Played some Bananagrams tonight. It's amazing. It will be huge at PAX East, I guarantee it. Scrabble is dead. Long live Bananagrams. If only we had discovered this game before doing an episode on word games.
I took my first foray into German board games on Friday, at the Nerd NYC Board Game night. I had so much fun and ended up staying for the entire event. I was eyeballing Tigris and Euphrates the entire night, but no one started up a game.
Played some Bananagrams tonight. It's amazing. It will be huge at PAX East, I guarantee it. Scrabble is dead. Long live Bananagrams. If only we had discovered this game before doing an episode on word games.
Bananagrams is an awesome game. There's nothing quite as rewarding as pulling off a massive rearrangement of your tiles just to fit in one hard to use letter. The apple and pear versions of Bananagrams are for little children, so avoid. Also, the iPhone app is a complete piece of garbage so don't be duped by that either.
I don't necessarily think it's just going to blow up at PAX all of a sudden though b/c it's more popular than you might think. I don't judge anyone for not having played a game before b/c there are just too many in the world to have played them all, but you should know Bananagrams is already quite popular. If it does blow up, it will just be from the efforts of the PA crew (I was surprised to see that Khoo tweeted he hadn't played it before until recently either).
The secret of the omegathon finale is probably one of the most closely guarded secrets in the world. Even if we could figure it out, we wouldn't tell you guys. ;^)
I think the root of the problem is that you simply don't get to play board games often. Most people have this problem (Scott does not). If you only get to play on seldom occasions, it's entirely reasonable for Pandemic to be the most fun you've ever had playing a board game. You said it yourself, it's the best experience you've ever had, and if you only get to play a game once or twice, the experience can be influenced one way or another by any number of factors (quality of rules explanation, mood of group, environment, etc.). The important thing to understand is that there are better games out there, and you should definitely try to play more because board games are awesome.
Of course when you sort almost 50,000 nobody is going to agree on the order. Rym has mentioned on the podcast that he doesn't see the appeal in Twilight Struggle, which is always in the top 5 and is a very complicated 2-player Cold War simulation. Although it's not my favorite game of all time I did enjoy it. Agricola is #1 right now and a fantastic game, #2 is Puerto Rico which everyone I know says I must play.
I don't necessarily think it's just going to blow up at PAX all of a sudden though b/c it's more popular than you might think.
Posted By: Rym Well, we have some secret knowledge. It's going to blow up by design. ;^)
Yeah I take it this got discussed at the Robert Khoo ramen & bananagrams meetup. Even Heels is tweeting about Bananagrams now.
On another note, the Scrabble Apple is actually a fairly decent game for what looks like just a Bananagrams knockoff. Players take turns drawing tiles, and can use them to create a pool of words in front of them (the words are not connected in any fashion, they all exist independently). Alternatively , players can place a tile onto an opponent's word and in the process steal the word for themselves. This can go back and forth, where I start by playing "the" and you steal it by expanding it into "there" and I get it back with 'therefore".
Whatever you do don't be fooled by the Bananagrams iPhone app. I'm writing something on digital versions of board games so I bought a bunch to try out. This one is a complete buggy dud.
Just played my first game. It was totally fun. Jeremy called "Bananas" too early and I discovered he had a wrong word. I let him continue, but I ended up winning.
I played Race for the Galaxy and Bananagrams Monday night. It was pretty awesome - comparing RftG to Dominion makes Dominion look like a child's game. Need another game to fully complete my coherence - I was running on 5 hours of sleep and it was late-ish.
It was pretty awesome - comparing RftG to Dominion makes Dominion look like a child's game.
I never cared for RftG. I've played it several times, but if you don't get passed the learning curve of the cards, people lose interest.
I've never played RftG myself either but you're not the first person by far that I've heard say this. Some people swear by it, and it definitely is a mega-popular game for a reason, but it has a large number of detractors who say the learning curve is too steep.
I consider myself lucky to have a group of friends that meets once per month to game, plus NerdNYC game nights. Game time is precious. I can't see myself bringing a game to the table that first-time players won't enjoy for several rounds, especially when it's hard to get the same exact group of people together night to night.
Race for the Galaxy is a really good game. The only problem with the learning curve is that it uses symbols, and the symbols aren't very well designed. Also, the symbols have way too many small variations. The cards also don't include any words that are redundant with the symbols. Really, the solution is to just print out guides to every possible symbol variation. They must be in color. If you play with the guides enough times, eventually you won't need them anymore.
Symbology was the main reason why I has so many issues learning Race. Once you get the symbols, it plays very fast and the strategy is almost always different. You have to take the cards as they come. It's an awesome game.
Originally Through the Ages (not Roll Through The Ages) was Civ the board game. Then they lost the license, but release the game anyway. Of course, nobody wants to play Through the Ages with me.
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Bananagrams
[Edit] Ah, it was Pairs in Pears.
I'll have to give it a second look.
Man, I need to have another game night sometime. Damn busy month.
I don't necessarily think it's just going to blow up at PAX all of a sudden though b/c it's more popular than you might think. I don't judge anyone for not having played a game before b/c there are just too many in the world to have played them all, but you should know Bananagrams is already quite popular. If it does blow up, it will just be from the efforts of the PA crew (I was surprised to see that Khoo tweeted he hadn't played it before until recently either).
The secret of the omegathon finale is probably one of the most closely guarded secrets in the world. Even if we could figure it out, we wouldn't tell you guys. ;^)
I must really need to get together with Ampersand and play some of your recommended games.
Your best bet would be to start with the Board Game Geek database sorted by ratings. http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame
Of course when you sort almost 50,000 nobody is going to agree on the order. Rym has mentioned on the podcast that he doesn't see the appeal in Twilight Struggle, which is always in the top 5 and is a very complicated 2-player Cold War simulation. Although it's not my favorite game of all time I did enjoy it. Agricola is #1 right now and a fantastic game, #2 is Puerto Rico which everyone I know says I must play.
On another note, the Scrabble Apple is actually a fairly decent game for what looks like just a Bananagrams knockoff. Players take turns drawing tiles, and can use them to create a pool of words in front of them (the words are not connected in any fashion, they all exist independently). Alternatively , players can place a tile onto an opponent's word and in the process steal the word for themselves. This can go back and forth, where I start by playing "the" and you steal it by expanding it into "there" and I get it back with 'therefore".
But I look forward to play it. I will have to ask(force) Jeremy to play tonight.
It was pretty awesome - comparing RftG to Dominion makes Dominion look like a child's game.
Need another game to fully complete my coherence - I was running on 5 hours of sleep and it was late-ish.
I consider myself lucky to have a group of friends that meets once per month to game, plus NerdNYC game nights. Game time is precious. I can't see myself bringing a game to the table that first-time players won't enjoy for several rounds, especially when it's hard to get the same exact group of people together night to night.
I have a raging nerd boner, atm.