Best iPhone iPad Games

These are the board games coming out for iPad and iPhone.  They better all have an iPad version or I’ll be ticked.

Wits and Wagers bgg coming out for iPhone October 2010 by North Star Games.

Neuroshima Hex bgg tactical 4 player war game programmed by Portal Publishing and Big Daddy’s Creations

Tichu bgg one of the best 4 player partnership card games. Programmed by Steve Blanding who brought us Mu card game on iphone / iPad.

Settlers of Catan bgg ipad version coming soon

Five below all programmed by Codito’s company.
Tikal bgg and El Grande bgg by Wolfgang Kramer
Brief History of the World bgg by Ragnar Brothers
Le Havre bgg by Uwe Rosenberg’s
Age of Industry bgg by Martin Wallace

Reiner Knizia has following coming out:
Medici bgg , Ra bgg and Tigris & Euphrates bgg programmed by Codito’s company

Samurai bgg programmed by Conlan Rios brought us Wriggle, Knizia’s Robot Master, Knights of Charlemagne, and Monumental.
High Society bgg and Kingdoms bgg programmed by Shannon Appelcline who did Knizia’s Money for iphone / iPad.
Through the Desert bgg programmed by TribeFlame who did Keltis Oracle for iphone/ iPad.

Board Game apps  I currently enjoy on iPad are:
Carcassone, Zooloretto, Keltis Oracle, Mu, Small World, Honey That’s Mine, Gipsy King, Knizia Money, Dead Man’s Dice, Kachina, Roll Through the Ages, Blokus HD, Pathology HD, Rush Hour, Quoridor.

(bolded games mean they are iPad version or are universal iphone / iPad games)

update August 20, 2010 a couple more announced are Through the Ages A Story of Civilization and Summoner Wars and Chicago Express and Modern Art

Ones that have been released are Medici, Samurai, High Society, and Tichu

In the Year of the Dragon game I just decided I wanted to learn since I play Samurai on mabiweb and read how cutthroat and competitive it is.  Well hot dang this game seems pretty hard to teach let alone learn but hopefully I can point you in the right direction. First print out these one page PDFs except perhaps official rules wish you can read over quickly. Credit for PDFs you can find at bgg entry for Year of the Dragon.  12 rounds and each round consists of four phases (all players do each phase before next phase):

1. Action – Taxes, Build, Harvest, Fireworks Display, Military Parade, Research, Privilege
2. Persons – Monk, Builder, Farmer, Healer, Warrior, Scholar, Tax Collector, Pyrotechnist, Courty Lady
3. Event – Peace, Drought, Contagion, Mongol Invasion, Imperial Tribute, Dragon Festival. Decay occurs end of phase.
4. Scoring – 1 VP for each palace, each courty lady, and each privilege. Also there is end game scoring.

yotd_reference.pdf 957KB one page – shows actions and events and quick phase description.
yotd_player_aid.pdf 166KB one page – shows 9 persons with related 7 Actions and and 6 events
yotd_quickref.pdf 63KB one page – quick summary of rules
yotd_gamerules.pdf 4.35MB 8 pages – official rules from Rio Grande Games.

Showing screenshot of In Year of the Dragon game in progress on mabiweb.

Now before you play on mabiweb.com you may wish to learn In the Year of the Dragon playing a flash version (my mirror) versus AI opponents.

Hoity Toity by same guy who did Settlers of Catan is one of my favorite bluffing games.  It’s really a love or hate game for sure. Definitely doesn’t win in the graphic department at least the online implementation.  Actual board game has decent graphics though. Object of game is to advance the furthest along the game board. On your turn you can either go to the Castle or Auction House. All players decide together and actions are revealed simultaneously.

In the Auction House you can choose to play a check or a thief.  If you play the highest check amount you get to choose between the two exhibition cards.  If a player choses a thief they steal the check played this round unless of course there are two are more thieves then no thieves steal anything.

In the Castle you can Exhibit your cards which must be at least 3 consecutive for instance AAB or BCD or BCCD or CDEEF.  If you have the best exhibit or 2nd best exhibit you advance based on the two numbers on the board where the lead player is currently. However, when you exhibit you could have someone who played a thief steal from an exhibition card from you.  Thieves can be caught and thrown in jail if you play a detective.  Detectives advance using a catch up mechanism.  If your in 4th place you advance 4 spaces forward for instance.  Game ends when one player reaches the dinner table (pink section) and all players reveal their collections. Player with most valuable collection advances 8 spaces and 2nd most valuable collection advances 4 spaces.

Hacienda also on spielbyweb is a game where you use land cards and animals cards to claim your land.  You score points by connecting three or more land tiles.  Connecting animals to markets gives you point bonuses too.  Water tiles and haciendas you can purchase for $12 each and give you additional points.

Santigo is probably one of the nastiest and pure screw your neighbor boardgames I own.  For that reason alone I love it.  Usually I’ll only play it with 5 players as I believe that’s the best to play with.  In real life money is hidden but the online version it’s not hidden. Five plantation tiles are laid out like bananas, peas, potatoes, etc. which players bid on or pass.  Can never bid the same amount as another player.  Whoever wins the bid gets first dibs on plantation tile of their choice and places one or two workers on the plantation and places it where they think water will run lest it dry up.  Canal overseer is one player who passes first and all others can if they wish bribe that person.

Scoring is done at the end of the game which is your money in your hand plus the income earned from harvest.  All plantations that have water produce their respective fruit / vegetables. Income is your number of workers times base of your plantation.  As you can see green color (mrbass) has four workers on peas and there are 7 pea plantations all connected there I get 4 x 7 = 28 as seen below in the scoring screenshot.

Reiner Knizia Amun-Re online is quite a complicated game to explain with lots of rules.  So I suggest you get a few other games under your belt before even attempting this one.  Let’s just say you bid on provinces for each of the six rounds.  You score in the third round and sixth round.  Pyramids score you points, depending where your provinces are could score you points (upper or lower Egypt, west or east of the Nile River).  Farmers give you income.  Sacrifice money to the gods to determine where the temple will go or steal 3 gold from farmers.  Each round has six phases. There are power cards.  Quite the game but it’s extremely interesting the mathematical computations one must make.  Love it.

Absolutely love Reiner Knizia Samurai  侍 and recently started playing it again Samurai online after a long absence. Very strategic abstract game.

There are buddhas, rice and high helmets you attempt to capture with your colored tokens by exetering your influence on them.  When a piece is completely surrounded you determine who has the most influence for each paticular piece to see who captures it.  Rather easy game to understand there is one swap pieces token and one reuse existing piece token.  Hardest part to fully understanding Samurai are the various winning conditions.  Basically whoever has two majorities wins but that’s not always going to happen.  If really interested in this game you can see my detailed overview which I wrote in 2006.

I love Tikal.  Recently introduced the boardgame to a few friends who are relatively new to German boardgames and they loved it.  Well I’m back to playing Tikal online again but this time I won’t have 10 simultaneous games going on at once.

Score points of temple (1,2,3,4,5,6, etc.)  if you have majority in a temple when one of four scoring rounds occurs when three volcanoes are drawn and at end of game.  Majority is determined based on number of workers.  Each player has one head worker who is worth 3 influence points. On your turn you have 10 action points.  Move workers to temples costs 1 action point to deploy at base or at one of your two tents.  Uncovering temple level cost 2 action points. Recovering a treasure cost 3 action points. Capping a temple so no one else can claim it costs 5 action points. Swapping a treasure with another costs 3 action points.  So during your turn there is quite a bit to do and I love the intimidation of this game and the general hatred and bad feelings it leaves amongst the players. It’s pretty competitive and for that reason I do quite enjoy it.

Had China boardgame since like 2006.  Didn’t realize you could play China online though since June 2009 and it uses the mabiweb.com backend.  Play 3, 4, or 5 player games turn based games (not realtime). On your turn you have 3 cards to play (replenish back to 3 when turn is over) which determine which region you can place a house and/or emissary in dragon circle).  Three methods of scoring are Regions (houses), Alliances (emissaries), Roads (four or more houses connected on roads). Two or more cards of the same color you can use as a wild card.  Can only place in a single region during your turn.  Only one house if nothing currently exists in that region. Emissaries can be placed but are limited to how many depending on the current 1st place majority of houses.  For instance, check out Wei it has 3 emissaries (1 red & 2 blue) since blue has a house majority of 3. Game ends after deck is exhausted for the second time.

Region Scoring – I’m purple I got 19 points for Regions (majority scoring). Shu region I get 2 points since I’m tied for 2nd place with green and red and score how many houses 1st place has which is two yellow houses.  In Chu I’m tied with yellow for first place so we both score entire region which is 8 points. In Lu I’m in 2nd place so score 2 pointssince 1st place has two green houses.  In Wei I’m tied for 3rd place with red so we both get 2 points since yellow in 2nd place has two houses. In Zhao I’m tied for 1st with blue so I get 5 points.

Alliance Scoring – got 20 points. You go and look at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. in order when scoring in real life. Must have majority or at least tied for majority in both regions of the alliance.  Purple for Alliance #5 I have 1 in Shu and tied for majority in Chu so I score that alliance which is 1 + 3 = 4 points. Alliance #6 I score 5 points (2 in Lu and 3 in Chu). Alliance #12 I score 6 points (3 in Han and 3 in Chu).  Alliance #13 I score 5 points (3 in Han and 2 in Lu).

Roads – only one who scores with roads is green 5 points as he is only one who has a houses on roads with four or more.

used to play Ticket to Ride a lot online using Days of Wonders codes of games I bought.  Since then they’ve changed it to pay only.  Game costs $10 for either the PC 44MB/ Mac 30MB / 29MB Linux java version or $10 for xbox live version.  I honestly didn’t care for the XBLA version as I felt you needed to zoom in too often so that was a pass.  The download version enhances the graphics and increases screen size to 1024 x 768 and can toggle fullscreen if you wish.  Also allows solo play against bots and of course vs online human opponents.  Each expansion is an additional $5 each for Europe, Swiss Map, or USA 1910. Pretty sure I’ll buy the USA 1910 expansion. My favorite Ticket to Ride game is the Marklin edition and of course they don’t have that on the computer.

Screenshot of downloaded java version 1024 x 768. (downsized).

Screenshot of online java version 800 x 600.

For those new to Ticket to Ride it’s very easy to play.  You build train routes by collecting the respective colors of cards to lay down track.  On your turn you either lay down one track or draw two cards.  Everyone has two or three hidden destinations they’re trying to complete (like Seattle to New York) that are worth points at the end of the game if completed.  If not completed they’re negative points.  You can get more destinations if you wish throughout the game.  The tension comes from not knowning if you’ll be able to complete your destinations and trying to block your opponents from completing their destinations.  I left a few rules out but that’s the gist of it. Even better explanation just watch this 7min video.