Any "Board Game Geeks" here?

I'm sort of a board/card gamer as well as a console gamer. To be more specific, I play checkers, backgammon, reversi, hearts, spades, and scrabble, and am learning go. In fact I'm one of the top rated legit checkers players on yahoo games. I also enjoy a few older war-type board games like the Axis & Allies series, Samurai Swords, and Risk.

I'm also becoming something of a modern board/card game geek lately, since it seems that to remain competitive, people are coming up with some bloody brilliant (and bloody difficult!) board games that really stimulate your mind. I play many of these with friends of the family roughly every 1-2 weeks. Some of my favorites so far include Seven Wonders, Settlers of Catan (Knights & Barbarians), Agricola, Le Havre, and Kingsburg. On the card game side, there's this neat fantasy-themed variant on Dominion called Thunderstone I've been learning lately.

So, wondering... are there any other card/board game geeks here?

I love Risk!!

I'm a horrible Chess player, I just don't have the patience for it. I played Settlers of Catan for the first time a few months ago, and I thought it was ok. People really seem to love it though.

Of course Monopoly is an all time fav.

I will kill all of you in Risk.

I would love to play you in draughts (Checkers) or Backgammon sometime. I'm a pretty decent draughts player and I'm alright at Backgammon too.

One of the top rated eh? I was very high when I used to play on Zone, I think I could take you!

Catan is overshadowed by the strategic brilliance that is Puerto Rico

But I love it.

That and Betrayal at The House On the Hill
Arkham Horror
Descent

... yea love board games.

I was never huge into board games with the exception of Risk and Monopoly (despite it's lame endgame), but I'd recommend checking out any of the games here: Sirlin Games - Welcome

I've got both Flash Duel and Puzzle Strike and they're a hell of a lot of fun, and very well made and designed games. I plan on grabbing Yomi eventually as well but haven't had the chance yet.

I've been meaning to check out stuff like Settlers of Catan for years as well but don't know anyone locally who plays a lot of board or card games. Plus some friends got me into Warhammer 40k a few months back and, well, I aint made of money.

EDIT: I've found out that Seven Wonders is actually playable online. Unfortunately it's on a relatively less-than-busy site where the navigation is entirely in French, but the game itself is playable without reading if you know how to play already.

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Originally Posted by Araciel

Catan is overshadowed by the strategic brilliance that is Puerto Rico

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Isn't Puerto Rico the one that was #1 on boardgamegeek for like 5 years before Agricola dethroned it? If it's the one I'm thinking of, the last time I played it was over a year ago and I remember something about hoarding corn onto a ship.

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Originally Posted by Crop

I would love to play you in draughts (Checkers) or Backgammon sometime. I'm a pretty decent draughts player and I'm alright at Backgammon too.

One of the top rated eh? I was very high when I used to play on Zone, I think I could take you!

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Well, we can play on yahoo sometime, or over an instant messenger if you like. Although I should warn you that my legit zone rating (when I played there ten years ago) was around 2150, which is also roughly where my yahoo rating peaked. My favorite openings are the defiance, fife and ayrshyre lassie. Ok, that's a lie, my favorite opening is really 9-14 with red, but I only play that against people whose skills I greatly respect. My backgammon skills, and those in every other game except spades, are fairly tame in comparison.

I like dominoes. Actually I like board games quite a bit, but I haven't played many of the ones you're talking about.

Dominoes is also playable on yahoo. You can play it with double sixes or double nines, to 100, 250 or 500, and with or without "fives up." I always play with fives up.

My favorite board games:

Boggle
Stratego
Risk
Monopoly
Tripoley
Scattergories
Taboo
Scrabble
Jenga

Boggle may actually be my favorite because it's kind of like a treasure hunt. Though Taboo is really fun if you have a group. Stratego is also good but after a while you learn each other's methods and it becomes predictable.

I used to play a bucketload of board games when I was younger, but lately not so much. That said, MILF and I play Scrabble together on occasion. We usually do silly things like help each other out or sacrifice victories in order to ensure that one of us is able to make some ridiculously long and complicated word.

Stratego is the best game ever. You can play that online somewhere, right? I'm going to find online Stratego and play the heck out of it.

I found this wonderfully racist boardgame online once. I'm a fan of boardgames though, it's always a nice change of pace.

That game was made by a black man.

Yes Puerto Rico deals with the production and shipping of goods - corn being the least valuable of them. I prefer it to every other game I've played (including Agricola) because of the differing machines you can make to produce your goods out of what's available. As well as the advanced strategy which you can plan many turns in advance, there is only one small element of randomness and the rest is decided by the players, which means it's skill against skill for the most part.

Trivial Pursuit is one of my all-time favorites. Scrabble is fun, though I usually modify the rules (bonus points for geeky words, and names are allowed if they are cool/obscure enough. Also, J is way too hard to use, much harder than Z, since it almost always occurs at the beginning of a word, and Q really needs to be Qu). Oh, and I recently did a revamp to the rules of Clue that makes the game quite a bit better overall.

Love board games but haven't played too much lately. Growing up I was really into Stratego, Risk, and Monopoly. Now my family plays a lot of Scrabble so I get it on it every now and then when i get home. I checked out and played a bunch of games of Catan a little while ago and had a blast. I think EoFF risk would be insanely epic if we could find something to do it on, except I'm not sure if I could understand all you damn Brits, me and rocket edge had to give up on communication during CoD becasue I couldn't get his damn accent

You know, in Scrabble there are entire books dedicated to tips like how to use a Q without a U. They include words like Qat, Qabbala, Tranq, and Qaids.

MILF and I end up doing "Qi" about 90% of the time.

Yes, because waiting to get 3 a's and 2 b's will be a lot quicker than waiting for a u. :p

I LOVE Boggle. I have an app for it on my phone.

I also love Risk, Monopoly, and chess, though I have not played the latter much in years so am probably very rusty.

Strategy games bore me :| I lose my patience and I just end up going on a suicide mission eventually trying to wreck as much havoc as I can on my way down.

I like party games such as Alias and Pictionary. or basically any game where you have to talk, draw or mime something. I also like games that gets you out of the couch, in whichever way that may be.

I also like the color blue, and brussel sprouts.

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Originally Posted by Levian

I also like the color blue,

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I don't know why that reminded me of this specifically, and I don't even care that it's only slightly related to the topic, but

I once played Celebrity Heads (I hope it has the same name everywhere) and I was the colour blue. wat

Also in that same game someone was Michael Jackson and they asked if they were black and it was the most awkward silence ever.

I played the war game Samurai Swords (formerly Shogun) tonight. Got slammed by round 2 since I was stuck between the other two players.

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Originally Posted by APolaris

You know, in Scrabble there are entire books dedicated to tips like how to use a Q without a U. They include words like Qat, Qabbala, Tranq, and Qaids.

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The fact that such a book exists is an indication of the problem. I don't need a book to tell me how to use my other letters.

Qabbala is probably invalid in standard Scrabble, BTW. It may be the original Hebrew definition, but most English dictionaries I've seen (required for Scrabble play) spell it Kabbalah, and don't include the "Q" spelling (ooh, and it's a proper noun, always capitalized, so, invalid). Also, "Tranq" is unallowed, as I can't find it in any dictionary I have (including dictionary.com), except possibly as an abbreviation for Tranquilizer, which is, again, invalid. So, yeah, half of your examples, invalid. Kind of, again, proving my point.

"Q" is still way too much of a pain in the butt.

Even the crossword nuts I play with agree that the lone "Q" is just too troublesome to use.

Clue... I've been trying to create new versions. They've been inventing themed Clues. They have a Star Wars themed Risk.

I like games that require more than the roll of the dice. Luck is a fine tool for deciding a winner... sometimes, but I'd rather feel I earned my place.
There was an episode of the Middle where the mother tried to make the best of a horrible situation by suggesting the family play a board game comprised of whatever they had left of the scrambled boardgames they brought.
I like the idea of combining board games. It's kind of like Cranium except you toss in whatever other game you may feel like substituting (like boggle or twister). I also like anything that teaches you or requires previous knowledge of trivia (I pretty much waste half a full day on Wikipedia and Television Tropes anyway)...

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Originally Posted by Jiro

Also in that same game someone was Michael Jackson and they asked if they were black and it was the most awkward silence ever.

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If someone didn't get the answer after that, I'd be very sad.

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

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Originally Posted by APolaris

You know, in Scrabble there are entire books dedicated to tips like how to use a Q without a U. They include words like Qat, Qabbala, Tranq, and Qaids.

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The fact that such a book exists is an indication of the problem. I don't need a book to tell me how to use my other letters.

Qabbala is probably invalid in standard Scrabble, BTW. It may be the original Hebrew definition, but most English dictionaries I've seen (required for Scrabble play) spell it Kabbalah, and don't include the "Q" spelling (ooh, and it's a proper noun, always capitalized, so, invalid). Also, "Tranq" is unallowed, as I can't find it in any dictionary I have (including dictionary.com), except possibly as an abbreviation for Tranquilizer, which is, again, invalid. So, yeah, half of your examples, invalid. Kind of, again, proving my point.

"Q" is still way too much of a pain in the butt.

Even the crossword nuts I play with agree that the lone "Q" is just too troublesome to use.

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We should probably notify the people at the National Scrabble Championship, then.

I remember hearing a news story about how Scrabble was opening it up to proper nouns as well. I thought it was a travesty.

I like boardgame-online! And Triple triad.

OH AND I LOVE SKIPBO! and Uno and those kind of card games. And sudoku and word games and majhong (spelling)

Sudoku is neat. I met the inventor of sudoku at the Brooklyn cherry blossom festival in April and got his autograph in two books. Sudoku itself has gotten too easy for me though, except the most advanced puzzles, so now I do a variant: the sumdoku. In that variation, you start with a totally blank sudoku grid, with a few squares blocked off, and their sum is noted. These sums encompass all of the squares and you have to reason them out. It helps to be good at kakuro before you try it, as it helps you remember the basic sums (for instance, 4 numbers summing 29 must be 9, 8, 7, 5 if you're not allowed to repeat any).

I love Mahjong but i've never had a game with real tiles :(

Scrabble is fun too as is Chinese Chess. Western Chess is ok.