has anyone played Flux? Opinion?
We’re enjoying Hanabi around here.
I love Fluxx. It’s pretty silly though.
@oregon101, when my kids were younger we played Fluxx quite a lot. In fact we took it on a trip to Japan and played it every day for two weeks. Unlike many games I found I really didn’t care at all about winning or losing, it was just fun to play. It is silly though. A good game for a wide range of ages though.
Currently by far my favorite game is Dominion - it’s in the genre known as deck building games like Magic (which I never played but my kids did.) Unlike the original Magic, you don’t have to buy cards to get better decks, or buy cards at tournaments so you are all on the same footing. Instead the boxes has a large number of sets of cards and you play with a random number of them. My kid now has two expansion boxes so there are lots and lots of cards to choose from. It’s a fascinating game - the best strategy varies completely depending on what subset of cards you end up playing with.
I see I pretty much repeated my post #35 - but really it’s that good!
Major board game geek chiming in.
First off, oregon101, I really enjoy Fluxx. One of the fun things about it is that there are different sets. One of my favorites is Monty Python Fluxx - for instance it has a rule card where you can draw extra cards by singing a couple lines of any Monty Python song. Zombie Fluxx is fun too.
Some of my favorite board games, with descriptions:
Lords of Waterdeep - You gather resources to complete quests and gain influence. Your Lord determines what sorts of quests earn you the most influence (e.g., Skullduggery and Warfare). Nerdy (based on Dungeons and Dragons lore) but changes a lot from game to game and has a lot of replay value. This is my personal favorite board game. Plays 2-5 players, or 6 with the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion. It’s often compared to Agricola if you’ve ever played that.
Betrayal at House on the Hill - This is a horror game where you construct a haunted mansion room by room. After so far into the game, “the haunt” is triggered and (usually) a player turns traitor. There are 50 different scenarios with different stories and substantially different game play so this also has a ton of replay value. It also accommodates up to 6 players.
Dead of Winter - A cooperative game in which you manage your resources to achieve an objective and survive the winter during a zombie apocalypse. There is also a traitor mode where everyone has their own objective, which can sometimes work against the colony as a whole. This game is 2-5 players IIRC.
Takenoko - You are trying to grow bamboo to feed the Emperor’s panda. It is cute, family friendly, and relatively simple. Earn the most points by growing bamboo, developing fields in particular patterns, and eating bamboo. I think this one is 2-4 players.
I will also put in another endorsement for Pandemic, which I believe has already been described.
As for other games that are not technically board games, but still fun, I also recommend:
Cash and Guns - You are members of the mafia and have just pulled off a big heist. Now you must divide the loot. It plays up to 8 players, and comes with foam guns to point at each other, which are either loaded with bullets or blanks (via a card you put on a table - not actual bullets). The objective is to have the most loot at the end of the game without dying. It is a good party game.
Smash Up - I think this game accommodates as many players as you have cards for (2 20-card decks for each player). Play as combinations of different factions (e.g., Wizards, Ninjas, Pirates, and in expansions things like Steampunk and Bear Cavalry) to break bases and beat your opponents to 15 points.
Munchkin - There are a bunch of different “flavors” of this card game, but the basic objective is to defeat foes to get to level 10 before anyone else. The basic, original munchkin is themed a lot like Dungeons and Dragons (you can be elves, orcs, wizards, etc., depending on the cards you get). There are different versions like Munchkin Booty (pirates), Munchkin Bites (vampires), Star Munchkin, and Munchkin Fu, to name a few, and they can be mixed together too.
If anyone has any more detailed questions about any of these games I’d be happy to answer them.
I also endorse Pandemic. We just played it.
Another game we just got and I like is Gloom. It’s a card game where each player has a family. The idea is to make your family as miserable as possible and your opponents’ families as happy as possible. Once you are, uh, happy with the gloom of a particular family member, you kill them, freezing the low points. The gloomiest family wins. There is an added component of story telling - where you make up stories, taking elements of your opponents’ stories, as you play the game.
We’ve discovered as a family there are whole genres of games we don’t like as much as other people do. I’m not a big fan of cooperative Pandemic because inevitably one person basically takes charge and tells everyone else what to do. (I hear there’s an expansion where the players have other secret objectives.) We’ve also discovered we all hate bluffing/deduction games like The Resistance. (Our nephew loves them, so we get to play them all too often!)
BTW if you want to get a sense of what a game is like, Wil Wheaton’s (aka Wesley from Star Trek: Next Gen) youtube series Tabletop is lots of fun to watch. He plays board games with some guests (usually also familar faces) with commentary on their strategy.