Your favorite Tabletop game of all time?

[coopasonic]

Saw this on the geek, thought it would be an interesting thread here. You aren't allowed a top 10 or top 5 or top3. What is your one favorite game? If you need to debate with yourself to decide, show your work!

Also, no favorite 2 player or 3 player or solo or party game... No categories. One game!

[coopasonic]

For me it's Chess or Mage Wars.

I love Chess for it's simplicity and accessibility along with the obvious endless strategy and challenge.

On the other hand Mage Wars is like Chess with frikkin fireballs and pet wolves!

There hasn't been a decent expansion to chess in like a thousand years (Not a factual statement, this is just here for fun, please don't argue this point. If someone tells me the pawn double move and En Passant was an expansion in the 15th century I will be sad). OK fine. 500 years.

I guess it has to be Mage Wars! I know it's all cult of the new, but I stand by my decision.

[hentzau]

My first thought when you broached the subject was Defenders of the Realm...I've played more of that game than any other...or so I thought until I went back and mentally reviewed. After review, it really is no contest...my favorite all time game would have to be Crokinole. I've had more fun, more laughs, more hours played with that game than any other in my collection. (Also spent a ton of money on it...probably the only game I've spent more on would be Warhammer.)

[hepcat]

Roborally. Probably because it was my first real boardgame. And that time in my life was much more carefree.

[Boudreaux]

War of the Ring. It has everything I love - fantastic theme, asymmetric situations, tough decisions, and wonderful stories that come out of every game. My two older sons are getting heavy into LOTR, and I can't wait to play it with them.

[El Guapo]

Hmmm... finalists would be Twilight Struggle, War of the Ring, Britannia, Battlestar Galactica, and Blood Bowl.

[coopasonic]

My first thought when you broached the subject was Defenders of the Realm...I've played more of that game than any other...or so I thought until I went back and mentally reviewed. After review, it really is no contest...my favorite all time game would have to be Crokinole.

The funny thing is we all knew it was Crokinole without having to think about it.

[hentzau]

My first thought when you broached the subject was Defenders of the Realm...I've played more of that game than any other...or so I thought until I went back and mentally reviewed. After review, it really is no contest...my favorite all time game would have to be Crokinole.

The funny thing is we all knew it was Crokinole without having to think about it.

Yeah, it is kind of obvious. But also, I don't really think of Crokinole as a board game.

[wonderpug]

Hmm, do card games count?

[LordMortis]

Saw this on the geek, thought it would be an interesting thread here. You aren't allowed a top 10 or top 5 or top3. What is your one favorite game? If you need to debate with yourself to decide, show your work!

Also, no favorite 2 player or 3 player or solo or party game... No categories. One game!

In the immortal words smoove stole first.

[El Guapo]

Hmmm... finalists would be Twilight Struggle, War of the Ring, Britannia, Battlestar Galactica, and Blood Bowl.

And thinking about it some more, I would probably say War of the Ring as well. Great theme, interesting strategic choices, lots of variation between games (I find), and it seems well balanced to me (second edition) - even if one player runs away with the early game, somehow it also seems like either side could win in the final turn.

[wonderpug]

Even though there are lots of games from the past few years that I think are better games, I'm having a hard time choosing them as "favorite of all time" over games from my childhood that I loved playing over and over and over, or games from high school that I played with my friends every morning before school and every lunchtime.

Fireball Island, for example...


Is hardly going to win any awards, but damn if I didn't play that more as a kid than I'll ever play any of my favorite games of today. I mean, there are fireballs (marbles) that roll down the hills and knock out bridges or hit your pieces! How can anything top that?

[Chaz]

Hmmm... finalists would be Twilight Struggle, War of the Ring, Britannia, Battlestar Galactica, and Blood Bowl.

And thinking about it some more, I would probably say War of the Ring as well. Great theme, interesting strategic choices, lots of variation between games (I find), and it seems well balanced to me (second edition) - even if one player runs away with the early game, somehow it also seems like either side could win in the final turn.

Did you finally get yourself a copy? I'd probably pick this one for myself as well, for basically the same reasons. I love that my copy of it is getting that nice worn look to it. It should really have that "classic, well-loved game" look to it when I'm still pulling it off the shelf in 20 years. And I really need to get around to picking up the expansion for it.

Pug, Fireball Island is on of my childhood favorites too. I'd desperately love to have a copy again, but no way can I justify the current prices, and it'll never ever get printed again. The marbles! THE BRIDGES!

[El Guapo]

Hmmm... finalists would be Twilight Struggle, War of the Ring, Britannia, Battlestar Galactica, and Blood Bowl.

And thinking about it some more, I would probably say War of the Ring as well. Great theme, interesting strategic choices, lots of variation between games (I find), and it seems well balanced to me (second edition) - even if one player runs away with the early game, somehow it also seems like either side could win in the final turn.

Did you finally get yourself a copy? I'd probably pick this one for myself as well, for basically the same reasons. I love that my copy of it is getting that nice worn look to it. It should really have that "classic, well-loved game" look to it when I'm still pulling it off the shelf in 20 years. And I really need to get around to picking up the expansion for it.

Pug, Fireball Island is on of my childhood favorites too. I'd desperately love to have a copy again, but no way can I justify the current prices, and it'll never ever get printed again. The marbles! THE BRIDGES!

I did get myself a copy - definitely worth it. There's also an online client (a la Vassal) that allows for playing online, though it's not super reliable.

Also unless he's gotten rid of it, Dave has a copy of Fireball Island. Maybe we should get together for a round of it sometime.

[Chaz]

Also unless he's gotten rid of it, Dave has a copy of Fireball Island. Maybe we should get together for a round of it sometime.

Where the hell is he keeping it? That apartment is tiny and the game is huge. Was it the coffee table?

[El Guapo]

Also unless he's gotten rid of it, Dave has a copy of Fireball Island. Maybe we should get together for a round of it sometime.

Where the hell is he keeping it? That apartment is tiny and the game is huge. Was it the coffee table?

It may well be at his mom's house, as that was the last place that I played it at. It is also possible that he got rid of it, though I would be mildly shocked if he has done so given how awesome Fireball Island is.

[Chaz]

Dunno, that thing sells for $200+. That buys a lot of awesome.

[wonderpug]

Wait wait wait wait wait wait. Fireball Island is still considered awesome today?! And people pay $200 for it?!!

Even though I just said it may be my favorite childhood game, I still have my copy collecting dust in the garage and it probably still has all the pieces and cards. As much as I'd love to keep it, I would also love to magically turn it into half of a new video game console.

[hepcat]

Is there a vassal module for Fireball Island?

[El Guapo]

Wait wait wait wait wait wait. Fireball Island is still considered awesome today?! And people pay $200 for it?!!

Even though I just said it may be my favorite childhood game, I still have my copy collecting dust in the garage and it probably still has all the pieces and cards. As much as I'd love to keep it, I would also love to magically turn it into half of a new video game console.

$200!

A couple years ago I turned my Magic: The Gathering cards from high school into a new laptop. The passage of time can be an amazing thing.

[coopasonic]

The funny thing is we all knew it was Crokinole without having to think about it.

Yeah, it is kind of obvious. But also, I don't really think of Crokinole as a board game.[/quote]

Hence the tabletop game subject!

Hmm, do card games count?

Yes, if you can play it on a tabletop, it's a tabletop game. or in the case of crokinole, if it looks like a tabletop...

[wonderpug]

Hmm, do card games count?

Yes, if you can play it on a tabletop, it's a tabletop game. or in the case of crokinole, if it looks like a tabletop...

Vietnamese Poker in high school is the card game contender for me. My school bus delivered us at school 30-60 minutes before the first class most days, so we played card games almost every morning. At lunchtime, more often than not we also played card games. We played all sorts of things, Hearts, Spades, poker, Blackjack, Rummy... but we played a variant of Vietnamese Poker more than anything else. It was a prime example of how much gaming can bring people together.

[Archinerd]

This is tough.

According to my profile on the 'geek these are the games I've rated as a 10.
Blokus, Chicago Express, Dune, El Grande, Hammer of the Scots, Napoleon's Triumph, Princes of the Renaissance and Twilight Struggle.

I'm not really liking this list that much actually. I love all of these games but it's been awhile never since I've adjusted my rating on any of these. If I include the 9's I should be able to choose one right? Everybody knows the best way to pick only one is to add more.

Rated 9:
1960 Making of a President, 7 Wonders, Android: Netrunner, Cosmic Encounter, Expedition: Northwest Passage, Friedrich, Go, King of Siam, Maria, Pandemic, Ra, Through the Desert and Tigris & Euphrates.

Luckily I can stop here and don't have to inlcude the 8's. Not that I would anyway, they're all good games and some of them should probably be 9's but none are a 10.

So here it goes.

Round 1: Reasons why it can't be my favorite.
Blokus
Chicago Express I really do like this game, but not even close to my fav.
Dune I've only really played this once. It was great, but that's not enough to base a favorite on.
El Grande
Hammer of the Scots I like other games here much more.
Napoleon's Triumph Love it, but too hard to explain to have an even game against a new player... so I've never gotten to play an evenly matched game.
Princes of the Renaissance
Twilight Struggle
1960 Making of a President Twilight Struggle is very similar and I like it better.
7 Wonders Lots of fun, but more of a fling.
Android: Netrunner I get frustrated with the Meta game in games like this, which dampens my enthusiasm.
Cosmic Encounter I like it, but too random to be my favorite.
Expedition: Northwest Passage I just got this and have only played it twice. Too early to be a contender.
Friedrich It takes 5 hours. I love it, but thats too long for a favorite.
Go Blokus is a "go-lite". I don't have the time or desire to really give this game the attention it demands. Also I've been at a point in my life where I played Blokus every day, something I've never done with Go.
King of Siam
Maria I've never actually played this... but I'm pretty sure I love it.
Pandemic Yeah, its fun but there is no way any Co-op game is going to get to the top of my list.
Ra
Through the Desert Blokus or Go beats this one.
Tigris & Euphrates I'm not good enough at this one to consider it my favorite

Round 2: Reasons why it might be my favorite.
Blokus Played this every day for years with friends in college, I'm really good at it and it plays in under an hour.
El Grande Easy to play, easy to teach and there is no luck.
Princes of the Renaissance I read the rules for this, fell in love with it and instead of buying an ugly used copy on ebay I made my own awesome version.
Twilight Struggle Love the theme and the game is fun. Not my favorite though... it's too fiddly I think. And maybe too overwhelming sometimes.
King of Siam Plays fast and I think is one of the most interesting and elegant games in my collection.
Ra Played this every day for years with friends at work, I'm really good at it and it plays in under an hour. But given the choice between this or Blokus I would painfully choose Blokus.

My favoirte Game is:

Spoiler:

King of Siam.
I know, I'm surprised too, I really thought it was going to be Blokus. But I think I like King of Siam better because it has more strategic depth. Blokus can been very strategic when played with 3 other players of comparable skill but it still doesn't approach the nuance and subtlety required to play King of Siam well. And Princes of the Renaissance... well. It needs too many players to be good. King of Siam only needs 3.

[Teggy]

I absolutely love Stratomatic Baseball. Sad thing is I've never had anyone to play it with and can count on one hand the number of times I've actually played it and it was never with another person. But I loved taking out the cards and looking at them and seeing how the stats worked. I still have my set with the 1985 teams (or is that 87?)

[MythicalMino]

Absolute no-brainer for me...it is a game that not many of you (if any) have ever heard about. But it has been a part of my life for 20 or more years now, and it is still going very strong, with new updates (expansions) every 6 months to a year...

Champions of the Galaxy )

That game has brought me through some of the toughest times in my life, I have played it on and off for years and years, and still love to play it (although, at the moment, I am taking a break...but getting that CotG itch again). I have met the creator of the game, and keep in contact with him, even. There is a great community of players...I first bought it in around 1991 or 1992 (the WarGames 2091 set had just come out). Such a great game, with so many great memories...

[hentzau]

I absolutely love Stratomatic Baseball. Sad thing is I've never had anyone to play it with and can count on one hand the number of times I've actually played it and it was never with another person. But I loved taking out the cards and looking at them and seeing how the stats worked. I still have my set with the 1985 teams (or is that 87?)

I have a good friend that will play full seasons of Strat-o-matic by himself. I could never see the appeal, but he loves it. And I remember hearing an interview with some famous sports announcer, and he said he learned the art of sports announcing as a teenager by playing games of Strat-o-Matic and doing the play by play from it.

[coopasonic]

I absolutely love Stratomatic Baseball. Sad thing is I've never had anyone to play it with and can count on one hand the number of times I've actually played it and it was never with another person. But I loved taking out the cards and looking at them and seeing how the stats worked. I still have my set with the 1985 teams (or is that 87?)

That makes me feel a bit better about my favortie game of all time being a game I have only managed to play twice. I have spent more time building spellbooks for it than playing it.

[LordMortis]

In middle school, we spend many hours drafting teams to play seasons where we each controlled 1/3 of the teams.

We'd document everything.

We never finished a season.

[Isgrimnur]

That makes me feel a bit better about my favortie game of all time being a game I have only managed to play twice. I have spent more time building spellbooks for it than playing it.

You've played it 1.5 times with me. The demo at 2012 BGGCon and once at the DGM.

[coopasonic]

Yeah, I'm not counting the demos. I played the demo twice, but it's pretty limited, so it doesn't count.

[NickAragua]

If I had to pick, I would take Galaxy Trucker. For me, it really hits that "frantic action" spot, but still leaves room for planning and meaningful decision making. I guess I work better under a little bit of time pressure.

[triggercut]

Ok. I'll play a bit, since I'm getting back into a boardgaming hobby that I was fairly obsessed with in my teens and early 20s. A lot of that had to do with growing up (literally) in one of the best game stores in the country in St. Charles, MO, and being good friends with the owners.

I'm disqualifying all games that I've played in the last two weeks, no matter how much I've enjoyed them.

So for me the list of memorable and incredibly fun games goes like this, and currently in no order (and this is going to likely be old school and boring)

Fortress America (Milton Bradley)
Caesar Battle at Alesia (Avalon Hill)
Dragon Rage (Dwarfstar/Heritage Microgame)
CV (Yaquinto Games)
Empires In Arms (ADG)
Freedom In The Galaxy (SPI)
South Mountain (West End Games)
Dogfight! (Milton Bradley)
Broadsides! (Milton Bradley)
Starfire and expansions (Task Force Games)
Dark Tower (Milton Bradley)
Electronic Detective (Ideal)
Code Name Sector (Parker Brothers)
Squad Leader (original Avalon Hill modular version)
Car Wars (Steve Jackson Games)
Wooden Ships & Iron Men (AH)
Strat O Matic Baseball
Pursue The Pennant
Statis Pro Football

Ok, time to start making cuts.

I'd put Dark Tower, Electronic Detective, and Code Name Sector into a category together. They're all late 1970s/early 1980s boardgames that feature some sort of computer/calculator built in. Code Name Sector was kind of like Battleship, but you could play single player. You'd input where you were dropping depth charges and whatnot, and the primitive chip computer would show an LED readout that said "MISS" "NEAR" or "SUB". You hit "SUB" enough you win. It wasn't great, more a proof of concept. Still, I enjoyed it until I learned better.

Dark Tower is really well-known, kind of a holy grail for boardgamers of this era. I think I was about 13 when I played this at a friend's house. It was amazing. Paradigm-shifting stuff. Sadly, my parents couldn't find a copy for a Christmas gift and I outgrew wanting one because I'd started playing D&D by the following year. Wonder if Brian still has his (now valuable) copy? Still...I think some of my affection for this game is related to having only played it 4-6 times, so it doesn't pass the prelims.

Finally in this group there's Electronic Detective.



Electronic Detective was innovative because there was no game board, just the computer, character cards, and the investigation pad of paper. The play was wonderful--the computer would choose one of the 20 character cards to be the murder victim, and another one of the cards to be the killer. Players then basically looked for clues and interrogated other characters by asking questions into the computer, which returned binary yes/no answers. Here's the cool thing--as you gathered clues it really felt like some clues were worthless and could be discarded, while other clues would lead you down a path to identifying the killer (each character card had traits, and that's what you were trying to clue into.) It played magnificently as a solo game, or with up to 4 players. It was a brilliant design that really did make players feel like they were making deductions. For me personally, it showed me what computers could do as a gaming medium above and beyond the Atari.

Electronic Detective makes the cut.

Next up, games that I played in my childhood. I am the youngest of 4 brothers, and my three older brothers and my dad were game players. When I was a kid, we had an AMAZING collection of Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, and Selchow & RIghter branded games in a closet under the stairs in our basement. That scene with all the boardgames in the movie Royal Tenenbaums? That's what this closet space looked like. There were two games in that closet that pre-dated my birth. One was called Dogfight, the other Broadside. Both were Milton Bradley games, part of some category of historically themed games they were trying to do to compete with an upstart company like Avalon Hill in the early 1960s.

Dogfight is very simple and non-complex. It's WWI plane battles with tokens moving on a board, cardplay, and dice rolling...so that's pretty innovative stuff for 1963 or whenever it came out. What capture my imagination when I was a little kid were the components and graphics. I mean, check it:





There were like a dozen plastic miniature planes in red and green that sat on stands. There was a bitchin' gameboard. There were maneuver cards with names like "Barrel roll" and "Immelmann". Additionally, there was this booklet that came with the game written by the folks at American Heritage about WWI flying aces. I was utterly smitten as a child. I mean...how can you not be?

The other game we had in this series was Broadside. Similarly garish cover, only this time about ship combat in the age of sail. The gameboard wasn't as cool as the one for Dogfight, but the miniatures were every bit as great. I sadly remember the gameplay of Broadside being a bit lacking, though.

While we had all of the games in the American Heritage Series (which also included Hit The Beach, with a WWII South Pacific setting, and Battle Cry, which had an American Civil War theme), the game that I think wins this category for me is one called Skirmish. The setting is American Revolution, but this is a grand strategy game. More interesting (and difficult for me to originally wrap my 9-year-old brain around) was that it had assymetrical forces and game rules. The British side moved slowly and hit hard. The Americans moved quickly, hit soft, and tried to get away. It was fun, the design was surprisingly forward-looking, and it was absolutely a great into to wargaming. For that reason, Skirmish gets the nod in my childhood division.

Next up, Fantasy/Sci Fi games.

Dragon Rage as I played it was a microgame. For five bucks you got the game, with an actual (cheap) board, punch-able counters, rules and dice in a small box. The gameplay was solo-oriented (in fact, this is one of the first solitaire games I can remember playing) and involved defending a walled city from the onslaught of a dragon and demons.

Freedom In The Galaxy was an obvious knockoff of the Star Wars universe. It was a fairly fiddly, complex, but interesting game that I think we actually managed to play start-to-finish exactly twice. It was a blast, but it could take over 6-12 hours to finish a game, which was prohibitive. The grand strategy computer game for Star Wars--Rebellion I think it was called--seemed to borrow back a lot of mechanics from this boardgame.

Car Wars likely needs no intro from me. I can remember laying out paper track sections, rolling dice for combat checks, etc. What was unique about this was the ability to design cars, which really took the game to a higher place.

Starfire, a little ziplock game from the folks at Task Force, takes this category for me. A brilliant, almost stupidly elegant combat system for space ship-to-ship combat, it also had ship design. Expansions bloated the game from it's beautiful, elegant initial state, but my gosh...that initial state of the game remains one of the great, elegant, slap your head and wish you'd thought of it game designs I've ever encountered. For that reason, Starfire wins.



Next up, let's do hardcore wargames.

Squad Leader obviously goes here. After struggling with the modular rules in the opaque, error-riddled, and just awful Magic Realm game from AH, I wasn't sure I was ready for Squad Leader, but the rules here--detailed though they were--were explained well and made sense. I played every scenario in the base game and the Cross Of Iron expansion, but honestly it felt like the expansions were really bloating the game a bit to me.

Empires In Arms is the only grand strategy game in this category for me. It's an elegant design system from ADG that takes the outline of Diplomacy and adds some extra asymmetry and interesting strategy/tactics to combat resolution. This is a complex game, difficult to learn and teach, and to get through a game you have to either leave it set up or write everything down because it'll take upwards of 8 hours or more to finish if you have every major power playing. Still...the rules design is excellent, and with the right players this is a second-to-none experience.

CV is from the late, lamented Yaquinto Games. During the mid-1980s, if you saw the Yaquinto mark on a game, you bought it. It was like a guarantee of "This is going to be really worthwhile at least, and great at best." CV is a complex game of the battle of Midway. While some folks bitch that it's too easy for the US forces (who know where the Japanese are in the game) rules for variable cloud cover, imperfect searchplane results and intel, and playing smart as the IJN makes it endlessly replayable--if you've got 4 hours or so to play. This was our favorite hardcore wargame back in the day, so it takes the category.



Easier wargames is next.

Wooden Ships & Iron Men is a beauty of a game, almost like miniatures rules in a boardgame setting. The rules are fairly simple and easily presented (ok, the movement and wind rules get a bit fiddly). The interface on custom paper pads for marking off damage on ships is well done. The game does bog down in bigger fights--to play Trafalgar, for instance, you'd better have two teams of three players each to help manage all the different ships.

Caesar at Alesia is an amazing, elegantly written board game. On the surface, it looks like a standard AH wargame, where you move counters, roll on a combat results chart, repeat. What elevates this is the assymetry of the sides (Gauls vs Romans) and the terrain and the victory conditions. Both sides play a completely different game here, and that was a paradigm-shifting thing to discover in a game in the 1980s. Unfortunately, the owner of the game store where we played this endlessly figured out a way to be almost unbeatable as the Romans by turtling up in fortifications. Even so, we had a blast trying to come up with ways to knock him out of those forts...unsuccessfully, sadly.

Fortress America also probably needs no introduction. When I saw the plastic pieces in this game I was immediately reminded of those old American Heritage games from my childhood. We loved the asymmetrical gameplay of this to death back in the day. While perhaps there's too much die rolling for some folks, I always thought the fairly simple rules did a great job of getting out of the way of fun, light strategy.

The winner of this category for me is perhaps the most obscure game on my list, South Mountain. The game store got this in in the mid 1980s from a company called West End Games, who'd make their biggest splash in gaming with the Paranoia RPG system. It's a Civil War game set in a key engagement before Antietam. The rules are fairly simple, and the mechanics don't at first blush appear to be more than move counters, roll on a combat results chart, resolve, next turn. That does this amazing game so little justice, though. The force sizes and objectives are asymmetrical. The CSA side has units that are trying to defend and always in command control. The Union has superior forces and ease of movement...but lacks a fire phase the Confederates get and due to limitations, they will have sometimes half their army unable to move due to command problems. Also, the terrain pays a huge role in the game. That all sounds complicated, but it's elegantly and clearly presented in the rule book and easy to absorb. The game plays a finite number of turns, and can be knocked off in under two hours. What's really cool is the combat results table, though. Units don't get destroyed much at all in the game. Instead, they take damage, retreat, regroup, and then get brought back into the fight. What it ends up in as far as gameplay is concerned is this massive, shifting King Of The Hill fight. One of the great problems with so many games is the snowball effect--once one side starts to win, the rest of the game is inevitable. That's what sets South Mountain apart. Over the course of the 19-turn game, the question of "Who's winning?" is going to shift a half-dozen times or more. There's an ebb and flow to the fight and a real sense of how brutal and awful Civil War battles could be. By the end of the game there's a very real sense of two battered, barely functioning armies slugging at one another like fighters in the 15th round. It's a small battle in scope, the rules are quick to learn and implement, and for that reason it takes this category.

Finally sports games.

If a game like Skirmish introduced my little brain into the idea of asymmetrical forces, Strat-o-matic baseball made it easy to understand and something I wanted in complex games. I had the 1977 full set of player cards and played so many danged games of this (and yes, there were Cheetoh fingerprints on some of those cards--sorry Bob Boone!) that I can now quote weird statistical minutae from that year in detail that frightens me today. I've always thought Don Sutton's difficulty getting into the Hall Of Fame was related to the fact that in apparently most years of SoM baseball (including 1977), despite his stats, he pitched like hell when you actually played the game. For whatever reason, Burt Hooton, Doug Rau, Rick Rhoden, and Tommy John all were better Strat-o-Matic pitchers than Sutt.

Statis Pro Football set an absurdly lofty goal for itself, and mostly succeeded. It had player cards for every NFL player, and modeled their performance. So many football boardgame sims lump the offensive line together as a unit, but not Statis Pro. I had the 1984 card set and kept a standing challenge through college: I invited anyone to either take a team as a whole or build an all-star team, and play me as the 1984 St. Louis Cardinals, and if they only lost to me by a touchdown I'd buy lunch or beers or something. Never lost. Dunno if it was because Statis Pro made the Cardinals better than they should've been, or whether it was because Jim Hanifan was a better position coach than head coach, but there you go.

My winner here is Pursue The Pennant. Its a colorful game with engaging components that does a more complex (but still fast-to-play) version of what Strat-O-Matic and APBA baseball do. Pursue was the gold standard in accurately simulating baseball seasons in the late 1980s and early 1990s until computer games finally caught up and made it sadly irrelevant.



So. Finalists on my list:

Preteen games with electronics: Electronic Detective
Childhood games that made me a gamer: Skirmish
Sci fi/Fantasy: Starfire
Heavy wargames: CV
Light wargames: South Mountain
Sports games: Pursue The Pennant.

Ok, paring down that list.

Skirmish was great for its time, but can't hang with this company. Ditto for Pursue The Pennant, sadly.

That leaves ED, Starfire, CV, and South Mountain as my final four.

CV is first off the island. Great game, great mechanics, but perhaps just too complex to be taught and learned easily. It's one of those games where you feel like if someone else knows some weird rule tucked away on page 33, they're going to exploit it and win.
Electronic Detective comes off the list with great reluctance, next. It likely no longer holds up...but coming at it as someone who'd played Clue and thought that was as good as detective games got, Electronic Detective was a revelation and revolution. It really did a great job of simulating an investigation.

Final two. Starfire and South Mountain.

I love Starfire. We played long-running campaigns of it, and even massive battles could be resolved in an hour or so, so beautiful were the mechanics to the game. I can remember agonizing over starship design instead of paying attention in AP Western Civ in high school. I love this game dearly....but it finishes in second place.

The winner then? South Mountain. In addition to all the other reasons I've talked about regarding this game, the other thing that makes it sing is how well it lends itself to implementing multiple strategies and tactical ideas. Games never seem to go the same way as prior games do. The two asymmetrical sides are magnificently balanced. If you're out and about at a used games sale and see this box cover



...pay the freight. It's absolutely worth it.

[Zarathud]

Eclipse. After a few games of Twilight Imperium, I didn't expect a 4x game could be playable, let alone elegant. Whenever I am at a gaming event and sufficiently awake, I am willing to play a 3-5 player game of Eclipse.

I want to play more Mage Wars, but I haven't played enough games to know whether the concept will survive the "cult of the new game." Twilight Struggle is a great game, but it's too heavy and exhausting to be the favorite.

In high school, we played a lot of Talisman. I tracked down almost a complete set of the Second Edition at GenCon for nostalgia, and have the complete set for the Fantasy Flight edition. Despite all of the good memories, I recognize that game mechanics have come a long, long way.

In college, we played Axis & Allies constantly. We played it to death, much like we played Arkham Horror and Battlestar Galactica.

For a while, I would have said Wealth of Nations. I discovered it at my first Origins in the open gaming area, and immediately recognized it as a board game implementation of the old Commodore 64 game M.U.L.E. Unfortunately, the Chicago crowd doesn't share my enjoyment of pure economic games and we never had a chance to try out the Second Edition rules which sped the game up -- they calculated that you could auction off multiple goods in the market at the same time without impacting game balance too much.

For RPGs, my favorite would be Paranoia XP even though we played a futuristic home brew campaign based on Car Wars for years.

[Holman]

War of the Ring. It has everything I love - fantastic theme, asymmetric situations, tough decisions, and wonderful stories that come out of every game. My two older sons are getting heavy into LOTR, and I can't wait to play it with them.

This, and for the same reasons. After a few games, my 10-year-old could play it without any rules assistance, and the 7-y.o. assists.

We also play Combat Commander, which is an excellent mix of serious wargame and card-driven narrative.

Other tops for me (right now) are Twilight Struggle, the Guns of Gettysburg, and solitaire Fields of Fire and D-Day at Omaha Beach.

Some years ago my choices would have been Dune, Car Wars, and Star Fleet Battles.

[coopasonic]

You all have made me add War of the Ring to my wishlist. 2.5 hour playtime would make it a rare game to get played, but that game comes up on these lists too much to ignore.

[Chaz]

War of the Ring is fantastic. Fair warning though, 2.5 hour playtime is really on the low end, and it's when you have two players who know what they're doing. Most games I've played push closer to 4 hours. It is not a short game, though it usually feels pretty short.

[Isgrimnur]

When he gets tired of having it in his library, unplayed, I'm sure someone on BGG will get a good deal at the next Con.

[coopasonic]

When he gets tired of having it in his library, unplayed, I'm sure someone on BGG will get a good deal at the next Con.

Part of the reason I am adding this to the list is that the list is running dry. I have bought literally every game I have an interest in except one. The only other game left on my wish list is Tash-Kalar, mostly because I feel like that is significantly overpriced. There are a few expansions, but nothing else on my radar so I need some CSI order filler. Not that a $60 game is much for order filler. Hey look if I combine it with Tash-Kalar I get free shipping!

There are still a good number of games that I should get rid of, but I think my days of buying anything just because it sounds cool are over. I think. Maybe.

[Isgrimnur]

I'm always willing to help you get a play under your belt.

[Archinerd]

I'm always willing to help you get a play under your belt.

perv.