Favorite Board Game?

[Ash]

I went over to my buddy Mario's house the other day and he and two other friends of mine, Chris and Shawn were just sitting down to play Risk.
They asked me if I wanted to join the game, so I did.
I hadn't played Risk in years so I had to quickly read up on the rules, which aren't that hard to get the hang of.



Boy, did we get our butts kicked by Chris!
He schooled all three of us and I was the first to lose.  
Even though I lost, it was an intense game and was pretty fun!
It was the first board game I'd played in over a year. 
(I last played Monopoly before that during a get together at a friend's house)
 

The list is kind of long, but then again there are a lot of board games out there to choose from.
I tried to narrow down the list to the top games that most of us have played at one time or another.
You may vote for your top 2 favorite games.  (vote changing is allowed)

I voted for Battleship and Trivial Pursuit.
I always seem to win at Battleship and the loads of useless trivia stored in my brain is great for Trivial Pursuit.

What's your favorite board game?

[clockworkcanary]

Hahah I'm in the same boat - I've been playing a lot of Mission Risk with some old friends and been getting my butt handed to me, yet it was still pretty fun.  We like Mission Risk better than global domination simply because it takes about 3 days less time lol (about an hour per game usually).  And I really like the new Mission Risk better where you get 4 missions of increasing difficulty rather than the old Mission Risk where you just had one (usually) hard mission to tackle.

We alter the rules just slightly though so that we get extra troops for completing a misison (1-4 depending on the difficulty).

[Andrew]

Taboo is easily our favorite.  I like playing Risk and Axis and Allies as well.  For some reason, my nephews always beat my us at Life, which is insulting since one is 13 and the other is 11.

Straight from the Random Thoughts, my Taboo story (I still take flak over what Todd and Bill guessed about Katie):

We spent a few days down at the beach with friends who had rented a house for a week. There were five children (ages three and under), so things were chaotic until all of them were in bed. After the kids were down, we would have time to talk, watch a movie, or play games. One night we played Taboo.

When playing Taboo you have two teams, a one minute timer, and cards. At the top of each card is the word that you, as the clue-giver, must get your team to say. Under it is a list of words you may not use as hints, else you get buzzed (a member of the other team sits by your shoulder, like some sort of twisted conscience) and the other team gets the point for the word. You have sixty seconds, every word that your team manages to guess is a point, but every word that you are buzzed or pass is a point for the opposing team.

Well, this is a fun game to play with adults who are drinking, especially when the teams are guys vs. gals. There were a couple that Bill and I pulled off that caused a roar of, "What the Hell?" from the women. For example: Bill says, "It lives in the ocean." Andrew shouts, "Octopus!" to which Bill screams, "Yes!" That sort of thing causes some serious angst.

However, possibly the funniest parts happened when I was the clue-giver. One round, and I think it was the first word I drew, I had to get them to say "Banker." Katie spent many years as a bank teller for Bank of America and Commerce Bank, so I offered, "This is what Katie used to do." Bill and Todd immediately yell, "Hooker!" (In perfect stereo.) At which point everyone collapses in laughter. I gave up trying to get them to guess the actual word, because they could not stop laughing. Oh and, for some reason, I was blamed for the two nincompoops calling my wife a hooker. Still trying to figure out how I was culpable.

Another round I needed to get my team to guess the word "Bran." I quickly hinted "you might add this to your early morning meal as roughage." and when they started guessing "cream of wheat" and "oatmeal" I continued giving clues. Finally, in desperation (because, this was taking far too long for "Bran") I sung a hint. It went like this, "I something, I something so far away." Bill immediately gets, "Ran?" but stops there, completely stuck. My wife, ready to buzz me, just starts laughing. When the time ran out, all I could do was snarl between clenched teeth, "Why are you so STUPID?" Which only made everyone laugh harder.

In my defense, "I bran, I bran so far away..." makes perfect sense at 1:00 AM, after a liberal application of Jack Daniels.

[Gerry]

What I wouldn't give to have a copy once again of my beloved "Tarzan to the Rescue" game:

[BeyondTheGrave]

I went with Candyland. It was my favorite Childhood games. I've played Risk, Life and such over my friends house but never really go into them.

[Menard]

I like a lot of games you don't have listed, though many of them are not so popular that they need to be on your list. Out of what you have listed, I would choose Sorry! and Axis and Allies. Sorry! was a favorite of mine growing up and probably spawned my interest in games. I played the original paperboard Axis and Allies when it was first published as a bookshelf game (paperboard and punch out cardboard counters).

Other games I like:

Decline and Fall: An ancients strategic game of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. I liked playing the Huns. Mobility was the key with the Huns. The weakness though was a lack of seamanship. If I could have gotten some vessels, I could have invaded Constantinople and hit the Romans hard. The Huns built strength, as any other player, by taking out opposing units. I used the Goths like cattle; I would let them build up, then go womp on them when I needed to build units. The game overall does favor the Romans, but then, so did history. The Roman player starts out as a united front, but then the empire splits, opening the opportunity for a second Roman player, or a headache of bookwork for a single Roman player.

Image: Originally published by 3M (I like collecting their old bookshelf games) the bought by Avalon Hill and shelved for years, then republished as a card only version. Though mostly a card game, it uses a board for organization, and the board places limitations on the players forcing competition which is lacking in the card only version. It is basically an historical personalities game where players build up runs of cards representing time period, occupation, fictional or not, initials, etc. The idea being to have a person in mind, real or fictional, and build a run of cards representing this person, thus scoring points when you name them. The competition is brought about by others being able to play on your run of cards, thus totally throwing off your game if it messes up your personality. The longer the run, the more points you get, but the more risk it is in as well.

Under Cover; Hare and Tortoise; and other Ravensburger games: Ravensburger is a German company which makes some pretty fun games. Chief among them, for me, are Under Cover and Hare and Tortoise. Under Cover is a race around the board style game where each player has several pieces and there is a hidden secret file they must find. Hare and Tortoise initially looks like a children's game, somewhat based on Pachisi, but adds layers of luck and strategy which can even be cut-throat if the players get that competitive.

Civilization: To list all of the Avalon Hill board games I like would be ridiculous, but the one that probably stands out the most for me is Civilization. It is a game of the cradle of civilization where players build their civilizations, advancing in their abilities historically. Alas, though, as civilizations advance and expand, competition and conflict will arise and players will vie for land and power.

Kingmaker: Kingmaker is another Avalon Hill favorite where players vie for control of England in the War of the Roses. The game can become quite cut-throat as players try to gain control of an heir to have crowned as the monarch of England. There is a dose of irony as I have seen a player with strong defences get his heir to the town to be crowned, but fate would have it and the town he was in was hit with plague on the draw of an event card, effectively wiping out his forces.

Dawn of the Dead: Yes, there was a board game based on the movie which was published by SPI. It is a paperboard bookshelf (narrow box) game with cardboard punchout counters. It uses the clearing of the mall as its primary scenario and can be played solo or as group game. It is just a fun little game that does a pretty good job of capturing some of the flavor (no pun intended ) of the movie. It is extremely rare.

Cosmic Encounter: Just too much fun packed into one game. If I get a group together and we start this game, we are likely to be playing several games for hours. I started with the original Eon games release and went through the different publications, each adding more to the already growing set. Each player is an alien force with a special power determined by the alien they are playing (they are often just called powers rather than aliens). Some of the powers can contradict or neutralize each other, while others don't come into play until you have forgotten that they can be used that way. The object is to gain control of five planets in neighboring star systems, and by whatever means necessary. This is just too much fun. We also would play with two powers, allowing players to combine them.


There are more I could list, but, being that I have played and collected so many games, a lot of them come down to an occasional play. What I have listed is games which stand out for me and have had repeated play.

[Ash]

Civilization: To list all of the Avalon Hill board games I like would be ridiculous, but the one that probably stands out the most for me is Civilization. It is a game of the cradle of civilization where players build their civilizations, advancing in their abilities historically. Alas, though, as civilizations advance and expand, competition and conflict will arise and players will vie for land and power.

I considered adding Civilization to the list but decided against it because I thought no one here would have ever heard of it.
I should've known better. 

[Gerry]

Kingmaker: Kingmaker is another Avalon Hill favorite where players vie for control of England in the War of the Roses.

I played this a few times.  Pretty fun game.

[Poogie]

I have a brain cloud today so I picked Clue and Yahtzee. It depends on the mood I'm in. I also like Risk for the long game experience and Monopoly. But then again I like Aggravation and Scrabble. Come to think about it, I really enjoyed Mouse Trap, but the problem with that is that my daughter and I would be impatient and set the whole thing up before we were supposed to.
When was Aggravation put on the market? My grandfather used to tell us he was the one who invented it, he even gave us one when we were kids, the board was made out of wood and he drilled holes in it, the marbles were the catseye type. Well this brought back a wonderful memory.   

[RCMerchant]

RISK! I like Chesse to. But when it comes down to games in general...poker!!!!! For $$$$$! ( Not too much $,cuz I am as a rule,broke).

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

Whe I was a kid I LOVED PayDay.  Pity my Dad didn';t but he still played with me....Over and over and over 
My favorite games as an adult are Scrable and Trivial Pursuit.
-Ed

[JaseSF]

Voted for RISK, which I usuallly won in my younger days, and SCRABBLE.

[Shadow]

This one would be my current favorite, Conquest of the Empire:


My favorite during my teen years, Dark Tower:


And my favorite as a kid, Bigfoot:

[CheezeFlixz]

What I wouldn't give to have a copy once again of my beloved "Tarzan to the Rescue" game:

Here you go ....

Tarzan to the Rescue

[Gerry]

Wow!  unopened even!