When I was I guess, 10, one of my friends had the Warhammer crap all set out and I think his dad was into it, also. I thought this was really cool and I went and made my mum who does not have much money spend £50 on a bunch of boards and cards and little statues I had to paint myself and I don't think ever really did. This friend also collected plushie toys after that, and I went to my mum and started pestering her for money to get them and they were expensive. So she'd had enough and she told my my friend was a spoiled loser and that was that. I don't remember what I did with the warhammer set. I remember guys went into the games workshop and spent all day there. I didn't know about them back then, the kind of people they were.

Well this isn't a very good post, and I'm not trying to rag on table top games in general or anything. This is just what I think of whenever I see warhammer mentoned.

I've never done Warhammer or D&D or anything that involved, but I do enjoy the hell out of some board games. Agricola, Warhammer: Chaos in the Old World, and the Game of Thrones board games are some of my favorites.

I've played Descent and a couple other "D&D lite" games which can be pretty fun. I really wanted to play Warhammer Quest with my group but that game is hella expensive since it's out of print.

I've never played a tabletop wargame unless you count Star Warriors, and another space combat game based on Babylon 5 I think.


Other shit I've played and liked: Troyes, Taluva, Race for the Galaxy, Nexus Ops, Puerto Rico, Imperial, Dominion, Last Night on Earth, Hansa Teutonica.

I've played in one rl session of D&D, but lately I've been playing a lot of D&D and pathfinder online(not the MMO) the last few years, actually starting with an IRC campaign here.

Other then that, I don't play much in the way of table top games, though I have been watching Table Top for a while now and there are more then a few games I wouldn't mind trying out for myself.

The only Warhammer-esque game I've got is Dust Tactics because it seems really simple and quick and fun unlike most miniatures games I've seen.  Can't say much about it yet because I haven't played it but me and my friend are planning on doing that in the next few days.  The theme of it is pretty neat, sorta an alternate universe WWII.  It seems like the sort of game where you don't have to constantly buy shit to enjoy it either.  The miniatures it came with seem pretty dang substantial.

I do play quite a few other board games tho.  There's the usual Catan, Carcassonne, etc. but I also really REALLY like Wings of War.  There's another WWII dogfight game that's totally card-based which I bought on the cheap that was pretty fun (once we ditched all of the advanced rules and kept it simple as possible) but I can never remember the name of it.

there's a finnish card game (that is now uncontinued unfortunately) that has one of the best game systems mechanic wise i have ever seen. shogun seems to be really fucking good mechanic-wise. Saboteur is really good/fun as both the social side and mechanic side is fun, Scotland Yard is probably the most intense game you are ever gonna play, it's the best...

catan is ok/not so good, carcassone is b-o-r-e, bang! is pretty funny/good game but kinda fails in parts mechanic-wise, ticket to ride is def better than catan but is assholish in nature (which is okay in my book and i think the game otherwise is good), uh... warhammer blood bowl was interesting/seemed to be good...  there was that neverland/that fantasy games where you took control over lands that i can't remember that was ok and semi-fun.

... some interest in tabletop games, yes!!! actually they're tons better than any commercial pc or console game really.

If you like Dominion, try Thunderstone. Very very similar, except it has more of a fantasy theme where you're slaying monsters and recruiting heroes and stuff. Also Ascension is very much in the same vein.

oh yeah, dominion! yeah i guess it's ok, though i don't remember any highlights/great stuff from those matches i've played with friends. you can sure maneuver a lot in it (and i'd imagine even moreso in expansions than in vanilla) but it's still pretty collection-focused.

also avoid knight of the camelot like it's plaque, jesus

the cool stuff about tabletop from my perspective is that you don't have a black-box computer handling all of the calculation and mechanical aspects of the game for you.  the way i've seen raph koster describe it is that the processor becomes the player, the programming becomes the rule-book (or text of the cards), and the RAM becomes the gameboard or whatever the physical pieces of the game are.


that means that your rules have to make sense and be comprehensible to a human player.  human players know exactly what is randomize and exactly what is skill based, so the problem that a lot of games have (hiding shallow gameplay behind spectacular graphics, or masking poorly designed mechanics with cheap stuff like rubber-banding AI opponents) is eliminated entirely.  that's cool imo... definitely gets you psyched up about playing a fun, well designed game.  aside from that there's nothing more social than actually looking at the other players face-to-face, cracking jokes, eating snacks.

yeah that's pretty spot on. it IS cool and at best i have seen flashes of possible systems, much more versatile and rewarding... well, it's not something easy to talk about but i think that a good system/mechanically good game can promote the social aspect of a tabletop game... i'm not sure, i haven't taken this thought to far but i noticed that games like setlers of catan tend to ultimately lead to players shutting down/becoming reserved and nervous and focused on their respective games (in live settings), whereas games like werewolf and modern society (the finnish game i was talking about) makes people more creative/more extrovert in regards to others... this is semi-bullshit but i'm sure there's some grain of truth there. i guess the social side IS related around the events of the game ofc but i'd still say that there's a world of difference between the games in when it comes to rewarding social experience, eg mutual recalled stories, going over battle plans/thoughts after or during game, the moments when other player(s) realize one's plan or one foil other person's move with an restrictive move etc. lol yeah this is just me anchoring on your seemingly belittling/minimizing comment on social aspect, groan. (like it's extra or what but nevermind this kamerad, i've understood...). it's still worlds more than in internet games even with all the technical prowess...

i guess the point is that there's a socially elevating (or vice-versa) side when it comes to designing an tabletop game! which along with good mechanics makes up a lot of the "rewarding" experience of the game, that's my thoughts about it. it kinda makes sense when you remember that european upper-class used games in social gatherings with the purpose to improve the party's quality etc...

EDIT now that you've brought this up... i really like tabletop games it seems... i've thought a lot about them. they're definitely pretty excelent way to spend time in social gatherings. just apply the "beer" rule on Bang! and you get the prize... (every time u consume beer in the game... you DRINK beer/alcohol in real life...! these astonishing dostoyevsky reality...!)

I think the most rewarding social experiences I've gotten from board games were playing Nightmare (the VHS game) because it's so goofy and fun and we're all scrambling around trying to beat a VHS tape at a game.

I tried playing settlers of catan with couchfiend when I visited him, but I got way too drunk (we all did) and don't remember anything about it. In fact I think I was "too drunk" before even my second turn.

It seemed like a fun game though, but when I think of it all I can think of is ghetto gin and tonics.

ahha it's not really compatible with alcohol like at all. u guys should had done Bang! with alcohol rule haha. *jumps outta chair, drops all pants* INDIANS!!! bwaahaha.... it kinda suprises me sometimes of what tabletop games gets notorious and what does not (like holy moly, catan is where you fuck up your game with the very first or at least at second move (which is placing towns) and sometimes road direction etc. i could imagine there's metagame guides in net... but it's not something i'd call fun/party-game or to play when drunk, imagine trying to do trading/trying to being the island's Donald Trump when Donald Drunk...)

i liked playing risk on my phone where the AI's turns went by instantly but it feels like it'd be the longest most tedious game in real life