board game recommendations sought for GenCon demoing!

[grodog]

Hi folks---

I'm going to be attending GenCon this year, and my wife has assigned me the onerous task of demoing board games until I find at least one fun game to bring home. It's a hard life

Heather and I and our extended family play a lot of cards (spades, oh heck, bridge, Sleuth, Authors, Milles Bourne, etc.), but our other mainstay is boardgames: Settlers (generally Cities & Knights these days, haven't checked out any of the newer releases since those) and Carcassone (mostly Hunters & Gatherers these days, which my wife and I play at lunch in about 30 minutes, generally) are among our favorites, but we also enjoy board/war games ranging from Awful Green Things From Outer Space to Dark Tower to Abalone to Titan to Arkham Horror (Chaosium version, haven't played the new one) to Kings N Things to Mystery of the Abbey.

Heather has found that she prefers shorter games to longer one: she's not generally willing to sit down and play Settlers for 2-3 hours (for a 6 player game), so games in the 30-90 minutes range would be ideal, though she's probably willing to check out a frood cool game for a longer time.

We play in groups of 2 to 6+ players regularly, so games that work well with small groups and with larger ones (with expansion sets if required) would be welcome suggestions! FWIW, I consider the game play more important than the 30-90 minute time frames, since I can convince Heather to a longer session if it's a great game.

So, what's worth checking out?

Thanks!

 

[Hypersmurf]

A couple of quick games I played and enjoyed recently were Tigris and Euphrates, and Mission to Red Planet.

-Hyp.

 

[JoshuaFrost]

So, what's worth checking out?

Why, Stonehenge: An Anthology Board Game, of course! ;-)

 

[wedgeski]

My personal favourite at the moment is Vinci , but it will be pushing 90 minute boundary depending on the number of players.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

It costs tickets (generics are welcome) but check out Rogue Judges in the Board Game room for board and non-collectable card games. Rogue Judges runs what they think are fun (not what companies tell them to run) and teach the rules for everything they run.

As for suggestions for games (in no particular order):

Guillotine by WotC, takes about 30 minutes and I can get my non-gaming sister to play.
Hex Hex by Smirk and Dagger, a real fast game that gets people involved.
Kill Doctor Lucky by Cheap Ass Games, Piazo is also selling an expensive glossy boxed version. Betther with 4-6 players this has more strategy than many of thier games.
High School Drama by Shifting Skies Games, this is sort of Illuminattii lite with a fun theme takes about 60-90 minutes.
SPANC by Steve Jackson Games. Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls with art by Foglio takes about 30-60 minutes and can be entertaining.
Run For your Life, Candyman! by Smirk and Dagger. Based on the kids game but turned into a twisted version. About 60 minutes.
Last Night on Earth, The Zombie Game by Flying Frog Productions, An excellent zombie game (and far better than Zombies!!!) that I demoed at the GAMA Trade Show. Hopefully production will be finished and it will be released at Gen Con. If not they said definitely Halloween.
Lunch Money by Atlas Games. A chance to be that schoolgirl bully you always dreamed of. Plays fast and fun especially if you like talking smack.
Siesmic by Atlas Games, this fairly simple but is an enjoyable 60 minutes.
Robo Rally by WotC, A classic of logical thinking that can take 4-6 hours.

Well that is my brainstorming for now. I may think of more later.

 

[Festivus]

My family is similar to yours in that we play a lot of games, though we tend to lean more towards card games. Cribbage, Five Crowns, Rich man Poor man, etc. This last camping trip my sister brought Killer Bunnies.

At first we were confused by the instructions, and it seemed overly complex (Hey killer bunny guys, write some better documentation -- what ships with it is confusing to say the least), but after some trial and error we ended up all really enjoying the game. By the end of the camping trip we all decided it was one of our new favorites and we decided to buy some of the expansion stuff for it.

In october a new version of Talisman is coming, for those too poor to buy it on ebay this might be an option. It looks like they are going back to the 2nd edition style game.

 

[the Lorax]

Good board games that should fit your requirements-

New(ish):

Pompeii
Hey that's my Fish!
Pillars of the Earth
Mesopotamia
Notre Dame
Vikings
(heck Rio Grande has a stack of good games out that I played demos of at Origins)

Older:
Tigris & Euphrates
Acquire
Domaine
Emerald
Puerto Rico <---I find it hard to believe that you didn't mention this one
Evo
Modern Art
TransAmerica <---I'm not a big fan of this, but it is non-gamer friendly and scales to 7.
Ticket to Ride
El Grande

 

[ObiAndy]

My personal favorites at the moment are Battlelore and Tide of Iron . Both can be played somewhat quickly, with setup taking the most time. ToI scenarios are dictated by number of rounds, and Battlelore moves pretty quickly.

 

[diaglo]

So, what's worth checking out?

Outdoor Survival by Avalon Hill.

you can see it or use it in one of the sessions i'm refereeing. check out the Gen Con sign up.

edit: here's the link: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=196076

 

[Chaldfont]

If you can find my friend and co-worker Adam West, you can try out his game Galactic Emperor. He's gonna try to make a go of it. He's got manufacturing and distributing all lined up and he's just now deciding if he wants to take the plunge and actually invest in a print run.

I've played it several times through design. It's kind of a 4x space game with some elements of Puerto Rico.

Just check the event guide. He's running his game several times over the con.