New Games and an Idea

This week Jen and I acquired two new games: Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride. Both are considered classics in the gaming community and after playing a few times I’m surprised that they weren’t already in our collection. These are top tier gateways into boardgaming that I now heartily agree should be in everyone’s closet. Seriously, go buy these right away definitely. Right now. Do it.

While we were playing the other night, we came up with an idea for Baby D. Every game comes with three quick stats: number of players, time to play, and appropriate ages. For example, Ticket to Ride is 2-5 players, 30-60min play time, for ages 8 and up.

The idea: If we purchase the right combination of games, we could have a board game for every age of Baby D. We could then celebrate each birthday with an inaugural introductory game… It’s like a gaming graduation each year! I LOVE THIS.

The problem is that certain ages are less common, probably because of marketing purposes. Games for ages 9+ and 11+ are much more rare than 10+; probably because everybody just rounds it off. FiveThirtyEight has a fun list HERE of kid-friendly games and their recommended ages. This will be a good start.

BTDubs, here are a few favorites of our collection with a quick pro/con

Dominion – Exceptional replay value, easy to learn/some strategies are annoying and slow the game down big time
Power Grid – Incredible depth, lots of strategy options/long game and long setup
Pandemic – Clever Co-operative play/prone to quarterbacking if one player is more experienced
Acquire – DEEP and immersive/can’t really be played with two people

If you have other gaming recommendations, please throw them into the comments

Last and not least: no board game post should exist without a link to BoardGameGeek.com

 

11 thoughts on “New Games and an Idea

  • 4/6/2016 at 10:52 am
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    Have you played Race for the Galaxy? It continues to be my favorite and it plays so well with two people it gets a lot of play still. You are a bit more social than us, but Tom and I have definitely had to focus on two player games in the past few years, it’s hard to get out and play games with other people with kids and bedtimes. We’ve been played Splendor a lot recently, plays great with two people, have never played it with more.

    For the younger set Memory is a good early game. Corbin is not great at sitting and playing games so I don’t have any real life examples, I could list all the games he has rejected, but that is not any fun.

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    • 4/6/2016 at 12:55 pm
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      I only played Race for the Galaxy one, and it was with you and Tom!! I recall it being fun, though is it intimidating to newer gamers? I recall that RftG WAY up on the best of bests on boardgamegeek.com. Maybe we’ll give it another shot next time we go to our local boardgame place!

      What’s Splendor? I know nothing about that game

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      • 4/6/2016 at 9:25 pm
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        Yes, Race for the Galaxy is not a game that is not much fun until you have played through 3-4 times. You really need to get to know the cards and a handle on the symbols and instructions on the cards, but once you do it’s fun and not difficult and plays excellently with two people. Also it packs up small so it’s easy to travel with. Tom and I frequently spend our babysitter time out at the library playing board games, so it’s nice to have small games to pack up and take with us.

        Splendor is a really simple game with cards and coins and you choose to get coins or buy cards on your turn and rack up victory points. Easy to play and way more fun than we expected it to be. It’s been our go to game since December. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148228/splendor

        Our three main game criteria recently are: 1. plays well with two people, 2. can play in 45 minutes or less, 3. packs up easily

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  • 4/6/2016 at 2:12 pm
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    I love Pandemic!

    Also, have you heard about Pandemic Legacy: Season 1?

    It’s a year-long game where you play each month, and there are twists in the game (eg: viruses mutate!), and the results of each month impact the rest of the year. The rules change, you can earn upgrades, new characters are introduced, characters can get scarred. The game comes with a bunch of mystery boxes that we’re not allowed to open until certain times of the year! It’s very well done!

    You have two attempts each month to win, so at best you’d go 12-0 in a season. At worst, 0-24. Some friends and I started the year 0-3, but we’ve won the last 3, so we’re 3-3 heading into May, having failed only the January mission!

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    • 4/6/2016 at 2:15 pm
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      How many people are in your Pandemic play group? I WANT TO PLAY LEGACY SO BADLY.

      I figure you need four people on board before you can go at it. I think the Legacy idea is brilliant. I’m also interested (though less so) in Risk Legacy. Pandemic Legacy Season 1 is currently the top rated game of, like, 15,000 on boardgamegeek.com

      Question: is it legit one time only? I figured if instead of destroying cards or otherwise, you could just set them aside so that you could share the love with other gamers. What do you think?

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      • 4/6/2016 at 11:22 pm
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        There are four of us playing. The other couple lives about a mile away, so it’s pretty easy to coordinate.

        Since the game is cooperative, you don’t really need a full foursome. You could conceivably play it solo, just playing all of the characters in turn yourself.

        I didn’t know it was #1! Our friends are the hardcore gamers, and they know that I really like Pandemic, so that’s how this got started. (I like Pandemic because it has maps, and since I’m not a gamer, I like the cooperative nature of the game because then I don’t feel like I’m at a disadvantage against a bunch of gamers).

        I would say that it’s legit one time only, because we’re placing stickers all over the place. Stickers in the rule book, stickers all over the game board (on cities, on diseases), stickers on the character cards, stickers on cards in the decks (and we’re just through April, so who knows what’s to come). We also write down who played what character on the character cards each time, too. Oh, and some of the cards have scratch-off areas, too. I don’t know what everything will look like at the end of the season, but it would be really hard to play it again, and it would probably be hard to play as regular ol’ standard Pandemic once the season is over, too.

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        • 4/8/2016 at 1:17 pm
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          Great description! The one-time game play makes a lot more sense now.

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      • 4/7/2016 at 6:56 am
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        You can play legacy two people. There are 4 in my Legacy group and we are heading into late March. So much fun

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        • 4/8/2016 at 1:17 pm
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          Do you actually only play once game per month? I would imagine that this would make it even better what with the anticipation

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          • 4/11/2016 at 11:21 pm
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            No. I want to play every night. But that’s not feasible.

          • 4/12/2016 at 1:03 pm
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            Our foursome is trying to match the suggested monthly schedule, so we started in January and we’ve already played our first April game. We won that one, so we’re not playing again until May. We’re all busy people, so we actually try and schedule two games per month, but we’ve only needed one attempt in March and April.

            But, obviously, you can also “binge play” and be done in a week…

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