We got some Amazon vouchers as a gift last week, £30 in total. Going to get a board game, we like drinking wine and listening to music while playing a game.
Not a general knowledge game, current favourites are monopoly, 5 second rule and linkee.
Anyone know of any gems?

Chess.

I think it might catch on eventually.

I’m always genuinely  surprised by the number of people who don’t know how to play.

See also: Backgammon

Backgammon is a pleasant game for two with drinks.
Can be played either very relaxed or with more intensity of thought. Same for cribbage.

How many players?

2 or more really. We often have freinds over

Exploding kittens is currently very popular in our office for lunchtime games club

expansion packs worth getting too

For 3-4 players, Love Letter is probably the most fun we have when playing with friends. Simple rules but great fun, and everyone we’ve played it with has ended up enjoying it.

Another favourite is Colt Express. Bit more complicated but still relatively simple to learn, and also pretty funny.

Okay then. For groups, Cranium is good fun as it’s a mix of Triv, Pictionary, charades, the one with the plasticene etc. Also love Articulate.

Going old-school, Mastermind is pretty good for just two of you.

Forbidden sky for something a bit different – players have to work together to escape and you can build up skill levels.

Ticket To Ride.

Easy to learn, has potential to be evil like all the best board games…

Ticket to Ride – Europe.
It’s simple, fun to play, challenging and addictive.
Really good quality, nicely made, just a great game.

Codewords is a bit of a must as well, but really needs four people.
Forbidden Island is also simple, superbly designed and fun.

Quirkle is a superb with kids, more of a traditional tile based game but still a challenge with adults.
Very tactile, big wooden tiles, people just love playing it.

Colt Express is great with a few people and a couple of drinks – fast moving, lots of mischief.

All easy to learn and so much fun to play, great design and some depth to them.

Scrabble and backgammon rule in our house. Cluedo, Labyrinth and UNO for the kid. Just bought ‘Dungeon’ as an introduction to D&D style gaming.

Ingenious is a current favourite.

I’d also recommend Ticket to Ride Europe – you can have a bit of drink with it and it still makes sense and it’s good fun, whilst also being simple to learn.

I quite like ticket to ride – good old fashioned type of game.

Anything but Risk unless you want to consider self-harm to make the horror end.

I think I quite enjoyed a mario kart board game recently.

+1 for quirkle, was bloody brilliant when we were skiing sharing a chalet with a bunch of randoms.

Another one we really enjoy is blokus.

Mapomimoes

http://www.mapominoes.com/

This is wrong on so many levels. You’ll love it!

Scrawl, but using cards against humanity cards. Fabulous fun, best with 8 people.

Was my birthday the other day – got the new Azul and Port Royal sat on the shelf. 🙂

Only got into newer games a couple of years (after some great tips from this place) ago but man, things have moved on.
Plus, have loads of friends and family who play too, so it’s a great post walk/ride social thing.

Lucky to have a good games shop in town and a group that meets locally – all pleasant people and great way to try loads of games before spending cash.

Now then.

What you’re asking for is what board gamers term “gateway games.” Basically these are modern games which are accessible to people who haven’t played a board game since, well, Monopoly. Gaming has moved on in the last century or so and there are many, many great games out there, a lot of which are insanely complicated and would put new players off for life.

If you like Monopoly – and are actually playing it properly by auctioning properties – then Settlers of Catan is essentially THE gateway game. It started a revolution. It’s pretty easy to learn and has aspects of trading like Monopoly. You roll dice, collect resource cards based on the dice rolls, then spend those resources to build roads and houses. To get anywhere you need to trade resource cards in your hand with other players. A word of caution here though, Catan requires at least three players, it doesn’t work very well at all with two.

As others have mentioned, Ticket to Ride is a solid shout. You have a map, cards with routes on (eg, London to Madrid), and have to build train lines on the map to complete the routes in your hand. There’s a bewildering number of versions and expansions but all you really need to know is this: There’s two base games which are both compatible with all the expansions, USA and Europe. USA is the original game, Europe its successor. Europe, being the later game, is slightly more complicated than USA with a couple of extra rules to worry about, but also slightly more refined. There’s a couple of special edition base games also, Marklin and the 20th Anniversary box, the latter is beautiful but neither are compatible with the expansion sets so I’d avoid these as a first purchase.

Carcassonne is another classic. You take turns to draw map tiles and then place them against what’s already on the table, lining up features like roads and cities Dominoes-style. You have a handful of little player pieces called Meeple which you optionally place after laying a tile. When you complete a feature such as a city, the Meeple is returned to the player’s hand and they score points based on the completed feature. Simple to learn and much more tactical than it appears at first glance. There’s a shitload of expansions for Carcassonne also, the first couple are excellent additions but beyond that it quickly turned into a cash cow and there’s some pointless tripe out there. But we can revisit that another time if you get to that point.

If you were ever a fan of Risk, you may enjoy Small World. This is an area domination game, you choose a race and a power (eg, Berserk Elves) and go out conquesting the map. Once you’re spread too thin to go any further you put them into decline (essentially, they die off), choose another race / power combo (Flying Wizards!), rinse and repeat. The actual gameplay mechanic is straight forward, the complexity comes with the races and powers which do different things. So for instance if you’re “flying” that means you can attack anywhere on the map rather than having to be adjacent to the rest of your tribe.

My current new favourite gateway game is Sagrada. You make stained glass windows. No, wait, come back! You have a bag with a ****ton of dice, and each player has a 4×5 “window” grid. You draw dice from a pool (called ‘drafting’) and place them in your window according to placement rules – the same number cannot be adjacent, the same colour cannot be adjacent, and the background of the grid has additional rules where for instance a given square has to be red. You get points at the end for completing goals defined by cards drawn at the start of the game. It’s quick, fun, and very pretty.

Oh, if you want a board game which is a card game in disguise, look at Dominion. Like Small World the base mechanic is simple, the complexity comes from the cards. On your turn you draw five cards into your hand from your draw pile, play an action card from your hand if you have one, pay money from your hand to buy a new card, then discard your hand and draw five new cards. When your draw pile is exhausted you shuffle your discards and that then becomes your draw deck. That’s it, you now know how to play Dominion.

The cards you buy from the tableau in front of you (Dominion calls this a “Kingdom”) can be points, money or action cards (and other things in later expansions). You might think, why not just keep buying points? Remember the cards you buy become your play deck, so if you do that you’ll soon end up with a hand full of points cards so you can’t actually do or buy anything else with them. An action card might say [+1 buy] meaning that if you play it you can buy two cards instead of one that turn (assuming you can afford it).

Exploding kittens is currently very popular in our office for lunchtime games club

I was going to recommend this, although must be said it’s not a boardgame.

Pandemic is always a good game to play. You play as a team rather than against each other. Great for people new to the game or playing board games generally as you can help each other. Easy to set the difficulty levels and work out strategies.

Sequence is a good board game it’s like a mix of a card game and connect 4 on a board. Easy to learn and I haven’t found anyone yet that doesn’t like it

I have so many recommendations it is silly. So I won’t bother.
Except to say that Colt Express is absolutely wonderful, hilarious and inventive.

I will let these guys do the hard work though – check out anything with their SUSD Recommended badge:

https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/

EDIT: Since this is (ostensibly) a cycling forum, then Flamme Rouge has got to be worth looking at:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lautapelit-LAU00051-Flamme-Rouge-Board/dp/B01MCZ5I3D/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=flamme+rouge&qid=1557485588&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Bananagram

It’s good for all ages. You just need a table or a floor to play it on.

On the subject of word games, SNATCH-IT is fun, cut-throat and fast paced.

Snatch it Word Game https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1572815175/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_oOv1CbYYKF2BB

Now then.

🙂

Still not tried Small World yet, people keep buying us other stuff.

Forbidden Island has been a pleasant surprise – for a first cooperative game it’s really well designed.
I like to get the most argumentative people in the room together playing this. Not only gets them out of everybody else’s way but is quite funny to watch.

Quirkle is dyslexia friendly btw.

I feel Colt Express should have a penalty system for those who continue with the attempted accent after the first round. 🙂

“Quirkle is dyslexia friendly btw.”

Apart from the name?

Good point. 🙂
Qwirkle, bloody auto correct.

Stepdaughter was put off a lot of games because she’s both dyslexic and appallingly competitive.

You can get a version of Codewords that uses symbols too.

We quite like castle panic – another co-op board game.

panic!

keep meaning to learn backgammon, mainly as a ‘holiday abroad with a glass of wine in the evening’ type game with the wife.

whenever i look at the rules tho, they seem too complicated, altho theyre probably not.

is there a ‘backgammon for dummies’ video or website that explains it a little better than what ive found previously? and is it indeed a decent game for two, or should we just learn some card games?

thanks

If you have a whole day to play

I’m always genuinely surprised by the number of people who don’t know how to play.

I made an effort to teach my daughters when they were about 6 or 7. I think it is important to pass the ability to play it on.

backgammon is a lovely tactile, fast game. 2 player only.
Mrs S and I used to play it every evening after work.

The patterns come to you very quickly after a while. I recommend the AI Factory android app on your phone to learn.
The rules are pretty straight forward really, but worth learning with a board to make it clearer.

cribbage is another two player game that is fast, good for developing mental patterns. But can be player in a very slapdash lazy way if you just want something to do while talking crap and drinking wine. Again the AI factory game on the phone is a very good version. Was taught by my grandmother.

Then wave bye bye to money/free time/relationship

Ticket to ride is the winner with so many recommendations. Arrives tomorrow. I shall report back.
Many thanks.

Tl;dr bit did anyone mention Catan? Very good monopoly-Raquel strategy game, but the best part is that you’re never waiting for your turn as you need to stay involved throughout