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Comment by colmvp | Hacker News Reader

The fact he has Gloomhaven to the right of him made me chuckle. I've only had one chance to play it, and it took hours of fumbling around with the instructions with my friends (who also hadn't played it) but once we got the hang of the instructions it was very, very fun.

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I liked that, to his left, he had Fortress America, Shogun, and what I think is Conquest of the Empire, the three other games in the same series as Axis and Allies.

Personally I was pretty happy to see Risk. Not many people seem interested in playing large strategy board games.

There are a lot of large strategy board games that are much nicer than Risk these days. The world has come a long way since Risk was created. Risk 2210 A.D. is much greater, and there are other games even greater than that. I think large co-op board games can be especially fun.

Any examples of large co-op board games that you find interesting?

Pandemic

I really like Mansions of Madness as well as Dead of Winter. Both are co-op but both have a mechanic where it’s possible one of the players is actually a betrayer out to defeat the others.

My problem with pure co-op, especially pandemic, is that what usually happens is one player ends up doing most of the actual “playing” and the others just provide a few suggestions here and there.

Both MoM and DoW limit the things you are allowed to share with the other players too, which makes this happen less often, and in DoW every player has a unique hidden agenda in addition to the group goal - which gets fun if they do something weird because you have to work out if they are a betrayer or just have a weird agenda.

I have played Pandemic a few times, and it ended up like you mention. 1-2 players took control while the others were mostly passive.

DoW looks interesting, but not sure how possible it is with 2-3 players and it is harder to get a larger group now in the middle of the pandemic.

It’s fun with even two players but it’s definitely more interesting with four or more.

The expansions allow twelve players, which I strongly recommend only doing with experienced players - it takes a whole day and people give up if you have to explain all the rules over and over.

Risk seems to get a lot of hate these days.

BoardGameGeeks rankings push it way down, which seems to be a common theme for popular mainstream games. Though the ones at the bottom like Monopoly and Game of Life are truly horrible and give board games a bad rap: fulling deserving of their ranking.

To the right of Risk looks to be Stratego which was a fun game when I was a kid.

I appreciate there are more sophisticated games out there but what's the issue with Monopoly?

Pure dice roll & has a trivial strategy for perfect play

Being simple and linear doesn't make it bad: I can equally enjoy playing super mario and Fallout,even though they are quite different in terms of gameplay.

The linearity and randomness aren’t the main problems. Play length and run-away winner are far worse issues. It’s possible to lose the game in the first couple of trips round the board and still have a couple of hours of slowly being ground down. One person might have fun no one else does.

You can add in more stuff if you want. Mergers and spin-offs, player-to-player loans with various interest rates, bill payment schedules, etc. :)

Some people have different tastes, like asking what’s wrong with vanilla ice cream.

I like board game geek, but it has a bit of a movie critic problem in that the most popular, most played, and most fun games aren’t necessarily highest rated.

It is also very well known, so any negative reviews have the added bonus of extra attention. And the criticism was novel a few years ago.

When I first read an article criticising Monopoly, I realised I didn’t know how to play it. We’d been house ruling it all this whole time! If you had fun playing it when you were younger, I’d question if you even know how to play it.

Sure, the house rules can make it more fun. But I’d argue, if you are just changing the rules, do you actually like Monopoly? Why not buy a game with rules you like?

The problem with Monopoly was it was originally designed to not be fun except for the one person winning. You thought you were playing a game, but instead it was educating you on how the haves end up having more.

Is it hate? Or is it just the truth that board games have really evolved over time? I can still enjoy a game of Risk, but it's difficult to say that I'd prefer a game of Risk compared to a game with more complex dynamics. That doesn't mean I disrespect Risk or hate it. But difficult to enjoy skiing green circle after you've gotten used to black diamond, no?

Nothing wrong with Risk, so I don't get why it gets downvoted - especially given the influence it has had on gaming over the years. Maybe it is simply a wish to push people more towards the independent games rather than those owned by a corporate.

Possibly, but I’ve only had people refuse to play Risk with me without suggesting any alternatives, so I have to assume it’s aversion to that kind of genre in general.

My biggest problem with risk is the huge element of chance.

I'd reach for Empire Builder or Nippon Rails or something like that before Risk. Even though it's a different theme, they end up being much better games.

Risk is a terrible game for anyone who cares about strategy because it has a kingmaker problem. Someone who is terrible at the game can still easily get mad and cause one player to lose by throwing all their armies at them. Monopoly has a similar problem with the ability to trade all your properties to someone for a dollar because someone else pissed you off.

That’s why Risk is more of a social game than a strategy game. Though I assume the same thing is true for global politics.

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