Looking for suggestions for games that may be a little easier for players that aren't into board/card games that might help tach them a few concepts and get them comfortable with games out side of monopoly and things like that.
Right now I'm thinking of an order like this.
King of Tokyo (with the power up expantion) -> Red Dragon Inn -> SotM
What do you think?
Any other suggestions?
Forbidden Island. It's cooperative and has interesting and challenging mechanics.
I've heard Flash Point is also good, but haven't had a chance to play it. Yet. 
I just got Forbidden Desert, (the playstyle sequel to Forbidden Island) and I agree, great entry level game, with good fun for the rest of us as well.
I'm used to dealing with video gamers, and Sentinels is a perfect gateway game for them. My Sister and B-i-L are non-gamers, Forbidden Desert and Sentinels are their speed of game, we just typically avoid low win match-ups. They also like Last Night on Earth, but they love zombie films so that comes naturally.
Forbidden Island and Flash Point are great games.
Other good "gateway" or "non-gamer" games: Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Coloretto, Escape: The Curse of the Temple, Lords of Waterdeep. I also love Dixit with non-gamers but it doesn't really lead them into other games.
A game from the same company as Red Dragon Inn and with a similar base play style (Draw to 7; play multiple cards) is "Kung Fu Fighting". Cinematic Hong Kong martial arts stuff. Non-coop, so it's free-for-all. But you see some SOTM-ish mechanics since you can play equipment and fighting styles that adjust your attacks; there are block cards, etc.
Pandemic. The mechanics aren't really similar to SotM, but it's an easy game to understand and it gets people used to working together.
Also good for supplying you with a variety of different roles/powers and the occassional deal that just eats your lunch. 
Love Letter. Short, sweet, to the point and a blast to play a few rounds while waiting for others to show up. Especially good for complete non gamers.
I disagree with pandemic unless they have some sort of gaming background. Then its usually OK of sort.
Pandemic has worked pretty well for me to induct non-gamers. Second Love Letter and the Forbidden games. You might try Alhambra.
Probably not specifically what you're looking for, but Mice and Mystics seems like it would be good for introducing board games to people who are already into role playing (but not board games).
Semi-connected, I remember there was a game I played once before where the premise was that a four-person party was hanging out in a tavern getting drunk, and you would play Beer cards and try to get your opponents to pass out before you...anybody know what I'm talking about?
I only played the Red Dragon Inn a few times, but that may be what you are refering to.
I thought that might be the one, that's why I brought it up.
That's the one. It's now on it's 4th expansion...we own the first two.
Though, truth be told, Smirk and Dagger Games' Hex Hex is a much superior drinking game.
King of Tokyo is always a good pick for newcomers. Just make sure you're playing with other people who make it fun. Last time I tried to get a non-gamer into games via King of Tokyo, she thought it was incredibly boring because the other players were incredibly serious about it and took like 30 seconds in between each roll to figure out their most optimum strategy. It's like "Dude...just roll the damn dice. It's supposed to be a light, fast paced game." There's a time for being competitive; playing King of Tokyo with a few first-timers who are trying to get into tabletop gaming is not one of those times.
Dominion is very good for introducing card playing mechanics to newcomers. The theme and elements are light enough for anyone to get into and it also features phases so they can get familiar with the concept of order of play. Just be careful: they might get so addicted to Dominion that they'll never want to move on to Sentinels :)
Red Dragon Inn, as you mentioned, is also a great beginner game. And like King of Tokyo, it really shines when people aren't taking it too seriously and can just have fun. Most newcomers to board games don't want to be competitive; that's one of the biggest barriers to getting into tabletop.
Smash Up! is also quite perfect. It's incredibly light on mechanics (play a minion, play an action, draw 2), but has a lot of room for the play to begin to see "connections" and "combos" on their own without anyone holding their hand. After only playing a few rounds, they'll begin to see moves they can make happen. "Oh, I see, I can play this zombie from my trash at the beginning of my turn for free, then use this minion who let's me play an extra action, then use these two actions to..." That really creates a sense of having fun; being able to figure out how to play optimally on your own, and Smash Up! let's players do that with ease. Plus who can argue to playing a game where Dinosaur Wizards fight Ninja Zombies? No one, that's who.
Now I'm going to throw out two games that a lot of hardcore tabletop gamers tend to absolute hate with a fiery passion. But hear me out. Those games are Munchkin and Fluxx (or Star Fluxx/other Fluxx theme). Now, I understand why gamers loathe these games, but putting that pure hatred aside, I think they can serve as great introductory games for the card-playing genre. It's, again, the simple "Play a card, do what it says" element that these games do well (or in the case of Fluxx, completely uses it as a crutch to do whatever it wants). Plus, they are light and silly and can definitely serve as party games. I don't think they should always hit the table; by all means Smash Up! does most of what these two do mechanically and is a much better game. But, if you're playing with a player who really doesn't take kindly to "rules" and the whole card-playing thing, these might be the good, fast paced drinking games that can serve as the gateway they need.
I could, I would much rather play a game where Robot Tricksters are fighting Alien Pirates!
Dc Heroes Deck Builder. It's a pretty basic deck-building game. There's only five variable cards you have to choose to buy per turn, your choices are usually pretty optimal at least early on, and there are clear and unique goals: "If I'm Superman, I buy superpowers. If I'm Batman, I buy equipment."
I'd rather play Steampunk Plants against Ghost Bear Cavalry. Or possibly Deep One Investigators against Cthulhu Elder Things, although personally I didn't really care for the way The Obligatory Cthulhu Set was put together. The very silly Scooby Doo portrayal of the Investigators was a turn-off to me, and separating Cthulhu, Deep Ones and Elder Things into three factions while ignoring the rest of the Mythos also makes me a bit sad, though I can sort of understand why it was done. The rest of the Mythos is not as popular as a rule, but if I'd been designing the set, I would have used the same four Cthulhoid factions as the Call of Cthulhu CCG - Cthulhu, Hastur, Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath - and probably had Investigators (played seriously rather than silly) be a mechanic present in all four decks.
I actually consider this a "gateway game"…if you like playing it the first few times, move on to the Lord of the Rings deckbuilding games, which are much better-designed implementations of the same basic mechanic. In DCH, Enemy cards are just like normal cards that you buy the same as anything else, and that feels utterly wrong for a superhero game; the Ambushes in LOTR are at least a nod to the idea that the game is supposed to be fighting back. Plus the Supervillains in DCH are in a random order except for Ra's al-Ghul, and that means that you can get stuck in the middle of the game with an almost-invincible villain like Parallax or the Anti-Monitor, then have the game end with a whimper versus Black Manta or Captain Cold. The Archenemy Level mechanic in LOTR fixes this nicely, ensuring the game always has a fairly smooth progression from easier to harder AEs. And LOTR has a strong political element which, as long as you have at least three players, makes it a far more interactive game that's not just a race to the most VP. The only thing about LOTR which I consider a step backwards is the absence of special powers on the character cards…technically, the oversized character cards don't actually do anything, since the characters differ only in which special card they have in their starter deck. This was obviously done so Frodo could have the One Ring, but the Two Towers game changed that up in a very effective way, and now FOTR looks kinda pathetic by comparison.
TLDR - DCH is a good game to play a few times, but I don't advise buying it, unless you're a regular "games ambassador" (or a really diehard DC fan). It's essentially a trainer for the LOTR FOTR DBG, which in turn is a trainer for LOTR T2T; play DCH with a friend's copy a few times, then buy those two instead, that's my advice.
there are clear and unique goals: "If I'm Superman, I buy superpowers. If I'm Batman, I buy equipment."
Not so much if you're Green Lantern, however.
If you want to play a superhero-based deckbuilder, play Legendary. It's MUCH MUCH better. DC isn't really that great of a game. Plus Legendary has expansions, and actually represents the theme well.
I thought we were talking about gateway games.
They also have an attack mechanism that "fights back," which except for… four? villains, all other cards lack.
Villain card order can be chosen if random selection is considered inadequate.
In the comics, Green Lantern uses his power ring to create equipment, similate superpowers, and sometimes even create duplicates of heros and villains. The DCH pays off variety with a bonus to him.
Aquaman has access to anything that has fallen to the ocean's bottom, so he collects and utilizes low-power cards faster than other heroes.
Wonder Woman is a warrior, and becomes stronger by beating enemies in combat.
I would really NOT recommend Pandemic, simply because there are 43 different ways to lose and they can crop up very fast. You can do everything perfectly right with the dream team of characters... and go from completely in control of the sitution to a game over in 2 turns. You can also get into a situation where you have everything you need to win but there's not enough time to accomplish it, or a situation where you know you can't possibly win but have to wait a bunch of turns to actually lose. For people with no tabletop gaming experience, that can be super-frustrating and off-putting. There's just so much of the game that's up to chance rather than skill. A friend of mine has played 10+ games and has never actually won.
Forbidden Island/Desert, on the other hand, while mechanically similar, are a lot more forgiving and tend to be better for newbies. They can still go downhill in a hurry, but there's not so many lose conditions and they tend to be more fun even if you're losing. Carcassonne is an amazingly fun game and super-easy to learn, but I'm not sure it's a good intro game for Sentinels. It's just too different to be used for that purpose. Carcassonne is probably my second favorite boardgame after Sentinels, though. I'd still recommend it if they refuse to believe good adult boardgames even exist, however.
I'm not a fan of Smash Up, personally. Sometimes you hit a combination that doesn't work at all against your opponent(s) and you feel there's no chance for you to win. And that's boring.
Sigh, I'm having this problem right now. Although I've gotten about four friends to play Sentinels with me and they really like it.
Dominion wears off after a little. It may be a month or a year (sometimes longer) but eventually the group stops playing it as much. My group will occasionaly use it as a warm up game.
Also, I agree that pandemic should not be the game to ease them in. It was the first co-op game my group chose and we hated it. Sorry pandemic fans. It took some convincing to get my group to try sentinels (which now gets decent play time, not as much as I'd like but still decent) after our bad experience with Pandemic. We played it four or five times and each time it left us with a bad taste in our mouth so we stopped trying.
Besides, if you want a nice co-op that oozes theme and appearance while it destroys your heroes you want to play Ghost Stories anyways. 
I agree that Legendary is a vastly better game than DCH, but it is not better for the purpose of providing light entertainment to non-gamers. The setup time alone would make people wander away in boredom, and the technicalities of the game, the effort of playing a new villain card every turn, the need for heroes to work together to avoid an Evil Wins event but also competing amongst each other for the individual victory…it'd definitely have a lot of potential to turn a newbie off. Like I said before, DCH is a gateway game; it's not great in the long term, but it can give people a good starting point.
Yes, that mechanic comes into effect after you buy the card. So, when Scarecrow is running around in the world, he's completely harmless; only after Superman "buys" him does he start frightening all the other superheroes. It's not great flavor for a superhero game.
Villain card order can be chosen if random selection is considered inadequate.
Nothing in the rules suggests this. Certainly it's something a playgroup could decide to do, but the game itself isn't printed in a way that facilitates this, as the LOTR DBGs are.
In the comics, Green Lantern uses his power ring
Yeah I know, I'm not saying it isn't fitting. I'm just saying that, mechanically, Green Lantern doesn't tell you what cards to buy (other than non-duplicates) the way all of the other heroes (even the promo Martian Manhunter) do. This is what I call "linearity", meaning that the game itself tells you what to do in order to succeed in it; it's a very valuable trait in games aimed at a casual audience, while being largely counterproductive to hardcore gamers. The counterpart trait that they look for is "modularity", and DCH is fairly horrible about that, which is why I think most players will outgrow it.
Aquaman, Wonder Woman
Yeah, I never mentioned them. They have linearity, and even Flash does a little
We Didn't Playtest This At All and Apples to Apples are card games with simple but interesting mechanincs. Wouldn't use Apples to Apples as a lead in to Sentinels, but they were both suggested to me when I asked a similar question to neil's once.
Besides, if you want a nice co-op that oozes theme and appearance while it destroys your heroes you want to play Ghost Stories anyways.
I love Ghost Stories. One of my favorite games.
Also, one of the hardest cooperative games of all time. Only play if you can handle slogging through a lot of stuff and working really hard and having good strategical plans . . . and still losing horribly.
I love it.
At least with the basic set, amen. There are some decks that aren't very… interactive. Or the interactiveness is so limited that you don't get to use it. Pirates and Aliens come to mind. Sometimes you don't have anywhere useful to move your guys or someone else's. Or you don't want to put minions back in your opponent's hand because he'll just get to play them and activate their effects again.
You could always return your own minions to your hand, that way you can trigger your effects again.
At least among the Alien faction itself, there's only one Minion that you would want to do that with (Invader), maybe a second depending on the circumstances (Overlord, which gives you a chance to return a more powerful minion to the owner's hand). Other factions, harder to say.
Depending on timing, that could work out, or the loss of your own minion could cost you scoring on the base.
I consider SotM to be, if not a gateway game, then a game with gateways. Take on Baron Blade with level 1 heroes. If there's an experienced player involved, new players will be able to make an informed decision as to whether SotM is for them.
Andrew
I picked up Ghost Stories about a month ago and have only gotten to play it once; but yeah, you basically hit the nail on the head. They always say "Arkham Horror is a game that you spend 4 hours slowly losing, but still have a good time while doing it." Where Ghost Stories seems to be "a game that you spend 1 hour slowly losing, but still have a blast while doing it." As much as I love Arkham Horror, losing it (while fun) can still be a slog since the length of the games make the intensity drop off; after the 4 hour mark, you just don't care anymore. Ghost Stories, on the other hand, is much quicker so the tension stays high throughout the whole thing.
And speaking of games where it's fun to lose; Android Netrunner! And though I wouldn't call it a beginner-friendly game, I did manage to teach it to my girlfriend (whom I introduced to boardgames only a few months ago) in about 30 minutes and she fell in love with it. So there's always a chance; you never know which games will be good gateways for your friends. Everyone has a different learning/attention level and different interests mechanically/thematically.
Actually I think my group wins Arkham Horror at least half the time. You just have to seal six gates, costing a grand total of 30 clue tokens and requiring at least one person to have decent Fight or Lore rolls. Seldom incredibly difficult; usually, if we do lose, it's through just a mild degree of bad luck.
I finally played AH a few weeks ago, with friends who obviously love it and have all the million and one expansions.
I was really bored for about 5 hours. I didn't feel like I was doing anything useful, my turns were dull (move, have a random encounter, fight some stuff, avoid some stuff, get some clues), I didn't see any player interaction apart from people occasionally giving each other stuff. I guess I just don't get it at all.
I gave up about halfway through and just kept having the same encounter because I didn't want to play anymore. Literally, the same encounter - get kicked out of the building, lose some health. Every. Single. Time. Until I ended up in the hospital, and then we won the game. And that's a whole afternoon of my life that I'll never get back.
Silverleaf, I’m going to make an assumption here–with all the baggage that goes with–and say that I can probably figure out why 1) your AH game took so long, 2) you had negative fun in playing it, and 3) encounters seemed repetitive.
The first few times my group played AH, we didn’t communicate at all. The game became a free-for-all of “I’m going to do what’s best for me and screw everyone else.”. And, if you play like that, the game drags on and winning becomes almost impossible.
AH works best when you meta game the crap our it, strategizing and forming a plan with the other people at your table. It plays to everyone’s strengths, keeps table communication high, and ensures that no one gets entirely boned by the game’s mechanics. Doing so also speeds up the game; my group regularly can play a full game of AH (with setup and tear-down) in 2.5 hours.
Apologies if my assumptions are too broad-reaching; after my first few games of AH, I felt much as you did. Today, its one of my favorite games period.
I believe it took longer than it should have because of the big bad - it was the guy that means you need extra clues to seal each portal. Plus it took about an hour for the last portal to appear so we could win.
It's probably unfair for me to say that we didn't interact. We decided who should go for clues based on how many they already had, who should probably fight the beasties wandering the streets, stuff like that. It's just that none of it seemed very interesting or important. I didn't really do very much other than fight a few things and have some pointless encounters which I had no real involvement in whatsoever except for the pretty much decisionless rolling of dice.
Honestly, I don't see myself giving it another play. The worst thing was, everyone else enjoyed it (except my boyfriend, who agreed with me) and I was sitting there thinking, "I don't understand how this is supposed to be fun."
Ooof–i know which one you’re talking about. That Great Old One isn’t fun!
I’m not sure what to say beyond that; not every game is for everyone. I would recommend giving AH another run, though, perhaps against an easier GOO like Yig or Azathoth.
I'm almost certainly biased against it because I much prefer Eurogames, and AH is about as Ameritrash as you can get, and I don't much care for the whole Cthulhu thing either. Other people love the game and I'm good with that, but I'm happy sticking to moving cubes around to get victory points. ;)
I'm with you. I'm tired of typical American games, even when they have a cool twist or mechanic it usually ends up search fight repeat or fight draw repeat. I have also grown tired of long games. Probably because I have a 2 yr. old and long games require significant advance notice, money for babysitters and the knowledge that if I don't get home in time to get his bedtime routine started he will flip shit and start destroying the house and biting people.
I also hate "social" games with bad mechanics. I can get behind a game of Words against humanity with the right group and some strong drinks, but otherwise those games get boring.
I keep thinking about why it is that Sentinels has me so hooked, when games that are comparable I have no interest in. Mostly I think I really like the characters, and I don't have to look at a rule book all the time.
Lack of rulebookness is a definite advantage.
There are people that hate Munchkin? Also, sorry for the super quote. I am posting from my phone.
Not sure about "hate", but I firmly don't like it. The jokes are funny, but the play is completely unbalanced. It has almost no strategic depth, yet is not easy to play. A massively losing combination.
I loved Munchkin years ago. Coming from an RPG background I found the jokes and references really funny and I liked the "take that" aspect a lot, but after a while once I knew all the jokes and realised that you can get massively screwed over simply by failing to draw appropriately low level monsters early on, I got very bored of it. It basically boils down to "whoever is the second (or sometimes third) player to reach level 9 and draw a monster, wins" since when the first level 9 player hits a monster everyone frantically uses up all their buffs/debuffs that they've been saving since the start.
And then I got more into board games and realised that there are so many games I'd much rather play that don't force me to do nothing for turn after turn while everyone else progresses and has fun.
"Oh look, a level 8 monster. I'm level 1 and have no stuff. Please will someone help me? No? Right, I'll do nothing for another turn then."
I'd play Munchkin once if someone really wanted to play it. And then I'd refuse and bring out a good game.
In a similar vein, I hate The Settlers of Catan for similar reasons. If the dice don't give you stuff, you can't actually play the game. I've literally spent turns and turns getting exactly no resources so I can't even trade despite placing my initial settlements on "good" numbers. Everyone else gets to build stuff (and thus generate more resources) and trade, while I'm stuck basically rolling the dice on my turn and doing nothing.
Ninja Burger (also from SJGames) is a much better game than Munchkin in almost every facet. It’s made even better with the expansion, Sumo-Size Me.
And I loathe Settlers with an unholy passion. I once wrote a ‘nuclear’ variant for the sole reason of making an unpleasant acquaintance–who regularly participates in Settlers of Catan national toruanments (and often forces the game on us)–angry beyond belief.
I have to admit, those people on BGG who insist that Catan's the best game ever and stands the test of time because they had a lot of fun with it when they first started playing games and (excuse the gamer snobbery) didn't know any better, drive me crazy.
Sure, if you enjoy a game, that's great. But many people think that if they like a game, that makes it a good game, and that's not necessarily true. I've played several games that I can see are very good games, but I don't like them - similarly I have a great time with some inferior games.
Catan, I think, is a great entry game. Simple enough to get you into it, but also simple enough to want to make you tear your hair out after a while to go searching for a better game.
I’ve actually found Ninja Burger to be much more frustrating that Munchkin on a mechanical level. Got a sneaky character? Stealth kill your opponent’s bystander he has to rescue. Got a strong character? Kill the sneaky character in one hit. I feel like Munchkin gives a more level playing field for being a jerk to your friends than Ninja Burger.
Amen about games, music, everything. Just cause you like it doesn't mean it is good, and just because it isn't good doesn't mean you shouldn't like it.
I know several Catan lovers who love Catan because they know the solution, and they play it so they can act out the script and win. They tend to get really angry when they don't. I don't even understand how a person would enjoy that, but they do.
The screwing over your friends to win genre hasn't gotten better since Touring in 1906. That game is just fun, you can add new twists and strategic bits, but it's still the same old game.
As much as I could take or leave Catan, I won't deny that it's a reasonably good game for what it sets out to do. Not excellent by any means, and there are certainly a million and one other games I'd rather be playing, but the game is a solid starter experience for most non-gamers and has been a great gateway to getting my friends into other, better Eurostyle economy games.
But, I definitely agree that the nostalgia has likely held Catan a lot higher than it should be across various "Best Game" lists. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, "Catan is such a poor game, why do I keep it around?" But then I recall all of the incredible memories I have with my friends while playing this game and once again I'm proud to have it on my shelf. And in the end, isn't that what's most important about games? Having fun? Making memories? Being with friends? Catan isn't an all-star, and the people who worship it can be exhausting, but overall I think it's definitely solid enough to serve as an amazing introductory experience for beginners and something light to play casually on a quiet week night.
I find that the best "screw you" games are the ones that look very innocent. There's something very satisfying in sneaking into your buddy's giant city in Carcassonne or playing a tile so he can't possibly complete his double points cathedral city, or forcing him to take cards that will lose him loads of points in Coloretto, or giving him three valuable beans he wants in Bohnanza only if he takes one that you don't want to have to plant.
The only Carc I've played much of was the Hunters and Gatherers version, and I've found that it absolutely blows my top whenever someone cuts in on something I've built. I would really rather play under a houserule that this can't happen.
I think Catan is eh mechanically as an experienced gamer.
I think that Catan has brought more of my non gamer friends and associates into board gaming than any other game in my collection. It is brought more people I know off into gaming that I don't even consider associates. It is a gateway game for many, many, many board gamers and that in itself gives it good cred.
Anything to bring more people into playing board and card games. This is a hobby that is a great way to pass some hours and socialize, and anything that can get more people into boardgaming is amazing. I spend most of my free time playing, thinking, working on, or working around board games... and I want more people to understand that this is not some anti social shut in, or a childish pastime, but a great and exciting few social hours.
Sure, if you're enjoying it, that's fine. I personally think there are much better gateway games, but if it works for you… Go for it.
And I'm totally with you on the casual games. As much as I like something weighty to get my gaming teeth into, I often prefer lighter stuff so we can mess around and socialise and not have to concentrate too much.
But that wouldn't be Carcassonne. Stealing is half of the point of the game - if you're not doing that you might as well play solo.
A good player will recognise when that might happen and change his play accordingly, or fight back by adding more of his own meeples, or by stealing someone else's stuff. It leads to some interesting decisions. My city's been invaded and I'm no longer controlling it - do I add in some more meeples of my own, or should I abandon it and concentrate on something else, or would it be more beneficial to make it uncompletable so my opponent's guys are trapped in there?
I know the game can lead to out-and-out fights, especially between couples where one's a more hardcore gamer than the other, or more competitive, or whatever. It's an extremely cut-throat game and obviously some people can't handle it.
But I love that about it.
The point of Carcassone is that you're trying to find the best placement for each tile that you draw; it's an exercise in forging order out of chaos. If people can steal your scoring areas, there's no point in bothering to build them up. I would indeed rather play solo.
A good player will recognise when that might happen and change his play accordingly
This punishes a player for being unable to see such sneaky moves coming. Hence my top-blowing.
or fight back by adding more of his own meeples
You have nowhere near enough meeples for this to be possible. Particularly in H&G, you have only five meeples and the ones you place on Meadows are there until the end of the game. You can't afford to waste two of them on securing a single Meadow, so if your opponent is able to patch into what you've built, both meeples are essentially negated, leaving fewer scoring opportunities and thus making the game even more luck-determined.
Nothing about the game looks cut-throat. It appears colorful and pretty and innocent. Therefore, it should not have rules making it cutthroat; doing so is equivalent to seducing the player so that you can kick him in the bits.
I disagree. The point is to score by completing features, and if you'd get more net points by making your opponent share his thing or stealing it, then that's the best tile placement. You build stuff up because that often gets you the most points.
I'm not sure how exactly your house rule would work mechanically. (Disclaimer: I haven't played H&G but I'm assuming the basic rules are not too dissimilar.) Jim places a tile and claims a city. Marie claims a nearby city, and then lays more tiles to try to join up the two cities - a completely legal play. At what point do you say her move is illegal? When she plays the tile that connects them? That could lead to both players unable to finish their respective features leaving their meeples stranded.
Sure, a better player usually beats a weaker one. I have no problem with that at all. The better player should win - after all, spotting the best placement is an essential skill in the game. If that annoys you, either don't play or get better at the game.
Again, managing the amount of meeples you have is an essential game skill, and playing your guys into meadows or fields at the wrong time can be disasterous. You have to work it out - is this feature worth spending the second meeple, or shold I put it elsewhere? Fight, or give up?
If one player claims a great feature because he lucked into exactly the right tile, you should be able to claw back some points by invading if you're clever, given enough time. I'd much rather that that have someone build up a 50pt city with no way to do anything about it other than hope for the right tiles to make him unable to finish it.
It's a Euro. They all have "pasted on" themes - none of them are really about what they appear to be. Agricola for example isn't really about farming,it just has a farming skin. And Carc is an area control tile-laying game about getting the most points, made into a much richer and deeper game by the fact that you can compete over partially completed features.
This is of course a problem when people can't see past external appearance.
>
Nothing about the game looks cut-throat. It appears colorful and pretty and innocent. Therefore, it should not have rules making it cutthroat; doing so is equivalent to seducing the player so that you can kick him in the bits.
I actually love games that are cutthroat. I think Sentinels is the only game I have that doesn't make people want to punch each other's faces in afterwards. Wonderful game <3
Maybe it's a product of all the hormone-fueled rages I got into as a teenager, but games never make me angry like that.
I think I could even play Diplomacy now without wanting to stab every single other player.
BULL****
Okay, okay, maybe not.
Depends on the players. There are some people I'd be tempted to stab without the Diplomacy excuse. ;)
THAT IS FLAT OUT IMPOSSIBLE.
I have never wanted to stab or cause harm to every/any other player while playing Diplomacy.
I hate catan and my gamer group knows it. therefore we play catan almost every time we get together.
I haven't wanted to either.
Doesn't mean I haven't done it… 
Getting mad causes one to lose at diplomacy. Refuse to get mad, watch other people make other people mad, take advantage of both sides. Then still don't win, but reliably come in second.
That's my strategy.
My younger B-i-L loves to play, but him and his friends allow ally wins; which is crap, but probably saves thousands in property damage.
I found the blue monk in Ghost Stories to be pretty awesome. But his job was pretty much teleport allies all over the map (either twice per action or teleport one and fight a mob).
As for Arkham Horror, I think my group tends to win about 2 out of 3 games or more. But we definitelty strategize and first thing decide who's going to be gate-closer, who's doing monster mulching, who's doing shopping, who's doing clue hunting. And we trade gear to help them do their job.
I've never played Diplomacy or Carcossone, but from the sound of it, I'm not sure I'd want to.
Carcassonne is really not so cutthroat as it's being made out to be in this thread. I think it's just that there's a small amount of cut-your-throat-ness that sneaks up on you. (Of course the game might not be to your taste for a variety of reasons.)
Carcassonne is only as cutthroat as any OTHER strategic-placement game. You get that feeling now and then of WHY DID YOU PUT THAT THERE I NEEDED THAT SPOT I HATE YOU, but really it's a really light-hearted game, and very fun, if you're ok with the whole counting-victory-points-at-the-end-to-see-who-won thing.
It's just not the game to play with someone who thinks it's a cute little innocent game about building things, and will take it personally or get annoyed when you mess up their build.
Yeah, that's why I don't play Carcassonne. My group is WAY too "AP/Let's count up everything now before I play a tile......EVERY TURN" for that game.
I find the best screw you games are the ones that say "Hey, you need to screw your buddy to win but if you screw them too much then I, the game, win!"
Cutthroat Caverns is a nice example of that, and has a familar RPG-esk theme.
Diplomacy is amazing. Just make sure everyone wears their grown up pants with feeling protectors, because you are going to get burned, and likely lose because someone listened to someone else instead of you.
Smirk and Dagger Games in general are really awesome. Their owner/creator, Kurt Covert, is a great guy, and Hex Hex may well be the best drinking game I've ever played. Shootin' Ladders and Run For Your Life, Candyman! are both spectacular.
Limited amount of other gaming experience here, but I think Hanabi might be a good game to lead with to get non-gamers into the idea of a fully cooperative card game.
I had to laugh when I saw Wil Wheaton’s post today. 
Excellent example. I love that game!
I consider it dishonest play, not optimal play. While it may not explicitly be forbidden by the rules, it is still borderline cheating by my definition. I would rather not play at all, than play with someone who considers it acceptible to play in such a crooked fashion.
Jim places a tile and claims a city. Marie claims a nearby city, and then lays more tiles to try to join up the two cities - a completely legal play. At what point do you say her move is illegal? When she plays the tile that connects them?
Exactly. My rule would be something to the effect of "players may not place a tile which connects two claimed areas of different players." (I might also allow them to reclaim one meeple if they connect two of their own areas, or I might just disallow that too.)
That could lead to both players unable to finish their respective features leaving their meeples stranded.
Perfectly acceptible, so long as it does not result in larceny.
Sure, a better player usually beats a weaker one. I have no problem with that at all. The better player should win - after all, spotting the best placement is an essential skill in the game. If that annoys you, either don't play or get better at the game.
There is no "getting better". I play games for fun, not to prove something about myself. If I have to think too hard, desperately struggling to predict all possible outcomes, then I'm not relaxing and enjoying my limited free time.
Again, managing the amount of meeples you have is an essential game skill, and playing your guys into meadows or fields at the wrong time can be disasterous. You have to work it out - is this feature worth spending the second meeple, or shold I put it elsewhere? Fight, or give up?If one player claims a great feature because he lucked into exactly the right tile, you should be able to claw back some points by invading if you're clever, given enough time. I'd much rather that that have someone build up a 50pt city with no way to do anything about it other than hope for the right tiles to make him unable to finish it.
The game is random regardless; allowing theft doesn't eliminate that risk. It only compounds it - now the opponent can luck into tiles which let him steal your lucky tiles, so the game is no longer just about who's luckiest, but who's lucky last. Far worse screwage than the basic mechanic; you might as well just roll dice and say that the first person to roll a 6 wins.
It's a Euro. They all have "pasted on" themes - none of them are really about what they appear to be. Agricola for example isn't really about farming,it just has a farming skin. And Carc is an area control tile-laying game about getting the most points, made into a much richer and deeper game by the fact that you can compete over partially completed features.This is of course a problem when people can't see past external appearance.
I'm pretty sure I've seen some euros that I found quite adequately flavorful (Carcassone itself isn't bad in that regard, IMO, at least in the Hunters and Gatherers version - the tiles you draw and play represent new areas your tribe explores in search of food, the meeples are where they concentrate their populations, and the mountains give you a bonus play because they let you get up high and see farther in whatever direction the rockface has the best view of). But in general, I guess that's a vote against euro-style gaming in general for me, though not necessarily an incredibly strong one. All other things being equal, I would generally prefer a game to have a strong flavor-mechanics connection, rather than be abstract - and if it is abstract, I'd rather keep it completely so, like checkers, rather than attach a theme to it which doesn't make sense (shouldn't a knight on horseback be able to move farther than a queen on foot? And why can a castle tower move at all?). There are games which I've heard are very good, like Power Grid and Flash Point, which I just can't bring myself to even try because the concept is so utterly boring; if the game is indeed abstract (I don't know whether that's so), I'd rather it not have had a theme at all, so that I couldn't reject it for having a theme I like (or be drawn to it by a theme I do like, only to find the game mechanically unappealing).
Then what game is exactly that? And how can we force the company that makes Carcassone to stop marketing it so that it's mistaken for being such a thing? The bright colorful box and cartoony art do not advertise the fact that it is a game which rewards predatory behavior and punishes even the slightest weakness.
In my experience, trading is only occasionally possible; usually all the players are in different corners of the map, if not in different Other Worlds. If all the characters stay together in a group, then nobody will be close enough to jump on some devastating Rumor when it turns up in a far-away place.
One of my favorite board games is actually a video game called Dokapon Kingdom, it also advertises itself on the back of the box as "The Friendship Destroying Game". It does take a VERY long time to play Story mode, it took me and a friend about a year to complete it, but we were only playing on Fridays. You tend to just gang up on the Computer player(s) when not playing with a full group though.
Hmmm... Maybe I need to give Carcassone another whirl... I played it a couple of times before and found soul-crushingly dull.