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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

Seriously, try some modern, German-style boardgames like those described in the article - settlers if you play with people who pay attention, something slightly less interaction-heavy (san juan?) if you don't. You'll be amazed how far game design has progressed since the ones you remember from childhood.

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Couldn't agree more. German-style games make Monopoly etc look positively archaic. Two great starter games are Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne. I'm a big fan of Ticket to Ride as well.

There are a couple of things that make these games so good. Firstly, they're extremely well balanced - unlike Monopoly, it's rare for one player to pull ahead to the point that it's impossible for anyone else to catch up with them.

Secondly, they tend to come to an inevitable conclusion - a game of Settlers will virtually never last more than an hour and a half due to resources / space on the board depleting over time. I've had games of Monopoly last 6 hours or more, by which time everyone is fed up and wishes they'd never started playing.

I've never been able to stand Carcassonne, and Ticket to Ride falls firmly into my "meh" category - with multiple players you optimize your chances of winning by taking a lot of routes, and it's then mostly a matter of luck whether you get a set that overlaps enough to complete. Settlers is good if you play it with people who pay attention, but if not you can easily be waiting half an hour while everyone asks everyone else several times over if they want to sell them any grain for their sheep.

So yeah, I've mentioned San Juan; Citadels is similar and conveniently is playable for 2-8. If you're a group of programmers then Roborally is fantastic (just ignore the life tokens).

For Settlers I've held firm to the rule that you get to make one offer/counteroffer per player for a particular resource. If you need ore, that gets you 2 times asking each player. If there are multiple things you can use then you get a few more times. It's made the game go so much smoother when a few particular folks get involved since most of the time players only need one or two things.

> Ticket to Ride falls firmly into my "meh" category - with multiple players you optimize your chances of winning by taking a lot of routes, and it's then mostly a matter of luck whether you get a set that overlaps enough to complete.

You score points if you complete the route. You subtract tat route's points if you do not complete the route.

Thus, taking extra cards is a gamble - do you gain 12 points for completing a route or lose 12 points for not completing a route?

Yep. But if you treat the game as win/lose then your best strategy is to increase your variance, which you do by taking a whole lot of tickets. Since many ticket routes overlap, it becomes a game of pure luck - the game is mostly determined by who happened to get tickets that overlapped, and all your efforts in playing won't overcome such an advantage.

My girlfriend and I saw Monopoly in the store the other day. We both thought it'd be awesome to play because as kids none of the adults around ever wanted to play with us. After about 2 hours of going around the board waiting for one of us to hit the tie-breaker property first we understood why.

You should buy Lost Cities. It's a good couples game.

Agreed. For me a big part of these games is that often you don't really know who is going to win until the very last turn. Especially with the games that have a collaborative element, people teaming against whoever is "doing too well" equalizes the gameplay a lot.

Monopoly, it's rare for one player to pull ahead to the point that it's impossible for anyone else to catch up with them.

In playing with 3 or more people, the way to deal with a front-runner is for other players to deal their way into also competing.

I had super-long games of Monopoly as a kid lasting multiple nights, but it was because we were doing stupid house rules, like rewarding people for landing on Free Parking, keeping the money supply way too high.

I'm not holding up Monopoly as the greatest game ever; "technology" has improved and board games should as well. (Here's one rule change to speed up end-game: after all properties are bought, cut the $200 salary to $100.) But a lot of the abuse it gets is undeserved, so I feel compelled to defend it.

Also many people play without the auction rule, which makes the game a lot more fast-paced.

There are also a number of excellent collaborative games, such as Pandemic, or the new(ish) and very quick Escape: The Curse of the Temple. These are great if you want a less competitive atmosphere.

I'd add recommendations for Cosmic Encounter, whose mechanic of destiny makes its competitive nature a lot more amenable to my tastes, and Flash Point, which is like Pandemic but about firefighters rather than CDC people and would probably be a lot more accessible to kids.

Dobble is amazing for everyone, and it's great fun to explain it for the first time ("each two cards have only one shape in common, you have to find it") and hear people go "That's it? That's easy!" and then shout in frustration when they realize it's almost impossible :P

Also, Jungle Speed, Cockroach Salad, Halli Galli are pretty fun speed games. Tokyo Train is a classic for four people as well.

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