Board 8 > eighty tabletop games, ranked

(+) Yeah! (+)

Played new Angeles.

It's a way more bastardly archipelago in pretty much every way
---

King of Tokyo/New York is pretty fun. It's much more enjoyable than I expected from a game that's so dependent on rolling dice.

I think the only other game that I've enjoyed that has been heavy on dice is Roll for the Galaxy.
---

Simoun posted...

Lol why is King of Tokyo so high on the list? I kid, but why is it higher than zombicide gah.

My fave dice chucker is Escape from the Curse of the Temple. No matter what the group there is hilarity to be had.

Generally, I feel that dice chucking is a means by itself, and if the mechanics that use it are sound, that's what makes it a good game.

yeah, KOT does strike me as being high

but these next 3ish tiers are all kind of mixed together with me!

cyko posted...

Least Favorite - Firefly the Game. I want to love Firefly so much since I am a huge fan of the show, but the game just drags on forever.It's also very unforgiving. One bad dice roll can basically reset all of your progress so you are starting over at the beginning of the game. This can make it impossible to catch up, which makes the wait between turns even more unbearable. It's too bad, too, because the game captures the theme of the Firefly universe very well and the minis look great, but the gameplay is just not very good.

agreed. feels like much more effort was put into nice visuals than gameplay.
---

62. Guillotine
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/116/guillotine

Genre/mechanics: Set collection, card drafting, take-that
Rules complexity: 3/10
Game length: 20-40 minutes
Player count: 2-5
Experience: 2 plays
First played: 2016

It's the French Revolution! You have a hand of action cards and a line of cards for heads of the aristocracy. The heads are valued at different rates depending on how prized/hated they are - Marie Antoinette will give you a whopping score, whereas a martyr will decrease your score. The front of the line represents the guillotine, and on your turn you take the card at the front and add it to your set - but you can use action cards to shuffle the order of the line.

Design - Guillotine is solely a card game, with the only real non-card component a prop - the cardboard standup of the guillotine at the front of the line. It's also very clearly a humorous, filler game - the head cards have amusing art, and you can see how they connect to their values/abilities, and in general, the action cards are swingy and incredibly mean and rather imbalanced. The brevity of the game makes those swingy effects comical instead of rage-inducing.

Enjoyment - The best part about Guillotine is that it's called "The revolutionary card game where you win by getting a head." My first game went at a snappy clip as intended. You could have vague aspirations for what you wanted to do over the course of the game if you got one of the heads that more valuable in a set. You would look at your cards and the line of heads and have a general idea of which you might be able to snag next turn, but unless your hand is massive, that's always vulnerable to disruption. Really nice in-between game experience. My second time, at a meetup, I actually didn't mind the runaway leader - so much as a player who drastically slowed things down by sifting through his hand of cards to min-max every turn. Even a game as random as Guillotine is not immune to slow-play.

Next play - Never going to request it, but with fast players, a breezygame that can afford some laughs.

Bonus question - How mean of a game do you like, or are you willing to play?

Hint for #61 - Where avoiding the high water mark is a chore
---

I generally try avoid being mean unless absolutely necessary. I do win most of our gaming nights so would probably make me even more hated if I played mean too

hey a game I own! I haven't played Guillotine in like 10-15 years but I remember liking it.

I think my tolerance for "mean" games goes way up if it's something like Guillotine or Exploding Kittens (or Munchkin?) where it's short, it's not very serious, and everybody is screwing everybody so often that it's not going to be taken personally. They still probably won't be my first choices, but I'd be much more interested in those than something like Diplomacy where the politics are the major feature and everybody's srs biz about it.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I wonder how I'd like Killer Bunnies in multiplayer? That's a mean game I enjoy, but that might just be because I played 2-player pretty much exclusively. I might actually like it more because the guy I played with was able to consistently beat the pants off me and adding more people would make it harder for him to run the board >_>

EDIT 2: One of my first times playing Dominion, everybody started treating me like some sort of supervillain for buying Saboteur. This was about the same time everybody but me decided that using the Settlers thief was a sanctionable offense. The funny part is Saboteur isn't even that good <_<
---

Tom Bombadil posted...

hey a game I own! I haven't played Guillotine in like 10-15 years but I remember liking it.

this made me chuckle

the only game on my list so far that i own is catan. which i guess shouldn't be surprising since i usually buy what i like.
---

I can be mean if I want to. But I'm often surrounded by soft-skinned friends. I would LOVE to play a serious game of Battlestar Galactica someday, one where I can actually cut loose.

But often times I hold back. I love Take That mechanics though so I often compromise and get my friends to play Cutthroat Caverns instead. Or Merchants and Marauders.
---

Next one is probably Forbidden Island?
---

yeah, next is forbidden island. (We played that wrong, we thought you put the used cards on top and then shuffled them in, turns out you shuffle the used cards, then put them on top so the same cards get flooded over and over. The way we played is more fair, since its random what comes up then.)

favorite dice game is Dungeon Dice.
I play mean games, my friends wont play with me. Dungeon Dice again is the meanest we play. (and then we usually only get mean when someone is one point away from winning)
---

The gf, a friend, and i tried guillotine this past November at pax. Definitely an enjoyable way to pass the time, but not something I'm ever craving.
---

I have to say I'm really not a fan of Guillotine. It's a bit too random for my tastes. I think both times I've played I won, and it felt pretty hollow.
---

61. Turn the Tide
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1403/turn-tide

Genre/mechanics: Simultaneous bidding, hand management
Rules complexity: 3/10
Game length: 25-40 minutes
Player count: 3-5
Experience: 3-4 games with 4-5 players
First played: 2016

Turn the Tide features an attempt not to drown over the course of multiple rounds. You are dealt a hand of cards from a deck numbered 1 to 60.

At the beginning of a round, two flotation cards (numbered 1 to 12, with 2 of each) are posted to bid on, and if you have the highest card overall Each round, each player simultaneously chooses and reveals a card from their hand to see who gets those cards - the highest bidder gets the lowest card, while the second-highest bidder gets the higher card. Then, everyone compares the latest flotation card that they won, and the person with the highest number showing loses one drowning point (represented by flotation rings). A hand ends after every player's hand is depleted, 12 rounds.

In a cool twist, you play N hands of the game, where N is the number of players - and in each round, you pass the cards you were dealt at the beginning of the game - so it's a symmetric game.

Design: I admire this game a lot. There are lots of really neat design decisions that make this game really interesting.

For example, your health bar each round is determined by the quality of your hand. A really good hand contains lots of really high cards (ensuring you can always grab the lower of two flotation cards and thus never drown) and/or lots of really low cards (ensuring that you don't have to grab high-numbered flotation cards if both are higher than your current one). So if your hand is full of cards from the middle of the deck, then you'll get extra health to compensate.

And how about simultaneous bidding? I love when a game scales cleanly in time. You can't get that wrapped up in analysis paralysis because it's chaotic, but there's definitely a card-counting element that goes into it.

You can argue that even with the extra-health rule, some hands will be objectively better than others. It's hard to dispute this, but it's hard to blame the cards for the outcome of the game when by the end of it all, you've gotten a chance to play using each player's initial hand! The outcome is determined based off memory, deduction, and (perhaps most importantly of all) reading your opponents' intent. And it's all wrapped in a short, light time package with art that tells you, "Don't take this too seriously."

Enjoyment: Sadly, TtT hasn't always resonated super-well with the groups I've played it in. Whether it's people not grasping the simple rules or taking too long to agonize over their decisions, your experience of the game can sour a lot. There's nothing wrong with the game, but the experience needs to feel snappy and engaging. I liked my first game a lot, but subsequent tries haven't really replicated that magic. When you haven't been having a lot of fun during the first three hands in a five-player game, it doesn't make you want to play that fourth or fifth game.

Future: With the right people, absolutely. It seems like the type of game that could make regular appearances as a post-big-game cleanser.

Bonus question - Are there any games that you feel like you should like by all accounts, but hasn't always clicked?

Hint for #60 - D, C, C, A, A
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

Are there any games that you feel like you should like by all acounts, but hasn't always clicked?

Talisman and Small World 2, both on Steam. Both only got like two plays outta me and may or may not ever get more (even though I'm usually starved for board games) and I can't really tell you why.
---

Haven't even heard of that one!
---

The Mana Sword posted...

Haven't even heard of that one!

Not surprising. Definiteliy one of the more obscure games on this list.

There might be 5-6 more on the list that almost everyone in the topic hasn't heard of, I think.
---

Is Pyramids Arcade on the list?

I love it but I think that's a more obscure game.
---

haven't heard of that one! none of the games left (bar maybe one?) is super-obscure, just not among the names that i see typically thrown around, and perhaps not by a big-time designer
---

60. Coup
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131357/coup

Genre/mechanics: Hidden roles, bluffing, role selection
Rules complexity: 4/10
Game length: 15-30 minutes
Player count: 3-6
Experience: 10+ games with 4-6 players
First played: 2015

In Coup, you're dealt two cards face down, which can each be one of five different roles. On your turn, you take an action, often one that's associated with a role, such as gaining money spending money to deal damage to an opponent. When the action you take is associated with a role, an opponent can call you out and ask you to demonstrate you have it. If you have it, they lose health. If you don't have it, they lose health. Goal is to be the last man standing.

Enjoyment - Coup did not make me feel good when I first played it. We played with six, including some slow people, and at least one player who was way too eager to challenge. She took one turn and watched for forty minutes. The next time I played, it was with four and with strangers, and I kept wondering what I was doing at this strange meetup. Thankfully, since then, games have gone much faster overall, and now I consider it a solid way to introduce others to gaming, or to play a quick game that takes little table space or thought.

Design - The best part of Coup's design is probably how compact it is. I do like the roles, but that's perhaps more out of familiarity than admiration. But the components are literally fifteen cards, reference sheets, and money chips. That's a lean footprint. The rule-set is also simple, with one action per turn. Probably the biggest barrier of Coup as a game is how long it takes to get to know the rules - again, familiarity changes the picture, but it's tiresome to have to check the reference sheet all the time and see what options are available to you when you don't know the game well.

Also, the game isn't perfectly strategic. Aside from luck and being-ganged-up-on (which cannot be overcome), Coup has a nasty endgame glitch where if three players each have 1 remaining health and have enough to perform a coup to deal damage, then whoever acts first guarantees themself a loss. It's a hilariously dumb situation to find yourself in, but there you go.

Future - Hardly shocking, but I'm not exactly clamoring to get Coup to the table as a centerpiece. But if it's with people newer to gaming, I think it would be a nice one to have in the back pocket.

Bonus question - What is your favorite role in Coup? If you haven't played Coup, what game would you use as an intro to competitive games for others?

Hint for #59 - For when you don't want to Race.
---

I am a total noob when it comes to tabletop games. I have a friend who loves them though, and we play occasionally. I don't think I've ever won a game, since I learn by playing so my first game is always the learning experience. Then we rarely play the same game twice lol.

I don't even know what games are considered popular and which are obscure, since this isn't really a fandom that I'm a part of. But I'm still gonna read this topic and if I see anything that looks good, I might ask to play it with her.
---

I dont like Coup too much. All our games just start as a tax bluff-fest game of chicken and then once enough currency has been accumulated, turns into an assassinate bluff-fest game of chicken.
---

my favorite role is either Capitalist or Priest

>_>
---

Coup is one of those games where the enjoyment is gonna vary wildly depending on the type of people you play with and the type of person you are. I think the basic concept behind the game is awesome though. (Favorite role is the dude who steals money from people-- always a fun one to bluff)
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

If you haven't played Coup, what game would you use as an intro to competitive games for others?

Settlers is my default both for a gateway and an "I don't know yet what you'd like" game, but it kinda depends on the group.

SeabassDebeste posted...

Hint for #59

Roll for the Galaxy?
---

My issue with coup is that, in my mind, a player should not be punished for being in the lead, and that's exactly what coup does because of how utterly powerless someone is to prevent being ganged up on.
---

Emeraldegg posted...

My issue with coup is that, in my mind, a player should not be punished for being in the lead, and that's exactly what coup does because of how utterly powerless someone is to prevent being ganged up on.

Yeah pretty much this. One time I won 3 games in a row, then the 4th game was basically a 3 vs 1 until I was out (it also didn't help that I started with double Ambassador).
---

Favorite is probably Duke, and it comes from the first games I played. I started with 2 duke cards, one player got annoyed I was getting 3 coins a time and challenged. I had to reveal one, picked up another card and got the 3rd duke card.

...that was a fun game, as the person who originally challenged thought there was no way I would get all 3 and wrongly challenged again (after the second duke was revealed through assassination). Next game was even better, as I didn't use the duke power on the first time, and did on my second turn. Same person challenged that, as he thought it had to be a bluff, as I had cost myself a coin on the first turn, and it made no sense to not take 3 (when it was the exact reason why I DID do it - to get someone to think I was bluffing). Let's just say he is not a fan of the game after that day.

It could be a fun game, but as some of you mentioned, it punishes those who push hard, as people gang up on you - playing slow generally works better.
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

Also, the game isn't perfectly strategic. Aside from luck and being-ganged-up-on (which cannot be overcome), Coup has a nasty endgame glitch where if three players each have 1 remaining health and have enough to perform a coup to deal damage, then whoever acts first guarantees themself a loss. It's a hilariously dumb situation to find yourself in, but there you go.

This isn't a endgame glitch, making sure you aren't the first one to max with 3 left is part of the strategy. You can intentionally slow yourself down by bluffing ambassador. If you're ahead of everyone anyways you have to bluff assassin. (Basically if your in the situation where you have to coup and lose it means you messed up your strategy somewhere else earlier on)

Great_Paul posted...

Emeraldegg posted...

My issue with coup is that, in my mind, a player should not be punished for being in the lead, and that's exactly what coup does because of how utterly powerless someone is to prevent being ganged up on.

Yeah pretty much this. One time I won 3 games in a row, then the 4th game was basically a 3 vs 1 until I was out (it also didn't help that I started with double Ambassador).

This happens to me a lot but I just think of it as a sign that they fear me =). Also the games so short it doesn't matter anyways. It's generally better to play 2 or 3 rounds of it and then move onto something longer as well.
---

And my favorite is ambassador.

It lets you intentionally tank your gold if you desire to appear less of a target.
---

All of my games of Coup just start with everyone pretending to be the Duke to get a bunch of coins. Nobody usually challenges anyone because it's too risky!
---

my group has started playing coup. i am terrible at it, but it's still fun

i'm okay at premeditated lying (a la resistance), but terrible at bluffing... and everyone knows it. This makes poker the only game i lose at more reliably.

the fact that you have to throw away your card after someone unsuccessfully challenges you also means a dying player usually (any non-coup death) has a lot of kingmaking ability

it also turns pretty mathy towards the end. i like having a duke/assassin combo, but captain (thief) seems to be the most useful so far- especially in the endgame- because you can choke out your lone opponent's resources
---

plenty of games are political, yeah. coup is fortunately short enough (especially with few enough players) that it's not that punishing die.

Colegreen_c12 posted...

This isn't a endgame glitch, making sure you aren't the first one to max with 3 left is part of the strategy. You can intentionally slow yourself down by bluffing ambassador. If you're ahead of everyone anyways you have to bluff assassin. (Basically if your in the situation where you have to coup and lose it means you messed up your strategy somewhere else earlier on)

just because a game has a glitch doesn't mean that you can't form strategy around it. i don't think it's good game design, though, since nowhere else in the game does this dynamic occur in this manner.
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

just because a game has a glitch doesn't mean that you can't form strategy around it. i don't think it's good game design, though, since nowhere else in the game does this dynamic occur in this manner.

I don't think you understand the meaning of the word glitch.
---

I love the assassin.

Because in all my games nobody actually expects assassin first turn. I know right? Maybe its just the circles I play in.
---

how are you using the assassin first turn when it costs 3 isk and you start with 2
---

that's why no one expects it tho
---

Early game sorry, not first turn
---

Any multiplayer free for all game with any sort of diplomatic element and a victory condition where only one person can win is going to have that "glitch." I've yet to play any game where that wasn't the case unless the game was heavily RNG based or there wasn't a mechanic to screw other players directly in the rules. I don't think you can or even should remove that aspect without fundamentally changing what the game is.
---

hmm, you may have a point, but it only applies to games where the goal is to eliminate every other player, and you only get one action per turn

looking at my list (spoilers!), literally no other game's sole win condition is eliminating everyone else
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

hmm, you may have a point, but it only applies to games where the goal is to eliminate every other player, and you only get one action per turn

I guess if your point is it's impossible to create a whammy turn to eliminate every opponent at once to win, yeah I guess that matters. You could maybe fix that with certain role cards too.

But you have the dynamic of king slaying in a lot of games. I think it's really only a flaw if the games are really long and it's likely one person is going to be sitting a long time in the typical play pattern of a game. Otherwise it's just something you accept and play around.
---

59. Roll for the Galaxy
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/132531/roll-galaxy

Genre/mechanics: Dice-rolling, dice assignment, hand-building, tableau-building, role selection, simultaneous action
Rules complexity: 7/10
Game length: 40-60 minutes
Player count 2-5
Experience: 6-10 plays with 4-5 players
First played: 2015

Roll for the Galaxy is a role selection game where you compete for victory points by settling or developing double-sided planet/technology tiles. You have a cup of customizable dice, and on each turn, you roll all of your available ones, then secretly choose an action you want to perform this phase. Depending on where you place your dice and other players' choice for their 'main' action, you may get to perform other actions as well.

Enjoyment - I've never loved a game of Roll for the Galaxy. While the phase selection can theoretically be interactive as you try to piggyback off others' actions, the game feels like it's always played with heads done, everyone looking at their own tableau. It's both a feature and a curse of the game's simultaneous action phase, which I love otherwise.

Unfortunately, breaking up those actions is the Explore mechanic - the only way to draw these cardboard tiles that the game centers around. I love the dice and the player mat, but man, that tile sack is just cumbersome to shuffle things in, and really cumbersome to draw from. But that's discounting the fact that the best way to Explore is to grab a big stack and sift through them slowly until you come up with one you like. I think it feels almost particularly egregious because the rest of the game is so seamless.

Design - I actually think a lot of decisions in Roll are really elegant and neat. Rolling the dice is beautifully satisfying, and those colorful dice are mega-attractive. The mitigation of luck is really solid - you can assign one die per round, and you can always perform the role you want by using any other die. Role selection is a neat mechanic. Tying up your dice developing tiles makes sense, and the engine for buying back your dice after they've been exhausted seems fair. Performing actions simultaneously shortens downtime (and makes the game overall about as long as your slowest player).

I think it could afford to have nicer-looking tiles and a nicer-looking player board (even though it's very functional), but maybe overall I'm just a hater of space themes.

Future - I think maybe I could find it in me to enjoy this game more, if I allowed myself to get sucked up into the combos. I always rush an endgame by building really cheap settlements/developments, but that hasn't ever actually won it for me. But I'm just so impatient, and I'd be really upset if someone else ended it while I was trying to get an engine going.

Bonus question - What's your favorite strategy to pursue in tableau-building games like Roll for the Galaxy?

Hint for #58 - The grandfather of Roll for the Galaxy
---

next game is yahtzee???
---

walterwhiteyougotme.gif
---

Anyway, I've only played Roll once, but I much prefer Race. Dice chucking is not for me.
---

i've also played race only once, but i did seem to like it a fair amount more - in fairness, i won that game, which tends to have a biasing effect (and is why i'm including personal experience as its own category here)
---

Well I've only really played 1 Tableu Building game: Millennium Blades. And that game is all about maximizing what you've got based on knowledge from of your opponent's cards by trading and pre-empting them
---

I like both games, but I decided that I like Race for the Galaxy more than Roll for the Galaxy because Roll punishes you more if you incorrectly predict what the other players will do. If you assign a bunch of dice to a phase or two that noone else chooses, those dice go back in the cup and part or the round is wasted for you. And if you didn't assign any dice to a phase someone else picked, you are stuck watching instead of doing something in that phase.

In Race, however, predicting incorrectly can mess up your plan, but at least you have the option of doing something during each phase that was chosen. Roll is still fun, but I feel that it is more restricting than Race.

Also, Millennium Blades is flat out awesome.
---

58. San Juan
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8217/san-juan

Genre/mechanics: Role selection, tableau-building, card game
Rules complexity: 6/10
Game length: 40-60 minutes
Player count: 2-4
Experience: 2 plays with 3-4 players
First played: 2016

San Juan is the predecessor game to Race for the Galaxy, from which Roll for the Galaxy is derived. It's a card game in which cards are used as the tableau and the resources you spend and the resources generated on cards. Each Round, the lead player chooses a role, which everyone gets to execute in order, though the leader gets a special discount. Once each player has chosen a different role, the Round ends.

Experience - I played San Juan right around the time I came around on eurogames in general, and San Juan was part of it. It's easily grasped, it plays quickly, and it doesn't have a million little pieces and rules that are so irksome. It flew by fairly pleasantly, and the same thing happened the next time.

Design - The role selection mechanic at the core of this game is rock-solid, but perhaps the defining characteristic of San Juan is how the cards function. It's both liberating and horribly constraining when you realize that you might have three or four interesting cards in your hand, and that you can only play one. And it's not just a matter of only being able to play it this turn - you'll have to discard the others as a cost. Once you've gotten that down, it's just a matter of drawing cards and building/spending them. The strategy is there in role selection and trying to optimize your engine in drawing cards, but focusing on one resource is delightfully elegant and snappy.

Replay - San Juan occupies an interesting space between a filler game and a "main course" heavyweight game. It doesn't feel like an every month game, but it does feel like a more-than-once-a-year game. I played this last month, so maybe in a few months I'd be up for it as an opener in a marathon of games.

Bonus question - What is your favorite role selection game? If you've never played any, then what is your favorite way to choose actions in a game?

Hint for #57 - I would certainly not be scared to stay at an establishment with such a name
---

I wanted to like San Juan, but it's always felt like nothing more than a lesser version of Puerto Rico to me
---

House on the Haunted Hill?

My friends have Millenium Blades and they and I both want to play but we haven't yet had the chance.
---