Dominion Strategy Forum
Archive => Archive => Dominion FAQ => Topic started by: LittleFish on December 11, 2018, 07:52:45 am
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If you modified the amount of kingdom cards to 15 and added the base set, could you play a normally paced game with 8p
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Could you play a normally paced game with 8p?
No. Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count. Dominion would just be a tedious game with a lot of downtime at this player count. Also, getting hit 7 times by a Witch until it is your turn again doesn't sound like a fun experience.
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Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count.
Can you back that statement up?
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Could you play a normally paced game with 8p?
No. Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count. Dominion would just be a tedious game with a lot of downtime at this player count. Also, getting hit 7 times by a Witch until it is your turn again doesn't sound like a fun experience.
Dobble plays eight players.
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8 people means two games of 4 players each. The creator of Dominion himself has said that he won’t play with more than 5 players even though the rules cover up to 6.
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8 people means 4 games of two players each.
FTFY
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Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count.
Can you back that statement up?
Not quite 8, but 7 player Caverna plays surprisingly smooth.
But in general, other than social deduction games, party games are good with 8 or more. Code Names is great with 8. Time's Up can be a lot of fun if you're into that sort of thing.
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No. Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count.
Not so. Games which allow simultaneous action by multiple players are another obvious category that scales well to high player counts. Especially drafting games. Things like Sushi Go Party! or even the classic Pit.
Edit: just asked BoardGameGeek to list games in my collection which take 8 players. So, non-social-deduction games I reckon play fine with 8 include: 6-nimmt!, Apples to Apples, Articulate!, Boggle, Ca$h 'n Guns, Cards Against Humanity, Codenames, Joking Hazard, Penultima, Pit, Sushi Go Party!
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I've created Diplomacy maps for eight players.
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No. Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count.
Not so. Games which allow simultaneous action by multiple players are another obvious category that scales well to high player counts. Especially drafting games. Things like Sushi Go Party! or even the classic Pit.
Edit: just asked BoardGameGeek to list games in my collection which take 8 players. So, non-social-deduction games I reckon play fine with 8 include: 6-nimmt!, Apples to Apples, Articulate!, Boggle, Ca$h 'n Guns, Cards Against Humanity, Codenames, Joking Hazard, Penultima, Pit, Sushi Go Party!
Your mistake here was implying that Apples to Apples plays fine with any number of people, or that it is a game.
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If you're looking for a Dominion-like experience with 8 players, 7 Wonders with the Cities expansion is great. It's a different genre of game, but there's a similar level of strategy, no downtime between turns, and can be played in 30-40 minutes. Without Cities it goes up to 7 players.
Also, Cosmic Encounter can be played with 8 players if you have 3 specific expansions. It's amazing and fun and relatively strategic, but it's more complex, there can be more downtime with that many players, and it can take much longer (1-3 hours depending on a lot of factors).
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Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count.
Can you back that statement up?
You can do the footwork yourself and look at the actual games that work with 8 players. You won't find a lot of Euros among them (nowadays 5 is a lot of a Euro), Ameritrash doesn't scale that much higher and most wargames cap at 6.
So we are left with the not-so-serious stuff: social deduction games plus the other stuff that has already been mentioned like party or trick-taking games.
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Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count.
Can you back that statement up?
You can do the footwork yourself and look at the actual games that work with 8 players. You won't find a lot of Euros among them (nowadays 5 is a lot of a Euro), Ameritrash doesn't scale that much higher and most wargames cap at 6.
So we are left with the not-so-serious stuff: social deduction games plus the other stuff that has already been mentioned like party or trick-taking games.
I think you would have gotten less pushback if you had said "social deduction and party games". And included the word "generally".
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Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count.
Can you back that statement up?
You can do the footwork yourself and look at the actual games that work with 8 players. You won't find a lot of Euros among them (nowadays 5 is a lot of a Euro), Ameritrash doesn't scale that much higher and most wargames cap at 6.
So we are left with the not-so-serious stuff: social deduction games plus the other stuff that has already been mentioned like party or trick-taking games.
I think you would have gotten less pushback if you had said "social deduction and party games". And included the word "generally".
Somehow I don't worry about having ignored the likes of Monopoly, Risk and 6 nimmt. I wonder why. Perhaps because such a high player count comes at the cost of a fluffy game and if the game is moderately serious it cannot be really interactive E.g. if memory serves 7 Wonders makes you only care about your neighbours as you cannot keep the entire tableau of numerous other players in mind.
Even the shining gem of Ameritrash, Twilight Imperium, which needs a lot of players (ideally 5-7) sucks at 8 due to the presence of every of the 8 roles in each round.
Which brings us to why simultaneous action selection doesn't solve scaling issues:
No. Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count.
Games which allow simultaneous action by multiple players are another obvious category that scales well to high player counts.
I already mentioned Twilight Imperium but this also applies for all other games which use this very mechanic from Puero Rico like Race for the Galaxy or Tiny Epic Kingdoms : just because the mechanic keeps downtime low doesn't mean that you can scale all the variables of a game well from 2 to 8 players.
5-6 is as high as it usually gets with non-non-serious games. And Dominion, arguably, sucks at a player count above 3. At least if badly scaling cards like Ambassador are around.
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For large player-count non-party-games, counting social deduction as party games, the big thing is to make decisions simultaneously. For years there my go-to game with 7 players was Factory Job. It was published in distorted form as Infiltration, and they didn't support 7 players, I guess to keep components down, although man, why not seize the chance to have a game that works with 7? That's a big thing though, that publishers want to keep components down and that can limit how many players a game supports.
It's fair to say that Factory Job is an Ameritrash-y game; swingy things happen. That's not essential though. Other simultaneous-decision games of mine, aside from not having enough components for more players, often run into an area-of-effect issue. If you play Nefarious with 6, you get hit by too many negative effects from inventions; you can address that with an area-of-effect, but then the game rewards/punishes players based on seating position, which people don't like. This is a result of my approaches to reduce politics. You can have a political simultaneous decision game with 8 players with no problem, e.g. Diplomacy. Or, a more solitaire-y game, where the player interaction is e.g. a race. I played a lot of wordsplay at one point - essentially online Boggle - and there can be 50 people playing and it's fine, someone does the best.
You can have dilemmas that work with a large crowd; it's a different experience but does work. This provides a way to get lots of player interaction into a non-political non-random many-player game without an area-of-effect. I haven't done a large game with such a mechanic though. Factory Job is a dilemma game, but it's small group dilemmas (you aren't so much interacting with people who aren't near you).
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Somehow I don't worry about having ignored the likes of Monopoly, Risk and 6 nimmt.
Apart from being a game, I'm not seeing much that 6 nimmt! has in common with Monopoly or Risk. It has both elegant simplicity and depth.
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Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count.
Can you back that statement up?
You can do the footwork yourself ...
Someone else already did, and while I don't agree with every item on the list *cough* CaH *cough*, I may also want to add VivaJava the board game and Pix, both of which do an elegant job of incorporating up to 8 (or in the latter case, even 9) players. VivaJava hits the table rarely precisely because it works best with 8.
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Another good one with simultaneous decisions is RoboRally. Newer editions added a timer and rules to make it a chaotic party game. But with the original rules, and a timer only if needed (just when some players are taking too long), it's a surprisingly tactical game where I have seen the good players consistently win. Of course you have to build a course that isn't too short, so that the luck will even out, so it could take a while to play.
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I'd like to chime in on 7 Wonders with the Cities expansion being a great game for up to 8 players. The thing there is that for 7 Wonders, players play at the same time, so additional players don't make it take longer.
Not sure whether Lifeboat (with expansions) counts as Social Deduction or Colt Express (with expansions) counts as non-serious, but for each, the play time still becomes longer.
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No. Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count.
Not so. Games which allow simultaneous action by multiple players are another obvious category that scales well to high player counts. Especially drafting games. Things like Sushi Go Party! or even the classic Pit.
Edit: just asked BoardGameGeek to list games in my collection which take 8 players. So, non-social-deduction games I reckon play fine with 8 include: 6-nimmt!, Apples to Apples, Articulate!, Boggle, Ca$h 'n Guns, Cards Against Humanity, Codenames, Joking Hazard, Penultima, Pit, Sushi Go Party!
I'd also like to mention Magic Maze. That game has really taken me by surprise.
Does Citadels work well with eight players?
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No. Social deduction games are the only boardgames which function well at this player count.
Not so. Games which allow simultaneous action by multiple players are another obvious category that scales well to high player counts. Especially drafting games. Things like Sushi Go Party! or even the classic Pit.
Edit: just asked BoardGameGeek to list games in my collection which take 8 players. So, non-social-deduction games I reckon play fine with 8 include: 6-nimmt!, Apples to Apples, Articulate!, Boggle, Ca$h 'n Guns, Cards Against Humanity, Codenames, Joking Hazard, Penultima, Pit, Sushi Go Party!
I'd also like to mention Magic Maze. That game has really taken me by surprise.
Does Citadels work well with eight players?
I assume so. I haven't tried with more than 4
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While Citadel's rules cope with eight players, I wouldn't want to play it that way; I'd get bored between doing things, and the game would take ages!
BoardGameGeek agrees that lower player counts are better.
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I may also want to add VivaJava the board game.
Can confirm; works well with 8. The simultaneous actions help things along, that's the key with large player-counts.
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While Citadel's rules cope with eight players, I wouldn't want to play it that way; I'd get bored between doing things, and the game would take ages!
BoardGameGeek agrees that lower player counts are better.
I played with 7, and we concluded that 5 was the most we should go with.
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6 Nimmt (aka Category 5) is my favorite non-social-deduction, non-party game answer to this question. It works well even with 10!
(Meanwhile, Citadels is one of the worst)
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To my mind it assumes party-game-like traits above a player number of 6. Hilarious nonwithstanding, but tactic plays less of a role.
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Another good one with simultaneous decisions is RoboRally. Newer editions added a timer and rules to make it a chaotic party game. But with the original rules, and a timer only if needed (just when some players are taking too long), it's a surprisingly tactical game where I have seen the good players consistently win. Of course you have to build a course that isn't too short, so that the luck will even out, so it could take a while to play.
I'd like to love this game, but my experience is that Robo Rally with many players has a serious runaway-leader problem - a player who has a significant lead doesn't have to worry at all about what the other robots do, while the middle of the pack keeps sabotaging each other's plans, making it harder to catch up to the leader even with better play. The "robots have lasers" rule (which is only a variant in the German version 😡) weakens the leader advantage because they tend to be hit more often, but not quite enough.
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Tailwind for the leader is a serious problem in Robo Rally at any player count, and makes the game way too luck-dependent.
I could rant at considerable length about Richard bloody Garfield and his bloody game designs with superficially nifty features but stupid, stupid problems that make them almost unplayable...
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Definitely you need to play with Robots have lasers, I never heard about anything else.
It's important to lay out a good course, so that the leader has to criss-cross into the others. Then it's about playing your cards well, not just about having nobody pushing you. Also, among good players there tends to not be one player who gets a significant lead (although it certainly can happen).
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As somebody who ordered the newer english version of Robo Rally quite recently, is that laser variant playable with it?
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As somebody who ordered the newer english version of Robo Rally quite recently, is that laser variant playable with it?
I don't know that version, but I expect it's playable with any version since it doesn't require any extra material. Robots just shoot a laser and deal a damage token to the next robot in their "line of view" just like the lasers printed on the board do.
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As somebody who ordered the newer english version of Robo Rally quite recently, is that laser variant playable with it?
I don't know that version, but I expect it's playable with any version since it doesn't require any extra material. Robots just shoot a laser and deal a damage token to the next robot in their "line of view" just like the lasers printed on the board do.
Ah, sounds nice! Cool, thank you.
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Responding to the original question - the first two or three times I played it was with a group of eight. We doubled up so there were four teams of two players each.
Obviously, this wouldn't work well for serious games, but for our group, it worked out great. We had some players who were totally unfamiliar with the cards, so pairing them with more experienced players kept the game from coming to a screeching halt every time someone had to read all the cards to figure out what they could do. Also, we had small kids in another room, so if a parent needed to get up to take care of one of them we could still keep playing.
Those games didn't take long and there was plenty of socialization going on. We played the first round putting hand cards face up so everyone could learn from each other how things worked. It took longer of course because there was sometimes discussion of what to do from the whole table before the team decided. It was a learning game, so no problem. After that one, we played "normally", but with teams, and the games were fast enough. We've played with partners since then when there were several people who wanted to play.
Playing with teams means there's going to be enough discussion between partners about what to play that it's not super top secret. But if you're playing with that many people, you're doing it because you all want to do something together, and socialize, anyway, instead of breaking into two separate groups.
tldr; partnering can be fun and the games don't get super long. Also it's tolerant of small interruptions that take players away from the table.
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I always thought the real reason no boardgames work well at 8+ players is that noone with such a hobby has that many friends. Or that big of a table. Or that many chairs.
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I always thought the real reason no boardgames work well at 8+ players is that noone with such a hobby has that many friends. Or that big of a table. Or that many chairs.
I don't know about the table/chairs situation, I think board game fans tend to be relatively wealthy. I know people that have rooms in their house exclusively dedicated to gaming.
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No lack of tables and friends (at least at the beginning) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYTbO06Crvo
I love the haggle phase.
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I always thought the real reason no boardgames work well at 8+ players is that noone with such a hobby has that many friends. Or that big of a table. Or that many chairs.
Huh? Three of my five most regular gaming groups are larger than that. Two of them regularly play the social deduction games that work best with 7-10 players. One of them does Two Rooms and a Boom with thirty players from time to time. The typical extending dining table will seat eight, as will tables in pubs, or two tables shoved together in a shop. (-8
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OMG I haven't played Civ since 1982 or so. One of my all-time favorites. Of course it was a much smaller board. Usually we'd play with whatever the max number of players was, i'm sure, seems like it was seven or eight.
Circus Maximus must have had eight players too. Our group got so loud playing it one time that a neighbor called the cops on us. :D
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That's right kids, we had fun gaming before Settlers came out.
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That's right kids, we had fun gaming before Settlers came out.
Don't get me started on that game. I have considered on multiple occasions going as far as saying it is worse than Monopoly.
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Looking at my collection on BoardGameGeek, the only games published before 1990 that I go out of my way to play for reasons other than nostalgia are:
Go, Chess, Perudo, Hearts, Bridge, Acquire, Jenga, Scotland Yard, Set.
Once we reach the nineties, Wolfgang Kramer and Reiner Knizia start producing games we'd regard as modern and that stand the test of time.
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Woah, I had no idea SET was that old.
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Another good one with simultaneous decisions is RoboRally. Newer editions added a timer and rules to make it a chaotic party game. But with the original rules, and a timer only if needed (just when some players are taking too long), it's a surprisingly tactical game where I have seen the good players consistently win. Of course you have to build a course that isn't too short, so that the luck will even out, so it could take a while to play.
Me and the people I play with almost always finish before the timer runs out (remember it only starts after one person has finished), and think fast enough to strategically play. The new priority system plus the player-specific decks make it much more predictable and much less random, so you can plan better and do deck-tracking. Although the time saved by the simultaneous decisions is then all taken up by the resolution phase.
I'd just use 'anything that supports 8 players and has no, simultaneous, or very fast turns'.
Sidereal Confluence would be a good example of a strategic game that supports high player counts.