Board 8 > eighty tabletop games, ranked

(+) Yeah! (+)

Arkham Horror isn't a hard game at all
---

Depends on the Ancient One you get. Zig and to some extent Nyarlathotep are pretty easy. Quachil Uttaus is the definition of a bad time; Yog-Sothoth can be a bitch too.
---

I am like Tom when it comes to co-op difficulty. If anything I want to win 75 percent of the time. And I always want to feel like we could have one if not for a couple mistakes/ bad luck.

But I mostly play with my wife who wants to win 90percent of the time. She doesn't play games for difficult challenges. Makes it tough to find co open games to play.
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

Lost Legacy sounds cool. It's an official spinoff?

Yes it is. I know AEG publishes it but I actually got the original Japanese one, just cos the art looks better:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/142039/lost-legacy

It's got english on the cards as well, which was super great.

th3l3fty posted...

Arkham Horror isn't a hard game at all

Are you serious? Have you ever fought Atlach-Nacha (all gates are bursts, and he's phys/magic resist) or Quachil Uttaus (the mummy with the dust deck that haunts the first player until he's devoured)?

That said, I've not known any other co-op that requires so much micro-ing as AH.
---

41. Small World
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40692/small-world

Genre/mechanics: Area control, variable player powers
Rules complexity: 5/10
Game length: 45-90 minutes
Player count: 2-5
Experience: 4-6 games with 3-4 players
First played: 2015

In Small World, you take lead a fantastic race, imbued with special powers, and invade the planet to score points. Over the course of ten rounds, you score points based on how much territory you control at the end of your round, before others take it from you on their turn. The twist - you're not married to your race. At any point, you can send your race into decline and choose another race, though this will cost you a turn.

Design - Small World is very, very appealing. The terrain types are colorful and varied. There are four differently sized maps - one for each player count. Each race has its own cardboard token set, and while there are over a dozen, each is distinctive-looking enough that you can tell them apart. Now, the balance between them may not be perfect, but each player gets to choose the race they want, and pay for the most recently turned-up race.

Enjoyment - Small World is one of those games that's just... pleasant. You can cheer for others as they smash your common enemies; you can gripe; you can trash-talk; you can play the political game of "oh, I'm not leading, he's leading!" SW also came along early into my gaming experience, and it's nice to experience this type of game where you're not pushing cubes on a board uninteractively, the attacking doesn't feel personal and is never passive-aggressive, and you transparently see how to score points.

Replay - That said, it's not super-deep, and I don't think I feel the need to revisit this often. I'll play it if it's at the table, but won't seek it out.

Bonus question - What is your favorite Days of Wonder title?

Hint for #40 - In which I've never played with the American rules
---

Simoun posted...

Are you serious? Have you ever fought Atlach-Nacha (all gates are bursts, and he's phys/magic resist) or Quachil Uttaus (the mummy with the dust deck that haunts the first player until he's devoured)?

That said, I've not known any other co-op that requires so much micro-ing as AH.

Oh man, I forgot Atlach-Nacha. Probably repressed the memory. Cthulhu can be rough too if you get an investigator who is naturally 7/3 or, worse, 3/7.

Arkham isnt a game you play during a game day its THE game you play since theres just so much. Usually I take the role of GM to handle the minutiae of the game for the other players in my group so it goes a little faster and with less mess. Plus, I get to keep the themes going this way so people dont get so bogged down by the crunch that they forget how great the fluff is.
---

speaking of filler games, I like Kolbolds ate my baby. *all hail King Torg*

Your write up of love letter reminded me of that.
---

I will admit that I forgot about Arkham Horror's expansions since I haven't played it in so long, and I only ever played Innsmouth and King in Yellow

the base game is kind of a joke though
---

Base Arkham is easier because there are fewer places for gates/clues to appear. But if you havent played with Dunwich, you havent played Arkham it improves the game so much that I consider it a necessity to the overall game.

Speaking of difficulty, dear God does Innsmouth make everything a pain in the ass.
---

Tag
---

small world is...fine? i dont really love the board-grabbing competition, which often has kingmaking problems, but the "bidding" on race-attribute combos and the variation that creates is rad (and easily the most exciting part of the game)
---

40. Mysterium
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/181304/mysterium

Genre/mechanics: Cooperative, limited communication, clue-giving, card game
Rules complexity: 3/10
Game length: 45 minutes
Player count: 2-7
Experience: 5-8 plays with 4-7 players
First played: 2015

In Mysterium, one player is a ghost of a murder victim, and the others are mediums trying to divine the killer's identity, crime site, and murder weapon. Illustrated suspect/location/weapon cards compose the "board" of the game, and the ghost hands vision cards out to each of the mediums so they can guess which suspect/location/weapon card corresponds to them, personally. The game lasts up to seven rounds of clue-giving and guessing.

Design - It's Dixit meets Codenames, in cooperative form. Mysterium is perhaps more impressive for its fantastic aesthetic than for its game design. All the art on the cards is perfect in this massive, haunted manor. There's a massive shield wall that the Ghost player can use to organize their version of suspect cards. And of course, I generally just like clue-giving games.

Enjoyment - I first played Mysterium as the Ghost, and man, it's fascinating to watch people debate amongst themselves. You can take your time handing out cards in any order - not the tightest design, but it allows you to hear table-talk of one group before heading to another. And of course at the end of the phase, the mediums feel like they can't possibly have misunderstood you - before you tell them, "Red... is wrong. Purple... is wrong. Blue... is wrong. White... is wrong..."

For the most part, subsequent plays, not as the Ghost, are considerably less fun. Part of it is that playing with the same group and seeing the same cards over again, there's not a ton of variety to the game. Because it is fully cooperative, it would be trivially easy to "break" the game by playing it three times in a row and coming up with dead-on associations. It's happened a bit, even unintentionally, because groupthink can eventually lead to one-to-one card associations, and neither the clue deck nor the suspect decks are particularly deep.

My favorite play after my first play came after I was already reasonably experienced at the game. This was the play with only three mediums - each guessing for two crime scenarios - and one Ghost. Great friends, two of them new to the game, and the trash talk flowed like wine. Technically, the American rules to this Polish game let you bet against one another, but we've never actually used the clairvoyance markers. But man, that one boisterous experience in this rather moody, quiet game, is my shining memory.

Future - I'm going to be careful about playing Mysterium overall, since getting to know the cards too well, especially with one playgroup, can sap the fun and novelty of it. But once in a blue moon, sure.

Bonus question - What games that you like are you most careful about not playing too often?

Hint for #39 - Beatles or bulls?
---

Yeah, Mysterium is a lot of fun, but you can't play it too often with the same people. There are a couple of expansion packs of new cards, so that helps a bit in that regard.

I do love hearing the ghost's explanation for a string of cards that makes no sense at the end of the game, though. That never gets old.
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

What games that you like are you most careful about not playing too often?

I understand all these words but not in this order

everything I like I drive into the dang ground, take off a few months, and repeat (Dominion, Ascension) or can't play often enough to get burned out (....everything else p much)
---

Tom Bombadil posted...

can't play often enough to get burned out

what does this mean, generally?
---

yeah i generally tend to lean on the tombolo side of that equation, which is why my favorite games (dominion, race for the galaxy, castles of burgundy, galaxy trucker, the resistance) are ones i've played and overplayed, and gone through multiple cycles of being super into, and subsequently burnt out on
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

what does this mean, generally?

it means I get to play like three board games in a good month, so most non-solo games I play maybe twice a year tops, and there aren't many games I'd burn out on that easily
---

39. 6 nimmt
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/432/6-nimmt

Genre/mechanics: Simultaneous card selection
Rules complexity: 1/10
Game length: 5 minutes per round
Player count: 2-10
Experience: 15+ rounds over 3-5 plays
First played: 2015

6 nimmt! is a game about getting the least number of points, as represented by beetle/bull-head symbols. (Cards have points if they are multiples of 5 or 11.) Each round, you are randomly dealt a hand of numbered cards between 1 and 104. On a turn, you choose a card, and it (along with everyone else's) is placed in order on a tableau of four card rows, depending on its number. If your card fills the card row to its limit, you take all the cards in that row and all the points printed on those cards.

I don't have a ton to say here - it's a filler that's wonderfully cerebral but incredibly interactive. One of my first games, it's never been a gaming experience like Mysterium, but it's also virtually impossible to have a negative play experience. Blind-bidding is always risky, and anticipating your opponents' moves is critical. The game's chaos level can rise rapidly with player-count, as you could be at risk of eating points on turn 1, if you happen to play last in a bucket. There's zero rules overhead and zero setup time other than randomizing and dealing cards - I'd totally play a few hands before most game nights.

Bonus question - What's your favorite playing-card-like designer game?

Hint for #38 - A game very similar in weight and "theme."
---

6 nimmt is the top tier filler
---

I played Mysterium once. I didn't get a single clue wrong. I didn't know it had different rules in america.

My husband did poorly at guessing, but we helped him. Luckily at the end, all 3 of us guessed the same thing which was right.

But yeah, I wouldn't play it too much.
---

you can up the difficulty in mysterium by giving more red herring suspects

american rules allow you to use 'clairvoyance markers' to bet on who is correct/wrong - and i believe you need to have a certain number of clairvoyance points to participate in the final choice

yeah, i don't get it
---

the final vote is more difficult if someone doesn't manage to reach 3 cards on the track, but in all the times I've played Mysterium, that's only ever happened once

it's not a bad mechanic, but it probably could have been implemented better
---

I'm going to buy the entire top ten list for my board game group (we currently only play Settlers and deck building games)

thanks in advance
---

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.

Haha, yeah, but at least if you act first you get to decide who wins!
---

38. No Thanks!
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12942/no-thanks

Genre/mechanics: Push-your-luck, bidding, set collection
Rules complexity: 1/10
Game length: 5-10 minutes
Player count: 3-5
Experience: 4+ sessions (10+ rounds) with 4-5
First played: 2015

No Thanks!, like 6 nimmt!, is a game about trying to acquire the lowest points via numbered cards. Each player starts with a number of red chips, and one by one, numbered cards turn up to be bid on. The thing is, you bid the chips, worth negative, points in order not to take the cards. Take the card, and you gain the point value on its face, but also the red chips on it. If you have no chips, you must take the card. However, if you take consecutive cards - 18 and 19 - then you only score the lowest one.

Design - From the summary above, you can pretty much see where all the tension comes form in No Thanks! - the surest way to win is never to take a single card, but that's a near-impossible strategy to execute, as high-face-value cards will go multiple times around the table and drain you of your red tokens. Taking low-valued cards can also be good, since you score relatively little and give up no red chips. There's hate-drafting available, if someone has 18-19 as well as 21-22-23, but taking a 20 straight-up is a tough call to make in a more-than-two-player game. And of course, if you wind up with the highest 33 card and a 32 turns up, you can try bleed your opponents for their treasured red chips for a few turns around the table before taking it at zero cost and getting all those benefits (as long as no one else decides to eat the hit instead).

Enjoyment - The first time I played No Thanks!, it wasn't that great, in large part because one of the players kept telling others to take the hit. (Like in many other multi-player games, you can screw over an opponent if you know what you're doing, but often that means suffering yourself - which means that the true beneficiaries are all the other players you didn't target.) Alas, I haven't played No Thanks! that much. Part of that is certainly because the only person who owns it moved away.

Future - The other reason I don't already own NT! is that it fills a somewhat strange spot. It's a filler game that plays super-fast, but it doesn't play more than 5 players, so you can't necessarily use it for a group. The scoring structure and high variance also seems to suggest that you play it multiple rounds, which might lengthen the experience - and the game doesn't seem suited as a centerpiece, either. Nonetheless, I think it's incredibly clever and playable and would love to play it again.

Bonus question - What's your favorite non-party-game filler?

Hint for #38 - I'm hungry.
---

Hungry hungry hippos good choice
---

I thought No Thanks was actually a pretty good filler game. To me, For Sale fills a similar spot as a very good non-party filler game. And even though it's only 4 players and a bit longer than the other two, Splendor is another good choice to me.
---

When I go back home for various holidays, we usually have 7 people for games, and No Thanks is one of the only games I own that works great with 7 and we all unanimously like it. Nobody's crazy about it, but everyone has a good time and wants to play multiple rounds. We'll usually play a big round of Balderdash, a few rounds of No Thanks, and a finale round of Sushi Go Party.

I slightly prefer For Sale over No Thanks, but For Sale only goes up to 6 :( and my brother hates it for some reason.
---

I really enjoy splendor
---

haha i also thought hungry hippos
---

splendor is p cool

I had a bootleg phone app of it until I realized it was not an original game, but I liked it
---

Splendor is fantastic and also rage-inducing when someone corners one of the gems.
---

Splendor aint really my jam but i can see why people like it
---

Tom Bombadil posted...

Hungry hungry hippos good choice

---

37. Agricola
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31260/agricola

Genre/mechanics: Worker placement, resource management
Rules complexity: 7/10
Game length: 60-150 minutes (30-40 minutes per player)
Player count: 2-5
Experience: 5+ plays with 2, 3, 5 (including app/online plays)
First played: 2015

Agricola is a workper placement game themed around subsistence farming. Each round, players take turns placing one worker at a time, drafting available actions - such as collecting wood, stone, reed, grain, or food; improving abilities using cards; getting animals and building fences for them; plowing and sowing fields; or growing your family and your house. Your farm is judged on its ability to achieve all of these objectives - and to feed your family consistently - after fourteen rounds.

Enjoyment - Man, I have a tortured relationship with this game. First off, I've never won. It should be noted I am terrible at complex strategy games such as Agricola. And then, the first time that I played this game, it was one of my first eurogames and with five players, with one incredibly analysis-paralysis-prone player (who sat away from me at this giant table). I didn't know people very well yet, I was doing by far the worst, and I was hungry. All I knew was that every time around the table, we'd be stuck for five minutes on someone's turn I could barely see, doing something called "baking bread" (an option not available to me, because I wasn't able to invest in an oven or grain, because my family was fucking starving). I'd have the shortest turns and the fewest, as I didn't grow my family much. Three and a half hours later, along with that first game of Catan, it was one of my formative, and worst, gaming experiences ever.

Since then I've played Agricola a handful of times, never with more than three players. The games haven't gone over two hours - perhaps not over 90 minutes if you don't count setup - and while I'm still garbage at the game, I've been able to see what's happening, look other players in the eye, and appreciate just how much I suck. I also learned what baking bread means. And... I don't know about fun, but I feel the pressure of working against the game.

Design - I have so much respect for how Agricola is designed. Part of me thinks it's Stockholm Syndrome. Action economy is tight, yet there are so many options per turn. If you lose it feels on you. The biggest pressure on a player is to feed your family, but the scoring rubric feels incredibly punishing. You didn't manage to build a shed? Take a negative point. You didn't have time to grow vegetables? Take a negative point. You had to eat all your sheep? Take a negative point. Essentially, everyone has to compete for every action, in order to stay afloat in the race. The game opens up later, as you get a bigger workforce and access to more powerful actions, but you don't ever get a chance to relax before the game ends. Agricola more or less exemplifies the way Ben Wyatt's Cones of Dunshire is described: "punishingly intricate."

The other cool part about Agricola is its theme. Subsistence farming isn't thrilling, but it's satisfying when everything kind of makes intuitive sense - animals bread, fields need to be plowed before they can be planted in; brick is required to build fireplaces or ovens; you need extra rooms to house extra workers. Don't fish for a while, and the fishing hole starts overflowing with fish to be caught. Though ho, ho, why can only one couple have sex in the village per year.

Replay - Yeah, I'd do it again. With no more than four. I can't help wanting to test myself again, even though I feel like I'll wind up hating myself again after two hours.

Bonus question - What games make you feel always on the edge because of the game, and not necessarily because of the player interaction?

Hint for #36 - It's the mouse!
---

Ive only played Caverna but I do really want to try Agricola sometime.
---

i'd love to try caverna but it's a $100 game that takes up an absolute ton of space and i doubt i'd like it + play it nearly enough to justify the storage + expense.

i'd like to play it at a meetup, but i also hear it's a bear of a game to set up/tear down and that it's epic-long
---

Caverna is so much better than Agricola. The constant worry about having your whole family die from lack of food is gone and you can just focus on building up your area.

I don't think it's significantly longer than Agricola, the game takes place over the same number of turns. There's a bit more options per turn, so things can take longer, but it's not a huge difference IMO.
---

I've only played Agricola once and it sounds like it was the same as your first experience with it.
---

My friend got it from a 50% off table and he made a laser-cut insert for it. I cant imagine having to set up on the table/put away without that.
---

36. Ghost Blitz
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/83195/ghost-blitz

Genre/mechanics: Pattern recognition, dexterity
Rules complexity: 1/10
Game length: 5-10 minutes
Player count: 2-8
Experience: 30+ games, thousands of cards, with 2-8 players
First played: 2016

Five wooden items sit in a circle: a white ghost, a red chair, a blue book, a green bottle, and a grey mouse. A card is flipped over, depicting two items, but at least one of them will have another item's color. If one of the items matches its own color, be the first to grab that item. If neither matches the color, grab the object for which neither item nor color matches (i.e., if you see a red mouse and a blue ghost, take the green bottle). First one to grab the correct item wins the card, and then next card is flipped.

Design - This game is ridiculously simple. If you've played SET, it's a very similar concept - be the first to identify the right item (with some speed thrown in). If you like real-time pattern recognition games, then it's for you. If you don't, then don't play this with a competitive player. The wooden components are fucking adorable, and the art is super-cute, too, especially illustrations of the ghost and/or the mouse.

Enjoyment - Ghost Blitz was perhaps the highlight of the game night where I discovered it - and I played around seven new games that day. Another person there pulled it out as a three-player filler game while waiting for the final game of the evening. I've managed to get Ghost Blitz to the table an absolute ton, because its lightness as a game is virtually unparalleled. A lot of that is due to the lovely, friendly, grabble ghost, or the cute mouse's tail, or the way people get attached to snatching that green bottle since it's closest and identifying when it's missing can feel satisfying and reliable. That said, it can be highly polarizing for people who don't enjoy this type of time pressure or fast-twich reflexes, as it's completely feasible for the slightly-faster/more experienced player to whitewash the rest - as in, winning 80% of the cards in a game with 8 participants. For that reason, I haven't brought it out that much lately.

Future - As I mentioned, going all-out in Ghost Blitz isn't super-enjoyable to me, and some of my group have expressed strong dislike for it, so it's been coming out a lot less. I do enjoy GB's expansions/sequels. My friend has the '5 of 12' variant which includes nine pieces and three images per card - and alternate rules for specific cards. It's still a nice warm-up/filler for people who might be enamored by the pieces and can learn in just a minute or two.

Bonus question - Do you have any games that you're too good at to play with new players? Are you able to suppress your competitive spirit to make it enjoyable?

Hint for #35 - You can be on a roll, until the arrows start a-comin'.
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

Hint for #35 - You can be on a roll, until the arrows start a-comin'.

Bang the Dice Game

I hate those arrows
---

35. BANG! The Dice Game
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143741/bang-dice-game

Genre/mechanics: Dice-rolling, push-your-luck, hidden roles, team-vs-team
Rules complexity: 4/10
Game length: 10-20 minutes
Player count: 3-8
Experience: 5-8 plays with 6-8 players
First played: 2015

A sheriff with a deputy. A team of hidden outlaws. One desperate renegade. On your turn, you roll and re-roll a bunch of dice, which let you deal damage, heal wounds, or most annoyingly, acquire an arrow (which sticks, even if re-rolled). Each character also has a special power. Last team standing wins.

Design - BTDG reimplements BANG!, an Italian card game featuring much of the same - the same three parties, hidden roles, and similar abilities. A colossal difference here is that defense is essentially not a strategy. Whereas BANG! could have a player eliminated in ten minutes while a game took forty, the arrow mechanic in BTDG, specifically, makes that nearly impossible. You still get to roleplay your secret alignment for a while, but once the Indians strike you and eat half your health in one go, it won't matter how much beer you're trying to drink to restore your health.

Enjoyment - I haven't played BTDG in years, and that makes me sad. It was another game early into my gaming experience, and I think I might appreciate it even more now. It was a game impossible to take seriously due to the swinginess of the dice and arrows. But it was effortless to learn, effortless to play, and hilariously mean.

Replay - I'd absolutely love to play this again. Gotta tell the people who own it to bring it next time we have a sizable gathering!

Bonus question - What is your favorite reimplementation of a game?

Hint for #34 - a classic euro with a shocking twist.
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

Bonus question - Do you have any games that you're too good at to play with new players? Are you able to suppress your competitive spirit to make it enjoyable?

the majority of my enjoyment of Dominion is screwing around with complicated engines that may or may not be viable, so sure
---

ya go my power grid
---

Unpopular Opinion time: I actually love BANG the Card Game. People who complain about the elimination just don't know "how" to play it. The game at least for us is deliberate, social, and requires even amounts of tabletalk to truly work. Sure, you can just shoot each other and in 2 seconds everyone's roles become obvious. But I've seen some crazy plays like a rogue Deputy whittling the Sherrif within an inch of his life so that his enemies can fight amongst themselves.

Bang the Card game is the one game I regret I can't play anymore as absolutely everyone hates it and prefers the dice version.
---

I own both Agricola and Caverna

no regrets
---

Simoun posted...

Unpopular Opinion time: I actually love BANG the Card Game. People who complain about the elimination just don't know "how" to play it. The game at least for us is deliberate, social, and requires even amounts of tabletalk to truly work. Sure, you can just shoot each other and in 2 seconds everyone's roles become obvious. But I've seen some crazy plays like a rogue Deputy whittling the Sherrif within an inch of his life so that his enemies can fight amongst themselves.

Bang the Card game is the one game I regret I can't play anymore as absolutely everyone hates it and prefers the dice version.

Simoun posted...

Unpopular Opinion time: I actually love BANG the Card Game. People who complain about the elimination just don't know "how" to play it. The game at least for us is deliberate, social, and requires even amounts of tabletalk to truly work. Sure, you can just shoot each other and in 2 seconds everyone's roles become obvious. But I've seen some crazy plays like a rogue Deputy whittling the Sherrif within an inch of his life so that his enemies can fight amongst themselves.

Bang the Card game is the one game I regret I can't play anymore as absolutely everyone hates it and prefers the dice version.

it's not just the elimination, though - the game moves at a crawl. coup lets you get killed early, but you know it won't last long afterward. the onslaught of MANCATO! cards, and the fact that you need a bang card to deal damage, is just killer!
---

34. Power Grid
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2651/power-grid

Genre/mechanics: Area control, bidding, resource management, route-building, economic
Rules complexity: 7/10
Game length: 90-150 minutes
Player count: 3-6
Experience: 1 base game, 1 game China - 5 players each
First played: 2015

In Power Grid, your power plant company competes with others' to deliver power to the most cities. There are three key phases - bidding on power plants that allow you to generate the power, building routes to cities so you can deliver that power, and buying the limited resources that you burn for power. Each costs money, which you earn when you successfully deliver that power.

Design - I love pretty much all of three of the decision point steps of Power Grid.

An auction is by nature high-player-interaction - you have to gauge the value of plants against what your opponents bid; a plant might cost a lot of resources to power, but then you can hoard them and corner the market in those resources.

The game includes a very neat catch-up mechanic, where player order in subsequent rounds is determined by who has the fewest cities in their grid, so you might not want to build cities before you can power them - but the issue is, others can beat you to the city first and force a nasty monetary penalty when you try to break into those markets later.

And the resource market also is vicious - money carries over perfectly from round to round, but to imitate supply and demand, the more bought and unburned resources people are hoarding, the more each resource costs.

As a result of the way the game is designed, then, there's this tense competition in each phase of the game, even as there are no obvious "Take that!" mechanics. There are so many decision points, so many aspects you have to evaluate (and which I suck at doing). It's incredibly tight, elegant game design that more than justifies its potentially lengthy playtime (and slightly annoying upkeep).

Enjoyment - Alas, I've only played Power Grid twice. It's the highest-ranking only-played-twice game on the list, and some of those plays were long - which should speak to just how much I admire the game design.

Replay - All that said, I'm not exactly dying to get PG to the table again. It's long and I pretty much suck at it, and my usual playgroup is four and not five-to-six, which is where I'd expect PG to be best, as the least amount of map has to be cordoned off. That said, at some point, the stars will align and I'll be in on it and I'll get a solider read.

Bonus question - What heavier game do you feel is awesome, but haven't quite gotten to the table enough to confirm?

Hint for #33 - a eurogame with an awesome, giant centerpiece
---

Finally some good games.

Power Grid is actually fairly light for a Euro imo, but its still a good play and Ive never had a bad experience with it.
---