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[penndog]

I absolutely love Dominion (stating the obvious, I know) but one of the biggest reasons is because it is the most fair game I have ever played.  What I mean is, in any other game I can think of, where more than 2 people play, the element of "ganging up" is always present.  I am usually the strongest player and therefore suffer from this. 

So does anyone know of any other games where "ganging up" is not possible?  I was looking at Pandemic, which looks interesting.

p.s. you might be wondering why I would want to find any other game, given that Dominion is so awesome.   Well, the friends I play with do not want to play with me anymore because I always (like 90%+) win. 

[theory]

Pandemic is probably not a good choice for you guys, since even though it's co-op it suffers from "one guy makes a plan and tells everyone else how to play" syndrome.

There really aren't that many games that I can think of where you can't target the leader.  Paradoxically, your best bet might be a game that involves politics a lot more, since then it's an explicit part of the game and you can work with it.  (E.g., Battlestar Galactica instead of Pandemic.)

[DG]

If you want a family friendly game you can do worse than something like Carcassone. It's not my favourite game but it's my game that gets played the most, since nobody objects to it. If you want a heavy decision game then you're spoilt for choice really. There are many financial and resource management games where you need to maximise your opportunities and deny (all your) opponents any opportunities but you can't gang up on a leader. Agricola is one of example, but so could be an older game like Acquire. Bidding games (like Medici or Ra) also are fairer since players can overbid to shut out a leader from an auction, but that will just lose them the game if they can't make value from their purchase.

[PetterTB]

I enjoy powergrid. It has a built-in feature that gives the player with the most cities trouble, but that's pretty much that, it isn't easy to gang up, and it is quite hard to know who's winning anyways.

[penndog]

Is Carcassone like Settlers of Catan?  Because that game does not work out because I get the robber placed on me the most

Maybe I just need new friends LOL

[Wingnut]

I would second the recommendation of Agricola from a couple of posts up. I also enjoy Ticket to Ride (either Europe or Marklin) depending on the group I am playing with.

[skrotkanon]

Roborally has little of this. Like Dominion it has a little
bit of luck from the shuffle but it's still mostly skill
and mindgames that determines the winner.
Dominion probably has the upper hand when it comes
to that but Roborally is still an amazing game, my
favourite when playing more than two.

[DsnowMan]

Space Alert. *drool*

Cooperative space awesomeness. It's better than pandemic in my books.

[lefaiison]

If you're winning 90% of the time, then your opponents need to get better!  Also, when asking for recommendations, I would suggest being a little more specific.  Are time constraints an issue?  How many players?  Complexity?  It's funny that you win so many dominion games, because I find it's one of the toughest games to win consistently (luck factor + winning player goes last the next game).

Are time constraints an issue?  I love Agricola, but it's a longer game (generally 30 minutes per player, so 4 player game = 2 hours).  It's also a more complex game so skill plays a large role in the game.  (Agricola is one game where I win fairly consistently). 

For a simpler game, I enjoy 7 Wonders.  It's a quick game (30 mins), and can play 3-7.  (I think there are rules for 2p as well, but it's a variant and plays differently from the norm)

[guided]

Agricola: unless the other players all form a deliberate pact to play equally sub-optimally to defeat you, there's little to no possibility for ganging up. If one person were to defect from the pact they would whomp on the other members of the pact. Even if they successfully held pact discipline, you'd probably win if you're just better at games than them.

Brass: A deliberate pact to attack you can eat into your lead a little bit, but likely won't defeat you if you play significantly better than anyone else. Good Brass play involves a couple of key "attacking" moves that are routinely deployed against whomever is in the lead, and this is an important element of the game's richness.

Power Grid, Troyes: There is no way for anyone to target a specific player without completely sabotaging their own best interests.

[drg]

Simple games are probably best when dealing with large variance in skill levels. As such, you could try the card game craits (or creights) which is based off of crazy eights with some extra action in the cards.

I play this game when in a group with large differences in skill level, as it's fairly random and quick paced, and it is not really a targeting game, although you can somewhat.

Mexican train dominoes also works, there's some thought in it for people who grasp games, but the basics are really simple and there is no choice targeting at all. 

Wikipedia will show the rules for either.

[Not a Cylon]

Power Grid, Troyes: There is no way for anyone to target a specific player without completely sabotaging their own best interests.

Well, in Power Grid, you can gang up on someone by buying extras of the resources they need, and this will hurt them more than you because of how resources get expensive when scarce (real-life economics FTW!). But this only works on whoever's “ahead” at the moment (since they buy last), so it only tends to happen to the one who deserves it OTOH, a good player can make sure they're not nominally “ahead” until the very end, which makes for some fun and deep strategy.

(Though since time constraints are being discussed here, I should note that this is a long game. Three hours for 4-5 players, easily. Four if a certain person I know is playing …)

[guided]

Well, in Power Grid, you can gang up on someone by buying extras of the resources they need

And if you do this, it's either a bad move for you or it's a good move for you. If we restrict ourselves to games where nobody can ever do anything that harms anyone else's position, we're not going to have many things left over to play.

I would add that situations where it's truly a good move to buy up resources you don't plan to ever use are quite rare, even if you are somehow tracking at all times exactly how much money everyone has. It's never a good move unless it actually prevents someone from powering a plant this turn--which means either depleting the resource they need so there aren't enough left or by costing them $1-$2 extra (or whatever) when they simply did not have $1-$2 extra to spend on resources.

If on the other hand you're buying resources with the intent of using them on a later turn, this is simply playing the market, an element of good strategy you should consider each and every turn regardless of who's winning. There may be (also rare) situations where you only choose to buy extra resources for next turn because it prevents someone from winning the game this turn... but again, that's harming someone else to increase your own chances of winning, which is how games are played!

[ycz6]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Race for the Galaxy yet, that's the game I see compared to Dominion most often. You know, on the Internet and stuff. It's got a similar style of indirect interaction and "powering up" as Dominion, and it's even got some of the same people on its staff.

[Axe Knight]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Race for the Galaxy yet, that's the game I see compared to Dominion most often. You know, on the Internet and stuff. It's got a similar style of indirect interaction and "powering up" as Dominion, and it's even got some of the same people on its staff.

It was mentioned in the other thread.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=13.msg86#msg86

rrenaud is apparently quite a virtuoso at that too

[drg]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Race for the Galaxy yet, that's the game I see compared to Dominion most often. You know, on the Internet and stuff. It's got a similar style of indirect interaction and "powering up" as Dominion, and it's even got some of the same people on its staff.

If his friends are getting dominated at dominion, I don't think race for the galaxy is a good idea...

[ShuffleNCut]

POT LIMIT OMAHA!  (seriously it's the best)

[timchen]

Power grid is actually an easy game to gang up in some sense. I remember a while a go I have played some 3-player games on BSW with my girl friend and some random player. You can imagine how we block the third guy in the initial stage of the game!

Also although not really a ganging up situation, I found it fairly often that a player who fails to win can decide who will win the game.

[guided]

Also although not really a ganging up situation, I found it fairly often that a player who fails to win can decide who will win the game.

This is definitely true sometimes. I've been on both the winning and losing end of this phenomenon in Power Grid games, and even when I lose I take it as a moral victory that I could easily have won. If you're in this position it means you played well! Some others may have a more difficult time taking this attitude....

[Davio]

I like Puerto Rico a lot.



In this game, every player chooses his own course and while there can be some "evil" moments, it is mostly fair.

It is about building your own city and farms and producing, selling and shipping goods.
This is like Agricola, you have your own domain and decide how to build your own domain.

What I like best about this game is that every turn, every player does something, this keeps the action going and you're not just waiting for your turn.
I will not go into specifics much, but basically a complete turn goes like this: One player is the starting player (this rotates clockwise after each complete turn) and chooses a character. He gets a bonus from choosing that character and performs the action defined by that character. Every other player then performs the same action without the benefit. Then the next player chooses a character and everything is repeated. Once every player has chosen a character and gained the bonus and performed the actions, the starting player token rotates and you start again with the new starting player going first.
There is one character that doesn't have a bonus or action for the other players though.

You can get "lucky" because other players may choose sub-optimal or "unlucky" when another player chooses something that will only hurt you and not help him. If you are careful, you can prevent this from happening by investing in some buildings which protect you against these choices.

This game is very similar to Agricola in the fact that you are building on your own plate, but the mechanic of choosing actions is somewhat different and refreshing.

[Arya Stark]

ooh I love Puerto Rico!! Ive only been playing it a couple of months now, I think I would like it more than dominion if the games didnt take so long 

[DG]

There's also of course San Juan, a card game derivative of Puerto Rico that is a decent game in it's own right. In fact, if you've heard good things about Race for the Galaxy but don't fancy teaching your friends all the complicated symbols and cards, then just buy San Juan instead since it has the same underlying rules but can be taught and played quickly.

[guided]

Puerto Rico is the game that got me into hardcore Euros. It's still great, but the problem is you simply can't play it with newbies, because even one person who isn't savvy to at least intermediate PR strategy completely ruins the game: the person to the left of the worst player will win, period. Every person at the table needs to have a solid understanding of the game before individual skill becomes the determining factor for victory. Even if someone is a solid Euro gamer with a keen sense of strategy, it's going to take them maybe a half dozen plays to get up to speed.

I used to play games with a cohesive, dedicated group, and we learned PR together and had an awesome time with it. It's a great game if everybody at the table knows what they're doing. These days I play with a rotating cast of gamers with an insatiable appetite for new games, so rarely am I playing any one game more than once every few months, and most people aren't PR strategy buffs.

Tigris & Euphrates has a similar problem: if there is even one bad player, it is utterly random which of the good players will win. The winner is whoever is summarily gifted the most points by bad players.

[Davio]

There's also of course San Juan, a card game derivative of Puerto Rico that is a decent game in it's own right. In fact, if you've heard good things about Race for the Galaxy but don't fancy teaching your friends all the complicated symbols and cards, then just buy San Juan instead since it has the same underlying rules but can be taught and played quickly.

San Juan serves well as an introduction game,  I played this with my brother and brother-in-law, neither of which are natural board gamers.
After a brief rule overview, we quickly played 3 games and every player won once.

[blackb]

I like Stone Age very much. It includes a nice balance between luck and strategy. Looking forward to the expansion.