bohnanza is a classic. I was reading about it the other day - it spawned several spinoffs, none of which are as good as the original, or something. Also, i think when it was released it was really popular, but a lot of people were a bit snooty because it was 'just' a card game, not a real boardgame, so for instance it didn't win game of the year in the german conventions, but has stood the test of time really well. Good choice imo.

There's quite a few of addons for Bohnanza and I liked all I have played so far, Al Cabone (alows solo games + mafia theme) might have been the worst but it'sd still pretty good.

And in case anyone is wondering Bohne = bean in German and Bonanza the western show was fairly popular over here so it's a nice little pun

Hey Waiter is a brand new card/trick-taking game that just came out after the Essen convention and is really good, I highly recommend checking it out if you like card games at all.

i've got a pretty huge board game collection, but nobody to play them with. does anybody want to get together on BSW or i see that somebody put a dominion port i hadn't heard of yet.

I've been playing a game called Fjords a lot lately. The play is a combo of carcassonne-style tile-laying and an abstract man-placement game. In the first phase, two players (only 2) take turns laying hexagonal terrain pieces. The tiles have mountains and water features that have to line up. On each piece played, you can choose to place or not place a farm, of which you have 4. There are about 40 tiles. Once all the tiles are placed, players take turns placing fields, which can only be placed adjacent to a farm or another field.

Games only take about 20 minutes, so it's a good quickie game. The second phase is straightforward enough that you can play pretty close to perfect after a few plays, but there are usually one or two tough decisions per game. The first phase is a lot more squishy and strategic, and revolves around placing farms at strategic points to cut off areas for yourself and building on to your "zones" while keeping the opponent from placing his own farm in your territory. Highly recommended, and I think I got it for only $10.

I just randomly found this youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/UvulaBob#g/u

Short reviews of games 5-10 minutes usually, pretty awesome styl imo (you may or may not like it but I love that style). I've watched the first 14 or so back-to-back

bob is solid. sort of the yahtzee of board games.

i picked up agricola recently, but have yet to play it

bohnanza is def fun

bananagrams is good as well but my wife and i mostly play scrabble over facebook using ipad/iphone so we can play asynchronously throughout the day

Great suggestions on games here. However, I'm looking for a few good games to play for MONEY with my poker buddies.

Obviously it needs to be fair and without the possibility of "being picked on". A game like Risk just wouldn't work because too much of your personal outcome is based on what others do to you.

Boomtown may work, might want to remove the dynamite and that other card where you can take a claim from the game though since it allows you to attack others

It would probably be fairly interesting to wager on Ghost Stories i.e. you pick the ghosts vs the team or vice versa. Would be interesting to see what the correct odds would actually be for the normal difficulty level. I'd guess somewhere around 3:1-4:1 against the team?

If you want HU action I'd get Labyrinth/Twilight Struggle

Dominion also seems good for gambling as long as you use a reasonable deck composition (for starters I'd go with one that doesn't have any player interaction). Most attack cards I remember attack all other players though so there isn't picking on a single player

Nobody has mentioned Colditz even yet?

I played that game a LOT, about 25 years ago.

hmmmm good ideas

Mansion of Madness looks awesome and has skyrocked to my #1 must buy. I'll need to wait for the German edition so I can play it with everyone since it has flavour text and all.

tl;dr: Arkham Horror style Lovecraft theme, 1-4 investigators are stuck in a Mansion looking for a way to escape, one person plays the Keeper and throws all kinds of nasty stuff at them. You wander from room to room searching for clues, fighting the occasional monster etc.
It's build like a mix of horror survival and mystery game (scooby doooooo!)

5 scenarios with three different endings each and the scenarios also have options in setting them up for the keeper and some randomness in the cards drawn etc...supposedly quite replayable. BGG has tokens that can be placed in each room so the depth of the carddeck that's usually played there etc. doesn't give away the valuable rooms

POG extra: there's doors that require solving puzzles (supposedly not really hard but seems like a neat mechanism)

Also has some miniatures, since I like to solo Arkham Horror with Joe the PI and he's included it even pimps my AH

Two part video review:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxh2AF1oXoE
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS1qve2Jmak
Part 3 will involve some spoilers etc and isn't out yet (but it's only a bonus anyways 1+2 are all you need to get a really good idea)

Do you by any chance solve the first few puzzles then find the keeper has gone AWOL and you are stuck in that room for ever more?

I dunno, I'm avoiding all spoilers for this game but AFAIK there are no boat related puzzles
From the videos it has a bit of a Resident Evil 1 feel to it. I tihnk there's some potential to steal/improve the idea and rebrand it as a RE game or even better Scoby Do because the entire family could play that. I wonder how much such a license would cost

played Dominion and expansions like a fiend last year, and then hadn't played it for maybe 6 months or so until last weekend... still a great game.

which expansion do u recommend?

I just got Agricola from some friends. Can someone give me some brief cliffs on how to approach the game when playing like 4 ppl? Im gonna go look up guides online but I kindda trust you guys more then some random guide :P

Do you mean actual strat or just how to play the game?

i should be able to learn how to play the game by reading the rules i guess.. so strats please

This is a Toganim gimmick btw :P

Invest heavily in ways to cook stuff.

So uh I have spent roughly 70 Euro on sleeves for Arkham Horror anouther 20ish for a couple of sacks/storage thingies and 15or so for two plano boxes. >100 Euro just for storage and related stuff haha. At least the game's awesome :P

I only own the gase game, King in Yellow and Dunwich Horror FWIW but bought the sleeves etc. for all epansions+one other game to save some money on shipping

agricola is like the omaha of boardgames

confirm/deny

I couldn't figure out how to play agricola at all by reading the rules

More ppl>less ppl

But afaik the strategy depends on what other people are doing, it's best to have a few options that you could take any given turn rather than something you need