Odd games you want others to try?

[Avilan the Grey]

Well not neccesary odd, but not much played or much known...

I have a short list:

1. Credo. Can't go into debt here about premise because it violates forum rules (Religion - Christanity) but it is very interesting, contains a bit of history lessons and is very very fun. I urge anyone to at least google it!!!

2. Comrade Coba. You are a member of Stalin's inner circle and shuffle for position without getting sent to Gulag or executed... The problem is that the game HAS to be played by 5 people, it won't work with any other setup.

3. Loot. A quick, very very tactical and yet incredible simple pirate card game.

4. En Garde. Dueling swashbuckling card game. Very well done, very exciting, and the artwork is great.

5. The Red Dragon Inn. A "drinking game" for fantasy characters in an inn. Basically what happens after the dungeon crawl. "Drink" your friends under the table and steal their money when you're at it. Hilarious humor, great illustrations, killer rabbits.

[Krade]

5. The Red Dragon Inn. A "drinking game" for fantasy characters in an inn. Basically what happens after the dungeon crawl. "Drink" your friends under the table and steal their money when you're at it. Hilarious humor, great illustrations, killer rabbits.

I know lots of people that play RDI. Unfortunately, most of them don't live anywhere near me...

That reminds me. I really need to fashion some kind of case to store all the expansions in. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 cards, a handful of counters, 20 player boards, and 200 cardboard coins take up a lot space. Not to mention the fancy wooden player boards I got at GenCon last year.

[Avilan the Grey]

I know lots of people that play RDI. Unfortunately, most of them don't live anywhere near me...

That reminds me. I really need to fashion some kind of case to store all the expansions in. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 cards, a handful of counters, 20 player boards, and 200 cardboard coins take up a lot space. Not to mention the fancy wooden player boards I got at GenCon last year.

I would LOVE if they made RDI into a digital game, btw.

[Wookieetank]

For computer:

Anti-Chamber: portal on acid with non-Euclidean level design.
Thomas Was Alone: minimalist platformer with a great story. Cared more for the quadralaterals in this game than I did many characters in AAA titles.
Stanley Parable: Just plain brilliant. Go play the demo now.

Board Games:
Endeavor: A resource management game where you play as an exploration company during the colonial period.
Pandemic: A cooperative game where you play as a team of CDC agents trying to find cures for 4 diseases before you run out of resources or the diseases outbreak too many times.

[shadow_archmagi]

I feel like Pandemic and RDI are two of the best-known games out there, right after Catan and Risk Legacy.

Personally, I'd strongly advocate for Sentinels of the Multiverse! It's a cooperative superhero card game; each deck is a different hero. The fluff is fantastic- each card has a quote from the (fake) comic book series.

Sentinels is simple enough even my least-nerdy friends learned it very quickly while also complex enough that my German-boardgame-hoarding friends stay entertained by it.

[Duck999]

Anti-Chamber: portal on acid with non-Euclidean level design.

I know some friends who liked this. I also have friends who have played fez. I have never played Fez, but have heard great things about it.

[Wookieetank]

I know some friends who liked this. I also have friends who have played fez. I have never played Fez, but have heard great things about it.

Still need to finish Fez myself, but it is indeed fantastic. Now that I've finished Ni No Kuni I really should get back to my backlog of indie computer games.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Well, mine will be analog, because analog is great. :smallbiggrin:

Friday! It's a solo deckbuilding strategy/puzzle game where you, as Man Friday, have to teach the woefully inept Robinson Crusoe how to survive on the island. You draw two obstacles, and choose one for RC to face. On a success, the obstacle turns into a beneficial card in your deck. On a failure, RC loses life points...but the more life points lost, the more cards you can eliminate from his deck. This is good, because his starting deck is awful. If he makes it through three rounds of the Hazard Deck, he then has to face two pirate ships...and then he can leave the island and leave you in peace!

Shogun is a 2-5 player strategy game about controlling an empire in feudal Japan. It plays similarly to the Total War series, but with a bit less detail. You pre-plan and give each province an order (say, "pay gold to raise armies" or "tax to raise gold"), and then get to execute those orders in turn with the other players. The catch? There's a randomized order for actions each turn (i.e. maybe one turn starts with taxation, moves on to military movements, then goes on to raising armies...while another turn starts with military movements and then taxes), and only 5/10 of the orders are revealed; you learn how the last five are arranged as you execute the first five. Also, you throw your armies in a tower to decide battles. :smallbiggrin:

Glenn Drover's Empires (formerly known as Age of Empires III) is a wonderful worker-placement gem about exploring and colonizing new lands. Multiple paths to victory, and it's just a very elegant setup. Everyone fights for prime spots in various queues, and once all the workers have been placed, then you take actions.

[Absol197]

Twilight Imperium! This is an awesome board game! I just bought it, but I can't get my friends to play with me :smallfrown: ...

[shadow_archmagi]

Twilight Imperium! This is an awesome board game! I just bought it, but I can't get my friends to play with me :smallfrown: ...

Oh, I bought that a few months ago. I've managed three games since then.

It really is great. The only drawback is the length is unwieldy; A three-player game took us five hours, while our six-player games have consistently needed something more like twelve, although admittedly, that was including lunch-breaks and soforth, but when your game goes on that long maintenance is needed.

I don't mind devoting an entire day to board gaming, but it's not something you can do every weekend, or even every month.

[Avilan the Grey]

Silly game that is good when drunk:

Cash & Guns. Complete with foam guns!

[Kislath]

Robo-Rally for the win!

Race your little robot around a deadly maze by giving it a series of programming instuctions. The availability of instructions comes from the cards you draw each turn. As your robot gets damaged along the way, it is able to receive fewer and fewer instructions until it either makes it to a repair station or is destroyed.

Extremely fun!

[Absol197]

Oh, I bought that a few months ago. I've managed three games since then.

It really is great. The only drawback is the length is unwieldy; A three-player game took us five hours, while our six-player games have consistently needed something more like twelve, although admittedly, that was including lunch-breaks and soforth, but when your game goes on that long maintenance is needed.

I don't mind devoting an entire day to board gaming, but it's not something you can do every weekend, or even every month.

That's the main problem: my friends are looking at the length of the game, not how fun it is top play. Someday I'll get them to take a chance, and they'll love it. But until then...

[warty goblin]

That's the main problem: my friends are looking at the length of the game, not how fun it is top play. Someday I'll get them to take a chance, and they'll love it. But until then...

You could always do as I do, and play against yourself. It's kinda nice.

A fringe benefit is that since my Valentine's Day plans involve playing Horus Heresy against myself, I can finally declare myself to officially have no life. I'd suspected as much for a while, but the monstrosity covering my kitchen table I think really clinches the deal.

[Tectonic Robot]

Undertale: Only a demo at the moment, sadly, but very interesting. What if there was an RPG where not only did you not have to kill anyone... but it was absolutely integral to the game? As opposed to being the slaughterfest most RPGs with random encounters are.

[Ailurus]

You could always do as I do, and play against yourself. It's kinda nice.


Works for some games, but not all. Unfortunately, TI is in the 'doesn't work solo' category (you have to end up chucking about half the game when you remove interactions and concealable information). The one good thing about TI's length, though, is that it does get noticeably faster as people get more experienced. So, if you can sucker people in for one or two games...

[shadow_archmagi]

Works for some games, but not all. Unfortunately, TI is in the 'doesn't work solo' category (you have to end up chucking about half the game when you remove interactions and concealable information). The one good thing about TI's length, though, is that it does get noticeably faster as people get more experienced. So, if you can sucker people in for one or two games...

Well, you could always go all out and just roleplay it, perhaps going as far as to keep eight separate diaries in which the leaders of the various factions plan their moves and react to their opponent's gestures.

Then you start adding more and more sub-journals as you introduce minor characters in each faction, so instead of just the Baron of Lezzit you've got his ambitious son ready to seize power, his daughter unwilling to be married off as a political pawn...

[warty goblin]

Works for some games, but not all. Unfortunately, TI is in the 'doesn't work solo' category (you have to end up chucking about half the game when you remove interactions and concealable information). The one good thing about TI's length, though, is that it does get noticeably faster as people get more experienced. So, if you can sucker people in for one or two games...

The only games I've found it doesn't work for are Descent and Cyclades. The first because running two players, then switching into Overlord mode is just too many balls to keep in the air at once. The second I only tried with all five players, and that again proved too many balls to keep in the air. I can do pretty well at pretending side A doesn't know what side B has up its sleeve, but I can't develop five consistent strategies at once.

[Ailurus]

Well, you could always go all out and just roleplay it, perhaps going as far as to keep eight separate diaries in which the leaders of the various factions plan their moves and react to their opponent's gestures.

Then you start adding more and more sub-journals as you introduce minor characters in each faction, so instead of just the Baron of Lezzit you've got his ambitious son ready to seize power, his daughter unwilling to be married off as a political pawn...

You could try that, but I can't see its working long-term. Maybe its just me, but going solo the secret objectives become absolutely worthless. Many of them rely on at least some trickery, but no matter how hard I try I can't entirely isolate the knowledge of whether or not the objective is in-play when someone gets close to completing one. And then it ends with certain groups either overreacting to deal with perceived threats or just ignoring things that would probably be obvious to a human player in an attempt to avoid using OOC knowledge. Plus, the political and trade systems break down for similar reasons. (Why, yes, I'd love to trade X for Y, or give you votes on this proposal. Unless its going to win you the game...)

*shrug* maybe its just me being poor at separating IC and OOC on that scale, but multiple parts of the game break down like that, unless I either spend a huge amount of time between turns (to forget stuff), or cut out/ignore them. And at that point, why not just play GalCiv, Sins, MoO etc. instead of a lobotomized version of a game?

[Gandariel]

Neuroshima Hex!

It's a strategy board game for 2-4 players
Players place hexes on the board represrinting units and supports, and try to destroy the enemy base.
Every race has special powers, units and different playstyles (Red has bulky, slow, ranged units, while for example green is all about mobility)
There are things such as initiative, bonuses, melee and ranged attacks, but the rules are actually pretty easy to learn and the game lends itself to a lot of strategy and planning.

The fluff is a war between the machines (red) who have taken over the world, although mutants (blue) have just arisen, and a wilderness army force (green) is resisting the machines. Also there's a Kenshiro-like band of motorcyclers (yellow) who... Look badass?

It's also recently been released for iPhone and android , the demo is free, and it's definitely worth a try.

Oh, also, Android users can find the full game for free sonewhere (pm me if you can't)

[Balain]

Twilight Imperium! This is an awesome board game! I just bought it, but I can't get my friends to play with me :smallfrown: ...

TI is great it does have some drawbacks that Eclipse (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/72125/eclipse) does better. I still love to play TI though.

Hmm, not sure if odd but maybe not heard of much

Terra Mystica (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/120677/terra-mystica), Agricola (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31260/agricola)

Hmm maybe those are heard of...

Okay here are some not heard of I bet

Ben Hvrt (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/965/ben-hurt)(I never see in stores, but you can buy a pdf version)

Clay-o-Rama (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9300/clay-o-rama): It was from a couple Dragon magazines( issue 125 and expansion in 144)

The Great Khan Game (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2063/the-great-khan-game): an old silly TSR game, set in Forgotten realms

Mertwig's maze (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1965/mertwigs-maze): Another old silly TSR game.

Nuclear escalation (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1213/nuclear-escalation)

One of my favourites, Napoleon in Europe (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3518/napoleon-in-europe)

Bootleggers (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12477/bootleggers) is pretty fun...I just saw an expansion may or may not have come out I will have to look for it.