Lurker > SeabassDebeste

dr2 > drv3 > dr1

not particularly close on any of them imo.

aai2... probably my game of the decade?
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

82. Coup (2012)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Hidden roles, bluffing, player elimination
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 15-30 minutes
Experience: 15+ plays over 8+ sessions (2015-2018) with 4-6 players
Previous ranks: 56/100 (2016), 60/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player is dealt two hidden roles, representing both their lives and their abilities. Each hidden role has a special power associated with it. Play proceeds clockwise, and on your turn you can either take a basic action or a special role action, claiming that special role. When you claim a role, you can be either challenged or not. Players can "coup" you to take out one of your two lives. Last man standing wins.

Design - Coup can feel messy with its player powers chart at first explaining this and that, but when it comes down to it, it's a fairly elegant design. Once you know every role, the setup and teardown are effortless and individual turns are quick and snappy.

As a take-that-ish game, Coup is a game where you have to accept that you won't always have control over your own destiny. The bluffing mechanism is a really clever way to even out the odds - you can take extra coins early on while it's hard to contest you, but once people have stored up money and it gets higher-stakes, the metagame should sort itself out that challenges are done at times that make sense. Unfortunately, since players have to actively get in conflicts (or be targeted) to lose, Coup often becomes a turtling game.

But, there's something unique in Coup about the bluffing mechanism, since you have full knowledge. "I block as Cortana" call or the "I challenge your Assassin" always gets the table interested, these are both the most common interactions (because they're so direct) and the highest-leverage (due to the elevated stakes that can send you from two lives directly to zero lives). It becomes possibly even more interesting when Captain actions are blocked (will anyone budge?) or especially Duke actions get challenged.

Experience - One of the funnest memories I have of the game (and probably the most fun I've had) was during the first game I played, when an overeager player who introduced us to the game angrily challenged two people in like three turns. She was promptly eliminated after having taken maybe one or two actions herself. Challenges are the most fun part about Coup, but unfortunately, challenging everyone is a losing strategy. The game went on and was never as entertaining.

Future - Coup doesn't make me eager to play it, but sometimes when sitting around with nothing to play, I think, "it would be nice to have Coup now." I've played it on a bus, for example, though it sucked. Nonetheless, due to its ubiquity outside my main circles and light interaction, it's likely to get played again and not particularly rise or fall in rankings.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

this has to be THE definitive fultz game, right? at the lakers and lebron james 20-pt triple double?

sadly i can't even properly enjoy the L
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

yikes, loss at home to deteoit
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

83. Anomia (2010)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Party game, pattern recognition, reflexes
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 20 minutes
Experience: 5+ plays over 3+ sessions (2017-2018) with 5-6 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 31/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player has a stack of face-down cards. The cards have odd shapes on them along with a category ("'60s movie star"). On your turn, you flip over a card from your deck onto your face-up pile, and if the shape matches someone else's shape, you immediately have to state something of the matching player's category ("Marilyn Monroe!"). The player who says the other person's first takes a point (card) from the original winner.

Experience - This game ranked super-high for me when I ranked it, largely because my plays of it were entirely concentrated between late 2017 and early 2018. I haven't played it in coming-on two years now, but I have very fond memories.

Design - I love real-time games like this that put people into the pressure cooker and turn their brains to mush. Anomia is designed essentially to make people flail and shout and point, and that is exactly what it does best. You constantly need to be on edge in case your card is shown, and if the pace is fast enough, you'll be thinking of "in case I match with X" words constantly. Due to the way card reveals works, it's possible to set off a chain when a lost card reveals another card that matches. And you might get to see how quickly your friends turn unexpectedly vulgar.

That said, Anomia is hardly a tight design. "Patterns match, race" and "think of something" are both super-fun mechanics to me, but they're not exactly original, and Anomia doesn't bring a ton more to the table.

One particularly disappointing artifact of the game's design is that it's technically possible to go an entire game without matching anyone, and that it's a virtual guarantee that the duels are not equally distributed. Scores aren't important in games like Anomia, but the unequal opportunities presented in Anomia make that exercise particularly nonsensical. It's certainly competitive and contentious, but because each round is almost independent and the duration doesn't form a coherent arc, it's also easy to say that Anomia isn't particularly game-y. So as it grows more distant in memory, it sinks more.

Future - Anomia is really fun, but not really the type of game I'd get as a hobby gamer. Again, the group will matter, but if it comes to the table again I will be glad - but I miss the memory of that time of my life more than desiring to play the game again.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Naye745 posted...

all i know about this game is it looks pretty

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I have never heard of this, but it looks very nice

if you're satisfied with art alone and aren't concerned with a strategic game, it's a good pick!

Naye745 posted...

welcome to the dungeon is fantastic. amazing how much game you get from such a small set of components

one of the games i'd like to bump higher maybe!

Peace___Frog posted...

I forgot all about welcome to the dungeon, me and a group of guys I used to work with would play it sometimes over lunch. I admire its graceful simplicity and wouldn't say no to playing it again, but it's not a game I'm aching to replay.

reasonable summation. not like i have a welcome to the dungeon-sized hole in my chest.

Grand Kirby posted...

It's hard for me to rate that game because I never really had a good "game" of it. I've only played in groups of like twenty people, and it was always with a mix of serious players, people who just wanted to screw around, and people who had no idea what they were doing, so it was always just a big mess.

Still funny at least, but I never think of it as anything other than a party game to waste time as opposed to a strategy game I should actually try to win.

i mean it certainly doesn't pretend to be a strategy game. i have had good experiences with it and also flatter ones. that said i love a good party game!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

84. Two Rooms and a Boom (2013)

Category: Team vs Team
Genres: Hidden roles, bluffing, voting, social deduction, party game
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 20 minutes
Experience: 10+ plays over 4+ sessions (2015) with 8-10 players
Previous ranks: 44/100 (2016), 53/80 (2018)

Summary - There are two equal teams: the red team (with a bomber) and a blue team (with a president). Everyone is randomly divided into two physically separate rooms. Over the course of a fixed, small number of timed rounds, the players in each room talk to one another, and elect both a leader and a hostage. Hostages are exchanged between the two rooms at the end of each round. After the final round, if the bomber is in the same room as the president, the red team wins; otherwise, the blue team wins.

Experience - Social deduction games were my jam when I started hobby gaming, and Two Rooms and a Boom was a really solid option for a large group of people. That one summer of 2015 we played it a ton, and then the person who owned it moved away, and the remaining regular gamers meet so much more infrequently and in such smaller groups that I've barely seen it since then. If I have a regret regarding it, it's not playing more different roles.

Design - Two Rooms and a Boom is really silly. It's a good case of how to do an awful theme without being stupidly edgy: suicide bombing as assassination is, you know, bad. But everything about the game, starting with the silly title, encourages us not to take it seriously or stir up controversial. Perhaps it's due to its relative lack of popularity, but I've never heard anyone complain about Two Rooms and a Boom, unlike Secret Hitler. And yes, that's because it's not stupidly exploitative with a hot-trigger issue.

Anyway, the game is fun, if you like the people. There are goofy roles in it, like the ones that prevent you from showing your card, or (especially) the clown that forces you to smile the whole time (this resulted in a bunch of people pretending to be the clown and smiling the whole time). And the suspicion that goes 'round when someone new enters is always fun.

Two things make Two Rooms particularly unique: Leveraging physical space and playing an extremely high player count. Those are probably the biggest innovation in Two Rooms, though of course they're also one of the worst parts about the game, because they so badly limit the opportunities to play it.

If I have a minor gameplay glitch (and it's been so long now that it feels pointless to nitpick), it's that with even numbers of players in each room, it's possible for one team to control both rooms if the first randomly selected leader is the same color both times. That can result in a stale game, as no one needs to decide whether it's better to remain in control or to try to gain information by sending an agent from the in-power team across the aisle. As a result, eight-player games fell very flat in my group, while ten-player games were considerably better.

Future - I was legitimately prepared to write that sadly, I may never play Two Rooms and a Boom ever again. But then I clicked a link to Amazon, and according to a review, a six-player game of Two Rooms can be good. I feel like a group of three in each room is rough, but that does spark my interest again.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

85. Welcome (Back) to the Dungeon (2013, 2016)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Push-your-luck, bluffing, bidding, player elimination
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 20-30 minutes
Experience: 4-6 plays over 3-4 sessions (2016-2018) with 4 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 47/80 (2018)

Summary - Everyone essentially plays a giant game of chicken to see who will go into the dungeon (deck of monster cards). The stakes are raised with each bid: either a monster is added to the dungeon or a piece of equipment is removed from the hero. You can also pass instead of raising the stakes, and once everyone drops out, the "winner" of the bid has to go into the dungeon. If they survive, they get a point (and two points wins the game); if they lose, they get a negative point (and two negative points loses the game).

Experience - The first time I played this game, I enthusiastically went into the dungeon twice in around the first three goes and promptly found myself eliminated and watched for the rest of the game. That was really rough. Subsequent plays had me just the tiniest bit more cautious, and I've never failed to have fun since then.

Design - Welcome to the Dungeon is incredibly clever in so many aspects, starting with the theme and how it ties into the mechanics: Essentially, you're not necessarily heroic; rather, you're rowdy and drunk and bragging to your friends about how you're way more badass than they are. The "bidding" process is really just bravado and a game of oneupsmanship, and often you can't necessarily back up your talk and are just hoping someone else will bite on it to get you out of it. Getting to go can either elicit a "we got this" or (depending on how much you overbid) an "oh, crap."

Rounds are snappy and fast, which is key when the game can go a potential 11 rounds (for 4 people). If there is a downside to the game, it is obviously the player elimination alongside the variable game length; you could get hosed in the first two rounds and have to watch everyone else go eight full rounds without you, as I did in my first experience. But being eliminated is entirely within your control; you never once have to go into the dungeon if you don't want to (though always passing on your turn would make for an easy dungeon that it's likely your opponents(s) would succeed in).

I don't like direct confrontation much, and in many cases I don't require player interaction. But engagement is big. Bidding is a great mechanism for that: non-confrontational, interactive, and highly engaging. Only one person winds up going in the dungeon, and you've got everyone rooting against that person. Watching a failure in the dungeon is a wonderful case of schadenfreude.

Future - Would replay with the right crowd (i.e. most of my friends) in a heartbeat, which makes me think that I rated this game too low this time around (and indeed, it ranked quite high last time).
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

oops, C:EW is actually #86

87. Call to Adventure (2018)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Tableau-building, push-your-luck, dice-rolling
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 45-60 minutes
Experience: 2 plays over 2 sessions (2018-2019) with 4 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Each player builds a character's epic story, from origins to final bosses. In practice, this means choosing on each turn to attempt to gain a skill/accomplish a challenge (both represented by a card market) by casting various sets of runes (i.e. flipping cool-shaped coins). These skills/challenges (cards) are added to your tableau. Every three cards you gain moves you into the next tier of available cards, and once a player has completed all three tiers, the game ends.

Experience - I've played this game twice. The first time was at a meetup with people I like, which made for a fun experience. The second was at a con, with somewhat less enjoyable people, but the game held up pretty well. Its lightness helps.

Design - Let's be clear: There isn't a lot of strategy to CtA. You've got several mechanisms going - a "light/dark" track that determines how much of an antihero or a saint you'll be; mechanisms to boost your power by becoming more evil; cards that function/score based on which path you choose; minor engine-building from your tableau that will let you cast extra runes. You get to make choices on how you want to grow your character or gain experience points and which challenges you want to try out and spend your experience points on. But the game pleasantly limits your choices to three challenges per round; you'll pretty much always want to play your cards in hand on the best possible ability; and depending on light/dark, that will reduce your options even further. The decision tree comes down to optimizing how you cast your runes and is wide but ultimately rather shallow.

On the other hand, Call to Adventure is huge on chrome. The art is gorgeous. The titles of the cards are evocative. You mostly get full control on your character's light/dark track, and it's more a matter of preference if you want to be paladin-esque or dark and brooding - you can get positive points either way, though there's a nice thematic punishment for going too evil beyond peak antihero. Getting that extra rune to cast is like turning to the dark side. The rules even say that you're supposed to tell your character's story at the end of the game - there are victory points that drive you, but in the end, it makes it very clear you're about the chrome-y, short, light journey and not the point-salad-y end.

The primary mechanic behind CtA is rune-casting. Whenever you undertake a challenge, you take differently colored runes, which are flat pieces with marks on both sides (more on one than another, generally). Depending on your tableau and the type of challenge, you may take extras. You shake them all up and literally cast them down, then count your marks for whether or not you accomplish a challenge. They look great and feel great to throw and counting them up is fun and satisfying.

Future - I don't think I'd ever buy CtA and it's probably not really in the wheelhouse of my main gaming groups. A lot of the time I want to play something that's a bit more game-y, but there's just something soothing and pleasant about the CtA experience. More plays could reveal it to be monotonous or make some nice storytelling memories, and I don't know which is more likely.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

i played it once, but i don't rank games i haven't played multiple times. i think i'd probably put it slightly above EW, but unsure.

never played any of the combo games.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

87. Century: Eastern Wonders (2018)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Point-to-point movement, area control, resource conversion
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 45-60 minutes
Experience: 3-4 plays over 3-4 sessions (2018-2019) with 3-4 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Each player plays as a spice merchant/trader sailing across a hexagonal grid of islands. At each stop, you can collect basic spices, trade your spices for better spices (depending on your tile), build an outpost, and upgrade your player abiltiies. At special ports, you can trade your resources for victory points.

The prequel - Since C:EW is the sequel to Century: Spice Road, which appears higher up on this list, the rest of this writeup is postponed!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

thinking about this next game. it's a sequel to a game higher on the list so i'd like to do both together. better to do both now, or both when i hit the higher ranking game?
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

88. Balderdash (1984)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Party game, word game, guessing game, trivia game
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 30 minutes
Experience: 2-3 plays over 2-3 sessions (2017-2018) with 5-6 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - A rotating "host" player draws a card with a real but obscure word on it ("wadmiltilt," as a first result from Google) and everyone secretly submits a nonsense definition of it. The host reads all the definitions (including the real definition, printed on the card) and everyone simultaneously guesses which one is real. You get points for guessing correctly or for others guessing yours correctly.

Experience - I played Balderdash a few times with a loose-ish friend group that's a little too big to play most heavier games. (We also met at a cafe that didn't really have a lot of table space.) It's... pretty fun?

I considered dropping Balderdash from the rankings, because it's obviously not a hobby game (playing it will "feel" more like Pictionary or Cards Against Humanity) and because it feels so clearly different from one, and I don't feel strongly about it. (I probably omitted it in 2018.) On the other hand, it has a clearly game-y design.

Design - Balderdash has a pretty classic design and draws from a fairly classic source of trivia: the English language. It's a published version of typical parlor games. But making up stuff in attempts to get others to guess your fabrication is definitely "game-y," as people have a sensible and objective goal. Balderdash smartly uses words that are absurdly obscure with often ridiculously specific meanings, allowing wacky and serious answers both to be chosen. (It also has really obscure proper nouns.)

The strategy in Balderdash, like in so many games that draw on outside knowledge (trivia games and word games and creative games), is largely based off an outside skill as well. Balderdash rewards knowing how others think, but it also punishes you if you don't know how to write like a dictionary. Making a grammatical mistake in Balderdash essentially ensures no one will pick your definition.

One major and unfortunate quality of life aspect of Balderdash is that it relies on handwriting/narration. Because you don't want to identify the correct answer by handwriting, there has to be a host player each round to collect submissions. And then people need to listen to the host read them instead of being able to read them themselves. It's unfortunate, but I feel Balderdash would be probably smoother, and very possibly better, as a Jackbox-style game. (Jackbox, of course, has variations on this.)

Future - In a game like Balderdash, the game is over if you know all the words. That said, no one in my group has ever known one of the cards, there are many cards, and unless you play it a ton in a very short amount of time, odds are against remembering these words well enough for replayability to become an issue due to knowledge.

I'll never thirst to play Balderdash, but I might prefer it at times to other options. And I suppose there's always a chance that someday I hit upon a really fun play of it.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

not having played this game, you're doing yourself a big disservice by assuming shakespeare's plays are dry - especially the most famous ones. their dialogue can be impenetrable but the plot and characters are iconic for a reason.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Would you be surprised to know I was extremely obsessed with Thunderstone for awhile?

Its been at least 5+ years since I played it, though.

haha, based on your likes so far, not surprised at all!

Naye745 posted...

i think king of tokyo is fairly fun but it offers considerably less depth than many of the previous 10 games or so on your list and that's important to me. dice forge, 7 wonders, and roll for the galaxy have a solid amount of stuff going on and comparable replayability

i think there are a handful of winning strategies (though of course what is ideal depends on the cards available) and yeah, avoiding tokyo is generally the right move

depth is not particularly a prereq for me in these rankings. KOT is probably a little too high, but its greatest shortcoming isn't necessarily being too shallow, but not as crazy-fun (in my experience) as it ought to be. again - could be the crowd
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

https://streamable.com/99n3v
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

89. King of Toyko (2011)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Player combat, dice-rerolling
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 20 to 30 minutes
Experience: 4-5 plays over 4-5 sessions with 5-6 players (2015-2016)
Previous ranks: 73/100 (2016), 63/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player controls a kaiju monster in or around the city of Tokyo, represented by a single zone for inside and a single zone for outside. On your turn, you roll a set of mammoth dice and get to reroll subsets of them up to two times. The results are attacks, victory points, healing, and/or currency to purchase cards that buff your abilities. Monsters that get attacked in Tokyo can choose to vacate Tokyo, allowing the attacker to move in. The winner is the first player to reach a VP threshold or the last kaiju standing after attacks have reduced everyone else to zero.

Design - King of Tokyo has a fantastic aesthetic and can be grasped by anyone. The oversized dice look fantastic, the monsters are large and fun, and simplifying the "map" to "in Tokyo" and "not in Tokyo" is a great decision. Punching your enemies feels really good, and it's not exactly a skill game - the barrier for entry is super-low. Like Cosmic Encounter, King of Tokyo also eases the confrontation level by forcing any attack to strike everyone in not-your-zone equally, which can help the "I'm so unpopular" types.

Experience - So, why is it never "that" satisfying? Like Qwirkle, King of Tokyo is perhaps a little too simplistic and not game-y enough. And the elements that make it game-y (i.e. the best ways to win) are a bit anti-fun: avoid attacking (and making enemies/putting yourself into the more frequently attacked Tokyo) and focus on defending yourself, buying techs, and accumulating victory points. While some people might find this a nice way to allow alternate routes to victory (and something less confrontational), it feels a little bit weird if no one can really be counted on to beat that strategy.

Maybe what it comes down to is, I've never played King of Tokyo in the ideal setting. It's always been a mixed group - of both experienced players and relative newbies that I know but am not directly friends with. Friends of friends actually sometimes kind of make for an awkward co-gamers. Or maybe it's just me.

Future - I'm suspicious of King of Tokyo, which a more carefully examined list would probably place lower. I think I'd like to play it with people who don't really play games but I'd like to play something silly with, and with maybe my core-est of groups. I feel there are more laughs to be had in this game, but like Settlers of Catan, it requires the right set of people to bring that out.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

90. Thunderstone (2009)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Deck-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 40-60 minutes
Experience: 3 plays with 3-4 players over 2 sessions (2016, 2018)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Thunderstone takes the deckbuilding mechanic and contextualizes it in fighting monsters in a dungeon. You buy heroes and weapons and spells and equipment from a fixed marketplace, and when you draw good-enough hands, you can instead go into the dungeon and fight monsters (i.e., pick one of a few revealed cards from the monster deck and lay out whether or not you're powerful enough to beat the monster). The monsters grant VP and other rewards that enable you to get more powerful.

Design - As is the case with Paperback, there's fun in the mechanics of Thunderstone. It isn't elegant. It's kind of messy. Deckbuilding feels like the correct mechanism by which you can make yourself feel like you're leading an RPG party that keeps getting stronger and stronger. The cards you draw are kind of a weird combo; it's not easy to find the perfect balance in your deck between the currency you need to upgrade your deck and the power you need to take out the monsters. To me, it's kind of messy. Maybe that's part of the strategy, trying to balance the chaos and distilling things down.

While the hodgepodge of mechanics isn't perfect, each of them individually is satisfying. Using light to get further into the dungeon is thematic and cool. Leveling up your warriors is really satisfying. And getting more powerful of course feels great. Theme helps to make Thunderstone more appealing.

Experience - I first played Thunderstone as a pretty experienced gamer, so I wasn't awed by it and I didn't get deep into it. Maybe I could have. But overall, it kind of just is what it is.

Future - Could see it hitting the table, but don't see a lot of potential for Thunderstone to rise a lot. Maybe with the right set of cards or a slightly changed mechanic somewhere introduced by a variant/expansion?
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Naye745 posted...

i think roll's first expansion is almost essential - it really helps flesh out the produce/consume strategies versus the aforementioned dev/settle tableau rush that seems pretty strong in base roll.

'
i mean embarrassingly i've never played with an expansion, always go for dev/settle rush, and always manage to lose anyway

Naye745 posted...

we always slam (or maybe more lightly place) our cups face-down front of the screen to indicate placement completiion. its cute, feels satisfying, and makes it clear where everyone is in the game process.
i think the (sometimes tedious and lengthy) exploration phase is a little more problematic in terms of holding up the game tbqh

this is entirely a user error, btw. that is our convention too, but for some reason it's hard for me to remember to do after spending a few minutes agonizing over dice placements
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Tom Bombadil posted...

is roll for the galaxy related to race for the galaxy

because race for the galaxy is p good but I feel like roll is the one that gets talked about

they're definitely related. race is a descendant of san juan and is seen as the best role-selection card game there is. people playing literally hundreds and thousands of games of race online and keep discovering new stuff.

roll is a lot more accessible i think, bc it is prettier and a dice game. but it also uses role selection as its primary mechanic and you build the same # of tableau items (12) to end the game, have the same two flavors of planet/settlement by which to add stuff to that tableau
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Great_Paul posted...

I've played Roll a few times. I thought it was only okay. It's interesting how you can try to take extra actions by attempting to guess what your opponents want to do. The rest of the game itself didn't really do much for me though. I haven't played Race yet but I want to at least once, since it's in the bgg top 100 and I'm trying to play as many of those as I can. Fun fact: I'm at 48/100 right now.

i'm at 50-52 depending on how you count versions. but only 24-25 or so are on this list!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

91. Roll for the Galaxy (2014)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Role selection, dice placement, tableau-building, simultaneous action selection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 5
Game length: 45-60 minutes
Experience: 4-6 plays (2015-2017) with 3-5 players
Previous ranks: 72/100 (2016), 59/80 (2018)

Summary - Roll for the Galaxy is a sci-fi-themed tableau builder driven by dice whose faces represent different actions. It follows the role-selection mechanism, in which each player rolls a cupful of dice and selects a role that everyone at the table will get the opportunity to perform (searching for new tableau pieces, working on tableau pieces, churning VPs off your tableau pieces). In order to take advantage of other player's action choices, however, you need to assign your dice to the corresponding actions before you know what actions will be selected.

Design - The plus side: It's a middleweight strategy game that plays in an hour and scales great, due to the simultaneous action selection mechanism. There's a ton of strategy, lots of decisions to make at each turn. And man, those dice are beautiful. Numerous, colorful, and tiny but extremely satisfyingly rattly. Love the iconography on them and the satisfaction involved when you get a new one of a cool color.

I don't find that it always translates into a lot of fun. The player interaction here hasn't felt satisfying to me. Guessing to piggyback off other people's choices isn't really a "mind game" that interests me. Then there's the bit of exploration that does make you aware of other players: the exploration mechanic. The single most important choice in Roll is what you decide to put into your tableau. This is done by drawing cardboard tiles from a bag, and while everything else is resolved simultaneously, this has to happen in sequence. And waiting for others to read what each tile does is annoying - so annoying that I basically spend no time doing that at all when I am exploring personally.

Then there are a few QOL things that I'm just not a huge fan of. While I love the dice themselves, the rest of the space-y aesthetic of the game is meh to me, from the tiles that form your tableau to your player board to your screens. Also, is it just me, or is it hard to remember to indicate that you're done placing your dice? Small frictions always seem to come up with Roll for me.

Experience - Part of this might just be "gid gud." The people who tend to enjoy Roll most and perform best aren't doing what I'm doing, which is rushing developments and settlements to close the game with VP based on those. Instead, they're patiently searching for good planets and spending turns producing goods and shipping them for victory points or sometimes income. Speaking of which, another frustration of mine is having always choking me, which feels frustrating - not having dice sucks ass.

Future - There's so much on paper that's great about Roll, and I love rolling its dice. When I think about it, though, I think of frustration with not having enough dice, and not being able to place my dice to develop planets, or having crappy planet options and no convenient way to get better ones. Nonetheless for its short playtime and depth relative to weight and the dice themselves, I think I could foresee requesting this. And if I actually got better at the game, I could also see this rising.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Tom Bombadil posted...

I've only played Small World 2 but my opinion mirrors Naye's of the original

not an unfair assessment tbh! though you need to do something with those cool powers, right?

trdl23 posted...

Popping in again to say I love Seven Wonders. I think a lot of it is because I adore drafting games in general, and of the non-TCG types, 7W has had my best experiences.

My friend owns DiceForge as well, and I am excited to play it at least once when given the opportunity. Then again, thats only been three times so far, so the novelty might not be an infinite wellspring.

lots of 7w love here! yeah, i want to get DF to the table... though i also want to get some of my own games to the table, too! need more board gaming nights!

SBAllen posted...

Just saw this topic. We seem to have very opposite tastes in board games. I actually played ONUW yesterday (and a few other games like Quacks of Quedlinburg and Marvel Champions) and have all the ONUW games minus Super Villains. Games like ONUW, SH, etc really depend on the group, though. Interested to see how this list plays out.

well, they might be opposite for now, but it's possible we'll align more at the top. but yeah, no doubt group/personal experience affects taste a lot for board games, especially "social" ones.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I own Small World (got it for like $2 at a thrift store) but have never had the chance to actually play it yet, although it sounds like Id like it.

you might like the powers, but if what you like about zombicide is the combat, small world might feel a little hollow there. it isn't quite a++ at any one thing; like other games it gets by with relative smoothness.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

92. Qwirkle (2006)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Abstract, tile-laying, sequence-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 30-45 minutes
Experience: 2-3 plays (2015) over 2 sessions with 2, 3-4 players
Previous ranks: 46/100 (2016), 69/80 (2018)

Summary - 108 attractive, square tiles have images of six different shapes in six different colors. Everyone then starts laying tiles connected to the existing tiles, obeying the rule that any connected tiles must match down the row either their color or their shape, without ever repeating the non-shared quality. Laying tile awards points for how long the chain is, plus a bonus for making it length six.

Design - Qwirkle is beautiful, simple, and clean. There is virtually zero rules overhead; you can basically immediately jump right in and then get a feel for the scoring.

With a ruleset/decision space this simple, you need a solid mechanic to back it up, and Qwirkle's set-forming absolutely qualifies as that. It'll feel very familiar to anyone who's played Scrabble, as you must always lay out in one line and always draw up to the hand limit. Like Scrabble, you can piggyback huge off someone's mostly laid tiles, so it's to your advantage to play a bit defensively and prevent easy piggybacking off yours.

I really like the minimalist, accessible quality of Qwirkle. It's not really a hobby game, but not every game needs to be. Like, one of my favorite parts about Qwirkle is its name - to me, it's just funny to have a named called Qwirkle, where the most efficient way to is to finish a set, at which point you announce "Qwirkle."

Experience - And when I started out, Qwirkle felt amazing. Even several months into the hobby, I found myself largely allergic to (if admiring of) games with heavier rulesets. Even today, I hold elegance in extremely high regard. Qwirkle is very elegantly made and can be played with anyone (color-blindness aside; that is a legit concern, but not really one I think about often).

Future - The question really is, when do you want to play Qwirkle? Despite its whimsical name, Qwirkle (like Scrabble) can be a defensive game. It's not raucous. It doesn't have a ton to explore (though I'm sure there's a reasonable skill ceiling). It's not thematic, so it doesn't have an interesting hook. (And for that reason, it's probably one of the games that's a little too high on this ranking.)

There was a time where I was really interested in buying Qwirkle. I think that time is gone, but I wouldn't be opposed to playing it again. Wouldn't think of it as a game with a lot of potential to rise, though.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

LeonhartFour posted...

this is the worst thing about "The Process" because it's made this mindset widespread even though it's debatable whether it actually worked

the process absolutely worked! you can't call every strategy a failure if it doesn't result in a title. they have two future MVP caliber players, and that's even after bungling fultz/tatum. they've smashed both the celtics and the bucks, the 2 best teams in the east, and they almost beat the champs last year.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

it requires both luck and culture

indy right now for example is not a true contender unless they get oladipo back. and as you know well, oladipo was picked #2 overall. indy was only able to get dipo to begin with because they got lucky with paul george at #10 or something.

but 90% of top contenders have multiple highly drafted players, even if they got lucky to acquire them. it's the highest probability (and lowest skill) route to success
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

93. Small World (2009)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Dudes on a map, area control, player combat
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 45 to 75 minutes
Experience: 4-5 plays over 4-5 sessions with 3, 4 players (2015-2017)
Previous ranks: 15/100 (2016), 41/80 (2018)

Summary - You pick a fantasy race and a magical power for that race and then start trying to conquer territory using the race and its powers. You score points for the territory you control at the end of your turn. Eventually, attrition will wear down your race, which has no way to marshal new forces. At that point, you can send your race into decline and sit out a turn... before picking a new one with which to invade!

Experience - I loved Small World the first time I played it. There's no engine to build, and you score points without any weird mechanisms, and combat is straightforward. It's just super-clean. I also played it just enough for some of the shine to come off it.

Design - Area control, especially dudes on a map, can be a vicious genre. Small World eases a lot of that pain by letting you know you don't necessarily need to hold territory to enjoy the game - you get victory points from offense, not defense. Add variable player powers to that, and it's a fun recipe where you can go around beating the crap out of each other without necessarily having those negative feelings that can come up so easily. That said, getting your troops wiped out still doesn't feel great, since you're forced into decline faster, but it's never super-punishing. Making a confrontational genre less confrontational is definitely the best part of Small World.

Future - I'm not a master of Small World or anything, but I'm not sure there's a ton more depth to see. There are 2 main decisions: valuing your race and which path to attack. So beyond a gateway/novelty game (which I think it is excellent as, don't get me wrong), I'm not super-interested in playing much more of Small World.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

davidponte posted...

The Raptors went from "we can win despite missing our best players" to "yeah maybe missing our best players and giving end of the bench guys major minutes isn't the best thing".

It never ends too. For every starter that returns from injury, two more take his place. It's crazy that this team is keeping pace with the top of the East.

it's incredible what you've done. but yeah, losing a top player can result in a short term burst, but long term, talent shines through.

... which doesn't explain how indy is ALSO doing it, but whatever
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

also, lots of love for 7W here! i'm looking at some of the games above it and feel it might have been a bit low/the games above it are a bit high.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

TomNook posted...

Have you ever played 7 Wonders Duel? It's quite a bit different, but has many similarities. It's only 2 player, but far more strategic. I think it's waaaay better than 7 Wonders. It has multiple win conditions, as opposed to just victory points, so there is much more to consider, and you are constantly having to counter stuff your opponent is doing, so it's nothing like solitaire. BGG has it as #16, vs. the original at #49, so definitely a pretty big gap.

i think duel was more fun and interesting, yes. it's also a completely different game, to be fair! didn't feel like 7 wonders at all, given no hands to draft from.

Naye745 posted...

sorry to spam your topic here! there were some interesting games to comment on! :)

not at all! i don't game as much as i'd like to, so there are relatively few games i've played 10+ times, especially meatier games. those games though (spoilers) will absolutely rank well.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

94. It's a Wonderful World (2019)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Card-drafting, tableau-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 30 to 45 minutes
Experience: 2 plays over 2 sessions with 2, 4 players (2019)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - It's a Wonderful World is played over four rounds. Each round consists of drafting cards and production. Drafted cards can be placed either into a construction zone or a discarded for resources, used to construct the construction zone cards. Constructed cards then produce yet more resources. Some cards give you victory points.

Design - This game is both a little simpler than 7 Wonders and a little more involved. The variety of cards is comparatively smaller, but the way production works, and the fact that your cards aren't instantly built, requires a second layer of thought. To me, the drafting is less good than 7W (because the cards aren't as cool), but the cool part of IAWW comes after the draft. The most agonizing part comes when you decide which of your cards to keep (and potentially build), while the most satisfying part of IAWW comes when your engine starts firing, you're getting those beautiful cubes pouring in, and you're completing a structure during production which immediately produces its resource too.

On a separate note, it's also hilariously overproduced for the simplicity of the game.

Experience - Having only played IAWW twice, it's hard to tell of course how to play it well (and card-drafting games are often beyond me). However, to me, it felt awkward that you draw from the same deck for all four ages, but like any engine-builder, you want to "run" your engine in the final rounds instead of building it. IAWW lets you run your engine all right, but what it doesn't do is guarantee you access to scoring cards during the final rounds. Compared to 7W which stacks the third Age with the highest point values (and always provides you with Wonders), it feels like you have to bite the bullet much earlier to get ways to score in IAWW.

Future - After getting smashed like 60-20 in my most recent game, a little gunshy - but would like to get reps in and maybe boost this game higher. No reason it can't stand as one of the elite filler-weight games (with a lighter overhead than 7W).
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

95. 7 Wonders (2010)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Card-drafting, tableau-building, civilization-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 30-50 minutes
Experience: 4-6 plays (2015-2018) with 5-7 players
Previous ranks: 16/100 (2016), 52/80 (2018)

Summary - 7 Wonders is a drafting game split over three ages. Each card you draft goes onto your tableau or into building Wonders specific to each player. Cards generally do one of the following: produces resources for building future cards; grant endgame victory points; or boost military strength (which are indirectly converted to victory points).

Design - Icons everywhere. Tons of different card types. Disconnected mechanisms. Variable player boards. While 7 Wonders is often touted as a gateway game, that's been anything but my experience.

That said, in my plays, the game hasn't felt same-y - each turn is filled with decisions, and because of the variety of ways to score (especially those Age 3 purple cards), it's very satisfying - much more so than Sushi Go, for instance. The resource system is quite clever; I love that you don't need chits or cubes to keep track of them, because you get to spend what you can produce on each turn and there's no storage. Also appreciate the coin mechanic by which you can buy resources from neighbors and the ability to dump cards productively into your wonders.

Experience - This was arguably the first game I played as "part of The Hobby" (TM), which has both ups and downs. I discussed in TTR how that game was the followup game session to a first game session. 7 Wonders was played in that first session, and it was the only eurogame we played that day. I remember this feeling of blankness in my mind as everyone silently looked at their boards and occasionally at others' as they struggled to make decisions, while I struggled just to make sense of anything, overwhelmed with cards but confused how I was supposed to keep track of everyone's board states.

Turns out, I now don't particularly mind multiplayer solitaire at all, especially if action is simultaneous. I also like eurogames now and am not particularly intimidated by symbology (of which 7W still has quite a fair amount). Playing this game a second time was another of my early eurogame wins, and it's probably responsible for how confusingly high this game was in my 2016 rankings. It probably belongs a bit higher than 95, but my ranking now is more a mix of the first mind-numbing play with the subsequent highs and "pleasant" plays.

Future - I know some people own 7W, but I'm not sure if there's a copy in my local group - which should tell you how regularly I see it played. I don't think it has a ton of room to grow on me personally, but becoming a consistent go-to game could put 7W higher.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Great_Paul posted...

Dice Forge is excellent. Would recommend you request it more.

might just do that, since it takes so little time to play!

Tom Bombadil posted...

don't leave me hanging I've been curious about this one for a while

thanks, edited!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

96. Dice Forge (2017)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: "Deck-building," tableau-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 25-35 minutes
Experience: 3-4 plays over 2-3 sessions (2018) with 3-4 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Dice Forge is a victory point game in which you roll a pair of dice each player's turn and gain the shown resources. What makes Dice Forge unique among games of its genre is that your dice's faces are removable. For a price, as in deck-building, you can remove one of your dice's faces and attach on a new one. You can also spend your resources to gain special abilities or take special actions, which will generally give you victory points.

Design - Craftable dice are a great idea. It's Dice Forge's signature mechanic (and what it's named for), and it . Occasionally dice will make you feel bad. That is the nature of dice. But it's fun to decide in Dice Forge between whether you want to create one uber-die or whether you want to even out the variance between your two dice so you're guaranteed something decent each round off both rolls.

The mechanic itself isn't perfect. Crafting the dice can be a little clumsy and requires some precise technique. The dice themselves are rather large (which makes sense, given their faces have to have space to be modular) and don't roll as satisfyingly as some other dice. It's also a little unfortunate that Dice Forge, while having a pleasing aesthetic in terms of color palette and art, can be a little visually noisy and unclear.

Dice Forge has a clear arc to the game, which will feel familiar to people who play engine-building games. The first part of the game is dominated by the desire for gold, sine that's the resource which will allow you to upgrade your die faces. But around the midway point of the game (which has a fixed number of rounds), your focus will shift to the red and blue resources, which are generally what you spend to score victory points. The game also plays incredibly quickly; because of its Catan/Machi Koro-esque feature where you get resources on everyone's turns, you'll almost always have something productive, if not optimal, to do.

Future - For some reason, I never crave playing Dice Forge. It's not quite as elegant as the highest-ranking filler-weight games on my list; there's overhead to explain and set up and it's a little fiddly. But when I think about its design or whether I want to play it, the answer is a resounding yes, perhaps more so than games listed above it. Probably has decent potential to rise if I make it a point to request this. (This review of the games I've played is giving me ideas on what to request at future game nights...)
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

97. San Juan (2004)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Role selection, tableau-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 30 to 45 minutes
Experience: 3-4 plays over 3 sessions with 3-4 players (2016-2018)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 58/80 (2018)

Summary - Played mainly with just a deck of cards, San Juan has the typical traits of a tableau-builder: your tableau cards grant you both victory points and special powers. The mechanism that drives all of the action in San Juan is role selection: the "Active Player" selects an action to perform, and then all other players get to follow that action if possible. Each player gets a turn being Active Player, and then a new round begins in which the first player moves.

Design - San Juan sits firmly between two revered games of the hobby: Puerto Rico and Race for the Galaxy (and unranked; I've only played them once). It is the card game version of Puerto Rico, with a shorter playtime, fewer fiddly components, and easier-to-explain rules. Race for the Galaxy takes the cards and the role selection and ups the complexity and depth by a lot.

From an adaptation perspective, San Juan is really clever. Puerto Rico (the godfather of the role selection mechanic) is filled with components - it has a map for your plantation, a stack of building tiles, colonists (obviously slaves) you need to work your plantation, an arcane method of shipping goods, specially colored cubes for those goods, money... It's a reasonably complex game that might rank high if I got into it; it was #1 on BoardGameGeek for some time. San Juan excises the spatial puzzle and uses cards to represent every resource. Producing sugar? Take a card. Selling your sugar? Draw cards. Prospecting? Draw cards. Playing a building? Spend a card.

It's the same paradigm which drives Bloody Inn - cards are both the goal of and cost of everything you do - but with a more open decision space. San Juan has a round structure, but it retains quick micro-turns. You'll puzzle over what to do when the Builder was picked and you weren't prepared for it; you'll be excited when you get an opportunity to prospect that you didn't expect; between those mini-turns you'll anticipate when you finally get to call the shots.

Experience - Over a year after learning Puerto Rico, I learned San Juan. This came during the zone when board games finally became clear to me. The quick playtime and lightish stakes and engagement level are nice here. If I have criticism, it probably lies in never really experiencing a massive high in San Juan: it's so polished that all the sharpness might have come off it.

Future - I mean, sure. San Juan strikes me as a "why not?" type of game. And maybe with improved feel for depth of strategy, there is a sense of "boo-ya!" If that happened, San Juan would definitely have potential to rise.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

tough call - the list has not changed very much from last year! do you want to send it by PM?
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I have Zombicide Black Plague, its pretty fun, and I think the theme works better than it does in OG zombicide.

i definitely preferred black plague. also not surprised to see you as the lone zombicide bolsterer!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

TomNook posted...

Zombicide is pretty fun for what it is, but I'm not really into dungeon crawlers much, because my probably least favorite thing that can happen in board games is quarterbacking. Of course it all depends on your play group, but if you aren't discussing what is going on, why even play with people, so there will be naturally some form of quarterbacking, and I just don't like it.

the balance between optimization and letting everyone do their own thing is very tricky in co-ops. that said, zombicide seemed to me simple/"casual" enough to defy a need for qb'ing. but again, i haven't gotten deep enough.

i'm sure it can be fun! i just want to experience it...!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

ha, good comparison!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Naye745 posted...

i liked bloody inn but didnt love it

usually multipurpose cards are a big draw for me and they're fine here, but they didn't feel like they allowed you to build enough of an engine. i dunno for sure though! i only played it once

i absolutely felt this way. the total number of turns is super-finite, and due to the cost system you wind up having to hire workers super-often. my second play was a little better because i gave up the idea of being able to get any sort of real control and just embraced that i should focus on one obvious, short goal at a time. not sure how that "strategy" or the game would hold up to like a dozen plays, but i highly doubt i'll ever get that many in!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

98. Zombicide (2012)

Category: Cooperative
Genres: Dudes on a map, campaign, dice combat
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 45-120 minutes (depending on campaign)
Experience: 1 play of Zombicide: Black Plague (2015), 1 session of Zombicide: Season 2 (2016) with 4-6 players
Previous ranks: 65/100 (2016), 64/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player is represented by a miniature on the board. Everyone works together to kill zombies (by rolling dice at certain distances), represented by other miniatures on the board. You can search for equipment and unlock doors, and depending on scenario, you might have to escape the map, survive/kill some number of zombies, or find some sort of item.

Experience - I'm not sure I should really even be ranking Zombicide, because by nature, a game like this is meant to be played as a campaign. You can't really get a full experience from one sitting, especially not the near-tutorial levels. I played once at a meetup, which was fine, and once with a friend group that's not the best to play games with, and it was kinda rough, especially the Season 2 scenario - downtime was high, too.

Design - Zombicide's ruleset can be fiddly in terms of upkeep with zombies, but the gameplay itself is pretty simple. You get some number of movements, plus actions. You try to make yourself more powerful. You try to avoid confrontation, or you try to slaughter the hell out of zombies. Almost every decision is straightforward. Your miniature looks great, and the zombies look evil, and the cards you forage for to look for items or weapons (see Dead of Winter) are kind of a mediocre mechanism. But when you're all in it together, it feels less pointless and more like you're working toward something. And that something is killing zombies. I can't comment too much on the game since there are so many scenarios I haven't played, but this game is super Ameritrashy and not exactly attempting to be elegant - you just gotta enjoy killing them zombies.

Future - So out of carelessness, partially, Zombicide is a good deal higher on this list than it has been, leapfrogging some games, despite my not having played it (or those games it leapfrogged!) recently. Why? Probably because with distance from everything, the games I've played become "oh, I'd like maybe a refresher on that," while Zombicide becomes this wistful, "if only I could get a campaign of this going." I'd have near-zero interest in playing another tutorial round of Zombicide; that isn't particularly fun. But getting to dungeon-crawl for real over multiple sessions and seeing new levels? Ahh, if only my friends owned that. Alas, instead they play Gloomhaven with another friend of theirs, and I'm campaignless.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Great_Paul posted...

I remember hearing the concept of Bloody Inn and being intrigued. I wanna try it but not enough to get it.

i'm almost always in favor of try-before-you-buy. BI definitely fits there, though it's so lightweight it has limited downside if you buy and don't like it.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

99. 4 Gods (2016)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Real-time, tile-laying, area control
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 20-30 minutes
Experience: 2 plays (2017, 2018), 3-4 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Each player is a "god," working in real time to build an island by laying square tiles onto it - from the outside border in. Each laid tile must touch two existing tiles, and it must follow placement rules such that geographical features are continuous. Each god is associated with a terrain type and gets to place prophets (meeples) onto that terrain type. Players can also put down "cities" into unclaimed spots, but a tile laid on that city will destroy it. The endgame scoring includes unrazed cities, razed cities, and territories controlled by plurality of prophets.

Design - 4 Gods is in some ways a Carcassonne being played in real time, with the tile-laying and area control mechanics married to one another. Being in real time helps it out, since it reduces downtime.

That said, for a real-time game, 4 Gods is actually rarely frenetic. In practice, it works more like simultaneous action selection and opportunistic sniping. There's a hand management aspect to the game that limits your ability to draw tiles which can leave you being pretty deliberate and spending time trying to figure out where you can place wisely. It's not downtime, of course, since you need to be ready to strike, but later on in the game especially, you have relatively few options on where to put your pieces. There's also this concept about "free hands," which lends itself to trying to dump your discarded tiles instead of going for optimal placement. If your hands aren't free, you can't really do anything.

I really enjoy the way the map in 4 Gods comes together. Being built from the corners inward is visually unique compared to the Carcassonne style where you start from the center and go out.

Experience - I've only played 4 Gods twice, and again, it's area control, so I hardly perform great at it. But it's novel and it's cute and I do want to refresh my memory on it (along with so many other games!) - fortunately I play with the owner pretty frequently, so maybe we can make that happen soon.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

after loving overcooked 2, was thinking of getting lovers in a dangerous spacetime, but the gf was unconvinced by the trailer
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

100. World's Fair 1893 (2016)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Area control, card-drafting, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30-50 minutes
Experience: 2 plays (2016), 3 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 55/80 (2018)

Summary - Set during the famous exhibition in Chicago, your goal is to control areas of the fair (which is conveniently abstracted to a circular map with equally sized slices). There are cards representing historical figures in each of those areas, and by placing a worker into a section, you can take one of the cards. Periodically through the game, you get scored based on plurality of workers in each area, and at the end of the game, you're scored based on the sets of cards you've collected.

Design - Another neat theme wrapped in a cute euro - Erik Larsen's Devil in the White City, which my group once read for book club, covers the titular fair (though H. H. Holmes fails to make an appearance here). Anyway, for such an assumingly bright-colored map, the competition is pretty damn tough. I like that each of the cards you get has a bunch of flavor text on it. And I like advancing the game timer using the train tickets, which are player-driven.

Experience - This is one of the games on this list that made the least impression on me. I can think of several reasons why: It's frictionless to learn, it's short to play, and while I played it twice, both plays were fairly close in time (not necessitating a full rules recap) and a long time ago. And obviously, it was neither incredibly good nor noticeably bad.

Area control euros are a tough sell for me, specifically those of the "keep placing dudes in here, you want to have the most, but others can place more, too" variety. When jostling becomes so competitive, the main loser is the one who comes in second at their most invested area, while the people who know how to avoid conflict opportunistically benefit. Consolation prizes are few and far between there, and I always seem to be embroiled in the wrong conflict(s). At a certain point, I just need to be able to fight my way out of it and stop staring at lost opportunity costs!

Future - The friend who owns this seems to have dropped off from our gaming group with no explanation. He's still in the group chat, but basically never responds anymore. So it's unlikely to get to the table. But I wouldn't mind being reacquainted with the game so I could speak on it with more authority again - again, it's quick and painless, so it's a no loss situation to cycle through libraries.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

101. Bloody Inn (2014, 2018)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Tableau-building, card-drafting
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 40-60 minutes
Experience: 2 plays (2015, 2017) with 3-4 players
Previous ranks: 81/100 (2016), 56/80 (2018)

Summary - Everyone is an innkeeper in the titular inn. Over the course of two seasons, as guests (represented by cards) visit the inn, players take turns drafting them into their hands (to be used to perform actions or convert to "annexes"), killing them (for money), and burying them (to dodge the cops and ensure the cash). Most of these actions require discarding cards from your hand. The game goes two iterations through the deck.

Design - While there are plenty of games where you play as a criminal or someone evil, there's still something uniquely morally decrepit about murdering your guests and competing over it. Ghoulish!

Anyway, Bloody Inn was one of the earlier games I played that frustrated me because of card economy: every card has a printed ability, but you can only play some. And that's not just because you have to pay for the cards, but also because the cost of playing a card (and many other actions) is discarding other cards. You get two actions per round, but almost half of those actions will be picking up a card, even as you have to figure out which of the cards in your hand is the one that's worth keeping.

There is a slight temporary specialization effect - for each action you can take, there's a type of card that doesn't have to be discarded to pay the action cost. When to invest in and divest of these "engines" is a key decision point in the game as well.

Experience - Bloody Inn holds a soft spot in my heart. My first play was rather unremarkable in terms of game itself, but it was one of the earlier eurogames I could nicely grasp in the halcyon days at a meetup. It felt a little too tight in terms of cards.

My second play is also notable - it had been well over a year since I'd learned the game, but at the meetup, someone brought it and people were looking for something to play. I sat and relearned the rules, then taught them, then played the game. Not the greatest of company for that one, but it felt really good being able to process rules on my own and then teach others in the same sitting. I was better able to grasp the game, and that ability to comprehend what's going on is very satisfying.

Future - I don't think I like BI quite enough to buy it, and I'm not sure if it'll come up at meetups. Doubtful that my friends will acquire it either, but as a non-centerpiece game, I'd be happy to pick it up and relearn it again.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

if you like deckbuilders that aren't necessarily super mechanically tight and you're interested, you'll probably like paperback/hardback. it's at least as good as say the harry potter deckbuilder, the DC deckbuilder, or ascension.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Peace___Frog posted...

Yes, and it really helps each game feel very unique.

Each food category (ex: appetizer, entree, side, dessert) has a number of foods to choose from before the game, so the deck is customized to what the group wants to go for. Each of the foods have different mechanics (ex: only get points if no one else played miso soup this turn, if you have more than 2 eels you lose points). I almost consider the base game to be like a videogame demo - it's fine for a quick session but once it's done there's not really any point in going back to it. Party is the full game.

does sound a bit more interesting. again, not huge on drafting in general but it at least sounds slightly higher-stakes than regular sushi go.

Naye745 posted...

hardback really feels like the superior version of the game, but i've had fun with both of them

as far as deckbuilders go, they're pretty harmless and enjoyable

"harmless and enjoyable" is accurate - and will describe many games in this tier.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

102. Paperback/Hardback (2014, 2018)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Deck-building, word game, spelling
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 45-90 minutes
Experience: 1 play of Paperback, 2-4 plays of Hardback with 4-5 players (2015, 2018)
Previous ranks: 58/100 (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Paperback is the first true deck-builder to appear on this list: each turn, you begin with a fixed number of cards. These cards have a combination of special abilities (such as drawing new cards) and currency (which you can use to purchase more cards, or victory points). In Paperback, your cards are letters, and you can only play them to gain their ability/currency if you can spell a word using it and other letters in your hand.

Design - Paperback and Hardback do one great thing among spelling/word games, in that they just let you form whatever word you want. It's simple to form a word with a wildcard; all you have to do is turn your card upside-down (losing its ability) and it becomes a wild-card letter. That JJZZN hand can become "JAZZY" fairly quickly (and the J/Z are likely going to give you some good benefits).

There's not a whole ton to cover in terms of the.design decisions. These games don't attempt to reinvent the wheel; designer Tim Fowers essentially recognized that spelling is inherently fun, and that deckbuilding is inherently fun, and then composed a game from those two elements. Paperback is slightly cleaner with a fixed marketplace, while Hardback has a few more complications (different card "suits") but has a more deterministic endgame with its victory point track. The games really want you to be able to form words; you're allowed to cry for "ink!" to draw more cards in Hardback, and Paperback encourages you to ask other players for help if you can't think of one yourself, and at no cost to yourself (but to a small benefit of the person whose idea you take).

As a result of the "just do what feels nice" philosophy that appears to have guided their design, Paperback/Hardback doesn't feel particularly well play-tested or optimized on the small scale. Like in other deckbuilders, spending more money will net you a more powerful card. But unlike those other deckbuilding games, in order to use those cool abilities you've acquired, you've now got to shoehorn a V or whatever into your hand. As a result, like in other Scrabble-esque games, you might find yourself making tradeoffs in your hand where you forsake a five- or six-letter word for a three-letter word that's more powerful. That's part of the strategy, but as usual, I generally prefer incentivizing cleverness in words rather than forsaking good letters to accommodate bad.

Experience - These games certainly don't leave you wanting in terms of length. My first game of Hardback went well over an hour, though admittedly the players were slow and we weren't playing simultaneously, which you really ought to. Granted, aside from racing for buying letters, it's not the most interactive game, which again, means that its mechanisms (spelling/fun vs deckbuilding/engine-building) feels a little misaligned.

If you do manage to get a fun deck going though, it's definitely good fun, and the game can develop a nice rhythm, especially in Hardback, where late in the game you might just be pushing for the most points you can get to race to completion, rather than buying words.

Future - Will rarely ask for a word game that lasts this long, but Paperback and Hardback do have a fairly unique blend of mechanics in a word game that gives them legs. That said, they're the type of game that will never be 1. the focus of a game night 2. played at almost every game night or 3. played repeatedly when they do come out. Bearing those caveats in mind, their niche is very limited, but I enjoy them fine.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

i've played neither arkham horror nor eldritch horror, but from what'd i've read, i don't think that's super-accurate. ghost stories is more euro-y than ameritrash-y.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness