I played Dominion: Seaside today for the first time at work and it was a lot of fun. It did take us an hour to play one 4-person game, though. That time will reduce as we get more familiar with the cards, but it will likely always take somewhat longer than Dominion-only or most Dominion Intrigue cards as you have duration cards and more choices on many cards.


We played with the recommended Seaside setup which included Pirate Ship and Island and Embargo. One of the four of us bought 3 provinces early on while the rest of us were building up Pirate Ship booty and then he started buying Embargos and embargoing Provinces. Each embargo on a stack means you have to draw 1 curse card when you buy that card. Province stack got to 3 embargos, so buying a Province for 8 would get you 1 province and 3 curses, netting 3 victory points, so of course nobody was buying them anymore. I got to buy 2 at just 1 embargo, so only got 2 curse cards and was within 1 province of the leader. I bought several duchys and islands and extra estates and by the time the leader emptied 3 piles to end the game, I actually won it 26 to 24 to teen-something to teen-something.

A great card is the smuggler: you get to gain (for free) any one card (worth up to $6) that the player to your right gained on their turn. So my rho bought a duchy even with embargos and got it with curse cards, and I was then able to smuggle a duchy without getting curses (as you only get curse if you BUY, not GAIN the card). He also bought a few $5 and $4 cards during the game that I smuggled. We did get one chain going where he smuggled a good card from his rho and then I smuggled that same card from him.

After one game, I recommend Seaside and will now need to buy it soon.

Oh yeah, Pirate Ship! Pirate Ship works like thief, in that every other player turns over top 2 cards on their deck and if either/both is/are money, then you can make them trash one of them. However, instead of gaining the trashed treasure from them, you gain a metal coin onto your Pirate Ship as long as at least 1 player had to trash a treasure. So I did that 5 different turns and had 5 metal coins on my ship. That meant that I was then able to choose option B, which is to use the booty instead of trashing opponents. The key is that those metal coins never get spent, so you can use them every time you play Pirate Ship.

So one turn, when only 1 embargo on province, I used card that is like village with an extra coin and played 2 Pirate Ships for $10 in booty + $1 from that village-like card + 5 in my hand = $16...and since i had first played a duration card with +1 action, +1 card, +1 buy, I had 2 buys for my $16 and thus bought the 2 provinces (plus 2 curse cards from stupid embargo) that turn, which is why i won the game.

There are still 16 more kingdom cards in Seaside that we did NOT play with, so gonna be a fun expansion.

That game is so fun, I actually looked at a visual spoiler and read a review of seaside this morning.

Unfortunately I don't know anyone I could get to play the game with me so it's pointless. Maybe they'll put seaside online soon.

Sadly almost everybody that I could play board games with only wants to play them "just for fun" (ie without even thinking about strategy), which makes my head asplode.

Does anyone play Skat?
probably not as it's a german card game

Europe's and possibly the world's biggest board game exhibition "Spiel" opened in Germany today. I'll probably be there Friday, Saturday, Sunday or at least on one day.

http://www.internationalespieltage.de/e000.php4 (English page but probably crappy)

These are all great, I own Abalone and Yinsh and will certainly buy the other games from the Yinsh designers. I played it for the first time at Spiel a bunch of years ago; I think it was actually the official prerelease.

The "Munchkin" card game series is also pretty awesome.

I think one of the best single player games of all time that every parent should provide for their kids is Tangram

Yeah I got it it's fun to play.

this is the essen convention? anything on your wish list to check out while you're there?

Has anyone here played San Juan (game in the Puerto Rico franchise). I'm actually debating what new game to get and am currently leaning Puerto Rico after what I read here/some reviews etc.

Yeah this is the one. I've gone there with friends for years and we'll probably just do the usual routine:

1) Play an introduction game of Magic and other card games; act as if we have no clue; compete for best flirt-factor with random hot game-introduction girls weighted by game obscurity (we came up with a formula for this)
2) Randomly browse games and play random pickup games; test some new stuff like the Dominion addon
3) Chat with some game designers
4) Buy random strange amounts of dice and the most obscure cheapo pen&paper RPG stuff we can find
5) Random tournaments etc. two years ago my friend played in the Munchkin championships and there's usually all kinds of events (I think it was the official European championship)

Edit: For people who said "Lost Cities", Keltis (2-4 player variant of it) won the German gaming price 2008 (Dominion won 2009); pretty much all games winning this are money.

I checked the "releases" PDF and it seems an Agricola addon will be released/is released. Also seems that all Arkham Horror addons etc. are finally translated to German.

agricola - farmers of the moors, or something like that?

back in a bit...

I haven't played either yet. My understanding is that San Juan is the card game extraction of Puerto Rico, like they've done for others (catan card game, etc).

This guy had an overview that I thought was good in giving a sense of what Puerto Rico is like:

http://www.boardgameswithscott.com/?p=80

...I still haven't played it yet, but I feel like I have a much better sense of what it's all about.

No one's mentioned Stone Age or St. Petersburg or Thurn und Taxis in this thread.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/34635
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9217
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21790

if anyone ever wants to play any of these against me on bsw I'm game
or caylus

durron/luckay/clown/others, what are your top 5 2-player games?

i have carcassonne and dominion so would like another game or 2 great for 2 players that has varied mechanisms from those 2...i'm thinking about:

agricola
caylus
thurn und taxis
san juan or puerto rico
settlers of catan card game
any others that i'm not thinking of


prolly best for them to not be too long of games...prolly won't get >1 hour 2-player games anytime soon

hmm, 2 player...

in general, I'm not a fan of 2 player to be honest, the more the merrier. But here's my answer:

1. Agricola
2. Le Havre
3. Caylus
4. Lost Cities
5. Magic: The Gathering? Go? Rawr so many left to name

would rather play 1 5 player game than 3 2 player games though

MTG is infi better 2 way unless u are a fish who likes dragons and monsters imo

yeah, but my 18-month old daughter can't really play with us (yet), so it's 2-player unless friends are over

Nicholasp27:

2 player games that I enjoy:

Saint Petersburg
Race for the Galaxy
Lost Cities
Thurn und Taxis

---------------

Hannibal is maximum 2 players and is a very intense strategical game. It's unbelievably well balanced for an asymmetrical game and very difficult for both sides. It's a 2nd Punic war simulation (Rome vs Carthage).
Attika is also supposedly a really good game, seems that way from watching other people play but I have not tried it yet.

On a scale from 1-10, where 1 is Apples to apples and 10 is Age of Renaissance as far as intense strategery is concerned, what are you looking for?

Of those games, Lost Cities and Hannibal are maximum 2 players and the others support more.

Yay (this dude has tons of reviews and while I don't agree with some it's still pretty cool)

Seems like "Cuba"+El Presidente addon is also the same kinda game (also Pillars of the Earth seems similar)

Try Dust it's kinda a more offensive version of Risk

something along the lines of dominion/settlers for strategy...most importantly, every game is different...in those 2, you have to change strategies every game because the board changes (in settlers) or the kingdom cards change (dominion) which gives them a lot of replayability

if the game doesn't change like that, then we'll just quickly settle into strategies and then get bored with it over time

Since I kinda want to try some coop stuff I ordered
- Pandemic (to be played with the family mostly)
- Arkham Horror (to be played with friends)
and will probably add Battlestar Galactica, Ghost Stories, Space Alert and possibly Shadows over Camelot to the list.

It's getting dark earlier so this is prime boardgame+point and click adventure season for me

Probably also gonna buy the following before the year is over:
- Ticket to Ride
- Le Havre (+ maybe Agricola)
- Dominion

Also, I haven't played it in a bit and maybe I loaned it to someone but "El Grande" seems to be kind of the predecessor to many of the games that have been popular the last couple of games.

Nich:
From your list I'd say "Thurn und Taxis" is the best; it's been a bit since I played the Settlers card game but from memory it was a little boring/simple.

Nich: Get Race for the Galaxy. Definitely the most replayable. Unless you really like tough, complicated games. Then get Hannibal.

Race for the Galaxy: http://www.funagain.com/control/prod...duct_id=017231
Hannibal: http://www.funagain.com/control/prod...duct_id=017270

Thurn and Taxis and Saint Petersburg and Lost Cities are pretty repetitive. While they are fun, they get pretty similar to themselves after awhile. I've never played Ticket to Ride 2-player but I imagine it would lose something with fewer players.

by the way power grid is great because it's almost impossible to be completely out of it. but you generally want more than 2 people and it's a pretty long game.

For anyone looking for a good solo or more game (1-4 players) that you can play on your computer as well (for free ldo):
Ghost Stories is a co-op game with upto 4 players where your monks try to defeat the ghosts (controlled by cards drawn). There's a Vassal module for it on the BGG site so just DL and install Vassal, download module and load it.

Get the combo rules/Refsheet PDF from BGG and watch these youtube vids explaining the game:
Ghost Stories 1
Ghost Stories 2
Ghost Stories 3
Ghost Stories 4

For solo just play all 4 monks yourself (in the game there's actually also better solo rules for playing only one monk but this already worked well enough for me not to bother), high replayability and pretty damn hard to beat (I'm 2-1 on the easiest level but got fairly lucky on the two wins).

Fell free to ask any questions, I've only played the vassal version but I'll certainly get the boardgame version because it seems like it would be mad fun. There's also addons that haven't made it to vassal yet.