Board 8 > another year of tabletop rankings and writeups

(+) Yeah! (+)

125. One Night Ultimate Werewolf (2014)

Category: Team vs Team
Genres: Party game, hidden roles
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 10 minutes
Experience: 15+ plays with 5-10 players (2015-2018)
Previous ranks: 55 (2016), 74/80 (2018)

Summary - One or two werewolves are mixed in with other hidden roles. Theres an app-driven night phase were various roles wake up and perform night actions, followed by a day phase on a time limit, at teh end of which everyone points to a player to kill. If a werewolf has a plurality, the non-werewolf team wins; otherwise, the werewolves win. The twist? Certain roles can change the allegiance of their own or other players, so you dont know which team youre on.

Design - Theres a lot thats clever and unique about ONUW. The micro-game-time, the funny roles, the confusion, and of course the fact that you can be high-fiving at the end of the game and then flip over your card and realize youre on the same team as the wolf you just lynched.

Experience - And yeah, I have laughed at ONUW. Ive played it plenty of times, after all. The issue is more that the average play experience involves a type of bluffing and play that eludes me. To me, things generally come down to the power roles want to talk this time and Im gonna sit until info comes out to implicate/exonerate someone. Theres a decision space to be had in ONUW but its beyond my grasp. A lot of these games tend to end with everyone else laughing, or a trivial case where no one really interfered with a Seer who immediately identified a werewolf, or me being the Insomniac and looking down at a werewolf card and immediately being outed by the Troublemaker or whatever.

I love social deduction and hidden roles, but the principle behind them is the arc that builds over time as you figure out whos on your team, persuade others based on evidence, and actually try to win for your team. ONUW messes with all those assumptions, and thats probably what makes it brilliant for the people who understand and love this game. As for me, it just makes me shake my fist or shrug.

Future - The right meta probably makes this game good, but its really not my thing. Ive sat out games and left meetups early to avoid this game, or mostly just stomached it for short goes. My main groups have mostly let this fall by the wayside, however.

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Out of the ONU games, my preference is Vampire, but Werewolf is okay too. Didnt like Alien and havent played Super Villains.

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Eaten By Sea Monsters
133. Secret Hitler (2015)
132. Good Cop, Bad Cop (2014)
131. Survive: Escape from Atlantis! (1982)
130. Sheriff of Nottingham (2014)
129. Dead of Winter (2014)
128. Imperial Settlers (2014)
127. But Wait, There's More! (2011)
126. Word on the Street (2009)
125. One Night Ultimate Werewolf (2014)

responding to some posts in a bit!

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My issue with ONUW is how the total randomness undermines any sense of strategy. Not that a game needs strategy to be fun, but it feels like a game built on it, but a few players at random just have their shit ruined for no reason.

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with one night werewolf you have to be willing to accept that sometimes the lack of information (due to the way the "night" played out) is beyond your grasp and may sometimes result in something seemingly completely random happening

it's not a great game but it is certainly more fun than munchkin, and a heck of a lot shorter
also a nice icebreaker game for groups with many strangers

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I remember when I liked Munchkin.

The only good thing about the good old days is that theyre over.

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munchkin is mildly fun for about 2-3 plays as you're seeing the cards for the first time
there's really nothing interesting about it beyond that

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TomNook posted...

Seven entries, and there has yet to be a 5+ complexity rating show up yet! I take it those are more your type of game. Guess we'll see!

that's an interesting point! my tastes have definitely trended heavier with time

Raka_Putra posted...

Oh man that last game sounds really fun to play with my theater friends.

yeah, i'm sure it can be enjoyed by the right group! i just don't think much of it as a "game," more an activity. (i've removed a few games that i love because they seemed a little nebulous on the "game" angle)

Tom Bombadil posted...

social games ewwwwww

hi tom

TomNook posted...

My issue with ONUW is how the total randomness undermines any sense of strategy. Not that a game needs strategy to be fun, but it feels like a game built on it, but a few players at random just have their shit ruined for no reason.

Naye745 posted...

with one night werewolf you have to be willing to accept that sometimes the lack of information (due to the way the "night" played out) is beyond your grasp and may sometimes result in something seemingly completely random happening

it's not a great game but it is certainly more fun than munchkin, and a heck of a lot shorter
also a nice icebreaker game for groups with many strangers

can agree with these, and perhaps it's a sign of how little i now want to play with strangers that i don't like ONUW!

never played munchkin so no comment there!

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Great_Paul posted...

Out of the ONU games, my preference is Vampire, but Werewolf is okay too. Didnt like Alien and havent played Super Villains.

never played any of those, but one night revolution (set in the resistance universe) was hilariously bad!

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124. Guillotine (1998)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Set collection, card-drafting
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 20-30 minutes
Experience: 5-8 plays with 4-5 players (2016-2019)
Previous ranks: 62/100 (2016), 62/80 (2018)

Summary - Two decks: Nobles (who are lined up in front of a guillotine) and action cards. Each turn, you can play an action card but most behead the noble at the front of the guillotine (collect it into your set). A round ends when all the twelve nobles are executed, and the game ends after three effectively identical rounds.

Design - Guillotine is super-cute. The theme is darkly hilarious and the tagline is among my favorite of all time: the revolutionary game where you win by getting a head. The guillotine prop is an amazing visual, and when its played right, the game moves very quickly as a nice filler. Its not particularly deep or balanced, but thats not really the point.

Experience - My first plays of Guillotine were with my own group, and they went great. Snappy playtime, laughing at the take-that and the cartoonish art, the scores dont matter!

Almost every time that this game has come out at a meetup and Ive been roped in, the experience has been significantly worst. Because of the unbalanced nature of Guillotine, fast play and good company are critical. Youd think that in a game with very little social component, you could pretty much enjoy yourself with anyone. Here, its the games shallowness that makes the playgroup paramount. In a five-player game where someone is agonizing for more than thirty seconds every time its his turn, and there is the occasional take-that card, the lack of agency is absolutely brutal.

Future - Ive virtually never requested this game but havent always been repelled by it. Theres a lot of good reason to be wary with strangers, though.

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I've played Werewolf several times and yet I'm not even sure if it was ever played correctly. It feels way too random. I don't really get a lot of fun out of it aside from "Ha ha, that happened."

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123. Sagrada (2017)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Tile-laying, dice assignment
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30 minutes
Experience: 2 plays (2018-19)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - A bunch of dice of different color are rolled. Players then draft the dice on their turn to place onto their tableaus, obeying certain placement rules. After nine rounds of new dice being rolled and drafted, the game ends and final scores are calculated based on how well youve fit them onto your tableau.

Design - Sagrada is very visually appealing - brightly colored dice that fit very nicely onto a grid, with a theme based on the stained glass windows of the Sagrada Familia church in Portugal. Theres some thinkiness to it.

Experience - Ive never really found Sagradas decision space to be particularly appealing. Theres not a whole lot of room for creativity. Usually you just want to get the die that matches your secret goal color, or the die that happens to fit your needs. Drafting dice can feel good, but its not interesting? But perhaps worst is that Sagrada came out the same year as, and in many ways both physically and tactically resembles, a far superior game.

Future - I would never pick Sagrada over its better regarded counterpart, which will show up later on this list. It doesnt exactly leave itself open for quite as shitty experiences as lower games on this list (its inoffensive; its pretty; it has no take-that elements; it isnt interminable because it has a set number of rounds... but the experience has virtually no highs. Its just bland.


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Sagrada is the last game I bought, and it's been a pretty good time the couple of times I've played :\

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sagrada is pretty great. by the time i first got to try it i already had and loved roll player, so it kind of came and went without much attention from me, but its a good game to play with relative newbies who just want something fun and pretty and it does that well

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SeabassDebeste posted...

never played any of those, but one night revolution (set in the resistance universe) was hilariously bad!

I bought that game on sale years ago, never played it, sold it for around the same price.

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Aw, dang, I love Sagrada.

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seems like the most popular game i've dropped so far!

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122. Innovation (2010)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Card game, tableau-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 60 minutes
Experience: 2 plays (2017-18), 3 and 2 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Innovation is entirely a card game - both players draw from a big deck and attempt to play those cards into their tableaus and advance their technology fastest. Improved tableaus give stronger abilities. Players race to be the first to complete milestones.

Design - Innovation is pretty sophisticated, with loaded but attractive cards and interesting ways to meld and splay cards - i.e. overlap them but reveal one edge, which gives a power, or reveal another edge, which has different power. My biggest source of annoyance was the Milestone scoring mechanic; in order to score, you have to be first to a Milestone. But accomplishing one Milestone puts you by default closer to the next Milestone than the players behind you.

Experience - That runaway leader effect was present in both games I played. In the first, the owner of the game won handily with four or so Milestones while the rest of us combined for one (and I believe I had zero). The next game I was also steamrolled. Obviously there was a skill gap, but (and this doesnt happen that often these days) there also felt like a massive comprehension gap. During my two plays I could never quite grasp Innovation. Could never get cards of the right suit, never really felt combos materialize, never felt like I was competing meaningfully. Its kind of easy to be salty and bash on a game, but I didnt even get Innovation.

Future - I think I want to like Innovation. Its clever, and people I personally know (including the one who pasted me twice) like it a lot. It just seems like theres perhaps too steep a learning curve, too much going on, to try that with someone whos advanced compared to me. Maybe as a couples game it is only $17 on Amazon if that happened, Id expect this to rise a lot.

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I like Innovation quite a bit- possibly because I mainly have played it against an AI. I bought it but can't find my copy, and I'm not even sure I still have the program either, so rip me.

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innovation is a game that i think is pretty good and well made, but it just doesn't do what i want out of an engine-building game and it suffers from that

i just don't like my engine creation/interaction to be so volatile, it makes for a seemingly chaotic and random experience

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happy new year, board gamers! more to come tomorrow.

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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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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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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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I pretty much never play anything two player cause our group always has at least 4 people but still interesting reads
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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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Cosmic is one of those games I want to play but I dont think Id want to play many more times.

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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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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?

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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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Cosmic is one of my favorite games of all time, this is unfathomably low.

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Fake Artist is fun. I havent played the real copy, but my friend had made his own version.

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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.

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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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fake artist is pretty great but i generally appreciate it most for the ridiculous drawing at the end moreso than the game portion.

take that for what you will

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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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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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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.

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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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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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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.

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SeabassDebeste posted...

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.

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

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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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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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SeabassDebeste posted...

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

There are a ton of cards where you can remove part of someone's dungeon, buff the hero, make the hero skip a room, etc. Plus there are actual counterspell type cards. Some of this probably depends on if you have all the expansions, not sure since I have all of them mixed together.

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I didn't like Carcassonne but it's been a very long time and my tastes have almost certainly changed. Should probably try it again.

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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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carcassonne is great. i dont have it among the top of my personal favorites list but i still love it a lot.

that said, it's probably the very best game to demonstrate why more expansions are not necessarily a good thing. inns & cathedrals is perfect, one might even say essential. traders & builders is generally pretty good, as is the river (which i think is now included w/ base games). everything else is...either extraneous or actively bad, depending on your tastes. stuff like princess & dragon and (infamously) the catapult are so far away from what makes carcassonne what it is that you wonder why they even exist.

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also on your strategic note, carcassonne functionally plays up to 6 (!) but really works best with 2 and 3. any more players and you start to lose a significant amount of strategic agency.
the 2p game can get really tight and cutthroat and i enjoy that. trying to sneak on a farmer or block off an opponent's city is much more viable when they're the only competition.

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I tried carcassonne once or twice on steam and it never really made any sense to me. I think I'd be much more partial to it if I had it explained to me by an actual player, but as you described I'm already familiar with tabletop in general so I probably wouldn't enjoy it as a gateway experience.

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