'houseo' on BGA for RftG - ~1700 rating

6 players is probably the most awkward number for boardgaming.

It's small enough to make you want to find a single game for everyone, but apart from party type games like One Night WW or Time's Up or something it's hard to make it work well for one game. Strategy games included. I think in most cases you just go two 3P games. There are a few games that go up to 6, but definitely don't play as well with 6.

If you have a whole day you could play Here I Stand. It's for 6.

Munchkin

Struggle of Empires
Dominant Species
Imperial
Eclipse
Keyflower
Pax Porfiriana
Ground Floor

Dominion base game with Dominion: Intrigue (and any other expansion but you need at least those two specific sets) can be played with 6 people.

Not to be a negative nancy but I think a vast majority of setups of any Dominion game (including expansions) are not enjoyable with more than four. Just my $0.02, I think Dominion offers a very nice deck building engine game but its beauty lies in cards that involve player interaction and often these (attack) cards with that many people (more than 4) slow the game down too much.

yeah 6 seems like it wouldn't be fun

also don't think you really need the base game, most cards are meh in it

just get intrigue instead

I've actually never tried it with 6 people, just know that it's theoretically possible. I have seen other say that two games of 3 people would be more prefrable.

If you want to play 6, you need both the base and intrigue. But if you want to play 4 or fewer players, you can start with Intrigue.

you could just have two copies of intrigue!

It really blows me away that poker players play so many 'puppy dogs & rainbow' type games. I figured y'all would like heavier games. Curious.

Lol. I knew I'd seen that comment somewhere before.

My ideal games tend to be in the 2.5-3.5 range on the BGG weight scale. I've been on a kick of lighter games recently because my girlfriend has decided she likes games and we've been slowly ramping up the complexity. I think we are going to try out snowdonia this weekend, which I am pretty optimistic about.

Hey guys. Just starting to get into board games myself. The girlfriend and I just got Settlers of Catan for 3-4 player occasions, but I'm wondering if there's something we could pick up for when just the two of us wanna play something.

If you want a light 2p game, I'd suggest something like Jaipur or Love Letter. Compact games with some nice flavour and depth for their size.

I did a cursory BGG search for games 7+ in user rating and for various weights and certainly a lot of top 100 games and a lot of my type of games show up in the 2-3.5 weight range. Stuff like RftG and Stone Age, stuff I would call medium weight.

Speaking of Stone Age... It was a game I bought at the time as just something to buy. Finally this week I got to play it with 4 players and it opened up my eyes. With 2-3 players there are some select rule changes but the game is clearly meant for 4. Board becomes much busier and the worker placement mechanic shines through much better. Can see now much clearer how it is considered a bit of a predecessor Agricola, which I have played a lot of. Would recommend with 4.

+1 for Jaipur idea.

Lost Cities is another good one.

Dominion and Race for the Galaxy are good as well, but a bit more complicated than the others.

Oh cool thanks for the suggestions! I started to get into Dominion and really liked it, but I'm not sure it'd be up her alley. Definitely need to check the others out though.

We've been playing Love Letter with the boy and it works really well.

Love Letter is fine and all but honestly I'd rather play like Up The River, Down The River or some simple card game like that. More fun.

I'm thinking of making a football (soccer) management game and want feedback on whether you'd play it and why it doesn't exist. I would have thought a game like this would have a huge potential market, therefore I'm confused why it doesn't exist in any particularly mainstream form.

Premise:

For 2+ players but best with 4+.

- There are a number of unique player cards which contain various stats such as speed, skill, strength, defence etc.
- Each player gets a squad of 15+ footballers via auction/random/draft.
- Matches are played using the player cards of the respective team. The result is a combination of luck and skill.
- The top two teams in the league have a playoff to decide the winner (or there is no playoff, or four teams playoff based on seeding, the point is there is a winner).
- There is the option to play multiple seasons, with football trading, footballers retiring, new footballers coming on the market etc.

Obviously the game mechanism is huge and the most important part. Assume that it has strategic depth, game theory, bluffing, strategising, replayability etc. You'll have to alter your tactics when you go 2-0 down, when your star player gets injured, when you're playing away from home, depending upon your players' strengths and weaknesses, your opponent's player's strengths and weaknesses, what you think your opponent thinks you'll do etc. This is obviously not easy but this whole post is irrelevant unless you assume I come up with a killer format.

Why doesn't this exist? Why hasn't a stud designer made this game? Has it proven too difficult or is there another reason?

Also, some questions about this game.

i) I'm stuck on the player allocation mechanism. Player valuation is a huge skill especially since I intend the players to have ratings in about 10 different areas. I'm thinking of including ~100 player cards. For a 4 player game ~60 players would be available for a 6 player game ~90 etc. So each game would have a different deck. In one game you may find that most of the speedy attackers are omitted, therefore defenders with a high speed rating are less valuable than normal. In one game John Teri would be more valuable than Frank Lamps, in the next vice versa.

How long do you think an auction would last per footballer? Since plenty of 6 player games wouldn't want to auction 90 footballers alternatives are to have a draft, or deal out the footballers (ensuring each gets the same number of 'elite' 'classy' & 'average' footballers to keep the squads competitive). Some combination is possible too - e.g deal each team 8 footballers then auction off the rest.

Is there a reason not to include all three options in the rulebook and tell me to chose what they're most comfortable with? Which of the aforementioned options do you think works best>

ii) How long is the optimal time for the actual football matches in this game? My rough draft of gameplay estimates each match lasting 15 to 20 minutes although it's tough to know until people have actually played it. Is this too long? For a 4 player game you're looking at the footballer selection phase + a minimum of three matches each, it might run up to 2 hours. Add 30 to 60 minutes for a 6 player game.

Getting a match down to 10 minutes would require a drastic rewrite of my game mechanism. Currently it has 4 phases per game. Think of it as 4 periods of 22.5 minutes. After each period the players adjust their formation & tactics, with the option of substitutions. Plus some other funky stuff. They'll have 'resources' which they need to manage throughout the game, e.g you might abstain from a beneficial tactical ploy in the second period in order to preserve it for later. And of course your tactics for the fourth period at 1-0 will differ from those at 0-1. Cutting the number of periods down to 2 would dramatically reduce the level of strategic depth so I'd probably have to do a total rewrite.

iii) How important is it that the board game is true to football. e.g if I decided to make a match last three periods, which clearly has no relation to the beautiful game, would this turn people off?

I would post this on the game designer forum in bgg.com

I intend to do that but I want to gauge opinion here first.

I'll look into it. Things that a five year old can play that maintain an adult's interest are hard to find

PGUK, the whole concept is intriguing, I can't really comment on how it would work until I got to look at a beta version of the game.

If these points are true: 'Assume that it has strategic depth, game theory, bluffing, strategising, replayability etc.' then I don't see why the matches need to be reduced to 10 minutes but perhaps your game could have two options for different length games. The 'full' version would have a lengthy draft/auction process and longer matches, the 'short' game could have some or all of the players dealt out like a traditional card game and shorter matches.

And you could obv call the different versions 'Premier League' vs 'Championship' or 'Professional' vs 'Amateur' or w/e. But yeah, it's impossible to make a judgement about the viability of the game, functionally or commercially, until I can start tinkering around with the mechanics of how it actually works.

An obvious problem with the game as it stands is about getting the licensing to use the image/likeness of the players, I don't know how that works but I'm sure it's expensive. On the plus side if you hit the right balance of strategy and playability and all the other things that make for a great gaming experience then the shelf-life of this thing will go on forever and you can get people to re-up for new versions all the time, World Cup Special Edition every 4 years, Legendary Player Packs, Champions League: Where Even Man City Can Win and so on, the possibilities are endless.

Yes, it would turn people off. I realize it won't affect actual game play, but it would seem wrong to everyone (especially if the rest of the game is quasi-authentic).

A suggestion: Beach soccer has three 12-minute periods. The higher scoring might make for a more entertaining experience anyway.

Obviously this means no famous players, but like Moocher said, you are unlikely to get that anyway if you plan to market this at all outside the confines of your basement.

But that does give you flexibility to simply create players with certain attributes (endless possibilities there; the players wouldn't even have to be human).