Board and card games

Like a lot of other gamers I play a mixture of things as well as RPGs and miniatures games. With the card games its mainly been Munchkin in recent years, with a mixture of Chez Geek and its spin off games and also Up Front. With the fun type games Munchkin and its different versions have been favourites with my group for times when we are not able to play Roleplaying games due to time or availability issues and it is highly recommended.

Board games have included the usual family type ones, mainly Scrabble, but with my gamer friends its the old Judge Dredd game which Games Workshop produced many years ago and is incredibly good fun. For two player board games it often tends to go back to a military theme with Ogre from Steve Jackson Games, originally Metagames who produced the edition I have, and Avalon Hill's Squad Leader designed by John Hill. In fact this post was inspired by my having seen the release of Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit 2, which piqued my interest as up till now I've steered clear of ASL due to its sheer size and investment required (especially to use the Brits), but this could be a winner for me as it contains British, Italian, and Allied Minor Nations as well as the Germans and Americans. The mix of artillery included is a little disappointing in having the German 88, but not the Brits iconic 25 pounder. Even so it still goes onto my to buy list.

I've found using Board game geek useful and its been interesting to be able to see easily what other games people have designed and what the history of things is. Its also nice in having lots of information on games including user reviews, pictures of mapboards and counters and content lists such as scenarios.

With card games I've not been a huge buyer of the Collectible Card Games, with only Illuminati New World Order and Mythos ever being purchased by me. With INWO I took the easy route and bought the big boxed set with all the cards rather than buy lots of packets and get into trading. This has always meant me avoiding like mad the M:tG and Pokemon fans.