Board games: Diplomacy and RISK (Interested in perhaps buying Axis and Allies, looks complicated can anyone give a very brief overview of what game play is like? Any similarities to RISK or Diplomacy?)

Card games: 1000 , 66 , Caroussel, Fool, Poker.
Pretty much all the card games I play are from Eastern Europe (apart from poker) I would recomend looking them up and learning them if you have the time.

Computer and Video Games: Warcaft 3: Frozen Throne (My favourite game ever probably), Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Runescape (I have quit it now, but I think it receives far more criticism than it deserves, It really is a legendary game, The graphics have been immensly improved and it is virtually impossible to complete, so many things to do.)

Those are my opinions of an average 17 year old casual gamer :P.

I've played Setlers more times than I'd like to admit. The strategy isnt that deep in it though so we (my friends and I) sort of abandoned it as we got into other games. I mentioned it before, but everyone in the Toronto area has to do themselves a favour and check out Snakes and Lattes. Such an incredible selection of games and very knowledgable and helpful staff.

The game we play the most atm is probably Carcassone. It's real quick and doesn't have too steep of a learning curve so you can get people interested in it. The strategy, however, is deep enough to keep you interested.

Many of the games that people mentioned like Agricola and Peurto Rico ate great. Other games worth checking out are Nexus Ops and Cyclades.

I'm actually working on making a game myself. Stil in its infancy though and has only been sort of half play tested but its been a fun exercise.

Also, I've never played game of thrones but I was incredibly disappointed to find out that it wasn't called Game of Game of Thrones.

I love Monopoly and Battleship. I also enjoy 5-card draw, blackjack, and Texas hold-em.

I don't really like Risk or Settlers of Catan because of the luck element. If I'm in the mood for a game like that, I just play Diplomacy.

I enjoy playing Diplomacy, Axis and Allies, Blackjack and occasionally I will play this old Daytona game from the 90s.

I also want to learn how to play Poker, even though I have a Texas hold 'em poker set.

Civ 4, Chess, Poker, Settlers of Catan, D&D, betrayal house on the hill, Axis and Allies, Call of Cthulhu, Quiddler, Scrabble, Stratego, Risk, Empire Earth (yes, an old 2001 RTS), Napoleon Total War, Empire total War, Team Fortress 2, Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2. And many more.

Of course, Go and Mahjong must also be included.

And I want to do a Campaign for North Africa game but no one has it or the time -_-

settlers of catan sucks. go seems like a good game, but it seems like people who memorize do significantly better than people who don't, so that's a negative. card games like hearts are ok. or that game they play on pirates of the carribean with the dice. that one could require alcohol to be entertaining though.

@Bolshoi: What do you mean by memorization? Go involves pattern recognition (knowing what shapes are more secure/less secure), but like Chess you have total information of the board and don't need to memorize anything. The focus of the game is on strategy and intuition.

I'd be interested to know how many people get to play Diplomacy in person. We struggle to get in enough time to play Settlers of Catan.

I've managed to set up face to face games with friends maybe five times. I have lots of friends with good taste, but few who have several hours to spare at the same time! I think that our longest game lasted for over 12 hours...

I've been playing this lately online, a Pacific War battle simulation:
http://www.fightingflattops.com/
Fun, but also extremely frustrating at times (mostly because the humans I've played against have been far more skilled than the silly computer AIs I'm used to)

Computer games I enjoy:
Most Paradox titles (I have spent more hours playing Crusader Kings 2 in the last three weeks than I'm willing to admit)
War in the Pacific (very detailed - takes as long to play as the actual war did)
Medieval 2: Total War
Space Empires V
Tropico

Board games I enjoy and have managed to find people willing to play:
Axis and Allies
Julius Caesar
Illuminati (card game)
Advanced Squad Leader

Thumbs up for Illuminati. I haven't played in ages, but still have my cards.

@hellalt

There is Empires in Arms, it's a fascinating concept, but very nearly impossible to play. The board is a map of Europe similar to the classic Diplomacy, but the size is 50" by 35", and it's set in the Napoleonic Wars. The rulebook is very thick, 40-50 pages of small print on letter size paper. The outcome of battles is determined by the number of troops, morale, tactics, leadership and eventually luck, but because a lot of other parameters are factored in, luck is not that prominent. There is, of course, a big diplomatic side to the game as well as logistics, troops have to be supplied and paid for and so on. Unsurprisingly the game takes forever to play.

I agree Tolstoy, Paradox makes some great games. Massive and flawed but brilliant. I haven't played CK2 yet, how is it compared to the original? I mostly play EU3, for hours and hours and hours, but I enjoy some Victoria 2 too and have had fun with CK in the past.

" I haven't played CK2 yet, how is it compared to the original?"

Very similar, with some added features. Maybe a little *too* similar. The gameplay is the same, the biggest change is the addition of sub-county fiefs and vassals (barons, bishops, and mayors). There are huge balance issues, and as a student of medieval history some of the details and mechanics drive me absolutely bonkers (sieges take 2 years each by the 14th century, don't even bother trying to storm - for instance), but I think it is by far the best and most playable Paradox game (judging by what it was on release) to date. I think it will be better than EU3 after a few patches and an expansion or two.

"There is Empires in Arms, it's a fascinating concept, but very nearly impossible to play."

I have a copy and used to play all seven countries against myself when I was a kid, but have never been able to find a human willing to play. There's a computer version of it (published by matrix games), but the interface is so difficult it's impossible to play.

"Thumbs up for Illuminati. I haven't played in ages, but still have my cards."

'The Mafia will be taking over the Boy Sprouts this turn...' hahaha. Easily the most hilarious game ever.

@Nerevatus i knew some good go players, and they would have these books that they would read about different go "patterns" as you call them, and constantly talk amongst each other about which specific move is the right one in a given "joseki". and whoever can memorize these sets of moves the best got the most props. if that isn't memorization, i don't know what is. people obviously didn't memorize every single possible move in the game. but your analogy is a bit wrong, cause neither do chess players. supercomputers might be able to memorize a huge amount of chess, but humans don't have that kind of memory.

the only real difference is that there are more options in go than in chess, so in maybe 5% of the positions, there can be some tiny difference that makes everything change. in a way that chess may not. but with the other 95% of it, raw memorization is what you need. you saying go doesn't require memorization is like saying math doesn't require memorization. memorization provides the foundation for your game.

Tolstoy, that's always the problem with Paradox, and what I meant by "massive and flawed". Every game they release tries to bite off more than anyone can chew. That's not to say that their games are bad, but it usually takes a few patches and an expansion or two before the games become balanced and really fun. I often feel like a beta tester who has to pay for that privilege when I buy a brand new Paradox game. But damn it, when the fourth expansion comes and they've really refined every aspect, their games are the best ones out there.

@Bolshoi: My comparison to Chess was only to make the point that you have total information of the board in the sense that you know just by looking that a certain pawn is located at space B4 for example, unlike some card games where you have to memorize who played what cards in previous hands, etc. In other words you don't have to memorize past moves. You are referring to "memorizing" future best moves. I think we're just using the word differently.

In chess, there are certain openings you actually memorize, but the rest is learning what to do in given situations. You yourself said that humans don't have the kind of memory to memorize all of the variations in Chess like a computer could and the reality is that Go is many orders of magnitude more complex. No human can beat the best Chess program, but even I can beat most of the best Go programs and I'm not that great. Being good at Go is a lot more than brute forcing, memorizing best moves, or going through extended "if x then y" thoughts like in Chess.

In Go, recognizing future best moves like in Chess is what "memorizing" joseki and Go problem sets is about, but it is just a small element of the game. Focusing on that alone though is very limiting and all of the Go players I know "get the most props" from how well and how elegantly they play, not how many problems sets they've gone through. Go problems are an important part to getting better, but in my experience even that is less of a memorization exercise and more about developing an ability to read isolated tactical sections of the Go board.

You are also completely off that in 95% of Go moves, you can rely on pure memorization. If all it took was memorizing Go problem sets, computers would crush the best Go players with ease. Your view of the game would apply perfectly though to Go on a 9x9 board, which is actually frequently used as an exercise and learning tool for learning or "memorizing" Go problems/joseki and is more similar in complexity to chess. Regular Go is played on a 19x19 board and turns the game into exercise of strategy and intuition, with the tactical stuff only becoming relevant at the margins.

Anyway, I'd encourage you to try the game out or read more about it. I think the strategic skills developed playing Go are foundational and would even help your ability to read more nuanced strategic dynamics on a Diplomacy board. I know it's helped me with some early success as a webdip player.

As you can tell, I'm a big fan of the game : )

I wouldn't equal joseki to chess opening. In chess, the exchange between tempo/material has some basic measures and although your playing style affects your behaviour, that's much more pronounced in go and it's territory/thickness dichotomy. Given it's larger scope, you can't clearly classify many opening moves as ?.