Currently, I've been playing board games which always have the same kind of (standard) mechanics (worker placement, card drafting, etc), which after a while, starts to feel kind of the same but what changes is the theme.

I'm looking for recommendations on board games which have unique mechanics. It could a completely new mechanic or simply a mechanic which already exists but then the game uses it with a twist.

For example:

• Trickerion use of worker placement but the workers have actually different values.

• Tzolk'in and the use of gears.

Everyone always refers to the coming of Eurogames a long time back, but I'm wondering about modern games. Where have they come? Where will they go? I'd say the art has gotten better, more eye-catching, but I'm more ambivalent about very recent (last five years) game mechanics.

This topic is part of a weekly series where we can talk about board games. Feel free to talk about any aspect of board gaming you'd like. Here are some potential talking points to get you started:

• Are you looking for a recommendation? Tell us a game you'd like, and we'll see if we can think of one that may suit you.
• Have you tried something new and want to chat about it? Tell us about why you like a particular board game!
• Did you have a particularly interesting tabletop gaming experience? Tell us about your 9-point swing in Catan, or the time you managed to finish off the entire village in Ultimate Werewolf!

This is a recurring thread in ~games.tabletop where we can talk about board games in a fun way. Feel free to discuss boardgames in any way you want! Each week I add a guiding topic / question, just to help things along:

What's the last game you played?

This is a recurring thread in ~games.tabletop where we can talk about board games in a fun way. Feel free to discuss boardgames in any way you want, but I like to add a bit of a hook each week to spice things up. Here's my hook for this thread:

What's one of your favourite board game and why?

Edit: I made the question a bit less hard to answer - instead of your absolute favourite, pick a favourite, and talk about it.

I'd love to see a recurring thread here in ~games.tabletop where we can talk about board games in a fun way. Here's my hook for this thread:

List one boardgame that you like, and we will suggest a boardgame that you may also like based on your one selection. Ideally, there will be an explanation for "why" as well.

Edit: I also encourage other people to post suggestions!

I'd love to see a recurring thread here in ~games.tabletop where we can talk about board games in a fun way. Since this is the second in series, my dream has become a reality! Here's my hook for this thread:

If someone were wanting to start creating a collection of board games, what one game would you suggest that they put in their collection, and why? To standardize the question a bit, let's assume that the person is relatively into board gaming already, so it's not "introduce someone to the basics of board games".

I'm not sure how many people here are into board games, but I figured I'd make a post about it. I'm going to be at dice tower con this week. I'm hoping to get a game of Blood on the Clocktower going. If you see a guy trying to gather people for a game of botc, that'll be me. Come say hi.

Hi there!

From time to time, me and wife enjoy playing 7 Wonders Duel on our weekends and we like that it's not that long because we always have to do other things. Of course, always playing the same game starts to get old (even though 7 Wonders Duel is quite great).

My wife was not totally excited by Jaipur, Santorini and Patchwork, for example. So, which board games would you recommend for two players where the playing time doesn't exceed 60 minutes? The board games don't need to be 2-player specific (like 7 Wonders Duel), though.

Edit: For future reference to other players. Besides the great recomendations in this post, I also found other very interesting 2-player games under 60 minutes. They are, Hanamikoji, Kodama Duo, Yokohama Duel and 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis. I actually bought Hanamikoji because it's so cheap and fast. Great game too!

With Essen Spiel 2018 arriving tomorrow, I was wondering what boardgames you guys are most anticipating.

I've listened to a bunch of podcasts and watched a bunch of top-10 most anticipated videos and there are a bunch of games that are getting me excited.

For example, Treasure Island, which I only found out about yesterday, looks pretty interesting to me. It involves one player hiding some treasure and the other players trying to seek it out (Scotland Yard style). The pirate hiding the treasure has to give out clues that may involve drawing areas on the may in dry-erase marker with a compass, like a ship's navigator.

However I'm most eagerly awaiting more detail on the forthcoming Capstone game, Pipeline and some more details on the Splotter expansion to Food Chain Magnate (even though I don't think it needs an expansion).

I was inspired to ask this because I see a lot of other groups like ~TV people have been doing periodic discussions, and I got to thinking it could work here too. Every now and then, we could hold a discussion on either a video game or board game, for example. If I were to start this up would anyone be interested?

Edit: Oh, and any suggestions for if I do start it up? What games I could start with etc?

Hello! I'm an avid fan of the board game Scythe and I've played quite a few games now. While everything seems very well balanced and thought out, no one in my group has ever managed a win using the Saxony faction. Some have come close, but never enough to beat Rusivet and Crimea (the usual victors). If there are some other Scythe fans here, what are your tips and tricks besides focusing on combat?

Some info on our general playstyle:

• Most people go for all their enlist actions
• Factions always have a star or two from combat in the end
• Everyone wants their factory card, all the time

Thanks!

EDIT: I'm going to play a game this evening, will report back on what went on.
EDIT #2: It turns out Saxony wasn't played becuase we used the expansion factions. Coupled with airships, I don't think I can explain it all!

Tonight we are having our weekly game night.
Recently i've been in love with Mottainai. Specially playing with my SO.

Lisboa and Agricola are still my favorites.

What are your favorite games right now?

Video games, board games, card games - whatever. I'm interested to know what you all have been playing recently.

I've been playing a lot of D&D recently. My players have just delved deep under an ancient keep to save an archaeologist from undead Tomb Spiders. I'm currently planning for this weeks game where they will hopefully encounter the giant spider brood mother.

On the video game front, I've been playing through Duke Nukem 3D. That's a game that's certainly made the test of time.

-LTADnD

I've recently played really good game of Secret Hitler, so I wanted to let you know about it. If you don't know Secret Hitler, it's great game and I'll briefly describe it below. You can play it online, for free, without ads at secrethitler.io (opensource). You can as well buy it, or even just download pdf, print it and play with paper cards!

Secret Hitler summary

Game for 5-10 players, tabletop. Players are divided to Fascists and Liberals. One of fascists is Hitler. Fascists knows who is who, but Liberals don't know anything. There is chancellor and president, players vote them and they elect laws (president receives 3 laws, 1 discards, 2 passes to chancellor, which discards 1 law and the other one passed). Fascists win, as 6 F laws passed or Hitler was elected as chancellor with 3 or more F laws. Liberals win, if 5 L laws passed or Hitler was killed. If you want to know more, watch some gameplay at YouTube, it's really interesting game about lying to people and manipulating them. And if you will be interested in the game, we might play it together online :-)

I was a Fascist. Right on the first turn as president, I got 3 Fascists laws and I selected Hitler as chancellor - I had to because of order and it would be suspicious not to do so. So I passed him the laws and he of course had to pass Fascist law. But then, he peaked (because 3rd F law passed) at top three cards and lied about it (said FFL, was FLL). Because of this, everyone, after few turns which revealed he lied, started suspecting him. When the liberals had 4 laws passed, I tried as hard as I could to defend Hitler - he just missclicked (no, he would told us!), you know it. After about 10 minute discussion, my propose was rejected, someone else elected as Chancellor and Liberals won the game.

Leave your own stories in comments and be sure to tell, if you would like to play this with other people here, it's wonderful game. And if you would like to, I have other stories - for example when we (IRL) played Secret Hitler to 3 AM, and at the last but one turn, everyone went extremely suspicious and we played one turn almost hour and half (I don't lie about this, I started to measure it after 20 minutes of discussion).

I play boardgames weekly, mainly what is called euro games that focus on building engines to accumulate points by the end of the game and typically at the heavier end of the gamut too. (The word heavy is used to describe games that have either long, complicated rulesets or complex strategy, or both. It's a somewhat subjective term.)

Trickerion is one of my top-ten games, if not my favourite. It's very thematic (Victorian era magicians competing for fame by performing tricks), the blind worker assignment mechanism it uses is very tense and it's possible to undermine an opponent's strategy by learning a trick they were clearly aiming for, or removing the materials they need from the marketplace. Best of all, there is this very dramatic end game crescendo as everyone rushes to the theatre to perform their most spectacular tricks.

That said, the rule-set is pretty heavy and the theatre scoring is a bit fiddly, so I couldn't recommend the game to someone who hasn't played many modern boardgames already. But if you're of a technical/financial disposition or have experience with middle to heavy boardgames already then I'd say dive in there whilst you can.

The original game was launched on Kickstarter in 2015. The new edition Kickstarter includes options for the expansion, the upgrade kit or the full deal with everything including the original game.

(I'm not affiliated with the game in any fashion, just enjoy playing it, though I did once witness the designer playtesting the expansion at the London on Board Meetup group and had a short chat with him.)

Most of my friends and my husband love board games- the more complicated, the better! My whole life, many board games have given me pretty bad anxiety to the point where I pretended I hated them rather than admit I was just scared.

Over the past few years, I have found a few games I don't mind playing- mostly cooperative (Sentinels of the Multiverse, Betrayal at House on the Hill) or anonymous ones (Cards Against Humanity, Jackbox Games). I still have a hard time playing strategy games like Catan or Ticket to Ride; games which involve guessing what others will do like Rook or The Resistance make me want to die.

A lot of times, my friends just want to sit around and play board games, and I'm trying to build up a list of games I like to play so I can join in. Any advice for getting used to them/learning to play in advance, or games that are fun for serious board gamers, but still sort of low pressure?

Thanks!