Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with boardgames

What are the odds?

JDHarper — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:59:54 -0800

I'm rolling 5 dice. I win if I roll two 1's, one 2, or one 3. What are my odds of winning, expressed as a percentage? This question is actually about the board game Battlelore, but I've simplified it above for ease of discussion.

In the game, you roll dice to score hits. Instead of numbers on the dice, there are three banner color icons (red, green, and blue), a "lore" icon, a retreat flag icon, and a bonus strike icon.

In combat, if you roll the banner color that matches the color of the target, you score a hit. In most circumstances, you also get a hit if you roll the bonus strike icon, and sometimes if you roll the lore icon or the retreat flag icon, just depending on what cards are in play and where the pieces are on the board.

I'd put together a spreadsheet for determining the odds of almost any given die roll in Battlelore. So, for example, if you want to know the odds of scoring two hits if you're rolling four dice which hit on bonus strikes and blue banners, you'd look at cell D31 and see that you have 40.74% chance of that happening.

But there's this one case from a recent game that's giving me trouble: I need to score one hit, I'm rolling 5 dice, and I score hits on the blue banner, the retreat flag, and on bonus strikes. BUT: The target ignores the first bonus strike.

No problem, I thought: That would be the odds of scoring one hit on on two die faces with five dice (cell D8, 86.83%) plus the odds of scoring two hits on one die face with five dice (cell C32, or 19.62%).

Unfortunately, those results add up to more than 100%, so I know that's wrong. The odds are high, probably over 90%, but there's still the chance that I'll roll all green and red banners or something.

How do I handle this oddly specific situation?

Let's put all the pieces together.

wundermint — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:31:01 -0800

Where can I find the best jigsaw puzzle for my puzzle-loving grandmom? My 85-year-old grandmother is wild about jigsaw puzzles. They are her gaming addiction. Every year for the past several years I've bought her one for Christmas, and recently have been challenging her by getting increasingly difficult ones. I've had random luck getting puzzles at the mall or even thrift stores, but nothing so far this year has looked good. I've searched online and been bombarded with crappy illustrations and generally disappointing results. Help me find the perfect puzzle!
Here are some specs:

- Must be 1000+ pieces, preferably 1500+.
- No Thomas Kinkade or puppy/kitten illustrated puzzles. Classy, interesting photos and artwork only. (I know, so elitist!)
- I want to stay away from the 3D/gimmicky puzzles, no matter how cool. She's a fan of the classic, flat, jigsaw puzzle and I don't want to blow her mind too much.

Your jigsaw puzzle ideas are appreciated!

I've got a design for a board game. Now what?

jbickers — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:16:36 -0800

I've got what I think is a really great idea for a board game. Now what? So I've got a fairly comprehensive, complete design for a new board game - full set of rules, design spec for the pieces/board, etc. And I'm reasonably sure I could make a working prototype out of existing pieces (wouldn't be pretty, but it would work). And I'm confident that it is an awesome strategy game.

So, is there any chance of an indie game design like mine getting published, and if so, what are the first steps you take? I'm guessing the major game houses are all like publishing companies - i.e. no unsolicited ideas - so what do you do? Are there agents for this sort of thing?

Option two is self-publish. Are there game/box/parts manufacturers that work with indie designers on small runs?

Option three (kinda weird) is hiring a Flash designer to do an online version. Would game companies look at an online game as a prototype for a board game?

TAKE

NolanRyanHatesMatches — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:06:40 -0800

We called this Scrabble variation "Take," but it seems no one else calls it that. What's the most common name? Back at college, we basically threw away the Scrabble board and played "Take" instead. Rules: turn over all of the Scabble pieces (usually from two sets of Scrabble so there were a ton of letters), and everyone begins with seven letters. The first person to make a word/words with those tiles (e.g. one seven-letter word or two interconnected words, like d-o-g, and then playing off of the -g- with g-a-m-e-s) yells "TAKE," and everyone has to take another tile.

So basically, everyone is building their own personal Scrabble board off of the letters they draw, and every time someone has used all of their personal letters, they yell "TAKE." To win, you are the player to yell "TAKE" when there are no more letters left in the pile. Then the other players check your interconnected words to make sure everything is kosher, and then you've won.

The name "Take" seems to be specific to my college; Of maybe the 30 people I've mentioned the game to in NYC, none of them have even heard this particular variation, and all are regular Scabble players. The only time I've met someone who has played a similar Scrabble variation called it by another name (can't remember what).

I've searched Google high and low for proof that we're not the only people playing this variation, but I can't find anything under "Take," and I can't seem to locate it by a different name.

HALP! Are we the only ones playing Take; or, under what name is everyone else playing under?

Where can I find this thespian-themed game?

peanut_mcgillicuty — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:22:59 -0800

Does anyone know what this game/toy was that I used to play with? I thought it was called "Let's Put On a Show" but now I can't find it. My grandmother gave me this toy in the late 1980s, and I might have gone along to the store to pick it out because for some reason I recall seeing it in the board games section of Toys R Us, probably around the magic tricks kits which I was into at the time.

It came in a yellow box (about the size of Monopoly) with a handle and was called something like "Let's Put On A Show". It had a roll of orange tickets (like raffle tickets), popcorn boxes to fold and glue and fill with popcorn, a paper megaphone, programs and posters on which you could write/draw about your show. It might have had a few partial scripts in it.

This was seriously one of the coolest presents I ever got, and I've thought about it often since then. I've looked for it in stores and Googled, hoping to give it to kids in my family, but it's like it never existed. Did anyone else have something like this? Or leads on where I could find something similar now?

What boardgames and when?

Slap*Happy — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:24:15 -0800

Board-games for a small family with a girl, from ages 0-14 (where she stops talking to us and accuses us of ruining her life forever) OK. Sooo... I'm going to have a daughter. She will be part of a nuclear family, a dad and a mom who are madly in love and viciously smart. If there is =one= thing I can teach her, it would be long-term strategic thinking. (Apart from "If a man beats you up, tell your Dad or Uncle Brian, so we can gently correct his behavior with a Louisville Slugger.")

In my experience, board-games offer both family interaction, and the education in long-term objectives that I'd want my scion to learn. So! Starting out from tiny tot, what games are best?

Help me choose a game

CautionToTheWind — Sun, 17 May 2009 05:17:23 -0800

I would like some suggestions for a game to play with my girlfriend. On the computer would be nice, for free would be great and there can be no killing of stuff. I'm trying to find a game to play at home for 2 players. Cooperative play would be a plus, so i thought of computer games where we would face the AI. I know many such games, but it seems they are all about killing and destroying stuff. Nothing wrong with that but it is not what my girlfriend wants, not even in very abstracted forms like Moonbase Commander (great game, try it out!). I guess board games could do but we would have to buy those and that would be a disadvantage. We play Monopoly and she is playing Sudoku right now, but Monopoly is getting old and Sudoku is single player and not my kind of game.

Nerd Alert in the PDX!

phredgreen — Sat, 02 May 2009 18:05:38 -0800

I've read all about where to eat, drink, club, stay, and chill in Portland - now I wanna get my geek on! The missus and I are driving out to the PDX next week as a scouting mission for an eventual move sometime in 2010. We'll be checking out places to live, local attractions, and some of the nifty places to eat and drink, but what I'll really need in my new hometown are places where I can fly my nerd flag.

I've read a bit about Ground Kontrol and Backspace, and they're already on my to-do list. What I really don't know much about are the best comic shops, the gamer stores that do board games and MTG nights, the anime shops that have screenings and sell the coolest new figures and other otaku goodies. I want the places that feed my geek need and that will make me excited for my move.

What are your favourite spots in the Portland area for geek culture?

Good place for a small group gathering for boisterous board game fun?

1024x768 — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:16:13 -0800

Good place for a small group gathering for boisterous board game fun? I have a small group I get together with on the weekends to play board games. We've recently swelled in number to 7 people and we're outgrowing our current meeting place (one of the players apartments). We're looking for a place to play that's open on Saturdays (and hopefully Sundays) and can tolerate at least 7 very boisterous and loud people playing games for several hours every other weekend or so. Cost is a big issue, it should be free or very cheap (as in a couple bucks a person or less). There needs to be a large enough seating area that all the players can sit down at the same table, room for the board, any papers/miscellanea for each player, etc.

None of us are affiliated with any churches or community organizations that would have meeting space. We're thinking we'd be a bit loud for the meeting rooms at the local library. None of us are in college so we can't meet in any empty classroom.

What places exist for this sort of gathering? General suggestions are greatly appreciated. Bonus points for any specific place suggestions that are in or easily accessible from Chicago.

Strat-o-Matic baseball for beginners?

yesno — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:28:39 -0800

How can I get started playing Strat-o-Matic baseball? I'm a bit confused by all the different products for sale.

Settlers of Catan: Where to from here?

Effigy2000 — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:10:55 -0800

I just bought Settlers of Catan! But now I have some questions surrounding expansion packs and two-player variants. I'm hoping some experienced Catan players could help me out. My questions are;

1. What expansion should I buy next? Seafarers of Catan or Cities and Knights of Catan? In other words, what's the better of the two?
2. Is Catan: Traders & Barbarians worth getting at some point down the road?
3. Can the original Catan be played with two players only, or is it really unplayable without 3+ players?
4. With the 5-6 player expansion packs, will I only need one of those to cover Catan and all its expansions, or will I need to buy a 5-6 player expansion for every new expansion I buy?

Is there a PC version of Fortress America?

DWRoelands — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:02:07 -0800

I love the Milton Bradley Gamemaster Series of board games. Axis & Allies got a PC version. Shogun's play mechanic found its way into Shogun:Total War. Is there anything close to Fortress America? Fortress America is one of my all-time favorite board games. I chased down a copy on eBay a few years ago, but I've been unable to scare up a game. I've never seen aything resembling a PC version, even in the freeware/indie arena.

Is there something out there that's close to it? I'm giving some thought to tackling it as a game-development exercise, but I'd rather not reinvent a someone else's wheel.

We're board, need games

c:\awesome — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:40:42 -0800

What's your favorite two-person game? We're currently buried in snow, and my SO and I are getting sick of playing Trivial Pursuit. What are your favorite two-person games? These can be:

-Video games
-Card games
-Board games
-Etc.

If it mixes well with beer, all the better! Preferably nothing too stereotypically gender specific (e.g. Sex and the City board game; Doom 3)

A good single player board game?

lioness — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:16:03 -0800

Can you recommend a good single player board game? I'm looking for personal recommendations for single player board games intended as a gift for a girl in her early twenties. Rush Hour immediately sprang to mind, but I would love to hear your suggestions.

What I'm not looking for: electronic games, suggestions for games with a deck of cards, sudoku's or crossword puzzles.
Online ordering is not an option, as I'll need it tonight. Luckily, we have some well stocked gamestores here.

Help find our family a new board game!

olinerd — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:51:06 -0800

Help me find a new board game to gift my family of sore winners. Every Christmas is quality family game time. All four of us are extremely competitive and very sore winners and there is no better Christmas gift than rubbing a big win in the face of another family member. Really, we all get along famously.

So this year, I'd like to get us a new game to play, since we haven't had one in a while.

Games we like include Tripoly, Upwords, Hearts, Uno, CatchPhrase, and Sequence.

Games we kind of like, but probably don't need any more of, include Scattergories, Guesstures, and Pictionary.

Games we don't like include Monopoly, Risk, and Trivial Pursuit.

It would ideally be something that's over in an hour and offers opportunities to screw over another player in a very satisfying way. Doesn't matter if it's a team game or not. Players are all adults (brother and I are in our 20s). Given all this, what would we like? Are there new games out I haven't heard about yet?

Buying a Go board in Nagoya

DoctorFedora — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:01:52 -0800

Where to buy a reasonably high-quality Go board in or near Nagoya? Or, failing that, Tokyo?

Haelp me improve my Axis & Allies strategies.

Effigy2000 — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:41:05 -0800

My friends and I have scheduled a game of Axis & Allies to play in a few weeks time and I'm looking for any advanced tips and strategies to assure sweeping victory for my forces. I've only played it a few times in my life and I've lost more times than I've won so any tips that expert gamers could give me would be great. I'll be playing the original, global map version, not the Pacific or European spin-off versions. I'll also probably be playing as Germany, too. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me!

What's on this guy's shirt?

Bulgaroktonos — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:12:22 -0800

Help me figure out what is on this guy's shirt I saw someone today wearing a shirt with a figure on it that seemed familiar, but I can't place. The figure is a man, but just the outline, colored entirely green. He's wearing a hat, sort of like a boater, and he looks like he's running. It sort of resembles a board game token, something like this only flat, green and wearing a hat. Any ideas?

How to poll the public on the Web?

rwhe — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:43:49 -0800

Where can I go on the Web to create an informal public poll to gather data for my next book, which happens to be about board games? I'm currently co-authoring a book of board and card games that can be played with "usual equipment", which includes things like standard decks of cards, Chess sets, six-sided dice, and so on. Almost everybody has most of those at home. There are some borderline cases, however, such as Chinese Checkers sets, double-nine dominoes or better, Scrabble sets, and so on. We would like to poll our readers to see which of these sets of equipment is really common, and which is not.

Because we are writing this book for an intelligent general audience, it's important that we don't inadvertently include equipment that only gamers have, such as 30-sided dice. Therefore, we can't just go to a site like BoardGameGeek or a gaming Yahoo group to ask this question. The people who are likely to answer the poll at those sites will not be representative; they will probably own far more game equipment than most people.

I would like to set up a poll and watch the results filter in for a couple of weeks, but I'm not married to the idea of a Web survey; if there is some more efficient or convenient way to gather the information we need, I'd like to hear about it. Scientific rigor is also welcome, but not absolutely necessary.

Thanks!

How does your Rummoli board look?

fish tick — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:04:15 -0800

Rummoli players: what's the best version to teach rummoli to newbies? I want to introduce the game to a group of people. I grew up with a rummoli board that was heavily hearts-based, like this, made by an ancestor in the 40s or 50s, I think. But I am told that a more even distribution of suits on the board is more prevalent, like this. Also, if anyone has a really good set of rules for the game, I would be very grateful.

Paradoxical sheet magnets

rwhe — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 07:07:48 -0800

SciFilter: Why don't these sheet magnets work as expected? I bought some sheets of magnetic material (sample 1, sample 2) to make some magnetic board games as holiday presents. The magnets seem to be behaving somewhat paradoxically.

I would expect the top of a sheet to be polarized magnetically either north or south, with the bottom of the sheet polarized oppositely. If this were true, it would enable me to make a game board out of a piece of the sheet, and make some pieces out of the rest of the sheet to stack on top of it. They would stick magnetically because the layers would be top-bottom-top-bottom, or NSNS, with north and south in closest contact.

Instead, what I'm finding is that pieces of magnet cut from the very same sheet want to stick top-bottom-bottom-top, which I interpret as NSSN -- hence the paradox. The other way, they either stick weakly or not at all. I notice that when they're stuck this way, and I slide them against each other, there seem to be magnetic "ridges", so that the magnets skip and jump in regular patterns as I slide them.

I've tried mixing pieces cut from different samples (as linked above), but the result is the same.

Obviously, the magnets aren't polarized the way I originally thought. But how are they polarized? What's going on, and how can I salvage this situation so I can still make magnetic board games for my friends and family? Cheers.

Uyghur board games

pravit — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 11:31:02 -0800

What board game are these Uyghur men playing? I snapped this photo of some neighborhood game playing when I was in Urumqi. I've never seen anyone playing this game, or western chess for that matter, in inner China.

Any idea what game it could be? It's definitely not Go. I was thinking it might be Nine Men's Morris, but there are too many pieces on the board for that.

Boardgames

Kilovolt — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:48:14 -0800

What is your favorite boardgame? Boardgames have been enjoying a resurgence. The likes of 'american' games like monopoly, clue, risk have had to make room for 'german' style games such as Puerto Rico, Tikal, El Grande.

Which style do you prefer?

Also why do 'american' games tend to have dice and 'european' games tend to be diceless?

Economics as all fun and games?

champthom — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 18:14:36 -0800

What are some other economic board games (besides Monopoly)? This link kinda got me thinking - what are some other economic board games besides Monopoly (and any variant thereof)?

I don't mean any game that uses money (like The Game of Life) but games that involve buying, selling, trading, etc. like Monopoly or invoke other economic acts (i.e. Traders of Amsterdam, which involves auctioning).

So, what are some other economic board games, past and/or present?

Bonus points for people with details on the original economic board game, The Landlord's Game, which hasn't been made since the guy who made Anti-Monopoly made a version of it called "The Original Monopoly Game" (and try doing an eBay or Google search for that).

What games should my friends & I play instead of Warcraft?

iwhitney — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 13:38:03 -0800

Now that World of Warcraft has abandoned all attempts at creativity, my friends and I would like a fun, casual, multi-player game where we can hang out. Any ideas? While we're all big nerds and like Warcraft, it's become apparent that every expansion is going to follow the same formula

Add 10 levels
Add a half-dozen zones
Set up some big bad to kill
Add a ton of repetitive faction grinds

And, since it's obviously making Blizzard a ton of money, I'm not going to begrudge them. But I would like to find another game to play with my friends.

We're geographically diverse, smart, talkative 20 & 30-somethings. We play games not to be the 'best' or to while away entire days, but to have fun, unwind and socialize.

Most of them are more into the RP side of RPG. But all of us can enjoy a good game, even if we're not pretending to be a dwarf.

What games out there could work for us? I've poked at Puzzle Pirates a bit, and it seems fun, but it also seems that every player is off doing their own puzzle (maybe this isn't true, I only tried it for a few minutes).

Another option is online Scrabble, which I'd be more enthusiastic about if I weren't terrible at Scrabble. But online board games do seem like a good option.

We obviously don't mind paying for our games. But free is cool too.