I like these vegetable dudes but I have to say I'm not really a fan of Amano's Final Fantasy art. I know I'm in an extreme minority with that though.

I should have recommended Small World actually. I usually do! I've used it to introduce new players to board games quite a few times and it's always been a success. It's relatively simple to learn, different every time and the combinations and pictures make for a lot of laughs.

I know quite a few girl gamers but compared to the amount that aren't, and the amount of guys that are...yeah they're a minority. Even on my games dev course we have 1 girl out of both our years courses (development and technical). The year below us which I have a few friends in only has 1 girl, who is one of the…

Oh and I would also suggest Junta. First edition if you can get your hands on it. If not then the newest one is still really good and probably better suited for newcomers as its more streamlined and quicker to learn. It's great fun and quite engaging. It's the game that got my 'non-gamer' friends into board games and…

Ticket to Ride is a good introductory game. It's simple to learn, simple to play, but a lot of fun. My gaming group still plays it from time to time because it is a great game. You can even get it on iphone or ipad so you can test it out before purchasing if you want.

I found Power Grid to be rather complicated and daunting at first but made sense fine after a while.

That comment utterly bamboozled me there until I remembered what my username was!

I was meaning in regards to the extensive rules of Game of Thrones not game length. Monopoly is without a doubt a very long game. And also very shit. I'm not a fan of any game that allows a player to be eliminated early on and have to sit out for 2 hours while 1 player slowly runs away with the game.

It sure is. I wasn't warning non-gamer/monopoly players off it because of game length though. It was because of the complication. People like your parents (or mine anyway) who have no experience of 'proper' board games, they're not going to take well to suddenly having to learn a million and one rules.

You don't really need to have seen BSG to appreciate it. Certainly helps but its definitely not required. We have a few in our group who haven't seen it but enjoyed the hell out of it.

Either would be great. I live in Glasgow so my Celtic mates are always preaching about Wanyama. I wouldn't say Frimpong hasn't worked. He's been good at times but is still learning. I think though that the fans need appeasing in the transfer market. I'm a big supporter of Wengers philosophy but if he completely loses…

Either would be great. I live in Glasgow so my Celtic mates are always preaching about Wanyama. I wouldn't say Frimpong hasn't worked. He's been good at times but is still learning. I think though that the fans need appeasing in the transfer market. I'm a big supporter of Wengers philosophy but if he completely loses…

My problem with games like this is that some players are unable to think of the bigger picture and will try and do what they think is best for themselves instead of stopping the player who is 1 castle away from winning.

You sure about that? Because mine worked fine. You can't power it on for long but the fan test will still run. I managed to get my disc out that way.

Games I've played in the past week or so:

I personally think it plays better with 3 or 4 players.

I wouldn't recommend it to most even though I do thoroughly enjoy it. It's long, complicated and very very long. Did I mention it's long? For experienced gamers yes I would definitely recommend it but to someone who's only experience of board games is Monopoly I wouldn't.

It's certainly a very good and useful site but I find their layout and presentation to be cheap and messy. I really wish they'd update it.

That's a good way of putting it actually. I've always just put it down to cheesy shit dialogue but what you said is probably more accurate. I liked The Avengers but I don't particularly rate much else that he's done. I liked Serenity (but surprisingly to most not Firefly) but it did have the occasional "urghhhh"…

Same way you do the fan test. Power off, hold down the eject button then power back on. It's not advisable to do it all the time but once in a while is fine. And if your system has already suffered from YLOD then what's the problem? I'll take that over a cheap as shit plastic disc slider any day. Which is also a shit…