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[Arya Stark]

least fav
thunderstone
assension

Now this interests me a bit... what is it you feel about Thunderstone and Ascension that fail so hard compared to Dominion?

Ascension has too much luck involved, its fun to play with my 8 year old son.
Thunderstone is ok, takes more time to setup than dominion, bought an expansion and never opened it

[ycz6]

Boardgames: Catan, Chess, Diplomacy, Risk, Small World
Card Games: MtG
Video Games: Any Smash Bros. game, Mario Party 1-4 (too fun), assorted others

I used to be really serious about Super Smash Bros. Melee, but dropped out of the tournament scene when I started college. Would still love to play it, but there isn't that big of a community in Boston =/

Holy crap, for real? I'm going to MIT right and have been playing Melee for a while, and I'd be glad to play with you! Once I get back from summer vacation >_> See http://www.youtube.com/user/ycz13
as well as http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=256340

I haven't really played any games that seriously besides Melee; Dominion, chess a while ago, and I guess Tetris are the only ones that are anywhere close.

[chwhite]

I used to play starcraft a lot.  It was basically my religion in high school.

Before I switched to Dominion, I was pretty good at Race for the Galaxy.  I definitely recommend RftG if you have a competitive friend and Dominion is feeling stale.

I met rrenaud on TeamLiquid, back when it was a Brood War site rather than a SC2 site.

I also played RftG, but never quite was at rrenaud's level, who won back-to-back-to-back WBC RFTG championships.

The other main games I play are Twilight Struggle and Tichu.  I think Twilight Struggle is the greatest game ever made, in fact.

I'm also a big Twilight Struggle fan; I think it's probably the second-greatest game ever though I don't get to play it much these days.  Although I mostly play Euros and their ilk (Puerto Rico, Agricola, Acquire, Age of Steam, etc.) the top spot for me has to go to good old Scrabble.  Recently, the vast majority of my gaming time has been going to Isotropic and Scrabble with my gf.

I used to play starcraft a lot.  It was basically my religion in high school.

Before I switched to Dominion, I was pretty good at Race for the Galaxy.  I definitely recommend RftG if you have a competitive friend and Dominion is feeling stale.

Also a big fan of this one.  One of my gaming friends has gotten tired of Dominion and prefers 7 Wonders now, whereas I've gone in the opposite direction.  Fortunately we both like RTFG, so we play that a bunch.  (Not that I hate 7 Wonders, just that I think it is way less interesting and strategic than Dominion or RTFG.)

[J.Co.]

My all-time favorite games (other than Dominion):
Space Hulk
Robo Rally
Shadows Over Camelot
Buck Rogers

Second-tier games for me include:
Memoir 44
Pizza Box Football
Descent
Munchkin
Settlers/Starfarers of Catan
Twilight Imperium

Game I think is most overrated: Battlestar Galactica

Videogames: too many to name. Metroid is my favorite franchise, though.

[Reyk]

My all-time favorite games (other than Dominion):
...
Shadows Over Camelot
...
Game I think is most overrated: Battlestar Galactica

Interesting. I really really like both games. But I strongly recommend this variant for Battlestar:
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/399183/valley-of-darkness-an-unofficial-mini-expansion

[theory]

Had a ridiculous BSG game last night, where rrenaud and I lost despite being at 9 distance and 13 population.  We lost 12 population in two turns, as our only pilot turned out to be a Cylon...

My favorite recent BSG game came when rrenaud and his fellow Cylon were defeated because Helena Cain (me) played Critical Situation, launched two nukes with Strategic Planning on each, and rolled 8's on both to wipe out almost twenty Cylon ships and save our very last civilian ship (while at 1 population).

I think BSG is a very poorly-designed game that is nevertheless very fun.  It's the main face-to-face game I play now.

[Axiom]

Game mechanics wise it might not be the best game out there, but I love it because of the "feeling" I get when I play it; I think it is a very good themed game. And of course it's a "social game" where the experience is just (well, maybe not quite) as important as winning or losing, whereas most other games I enjoy is about strategy and getting the most points etc.

I have not played Shadows Over Camelot, but from what I've heard, it seems like most people like BSG a lot better (at least the people whose opinions I've heard).

By the way, who of you have played Twilight Imperium? Did you like it? I am probably going to play it this weekend (after my last exam!)

[theory]

Oh God, I played a 9hour TI game a couple weeks ago that ended when this awful boon ("noob" backwards ... someone who is not new at the game, but still incompetent at it) gifted a win to another player.

My standard is: if it takes as long as Twilight Struggle, it better be as good as Twilight Struggle, and TI was not worth 3-4 Twilight Struggles.  TI feels a little too chaotic, like you aren't in control of your destiny.  It's probably a lot of fun with the right people, but I didn't play in a good group my first time.

[Geronimoo]

Magic the Gathering
Agricola
Poker (HORSE, Omaha...)

[carbonduck]

* Fluxx - of the Monty Python and Zombie variety

YES! I've been trying to recall all of the card and board games that I played regularly with my friends back in college... and I had completely forgotten about Fluxx. I just ordered a copy on Ebay and now my friends and I are going to have a blast next week. Thanks a lot!

[Taqman]

So I have yet to get into Race For the Galaxy but I am very interested after discovering it has a ladder like isotropic:  http://rftgstats.com/

But the Genie server is down, and the flexboardgames server doesnt seem to be working either. 

For any players that legitimately play both games, what is your opinion on the relative amount of luck between RftG and Dominion?  Is RftG as rewarding?  Obviously if rrenaud can win back to back national tournaments it can't be THAT luck based, right?

[theory]

The primary site of multiplayer RFTG is now via the Keldon AI, but that doesn't produce logs for RFTGstats.  In general, the RFTG multiplayer scene seems to have died once Isotropic sprang up.

I think RFTG about the same luck factor as Dominion, with the caveat that progression in RFTG is much more gradual than the jumps in skill you tend to see in Dominion.

[rrenaud]

FWIW, "national" is a bit of a stretch.  WBC mostly attracts people from the mid atlantic region.  OTOH, there was a tournament where the game designer was present near Portland, Oregon, and me and two of my friends flew from NYC and took 1,2, and 3, so that was pretty cool.

[shark_bait]

Unfortunately my friends don't want to handle learning and playing different games all the time.  As of now I mainly play  dominion, catan (cities and knights over regular), colosseum, and ticket to ride.  If I had my way, I'd make them play any euro style game.

Regarding catan, does anyone play online at games.asobrain.com?  I haven't played in awhile, but feel free to send me a message if you feel like playing a quality game of catan.

[Axe Knight]

My game group and I have been playing a lot of Notre Dame lately.  The game has many criticisms, but it is not bad as a warm-up as an exercise in simple game mechanics.  There seems to be an upper bound on the number of points possible (assuming you have perfect draws), and as soon as you figure out an optimal strategy, it is not difficult to get to 70-80 points or more regularly.  The expansion in the Alea Treasure Chest makes things slightly more undetermined with respect to strategy, but not by much.

I'm also still getting mileage out of the original Starcraft, and haven't quite gotten around to Starcraft II yet, but hopefully will soon.

If you're into non-strategy party games, you should try Say Anything, if you haven't already done so.  It's like Apples to Apples meets Loaded Questions and is an absolute riot.

[WanderingWinder]

1. Chess. I'm decent, not great (my last 7 games against masters I'm +1 =3 -3). I play several blitz games every day. And I know a few Grandmasters and several International Masters
2. Card Games. 500 is my favourite, but also Spades, Canasta, Gin, Casino, 13, and a few dozen other games with less frequency.
3. I like the "Euro-Style" board games, but haven't actually played all that many all that often. The one I've played MOST often (other than Dominion, of course) is Small World, which I quite like. I've also played Ticket to Ride (US) several times, but I'm sort of meh on it. And then there are a few that I've only played once for whatever reason.
4. Backgammon
5. Among computer games/video games, I'm not nearly so into them as I used to be (although I guess I never was really into them). I've played some SC2, but I'm not very good at it. My APM hovers in the low 30s. Yeah...

[SixDaysShort]

I don't really play much in the way of competitive gaming anymore.  I do game night with a big group (8-10) every week or two.  For lighter games, balderdash, cranium, rock band, wii-bacci, bohnanza.  We play race for the galaxy every now and then.  We play citadels every now and then. Carcassone and settlers are played (but I avoid them).  They couple who does it all also has the battlestar galactica game and seven wonders...both unopened.  We gave game of thrones a chance, but gave up.

[hughes]

I played a little bit of seven wonders and wasn't all that impressed.  I think theory has a somewhat more favorable opinion of it though.

After reading the answers to my post, I think the game just isn't that deep.

I played it once.  It's nice because you can play 7 people without dragging.


Ticket to Ride is a really fun game that pretty much everyone enjoys and doesn't take 3 hours.  A beginner game with 5 people can be played in less than 90 mins.

[Randal FTW]

Mostly card games these days. Poker (found dominion off a poker site), spades, gin, etc. I use to play a ton of Guild Wars and Champions but havent in a few years.

[Personman]

All these Starcraft players, but no LoL? Sad day. Though I did see someone logged in to isotropic as 'HotShotGG' last night which made me chuckle. (For those not in the know, he is one of the top League of Legends players currently competing at Dreamhack in Sweden.)

I used to be kind of serious about Brawl, though never close to good by tourney standards.

I play a lot of rhythm games: GH3, RB2+3, Stepmania, Pump it Up except my local arcade's copy had the screen broken recently :/, Poppin' Music

I recently tried a game of Mansions of Madness, a style of game I had experienced several times with Betrayal at House on the Hill and not enjoyed very much, but to my surprise it was really good! Captured the survival-horror sense pretty well, and had very nice DM mechanics.

I used to be (well, I guess still am?) the best Frames player in the world over at superdupergames.org, but that was out of about 30 active players XD

I play Magic, but like someone else in this thread, spend more time reading MaRo's articles than playing the game. I think I honestly enjoy actually playing Dominion more than actually playing magic now, though Magic has an amazingly deep system and card set, and I'm even sort of in training to be a judge. I also ran a puzzley magic variant called 2CB at mtgsalvation.com for a year. It was quite successful, and if you have any interest in exploring Magic in a more controlled, nonrandom environment, I recommend checking it and it's sister XCBs out.

And I don't know if this counts as *playing* games exactly, but I spend a lot of time over at tasvideos.org and have recently begun work on my very first TAS, of the wonderful Ninja Senki. If you've never heard of TASes, watch this (Mario 64) or this (Pokemon Yellow) and have your mind blown.

[Amaranth]

The game I play most frequently is V:TES. I'm particularly fond of some of the Bloodlines. Shattering Crescendo is a very fun deck (for me, at any rate).

In terms of board games, I'm very fond of BSG, and have fond memories of Shogun/Samurai Swords, which is one of the few conquest games where you win by player elimination and you don't have a tedious mopping up phase where you have to grind your way through an opponent who has no chance of winning.

[Graystripe77]

Anyone ever play W101 (Wizard101)?   It's an online MMO with over ten million player's.  I like this game because it's a turn-based game with a lot of strategy, like dominion.

[papaHav]

Just played citadels on the weekend. 5 players - great game =D buy rating!

7 players - horrible

[SixDaysShort]

Just played citadels on the weekend. 5 players - great game =D buy rating!

7 players - horrible

6 people isn't bad, either--at least in my experience.


I played battlestar galactica (just the base game) this weekend with 5 other friends. Someone got it from borders for $15 dollars 4 months ago...but we hadn't opened it, out of intimidation at the number of pieces and estimated time, until then.  I don't k is if it was an aberration, but it was by far the best boardgame experience I've ever had.  Because of unfamiliarity, the game took almost 4 hours...but not one of us ever got bored.

Incredible.  I can't wait to play again.

[guided]

Dominion is probably my favorite game, which is saying a lot coming from someone who generally prefers little-to-no-luck strategy games. The depth-to-length ratio is just awesome. But I do play a lot of other board games, and here are some favorites:

Agricola - My first love and still my favorite.
Brass - I forgive the byzantine ruleset because once you learn it, it makes for exquisite balance and depth of strategy.
Antiquity - So unique and rewarding among resource-management games that you can forgive the chit overload.
Dominant Species - "Was that really 6 hours? I hardly noticed." The only area control game I truly love.
Innovation - Tactics porn. This is my idea of a beer-and-pretzels game, with delightful gameplay even though the outcome hinges heavily on luck.
Merchants & Marauders - The best thematic dice-roller
Smallworld - Light enough for neophytes and well-balanced with any number of players.
Caylus
Goa
Power Grid

I'm on a Troyes kick lately, too. Definitely the best heavily dice-based Euro I've played, improving hugely on Alien Frontiers or Kingsburg. I've only played Indonesia once so far, but I suspect it will become a favorite with more time.