Table Games

[Rez09]

I love tabletop games; Key to the Kingdom and HeroQuest are the two games from my childhood I love as much as Sonic 2. I made up so many stories and custom rules for both games and often mixed things from them together, so there would be a random HeroQuest monster moving around on the Key map, giving out equipment cards when beaten, or various treasure cards from Key showing up in HeroQuest and being needed to open secret doors in some rooms. It's just too bad that youthful exuberance led to those pieces and cards being used in everything ELSE as well, from Army Men to Flying Pirates games, and eventually everything ended up lost/torn/broken. Finding complete versions of these games now is a rather pricey affair.

More recently, I picked up both Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon, and they are licensed DnD Co-op boardgames that people tell me feel a bit like 4th edition. They are fun enough, and respectably challenging due to monster placement rules, but there is an odd stigma around the DnD brand I've encountered that makes people hesitant to try the games out. Fortunately though, once people break down and play once, they are hooked and happily continue playing. Much like HeroQuest, I feel there is a lot of potential in the titles if I made custom rules/stories for them, though doing so without completely discarding the original tile placing rules might be difficult. I'm also a bit curious how to deal with later monsters if I allow players to hold onto equipment between quests, as players will continue to grow in power where monsters remain static. Perhaps rooms that require certain items to unlock? Or giving monsters extra HP and armor? Hmmmm.

There was a board game I played a while ago that the owner claimed was a lot like Master of Orion, though I can't remember the name. You have map tiles that were hexagons you placed down, or maybe flipped, as you explored, and you invested in techs and upgraded your ships and whatnot. I wish I remembered more about the game, but I was pulled away before we finished and haven't seen or played it since then. It was a lot of fun and I'd love to check it out again, though.

I played the Resident Evil card game with a friend and it was pretty good -- much better than I had expected. It's very quick to learn and there are some cool strategies I threw together over the dozen or so games we played, though I seem to remember us having to stop friendly fire due to what I like to call, 'mad Jill grenade spam'. Good times. There's also Munchkin and Bang! on the card front, both being a lot of fun, and there are toooooooons of Munckin expansions. Sadly, I didn't get to spend the same amount of time with either title as I did with RE, only playing around two games of each. I should really pick one of the three up for myself sometime.

Lords of Waterdeep and Libertalia have both been super high on my wishlist since I heard about them, but no one I know owns either and I don't have the income to purchase them, so I don't have much else to say about them. I just felt the need to get their names out there. There's also Battlestar Galactica, Arkham Horror, and Thunderstone which people I know have and tell me I need to play, though I haven't been able to for whatever reason yet. Eventually I will though, and Arkham Horror in particular I am looking forward to.