The four year old managed to play hanabi, his strategy was only marginally less successful than the adults.

OK just made my latest CoolStuffInc order, picked up a few things I'm excited about:

--Cheaty Mages: This is totally my kind of game, quick, easy to teach, perfect for about 3 players, and only about $6. Check out online reviews of it.

--Going Going Gone: Clearly it's overpriced for what you get component wise (as is the case with many party games) but the fun factor is there any reviews keep raving about it as a party game. For something to play with the family this New Year's season, this seems perfect. Looking forward to it.

--Eight Minute Empire Legends: Never played the original but this looks great, plays in about 15 (not 8) minutes, and is the kind of game my wife loves without a lot of fighting but more about area control, cards with powers, etc. Really excited and it's got great reviews.

Tried King of Tokyo with the family last night and they were lukewarm on it but everyone was tired and we had lots of interruptions. Tried it as 2 player with my wife after everyone else went to bed and I destroyed her and she said it sucks as 2 player game lol. We'll see if I can salvage it. Seems fun, though on first play I like Smash Up better.

Forbidden Desert has been a big hit with the wife so far, we only have had a few plays but it's definitely a lot more challenging than FI with the dying via lack of water so far (we haven't had the Water Carrier character yet).

Looking forward to playing Dominion with the Prosperity and Hinterlands expansions. Also new Dixit Origins cards so will probably play that tonight.

Happy gaming everyone.

Why no meatier strategy games?

I mean, for what this site is, I'm pretty surprised to see so many light, filler, or party games that you guys play.

Different strokes for different folks and all that, but I think I'd be miserable playing those light games all the time.

Try out Freedom: The Underground Railroad. Tough, but great game...well, as far as Co-ops go anyway

any chance of a brief review of love letter, guys?

Small game. 16 cards with ranks from 1-8 with more of the lower ranks and fewer of the higher ranks. In addition to a rank, each card has a power. Every player is dealt a single card hand. On your turn, you draw a second card and choose one to play. The assorted powers give you a chance to eliminate other players or avoid being eliminated yourself. To win the round, you either have to be the last person standing or have the highest ranked card in your hand when you reach the end of the deck. Officially it plays with 2-4, but it is decidedly better with 3 and 4. You can play to any total you want. They recommend first to 7 with 2, first to 5 with 3 and first to 4 with 4 (which which is a max of 13 rounds no matter the number of players). A round takes a few minutes so the game plays in like 20 minutes. Its a really nice little bluffing game.

At the other end of the spectrum for heavier games, I don't think anyone has mentioned merchant of venus, but I have really been enjoying the 2nd edition of it. I've only played the classic game so far and trying out the standard game is high on my list of games to try.

ty - I just gave it blind as a stocking filler

You can add me to the list of people who would recommend The Resistance.

We played it at a couple of family holiday functions and even the non-gamers really liked it. We played without any of the plot cards, so it was very similar to a vanilla werewolf game only with more emphasis placed on mission nominations and voting records. It was a lot of fun to put the wolf hunting tactics POG has taught me into practice against a group of mostly newbies.

Hopefully you did POG proud in your initial games, accobra_kid!

Resistance was a big hit this holiday season and it was the only game I bought (via Amazon.com).

I got the chance to play the following games these holidays for the first time:

Powergrid: I would liken this to Ticket to Ride with the added feature of auctions and resource management. It makes it sound more different than it is, but ultimately Powergrid is a route management game with extra flavour. You purchase power plants and convert raw resources into power using the plants, and this power powers the cities that you own on the board. I enjoyed it, it was fairly simple to be taught. My only gripe (provided we were playing with the correct ruling) is that the recommended win conditions seem weird to me. This is one of these games that's high on BGG and I've heard a lot about and have only just now tried, but it's good. I think local shops have it at 40-50 dollars which seems appropriate.

Tzolk'in: this game is pretty wild and I think has many layers of strategy. It's a combination of Peurto Rico and Agricola (worker placement). The twist is the game uses a Rondel mechanic; a large central wheel which designates the duration of the game is spun each turn, which rotates four other gears upon which workers are placed. This spinning can change pace so a big part of the game is judging and getting your timing right so your workers are all accelerating on each gear at the right moment. Otherwise your standard resource/building/influence motifs. The first game I've seen with moving parts which certainly is unique.

Game of Thrones Board Game: a Risk like territory management game based in the GoT universe (although knowledge of the series is not required at all to play the game). Actually I'd say this is a decent take on the army type game, but after playing it, it made me quickly realize that once I sell Smallworld, I have no desire to replace it with a like-minded war game. They're just not my taste.

Imperial: a zero luck game of diplomacy. You invest in various nations in Europe and take turns profiting from the countries expansion, taxation, production, etc. A pretty dry game but once we figured it out it was actually not bad. Less to say about it but if you're looking for a game with zero luck involved, this would be a suggestion as there's no dice rolling or card drawing. You have total control at your disposal if you wish to take a nation under your command and have your way with it.

So overall you would recommend GoT? I really like smallworld when i first played it but that wore somewhat quickly. Same with pandemic.

I bought mage wars but we never got rolling with it tldr its collecting dust now.

I haven't played Mage Wars, but I have played the other 3. I wouldn't compare AGoT to Pandemic especially, but not even Small World. I'm not the biggest Small World fan, but I am surprised that Small World wore quickly given its focus on random race/ability links. Pandemic is co-op so...nothing like AGoT, which is more similar to Diplomacy.

AGoT has no dice and is a simultaneous order resolution game. People lay down order tokens face down next to their territories and they all get resolved at once - attack, defend, support, gain power (?). Some people play it fairly light in the negotiation dept. but it's probably more made for a negotiation type affair. It's a tense micro-conquest game. You can't make large sweeps, even though you can make fairly devastating moves like Diplomacy. It has a lot of extras on top of the the basic Dip engine. It's more of a lengthy game than Small World as well.

Nations is very good but hard to get. Thank god I work in Essen

Re: heavier games...it's pretty hard to get them to the table so I tend to prefer stuff I can play with more people.

I would love to play TI3 or Rex/Dune but that's pretty much never going to happen. It's basically the same with heavy Euros. Would really like to play Dominant Species for example
Heck even my Twilight Struggle is collecting dust.

The absolute best "no luck" games out there are 18xx games. Absolutely fantastic economic games..

I'd recommend 18AL as your beginning game.

So next year, can we get you to pick up and ship games for us, if we pay?

And I made a pretty good (imo) learn-to-play video on DS. It's on the DS page on BGG... 4 hours and lots of chaotic war-gamey Euro-ness

dbmurph said it better than I did. We only played one game of AGoT with only 4 players and it was just okay for me (I played as the Starks). Seemed like with less than six people, some people had so much room to work with and others (me) did not, but we all played to some degree of passivity and allowed a lot of expansion. I think on multiple plays I would get more enjoyment out of it once I fully understood the movement mechanics.

Thanks Bebe. I liked your take on Imperial. It is no luck and pretty fascinating. I like it but it really took me a couple of plays to begin to get the hang on the strategy since you have no vested interest in a nation beyond how much money it makes you. I found we played at first with only short term money making ideas. We sort of built nations up then tossed them to the rocks. It's really more of an economic game. It's like the 18xx series meets warring nations with a rondel. I've only played the normal Imperial game, which I really like, but I hear the Imperial 2030 version is even better.

Can you elaborate on Le Havre, Dominant Species, and Casltes of Burgundy?

How closely does LH parallel Agricola? Is it unique enough? I don't own Agricola but I have played it a ton, and would want something that isn't too close that I could offer up on board game nights.

I've read Dominant Species is a good game with a nice idea but poor execution of the theme.

Also anyone played Alhambra?

I have a time or two but it was a long time ago. It was okay to good just from memory. I think there may be an Android or iOS app for it. There is one for Le Havre, which I like. It's more of a gamer's type game than Agricola. LH is more of an economic game. Get goods or money, build buildings, use buildings, get your buildings used for payment, ship goods, feed people. I played Castles of B for the first time a few weeks ago and it was pretty fun. Use dice to build up your plot type game. Haven't played DS.

BGG (and probably youtube) has some video reviews on most games.

Alhambra is solid. Not very long and pretty fun imo
I got CoB in the calender thingy and it's pretty good after a couple of plays.

The best videos/style currently are Rahdo's imo so if you can find a video by him on a game you're interested in check it out. Might not be for everyone because he's kind of hyper but I love them. He basically plays two players (himself and his wife), starts with a 30min gameplay video and then the option for a longer one or straight to final thoughts.
Gameplay videos are generally much better than explanation or pure review imo

http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/14...hrough/page/1?

Castles one:
http://boardgamegeek.com/video/26574...es-of-burgundy

Since BGG is kind of horrible to use here's how you find good videos for games:
- Enter game in search bar at the top, click on it
- Click on the smallish "videos" link at the top of the games page (or just scroll down)
- In the videos section click on the small "hot" at the top right (default is "recent") -> videos are now sorted by votes they got which is much more usefull...no idea why it's not the default
[also useful if you want to search for similar games, click on the designer or one of the mechanics in the game overview and it brings you to a new page...in "linked items" sort by ranking from the dropdown (the default is by name which is more than useless)

Played "Cards Against Humanity" the other night, hilarious

http://cardsagainsthumanity.com/

hate cards against humanity lol

watched the trains video - looks interesting

You can also try Alhambra and Castles of Burgundy here: http://www.boiteajeux.net

that guy looks/acts like he is coked up all the time, but i like his videos too.

He's a retired video game designer...probably just (mild) ADHD