Chat 3 pm EDT on the four-letter. ESPN 710 Seattle at 2 pm PDT. AllNight later on tonight. Waiting for confirmation but I should be on ESPN 1250 Pittsburgh tomorrow at around 11 am EDT.
Back when I did my original post on board games, several readers recommended Puerto Rico
The game takes a while to explain but is very simple to play. In each round, there are phases (one per player) that allow players to build new buildings, produce goods, sell goods they’ve produced, or draw extra cards from the deck. The cards serve several functions: a player can use them to pay for buildings, a player can build the building on the card’s face if he has enough cards, and a player can stash them under a Chapel to sock away some bonus points for the end of the game. The game ends when one player has built twelve buildings in his settlement, after which the player with the most points is the winner. Having the most buildings doesn’t mean you’ll have the most points, as different buildings have different point values, and some buildings are worth bonus points based on what else each player has in his settlement.
Once you’ve started the game, it’s easy to follow and moves pretty quickly; as you add to your settlement, the rate at which you can produce, build, and sell improves, since each building has some bonus feature like reducing the cost of certain buildings or allowing you to produce an extra good during the production phase. All of the other two-player games we regularly play take far longer, so it’s great to have a fun alternative when it’s late and we want to play something fast.
The game also has a good mix of strategy and luck. There are clearly better and worse ways to build your settlement, and you have to make major decisions like whether to build another production building or whether to start building the violet-card buildings, which have the bonus features I mentioned above and are generally worth more points. You have to decide which cards in your hand to use as currency and which to keep so you can ultimately play and build them. The prices of goods change slightly from turn to turn, leading to sell-or-wait decisions. But you’re also at the mercy of the cards you draw, making the game different each time but also perhaps preventing you from always using the same strategy.
And since it’s just a big deck of cards and a few cardboard pieces to mark phases and prices, it’s extremely portable, which never hurts.
I still have to write about Carcassonne, after which it’ll be time to revise the board game rankings.
You should give Power Grid a shot. Takes a while to get up and running but it’s a high quality game.
Hey KLaw, if you end up making the pulled pork, let us know how it turns out. I recently made pulled pork with Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce in a crock pot. It was decent, by no means excellent.
It’s in the brine now, and I’ll be up by 7:30 to start the wood burning. I’m not going to soak the wood this time. Hoping that the 90+ degree temps mean keeping the grill at 210-220 won’t be difficult.
I’ve mentioned this before on the Dish, but you should give Agricola a try. Works well as a two player game, but is also good with 3-5 players. Takes a while to set up and it may take a game or two to learn the best strategies, but it’s a lot of fun. A two player game takes about an hour (they game instructions say it takes about 30 minutes per player, which is about right if the players have played the game before, excluding setup)
How long does a game of San Juan take for 2 players? What about 3 or 4?
My family loves Ticket to Ride (with the 1910 expansion) – great recommendation!
I second John’s recommendation of Power Grid. It can play 2 players and scales well up to 6. Excellent game.
For other recommendations, I wrote a really long comment on the previous board game post.
I enjoy Power Grid as well, and have been playing Pandemic a lot lately (which also works well as a 1-player game too).
@ Douglas: I couldn’t find your previous recommendation comment. Which post was it?
If you like San Juan and are ready for a challenge, check out Race for the Galaxy. It’s very similar mechanics (cards are money or potential cards for tableau) but almost every card is different and role selection is simultaneous. The two designers actually were working together on the game but split apart due to differences. I consider it the Major League version of San Juan.
The comments on the old boardgames post were lost in the database corruption problem in December. I actually have them all in my email and one of these days I’ll get around to reposting them.
Klaw, are/were you ever into video games, being the nerd you were back in the day? (joking of course) 😉
+1 on Ticket to Ride. The wife and I love it. I recommend it to anyone who has any interest in board games.
Report on the Q?
Mike-
I would hope a solid strategy game would take more than 1 or 2 plays to really figure out ideal strategies. Is it less complex than a game like Catan? Or were you referring more to “winning” strategies than ideal strategies. I’m always up for a new strat game and would check out Agricola if it takes more than 2 hours to master.
Klaw-
I still advocate Village Smokehouse in Brookline. By no means great Q, but probably the best I found in my 5 years in Boston. And definitely better than Blue Ribbon. I generally can eat anything covered in BBQ sauce, but even that I literally had to throw away. You may not love it, but it may fit the bill if your looking for a quick fix and forgot to brine the butt.
BSK,
I didn’t word that very well. I guess what I meant was, the first time we played it we were so overwhelmed with the setup/lengthy rule book that we kinda just jumped in after figuring out the basic mechanics of game play. It wasn’t until towards the end of the game that any of us thought to look at the scoring outline (they give you handy cards showing what you gain and lose points for) to see how we accumulate points. The second time I played was better, but I was still feeling my way around the strategy I wanted to take – should I plow fields and plant grain/vegetables? Should I build pastures and collect animals? Should I try to do both (hard to do and dependant on what the other person does). Also, there are cards that allow you to do certain things (occupation cards and improvements to your farm) that can dictate your strategy, and there are a lot of them, so it takes a few games to see all the cards.
So to summarize what I meant: It took me a few games to learn the strategy that I prefer, but there is more that one way to win the game and balance is rewarded. But again, it’s dependant on what your opponent does (it’s like Puerto Rico where you cannot perform the same action as your opponent in the same turn).
It’s definately a game worth getting if you liked Puerto Rico/Catan. I’d say it’s more complex than Catan, but after a game or two you’ll get the hang of it.
Mike-
Thanks for the clarification. Sounds really interesting. I haven’t played Puerto Rico, but am big into Catan. If it’s anything like that, great; if it’s even more complex, all the better!
Keith,
Another excellent recommendation. I’ve been playing this game daily with my housemates at college. Very fun and quick game…
I’m eager to see what you say about Carcassone, as that will be my next purchase if you recommend it!