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Travis Cooper
United States
Salt Lake City
Utah
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In my last post I talked a bit about some of the traditional card games we have tried at work. We have also played some of the boxed up card games as well. I have played several card games over the years, but they mostly seemed pretty random and kind of turned me off to most card games. You know Uno, Phase 10, etc.
I did play things like Killer Bunnies and Munchkin and even Fluxx through the years. These didn't improve my image of card games. I figured the only good card game was one with a regular deck of cards. Eventually, when I started coming around here more often, I wanted to try out Puerto Rico. I read a lot about San Juan and saw that it was a simpler version with an easier learning curve. I decided to pick it up and for once it was actually somewhat enjoyable. A much better game than those I'd previously played. I eventually did move on to Puerto Rico though, and San Juan doesn't get played much anymore. So, here are some of the card games we actually played at work.
Citadels
Somebody else brought this game in and we got in quite a few plays of it. I really liked the secret role selection. We did have some rules wrong, like once you got your 8th building you couldn't have one destroyed, that lead to a lot of king making decisions. After clearing that one up it seemed a lot better. In the end I decided to pick it up myself. My family has played quite a bit of Bohnanza, but I am not a very big fan of it. So I thought this would be a better substitute for a card game that could play a lot of people.
I still enjoy getting this game out from time to time. It is a great game to take camping. My copy is pretty scratched up due to playing in the great out doors. For a work time game, it actually can get longer as you add people. So, playing with full capacity could force you to have to rush. While there is some amount of luck in the cards you are drawn, the real meat of the game is in role selection, so that makes the luck of the game easier to overlook. This could be a great option and I think it actually plays better at around 4-5 people anyway.
Bang!
This is another game that another person brought in. I decided to give it a try and we played it for several games. This game got quite popular and I still see people playing it quite a bit. This game brought back some of the same feelings I had about other card games I had played in the past. There is a lot of luck in the cards that you are drawing. I also didn't like how they handled the range to be able to shoot people. With a lot of players it makes it pretty difficult to shoot any one given person. You get pretty limited to the people sitting close to you.
Is this game going to work for you? Probably. From what I see a lot of people tend to like this game. It just really bombed out for me. Some of the other people in my group felt the same way. I got a chance to play Shadow Hunters soon after we stopped playing this. When they described it as Bang! I had a bad attitude going into it. However, I found that it was a much more enjoyable game. The hidden teams from Bang! is still there and it has a somewhat similar feel. However, adding the board to change your attack range, rather than just seating position, the theme, and the shorter play time made Shadow Hunters a huge improvement in my book. I went out and bought it so I could have an alternate to when people suggested to play Bang!. I've never met anybody who liked Bang! that didn't like Shadow Hunters. I'd recommend getting it instead.
Race for the Galaxy
This is another game that somebody else introduced to us. I had read and heard about it here on the geek before we played it. The best description I had heard was it is San Juan in space. I had somewhat enjoyed San Juan in the past so I thought it would be okay. The first thing I noticed were the rules were more complex. San Juan is pretty simple and straight forward, but Race has all those symbols and other things that you need to learn and remember. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means you have a larger learning curve ahead of you. I thought that the simultaneous role selection was kind of cool, but it seems like several people will choose the same action. Even when you know they are going to take it, you still need to so you can get the extra privilege. I'm sure the more you play it the better this gets, but I found you really need to coordinate which cards you are playing to get a good score. It can be good that the cards work well together like this; however, I feel like in the end it just means you are depending on a lot of luck in order to get things working the way you want.
Again, from what others have said, I think this could be a good game to try out. I personally hate the game, and I usually sit out on days that people suggest to play it. I have played it a couple of other times outside of work as well, and I still didn't enjoy the game. This seems more like a gamer's game that you really need to play a lot with the same group to get the real feeling for the game. If you're going to be teaching new people frequently I don't see it as a good choice to have at work. You will find people on a much higher level and the new people probably won't enjoy the game very much.
Dominion
How can you have a post talking about card games and leave out Dominion? It seems like Dominion is talked about a lot these days. Several games are being influenced by it, and expansions just keep coming out. This was one I was a little hesitant about picking up. Again, partially due to my bias towards card games, I just didn't get this when it first came out. Several months after the initial release I got a chance to try this out at a local game store. I thought it was pretty fun, and the deck building aspect was really cool. I brought a few guys from work with me to the next game night to have them try it out too. Both of them had played a bit of Magic in the past and after the first few rounds they were both hooked. I then found out that it was out of print, but expecting to be back soon. I got my copy the first chance I could when the next printing came out and we've been playing it off and on ever since. I have played around 400 f2f games and it still doesn't grow old.
I think Dominion is a perfect fit for a lunchtime. The games play pretty fast and the variability makes for some fun games. Our group I think is also really good about experimenting, so we find pretty cool combos and strategies all the time. The other thing that I think works well at lunch, is that we started leaving out the same set to cut down on setup time. So instead of playing 1 game, and then moving on to another set, we get one set out, and then play that same set until the end of the lunch hour. The thing I really like about this is it allows you to try out several different things all with the same group of cards. This really allowed us to break out of several group think issues that everybody faces with this game. Dominion is a perfect fit, our group loves it so much that three of us own every set and some others have at least one of the sets.
Thunderstone
With the success of Dominion in our group, one of the guys decided to pick up Thunderstone. We were pretty excited and tried it out for a while. I think that the two different locations is a good addition. Trying to decide if you should go get more cards in your deck, or to go fight a monster was a nice touch. However, I started feeling like I had little control over the monsters. The monsters were switching often, and when a good monster came out after your turn, you were very unlikely to get a shot at it. This started giving me a feel of 6 player Alhambra where the winner was more based on luck than anything else. If the right stuff came out when you had a good hand you would win. I never tried the expansion, but they guys that did really didn't like the traps that were added.
I wouldn't really recommend this for work. Nobody in our group would choose this over Dominion even after all the plays we've had. I think if you want to get a deck building game Dominion is the best that I've found, and until I find something better I'll recommend it over any of the others.
Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game
I stumbled on this at a game night and thought it was pretty good. I like to find little co-ops and I thought this would be a good fit for my collection. It was hard to find, but I got a copy at Barnes & Nobles. We played it at work several times, but I think I was mostly the one pushing it. The others got tired of it, but I still really enjoy the game. I think part of the problem was we were winning way too often, so it got dull to everybody.
As far as co-ops go, our group were never really big on them. I still think it's a pretty good game, but the rest of our group would probably tell you to pass on it. I personally like the difficulty of Pandemic (especially if you have the expansion with it) more. I find the tension is better throughout. If you are a space hulk fan you probably need this game, if not, you could probably pass on it.
7 Wonders
I saw all the hype for this game last fall and put it on my wishlist. My wife was able to get a copy and I found it under the tree on Christmas. I really wanted to see what this many civ building game was all about. I will say first off, that it isn't the drafting type of game that you might expect. You don't draft all your cards and then play, you draft a single card, play it, then draft your next card, and so on. Having the different wonders is nice to give people different paths to follow. I also like the aspect of using your neighbors' resources. The game doesn't get longer as you add more people. However, even with the duplicates in cards when you add more people I start feeling like you lose sight in what other people at the table are doing. You really start fitting in to your own little world with the people next to you. Also, based on how the cards are bunched, you might not get a chance to see the resources you need. I've had several games with large amounts of players where neither of my neighbors built a resource I needed and I never saw it. This really slows you down.
I think this is a great game to try out at work. It got several plays in our group, but I think we just have too many other games they'd rather play. With fewer players, where I think it works the best, we have plenty of options. When you start getting 6+ people would rather play Shadow Hunters. Many people in our group still enjoy the game, but with so many other options it just doesn't get the play time I wish it did. I believe it can work well in most lunchtime groups though.
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