Board Games

Anyone played Francis Drake yet? Expensive but very cool. Game only has 3 turns, each turn has 2 rounds. 1st round is a Waterdeep style worker placement that you use to stock your ship w/ food/water, sailors, cannons, trade goods, upgrade your ship, get a sloop, get favors from governor, queen, admiral, etc... 2nd round you sail to the caribean and it uses a blind bid mechanic so everyone can bid on the areas they want to goto and actions they want to do. ie swap trade goods, pillage a town, fort, spanish treasure galion. All these actions are dependent on how you stocked your ship. Ie you are limited on how deep into the map you can go by how many food/water you stocked up w/, more trade goods = more trade, attacking forts, towns bleeds off your crew and canons, to attack spanish treasure fleet, you must upgrade your ship, etc. You do this for 3 turns and then tally points.

After 4 plays, still one of our groups favorate games. Great marriage of mechanics and theme and Pirates!

nite1_sl said:

Has anyone ever ordered from either herebebooks.com or cardhaus.com?
Been trying to get a copy of betrayal at house on the hill but im not looking to spend 80 to 100 dollars and these sites have it for 40 to 50 but ive never even heard of them

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Ive never personally used Cardhaus, but I hear it mentioned on BoardGameGeek all the time. I would assume that is a fairly reputable place to buy from. Be aware, while I think the Betrayal is a fun game, the components are very low quality. So when you start to overpay for it, it just makes it all the worse.

Betrayal At House On The Hill - 2nd Edition:Amazon:Toys & Gamesseems plenty reliable and not overpriced....

I've ordered from cardhaus before, they are fine. They have a brick and mortar store, so no matter how cheap and asian their website looks, they are a real company.

It seems like it's printed in low quantities at a time. Just a matter of catching it from what I've seen.

I got my Betrayal from Coolstuffinc. I just watched for them to put the preorder out for it, and then preordered as soon as I could. They filled Pre-orders in the order they were received. So I got mine for $35 + free shipping because I just added other games I wanted but could wait on playing. Sadly I think they just release the newest printing not too long ago, so they places are already sold back out, it will be awhile until the next printing cycle, and prices will just keep going up again.

Side note - Someone mentioned Bang the Card game, I still havnt played that, but I played Bang the Dice game last Sunday for the first time and enjoyed it quite a bit. We actually played different hidden role games all night with 7-8 people. All were a ton of fun.

Well Amazon ended up having a decent selection for their GenCon sale this year, Betrayal was around $30. I ended up grabbing Quantum, King of Tokyo, and a few others that have languished on my B-list for a while. Only spent about $140 for 6 games.

Vaclav_sl said:

Betrayal At House On The Hill - 2nd Edition:Amazon:Toys & Gamesseems plenty reliable and not overpriced....

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I have the original that I paid a good amount for years ago. Such a good game.

I've been getting bored with my games so recently I picked up these. There were a few others I wanted to buy, but I try to buy games my buddy doesn't already own for the most part.



I absolutely love Smash Up and there seems to be a decent amount of expansions. I already own Zombie Fluxx, but I needed some SciFi in my life. Pandemic is just a great game and I wanted to add on to the original.. and lastly Legendary. I'm torn because I feel like they half-assed this game. Its fun, but it could have been so much better. My buddy owns Sentinels of the Multiverse and I prefer that way more.

Finally bought Settlers of Catan.. instant classic.

I like the Cities and Knights expansion. It feels like a more complete game than straight up Settlers. Even my one friend who hates Settlers actually enjoyed C&K.

Recently bought Smash Up, Forbidden Island, and King of Tokyo. Recommend all of them. KoT is especially fun and is a good game for kids as well (my daughter took great pleasure in taking out my son's monster).

Spotted this bad boy a week ago at a youth center. Seemed to be pretty much complete still.

DeLLy_sl said:

I have the original that I paid a good amount for years ago. Such a good game.

I've been getting bored with my games so recently I picked up these. There were a few others I wanted to buy, but I try to buy games my buddy doesn't already own for the most part.

I absolutely love Smash Up and there seems to be a decent amount of expansions. I already own Zombie Fluxx, but I needed some SciFi in my life. Pandemic is just a great game and I wanted to add on to the original.. and lastly Legendary. I'm torn because I feel like they half-assed this game. Its fun, but it could have been so much better. My buddy owns Sentinels of the Multiverse and I prefer that way more.

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Pandemic On The Brink is almost essential if you enjoy the original. I recommend Virulent Strain and Mutation modes heavily. We pretty much don't play Vanilla anymore. The Bioterrorist is not nearly as enjoyable and is quite complicated.

NoodleAnus_sl said:

Finally bought Settlers of Catan.. instant classic.

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Don't bother with the Seafarers expansion because the Explorers and Pirates expansion basically replaces it and is WAY better. Also don't bother with Traders and Barbarians unless your group is REALLY into Catan because besides the caravan alternative play mode, the rest is bla.

Original Catan + Cities and Knights + Explorers and Pirates = Awesome sauce.

My girlfriend bought me Android: Netrunner for my birthday. We played our first game tonight after watching a tutorial, and it was great. She picked it up suprisingly fast for someone whose only TCG/LCG experience is Hearthstone.

I think she had 5 agenda points at the end and I won with 8. Weyland vs. Shaper Kate.

I can see this being a really fun game with more complexity and replay value than some of the more classic style like Magic and Hearthstone. One improvement they could have made is including a nice playmat in the core set like the ones you can get printed up off places like inkedplaymats.com.

Absolutely love Netrunner, we got a pretty good deal on a group order from inkedplaymats. Miniaturemarket also stocks some netrunner specific mats slightly cheaper than IP.

I found that after a couple weeks with the inked mat our group moved back to regular play mats. Once you know the game the boxes get in the way IMHO. Great game though!

Wuyley_sl said:

Don't bother with the Seafarers expansion because the Explorers and Pirates expansion basically replaces it and is WAY better. Also don't bother with Traders and Barbarians unless your group is REALLY into Catan because besides the caravan alternative play mode, the rest is bla.

Original Catan + Cities and Knights + Explorers and Pirates = Awesome sauce.

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Thanks for the info! Right now, since we're new, we're really just playing the original (plus 6 player expansion) and enjoying it. I feel like if I throw those in right away people will get confused or something.