Recommend some non-warfare centered board/card-based games?

[MisterStone]

So, I was looking around for boardgames that I could enjoy playing with my SO and a couple of friends. In particular, I was wondering if anyone could recommend some that are centered around trading/exploration/building etc. I don't care if they involve warfare to some extent, but I think that my SO would get board with, say Axis and Allies or similar titles.

Thanx in advance

(Side note- board games are kind of expensive. $35 for cards and some counters?? That better be a well-designed game!)

 

[pkt-zer0]

Settlers of Catan (preferably with Cities and Knights) is a pretty fun, albeit simplistic, game. You can play it online here after registration and decide for yourself whether it's any good.

 

[HanoverF]

http://www.cheapass.com/

 

[DemonKing]

Some of my favourites:

* Illuminati

* Descent

* Runebound

* Talisman

* Wrasslin'

None of which involves warfare (although some have combat).

If you add warfare to the list then you can add stuff like Tide of Iron, Combat Commander, Apocalypse, Battlelore, Memoir '44, Command & Colors: Ancients, A Game of Thrones etc all of which I own and enjoy playing.

 

[obediah]

I went with my wife to pick out a handful of board games a few weeks ago. We bought

Ticket To Ride - Fast to play, easy to learn, low-to-moderate strategy. We enjoyed playing it, although there wasn't much to chew on. The strength is that you can get people that wouldn't otherwise touch a nerd game to play it.

Arkham Horror - Much more complicated, can take 3+ hours to play, and is a Lovecraftian board game. I thought my wife was going to give up the first game, but once she got the hang of it, she had fun. It's cooperative, which is a nice change of pace, but there is combat and weapons and spells and all that jazz.

Puerto Rico - Very nice. A bit of a pain to setup, and daunting the first turn, but it is very quick to pick up. There is a 2 player variant that is fun, but it really shines with 3+. It plays pretty quickly, but there are lots of difficult decisions - so you can play it over and over and always have a new strategy to try ( or I guess you could find some forum to read and ruin all that fun )

 

[Psycroptic]

Arkham Horror was a complete success for me. Now it is requested so we play it quite often! I even bought the expansions for added fun. I really wish there were more games like this: co-operational, solo play is possible, cool theme. Takes a little practice and a bit of reading the online boards to really nail down the rules.

Carcassonne is pretty fun too. It's a game in which you try to control the territory that you build with your random tiles. There's really no warfare; it's pretty peaceful. Though it can be ruthless in a sort of passive-aggressive way.

I also just bought Agricola. You build a medieval farm starting from a mere peasant hut -- balancing which direction you want to develop your crops, family, and structures. Sounds kind of menial I know, but it is extremely highly rated and with the optional easy rules it's pretty simple to get started with.

 

[Dire Roach]

Bang! - Simple rules (great for adapting drinking rules), quick games (10-30 minutes each), lots of psychological warfare involved, and lots of replay value. The only downside is that it can't be played with less than four players using the basic rules, but you wouldn't really want to anyway. The best part of the game is finding out what is the secret role of each player, and the less players there are the more obvious it gets.

Carcassonne (strongly seconded) - Fairly quick games (save for the first one, as always), easy to learn, and lots of strategy involved. Very addictive.

Cranium - A combination of many other party games with trivia, charades, clay sculpting, sketching, singing, etc. It gets old after a few games but the chicks dig it.

If you don't mind games that can last a couple of hours and are more rule-intensive, then I strongly support the recommendations of Arkham Horror. You may also want to try dungeon crawler games such as HeroQuest or Descent. Finally, if you can stand to leave a game halfway-finished on a table in order to continue playing another day, then you need to discover the joy that is Diplomacy. I have yet to find another game where drama, lies, and backstabbing are such a crucial part of gameplay.

 

[MisterStone]

Sweet, your recommendations are much appreciated!

 

[OSK]

Candyland (exploration)
The Game of Life (building/exploration)
Monopoly (trading/building)
Mousetrap (building)
Chutes & Ladders (exploration)
Crossfire (trading)
Scrabble (building)

 

[Dementia Praecox]

Ouch, too much to mention! Some favorites:

• Cash and guns - best vorspiel-game ever.
• Diplomacy - easy way to make away with your friends.
• Republic of Rome - same alley as diplomacy. Bit more complicated, but with added awesome.
• Settlers - as mentioned above, but only fun with all expansions.
• Formula 1 - You've got a gazillion of expansions to this, mostly just new tracks though.
• Galaxy Trucker - Play it.
• Wizard Kings - Ait, it's a war-game, but it's so cool I have to mention it. Fairly complicated but bloody fun when you get into it. Requires a couple of expansions to uncover the awesome.

 

[Whipporowill]

Arkham Horror and Fury of Dracula.

 

[Barbader]

ST. Petersburg --> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9217

 

[SuicideBunny]

* Illuminati

Bang!

+1

also junta and once upon a time + dark tales if you can handle a storytelling game.
according to my friends, race for the galaxy is pretty good too.

 

[Dementia Praecox]

junta

Yes! Junta was the name. I couldn't remember what it was called. You should definately check it out. Been ages since the last time I played it, though.

 

[Trash]

Settlers of Catan is always good with friends. It's fun and relatively easy to pick up but hard to master. There is also a card game that is great to kill some time while having a beer with. It's only two player though.

 

[SuicideBunny]

Yes! Junta was the name. I couldn't remember what it was called. You should definately check it out. Been ages since the last time I played it, though.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/222788 says everything about the game.

 

[Nael]

Weed! was a game I played a lot when I was in high school. It's similar to Go Fish, so the difficulty and depth is lacking compared to most of the suggestions already given. But if you're a pothead you may enjoy it

 

[HanoverF]

Anyone have any experience with this?

 

[barker_s]

Looks promising, but that might be just my love for zombie movies.


Once there was a fantastic board game called Aliens . I've never had a chance to obtain it in its 'paper' version, but from what I've heard it was loads of fun. Also it's a must-have if your a fan of the original movie that the game was based on.

As far as I know the company that released the game made its rules free to distribute. It allowed some guy, whose name I can't remember atm, to make a flash version of it (it's probably the best flash game I've ever played).

Enjoy .

 

[Zeros]

I have recently been playing Caylus over some german-made (but available in english too) internet platform, but the game is originally a board game.

It's quite fun, being about gaining favor with the king via a multitude of ways (like building the castle, using player-built buildings, royal favors).

It's also interesting because strategies and what is valuable in the game continually shift, from the start, to midgame to the endgame, so you approach what's available in different ways, allowing for different strategies.

So it's uh, fun. Very recomendable and for 2-5 players.

 

[Psycroptic]

Anyone have any experience with this?

I seriously considered buying this as it looks really nice. What held me back was:

1) One player has to play the zombies. I'd rather have both players fighting cooperatively as humans. Then have some sort of movement rules for the zombies so they act automatically. I guess with a large group playing this wouldn't be such a big deal. But I always play two player games.

2) I read some reviews saying that after a few games and some practice the player with the humans would have a hard time losing.

It still seems like it could be pretty fun though. I'd have to see some more in depth reviews before picking it up.

 

[Human Shield]

Good sugguestions here, I recently bought a bunch of boardgames. Ones not mentioned.

Felix the Cat in the Sack, gambling-like experience with easier buy in.

Chrononauts this looked really awesome to me but the win conditions are pretty random and have people looking at the board and going "oh, I win" either too early or too late. Would need to house-rule.

Lifeboat awesome negotiation game where you have nothing to offer and alliances shift. A PDF should be the official site and I just printed out paper and used color tokens, and card covers, and made it for free.

This chubby guy in very informative.

There are tons of zombie mini games and apparently all have flaws.

 

[HanoverF]

I seriously considered buying this as it looks really nice. What held me back was:

1) One player has to play the zombies. I'd rather have both players fighting cooperatively as humans. Then have some sort of movement rules for the zombies so they act automatically. I guess with a large group playing this wouldn't be such a big deal. But I always play two player games.

That appeals to me though. I might have to take the plunge. Zombie!!! looks too much like a videogame (bullet/heart containers, infinite restarts) I played one Dawn of the dead shopping mall zombie game and was unimpressed, don't remember which it was, I think there's like 4 or 5 different ones so maybe it's time for the game makers to stop wallowing in that particular tiny corner of the sub-genre.

 

[Dire Roach]

Zombies!!! starts out as a great game but gets really tiresome after a while and can take much longer to finish than expected. The players are survivors in a zombie-infested city who are trying to find the last remaining helicopter in town to escape with. The players can work as a group but, ultimately, it's an "every man for himself" scenario since the winner is the player who gets to the helicopter first. The game gets really tense when the helipad tile appears on the map and everyone starts rushing toward it, but this tension soon turns into repetitive frustration and boredom as players start spamming cards that are specifically intended to hamper another player's efforts (like spawning masses of zombies to block the way, making another player skip their turn, etc.). Thus, while it may seem like the game is about to end soon at this point, there's still a long time left (possibly half an hour or more) until one player finally gets a lucky break and reaches the helicopter alive.

Another way to win the game is by killing a grand total of 25 zombies, but this method takes a long time and a huge amount of luck, since fighting zombies is very risky and your kill count is reduced by half if you die. It's usually easier and takes the same amount of time to just race to the helicopter.

Not too long ago I had to make the decision whether to buy that Last Night on Earth game or Tannhäuser. I ended up choosing the latter due to prior positive experience with other Fantasy Flight games, but the fact that the former announced that it came with its own soundtrack CD in the box seemed really cheesy and didn't help it at all in my case. I'm not sure if I made the best decision, though; Tannhäuser is a good-looking tactical combat game but, without its yet-to-be-released-in-the-US expansions, it lacks sorely in terms of replay value.

 

[ecliptic]

Some of my favorites -

Gheos - civilization and landscaping in a god-like fashion, very interesting system, yet very streamlined

Carcasonne - has already been mentioned, Inns and Cathedrals is almost necessary after you've played it once or twice

Caylus - I own this, but haven't cracked it out yet

Mall of Horror - Nothing is quite so fun as backstabbing your friend by feeding him to the zombies to save yourself (or just to screw him or her over), great with 4-6 people

Icehouse - these little pyramids are oodles of fun, think of them more as a deck of cards than a game themselves. There are some really well designed games out there for this.

Khet - Though only two person, you can't go wrong with what is basically laser chess. You have mirrored pieces and take turns maneuvering and rotating them to try to zap (or force your opponent) to zap the opponent's pharoah piece.

Ra - fun auction based game

Villa Paletti - If Jenga were fun and included strategy, it'd be this game.