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[questioneer]

Revolution and Catan are great but as far as short-time games with depth, replayability and value 7Wonders is probably the closest to Dominion status.

I really think that Dominion and 7Wonders are the new standard for successful games- easy to play, hard to master, replayable and fairly short ~30-40min tops with deeper strategies with the expansions.

Revolution and Catan take an hour so they aren't too bad.  Any game that takes over and hour will be hard to get people to play unless they are real gamers.

[ehunt]

i like galaxy trucker almost as much

[jotheonah]

THey had a copy of 7Wonders there, but it was always in use when I was there. Go figure.

[brokoli]

- 7 Wonders is almost as great as dominion. Without extension, it's already cool. But with Leaders and Cities, the game has a great replayability like Dominion with Intrigue or Seaside.
- Seasons is an excellent card game with strategies and combos.
- Race for the galaxy is very close to Dominion, but I don't really like it.

There are a lot of other very good boardgames, but more distant in term of mechanic.

[PenPen]

Been playing Dominion mostly lately (obviously). I also dabbled in some other board games too, I played Ticket to Ride a few times - it's quite easy to teach, yet it makes a fun competitive game. I also got the PC version off the Steam summer sale earlier for no reason. I'd say Ticket to Ride would be a very close competition to Dominion - easy to learn, hard to master, great fun.

I played Pandemic as well (for like half a dozen times) and it seemed like I'm the only one who was really interested in playing it (it was mostly played before I got to Dominion). As someone said above, for these co-op games it's very easy to have a dominant person take over the game and tell others to do blablabla, possibly ruining the experience. Pandemic also has the expansion (I forgot the name) that's pretty much a must-get if you want more roles to play with (I think it supports more people? I forgot) along with some alternate game modes.

I haven't played it with anyone yet, but I have a copy of Flash Point: Fire Rescue sitting along with my other games. I did a test run myself (since in my group I'm the guy explaining everything) and as a co-op game, I think it is as good as Pandemic, but the gameplay may be a little more complex with the fire spreading and wall destroying in comparison to Pandemic.

Power Grid is great but it also requires some calculations. It's not easy to get your head around the game initially (since the game runs in 3 phases instead of just one), but once you got the idea (that it's not just buying resources for yourself and make money off it), it's great. It works with pretty much as many players as it can allow. I wish I could play more.

I actually got around to play a more obscure game called Vinhos where you run a vineyard in Portugal and make wines. The board looks crazy, but it's actually not that intimidating, it just needs to be explained. I played this once with my friends and they think it's fun (even though we got like 2-3 minor things wrong). It's also a strategy game that requires some pre-planning. It's good, but getting non-board gamers to play after seeing the board is part of the challenge (or an initiation).

Me and my friends got to try 7 Wonders and it didn't click. They were like "Oh, you just pass cards around?" "Wait, what does this do again?" and lost interest in it quickly (the game was actually abandoned). Different strokes for different folks I suppose. They were much more receptive to Dominion, where they get more satisfaction immediately ("oooo I can use money to get more money!").

[theory]

I played Sunrise City this weekend and loved it.  Growing up, SimCity was one of my favorite computer games, and this brought back a lot of those memories.

It's not really that much like SimCity, but it scratches the itch close enough.

[DG]

Have a look at City Tycoon if you like city builders. It's not top drawer but it's good.

[Synthesizer]

I played Ascension a couple weeks ago and was dazzled by how it somehow managed to combine every aspect I hate about Dominion into a standalone game.

Opinions vary... which "aspects you hate" are you talking about? Ascension was my first deck builder and I still really like it...
It is not such a luck-fest as people claim - otherwise my wife wouldn't beat me this often! (i.e. better players win more than their fair share, but much less than 100% of all games)

Apart from the deckbuilding mechanic, it is quite different from Dominion though, I agree with that. There is no such concept as "actions" or "buys" - you can play any card you have from your hand any time during the main phase of your turn, and can buy or gain as many cards as you can afford. This makes for very quick ramp up of decks, and it eliminates dead-draws. You can switch between buying and drawing etc. and back again for as much as you like...

In Dominion you purchase "cards that do stuff (which might also give you money)" and "cards that just give you money", both of which will help you get "cards that don't do stuff, but provide points". In Ascension, almost all cards provide effects, points as well as currency. There are two types of currency: runes  and power. You spend runes to acquire new cards for your deck, and power to kill monsters. Each cards is worth points but it's not dead, it "does stuff" (i.e. give you runes and/or power, as well as draw, gain, trash or throne-room-like effects, or anything I haven't thought of now). Killing a monster will get you bonuses as well and will give you point tokens; this is a limited supply and the game ends when this supply is empty.

The supply works different from Dominion as well - there are always 6 randomly dealt cards in a "marketplace"; if you buy, kill or gain one, then that card is immediately replaced, so that you can also get its replacement during the same turn. All cards in the game are shuffled in one giant deck, which you don't typically run through during a game, so there is no guarantee that all your combo pieces will come up; the winner is mostly determined on reacting accordingly (and yes, you can win if the opponent gets turn 1 Arbiter of the Precipice and you don't). If there is nothing worthwile to buy or kill, there is a giant stack of vanilla money or power givers, as well as a limitless supply of a vanilla type of monster as consolation prizes.

The game lends itself to really big combo's which are very fun to play. Which is also its biggest weakness because these same combo's are a lot less fun to observe (ref: village-smithy-village-smithy-etc....-"Then I'm done with my action phase, so I'll play 7 coppers, and buy..., an..., (pause to think)..., I know, another village!" )

In addition, there is a world of difference between 2 players and more-than-2 players. There are a few monster-killing-effects that provide player interaction, but the bulk of the interaction is through the marketplace from which you can buy cards. In that respect, it's not so much a deck-building game as it is a "prevent your opponent from building a cohesive deck" game. i.e., you win not so much by what you get yourself, but by what you deny your opponent. And of course, this creates an unbalance with >2 players: either the one sitting to the left of the weakest player wins, or one player denies anything useful to his left neighbour while also eliminating himself -  such that player 3 wins.

I hear this is completely undone by using the 2v2 team rules provided you have 4 players; but I haven't tried those. After a few hundred games of Ascension, Dominion was gifted to us and it was the "new thing". In addition, the medieval-kingdom theme fares a lot better than the fantasy-world-elves-and-other-creatures-killing-monsters theme with our group of friends, so it takes loads of effort to get this game onto the table...

Oh well, just wanted to share my point of view.

[RichardNixon]

Imperial.

It isn't a card game, but it's a really good investment game cloaked as a war game with immense re-playability.

It's a stock investment game with tanks. What more could anyone possible need?

[blueblimp]

The game lends itself to really big combo's which are very fun to play.

Weird, I found the opposite about Ascension. (To be fair, I've only played it on the iPad vs an AI.)

There are very few cards that draw 2 or more cards, so you can't draw even a small deck. So your big combos are limited to tiny decks with lots of cantrips. But trashers mostly just trash one card at a time, so it takes ages to get to this deck size even if you are lucky enough to get an early trasher. And your opponent wants cantrips too, so it's not easy to load up on them.

The only reliable exception I've seen is the Storm of Souls expansion when the Enlightened event is up, when you can smack Fanatics to go through a ton of cards in one turn.

[Tombolo]

I've only played a few Ascension games, and those against an AI, but most of the time I managed to get to the point where I'd trashed everything I wanted to trash and had to stop using the forced trash cards.  I wound up being able to play my deck in most of those games.

[chwhite]

Imperial.

It isn't a card game, but it's a really good investment game cloaked as a war game with immense re-playability.

It's a stock investment game with tanks. What more could anyone possible need?

I've always described Imperial as thus (warning, quasi-RSP content ahead):

"It is Spring, 1901.  And you are Halliburton."

It is one of the most cynical and subversive games I've ever played, and it's fantastic.  It's been years since I've had a chance to play it, though.  Need to fix that.

[Archetype]

I really enjoy Acquire.

It's an extremely fun, but old game, like Diplomacy, that's been remade by Avalon Hill.

It's a very smart, tile-placing game based on the Stock Market.

The game flows really smoothly and strategies can change at the placing at a tile, and you never know who's winner until it's over.

The problem is, it can cause a bit of AP over which tile to lay (even though usually it won't matter) or which share to buy (even though they aren't majority or minority).

Has anyone else played it?

[Axxle]

I've played Ascension a few times, it always seems impossible to slim down your deck with the few trash cards that come up.  There's like maybe 4 that show up per game that only trash one card from hand or discard.  That takes too long especially with how fast the game goes with 4 players.

[Synthesizer]

The game lends itself to really big combo's which are very fun to play.

Weird, I found the opposite about Ascension. (To be fair, I've only played it on the iPad vs an AI.)

There are very few cards that draw 2 or more cards, so you can't draw even a small deck. So your big combos are limited to tiny decks with lots of cantrips. But trashers mostly just trash one card at a time, so it takes ages to get to this deck size even if you are lucky enough to get an early trasher. And your opponent wants cantrips too, so it's not easy to load up on them.

The only reliable exception I've seen is the Storm of Souls expansion when the Enlightened event is up, when you can smack Fanatics to go through a ton of cards in one turn.

It is true that there are not many cards that draw loads of cards, and that trashers don't trash many cards. But this is completely offset by the fact that dead draw doesn't exist, there is no need to buy any cards that are completely dead (Estates, Duchies and Provinces in Dominion) and there are loads of cards that draw one card (no really, if you missed them, you had a messed up game). The constructs (these are like durations, except they stay out) help you to keep a slim-enough deck. It is true that often you don't draw your whole deck; but is that really necessary? In Dominion it is a good thing usually, because it guarantees consistency, but in Ascension the Center Row (the marketplace) keeps changing so much that consistency doesn't really pay off anyway. Perhaps you made the mistake I make too often: can't afford/want to buy anything from the center row, buy a bunch of Heavy Infantry and/or Mystics, such that I get bogged down and return to step 1: can't afford/want to buy anything from the center row.
In Dominion that might happen as well: you are trying to build an engine, have 3$ and a buy, do you buy a silver, a herbalist, a chancellor, or do you take the secret option: nothing? Heavy Infantry and Mystics have pretty much a similar effect on your Ascension deck as a silver has on your Dominion deck!

I only own base (Chronicle of the Godslayer) and Return of the Fallen (and my telephone can only be used for old-fashioned stuff, such as talking to people who are not near you , and by the end of the game I am usually chaining stuff up, barring the rare circumstance where I completely messed up, or where I loaded up on constructs too much and someone else manages to keep killing sea tyrants and corrosive widows, or similar situations.  Please do note: everything I talk about is 2 player. Haven't played more than a handful of games with >2 players, and none with experienced opponents.


EDIT: what I don't think came across good enough: it's still chaining even if it doesn't draw your whole deck.

[Jorbles]

There's been a lot of talk about Ascension, but I'm curious what people have to say about Quarriors (the dice-deck building game)? I played it and thought it had neat mechanics, but I thought the game ramped up really quickly, and it was over before we really got to get our dice to do much of the neat things I wanted them to. I was playing 2 player and there's a greater likelihood of your creatures living to the scoring phase in 2p because less people are attacking you. Does the game balance itself out to a slower more strategic game with more players? 2p seemed kinda borked.

[Axxle]

I found quarriors ends much too quickly, even in a larger group. It never really feels like I built a deck before it's over.

[Insomniac]

There's been a lot of talk about Ascension, but I'm curious what people have to say about Quarriors (the dice-deck building game)? I played it and thought it had neat mechanics, but I thought the game ramped up really quickly, and it was over before we really got to get our dice to do much of the neat things I wanted them to. I was playing 2 player and there's a greater likelihood of your creatures living to the scoring phase in 2p because less people are attacking you. Does the game balance itself out to a slower more strategic game with more players? 2p seemed kinda borked.

This is true of most Quarriors games, with the expansion it slows down a bit sometimes but its normally over as it begins.

[shMerker]

I really enjoy Acquire.

It's an extremely fun, but old game, like Diplomacy, that's been remade by Avalon Hill.

It's a very smart, tile-placing game based on the Stock Market.

The game flows really smoothly and strategies can change at the placing at a tile, and you never know who's winner until it's over.

The problem is, it can cause a bit of AP over which tile to lay (even though usually it won't matter) or which share to buy (even though they aren't majority or minority).

Has anyone else played it?

I love Acquire. You get to wave around fat stacks of cash like in Monopoly but unlike in Monopoly you get to make a lot of meaningful decisions and the game moves pretty steadily toward a definite conclusion.

I think it's honestly pretty ok to be sort of cavalier about tile-placement a lot of the time. What's important about the tiles is they give you some information about where the market is headed in the short term and also let you exert some influence over when a particular deal takes place. I've had games where I got an important merger tile early on and just held it until the end of the game. Meanwhile two other players bought up all the stock in both chains, assuming a merger would be right around the corner, and ended up having to just sit on it.

[Polk5440]

I really enjoy Acquire.

It's an extremely fun, but old game, like Diplomacy, that's been remade by Avalon Hill.

It's a very smart, tile-placing game based on the Stock Market.

The game flows really smoothly and strategies can change at the placing at a tile, and you never know who's winner until it's over.

The problem is, it can cause a bit of AP over which tile to lay (even though usually it won't matter) or which share to buy (even though they aren't majority or minority).

Has anyone else played it?

I love Acquire. You get to wave around fat stacks of cash like in Monopoly but unlike in Monopoly you get to make a lot of meaningful decisions and the game moves pretty steadily toward a definite conclusion.

I think it's honestly pretty ok to be sort of cavalier about tile-placement a lot of the time. What's important about the tiles is they give you some information about where the market is headed in the short term and also let you exert some influence over when a particular deal takes place. I've had games where I got an important merger tile early on and just held it until the end of the game. Meanwhile two other players bought up all the stock in both chains, assuming a merger would be right around the corner, and ended up having to just sit on it.

I also love Acquire. It's fun and plays in a reasonable amount of time (usually about 45 minutes to an hour for me). Some people don't like the accounting aspect of it, though (calculating stock value all the time). That's much more of a concern than AP when deciding whether to pick it up and play. I would not categorize Acquire as one that has so many decisions it induces AP.

[ConMan]

One other game I really liked when I was younger was Bang.  It's partially a hidden information game, like Mafia.  Anyone familiar with it?  More recently I've been playing a Chinese rip-off of it called San Guo Sha.  While it is largely a re-themed carbon-copy, it actually makes the game so much more fun via the myriad of different characters.

I played San Guo Sha once. It was a bit difficult, since I know approximately 15 words of Mandarin, none of which were particularly helpful in reading the cards, but I was teamed up with my girlfriend (who is Singaporean) against some other Singaporeans of varying skill levels in the game. I can imagine that if I had the full translation of all the cards in front of me it's a pretty cool variation on Bang.

I am a huge fan of Innovation, but it is definitely a game that will not be to everyone's tastes - almost every turn the board can change drastically, so it's much more of a tactical game than a strategic one. I haven't been brave enough to get the "Echoes of the Past" expansion as I haven't heard fantastic things about it - mostly that it tries to introduce about 3 new mechanics at once - but the second expansion, "Figures in the Sand", sounds like it might be a bit better.

[Axxle]

I know approximately 15 words of Mandarin

I know all 22 words of mandarin:

Put
a
card
from
your
hand
on
top
of
deck
When
you
gain
this
all
Treasures
have
in
play
any
order


Oh, and "Action"

[Morgrim7]

Hey, guys, has this been mentioned before? I'm to lazy to go read 6 pages, I have mafia for that, but does anyone here like Chess?

[PenPen]

One other game I really liked when I was younger was Bang.  It's partially a hidden information game, like Mafia.  Anyone familiar with it?  More recently I've been playing a Chinese rip-off of it called San Guo Sha.  While it is largely a re-themed carbon-copy, it actually makes the game so much more fun via the myriad of different characters.

I played San Guo Sha once. It was a bit difficult, since I know approximately 15 words of Mandarin, none of which were particularly helpful in reading the cards, but I was teamed up with my girlfriend (who is Singaporean) against some other Singaporeans of varying skill levels in the game. I can imagine that if I had the full translation of all the cards in front of me it's a pretty cool variation on Bang.

I am a huge fan of Innovation, but it is definitely a game that will not be to everyone's tastes - almost every turn the board can change drastically, so it's much more of a tactical game than a strategic one. I haven't been brave enough to get the "Echoes of the Past" expansion as I haven't heard fantastic things about it - mostly that it tries to introduce about 3 new mechanics at once - but the second expansion, "Figures in the Sand", sounds like it might be a bit better.

I can read Chinese without problems (even though it's in simplified Chinese, which takes me a bit of time to decipher because I learnt traditional Chinese) and while I can tell that San Guo Sha started off as a rip-off/copycat of Bang, they expanded upon the game with additional characters and mechanisms. There's like 6 character expansion packs out there at a speed of around 1-2 expansions each year (at around 5-8 new characters per expansion). The pace of expansions slowed down now (because it's like uber popular in China and they host annual tourneys and stuff based on a 3v3 variation of the game which feels like what they're focused on now), but the popularity never waned. In fact they actually had fan card contests from last year and earlier this year, and the winners get their cards (re-balanced) as an expansion pack. Pretty nifty idea (I wish Dominion has an expansion set like that in the future).

The problem with San Guo Sha is that you really need at least 5 people to play the game with its functions and balance out the roles. I suppose you can play with 4, but the balance felt a bit gimped. It also has an issue where if you selected a character that's perceived as strong (eg someone who has awesome firepower), you're likely to get killed off really early as a result, because most of the focus would be on you. Players who got killed off will have a pretty long time of watching the game unfold, which can drag on for pretty long, especially if one of the characters have a pretty good defense or survival mechanism.

The game isn't bad at any rate - the role guessing, the chemistry happening between characters and the interactions make it good. But I wouldn't say it's the best game in the world, by far...it needs a mid to large group of people to start with and there's quite a lot of dead time for players who got eliminated. It's my preference to play something that can keep other players engaged at all times instead.

[jotheonah]

Axxle, that joke was bad and you should feel bad.

Although I did +1 it, because I have a love/hate relationship with puns.