Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I got Cataan Jr. for my daughter (she's 7) and we've added it to the rotation. It's a fun game to get the kids kickstarted into some fun boardgaming.

Amazon.com: Catan: Junior: Toys & Games

I got one of the Cataan Card games for my wife and I to try..

Game day. 4 of us gathered to play A Distant Plain. 2 of us know the system, 2 were new to it.
I played as the government. And won on the 2nd propaganda card. A pretty convincing win. The 2 new guys were the Taliban and the coalition. They struggled with their victory goals.
It was fun, and should be even better the next time we play.

Then we played a game of Smash Up. Not a huge fan, but will play because the others like it.
I ended up winning that game also. Which was a first. I usually place last.

2 Games, 2 victories. A good day for me. And a fun one all around.

Having watched it played on Tabletop, I honestly might like it more than the regular version.

It's going to take me a while to go through all my Christmas Board Game loot, especially with no vacation time, but I was able to play a couple games of Flash Point this past weekend. It's a cooperative game that mechanically is VERY similar to Pandemic. It "solos" even better than Pandemic however, and I find the theme more enjoyable (saving people and putting out fires). Looking forward to picking up some expansions for it in the future.

Finally got around to learn a new board game on the iPad: Brief History of the World. Great game, highly addictive and superb replay value. Think Risk but with gameplay governed by cards.

Brief History of the World is a lot of fun for a quick game. I've played both it and History of the World. I prefer the longer version, but Brief is more likely to make it to the table. Good Game.

So far over my break I've played...

Love Letter (got it for Christmas) which gets a lot of talk on BGG. I found it to be way too quick (some turns are over before you even get a turn) and just not very interesting.

Battle of the 5 Armies. Tremendous game. War of the Ring is the epic. This plays much quicker but still has some good strategy. Good guy characters add a ton of flavor.

Clash of Monarchs. My favorite. Just a great CDG war game.

Mound Builders. Finally got this to the table. Pretty interesting solo game using the States of Siege system from Victory Point. Spread your empire, fight tribes as they expand mid-game, then hold on for deal life when the Spanish arrive.

Love Letter is great as a filler, just don't expect it to be the main course for a game night.

I also got Battle of five armies and the first edition of war of the rings with the 2nd edition upgrade kit. I went ahead battle of five armies was a gift for my kids and painted the miniatures and they came out great.

Good thing I double checked my still on hold order from Cardhaus. Apparently somehow the only thing on the order is the Star Realms bundle despite giving direct links to Troyes and Star Wars: Imperial Assault to my mother and my mom mentioning items being on the order. So much for that preorder price on SW:IA. That's $8+ right there and since the Black Friday $100 free shipping is gone I might have to add to the order to get it back. I don't know where the screw up happened, but I'm obviously really not happy about it.

EDIT: Kings of Israel should be here on Friday, so yay for that.

I've got Imperial Settlers and Castles of Mad King Ludwig to try out still, and I've got a copy of La Isla coming soon that i"m really looking to get to the table. The other Christmas items that I have gotten to the table multiple times are Colt Express(ok that was pre-Christmas), Camel Up, Drakon(from the cult of the old), Pandemic: the Cure, and my daughter is VERY happy with Geistes Blitz.

I'm looking forward to a lot of gaming New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Yeah, Love Letter is a nice quick game to play between games or before everyone has arrived.

Finally got Kemet as a Christmas present and got the KS copy of Viticulture/Tuscany on Christmas Eve. Through two plays of Viticulture + a couple fo the small expansion unlocked it might be my wife's new favorite game. It's a really solid light-medium weight worker placement and I've really liked it

Kemet is my favorite light "conflict" game. I'm looking forward to the expansion for this one. I'm Interested that you class Viticulture/Tuscany as light middle weight. One of the Dice Tower reviewers described the expansion as allowing you to ratchet the difficulty from medium weight to a real heavy game as you add in pieces in parts. That piqued my interest a bit in a game that I'd somewhat written off without much of a second look.

I think the initial Viticulture is that weight I described in comparison to other worker placement games - I would say it's similar in complexity to Waterdeep, though different in mechanics beyond WP. The expansions add variable starting set up, new cards with an either or option, a whole new board with different actions spaces, and workers with special powers, to name just a few. So I would say if you are a big gamer or a fan of meaty WP then the base game will be a bit too light for you. I think with the expansions I've seen so far and the other ones it moves to one of my top tier games

Thanks for the tip on this - picked it up yesterday, and am enjoying it.

I think I said it here, but I really liked Imperial Settlers to the point I debated if I was going to buy it or not. I'm currently holding off just because I think I'll get to play it enough as much as I want by playing it at the local game days. I currently have it in my Top 15.

Matthean, are you in SE Mich by chance?

Lansing area.

Ah, OK. I am between A2 and Detroit. Gameday coming up on Saturday.

I got Lords of Vegas as a birthday gift a couple days ago. I'm getting together with some friends on Saturday night and hopefully there will be some takers willing to try it out.

Anybody play on Yucata.de?

They have a quite a few games on there. I have the same handle on there as here.

Flash Point is a fun game. I just happened to play it at DragonCon last year with the game's designer, Kevin Lanzing. I had no idea who he was. I just went into the game room, saw a guy and his girlfriend sitting there by themselves, so my wife and I went over and they brought out Flash Point. Halfway through the game, he told us that he was the designer. Then he let us playtest a new game he's working on.

In any case, the expansions for Flash Point are "nice to have" items, but I don't really feel that they add very much to the core game. Obviously, your mileage may vary, but the expansions that I have are basically new maps, and I found the new maps to actually make the game a little more confusing than anything. Then again, I've only played them a couple of times, so I could stand to learn 'em a bit better. Still, Flash Point is a very fun game, and its designer is a very nice guy.

Played a few new games over the holiday break.

Cards Against Humanity: Never played it before. I got this for my brother for Christmas, so we opened it up and played a game. The mix of people was darn good. Me, my wife, our 26 year old daughter, 22 year old son, 60 year old brother and his 45 year old "partner". I've never seen any of them laugh so hard. The highlight of the evening was my son making my wife (very much a goodie-goodie when it comes to dirty language) read the following out loud "Pac-Man uncontrollably guzzling cum." I think a few of us were on the floor, and my wife was crying at that point. We were having so much fun that we played for 3 hours - exhausting all the cards in the box. We've played it a couple more times since Christmas with other people, and it was fun, but nothing will ever match that first play.

Freedom: The Undergound Railroad: I was really happy to convince my wife and daughter to play this cooperative game with me. I had played it once solo (pretty good solo game) and found it very easy to teach as it has a very clear and easy to learn rule-set and order of operations. We were successful, but only on the very last turn and with the very last dollar we had to spend - quite an an exciting victory. I highly recommend this game for families.

The Resistance: Picked this one up for our latest game night after watching the TableTop episode on it. I wanted something new, but that played quick. I think everyone liked it, but I wouldn't say "loved" it. Having to play the spy and bluff/lie didn't appeal to everyone, although they did a good job of playing along. I also picked up Coup but haven't tried that one yet.

I really need to pick this up. I love coop games. They are my favorite.

We played our annual New Year's Eve "Arkham Horror" game last week. Sadly, we were not able to save the world from complete annihilation. We could not stop the great worm, Shudde M'ell, from awakening and tearing the world asunder. We were close, but suffered from a couple of back-to-back gate bursters that crushed us.

We played another game of Arkham on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. We ended winning with one turn left. It was a weird game. We found three Elder Signs and got the ally that removes a doom token. We still had 11 doom on the track (max 12) when we sealed the final gate. We did draw two "add two to the doom track" mythos cards. A lot of odd things happened that rarely do in the game.

I've played Arkham well over 40 times now and - despite the long set up and all of the pieces and cards and complicated rules - it's still my favorite board game.

P.S. PUMPY!!!!!!

And just like that, you made me make a step closer to buying Flash Point.

Cards Against Humanity is very much a game that can be over played. Best to play once or twice with a gap in between it to keep it fresh.

It's fun. Even the guys in my group who don't like that rough genre of games enjoyed it.

Agreed. Although on the 3rd play we added the first expansion which helped.

I've played CAH about a half dozen times now and what I've found is that there are two different levels of humour. The first is the humour derived mostly from the content of the white card itself. There are lots of really 'good' white cards that can be played against almost any black card and get a great laugh. The pac-man card mentioned earlier fits this mold. The second is the humour derived from pairing a seemingly innocuous white card with a black card that changes it's meaning or otherwise elevates them into a 'more than the sum of their parts' equation.

The problem that I have seen is that the first type of humour is also the kind that wears off a bit. So if you are introducing the game to different groups frequently what you can find is that the people around you are killing themselves at all the obvious jokes you've already heard several times before, and meanwhile very little of that subversive wit that CAH can expose is being allowed to shine through.

The wife and I would like to try out a couple of board/card games in the coming months. Any recommendations on games that work well w/ just two people?

I've paged through a couple pages of this gigantic thread, but thought I'd just ask instead of going over all 53 pages :)

I love playing with people who havent played it before. Watching their expressions makes the game IMO

I play about 90% of my games with just my wife, so I would just ask do either of you have games or activities you like together? For example, have you played any newer board games (such as Catan, Carassonne, Ticket to Ride)? Do you like trick taking games/card games? What types of themes do the two of you like?

I think Pandemic is a fun couples game. Granted, I'm partial to co-op games, but the benefit to that is that you're both working together as opposed to trying to beat the other person.

Pandemic is also pretty quick to play and easily understood.

I second this.. My GF and I play it fairly often and the theme is a pretty easy one for most people to get into. Everyone we have played it with enjoys it. Great replay ability too, because the beginning of game conditions are never the same and the different characters you can play alter the strategy quite a bit.. Especially if you also have the expansion.

Girlfriend and I have been big into King of Tokyo, Dominion and Munchkin.

Awesome games.

+1 to Dominion for two players

I also like Lords of the Waterdeep for two players

Agreed on Pandemic, I think its a great 2 player game and still one of the best co-ops. We also like two player card games like Jaipur and Battle Line. Star Realms has replaced Dominion as our two player deck builder of choice, though both are very good.

Thanks for the advice everyone. Pandemic was at the top of my list to try and it sounds like we should definitely give it a shot.

cschex: We don't really play any games unless it's the typical party type of games w/ big groups. Now that we have a 1 year old and we're not out and about as much, we're trying different things to keep us entertained at home (get your minds out of the gutter, people).

Try Star Realms. It's really cheap and has a small footprints and is a good introduction to deckbuilders and also plays in 20-30 minutes. We also really have been loving Viticulture lately

Some other thoughts on two player games:

-Balloon Cup is fantastic if you can find it. Plays quick, simple gameplay with good depth of strategy.
-Castles of Burgundy makes for a pretty great two player game as well. My only gripe is that the setup is kind of a pain.

It really depends on what you are looking for. The following are all good and play well with two players...

Ticket to Ride (if you go this route, go with the Nordic Countries version which is for 2-3 players) - Set collection/Hand management
Dominion / Paperback - Deckbuilding games
Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small (this is a streamlined two player version of Agricola) - Worker placement
The Duke / Hive - Abstract Strategy
Morels / Lost Cities - Card drafting
Pandemic / Escape:The Curse of the Temple - Co-operative
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective - Deduction
The Mr. Jack Series - Deduction

The wife and I love to play the two player of Tune in Tokyo. Oh, uh, wrong thread, sorry carry on.

Sorry to refer to a really old post, but tarcone, if you see this, can you give me some more insight on this game? I'm looking into getting it for solo play, but I've seen some mixed reviews, mostly about the complexity.

My wife and I like kingdom builder with two. As a bonus you will both learn new tricks and tactics as your play count increases. Playing together you will keep pace with each other. We think it works very well with two. There are also a couple of abstracts like hive and the duke that are made for two.

I havent played this in a long time. I never did solo it. There is complexity. Its not an easy game to learn.
A suggestion would be to read the rules. Here is a pdf of them.

http://www.gmtgames.com/living_rules...Rules-2011.pdf

There is a module on Vassal. You can play it there. And see what you think before you buy it. Or if you want to buy it.

Been having Takaido sitting on my shelf for almost a year, and we finally broke it out, and enjoyed it.. Been playing it online a lot. Great gateway game.

Hey Fidatelo-

I've had Lords of Vegas on my shelf for a while along with Vegas Showdown (a similar game) but haven't busted either out yet.

Did you play it? If so, what were your thoughts?

It's a good lightweight family game and it is just really relaxing to play. If you can, track down the Crossroads expansion - it adds strategic depth and replay-ability to it without making it overly complex