any good complex card/boardgames with pvp?

[SuicideBunny]

preferably for 3 people. i bought dominion and race for the galaxy as they were pretty highly rated on board game geek, but fuck, they are very mediocre and race for the galaxy has no player interaction whatsoever...

 

[Helton]

Risk?

 

[Angelo85]

Small World. not overly complex, but fun IMHO (if you're into Fantasy stuff).

Entertaining demonstration vid:



Educational demonstration vid:

 

[Ulminati]

Get smallworld underground instead of smallworld. SWUG introduces relics/places of power that adds additional map objectives to fight over. It's only slightly more complex and way more fun to play.

You could also track down a copy of Neuroshima Hex. It's basically all about blowing up the other players dudes.

Both of those aren't terribly complex though.
You could grab robo rally. But the PvP in that depends on how aggressive the players are.

 

[SuicideBunny]

robo rally is hard to find in the non-german (read non-derpy) version around here but it's been on my wishlist for quite a while.
will give smallworld underground a try, thanks guys.

 

[Ulminati]

Shogun has a lot of fightan too: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20551/shogun

It takes longer than SWUG to play, but the rules are fairly intuitive.

 

[malko_sundervere]

It's not in publication anymore, but you can still find card collections - Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. It's a very very complicated trading card game designed by Richard Garfield, optimized for more-than-two-player games. Based on Vampire: The Masquerade's universe, naturally.

 

[Destroid]

Cosmic Encounter. It's just the best game for 4-6.

I'd also recommend Rex: Final Days of an Empire, Eclipse, Tigris & Euphrates.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Yesterday my Claustrophobia box came, it is a 1 vs. 1 game though, so not exactly what you are looking for.

 

[Grunker]

Blood Bowl is obviously an awesome candidate. Talisman is simple but fun - especially if you make your own expansions like add cards and characters and stuff.

 

[Alex_Steel]

Mage Knight board game is a pretty good game and it has PvP. It is quite expensive but maybe you can try it out at a local store.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Dungeoneer - The players build a dungeon from a deck of cards (+1 map card each turn), draw/pick heroes and set out on randomly drawn quests. During the game they alternate between two phases - the hero phase, when they control the hero, explore, do quests, attack other heroes, etc, and the dungeon master phase (dubbed by my bros and me as "faza wpierdolu"), when you can use offensive cards against other heroes to make their life total pain.

The Dungeon Master artifacts include monster encounters, traps, curses, buffs for monsters and some other trollish effects like eliminating a hero's artifact or moving map cards around. There is nothing more trollish than waiting for a guy to approach his quest location and then suddenly putting the location on the other side of the dungeon. Heroes can sometimes find artifact/enchantment cards that can repel dungeon master cards in some ways.

The player who does all 3 quests assigned to him or is the last one to stay alive wins.

Great fun for everyone.

 

[Destroid]

Talisman is actually anti-fun.

 

[Ulminati]

Blood Bowl is obviously an awesome candidate. Talisman is simple but fun - especially if you make your own expansions like add cards and characters and stuff.

Was going to mention BB until OP sait they were 3 players. I actually haven't played Talisman myself, although I've been meaning to for a while. Opinions amont the people I usually play boardgames with seem to be pretty split.

On the topic of 2-player games, Battlelore (another FFG title) is pretty good even if they kind-of killed it with expansions. They migrated the system onto a game of thrones with Battles of Westeros. The game is sort of expensive due to gratuitous amounts of plastic bits though. There's quite a bit of setup time, but the actual game flows pretty well.

If you're up for a challenge (and can get 4-6 players together preferably), I heartily reccomend the 1980 classic Titan: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/103/titan
It revolves around the players moving stacks around the boards, trying to combine the types of units in a stack with the correct territories to breed more monsters before attacking the opponents stacks. There's a fair amount of downtime between turns sadly, but it's an evergreen we keep coming back to every couple of months. Be warned that games sometimes drag on for many, many hours.

 

[Vagiel]

Try legend of the five rings. It is propably the best and most complex ccg on the market with a loyal fan base and can also also ne played by 3+. Do sone research and ask if you are intersted.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Talisman is great, fuck da haters

 

[Ulminati]

Try legend of the five rings. It is propably the best and most complex CCG on the market with a loyal fan base and can also also ne played by 3+. Do sone research and ask if you are intersted.

Danger, Will robinson, Danger!

 

[hoverdog]

Speaking of CCGs, look no further than Kult. It's not produced anymore, so cards may be a little bit hard to find, but the game is awesome - and that's coming from someone who hates collectibles with a passion. Nice mechanics and great card images. For two to four people.
My bro was an avid V:TES player, and from what I've heard, it's best played in a large (4+) group.

(dubbed by my bros and me as "faza wpierdolu")

nice little game, and cheap to boot.

 

[spectre]

Speaking of CCGs, look no further than Kult. It's not produced anymore, so cards may be a little bit hard to find, but the game is awesome

I have to second that one. It's worth it for the twisted style alone. If yiou're familiar with the swedish pnp with the same name, it's pretty similar.
The fact that it's discontinued is a plus imo, you can easily get most of the card types. Some stores even offer a few leftover booster packs for peanuts.

It was one of the few card games that actually managed to catch my attenton for longer. Used to be an avid MtG player, began during Urza's Sage (which was the highest ppoint of the game imo) dropped off somewhere around Odyssey.
Can't really recommend it the way it is right now. It's mostly creature-combat based atm which isn't all that interesting.

I also liked Dark Eden - it's a Doom Tropper spin-off with base building, resource management and more tactical combat. Card style is pretty good (apart from the base buildings, some are good, others are pretty cheap looking 3d renderings).
It's based on the Mutant Chronicles univers that is pretty similar to Warhammer 40K. It was used for tabletop, pnp and a bunch of card games. Dark Eden is slightly different because it has a nice post-apoc flair.
It's also discontinued, so be ready to do some digging.

 

[SuicideBunny]

Try legend of the five rings. It is propably the best and most complex ccg on the market with a loyal fan base and can also also ne played by 3+. Do sone research and ask if you are intersted.

never.
i'm a fan of the pnp rpg (which came first) and it annoys the shit out of me that they fuck up our pnp experience by deciding important stuff with their shitty ccg matches, so for all i care l5r ccg and its fanbase can go and die in a fire.
plus the way they handle various editions is highly annoying.

 

[Alex_Steel]

never.
i'm a fan of the pnp rpg (which came first) and it annoys the shit out of me that they fuck up our pnp experience by deciding important stuff with their shitty ccg matches, so for all i care l5r ccg and its fanbase can go and die in a fire.
plus the way they handle various editions is highly annoying.

The CCG came 2 years earlier and it is their main product, the RPG coming second.
Apart from that, the basic story and setting of L5R has not changed through the years. The only thing that is affected is the newer timeline. But that's why you have a GM, to fit the setting to his tastes.

In the end, the whole storyline based tournament thing of L5R has nothing to do with the actual qualities of the CCG. You can just buy the cards, enjoy the game's kinda complex rules with your friends and ignore the story.
A game is a game, no need to be "emotionally engaged".

 

[SuicideBunny]

The CCG came 2 years earlier and it is their main product, the RPG coming second.

keep your facts away from my irrational hatred, please.

Apart from that, the basic story and setting of L5R has not changed through the years.

uhm.. that depends a lot on what you understand as basic story/setting. i'd say most of the world outside of rokugan being overrun and the great wall falling are pretty big changes setting wise, as well as the current affair with the colonies.

 

[Alex_Steel]

uhm.. that depends a lot on what you understand as basic story/setting. i'd say most of the world outside of rokugan being overrun and the great wall falling are pretty big changes setting wise, as well as the current affair with the colonies.

As basic story and setting I mean the timeline that was created before tournaments having any effect (if I remember correctly until the 2nd Day of Thunder) and all the details in the 'Emerald Empire' supplements.
There were no retcons or any new weird revelations about the past that would have changed the core of the setting, the way the world works. After that basic timeline, the GM can just ignore whatever doesn't suit his needs. Like DnD, you can safely play a game without having to stick to the official timeline.
The 4th edition of the rpg actually promotes this idea. Maybe they had the same concern too, how players will react to all this. They try a lot to separate in the core book the principles of the setting(bushido, way of the clans, the Tao, the law, etc.) as they were for most of the history of Rokugan from various time specific changes. The timeline details come as sidenotes and supplements.

Anyway, again all these things don't have anything to do with the quality of the CCG itself.

 

[Vagiel]

I agree that the story has not been good since maybe gold and a reason for that is player input but the ccg it self is not at fault for this. At the moment it might be the only ccg that requirs some player skill beyond the deck building and that is what make it stand above the rest.

 

[Father Walker]

You could try Warrior Knights. The rules are pretty simple, but the game itself has a number of sub-systems which make it engaging. WK is focused on conquering other player's territories, but also gives the posibility to fight for political and religious influence (which are pretty important and allow you to royally fuck other players).

I also like the way you take turns in this game. There are three numbered piles and each player puts an order card on each one of them. So basically, you must plan your whole turn ahead and hope for the best. I find it pretty engaging, since there isn't much downtime when other guys take their turns.

All in all, it's a solid and tense game.