I like carcassonne as well. Not in my top 10, but it's a fun 30 minute game with simple rules.

"Anyone who plays ASL is someone who's smarter than me, and I'm a pretty smart guy..."

You don't have to be a genius to play ASL, you just have to be very patient and realize that this is more of a long-term hobby that requires a slight time investment up front than something you can just pick up off the shelf for a random Saturday night and immediately set down like most board games. For realism and excitement I think it cannot be topped by any board game, but it does require some commitment up front. The starter kits are a good way to get started (Starter Kit #3 is easily the best bang for your buck in the whole system) - if you can grasp the dozen or so pages of the starter kit rules, the move to full ASL is very simple and can be handled in bits and pieces, scenario by scenario.

"Tolstoy, have you ever heard of the Fresno Gaming Association?"

I have not, aside from what I've just googled (which doesn't give me much).

Oh, and at the tournament I'm playing in this weekend I beat the champion of last year's tournament in a pick-up game. Not really relevant to this thread, but it seems a reasonable excuse to brag about it so I will. :-)

my relationship with the Fresno Gaming Association was the beginning of my relationship with war games which is why I bring it up. A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away my mother and father lived in Fresno before I was born, I had my dad topmass and is a pretty smart guy and had some friends who played war games. It turns out that these group of people had significant overlap with the Fresno Gaming Association which was a publisher of war games. This is how I came to found some in shrink copies of war games in our house when I was around 10 or so. I tried to get into them but with no one to play and being 10 I couldn't quite understand the rules set.

Fast forward a little more than a decade, & I start collecting and researching and playing and studying board games very seriously. I'm reminded of finding those old World War 2 Pacific Theater war games in the house and I have time to look some up. This is when I found at the Fresno Gaming Association was infamous in wargaming circles at least on the west coast of the United States during their run, as having beautiful maps and beautiful pieces of interesting battles, but absolutely terrible terrible if not unplayable rules. Unless you were the designer and knew how things were supposed to work in your head you basically had to make it up as you went along. A bit of an exaggeration of course, probably, but once it happens enough that kind of reputation for board game publisher doesn't quite go away. It made me feel a lot better about not understanding them when I was a kid.

Right now I have sitting on my shelf Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan, and am hoping to use that as a gateway war game into the hobby, but because there is some hidden information and bluffing I cannot play it one player.

*taught math, not "topmass"

Tokaido is also a lovely game. It also happens to be a game that I always perform abysmally at, and can never seem to figure out even why I did so abysmally.

Risk is pretty good if you have the starting powers be the US, EU, Russia, Brazil, India and China. That is the variant I normally play.

i'm curious. what exactly do you think is pretty good about risk, especially if you're playing diplomacy?

@Minister, Junta has been known to hit the table at our after party for our minor CODCon tournament, which this year will be April 11-12. (http://windycityweasels.org/codcon9)

Your groups sounds awesome Jim. Too bad I'm never in the neighborhood.

http://s.quickmeme.com/img/a0/a04aed78fc238b67ee2b37bfa2b779f330223c56cf868eaf6da689c7cdff0d9b.jpg

I just watched some youtubes about twilight struggle after seeing it at #1 on boardgamegeek. My god, that game looks awesome!

My friends and I played Letters from Whitecastle this weekend. Its a more involved version of Scotland Yard. Pretty fun bit I think we need to play a second time to really judge it.

Abge, no ones talking about a trip for burgers when you're baked out of your mind

Speaking of boardgamegeek, in a few weeks I'm tentatively planning on going on their first game convention on a cruise ship, BGG@SEA.

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread...-gaming-cruise

I'm so envious of you right now. That sounds awesome!

Letters from Whitecastle sounds fun. Also check out that Rob Zombie movie, House of 1000 Pancakes.

In all serious though, haven't played Letters from Whitechapel, but Nuns on the Run is a neat little game which is effectively the inverse of Scotland Yard.

@Valis, twilight struggle is like the best boardgame I've ever played. It takes about 4 hours to play and is only 1 on 1, but it's really worth it. I also quite like that it is asymmetrical, which makes it fun to play for twice as long, and quite complex. I heard that Labyrinth is similar in that matter (it's USA vs terrorists), I have to try it but it's insanely expensive (at least in Poland, around 100 euros)

Oh yeah, ^@Marquis Mark

Just got King of Tokyo this weekend and played it with my sons. It is a fun little game.

Twilight struggle reminds me a lot of Balance of Power, but both improved and simplified. Does anyone remember that game? It was a computer game in the late 80s. I loved playing it but was too young to fully understand what it was about so I usually lost very quickly.

@yassem - if it's taking you 4 hours you're very slow players, as my friends and I finish a game in 2.5 hours tops, and usually much less than that.

Has someone mentioned Battlestar Galactica yet? That's my favourite.

@mendax, I'd say we are doing average speed, not rushing things, talking about events, making jokes etc., of course it's possible to finish after 15 minutes (DEFCON suicide or USSR huge op in the first turns), but I'd say finishing by playing to the last turn in 2.5h is quite fast.