Your personal top 10 board games

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Assuming you only had to consider what you would want to play and assuming you can find enough players who also want to play the same game, what are your top 10 board/miniatures games?

Blood Rage
Lords or Waterdeep
Car Wars
Battletech
Castles of the Mad King Ludwig
Scythe
Dungeons and Dragons Adventure System (Any/All)
Ogre
Kingmaker
Castles of Burgundy

They all acrascr little itches I have either for nostalgic reasons or thematic reasons or just fun pure and simple.

What are yours?

Order is unimportant to me.
 
Just going off the top of my head, and reserving the right to edit my selections later, I like:

Clue, especially the "deluxe" version with a gazebo and greenhouse and other additional rooms, suspects, and murder weapons.

Napoleon Solo: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Game is a lot of fun but probably hard to find.
20180523_220525.jpg
This game still looks great and is over 50 years old!

Labyrinth, where you change to pathways every turn and compete with other wizards to find treasures. You can play it different ways to make it more or less difficult. With my kids we play the simpler way but it helps them figure out strategies.

The original Godfather movie board game, which was a little bit like Othello but better. Competing mafia dons trying to take over various rackets and neighborhoods in Manhattan, what's not to like?
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This game is in great shape despite being nearly 50 years old now!

The Three Musketeers: The Queen's Pendants, which I actually wrote about in detail somewhere in the board games thread.

I still like Risk as long as it has the old wooden pieces.

Heroes Incorporated is a fun superhero game where each players controls two superheroes who are trying to top the other teams and best the villains and get the best publicity. It's riddled with typos and has at least one rule open to interpretation but that's nothing to a roleplayer, right? Got it used for $5 or $7 on the same lucky day I came across a somewhat battered but complete Starter Traveller boxed set for $10.

221b Baker Street, the Sherlock Holmes mystery-solving game I would love to play more.

Crown of Roses is a strategy game of the War of the Roses by GMT Games. It can take a long time to play.

A similarly themed game is Richard III from Columbia Games (probably better known for Harn, I'd imagine).

Louis XIV is a game of intrigue and influence in the court of guess who.

The Castles of Burgundy is all about building your estate and gaining prominence in the Loire Valley in 15th Century France. Each player's estate will be different so even if you've played it a lot you have to adjust your strategy based on which estate you have.

One I haven't gotten to play yet is The Marvel Heroes Strategy Board Game, which seems like it should be fun. Each player gets a team of 4 heroes: Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four, or a loose assembly of independent heroes (Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Daredevil, and Elektra). Each player also controls a villainous mastermind (Doctor Doom, the Red Skull, the Kingpin, or Magneto) to hinder other heroes. Comes with 20 figures to play on a really sturdy and cool map of Marvel New York City. Apparently this game sells for a lot now but I got mine barely used and inexpensive a few years back.

I also have a feudal Japan game called Samurai that I haven't been able to get anyone to play yet. It looks and sounds like a lot of fun. Has a great board you could probably use as "Nippon" next time you play Bushido.

Wall Street: The Stock Monopoly Game is a game from 1981 produced by a local company. The address on the box is a few miles away in the Clairemont Mesa neighborhood of San Diego. Sadly my wife has zero interest, my kids are too young for it, and my friends would usually rather play a game they already know or an RPG. Might have to try a meet-up sometime, as I think there are a couple of local board game groups around here.
20180523_220937.jpg

I'd like to play more Dawn Patrol (TSR), Blue Max (GDW), or Knights of the Air (Avalon Hill), all World War I aerial combat games, all a bit different from each other. I'm a big fan of airplanes from that era and have a few models I let my kids play with.

I also have a lot of cooperative games to play with my kids and a few simpler ones they enjoy like the Scooby-Doo! Fright at the Fun Park Game and The Dynomutt Dog Wonder Game.
20180523_220548.jpg
Another oldie! From 1977!

I used to have a ton of Avalon Hill board games and stuff like Axis & Allies and an awesome Roman Empire one with a huge map of the Mediterranean, but over the years games have been sold, given away, lent and never returned, or just mysteriously disappeared.

Did I list ten?

A lot of those old board games they used to produce for every hit TV show or movie back in the good old days had some pretty cool ideas and mechanics in them, not like a lot of the games they make now for TV shows and movies where they just slap the new name on a game you already have like Star Wars Monopoly and Stranger Things Ouija Board. Although the Star Wars Clue game is a lot of fun with extra rules to fit the theme better and a nice three-dimensional two-level playing surface. (You're moving around inside the Death Star! My son the Star Wars fan loves it and Star Wars Battleship, too.)

Edit: I used to have a great railroad game called Empire Builder where you'd draw your railroad lines in different colored crayons on the board to connect cities and try to transport the most profitable goods from city to city around the contiguous U.S. I wish I still had it as it was a heck of a lot of fun.
 
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Which version of Samurai?
 
This one, where you can remove islands if you have fewer than four players.
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Can't you just see placing that board in the middle of the table when you play a session of Bushido?
 
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Dumarest said:
This one, where you can remove islands if you have fewer four players.
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Can't you just see placing that board in the middle of the table when you play a session of Bushido?
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Never played that one. I played the old Avalon hill version.
 
Bunch said:
Never played that one. I played the old Avalon hill version.
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That one I don't know/remember. I might have had it or played it 35 years ago. I'd have to see it to jog my memory.
 
Nearly forgot this classic:
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Source of the Nile!
 
Letters from Whitechapel

Memoir '44

Lords of Waterdeep

Onitama

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Battle of the Five Armies

Arkham Horror

Shadows Over Camelot

Diplomacy

Sheriff of Nottingham
 
"Top 10" is kind of a misnomer for me because the board game medium is so broad that direct comparisons between certain categories of games is kind of pointless. If I had to pick just 10 board games to have in my collection, it would probably look something like this:

Arkham Horror
Escape: Curse of the Temple
Firefly
Gloomhaven
King of Tokyo
Lord of the Rings (Knizia)
Republic of Rome
RoboRally
Scotland Yard
Twitch

The one that hurt most to cut from this list was Diplomacy. But I'd rather play Republic of Rome.
 
10. Shanghai Trader. Make as much money as you can and then escape Shanghai without being shot by your rivals. Gloriusly nasty.

9. Kremlin. Purge your friends for the glory of Mother Russia. I have the new edition which has the added bonus of allowing you to have Putin assassinated.

8. Sons of Anarchy: Men of Mayhem. The only worker placement game I like. Because this worker placement game has guns and drugs instead of fucking farmers or whatever.

7. Illuminati: New World Order. The only CCG I ever really got into, although I did dabble in Mythos for a bit. I think it's superior to the original game. These days I have a full factory sets of cards and nobody to play the game with.

6. Henry VIII: Intrigue in the Royal Court. It's an obscure print and play game which happesn to be one of the most fun games I've ever played.

5. Spartacus: A Game of Blood & Treachery. Another blinder from Gale Force Nine. We like it so much we always insist on playing the long version.

4. Junta. An absolute classic. Coups and mistresses and secret police. What's not to love?

3. Virgin Queen. I don't play that many full on wargames. I like this one because it has lots of diplomacy, marriages, piracy and other non war bits.

2. Republic of Rome. Amazing game that offers an experience like none other.

1. Crossbows & Catapults. Chuck stuff at the head of your opponent. And frequently my brother, even if he wasn't actually playing.

As you can tell, I like a lot of negotiation and backstabbing in my boardgames.
 
I dont play a lot of boardgames, so this list may seem a bit shallow. I'm not going to try and rate them either, just do alphabetical order, most are far too different to compare meaningfully...

Arkham Horror
221b Baker Street
Cluedo
Diplomacy
Dragon's Lair
HeroQuest
Kingdom Death's Monster
Rising Sun
Shogun
Stratego
 
HeroQuest would be my #1 easily. Not sure how I'd sort the rest: Pandemic, The Last Friday, Tammany Hall, Risk, Talisman, Space Hulk, Twilight Imperium, King of Tokyo & Strat-o-matic Baseball
 
I don't think I can name my ten favorite board games without half the list being my least unfavorite, but I can recommend King of New York and King of Tokyo without reservation.

HeroQuest would probably be high on the list if my first experience hadn't been marred by playing with the laziest fucking cretins ever to disgrace this planet, and being expected to coddle their unfathomable stupidity by the creature running the game.

Oh, Of Mice and Mystics is definitely the sauce-- a lot like HeroQuest, except my first experience with that one was with intelligent human beings.
 
Marvel Legendary is a no-brainer. Favorite game in my collection.

Camp Grizzly is a ridiculously fun slasher movie board game.

A Touch of Evil is the unsung hero of the Flying Frog catalog. Far and away my favorite game from their catalog.

Street Masters: Rise of the Kingdom is probably being affected by "The New Hotness" syndrome, but it's a REALLY cool game inspired by Street Fighter, Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, etc.

Fortune & Glory - Another Flying Frog game, this time pulp. I really feel like this and A Touch of Evil get wrongly overshadowed by Last Night on Earth and Shadows of Brimstone.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Legendary is my second favorite Legendary game (though it's not close to Marvel).

Darkest Night is a cool, smaller press dark fantasy game with heroes desperately scrambling against a Necromancer who is corrupting everything around him.

Betrayal at House on the Hill. Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.

Firefly the Game. I'm not a huge sci-fi fan, but this is a fun game, even if it takes forever to play. Especially when you use all the expansions. (I use all the expansions.)

Sentinels of the Multiverse, but really only if I'm playing the digital version. I liked this game a lot more until it became a clunky meatgrinder, but I still have a fondness for it.

Top 3 or 4 are pretty well in order. Everything else is kinda together.
 
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GURPS combats on hex maps using the full rules (& house rules)
The Fantasy Trip (though I start to want house rules, or just use GURPS)
Ramspeed (with the designer's extended rules published in Interplay)
Squad Leader (pre-ASL, with rules up to about Crescendo of Doom)
Star Fleet Battles
Wooden Ships & Iron Men
I've wanted to try Source of the Nile for a long time, but never had it.
 
Totally forgot Down with the King from the late, great Avalon Hill, wherein the players are nobles of "Fandonia" who compete against the King and each other via intrigue, treachery, duels, assassinations, imprisonments, wars, etc. to build up a powerful political faction and replace the King with another member of the royal family whose loyalty is to the player.
20180526_161815.jpg 20180526_161822.jpg
 
Dumarest said:
Totally forgot Down with the King from the late, great Avalon Hill, wherein the players are nobles of "Fandonia" who compete against the King and each other via intrigue, treachery, duels, assassinations, imprisonments, wars, etc. to build up a powerful political faction and replace the King with another member of the royal family whose loyalty is to the player.
View attachment 2521 View attachment 2522
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You might like Blood Royale by GW.
 
Dumarest said:
Totally forgot Down with the King from the late, great Avalon Hill, wherein the players are nobles of "Fandonia" who compete against the King and each other via intrigue, treachery, duels, assassinations, imprisonments, wars, etc. to build up a powerful political faction and replace the King with another member of the royal family whose loyalty is to the player.
[
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The aformentioned Henry VIII: Intrigue in the Royal Court was actually inspired by DWTK. I advise checking it out; it's pretty much replaced DWTK in my group. http://www.garrysgames.com/Henry.html
 
Ooh of the games that I have actually played (not in any particular order):

Battlestar Gallactica: I don't even like this series, but I loved this game of intense resources management and paranoia.

Arkham Horror: I have EVERYTHING for this game and cherish every moment... except for those fucking RUMOR cards. Those should be burned; they slow down the game and make it into a tedious chore.

Warhammer Quest: it's like Hero Quest, but better! It has everything that I like from so many other games, especially ones from Games Workshop, that I don't need anything else. I'm talking about the original one, not the overpriced new one out right now.

Hero Quest: I have to put this here because I do love it, despite its limitations, but after almost 20 years I have sufficient house rules to make it really shine. My key gateway drug into serious tabletop games.

Runebound: the original (I don't have the newer one). I love the map exploration, co-op possibilities and thematic expansions. A great game, even if it has a few UI problems (ranged attacks have a helmet symbol? WTF??).

Red November: the ultimate co-op game of frantic resource management (er, of putting out fires). Super-small box is fun to pull out too.

Talisman (with a few house rules). A very laid-back game of exploration and fighting monsters for loot. Easy for my kids to figure out too.

Boss Monster: simple, thematic of 16-bit video games and funny. I've got every expansion for this one too (they add variety instead of slowing things down).

Dungeon Roll: another simple, casual game of dungeon exploration with a bit of gambling the odds. Very easy to teach to others and very portable.

Mansions of Madness (1e): I run this like an RPG-lite, instead of being deliberately antagonistic towards the players. I love it: the puzzles, the mood-setting mechanics and the dungeon-tiles. A classic.
 
Whats the difference betweenMansions of Madness and Arkham Horror? When it came out I skipped it because I thought it was just a rebranding of the older game.
 
Arkham Horror has a much broader scope: investigation covers the entire town. Or even multiple towns.

Mansions of madness is entirely located within one building. They are similar in theme, however (collect clues, avoid or fight monsters, overcome terrible environmental effects).
 
Random list of what pops into my head first, and not including any miniatures/wargames:

Diplomacy (though I don't want to play it with the people I know who always want to play it)
Labyrinth (puzzle maze game to collect treasures)
King of Tokyo (giant monsters smashing each other)
Fury of Dracula (I think that's the name... hunting Dracula across Europe)
Othello
Bang (the dice version)
Stratego
Once Upon A Time (storytelling card game)
Clue
Robo Rally
 
Oh yeah Fury of Dracula was a blast , haven't thought about that one in ... decades I think. Wasn't it an early GW game?
 
Really enjoyed Once Upon a Time as well, sad it kinda stalled, because considering all the folklore available I thought they could have done expansions out the wazoo
 
Once Upon a Time is really fun, but the 20+ times that I ran it every story was pretty much the same, regardless of who was playing: a young person, usually a girl (princess) goes on a long journey to a weird castle and strange, surreal shit happens. Despite my efforts to avoid it, every ending was handled in a 5 minute monologue.

The best games where the ones in which I totally didn't give a FUCK about winning, just throwing surreal, hilarious plot twists.
 
While I prefer RPGs, my main hobby still is probably board games, I tend to play them more as they require zero prep and zero continuity of players (exception on the latter for a single certain game on my list). My game room walls are mostly board game shelving. I've actually had to move the RPG books into the guest bedroom. I leave one shelf open in the game room for whatever games I'm currently running RPG wise. Anyway, my top ten favorite boardgames:

#10: Carnival Zombie
#9: Dungeon Petz
#8: TMNT: Shadows of the Past
#7: Big Book of Madness
#6: Rising 5: Runes of Asteros
#5: Inis
#4: The Prodigals Club
#3: Millennium Blades
#2: Adrenaline
#1: Gloomhaven
 
I was heavy into board games before I returned to RPGs a couple of years ago. So my list is out of date and in no particular order, probably with significant omissions:
  • Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: Most fun solo game I ever played (edged out Robinson Crusoe).
  • Forbidden Stars: An asymmetric strategy game with so many moving parts that feels just right; like a more complicated Blood Rage.
  • The Resistance: Avalon: Like Werewolf but it's actually a game.
  • Tragedy Looper: Totally unique gameplay.
  • Diplomacy: Required.
  • Chess: It's chess.
  • Star Wars Imperial Assault: My favorite tactical board game.
  • Risk Legacy: The best legacy AFAIC.
  • For Sale: Simple. Perfect.
  • Twilight Struggle: It's elegance only reveals itself on multiple plays.
  • Cosmic Encounters: Just FUN.
OK, that was eleven...when I got to Cosmic Encounters and realized it wasn't on the list, I looked it over and realized that I had nothing to bump. No less than eleven would do!
 
Talisman (4.5 Harbinger). DungeonQuest (1E). HeroQuest.

I used to love the Milton Bradley Gamemaster series: Axis & Allies, Conquest of the Empire, Fortress America, Shogan, and Broadsides & Boarding Parties.
 
Tragedy Looper is a game that would probably be on my top 10 if I could play it more. It is so unique though that it is kind of hard to teach to board gamers. Like there is no way to teach it as "well its like this except this" because literally nothing plays like it.
 
Can't keep it to just 10 but 11-13 may be a bit outside the original question...

  1. Alien Frontiers
  2. Space Empires
  3. Britannia
  4. Battle Fleet Mars
  5. Axis & Allies
  6. Deflexion
  7. Heroclix
  8. Hive
  9. Chitin: I
  10. Titan

  11. Pyramix
  12. Go / Pente / Chess
  13. Fluxx
 
Can anyone here tell me how different Star wars Imperial Assault is from the old Star Wars WotC minis game?
 
Bunch said:
Can anyone here tell me how different Star wars Imperial Assault is from the old Star Wars WotC minis game?
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The old minis game was a skirmish game, wasn’t it? Imperial Assault is an adventure game (that can be played as a skirmish game) with one player playing the Empire, trying to stop the Rebels from completing scenarios. (With an app, you can play completely co-op against a CPU player.)
 
EmperorNorton said:
Like there is no way to teach it as "well its like this except this" because literally nothing plays like it.
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One guy I taught it to really didn't like it. He was confused until about three playthroughs and he took a strong disliking to TL thereafter. That's how I learned he was a bit of a control freak who couldn't stand being disoriented. It's not actually that complicated a game but it's really hard to explain for the reasons you mention.
 
There was a space board game I had when I was a kid, it was really awesome, but cant recall the name. Each person played one of four alien empires, I think one was Lion people, one might have been like space elves? I got a big fantasy vibe off it. GRrr....this is going to drive me nuts now
 
AH! Found it (had a picture in my nostalgia folder)

was way off about the Lion men...

pic314146.jpg
 
Yes! Loved that game as a kid. That and oddly dungeon dice. The one where you are teytry to dig your way out of a dungeon.
 
Bunch said:
Castles of the Mad King Ludwig.
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Never heard of this game, but I do love me some Mad King Ludwig! I hope it actually involves castle building...
 
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