Wow! Looking for extrasolar planets! This sounds really interesting!

Classic games: Risk, Monopoly, and Life. I look back fondly on many an afternoon back in the 80s conquering the world, or at least Atlantic City.

In more recent years: Don't get too many chances to play, but I enjoy both Talisman and Puerto Rico.

Munchkin has entered my list of the 'new classic' games.

Hearing your 13 year old daughter (at the time) in a perfect Valley Girl voice say "But... it's MY Chainsaw of Bloody Dismemberment!" made it worth the price of admission...

Jeff & I still play the Junior Apples to Apples quite a bit with our nieces. Fun game. :-D

The green (adjective) card was "Radiant"

I won it (and totally cracked up the judge) by playing "Madame Curie".

Monopoly is a classic favorite, and in the right mood I really enjoy Risk and Axis and Allies. Bootleggers is another new-found enjoyment, and Sequence is a lot of fun. When I was a kid, I played Chance a LOT, but I haven't had access to it in a long time, so I'm not sure if I'd still like it.

Bootleggers is a monopoly-sort-of-sort-of-not game where you play mobsters making and running liquor in the prohibition of the 20s and trying to get rich. Great fun! Lots of laughs! Fairly complex, and some strategy involved, but also lots of luck.

Sequence is a card-based board game - you have a board showing 2 sets of cards, except jacks, and two decks of cards. Like Connect Four or similar games, you try to make runs of five and block the other player(s).

And it wasn't Chance I was thinking of at all, it was Sorry!

Does Settlers of Catan count as a board game? It has a board, but you build it out of hexes at the beginning of the game. If it counts, it's my current favorite board game.

Favourite board games? That's like asking what my favourite song is! There are too many choices. :)

But seriously, of late we're playing a lot of Caylus, mostly because it's both fun and new. Power Grid is also seeing a lot of play. I like both of them a lot. I think Arkham Horror and Revolution are still favourites, but they're not favourites for everyone in our group and they take a long time to set up and play, so they don't get played as much. Advanced Civilization is probably the most widely respected game for our group, though.

Caylus is relatively new (the surprise hit of last year's big game fair). It's thinky and long-ish and quite addictive (one of those games where there are a lot of things you COULD do on each turn but you have to choose between them all, and then figure out what the ramifications will be later. There's a lot of "fingers hovering indecisively above counters" in this game....).

Arkham Horror is heavily themed and LONG and complicated. Must be great if you're a big fan of that universe though.

My standby games are Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Thurn and Taxis and Settlers. We've successfully introduced lots of people to them and they don't take too much time or brain power at the end of a busy day.

Traders of Genoa is good too. Oh dear, you've got me started. I'll stop now.

I didn't know there was a comic! :) (Well, there was a web one at one point, I think, but it wasn't very good and was essentially an ad for the game as far as I can recall.) The board game is based on the H.P. Lovecraft mythos, and is a cooperative game in which you and all of the other players struggle to overcome whatever elder God is threatening the world this time (which is played by the game mechanics itself).

Hm. I dunno how I got logged out. This was me. :)

I didn't know there was a comic! :) (Well, there was a web one at one point, I think, but it wasn't very good and was essentially an ad for the game as far as I can recall.) The board game is based on the H.P. Lovecraft mythos, and is a cooperative game in which you and all of the other players struggle to overcome whatever elder God is threatening the world this time (which is played by the game mechanics itself).

As a logophile, my favorite board game is Scrabble. Finding a willing opponent is difficult since everyone who knows me, knows better... =>

I found your LJ through your "Waiting for Frodo" and "My Life in a Nutshell" comic strips, hope you don't mind my adding you to my f'list.

There is certainly an element of luck. But I don't rely on the luck of the draw, I add strategy, cunning, and a prodigious vocabulary... and all my friends and family know this. Which is why they don't play Scrabble with me (except for my sis-in-law who is even better at it).

Now Monopoly, on the other hand, I always loose.

True, there's an element of luck. There is in all the best games (which, to me, excludes chess and Othello). The key is that in the long run skill will prove itself. Over a three- or five-game set, the skilled player ought to be able to overcome the draw, and in any longer series, it's almost a certainty.

Oh so many!

Scrabble (but I prefer it online so I can use the value and @ospd verbs) :)
Trivial Pursuit, but my family stopped playing when my stepmom would always win (she does a lot of crosswords)
Encore, of course!
Pictionary
Kill Doctor Lucky, from Cheapass Games-- with the right group, this one is HILARIOUS.
Chez Geek-- not really a board game, but a good party game.

Always wanted to try playing the one where you're read the first half of a saying and you have to complete it. I don't remember its name.

Wow! The prototype is simply amazing! :D
And I really enjoy Rummikub, although not many have heard of it. I also like Scrabble and The Real Game of Life. (it's a board game created in my home town that has things like, "You can't pay off your loans so now you must be homeless" and things that would happen in 'real' life, it's quite entertaining.)

Yes! I had always assumed no one else knew of it either! Every time I asked someone, they acted like I had ten heads.

I don't think it's sold anywhere else, although it should be. I don't even know if it's sold in my town anymore.

Probably scrabble; it's comparatively easy and everyone in the family likes it.

In the past I played a lot of chess and go, but not so much recently. I should get back to them.

You have the cooooooolest friends.

And- Thank you!! ;)

Dune follows the book by Frank Herbert. A science fiction game that is balanced, detailed, and fun. Adults only. Out of print for about 20 years. Gotta love EBay?

Settlers of Catan: Build and Trade. Great game. Top selling for like every year since it came out. Unlike Monopoly which is one winner, many losers, Settlers ends up with 1 winner and some players. We play with kindness, so trades are made to help the people who are behind.

Carcasonne: build your city with roads, city, and lawn (aka farm). Players take turns adding to the board, placing their markers on road (robbers), city (knights) and farms (farmers). Score when something is completed (farm are never finished).

Ticket to Ride: Build your train empire in Europe. Link your goal cities together. If blocked one way, find an alternate route to satisfy your (random) destination cards.

Hmmm..strangely aside from the first, none of these games has combat in them.

Maybe I grew up? :P

I love Scrabble, Cranium, Catch Phrase (which isn't really a "board" game...), Scattergories, ummm...I used to play Pictionary quite a bit, but I haven't played in a long time.

:)

Scrabble (but I'm the competitive sort, and vastly prefer to play head to head, rather than in a group). Backgammon. Cathedral. Cosmic Encounter. Careers can be okay, as can Monopoly or Risk. I like Encore, but am truly not very good at it (I don't have a good index of lyrics in my head :-)

I'd like to try Apples to Apples; I hear good things of it.

I am not at ALL a fan of chess or Othello, because of those games' lack of a truly random element. For me, a game should allow skill to prevail over luck over time, but permit the occasional lucky win for the less-skilled player. (I hold no opinion on Go in this regard; it seems that its complexity may overcome the lack of true randomness.)

My favorite games fluxuate a lot, depending on what I've been playing recently, what I've played enough for it to lose its glow, etc. Currently, probably Puerto Rico, San Juan (those two have been in the top list for a while now), Ingenious, Hazcienda, Acquire (speaking of whiles), Set, and Caylus. Of those, Hazcienda is on there partially because of novelty, Set has a limited lifetime but is still a favorite, and the rest are likely to stay on there for a good long time.

Lesser faves would include Iron Dragon, Merchants of Venus, Arabian Nights, Money, Alhambra, Jacob Marley, Settlers (guilty pleasure), and, um, a lot of other games. I'm a pretty serious board game freak. And Clue is pretty good.

Games I dislike from those mentioned above include Munchkin (each card set is funny exactly once. Until you've gone through the entire deck. After that, it becomes tedious, as someone tries to win -again- and people stop them -again-, repeating until someone sneaks one through, which usually takes {your patience}+1 hour), encore (can be fun if you limit the timeframe, if not...; not really a game, but more a party activity), Apples to Apples (amusing party activity for at least ten minutes. But people play it for hours), or Monopoly (don't like the gameplay much).

I'm not really sure about the most recent Arkham Horror game (yes, there were two; I like the earlier version, which is a lot simpler and shorter). For party games I -do- like (more than A2A), see Attribut (Lookout Games; still findable in the 2003 English Language edition, and playable online on Brettspielwelt) or The Big Idea (from Cheapass).

Margaret and I saw the Keck Observatory in Hawaii last February. Keck is smaller than the proposed telescope but uses similar adaptive optics.

As to games, Go and Scrabble are current favourites. I really enjoy the Mayfair rail games. Good for picking up regional geography as well. Monopoly and Backgammon are old favourites. I like Trivial Pursuit, but I memorize the cards after a couple times through a deck.