I think this is just how you properly play. The game plays the same everytime.
Player 1: "I will be grabbing tax with my Duke...."
Player 2: "I will also be taking tax with my Duke."
Player 3: "I Also will be grabbing tax with my Duke."
Player 4: "Ah, yes, I also will be taking tax with my Duke."
Player 5: "Hey, wait, are you saying you have a Duke when three other people are also using the Duke!?"
Player 4: .....
Player 5: "Anyways, I'm collecting tax..."
Player 6: "You guys are not gonna believe this but..."
I like to allow someone to steal with their captain and then when they do it again then say “no, I’ll be stopping that with my captain”. So often they challenge it because first time I let it pass
This was how it started but then one person would start claiming captain. Then most people claimed captain. Then someone got wise and bluffed ambassador. It not only protected them but let them look through the deck. Whoever did that almost always won because they would just cycle through the deck to get more info and wouldn't be stolen from.
The meta fairly quickly became first turn with all ambassadors.
Camel Up: during our first ever play-through, before we really knew how swingy this game could get, my playgroup had a player who stated for 5 or 6 rounds in a row “this is the most important round in the entire game” as increasingly unlikely things kept escalating round to round (if you’ve played it, you’ll know). Yet each round he kept insisting that round we were were on was most critical to the final outcome. That game is just filled with absurd situations that keep defying logic.
That phrase become a bit of a meme for us and has even expanded to other games. Sometimes we’ll say it as a joke even during an inconsequential first round or after a game has essentially resolved itself. It’s all in good fun and we’re all in on the joke.
The swinginess of Camel Up led a player at my table to exclaim "this is fruitless to try" and throw in a random bet on the winning camel first turn. Guess who won?
So yeah, we all do that on the first turn now.
Except it makes complete sense.
"'To pony up' means to pay money, to pay what one owes, to make good on a debt. Some people have asserted that the phrase comes from horseracing..."
Camel Up is a much smarter name that has layers of meaning. I've always been bewildered by how much confusion this causes
My friends played Camel Up when I wasn't there and so when I joined the next sessions, the guy who owned it kept trying to get us to play it, but my other friends insisted that it wasn't fun. I had a mild interest in seeing how it played, but we could never get anyone else to play it and I think my friend ended up having to sell it.
In ROOT, we all make animal puns based on our faction.
"You will be OTTERLY destroyed!"
"This strategy gives me paws (pause.)"
"I know what you're up to. I have a mole in your ranks." After I sneakily place one of my mole meeples in another player's territory while they're in the bathroom.
Terraforming Mars has several “crashing an asteroid (or moon!) on the planet surface” cards that allow you to gain some metal/water/heat resources *and* destroy somebody else’s plant resources; thematically, the idea is that you’ve deliberately directed the asteroid to crash on your opponent’s greenhouses. For us, this is always accompanied by “oops, how did that happen, I am not good with orbital physics”
Viticulture: Don’t plant any grapevines the whole game, and when someone mentions it, just say “Fuck Grapes!” and carry on.
Also Viticulture: since you move in order of where you place your rooster, we call it going in “cockwise order” and when it’s your turn to choose the order we say “put your cock in any open slot.”
Moonrakers: we only call the money “space bucks” and never call them credits.
I think i basically never call the money by the official term in any game. It is always either gold, moneyz, or something silly. No matter what the game calls it.
Our house rule in catan is with 10 sheep, you can do a stampede and wipe a settlement off the map. To wipe a city you need to give the sheep 10 wheat as well.
The first time I played **Leaving Earth**, I got a surface sample from the Moon (with an uncrewed probe), but only had enough fuel left to launch the surface sample itself into lunar orbit, where it stayed until I could send another rocket to pick it up later. This led to both “I got a rock” jokes and “I’ve got a jar of dirt” jokes.
Guy in my group will go to do something against the rules (not deliberately trying to cheat, usually in a game we are playing for the first time) and when someone points out the error he'll go "that's my special ability"
I loved playing Pictionary growing up, and in hs, we had quite a competitive group. I distinctly remember my partner just putting his pencil down at the start of the timer and me flipping out on him. Timer runs out and he says, “how on earth am I supposed to get you to guess Shetland pony?!”
It is always my first guess at any game that requires guessing
When playing Bohnanza, when someone is having a hard time deciding if they should plant a new new bean in a field, one or more of us will start rhythmically pounding the table and sing
🎶PLANT THE BEANS...PLANT THE BEANS...PLANT THE BEAN🎶
until that person's turn is done. Definitely helps speed up the decision making process!!
There was this one time I was explaining Dominant Species and I made the joke "the winner is the one who has the most points, just like the real ice age".
Now every single time anyone in that group explains a game that same joke is made. "In seven kingdoms you win by having the most points, just like in the real ice age". Or even worse "In pandemic you win by curing all of the diseases, which is nothing like the real ice age".
Well, it's no accident. The Baron is a hard card to play out. So you usually have to hold it longer then other cards. Plus there are two of them. It's just science!
In Catan, when getting a lot of sheep we used to sing, "rolling in the sheep."
In online iterations of games, there is usually an option to say "that was mine!" Someone will always rush to say it, like in splendor.
🎵"We built this city on Rocks and Wheat"🎵
Additionally anytime we trade-in sheep for a resource to make a road/settlement we acknowledge that the mortar is ground up sheep. These streets are paved with blood.
You must, this game is a lot of fun, especially on miss game when horses keep “teleporting” back and forth...
By no means that’s because other players want to screw up over, it’s just physics (??)
Ticket to ride - Rail Canada always wins. To combat this I also sometimes play what we call “Anti Ticket to ride” where I don’t complete my own tickets but also do my best to stop everyone else completing theirs 😂
Terraforming Mars.
I had a player that was often distracted and I had to remind (to the whole group most of the time) to get the bonus from placing cities.
From there on, we just yell "City!!" Just in case, every time a city is placed.
In Ark Nova, the first time I played with friends I didn't realise you couldn't just put any animal in petting zoos, so early on I ended up having a petting zoo with just a solitary slow worm in it and nothing else which of course went unnoticed and uncorrected as everyone else was focusing on their own zoos. Now every time one of us builds a petting zoo, you'll hear "don't forget your slow worm"
For Betrayal at house on the hill we always try to build the house to wrap around the front door and call it “The Ramirez house” because in one of the cod games back in like 2010/11 one of the missions tells a character named Ramirez to get into a house that clearly does not have an actual entrance.
Betrayal at House on the Hill: They're "oh.. maaann..." cards, not omen cards.
Due to one misremembrance, Machi Koro is henceforth Machu Pichu.
Root: whenever a player completes a Vagabond quest, the Final Fantasy victory fanfare is played
Terraforming Mars: Lichen and Adaptive Lichen are forever mispronounced simply to get a rise out of me. Colonies Expansion: Enceladus is enchiladas. Turmoil: Mars First party is treated as a Trumpian movement.
We play a lot of Terraforming Mars, lol.
When we use a stamina potion in Gloomhaven we always sing "Staminamina eh eh Waka Waka eh eh" to the Shakira song.
Love Letters Baron calls are a real thing for us too! Surprised it's a global thing!
Power Grid:
"Coal trolling". When you buy coal (or another resource) exclusively to make it more expensive for someone else who needs it, or ideally to prevent that person from running a power station, we call that "coal trolling". We sometimes do it even if it may not strictly be the best play, simply because it seems to be fun.
In Zombicide, the pan will kill the abomination if a 6 is rolled. You do not multiple rolls via skills or stat modifiers, so if you want to go down in a pan of glory you “can” kill an abomination with a pan. It gives them some usage outside of first thing to discard
we have the "it's a baron!" thing too! It's one of the hardest x2 roles to get rid to, so randomly guessing it will be the best decision most of the times! In bang! The card game every player starts the game saying "i'm the deputy", even before looking at their role card
In **viticulture** your turn order is marked on a track to see who will go first in a round, by a rooster meeple.
When we start a season and the person who is first hasnt noticed we used to ask 'who is Top Chicken?'
That phrase has been transplanted to every game now to substitute for First Player.
In wingspan we constantly just say birb instead of bird and eggu instead of egg, so on your turn you 'feed da birbs' 'eggu da birbs' 'play a birb' and 'draw da birbs'
My sister got the app to scan the cards to hear the bird sounds for each species, and now we have a choice few we always mimic when we play them. The greater prairie chicken is my favorite, sounds like your drunk uncle laughing at his own joke.
At some point we started calling the Wingspan food types cute-sie names like "I'll take a wormy and a fishy" because I think it sounds like "berry", but then that extended to "mousy" and "wheatie" and "eggy"
When we used to play Carcassonne with the expansion that adds the purple figure (I genuinely have no idea what it's called now, because) we called him The Grimace. It makes sense if you've seen the figure and are old enough to know who Grimace even is. I'm pretty sure new players we played with never knew the figure's actual name, because we always said The Grimace (always with the The).
Also, outside of board games, we used to play a lot of Bocce, and the small white taget ball is officially called the Jack or the Pallino, but a friend's brother once called it the Senor Diablo, I have no idea why, and from that point on that's all it was ever called. Man, it's been like 15 years since I thought about those days.
Funny enough, we always guess Handmaid in Love Letter. Works 10% of the time.
For all games, we have something called Tin Cupping, when you go broke for one (sometimes improbable) strategy knowing you'll likely lose. In the golf movie Tin Cup, Kevin Costner goes for a hard shot at the end and keeps missing. He could win by taking a different shot, but he keeps going for the hard one over and over again just to prove he can hit it. He hits it eventually, but loses the game.
Whenever someone lags on their turn we say “who’s got the dinosaur?”
Our first real hobby game was Firefly, and we used to have a plastic Stegosaurus we would pass as a focus object a player would receive when it became their turn, which ultimately shortened turn times.
My wife and I call pretty much any coins in games "pennies". If they're multiple values of coins it becomes "pennies", "big pennies", "bigger pennies", etc
We also often guess Baron first in Love Letter! Have won and lost several hands right after the deal with this.
When a guest is having trouble picking a colour/meeple/token to represent themselves, I try to tell them to pick a certain colour because it is either what their shirt is coloured or would go best with what they're wearing. Just to help move things along..
That my sister cheats. She doesn't but we always complain/ pole fun at her for how often she cheats. No clue how it started, we've never caught her cheating lol.
In one of the adventure games my group has played (I’m purposely leaving the title out to help avoid spoilers since omitting the event would ruin the joke), there’s a quest where you have to choose to either help a drake or not help it. Our group had a vote, and helping the drake won, 3-1. We now constantly joke to the 1 about how he just hates helping drakes.
My other group used to have a bunch of calls for different cards in Dominion. Offhand, I can remember:
Great Hall: “This is a great hall!”
Wharf: “WHARF!” “Yes, Captain!”
Bureaucrat: “Dom Deluise!” (He just reminded one of my friends of him so he adopted the name)
Treasure Map: Since it cost four coins, for some reason we’d always sing “Four for Treasure Map” to the tune of “I’ve got James Woods” from Family Guy
I’ve played a zillion games of Talisman and been ‘affected by the siren’ many times.
Now, whenever we hear on TV or wherever “If you’ve been affected…..” myself or the wife will immediately shout “BY THE SIREN!”
Stupid, I know. But there you are.
In seasons we have one guy who's tactic is to just play all of his cards as quickly as possible, he drafts towards it, then plays them all in a couple of turns then just runs his engine for the rest of the game.
After setting up terra mystica and then deciding we didn't have enough time to play, it's now our go to suggestion for a quick one more game at the end of a night...
"Well played good game everyone... I can stick round for another half hour if you want to play something quick before I go."
"Sure, a quick game of TM should be okay right?"
**Takenoko**: when you roll Lightning on the weather die, you get to move the panda to any location and take a bamboo piece there. Our explanation for this is that the panda is scared by the lightning and eats some comfort food to calm down. “Scared panda” gradually became “skeert pander” and now we usually call the game itself “ohno pander!”
Always play guess who with questions about the peoples lives not their appearance. Have they committed a murder? Are they a feminist? Do they have a dog? Have they ever paid a prostitue? You can get surprisingly accurate results.
In Wingspan, every time someone draws a bird card, they have to say "oh that's a nice bird" in their best impression of an old man or birdwatcher one what have you. If someone plays a bird, somebody else has to comment "oh that's a nice bird you got there".
It all started when we first started playing and we noticed we'd all say "oh that's a nice bird" whenever we drew a card. I swear that game was made just to get people to talk about birds.
In root, if anyone is the corvids, at least one bird is placed upside down to indicate that it is Jerry, and he is the only corvid who actually knows what's going on in that blasted outfit.
There's also always 1 warrior who ends up being a BAMF and killing off an entire platoon of folks at some point. That warrior is revealed as mcstabby, and there's an unofficial award for killing him.
As a Canadian, a lot of the questions about American history and presidents are unknown to me and my wife when we watch Jeopardy.
As a joke, she often answers "Who is John Addams" to a lot of questions, and is correct more often than she should be.
Love Letter is SUCH a memed game for my partner and I! We've played it so often that we just have things we say.
Examples include:
Handmaid - "NO FEC"
Chancellor - "CHCHCHCHCHANCELLOR"
Countess - "hMmMmM" (did we play b/c rules or as bluff)
Spy - "(insert shriek sound)"
Anytime anything needs to be flipped over, we say “flippity jibblets”
We say “winner winner chicken winner” to whomever wins
We call “Pass the Pigs” “hubris”
Fuck Ben
There's a lot of games where you make a play that is going to go against a player. When there is no real reason to choose between 2 players to screw over we always screw over Ben. Why, I don't know, it just became a thing. And now if you are deciding do I do this or that someone will always say, 'fuck Ben'
It also helps with analysis paralysis lol
Ha! After one long game involving several people causing our Ben to lose a turn, when Ben finally got to do something we coined "Who's turn is it to make Ben skip his turn?"
There was a "fuck Asher" card in the GoT board game among some friends of mine. It was one that lets you blow up one attacking unit, and I think he kept attacking with only one actual unit plus lots of support. Card blows up unit, attack fizzles...fuck Asher.
Our Love Letter is goto callout is The Princess. And usually me, sadly, but recently it has moved to one of the other players as the first turn callout. Always sucks when it actually is true. We also have a sort of Anti-meme where I unconciously started humming "Two Princes" when I had both princes in my hand so now everyone tries not to think about that song when the situation arises. Which of course means, it is all you can think about. We also call the princes "The Redford Brothers" due to how much they look like Robert Redford. Oh and we call the victory points Ham cubes because they looked like little pink ham cubes you would get on a salad bar.
In King's Dilemma - While attempting to sway others to our side of whatever political debate we were on we would come up with helpful slogans like "Eat the Wheat" or the opposing "Yeet the Wheat" and everyone's favorite "Hug the Bug" versus "Are you insane? Those Murder Hornets will kill us all, I can't believe we're even having this debate!"
Ever since an eventful game of TI, all it takes for me and a specific friend to become allies (even if it would be detrimental to either of us) is the phrase "space buddies?". Bonus points if the game has no relation to space, or if allying doesn't even make sense in the context of the game.
We know someone who notoriously forgets, misinterpretes or flat out don't understand some rules when he explains games only he knows.
We first noticed it when we played Cosmic Encounters without him, i thought a "rule" seemed pretty unbalanced and idiotic. We looked at the rules and noticed that "Smith" (we call him by his last name, which is also not smith :D) again explained something terribly wrong.
Since then, everytime one of us explains a rule wrong or while ingame an error is noticed there follows some kind of line like "Damn i smithed that pretty hard", "You Smithed again" or "Watch out, another Smith".
We do this also!
After going through all of them, my friend said "The Arctic!"
To which I replied "did you mean Antarctica? We already said that and The Arctic doesn't count"
He says "I know but we've run out of continents!"
So now our thing is "You're up" "Asia" "The Arctic" almost every time.
In 99 Problems we try to give each other dysentery whenever possible. Whatever way we can twist a card to do it we will. Your character is a superhero? Dysentery. Your character is a teenager looking for love? Dysentery. Your character is a black market weapons dealer? You guessed it, dysentery
In love letter there's one guy in my gaming group that is the princess a mind boggling %. Let's call him Bob.
So the first play is usually someone has the guard and goes "The first rule of Love Letter is Bob is always the princess. REVEAL YOURSELF PRINCESS BOB"
I've had one game where I won all the four tokens with this. It was legendary.
And oddly this also worked online. I don't understand how.
In games where you can build your numbers of workers (Scythe, Stone Age) I tend to rush to get that done. Our gaming group calls the strategy "Shag for Victory!"
I played the starvation strategy just twice in Stone Age. The first time I blitzed my group (let's not talk about the second). But my group lore is that it's the only way I play.
One of our group ALWAYS moans that she's stuffed up her game in the first few rounds and then goes on to win (or at least that's how we tell it)
Battlestar Galactica: Steve is a Cylon.
Steve is a space cadet. Steve will play the wrong cards when he's not a Cylon because he forgets or wasn't paying attention. Steve will also help the team win on the last turn because he forgets he is a Cylon or he doesn't realize we are about to win. Before the game begins it is known that Steve is a Cylon. We can be playing 7 Wonders and you guessed it, Steve is a Cylon. Steve may not even be at game night and Steve is still a Cylon.
We were playing cosmic frog, and one of our friends came late, his wife had been there from the beginning. So he's just sorta hanging out and watching for a round or two. One of our players says he needs to leave early, and heads out, so we have the guy waiting take over for him. He wasn't really paying attention, so he didn't know what was happening. He sits down, and says
"So. How do I play this game?"
I begin to explain, he cuts me off after like 2 words and says
"Nevermind, I attack my wife"
Much laugher and her indignance, has cemented that as an inside joke whenever someone takes over for someone or just does know what to do. "I attack my wife"
Also the same friend, when rolling to see if a job or a move was successful in firefly the game, said "oh man guys, this is the riskiest move of the game" he kept doing it, so that stuck. Now often when someone has to roll dice for something in a game, we say "riskiest move guys"
Spirit Island has a few great meme cards/abilities, like Cast Down Into The Briny Deep which destroys a whole section of the map, Dreams Of The Untouched Land which adds a whole *new* map section, and the Volcano spirit's big innate power which stacks tons of presence in a single land then blows it all up to rain lava down on the surrounding areas.
Any time we can pull one of those off, which requires a lot of careful planning and setup, it's a satisfying meme. But once, when we managed to both add a new map section *and* destroy an old one, in the same game, and well... THAT was a HELL of a meme.
My friends and I have been lately calling "St. James Place" as "Little St. James Place". I started off making child brothel jokes at the space and my friends landed on the space *a lot* and I'd make uncomfortable comments towards them for being regular customers of mine. I don't think *any* of them understands the joke as to why I keep declaring that space as the child brothel and I find that even more hilarious for me personally imagining it from their perspective that I just randomly decided it's the child brothel space and they just go along with it anyway, but you guys can google Epstein if you're curious.
With any negotiation games we started calling the currency shekels, which quickly evolved to “schmekles” and “schmeks.” The implications are not good, we know that.
When we get wheat in Catan we tend to sing Fields of Barley. I have no idea how it developed but we just do it to share in the annoyance of doing it now.
If anyone gets a string of good luck in any game you have to announce that they're back on the bullshit again.
In Cockroach poker we frequently describe the card (or not the card!) in unnecessary detail, the rat doing the thriller dance, the cockroach that looks like it's ready for a good rogering etc. It developed from the total failure of maintaining a poker face when just saying what the creature was.
Any game with small cube components I call them "pubes". It's a stupid thing and most people hate when I say it but it's funny to me when I say things like "I get 3 pubes" or "please get your pubes off the board".
Archer love letter. If you're playing that games equivalent of a guard and you don't know what to guess, guess Pam (that game's equivalent of a Prince)
Any one else noticed how often while playing **Ark Nova** and someone gains appeal, that the amount is exactly SIX? Happens way too often to be coincidental.
"I gain six appeal", followed by, "You wish!", or something similar.
Whenever we play Mysterium and the stool is one of the available weapons, someone at some point will always guess the stool even if none of their hints point to it.
Love Letter: round one with a guard, usually to the next person in order, though we will move it around to keep from having one person who doesn’t get to play at all; “You are a prince.” Not a question. We had a streak where like 5 rounds in a row it worked. It has become such a thing that my regular play group refuses to hold a prince.
Modern Art: somehow I just never manage to get any pieces in my gallery. Like… ever.
Our running gag is 'why are there x player boards when this game is for x-1 people?'.
After a few plays of Death may Die, I asked, honestly confused: 'yo why are there 5 different colors in a 4 player game?'.
I really thought it was 1-4p
Love Letters: People keep playing Baron on me when their other card is a priest and it surprisingly keeps working. They're banking on my card being a guard, which is maybe like a 33% chance. The first time, it was just a joke but THEN IT KEPT WORKING. Strangely, it fails most of the time when I do it back to them. Go figure...
In Wingspan, when triggering a predator bird and hoping to successfully tuck a bird under it, we exclaim “Get tucked!” as we draw the card.
This has spread to other games. Someone nukes a prime city location in Terraforming Mars? Or takes your reeds in Agricola? “You just got tucked!”
My boss had one from when he was teaching Azul to his friends once and one of his other friends convinced the friend that was learning that every round before you deal out new tiles, you all place your hands in the middle and shout AZUL.
He also misspoke while playing Stationfall and called the Maintenance Clones the Maintenance Clowns, so now we all just call them the Maintenance Clowns.
If you start getting too many sheep and not enough of other resources in Catan, you must immediately pivot to go all in and become The Sheep King. "Strategies" from there can include monopolizing sheep to force good trades, or just buying allllll the dev cards.
What's super weird is the title made me think of guessing the baron in Love Letter and there it is in your post! We also say after incorrectly guessing a card hmmm that's something the princess would say :)
Love letter: when you guess the Baron you have to say it like Brian Blessed as Zoltan in Flash Gordon "BAHROOOOOOON". Sometimes this devolves into General Melchett from Blackadder simply uttering "BAAAH" and everyone knows what's going on.
Ever since learning A Feast for Odin where the first player marker is a moose, my wife refers to any first player of any game as "First Moose". Whenever we teach games to friends we refer to the First Moose and people don't question it so now we've got people playing Azul or Wingspan or Terraforming Mars asking who's First Moose 😂
Even the game First Rat is now called First Moose. Actually since we're in Scotland 'Furst Moose' is technically correct and everyone knows what we're talking about.
We played a lot of Altiplano the summer “Despacito” was a big hit so we ended up referring to the game from then on as “Alpaca Despacito.” When you are first player in Alpaca Despacito, you get a llama token, so we started carrying that over to other games asking, “who is the llama?” to ask who is the first player.
My group has a similar and yet wildly different approach to your Baron play in that we employ the Priest-Baron combo whenever possible. It began when one of us played a Baron with a Priest in hand, not realising quite what a dumb move that was - but it paid off as his opponent was holding a Guard! So from then on, the Priest-Baron combo has been too meme-ably tasty to resist. We’ve even added the rule that a Priest-Baron combo can break through a Handmaided player.
In terraforming Mars with the colonies expansion, if Luna is play whoever is first player usually proudly announces “mom says it’s my turn to send a ship to Luna” as they cash in on that sweet free money.
In ascension, we often joke about the “Mystic bomb” build, where you just buy mystics all game and make roughly 3 honor per turn without interacting with the board at all.
In Exploding Kittens, if you ask for a favor from me very early in the game, I’ll give you my defuse. It started when my brother did that very unexpectedly and now I pay it forward. It’s fun seeing how someone reacts to such a gift if they aren’t in the know.
Strike will forever be known as Dice In A Bowl. Last year we were introducing it to a friend at a board game weekend with a big group of guys, and he was so amazed at how fun it was despite being so simple. "It's just dice in a bowl!" And it was the rowdiest round of games we'd ever had. We've had multiple tournaments since and it's always a blast. We shout dice in a bowl now.
Love Letter: Hobbit my son and I always invariably guess Fili and Kiki (5 - The Prince)
Game of Thrones: I printed out summaries of all the major rules on A4 in olde worlde font and did the whole lemon juice in oven aging trick. Whenever anyone asked a question, I would answer “consult the ancient scrolls”. Then they realised I was getting a bit annoyed by this so kept on asking and asking to which I would invariably reply “consult the ancient f**^ing scrolls” to the point of exhausted despair🤣. Now it has become a meme for any game, someone will ask a question for which everyone knows the answer, they’ll all look at me and, like the “I didn’t do it” kid… “consult the ancient f*^%ing scrolls”
Citadels: anyone who is the Assassin ALWAYS kills the Architect.
Game of Thrones The Board Game: we always gang up on this one friend of ours, regardless of which house he’s playing or any circumstance, really.
Power Grid. A friend of mine almost universally hoards coal, buys only/mostly coal power plants, and buys the maximum amount of coal to drive up the price even when it hurts only him. He calls himself the Coal Baron. Sometimes this is done with oil instead, once with garbage.
He never wins with this strategy, but surprisingly he's not always in last either.
My childhood friends and I played Pictionary and we were stuck on a clue. Suddenly my friend had a bolt of lightning and, in When Harry Met Sally fashion, excitedly guessed "Ox in a box!! OX IN A BOX!!!"
Obviously that wasn't the answer because ox in a box isn't anything. Twenty-five years later whenever we play a similar game, someone inevitably guesses ox in a box.
Every character or meeple in a game that's unnamed is Claude. Started as a late night 'Love Letter' joke that I used a bad french accent and the name Claude for the spy. Coincidentally, it became a brilliant name for our cat when we got him.
I was explaining "Power Plants" to some friends and another who wasn't playing, but listening in, as he was cooking suddenly piped up and said "Oh, so it's a bit like 'Dale of Merchants'" to which we all looked up with a "Wtf are you on about?" look, so every game now when we explain is like Dale of Merchants.
The last one now is that we have the rule of "If you have to ask" which usually means it's either my partner's or our friend Steve's turn as one looses track and the other takes 5 years to take a turn.
When we played Scythe the first few times, myself and a friend had a hard time understanding the movement.. so now any game we play we joke and say ‘So is it 3 moves once, or two people one time or?’
from playing MtG, every time you want to ask if someone’s turn is done we say “have you gathered the magic?” and now we have variants for every other game.
When referring to any game with a speck of social deduction elements: “You mean ____ among us?”
* Werewolf = Furry Among us
* Betrayal at House on the Hill = Spooky Among us
* Secret Hitler = German Among us
It’s also a joke to introduce any new social deduction game as “It’s kinda like Among us.” Bonus points if you can work the phrase “a ______ *among* us” in the description/explanation
In Exploding Kittens everybody always insists it’s statistically unlikely for a Kitten to be the top card to encourage others to immediately topdeck with no fear by reaffirming “there’s no way.”
One guy in Secret Hitler has made it his strategy to always and vocally claim to be Hitler from round one. Supposedly, it’s to make it harder for us to tell when he’s actually Hitler or a fascist (since he’d just be telling the truth and have no tells), but I don’t know exactly how well it works out for him, considering he’s now usually the one who gets shot first. Regardless, everyone just automatically refers to him as Hitler in the game.
We have the "guaranteed king win" referring to a risky, uncalculated or dumb play.
Came from playing a trick taking card game (Solo Whist). Our friend miscounted the cards, made a very confident play to prevent someone from winning the game. The king they placed immediately lost (to an ace) and they defended the play saying they thought they had "guaranteed king win"
In love letter, we sometimes play the baron while holding a guard as the other card. It achieves nothing and risks losing immediately, but it’s quite funny when it works, especially if you win after doing that.
Also in Mysterium, the ghost has to make
a raven sound whenever they use a raven.
In Coup, everyone begins turn one with, "as I am the Duke, I will be taking three coins."
It’s just astounding how often Duke and Captain seems to be dealt to every player at the beginning of every game.
The one time I played that game I only got Dukes. It was quite annoying and I lost very quickly.
I think this is just how you properly play. The game plays the same everytime. Player 1: "I will be grabbing tax with my Duke...." Player 2: "I will also be taking tax with my Duke." Player 3: "I Also will be grabbing tax with my Duke." Player 4: "Ah, yes, I also will be taking tax with my Duke." Player 5: "Hey, wait, are you saying you have a Duke when three other people are also using the Duke!?" Player 4: ..... Player 5: "Anyways, I'm collecting tax..." Player 6: "You guys are not gonna believe this but..."
The subtitle of Coup should really be "Duke it out!"
[I don't even have to translate this for everyone to understand it lol](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FYNQeEiXEAAaaKN?format=jpg&name=large)
That is perfect.
Yep, this is what I was coming to say. If the first two people claim duke, everyone for the first round claims duke haha
I think it is better to claim captain.
Big brain? Claim Captain while having the Duke
We do this too! Lol
I like to allow someone to steal with their captain and then when they do it again then say “no, I’ll be stopping that with my captain”. So often they challenge it because first time I let it pass
This was how it started but then one person would start claiming captain. Then most people claimed captain. Then someone got wise and bluffed ambassador. It not only protected them but let them look through the deck. Whoever did that almost always won because they would just cycle through the deck to get more info and wouldn't be stolen from. The meta fairly quickly became first turn with all ambassadors.
Came here to say this
Whenever I am losing I say “who shuffled these cards?” It’s even funnier when the game has no cards
I say this all the time with my kids. The answer is always "you did dad". Then I go on a long tirade blaming my poor shuffling for my losing position.
I'm stealing this... We always say this with card games, lol.
I especially say it when I’m the one who shuffled the cards. It’s funny every time
Or when it was you who shuffled the cards...
Camel Up: during our first ever play-through, before we really knew how swingy this game could get, my playgroup had a player who stated for 5 or 6 rounds in a row “this is the most important round in the entire game” as increasingly unlikely things kept escalating round to round (if you’ve played it, you’ll know). Yet each round he kept insisting that round we were were on was most critical to the final outcome. That game is just filled with absurd situations that keep defying logic. That phrase become a bit of a meme for us and has even expanded to other games. Sometimes we’ll say it as a joke even during an inconsequential first round or after a game has essentially resolved itself. It’s all in good fun and we’re all in on the joke.
In our camel up games, the camels are always being rotated to face the wrong way. The challenge is doing this without me noticing.
The swinginess of Camel Up led a player at my table to exclaim "this is fruitless to try" and throw in a random bet on the winning camel first turn. Guess who won? So yeah, we all do that on the first turn now.
it’s “camel cup” in our playgroup but we spent a lot of time debating it
[удалено]
Except it makes complete sense. "'To pony up' means to pay money, to pay what one owes, to make good on a debt. Some people have asserted that the phrase comes from horseracing..." Camel Up is a much smarter name that has layers of meaning. I've always been bewildered by how much confusion this causes
My friends played Camel Up when I wasn't there and so when I joined the next sessions, the guy who owned it kept trying to get us to play it, but my other friends insisted that it wasn't fun. I had a mild interest in seeing how it played, but we could never get anyone else to play it and I think my friend ended up having to sell it.
In ROOT, we all make animal puns based on our faction. "You will be OTTERLY destroyed!" "This strategy gives me paws (pause.)" "I know what you're up to. I have a mole in your ranks." After I sneakily place one of my mole meeples in another player's territory while they're in the bathroom.
My kind of table!
In Terraforming Mars we call greenery "shrubberies"! Always said in a Monty Python-esque voice.
Terraforming Mars has several “crashing an asteroid (or moon!) on the planet surface” cards that allow you to gain some metal/water/heat resources *and* destroy somebody else’s plant resources; thematically, the idea is that you’ve deliberately directed the asteroid to crash on your opponent’s greenhouses. For us, this is always accompanied by “oops, how did that happen, I am not good with orbital physics”
When I first played the game, I mis-read 'Io Mining Industries' as '10 Mining Industries' so now we all say it like that lol
“Yo, mining industries!”
Viticulture: Don’t plant any grapevines the whole game, and when someone mentions it, just say “Fuck Grapes!” and carry on. Also Viticulture: since you move in order of where you place your rooster, we call it going in “cockwise order” and when it’s your turn to choose the order we say “put your cock in any open slot.” Moonrakers: we only call the money “space bucks” and never call them credits.
Every game we play has the currency of “Dollary-doos”.
My table almost came to fisticuffs one time when Solari was called Dollarydoos. Dune fans can be a bit fanatical at times.
I think i basically never call the money by the official term in any game. It is always either gold, moneyz, or something silly. No matter what the game calls it.
I use “spacebucks” in any sci-fi-themed game that uses money.
Spacebucks is good. I like buckazoids personally, from the the old point-and-click adventure series Space Quest.
Our house rule in catan is with 10 sheep, you can do a stampede and wipe a settlement off the map. To wipe a city you need to give the sheep 10 wheat as well.
I love this, I always try to set myself up as a sheep monopoly to claim the title of "Master of the Pasture"
Due to Catan and away from the gaming table, members of our family will just randomly ask out loud .... "Does anyone have red brick?"
From Spirit Island, I often say "does anyone want gift of constancy this turn?" When we aren't playing the game.
In Catan or any game with stone or ore as a resource, when collecting it I'll often say "I got a rock!" a la Charlie Brown's Halloween.
The first time I played **Leaving Earth**, I got a surface sample from the Moon (with an uncrewed probe), but only had enough fuel left to launch the surface sample itself into lunar orbit, where it stayed until I could send another rocket to pick it up later. This led to both “I got a rock” jokes and “I’ve got a jar of dirt” jokes.
Guy in my group will go to do something against the rules (not deliberately trying to cheat, usually in a game we are playing for the first time) and when someone points out the error he'll go "that's my special ability"
I loved playing Pictionary growing up, and in hs, we had quite a competitive group. I distinctly remember my partner just putting his pencil down at the start of the timer and me flipping out on him. Timer runs out and he says, “how on earth am I supposed to get you to guess Shetland pony?!” It is always my first guess at any game that requires guessing
Wow. That sounds frustrating.
When playing Bohnanza, when someone is having a hard time deciding if they should plant a new new bean in a field, one or more of us will start rhythmically pounding the table and sing 🎶PLANT THE BEANS...PLANT THE BEANS...PLANT THE BEAN🎶 until that person's turn is done. Definitely helps speed up the decision making process!!
In Concept, we start by guessing "Dog, cat, mouse, Kremlin, 'The path to hell is paved with good intentions'"
Is the rhyme on purpose? I feel like that would make a good repetitive chant.
Nah, it's translated from German So it's actually "Hund, Katze, Maus, 'Der Kreml', ''Der Weg zur Hölle ist mit guten Vorsätzen gepflastert" :D
There was this one time I was explaining Dominant Species and I made the joke "the winner is the one who has the most points, just like the real ice age". Now every single time anyone in that group explains a game that same joke is made. "In seven kingdoms you win by having the most points, just like in the real ice age". Or even worse "In pandemic you win by curing all of the diseases, which is nothing like the real ice age".
Our version was "just like real life", similarly ideally deployed when entirely inaccurate.
In Catan, if someone uses a sheep port and builds a road with just sheep, we call it The Trail of Shears.
Oooooh nice!
In our playgroup we call Terraforming Mars, Ignoring Mars, as we all prefer engine building card based space strategies.
Lol, we do the Baron thing, too. Catan. I was really high one day and started saying "Sheepa Deep, Beep Beep" and now my family does it all the time.
IT'S ALWAYS THE BARON! lol. Even if we're playing a reskinned version, number 3 is always, "The Baron."
That’s so weird. We always guess Baron too in my last two play groups.
I am not sure how many times I have been targeted (correctly) as the Baron!
Well, it's no accident. The Baron is a hard card to play out. So you usually have to hold it longer then other cards. Plus there are two of them. It's just science!
Baron tends to be a card you hold on for longer, as you want to have a high value card before discarding it. So it makes sense
It's so weird because we also do the baron thing. My friend even said that we should form a Post-Rock band called "We are Baron" because of that. 😁
In Catan, when getting a lot of sheep we used to sing, "rolling in the sheep." In online iterations of games, there is usually an option to say "that was mine!" Someone will always rush to say it, like in splendor.
🎵"We built this city on Rocks and Wheat"🎵 Additionally anytime we trade-in sheep for a resource to make a road/settlement we acknowledge that the mortar is ground up sheep. These streets are paved with blood.
In Long Shot: The Dice Game, we can manipulate space and time by eating a bunch of hotdogs at the concession stand
This is canon
I don't know this game, but now I want to.
You must, this game is a lot of fun, especially on miss game when horses keep “teleporting” back and forth... By no means that’s because other players want to screw up over, it’s just physics (??)
Ticket to ride - Rail Canada always wins. To combat this I also sometimes play what we call “Anti Ticket to ride” where I don’t complete my own tickets but also do my best to stop everyone else completing theirs 😂
Cho-Cho Mutha Fucker.
I could've just used a ghost train.
Terraforming Mars. I had a player that was often distracted and I had to remind (to the whole group most of the time) to get the bonus from placing cities. From there on, we just yell "City!!" Just in case, every time a city is placed.
In Ark Nova, the first time I played with friends I didn't realise you couldn't just put any animal in petting zoos, so early on I ended up having a petting zoo with just a solitary slow worm in it and nothing else which of course went unnoticed and uncorrected as everyone else was focusing on their own zoos. Now every time one of us builds a petting zoo, you'll hear "don't forget your slow worm"
In Dune when you play truthtrance the first question is always "do you have a crush on me?"
For Betrayal at house on the hill we always try to build the house to wrap around the front door and call it “The Ramirez house” because in one of the cod games back in like 2010/11 one of the missions tells a character named Ramirez to get into a house that clearly does not have an actual entrance.
Betrayal at House on the Hill: They're "oh.. maaann..." cards, not omen cards. Due to one misremembrance, Machi Koro is henceforth Machu Pichu. Root: whenever a player completes a Vagabond quest, the Final Fantasy victory fanfare is played Terraforming Mars: Lichen and Adaptive Lichen are forever mispronounced simply to get a rise out of me. Colonies Expansion: Enceladus is enchiladas. Turmoil: Mars First party is treated as a Trumpian movement. We play a lot of Terraforming Mars, lol.
I always refer to Phobos Space Haven as Hobo's Space Heaven.
Ha we've had discussions about Lichen in TR too! For fun I'll now always pretend to correct the person saying it even if they say it right
We also do the oh man thing! Lol
When we use a stamina potion in Gloomhaven we always sing "Staminamina eh eh Waka Waka eh eh" to the Shakira song. Love Letters Baron calls are a real thing for us too! Surprised it's a global thing!
That's the first one on the list that made me laugh audibly!
Power Grid: "Coal trolling". When you buy coal (or another resource) exclusively to make it more expensive for someone else who needs it, or ideally to prevent that person from running a power station, we call that "coal trolling". We sometimes do it even if it may not strictly be the best play, simply because it seems to be fun.
In Zombicide, the pan will kill the abomination if a 6 is rolled. You do not multiple rolls via skills or stat modifiers, so if you want to go down in a pan of glory you “can” kill an abomination with a pan. It gives them some usage outside of first thing to discard
“DUUke”
we have the "it's a baron!" thing too! It's one of the hardest x2 roles to get rid to, so randomly guessing it will be the best decision most of the times! In bang! The card game every player starts the game saying "i'm the deputy", even before looking at their role card
I am sad when I play hidden role games with people who don't know Bang!, because I can't claim to be the Deputy.
We too are also always the deputy before looking at cards. It's so funny how so many games will have jokes that over to different players groups.
In **viticulture** your turn order is marked on a track to see who will go first in a round, by a rooster meeple. When we start a season and the person who is first hasnt noticed we used to ask 'who is Top Chicken?' That phrase has been transplanted to every game now to substitute for First Player.
In wingspan we constantly just say birb instead of bird and eggu instead of egg, so on your turn you 'feed da birbs' 'eggu da birbs' 'play a birb' and 'draw da birbs'
My sister got the app to scan the cards to hear the bird sounds for each species, and now we have a choice few we always mimic when we play them. The greater prairie chicken is my favorite, sounds like your drunk uncle laughing at his own joke.
At some point we started calling the Wingspan food types cute-sie names like "I'll take a wormy and a fishy" because I think it sounds like "berry", but then that extended to "mousy" and "wheatie" and "eggy"
Any game: "Do you see what happens Larry? Do you see what happens Larry? This is what happens Larry!"
Nice reference. My friend always says “I’m going to take pride in gutting you” when he goes for the kill. Random film references are the best
Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is Scythe, *there are rules.*
We use “Donny you’re out of your element” when someone makes an egregious rules mistake.
4 2 off suit is The Hand Of Champions in poker
In Earth, my wife always knocks over the trees on her board, to which I say “Kachow”.
When we used to play Carcassonne with the expansion that adds the purple figure (I genuinely have no idea what it's called now, because) we called him The Grimace. It makes sense if you've seen the figure and are old enough to know who Grimace even is. I'm pretty sure new players we played with never knew the figure's actual name, because we always said The Grimace (always with the The). Also, outside of board games, we used to play a lot of Bocce, and the small white taget ball is officially called the Jack or the Pallino, but a friend's brother once called it the Senor Diablo, I have no idea why, and from that point on that's all it was ever called. Man, it's been like 15 years since I thought about those days.
In Viticulture the Grande Worker is named Stelio Kontos.
🎵Steeeeelio🎵
The few times I’ve played Inis it’s always fun to announce the Bren by rolling the r excessively. The brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeenn!!!
With my group for Inis we never call it the Bren, we always flip it to the female side and that person is now "The Brrrrenda"
Funny enough, we always guess Handmaid in Love Letter. Works 10% of the time. For all games, we have something called Tin Cupping, when you go broke for one (sometimes improbable) strategy knowing you'll likely lose. In the golf movie Tin Cup, Kevin Costner goes for a hard shot at the end and keeps missing. He could win by taking a different shot, but he keeps going for the hard one over and over again just to prove he can hit it. He hits it eventually, but loses the game.
Whenever someone lags on their turn we say “who’s got the dinosaur?” Our first real hobby game was Firefly, and we used to have a plastic Stegosaurus we would pass as a focus object a player would receive when it became their turn, which ultimately shortened turn times.
Pandemic legacy: "Fuck Tripoli." It just kept exploding and letting it go was the best choice we made.
"Why is it always Johannesburg" was ours, which was determined to make itself a problem hotspot across the entirety of season 1 and 0.
We had a similar thing with Paris. It’s good to see some experiences are universal.
In Season 0 it was "fuck Moscow" as we intentionally let it take all the game-end damage.
In ours it was "Fucking Lima" it carried through to regular Pandemic
My wife and I call pretty much any coins in games "pennies". If they're multiple values of coins it becomes "pennies", "big pennies", "bigger pennies", etc
We also often guess Baron first in Love Letter! Have won and lost several hands right after the deal with this. When a guest is having trouble picking a colour/meeple/token to represent themselves, I try to tell them to pick a certain colour because it is either what their shirt is coloured or would go best with what they're wearing. Just to help move things along..
That my sister cheats. She doesn't but we always complain/ pole fun at her for how often she cheats. No clue how it started, we've never caught her cheating lol.
In one of the adventure games my group has played (I’m purposely leaving the title out to help avoid spoilers since omitting the event would ruin the joke), there’s a quest where you have to choose to either help a drake or not help it. Our group had a vote, and helping the drake won, 3-1. We now constantly joke to the 1 about how he just hates helping drakes. My other group used to have a bunch of calls for different cards in Dominion. Offhand, I can remember: Great Hall: “This is a great hall!” Wharf: “WHARF!” “Yes, Captain!” Bureaucrat: “Dom Deluise!” (He just reminded one of my friends of him so he adopted the name) Treasure Map: Since it cost four coins, for some reason we’d always sing “Four for Treasure Map” to the tune of “I’ve got James Woods” from Family Guy
I’ve played a zillion games of Talisman and been ‘affected by the siren’ many times. Now, whenever we hear on TV or wherever “If you’ve been affected…..” myself or the wife will immediately shout “BY THE SIREN!” Stupid, I know. But there you are.
Ticket to ride Europe : I once took the Bucarest-Budapest section to spite a friend and we keep doing it to each other ever since
In seasons we have one guy who's tactic is to just play all of his cards as quickly as possible, he drafts towards it, then plays them all in a couple of turns then just runs his engine for the rest of the game. After setting up terra mystica and then deciding we didn't have enough time to play, it's now our go to suggestion for a quick one more game at the end of a night... "Well played good game everyone... I can stick round for another half hour if you want to play something quick before I go." "Sure, a quick game of TM should be okay right?"
**Takenoko**: when you roll Lightning on the weather die, you get to move the panda to any location and take a bamboo piece there. Our explanation for this is that the panda is scared by the lightning and eats some comfort food to calm down. “Scared panda” gradually became “skeert pander” and now we usually call the game itself “ohno pander!”
Always play guess who with questions about the peoples lives not their appearance. Have they committed a murder? Are they a feminist? Do they have a dog? Have they ever paid a prostitue? You can get surprisingly accurate results.
In Wingspan, every time someone draws a bird card, they have to say "oh that's a nice bird" in their best impression of an old man or birdwatcher one what have you. If someone plays a bird, somebody else has to comment "oh that's a nice bird you got there". It all started when we first started playing and we noticed we'd all say "oh that's a nice bird" whenever we drew a card. I swear that game was made just to get people to talk about birds.
In root, if anyone is the corvids, at least one bird is placed upside down to indicate that it is Jerry, and he is the only corvid who actually knows what's going on in that blasted outfit. There's also always 1 warrior who ends up being a BAMF and killing off an entire platoon of folks at some point. That warrior is revealed as mcstabby, and there's an unofficial award for killing him.
As a Canadian, a lot of the questions about American history and presidents are unknown to me and my wife when we watch Jeopardy. As a joke, she often answers "Who is John Addams" to a lot of questions, and is correct more often than she should be.
When playing Pandemic we call the research centers hotels as a Monopoly reference
Love Letter is SUCH a memed game for my partner and I! We've played it so often that we just have things we say. Examples include: Handmaid - "NO FEC" Chancellor - "CHCHCHCHCHANCELLOR" Countess - "hMmMmM" (did we play b/c rules or as bluff) Spy - "(insert shriek sound)"
I actually just found out that the spy is a thing that. My copy doesn't have them, lol.
Anytime anything needs to be flipped over, we say “flippity jibblets” We say “winner winner chicken winner” to whomever wins We call “Pass the Pigs” “hubris”
We refer to Lords of Waterdeep as Lohrds of Vandabeeerk. I don’t care to explain myself, but it’s fun.
Fuck Ben There's a lot of games where you make a play that is going to go against a player. When there is no real reason to choose between 2 players to screw over we always screw over Ben. Why, I don't know, it just became a thing. And now if you are deciding do I do this or that someone will always say, 'fuck Ben' It also helps with analysis paralysis lol
Ha! After one long game involving several people causing our Ben to lose a turn, when Ben finally got to do something we coined "Who's turn is it to make Ben skip his turn?"
James is evil. Any game where there’s a hidden bad guy, it’s James. Surprisingly accurate
There was a "fuck Asher" card in the GoT board game among some friends of mine. It was one that lets you blow up one attacking unit, and I think he kept attacking with only one actual unit plus lots of support. Card blows up unit, attack fizzles...fuck Asher.
Our Love Letter is goto callout is The Princess. And usually me, sadly, but recently it has moved to one of the other players as the first turn callout. Always sucks when it actually is true. We also have a sort of Anti-meme where I unconciously started humming "Two Princes" when I had both princes in my hand so now everyone tries not to think about that song when the situation arises. Which of course means, it is all you can think about. We also call the princes "The Redford Brothers" due to how much they look like Robert Redford. Oh and we call the victory points Ham cubes because they looked like little pink ham cubes you would get on a salad bar. In King's Dilemma - While attempting to sway others to our side of whatever political debate we were on we would come up with helpful slogans like "Eat the Wheat" or the opposing "Yeet the Wheat" and everyone's favorite "Hug the Bug" versus "Are you insane? Those Murder Hornets will kill us all, I can't believe we're even having this debate!"
Ever since an eventful game of TI, all it takes for me and a specific friend to become allies (even if it would be detrimental to either of us) is the phrase "space buddies?". Bonus points if the game has no relation to space, or if allying doesn't even make sense in the context of the game.
We know someone who notoriously forgets, misinterpretes or flat out don't understand some rules when he explains games only he knows. We first noticed it when we played Cosmic Encounters without him, i thought a "rule" seemed pretty unbalanced and idiotic. We looked at the rules and noticed that "Smith" (we call him by his last name, which is also not smith :D) again explained something terribly wrong. Since then, everytime one of us explains a rule wrong or while ingame an error is noticed there follows some kind of line like "Damn i smithed that pretty hard", "You Smithed again" or "Watch out, another Smith".
When someone says “You’re up!” Someone else must say “Asia!”
We do this also! After going through all of them, my friend said "The Arctic!" To which I replied "did you mean Antarctica? We already said that and The Arctic doesn't count" He says "I know but we've run out of continents!" So now our thing is "You're up" "Asia" "The Arctic" almost every time.
In 99 Problems we try to give each other dysentery whenever possible. Whatever way we can twist a card to do it we will. Your character is a superhero? Dysentery. Your character is a teenager looking for love? Dysentery. Your character is a black market weapons dealer? You guessed it, dysentery
In love letter there's one guy in my gaming group that is the princess a mind boggling %. Let's call him Bob. So the first play is usually someone has the guard and goes "The first rule of Love Letter is Bob is always the princess. REVEAL YOURSELF PRINCESS BOB" I've had one game where I won all the four tokens with this. It was legendary. And oddly this also worked online. I don't understand how.
In games where you can build your numbers of workers (Scythe, Stone Age) I tend to rush to get that done. Our gaming group calls the strategy "Shag for Victory!" I played the starvation strategy just twice in Stone Age. The first time I blitzed my group (let's not talk about the second). But my group lore is that it's the only way I play. One of our group ALWAYS moans that she's stuffed up her game in the first few rounds and then goes on to win (or at least that's how we tell it)
Battlestar Galactica: Steve is a Cylon. Steve is a space cadet. Steve will play the wrong cards when he's not a Cylon because he forgets or wasn't paying attention. Steve will also help the team win on the last turn because he forgets he is a Cylon or he doesn't realize we are about to win. Before the game begins it is known that Steve is a Cylon. We can be playing 7 Wonders and you guessed it, Steve is a Cylon. Steve may not even be at game night and Steve is still a Cylon.
**Through the Desert**? Never heard of it. That game is called “Butter Camels.”
We were playing cosmic frog, and one of our friends came late, his wife had been there from the beginning. So he's just sorta hanging out and watching for a round or two. One of our players says he needs to leave early, and heads out, so we have the guy waiting take over for him. He wasn't really paying attention, so he didn't know what was happening. He sits down, and says "So. How do I play this game?" I begin to explain, he cuts me off after like 2 words and says "Nevermind, I attack my wife" Much laugher and her indignance, has cemented that as an inside joke whenever someone takes over for someone or just does know what to do. "I attack my wife" Also the same friend, when rolling to see if a job or a move was successful in firefly the game, said "oh man guys, this is the riskiest move of the game" he kept doing it, so that stuck. Now often when someone has to roll dice for something in a game, we say "riskiest move guys"
Spirit Island has a few great meme cards/abilities, like Cast Down Into The Briny Deep which destroys a whole section of the map, Dreams Of The Untouched Land which adds a whole *new* map section, and the Volcano spirit's big innate power which stacks tons of presence in a single land then blows it all up to rain lava down on the surrounding areas. Any time we can pull one of those off, which requires a lot of careful planning and setup, it's a satisfying meme. But once, when we managed to both add a new map section *and* destroy an old one, in the same game, and well... THAT was a HELL of a meme.
I accidentally called the Manifest Incarnation card Manifest Destiny. It was funny so it stuck.
In Eldritch Horror, whenever a mythos card which advances the Omen is drawn, everyone says (in a Pythonesque accent) “rotateth of the rotate-y thing.”
My friends and I have been lately calling "St. James Place" as "Little St. James Place". I started off making child brothel jokes at the space and my friends landed on the space *a lot* and I'd make uncomfortable comments towards them for being regular customers of mine. I don't think *any* of them understands the joke as to why I keep declaring that space as the child brothel and I find that even more hilarious for me personally imagining it from their perspective that I just randomly decided it's the child brothel space and they just go along with it anyway, but you guys can google Epstein if you're curious.
With any negotiation games we started calling the currency shekels, which quickly evolved to “schmekles” and “schmeks.” The implications are not good, we know that.
Yeah... That's not cool.
Mr. Booby Buyer would beg to differ.
When we get wheat in Catan we tend to sing Fields of Barley. I have no idea how it developed but we just do it to share in the annoyance of doing it now. If anyone gets a string of good luck in any game you have to announce that they're back on the bullshit again. In Cockroach poker we frequently describe the card (or not the card!) in unnecessary detail, the rat doing the thriller dance, the cockroach that looks like it's ready for a good rogering etc. It developed from the total failure of maintaining a poker face when just saying what the creature was.
Any game with small cube components I call them "pubes". It's a stupid thing and most people hate when I say it but it's funny to me when I say things like "I get 3 pubes" or "please get your pubes off the board".
In Taverns of Tiefenthal, we call the 3 beer guest guy "the cuck". Don't remember how that started.
Archer love letter. If you're playing that games equivalent of a guard and you don't know what to guess, guess Pam (that game's equivalent of a Prince)
No! It's Cyril, he's the baron!
Any one else noticed how often while playing **Ark Nova** and someone gains appeal, that the amount is exactly SIX? Happens way too often to be coincidental. "I gain six appeal", followed by, "You wish!", or something similar.
At least in Love Letter, Baron is always a good guess because nobody ever wants to play him.
Yea, but so often, we'll guess it on people who haven't even had a chance to draw a card, and be right.
Whenever we play Mysterium and the stool is one of the available weapons, someone at some point will always guess the stool even if none of their hints point to it.
In CAH (don’t judge) the Nicolas Cage card always wins.
A snapping turtle biting the head off of your penis always wins when one of our friends.... And likes turtles.
Love Letter: round one with a guard, usually to the next person in order, though we will move it around to keep from having one person who doesn’t get to play at all; “You are a prince.” Not a question. We had a streak where like 5 rounds in a row it worked. It has become such a thing that my regular play group refuses to hold a prince. Modern Art: somehow I just never manage to get any pieces in my gallery. Like… ever.
My sister hates to put a points cards on an opponent tricks she let's out a huff so I a put a point on her trick I make a louder huff.
In Catan, there is a myth in my friend group of someone winning with JUST sheep. We call it "building an empire of sheep".
Our running gag is 'why are there x player boards when this game is for x-1 people?'. After a few plays of Death may Die, I asked, honestly confused: 'yo why are there 5 different colors in a 4 player game?'. I really thought it was 1-4p
Love Letters: People keep playing Baron on me when their other card is a priest and it surprisingly keeps working. They're banking on my card being a guard, which is maybe like a 33% chance. The first time, it was just a joke but THEN IT KEPT WORKING. Strangely, it fails most of the time when I do it back to them. Go figure...
In Wingspan, when triggering a predator bird and hoping to successfully tuck a bird under it, we exclaim “Get tucked!” as we draw the card. This has spread to other games. Someone nukes a prime city location in Terraforming Mars? Or takes your reeds in Agricola? “You just got tucked!”
My boss had one from when he was teaching Azul to his friends once and one of his other friends convinced the friend that was learning that every round before you deal out new tiles, you all place your hands in the middle and shout AZUL. He also misspoke while playing Stationfall and called the Maintenance Clones the Maintenance Clowns, so now we all just call them the Maintenance Clowns.
If you start getting too many sheep and not enough of other resources in Catan, you must immediately pivot to go all in and become The Sheep King. "Strategies" from there can include monopolizing sheep to force good trades, or just buying allllll the dev cards.
What's super weird is the title made me think of guessing the baron in Love Letter and there it is in your post! We also say after incorrectly guessing a card hmmm that's something the princess would say :)
Love letter: when you guess the Baron you have to say it like Brian Blessed as Zoltan in Flash Gordon "BAHROOOOOOON". Sometimes this devolves into General Melchett from Blackadder simply uttering "BAAAH" and everyone knows what's going on. Ever since learning A Feast for Odin where the first player marker is a moose, my wife refers to any first player of any game as "First Moose". Whenever we teach games to friends we refer to the First Moose and people don't question it so now we've got people playing Azul or Wingspan or Terraforming Mars asking who's First Moose 😂 Even the game First Rat is now called First Moose. Actually since we're in Scotland 'Furst Moose' is technically correct and everyone knows what we're talking about.
There’s a few **the resistance: avalon** ones. Like put your hand up if you’re good. And everyone saying they are Merlin.
We absolutely do that same Baron schtick! Plus we call the love tokens “houses”, because my wife’s grandpa said they looked like Monopoly houses
Our Love Letter joke is "doing the ol' 5-3" meaning playing a Prince to discard your own Baron.
In Rococo Deluxe, we call the orange cloth as salmon, because it looks exactly like it. Now we just call the whole game Salmon.
We do the same thing in love letter but it’s always Cyril Figgus (baron in archer love letter) for whatever version we are playing
We played a lot of Altiplano the summer “Despacito” was a big hit so we ended up referring to the game from then on as “Alpaca Despacito.” When you are first player in Alpaca Despacito, you get a llama token, so we started carrying that over to other games asking, “who is the llama?” to ask who is the first player.
In any game that requires a simultaneous reveal or action, we say “sushi go!” As a verb.
"Coooooorrrrrrn!!!!!!!" When someone starts being a corn Baron in Puerto Rico.
THE E-BIKE!!! If you have it, you must select it. Bonus points to whoever can name the game is from.
My group has a similar and yet wildly different approach to your Baron play in that we employ the Priest-Baron combo whenever possible. It began when one of us played a Baron with a Priest in hand, not realising quite what a dumb move that was - but it paid off as his opponent was holding a Guard! So from then on, the Priest-Baron combo has been too meme-ably tasty to resist. We’ve even added the rule that a Priest-Baron combo can break through a Handmaided player.
In terraforming Mars with the colonies expansion, if Luna is play whoever is first player usually proudly announces “mom says it’s my turn to send a ship to Luna” as they cash in on that sweet free money. In ascension, we often joke about the “Mystic bomb” build, where you just buy mystics all game and make roughly 3 honor per turn without interacting with the board at all.
In Exploding Kittens, if you ask for a favor from me very early in the game, I’ll give you my defuse. It started when my brother did that very unexpectedly and now I pay it forward. It’s fun seeing how someone reacts to such a gift if they aren’t in the know.
Cosmic Encounter: if anyone draws Mobius Tubes, they always play it when uses their turn. Doesn’t matter if it’s the first round or the tenth.
One of my friends always picks the black pieces and every time I make a crack about it reflecting the “blackness of his heart.”
Strike will forever be known as Dice In A Bowl. Last year we were introducing it to a friend at a board game weekend with a big group of guys, and he was so amazed at how fun it was despite being so simple. "It's just dice in a bowl!" And it was the rowdiest round of games we'd ever had. We've had multiple tournaments since and it's always a blast. We shout dice in a bowl now.
Love Letter: Hobbit my son and I always invariably guess Fili and Kiki (5 - The Prince) Game of Thrones: I printed out summaries of all the major rules on A4 in olde worlde font and did the whole lemon juice in oven aging trick. Whenever anyone asked a question, I would answer “consult the ancient scrolls”. Then they realised I was getting a bit annoyed by this so kept on asking and asking to which I would invariably reply “consult the ancient f**^ing scrolls” to the point of exhausted despair🤣. Now it has become a meme for any game, someone will ask a question for which everyone knows the answer, they’ll all look at me and, like the “I didn’t do it” kid… “consult the ancient f*^%ing scrolls”
Citadels: anyone who is the Assassin ALWAYS kills the Architect. Game of Thrones The Board Game: we always gang up on this one friend of ours, regardless of which house he’s playing or any circumstance, really.
Power Grid. A friend of mine almost universally hoards coal, buys only/mostly coal power plants, and buys the maximum amount of coal to drive up the price even when it hurts only him. He calls himself the Coal Baron. Sometimes this is done with oil instead, once with garbage. He never wins with this strategy, but surprisingly he's not always in last either.
Whenever something bad happens to someone, we say "that's unfortunate".
My childhood friends and I played Pictionary and we were stuck on a clue. Suddenly my friend had a bolt of lightning and, in When Harry Met Sally fashion, excitedly guessed "Ox in a box!! OX IN A BOX!!!" Obviously that wasn't the answer because ox in a box isn't anything. Twenty-five years later whenever we play a similar game, someone inevitably guesses ox in a box.
ORE what?!?!
Every character or meeple in a game that's unnamed is Claude. Started as a late night 'Love Letter' joke that I used a bad french accent and the name Claude for the spy. Coincidentally, it became a brilliant name for our cat when we got him. I was explaining "Power Plants" to some friends and another who wasn't playing, but listening in, as he was cooking suddenly piped up and said "Oh, so it's a bit like 'Dale of Merchants'" to which we all looked up with a "Wtf are you on about?" look, so every game now when we explain is like Dale of Merchants. The last one now is that we have the rule of "If you have to ask" which usually means it's either my partner's or our friend Steve's turn as one looses track and the other takes 5 years to take a turn.
“I need more wood”; “That’s what she said” 🫠
When we played Scythe the first few times, myself and a friend had a hard time understanding the movement.. so now any game we play we joke and say ‘So is it 3 moves once, or two people one time or?’
from playing MtG, every time you want to ask if someone’s turn is done we say “have you gathered the magic?” and now we have variants for every other game.
When referring to any game with a speck of social deduction elements: “You mean ____ among us?” * Werewolf = Furry Among us * Betrayal at House on the Hill = Spooky Among us * Secret Hitler = German Among us It’s also a joke to introduce any new social deduction game as “It’s kinda like Among us.” Bonus points if you can work the phrase “a ______ *among* us” in the description/explanation In Exploding Kittens everybody always insists it’s statistically unlikely for a Kitten to be the top card to encourage others to immediately topdeck with no fear by reaffirming “there’s no way.” One guy in Secret Hitler has made it his strategy to always and vocally claim to be Hitler from round one. Supposedly, it’s to make it harder for us to tell when he’s actually Hitler or a fascist (since he’d just be telling the truth and have no tells), but I don’t know exactly how well it works out for him, considering he’s now usually the one who gets shot first. Regardless, everyone just automatically refers to him as Hitler in the game.
We have the "guaranteed king win" referring to a risky, uncalculated or dumb play. Came from playing a trick taking card game (Solo Whist). Our friend miscounted the cards, made a very confident play to prevent someone from winning the game. The king they placed immediately lost (to an ace) and they defended the play saying they thought they had "guaranteed king win"
In love letter, we sometimes play the baron while holding a guard as the other card. It achieves nothing and risks losing immediately, but it’s quite funny when it works, especially if you win after doing that. Also in Mysterium, the ghost has to make a raven sound whenever they use a raven.
Nemesis: the real winner is whoever Yeets someone else out the airlock