( continues...) of your family scions to become First Man in Rome (elected Consul for Life), and what's best for you to achieve that, and what is best for the Roman ship of State are pretty much always at cross purposes.

This game is also divided into epochs -- Early, Middle, and Late Republic. The Early Republic is very difficult to play, because Rome is always on the verge of succumbing to war (if you ever have four or more active wars at the end of a turn, game over, everybody loses). The Middle Republic period is the most fun to play, I think, as the world settles down a bit, and you can spend most of your time being political in the Senate. The Late Republic becomes a little too political, as Rome now wants to become an Empire, which adds some interesting destructive forces of its own.

Anyway, I have babbled over long, and need to get ready for work.

WHEW!

LOTR Risk is an AWESOME game. Great variation on the basic Risk game.

I've only ever played it with 3, which is a bit uneven. But yeah, I think it mitigates the main problems with the original Risk.

Then there's this game I mentioned called Republic of Rome. It's a lot of fun, too. Each player plays a faction of early Roman Republic political families, with between three, four and five cards, representing the individual families. And these are historic families, like the Julii, the Fulvii, the Cornelii, the Sulpicii, the Aurelii, and so on.

Ooh, that sounds like fun. Except I have a feeling I'd find it really hard to put the HBO versions of everyone out of my head.

I also have been itching a little to play Cosmic Encounter, which I have, and Talisman, which Drew has (a full set, no less).

My Cosmic is a full set of West End's Cosmic and More Cosmic.

I had a friend back in Michigan who once had a full set of Eon Cosmic, including the 9th expansion set with the Aristocrat power. It's now long gone, and Eon sets are collectors items that only leave their owner's hands for obscene sums of money.

Republic of Rome (the Middle Republic game) is SO MUCH FUN, Jess. And actually, though I haven't seen any of it, the HBO series is probably good to keep in mind while playing. I played it with a lot of fans of Roman history, and we were always discussing and inventing juicy details about what was going on.

Civ was fun too. They are both Block Out A Whole Day games, though.

Yeah, I'm really itching to play a big game of Talisman too.

I spent many late nights playing Civilization and Talisman. I vaguely remember Cosmic Encounter -- isn't that one where you play one of a number of alien races, each of which has special (and often very off-center) powers?

I was very good at Empires of the Middle Ages, which was a conquer-Europe-during-the-Middle-Ages game. Not least because the game was set up so your empire had natural language and, to a lesser extent, religious limits. I played then with a very attack-minded group. So they'd develop large empires and spend the rest of the game losing and regaining. While I'd stop at my natural limits and have a smaller, but more cohesive and prosperous, empire.

where's the love for Word Sandwich?

I think is was Sean who mentioned it earlier- I have indeed played the Order Of The Stick game. I found it very similar to Munchkin but more fun as it incorporates the personalities of the comic-strip denizens into the play of the game.

I also have spent many hours in love with Arkham Horror . Though I have found the denoument to be frustrating it always leaves me wanting to play some more.

I'd love to play the board version of Civilization. I've been playing Sid Meier's computer versions since the beginning. I still think Civ II was my favorite. I loved building underwater bubbles and tunnels, along with the space stations. They did away with those when they reverted to Sid's original format in Civ III. Sometimes, I think the original version of the game was best. They keep adding so many new techs and wonders and such, the game has gotten horribly bloated. I almost never play to the end anymore. Just 'til I get bored with the current iteration of whichever civ I'm playing and kill the game.

Sail, the original Civ board game is very similar in many ways to the video game. It stops well before the modern age, even with the expansion set. But still lots of fun.