5 surprisingly savage board games that will test your friendships
Dicebreaker
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Some board games look like sweet and chilled experiences when, in actuality, they’re all about screwing over the competition however you can. Here are five surprisingly savage board games that will test your friendships.
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11.04.2022
52 card pick up 😉
I FORGOT HOW MUCH I LIKE JOHNNY. As in my favorite YouTuber not anything weird.
Ticket to ride. I’ve played a couple times, and watched my friends start yelling over the pieces or because I screwed up their path is hilarious. It’s been a while though. I should play again.
I describe the logic of "No Thanks" as something like everyone is treading water, and you can VERY easily grab one other player and drag them down with you. When you take someone's perfect "gap filler" card, you know damn well that card is pure pain for you, just much worse pain for the victim. Usually when this happens though, yeah, no chance either player are winning that hand.
I have one for this list, and don't laugh too hard, but Storage Wars.
Yes the game based on the TV show and unlike most games like that this one is actually good.
It is pretty basic, a few items get put in 4 lockers. You bid on the lockers with your starting cash. If you run out of cash you have to sell items at half price. Each character has two colors worth double at end of game so you don't want to sell those.
There are 3 rounds of 4 lockers. Easy enough.
HOWEVER….
It is also cutthroat. You can put bad items in a locker you know someone will bid on then bid them up.
You can try to run them out of money on the first 2 lockers just so you can get the last 2 for cheap.
It can get UGLY fast.
Lol..oh can you please draw out this section anymore. Your dredging the bottom of the barrel here.
Mine is definitely munchkin, but thats cos a friend of mine always races to the finish before anyone can challenge them. Makes it kinda boring after a while
any online game that allows chat becomes an exercise in diplomacy/building up a thick skin/war …
My wife's family refuses to play "Ticket to Ride" with me anymore because I "take the fun out of it." Also, if I die unexpectedly it's probably a result of my wife and I playing 2-person "Blokus." 🙂
What about evolution
If I remember right that one gets kinda vicious
Diplomacy is the undisputed king here.
Still have the box.
1830 is also extremely savage.
Your examples are the more modern games whose savagery has been nerfed- all for the better.
Stone Age. A friend of mine and myself, we think alike. And when seating next to each other while playing this was a real test of patience, as we both tried to do the same strategies every turn.
Brass: Birmingham is pretty savage. There's nothing like being debt free while your opponents take out loan after loan in an attempt to get their industries into a groove. You understand how 19th century industrialists went about crushing their rivals' hopes and dreams.
Have you tried Exploding Kittens? I think it fits purrfectly on this list.
Why not include timestamps or a list??
5. Azul
4. Wingspan
3. No Thanks
2. Root
1. Cornish Smuggler
In my experience, Carcassonne is more cutthroat than any of the games mentioned on this list.
Perhaps not surprising, but I find City Of Horror as the ultimate F*** You! game. Each player has a team of three survivors trying to shelter from the zombie hordes waiting for a rescue copter. Then just as it looks like the zombies are about to break in, the survivors vote which of them gets thrown to the zombies as a sacrifice.
I don't know if it's surprising but I've literally lost friends over Diplomacy
Azul taking more than 5 rounds means you already lost.
Arboretum, DEFINITELY. There is no indication at first glance that there will be any real interaction at all, let alone meannes, but when you spend your first game building up a beautiful garden of trees and then realize your opponent has built their hand so you don't score 75% of it, a little piece of your heart turns to stone.
Ah, No thanks was played on korean show The Genius!
The Game of Thrones Boardgame can be pretty brutal amongst friends.
Photosynthesis: Tree Warfare edition. It's literally a game about casting shade on your opponents and trying to steal all the sunlight.
We all said it looked cutesy until about 3 turns in, and then we realized the horror we had wrought.
For me: Santiago is #1 for this list
Splendor. Splendor is mostly a bunch of quiet contemplating, poker chips clacking together, interspersed with shouts of "You fuck!" as someone takes the card or chip that you need.
The host reminds me of David Mitchell….
If you ever want to play a rage-inducing, vein popping game try to find a copy of Curse of the Mummy's Tomb. Long out of print, it features a 3d board where you try to avoid traps and a vengeful relentless mummy. The other players can conspire to move the mummy into your path or inflict other obstacles through cards. It is fantastic, and terrible.
King Maker, Fief.
Forget the board games, 16:47 is the really surprisingly savage part.
Possible Honorable Mention: Tigris and Euphrates. on it's surface it's a simple tile laying game, but deep down it's about destroying everyone… so many turns sitting pretty at the end of my turn, only to be completely desolated by the time it comes back around to me… such a fun, backstabby, game.
Five Kings. There have been many a "You suck" argument in my family over this game.
Junta. The classic board game definitely but even the reissue can make people cry or stomp out the room. It’s distilled pure meanness.
Hey That's My Fish – cutesy little penguins just gathering fishies….which actually means scheming to block off all other players, muahhahhaa!
Carcassonne is far from chill. It's every bit as brutal as Azul if not more so. Enclosing someone's farmer so they can't score any points? Placing a tile just-so that it's going to make that 20 point city someone's been working nearly impossible to complete? Sneaking in on someone's massive city at just the last moment so that you score all the points from their hard work? Placing that key tile that gives you two farmers in a massive field to your opponents one? I've rarely felt as angry in games as when someone really effs you in Carcassonne.
"I can't believe you left out….." 😛
Well, let's start of by mentioning Diplomacy. Yes, THAT game. I have seen people nearly come to blows during that game and I've only played it twice. It was NOT for me!
Next up is RISK. Yep, another grand old one. I have played it so many times that it got boring; lots of better game are around nowadays. I nearly lost a friend over that game once, but I saw two friends argue over it and I think they still are enemies – because of that game.
Civilization. Not Sid Meier's game, the really old one by Avalon Hill from the early 80's. You have a civ from the stone age to the iron age. You expand your civ building cities and go to war some times. You trade every round and buy advances, for instance Pottery or Sail Making, and you shift calamities to other players while trading – and snicker while the player looses cities and people. It can be so mean but on the other hand it can be civil – if the players want it to be so.
Rumis (or Blokus-3D looks) like a nice coloured kids building block puzzle game. There's no luck, and you win by building over your opponents and starving them of options. It's beautifully and unexpectedly competitive and vicious.
Voyages of Marco Polo
You guys have been watching too many old episodes of Top Gear – you sound just like them. Need to develop a less irritating style.
Bohnanza aka the bean game.
Just refusing to take a donation, a gift, from another player is enough to turn a game.
Aha. I was watching the Winsgpan bit going "But we play this and don't find it super-competitive at all". Then I discovered we play on the blue side of the goal scoreboard and you apparently play the green side. Props for Stonemaier for offering both options.
Diplomacy. Nothing says stick it to your friends, severely, like Diplomacy 😈😈😈😈
Root. Sounds like a war game.
Carcassone with two players is like Azul. The fights over the posession of a lawn is much more important than all the points from the towns and streets. My wife alienated me with all her new dirty tricks of placing tiles, so I loose my lawn and can never reclaim it! Grrrr lol
Someone forgot Diplomacy from Avalon Hill.
Fascinating, I have never heard of any of these board games. In my family there is only one game that has tested our relationship and that is the economic game MONOPOL, perhaps because of it's economic nature and most of my family including myself are sore losers. Fiercest was it between my brother and I and it usually ended with us having to enlist another family member acting as the rule book because we both suspected the other for cheating.
One that always throws off our gaming friends is how savage Tokaido can get as you add more players. There have definitely been plenty of moments where someone narrowly snatched a painting or made someone go hungry at the inn due to lack of money
An 8 hour Risk game back in 1992 ended not just one, but THREE long term friendships. I haven't talked to those guys in almost thirty years. Screw them, Mongolia, Irkutsk and Siberia…
I was gonna comment about AZUL, but you already made it the very first image you showed. Yep. AZUL…
Add time stamps to your descriptions for heaven’s sakes…
Terraforming Mars can be brutal sometimes. Real bloodbath fighting for real estate.
And watch out for asteroids. 😂
Nevermind the video; why is there no Agricola in the comments?