2004 Board Games Gift Guide 489
The Morning News has come out with a nice guide to good gift boardgames, while Funagain Games has the list of the 2004 Board and Card Games of the Year (and the runners-up). Like a bowling ball with your name engraved upon it, these make great gifts for your significant other. Any other suggestions for good adult boardgames?
Do not pass "Go" (Score:5, Insightful)
Me: still a Go newbie but loving every minute of it.
Apples to Apples (Score:5, Insightful)
What! No Risk? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Do not pass "Go" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing how simple the game is, yet the best computer programs in the world only play at an intermediate level at best.
Re:What! No Risk? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mensa Recommended games . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Do not pass "Go" (Score:3, Insightful)
On the flip side, it's actually easier to teach than chess (fewer rules, no difference in the pieces), so it fits a guideline in the article ("can be taught within five minutes") much better than most, if not all of the games in the article.
Incidentally, if you do get a board, you might want to get one online. Places like Samarkand [samarkand.net] have good stuff. And the US Go Association [usgo.org] has links to more vendors as well as local clubs.
(Incidentally, "sabaki" is a Go term meaning light and flexible play.)
Axis & Allies (Score:2, Insightful)
List of my favourites w/ reasons (Score:1, Insightful)
Peurto Rico : Resource building game : 3-5 players : approx 1 hour per game : an intricate and balanced game where each players actions affect other players.
San Juan : Card game : 2-4 players : approx 30 mins per game : A simplified verion of Peurto Rico done using cards.
Citadels : Card game : 2-9 players : 15-45mins per game : a good game when there is a lot of players
Roborally : board game : 2-8 players : 30+mins per game : programming a bot to destroy other players bots has never been so much fun. The only problem is getting a hold of this game.
Carcassonne : tile game : 2-5 players : 45-60 mins per game : nice and simple with out the expansions.
Guilotine : card game : 2-5 players: 15-30 mins per game : simple and amusing. A good time filler before or after other games
Tantrix : tile game : 2-4 players : 30-45 mins : will twist your brain in knots
I guess the main thing to consider is how many people are likely to be getting to gether to play games and how much thinking they want to do.
I think most of the new games that are coming out of european games companies are very good.
Re:Do not pass "Go" (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people measure the success of an AI by its comparability to humans, especially in games. It's important to note that not every AI researcher agrees; some feel that the state of the art is what matters more than material success. That aside, there is a game that plays similar to Go, and features similar gamespace factors: Othello. Despite this, computer opponents usually trounce their human counterparts.
Go never recieved the attention that Chess programs do in the States, which partially explains why the state of the art lags behind other game agents. But behind that surface analysis, I've found that today's researchers in the field feel that human Go players utilize a strong sense of pattern recognition that common min-max and other brute forcing techniques fail to capitalize on. The human pattern finding ability quickly outpaces move searching, because the board doesn't change much. We can predict much of what the future will look like from the present. Reversi/Othello is a contrast to this property, where every move can drastically alter a number of pieces and potential moves therein.
I have to admit that I too haven't a PhD in the field, but to my credit I share an interest in the field, and I've studied under a fairly brilliant mind in the field. This is my meager understanding, and probably indicates why you can't play a Go game against a bot on Yahoo! games