Lurker > NBIceman

I'd be interested to try out the other versions too, but not enough that I actually want to spend the money for it. Heard conflicting reports from "all of them are better" all the way to "none of them are better." It'd be good to find a board game cafe who has them but, alas, there are none around here.

17. Azul
Expansions Played: None

Azul has a well-earned reputation as an uber-popular gateway game to the point that I don't really feel the need to make this writeup very long. Most people have played at least one of its versions at least once, especially if they got into the hobby in 2017 or later like I did - indeed, it was one of the first few modern board games I was ever introduced to. It's pretty, it's simple, and it's got a fun little theme even if doesn't come through very strongly (okay, or at all) in the gameplay. The tiles are very fun to handle, the rules can be taught in just a few minutes even to non-gamers, and it isn't long by any means.

My favorite thing about Azul is how well it allows for different playstyles depending on your group and mood for the day. Do you want to approach this as primarily a head-down, multiplayer solitaire where you're laser focused on your own board and don't give much thought to anything other than drafting the best tiles for you at any given time? You can pretty much do that and score just fine. Do you want to constantly be checking on your friends' boards to see which colors they're neglecting, and/or to open up prime hate-drafting opportunities? You can definitely do that, too. I've had enjoyable sessions where everyone was playing both styles and also good sessions when there was a mix of the two. It's a surprisingly versatile game in that way, and it makes for fun moments where one of your opponents really hits someone where it hurts with a hate-draft and everybody's like, "Oh, okay, it's gonna be one of those kinds of games."

The game arc is one I tend to love, too, where you start off with the possibility to go in literally any direction and end up with an increasingly narrow scope by the end and you have to be very careful not to put yourself in a corner, especially if it's a more conflict-heavy session. Outright disastrous rounds don't really happen all that often, but when they do, they're all but impossible to recover from. And despite all that, the drafting stays snappy all the way through because there are rarely, if ever, circumstances that would tend to induce analysis paralysis.

"Smooth" is the word that always comes to mind for me for Azul. Smooth drafting, smooth scoring (if a little bizarre - I and the rest of the group always need a quick refresher on how exactly it works), a smooth teach, even the tiles themselves are smooth. It's little wonder that it's become such a staple of the hobby.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by my best friends. We don't play it super often because there's nothing it does exceptionally well (i.e. better than other game options), but it all comes together into a very reliable package. We've never gotten tired of it and I don't think I ever will.

It does my heart good to see that after years and years of WWE pushing over-the-hill stars from bygone eras instead of focusing on younger, newer talent, all the while being defended for it by their most passionate fans, that it's finally coming back to bite them.

Except that's not even what's happening, because this controversy is now eating up all the headlines for the company and no one is talking about how Vince McMahon is a serial rapist and sex trafficker anymore.

There's another tier finished. Next up is going to be...

Almost Always Down to Play Tier
17. ???
16. ???
15. ???
14. ???
13. ???
12. ???
11. ???
10. ???
9. ???

And here's a list of what's left.

Azul
Calico
Cascadia
Dune: Imperium
Everdell
Flamecraft
Great Western Trail
Kingsburg: Second Edition
Marvel Dice Throne
Obsession
Root
Sagrada
Scythe
Spirit Island
Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef
Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition
Wingspan

18. Dice Forge
Expansions Played: None

This is an easy game to talk about, because it's fun for some very simple and obvious reasons but held back from excellence for reasons that are equally clear. As the name implies, this is a dice chucker through and through, with a rarely-seen gimmick in that you'll be repeatedly removing the actual faces on your dice to replace them with better ones.

That's it. That's Dice Forge. On every turn, every player rolls their dice to get the resources shown on them, and the active player has the choice of spending those resources to either upgrade their dice or buy a card. These cards provide victory points, special recurring effects, or even more die faces. I've basically just taught you how to play the entire game; all you'd need to learn when you sit down is iconography and a couple special edge rules. There's a hilariously pasted-on fantasy theme, but frankly, all that does is make for some flowery and unnecessary terminology for certain actions even if the art is fun and colorful for what it is.

Really, this is a fun twist on engine building where the dice themselves are the engines. It's wonderfully tactile - popping the faces on and off never gets old, and it's pretty easy unless you're my best friend, who for some reason really struggles with the necessary fine motor skills and usually resorts to using a fork. Dice upgrading isn't a terribly unique mechanic in board games, but I'm not aware of many other examples that let you physically do it in this way. It makes things extra customizable, and the novelty doesn't hurt. The game is also marginally less dependent on luck than you might think - I have a weirdly high win rate despite famously having lifelong poor fortune in dice rolling of any kind. You have to be closely tuned in to the game arc, because at a certain point you have to stop focusing on upgrades almost entirely. Knowing when to make that choice is usually the key to victory, and it doesn't necessarily come at the same time in each game.

As far as drawbacks? Well, for the light filler game that it is, it's a bit of a table hog, and the setup and teardown is annoying not just for the glaring reasons but because getting all the cards in their proper places is annoying, especially if you don't have the full complement of players (in which case you have to remove some). Once you do have it all set to go, though, it's quite snappy - 10 rounds that don't take very long due to the fact that you don't have to make many brain-burning choices. Playing multiple sessions back to back is very doable if you're inclined.

Dice Forge isn't any kind of masterpiece, but its memorable gimmick and super easy gameplay make it an ideal "beer and pretzels" game (or "soda and pretzels" in my group's case, given that none of us really drink). I don't like to play it too often because it does get repetitive, but I think it accomplishes its goals pretty much perfectly.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by me. This is in the running for the most frequently played game in my group, and while I definitely think it's hit the table more than it's maybe deserved to over the years, I've never gotten tired of it to the point that I'd expect it to lose its spot in this ranking. I'd like to pick up the expansion eventually to see if it might get a bit of a boost; don't think that's impossible.

I feel like Inis is really trying to be kind of a high-confrontation game for people who don't like high-confrontation games, as you mentioned. I feel like there's probably paths to success that involve little to no conflict of any kind for skilled players in certain groups. But I can understand how it might still fly a bit too close to the sun in some respects just due to its genre.

KommunistKoala posted...

I think I prefer Dice Throne for my Yahtzee dice chucking game but King of Tokyo / New York with some expansions thrown in is still fun

I'm with you there! Which I guess is obvious considering I haven't ranked Dice Throne yet.

19. Inis
Expansions Played: None

This writeup is probably going to be less than this game likely deserves, because it's among the games in my collection that's been played the least. Hasn't even hit the table since my wife joined the group, and... I'm not 100% sure why that is, but I have some ideas.

On paper, Inis should very much be my jam. It shares mechanics and design philosophies with at least half the games yet to be ranked in higher tiers. Drafting, political negotiation and table talk, multiple paths to victory, simple rules with a lot of room for clever strategy, all wrapped up in gorgeous artwork. But in our limited plays, it just never seemed to sing like expected.

This is an area control game that is very polite as regards the "control" part. Players start off being all up in each other's business and stay that way for the whole game, but combat isn't just triggered by two players being in the same area. Specific cards have to be played, and even then, players have the option of agreeing to end things before they get too bloody. Inis doesn't want you to gain influence and power by just wantonly killing everyone else - it wants you to be clever about it and to really think about when it's advantageous. It also becomes a case of mutually assured destruction in some cases, because the map is so small (especially on earlier turns) that it can often be quite easy for another player to benefit more than the attacker by swooping in and gaining a foothold where forces have been depleted, especially when you consider that the map also contains Citadels that serve as totally safe havens in which players can completely hide forces from the destruction happening around them.

But also, there will be plenty of times you might not even really have the option to do any of this. Actions in Inis take the form of cards that each do something very specific and, in the grand scheme of things, very minor and simple. Options to do something as mundane as moving or putting new forces down are relatively limited, so you have to figure out ways to do a lot with a little. These cards are drafted as in 7 Wonders: take one and pass. All forms of action selection in board games are effectively opportunity cost mechanisms - doing one thing means you're choosing not to do another - but in Inis, you're also denying that thing to everyone else, which is equally important.

It manages to do something interesting with the endgame as well. Once you've met one of the victory conditions (which are, broadly, widely spreading out your forces, controlling certain structures, or having control over enough other players' forces), Inis requires you to use your turn to take a token that basically serves as a megaphone shouting "I'M GOING TO WIN!" If you still meet the condition when play gets back around to you, you do indeed win. I can never decide how I feel about this, because it feels like it should drive an exciting end with every player desperately trying to stop the one in the driver's seat, but it just never ends up being as climactic as it sounds.

Inis is a very, very smart design. "Elegance" is a word that's kind of become a meme in the board game community for how overused it is, but it really does fit this one. It's a title with a lot of strategic depth and potential for getting even deeper with each repeat play, and it does all that with minimal rules to learn. But I wonder if it's maybe a little too elegant. You do so little on any one turn that you only ever feel like you've gotten a few tiny inches closer to victory, and while that definitely creates tension, it also creates a game that feels like it's not all that FUN.

I like Inis. I think it's better designed than some of the games still yet to drop on this list - in some cases, significantly so. But the majority of the time, if I stare at my shelf trying to pick a box to bring out, it just feels so mundane compared to other games that are much more messy and loosey-goosey. Games like this normally bring an enjoyment that extends beyond the last card played or die rolled, where every player sits back in their chair and tries to point toward that one bombastic move that won or lost them the game and learn from it. Inis doesn't have those moments because it doesn't have bombastic moves. And I hesitate to call that a flaw, because it's... Not, really. It's very much intentional and a big part of why this game is good. But it's also why I have yet to have an experience that makes me think it's great.

Seriously, though, returning to the artwork for a second, this game's look is incredible. I know that's the coldest take ever but it needs to be said anyway. Inis makes the absolute most out of its limited amount of cards and map tiles and commits to making them all beautiful and distinct. It's almost easy to get distracted during the drafting stage just appreciating the cards, and though I guess it's kind of a silly thing to praise, I love how big they are too. More board games should go Celtic, is what I'm saying.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by me, and doing this writeup has really made me want to bust it out soon. Popular opinion seems to be that this game is best at four players, and I think the group is better equipped to handle a game like this now than we may have been when we last gave it a shot. This game ticks so many of my boxes that I could see it really exploding up the ranking if we finally get that session that clicks. Otherwise, I'll probably be looking to trade it, though, because as of now, it doesn't do anything that some other game in my collection doesn't do better.

I can't believe a man who spent years covering up a child molestation ring in his company would be guilty of other sex crimes.

How about a twofer today?

21. King of Tokyo
20. King of New York
Expansions Played: None

I've seen some people have really strong opinions on which of these games is better, but they're similar enough to me to feel like basically the same game, even if I would have to say I have a slight preference for New York if you forced me to choose.

Though I didn't play it myself until much later in life, I remember seeing a YouTube playthrough of King of Tokyo yeeeeeears ago that was almost definitely my first exposure of any kind to modern board games. I don't think I'm alone there, either - at one point, at least, this seemed to be among the most well-known games that you couldn't find in Grandma's closet. Maybe it even still is, but I think I'm too deep in the hobby now to make that determination.

Anyway, I think everyone's familiar enough that I don't have to do much of a breakdown, but I will anyway. These games are Battle Yahtzee. Everyone plays as a monster, and you roll six dice up to three times on your turn and do what they say. You can attack, heal, score points, or gain energy that can then be spent on power-up cards. King of New York redesigns the point-scoring system and adds in a couple new die faces with the extra spaces that allow you to destroy buildings for various benefits and potentially provoke a military attack in response. If you're the last monster standing or first to score 20 points, you win. In all but the very first turn of the game, there will always be one monster (two at higher player counts) in Tokyo (or Manhattan, depending on the version). While there, you score points and energy at the beginning of every turn, and your attacks hurt everyone else, but you can't heal. Attacks from outside the central area can only hurt the monster(s) inside it.

It's silly, it's quick, it's a reliably great time. Who doesn't want to play a game that lets you be a kaiju every once in a while? These games pull a lot of fun out of a very straightforward set of rules and limited decisions. Your choices never amount to much more than which of a few dice to reroll or which card to buy or, most critically, when to get out of the central area, but you'll agonize over them every time anyway. The greatest moments here come when someone tries to push their luck by staying in the central area for one more round because they've got plenty of health and one other player needs to heal, only for a different bloodthirsty monster to commit completely to rolling attacks and killing them with a lucky result. There's an elegance to the lunacy here, and you can switch up your strategies frequently between games without ever getting bored.

Nobody tends to like player elimination in games, but it's about as far from being a problem here as it could possibly be. You can easily fit 3 or 4 games into an hour, so if someone dies early, you can bet they're going to be back quickly anyway and with a literal vengeance. The more grudges that develop between players, the more chances you have for moments like that one I described. These are rare games that not only don't lose anything from immediate runbacks, but actually benefit from them.

Prevailing opinion seems to be that Tokyo is the superior version of the two games because of its snappiness - New York lets you move around the city's boroughs at the end of every turn if you so desire, and with every one having randomized buildings and army responders with different rewards, it adds a little more brain overhead. I can certainly understand how that can feel like it gets in the way of the mindless dice chucker spot that these games are trying to fill on the shelf. I really like that slight uptick in complexity, though, and it inarguably makes you feel more like a kaiju rampaging through the streets. Isn't that what we're going for here?

My only real complaint about the games is that the deck of cards for power-ups is quite big, but only three are ever dealt out at a time and it costs a valuable 2 energy to wipe and replace. These powers are a big part of the game's fun, but there's probably some in there that we've never even seen just because you only cycle through a few of them every game. Fortunately, there's no real need to wring your hands about balance here, so you can easily come up with some house rules for that if you feel the need.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: New York is owned by my best friends and we pull it out frequently. They don't ever make for the kind of memorable, lasting experience that would ever make me move them up a tier, but they've had impressive staying power in a hobby with few examples of that for good reason.

That top 6 protected Raptors pick that the Spurs own is looking mighty nice right now.

If Wemby doesn't sit tonight, the Spurs would've ended up with a nice little 3-game win streak going. Too many easy paint points that just don't happen if he's protecting the rim instead of Dominick Barlow or Mamukelashvili.

And I like Barlow a lot but he's a 4 long-term.

Hell yeah, Go Spurs Go.

I think starting Jones now has proven that they are at least a slight step above the other basement dwellers. I know Cade is injured and Charlotte is perpetually so, but SAS's efficiency is notably improving on both ends of the floor and Wemby is steadily figuring things out.

I'm still alive even though Seabass put me to shame with how quick he finished his topic!

22. Sushi Go!
Expansions Played: None, unless you'd count Sushi Go! Party

With how super light and approachable it is, I don't feel like I have much to say about this game and I don't really feel like I need to, either. The second simultaneous drafting game on the list after 7 Wonders, as I mentioned in that game's writeup, I think this one is just better in every way. The theme is more unique, more pleasant, and fits the mechanics better. It's quicker and simpler without sacrificing interest. There's no setup and teardown overhead so it's incredibly easy to play more than once at a time, and it's a super welcoming package all around for even the most inexperienced of board gamers.

Everything here just feels very tight in a way I don't think you'd initially expect at first glance, and I think it's because the scoring options are pretty perfect in their simplicity. Ten different cards with exactly the right variety, especially if a good group meta develops. Sashimi and especially Tempura always seem like they get a little undervalued in my group, so I'm able to swoop in under the radar and rack up some mildly uncontested points that way. Wasabi can be incredibly strong, but if the players next to you are paying good enough attention and/or want to hate draft, OR if you yourself aren't counting cards well, it can backfire hard. You always have to keep the Puddings in the back of your mind, too... Unless you're willing to just sacrifice those 6 points from the very beginning and focus on exploiting the card plays you consequently free up while all your opponents fight for them amongst themselves... Of course, if you take that tactic in too many games, maybe one friend catches on and quietly just plays one Pudding at the very beginning to do your strategy better.

There's a deceptive amount of thinking going on under the hood here if you really want to try hard. Read the friends, keep track of which cards you see, stay cognizant that Brian will never let anyone beat him in Maki Rolls if he can help it, so on. But if you want to just shut your brain off and throw down some adorable cards and see what happens, you can do that too. You'll still have a good time and maybe even still be competitive if everyone else has galaxy brained themselves into oblivion.

Sushi Go! excels in its reliability. It works equally well as an opener or filler for game night as it does for a casual "beer and pretzels" kind of party. I don't know if I'd quite call it a gateway game, because despite its surprisingly clever and layered gameplay, it's probably a little too light and breezy for me to think I could invite a friend who enjoyed it to play even something like Sagrada next time without them feeling like they may have gotten a little more than they bargained for. But it's easily my favorite game to play with non-gamers and it's plenty fun with gamers too. It just does its job really damn well.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by me. Sees a fair amount of table time (although less so lately since my group took so well to Here to Slay) and considering its versatility, I don't see that changing. This is the exact right tier for it, though.

As it is for many, I know!

Having the group so accessible now has opened up the problem that I'm just probably going a little too crazy buying games, though. Probably gonna stop for at least the first half of the year now, unless some already-cheap games that I want end up showing up with some even better deals.

I believe we only managed to get together twice in December, but fortunately they were both pretty long and packed days.

Half of our group is going on a family vacation starting tomorrow for at least a week, so January might be another leaner month. Life should slow down after that, though, so hopefully we'll get back in a good rhythm.

We have a new addition to my shelf of shame - got a great deal from BoardGameGeek on the second deluxe edition of Wonderland's War, which has been near the top of my wishlist for a while. Going to make a concerted effort to get that one to the table very soon.

Anybody that isn't already should go check out the other board game ranking going on right now!
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80661298

23. Here to Slay
Expansions Played: None

Unstable Games doesn't exactly have a reputation for creating "gamers' games" - and they're not trying to. They want their games to be casual affairs, to bring out "Awww, look at this cute art" reactions in the midst of chaotic and violent theming, to come out quick and get off the table just as quickly, to act almost as background noise to table chitchat, and maybe to sell a few T-shirts along the way. They all have an air of "Hey, games are silly, don't take them too seriously" about them, and even as someone who tends to gravitate toward the heavier side of the hobby, I can appreciate that.

Here to Slay is generally regarded as their best work, and I agree it's mostly a winner. It's a simple card and dice game where the goal is to either assemble a full party of heroes - Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Thief, and Mage - or defeat three monsters. You get three action points on your turn to distribute as you see fit. Drawing or playing a card, or rolling to try and activate a hero's special ability, costs one point. Fighting a monster (also a dice roll) costs two. Discarding your hand to draw a completely new one costs all three. There's a wide variety of ways to mess with your fellow players, either with the hero abilities or through other cards that let you contest card plays or change the value of dice rolls etc.

Action point and "Take That" mechanisms are generally unpopular among the hardcore gaming populace, the former because it has a tendency to induce analysis paralysis and the latter for pretty self-explanatory reasons of feeling somewhat mean spirited a lot of the time. Here to Slay makes them both work just fine, though. You don't have that many options for your action points, especially if you use two of them to fight, and in many many cases, you'll have an obvious "best" path. And the Take That works because it's really the main conceit of the game - you have to get in your friends' ways, and once one of them starts the dominos falling, the gloves immediately come off from everyone else. Most of it requires a dice roll anyway, and I find negative effects in competitive games like this to be much more palatable and entertaining when they're based on random chance. Getting a lucky roll to screw over your buddy is great, but you know what's even better? When your buddy confidently tries to screw you over in return, only for his roll to fail spectacularly and cause everyone at the table to laugh.

I'm not saying I'd want to play a 75-90 minute game like this by any means. Here to Slay clocks in at a tidy little 20-30 minutes, maybe up to 40 on a rare occasion where everyone is getting incredibly lucky or unlucky, and that's just the right amount of time to keep everyone annoyed in a playful way instead of a tired, frustrating way. The two win conditions feel pretty balanced (insofar as anything in this game is balanced), and we've had plenty of games end with both of them. I've seen some people house rule that you need a full party AND three monster kills to win, and while I personally haven't tried it that way, I see the appeal of making things a little less prone to abrupt and unsatisfying endings.

I've discovered that this game also has a valuable niche as a filler game that directly sets up other heavy-interaction games. It's so much easier to get my overly nice, conflict-averse game group in the mood for a Root or Inis or something once they've warmed up on Here to Slay. We're all frustrated with at least one other person at the table and can't wait to start destroying them in a more serious, higher-stakes, longer game. The art is fantastic, too, even by Unstable Games standards - the "generic fantasy" theme is perfect for their style and every critter is cute in their own way.

It's just fun, pleasant pandemonium. It's the farthest thing from groundbreaking in any way, but for its $20 price tag, it does its job tremendously well.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by me. It's been our go-to filler game lately and while nothing tends to hold onto that spot for a super long time, I do think this one has a bit of staying power to still be broken out fairly frequently once its time in the limelight ends.

Pop threatens the team after last game and suddenly they all learn how to pass to Wemby, who'da thunk?

Just a quick bump this morning. Between work and the holidays, I haven't had many opportunities to do writeups or get the group together for games.

Collin Sexton 45-piece incoming.

24. Viticulture (Essential Edition)
Expansions Played: Tuscany

Maybe the best example on this list of a game that, while being perfectly functional and enjoyable, just lacks some indefinable "spark" that sets it apart as something excellent.

Viticulture makes its players into inheritors of some old-timey vineyards and tasks them with transforming these rather sad offerings into thriving producers of wine. Its central mechanism is worker placement, with a central board split into different seasons that each have a set of worker spots. Multiple workers can go to an individual location, but usually there will be a bonus for the player who gets there first. Everyone also has their own player board for use in managing their wine products and structures and fields, and there are a few decks of Visitor cards representing folks who come for a tour that can help out in various ways. There's lots of ways to earn points, and when anyone reaches 20, endgame is triggered, prompting a few endgame scoring opportunities before the player with the most points wins.

I've never had a problem with Viticulture. In a lot of ways, it's a great example of the kind of worker placement I tend to like - interaction is limited but not completely absent, multiple strategies are viable, and options are never overwhelming. I'm also always a HUGE fan of a mechanic that lets players select and manipulate their own turn order with rewards for going later. It doesn't run long, the board looks nice on the table, and the ability to support 5 or 6 players is always a nice bonus.

But it's also just never really wowed me. There's not much of a satisfying game arc of peaks and valleys - every round basically feels pretty similar in the options available to you even though you'll have to rotate through doing different things. Doesn't exactly end with a bang, either, as the short runtime will often find the game ending just when you're starting to get a decent flow together, and not in a good "Aw, if I just had one more turn!" sort of way. And, while Stonemaier games are never lauded for their balance, this one always feels particularly luck-based and swingy to me. Visitor cards are highly variable in the benefits they offer, and the Order cards that determine what sort of wine you can sell and for how many points have similar issues. They feel like the things that should be determining your strategy, but there's too much randomness for that to be the case - too often it feels like the game is railroading you into your decisions despite the amount of options that are available.

Everyone I've ever played this with has liked it more than me, so I recognize I'm an outlier. As a lifelong teetotaler, I thought for a while that maybe the whole wine-making theme just wasn't landing with me, but upon greater reflection I've realized that I actually dig the theme quite a bit. It's a fun one for a euro that doesn't try or pretend to be outright exciting but still manages to feel somewhat novel for the space. Actually, I think part of my issue with the game is that the theme doesn't come through strongly enough - there are too many ways to get points that really don't have anything to do with making wine. I've seen wins and almost-wins that came without the player fulfilling a single order, and the most expensive and/or complicated wines feel like they're never worth it considering the amount of effort and actions they require.

Viticulture is a good game, but there's no one thing about it that I can point to as a reason to play it over other stuff. It just doesn't offer excitement or anticipation when it hits the table. I play it, have a perfectly fine time, it goes back in the box, and then I never think about the experience again. That's a pretty good encapsulation of this tier.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by my best friends. It's interesting - as I mentioned earlier, I'm the low man on Viticulture in both this and our previous group, but nobody's made much of an effort to get this off of the shelf recently, so I think even they might share the opinion that it's lacking that WOW factor of some other stuff in our collections. I'm sure there will still be a decent amount of plays in our future, though, and while I don't think it's out of the question that it might click one day, I kind of doubt it. Worker placement just seems to be getting more and more creative these days, and I think that'll make it even harder for Viticulture to find that perfect storm.

I would be really interested to try Ghost Stories if it was accidentally at some board game cafe or something that I stumbled on. If it's true that Last Bastion toned down the difficulty just a tad, I can see how GS could end up feeling more like stressful work than LB does. I do think that's true of the majority of co-op games, though. Their gameplay loops and strategies are just inherently more reactive than competitive games.

Really fun list. Haven't played a whole lot of these but it was great to follow along.

I don't know that our tastes in indie games enough to justify throwing out many recommendations, but I will mention one.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/983970/Haven

I haven't actually gotten to play this myself yet, but its developers are responsible for Furi, one of my all-time favorite games, indie or otherwise. I'd be hesitant to point you toward that one because it's similar to Cuphead in its considerable difficulty and I remember you stating you weren't the biggest fan of that in its writeup, but the storytelling around it is such that I trust them implicitly to deliver the goods on that front for every game they might make.

So Haven seems like it might be up your alley as an atmospheric game centered around romance and slice-of-life and emotional storytelling. Again, I can't confirm that myself, but I thought I'd give it a shout as something worth at least checking out.

25. Last Bastion
Expansions Played: N/A

Oh, hey, a co-op game. Been a bit.

This is the game on the list with the biggest need of a replay. It's been years since we last broke it out, and that's... Really not the game's fault.

Last Bastion is a retheming of Ghost Stories, Antoine Bauza's first real hit before his name was etched into relative board game immortality with 7 Wonders. That game has a reputation for being brutally difficult to win, even by the standards of popular cooperative games, and while it's generally agreed that Last Bastion isn't quite as punishing, it's far from being completely nerfed.

Initial plays backed this up. I even ran through a game solo when I first picked this up, which I hardly ever do. That was followed by a session at 3 players and then one at 2, and all three of those ended in pretty extreme failure. Then we all got together for a 4-player run wherein we got absurdly, absurdly lucky in every respect and basically stomped all over the deck that was our opponent. We'll never get dice rolls like that again.

It just left an impression best described as, "Oh. Well, okay." And like I said, I hesitate to call that a fault of the game - I don't want to criticize a game for not accounting for incredible player fortune. But it does speak to a flaw that I lambasted Eldritch Horror for and think is somewhat inherent to cooperative games in that they really have to hit a sweet spot to be fun, because when things go too well there's no feeling of accomplishment. With competitive games, you have a living, breathing, thinking opponent across from you that can learn and adapt and switch strategies and take agency. Cooperative games have only the scenario, so the only legitimate way to have replayability is to use randomness, and sometimes randomness just sucks.

Anyway, I don't want to muse on that sort of thing too much here instead of talking more about this individual game. Last Bastion drops you and your fellow heroes onto a 3x3 grid of randomly placed tiles that makes up the titular citadel and gives you what is essentially a tower defense game. Each tile on the grid and each playable character has unique abilities, which you'll be using to protect the place from an advancing horde of monsters (also with their own unique problems to cause) drawn each round from a central deck. Broadly speaking, each hero can move and fight OR move and use a tile action on every turn, in any order. Combat is mostly dice-based, but there's ways to mitigate the luck and help out your rolls. Included in the deck is a boss monster, the Warlord (though you can add more to increase the difficulty) - simply kill it when it eventually pops up and you win.

It's not a complicated game, as rules overhead is kept light and the only thing that takes some getting used to is the tile iconography. This game also distinguishes itself from something like Eldritch Horror quite a bit by having multiple good options for players on most turns, which reduces both the overall learning curve and the need for backseating - maybe you're not always making the one "BEST" decision, but you don't ever feel like you play the whole game as a fireman running to snuff out the thing that's going to cause obvious, imminent, total disaster if it's not dealt with IMMEDIATELY. The small board means you'll rarely be in a situation where you can't react to something promptly, and you've got good situational tools. You can battle two monsters at once from the corner spots, for example, but that's not necessarily always the most efficient use of actions.

In short, Last Bastion does a good job of creating a challenge that makes you think and synergize with your teammates due to its rapidly changing game state and healthy amount of viable options for success without forcing the need for extreme brain burning. Those options are simple and if you're playing the game right, bad luck shouldn't completely sink you. I've seen complaints that the theme is boring, especially compared to the spooky Chinese mythology of Ghost Stories, but I'm not bothered - I think "generic fantasy" works well for a game like this and it's still quite a pretty production.

It takes a special kind of co-op game to get past my bias against the format and I don't think Last Bastion is special, but it's a fun enough time.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by me, picked up for a good deal years ago. As I said, I'd definitely like to get this to the table again sometime soon to see if my extended time in the hobby changes my mind on any of this, and to get over our underwhelming last session. I can't imagine it will surpass Spirit Island as the go-to cooperative game for the group, though. (Since that's the only one left on the ranking, I don't think I'm spoiling anything here.)

27. Photosynthesis
Expansions Played: None

The forest is a mean, ruthless, dangerous place, and this game gives you the chance to take part in that cruel ecosystem and spread your influence as wide as you can while probably angering every other player at the table.

No, you read that headline right - this isn't the Root ranking. Photosynthesis is a hell of a deceptive package, a pretty little plant game you can find at your local Target and explain in less than 5 minutes that's hiding some of the most cutthroat passive-aggression of anything I've come across in the hobby.

Each player starts off with a board full of lovely (albeit flimsy) cardboard trees and a few seeds. The main board gets set up with a couple other trees and the sun, and you're off and running on what's essentially an area control game, plopping down your own trees to try and soak up as much light as possible while denying it to everyone else as the sun moves around the board. Bigger trees block more sun, but the only way to score points is to completely remove them.

The mark of elegance in a board game is wringing a large number of interesting turns and decisions out of a limited number of options, and Photosynthesis is a great example of that. Balancing the need to expand your territory with the option to mess with your opponents, all while having to plan ahead for the rotating sun, makes for an experience that turns out to be a surprising brain burner, especially when you can get through it in just a half hour or so.

This game's problem is its staying power, or lack thereof. After the first few plays, especially if they're with the same group, Photosynthesis kind of runs out of things to show you. There's no luck and no chance whatsoever, no difference between games, and the group meta will become apparent very quickly. The decisions you make aren't changing, but they feel less interesting with each repeat play unless people are making a concerted effort to do different things.

And look, for the price tag that this game comes with, that's perfectly fine. You get your money's worth and I think it's very good. But it's hard to place this any higher when I just feel like I've seen all it has to offer.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Currently unowned in the group, but there's a very good chance I pick this back up in the future and also grab the expansion that came out a few years ago. It seems like it addresses some of my problems with the game and adds some incredibly adorable animal meeples to improve the already nice table presence. This is the first game on the ranking that could conceivably make a big leap eventually.

26. Codenames
Expansions Played: None, but multiple versions

I don't think I even really need to bother giving an overview here, right? Don't think there's many people out there with even a cursory interest in the hobby that hasn't played Codenames. You can damn near learn the rules just by reading the box anyway.

From what I've seen, this is one of the most universally liked games out there, and there's good reasons for that. It's easy to teach and play for all ages and experience levels. It can support basically any player count of 4 or more. It's got a cute theme for unnecessary but fun flavor. It's endlessly replayable. It's quick. You can be as risky as you want from turn to turn, setting the stage for entertaining desperation plays where the spymaster gives a comically unhelpful prompt of "Cool, 6." You get the dizzying highs of successfully completing a five-card clue that make you feel like you and your friends have connected on a truly psychic level. You get the despondent lows as the spymaster painfully endeavors to maintain their poker face as their teammates discuss choosing the assassin card (which is itself hilarious if you're an observer on the other team and can see them slowly dying inside as they plot the "How could you think that was the right guess?!" rant they're about to explode with).

It's just a reliably good time. My favorite moments come when I'm teamed up with my best friend and we connect on a hint word that draws from inside jokes from 15+ years ago to the absolute befuddlement of everyone else around us. "Guys, if Brian says 'Contest, 2', he wants us to guess 'Choke' and 'Finger' and you're just gonna have to trust me on that." I struggle to think of an occasion where this game wouldn't work - even heavy gamers can get enjoyment out of the cleverness and puzzle inherent in Codenames in small doses.

With all that said, though, I'm never EXCITED to play it. I've never suggested it unprompted as something to pull off the shelf, and the only reason I ever would is in a family environment - even for something like a 6- or 8-person party among friends, I'll get more laughs and/or satisfaction out of the party versions of something like Sushi Go! or Anomia. Codenames will never blow me away. But there's something to be said for its impressive consistency, which is why it's still this high.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by multiple friends, and I'll probably grab a copy one day for the aforementioned family dimension. Actually hasn't come out in a while, but I'm sure it will again before too long. My opinion of it is never going to shift at this point, though.

Machi Koro 2 is all dynamic marketplace. I didn't even realize that was a change!

I can see how a static one would be preferable to some, but that just feels like a lot of choices all on the board at once for something that's supposed to be pretty snappy and light on real thought. I especially wouldn't like having some of the catchup mechanic cards always available.

Probably worth noting that this is the tier that's closest to a complete blob within itself. I like #18 better than I like #28, but it's not by a significant margin. Most of these next ten games are pretty neck-and-neck when it comes to my enjoyment level.

28. Machi Koro 2
Expansions Played: N/A

Not really much to say about this one, because there's not much to it. You've got rows of cards with values from 1-12 on them that all do different things if their numbers come up on a dice roll. Mostly they give you money to buy more cards, and if you buy three special, expensive cards, you win.

I'm sure there's a good bit of mathematical optimization to do here, considering you can roll either one d6 or two and the game even includes a handy little card that tells you what the odds are for rolling any number. I've never really bothered to try figuring any of that out, though, because I feel like it'd be kind of antithetical to a 20-30 minute dice rolling filler game. I'm happy to just grab the dice and roll and see what happens and buy whatever I'm drawn to at the moment.

MK2 oddly shines when someone is just getting hilariously screwed over by the will of the fates, and there's usually one of those players every game. I had one round recently where I scored a great roll on my first turn and then didn't profit again for almost the entire rest of the game. Everything I rolled gave other players more money than I got. There's actually a couple of solid catchup mechanics in the game and I was able to come back late to the point that I didn't get completely annihilated, which is another nice point in its favor.

It's just a fun little warmup for any game day, perfect for having something on the table while you're still just chitchatting with your friends and waiting for lunch to finish cooking or something. I actually like it less as a midday filler or end-of-day cooldown because everyone's more tired and the luck swings are less entertaining, and it just feels a little underwhelming all around after you've already played something more involved, but it's not like it's outright bad in either of those roles either. It does what it's supposed to do, no more and no less.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by my best friends, certain to be played pretty frequently moving forward. Don't really see it rising or falling much.

We have done 7W at lower player counts, but not as much as at the higher ones. That definitely could be part of my issue.

Another tier down! My prior update had this one going to 28, but apparently I miscounted because dumb.

Games I'd Rather Never Play Again Tier
44. Cards Against Humanity
43. Fury of Dracula (Third Edition)
42. Dead of Winter
41. Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza
40. Eldritch Horror
39. Mysterium
38. Exploding Kittens

Fine in Certain Contexts Tier
37. Wavelength
36. Sequence
35. Happy Little Dinosaurs
34. Boss Monster
33. Anomia
32. Hues and Cues
31. Secret Hitler
30. 7 Wonders
29. A Feast for Odin

Usually Fun, But I'd Also Usually Rather Play Something Else Tier
28. ???
27. ???
26. ???
25. ???
24. ???
23. ???
22. ???
21. ???
20. ???
19. ???
18. ???

Somewhat surprisingly, this is the biggest tier, with 10 games total where the two surrounding it both have 9.

30. 7 Wonders
Expansions Played: None

I feel like I've gotta be missing something here, because this is obviously a popular game that's had an impressive amount of staying power since its initial release in 2010 in a medium where that's not particularly common. To me, though, 7 Wonders just seems to work against itself. It's themed around civilization building, but it's incredibly short, pretty light on player interaction, and it's all just cards? I don't know - I'm not exactly a Sid Meier connoisseur so maybe I'm just talking out of my ass, but there's a real lack of an epic feeling here that I'd like to have in a game where I'm playing as a leader of a Great City. A long playing time would be a feature, not a bug, for someone like me in that kind of game.

Most of the decision making isn't even all that meaningful - the best card choice from the hand you're given feels pretty obvious far too often for my tastes, and trying to deny stuff to your neighbors slows the game down too much to be a viable option. But despite that and the low-interaction nature of the game, success always seems bizarrely dependent on who you're sitting next to, not because they're necessarily playing a clever game but because they might just happen to have a similar strategy to yours, which hamstrings the both of you.

Even the end feels underwhelming. This theme feels like it should end with accomplishments, but instead it's just round based and then everyone totals up points in a weirdly finicky scoring system. AND THEN there's just enough setup and teardown that you can't even really take advantage of the short playtime to easily do multiple plays.

I never tend to think of myself as a hardcore theme integration, Ludonarrative harmony guy when it comes to board games, but... Maybe I am? Because I certainly don't hate 7 Wonders. It's not like I find any aspect of its gameplay all that objectionable (hell, I even tend to quite enjoy drafting and simultaneous selection as mechanics) and I don't groan internally when it gets brought out from the shelf. I also give it a ton of credit for taking a relatively complex (as in, it's not Anomia or Hues & Cues) game for up to seven people and condensing it into the timeframe that it does, my personal complaints about game feel aside. But it just doesn't set itself apart from other lighter card games enough for me. That niche it fills as a non-party game for big groups is nice, but I never feel like I get much more out of it than I would Sushi Go Party, which has less overhead and is much more pleasant to look at.

Maybe I'm just forcing unrealistic expectations on this game for not being exactly what I want it to be. For plenty of people, this kind of quick, low interaction civ builder is precisely what they want - all this stuff I'm complaining about makes up the selling points for them. And I get it! I just personally don't want an abbreviated civilization game any more than I'd want a two-hour word game.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by a friend, but I don't know if its future prospects are great. I'm the low man in the group on this game, but none of us love it. I can obviously see it getting pulled out when player count exceeds the 4 or 5 that most of our collection caps at, but those occasions are pretty rare. It's not impossible 7 Wonders could finally click with me after just a few more plays and at least jump a tier, but I'm not sure it'll ever get that chance.

29. A Feast for Odin
Expansions Played: None

Yep! Down here among the light game graveyard, we have one of the three heaviest games on the whole ranking in Uwe Rosenberg's classic monstrosity. Honestly, it probably should've even been a little lower.

I don't even know where to start here, because there's just so damn much. More often than not, I like games that throw a metric ton of options and mechanics and ways to score at players and leaves them to puzzle out the best ones, but in this case they just don't coalesce in the way I'd hope, and it might just be because it's all a little TOO obtuse. Feast for Odin doesn't give you a whole lot of direction to sift through its many choices and seeing how they connect to one another, and it's not like the game arc is designed in a way that makes for a manageable start and steady ramp-up. It's sandboxy, but not in a way that makes you feel completely free to really experiment.

AFfO represents a kind of worker placement that I tend to struggle with, where player interaction is very low but incredibly frustrating when it does happen. If by sheer bad luck you end up going for the same overall strategy as another player, you're either going to sink each other or one is going to be completely annihilated. There's so few ways to adjust when a spot you need is taken. It's a somewhat forgiving game relative to its complexity, where anything you do is more a question of whether you'll succeed now or later versus succeeding or failing, but a couple of instances of succeeding later is still going to make it tough to compete.

I'm a reasonably smart fellow and tend to pick things up fairly quickly, including other board games of similar weight. Here, I had to keep asking people to re-explain different actions to me, because some of them are just weird. I'm still not entirely sure why, from a design perspective, we need a d8 and d12 depending on what we're hunting, or why we want to roll low when hunting but high when pillaging or raiding. It's never been immediately clear to me why my opponents did better than me in an individual game or vice versa, either.

My other complaints about the game are relatively small. It's incredibly drab looking, first of all. The polyomino aspects feel as tacked on as tacked on can get, and while we're at it, so does the theme. I spend more time feeling like a super stressed and persnickety farmer than I do feeling like a viking. These kinds of things wouldn't matter much if not for my problems with the gameplay, but added up, they make for something that I'll just never actively seek out again.

It sounds like I hate this game, I know, but I don't. With a game this popular, I just feel the need to probably overexplain my lack of love. As a baseline skeleton, heavy worker placement is something I want to and should enjoy. I like the conceit of the sandbox we're playing in here, and with a few alterations I think I'd very much enjoy this game where we all pick our lanes without stepping on toes and see whose strategy was the most sound. I've heard the Norwegians expansion helps with some of this, and if any friends want to shell out the $100+ it would cost to prove it, I'd give it a shot. But for now, it's a game I just respect much more than I like it.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Unowned by the current group and I don't expect that to change. Think I've played my last game of Feast.

Likely no ranking to drop today, but I'm hoping to finish out the current tier with the last two games in it tomorrow!

Last couple of weekends have included some really great game days. Nothing new from the Shelf of Shame yet, but we've packed in some long sessions. Cascadia, Dune: Imperium, Great Western Trail, Here to Slay, Machi Koro 2, Marvel Dice Throne, Root, and Scythe all hit the table for us, some of those for the first time in a very very long while. All of the four remaining tiers for this ranking have at least some representation there, by the way, although none of them have seen much movement!

Both of the next couple games to drop are probably gonna be a bit controversial, interested to see the response.

Apologies for the lack of updates. Work gets insanely busy this time of year for me and with family time over the holiday weekend I didn't have many free moments.

31. Secret Hitler
Expansions Played: N/A

All I'll say about the theme here is that it's never really been an issue for my group, but I completely understand why it would be for others and I would never tell anyone that they're wrong for that.

As far as the game itself goes... It definitely feels a little weird even ranking this sort of social deduction game on a list alongside something like Eldritch Horror. You have to really squint to see how they technically belong to the same hobby. But whatever, it's on BGG so I'm not going to be pedantic.

Roles are assigned randomly at the start of the game. "Liberals" are a majority, but don't know anyone else's affiliation. "Fascists" know who each other are and who "Hitler" is. "Hitler" also does not know anyone else's affiliation. Each round, everyone elects a President and a Chancellor who enact laws based on liberal and fascist policies drawn randomly from a deck that is weighted toward the latter. Liberals win if five liberal policies are enacted or Hitler is killed. Fascists win if six fascist policies are enacted or Hitler is elected Chancellor after three or more fascist policies.

Funnily enough, this game actually consistently delivers something that I complained about EH totally whiffing on: memorable moments where you can accurately recall every detail of that time when everything went completely, gloriously right or painfully, hilariously wrong. I saw my best friend have a complete head-in-hands crisis questioning the strength of his marriage (in a funny, lighthearted way) after his wife looked him dead in the eye repeatedly and managed to totally fool him in one game. Another game ended after a galaxy brain mind-meld between me and a friend of a friend that I hardly knew at all, where she as Hitler realized with impressive speed that I as a fascist was actively trying to covertly sabotage myself in a fashion where only she was in a position to call me out for it and put her above suspicion. Another saw two of our heavier drinker friends, both Liberals, obsessively and loudly tunnel on each other with Hitler suspicions for the entire game, only to fall ass backwards into a victory when the actual Hitler got a little too cute letting a Liberal policy through and basically got screwed over by luck of the draw afterwards.

I don't really have much more commentary about the game outside of applauding it for setting up a framework that encourages those sorts of moments. It's not all that innovative and there have definitely been some annoying games where the fascists won through very little fault of their own thanks to favorable draws. But it works as the beer-and-pretzels game for large groups that it's trying to be. Internal metas will develop and you'll eventually get used to the deck enough to be at least somewhat calculating if you want to be. And sometimes, honestly, it's just fun to point at your friends and yell and call them fascists. There's just something about it.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: I think my best friend and his wife own this, but it hasn't come out in a long time, mostly because our bigger friend gatherings are pretty rare these days. I think the game wears out its welcome fairly quickly if played a lot, but doing this writeup has kind of put me in the mood to bust it out for a round or three. As is the case with most games to have dropped so far, though, I don't imagine it'll ever rise much further.

Cuphead's difficulty is one of the biggest reasons I love it, but I agree with the sentiment that people should be free to play their single-player games however they want. At least most of the time.

I will second 86.

Movie: Nightmare Before Christmas
Series: Castlevania Nocturne (after going through Castlevania right before)
Novel: The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
Theater: Probably Wicked, but it's been so long since I've been to any that I really have no idea
Video Game: Sea of Stars

HaRRicH posted...

Ah, different taste in platformers. Celeste was great! I had it as #17 on my Game of the Decade list, but I also had The End of Nigh at #14, Cuphead at #11, and Super Meat Boy as #1. Celeste was more consistent in quality than at least those first other two I named and was really successful in including narrative and boss fights to that type of game. Those later post-game stages are just too hard for me though with all the heightened challenges and mechanics coming in.

Oh well, I still like my Celeste Mountain hoody.

See, Celeste and Cuphead I adore. SMB just didn't feel right to me in any way.

I greatly dislike Super Meat Boy but I didn't play it until a couple of years ago and I feel like that was probably a big reason why.

Puzzle games are a genre I really need to explore more so I don't know if I really have a worthwhile opinion.

The La-Mulana games are among my all-time favorites and they're well known for their absurdly obtuse, bordering on psychotic puzzle design. But I think they're kind of lightning in a bottle for me and I wouldn't want to play lots of games like them. Hoping to go through Tunic soon to see what that's all about.

Not even sure any of those really qualify as "puzzle games" for what this topic is asking, though.

32. Hues and Cues
Expansions Played: N/A

There's not much to this game and, as its placement in this tier implies, I wouldn't want to see it on the table more than once in a blue moon. That being said, the few times I've played it, I've always had more fun than I expected to. I guess it would technically still fall in the "party game" category, but it's on the fringes - my delineating factor is essentially whether a moderately inebriated person could still semi-competently participate.

Super straightforward. You've got a board in front of you displaying 480 colors. One player draws a card with a few of those colors on it and picks one to give a one-word identifying hint for. All other players place a marker on a board color to make their guess, and then the clue giver has the option to also give a two-word hint; if so, players can make an additional guess. Once done, you place a little 3x3 box on the board with the original color at its center, in which the guessers get points for how close they were and the clue giver gets points for every guess within that box.

The idea that makes this game work is that describing colors is hard, and basically impossible without using something as a reference. If you're like me (i.e. horrible with anything artsy), you'd usually start off by using another color as that relative point, then use words like "lighter" or "darker" or some such, and then in frustration move on to something like "It's like Barney the dinosaur."

Hues and Cues's restrictions force you into that third, funny step immediately, which makes a tough task even tougher while keeping it as something that literally everyone can do to some extent. It makes for just a nice little game that's likely to lead to a laugh or two, like when my group realized that my color-oriented painter wife was the only one of us who has any idea what chartreuse is or when you get a quote like "What the hell color do you think Pikachu is?!" It does a good job of encouraging that post-round argument between players that make party games enjoyable while avoiding making the game itself feel like it's just an ancillary vehicle for that goal.

It's quick, simple, and easy to teach. Has a really nice niche as a night-ender where everyone's kind of tired of thinking hard and just feels like chatting or keeping one eye on Sunday Night Football or something, but still wants to also have a game on the table. It's also easily the best game on the list so far for families, in my opinion.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by no one right now - only played at board game cafes a few times. I expect I'll find a used copy for $5 somewhere eventually and buy it just for the sake of messing with my color-blind friend one day.

Actually, in all seriousness, this is a game I could see rising a bit in the distant future when my wife and I have kids. I imagine a lot of potential humor in a young child using their limited frames of reference in the world for colors and getting frustrated when no one understands their clues.

Like I said in the writeup, I don't have the vitriol for CAH as an activity that some board gamers do. But as an actual "game" itself, it's sorely lacking in almost every conceivable way.

SeabassDebeste posted...

(glanced at the list and of the 20 games left that i have played, i think i would probably have anomia arguably above over half of them. but it obviously is a game that fills a pretty casual niche in comparison to many of those.)

I don't think I'll be blowing anyone's mind at this point to say that more casual/party games do tend to have a bit of a ceiling for me, yeah. They were hard to rank because yeah, some of them do their job perfectly or almost perfectly. But I still just tire of them quickly and find myself wanting to play something that has a little more to it.

GranTurismo posted...

your cell phone has no camera or a gps?

It has both. Camera isn't great but I'm not an Instagram influencer so it does all I need.

I've been using a <$200 phone for years so that's an easy answer.

Just one today.

33. Anomia
Expansions Played: N/A

Anomia: "Inability to remember the right words such as names of people or objects."

Simulator games seem to be all the rage in the video game world these days, but board games are countering with Anomia, AKA "Uh, um, uh!" Simulator.

Anomia sets a central deck on the table. Each player, in turn, will flip over a card from the top directly into a stack in their play area. Each card has a symbol and a category on it, and if the symbol matches one on the top card of another player's stack, you both have to race to name something belonging to the category on your opponent's card. The winner takes both cards, and when the central deck runs out, the player with the most cards wins.

Sounds like the easiest game in the world. But when you play with higher player counts (which you basically always should), it instantly becomes impossible to pay attention to everything. You'll be fumbling for even the simplest category. "Name a color?! Uh, uh, um!" The deck also holds "Wild Cards" with two different symbols and no category, so if two players have the symbols on that card, they have to scramble for an unexpected face-off. And obviously when a card is taken, the one underneath is revealed, so you will often have a quick series that gets many players involved one after another.

I think one of the reasons I'm not always a big fan of party games is that a lot of them seem to promote laughing at your friends' stupidity. Don't get me wrong, that's undoubtedly fun, but A) it does get old a little quick if it's the main conceit of an activity, and B) my group can do that just fine without the aid of a party game - often it happens in more serious board games anyway. Anomia has this, but I feel like it's built even more around laughing at your own stupidity. Why couldn't I think of a last name? I have a last name! I'm the biggest nerd here, why couldn't I name a video game?!

Feeling dumb in games is just never pleasant. Even in something unserious like Wavelength, if I have a couple of rounds in a row where I know I've given bad clues, it bothers me a little. But in Anomia, those moments are great, especially when they cascade. So many times, I'll lose a face-off and be too busy chuckling at the absurd mental blank I just drew to notice that another face-off was immediately triggered that I proceed to also lose. I love the "Wait, did Brian just try to name Frodo as a fairy tale character?" moments as much as anyone, but it's good to break those up with some good ol' self-owns, too. Anomia crafting its whole identity around the amusement of utter failure creates an atmosphere I haven't seen replicated anywhere else.

This glowing review so far probably makes it sound like I'm dropping this too early, but Anomia has kind of a critical flaw for a party card game in that it's not really very fun to play multiple rounds back-to-back. Since you go through the whole deck for each play, there aren't really any surprises on a runback. The luster doesn't wear off entirely - people will still struggle plenty - but it's definitely less funny to watch your friends try desperately to name an astronaut the second time around in one night.

For that reason, I think it probably works better as a warm-up game before the main game or activity of the night than as something that's being counted on to carry the fun for an hour or two at a party. The problem with that is that if you're pulling this out with, say, your regular board game group, there's a higher chance that you'll have just three or four people, and Anomia does lose a bit of its shine at those counts.

In general, though, I'd wholeheartedly recommend it for both cases. It's inexpensive and sets a lovely mood for either occasion even if it's not perfect in either regard.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by a couple of different friends and certain to be played fairly often in the future. Not going to rise or fall much, though, because it's not like this is a game that's really going to show anything more on its twentieth play than its second. I will say that I wouldn't mind picking up Anomia X at some point for cheap if the opportunity presents, because the nature of the game kind of seems to lend itself to a dirtier version that doesn't suck. It'd probably be funny to see the prudish couple on the periphery of our friend group having to suddenly name a fetish in a panic, for example.

35. Happy Little Dinosaurs
Expansions Played: None

This game is weird. At its core, it's really just a trick-taking game, but it plays like absolute chaos.

You play as a dinosaur trying to escape disasters... Or something. Each round, a card is flipped over with a Disaster on it, which can be one of three types plus a wild card. All players play a card with a number value from 0 to 9 facedown and reveal simultaneously. Everyone gets a chance to play additional cards with other effects to manipulate the scores until everyone passes consecutively. High scorer earns points equal to that score. Low scorer takes the Disaster card. Collect all three types of Disaster or three of one kind and you're eliminated. First to 50 points or last dino standing wins.

For such a simple game, there's a bizarre amount of rules overhead that confuses us all more than I feel like it should, and the rulebook itself is not a great helper. The components are nice and the art is cute, and setup and playtime are quick enough to get in multiple rounds in a short period anytime you want - Unstable Games is at least reliable on those fronts. I'm just not a big trick-taking fan, though, and a version this simple is not going to be my jam, even considering the hand management and push-your-luck aspects tossed in. HLD's brand of humor also doesn't land with me - the "Emotional" disaster cards in particular make light of things like your friends making plans without you or embarrassing gaffes on a first date, and that sort of joke has just never made me laugh.

It's not awful, though. It's a nice, small, affordable filler game and nothing else.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by me. Bought by my wife when she was just getting into board games. I don't think it'll ever really see much more play in our usual group but I'll be glad to have it around to play with our eventual kids.

34. Boss Monster
Expansions Played: None

Look, I'm here on a video game message board with a seventeen-year-old account - obviously a small card game with a retro video game aesthetic is going to stand out to me on a shelf and tempt me to impulse buy it. Which is exactly what happened.

Fun little theme for a game, where you play as a monster trying to devise the perfect dungeon that is enticing enough to lure in adventurers to be killed without attracting so many that some survive the deathtraps and come to defeat you instead.

Simple little card game with a lightning-quick setup and easy teach. It affectionately rips off your Metroids and Castlevanias and throws in plenty of chuckle-worthy references to other nerdy pop culture standouts. The flavor text is fun, which is a nice bonus for a light warm-up game that gets everyone around the table that little bit more involved, and your strategy will be affected just enough by what other players are doing that it behooves you to maintain at least some awareness.

The strategy itself just isn't all that deep, though. I don't mind games like this being pretty luck-based, because it's not like I bring out Boss Monster with the goal of conducting a hyper-competitive main event for game night. But there's not a whole lot of variety, either, and limited replayability is definitely something that affects the viability of a filler game.

As it is, it really only works as an occasional palate cleanser. Every collection needs some games like that, and the charming look of Boss Monster makes it a good one for me personally. But it's not something I'd ever really recommend. I've heard the expansions help at least a little, so that's something I might look into eventually.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by me, but it hasn't hit the table in a while. Filler games in general have a pretty high turnover rate in my group, no idea whether that's a common thing. As I mentioned, if I ever find an expansion for dirt cheap somewhere, I could maybe see a little revival for this game that would bump it up a couple slots, but I don't think it'd jump a whole tier or anything.

The current Burger King ones drive me insane beyond all reason.

I'd like to play more semi-cooperative games, because I think there's ways to do it well. I've had a game called Sons of Faeriell on my radar for a while that seems to have a lot of potential on that front. Just haven't pulled the trigger on it yet.

AriaOfBolo posted...

My favorite Exploding Kittens moment is when my agent of chaos wife got bored and used the card that lets you move the bomb. Everybody tied themselves in knots trying to wifom where she would've put it, but it turned out she just stuck it in there completely at random. I think she wound up blowing herself up with it, even.

Yeah, this sort of thing is why I don't think EK is quite as bad as a lot of people. Someone in the group will end up taking the "decisions" way more seriously than they deserve and it will lead to funny accidents like this.

Doesn't mean I like the game, but I'll give it a little credit for the potential to fall ass-backwards into something entertaining.