Yuck. More games with giant molded plastic pieces. That's all we need. Gaudy.

[dawns flame retardant suit]

Railroad Tycoon is a great game, my wife recently bought it for me. She paid just over £50 Sterling for it. ( I live in the UK) So with the exchange rate as it is at the moment she paid more than a wacking $100 for it. Was it worth it? Hell yes!!!!

Haa, just read this list... and unfortunately that is about $450 US.

(ok, slight sarcasm)

I just traded mine. The box I shipped it in was perfect and still it cost almost $30 to ship because of the weight.

Shares are public, so yes you do. Any smaller and you wouldn't be able to see them from across the enormous board.

I got an e-mail on Tuesday that these are about to ship from Fair Play Games! Yea!

As someone who goes nuts over nice game "bits" and storage boxes, this was a no-brainer purchase.

Next up is finally getting around to my 3-D Kill Doctor Lucky mansion.

Or a Seafarer expansion? I guess one wpuld ned a secound wooden chest to fit it all then

Overproduced?

I think you can demand that type of content for THIS price!!

My husband and I bought this for my mom & dad when it first came out and my mom quickly solved this problem by making colored markers to represent the various types of land tiles. (She glued colored to the flat side of those glass blobs they use in flower vases, but there are lots of other things you could do.) Put the markers in a cup, pull one at a time, select the matching land type and away you go....

I'm happy to say that this game (not necessarily the 3D version, but it probably helped) transformed my dad from a you-gotta-beg-him to a when-do-we-start game player. In fact, he returned the favor this year and gave us a copy for Christmas.

It really is very beautiful and more fun to play. Especially putting the flags on the knights.

The random set up is a cinch -- just shuffle the right number of cards of each terrain type (including one of the special upgrade cards to represent the dessert). Then deal them out in the islands shape -- replacing each card with the right terrain as you set up.

The deluxe set is the only way to play Settlers! Worth every penny -- expecially if you bought it at $200 or less from an internet seller.

7, I believe. 7 Epochs, 4000BC-1914AD. Of course, you can draft Axis and Alliex peieces for Epoch 8 if you like.

I agree that the bits for this game are GREAT! I also agree that you can sort each Epoch in the sectioned box that this game comes in--save your money for other games instead of buying storage boxes for this one. If you really hate to sort the colors each game, just buy some snack-sized baggies for about $1.59 for a box of 50 or so!

Don't forget they don't have those baggies in countries where governments care how bad they are for the ecosystem.

Then how in hell does one wrap up a sandwich?

I'll second that. Distinguishing eras in play is important and these don't do the job out of the box. Stick to counters.

For those who don't know the game, I just wish to point out that the motherships serve not only as dice, but also to keep track of ship upgrades, by means of various attachments. Not that it couldn't have been made with a small player board and cardboard pieces... But then it wouldn't have been so cool, of course.

Yes, I had to go and check that too. Hmm...

Cock and ball torture?

the ships are flimsy, but the publishers must know this, since they have sent me replacements when asked without giving me grief.

Yes me too.

Who writes this phrase so often that they need to shorten it?

This is certainly one of the most lavishly produced board games I've ever seen.

I'd say this one in not OVERproduced. It just comes with what you need to play it. More descriptive words would be: massive, epic, expensive; but not overproduced.

This game does not belong (as much) on this list. Most of the pieces are just functional cardboard, though attractive. If anything, the little plastic ships are underproduced, because it's not always easy to tell the ship types apart.

It is of course way too big and takes for-frigging-ever to play.

Not overproduced - to my mind
just heaps of the coolest spaceship miniatures I have ever seen in a boardgame -
I just like it as it is.
And I'd sure like to see an expansion or two with other miniatures

What part of EPIC don't u understand? This game is great (time consuming) and definately not overproduced, maybe over-conceived, but not overproduced...

Although I love this game, I was amazed at the empty space in the box.

I have this game, it kicks butt!

Crazy part is are all the counters solely dedicated to *bookkeeping*.

At least an optional character sheet would have been nice...!

aka. Washu! ^O^

I just bought this, it weighs a ton, I had to manhandle it home on the train from work, can't wait to play it.

The big box is to hold all the expansions in. Of course they actually don't fit, so I end up carrying around two of the expansion boxes as well, one to hold all the mini's, and one to hold all the game tiles.
I love this game, wish I could find more players to play.

A lot of work for the Invader player (always me). I must like over-produced games, is WAR OF THE RING on this list?
I'll bet it is, now I must keep reading.

80mm Cyberdemon... that one was the "wow" for me.

That demon (in two pieces!) never fails to impress.

For best results, don't take him out for the others to see, keep him bagged seperately. The first time they hit that last room he's in....boom, lasting impression of that particular game session forever and ever.

Actually, I like that, since the invader player's monsters are limited based on the number of marines in play. It's far more difficult to "accidentally" go over the limit when the marines can point and say "Umm... why's that one red?"

Descents OLDER brother.

The continues good sales of this excellent example of the 80's classics is evidence that overproduction was the way to go. This is the usual stepping stone to more involved and less well-produced war games.

A+ 20 years ago and still an A+

I kind of found that statement humorous since miniatures gaming predates cardboard gaming by a long shot.

Not entirely true, as a grognard my first experience with wargaming was chess. Afterall chess is nothing more than a battle on a defined board with pieces that have defined movements.

A&A is a neat game for what it intends to be. I personally will not play it since I own far too many other wargames and euros that I find personally more appealing. When I see people playing it the thing that most strikes me is there are two camps.

1: "This game is complex and difficult" - Those types tend to never get into wargaming at any level beyond A&A

2: "Why can't I do more with this game" - These types eventually end up finding wargaming is more up their alley.

It was among the first stepping stones I took into being a euro gamer believe it or not.

refer to "chess"?

Three years later, and my fingers are still bleeding.

Not only do I own this, and have played it, but another of my game group (although WHY, I don't know) owns it as well. We've played this game many times. I'm sorry, but it's true.

As a matter of fact, when two of us were playing a one-on-one game of the LAST game on this list (A&A), we were simultaneously discussing the fact that we needed to play another round of this monster.

Of course, we have some house rules... but none of them changes the game system, or makes it into something else.

There's a GOOD game in there! Sure, it's got its flaws... but why buy another game you HOPE is going to be the game you thought this was when a few simple tweaks will fix the one you already own. Suggestions included in my game rating comment.

Also, there's less dissappointment this way when 'another civ. game doesn't pan out', which I've heard all too often, here.

I also firmly believe in this. And I think that, with a little tweaking WITHOUT changing the rules, this game could become much less stressing.

For example, a clever done income track (like that in A&A) can reduce the bookkeeping. The use of combat cards (with just 3 types, "INF", "CAV" and "ART") could replace that dumb "hide behind any screen (not included in this game) your selected unit" rule AND bring a lot of useful information to the user (like how many dice, attacking power, cost, strong vs./ weak vs., etc). Painting the units bases with the era colour (green, purple, yellow, red) can ease a lot the purchasing proccess...

I really like this game, the idea, the production values, the sense of building something big and unique, it's so sad the poorly conceived finishing of the rules make that come for such a high price.

This game just kind of makes me sad. My wife and I picked it up thinking that it was going to be God's personal gift to us. And we pulled it out, and we read copious rules, we re-read those same rules to make sure we had them, we punched bits, we trimmed spars, we bagged pieces, we set up and we played. And it was good.

And we played again a week later, and it was still good but not as good.
About 4 games in we realized that the secret to victory was taking all the Gems and Wine like homeless people fighting over a hamburger. There is a seperation in life between the haves and the have-nots. That pretty much killed it for me.

This game looks good, since yous dont want to use them I am willing to buy them.

I think they're hoping that people will think they're getting their money's worth on this lame game if they consider the price per pound

OTOH, we'll be able to pick up some nice bits for use in other games when these anchors are priced to move after the holidays

I got this as a Christmas present, the "chest" version (it comes cheaper in a box too), as has been said the game is very lame. I suppose you could transpose some of the pieces with Buccaneer, but then that has some nice pieces anyway.

I picked this up at borders because it looked cool and I wanted to try a different boardgame. This was of course before I knew BGG existed otherwise I wouldn't have wasted my money after reading some reviews. I've been thinking about putting the cloth map to use with ships and rules from the Pirates of the Spanish Main and it's expansions. Instead of measuring movement with card edges one could easily do it using the square hexes on the map. Treasure to plunder could be set up in the Dread Isle i'm pretty sure it could work with some rule variants.

Games like this make me sad. The components are awesome, and deserve a better game to make them worthwhile.

Sadly the gameplay itself is a bit shoddy, but i recieved this box (the nice wooden one) for christmas, and we play it simply to pull it out.

Its absolutely beautiful. I did modify it a bit though, replacing the round "gems" with actual gem-shaped gems from the local craft store. I think with a little bit of clever re-thinking, the game could actually be quite fun. Sadly its impossible to enjoy because its so stinking poorly thought out.

good photo

Man, I'd like to see this one up close. That is, without the need to shell out a grand...

Gamers on a budget should snap up Fackler's Die Mauer, a smart little bluffing game, or Nasenspiel, a neat tile game you nose you'll like.

Or in this case, 200 copies @ €2600.

(See bottom of

http://www.zeitstein.de/abtei.html

for price.)

They even have a play marketing the game:

http://www.zeitstein.de/grossabtei.html

This was the first one that came to mind when I saw the title

And you used to be able to play it most years at Essen - I did, and it's a quite good game

Made with wood & cardboard, maybe £20, and I would buy it

Here's a picture of some of the playing pieces:

Wouldn't a high dollar GO board, stones and bowls go for a LOT higher than this? One could spend more than $20,000 on top-notch handcrafted equipment!

!! I didn't know this carried a price tag like this!
I bought a portable version from a charity shop for £1.50; you need an electron microscope to see the pieces and, frankly, the game is dull and unending

Actually it's not even close to beeing the most expensive board game out there: http://www.charleshollandercollection.com/backgammon.html

Real fancy go boards can go up to $20.000. Not to mention gold encrusted antique gobans going for 100k ( http://everything2.com/title/goban