Why is your favourite game, your favourite game?

Yes. More if you have 4 players. I’ve read that people who know it well can confidently play it at around 1 hour per player on a table (it’s faster real-time on the app), but realistically you’ll need plenty of time, especially when learning. And there are quite a lot of little exceptions like leader powers that need to be checked for/remembered all the time… so the experience investment before you can play fast is quite high. It’s amazing, but it’s also demanding.

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I feel like I could play it lightning fast, but that’s after dozens of games on the app and a comprehensive understanding of the bookkeeping, which the app doesn’t really impart. I don’t know many other people who could do the same though.

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My favourite game is one from my teens: the original GW 1st edition of The Fury of Dracula. I love the setting and closeness to the story plus it was one of the first cooperative (well, bar one player) games we played. The hidden movement mechanic was great too, although I was keen player of Scotland Yard from my childhood already.

We didn’t get too many games out of it with my schoolfriends at the time, as we had some many titles we enjoyed, but two games in particular stand out. The first, when I was playing Dracula and got my six vampires placed without the others getting anywhere close to me. The second was when playing as Van Helsing and being pounced on an overly confident Dracula at night. He snatched my stake away in the first combat round, then went in for a bite on the second round, but hadn’t expected me to have a second stake with me. Adios, Diablo!

I might pick up the latest version if I get back to playing games woth other people, but still have the first edition classic, even if its components are aging now.

A close second was the American Football strategy game Statis Pro Football. Some great games and leagues played with my school friends in the late 80s and early 90s with that.

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War of the Ring. Been playing it with my friend Paul, every ten games we added in expansion elements. Lords, then Warriors, then Council of Rivendell. We’ve joined it up with Hunt for the Ring, we’ve played 30+ times now. Before that, I’d played a good dozen games with my sister - so I had the upper hand against Paul, but it’s been amazing with him learning the ropes as the Free Peoples - we’ve never changed allegiances. He’s been clawing back the wins, so now I’m only two ahead in our cumulative victory leader tally!

It’s a remarkable system mechanically - so robust, full of excruciating choices from round to round. It creates a new twist on the narrative each game - the last one was the first time Paul tried playing ‘The Western Way’ card (catching a ship south from The Grey Havens). Made it all the way to Mount Doom but perished just before dunking the ring.

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This kinda depends on my mood, but overall, if my wife walked up to me and said "I’ll watch the baby – aka our 2.5 year old daughter. Not technically a baby anymore, but I’ll probably always call her baby. I still call our basically 17-year-old daughter (birthday is in two weeks) old “Kiddo” even though she’s practically an adult – today, and you can play games all day then the game I’d play is Twilight Imperium 4th Edition.

I love that game, even though I haven’t been able to play it in over a year. I just love the spectacle of it all. I love that it’s realistically not as complicated as it sounds, and it’s definitely a game you get out of it what you put in. If you just half-ass it, you likely won’t have much fun.

After that, my current favorite game that I can actually get to the table frequently is Aeon’s End. Deck builders have always been a hit with my group and me, and it’s nice that Aeon’s End is a really good one, while also being a great co-op monster fighting game. I find the breach mechanic to be really interesting, and not having to shuffle was a godsend when I used to have to play with a sleeping baby in my arms.

I just feel it’s generally packed with more interesting decisions than most other deck builders, other than maybe our group’s other favorite Trains.

Race for the Galaxy was my favorite for years, and I still love it, but it’s dropped below those other two. Still, it’s faster and easier to set up, so if we’re in the mood for something quicker, it’s likely to hit the table.

And our favorite fast, small games at the moment are The Mind and Illusion. They’re both fantastic, with The Mind being better for small groups, and Illusion being surprisingly good even at large player counts.

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40 posts were split to a new topic: Aeon’s End: what is it like and why should I care?

This sounds fantastic, like the perfect way to play. I would absolutely grab a copy if I had a friend who was up for really committing to the game. Unfortunately the prime candidate has moved to the other side of the Atlantic…

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WotR was on sale from an OLGS last year but I could not justify it, so I tried going in halvsies with our friends, but they decided to just buy it outright. I really want to play it at some point, but figure we need an afternoon with no kids (and lack of a pandemic) to give it a go, and I just don’t see that happening anytime soon.

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FoD was one of my faves from my high school gaming club. The teacher always played Dracula and often gave us quite the chase across Europe. I liked the different victory conditions, despite them drawing out the game, and I feel like we only rarely finished the game in our alloted time for the club.

Best memory of it was one of us getting Newspaper Reports(?) which makes a Dracula reveal his location. In response, the teacher used a card to teleport to a different location, at which point the same player revealed the second Newspaper Reports card he had just drawn. The teacher was pretty frustrated. :slight_smile:

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I love a lot of games, but I think there’s a consistent trend for my absolute favorite experiences:
They involve powering up my character and having unique special abilities, ideally in assymmetric coop with lots of modular parts so each game experience is different. Bonus for having strong narrative but that does tend to limit overall replay. So:
Before Good Games ™, my favorite was Talisman. Fighting monsters, levelling up, getting cool loot and followers, and every character has unique rules-breaking special abilities (though some much less than others). Sure, it’s basically just rolling and moving, and you have hardly any interesting decisions, and it could take 8 hours, but by golly, nothing else offered anything quite like that, so I was still hooked.
Then Fantasy Flight came out with Arkham Horror, Second Edition. And suddenly there was actual decision-making, and a cool theme, and lots of swappable components like Ancient One, sideboards, varied encounter decks, characters, etc etc. Plus still plenty of advancement and getting fun toys to play with. Okay, it’s still pretty random, and it breaks if you add more than a couple expansions at once and god, removing them was a pain. But hey. Still a revelation. Gonna be honest, I’m not sure any of their followups have quite supplanted this one for me, even though I don’t own it and most of them are objectively better games. For this sort of experience, Eldritch Horror is probably better overall, but it’s so hard to get around and it uses the same dice odds with much, much smaller dicepools, so it can be a touch frustrating. Arkham Horror LCG is really good…but it’s expensive and I hate building decks. Mansions of Madness is just really altogether a different thing (and great). I haven’t tried 3rd edition AH but it seems to limit replay a little too much and it still has barely been expanded. And Elder Sign I think is just terrible.
Which brings us to probably my ongoing favorite: Mage Knight. Unlike Talisman and Arkham Horror this is a straight up brilliant, mindbendingly challenging design with all sorts of incredibly cool upgrades to get, still remarkably asymmetric. And of course fully coop with the first expansion. it takes forever, so I’ve rarely played it, but every game has been so, so satisfying.
But Gloomhaven and Tainted Grail are very close contenders. Gloomhaven has the single best tactical combat implementation and class design I’ve seen in a boardgame and there are plenty of compelling advancement options during the course of the campaign. It might have overtaken Mage Knight for me, I’m not sure? I’m not sure it’s quite as smart a puzzle (Mage Knight combat is much less involved, though), and it takes much longer for hits of progression. But individual sessions are much more manageable and it’s got an actual story, even if it’s not the most amazing one. Tainted Grail is probably the best narrative play I’ve encountered in a boardgame. Great writing, lots of hard choices, lots of writing, and character development is satisfying and plays a clear role, plus there’s character specific content and mutually exclusive storylines so there’s still replay. And the combat and diplomacy encounters are still pretty satisfying puzzles, too. I don’t rate it quite as highly as Mage Knight or Gloomhaven because I don’t think it’s quite as tight a design. Really good, but still shakier. And right now at least, there is just plain less of it than Gloomhaven.

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My favorite game is Supremacy. And it’s my favorite because it’s absolutely mental. I have a comprehensive collection that consists of: a 1st ed, 2nd ed, 3rd ed, Mega Map, every expansion (except for the miniatures which I have no interest in), a copy of the companion Rollout economic game, a loose leaf binder of the Mega-Supremacy rules (that expand the game from 6 players to 6 teams of 4 players each), and a bespoke 3 ft x 4 ft Mega Map that I had printed on durable vinyl. Supremacy has lots of problems, especially the market mechanism, but those can be house-ruled. Regardless, I absolutely love it.

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Interestingly, I recently learned through a BGG forum that Supremacy Games actually stole the design, which originally had simultaneous, Diplomacy-style hidden movement, and dice-free combat. Robert Simpson was a play tester for the original game and just stole what he liked about it, beating the actual designer to market. What a jerk! :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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And my streak of commenting on other people’s favorites rather than posting my own continues!

Talisman was a long time favorite for me, simply because one friend and I would play a lot. We would each take one Good, one Neutral, and one Evil character at random and play the alignments as teams trying to beat the other characters. It would take hours, but it was glorious!

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Beautiful post! Yeah, Arkham Horror 2nd Edition was the second game I bought (after Pandemic) when I was discovering modern board games. It was a BEAST to learn from that rulebook, with additional printed flowcharts for every phase, and reference sheets. Holy moly though - it was like a Pandemic coop puzzle, with CHARACTERS… and stuff happened to them, and if you squinted enough you could create a wonderful narrative for each character. Ashcan Pete discovering he was actually an Innsmouthian fish person while he watched an orphan Wendy being devoured whole in a bookshop by a Moon Beast was especially fun.

It’s generated more fun for me than perhaps any other game. Mansions of Madness 1st Edition was great too - and while Eldritch Horror and the next editions of Arkham and Mansions ‘streamlined’ the whole affair, they also sucked a lot of the personal connection to your character, the joy, and the terror out of them.

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Yes Talisman was one of our early favourites too and we started playing it at about the same time we started playing D&D - the red box “Basic” set when about 10 or 11.

There were “Good Games” around that time too: Scotland Yard and Survive (now called Escape from Atlantis) were 80s childhood favourites, plus I was already playing some of my Dad’s games from the 60s - Exploration I remember particularly fondly, plus Avalon Hill titles Gettysburg and Blitzkrieg.

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When people ask ‘what is your favourite game?’ I struggle as I have a top clutch that is my favourite depending on who I am with.

That said:

Brass: Lancashire is a fabulous interactive cutthroat design. The interaction usually results in net positive on both sides so it’s about edging the positives more towards you.

Codenames as I can teach this by just playing.

Carcassonne has a special place as it’s the great survivor from my first batch of games.

Ra is everything I want in an auction game (apart from the theme)

Quantum is a fantastic tight game. Doesn’t need anything adding or taking away.

Power Grid is my go to game for next steps and will play anytime.

El Grande, best with a full 5 but you don’t need any other area control game (unless you play with three).

I’ve just realised I’ve done a top 7 games in my collection

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I’ve enjoyed playing Onitama and in my teens played a great deal of Car Wars and Ogre, but I’m not sure I have a favourite boardgame. Tina loves them, but I struggle with the rules and competitive aspects. I think that’s why the open nature of RPGs attracted me so strongly.

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There are so many things on here that I’ve never played. I don’t know the Lovecraft stuff outside of gaming so thematically it doesn’t do much for me, but I can appreciate why games in that style are so well loved.

Aeon’s End sounds very interesting. Power Grid is something I fancy having a go at (although I bounced hard off Pipeline - I don’t think they’re too similar, but they’re linked in my head!). I really want to try Ra. We got Modern Art at Xmas and while I don’t think it’s a great game we always have a great time playing it.

I’ve got quite a lot of game that I want to play at 3,4 or 5 but circumstances mean it’s mainly my wife and I. I really like Age of Steam. Brass Birmingham seems like it should be great, but 5 plays in I’m still on the fence.

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I’ve been wanting to answer this since I saw the thread… love all your games and reasons for loving them :slight_smile:

There are certain aspects that are probably common to all games I really enjoy. So in order of importance these are what make my favorite games my favorites

  1. Puzzles/Combos: I can spend hours upon hours on a nice logical puzzle (Einstein puzzles are the
    best). And: never underestimate what years of playing MtG do to someone’s taste in games…
  2. Character/Tableau/Campaign development: even though I started “late” by now I’ve been a pen&paper roleplayer for 20+ years and anything that gives me that same feeling of change and advancement is great (also see next item)
  3. Unique player powers / asymmetry / multiple victory conditions: I like it when each player can choose a unique path to try and win, when everyone gets to have their own strategy or when there are alternate victory conditions (I know for most of you these things aren’t all going to be the same thing)
  4. Design/Material: a good game that also feels and looks good is a great game (1)
  5. Hex fields. As a forever Civilization (the computer game) player, hexes are like candy… and games where I can land-grab them are very tasty indeed.

My favorites have evolved over the years there is probably no “forever favorite” that I have. My boardgaming-as-a-hobby phase began with Terra Mystica some 10 years ago and so I have a lot of nostalgia for this game and it still hits a lot of the right buttons. I’d say in recent incarnations Root and Pax Pamir 2 scratch similar itches but I haven’t played either of the newer games enough to put them in fat print (yet).

Spirit Island is the master of combo and it has evolving player boards and unique powers and it’s just so yummy. Usually I buy expansions because I am a completionist, but in this case I am eagerly awaiting Jagged Earth because I’ve played the base game + 1 expansion so much I need new stuff!

Gloomhaven has it all. I got to it late last year around the same time after first watching SUSD reviews and the review actually helped along my buying decision. The big box and the fact it was #1 on BGG(2) made me avoid it for a long time. I don’t remember exactly what made me reconsider but I am glad I did. It also clicked with my partner for some of the same and some entirely different reasons and that is what makes it our most played game of the past 10 years!

The Crew it’s rather new but it has clicked with everyone around me and it’s got the puzzle aspect but distributed to everyone and also has this familiarity because I grew up with the German favorite trick taking game called “Skat” and it’s just that but backwards and coop and… what’s not to love. We’ve been playing this on TTS lately and I am just happy such an easy to learn game can have such depth that it can keep us occupied for so long. (3)

I could name more names and the actual games will change again… but these are the four want to name right now.

(1) you can argue with me that in my actual favorites this doesn’t seem to play a huge role, and your’re correct, none of these is famous for having the best artwork or luxurious materials. I know. What clicks is personal :wink:
(2) BBG’s top lists “merit” a discussion of their own
(3) I’ve noticed and it’s neither a surprise nor an accident that 3 out of 4 of my favorite games are coop games

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We love The Crew. It seems perfect for lockdown for some reason. It can get very tense. I like to ‘throw’ a hand on purpose early on to try to defuse people getting angry with each other for messing up. We’re stuck on a horrendous task at the moment.

Have the app of Terra Mystica but never played irl. I would love to try it, or Gaia Project.

Also, it sounds like you should try Aeon’s End. Aeon’s End: what is it like and why should I care?

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Is there an RPG which is your favourite? I know so little about any of the systems.

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