Monthly check in! What have you all gotten to the table recently?

Hi, me and my cousins had a good thing going for a long time playing Catan but we are looking to shake things up. We have played Catan regularly for over s year, but find that it's getting a little stale. We are looking for a game that requires a lot of strategy, planning, teamwork but also betrayal and backstabbing, yet also not take half an hour to set up and dismantle.

In Catan we love that the board changes every game and therefore the strategy, but found that once we got to the castles and knights expansion there was one strategy that beat out all the rest which sort of deflated the fun (first person to get science bonus seemed to win 90% of the time).

Any other board games out there for beginners that don't take forever to set up and put away? Not huge into role playing, but never say never I guess.

I'm not expecting a whole lot, but looking forward to getting out with the gang. Have never played something where you toss pieces.

Then it never left my shelf. It just seems like the same game over and over, thoughts?

After reading how much everyone loves War of the Ring and having it recommended to me multiple times I decided to see if I could find it at a local store and avoid Amazon. Lucky for me my main store I use had 1 copy!

Hey folks.

Have you ever tried putting together a cube as a standalone CCG experience? MTG has a great Cube community and guides for designing your very own draft environment. Of course there are drafting games that scratch a sinmilar itch, but I'm interested in turning a collection-based game into a standalone experience

My question is, do other games support this kind of playing? Are there guides or communities that aid in building cubes? I'd love to cube Pokemon with proxies and take it to youth houses, or maybe give other CCGs a spin in a similar fashion.

Have you tried it? Any successes or failures you'd care to share?

Got a play of Pax Porfiriana in yesterday. Excellent game, very close play. It came down to money after a military coup was narrowly averted. I probably could have won on money had I abandoned the coup attempt and sold off my assassin cards instead, but dang it, I don't want to be the richest player, I want to be the military dictator of Mexico!

It's reminiscent of Pax Pamir, which is in the same system. I'd have to get another Pamir play in to compare, but I think I prefer Porfiriana.

All over the world, board game groups meet and play board games of all kinds, so let's talk about it!