Collection Suggestions

Race (and Roll) for the Galaxy are probably my favourite games of the moment. Galaxy Trucker is way up there, too. So many choices! That's excluding the Greater Than Games (and, by extension, Dice Hate Me Games) titles that I obviously love.

If you regularly play in groups of at least 5 players, I strongly recommend The Resistance. Chez Geek and Fluxx are two of my personal favorite card games. Kill Doctor Lucky can be very amusing also. 

If you are wanting more simple, but addicting games you cant go wrong with Sushi Go! and Love Letter

Depends on the number of people you have and the types of games enjoyed, really.  One of my big criteria for new games these days is "will it handle 6 people, with a bonus if it can handle up to 8."  Some of the games I really enjoy only handle up to 4-5 and there are times that they just can't get played because we'd rather do something with all 6-8 people than split into two groups.

- Dominion (deck-builder, tons of expansions, so a long collection process.)  Competitive, can handle up to 6 people but best with 3-4 IMO.  I try to play at least 2-3 games of Dominion in a row even if we're switching between games frequently that day because the setup and teardown is more efficient by leaving the generic portions of the supply in place while changing out the purchasable options.
- Thunderstone is a different type of competitive deck-builder that'll handle up to 5.  I don't find it quite as enjoyable but I do like it as a change of pace sometimes.
- Shadowrun: Crossfire is a light cooperative deck-builder that'll handle up to 4 and has some understated depth to it.
- Evolution (try to grow species' populations while avoiding being eaten by other players' species and making sure you don't starve but trying to make it so that they do.)  Competitive, can handle up to 6 people with a single deck.  I bought two copies of the game because the mechanics will support more if there are more cards.  It does get a bit slow with more than 5 people unless you use a simultaneous play variant for one of the phases.
- Pandemic.  Cooperative, can handle 4 with the base set and 5 with an expansion (not sure if a second expansion allows for 6 or not.)  Racing to save the world from different diseases that are breaking out.
- 7 Wonders.  City-building with a drafting mechanic, handles up to 7 people (8 with a certain expansion), quick to play but has a looooot of depth to it.  The first time you teach it to someone, you'll spend about as long explaining everything as you will playing the first game - there's a ton of options and possibilities, but it gets significantly easier to understand when you play, and it moves quickly.
- Palenque.  Area control, handles up to 6 people, interesting gerrymandering rules.
- Temporum.  Time-travel / history-changing theme (light on the theme) game about balancing card draw / card play for effects / card use for scoring points.  Handles up to 5.  Quick, light, fun.
- Sewer Pirats.  You play rats/weasels/cockroaches/slugs/etc. boarding one of three pirate ships in the sewers and going out for treasure (happy meals, fries, ketchup packets, food cans, can openers, etc.)  Each species in your crew has a different ability, the treasures aren't just straight points, and it's a fun game that I don't think is being printed anymore.

For a general collection, I'd probably recommend 7 Wonders, Pandemic, and Evolution out of that list.  Those are probably going to have the broadest appeal, in my experience.

Edited to add - Concept, a fairly new party game that I found surprisingly fun to play for hours.  While you can keep score for it, we chose not to do that.  The goal of the game is to work with a partner to get the rest of the room to guess what thing is on the card that you drew.  The way you do that is by placing colored tokens on a mat to indicate primary, secondary, tertiary, etc. concepts of the thing to be guessed.  The only options you have are on the mat, which is both helpful and restrictive in some ways.  An easy example for Americans would be George Washington, so the primary concept would be Man, Historical, Real, Politics.  Secondary concept might be Location, Red, White, Blue.  Tertiary might be Tree, Fruit/Vegetable, Round, Red to try to get people to think of the cherry tree.  A hard example from the rulebook had something like six concepts to indicate a fictional story of a short smart man plus a big strong man in blue and white, with a small animal, and French and Roman flags.  The goal there was to get people to guess "Asterix and Obelix" which, when we read it aloud, had all but one person in the room looking blankly at the reader.  There's a wide range of difficulties for people with different backgrounds to choose from :)

i second 7 wonders, my friends and i had a bout of playing that game EVERY game night.

lords of waterdeep - worker placement set in d&d world

machi koro - like dominion (deck building) + catan (rolling for resources), really simple, but has fun interactions with other players, i.e. stealing money hahaha

Cthulhu Wars. I'm addicted. It's one of the best board games I've ever played in all honesty. It's pricey, but damn the gameplay and overall design is SO worth it. That and SotM are the only games I'd drop everything to go play if someone asked.

I've really enjoyed Euphoria as an awesome and beautiful worker placement game (Brew Crafters is another in the genre that I love and is a DHM/>G title)

How many people you typically play with will have a lot to do with what you get - I primarily game with 2, so all of my games have to have at least a good if not great two player experience:

Some of my favorites:

Roll for the Galaxy (Craig already mentioned this)

Viticulture - worker placement about owning a vineyard, plays 2-6, add the Tsucany expansion for my favorite ever WP game

Seasons - card drafting/dice selection game that has a card playing/Magic The Gathering feel to it

Smash Up - fun thematic card game where you mix factions in one deck (example Pirate Ninjas or Alien Zombies) to try to score the most points by destroying locations

Ghost Stories - my second favorite co-op, incredibly difficult but awesome and engaging

Euphoria is great too - same designer as Viticulture, which I prefer as a two player game, but I love Euphoria with 4 or 5

What do you like about the games you already own?

Second 7 Wonders, Race for the Galaxy, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Cthulhu Wars, Seasons and Pandemic.

Although I'd actually recommend Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert over Pandemic - the play structure is similar, although the mechanics are different, and I think the art and flavor are phenomenal.  (In Forbidden Island, you're playing as a team of archeologists trying to locate lost artifacts before the island sinks out from underneath you, while in Forbidden Desert you're trying to repair an ancient flying machine before you die of thirst in the desert, or get buried in sand.)

Some of my other favorites:

Dungeon Lords: Worker placement game for 4 players.  You're playing as an evil dungeon lord, trying to protect your lair from those pesky heroic adventurers trying to kill you.  You recruit monsters (slimes, goblins, vampires, dragons), build traps, and develop your dungeon during the worker placement section, and then there's a puzzle section where you try and deal with the adventurers you've attracted with a minimum of pain.  The worker placement is pretty interesting too - each action has several different modes, and which one you get is determined by the order workers are placed on the action - which you don't know until after you've selected your actions.  So a big part of strategy is predicting what actions the other players will take so that you can land on the modes you want.  And the flavor is pretty fun.  One example is food:  the first mode for food is to pay 1 gold for 2 food (your minion goes to the village and pays for food).  The second mode is to go up in evil reputation for 3 food (the villagers refuse to sell you food, so you threaten to burn down the village, and they give you food).  The third mode is to go up in evil reputation twice, and get 3 food and a gold (the villagers refuse to give you food, even when threatened, so you burn down the village and find food plus the gold that the first minion payed them).  Another example is the "Magic room".  Two imps and a romantic dinner go in, three imps come out!  It's magic!

Tales of Arabian Nights:  Admittedly, this is less of a board game, and more of a choose your own adventure story with multiple people running around.  There's almost no strategy involved, you just run around making questionable decisions (I recommend courting everything that moves) and getting bewitched, crippled, and turned into monkeys.

Shadows over Camelot & Battlestar Galactica:  not entirely the same, but both are mostly coopertive games where everyone's working together, but 1 or more people is secretly a traitor.  Both are fun and flavorful, and I recommend both.  (and actually, they are about as similar to each other as Pandemic is to Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert.)

Atlantis:  I like to describe it as "Candy Land, only fun".  The movement mechanic is similar to Candy Land, but you have multiple meeples to move, and multiple cards to play, and the tiles in the path disappear from behind you as you move (because you're escaping a sinking Atlantis), so it becomes much more strategic than Candy Land could ever be.

Ninja Burger:  If you like Munchkin, you'll probably like Ninja Burger.  It's another Steve Jackson game, where you're playing as a family of ninjas running a burger joint, and you go on missions to deliver burgers to places like the International Space Station, supervillain lairs, and Camelot.  There's less backstabbing than in Munchkin but it's still present, and a lot things that can't be done in other games, (like winning ties or playing cards after dice have been roled) are allowed because you're ninjas.

Hey!  That's my Fish!:  A 2-4 person 15 minute tile game where you play as penguins sliding around and collecting fish.

Guilds of Cadwallon:  2-8 players (if you have the expansion), about 30-45 min.  You're recruiting guilds to join you.  I'm not entirely sure how to describe the mechanic better than that, but it's very simple and easy to pick up.  The art is beautiful (if a little busy), and it can get very complex very quickly, especially if you're using a large board.

Promise me we'll play sometime. It's amazing.

I actually can't get in engaged in Dungeon Lords, though I've tried.  Dungeon Petz, on the other hand, is wonderful

Ohmigosh, The Resistance and Arabian Nights are recipes for absurd (and wonderful) group dynamics.

Add in some Robo Rally, and you've got a night.

Oh, I'll add Citadels to the list.  2-8 players, not much to set up but has a lot of replayability.  Another citybuilding theme, with semi-drafting mechanics for roles on a round-by-round basis.  Tends to play pretty quickly.

I can't read this without hearing Eric Summerer in my head shouting "CITADELLLLLLLLLLLS!"

I've been known to yell this aloud when Citadels is mentioned. No one ever gets it.

Welcome to my world then... I'm constantly doing memes and in-jokes at the wrong target group, so I get a lot of blank looks.

I'd totally get your Eric reference. ;)

I like a lot of games by Seiji Kanai, which are competitive, flavorful, and quick to play.  Love Letter, Mai-Star, and Cheaty Mages are all fun, inexpensive games that don't take up much space!  Hanabi by Anton Bauza is a wonderful co-op game that involves players playing with their hands revealed to everyone but themselves and utilizing their turns to help other players discover what is in their hands and play five suits of cards in sequence.  Bauza also made Takenoko, which is an adorable game about fulfilling objectives for The Emperor's pet panda either eating bamboo, bamboo field configurations, or growth patterns of various bamboo.  Zombie Dice is a small dice game that is more of a "game in-betweener" but it's invaluable when you're waiting on a player to show up and want something to do for ten or fifteen minutes!

For larger games, I've found BattleCon to be quite fascinating.  It's a 2D Fighter card game, like if Street Fighter or Tekken were a game of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" with more time to plan out your move).  Ticket To Ride is a delightful game that is somewhat simple but very accessable!  Your goal is to complete train routes on tickets before the game ends while planning out an efficient route that provides a lot of points!

I don't know that all of these reviews make these games sound the most exciting, but I've had a lot of enjoyment out of all of these!  Best of luck growing your collection!

Here are a few recommendations, organized vaguely from light to heavy. A few have already been mentioned, but are worth repeating.

• Dixit
• Bohnanza

• Blueprints
• Hanabi
• Glory to Rome (if you can find it)
• Race for the Galaxy
• Ginkgopolis
• Dungeon Lords

I'd be in the group with the blank stare.  Had to go look up the reference, and even then it's still fairly abstract for me as I don't follow the Dice Tower podcast that was referenced.

Here are some more suggestions that have worked well with various game groups consisting of hard-core, casual and beginning gamers:

- Dominion: Very versatile in the sense that you can tune the setup to fit people that do not favor interaction and to fit people that do like this.

- Bohnanza Dice Game: Very simple push your luck dice rolling game, but has been an instant hit with everybody I've played it with.

- Shadows over Camelot: Very good cooperative game with the added advantage that the game mechanics allow for people to join when the game is already running. Despite the fact that it looks complex, both hard-core and casual gamers like it a lot.

- Cross Hares: When playing with casual gamers, this game can be really really fun (not just for the artwork), although you have to keep in mind that it is not heavy in strategy. Very good with people that like to poke others when they have the chance and if you like conversation to be an equal part of the evening.

I'm doing a little resurrection here because my birthday is coming up, and my fiancee and I play a lot of board games.

...actually, that's kind of a lie. We play almost exclusively Sentinels of the Multiverse!

I might want to mix that up a bit. What we like about Sentinels is:
- It's easy to set up and break down
- It takes about an hour (except those times when Citizen Truth...never mind)
- It's got a simple rule set without a lot of special cases or permutations (everything else is on the cards themselves)
- It has a fun theme with a lot of replay options
* We can play it with TWO players

We already have Dominion and Pandemic (we like cooperative games!), which also tick many of those boxes. But Sentinels is just so great! Anyway, I thought I'd ask if anybody can think of some good games for those criteria.

Red Dragon Inn is one of my favorite games. It fits all of these, except maybe rules simplicity, since just over half of the currently available characters each have their own unique ability that you need to know the rules for. I'd recommend trying out either Red Dragon Inn 1 or 2, since all of the characters in those two are run only on the core rules, then if you like the game you can pick up the 3rd or 4th core box or the individual characters (called Red Dragon Inn Allies) to add some character variety. You can play a game with just two people, but it will likely play through very quickly, probably 10-15 minutes. You need at least one core box to play the game, since each core box comes with a Drink Deck but none of the Allies have one.

Set up and break down takes about a minute each, just like Sentinels the game is made up of premade decks and tokens so you just gather the cards up and put them back in the box. It's not a cooperative game, it's straight up player vs player, last one standing wins. The theme of the game is that you're a party of adventurers fresh off of turning in your latest quest, and you've come to the Red Dragon Inn to drink and gamble with your earnings. You can be knocked out of the game in one of two ways: if you need to pay gold for something but have none, or if your Fortitude (starts at 20) and Alcohol (starts at 0) markers cross past each other on your character sheet. In the former you're just out of the game, in the latter your party pays half your remaining gold to the Inn and splits the remainder evenly among themselves.

I don't recommend the gambling expansion for new players, all but 2 of the minigames in it will kill any momentum your main game has going as you'll have to read through paragraphs of rules and setup. Once you get the swing of things though, it can be handy to add some additional variety. If you get into the game, the fifth core box is coming out later this year and will be supersized to hold all previous expansions in a single box.

EDIT: One last thing I forgot to mention, you only need two people to play but if you have the characters available you can technically play the game with as many people as you want. There are currently four Core boxes and 6 individual Allies characters. So if you had the table space and enough warm bodies, that's a 22-player game. It wouldn't be very elegant, and some global effects would creep out of power balance, but it's totally doable. A normal play group for me starts out with 4 or 5 players but we've gone as high as 9 at a PAX board game night.