S1E33 - Modern Board Games - “Fiddly bits!”

Modern Board Games We talk about the resurgence of board games. And not like Monopoly, Scrabble, or Clue. We’re talking the genre of Modern Board games that has exploded lately, beginning with Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Dominion. Beej isn’t much a board game player--he prefers simpler “party games.” However, Void has an entire cabinet dedicated to them, and we talk about how he got into them initially (hint: it was a co-worker who made him play Citadels over his lunch hour 5 years ago.) (We go into much more depth in the episode than I am in the notes, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll just break them down by how we categorized them in the episode.) Good games to start with for newbies to the modern board game scene: Citadels Ticket to Ride Pandemic Beej’s big question is this: “What are good two player games that my wife and I can play together (and we are picky about board games) that can be expanded to multiple people when we have a party?” Good 2 player games are: Love Letter Condottiere Timeline Push Fight Zombie Dice Memoir 44 Pandemic Games from Void’s collection Beej wants to know more about: Wiz-War Mage Knight Exploding Kittens Takenoko Cool / Big modern board games Mage Knight (super interesting, super complex) Game of Thrones Board Game Memoir 44 Cosmic Encounter Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures game, Armada, Imperial Assault Good games to start a game night with: Love Letter Zombie Dice Push Fight Sushi Go! Timeline Not quite a board game, but similar! Intro to LCGs: Game of Thrones Netrunner Lord of the Rings Games that get the most table time at Void’s house: Ticket to Ride Pandemic Push Fight Co-op games can be amazing with kids. You can even turn games into co-op even if the designers didn’t make them that way. We talk about Takenoko in particular, as well as Pandemic. Void is a little nuts for Pandemic Legacy. It’s the board game y’all are going to hear about as much as Hamilton and Firewatch. Apparently, it’s just crazy good, and Void is losing his mind for it. Some of the highlights include: Legacy Game, meaning you can only play through it once, but it’s like a video game in that you continue the story, even permanently altering the board to progress the story and change mechanics. Just an amazing experience unlike anything Void has played before There are huge surprises in the boxes you open during gameplay. Hardest part is that we’re getting to the point where there are so many modern board games, it’s hard to give general recommendations. You wouldn’t recommend Halo to anyone getting into video games, would you? It’s just as hard to give out a broad general recommendation in board