Illuminati is all kinds of awesome. The original game and first two expansions might still be in a box somewhere at my parents' place…

There's less difficulty moving the pieces on the iPad, although I still sometimes have trouble with it. There's a way you can do it without issues, but it's never quite the natural thing I want to do and I end up fucking it up.

The cool thing about A&A is that the best strategies are often very close to what actually went down. Yes, Germany is outmatched, but it poses a real threat if it goes on this rampage throughout as much territory as possible, and occasionally that will let it win, with a bit of luck. Which is pretty much exactly what…

Hmmm… you're kind of an asshole, aren't you? Here's a hint: you know nothing about the kid's physical fitness, and the article doesn't talk about him playing with imaginary friends. He's trying to figure out if a game is solvable.

To be fair, I always thought your grandmother was kind of a bitch.

Well, I definitely pity them.

@avclub-d1dd537846e529e1101d7c23e170fe4b:disqus You got a mac? If so check out 3d Bridge Deluxe for the online play, and Bridge Baron if you want to play against the computer and have the best possible AI and advice (3D Bridge Deluxe's AI is really quite awful, but the online interface is really good).

I play a dozen times a year or so. Used to be not that awful when I was playing every week a couple of times.

Actually I think fields probably are the same thing as farms and I'm just mis-remembering the terminology. So I agree with most everyone above.

My father plays bridge reasonably seriously (he has an international ranking, which is apparently quite common). I've played enough to know the basics of bidding (not just how you do it, but what the simplest conventions are).

Yup. Another one with a nice iOS app as well, although the AI is pretty easy to beat on the hardest level.

Kids also often like a lot of the more abstract games - go, or the vastly different and simpler go-moku, mankala, those sorts of things.

You people are fools. It's all about fields!

Yeah, I played it years ago in physical form, but the iOS version is so well designed. Although the AIs are kind of shitty, really.

@Nudeviking:disqus In my experience, there's a gap between chess/go players and players of the new crop of board games. I play both, at least sometimes, but you'll usually have a "chess club" and a "games club", and they often don't have much crossover at all.

I'm turning 37 this year, and I don't play most of these with real people but have tried a few, and have a bunch of them on my iPad (which is a surprisingly good way of playing board games).

@avclub-4ff25c60792fa2f9cb596e4666530aec:disqus It's going way too far to say that luck isn't a factor in poker - if I was playing with a table of pros, there's a small (quite small but nevertheless real) chance that I'd come out on top through sheer luck. If you've watched the World Series there's often an amateur at…

You should consider banging your sister in law, just to say thanks in a special way. Seriously, she sounds awesome.

I realize this isn't meant exactly seriously, but still… Monopoly bugs the shit out of me, because it takes an hour at minimum, and quite likely 2 or 3 hours, but it has exactly the same amount of skill as Trouble. There is the possibility of doing something other than buying every single empty property you land on,…

Will check it out, thanks!