Lately a few of us from work have been getting together (Mainly my g/f and Micheal Born) for board gaming nights.   Our default game is

Settlers of Catan

Settlers of Catan: This classic game from Germany is very fun.  Each game will be different than previous games, a strategy that worked one time will not work the next.  It is a mix of resource management with strategic placement of your pieces to gain more resources and block your opponents.   This game is pretty easy to pick up so we’ll play that when we have newcomers.  This game has kept us up until 3am cause we had to have ‘just one more’

Puerto Rico: Calla got this one from me for her Birthday, on recommendation of her Brother.  This one has no dice so there is less luck, but there is still a lot of strategy.  It has resource management to a degree, but the interesting thing is the playing differant roles each round so you get differant special abilties.  This one is about knowing when to pick a certain role, and hoping the person in front of you didn’t have the same idea.  This is one that I would like to play more of.

El Grande: Calla got this one for her Birthday from her Brother.  We played this with him and one of his friends when we were in Chicago.  We want to get it into our nights up here.  El Grande doesn’t have any resource managment but it does have a card system for getting special abilities.  The twist is, you have to secretly bid for turn order so you can pick the cards that you want.  The main goal is to place your pieces around the board so you can maximize your points on scoring rounds.

Diplomacy: This is one that I got for myself =) … on Calla’s Birthday.  We haven’t played in on game nights yet, but we played in back in college and some of my friends in CO got an e-mail version going earlier this year.  When I bought it the store clerk said “Ahhh the game that destroys friendships” that pretty much sums up how a game of Diplomacy can end.  It is similar to Risk but there are no dice, nothing random.  Your success is based upon who you can make friendships with that can support you against the others.  In the middle game there are ussally a few backstabs that will leave a few people bitter if they are really into the game.  This is one of my favorite board games, and i hope to get it into our game nights when we get a group of 7 people.

Risk 2210 AD: This is Risk but with water and moon spaces.  All I have to say is “The Moon Rules!!”

Comment if you have any other good board games.  And Julian and Heather get ready cause we will bring them when we visit in Jan.