c/board-game-geeks

TIL co-op games aren't just for casuals, learned that at a Thursday meetup

Three years ago I swore off co-op board games, thought they were too soft compared to competitive stuff. Last Thursday at a local game shop in Tucson, this guy walked me through a round of Spirit Island where we coordinated 3 players against the board and I finally got why the tension can hit just as hard. Anyone else flip on a genre they used to dismiss?

1 comments

karenhenderson•2d ago

Took me 4 years to finally try a solo campaign

I always figured solo board gaming was just for people who couldn't find groups, so I ignored it. Then last winter my regular group fell apart when two guys moved to Denver and the other one had a baby. I picked up a used copy of a legacy game at a flea market for $12, figured I'd play one session and give up. That first night I played 3 hours straight and actually got deeper into the story than I ever did with my old group. Has anyone else converted to solo after being stubborn about it for ages?

1 comments

william407•3d ago

My dice tower saga: from a $60 store buy to cardboard and tape

I used to buy fancy dice towers from shops, spent like $60 on one with velvet lining and it still sounded like a cat falling down stairs. About 3 months ago I tried making one from a cereal box and some packing tape, just to see if I could. Now my group actually prefers the cardboard one because the dice tumble out in a weird, chaotic way that feels more random. The $60 tower sits in my closet, I keep telling myself I'll sell it but honestly it's just a paperweight now. Anyone else downgraded their gear on purpose and found it works better than the expensive version?

1 comments

-1

xenam76•7d ago

A stranger at a flea market corrected my game rule and was right

Last Saturday I was at the flea market on Vine Street and saw a guy selling a used copy of Puerto Rico for 40 bucks. I picked it up and started telling my friend how you always get one build action per turn, and this stranger standing nearby just goes 'Nope, you only get one unless you're the Builder.' I almost argued but he pulled out his phone and showed me the rulebook PDF. He was completely right, I'd been playing wrong for like 2 years. It made me wonder how many other rules I fumble without knowing. Has anyone else had a total stranger point out a rule mistake in public and turn out to be spot on?

0 comments

quinns20•7d ago

That teenager at the game swap made me rethink my whole collection

Last Saturday at the old community center swap in Portland, this kid, maybe 15, picked up my beat-up copy of a 1999 euro game and asked why I kept it if the box was falling apart. I said it was for the memories, and he said, "Memories don't need shelf space." That hit weird because he wasn't being rude, just honest. I spent the last 20 years treating every game I ever played like a trophy, even the ones I hated like that dice fest from 2006. Now I'm going through my shelves and sorting out what I actually want to play again versus what I'm just holding for nostalgia. Already sold 11 games for store credit, and honestly the shelf feels lighter and better. Has anyone else done a hard purge and regretted getting rid of something they thought they'd never miss?

0 comments

andrew693•9d ago

My dice tower guy owes me $40 after that brutal 3 player game

A friend swore his $60 dice tower from a local maker in Portland would speed up turns and stop dice from flying into drinks. I laughed it off because we usually just roll in the box lid. Last Saturday we finally tried it during a 3 player run of a heavy euro game and the thing made everything worse. Dice kept getting stuck in the foam baffles, we had to shake the tower like a piggy bank every single roll, and one player just gave up and started rolling on the table anyway. That tower added at least 15 minutes to a game that already runs long. I get that some people swear by them for chaotic games, but for quieter strategy nights it feels like a gimmick. Has anyone else bought fancy table gear that ended up being pure decoration after the first try?

0 comments

noah_walker16•15d ago

Rant: lost my whole campaign binder on the bus in Portland

Last Tuesday I was heading home from a game night at a buddy's place in Southeast Portland. I had my big 3 inch binder with all my Gloomhaven character sheets, town records, and about 4 months of notes. I set it on the seat next to me while I dug for my bus pass. Got off at my stop and realized I left it behind. Called TriMet lost and found three times over the next week. Nada. The worst part is we were mid-campaign, level 7 party, and I had house rules written in the margins that took me forever to balance. My group decided to just start over with a new campaign, but I still think about all that planning. Has anyone else lost a whole campaign to something dumb like a bus or a coffee shop? How did you get your group to not rage quit?

0 comments

taylor_mitchell80•16d ago

Lost my whole campaign sheet in a coffee spill last Friday

We were 4 hours into a Gloomhaven session and my character sheet got soaked after a coffee spill, so I had to rebuild all my XP and gold from memory during the break. Has anyone else lost serious progress to a dumb accident like that?

0 comments

alicecooper•17d ago

Took me 4 evenings to find the rule I kept misreading in Spirit Island

Kept losing to the same adversary because I thought blight only applied to my board, not the whole island. Has anyone else spent way too long on a tiny rulebook detail that was staring right at them?

0 comments

karenhenderson•17d ago

My 8 year old's game night question changed how I pick board games

He asked why we always play the same 3 games and after explaining that I just grab what's familiar, he said 'that's like only eating cereal for breakfast', and now I've spent $60 this month on games from our local library's swap shelf trying new mechanics, has anyone else had a kid force them out of a gaming rut?

0 comments

gavinh26•17d ago

Co-op campaign night with randoms taught me a lesson about turn timers

Set up a 4 hour Gloomhaven session last Saturday with a group from the local game store, and we only finished 2 scenarios instead of the 4 I planned. Turns out half the group wanted to play fully optimized and the other half just wanted to mess around with weird builds, and the friction ate up like 90 minutes total. Does anyone else set a strict timer per player before the session starts, or do you just let the chaos happen and accept a shorter night?

1 comments

lunashah•21d ago

Just realized I've been shuffling Commander decks wrong for 6 months

Last Friday at my local shop in Portland, someone pointed out that I was overhand shuffling my Commander deck instead of mash shuffling. I thought it was fine, but then he showed me how the sleeves were causing cards to clump in groups of 5 or 6. Took 4 games to notice the pattern, my opening hands were always heavy on lands or light on ramp. I went back and checked my old notes, my win rate dropped from about 30 percent to 15 since I switched sleeves. Has anyone else had a hidden habit like this mess with their draws? How did you catch it?

0 comments

oscarh16•23d ago

Overheard two guys at a coffee shop arguing about rulebook order

I was grabbing a latte near Portland last Saturday and these two were going back and forth about whether you should learn a board game by reading the rulebook front to back or just skimming the components list first. One guy said he always reads the setup section three times before touching anything, the other said he just dives in and looks up rules when he hits a wall. It got me thinking about how I teach games to my crew after work, because I usually do a quick 5 minute rundown and then we just play, fixing mistakes as we go. That works most of the time, but I had a game of Brass Birmingham fall apart because nobody understood the income phase until round 3, and that was rough. Do you guys have a method for learning new games that actually sticks, or do you just accept a messy first playthrough? Has anyone else found a middle ground that saves time without killing the fun?

0 comments

blake432•28d ago

The house rule my buddy swore by finally backfired on us

He told me to always reroll ones on the first turn because it speeds up the early game, but last Friday it handed a guy in our group three bonus crits and he wiped the table by round 4, so has anyone else had a 'fix' like that blow up the whole session?

1 comments

fionaa35•29d ago

My buddy's rule about teaching games saved game night last Friday

He always says to hand out player aids before explaining anything, so people can follow along. I tried it with a heavier euro game at my place in Austin, and two new players actually got it by round 3 instead of zoning out. Anyone else have a teaching trick that just works every time?

2 comments

beth_ward80•1mo ago

Hit 500 unique games logged on BGG last night

Didn't even realize I was close. Just checked my profile after a 6-hour marathon of Dice Throne with my buddy. 500 plays is a weirdly solid milestone for me. It means I've actually played through most of my shelf instead of just buying stuff. Anybody else track their numbers and get surprised by a random milestone like that?

2 comments

the_sarah•1mo ago

Why does nobody talk about how a secondhand game collection can fall apart in 6 months?

I scored a huge lot of board games from a garage sale outside Portland back in March. Probably 30 games for $40, thought I hit the jackpot. By September, half of them had sticky dice, warped boards, and one even had a dried-up bug glued to the inside of the box. The owner kept them in a damp garage with no climate control, and it wrecked the paper and cardboard. Has anyone else bought a bulk lot and ended up with games that were just trash after a few months?

2 comments

jade_butler•1mo ago

I got roasted by a playtester for my rulebook and it actually helped

Last month at a local con in Portland, a guy read my prototype rulebook and told me my instructions felt like a math textbook. He said nobody wants to read four paragraphs about turn phases before they even touch the dice. I cut the whole thing down to a single page with simple bullet points and one example round. Now people get to playing in about 2 minutes instead of 10. Has anyone else totally reworked their rulebook after brutal feedback? What did you cut?

1 comments

ben827•1mo ago

TIL you can use a sharpie to mark board game pieces so they don't get mixed up between expansions

I wrote a tiny dot on each piece from my Scythe expansion after a friend grabbed the wrong mech last game night, and it saved about 10 minutes of sorting afterward. Has anyone else done this or found a better way to keep expansion components straight?

2 comments

white.grant•1mo ago

Found out the actual player count for the original 1990s Magic playtest group was just 12 people

I was reading an old article on the Wizards of the Coast history page last night and it said the very first Magic: The Gathering playtest group was literally 12 guys in a basement. For a game that ended up defining an entire genre, that surprised me. Has anyone else stumbled on a weird small stat like that about a classic game?

1 comments

king.jordan•1mo ago

I finally hit 100 plays on a single board game and it actually surprised me

I always thought people who logged plays were a little obsessive, but I started tracking my games on a spreadsheet about two years ago. Last week I noticed I hit 100 plays on this one co-op game I play solo on my night shifts. It honestly caught me off guard because I didn't think I played that much, but seeing the number made me realize how much that game has become my go-to for winding down. Has anyone else hit a weird milestone like that and felt different about it?

1 comments

the_iris•1mo ago

Heads up if you sleeve cards - the penny sleeve trick works better than I thought

I always used those premium sleeves for my deck builders, dropping like $12 a pack. Last week I grabbed a 100 pack of penny sleeves for $3 at my local shop just to try. They fit a bit loose but honestly for casual games like Dominion they protect fine and shuffle way easier. Anyone else make the switch for cheaper games or am I risking card damage long term?

2 comments

-1

sageburns•1mo ago

Update: I finally figured out a better way to organize my game tokens after 8 years of chaos

I got sick of digging through a ziploc bag every game night to find the right player pieces for Catan. Last month I grabbed a plastic craft organizer with 24 tiny bins from a Walmart in Akron for $9. Now I sort all my tokens by color and type before we even start playing. It cut our setup time down from 10 minutes to maybe 2, and nobody has to argue over who lost their sheep. Has anyone else found a cheap storage hack that actually works for your game boxes?

2 comments

kaib18•1mo ago

I used to love those big heavy strategy games with tons of pieces, but now a simple 30-minute card game hits the table way more often.

After hauling Catan and Twilight Imperium across country for years I realized those epic 4 hour games only got played once a year. Has anyone else found themselves gravitating toward faster games as you get older?

1 comments

oscarh16•1mo ago

Ran into a guy at a thrift store who rebuilt his whole Settlers of Catan set from scratch

I was digging through the board game section at a Goodwill in Portland last month and this older dude next to me pulls out a beat up copy of Axis and Allies. He starts telling me how he bought a used Settlers of Catan for $3 but half the pieces were missing. Instead of returning it, he spent like 6 weekends making his own tiles and tokens out of polymer clay and wood scraps. He even painted little sheep and wheat fields on them. I asked why not just buy a new one and he said the satisfaction of fixing something broken was better than getting something perfect. That conversation stuck with me because I usually just toss incomplete games. Has anyone else ever bothered to rebuild a game instead of replacing it?

2 comments