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| Topic | my top 32 tabletop games |
| cyko 07/29/20 11:55:03 AM #311: | Okay, so this is why I don't have time to do my own write up - it took me the course of a week just to come up with responses to your commentary! Here are my thoughts - 1. Eclipse - want to play, but it will be a long time before I do, if I ever can. Already gonna struggle getting more plays on my near-new copy of Root. For me, this is just such an epic game with the right balance of everything that makes a game fun - planning, interaction, different strategies, theme, different factions, tactical decisions and epic space battles. I love everything about it! I really hope you get to play it. It's off topic a bit, but Twilight Imperium is similar to Eclipse in many ways, but I prefer Eclipse for two main reasons - First, the board for TI is set at the beginning of the game which eliminates the excitement of exploring. It's also very possible for someone to completely screw you over with the initial placement of system tiles - which can be very demoralizing to realize that you are starting off a 6-8 hour game with a major disadvantage right from the start. Second, Politics play a much larger role in TI, including the use of some cards that can have a major negative impact on someone's game. It makes it much easier to gang up on a player to eliminate or severely handicap them, which usually isn't fun (...unless that player really deserves it!!!). I bring it up because Twilight Imperium 4th edition really is another great epic space game that you also might love - especially if you prefer games that have a lot of politicking and backstabbing. I highly recommend Eclipse with 6 people, but have still enjoyed it with 4 or 5. I have never tried it with 2 or 3 people. This is also one of the very few games that I have successfully played with 9 people. It does seem overwhelming to new players at first, but once they understand the basic flow, almost every noobie I have taught this game to wants to play it again. 3. Star Wars Epic Duels w/ custom decks - I played an old copy of someone's at a meetup a few years back. It was... okay? Maybe the custom decks change things up? I do think that a lightish team game is a winning formula. Epic Duels is hands down my most played board game of all time. Nothing else even comes close. The original game could be played as a free for all or with teams. The free for all mode was pretty mediocre because it was inevitable that whoever struck first pretty much always lost and whoever hid in the corner and waited for everyone else to fight first usually won. But the team game was always a blast. There's not nearly enough games (especially non-party games) that give you that feeling of winning as a team - most games are cooperative or competitive. Playing as a team against another team gives you the best of both worlds! In Epic Duels, playing 2 vs 2 or 3 vs 3 also helped mitigate a poor opening hand of cards. Usually, two players together could adapt together long enough to survive if one or even both of them had a terrible opening hand, which was difficult to do as a single player. The original Star Wars characters were fun to play with, but some of them weren't very well balanced (Obi-Wan was clearly better than the rest). However, the core system was VERY well done and once we discovered the custom decks from all across the Star Wars EU, the game really started to shine. Even though the system is not complicated at all, the different characters add a lot of depth. There were a couple of fans who designed some excellent custom decks. Then my friends started getting in on the fun by creating our own custom decks. I am not usually a very creative person when it comes to customizing games, but I took this a step further and created a full set of custom Super Smash Bros. Epic Duels. I took time to customize each deck to the character's personality and playstyle. I am obviously biased towards my own decks, but after hosting several events at Gencon over the years, I have heard nothing but positive feedback about Super Smash Bros Epic Duels. Undoubtedly, those positive experiences have elevated my personal opinion of Epic Duels. Recently, Rob Daviau remade the Epic Duels system into a game called Unmatched. The characters aren't nearly as interesting as Star Wars (or Smash Bros!!), but the game has gotten great reviews and seems to be better balanced than the original Epic Duels. I haven't tried it yet, because the price seems crazy high ($40 for 4 characters) compared to what you got with Epic Duels ($50 for 12 characters...), but I would like to try it. 7. Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico was the very first Euro game my core gaming group and I ever played (Even before Catan or Ticket to Ride). That had to be at least 15 years ago. It not only introduced us to the concept of Role Selection, but it introduced us to the concept of Victory Points in games for better or for worse. I fell in love with the game, but as we discovered more and more games, it got played way less frequently. We last pulled out Puerto Rico about two years ago and played it twice. I was surprised that it still holds up very well. It's a very interactive Euro game and still a lot of fun. The colonist thing doesn't really bother me, but I do understand and respect your viewpoint about it. If that is a bit of a barrier, then you really need to check out New Frontiers. It's basically a refined version of Puerto Rico with the symbology and space theme of Race/ Roll For the Galaxy. 8. Russian Railroads
I can't quite put my finger on why I love this game so much, but it's a very well polished, very strategic worker placement game where every action feels important. It's definitely in the same genre as Agricola, but different enough for me to enjoy both. RR definitely rewards skilled players, though, so it can be a little tough for newer players to break into. The German Railroad boards really open up the game without making it too much more complicated. It is out of print, but if you want to try it online, you can play it at www.yucata.de or www.boardgamearena.com 9. Race For the Galaxy - played it once and thought it was really neat - more fun than Roll. Might be one worth taking a flyer on as a 2p game, though I'd like to get a few more reps before committing the shelf space to it. Roll and Race are indeed very similar and both fun games - similar enough where I don't really see a need to own both. I have played Race a number of times at all player counts and it does play very quickly and pretty well at 2p. Two of my friends prefer Roll over Race solely because they like the feel of rolling dice. To them, that's the only real difference between the two games. For me, I prefer Race over Roll mainly because of the dice allocation. In both games, you are trying to predict what your opponents will do and capitalize off of their actions. In Roll, it's much more crippling if you predict incorrectly - all of those dice you allocated to a phase that didn't get chosen go back in the cup and you can lose an entire turn. It just doesn't feel good. In Race, if you predict incorrectly, your turn may be less than ideal, but at least you still have the option of using each phase that was selected. It doesn't "feel" as painful. It's a minor gripe, but that's the only real difference between the two games for me. --- Yay - azuarc is the guru champion of awesomeness. ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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