What's the formula for gaining an advantage when playing Diplomacy then?
WINNER! Crush your loved ones at Connect Four this Christmas
With Christmas Day within sight, it’s time to dust off your Monopoly set and concentrate on your Settler’s strategy. Or, maybe, consider some new board-game purchases. It’s not just me caught up in this wave of nostalgia – venerated institution the Victoria and Albert Museum is hosting a major board game retrospective. Of late, …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 15th December 2016 14:40 GMT I ain't Spartacus
The way to win at Diplomacy is to be really open, helpful and nice to everybody - right up to the point when you apologetically stab them in the back - explaining how it hurts you more than it hurts them, but that it's your only logical move. This helps them to keep feeling that you're honest in future.
It's also really helpful to be able to lie with frightening consistency.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 19:47 GMT Robert Helpmann??
Formula for gaining an advantage when playing Diplomacy
C2H6O
I should also point out that when flipping a coin for a decision, the person flipping is not the one who guesses the outcome. And for a quick demo on how to beat someone a Rock-Paper-Scissors, I refer you to Penn Jillette (around 2:10).
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Thursday 15th December 2016 12:13 GMT Wade Burchette
Monopoly
I once bought a book on Monopoly strategies. I even read it all the way through and I, of course, still have it somewhere. I learned a very simple strategy for winning. Always buy the orange and red properties. For some reason, these are the most landed on properties in the game. Get those properties and put hotels up on them as fast as you can. Boardwalk and Park Place tend to be landed on infrequently, don't avoid them but you can use it as a bargaining chip to get properties which people land on more often.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 12:56 GMT Nick Ryan
Re: Monopoly
The orange and red frequency compared to others is higher because there are more cards that send a player to one of them, or ahead of them (including Jail and Purple in the first side) but even the "go back three spaces card". Combine this frequency with the most common value out of two dice being seven with eight a close second and the odds are stacked in their favour.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 14:21 GMT BongoJoe
Re: Monopoly
If you're in jail you still have to throw the dice. If you roll a double then you're out and you move the number of spaces shown. So, a double three or double four will get you into trouble.
And the Chance within the red set may send you back three spaces to Vine Street.
My favourite set is the Old Kent Road/Whitechapel. They just nick Go Money nicely.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 16:08 GMT BongoJoe
Re: Monopoly
Actually, the best way is NOT to build hotels but to keep everything at four houses if you can afford the repair bills.
The name of the game, Monopoly, comes from the potential monopoly of the housing market and if there's not enough houses in the box then people can't build hotels. And, no, you can't just sling down £750 to build three hotels straight on the light blue set if there isn't twelve houses available in the box.
That's one of the many rules that Most People Don't Know in the game which Everyone Thinks That They Know The Rules Of. And it's handy to spring on people after they've sat there for half an hour wondering why I never buy hotels.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 15:12 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: I still play Risk...
The problem with Risk is that it's always better to attack than defend - but if people haven't worked that out you can intimidate them with a big stack of units at a choke-point.
If you like it though, there's a nice website out there called Conquer Club - that have loads of variants, of which my favourite was the New World one (I think it was called) where you're colonising the Americas. Which only works because you play it hidden movement.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 12:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
It depends on what the 'point' of the game is
In a family dynamic, there will clearly be a mixture of ages and therefore experience and capabilty, and each will be looking to take away something different from the game.
For an adult with children, the aim is not to be 'competitive dad' and smash the weak opposition, rather to encourge participation, concentration, playing with others, having fun. 'Winning' the game for an adult is having a game with kids that they enjoyed and tried to do well in - the outcome of a win for the adult is not the most important part.
Even in social gatherings of like minded, similarly competent people, the game is a means of social interaction and having a good time - nobody should care who wins at Monopoly or Risk EXCEPT if you all agree the point is to WIN - then you are all working from the same perspective (e.g. warhammer competitions or 'lets take this game of Risk seriously to see who's the best').
One exception to this is where real money is at stake - games such as Poker. At no point is that implied everyone is in it for fun alone. Putting real cash in implies everyone is there to take it seriously as a game of skill. Even so, if the stakes are modest, enjoying a pint and talking shit during the game are just as important as winning the pot.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 14:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: It depends on what the 'point' of the game is
I bore my kids to death by (re)telling them that they are allowed to choose their own victory conditions, which do not have to be those stated in the rules, or those used by other players: just doing "better than usual" is fine. And I made up a space-race game with my son that deliberately has four different ways of "winning", all of which are used in each game, and which tend to be mutually exclusive. As we've never managed more than three players for it, it works out quite well :-)
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Thursday 15th December 2016 14:45 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: co-op games
I was a zombie in the graveyard in Spyfall 2 last week. You cannot imagine how hard it is not to just blurt out BRAAAAIINNZZZ for the cheap laugh, and give the whole game away. The other locations make sense, just not the graveyard - exactly what are you spying on there? Then again, how many spies are sent to amusement parks or theatres...
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Thursday 15th December 2016 13:35 GMT Valerion
No need for strategy
Every game of Monopoly I have ever played has always ended with either:
a) One or more people getting bored and leaving, with nobody else really caring about who has the most
or
b) A huge tantrum by one or more players resulting in storming out and/or the board being upended.
The WOPR quote above is appropriate.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 15:05 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: No need for strategy
That's the problem with Monopoly being so rubbish. Not only is there almost no strategy involved, but worse, it's also long. At least Connect 4 is over quickly - and is quite fun for a while if you're thinking 5 moves ahead. Even a long game like chess is fun if played quickly - if you haven't got a clock just sing the Countdown song at people, and disqalify them if they haven't moved by the end. The annoyance of that adds to the pressure to keep moving...
There's some great games out there nowadays. From the simple and silly to the long and complex.
I like the new version of Junta, where on election as El Presidente you get to wear the dark glasses of office. Until you're assassinated... Then you hand them over, and start plotting your revenge. I would have won, but accidentally murdered the President one turn too early. Ooops.
Avalon: The Resistance, Spyfall, Cash n Guns are all good I'm not a fan of the Werewolf games as they're too random - but it's still fun to accuse your friends of being a secret werewolf, then having to act all apologetic after lynching them only to find out they were innocent after all.
One of my favourite simple games is No Thanks. A bit like poker, there's a roughly optimal strategy to play the precentages, but then you have to deal with the fact that the people around you know that too.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 15:55 GMT Helldesk Dogsbody
Re: No need for strategy
Munchkin is a classic for causing more fights than Monopoly while still being fun and relatively fast paced. Secret Hitler is a corker for sowing FUD amongst friends and family, Game of Blame is a newish one with some strategy and a lot of memory work to try and avoid shooting yourself in the foot.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 16:12 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: No need for strategy
Not sure about Secret Hitler. Though I've only played it twice. But you can get into situations where even though you know who the bad guys are - there's nothing you can do to stop them. Which I think is a design failure. It's got some good game mechanics though.
I think my favourite game of that type is till Avalon: The Resistance, because it seems to work best at allowing everyone a fair crack of the whip - and gives enough information to actually make intelligent decisions.
Werewolf is too random, Battlestar Galactica is too bloody long, I haven't played Two Rooms and a Boom - but I've heard it basically all comes down to one decision - though I imagine it's also funny.
Spyfall is excellent because of the opportunities for jokes and running gags. And the simplicity.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 13:41 GMT deadlockvictim
Poker with Maltesers
I rather like playing poker with children using Maltesers as the thing being gambled. The game is over when all of the Maltesers have been eaten.
Once the children have ventured beyond the safe (and losing position) of only betting when they have a good hand, it becomes quite fun. I'm usually doomed as well at this point.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 15:15 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Poker with Maltesers
That's a game where I'd want to get into an early lead, then just eat. Although the downsides of handling the stakes is they become rather icky.
I remember playing once with Fruit Polos. And they stuck together into stacks, so you might be forced to raise more than you wanted just because you couldn't separate them, and wanted to keep the untouched ones to eat.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 13:46 GMT Stevie
Bah!
Board games I love but for which I cannot scare up players because of rules fright:
AH Dune, Circus Maximus, Speed Circuit, Conquistadore, Search For The Nile, Diplomacy(!), or any of my old SPI games.
Oh, and Colditz (mine's a Gibsons Games reprint).
No youtube video explaining play, game off.
Part of the problem is the piss-poor job game companies make of writing rulebooks these days. With the Case System you didn't have to know every bleeding rule by heart because you could find the one you needed in seconds when you needed it. Now RPG graphic art sensibilities trump usability.
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Thursday 15th December 2016 15:19 GMT Pen-y-gors
Nuclear War
Lovely board/card game. Aim is to assemble nuclear warheads and delivery systems and wipe out your opponents in a nuclear attack. Lovely game.
The sting in the tail is that when someone loses they can launch all their remaining stuff back, which tends to wipe out the attacker.
A very common result is that everyone ends up dead. Hmmm....
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Friday 16th December 2016 11:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Shadows over Camelot?
The second picture that purports to show a game of Settlers of Catan is definitely not Settlers.
It appears actually to show the (dull and deeply flawed) cooperative boardgame Shadows over Camelot.
I'm not so sure about the first picture of Settlers, for that matter ... it does seem to show Settlers, but what's the purply conical playing piece supposed to be?
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