Ask YC: What Is Your Favorite Board Game?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133128

by xirium • 18 years ago

16 77 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Chinese Checkers is a great game which scales from two players to six players, but what do you prefer? Chess? Monopoly? Risk? Escape From Colditz?

aggieben2• 18 years ago

risk. What could be better than psychologically manipulating 5 guys sitting next you into letting you dominate the world?

mcu3• 18 years ago

Not having your success hinge on random chance. Try Diplomacy for a less hollow victory.

demallien• 18 years ago

Diplomacy is easily the most evil game known to mankind. I remember playing in a large group in high school, and the best proponents were the two most devotely Christian members of my year. These two, butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, so when they proposed an alliance, you believed them. The wopping great big dagger that you subsequently found in your back always came as a big surprise.

The worst was that one of them even had the ability to explain to you that it was all a strategic move to make the guy he had sided with to trust him. Evil guy would then backstab erstwhile ally, using YOU as the hammer. And of course you'd happily go along with it.

But that's not what's really evil about Diplomacy. What's really evil is that you NEED alliances just to survive, so you can't just blow these guys off if they are on your borders.

Evil.

aggieben2• 18 years ago

Ah, but see...that's life. That's the beauty of a great Risk strategy - it takes into account probabilities that bad (or good) things will happen.

jacobolus2• 18 years ago

Risk doesn't have that much dependence on chance, except inasmuch as particular diplomatic relationships adjust to circumstance. Games among equally strong players are quite balanced, and the strongest player will generally win.

Prrometheus2• 18 years ago

Ah, the memories. A true game of Risk is not played on a board alone. If that were the case, then it would be a simple exercise in random dice throws. Rather, the majority of Risk strategy takes place in the psychology of the participants.

In college, we used to play an internet version of Risk. There were six of us that lived in a four room suite sharing a common hallway. The plots, betrayals, and backstabbing were epic. You could guess at which alliances existed by watching who was sneaking into whose room, although since IM was available as a stealthier method of communication sneaking around was often done for misdirection. There was always a risk, though, that if you tried to plot over IM that the other person would betray your plans to his roommate to gain leverage or trust.

I enjoy Monopoly for much the same reasons. I love to make various financial derivatives using various characteristics of my properties. If it could be imagined, I sold or bartered it, including X-turn immunities, partial property cashflows, and dozens of other goods.

kschrader• 18 years ago

Nothing quite as satisfying as having your 2 army country successfully defend against 10 or 15 attackers.

See also, frustration.

dmoney• 18 years ago

You may like Dice Wars if you like Risk: http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/dice/dice.html

JeffL• 18 years ago

You might like KDice if you like dice wars. Same game, but multiplayer. http://kdice.com

comatose_kid• 18 years ago

I still recall playing Global Wars (risk clone) on a local BBS back in the day. One move a day, and it was still a lot of fun.

moog• 18 years ago

Escape From Colditz, if I remember correctly, has a 'Do or Die' card you can play. Basically, you roll the dice x times and must escape in that many moves. If you don't make it you are shot dead. Kinda like a startup.

adnam2• 18 years ago

You just reminded me of wet holidays stuck in a caravan in Wales.

enki• 18 years ago

dood• 18 years ago

I'm consistently astonished by how much I've learnt from Go, and how much I have yet to learn.

I'm a big fan of games of all varieties, but Go stands above and beyond everything else for me.

jgrahamc2• 18 years ago

I both love and hate Go. It's daunting realizing that I'll never come close to mastering it.

jdavid5• 18 years ago

i have always wanted to write an AI for GO, maybe after this company i can play around with ideas like that.

CHIEFARCHITECT• 18 years ago

Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double entry accounting. -- from Shibumi , bestseller by Trevanian

sanj2• 18 years ago

Settlers of Catan.

With the "penny rule":

On any die roll where you get NO resources that isn't due to the robber, you get a penny. During your trading round, you can turn is as many pennies as you have victory points showing for a single resource.

This reduces the game's tendency to knock someone out of the running three rounds in because of a set of bad rolls.

adnam2• 18 years ago

Yeah, love Siedler. Thanks for the penny rule tip!

If you like Siedler, you might like a Dutch card game called "Koehandel".

eru5• 18 years ago

Or the (original) German version 'Kuhhandel'. Or the English one 'You're bluffing'. Be warned: Kuhhandel is a very mean game though.

http://boardgamegeek.com/game/1117

boredguy8• 18 years ago

http://games.asobrain.com will either be a blessing or a curse for you, then. (Play -> Xplorers, must register).

Also, I like resource scarcity - under your game, I have a high incentive to pick 'bad' locations because I stand to profit more. Initial deployment is a key part of the game--as is trading resources!

sanj2• 18 years ago

Not really. It turns out that you still end up falling behind, just not as quickly.

Run to the wood and brick and get those roads built!

admoin• 18 years ago

axis and allies

chez17• 18 years ago

Far and away the best board game ever. If you like Risk and you haven't played this, you should definitely give it a try.

mynameishere• 18 years ago

It's a fun game, but after a few (hundred) plays, you realize that the optimal allied strategy is a fairly unmovable thing--and when they adopt it, the axis stands a 10 percent chance of victory at best.

mullr• 18 years ago

Depends on the mood I'm in:

1) Go. Emergent gameplay, endless depth. Studying this game will teach you how to think strategically in the real world.

2) Magic Realm, a '70s Avalon Hill fantasy game. It's a fantastically complicated hack & slash dungeon crawl board game. But it's still simpler than D&D, and takes less time for you and all your geeky friends. The creator of the game is (or was, last time I checked) still active on the fan mailing list.

vegashacker• 18 years ago

Balderdash.

Settlers.

I've also been playing some Clue lately (if you haven't played since you were a little kid, I'd recommend trying again -- but with scratch paper to make notes instead of just the puny sheets that come with the game).

I and some friends were super into Risk a few years back (we even drove from Rhode Island to Pennsylvannia one evening to enter the Risk Tournament of Champions http://www.risktoc.org/)

ghiotion• 18 years ago

If you like Clue, check out Mystery of the Abby from Days of Wonder. It's the deepest mystery board game I've ever seen.

csmajorfive• 18 years ago

Scrabble -- pretty much due to Scrabulous (take that Mattel/Hasbro!). I just like the type of thinking required to consider and place permutations of letters. Learning new words is nice too.

jdavid5• 18 years ago

unlike pg suggests that good hackers have good grammar, i can't spell, even though i was in advanced english. written language is not like code at all. i am finding it easier to learn Japanese than i did English.

jgrahamc2• 18 years ago

What's your mother tongue?

I think a lot of hackers are interested in spoken and written language and like to play around with words and puns, etc.

daniel-cussen• 18 years ago

Chess.

german• 18 years ago

Chess for me too, it would be interesting to start an online YC chess tournament. :P

aquateen• 18 years ago

Where does everyone play at? ICC? FICS? Yahoo?

python_kiss• 18 years ago

Chess Go RISK

jdavid5• 18 years ago

where should we play?

nickb• 18 years ago

Chess, absolutely. My father taught me chess when I was around 4 and have been playing on and off ever since. I've learned so much from chess and owe a lot to it. For example, chess is one of the greatest teachers of strategy. It also clearly delineates strategy from tactics. Chess teaches you how to think in abstract terms and plan ahead and it teaches you how to formulate and spot patterns. It's also a superb decision making 'simulator' and it teaches you how to make sacrifices (something that children tend to learn late in life), how to value things and how to trade things.

Chess is probably the best game that exudes all of these characteristics.

And bets of all, it takes a day to learn and a lifetime to master... so you will never get bored.

bootload• 18 years ago

"... What Is Your Favorite Board Game? ... Chess ..."

While chess is good, 3D chess is one you should try. Recommended by my geology lecturer to improve 3D thinking.

jacobolus2• 18 years ago

Bughouse!

aleclair• 18 years ago

Personally, I'm a Carcassonne man.

That said, when I have a good day to kill, History of the World is a lot of fun.

Tichy• 18 years ago

I think Carcassonne is the best, too.

walesmd2• 18 years ago

Monopoly.

walesmd2• 18 years ago

Mouse Trap is a great one too. Been playing it with my daughter as of late, and it definitely brings back fond memories of childhood.

I seem to remember a "Grape Escape" or something like that from childhood as well. You were little clay grapes and as you ran around the board you were smashed, cut, squeezed, etc.

Good times.

mcu3• 18 years ago

Twilight Imperium, Drakon, A Game of Thrones, The WarCraft (not WoW) board game is excellent, Pillars of the Earth is a great game for programmers (think knapsack problem), Arkham Horror, RoboRally, Khet, Starfleet Command, Basari. The StarCraft board game is actually quite fun.

http://boardgamegeek.com/

mcu3• 18 years ago

Also Ticket to Ride.

Prrometheus2• 18 years ago

Does “Magic: The Gathering” count?

(My green and white deck from 2001 will kill any deck you have)

myoung8• 18 years ago

Agreed. I feel like everyone has a green and white deck that rocks. A well-crafted blue deck can destroy green/white, though.

hochmann• 18 years ago

I love Magic, and I absolutely love playing blue. I used to have an amazing counterspell/bounce/venom deck that would piss my friends off to no end. :-)

avibryant• 18 years ago

Diplomacy. The hard part is finding exactly seven players. http://phpdiplomacy.net/ seems like a good online implementation, but I strongly recommend playing with friends rather than strangers.

eru5• 18 years ago

Play on the DPjudge. www.diplom.org is the place to go online for Diplomacy.

euccastro2• 18 years ago

I found PBEM too draining. While a game was going (and it can take months or years, e.g. atlas@USTR), it's something I couldn't take a rest from, at least not often enough. Even when I was not compulsively checking my mail or looking at a map, I would keep a background process munching my tactical and, especially, my diplomatic situation.

I left the hobby altogether because of that (and the fact that I can't find other 6 players for a live game [1]).

I plan to some day [2] implement a client/server to play remotely but in real time, with good communication interfaces [3]. So you can set apart an afternoon every other weekend or so, play a game for a few hours, and then the game ends no matter what and you're done with it.

[1] There are some variants with more or less than 7 players, though. I found Iberian (5 players) to be enjoyable, and Hundred3 is quite playable if you can only find 3. If you want to lose your life, try World2, played by 17 (!) players on a wraparound world map.

[2] And seeing so many upvotes to Diplomacy comments around here, that day might come sooner!

[3] There's RTDip, a community for realtime mail games, but communication is forbidden in those games, so it's not nearly the same.

bhb• 18 years ago

I'm surprised that Puerto Rico hasn't been mentioned. My hacker friends and I dabbled in both Settlers and Carcassonne, but ultimately ended up playing mostly Puerto Rico. Great game. Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck getting my non-hacker friends to play.

A big hit in almost any group of people has been Speed Scrabble. Quick, easy to play in teams, and just great fun overall. If you like Scrabble, try it out.

misterbwong• 18 years ago

Star Munchkins. More of a card game but not like magic in that you don't build decks.

jojoleflaire• 18 years ago

Just one?

For two players: Scrabble or Carcassonne. For three or four players: Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico

If you can find them: Titan Talisman 2nd Edition and Illuminati are also totally awesome.

scooter53080• 18 years ago

I love Bohnanza. Anybody played that? I know the premise of the game seems silly, but I've taught it to many (adult) friends, and it is pretty universally liked. I'm going to check out Puerto Rico based on some recommendations here...it has gone under my radar until now.

dkokelley2• 18 years ago

Monopoly is great, unless your friends refuse any sort of trading/negotiation not explicitly laid out in the rules.

None of my friends would hear anything along the lines of "Ok, I'll trade you this, and in return, you'll be immune from paying for this long, or you'll only have to pay 30% forever, plus you'll receive this property that you can use to trade Tim for that property so that you can get a monopoly too."

My friends didn't like to think that hard. "You pay what's on the card. If you get this then you'll have a monopoly and that's bad. Boardwalk is the best one."

I always liked thinking a little bit beyond the basics of that game. The railways have the highest yield out of anything, plus there are 4. Monopolies of only 2 more valuable properties are not really as valuable as a monopoly of 3 "average" properties. Utilities are crap.

I'm hoping that in the real world people are a bit more susceptible to "negotiating."

Spyckie• 18 years ago

haha monopoly is great, especially with friends who don't think outside the box. It requires very fine deal negotiation and value assessment skills.

My favorite move in monopoly is to come up with some trading deals that would give everyone monopolies in a single turn, but make it so that I had either a positional (read: my piece is either in jail or far, far away from their monopolies) or money advantage. Then, mortgage/sell all my other properties, build up as much as possible and hope to kill someone quickly. In monopoly, you have to play the 'do or die' strategy. There is no other way to play.

Unfortunately, now they no longer do any deals with me because they know my deals are deadly even though they look fair...

dkokelley2• 18 years ago

That's the trick. Sometimes the deals aren't deadly, you just have to point out how they are beneficial to everyone. Sell the value. Unfortunately some friends feel that seclusion is the best route.

I'm notorious for aggressively pursuing side deals with my friends.

dfranke• 18 years ago

The way I read the rules is that you're welcome to make any deals you want -- immunity, whatever -- but they aren't enforcable. The person you make the deal with is free to reneg the moment it's to his advantage.

Really, vanilla monopoly is a very carefully balanced game. I've never heard any house rule that doesn't make things worse.

SwellJoe• 18 years ago

I have to agree. Monopoly is a blast with a group of friends playing straight by-the-book rules. It takes a while, of course, and sometimes one or more players will be out pretty quick and then things seem to drag on forever between two equally funded and propertied players. But, mostly it's nicely balanced and provides a challenging but relaxing evening of entertainment. Good humor required, wine or beer optional.

imperator• 18 years ago

Samurai Swords, which was formally called Shogun. You battle for control over feudal Japan. Unlike Risk, you don't have armies on every territory. Rather, you have three armies that you decide the composition of, and you leave garrisons in the rest of your conquered land. Also, there is a set of interaction that isn't just army v. army, like killing an enemy general with a ninja, hiring Ronin to run surprise attacks, and building castles.

andr• 18 years ago

Chess.

jdavid5• 18 years ago

i am good at chess... (thanks dad) but that does not make it fun to play.

i actually like "settlers" a lot right now. "tides of iron" is pretty cool "B5 CCG" is a blast to play twice a year

but my all time favorite is RISK

ivankirigin• 18 years ago

I've seen a trend where people "Get it", and love a ton of board games, or they don't.

I play a lot of them, and can't pick a favorite.

I love chess. The first time I beat my Dad was an event. I love Go, but started to beat everyone around me, which actually sucks.

Risk 2210 is excellent. Settlers of Catan and it's variants are a delight.

Monopoly isn't worth the paper money it's printed on :)

bayareaguy• 18 years ago

Our family enjoys lots of games but our favorites are Settlers of Catan, Sequence, Talisman, The Apprentice and Risk 2210.

eru5• 18 years ago

Diplomacy.

http://www.diplom.org for a great magazine and to play online http://www.floc.net/dpjudge (from the same people)

eru5• 18 years ago

And it's written in Python.

cardmagic• 18 years ago

Locke• 18 years ago

I run a turn-based games site, so I like quite a few board games. Right now my favorites are probably Connect6, Breakthrough, and Phutball. I've recently (re-)discovered Dots and Boxes which is quite a bit more interesting than I remember it being when I was a kid.

If you want to try any of these, my site is Vying Games (vying.org).

Flemlord• 18 years ago

War on Terror the Boardgame. It appeals to my sense of political irony and it's actually a pretty fun game.

doubleplus• 18 years ago

Chutes & Ladders

bobbylox• 18 years ago

Mousetrap was my favorite. I pretty much ignored the actual game though...

Ask YC: What Is Your Favorite Board Game?

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