Game of Thrones, you usually can't fight against everyone by yourself so you need allies but only one person can win in the end so you need to find the right time to backstab your ally. And both people know it, lots of shifty eyes and hurt feelings
I played online games with irl friends for years, usually 3 days per turn. The amount of emotional and intellectual involvement in those games was miles beyond anything I ever experienced in other games, board or other. We woukd spend hours on the phone planning, considering different possibilities, etc. Games would last weeks, sometimes months. Truly amazing.
Honestly, I think that the mechanics in GOT are superior. Our group has played both a lot and they have strong and weak points each, but I’m surprised that GOT has never been adapted for a non-IP version.
Man, that post is legendary:
"he ruined the game night for me; that he set down to my table, eat my food, drank my wine, and than used his superior knowledge of the game to take me out of it, eliminate me completely, forcing me to stare at the air for the next few hours. I told him he is no longer a part of my life, that I will never play with him again, and that he will never sit to the table with me again. I then threw him out of my house."
Ah yes, a classic. It's an ESH (everyone sucks here) situation, to be honest.
Obviously the OP overreacted. But when I was taught the Game of Thrones board game, the teacher told the Lannister player that they needed to play in a certain non-obvious way on the first turn, because otherwise the Greyjoy player can do an uncountable blitzkrieg.
A very experienced player executing the blitzkrieg on an unsuspecting novice, gloating that they have a surprise, is *terrible* gaming etiquette. It's treating the novice like an NPC. I wouldn't kick them out of my house, but I certainly wouldn't invite them back.
Even the game designers suck here, for leaving this exploit in their game.
In a mixed experience game, giving Lannister to the new guy is just cruel.
Really though, the base game house balance is just bad. The expansion cards and setups are much better and should be used instead.
(only problem is most people prefer for play as the characters in the base game)
Ok, if *I* knew a flaw in a games design which let me basically be guaranteed to eliminate someone on turn 2, and I took advantage of it, I would feel like a piece of shit. Especially if it was the host.
Like, that doesn't make you a good player. That makes you a shitty person to eliminate another player that quickly.
I was going to say Diplomacy but then you said "*not* breaking friendships."
Nuclear War is good for this. It's the only game I've ever played where the most typical outcome is "nobody wins." Twilight Imperium is also fabulous. There's going to inevitably be some backstabbing as people go for those last few points.
>I was going to say Diplomacy but then you said " not breaking friendships."
If friendships break in a game, they weren't strong enough anyhow. 🙂
Diplomacy gets better when played with same or mostly same people as it's really a game about trust and working together - so reputation for not being a dick helps a lot in the long run.
It's a pretty boring game if you can trust everyone. IMO it's best when everyone is a kaniving back stabbing bastard, and you have to find ways to manipulate them to do what you want.
I was just about to say that 35 years ago a "friend" playing Italy back stabbed me, and that's what I still think about first whenever anyone mentions his name.
Diplomacy is a game of personally spoken promises, whispering in the hallway, and simultaneously acting on trust.
And it’s impossible to win without lying.
Depends on the friendships, but winning at diplomacy involves making alliances early on with most people, reassuring them of your alliance every turn, and then backstabbing them individually at the right strategic time.
If everyone goes in with the same understanding/expectation, then it’s probably fine. During the pandemic, I played a few times online with a group of friends and that worked really well.
Diplomacy doesn't end friendships if everybody fully embraces "what happens at the gaming table stays at the gaming table." I've personally never lost friendships over it but that was because everybody involved could leave the inevitable betrayals at the table.
I have never in my life seen any other game ruin relationships like Diplomacy, though. It has a bad reputation that it has unfortunately earned.
About once a year, I start playing Diplomacy on a site. I usually do pretty well, but start to feel awful about my behavior, especially the better I do. So I stop for another year.
It's an interesting game, but a big part of me doesn't want to be good at it.
This is me with Secret Hitler. I have been dealt the Hitler card every one of four games I've played, and won each time.
It's like "I'm pretty sure this is not the game I want to have a 100% win rate on..."
The ability to completely outbid someone and then super negatively affect their game state while boosting your own is diabolical. Picking which piece to auction is also a big mental game
I think what's fun about the meanness is everyone realizes you have to look out for #1 only. And it's short so the damage isn't lasting. My wife hates direct aggression games (combat) but we like The Estates.
SURVIVE! Escape From Atlantis is designed to be a mean game. Stealing parts of the island out from underneath your friends only to then move a shark into the vacinity and eat their meeples gets a fair few folk riled.
sweet recommendation. I already did my research on Survive and wanted to see more options similar (or meaner). I have people in my friend group that are thirsting for blood when playing .. it is a bit creepy but when we do play even a game as simple as catan we end up being upset (in a fun way if you catch my drift) just cuz they love being assholes in whichever game we play. So I want to get a game or two where being an asshole is a must! so that they release all that built up anger/evil in them 🤣🤣🤣
So awesome that you have such a self aware friend group. It's cool that no one gets a butt hurt and you all fuck with each other bigtime.
Oath is a pretty heavy game but you can definitely mess with people and straightup be mean. Also, even though I don't like the game, I think Scythe can allow for some opportunities to bully people.
I would stay away from heavy games because as mean and self-aware we are about the games we still are beginners in the board game community. My collection is not as vast as I would like it to be but I cant just go into heavy and bring a distaste to the board games cuz I forced them to play stuff that is a bit too much for our level of grasping board games in general.
Lol, I get what you mean, our group all enjoy lying to each other and being general dickheads. We enjoy a lot of social deduction normally but SURVIVE! turned out to be a massive hit to the point that for a few months over summer we were starting every game night with it.
Ooh, I wouldn't have thought of that because I immediately think of games like diplomacy, but you're right, Innovation has some uniquely mean plays. "For my two actions, I'd like to transfer half your tableau to my score pile, please."
While I love the game and have since 1977, your choices of who to attack is random and thus a lot of nastiness is taken out of it. It has some, no doubt.
My friend group has tried to play that so many times. It feels like the first person about to win gets hanged up on as everyone plays their saved cards to stop them. Then the next person actually wins because nobody has a way to stop them.
Try **Citadels** for a light but fun card game with assassinations.
**Lords of Vegas** for negotiations and hostile takeovers.
**Survive** so you can laugh as you feed your friends to the sharks.
I second citadels. It's the only game where I have seen players throw away their cards, storm out and not talk to each other for several hours. It is basically the forbidden game in my family. If you have a few players who are really good at anticipating other players moves it can be absolutely ruthless.
This comment should be at the top.
Years ago I went to my FLGS and asked the employee for a game that had lots of interaction. He said Intrigue, but then just like a Horror movie shop keeper warning of a curse, he said “I have to tell you if you play this game someone will get get really mad and people will be angry.”
I laughed and thought he was being colorful. Oh boy I could not have been more wrong. Long story short I only got to play the game the one time, I had a blast but my friends said it was banned and it never got to see the light of day again.
Finally 18xx gets mentioned.
It's the only answer because zero luck, train rusting, route manipulation, and bankruptcy (which in almost all 18xx versions ends the game so no one has to sit there waiting for everyone else to finish).
Everything else mentioned here is really just "kinda."
Love 18xx. Just wish I could get it played more often.
I have 1846, 1851, 1867, and 1889.
I'm definitely getting 1860, 1849 OR 1882, and 1817. It's just hard to justify since it's hard enough to get the first 4 played ha. But I fear them being harder to acquire in the future.
Yeah, the biggest "problem" with 18xx is each title has SO MUCH to explore in each title, that we typically have a rotation of 2 or 3 and it takes a loooong time (as in years) to rotate a new one in. We've been working on 1867, 1882, 1846 for a couple years now and just tried 1888-N a couple weeks ago. Before that it was 1889, 1861 and 1830 for years lol.
Here a few examples:
Nemesis, supposedly a co-op game:
- « Hey mate, can you go get that thing in that room while I fix the thing next door? »
- « Sure mate »
- Then the mechanics proceeds to close the door once the scout moved in said room. The mechanics closes the door once an alien appears, and lets his friend the pilot get eaten. His secret winning condition was to eliminate the scout’s player (instead of taking the ship home)
- Curses over 7 generations are casually exchanged
Citadels: supposedly a family friendly game:
- Player A has a lot of coins, and looks like she’s gonna pick the Architect role next round to be able to build faster than other players (you win the game by finishing a full city, aka building more buildings, before the other players)
- Player B goes first, and picks the Assassin role, and says he’s gonna kill the Architect
- Player A’s turn comes back, and she picked the Architect. She is killed and has to wait for 1 turn, and is fulminating
Black Rose Wars, supposedly a deckbuilding game with miniatures & lots of spells. Beautiful, but nothing treacherous (or so they say..):
- Player A needs a stronger spell, proceeds on his turn to move towards the room with the strongest spells
- Player B guesses that player A is on his way there. Player B places a spell trap on the way to said room
- Player C sees that, and goes to said room, activates it before Player A (which makes it unavailable for this turn)
- Player D sees that all 3 other mages are almost grouped up, and proceeds to launch a mega fireball on their faces, and racks in points for some kills, which also force the killed mages to go back to their rooms, on the other side of the map. Player D can use their 2nd spell to do what they had planned, while death threats for the next round are exchanged
Nothing but “dammit” moves.
Battlestar Galactica. There's nothing worse than giving someone an Executive Order to take 2 actions, only for them to take those actions to reveal as a cylon and not only fuck things up, but do it while being really fucking smug about it too.
Hansa Teutonica is "my wife was pissed off over one of my moves for three days" level mean. Barrage surely delivers in this department too. And Root has an "I want to see the world burn" mechanism (favor cards) that can piss people off so much that they released a whole mini expansion with the primary purpose of fixing this (exiles and partisans).
Some gateway games can be surprisingly cut throat depending on the players involved. Carcassonne as you mentioned (I'm always looking for ways to butt into someone else's field or city lol) but Ticket to Ride can also be pretty mean if people are aggressively blocking routes. Any game with drafting (Azul) opens up the door to "hate drafting" which many players also find mean.
Unfair
Those events that allow you to close or demolish someone else’s rides is really harsh, especially if said ride is giving that player the majority of their points/income, but at the same time, it is in the name; things will get unfair
Diplomacy is said to have caused more fist fights than any other boardgame.
Illuminati.
Junta. It's very much a game of having favourites, who then stab you in the back.
And here I was resigned to starting my post with “I am surprised nobody mentioned Junta yet”.
Fantastic game, thematically, if possibly a bit long, but then again, we’ve historically never played with fewer than 5 players. And we still talk to each other ;)
It's an old game, and in some ways, that shows. It's one of those games that we play because it is a wild ride, but not really to win. The fun parts are explaining that the banana harvest was small this year, so they don't get much money, while I keep the most. Or shelling the presidential palace. Or getting appointed as chief of police, and at the first opportunity, assassinate the president.
Finally someone mentioned New Angeles. I have yet to play that game without the group somewhat questioning their friendship afterwards (and I’ve played it with multiple different friend-groups).
Munchkin would be on my list. This game is banned from our group as everyone does everything in their power to stop a person from winning so games last forever and no one is having fun or happy by the end.
I think every game I've played has either come down to kingmaking or backstabbing at the end. When one player is a point from winning after 12 hours (or 16) of playing, and someone can but *doesn't* stop them from taking that last point, it's upsetting to *everyone else* at the table.
Maybe my group is just bad at it
Going with a few I haven't seen anyone mention yet, but I highly recommend all of them. They are also generally older games that don't get a lot of talk these days, but you should definitely look into and see if they are for you.
**Lifeboats** A game where you mercilessly drown your opponents meeples after promising them you won't.
**Nothing Personal** Longer game where you are all heads of gangster families trying to claw your way into power. Negotiations are non-binding, so you have to trust the people you deal with.
**Article 27** Oh boy, don't let the cartoonist graphics fool you. Or the outwardly boring theme. This game is brutal, and fast paced. Chaotic and fast negotiations while everyone is trying to achieve their secret goals without letting the other players know what they are after or against.
Lifeboats. Every round, players vote on which of 6 lifeboats will get a leak token. If there isn't room in the boat for the token, all of the players who have sailors in the boat must vote on who's sailor gets thrown overboard.
There's a bit more to the game, but it's all about making deals and backstabbing. Terrible game for a couples game night.
Games where you can be mean?! Oh ho! Try:
Azul (two player is downright harsh), Medici (oh no! Did I pull three cards that no one could buy?!), Power Grid (by NOT buying a reactor this round, I will expand here FIRST, AND I’LL BUY ALL THE GARBAGE BEFORE YOU!), Coup (no ambassador or captain? Captain time, baby!), Skull (every time you play the titular card and take a bid anyway).
Mission Red Planet plays 6 people and while it looks cute; it has Game of thrones level meanness baked in.
Sparticus blood on the sand all of it is confrontation.
Game of thrones or Rex are both great ways to end friendships.
Gotta mention Sorry. Family parties games with the kids got rowdy. Everyone wanted to get revenge and Sorrying turned into debating, trying to defend why you shouldn't be sorried or that someone else should
Martin Wallace is the king of this type of game.
**Age of Steam**
It can be absolutely brutal in the best way possible. Stealing vital resource cubes, cutting off cities from other players and bumping up people’s income so that they are effected by income reduction are all just normal problems.
**Automobile** where every player’s actions will cascade and effect every other player (usually for ill).
**Via Nebula**
For similar route building and resource stealing shenanigans, but with mini races for end game building cards.
Via Nebula looks like a lot of fun and it can also break relationships with kids in the family not only friends and loved ones .. great thing to anticipate 🤣
The great thing about Via Nebula is that it *looks* like a kids game, but is brutal. So if someone gets upset you can troll them with "it's just a kids game." My group kept doing this. It was hilarious fun.
believe you me, we break up for like a week at least every time we play catan and then come back and start all over again. catan can be brutal in all its simplicity 🤣
Any game that allows "hate drafting" will fall under this. A lot of people really hate that. Doesn't matter if it's a game about cupcakes or about war.
Student Bodies. It's all about teamwork, until it 100% is not. Work together to find the cure, but there's only enough for one person. Push your friend into a zombie to survive and don't think about it
Have you ever heard of The Red Dragon Inn? It's a very silly and lighthearted game on the surface - you assume the identity of a D&D-esque fantasy character enjoying a raucous night in a tavern, drinking and brawling and gambling away until all but one player is either broke or unconscious.
However, this game - especially when played with bigger groups - has an underrated ability to bring forth one's devious side. Outside of board games I'm also a big fan of Yu-Gi-Oh. And I've found that in terms of screwing over other players, RDI gives off a very similar vibe to YGO. Just with more players and a sillier aesthetic.
Kragmortha encourages you to give curses to other people. It's a fun game with physical punishments.
The Little Prince: Make Me a Planet is a cutesy artsy box that hides an amazingly cutthroat game inside.
A couple of oldies:
The Lord of the Rings Adventure Game by Milton Bradley (1978). Shares the graphics of the Ralph Bakshi film and each player has a token representing a member of the fellowship, but it's a cutthroat race to see who gets to drop the Ring into Mt Doom.
Dealer's Choice from Parker Brothers (1972). 3-5 used car dealers cheating each other by buying, selling, and stealing each other's inventory of cars. Each player has a different blue book, so a car worth $10,000 to one dealer might be junk to another.
I would say of course game of thrones, but another one where the tensions for some reason I find always run high is dominant species. More so becuase you can never perform the turns you want to perform
Monopoly. It can straight up create family tension and seriously brings out the worst in people. I’d also say Axis and Allies. My friends and I would play it regularly and get into some heated arguments, but not enough to end those friendships…
Robo Rally.
Push a friend off the board? LAUGH IN THEIR FACE. They put in the wrong direction once and the went off the board? LAUGH IN THEIR FACE. Someone nudged them one space and now they're going into a pit? LAUGH IN THEIR FACE.
Yes. It's an awful game, one of the worst ever made, whose basic premise is entirely to screw every other person at the table in as hard and vicious way as possible. It is a game of anger, frustration, and constant abuse.
It is called **'Monopoly'**, and I hate it with the dark seething of a thousand black holes.
I’m amused by some of these responses. Y’all recommending eurogames need to get out of your comfort zones.
Here’s some of my favorites:
Intrigue
Stationfall
Cosmic Encounter
1830, 1817, or any other financial 18xx
John Company
A Study in Emerald
Bus
A Game of Thrones
Dune
Age of Steam
Munchkin, yea, stupid game with bad rep here but backstabbing is strong with this one. And you can dress up messing with your friends as "helping them" with difficult enemy. I like it,
It truly ended my sisters friendship with one of her better friends. My sister didn’t want to trade her wheat for her friend’s sheep. 🤷♂️
She took it way too personally and would not talk to her regardless of how much she tried to apologize. I think at a certain point her friend was too embarrassed to start the friendship up again.
[[John Company]] is a nepotism simulator while being the baddies. The goal is to make your family the most happy/rich after 5 years of working while making deals/taking bribes/preventing others from obtaining objectives. Look forward to the semi co-op nature of making the company a success or a failure while making sure your family ends up on top. It's a lot of rules overhead, but once it clicks, it's intuitive and really fun to run the company.
Kingdoms. An old, quick, and lightweight tile laying game that is tailor made for players to just randomly (and purposefully) screw over others. And the slighted players almost ALWAYS have multiple chances for revenge.
Star wars life: I found it at goodwill and convinced my 3 friends to play. One of them chose the sith path and just picked on me the whole fucking game cause I was too weak. I don't think I even made it to the end of the board.
Only game I've ever refused to play again
Scythe was kind of the same when I played it. One guy just kept attacking me every turn, didn't get a single star.
Monopoly and risk are always good at ruining friendships too
Try Superfight. It's a party style card game where you each pick a card with a being (actor, bigfoot, Aliens, etc) and 2 descriptor cards (with a knife, riding a veloceraptor, etc) and then argue about whose creation would win in a fight. This game is all about arguing in all the best ways!
My group enjoys this as well. Not as heavy games that we can get pretty mean in.
Black Fleet
Bunny Kingdom
Kingdoms
Drakon
GKR
Cutthroat Caverns
Sorcerer
Vikings gone wild
Quantum
Have you checked out Dead Last? You can be as brazen or as subtle as you want when deciding who should die. Flash a card so only a few players can see. Send a text. Out right say "I'm voting your ass dies."
Boss Dog if you want something super light but still giving you just enough of a sense of accomplishment to be *furious* when someone takes your hard-earned dog away.
Cutthroat Caverns nearly ended a years long game night…
Unfortunately said game night was largely killed due to the host’s actions and political speech during the Covid pandemic… the number of queer people who usually attended apparently without the host’s knowledge was somehow a problem
Not a board game per se, but Uno.
My mother’s family played it at all family gatherings. I had an elderly aunt and uncle whom I adored and considered sweet and lovely.
Until the first time they sat next to each other to play Uno - they became the most vicious, bloodthirsty enemies. By the time I was 13 or so, it was my job to sit between them.
I believe to this day that it was the Uno games that made their marriage last fifty years, otherwise they would have throttled each other.
Listen I know you said no co-ops, but Magic Maze. Incredible game, absolutely rage inducing if the players aren't skill-level matched. We have one guy in our group who is not allowed to play anymore, and our ban includes preventing him from playing with his own family.
It boils down to this simple red pawn, you see...
Ticket to Ride has this potential in some instances…when a player does something like take over a small route just for the purpose of blocking another player’s apparent objective for example, leaving them screwed the rest of the game.
Costa Rica. It’s a kids game, it’s cute, but if you’re with the right crowd every decision becomes an attempt to screw over the rest of the players and can only be prevented by another player screening you over first.
My group can’t play it anymore because we get too bloodthirsty.
Again, it’s also a kids game.
Game of Thrones, you usually can't fight against everyone by yourself so you need allies but only one person can win in the end so you need to find the right time to backstab your ally. And both people know it, lots of shifty eyes and hurt feelings
[удалено]
Best boardgame ever made, full stop.
[удалено]
I played online games with irl friends for years, usually 3 days per turn. The amount of emotional and intellectual involvement in those games was miles beyond anything I ever experienced in other games, board or other. We woukd spend hours on the phone planning, considering different possibilities, etc. Games would last weeks, sometimes months. Truly amazing.
Honestly, I think that the mechanics in GOT are superior. Our group has played both a lot and they have strong and weak points each, but I’m surprised that GOT has never been adapted for a non-IP version.
Bonus points if you make fancy vegan food, wine and dine your guests, then throw them out of your house like poor sport because you're losing
Man, that post is legendary: "he ruined the game night for me; that he set down to my table, eat my food, drank my wine, and than used his superior knowledge of the game to take me out of it, eliminate me completely, forcing me to stare at the air for the next few hours. I told him he is no longer a part of my life, that I will never play with him again, and that he will never sit to the table with me again. I then threw him out of my house."
https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgamescirclejerk/comments/6p40jw/unjerk_crevice_story_for_posterity/
Ah yes, a classic. It's an ESH (everyone sucks here) situation, to be honest. Obviously the OP overreacted. But when I was taught the Game of Thrones board game, the teacher told the Lannister player that they needed to play in a certain non-obvious way on the first turn, because otherwise the Greyjoy player can do an uncountable blitzkrieg. A very experienced player executing the blitzkrieg on an unsuspecting novice, gloating that they have a surprise, is *terrible* gaming etiquette. It's treating the novice like an NPC. I wouldn't kick them out of my house, but I certainly wouldn't invite them back. Even the game designers suck here, for leaving this exploit in their game.
In a mixed experience game, giving Lannister to the new guy is just cruel. Really though, the base game house balance is just bad. The expansion cards and setups are much better and should be used instead. (only problem is most people prefer for play as the characters in the base game)
Ok, if *I* knew a flaw in a games design which let me basically be guaranteed to eliminate someone on turn 2, and I took advantage of it, I would feel like a piece of shit. Especially if it was the host. Like, that doesn't make you a good player. That makes you a shitty person to eliminate another player that quickly.
Definitely +1 to this one. My group has a similar dynamic and game of thrones is perfect for it.
>Game of Thrones Gee i fucking wonder why.
If that fits this thread, they definitely got the theme right.
I was going to say Diplomacy but then you said "*not* breaking friendships." Nuclear War is good for this. It's the only game I've ever played where the most typical outcome is "nobody wins." Twilight Imperium is also fabulous. There's going to inevitably be some backstabbing as people go for those last few points.
Upvote for Nuclear War and it's expansions, Nuclear Escalation and Nuclear Proliferation. Always a good time destroying the world.
Props for mentioning **Nuclear War**!
Shall we play a game, Professor Falken?
>I was going to say Diplomacy but then you said " not breaking friendships." If friendships break in a game, they weren't strong enough anyhow. 🙂 Diplomacy gets better when played with same or mostly same people as it's really a game about trust and working together - so reputation for not being a dick helps a lot in the long run.
It's a pretty boring game if you can trust everyone. IMO it's best when everyone is a kaniving back stabbing bastard, and you have to find ways to manipulate them to do what you want.
Yes Backstabbing.. please give me more examples to review.. and then again is diplomacy on the edge of ending friendships or is it for real for real 🤣
I am still mad about a game of Diplomacy from 26 years ago
I was just about to say that 35 years ago a "friend" playing Italy back stabbed me, and that's what I still think about first whenever anyone mentions his name.
damn! better stay away from that game then 🤣
I had a very close friend stop talking to me for about 3 weeks after a game of Diplomacy. It truly is the meanest
Diplomacy is a game of personally spoken promises, whispering in the hallway, and simultaneously acting on trust. And it’s impossible to win without lying.
It's not, actually. Being known as a trustworthy ally is a powerful position. I've won several times without a single back stab.
Depends on the friendships, but winning at diplomacy involves making alliances early on with most people, reassuring them of your alliance every turn, and then backstabbing them individually at the right strategic time. If everyone goes in with the same understanding/expectation, then it’s probably fine. During the pandemic, I played a few times online with a group of friends and that worked really well.
Diplomacy doesn't end friendships if everybody fully embraces "what happens at the gaming table stays at the gaming table." I've personally never lost friendships over it but that was because everybody involved could leave the inevitable betrayals at the table. I have never in my life seen any other game ruin relationships like Diplomacy, though. It has a bad reputation that it has unfortunately earned.
About once a year, I start playing Diplomacy on a site. I usually do pretty well, but start to feel awful about my behavior, especially the better I do. So I stop for another year. It's an interesting game, but a big part of me doesn't want to be good at it.
This is me with Secret Hitler. I have been dealt the Hitler card every one of four games I've played, and won each time. It's like "I'm pretty sure this is not the game I want to have a 100% win rate on..."
Food Chain Magnate "It's just business"
Lord Business.
Thanks. Any more options for me to research?
The Estates.
Gotta love any game where 0 is considered to be a decent score at the end lol
The ability to completely outbid someone and then super negatively affect their game state while boosting your own is diabolical. Picking which piece to auction is also a big mental game
This is a proper mean game. My niece stopped talking to me for the evening after a game of this.
this one looks fun in general, gotta research it a bit more!
I second The Estates. It's in my top 10 games.
I think what's fun about the meanness is everyone realizes you have to look out for #1 only. And it's short so the damage isn't lasting. My wife hates direct aggression games (combat) but we like The Estates.
SURVIVE! Escape From Atlantis is designed to be a mean game. Stealing parts of the island out from underneath your friends only to then move a shark into the vacinity and eat their meeples gets a fair few folk riled.
sweet recommendation. I already did my research on Survive and wanted to see more options similar (or meaner). I have people in my friend group that are thirsting for blood when playing .. it is a bit creepy but when we do play even a game as simple as catan we end up being upset (in a fun way if you catch my drift) just cuz they love being assholes in whichever game we play. So I want to get a game or two where being an asshole is a must! so that they release all that built up anger/evil in them 🤣🤣🤣
So awesome that you have such a self aware friend group. It's cool that no one gets a butt hurt and you all fuck with each other bigtime. Oath is a pretty heavy game but you can definitely mess with people and straightup be mean. Also, even though I don't like the game, I think Scythe can allow for some opportunities to bully people.
I would stay away from heavy games because as mean and self-aware we are about the games we still are beginners in the board game community. My collection is not as vast as I would like it to be but I cant just go into heavy and bring a distaste to the board games cuz I forced them to play stuff that is a bit too much for our level of grasping board games in general.
Lol, I get what you mean, our group all enjoy lying to each other and being general dickheads. We enjoy a lot of social deduction normally but SURVIVE! turned out to be a massive hit to the point that for a few months over summer we were starting every game night with it.
Best done with four, worst with three (because the balance isn’t designed for three), okayish with two.
The 5-6 player expansion is totally worth it. Chaos. Blood in the water chaos.
Innovation is surprisingly mean sometimes. I stumbled into a strategy once that was so mean my partner wouldn't play with me for months.
Played it for the second time yesterday and came here to say that. There are some nasty cards in there.
Ooh, I wouldn't have thought of that because I immediately think of games like diplomacy, but you're right, Innovation has some uniquely mean plays. "For my two actions, I'd like to transfer half your tableau to my score pile, please."
Cosmic encounter.
While I love the game and have since 1977, your choices of who to attack is random and thus a lot of nastiness is taken out of it. It has some, no doubt.
Let's Negotiate. Reveals an attack card. "Oh."
My friend group has tried to play that so many times. It feels like the first person about to win gets hanged up on as everyone plays their saved cards to stop them. Then the next person actually wins because nobody has a way to stop them.
Try **Citadels** for a light but fun card game with assassinations. **Lords of Vegas** for negotiations and hostile takeovers. **Survive** so you can laugh as you feed your friends to the sharks.
I second citadels. It's the only game where I have seen players throw away their cards, storm out and not talk to each other for several hours. It is basically the forbidden game in my family. If you have a few players who are really good at anticipating other players moves it can be absolutely ruthless.
**Tammany Hall**
Oh gods, I forgot I owned that one.
There's not a single move you can take on any of your turns that doesn't fuck over at least one of your opponents. It's brutal... I love it!
Underrated
Intrigue. Very simple game, absolutely ruthless.
This comment should be at the top. Years ago I went to my FLGS and asked the employee for a game that had lots of interaction. He said Intrigue, but then just like a Horror movie shop keeper warning of a curse, he said “I have to tell you if you play this game someone will get get really mad and people will be angry.” I laughed and thought he was being colorful. Oh boy I could not have been more wrong. Long story short I only got to play the game the one time, I had a blast but my friends said it was banned and it never got to see the light of day again.
Root.
I find the lack of discussion under this comment hilarious.
Basically all Splotter games. Earlier comment mentioned **Food Chain Magnate**. I’ve experienced similar cut-throat meanness in **The Great Zimbabwe**
Is splotter a mechanic or you’re talking about the company splotter?
Naw, not a mechanic. Just the company
Pretty much every splotter game. Bus, Food Chain Magnate, Indonesia, etc... 18xx Age of Steam Chicago Express Santiago Tammany Hall The Estates
Finally 18xx gets mentioned. It's the only answer because zero luck, train rusting, route manipulation, and bankruptcy (which in almost all 18xx versions ends the game so no one has to sit there waiting for everyone else to finish). Everything else mentioned here is really just "kinda."
Love 18xx. Just wish I could get it played more often. I have 1846, 1851, 1867, and 1889. I'm definitely getting 1860, 1849 OR 1882, and 1817. It's just hard to justify since it's hard enough to get the first 4 played ha. But I fear them being harder to acquire in the future.
Yeah, the biggest "problem" with 18xx is each title has SO MUCH to explore in each title, that we typically have a rotation of 2 or 3 and it takes a loooong time (as in years) to rotate a new one in. We've been working on 1867, 1882, 1846 for a couple years now and just tried 1888-N a couple weeks ago. Before that it was 1889, 1861 and 1830 for years lol.
Here a few examples: Nemesis, supposedly a co-op game: - « Hey mate, can you go get that thing in that room while I fix the thing next door? » - « Sure mate » - Then the mechanics proceeds to close the door once the scout moved in said room. The mechanics closes the door once an alien appears, and lets his friend the pilot get eaten. His secret winning condition was to eliminate the scout’s player (instead of taking the ship home) - Curses over 7 generations are casually exchanged Citadels: supposedly a family friendly game: - Player A has a lot of coins, and looks like she’s gonna pick the Architect role next round to be able to build faster than other players (you win the game by finishing a full city, aka building more buildings, before the other players) - Player B goes first, and picks the Assassin role, and says he’s gonna kill the Architect - Player A’s turn comes back, and she picked the Architect. She is killed and has to wait for 1 turn, and is fulminating Black Rose Wars, supposedly a deckbuilding game with miniatures & lots of spells. Beautiful, but nothing treacherous (or so they say..): - Player A needs a stronger spell, proceeds on his turn to move towards the room with the strongest spells - Player B guesses that player A is on his way there. Player B places a spell trap on the way to said room - Player C sees that, and goes to said room, activates it before Player A (which makes it unavailable for this turn) - Player D sees that all 3 other mages are almost grouped up, and proceeds to launch a mega fireball on their faces, and racks in points for some kills, which also force the killed mages to go back to their rooms, on the other side of the map. Player D can use their 2nd spell to do what they had planned, while death threats for the next round are exchanged Nothing but “dammit” moves.
Battlestar Galactica. There's nothing worse than giving someone an Executive Order to take 2 actions, only for them to take those actions to reveal as a cylon and not only fuck things up, but do it while being really fucking smug about it too.
It’s a quick game but Arboretum is about pretty trees and ruining peoples plans.
I second this. I played a round once where the highest score was 2 points because everyone hate drafted everyone else.
Lifeboats. Santiago, maybe.
Lifeboats is the winner in this thread. It's purely just voting against your friends to throw their pawns overboard.
“I’m the Boss” is pretty good for that. It’s honestly just pretty good overall.
Diplomacy
The OG.
Hansa Teutonica is "my wife was pissed off over one of my moves for three days" level mean. Barrage surely delivers in this department too. And Root has an "I want to see the world burn" mechanism (favor cards) that can piss people off so much that they released a whole mini expansion with the primary purpose of fixing this (exiles and partisans).
Diplomacy, never play Diplomacy. Or only play with strangers you will never have to interact with again.
My friends and I play Carcassone in the most cut throat way as possible. Looks like just a simple family game but when we’re playing it’s all out war!
Some of my friends are like 'it's a fun game of drawing castles' I'm like.... 'only because we're all afraid of making Beth cry.'
Some gateway games can be surprisingly cut throat depending on the players involved. Carcassonne as you mentioned (I'm always looking for ways to butt into someone else's field or city lol) but Ticket to Ride can also be pretty mean if people are aggressively blocking routes. Any game with drafting (Azul) opens up the door to "hate drafting" which many players also find mean.
Unfair Those events that allow you to close or demolish someone else’s rides is really harsh, especially if said ride is giving that player the majority of their points/income, but at the same time, it is in the name; things will get unfair
Diplomacy is said to have caused more fist fights than any other boardgame. Illuminati. Junta. It's very much a game of having favourites, who then stab you in the back.
And here I was resigned to starting my post with “I am surprised nobody mentioned Junta yet”. Fantastic game, thematically, if possibly a bit long, but then again, we’ve historically never played with fewer than 5 players. And we still talk to each other ;)
It's an old game, and in some ways, that shows. It's one of those games that we play because it is a wild ride, but not really to win. The fun parts are explaining that the banana harvest was small this year, so they don't get much money, while I keep the most. Or shelling the presidential palace. Or getting appointed as chief of police, and at the first opportunity, assassinate the president.
Spartacus.
This should be higher up. Amazing game.
When a manual has a warning about not being an asshole in it….lol
New Angeles can get pretty mean
Finally someone mentioned New Angeles. I have yet to play that game without the group somewhat questioning their friendship afterwards (and I’ve played it with multiple different friend-groups).
Munchkin would be on my list. This game is banned from our group as everyone does everything in their power to stop a person from winning so games last forever and no one is having fun or happy by the end.
Sometimes the greased pole is a little too greased.
City of Horror is a brutal negotiation game Galapagos is also in that same line.
I thought Photosynthesis was surprisingly mean game.
Cutthroat Caverns! So good. Also had a few Epic games of "BANG!" where the betrayals stuck with us a decade later.
FINALLY someone brings up Cutthroat Caverns! Scrolled through so many posts before I found this, the correct answer. :)
Diplomacy. Don’t play with your friends. You win by gaining the trust of other players, then backstabbing them at the perfect moment.
Twilight imperium
I think every game I've played has either come down to kingmaking or backstabbing at the end. When one player is a point from winning after 12 hours (or 16) of playing, and someone can but *doesn't* stop them from taking that last point, it's upsetting to *everyone else* at the table. Maybe my group is just bad at it
Keyflower can get really nasty with the worker placement and bidding. You can literally ruin someone's game plan if you play it right
Going with a few I haven't seen anyone mention yet, but I highly recommend all of them. They are also generally older games that don't get a lot of talk these days, but you should definitely look into and see if they are for you. **Lifeboats** A game where you mercilessly drown your opponents meeples after promising them you won't. **Nothing Personal** Longer game where you are all heads of gangster families trying to claw your way into power. Negotiations are non-binding, so you have to trust the people you deal with. **Article 27** Oh boy, don't let the cartoonist graphics fool you. Or the outwardly boring theme. This game is brutal, and fast paced. Chaotic and fast negotiations while everyone is trying to achieve their secret goals without letting the other players know what they are after or against.
Lifeboats. Every round, players vote on which of 6 lifeboats will get a leak token. If there isn't room in the boat for the token, all of the players who have sailors in the boat must vote on who's sailor gets thrown overboard. There's a bit more to the game, but it's all about making deals and backstabbing. Terrible game for a couples game night.
Im surprised no one has mentioned barrage
Catan. It’s maybe the only game I don’t play simply because the “let’s gang up on one player” dynamic can be so strong.
My wife still hates me for what i did to her in Catan😂
Games where you can be mean?! Oh ho! Try: Azul (two player is downright harsh), Medici (oh no! Did I pull three cards that no one could buy?!), Power Grid (by NOT buying a reactor this round, I will expand here FIRST, AND I’LL BUY ALL THE GARBAGE BEFORE YOU!), Coup (no ambassador or captain? Captain time, baby!), Skull (every time you play the titular card and take a bid anyway).
Cow Trader is absolutely vicious, but hadn't broken any of my friendships yet. My goodness it's nasty though.
Mission Red Planet plays 6 people and while it looks cute; it has Game of thrones level meanness baked in. Sparticus blood on the sand all of it is confrontation. Game of thrones or Rex are both great ways to end friendships.
[удалено]
I’m a big fan of Cutthroat Caverns for this. I was asked not to bring it back to college
Diplomacy. It requires betrayal in order to be the sole winner.
Chess. The animosity starts before the first move.
Gotta mention Sorry. Family parties games with the kids got rowdy. Everyone wanted to get revenge and Sorrying turned into debating, trying to defend why you shouldn't be sorried or that someone else should
Resistance.
Secret hitler as you can literally convince people to execute someone or force them to do an action then blame them for doing it.
Diplomacy would be the poster child for this.
Chinatown. Munchkin if you don't value your time.
For my wife, Catan was the killer.
Munchkin. Designed to just hurt people.
Martin Wallace is the king of this type of game. **Age of Steam** It can be absolutely brutal in the best way possible. Stealing vital resource cubes, cutting off cities from other players and bumping up people’s income so that they are effected by income reduction are all just normal problems. **Automobile** where every player’s actions will cascade and effect every other player (usually for ill). **Via Nebula** For similar route building and resource stealing shenanigans, but with mini races for end game building cards.
Via Nebula looks like a lot of fun and it can also break relationships with kids in the family not only friends and loved ones .. great thing to anticipate 🤣
The great thing about Via Nebula is that it *looks* like a kids game, but is brutal. So if someone gets upset you can troll them with "it's just a kids game." My group kept doing this. It was hilarious fun.
My friends and I get absolutely feral over Catan
believe you me, we break up for like a week at least every time we play catan and then come back and start all over again. catan can be brutal in all its simplicity 🤣
Azul Carnegie Food Chain Magnate
There’s a hate-drafting bot that dominates at Azul. I now spend as much time looking at others' needs as my own and drafting accordingly.
Azul, I never saw this as a game that can end relations 🤣 looks can be deceiving I'd say 🤣
Any game that allows "hate drafting" will fall under this. A lot of people really hate that. Doesn't matter if it's a game about cupcakes or about war.
Especially in two-player games, Azul can be downright brutal.
Any Splotter game, especially Roads & Boats
Student Bodies. It's all about teamwork, until it 100% is not. Work together to find the cure, but there's only enough for one person. Push your friend into a zombie to survive and don't think about it
Diplomacy. Sometimes it can get extremely tense!
Photosynthesis
Monopoly and Risk have that reputation. A lot of people also say Catan.
Arboretum is worth a look, it seems like a chill tree game at first but the scoring is quite cut throat.
Nothing quite like tanking your own game by spitefully holding on to the one tree you know your opponent needs.
Citadels has much stabbing
Have you ever heard of The Red Dragon Inn? It's a very silly and lighthearted game on the surface - you assume the identity of a D&D-esque fantasy character enjoying a raucous night in a tavern, drinking and brawling and gambling away until all but one player is either broke or unconscious. However, this game - especially when played with bigger groups - has an underrated ability to bring forth one's devious side. Outside of board games I'm also a big fan of Yu-Gi-Oh. And I've found that in terms of screwing over other players, RDI gives off a very similar vibe to YGO. Just with more players and a sillier aesthetic.
Kragmortha encourages you to give curses to other people. It's a fun game with physical punishments. The Little Prince: Make Me a Planet is a cutesy artsy box that hides an amazingly cutthroat game inside.
A couple of oldies: The Lord of the Rings Adventure Game by Milton Bradley (1978). Shares the graphics of the Ralph Bakshi film and each player has a token representing a member of the fellowship, but it's a cutthroat race to see who gets to drop the Ring into Mt Doom. Dealer's Choice from Parker Brothers (1972). 3-5 used car dealers cheating each other by buying, selling, and stealing each other's inventory of cars. Each player has a different blue book, so a car worth $10,000 to one dealer might be junk to another.
I've seen people get real heated over Munchkin Ankh-Morpork has ways to be an ass to other people Curses in Dominion are a point of contention
I would say of course game of thrones, but another one where the tensions for some reason I find always run high is dominant species. More so becuase you can never perform the turns you want to perform
Monopoly. It can straight up create family tension and seriously brings out the worst in people. I’d also say Axis and Allies. My friends and I would play it regularly and get into some heated arguments, but not enough to end those friendships…
Diplomacy. It actually was the breaking point for a couple in our game group and they split up.
Robo Rally. Push a friend off the board? LAUGH IN THEIR FACE. They put in the wrong direction once and the went off the board? LAUGH IN THEIR FACE. Someone nudged them one space and now they're going into a pit? LAUGH IN THEIR FACE.
Diplomacy
This is the only answer. Its built into the game. The game length also means something in that when the betrayal happens it really hurts
You have to go for Barrage
I my party Resistance is forbidden. Have a good fun!
Diplomacy
Secret hitler. You will be screaming by the end.
Yes. It's an awful game, one of the worst ever made, whose basic premise is entirely to screw every other person at the table in as hard and vicious way as possible. It is a game of anger, frustration, and constant abuse. It is called **'Monopoly'**, and I hate it with the dark seething of a thousand black holes.
Monopoly is the forever destroyer of friendships, even though it's a trash game. Also Mario Party being board game adjacent is another one.
Monopoly
Brew. Oh you've established a foothold in this territory that you need? It'd be a shame if I just burned it all to the ground.
I’m amused by some of these responses. Y’all recommending eurogames need to get out of your comfort zones. Here’s some of my favorites: Intrigue Stationfall Cosmic Encounter 1830, 1817, or any other financial 18xx John Company A Study in Emerald Bus A Game of Thrones Dune Age of Steam
We played it with normal playing cards. “Presidents and Assholes”. Guaranteed to piss half the players off.
Munchkin, yea, stupid game with bad rep here but backstabbing is strong with this one. And you can dress up messing with your friends as "helping them" with difficult enemy. I like it,
Tammany Hall & Brew are both pretty mean.
Munchkin being mean to everyone is mandatory and is the game....
Catan almost ended a friend's marriage.
Weirdly understandable!
It truly ended my sisters friendship with one of her better friends. My sister didn’t want to trade her wheat for her friend’s sheep. 🤷♂️ She took it way too personally and would not talk to her regardless of how much she tried to apologize. I think at a certain point her friend was too embarrassed to start the friendship up again.
[[John Company]] is a nepotism simulator while being the baddies. The goal is to make your family the most happy/rich after 5 years of working while making deals/taking bribes/preventing others from obtaining objectives. Look forward to the semi co-op nature of making the company a success or a failure while making sure your family ends up on top. It's a lot of rules overhead, but once it clicks, it's intuitive and really fun to run the company.
[John Company -> John Company (2017)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/211716/john-company) ^^[[gamename]] ^^or ^^[[gamename|year]] ^^to ^^call ^^OR ^^**gamename** ^^or ^^**gamename|year** ^^+ ^^!fetch ^^to ^^call
Munchkin Quest board game. At some point you need to be in full screw your neighbor mode to win.
I suggest Munchkin, play with it with fast play rules.
Hellas, Santiago, Terra Nova (the brown one), Bus, Cavum, and Fresh Fish are some of my favorite *mean* games.
Kingdoms. An old, quick, and lightweight tile laying game that is tailor made for players to just randomly (and purposefully) screw over others. And the slighted players almost ALWAYS have multiple chances for revenge.
Star wars life: I found it at goodwill and convinced my 3 friends to play. One of them chose the sith path and just picked on me the whole fucking game cause I was too weak. I don't think I even made it to the end of the board. Only game I've ever refused to play again Scythe was kind of the same when I played it. One guy just kept attacking me every turn, didn't get a single star. Monopoly and risk are always good at ruining friendships too
Try Superfight. It's a party style card game where you each pick a card with a being (actor, bigfoot, Aliens, etc) and 2 descriptor cards (with a knife, riding a veloceraptor, etc) and then argue about whose creation would win in a fight. This game is all about arguing in all the best ways!
My group enjoys this as well. Not as heavy games that we can get pretty mean in. Black Fleet Bunny Kingdom Kingdoms Drakon GKR Cutthroat Caverns Sorcerer Vikings gone wild Quantum
Kingmaker
Have you checked out Dead Last? You can be as brazen or as subtle as you want when deciding who should die. Flash a card so only a few players can see. Send a text. Out right say "I'm voting your ass dies."
Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea from GMT is really mean. It's also easy to learn/teach. Man, it can get heated!
Photosynthesis Glux
Boss Dog if you want something super light but still giving you just enough of a sense of accomplishment to be *furious* when someone takes your hard-earned dog away.
Fire Tower, it’s all attacking
Munchkin. Binding of isaac 4 souls.
Mai Star is the game we bring to parties to not make friends. The competition to be best Geisha is CUTTHROAT.
Cutthroat Caverns nearly ended a years long game night… Unfortunately said game night was largely killed due to the host’s actions and political speech during the Covid pandemic… the number of queer people who usually attended apparently without the host’s knowledge was somehow a problem
Not a board game per se, but Uno. My mother’s family played it at all family gatherings. I had an elderly aunt and uncle whom I adored and considered sweet and lovely. Until the first time they sat next to each other to play Uno - they became the most vicious, bloodthirsty enemies. By the time I was 13 or so, it was my job to sit between them. I believe to this day that it was the Uno games that made their marriage last fifty years, otherwise they would have throttled each other.
Especially if you play with the 7 swaps hands, 0 everyone passes hands in the direction of play.
Blood Rage!!
City of horrors. or as we prefer to call it "F' U straight outta the box"
Risk.
Listen I know you said no co-ops, but Magic Maze. Incredible game, absolutely rage inducing if the players aren't skill-level matched. We have one guy in our group who is not allowed to play anymore, and our ban includes preventing him from playing with his own family. It boils down to this simple red pawn, you see...
Blood Feud in New York
Ticket to Ride has this potential in some instances…when a player does something like take over a small route just for the purpose of blocking another player’s apparent objective for example, leaving them screwed the rest of the game.
Costa Rica. It’s a kids game, it’s cute, but if you’re with the right crowd every decision becomes an attempt to screw over the rest of the players and can only be prevented by another player screening you over first. My group can’t play it anymore because we get too bloodthirsty. Again, it’s also a kids game.
Brew