.title Board Games

Lots of people have been talking about favorite board games [0][1][2] and probably many more.
I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon.

Here are a few games that I like.
I don't know if they're my favorites, because I don't really play very many, but they are ones I want to share.

.\" crazy eights
.title Crazy Eights

This is a game that I found on pagat [3].
It's not exactly a board game, given that it's played with a standard deck of cards, but it's close enough.

Crazy Eights is a pretty simple game and there are many variations of it.
The goal is to get rid of all of your cards by placing one card per turn (with some restrictions).

You can only place a card down if it:

1. Matches the suit of the top card.

2. Matches the rank of the top card.

3. Is an 8 (wild card, you choose the new suit).

There are 4 special cards.

1. Wild card: 8s. You can play an 8 on any other card and you announce the suit that it's acting as. e.g. you could play an 8 and it could act like a Spades.

2. Draw two: 2s.
If there are two players Alice and Bob, and Alice plays a 2, then Bob has two choices:
he either draws 2 cards or he can play his own 2.
If he plays his own, and Alice doesn't have another 2, then now she draws 4 cards.
With three 2s in play, they would draw 6 cards.

3. Skip turn: Queens.

4. Reverse order: Ace.

I play this game a lot with my fiancee and lose at it a lot, but it's good fun and doesn't require too much thinking.

.\" secret hitler
.title Secret Hitler

Secret Hitler [4] is a fun "social deduction" game that's a lot of fun with a large group of people (like 8 or so).

The idea behind it is that there are two teams of players: the fascists and the liberals.
The liberals have the majority (in an 8 player game, there will be 5 liberals).
The fascists have one member that is "Secret Hitler."

The liberals want to pass as many liberal policies as possible, because they win if enough get passed.
The fascists want to pass fascist policies, and after enough of them, a special win condition is unlocked (in addition to being able to win with enough fascist policies).

Each round consists of somebody becoming president (in order, around the table) and that president chooses someone else to be their chancellor.
The president then draws from a pile 3 policies which are either fascist or liberal, and discards one of them, then hands the remaining 2 to the chancellor.
The chancellor chooses a policy out of those two and it becomes law.
Once enough fascist policies are in play, if Secret Hitler ever becomes chancellor, then the fascists win.

Throughout the game, no one really knows who the others are, whether they're liberals, fascists, or Secret Hitler.
You have to try to deduce who is on your team and who isn't.

The rest of the game is in the social nature of it.
Pretty much everyone wants to make themselves known as a liberal, so you're constantly trying to sound in favor of liberal policies even if you aren't.

If you play this, one of the best things to do is choose someone to pick on and try to convince everyone that they're Secret Hitler.
"Oh of course you'd do that, Hitler" or knowingly hand them two fascist policies so they look like the bad guy (of course, cover for yourself with "oh no, look I'm really sorry but it's not me").
Just try to hide that evil smirk as you do it.

.\" snake oil
.title Snake Oil

Snake Oil [5] is another fun game that we play a lot.
This game is comparitively much simpler: there are no teams, only two types of cards, and a simple task.
The goal of each round is to convince people to buy a product that you're selling, made up of cards from your hand.

Each game starts with dealing every player 7 "product" cards.
These make up each player's hand and are things like "meat," "disaster," "moon," etc.

In each round, a player gets a turn being a particular role of person like "baby sitter," "cheerleader," or "couch potato."
It is every other player's job to try to come up with a product using 2 cards from their hand and try to sell that product to the main one.

For instance, if Alice is a cheerleader, then Bob might try to sell her "disaster meat" which he markets as
"There's always that one person on the cheer team that you don't like.
And as a cheerleader, you want to find the easiest way to ensure they don't come to practice to steal your boys!
I present: disaster meat.
On the day of cheer practice, you can just sneak this into their dinner and everywhere they go, they'll be followed by disasters!"

Of course, there are other ways you could sell each product.
Maybe disaster meat just gives them a stomach bug?
Or maybe you'd rather sell a meat disaster, which manifests itself as a tornado of meat.

With a large crowd of creative people, this game is a blast.

.ref gopher://baud.baby:70/0/phlog/fs20190528.txt

.ref gopher://gopher.black:70/1/phlog/20190529-board-games

.ref gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/board-and-card-games.txt

.ref https://www.pagat.com/eights/crazy8s.html

.ref https://www.secrethitler.com/

.ref https://www.amazon.com/Hasbro-C0900-Snake-Oil-Game/dp/B01HH0NTOE