Great examples are poker and Contract Bridge. In poker, you look at your cards and if they suck you just don't play. In Bridge, you take a more defensive tack and just do what you can to prevent your opponent from making their contract. The skill is in recognizing when you are in a favorable or unfavorable position, and playing accordingly at that point.

As to what makes a good or a bad game, here's an interview I did with a couple of guys who know what they're talking about way more than I do on the subject. (It's been a while and the store has changed its name, so I need to go back and fix the dead links there, but maybe I'll have that done by the time you read this.) They reiterate a few of the points that I've made here, and also go a bit more into depth about game balance and mechanics and things like that. There's definitely lots more stuff written on the subject on the Internet if you want to learn more, though.

[US 89]

Settlers of Catan.

[index]

Uno played with a standard deck of cards. If you want a Norman Rockwell type scene in your head, two friends and I would always play this in the office in middle school after we got called in waiting to see the assistant principal for being edgelords. Which was a lot.

[Scott5114]

Uno played with a standard deck of cards.

Crazy Eights? Or did you work in skips, draws, and reverses somehow? (There are a lot of Crazy Eights variants that do that.)

[index]

Uno played with a standard deck of cards.

Crazy Eights? Or did you work in skips, draws, and reverses somehow? (There are a lot of Crazy Eights variants that do that.)

The latter, variants. Jack added two, queen skipped, king reversed, and we treated aces as a wild card or a draw four+wild depending on the color, red or black.

[hotdogPi]

For instance, I've found I really don't like card games that involve a hand-size limit. This enforces a use-it-or-lose-it sort of play style on the players, and having to choose a card or action I have to discard, or forcing me to play a card at a suboptimal time, stresses me out. I'd much rather play a game where I can hang onto that until the right time to play it presents itself.

What about a game like Magic, where there's a limit of 7 (unless a card changes it), but it's rare to go above that number (and if you do, you probably have some unusable cards in your hand)?

[NWI_Irish96]

Card games:
Poker (Texas Hold 'Em, Omaha, Omaha H/L)
Euchre
Hearts
Cards Against Humanity
Exploding Kittens

Board games:
Risk
Stratego
Scrabble

[1995hoo]

Right now I don't have all that many board games at home. We have two different versions of Monopoly (one the NASCAR version someone gave me, the other a "Mega Monopoly" version), but since it's just the two of us we don't generally play them.

I also have something that might appeal to some folks here: Computer Rage. This may be the geekiest board game ever. For me it provokes childhood nostalgia because my fifth-grade teacher had this in the classroom and used to let us take it to the cafeteria to play during lunch. The game has binary dice (so rolling 1-1-1 means you rolled a 7) and is almost certainly the only board game out there with an "Output Queue" space. I found a copy on eBay some years ago.



I enjoy Trivial Pursuit, but we don't have a copy because, again, it wouldn't be much fun with just the two of us, plus I'd win easily every time because my wife is less into trivia and such than I am.

I ought to look through my mom's basement for old board games. Some we enjoyed a lot when we were kids:
Parcheesi (and a similar game called "Aggravation" that's probably deemed unsafe now because the pieces are marbles)
Scotland Yard
Dungeon (board game based on D&D)

I know Mom has our old Star Wars board games (Escape from Death Star and Destroy Death Star) somewhere, as well as the Game of Life (the 1970s version) and another old version of Monopoly. I don't remember how many of our other board games are in her basement, but I recall we had Risk but didn't play it very often, and I had the Mad Magazine Game but it wore out its entertainment value too quickly. I know there are others down there, but off the top of my head I don't know what. I suppose Mom wouldn't care if I took them all, but I don't have a good storage space for them unless I build another shelf in the garage.

My brother and mother used to like playing Scrabble. I stopped playing it with them years ago due to certain "house rules" they have that make the game take way too long (among other things). Plus I have a bad memory from the early 1980s: I didn't know their house rules weren't part of the actual rules and I got embarrassed by that at school once.

[webny99]

First off, I think it's worth noting that the taste in board games is extremely diverse and a game that plays really well for certain players' taste will not be favorably received by other players. ...

Every game falls somewhere along the continuum of luck versus skill. At one end, you have something like a slot machine that has no skill at all. At the other, you have something like chess, where there is no random chance at all. ...

It's important to note that the mere presence of random chance doesn't mean a game is necessarily primarily luck-based. Instead, the skill may come in managing randomness. Great examples are poker and Contract Bridge. In poker, you look at your cards and if they suck you just don't play. In Bridge, you take a more defensive tack and just do what you can to prevent your opponent from making their contract. The skill is in recognizing when you are in a favorable or unfavorable position, and playing accordingly at that point.

As to what makes a good or a bad game, here's an interview I did with a couple of guys who know what they're talking about way more than I do on the subject. ...

Thanks! That was all really interesting, including some points (luck vs. skill, managing randomness) that make a lot of sense and had just never occurred to me before, at least not in those terms. Great interview, as well.

For instance, I've found I really don't like card games that involve a hand-size limit. This enforces a use-it-or-lose-it sort of play style on the players, and having to choose a card or action I have to discard, or forcing me to play a card at a suboptimal time, stresses me out. I'd much rather play a game where I can hang onto that until the right time to play it presents itself.

What about a game like Magic, where there's a limit of 7 (unless a card changes it), but it's rare to go above that number (and if you do, you probably have some unusable cards in your hand)?

This was a point I was interested in as well. What about card games played in rounds? For example, in a game like Rook where you start with a certain number of cards, but can still choose when to play which card (although there are some limits, like having to play the color if you have it). I don't find that type of game stressful, exactly, but it can be challenging and kind of fun to decide how to play your hand (I suppose this could also be considered managing randomness to some degree, especially if you pay close enough attention to know which cards have been played, but there's some luck as well).

[webny99]

Scotland Yard

That reminds me of Clue. And there's another British-themed one where you're tasked with finding the villain and it makes certain noises depending on where he is and how far he's traveled. Can't remember what it's called, though, and not even Google could help. I'll have to see if we still have it at home.

I stopped playing it with them years ago due to certain "house rules" they have that make the game take way too long (among other things).

Our number one house rule seems to be exactly that: take as long as humanly possible to find a word with one more point than something you've already found.

[hotdogPi]

I made a Python program that is Extended UNO. It has an 1824-card deck from these games:

• UNO, including the action cards from many themed sets
• UNO Hearts (listed separately because the real game plays like a trick-taking game)
• Your standard 52-card deck, plus two jokers (wild), plus the Six-Handed 500 extension (11-13 of each suit) and the 21 trumps in a tarot deck (no knights, though)
• Rack-O (these cards and the 21 trumps have no color; instead, the two-digit ones have two digits; e.g. a Rack-O 12 can be played as a 1, 2, or 12)
• Skip-Bo; play on a number one less, e.g. a Skip-Bo 8 can be played on a 7 but not an 8 (color matches still work)
• Phase 10
• Rook
• Sorry, with three different color schemes; Sorry card refills next player to 7 cards, but is not a wild
• Five Crowns
• Some, but not all, Monopoly Deal cards. Its number is the value in the upper right corner, and its color is the property color (brown = purple), or if it's an action card, the card color.
• Rage, number cards only
• Sorry! Card Revenge (non-action cards are "add one" just like Skip-Bo)
• Sorry! Revenge Card Game (yes this is a different game from the above, and they're not "add one" cards unlike the above)
• Super Taki (this game actually plays like UNO for real, but with more complicated action cards)
• Farkle Flip (if you're forced to draw multiple cards, except for the opening hand, and you draw a Farkle, you can reveal it, and you stop drawing)
• DOS
• O'NO 99
• Bottle Imp
• Haggis
• Tichu

The game has 7 colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black), but not at equal frequency, and some cards (described above) have no color, and a few Monopoly Deal cards have two colors. Numbers are not restricted to 0-9, but lower numbers are more common than higher numbers.

Some of the complicated parts are from the UNO specialized action cards. For example, the Farkle stop drawing mentioned above even if it's not your opponent – Star Trek Uno has a wild card where you have the option to discard your hand and replace it with a new hand of the same size. Then there is the Racer X card (also from a specialized UNO deck), which starts a minigame where you must play cards one higher than the previous card, ignoring all actions, and the first player who can't is forced to draw 3 cards. (Keep in mind that regular UNO decks have no numbered action cards.) There's a Minecraft UNO Creeper where each opponent draws 3 when you draw it (except in the initial hand), unless blocked (yes, these cards exist, too).

All cards have a number except for some action cards. Wilds that wouldn't otherwise have a number are 0, so you can play a 0 (or a Skip-Bo 1) on a regular wild; many decks have the equivalent of a wild. Draw 2 cards are 2s (and Harry Potter UNO has Draw 3s instead, which are 3s), and wild draw 4s are 4s; since a player can always call the rarest color out of seven after playing a wild (which is useful if it's your penultimate card and your last card is colorless), there's always the option to match number instead.

The game draws from an infinite deck, and the opponents don't cheat. You can only play out of turn when prompted, and if more than one player would do something at the same time (or has the option to play at the same time in response to something), it goes in turn order. The game tells you which cards are valid plays at any given time.

[1995hoo]

Scotland Yard

That reminds me of Clue. And there's another British-themed one where you're tasked with finding the villain and it makes certain noises depending on where he is and how far he's traveled. Can't remember what it's called, though, and not even Google could help. I'll have to see if we still have it at home.

....

I forgot about Clue. Scotland Yard was a bit different and might be the sort of game that would interest folks here (except one poster who is against mass transit) because the fugitive has to use London's transportation network (taxis, buses, the Tube, and ferries) to try to escape the other players.


Edited to add: Discussing detective games reminds me that my brother had a game someone gave him called 221B Baker Street. As the name implies, it was Sherlock Holmes themed. I don't remember us playing it much because I think we decided it was too complicated.

[Rothman]

Scotland Yard >>> Clue.

That said, my kids and us like playing Clue because it's such a stupid game.

[Max Rockatansky]

Forgot about Clue, that's another favorite of mine.  I even got the SNES version for Christmas last year. 

[WillWeaverRVA]

I used to play Magic: the Gathering quite a bit. I don't play anymore but I still participate in the game's community and was a rules advisor for the game until they discontinued that program.

[jeffandnicole]

One of our favorite games is Phase 10.

I picked up "Flip Uno" on a whim this year as a little stocking stuffer for my wife.  Each card is two sided.  Basically, it's regular Uno on one side (with a few modern changes to Action/Wild cards), and then a 2nd Uno game on the other side, again with regular Uno 0 - 9, but with different colors, and various Action/Wild cards.  The 2 sided cards don't match up, so if you're holding two Red 9's, the other side could be a Purple 3 and a Green Reverse.  The action cards include 'Flip', which means everyone flips their hands to the other side, and you flip the draw and discard piles too.  Yes, you can see the backside of other's cards when they're holding them, so there is some strategy involved playing a flip card.

At first, it seemed a bit confusing, but became a lot of fun once we played it a few times.

[1995hoo]

This thread is giving me the urge to go on eBay and pick up a copy of Trump: The Game and send it to my brother in May as a birthday present. He would not appreciate it.

[jeffandnicole]

This thread is giving me the urge to go on eBay and pick up a copy of Trump: The Game and send it to my brother in May as a birthday present. He would not appreciate it.

Hahaha...I have that game sitting in the living room right now!  I got it probably 30 years ago, and it's basically sat in the Attic since.  I don't think I every truly played it.  The box looks like a box sitting in the attic for 30 years, but the game inside is actually in pretty good shape.

[Takumi]

I used to play Scrabble, but I haven’t since my ex left.

Well, at least you didn't get stuck with them. Losing eight points sucks.

I don’t know, it wasn’t all bad. She hated losing, but it also turned her on for some reason.


Um...anyway, I’ve never played Clue.

[rawmustard]

I've always enjoyed cribbage and euchre as my favorite card games, and Trivial Pursuit as a board game. I need to check out some of these newer games, although I bought a copy of Exploding Kittens during their Kickstarter but haven't ever had the opportunity to play it.

[kphoger]

I'm actually terrible at Uno, but the kids love it. We play either the "one card draw" method, or we have a randomizer which spits out between 0-4 cards at a button press.

We've found most rounds go on a little too long for "keep drawing until you can play something" version (which I don't recall in the rules but seems to be the most popular).

I'm a real stickler about going by the original rules (or at least the very first revision of them).  Draw only one card.  No stacking action cards.  There does exist one ambiguity in the original rules:  If you play a Wild Draw Four illegally, and another player calls you out on it and makes you draw cards, does your Wild Draw Four still stand?  In our house rules, the answer is yes, but I'm not opposed if you say it shouldn't stand.

Uno played with a standard deck of cards.

Crazy Eights? Or did you work in skips, draws, and reverses somehow? (There are a lot of Crazy Eights variants that do that.)

The latter, variants. Jack added two, queen skipped, king reversed, and we treated aces as a wild card or a draw four+wild depending on the color, red or black.

I was taught a similar game in Poland back in the late 1990s.  (I still have the deck of cards, and it throws people off that W is Jack and D is Queen.)  After a while, though, I rediscovered Crazy Eights and forgot all about that Polish version.



I also like dominos.  My favorite dominos game is Chicken Foot.

[CoreySamson]

Phase 10.

That's another one of my favorites, except we don't have it at home. Really fun.