Board Games on Facebook – Guest Article

5 Most Enjoyed Board Games On Facebook

With a zeal to present the latest information, applications, games, groups and activities, Facebook has become one of the most-preferred social networking sites. A friendly source and a medium to never lessen your interest. Facebook gives you the opportunity to interact with your friends using different stylish and trendy interactives. While you play a quiz or become a part of groups, you can also enjoy some of the most-enjoyed board games on Facebook. So pick your game from the list mentioned below and confront your pals to play your board game on facebook.

Note: We here at BestDangGames.com still recommend the good old family game night. The experience of being face to face at the table can’t be duplicated online. This is why board games remain a popular means of getting away from the computer screen. However, playing online gives you more opportunities to play so it’s a great way to meet new people and pass time between game nights.

Backgammon
Backgammon is rooted with the elements of luck and some methods that you can follow to play and succeed against another facebook player. You search and add this application and a list of rooms will be displayed for you to pick from. Some rooms have players waiting for someone to join in whereas in other rooms you can actually watch two players playing. So spin your virtual dice, shift the pieces and open your own room if you want to begin your own game.

Skype is the basic tool that needs to be installed and in a running mode so as to activate the game of backgammon. Skype services gives you the benefit to interact with the game opponent’s via chat, speak over VoIP and transfer photos and other files.

Chess Pro
The experts who created Scrabulous on facebook also made this brain game application. Chess Pro is a heroic game which requires mind power and observation. You just don’t have to take the pains to stay online while opponent is online.

When you begin the game you will see a board of chess on your facebook profile. The game will have the horses and the knights where all the pieces try to overpower the king by confronting in various directions. Your task is All you need to do is to drag and drop your men around the board and then click on “Play Move” to make your move final. Then you can relax and wait for your opponent to make their move. The chat screen enables you can use to send messages to your opponent while the game is going on.

Scrabulous
Scrabble as we all know is a game based on word formation. Facebook introduced the same game by naming it Scrabulous. It involves the basic rules of scrabble to arrange and create meaningful words out of the alphabets picked up randomly by the players. It is a learning game as it helps in vocabulary development. So defeat your friends by using language skills and challenge them by playing Scrabulous on Facebook. You get a chance to have fun, relax and also brush your language skills. So try to be the Scrabulous champion in your group.

Reversi / Othello
Just get your friends or anyone to join you in building the strategy and using smart brains to play Reversi / Othello on facebook. The way you play it is simple and neat.

There are little green dots on the board at different positions where you can move your pieces to. You can chat with your opponent while you play using the message board. Make as many of the pieces as you can your color and you win. So get on to challenge your pals in this strategy game and make sure you wear the thinking cap first.

Monopoly
This is one board game that is presented in various themes by many changes and alterations. Facebook too has created its version of Monopoly. Here, you can play the game of Monopoly by completing against three other computer generated players. It easy for the player as it involves simple steps and has no hard rules to learn.

So get the dice rolling, shift your pieces and purchase your assets. Place your hotels and houses just as you play in the Monopoly board game. The benefit is that the money count is in the middle of the board so you’ll always know how much you can lend out. It’s tough to judge what the other player is upto as it moves really quickly. So go ahead in making business out of this money.

Author Bio: Aum has been part of board gaming info over 10 months now and part of the web industry over 2 years now.
You can see more of Aum’s posts at his website http://www.boardgaminginfo.com/

Get your board game fix at www.BestDangGames.com

New Website Launch

We’re excited about the launch of our new website at http://www.BestDangGames.com. We’re now offering customers the freedom to pick and choose the games they want with our Create Your Own Bundle discount program and an additional discount of FREE shipping with an order of $100 or more. The best thing is that your bundle discount is given right away, not during your next order or after an accumulation of “points” that other dealers offer. Add that fact to our excellent base sale pricing and you can’t go wrong.

In addition, we offer full site SSL encrypted secure shopping on a speedy server so you can get it done quickly. Other features include partial search, advanced search, game description display toggles, multiple browsing options, and more!

We are always looking for feedback so we welcome your comments and suggestions. Give us a look today. http://www.BestDangGames.com

Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande Games Offers an Interview

We have been a little slow to edit and post our interviews. We have a few of them in the pipeline. We got a chance to speak with Jay Tummelson, the owner of Rio Grande Games. His game publishing company is responsible for most of the great European Family Strategy Games that make their way over to the US. Rio Grande Games is a consistant winner of the Spiel Des Jahres award (German Game of the Year).

Some of his stand-out games include:

• Carcassonne
• Puerto Rico
• Dominion
• Stone Age
• Race For The Galaxy
• Power Grid
• Lost Cities
• Thurn & Taxis
• Zooloretto
• Galaxy Trucker

That list goes on and on. If you want to learn a few strategy tips and see what makes Jay and Rio Grande tick, give this set of interviews a listen.

In this one, he speaks to us about the popularity of Dominion and how Dominion: Intrigue works with it.

In this portion of the interview, he talks about his take on what Rio Grande Games and Strategy Games are all about and why his company enjoys making them. He also talks about his philosophy on why allowing people to demo his games is important to him.

Working With World-Class Customer Service

What’s more valuable to you? Price or service? Would you pay a few more bucks for the same product if you knew it was backed by quality service?

We had an experience recently that spotlighted the benefits of working with a high-quality company that believes in customer service and in the end, doing what was right for the customer.

Here is what happened.

In late June, we had a customer pick up our Arkham Horror bundle – almost $200 in games. This is not a small order. They get the package and showed their game group – the game group says “not interested – don’t like the theme”.  So, this customer calls me up and tells me this story. He starts asking me about a series of other games he wants to get and that he is going to trade or sell off the Arkham bundle. I told him to send it back to us and we would provide him the 125% money back guarantee.  The experience of gaming is what we sell, and I wanted him to have a positive gaming experience. The games had not even been opened, so I assumed I could just restock them into inventory. They are popular enough that I was not concerned.

So, he ships them back to us – but he shipped them to Amazon because some of the products in the bundle were originally shipped to him from there, while the rest was shipped from a supplier – rather than shipping them back to our posted address.

I was unaware this had occured, until it had already happened and Amazon had received the package. Mind you, we had already sent him replacement games. So, we were out the Arkham bundle, the replacement games, AND the multiple shipping costs – this was to the tune of about $400 now.

Amazon was confused and considered it a “problem package” and tossed it to the side – possibly never to be seen again.

I went back and forth with Support to see what we could do. No dice. Just the runaround.

We finally got a supervisor involved. Immediately they waved the Terms of Service at me and said it was shipped incorrectly and they were not responsible for any of the package – even though some of the games in the package originally shipped from them. They also claimed it was impossible to find the box – but the box had my name on it and my business name on it. We even had tracking numbers to work from. The fact was that if Amazon did the “right thing” rather than what the Terms of Service said, they were certainly not going to take a ding on the bottom line. But, it vastly affected MY bottom line.

Essentially I told the supervisor that his company needed to step up and do the right thing – refund the cost of the lost products, find the box and put those games back into my inventory so they could be  resold, or ship the box to me and let me ship them back to Amazon correctly so they can go into inventory. Blah blah blah and it seemed like they might be destined to let this just go away – even though we were only talking about $146.00, as compared to some of their larger customers.

Last week (now September), I got an e-mail from them saying they were going to credit my account for the games. Then, this week, I see $146 credited to my account at Amazon.

NICE JOB AMAZON! TWO THUMBS UP FOR TAKING CARE OF YOUR CUSTOMER (no matter what the Terms of Service says). They treated me correctly!

I point this out becasue it is important which retailers you choose to buy from and unfortunately you don’t always know the good ones until you have a problem. That is whenthey shine or it fall on their face – when you actually care.

This is why we work with Amazon. They are the best at being an alternate sales channel and at fullfilment of customer’s orders. Are they the easiest to work with? No, there is a lot of labor that goes into shipping the games up to them. But, when we needed them, they were there.

Best Dang Games could be like the other companies. We could just put a picture of a box up on the site and sell it. You receive the package and everyone’s happy. But that’s not what we do. We sell the experience of the gaming hobby and introduce  you to the community. When we actually interact with you, as a customer, we do our best to remember you – especially if you are a returning customer.

We typically offer more information about the games you are buying, we offer you videos that show you how the game works, we provide player aids and links to the online rules, if they are available. We offer this blog you are reading and we offer news and updates via Twitter. 

We do this because you are buying more than a box. You are buying an advocate and a partner that wants to see you enjoy EVERY game you get from us. That’s why we don’t have the massive catalog of games other stores promote. We carry the BEST games. We have played most of the games we promote on our site.   We have turned away games from the site because we did not believe they qualified as a “best dang game”. This helps you sift through the mass of games that are available and allows you to focus your purchasing dollars on the good stuff. You don’t have to TRY something and if you don’t like it, trade it off. Technically, you don’t even have to do a ton of time-consuming research to compare this game to that game. We’ve done that for you. Our catalog is a “best of breed” catalog.

We have actually had people say “What’s wrong? You can’t compete on price, so you throw out the “quality service” tag line!”. I am sorry, but I think these people have missed the boat. Sure, WalMart may have the best prices, but when it comes to service, Costco has them beat – and people pay a membership to shop there.

The fact is this: Every online board game retailer is selling the same boxes. They are not all selling the same experience. What experience do you want?

Best Dang Games beleives we are giving you the best service and shopping experience available in the hobby gaming market and we hope you agree that service and caring about you, our customers, is more important to you than $1.00 or $3.00 on a game.

If you have had any experiences with us or other retailers that spotlight what we are saying (positive or negative) share them with everyone here as a comment on this article. We would love to see if we are off base on this or if more companies need to care about their customers first.

The Curious Case of the Tomb Board Game

About a year or so ago, AEG released a game called Tomb. It did not get a lot of fanfare at the time. As a matter of fact, we only sold a few copies of it, so we did not even stock it. This year, at GenCon, we met with some of the AEG folks and learned of an expansion for this game, called Cryptmaster. I even spent a little bit of time playing it. It seems promising – and we will get to that in a minute.

So, the premise of Tomb is fairly straightforward. Each player seeds the different tombs with Tomb cards, so it is mildly random – but some of the players have an inkling of what they can expect. Over a few turns, they recruit a raiding party, and they venture into the tomb for a hack-n-slash. This is supposed to be a get-in-get-out dungeon crawl where your raiding party is essentially monster fodder. The box says you should be able to play up to six people and it says the game length is about one to two hours.

The premise is great and our gaming group was revved up and ready to go. They like this kind of stuff, so it was a good bet to open the evening with this. Well, that was not the case.

This game was “broken” when we played with a full set of players. There were six people playing plus myself. We all wanted to really like this game and we wanted to believe that it was slow and plodding because we were learning the game. The game lasted for FOUR HOURS and it became a grind to get through.

Each player had a full raiding party of 5 characters, so there were tons of decisions on what to do, and each player’s turn lasted as long as 10-15 minutes each, so, that is an hour per round. There was very little of the players going back and “banking” treasure, recruiting more characters, drawing more cards, etc.

What started out as a fun adventure went on to be a boring monster kill session. People got up, got food, chatted with other friends, and Gary even mentioned that he had considered getting a shower. One of the players actually had to leave and go pick someone up and was gone for an hour or so. They came back and missed one turn. The essence of this game was lost somewhere in the process. Quick and dirty is how it is promoted!

So, this gets us back to GenCon and our meeting with AEG.

It seems that they are releasing an “expansion” for this game called Tomb: Cryptmaster. Now, I was hooked at the idea of this game from the demo – before I played Tomb.

I believe in the premise of the game, so I am still positive about Cryptmaster and its ability to fix the holes in the core game. Let me share with you what AEG told us (and I paraphrase):

“There were some issues with the original Tomb rules, so we adjusted them for this expansion. As a matter of fact, we would prefer that people buy the expansion as the core game and use the base game to expand your ability/weapons cards, quantity of characters, and a second stack of Tomb cards (about 40 go out per game and there are 200 in the box, so that’s a lot of cards). “

So, essentially the new Tomb expansion is the patch to Tomb. Which, if it plays well is great. Sadly, they should not have released a game that needed a patch.

Something else that is cool is that the new board has four entrances to the crypt. This is good, because it took people a turn or two to get to the back of the crypt. Now, they can zip out to the Inn and re-enter at the back of the crypt.

I am not going to spend a lot of words here spelling out all the changes to the rules that have been incorporated into this new “expansion”.

What I will say is that Best Dang Games was going to offer Tomb, because it seemed like a cool game. But after our experience with it, we are choosing not to carry this game (ALONE). We may try to play it one more time or two, to see if first impressions are accurate. Once Cryptmaster comes out, we will shoot to get a demo copy of that game with high hopes once again. If Cryptmaster passes the “fun” test, we will sell it as a single option and we will offer Tomb and Cryptmaster as a bundle together, since that is how it seems you should play it.

The rules for Cryptmaster are available for download.

If you own Tomb and had a similar experience, you may want to consider downloading these rules and using them, rather than the rules that came in the original box of Tomb. Here are the rules for Cryptmaster. If you have played this game, please leave comments to let us know if we are off base on this. If you went to GenCon and demoed Cryptmaster, let us know what you thought. We really want to like this game.

Chicago Express Video Posted

Our ongoing video reviewer, Cory Duplantis, has delivered yet another video for you. This one is a summary of how to play Chicago Express, the Wabash Cannonball reprint from Rio Grande Games. This is a simulation of running a railroad business in the upper portion of the US. If you are a fan of the train game genre, check it out!

Fluxx Card Game – Goals and the Keepers that Go With Them

Author – Chris Skinner

When playing the Fluxx card game, arguably the most important aspect is the end goal of the game.  One of the niftiest parts about this game is the fact that it doesn’t have a single end goal – it has multiple! 

While the Goals tell you exactly what you need right on them, the Keepers in your hand do not tell you which Goal they go with.  Since there are so many in the original, and even more in the newer versions, we’ve put together a list, forward and backwards, of the Goals you have and what Keepers go with them!

Listed By Goal

• Squishy Chocolate – Cholocate and Sun
• Star Gazing – Cosmos and Eye
• Interstellar Spacecraft – Rocket and Cosmos
• Time is Money – Time and Money
• Toast – Bread and Toaster
• All You Need is Love – Love and no other Keepers
• Dough – Bread and Money
• Hippyism – Peace and Love
• Night and Day – Moon and Sun
• Rocket to the Moon – Moon and Rocket
• War = Death – Death and War
• Winning the Lottery – Dreams and Money
• 5 Keepers – Five of any Keeper
• 10 Cards in Hand – 10 cards of any type
• All that is Certain – Death and Taxes
• The Appliances – Television and Toaster
• Dreamland – Dreams and Sleep
• Milk and Cookies – Cookies and Milk
• Party Snacks – Party and (either 1 Bread or 1 Chocolate or 1 Cookie)
• Rocket Science – Brain and Rocket
• Baked Goods – Bread and Cookies
• Bed Time – Sleep and Time
• The Brain (No TV)  – Brain and no TV Keeper anywhere on table
• Chocolate Cookies – Chocolate and Cookies
• Chocolate Milk – Chocolate and Milk
• Death by Chocolate – Chocolate and Death
• Hearts and Minds – Brain and Love
• The Mind’s Eye – Brain and Eye
• Peace (no War) – Peace and no War Creeper anywhere on table

By Keeper

The number in parenthesis indicates the frequency it shows up in Goals

•  The Brain(4) – Rocket Science, The Brain (no TV), Hearts and Minds, The Mind’s Eye
• Bread – (4) – Dough, Toast, Party Snacks, Baked Goods
• Chocolate – (4) – Squishy Chocolate, Party Snacks, Chocolate Cookies, Death By Chocolate
• Cookies – (4) – Milk and Cookies, Baked Goods, Chocolate Cookies, Party Snacks
• The Cosmos – (2) – Star Gazing, Interstellar Spacecraft
• Death – (3) – All That is Certain, Death by Chocolate, War = Death
• Dreams – (2) – Dreamland, Winning the Lottery
• The Eye – (2) – Star Gazing, The Mind’s Eye
• Love – (3) – All You Need Is Love, Hippyism, Hearts and Minds
• Milk – (2) – Milk and Cookies, Chocolate Milk
• Money – (3) – Time is Money, Dough, Winning the Lottery
• The Moon – (2) – Night and Day, Rocket to the Moon
• The Party – (1) – Party Snacks
• Peace – (2) – Hippyism, Peace (No War)
• The Rocket – (3) – Interstellar Spacecraft, Rocket to the Moon, Rocket Science
• Sleep – (2) – Bed Time, Dreamland
• Taxes – (1) – All That Is Certain
• The Sun – (2) – Squishy Chocolate, Night and Day
• Television – (1) – The Appliances
• Time – (2) – Time is Money, Bed Time
• The Toaster – (2) – The Appliances, Toast
• War – (1) – War = Death

Are You Coming to GenCon 2009?

If you plan to be there, don’t forget to look for Best Dang Games! We will be wandering the floor enjoying the event. However, we want to meet you!

If you see us, come up and say hello. We will have BDG shirts on with our logo.

If you give us your e-mail address for our mailing list, we will share a 20% coupon with everyone that signs up at GenCon. How sweet is that?

But wait, there’s more! By getting on our mailing list, you automatically qualify for the 10% off coupon all registrants get. Yes, 20% off one order and 10% off a second order.

But wait, we aren’t done yet! We will also have a drawing from the registered names. FOUR lucky gamers will get their pick of a game that is $50 or less (including shipping) for FREE! Yes, FREE!

So, is it worth your effort to say hello?
1) Free newsletter
2) 20% off one order
3) 10% off a second order
4) Potential to win one of four games (your choice under $50 with shipping)

Happy Gaming and we hope to see you at GenCon!

New Race For The Galaxy Card Game Expansion Videos Posted

Cory Duplantis has hooked us up again with some more review and overview videos. We focused on Race For The Galaxy again, but this time, we dove into the two expansions, The Gathering Storm and Rebel Vs. Imperium.

If you are curious about this game, hopefully these will help you get a better feel for them.

New Race For The Galaxy Card Game Video Posted

We have the first in a multi-video series posted about the Rio Grande Games card game, Race For The Galaxy.

This game is an advanced version of Puerto Rico and San Juan, but with a science-fiction theme.

In this first video, of three, Cory Duplantis introduces the concepts of the game and how the basic flow of the game works.