Board Games I've Been Playing

It's been a while since I went over what board games I've been playing, so I thought I'd go over some of the games I've been playing most often in 2011.

7 Wonders: By number of games played, this is solidly in first place. I can see this getting old eventually, but it's still a lot of fun right now, and I don't even have the new expansion yet. Fast play time combined with sort of a civilization building theme gets this to the table fairly often. I highly recommend it as a short, moderately light card game.

Dominion: Still a standard with people around here. It didn't see much play earlier in the year due to a personal shortage of card sleeves for the two most recent expansions, but now that Prosperity and Cornucopia are both sleeved it's hitting the table fairly regularly. I'm not really that good at it, but I enjoy building my deck and seeing it run, even when I don't win.

Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft/Wrath of Ashardalon: While our weekly Board Game Night was still meeting at the now closed FLGS, these games were the ones most likely to catch the eye of people new to the event. I enjoy them quite a bit, but one of my regular gaming buddies despises them. That combined with the smaller tables at our new location make it less likely these will hit the table again any time soon, although I may just try it solo the next time I get an itch for some dungeon crawling.

Star Trek Expeditions: A fun cooperative game that's been getting a lot of play. So much so that I got a little burned out on it for a while, but I'm already starting to want to get back to playing it again. Does a decent job of capturing the feel of Star Trek in addition to being an interesting game.

Barbarossa: Although it hasn't gotten as many plays as the others listed above, this is probably my pick for favorite game so far this year. I really like where the designers took the Dominion mechanics with this game, even though it does make for a longer game. Unfortunately, while my regular gaming group doesn't dislike the game, they aren't as enamored with it as I am. I still hope to get it back to the table soon.

Combat Commander: I finally managed to get some more games of this in this year. It has been about three years since the last time it hit the table, so its return was welcome. I'd really like to continue playing this, but am not sure when that will happen. Possibly my favorite squad level wargame.

All of the above have had at least three plays so far this year. Lots of other games got one or two plays. I may go over some of them in a future post.