Lurker > SeabassDebeste

have def heard good things about sushi go party - does it have more interesting food types than the base?
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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

103. Ghost Stories (2008)

Category: Cooperative
Genres: Point-to-point movement, dice combat, threat management
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 60 minutes
Experience: 2 games with 4 players (2016, 2017)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 54.5/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player controls a warrior defending a village from a siege of ghosts. The village is a 3x3 grid, and each turn, an increasing number of ghosts spawn (via a deck of nemeses) and advance on the village from one of its four edges. Players move around across the town to defend different edges of it, rolling dice to attempt to defeat the ghosts. You win if you survive the entire deck plus defeat a boss.

Design - Ghost Stories is pretty clever and it has great table presence - a cool-looking village with different tiles where you can perform actions; enemies on cards that keep advancing; a mind-crunching puzzle. In a staple among many dudes-on-a-map co-op games where the board keeps escalating its threats, characters have slightly different special abilities, so you might want to delegate responsibilities to a future player's turn even if an issue seems urgent.

Experience - The thing is, Ghost Stories earns its "wow, this is stupid-hard" reputation. I've played it twice - once at a meetup and once on a friend's copy - and each time, it just felt punishing. That's really the single word that best describes my GS experience. Other co-op "threat management" games can overwhelm you, but either you can outrace the overwhelming threat, or you get more and more powerful.

Ghost Stories feels like it has neither. You can't outrace, because the victory condition is outlasting. But there also doesn't feel like there's a power progression, so as far as I've seen, you just get ground down. I think we got close to seeing the boss, but didn't either time.

Future - Now there's an obvious incentive to replay Ghost Stories: beating the bastard of a game. But the feeling I get after an hour of stress until finally being overcome is not "let's do that again!" but rather "oh... okay." The highs are there in the game, but they're infrequent. Maybe there's some "git gud" that needs to happen, and we just need to grind through until we get to that level. But if a difficult co-op discourages a repeat try... that's worrying.
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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

104. Sushi Go! (2013)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Card-drafting, tableau-building, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30 minutes
Experience: 4-6 games with 4-5 players (2015-2017)
Previous ranks: 76/100 (2016), 70/80 (2018)

Summary - Sushi Go! is a pure card-drafter. Each player has a hand of cards (each representing a piece of a meal you might have at a sushi restaurant), and simultaneously everyone chooses one to keep and passes the rest of the hand to the left. They then pick up the hands passed to them and rinse and repeat. Three largely identical rounds are played and scored, with some very slight carry-over.

Experience - As the rankings of Catan and TTR show, I didn't always take the best to gateway-level games, even when I started. I've played several games of Sushi Go! and can probably name what each type of card does off the top of my head, though I've never quite had one experience hit "the spot."

Design - Sushi Go! has a lot going for it. It's got a great theme, a simple ruleset, nominal player interaction, and the satisfaction of producing a meal. It's a perfect complexity and playing time for what it is. You can try to discern what your opponents will do, push your luck with the set collection mechanic (am I feeling sashimi?), perform nifty combos.

The problem, I guess, is that what it is... isn't that great? It's a pretty straightforward point salad, and I'm not sure that such a style of game needs hate-drafting. I mean, I suppose chopsticks enable you to do a combo, but why wouldn't this game just have an open-table draft instead of drafting hands? I know that's not the game, but basically Sushi Go! feels like it gives remarkably low highs, even as it avoids any particular lows. And this isn't even talking about high games vs low games; even within a game there are very few high moments.

Future - Sushi Go! is higher here than on previous lists, and that is probably due to the exhaustion inherent in ranking 133 games. I have little-to-no desire to play SG!, though I wouldn't really object to playing it. The main reason I'd be in interested in picking it up again is to give my new gaming partner, who likes both cooking and cooking games as a theme, a chance to see if she's into 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

well, it probably bears noting that the additional elements make it far, far superior to uno. you do get to make cool decisions about whether to discard a card (and not get the points on it, which are bad) or use a card (and have to get the points, but get a cool ability). and it doesn't have the same feels-bad plays as uno.

that said, if you don't want to get it, it's just as well. not the easiest game to buy.
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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

105. God's Gambit (2014)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Sequence-building, separate hands
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 5-10 minutes per hand; 30-40 minutes per game
Experience: 8+ hands over 2-3+ sessions with 4-6 players (2015-2017)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 54/80 (2018)

Summary - As the friend who owns it describes it, "Uno with special powers." You're dealt a hand of cards with ranks and suits (though with considerably cooler, manga-esque art), and when it's your turn, you either discard a card matching either the rank or suit of the top discarded card, or play in front of you any card and activate its ability (determined by rank). The sum of the ranks in front of you and in your hand at the end of a hand is your score, but if you go out first, you always score zero.

Experience - We've played this as a filler a few times. Becoming accustomed to the cards always . I've got a long history of playing card games, though normally trick-tacking games and poker (neither genre is really represented here). But I played those games with a different crowd and in largely different capacities, not as a hobby game.

Design - One reason God's Gambit feels so much more "card game-y" than "hobby game-y" - it is uniform across rounds. Basically, the game is divided into hands, and the "winner" of a hand is the person who goes out first. At the end of a hand, you take your score and add it, and then you just deal out the next hand... which plays out identically to the previous hand. The only continuity between hands is the score, and the game length is some number of hands until someone exceeds some number of points. Relatively few games on this list have this mechanism.

As a result, the story arc of any given game is quite short. I of course love short games and quick decisions and have spent countless hours playing Spades, Hearts, Asshole/Chinese Poker, and the like. But those games have felt like they had a different purpose. When I play a hobby game, I got for uniqueness, and the overall experience of GG doesn't feel that unique, even though the gameplay itself is smooth and the art is trippy.

Future - I mean, sure, if the appropriate friend brings it to the appropriate game night as a filler option. There are a few other games on this list that work similarly, and I think getting to know what each card rank does effortlessly would probably aid this game in rising higher - if it feels as intuitive as those playing card games, then maybe it reaches that seamless level of enjoyment.
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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

aa post-aa4 is never quite the same, but it has great cases, and it also never again is as bad as aa4, so there's that!

well except 5-1, which i guess is kind of not great
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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

BBCG isn't on this list. i played it once at a con and thought it was a neat. i HIGHLY doubt it simulates the video game at all and it's not very thematic, but it mainly fixated around trying to land a big hit with your cards at the right time. think a team game of SSB where you're competing for KOs and you keep cherry-picking your teammates' KOs. but with cards.

i'd have to play it more to get a better sense, but i had fun with it. as peaf said, it's probably more on the fillerish side than "centerpiece"ish.
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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

cyko posted...

I just played Gears of War for the first time last week. That is a very well done co-op board game.

neat! i'm not generally into IPs that i don't love IRL - is part of your enjoyment from the universe?

Great_Paul posted...

I finished putting together my yearly top 50 that I've done for the past few years. I might do a topic once yours is finished. I know I was doing one for my list last year that didn't finish, but stuff started getting in the way.

it may be a while, i'm going at a pretty deliberate pace...!

MajinZidane posted...

this topic inspired me. I went through your list from previous years because I wanted some ideas of a few games to buy to add to my small collection. Mulling it over, but my shopping cart on Amazon is full right now =)

yeah, i feel bad right now because due to the sparseness of board gamers compared to video gamers on b8, a board games topic also becomes something of a gateway recommendation list... i'd recommend some of these, but they're not my favorites yet! good move to use my list from last year though :P we'll have some new entries, but it'll look fairly similar up top!
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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

Nelson_Mandela posted...

Do you get more "skilled" as these cases progress? In case 2 I basically figured out the mystery right away but kept fucking up with presenting the evidence at the exact right time. But is that something my brain will just learn with each new case?

to me, aa1's trials were pretty easy, aside from the awkward epilogue case. they'll probably get a little more intuitive, even though yeah there are times when there seem to be multiple obvious contradictions and only one piece of evidence triggers the right objection

aa2 and 3, and one aa1 case, are exceptionally hard, both in trial and in investigation. i'd give them your best shot, but don't kill yourself in frustration if you can't figure out the right order in which to do things, and use a guide when you get stuck. assuming you do decide to play them.

after aa3 you should mostly not have to use guides again except like a few isolated incidents.
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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

Nelson_Mandela posted...

I don't want to steal anagram's thunder with another Ace Attorney playthrough topic, but I will let you all know that I beat case #2 and I totally did not expect that to take me half the flight from NY to LA.

get strapped in, they only get longer from here!
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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, this is the first cooperative game to go down! promise there will me plenty more, though rarer than player v player by a fair amount.
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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

that sounds really nice! but... does it address my #1 concern, the absurd difficulty scaling?

(edit) i guess capping morale loss is a form of changing difficulty scaling
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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

cyko posted...

Machi Koro - this one wasn't bad until I realized in my second game that going after the 7s or 8s was pretty much the only way to win. Then it deteriorated into a game of "will we roll 7 or 8???". The expansion makes it playable, but still not my favorite.

Ticket to Ride - on the other hand, I love TTR. I have introduced many non-gamers and casual gamers to modern board gaming with TTR. At least 10 people have bought copies after I played it with them. Interesting enough, Africa is pretty much the only expansion I didn't like at all. Restricting certain colors to certain parts of the map made it more frequent and less fun when you couldn't get the right color.

haha, it's been a while, but what i actually found in my single play was that there seemed little reason to upgrade to rolling two dice... in the original. in the expansion, rolling multiple seemed wise.

Peace___Frog posted...

I had a similar experience with Fire Tower. I played it at the first PAX Unplugged with the creators, really enjoyed it, pledged to the kickstarter... and have played it 4 times since? The first three were fun, but the fourth was just kinda dull.

Europe is my favorite TTR map, but I'm also very fond of the Nordic Countries map.

the creators are great! it's easy to be sold by good people. i'm surprised someone else has played that game!

Naye745 posted...

i've never actually gotten to play the grizzled but i do appreciate its theme combined with mechanics

its a relatively simple co-op game about ww1 that somehow nails the theme and treats it appropriately. that's pretty darn cool to me

yeah, the theme is arguably the best part of the grizzled.

Great_Paul posted...

The Grizzled is my favourite co-op game. I always play with At Your Orders because I like the missions.

RIP Tignous

interesting! didn't expect to hear this in this topic! how does the expansion change it?

Glenn_and_Toad posted...

Man, the more I read of this topic, the more good opinions I see, and not just by the op.

i am to please
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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

106. The Grizzled (2015)

Category: Cooperative
Genres: Restricted communication, sequence-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30-40 minutes
Experience: 4-5 plays over 2 sessions with 3, 5 players (2016)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 54/80 (2018)

Summary - The goal of The Grizzled is, as a team, to clear a set of stages representing psychological traumas of World War I. A leader chooses the ambition level of the mission, and then on their turn, each player plays cards with attributes that might cause trauma, like darkness or gas masks, or cards that limit others' abilities to play as easily. The game works like an anti-set-collection game; if you get too many of any given trauma, you blow up.

Experience - My friends and I played The Grizzled for the first time while staying together to attend another board gaming friends' wedding. Any co-op game with vaguely defined, loosely restricted communication results in kind of funny circumvention of those communication rules. We ground through the campaign with three players and it was unique-feeling and satisfying. Just a few weeks later, wtih no less likable a crew, we played a five-player game later and... it was just insanely punishing. There's no way that I was strategically worse my second go with the game, but there was no point at which it felt like we could possibly have won.

Design - The Grizzled is pretty clever. I like the art (which always depicts a combination of afflictions), I like the special abilities, I like the the courage factor (where a leader can choose to be conservative or risky in deciding how many cards to draw), I like the "lucky charms" that give you little one-off abilities to discard cards, I like the retreat mechanic (and the trash-talk that can come from calling your teammates cowardly), and I really like the support mechanic.

But in the end... Playing it with three was good and perhaps four would be challenging and tight, but something about the game just feels fundamentally broken if you can't realistically even hope to win at a player count that it endorses. I made this comment last year, but the one thing I felt would best improve our chances last year was... cutting out a player or two. I don't think that's a particularly good look.

Future - I've played a fair number of different cooperative restricted communication games (a few of which will show up later), and usually they provide more laughs, more intensity, or simpler rules. The Grizzled also doesn't seem like a great 2p game, which further limits its niche. Like many games in this tier or so, I'd like to refresh my memory of it, solidify its ranking and my thoughts on it, and perhaps lay it to rest.
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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...

funnily enough, i also won a random old game at the origins game room a few years back and when i looked it up on bgg it was not good lol. i have kept it in shrink in case i ever get a chance to offload it somehow

i mean, you can offload a used game too! i figured that a game they're selling for free has little-to-no resale value anyway, so might as well get my kicks from 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

107. Fire Tower (2019)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Take-that, card game
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30-40 minutes
Experience: 2 plays over 2 sessions with 4 players (2019)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Each player holds a fort in the corner of a square forest map, and there's a burst of fire in the center of the forest. The goal is to play cards to manipulate the wind and spread the fire so it burns down everyone else's tower. Last man standing wins. There's also a mechanic where eliminated players get to play as the "spirit of the forest" and spread extra destruction.

Experience - The super-nice couple who designed Fire Tower demoed it to me and my girlfriend at Origins on the first day, and it was our most pleasant and enjoyable demo of the weekend. The game resulted in a spirit-of-the-forest victory, which is apparently quite unusual. This was the purchase that the girlfriend was most enthusiastic about, by far, so I sprung for it. We broke it out once more during that weekend with friends, and the game didn't seem to quite have the legs we'd hoped. But it's sitting here, waiting to be played.

Design - Fire Tower doesn't have a lot of variation in its appearance, but the components it does have are beautiful - namely, the fire tokens and the map. It's tactilely satisfying to spread the fire, and the contrast of the red on the green-and-black forest is striking. FT's also got a unique theme (you WANT to burn down the forest?) going for it.

the game itself is pretty solid, but not super-inspired. Decisions are fairly straightforward; you look at your limited hand and see what best moves the fire away from you and toward the person you've decided to beat the crap out of. Minor alliances can take place where sometimes the northeast and northwest players might try both to spread the fire south; the southern players can either try north to avoid eating it, or push it sideways.

That said, the amount of control you have over the general inferno is relatively limited. Much more effective seem to be cards like the dozer line, which lets you block the spread of fire, for example, or the fire extinguisher, which lets you put out fires (but not in your own tower). Timing of card draws can be pretty swingy and can kind of frustrate you when you think you're about to bring someone down.

Future - The biggest obstacles to bringing Fire Tower to the table are 1. that there are better options as a game; the experience range seems to vary and 2. it's clearly by far the best at four exactly. But given these constraints, I'd love to get some more value out of my game. I've never offloaded a game, and I don't necessarily want to begin with my haul from Origins.
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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

third game in four nights, celtics lose. they have struggled a LOT in opening quarters, and this time, they weren't able to come all the way back. ish smith always seems to murder us.
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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

108. Yeti Slalom (2001)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Point-to-point movement, take-that
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 0
Game length: 15-30 minutes
Experience: 2 plays over 2 sessions with 4 players (2019)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Each player manages a team of four snowboarders (of different point values) and places them at the start of a grid-shaped mountain. On your turn, you move a snowboarder around/down the mountain or place a new snowboarder, plus can play a Yeti card onto the board, based on the coordinates that Yeti is allowed to take. Then, you roll the dice to see which snowboarders near that Yeti you can knock off the mountain. You gain points for enemy snowboarders you knock off the mountain and for your own snowboarders that make it to the end.

Design - Yeti Slalom is almost certainly the most poorly designed game on this list, though I haven't scoured it deeply. Obviously not a ton of care went into the ruleset, which is barren, and the gameplay is hilariously devoid of strategy. The strategy seems to focus mainly around playing a game of chicken with your highest-valued snowboarders coming on last, while you boldly slide your lower-value snowboarders down the slope and hope no one ejects them immediately. Usually playing a Yeti is a pretty trivial decision, and they're incredibly mean. Oh, and because you can move sideways, the game can theoretically stall out forever. Players can definitely be eliminated, though usually the game ends very, very quickly afterward.

That said, while I have little respect for the design, it's pretty fun to play, thanks to its incredibly breezy playtime and average time per turn. One of the funner parts of the design is probably the art, which is goofy as hell. I think I favor the team of alligator snowboarders. Everyone knows to expect Yetis and where to expect them; the only real question is who you think has them, and whether they've decided to play them yet. Yeti-players can also use snowball cards to reroll their dice, which is inherently fun when you're trying to knock off three snowboarders at once with a 5 or 6. There might be some strategy with juking and trying to deny other snowboarders "safe" passage but let's not make it more than it is - it's just dumb, and vaguely fun.

Experience - I was at Origins in 2019, and this game was pretty much foisted upon me as a "prize" at the end of the raffle for people who played games in the Origins gaming library. So yeah, I own it, and I got it to the table twice. Neither time did the game actually embarrass me or give me a negative experience. That said - I was also the winner of both games, responsible for taking a single shot and KOing two separate snowboarders of a single player in each game. That could be a pretty feel-bad experience too, though the novelty and simplicity still provided laughs at the time.

Future - This could get really old, really fast. I'm hardly looking to wear it out, but as a filler game with absolutely no stakes or strategy, it's not the worst. And honestly, its relative highness in the rankings might just be due to the fact that I own this unique, non-hobby, 4.9/10-on-boardgamegeek 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

109. Machi Koro (2012)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Tableau-building, engine-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 30 minutes
Experience: 1 play with no expansion, 1 play with expansion 4 players (2015, 2016)
Previous ranks: 61, 94/100 (2016), 66/80 (2018)

Summary - You build your tableau in Machi Koro by buying property cards with money. Those property cards generate income based on communal dice rolls.

Experience - My first play of Machi Koro was super-fast and super-pleasant. It was one of the very first strategy games that I wound up winning, and there were very few feel-bad moments for anyone, though of course a winner can easily have a biased opinion. My second play included the Harbor expansion, and it took at least twice as long for zero added depth, and for a game with such light decision-making, it almost tanked it.

Design - I love the way that Machi Koro distills the feel-good aspect of Catan - to me, the part where you get money from the roll of dice (also, incidentally, one of the pluses of Monopoly) - but takes away the meanness in the robber, the route-blocking, and being locked out of trading. In so doing, it might actually strike most of the "game" from the game - Machi Koro's decision space is small and rather simple; arguably it plays itself, as you're almost always taking the best property available on your turn.

The Harbor Expansion forces you to buy from a rotating market instead of a fixed market. This introduces a big tactical element, but it's not particularly fun, as it slows the game down as players have to adjust their strategies, plus gives everyone a reason to pause and squint and read what each new card does. It's not like it's super-complex, but part of the appeal of Machi Koro as a game/activity is its frictionlessness, even on a first play. Harbor might be better for big Machi Koro expansions, but my experience with that slotted in 30 slots under the play of the original.

Future - Odds are against MK coming to the table, as I usually see the owners of this game in larger groups. I'd be totally willing to play the base game again; even though I'm worried that the thinness of it would become more and more apparent with each play, it never really reached monotony due to its quickness and lightness. The Harbor Expansion I'd also give another chance to see if I misjudged it (or to see if the "5-5-2" variant, which evens out the cost curve, might be worth it) - but I wouldn't coutn on that one winning my favor.
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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 a personal dislike for me is games that feel "extraneously" lengthy for what they are. obviously this is hugely subject to opinion and personal taste, but my main problem with munchkin is that for a game of silly card interactions and mountains of relatively random take-that interaction, it just takes too damn long. similarly, i love simple card games that are quick turns of draw a card/play a card-style interaction, but usually those games are <30 minutes in length and individual rounds are even shorter. ticket to ride feels like that kind of game (with a board of course) but padded out to 60-90 minutes.

this is ABSOLUTELY true, yes!

Naye745 posted...

if catan, carcassonne, and ticket to ride are the staple "modern" euro gateway games, ttr is easily my least favorite of the three. it's just kind of a boring game - 90% of the time you're beefing up your hand, before you actually do anything.

it's still a pretty good game though! and some of the maps (i've heard PA/UK is stellar) are really neat and offer some different stuff to play with. but overall it's the least compelling and strategically interesting to me by a long shot

i think i'd call catan the least strategic (or at least by FAR the least tactical). but yeah, the impression i get is that carcassonne is the deepest from a strategy/tactics perspective

and after i posted, i did realize that carcassonne is definitely a big-time gateway game too. it slipped my mind because i've played it so little and i didn't play it during "formative" years
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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

110. Ticket to Ride (2004)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Route-building, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 45-75 minutes
Experience: 3 sessions of TTR US, TTR Europe, and TTR Africa (2015-2017) with 3, 5 players
Previous ranks: 63/100 (2016), 67/80 (2018)

Summary - Players draw cards from a deck or supply area. A set of cards of an appropriate color can be played to lay train tracks down on a map. Points are awarded for connecting cities with tracks and just for having trains played on the board.

Design - TTR is probably #2 in popularity among the games on my list for the "mass market," after Catan. It winds up becoming a lot of people's gateway hobby game and is often talked about in terms of introducing it to new players, or being used as a stepping stone. Because of its role in many gamers' lives (including my own) and its proximity to Catan on my ranking), I might draw comparisons between the two, even though mechanically they're not that similar.

One of the prerequisites to getting there is that it has wonderful table presence, with a map of a real geographic region and brightly colored routes. The train minis are beautiful as well.

Another near-prerequisite: simple rules. The options on any given turn of TTR are extremely manageable but have more agency that Catan's; instead of relying on dice, TTR has cards for its building materials. And instead of a blind draw, TTR invites you first to draft cards from an lineup. You only draw if you don't have a particular card you see in the lineup that you want, or if you want to conceal your intent. And then laying down those tracks feels very mechanically satisfying.

TTR isn't perfect. Early editions of the game had cards that were way too small. In general, I'm also not huge on hidden objectives that both award points for completion and deduct points for failure, though obviously they make sense in TTR. Hoarding cards is also a pretty good strategy given that there is no hand limit, and the "build random routes" strategy can be highly aggravating. And of course, the game lasts rather long for its relative simplicity, though I'll admit this trait might be a plus in its appeal as a gateway; you can really get into a rhythm and experience it to the fullest.

Experience - Like with Catan, a little bit of bio. Catan I played in 2011 before I'd played any hobby games, really. In early 2015, I was invited to a board game night, where I was overwhelmed by the new people and the new games and ALL the new rules. The next day (or was it a week?) I was back there, in a smaller group, with only the host and the friend who'd invited me the first time. We played TTR that weekend twice. It was... well, it was okay. But I have very fond memories of just hanging out and doing this new activity, even though (even then!) I thought the game was a little simplistic.

I've since played TTR twice, though not on the US map. I'd probably estimate Europe > Africa > US, though I don't feel strongly about it at all. Those other plays happened at meetups and with five people, so the company wasn't nearly enjoyable, but I appreciated seen different riffs on the theme.

Future - My main group doesn't own the game, and I'm hardly gonna buy a game I don't love. But given I'm with someone who's never played TTR, it might be worth another play or two - if the opportunity arises.
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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

KommunistKoala posted...

just finished placing second at a Catan National Qualifier tournament yesterday actually (part of a bigger convention and my friends and I do it for fun)

fun to do once a year but thats the only time we really play it

that's pretty exciting! i assume you won't go to nationals?

Naye745 posted...

honestly catan is pretty good for what it is

some games where the numbers line up just wrong can devolve into one person getting cities fast and running away, but usually the player interaction (via trading and the robber) helps balance the game out and savvy negotiation is key

i don't really play it anymore (i've played it out at this point) but its expansions are all pretty decent and do a good job at moving the game in different directions if you want more catan

i would be interested in trying expansions but have no desire to buy them, or make the game particularly longer. if they do something about the space crunch, maybe.

fall-behind losers concern me more than runaway leaders!Tom Bombadil posted...

Catan has a special place in my heart but it does not hold up that great against the litany of games I've played since. It is indeed the dang worst game in which to fall behind, which was usually my role. Got some fun expansions tho.

catan wasn't my gateway so i never "outgrew" it. i kinda admire its simplicity; something of its rule capacity might be a good 2p game for me ...
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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

111. Settlers of Catan (1995)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Trading, route-building, area control
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 45 to 100 minutes
Experience: 7+ plays with 2-4 players (2011-2018)
Previous ranks: 86/100 (2016), 66/80 (2018)

Summary - Catan is almost certainly the most famous board game on my list, so if you're reading this far, you probably know it: On a hexagonal grid of hexagonal tiles, players build roads and settlements and gain five different types of resources from communal dice rolls that favor their settlements. These resources are used to build more roads and settlements, upgrade the settlements to cities, and purchase special cards that grant one-time use abilities or victory points. Players can also trade resources with one another.

Experience - My first ever game of Catan, in 2011, was brutal. It was so brutal it turned me away from the idea of "getting into board games" for years. Resource conversions were brutal, the ports felt unintuitive and random, the game took far too long, and worst, I couldn't fucking do anything. These were my closest friends at the time, and I abhorred the game.

I picked it up when a friend was visiting from town and played two-player. With an open map and a much better grasp of the rules, it went much more breezily. Since then I've had lightning-quick, enjoyable 3-player games and some longer 4-player games

Design - Catan recognizes that luck is fun; there's something undeniably endorphine-releasing when someone else rolls the dice and you collect resources. I think people genuinely enjoy trading and negotiation (though I personally don't care for it). It's also got a beautiful aesthetic simplicity (with its wooden components and pastoral setting the definitive eurogame look). As one of the earliest euros, Catan also contains some familiar take-that elements that can even the playing field, and its relatively simple board state allows people to decipher who's winning and losing easily, making it feel more interactive than some other games in the list.

As for why it's low, my massively negative first impression may give a clue. My early hobby gaming days, starting from Catan, were dominated by sucking at pretty much every eurogame. Therefore, when considering this game especially, I'm very sensitive to how it feels to be doing badly in a game.

Like so many economic games, when you have very little, getting more is even more difficult. But making Catan even more brutal is the route-building style in which you expand your territory: if you fall behind at the beginning, you can easily be locked out of ever expanding beyond your initial settlements. And yeah, sure, you can trade, but... if you have the fewest settlements, you also have the fewest goods to trade. Oh, and there are no restrictions on the "screwage" factors of the Monopoly card and the Thief, which allow people to take cards from you, so there are lots of feel-bad moments, too.

As a side note, I'll also say that while it's most known for being played with four, and there is the most competition for spaces there, I actually find it much more enjoyable at three - the playtime goes down by a ton, because not only does each player get to go more frequently, but there's less competition for space, as well as less time wasted asking whether someone has a resource that it's been established no one has. That's why I listed the playtime's range so wide - a 3-player game would be hard-pressed to hit an hour in playtime, while a 4-player game with not-the-fastest-people would average 90 minutes.

Future - Catan is the first game on this list that I own. It does fill a somewhat unique niche, but I don't love it. It doesn't have that unique factor, and it takes a bit too long with four. That said, it's rules-light and decision-light, so I'd definitely be up for playing it with people who aren't cutthroat and are happy just to roll the dice (provided no more interesting alternatives). At three players, I'd be even more eager to break it out. Perhaps its biggest hindrance for its hitting the table at home: it doesn't "really" play two.
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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...

Set collection games with a boring theme are like my least favorite kind of games, lol, Im still butthurt about Cosmic Encounter

I just don't get CE!
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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

neonreaper posted...

it kills me that they blackout national games now, so I can only listen on radio.

i've been hitting the streams hard for a decade, except for like 3 years when i would watch national TV games on cable. they've gotten stunningly good in quality and consistency.
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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

neonreaper posted...

Lets go Celtics

absolutely loving brown lately! he probably needs to chill with dumb outlets 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

Anagram posted...

Is it bad that I feel worse for Ini about being creeped on so badly that she remembers the guy six months later than for some of the murder victims in the series so far?

ugh.
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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

Gunned Down
124. Guillotine (1998)
123. Sagrada (2017)
122. Innovation (2010)
121. Quiddler (1998)
120. Tak (2017)
119. Mascarade (2013)
118. Cosmic Encounter (1977)
117. A Fake Artist Goes to New York (2012)
116. Boss Monster (2013)
115. The Godfather: Corleone's Empire (2017)
114. Carcassonne (2000)
113. Colt Express (2014)
112. Bohananza (1997)
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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

first time watching football this early in january in a long 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

112. Bohananza (1997)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Trading, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30 to 45 minutes
Experience: 2-3 plays over 2 sessions (2015, 2018) with 4-6 players
Previous ranks: 96/100 (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - You're collecting beans as cards and planting them in sets so they give you victory points. You can also trade beans with others on your turn.

Experience - My first play with Bohnanza was with friends, but six of them, and slightly competitive ones. My next play wasn't 'til three years later, but it was with my then-regular gaming group of four, and people spent a lot less time negotiating.

Design - Bohnanza isn't fancy or pretty, but it does offer you a bunch of troublesome decisions because of the way you can't manage your hand the way you'd like. It's slightly interactive in trading, but not overly damaging, and there aren't a lot of negative feelings involved. The theme is also pretty fun - planting beans. That said, I'm not certain its central mechanic is fun. The decisions are tough and I'm not sure it always feels particularly good.

Future - That said, I'd like to get a bit of a better feel so I can be more articulate about the game! Uwe Rosenberg is one of the most respected dudes in the biz and others of his games do feature 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

does the translation ever specifically say it's in LA? i feel it is very heavily implied to be california (at least west coast US) but not LA per se

i also don't think a matriarchal village that focuses on spirit channeling is particularly japanese

that said, yes, i never really thought of the game as taking place in the united states at all
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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

Mr Lasastryke posted...

if i say "black people suck," my statement is not non-hostile because i'm not directing at any particular black person.

i love b8
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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...

seriously I want someone to answer this

(the password is all zeroes except for the last number which is a 9 in case anyone wants to confirm lawl)

the goal of those passwords is to save progress, right? to me you'd "beat" the game if you reached the screens that gave you those passwords

that said if it were in school in the 80s/90s and you found it without internet i'd totally give you bragging rights for discovering 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

113. Colt Express (2014)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Programming, player combat, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 40 to 60 minutes
Experience: 2-3 plays over 2-3 sessions (2017-2018) with 4-5 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 72/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player is an outlaw in the Wild West, trying to rob trains. The game takes place over a series of five heists, where first everyone takes turns laying (face-down) an action card in their hand for a round, and then all of those actions are resolved sequentially - characters will move train cars, go up and down levels, pick up jewels, and punch one another into the next room (and cause them to drop their jewels).

Design - One of the neatest parts of CX is the components. You actually construct a standing cardboard train with open spaces to place your player meeples. It has fantastic table presence. CX is also the only game on this list that has the Programming mechanic, which is quite distinctive: While your actions may affect or be affected by others, you have to decide on them simultaneously without knowing the order in which they will resolve. It's distinct from simultaneous action selection because action resolution is sequential and not simultaneous. Chaos often ensues from plans going awry.

Yet somehow, that chaos is only a light "ah fuck, now my entire turn's fucked, and nothing really else funny is coming of it." Punching players is by far the most disruptive action that can happen, but CX also has this hand management mechanism in which as you take wounds from guns or whatever, you get more and more wound cards, which prevent you from moving as freely around the train as you'd like. That... sucks. Why would you want less agency as the game goes on? It keeps the game in the "silly" category, and that isn't necessarily a problem, per se, but the chaos is very confined in scope and can often reduce laughs instead of increasing them. (Compare CX's programming to the cooperative/real-time Space Alert, which I don't rank because I've only played it once, but where the negative effects hit everyone, resulting in more shared laughter.)

Experience - Which is all to say, I largely enjoyed setting up the train and derived some satisfaction from inflicting wounds on my opponents, but winning a game wasn't super-satisfying, while losing felt frustrating and kinda bad.

Future - Despite these, CX gets a lot of points for the ideas it tries out and its relative uniqueness. I'd play it above sitting out games for sure and wonder if all that's needed for more raucousness is lightning-fast play and the agreement that the scoring really doesn't matter.
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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...

I love the setting and visuals of Boss Monster, but games get bogged down really fast by Heroes entering dungeons, and once they start entering, it becomes waaaaay too hard to keep track of what everyone's dungeon is like, and all the cards you have that counter theirs. It's perfectly fine for a 2 player game, but I really can't stand it for anything beyond that.

wish i remembered it more intricately, but how can you counter someone's dungeon? IIRC it played kinda multiplayer solitaire; i mainly remember the interaction coming from bidding over heroes

Eddv posted...

I will say the game plays best at 2 and 4 players.

It does NOT play super well at 3 because its too easy for someone to build a winning engine. The expansions also make the strategy more robust.

Boss Monster is a favorite 'opener' on game night to get us all in the mood before jumping into something heavier, alongside other favorite Machi Koro

what changes in the setup to make 3p different from 2 or 4?
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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

114. Carcassonne (2000)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Tile-laying, area control
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 40 to 60 minutes
Experience: 2 plays over 2 sessions (2018, 2019) with 2, 3 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - The players collectively lay out territory in medieval France, one (randomly drawn) square tile at a time. The tiles depict roads, meadows, cities, and more. When you lay a tile, you can also move one of your meeples onto that tile, which will award you points either immediately or in the endgame. Your meeples come off the board when a structure is complete.

Design - My respect for Carcassonne is off the charts. It's one of the gateway games (along with two that are, spoiler, very close to coming up on this list), and possibly the best-designed, because the depth is tremendous. Optimizing tile placement, knowing what your opponents are likely to draw, tactically and strategically setting up cities, trying to ensure you have the highest presence, but also gathering back your meeples at a timely manner - each decision is quick, but impactful. There's also the strategic and counterintuitive "farmers" mechanic that doesn't even factor into base Carcassonne.

Carcassonne is so influential that its community is responsible for the word "meeple" becoming common to describe the wooden (or plastic) figures in board games that are vaguely human-shaped, but are clearly not miniature sculpts. It's one of the defining hobby games and by far the most famous tile-lying game.

Experience - That said, my experiences with Carcassonne have been... okay. I first played it when I was already deep into the hobby, though I definitely have some fondness of it for being one of the first games I learned in a game cafe with a friend. I think that there are likely two areas where Carcassonne shines: as a gateway game, with its incredibly light and relatively repetitive mechanics; and as a hypercompetitive game, where all players have played the game an absolute ton and are competinghard with lightning-quick decisions. I fit neither category; I'm able to learn more mechanically unique games, but I also have no real desire to get deep enough in strategy to compete with more cutthroat players. So there's this middle groudn where it's... okay.

Future - Probably won't say no to getting more Carcassonne reps simply because, again, I have so much respect for the game. It could probably rise a tier or two, but I still can't really see myself getting good at 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

Tom Bombadil posted...

The first couple times I played Boss Monster I wasn't a fan, but I played it again recently and it was more fun. Bears further research.

encouraging! though no one local owns it, so I wonder how likely it'll be that I play it again. there are other frictionless games too that might be better even at its weight - lanterns randomly came to mind just now
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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

115. The Godfather: Corleone's Empire (2017)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Worker placement, area control, set collection, pickup-and-deliver
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 75 to 105 minutes
Experience: 2 plays over 2 sessions (2017, 2018) with 4-5 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - You play as one of the mob's five families of New York (in the universe of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather). During each of the four rounds, you dispatch your underlings (and family members) as workers into different territories, attempting to complete jobs (shown on draftable cards), collect contraband goods like guns or liquor, bribe officials to give you better abilities, or establish control over those territories. Endgame points are awarded for success in completing jobs and in controlling areas the most over the course of the game.

Design - The Godfather looks nice to play, and its ruleset is pretty slim for something of its relative weight. The decision space is broad but not overwhelming and with manageable depth - it has over a dozen options on any given placement, but you have relatively limited opportunities to place your guys down, keeping the game to sensible length. Being an area control game, there's also a strong interactive element, where you have to decide where to pick your battles and when you should fortify your hand and collect the contraband you need instead.

Experience - Like with so many area control games, and especially area control game hybrids, I sucked at this game, and that might have something to do with its placement. Area control is naturally competitive and interactive and take-that-ish in a way that many of the games I play are not. It's incredibly difficult for me to balance short-term attempts to hold or take territory with less interference-prone plans that (incidentally) bolster your ability to compete for those areas later in the game. Using the "gun down" mission cards can make enemies of other players, and while it was funny, it also felt pretty bad from an in-game perspective when I (in last place) attacked third or fourth place, and then on the final turn, he chose to attack me instead of somewhere he could possibly gain more.

Future - Because of the meanness in The Godfather, I'm hesitant to want to play it again. It's not the most punishing game, clocking in at under 2 hours with the group I've played it with, so perhaps with less aggro/zero-sum focus I can find some more enjoyment. But then, the friend who owns this keeps getting new 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

116. Boss Monster (2013)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Tableau-building, push-your-luck, budding
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 30-45 minutes
Experience: 2-3 games over 2 sessions (2016) with 3-4 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 73/80 (2018)

Summary - You play as a video game boss trying to build a dungeon that will kill the most heroes. From a deck of cards, everyone assembles components for their dungeons - rooms, traps, monsters. Then the heroes come to the dungeons that are most tempting/evil, and we score based on how well they fare.

Experience - I played Boss Monster a few times in different sittings, but all in one weekend in 2016 surrounding Gen Con. Good company, good fun, not a high-ranking game.

Design - Boss Monster has a neat theme and great 8-bit aesthetic. I've played other games about being a dungeon-master, but Boss Monster's art is particularly unique. The attracting-heroes-phase is also cute. That said, it otherwise lacks specific mechanics that make it stand out, and the decision space/agency didn't seem massive.

Future - There's nothing unpleasant about BM - it's one of the lighter "strategy" games on this list and it plays quickly. I'd like to get a refresher on it to articulate feelings more clearly, but it obviously wouldn't be much for raising its ranking significantly.
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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 don't see that as a huge negative. A lot of games' mechanics are better than their scoring, for example!
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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 did wind up seeing BOM in december! really enjoyed it.

might see the irishman sometime this month
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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

just echoing others,

1. would totally read a topic

2. yes, the soundtrack is incredible. it's one of those things that makes AA feel so good to play
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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

Grand Kirby posted...

You said you weren't going to do "judge" type games. Does that mean Telestrations isn't going to be ranked? That's an art game I always enjoy playing.

Telestrations is off because I haven't played it more than one sitting. That said it's not a judging game... and I'm not 100% sure it's very game-y at all, given there is no real goal to it.

Fun 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

TomNook posted...

Never heard of Fake Artist, but it sounds pretty fun. I love art games though. How do you feel about traditional Pictionary type games in general?

in general, clue-giving is one of my favorite mechanics. i think the game surrounding pictionary isn't great, but actually drawing is super-fun. that said, i think there might be only one other drawing game that's 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

117. A Fake Artist Goes to New York (2012)

Category: Team vs Team
Genres: Party game, art, hidden traitor
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 10 minutes
Experience: 10+ games over 4-5 sessions (2018-19) with 5-8+ players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - There is a secret word that everyone knows except a hidden traitor. Everyone then draws one stroke of a common picture in a differently colored pen (so you can identify who drew which stroke). Once everyone has contributed to the drawing, everyone looks at the completed product and tries to identify the fake artist.

Design - One of the most important things in a hidden roles type of game is being able to analyze the evidence - i.e., telling apart who drew which stroke. Fake Artist's differently-colored pens take care of this nicely. There's a reasonable amount of novelty in the mechanic: how do you make it clear that you're not the traitor (with the stroke you're drawing), but without revealing what the word is? Even the same word can't be played the same way twice with the same group.

Experience - My experience with Fake Artist has been... lukewarm. Sometimes you find the perfect stroke that will signal what the image you've drawn is, but if your "clue" goes over the head of others and you're picked as a traitor, it kinda sucks. Similarly, in making the picture too accurate, you can be accused of tanking the game.

While I love drawing and I enjoy hidden roles, I think I'd prefer a game that was a little stronger in one category or the other. The best comparison for Fake Artist might be a game I decliend to rank since I haven't played the physical copy really - Spyfall. Spyfall has the same one-guy-in-the-dark mechanic, but it distills the experience into pure question-and-answer instead of having the goofy art mechanic. That might encapsulate the issue - I had more fun with a pure deduction game than the hybrid found in Fake Artist, even though Fake Artist undoubtedly has "more" that's going on.

Future - Honestly, it's fairly harmless, but the experience isn't great. I'm hoping for no.
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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

118. Cosmic Encounter (1977)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Negotiation, hand management, combat
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 60-120 minutes
Experience: 2 plays (2015, 2017) with 5 players
Previous ranks: 40/100 (2016), 68/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player assumes control of an alien race attempting to colonize other players' home planets. Your goal is to be the first player to colonize a certain number of planets. You get to colonize a player's planet if you successfully attack (or support an attack of) that player. The attacks are randomly decided and cards are used to enhance the attack and defense strength of those planets, and players can pledge their ships to causes of others' attacks or defenses.

Design - While it sounds like a space opera, Cosmic Encounter is much lighter in tone than that. The "destiny deck" determines who gets attacked and is this gentle reminder not to take the game too seriously. (The wacky alien powers and incredibly swingy combat cards are another reminder.) It winds up mainly being a game where you play cards with really big numbers (that generally dwarf the number of ships being pledged on both sides).

Experience - I was hesitant to play CE the first time, with a few friends but a rando at a meetup as the game's introducer. It became one of the few games I had ever won at that point, probably responsible for boosting its ranking here. That said, it didn't feel very satisfying. My second play was... fine. Better company, but the game just doesn't make a strong impression on me. Perhaps it hurts that the rhetoric around the game is that the only real win is an individual win? In any case, the raucous negotiation, which I assume is what's supposed to make the game fun, has never materialized for me.

Future - I really don't know how this game can rise much. It's not particularly unpleasant, but the upside seems rather low. Would play it maybe a few more times, but mostly to solidify my opinions, and perhaps not as much expecting great things.
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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

119. Mascarade (2013)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Hidden roles, bluffing, memory
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 15-30 minutes
Experience: 7-10 plays across 2-3 sessions (2016), 10-13 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 79/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player is dealt a hidden role card. From there, in clockwise order, you get one action per turn: either check a player's card, swap players' cards without looking (or maybe not! only the swapper knows), or attempt to use the special action associated with your current role. Since you don't necessarily know your own role/you can lie about who you are, players can counter-claim you... but only if they think they have the role themselves. The player who accumulates a certain amount of gold first wins, but must claim victory on their turn.

Design - I love the idea of Mascarade. Hidden roles, not knowing what's going on, slowly gaining information/sowing chaos as players switch roles with one another, inexorably moving the game toward its conclusion. (The total amount of gold in the game always increases, even if it's not always in the players' hands.) While I'm big on teams in hidden role games, there's something nice about Mascarade's bluffing because it's not as inherently confrontational - much less "you're lying!" and more just calling someone's bet, like in poker. It's also less zero-sum than Sheriff of Nottingham in that sense.

The powers associated with each role feel pretty unique, and I love that you can only counter-claim someone if you're willing to bet that you yourself have that person's role. It results in some great moments, a la One Night Ultimate Werewolf, where everyone flips over their cards and laughs as no one who tried to take the King action actually has the King role.

Experience - My problem with Mascarade is that despite its qualities on paper, I've never actually had a great experience with it, despite my highest hopes. It felt turn-order sensitive, and it felt dominated by people who had surprisingly good memory despite the chaos, which meant that bluffing rarely worked out. I also played with a mix of friends and friends-of-friends, and it sucked to be down in both scores and turn order and then to get hit by a take-that effect - it's not a mean game, but you can effectively be eliminated by the whimsy of another player who just needs to pick someone to use their awesome power on.

There's also the notable fact that if someone forgets to swap roles with the player downstream of them, then that player gets a risk-free use of their ability - which you should theoretically try to prevent. But it feels like you need skilled players to discern who has "too good" of an idea what they are. That meta feels like it would be a dozen plays beyond the depth at which I played it.

Future - With years of separation from the last time I played, I'm less able to remember the details and how it worked and whether counterplay could have done something. Is it as imbalanced as it seemed? Was I held back by slow players? Did it just require me to play with personal friends only? While being a bucketful of laughter is hardly guaranteed, what I am fairly confident on is that those measures could have been taken to make it feel less bad. I'd like to try it with fewer players, ones that I trust to play fast, and ones with whom I have a better rapport (and thus can feel less bad about losing to, or about doing something mean to). Really curious to replay if only to solidify my opinions, or if only because the design idea sounded so cool.
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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

120. Tak (2017)

Category: Head-to-Head
Genres: Abstract movement, route-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 15-30 minutes
Experience: 3-4 plays across 2 sessions (2017, 2019)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Tak, based on an in-universe game in a book by Patrick Rothfuss, is a chess-like game where you attempt to connect your side of an NxN grid (can go from 3x3 to 8x8) to your opponent's side, using interestingly shaped blocks. The board starts empty, but as you and your opponent place your pieces onto the board and stacked and unstack them, it fills up quickly.

Experience - It may be unfair for me to rank Tak, as I've both never won and never even come close to piecing together any strategy in my head. I was blasted out of at least two of my games and floundered around with the others. But... there are so many games where that doesn't have to be the case.

Design - Like I said above, Tak is like chess. It's luckless and abstract and should theoretically easily reach the point where computers crush humans at it. Similarly, it's also a game where an experience gap allows the more experienced player to obliterate first-timers and less experienced players. That said, there's obviously tremendous depth to it, and the pieces are beautifully shaped to resemble runes, so I admire it, even if I don't enjoy it.

Future - Tak would be a nice game to own if only for its table presence. But when I think about regularly trying to play it (obviously with someone similarly inexpeirenced), questions occur to me like - how long until the game becomes fun? Because Tak is incredibly interactive but abstract, so the fun has to come from maneuvering tactically and strategically (as opposed to running your own engine or building your own tableau). But how long will it take to reach a skill level where my partner and I would start seeing those patterns and next steps? The learning curve is a bit off-putting.
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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

121. Quiddler (1998)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Word game, spelling
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 30 minutes
Experience: 4-8 plays (2015), 5+ players
Previous ranks: 60/100 (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Over the course of eight rounds, each player are dealt a larger and larger hand of letters. On their turn, everyone draws from a deck/discard pile and then discards a card. The goal is to use all of the words in hand in two-or-more-letter words once someone else has set theirs out. Points are awarded for the difficulty level of the letters used and subtracted if they are unused by the end.

Experience - It's been a long time since I played Quiddler, which mainly happened with the friend whose collection was the first source of games for me. Again, I'm a big fan of word games, and the ruleset was approachable enough for someone who didn't necessarily have the appetite for heavier games at the time.

Design - Quiddler appeals to the part of me that wants to make cool words. It does allow you to craft your own hand by drawing cards. Looking back, I mainly feel frustrated by the lack of control in the cards you get, along with the scoring mechanism. I suppose it's a risk/reward tradeoff, but I find it rather punishing and unfun and archaic in a way. I enjoy the spelling part of the game, but do not enjoy the massive disincentives to spell cool words as opposed to "Scrabble" words - because of the way scoring works, it's better to play "ZA" and waste an R, H, and D than to play "HARD," because the Z is worth so many more points. On top of that, with a high number of players, it's highly likely someone will be dealt an insta-play hand, which means you can have very limited opportunities to tailor your own hand. So when I think of this game, I tend to remember being screwed either by low-point-value cards or by having to play shitty words to avoid negative points - but at the same time, I enjoy the mechanics of spelling words. It's a complicated spot to be in!

Future - The friend that owns Quiddler moved away long ago, and while I still play with her once or twice a year, Quiddler largely filled a niche of "we have already gone through the dozen better games of this weight for this high player-count." So I see it as unlikely the game rises, even though I'd theoretically like to play it again, if only to refresh my memory. (Quiddler did not make it onto the 2018 list because it wasn't fresh enough in my mind... evidently I'm less choosy this 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

i might have beaten ten games this decade! that probably merits a topic to count down right?? probably fewer than ten made this decade 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