Old school games were clearly better

Kyleran

Let's see who reads past the title, as I'm not talking about MMORPGs, or even video games.

I mean the "true" old school board games which we older folks played by candlelight with actual people we knew in real life.  

I was a "gamer" back then too, spending every cent or asking "Santa" for nothing but board games year after year.

So many favorites back then, going to create a poll with some of my favorites but feel free to add any you personally enjoyed before video games changed the world. (Poll will appear shortly)

Scorchien

Warhammer Quest.. 

    Still have all the pieces hand painted,  played that to exhaustion so many notes  enjoyed it more than D&D , just had better flow to it imo

Sovrath

Monopoly!

That and I played a lot of chess.

rojoArcueid

My favorite board game as a kid was Parcheesi, played it almost every day.

I also played Chess and another one i forgot the name where the board forms a star shape with many holes and the pieces that go in the holes are little spheres.

EDIT: ah found the star shaped board game, it's called Sternhalma, but i knew it from the Japanese name Diamond game.

acidblood

I thought people still played board games? Also, and maybe it's just me, but there are quite a few good modern board games as well.

Utinni

Why "were" ? They all still exist!

Renfail

Risk, Stratego, Chutes & Ladders, Sorry, Monopoly, I can remember all those from my childhood with my parents/siblings. 

D&D was the one that took the cake for me as an obsession once I hit my teens, and continued into my adult life. I can't remember the last time I played any of the others. Probably in the 80s?

strawhat0981

Axis and Allies, so many hours playing that growing up. 

Adamantine

Yeah, well.

Chess was great once, but the computer definitely killed that one.

Last I checked the best human was around ELO 2800 and the best computer program was around ELO 3500. That means the human will be obliterated three times over by the computer. Even a ELO difference of 100, as it was once between humans, namely between Bobby Fisher and Boris Spassky in 1972, was a completely hopeless difference for Spassky, who indeed lost this match without a chance.

Thats just completely demotivating.

immodium

Cluedo was a favorite of mine. I never played board games with friends, just family.

Oh, add Boggle, Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble.

laserit

"You got trouble wait don't run this kinda trouble is lots of fun"

"That's popomatic trouble"

Loved them all including Don't Break the Ice, Buckaroo, and Ants In the Pants just to name a few.

Ungood

While I was tempted to say Dungeons and Dragons, I never really got into the board game, while at the same time I was on the chess team all through high school, and still sit down with my friends to play when we get the chance.

So for me, I would say Chess, was an old school favorite of mine.

Kajidourden

As a child I played a few of these games, but as an adult I know there are FAR better board games out there.  I haven't played something like monopoly since I was like 12

Asm0deus

You forgot some classics

Monopoly

payday

battleship

Clue

hungry hungry hippos

Trouble

checkers

backgammon

scrabble

operation

Amathe

Love the D&D and Chutes and Ladders references. Reminds me of this quote from Big Bang Theory:

Howard Wolowitz : Really? On Dungeons and Dragons I enter a dungeon and find a dragon? Isn't that a little on the nose?

Sheldon Cooper : When you play Chutes and Ladders, do you complain about all the chutes and ladders?

olepi

I played most of those games as a kid in the 50's and 60's. But I really loved the Avalon Hill games.

Jutland was fun, we had to play in the back yard to get the scale right. Took up most of the yard.

cheyane

Sovrath said:

Monopoly!

That and I played a lot of chess.

I was going to say Monopoly but you beat me to it.

Laeyrum

My favorite board games were Mousetrap, Clue and D&D (yep the board game version). The board game version of D&D opened the door to Monster Manuals and all the wonderfulness of "Critical Fumbles" . 

Aeander

I don't play bored games.

gervaise1

Pack of cards: one grandmother taught me Fish, Happy Families, Patience whilst one Grandfather taught me Cribbage, Gin Rummy and got me a set of dominoes. 

Monopoly, Risk, Cluedo, Mousetrap as mentioned. Also e,g, Railroader and I have fond memories of one called Exploration. Edit: And Sorry!

Later games e.g. Dungeon (yep TSR did a board game!), Cosmic Encounter. 

Slightly later Civilisation. The original version was prettier than the Avalon Hill version! But mentioning AH means Diplomacy has to get a mention. 

Which leads on to multiple S&T games. One a month with the magazine plus other purchases.


Absolute standouts for me though?

Kingmaker. 

Junta.

(Sorry folks its been another bad year for the budget, what you think I am stashing it all in my Swiss Bank account? And no I was not at the bank when you tried to assassinate me!)

ultimateduck

Dungeons and Dragons.

There are a couple of apps that allow you to play the D&D tabletop game (and other games) in a virtual world with your friends. I just don't have the time to sit around for several hours at a time and game like that anymore.

cameltosis

Whilst I had a lot of fun with board games as a child, and I still play Chess, Risk and Monopoly on a fairly regular basis, I disagree that old board games were the best.

I've only recently started getting back into board games, but I get the impression that there has been somewhat of a renaissance in the last 5-10 years, especially with crowdfunding. There are an absolute ton of new games to suit a whole variety of playstyles.

My favourite modern board game is Zombicide. It's basically a computer game in board game format - you kill, you get xp, you level up, you loot weapons etc. Great fun, pretty easy to learn but still sometimes hard to complete. 2-10 players.

Also got a love for Citadels, though that is card game rather than an actual board. Pretty tactical and fun to play with people you know well (lots of psychology involved!)

Amathe

Also, shout outs for Traveller and Feudal.

Mendel

Monopoly!  Was there anything better than sitting at a table, casually dropping a couple of $10s on the floor and yelling "Money on the floor".  When everyone else dived under the table to scramble for that loose money, I'd casually raid the bank for a couple $50 or $100s to replace the dropped cash.  That worked way, way longer than it should have.

In college, Risk, Spades, and Bridge were the games of choice in the dorm.  Of course, there were ways to gamble on these.

In the gaming groups, there were a variety of miniatures rules we used, plus any number of SPI/AH board games, plus other publishers.  We played lots of Reach for the Stars, and lots of odd other games.  When SPI started to produce their monster games, we did those, particularly Terrible Swift Sword and War in Europe.  We were even allowed to set up a game in the Air Force ROTC building for a quarter at a time.

Our collective group "discovered" D&D in December, 1975.  Role-playing took over the good bit of the majority of the group's time, with D&D, Swords & Sorcery, Tunnels and Trolls, and RuneQuest (Chaosium) and Empires of the Petal Throne campaigns (the last run by a entomology grad student) being worked into the group rotation for the next few years.

In my senior year (78-79), most of the AF ROTC types had graduated, and most of us moved to the group in the History department.  This group liked Diplomacy and other board games, and due to the larger number of high school students there, D&D was a staple. 

Amathe

rojoArcueid said:

My favorite board game as a kid was Parcheesi, played it almost every day.

As it happens, life is Parcheesi. Do you use your rolls to advance all 4 tokens a little at a time? Or send one token first all the way around? That decision is one I make every hour of my workday. Make a little progress on 4 projects, or on one substantially. 

Iselin

Avalon Hill's Panzer Blitz and its early '80s computer offspring, Kampfgruppe. I was a war gamer first and the very first computer game I ever got for the Atari 8-bit was Chris Crawford's Eastern Front.