It does, but be warned



Before going any further into the wonderful realm of boardgames, there are some prep work that you need to do. The first one is to burn your copy of monopoly in a big fire, to symbolize you throwing off the shackles of bad "traditional" games, games that have been surpassed in every way possible, and yet are still sold because that is what toy stores still seem to stock.
(and while you are at it, burn Risk as well)


Once that is done, your new life as a boardgamer will begin. And here are some good starting points:
Arkham Horror: A cooperative boardgame where you and your fellow players try to prevent an evil lovecraftian creature from waking up and destroying the world. The random factor is high in this game, but there is still a fare amount of skill involved, and it is also a great game for introducing new players, as only one person need to know all the rules.

Agricola : A "Eurogame" about building a family & farming. Relatively non-competitive in nature, but with a good amount of depth. It is considered to be one of the best board games of all time.

Race for the Galaxy: A card game about building a galactic empire. Somewhat similar to Agricola in that you don't interact directly with other players, but also with a good amount of depth & strategy.

Space Hulk An excellent 2 player tactical boardgame, with asymetrical sides. The brave space marines need to fight their way through an alien infested spaceship (think Aliens, but in the 40k universe). The game is both easy to learn & deep.

Once upon a time: A storytelling game, where you are supposed to tell a story based on the cards that you draw. First one to clear his or her hand and somehow ties it together with it's persons ending wins. Can be a bit hard to play with incredibly shy people, but it is also a good training for those who want to learn how to speak up and/or improvise in front of a crowd. Also, this game tends to cause a lot of laughs.

Descent. Think HeroQuest, but made with adults rather than 10 year olds in mind. One person plays as the monsters, while the other play individual heroes, and need to cooperate.

Shadowrun Horror.

I don't really play board games but i'd be interested in playing some so i'll use this opportunity to ask a question :).

Does anyone play Arkham Horror or Vampire: prince of the city and would be willing to "review" these games a little? And what would you recommend as a fun game with not too short gametime for two or three players?

snakes and ladders , sign me up for a game any day :)

for those who have not known about it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_and_Ladders

Probably Afrikan Tähti. It was great as a kid.

The latest I've played with friends (that I didn't know so well) was probably Alias, and it sucked because couples (e.g. wife and husband) automatically did much better in it than those of us who were "pair-less", and had to play with someone who you hardly knew.

For half of the questions, the couples would just say to each other "Remember a year ago when we were in Spain, we ate this..." , and bam, then other would know the answer right away.


I have no idea if Afrikan Tähti or Alias are known outside Finland, and frankly I couldn't care less. So there. :)

Arkham Horror: The only game where it is not entirely unlikely to find a nun riding a motorcycle while gunning down monsters with a tommy gun.
What more do you need to know?


A game of Arkham Horror takes between 1-4h depending on how many players you have, what god you face and how well people know the game. And it works quite well with 2-3 players (though I've found the ideal number to be 4-5).
Arkham Horror is actually a really good beginners game, due to the simple fact that only one person need to know the rules, it is enough for the rest to understand their characters and what they do. This makes it a good game for introducing new players to the hobby (even though it might look a tad bit intimidating at first). It is also good because it keeps all the players interacting at all time. It is not like with many older games, where you do your turn while the other players just sit & watch (in fact, most "good" modern boardgames try to engage the players even when it is not their turn)
The game is quite luck dependent though, there are a lot of random events going on all over the place, but a group of players who know what they are doing can still usually do well. The expansions to the game make it a bit harder, so don't get them right from the get go (well, actually, it might be worth getting one small-box expansion, as they add more location cards, something that I think the game has too few of out of the box.

I think the boardgame that I played most was Die Schlacht der Dinosaurier ("The Battle of the Dinosaurs") which was for some reason released under the Das Schwarze Auge label (Dark Eye, the same franchise as Realms of Arkania and Drakensang). Pretty awesome game, only the plastic volcano was a moronic idea - it served as a randomizer but I'm wondering what gamedesigner comes up with the idea to use such a clunky device for this. :P

Also I played a decent amount of "Starquest" (which is the German title of Space Crusade). I think it was quite an awesome game and the RPG mechanics were motivating for playing whole campaigns. The German version sucked a lot, however, because all (!) ties to the Warhammer franchise were removed, the Space Marines were called Galaxy Safe Guard (apparently an homage to the German GSG 9) and everything was presented as non-violently as possible. Just awful!

Edit: Oh yeah, and one that I only started playing more recently with my brother and his wife was The Settlers of Catan. Brilliant game.

Hm, my favorite "Eurogames" are actually card games like Dominion, Bohnanza, Blue Moon, San Juan or Caesar & Cleopatra. But I also like Puerto Rico, Thurn and Taxis, Carcassonne and Torres a lot.

Monopoly or that african diamond.

So Dungeons and Dragons does not count?

no wait, hero quest was the best.

German students taught me a fun board game. It's called Kekswichsen.
On second thought I'm not sure whether it's a board game.
Actually I'm not sure whether it's a game at all.

D&D is a roleplaying game, not a board game in the traditional sense.

HeroQuest is a childrens game though. Without the nostalgia goggles, it is hard for an adult to find a whole lot to enjoy in that game. Same with SpaceCruade, which was Game's Workshop's 40k version (HeroQuest takes place in the WHFB universe). Might be worth getting if you plan to play a game with an 7-14 year old kid though.

i still like monopoly, dont play it often and not on a board anymore either but it started out as a board game so thats ok right?

I've played a lot of Arkham Horror, so here's a quick review:

Concept: Each game, a random Great Old One is selected as the "enemy". The players play cooperatively against the Great Old One, trying to seal up the dimensional portals it opens while keeping the number of roaming monsters in check. If the GOO "breaks through" (due to to many open portals, too many monsters, or just the passage of too much time), there is a final battle, and if the investigators lose, the world is destroyed. If the players defeat the GOO (or manage to seal enough portals), they collectively win.

Pros:
-Good "pulp action/horror" feel, especially if you're into Cthulhu.
-The game creates great "stories". The game plays out very differently each time, and there is a lot of room for players to interpret events and outcomes and tell stories to explain what happened. This is one of those boardgames where years later you'll be saying "Man, remember that time when when...." As in, "Man, remember that time when the police deputized the town bum and gave him a revolver, and he drove around town in a police buggy with his dog drinking whiskey and shooting vampires in the face?"
-Once you get used to the rules, it's fairly straightforward, and a group of experienced players can easily "carry" an inexperienced one.
-The game rewards cooperative play, collaberative strategizing, and personal sacrifice - a player who tries to "go it alone" will likely end up dying and dragging the rest of the team down with them.
-Lots of options for ratcheting the difficulty up or down, depending on your skill level (this mostly requires expansions, though).

Cons:
-The rules can be fairly opaque at first, so if you don't have an experienced player to "run" things for you, be prepared to spend a lot of time hunting through the rulebook for fiddly situational rules.
-Lots of cards and fiddly bits leads to a long setup time, and can be a bit overwhelming for players who are used to playing simpler games with less to keep track of.
-It's not uncommon for a particular player to get hosed (such as by being jumped by a particularly nasty monster), which can lead to a lot of "down time" in the hospital and/or asylum. This can get pretty boring if it happens several times in a row. I tend to solve this by having less players and giving each of them two or more characters, so if one goes down they still have another one to play with.
-The game can run quite long - be prepared to set aside an entire evening for a single play-through, especially if you have more than 4 players and/or novice players.
-Once in a while the game just "doesn't work" - for whatever reason, events conspire such that neither the heroes nor the enemy are advancing much, and the game just turns into a long slow slog. This doesn't happen very often, but if this was a new player's introduction to "advanced" boardgames, it might put them off the entire concept.