Tonight is board game night again so I'm back in the board game mood.

Last week we played a game of Catan and Ticket To Ride Europe (which was the first time any of us played and we all loved it).

Any recommendation for good 4 player games that take an hour and a half or less?

Dominion & Zooloretto.

Interesting development: Target is carrying board games. They've had Catan and Ticket to Ride for a few months now, but tonight I saw several Fantasy Flight games, including Lord of the Rings, Deadwood, Nexus Ops and a few others. Also, they had several copies of Munchkin.

Awesome.

The cool thing about computer gaming is that it's really making kids/people interested in other alternative games as well. I see this all the time at the high school, where kids are getting into tabletop RPGs (and alternative board games) as a result of playing MMORPGs and single-player RPGs.

Never in my life have I encountered people that would play these things. Going all the way back to my youth and D&D.

I'm surprised by the interest shown in this thread.

Your geek radar is weak, clearly.

I guess so. I suppose I don't gravitate towards those people, even though they are probably who I would relate to best.

I've always had an inner geek. High school through college, I basically led a secret life of playing either single-player or online RPGs (MUDs) while simultaneously living a very active social life and being one of the "cool kids" (whatever that means). I was still into comic books, fantasy novels, and geek culture. I used to go sit in the book store and read World of Darkness game books (Vampire: The Masquerade and such), even though I didn't even play the games because I didn't have a gaming social group. The internet was a total blessing, because I was able to geek out online.

Now that I'm old enough to have kids, I don't give a shit. I let my geek flag fly. My current social circle does actually give me shit (in a funny way) for the fact that I'm in a "gaming group" these days and play DnD every other week. Of course, I've also had two guys from my normal social circle who now have joined the gaming group because they used to play DnD in junior high and wanted to play again.

Of course, in a world where kids are raised gaming on computers, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and other hallmarks of "geek culture," it's become downright mainstream.

Eh, it's not just "geeks" that game anymore. Or, perhaps it is and the term "geek" has really lost a lot of its meaning. Most of the kids that I see buying the Magic cards are athletic college kids that could just as well be playing basketball. The gaming culture is expanding, which is great IMO.

I really didn't get into gaming at all until the last year or so.

For anyone interested in board games, BoardGameGeek.com is pretty much the definitive site for all things related to board games. They've got forums for each game, galleries, alternate rules, reviews, etc, etc. It's a really great site.

Still miss this game from my younger days. The tower broke the second week and we couldn't get a replacement. :(

http://www.wired.com/images/slidesho...dark_tower.jpg

fluxx, scrutineyes, and, blockus

Settlers of Catan and it's variants, Heroquest (for you old schoolers), and Munchkin are all my personal favs right now. Speaking of which I'm thinking I need to go play some Catan with my friends this week!!!

As you iOS folks probably already know, Ascension on the iPad is incredible. The ROTF expansion is great as well. Here's the BIG news. Today, Dominion was released on the iPad. It's not an "official" version, but all of the artwork and gameplay are there. And....
It's FREE.

You literally have no choice but to download this game.

Edit: Here is a short review.

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2012/01/d...y-comes-to-ios

You can get Catan on Android for like $4. It is ok on a phone but fantastic on a tablet. There is no online multiplayer yet but should be sometime in 2012.