LogFAQs > #942228863

NBIceman posted...

Fun list to follow, thanks for all the hard work!

Do you keep up enough with upcoming releases to be able to comment on whether there are any you're looking forward to in the next six or twelve months?

Thanks!

Alas I don't really follow new games too much. I follow the r/boardgames subreddit, and that's where I get most of my news. My married friends (who are now moving away) have a Kickstarter fiend among them. They buy a lot of new games. I also used to attend meetups in my city quite frequently, including at a board game cafe where I'd intentionally pick new games myself.

For recent releases, I have yet to play any form of Gloomhaven, but I think Jaws of the Lion sounds much more palatable with my girlfriend (who I'm moving in with today). But buying heavy games feels like a trap too - we blasted through Aeon's End, but Spirit Island has yet to see a complete runthrough (with her). Maybe living together I can get it to the table more, but I'm not super-optimistic.

Hansa Teutonica's big box is also something I'm "looking forward to," even if I don't get it.

Maracaibo has been out for a while, but I'm looking forward to playing it. I suspect it won't quite live up to GWT but it's still interesting. Another sequel I'm interested in is Gaia Project, since I've gotten in some reps of Terra Mystica online since the quarantine started.

cyko posted...

Wow. That was an unexpected number one. Hansa Teutonica has been on my Wishlist for a long time, but it always look like the theme was very lacking. It doesn't quite look like the definition of a Soulless Euro Style game - it does seem more interactive than most Euro games - but still dry on theme and components. Those aspects don't bother me - I love Euro games, especially Euro games that can be interactive without being directly mean (I hate Take That games where all or most of the decisions you have made in a game can be rendered meaningless by one action taken by anther player). But as we have gotten older, a number of my friends have grown fonder of flashy games with great pieces and a strong theme. Some of them have gotten burnt out on what they consider "dry victory point games".

I definitely prefer games that reward multiple plays and develop a metagame. The problem with that is that my gaming friends and I simply own WAY too many games. Unless it's a filler game or one several of us know how to play, we rarely play games once a year because everyone wants to try the latest game we picked up. We are also a chatty bunch, so in a 5-6 hour gaming night, we would typically get through only one or two games. So, who knows if we will ever get to Hansa Teutonica.

Either way, thanks for the great list! It took a while, but it was very interesting to read through your opinions and see where our tastes align and where they differ. I don't have time to do a full write-up, but I think I know my Top 25 or 30 board games, which I could post here.

Thanks! It's obviously more encouraging to do these lists with others around. I'd love to see your top 25-30. And yes, I did feel like it was an unexpected #1 myself too! It's close between it and Time's Up!, but I think it's kind of nice to have a "designer game" on the top of the list. They obviously scratch insanely different itches.

I didn't touch on the theme in Hansa Teutonica, but I actually love it in a meta way. Like, look at the cover art: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/43015/hansa-teutonica

This guy actively wants you to be bored! He's offended at the idea of you having fun playing this game! 80% of the game is literally moving cubes around. 19% of it is moving wooden discs around. And 1% of it is using cardboard tokens to... well, move cubes and discs around. The theme of the game is almost satirically euro - you're literally building trading posts in medieval Germany. Like holy shit.

Because the lack of theme is so stark, you can't really compare it to euros like Feast for Odin, Agricola, Through the Ages, or Viticulture. Once you open the box, there's pretty much nothing there that evokes any of its theme - you're building some sort of network, sure, but the theme abstracts itself so much it's arguably less thematic than even Chess or Go, which have classic wargame themes. If your group could see the humor in that then they may enjoy it.

That said, I think the map actually looks pretty nice, so it doesn't hurt the eyes. And wood is pretty too.

RE: its fit for you otherwise - the metagame and the length of your gaming session - the chattiness is a really big component here, I think. I think I've had 4-player games wrap in 45 minutes, and the setup is literally one minute, if everyone pitches in. It's not hard to run two sessions in a row.

RE: the interaction - it's sublime. Let's look at the classic Catan and TTR - in Catan, blocking someone off can literally fuck over their entire game. The only benefit to the blocker is blocking someone else out (and indirect gains). Trading can feel bad for the person behind. And there's nothing good-feeling about the robber. Likewise, TTR's blocking depends on arbitrarily drawn tickets. HT's version of blocking feels intentional and not like meanness. IMO of course.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness