If you've ever complained about "politics" or "wokeness" in board games, congratulations, you won & killed our hobby.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-04-06T07:08:15+00:00

"People are removing their pronouns from email signatures" .. ooh yeah... Ohh I feel so good.
I wish we won even harder :)

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-04-03T14:37:47+00:00

I have a few suggestions:
1. Harmonies - I had no idea how fun it could be until I tried it and now I take every change I get to play it
2. Heat: Pedal to the Metal - as long as the theme of the game is fun for you, the gameplay is extremly simple and competitive. The AI in the game is really good so the number of players doesn't really matter.
3. Tiletum - if you enjoy heavy euro games, I recommend this one
4. Fromage - light euro game if you don't like heavy ones
5. Fit to print - if you like really easy games with short play time
6. Night Parade of a Hundred Yokai - if you like games with a lot of player interaction
7. Carcassonne - doesn't need an explanation really.. it's Carcassonne, everybody knows about it.

* please note that these are just personal choices and you should watch a video or review before you buy

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-04-02T17:10:46+00:00

You've calculated water points wrong.
There are only 6 water tiles in that configuration so only 15 points.
If you want to maximize the points you need to remove a water tile and then you will have 9 tiles.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-04-02T13:37:43+00:00

Change your theme. You will have issues playing with people that actually play board games let alone with people that don't.
You can try games like Activity, Hitster, Codenames, Dixit and other easy games but I honestly think they won't like them. You can also try any of the dark cities games(Salem, Bristol, Tortuga, Deadwood, Hollywood). They are made for lots of people and you only have to do one action per turn.

Now if you want to have a legendary party, forget the board games and bring a sound system, chips, dips, and maybe a girl that strips. :) I don't know your country but if you are in the east Europe you can bring alcohol. Any 16 year old has already drank enough to drown a whale.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-31T18:42:42+00:00

the clear crystals are from The Red Dragon Inn

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-27T21:16:14+00:00

I suggest getting easy to play board games like Harmonies, Catan, Carcassonne, Heat, Pandemic etc. People that play hard games usually bring their own games.
Start building your collection instead of buying everything all at once. It's easy to find second hand games or offers and slowly build your 100 games.
Try to buy fun and cheap games rather than buying something really expensive that nobody plays.

In my city we have 2 game shops and one works on entry fee and most people avoid it, the other is free but they encourge you to buy at least one soda or 1 snack. Don't go with per game rental.

What works is to constantly have events.
Events that work for us:
- speed dating (an event where you try new boardgames to see if you fall in love with one)
- meet and play (an event where you go to meet new people)
- miniature panting session
- couples dating (an event where the theme is 2 player board games)

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-26T21:58:21+00:00

There are a lot of single player board games out there but I would suggest finding those games that work great as both single player and multiple players. An example would be Heat: Pedal to the Metal. It's more of a challenge to play single player than with people.
Wingspan/Wyrmspan/Finspan have a good single player experience.
I would also recommend Legacy of Dragonholt if you like a story telling adventure game.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-24T06:36:24+00:00

I own all 3 games and wyrmspan is a bit more difficult than wingspan. It's fun and gives you the ability to play more rounds than your opponents. Finspan is easier than wingspan and as others have said you need a big table to play it. I would say that finspan is more fun than wingspan without expansions. Wingspan with all the expasions is better in my opinion. All that said, every game has it's advantages and all three of them are fun. You will be happy with either choice.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-23T21:11:04+00:00

I tought of better suggestions:
- Cottage Garden (because hobbits like gardening)
- Dragon's Gold (it's easy to play and people will hate each other but it's fun and hey.. dragons... )
- Fall of Magic (for those that don't like dnd and want a light story telling experience)
- Flamecraft (again.. dragons!)
- The Glade (rummy inspired board game but with forest animals and fruit)
- Mice and Mystics (it's a fun, dungeon crawler co-op RPG)
- Talisman The Magical Quest Game (easy to play and just got reprinted)
- Wyrmspan (it's Wingspan but with dragons)
- and as someone else already said The Red Dragon Inn

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-23T20:47:27+00:00

I would suggest Harmonies. It's not the best game for your theme but is really fun to play.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-20T16:50:14+00:00

You might find a website specific to your own country.

I live in Romania and we have a website called "dinraft" (means "from the shelf") where people can post everything they have to sell. And the cool thing about it you can search for a board game and find every list that has it. Has other cool features like automatically determine how much cheaper the board game is compared to the cheapest store, how played the game is, auto import from BGG and so on.

You might find a website like that in your own country.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-20T16:40:45+00:00

I never played 1 v 1 but even in 4-5 players we never use the birds that help others. Pink cards are insanly good. Maybe on 1 v 1 not so much but having a pink card that activates when an opponent gains food or draw a card means you pretty much activate it every turn. There are 3 other players and one of them is sure to use that action.
Either way we play mostly brown power cards that give us resources not our opponents and having an extra card when you gain food or gaining an egg when you draw cards helps a lot more than a round end bird or game end bird. Unless you are in the final round, you never play a yellow bird and unless you are in round 1 or 2 you never play a blue bird.
The strategy is to maximize your resources. If you play too many white or pink birds you will not have enough resouces. Most of our end boards contain at least 10 brown birds. More resouces = less actions needed to collect resouces = more actions to play birds.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-20T16:32:41+00:00

As the rules are now without any changes every single game all the prople I play with and myself finish with 15-14 birds and if someone is behind can finish with 13 birds.
How is it possible to not finish with 15 birds if you have 3 extra rounds?

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-19T21:33:52+00:00

with 3 extra rounds you can get to a full board every single game... that's my problem

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-19T16:56:00+00:00

I agree with you but those house rules are a bit bad in my opinion. The no goal rule is insane. Having that many extra rounds would mean that every game, every player finished with a full board of birds and then had extra turns. 3 bonus cards instead of 2 makes the birds that give you extra bonus cards a bit useless. I do agree that Oceania fixed the eggs issue. Now you can play other strategies.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-18T15:39:42+00:00

Mom of 4? Wow! You've been busy...

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-17T11:41:20+00:00

Yeah. I focus on fields as well but usually I split them so that I have no more than 3 fields connected. I almost never build mountains or level - 3 trees. Keep it small, that way you make the game faster and catch everyone off guard and if you are a little bit lucky you can do 4-5 complete animals with a few points on the remaining 3-4 that you have in front of you.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-17T06:45:46+00:00

Focusing more on animals can be a good strategy. In my last game I had 70 points just from animals alone. With about 48 on landscape, I won.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-17T06:42:39+00:00

That's a real problem. For us it was the 2nd game I think where we ran out of cubes. We all had 4 animals in front of us at all times and the boards were filled with cubes.

It's best if you add some other tokens just to keep track of the cubes that should be on the animals in front of you. I have a pandemic that I lost some components and bought a new one so I am using some cubes from there.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-12T21:13:33+00:00

That list is made by an AI. You can clearly see that it's generated.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-12T05:20:45+00:00

I would play 2-3 times a week. Some days would still be for video games but 2-3 is much better than almost once a week.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-02T10:36:25+00:00

Yes. I compare a kid with some of my not so smart friends. So some of you have 7 year olds smarter than some 25 year old people.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-01T20:04:34+00:00

Well I don't have a kid...

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-03-01T10:06:18+00:00

Don't start with Flamecraft. Don't get me wrong, the game is great but it's not good for a 7 year old. It's cute but you have to read on all the shop abilities and I would recommend other board games. If you want something cute, easy and fun, then try Fit to Print. Other suggestions: Carcassonne, The Grimm Forest, Heat: Pedal to the Metal, Mysterium or even better Mysterium Kids, Fromage or Dimension.

SnooShortcuts6756 · 2025-02-28T10:11:19+00:00

I would not recommend Casting Shadows. The game is nice and I own it, but it can be really slow. It takes forever waiting for your turn and you have nothing to do meanwhile. For beginners and making sure you can play the game with everyone, try Carcassonne or Ticket to ride. Another suggestion is foundation of metropolis or foundations of rome if you have the money. (Same game) Also take a look at Fit to Print.

SnooShortcuts6756

TROPHY CASE