Use Carcassonne for indoctrination. It got all of my relatives from early teens to thirty-somethings into German-style boardgames. Using the “enlightened advice” rule brought in even some of the pre-schoolers, although they have enjoyed Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries best, probably because we are in Finland.

On getting knocked out of the game: Doesn’t really happen in German-style games. I’m guessing this is a major contributor in their popularity.

On cooperative games: Pandemic! Simple and fun.

On the other hand, if you are willing to combine cooperation and competition, RoboRally is a good choice. Of course, in any game with enough interaction you can combine forces. These alliances are very volatile, especially in the end-game, but they work.

The one game: Dominion: Enough variety for a lifetime in one box. Also, two expansions exist, which are pretty much equal in scope (the first expansion was also a standalone).

The catch-the-thief game Dan was talking about reminded me of a similar game, which I know isn’t the one he meant, called Scotland Yard. It’s cooperative/competitive: most players work together as Scotland Yard detectives, traveling around London via bus, taxi, and subway, to catch the single thief. The detectives have X bus, taxi, and subway tickets, where the thief has a much larger or limitless supply. The detectives have to land on the same space the thief is in, where the thief has to stay free until the detectives run out of movement. Most of the thief’s movements are written down, but not shown on the board, but every few turns he puts his token on the board.

The mystery/horror game you were talking about might have been Black Morn Manor. It’s a board game Pacesetter published in the 80s based on their Chill Horror RPG. You use tiles to build the grounds and house board as the game progresses. The players are investigators trying to figure out what’s haunting the manor and stop it, but one of them is working for the monster. The game ends when the monster’s servant completes the monster’s goal (an individual victor) or when the investigators defeat the monster (a cooperative, shared victory).

I never heard you guys mention Twilight Imperium. If you’ve never tried it, I highly encourage it. You guys seem to really like sci-fi, at least in your RPGs, so I think you’d really like Twilight Imperium.

It’s a sci-fi empire building game with a random galaxy “map” that gets generated in a fashion very similar to Settler’s of Cataan. What I like best about the game is all of the different facets: it has warfare, economics, diplomacy, and espionage/sabotage. The objectives of the game (how you win) are also random and can exist in any of those categories.

With the expansion for the game (there is only 1), it adds a wide variety of options and a bunch of new game tiles so that game really becomes a very different experience each time you play. I’m sure you guys would enjoy it.

The thief game Dan talked about was called Stop Thief (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1992)

The mystery/horror game is Betrayal at House on the Hill (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10547)

Reposted from the forum:

I wish we had waited a week or two to record that show. This past Friday, we were visited by GamerInterface. He introduced us to Blockus, Puerto Rico, Shadows of Camelot, Pandemic, and Roll Through the Ages. All of those would have been excellent points of conversation. Not that we could possibly work through every title in an episode, but even as I was editing the audio, I wish I could have gone back in time and revised the conversation a bit.

Richard, that’s exactly it! Good memory! Or Google-Fu. Either way, I’m glad to see it again.

Twilight Imperium sounds like a lot of fun.

When I suggested Twilight Imperium you said you weren’t intrested in playing it! :P

I can only think of one way to settle your disagreement. One of you must set the other on fire.

That’s just because you suggested it. :) Actually he just described it better. He didn’t start with “there is this game that takes 12 hours to play”. I didn’t even realize it was the same game. Of course boardgame geek says it only takes 4 hours to play.

At the end you said something about the Blood Bowl game. It’s been out for several months already hasn’t it? I saw a boxed set in a store and Steam has been advertising.

Of course I might have misheard.

I have always wanted to try Twighlight Imperium

I’ve been playing the 360 version of Blood Bowl since last Friday. Is it only out in the UK/Europe so far?

This episode was recorded a couple of weeks ago. However, doing a quick search, it has indeed been released since then! I’ll have to pick it up and start organizing an FTB league. Unfortunately, it looks like only a couple of places are carrying it.

Checking around, it looks like the North American release hasn’t hit yet. The only estimates I can find are in January. Best Buy doesn’t even list the product. Nor does Amazon.

Being a boardgame nut/collector/player/lover/whatever, I have a few recommendations.

Carcassonne is a good intro game as it is very pretty, and works well for what some people call “bait games”. However, for the first game, I recommend removing the (in)famous farmers rule.

For some very quick short bait games you should really check out
Hey! That’s My Fish! (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8203) and
Coloretto (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5782)
as they can be played in about 20 minutes.

For more complex games, I very much recommend
Galaxy Trucker – a real-time grabbing tiles and building a space ship hoping it works (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31481) and
Age of Empires III – completely different from the licensed title, but far better (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22545).

Shame. Looks like our version is region locked too, so you couldn’t even import it from here. I’d really like to play a few games with some people (nobody I know both likes Blood Bowl and has a 360) but I imagine time zones would make it a pain to schedule.

Actually, the great thing about Twilight Imperium is that it can be shortened effortlessly. To win the game you complete Objectives to gain Victory Points. If you want the game to end quicker you simply reduce the amount of Victory Points required to “win” the game.

That game, Stop Thief, sounds a lot like a version of Clue named Clue: The Great Museum Caper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clue:_The_Great_Museum_Caper), which had one player as the “bad guy” and everyone else as the protagonists. A lot like MB Heroquest (which is awesome).

On a new topic, how do you guys feel about RPG IPs that get put out as board games, like Arkham Horror, Deadlands, Talisman or some other ones?

Cheapass Games is now out of print. The reason Kill Doctor Lucky can be obtained in a ‘full’ version because another company purchased the rights.

Vive la Revolution!

http://www.sjgames.com/revolution