S1E33 - Modern Board Games - “Fiddly bits!”

Modern Board Games


We talk about the resurgence of board games. And not like
Monopoly, Scrabble, or Clue. We’re talking the genre of Modern
Board games that has exploded lately, beginning with Settlers of
Catan, Carcassonne, and Dominion.


Beej isn’t much a board game player--he prefers simpler “party
games.” However, Void has an entire cabinet dedicated to them,
and we talk about how he got into them initially (hint: it was a
co-worker who made him play Citadels over his lunch hour 5 years
ago.)


(We go into much more depth in the episode than I am in the
notes, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll just break them down by
how we categorized them in the episode.)


Good games to start with for newbies to the modern board game
scene:


Citadels

Ticket to Ride

Pandemic



Beej’s big question is this: “What are good two player games that
my wife and I can play together (and we are picky about board
games) that can be expanded to multiple people when we have a
party?”


Good 2 player games are:


Love Letter

Condottiere

Timeline

Push Fight

Zombie Dice

Memoir 44

Pandemic



Games from Void’s collection Beej wants to know more about:


Wiz-War

Mage Knight

Exploding Kittens

Takenoko



Cool / Big modern board games


Mage Knight (super interesting, super complex)

Game of Thrones Board Game

Memoir 44

Cosmic Encounter

Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures game, Armada, Imperial Assault



Good games to start a game night with:


Love Letter

Zombie Dice

Push Fight

Sushi Go!

Timeline



Not quite a board game, but similar! Intro to LCGs:


Game of Thrones

Netrunner

Lord of the Rings



Games that get the most table time at Void’s house:


Ticket to Ride

Pandemic

Push Fight



Co-op games can be amazing with kids. You can even turn games
into co-op even if the designers didn’t make them that way. We
talk about Takenoko in particular, as well as Pandemic.


Void is a little nuts for Pandemic Legacy. It’s the board game
y’all are going to hear about as much as Hamilton and Firewatch.
Apparently, it’s just crazy good, and Void is losing his mind for
it. Some of the highlights include:


Legacy Game, meaning you can only play through it once, but
it’s like a video game in that you continue the story, even
permanently altering the board to progress the story and change
mechanics.

Just an amazing experience unlike anything Void has played
before

There are huge surprises in the boxes you open during
gameplay.



Hardest part is that we’re getting to the point where there are
so many modern board games, it’s hard to give general
recommendations. You wouldn’t recommend Halo to anyone getting
into video games, would you? It’s just as hard to give out a
broad general recommendation in board