What is your favorite AT game that you can't get on the table?

No, I'm not talking about the combined weight of all the Arkham Horror boxes or the unwieldy quantity of Zombies!!! expansions.

What is your favorite AmeriTrash game that you can't get people to play anymore?

I have posed the question here in Classic AT, because I'm assuming that modern AT games tend to be more acceptable to gamers in general than the older AT, but go ahead and name a modern AT game if that's your favorite that you can't get played.

And as a follow-up question... Why do your gaming buddies dislike this game?

For me, it's a toss-up between these three games:

1. Vampire: Prince of the City. Okay, it's got some hybrid aspects, but this very attractive game has some strong AT qualities, right down to the little character sheets with the special abilities. The game does a reasonable job of capturing the theme of vampires struggling to control the city.

But my gaming group is divided on the game. 50% of them have little interest in anything that White Wolf has ever published, so they won't even try it. The other 50% are big fans of the old World of Darkness, so they have some resentment that this game is set in the fairly similar new World of Darkness. And they played it once, but found the central mechanics of bidding then rolling dice to be somewhat dry. I spent a couple hours downloading stuff that re-themed the game for old World of Darkness, but my friends still aren't interested.

2. Strange Synergy. Yes, it's a crappy-looking modern Steve Jackson game, which is two strikes right away. But as a long-term fan of comics, I feel that this game does a great job of simulating two teams of superhuman characters fighting it out. The rules are very simple, but the powers add some complexity and strategy. I especially like that more than half the powers are initially secret until revealed by use. To overcome the crappy appearance of the components, I found a website for somebody's Champions campaign that had decent and original character art for over 200 superheroes and supervillains. I picked out about 100 pictures that I liked best, and formatted them up as new components for my copy of Strange Synergy. And I even picked up a bunch of extra bases from SJGames, and painted them in different colors so that up to nine players could engage in one giant battle royale with 27 characters in total.

And it turns out that only one of my friends likes the game as much as I do. We got in a couple of moderately big games (including a 5-player), but most of our group doesn't really get into superhero comics, so they weren't feeling the theme. And sometimes the endgame drags out a bit when some people have been eliminated and the few remaining characters are somewhat stalemated by the way their attacks and defenses match up.

3. The Roaring '20s. Pick up and deliver games generally bore me senseless, especially the rail games. But this delivery game has a cool AT theme... gangsters rob businesses, evade pursuit by police cars and then "deliver" their loot to their secret hideouts. Squealing tires, roadblocks, bribery, graft, and mob hits, this game has it all, with a really neat streetmap and a surprisingly succint rulebook.

In primordial times (okay, the early '80s), my high school gaming crowd played the hell out of this game. We just loved it. But my current gaming group played just once. They liked it, but started whining when we approached the two-hour mark, so I yanked most of the remaining deck and discarded it, to save them from the misery of playing a three-hour game. But really, there is no good reason why we aren't playing Roaring '20s more often. I'm going to browbeat my Call of Cthulhu group into trying it soon, even though at least half of them tried it that one other time. Maybe I can bribe them with sanity points and beer. Especially beer.

I haven't been able to get Runebound (which I bought with 5 expansions) or Fortress America (bought it a year ago-when it was new I was too busy with Battletech) to the table at all. Ever. Never played them. I intended Runebound to be played at least once this month but then I got Dune, Origins: How we Became Human, and a bunch of wargames. Some guys I game with occasionally talk about FA but it hasn't happened yet.

But of all the problems I have, too many games seems to be one of the better ones.

I haven't played TI3 in ages, after playing up to 10 times (I didn't "log" them ) in a short period of time. I don't own the game though.

Where's Steve Avery? His entire collection belongs on this list.

I love STAR WARS: THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT but it's one of those that never sees the light of day...problem is, if I have only 2 players I'm probably going to be doing a more serious wargame.

Dune.

I've only been able to get it on the table once in the past 3 year. My friends just didn't understand that they were in the presence of greatness. Philistines the lot of them

-Will

Punch 'em in the face until they understand. It works better than The Voice.

Seconded on Strange synergy. Great Game.

But....its got to be Circus Imperium. Little do my friends know that I am creating *the* Circus imperium set to end all other sets.
Huge board, Chariots, great fearsome beasts...all its going to be missing is real blood. For that I have to wait for Ken Bradford to visit Atlanta again...

Steve"BoyontheBend"Avery

If there's ever a king crowned for the Island of Misfit Games, it's got to be Steve Avery. No one likes any game he owns, and as such he may as well list his entire game collection in this thread.

I can't seem to get Britannia to fly past my "OMG its risk" group. The very same people who have played History of the World by candlelight when the power went out. Bah!

But really, I have problems trying to get anyone to play a game in the 2+ hour range these days.

Attention spans have suffered so much thanks to Euros...it used to be "Hey guys, six hour game?" followed by "Can we play CIV afterwards?" Now people hem and haw about anything over 2 hours...but there again, they'll play six hours worth of 30-90 minute games without batting an eye.

Yes, the arbitrary two-hour time limit is really getting to be a pain. Maybe it's the result of some kind of additive to the Mountain Dew formula, leading to a chemical erosion of the human attention span. I'm thinking about starting a new boardgame group called The Big Game Society. We will meet once a month to play a single long game, with a different game each time. Then I can finally play Twilight Imperium, knock the dust off my Divine Right box, and possibly even play my third game of Civilization.

Alternatively, maybe I should start going to GenCon again. People are willing to play one game for 3.5 hours there.

I can't get Space Hulk to hit the table to save my life Played it, maybe, once in
the past two years.

Alternatively, maybe I should start going to GenCon again. People are willing to play one game for 3.5 hours there.

Heh. I played TI3 for the first time at Gencon. It was a newb game. All told, we were at it for six hours and it went by like a breeze. My non-lengthy-game liking friends were dumbfounded.

billyz wrote:

I can't get Space Hulk to hit the table to save my life Played it, maybe, once in
the past two years.

You poor bastard.

My 40k group is currently taking a break while we wait for 5th edition (to see whether we will adopt it or not). In the meantime we've dusted off Space Hulk as our game of choice. Matter of fact I'm packing up my set right now. Today we unleash Deathwing and its rules for custom force lists. Muhahah...

-Will

Basically all of them due to lack of like-minded gamers in my area - one group is mainly euro gamers with about 75% refusing to play most ATish games, while our small club is mainly minis gamers and they are sometimes keen to try out games I bring but most of the time they can't because they are doing warhammer or bloodbowl leagues. I have taken Fortress America along for three consecutive weeks and have yet to get one person to say "I'll play" ... in fact I felt insulted for this Grail of AT when last week the available gamers chose to play that stupid tile game Galaxy Trucker instead !

Bulwyf wrote:
In the meantime we've dusted off Space Hulk as our game of choice. Matter of fact I'm packing up my set right now. Today we unleash Deathwing and its rules for custom force lists. Muhahah...

-Will[/quote]

I hate you.