Board 8 > another year of tabletop rankings and writeups

(+) Yeah! (+)

I like Boss Monster. I love the aesthetic of it, and it's pretty fun. I never felt like it was too strategic though. I always just kind of rolled with the punches of whatever is drawn (for heroes and rooms).

Also, the first ever game I played of it someone played the Jeopardy card as the very first move. ...Not great.

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112. Bohananza (1997)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Trading, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30 to 45 minutes
Experience: 2-3 plays over 2 sessions (2015, 2018) with 4-6 players
Previous ranks: 96/100 (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - You're collecting beans as cards and planting them in sets so they give you victory points. You can also trade beans with others on your turn.

Experience - My first play with Bohnanza was with friends, but six of them, and slightly competitive ones. My next play wasn't 'til three years later, but it was with my then-regular gaming group of four, and people spent a lot less time negotiating.

Design - Bohnanza isn't fancy or pretty, but it does offer you a bunch of troublesome decisions because of the way you can't manage your hand the way you'd like. It's slightly interactive in trading, but not overly damaging, and there aren't a lot of negative feelings involved. The theme is also pretty fun - planting beans. That said, I'm not certain its central mechanic is fun. The decisions are tough and I'm not sure it always feels particularly good.

Future - That said, I'd like to get a bit of a better feel so I can be more articulate about the game! Uwe Rosenberg is one of the most respected dudes in the biz and others of his games do feature on this list.
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Gunned Down
124. Guillotine (1998)
123. Sagrada (2017)
122. Innovation (2010)
121. Quiddler (1998)
120. Tak (2017)
119. Mascarade (2013)
118. Cosmic Encounter (1977)
117. A Fake Artist Goes to New York (2012)
116. Boss Monster (2013)
115. The Godfather: Corleone's Empire (2017)
114. Carcassonne (2000)
113. Colt Express (2014)
112. Bohananza (1997)
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bohnanza is great, it's my 2nd favorite uwe rosenberg game (and my favorite that isnt about farming somewhere) but it's certainly dependent on both your taste in "trading" games and the group you play with

for what its worth, one of its many expansions (high bohn) is really good and helps give the game a little more heft and depth for a group of experienced players

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Set collection games with a boring theme are like my least favorite kind of games, lol, Im still butthurt about Cosmic Encounter

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Set collection games with a boring theme are like my least favorite kind of games, lol, Im still butthurt about Cosmic Encounter

I just don't get CE!
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unrelated to any games currently listed but wingspan out of stock everywhere sad times

I tried to play carcassonne once when i was a young lad and had no idea what to do and have never played since!

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111. Settlers of Catan (1995)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Trading, route-building, area control
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 45 to 100 minutes
Experience: 7+ plays with 2-4 players (2011-2018)
Previous ranks: 86/100 (2016), 66/80 (2018)

Summary - Catan is almost certainly the most famous board game on my list, so if you're reading this far, you probably know it: On a hexagonal grid of hexagonal tiles, players build roads and settlements and gain five different types of resources from communal dice rolls that favor their settlements. These resources are used to build more roads and settlements, upgrade the settlements to cities, and purchase special cards that grant one-time use abilities or victory points. Players can also trade resources with one another.

Experience - My first ever game of Catan, in 2011, was brutal. It was so brutal it turned me away from the idea of "getting into board games" for years. Resource conversions were brutal, the ports felt unintuitive and random, the game took far too long, and worst, I couldn't fucking do anything. These were my closest friends at the time, and I abhorred the game.

I picked it up when a friend was visiting from town and played two-player. With an open map and a much better grasp of the rules, it went much more breezily. Since then I've had lightning-quick, enjoyable 3-player games and some longer 4-player games

Design - Catan recognizes that luck is fun; there's something undeniably endorphine-releasing when someone else rolls the dice and you collect resources. I think people genuinely enjoy trading and negotiation (though I personally don't care for it). It's also got a beautiful aesthetic simplicity (with its wooden components and pastoral setting the definitive eurogame look). As one of the earliest euros, Catan also contains some familiar take-that elements that can even the playing field, and its relatively simple board state allows people to decipher who's winning and losing easily, making it feel more interactive than some other games in the list.

As for why it's low, my massively negative first impression may give a clue. My early hobby gaming days, starting from Catan, were dominated by sucking at pretty much every eurogame. Therefore, when considering this game especially, I'm very sensitive to how it feels to be doing badly in a game.

Like so many economic games, when you have very little, getting more is even more difficult. But making Catan even more brutal is the route-building style in which you expand your territory: if you fall behind at the beginning, you can easily be locked out of ever expanding beyond your initial settlements. And yeah, sure, you can trade, but... if you have the fewest settlements, you also have the fewest goods to trade. Oh, and there are no restrictions on the "screwage" factors of the Monopoly card and the Thief, which allow people to take cards from you, so there are lots of feel-bad moments, too.

As a side note, I'll also say that while it's most known for being played with four, and there is the most competition for spaces there, I actually find it much more enjoyable at three - the playtime goes down by a ton, because not only does each player get to go more frequently, but there's less competition for space, as well as less time wasted asking whether someone has a resource that it's been established no one has. That's why I listed the playtime's range so wide - a 3-player game would be hard-pressed to hit an hour in playtime, while a 4-player game with not-the-fastest-people would average 90 minutes.

Future - Catan is the first game on this list that I own. It does fill a somewhat unique niche, but I don't love it. It doesn't have that unique factor, and it takes a bit too long with four. That said, it's rules-light and decision-light, so I'd definitely be up for playing it with people who aren't cutthroat and are happy just to roll the dice (provided no more interesting alternatives). At three players, I'd be even more eager to break it out. Perhaps its biggest hindrance for its hitting the table at home: it doesn't "really" play two.
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just finished placing second at a Catan National Qualifier tournament yesterday actually (part of a bigger convention and my friends and I do it for fun)

fun to do once a year but thats the only time we really play it

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Catan has a special place in my heart but it does not hold up that great against the litany of games I've played since. It is indeed the dang worst game in which to fall behind, which was usually my role. Got some fun expansions tho.

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honestly catan is pretty good for what it is

some games where the numbers line up just wrong can devolve into one person getting cities fast and running away, but usually the player interaction (via trading and the robber) helps balance the game out and savvy negotiation is key

i don't really play it anymore (i've played it out at this point) but its expansions are all pretty decent and do a good job at moving the game in different directions if you want more catan

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KommunistKoala posted...

just finished placing second at a Catan National Qualifier tournament yesterday actually (part of a bigger convention and my friends and I do it for fun)

fun to do once a year but thats the only time we really play it

that's pretty exciting! i assume you won't go to nationals?

Naye745 posted...

honestly catan is pretty good for what it is

some games where the numbers line up just wrong can devolve into one person getting cities fast and running away, but usually the player interaction (via trading and the robber) helps balance the game out and savvy negotiation is key

i don't really play it anymore (i've played it out at this point) but its expansions are all pretty decent and do a good job at moving the game in different directions if you want more catan

i would be interested in trying expansions but have no desire to buy them, or make the game particularly longer. if they do something about the space crunch, maybe.

fall-behind losers concern me more than runaway leaders!Tom Bombadil posted...

Catan has a special place in my heart but it does not hold up that great against the litany of games I've played since. It is indeed the dang worst game in which to fall behind, which was usually my role. Got some fun expansions tho.

catan wasn't my gateway so i never "outgrew" it. i kinda admire its simplicity; something of its rule capacity might be a good 2p game for me ...
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yeah it was only the winner of the qualifier that got to go. not that I wanted to go since it's in Ohio

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SeabassDebeste posted...

fall-behind losers concern me more than runaway leaders!

I don't even mind fall-behind losers if it still feels like you're doing something. Like say Dominion you can still usually improve your deck and have a sense of progress even if you have no chance of winning. Catan if you get that far behind you probably have junk production and/or have gotten fenced in so there's not even much you can do except wait for the sweet release of somebody else winning.

SeabassDebeste posted...

something of [Catan's] rule capacity might be a good 2p game for me ...

My buddy and I played a lot of 2p catan just by increasing the target score. (I think it was 12 for base and 15 for cities/knights/whatever else added more scoring opportunities) Worked fine imo unless you're really into the area control aspect.

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SeabassDebeste posted...

if they do something about the space crunch, maybe.

Kinda sorta! Cities and Knights has more ways to score so you're not as screwed if you only get two spots. Seafarers IIRC has some scenarios with more tiles. I haven't played anything else enough to remember. (You could also just get the 5-6 player expansion and then play the bigger map with 3-4 I guess)

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i love one night: werewolf but i will concede that you need the right mindset for it to be fun. for me personally, the most fun part of any board game is getting inside your opponents heads and playing mindgames with them. werewolf is a perfect vehicle for that.

but you have to be willing to take major risks and lie your ass off to completely upend the status quo and embrace chaos when youre a minion/werewolf. naturally, the game isnt very fun when the werewolves are bad at lying / the game.

110. Ticket to Ride (2004)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Route-building, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 45-75 minutes
Experience: 3 sessions of TTR US, TTR Europe, and TTR Africa (2015-2017) with 3, 5 players
Previous ranks: 63/100 (2016), 67/80 (2018)

Summary - Players draw cards from a deck or supply area. A set of cards of an appropriate color can be played to lay train tracks down on a map. Points are awarded for connecting cities with tracks and just for having trains played on the board.

Design - TTR is probably #2 in popularity among the games on my list for the "mass market," after Catan. It winds up becoming a lot of people's gateway hobby game and is often talked about in terms of introducing it to new players, or being used as a stepping stone. Because of its role in many gamers' lives (including my own) and its proximity to Catan on my ranking), I might draw comparisons between the two, even though mechanically they're not that similar.

One of the prerequisites to getting there is that it has wonderful table presence, with a map of a real geographic region and brightly colored routes. The train minis are beautiful as well.

Another near-prerequisite: simple rules. The options on any given turn of TTR are extremely manageable but have more agency that Catan's; instead of relying on dice, TTR has cards for its building materials. And instead of a blind draw, TTR invites you first to draft cards from an lineup. You only draw if you don't have a particular card you see in the lineup that you want, or if you want to conceal your intent. And then laying down those tracks feels very mechanically satisfying.

TTR isn't perfect. Early editions of the game had cards that were way too small. In general, I'm also not huge on hidden objectives that both award points for completion and deduct points for failure, though obviously they make sense in TTR. Hoarding cards is also a pretty good strategy given that there is no hand limit, and the "build random routes" strategy can be highly aggravating. And of course, the game lasts rather long for its relative simplicity, though I'll admit this trait might be a plus in its appeal as a gateway; you can really get into a rhythm and experience it to the fullest.

Experience - Like with Catan, a little bit of bio. Catan I played in 2011 before I'd played any hobby games, really. In early 2015, I was invited to a board game night, where I was overwhelmed by the new people and the new games and ALL the new rules. The next day (or was it a week?) I was back there, in a smaller group, with only the host and the friend who'd invited me the first time. We played TTR that weekend twice. It was... well, it was okay. But I have very fond memories of just hanging out and doing this new activity, even though (even then!) I thought the game was a little simplistic.

I've since played TTR twice, though not on the US map. I'd probably estimate Europe > Africa > US, though I don't feel strongly about it at all. Those other plays happened at meetups and with five people, so the company wasn't nearly enjoyable, but I appreciated seen different riffs on the theme.

Future - My main group doesn't own the game, and I'm hardly gonna buy a game I don't love. But given I'm with someone who's never played TTR, it might be worth another play or two - if the opportunity arises.
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if catan, carcassonne, and ticket to ride are the staple "modern" euro gateway games, ttr is easily my least favorite of the three. it's just kind of a boring game - 90% of the time you're beefing up your hand, before you actually do anything.

it's still a pretty good game though! and some of the maps (i've heard PA/UK is stellar) are really neat and offer some different stuff to play with. but overall it's the least compelling and strategically interesting to me by a long shot

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i think a personal dislike for me is games that feel "extraneously" lengthy for what they are. obviously this is hugely subject to opinion and personal taste, but my main problem with munchkin is that for a game of silly card interactions and mountains of relatively random take-that interaction, it just takes too damn long. similarly, i love simple card games that are quick turns of draw a card/play a card-style interaction, but usually those games are <30 minutes in length and individual rounds are even shorter. ticket to ride feels like that kind of game (with a board of course) but padded out to 60-90 minutes.

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Naye745 posted...

i think a personal dislike for me is games that feel "extraneously" lengthy for what they are. obviously this is hugely subject to opinion and personal taste, but my main problem with munchkin is that for a game of silly card interactions and mountains of relatively random take-that interaction, it just takes too damn long. similarly, i love simple card games that are quick turns of draw a card/play a card-style interaction, but usually those games are <30 minutes in length and individual rounds are even shorter. ticket to ride feels like that kind of game (with a board of course) but padded out to 60-90 minutes.

this is ABSOLUTELY true, yes!

Naye745 posted...

if catan, carcassonne, and ticket to ride are the staple "modern" euro gateway games, ttr is easily my least favorite of the three. it's just kind of a boring game - 90% of the time you're beefing up your hand, before you actually do anything.

it's still a pretty good game though! and some of the maps (i've heard PA/UK is stellar) are really neat and offer some different stuff to play with. but overall it's the least compelling and strategically interesting to me by a long shot

i think i'd call catan the least strategic (or at least by FAR the least tactical). but yeah, the impression i get is that carcassonne is the deepest from a strategy/tactics perspective

and after i posted, i did realize that carcassonne is definitely a big-time gateway game too. it slipped my mind because i've played it so little and i didn't play it during "formative" years
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whether you consider the trading and negotiation of catan to be a big part of the depth of the game is going to influence where you have it on the strategy scale. expansions for catan also beef up the game as a whole, while ticket to ride's mostly go sideways (different maps, same amount of complexity)

i definitely agree with carcassonne having the most of the three though, especially when you get to 2-3 players.
and even though the amount of high-profile gateway games has increased a lot since when i started almost a decade ago (splendor, azul, pandemic, and some others have great claims for a spot) i still view ttr/catan/carc as the "big three".

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109. Machi Koro (2012)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Tableau-building, engine-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 30 minutes
Experience: 1 play with no expansion, 1 play with expansion 4 players (2015, 2016)
Previous ranks: 61, 94/100 (2016), 66/80 (2018)

Summary - You build your tableau in Machi Koro by buying property cards with money. Those property cards generate income based on communal dice rolls.

Experience - My first play of Machi Koro was super-fast and super-pleasant. It was one of the very first strategy games that I wound up winning, and there were very few feel-bad moments for anyone, though of course a winner can easily have a biased opinion. My second play included the Harbor expansion, and it took at least twice as long for zero added depth, and for a game with such light decision-making, it almost tanked it.

Design - I love the way that Machi Koro distills the feel-good aspect of Catan - to me, the part where you get money from the roll of dice (also, incidentally, one of the pluses of Monopoly) - but takes away the meanness in the robber, the route-blocking, and being locked out of trading. In so doing, it might actually strike most of the "game" from the game - Machi Koro's decision space is small and rather simple; arguably it plays itself, as you're almost always taking the best property available on your turn.

The Harbor Expansion forces you to buy from a rotating market instead of a fixed market. This introduces a big tactical element, but it's not particularly fun, as it slows the game down as players have to adjust their strategies, plus gives everyone a reason to pause and squint and read what each new card does. It's not like it's super-complex, but part of the appeal of Machi Koro as a game/activity is its frictionlessness, even on a first play. Harbor might be better for big Machi Koro expansions, but my experience with that slotted in 30 slots under the play of the original.

Future - Odds are against MK coming to the table, as I usually see the owners of this game in larger groups. I'd be totally willing to play the base game again; even though I'm worried that the thinness of it would become more and more apparent with each play, it never really reached monotony due to its quickness and lightness. The Harbor Expansion I'd also give another chance to see if I misjudged it (or to see if the "5-5-2" variant, which evens out the cost curve, might be worth it) - but I wouldn't coutn on that one winning my favor.
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108. Yeti Slalom (2001)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Point-to-point movement, take-that
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 0
Game length: 15-30 minutes
Experience: 2 plays over 2 sessions with 4 players (2019)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Each player manages a team of four snowboarders (of different point values) and places them at the start of a grid-shaped mountain. On your turn, you move a snowboarder around/down the mountain or place a new snowboarder, plus can play a Yeti card onto the board, based on the coordinates that Yeti is allowed to take. Then, you roll the dice to see which snowboarders near that Yeti you can knock off the mountain. You gain points for enemy snowboarders you knock off the mountain and for your own snowboarders that make it to the end.

Design - Yeti Slalom is almost certainly the most poorly designed game on this list, though I haven't scoured it deeply. Obviously not a ton of care went into the ruleset, which is barren, and the gameplay is hilariously devoid of strategy. The strategy seems to focus mainly around playing a game of chicken with your highest-valued snowboarders coming on last, while you boldly slide your lower-value snowboarders down the slope and hope no one ejects them immediately. Usually playing a Yeti is a pretty trivial decision, and they're incredibly mean. Oh, and because you can move sideways, the game can theoretically stall out forever. Players can definitely be eliminated, though usually the game ends very, very quickly afterward.

That said, while I have little respect for the design, it's pretty fun to play, thanks to its incredibly breezy playtime and average time per turn. One of the funner parts of the design is probably the art, which is goofy as hell. I think I favor the team of alligator snowboarders. Everyone knows to expect Yetis and where to expect them; the only real question is who you think has them, and whether they've decided to play them yet. Yeti-players can also use snowball cards to reroll their dice, which is inherently fun when you're trying to knock off three snowboarders at once with a 5 or 6. There might be some strategy with juking and trying to deny other snowboarders "safe" passage but let's not make it more than it is - it's just dumb, and vaguely fun.

Experience - I was at Origins in 2019, and this game was pretty much foisted upon me as a "prize" at the end of the raffle for people who played games in the Origins gaming library. So yeah, I own it, and I got it to the table twice. Neither time did the game actually embarrass me or give me a negative experience. That said - I was also the winner of both games, responsible for taking a single shot and KOing two separate snowboarders of a single player in each game. That could be a pretty feel-bad experience too, though the novelty and simplicity still provided laughs at the time.

Future - This could get really old, really fast. I'm hardly looking to wear it out, but as a filler game with absolutely no stakes or strategy, it's not the worst. And honestly, its relative highness in the rankings might just be due to the fact that I own this unique, non-hobby, 4.9/10-on-boardgamegeek game.
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107. Fire Tower (2019)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Take-that, card game
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30-40 minutes
Experience: 2 plays over 2 sessions with 4 players (2019)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Each player holds a fort in the corner of a square forest map, and there's a burst of fire in the center of the forest. The goal is to play cards to manipulate the wind and spread the fire so it burns down everyone else's tower. Last man standing wins. There's also a mechanic where eliminated players get to play as the "spirit of the forest" and spread extra destruction.

Experience - The super-nice couple who designed Fire Tower demoed it to me and my girlfriend at Origins on the first day, and it was our most pleasant and enjoyable demo of the weekend. The game resulted in a spirit-of-the-forest victory, which is apparently quite unusual. This was the purchase that the girlfriend was most enthusiastic about, by far, so I sprung for it. We broke it out once more during that weekend with friends, and the game didn't seem to quite have the legs we'd hoped. But it's sitting here, waiting to be played.

Design - Fire Tower doesn't have a lot of variation in its appearance, but the components it does have are beautiful - namely, the fire tokens and the map. It's tactilely satisfying to spread the fire, and the contrast of the red on the green-and-black forest is striking. FT's also got a unique theme (you WANT to burn down the forest?) going for it.

the game itself is pretty solid, but not super-inspired. Decisions are fairly straightforward; you look at your limited hand and see what best moves the fire away from you and toward the person you've decided to beat the crap out of. Minor alliances can take place where sometimes the northeast and northwest players might try both to spread the fire south; the southern players can either try north to avoid eating it, or push it sideways.

That said, the amount of control you have over the general inferno is relatively limited. Much more effective seem to be cards like the dozer line, which lets you block the spread of fire, for example, or the fire extinguisher, which lets you put out fires (but not in your own tower). Timing of card draws can be pretty swingy and can kind of frustrate you when you think you're about to bring someone down.

Future - The biggest obstacles to bringing Fire Tower to the table are 1. that there are better options as a game; the experience range seems to vary and 2. it's clearly by far the best at four exactly. But given these constraints, I'd love to get some more value out of my game. I've never offloaded a game, and I don't necessarily want to begin with my haul from Origins.
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i have been fairly underwhelmed by everything about machi koro in my experiences playing it. there are more compelling engine building games out there - light ones like splendor or gizmos are much more interesting, and of course beefier classics like race for the galaxy are fantastic.
the main factor that mitigates the randomness in catan (trading) is not present. plus the game has a little oddly take-that-y vibe with a handful of the cards that i don't really like.
i've heard the expansions do some work in making it a better, deeper game, but with so many better games out there in 2019 and no dearth of good or easily accessible options, why even bother?

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funnily enough, i also won a random old game at the origins game room a few years back and when i looked it up on bgg it was not good lol. i have kept it in shrink in case i ever get a chance to offload it somehow

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Woo board games. I've been getting into them lately.

Of the games so far that I have:

1) Settlers of Catan
2) Boss Monster
3) Carcassone

I'm not too experienced! i like them all though

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Naye745 posted...

funnily enough, i also won a random old game at the origins game room a few years back and when i looked it up on bgg it was not good lol. i have kept it in shrink in case i ever get a chance to offload it somehow

i mean, you can offload a used game too! i figured that a game they're selling for free has little-to-no resale value anyway, so might as well get my kicks from it
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I followed along with this topic last year and I am following along again since I am a huge board gamer, but you are moving too fast for me to comment on everything! But I can still make a few comments -

Sagrada - it does feel similar to Azul, but I do enjoy both games. I love Sudoku puzzles and it feels like a multiplayer Sudoku where you sometimes need to weigh whether it's better to take what you need or block someone else.

Boss Monster - I LOVE the art style and the sense of humor, but the game play was so random and repetitive that I ended up trading it away. If you liked the art style, try Pixel Tactics which invokes the same retro video game vibe, but has vastly superior gameplay.

Cosmic Encounter - I don't get the appeal of this one either - it just seems like a glorified version of Munchkin. It might just be my group, but every game ended the same way - the player who's about to win gets stopped by everyone else until each player is one point from winning. Then, after the whole game has been played out, the luck of the draw determines the winner.

Catan - I didn't play Catan until after I had played several other modern board games and it felt very plain and dull to me. It doesn't help that I played a 4p game and two of the players would only trade with each other and they traded pretty much every turn. It made for a very unfun experience.


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Machi Koro - this one wasn't bad until I realized in my second game that going after the 7s or 8s was pretty much the only way to win. Then it deteriorated into a game of "will we roll 7 or 8???". The expansion makes it playable, but still not my favorite.

Ticket to Ride - on the other hand, I love TTR. I have introduced many non-gamers and casual gamers to modern board gaming with TTR. At least 10 people have bought copies after I played it with them. Interesting enough, Africa is pretty much the only expansion I didn't like at all. Restricting certain colors to certain parts of the map made it more frequent and less fun when you couldn't get the right color.

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I played ticket to ride....once? twice? I liked it but I suspect I would get tired of it if I'd played it as much as Catan

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I've only ever played the US map in TTR

apparently i've been missing out

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I had a similar experience with Fire Tower. I played it at the first PAX Unplugged with the creators, really enjoyed it, pledged to the kickstarter... and have played it 4 times since? The first three were fun, but the fourth was just kinda dull.

Europe is my favorite TTR map, but I'm also very fond of the Nordic Countries map.

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the us map is undoubtedly the worst ttr map, though i've only ever played through us/europe/asia

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106. The Grizzled (2015)

Category: Cooperative
Genres: Restricted communication, sequence-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30-40 minutes
Experience: 4-5 plays over 2 sessions with 3, 5 players (2016)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 54/80 (2018)

Summary - The goal of The Grizzled is, as a team, to clear a set of stages representing psychological traumas of World War I. A leader chooses the ambition level of the mission, and then on their turn, each player plays cards with attributes that might cause trauma, like darkness or gas masks, or cards that limit others' abilities to play as easily. The game works like an anti-set-collection game; if you get too many of any given trauma, you blow up.

Experience - My friends and I played The Grizzled for the first time while staying together to attend another board gaming friends' wedding. Any co-op game with vaguely defined, loosely restricted communication results in kind of funny circumvention of those communication rules. We ground through the campaign with three players and it was unique-feeling and satisfying. Just a few weeks later, wtih no less likable a crew, we played a five-player game later and... it was just insanely punishing. There's no way that I was strategically worse my second go with the game, but there was no point at which it felt like we could possibly have won.

Design - The Grizzled is pretty clever. I like the art (which always depicts a combination of afflictions), I like the special abilities, I like the the courage factor (where a leader can choose to be conservative or risky in deciding how many cards to draw), I like the "lucky charms" that give you little one-off abilities to discard cards, I like the retreat mechanic (and the trash-talk that can come from calling your teammates cowardly), and I really like the support mechanic.

But in the end... Playing it with three was good and perhaps four would be challenging and tight, but something about the game just feels fundamentally broken if you can't realistically even hope to win at a player count that it endorses. I made this comment last year, but the one thing I felt would best improve our chances last year was... cutting out a player or two. I don't think that's a particularly good look.

Future - I've played a fair number of different cooperative restricted communication games (a few of which will show up later), and usually they provide more laughs, more intensity, or simpler rules. The Grizzled also doesn't seem like a great 2p game, which further limits its niche. Like many games in this tier or so, I'd like to refresh my memory of it, solidify its ranking and my thoughts on it, and perhaps lay it to rest.
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i've never actually gotten to play the grizzled but i do appreciate its theme combined with mechanics

its a relatively simple co-op game about ww1 that somehow nails the theme and treats it appropriately. that's pretty darn cool to me

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The Grizzled is my favourite co-op game. I always play with At Your Orders because I like the missions.

RIP Tignous

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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.

Bing bing bing.

Also, Secret Hitler in last place, this list is starting off well. I actually think I prefer it to The Resistance slightly, but man, these games bring out the tryhard rage in people.

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Man, the more I read of this topic, the more good opinions I see, and not just by the op.

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cyko posted...

Machi Koro - this one wasn't bad until I realized in my second game that going after the 7s or 8s was pretty much the only way to win. Then it deteriorated into a game of "will we roll 7 or 8???". The expansion makes it playable, but still not my favorite.

Ticket to Ride - on the other hand, I love TTR. I have introduced many non-gamers and casual gamers to modern board gaming with TTR. At least 10 people have bought copies after I played it with them. Interesting enough, Africa is pretty much the only expansion I didn't like at all. Restricting certain colors to certain parts of the map made it more frequent and less fun when you couldn't get the right color.

haha, it's been a while, but what i actually found in my single play was that there seemed little reason to upgrade to rolling two dice... in the original. in the expansion, rolling multiple seemed wise.

Peace___Frog posted...

I had a similar experience with Fire Tower. I played it at the first PAX Unplugged with the creators, really enjoyed it, pledged to the kickstarter... and have played it 4 times since? The first three were fun, but the fourth was just kinda dull.

Europe is my favorite TTR map, but I'm also very fond of the Nordic Countries map.

the creators are great! it's easy to be sold by good people. i'm surprised someone else has played that game!

Naye745 posted...

i've never actually gotten to play the grizzled but i do appreciate its theme combined with mechanics

its a relatively simple co-op game about ww1 that somehow nails the theme and treats it appropriately. that's pretty darn cool to me

yeah, the theme is arguably the best part of the grizzled.

Great_Paul posted...

The Grizzled is my favourite co-op game. I always play with At Your Orders because I like the missions.

RIP Tignous

interesting! didn't expect to hear this in this topic! how does the expansion change it?

Glenn_and_Toad posted...

Man, the more I read of this topic, the more good opinions I see, and not just by the op.

i am to please
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SeabassDebeste posted...

interesting! didn't expect to hear this in this topic! how does the expansion change it?

It adds a deck of mission cards that are ranked easy, medium, or hard. You add a combination of each to the game based on the difficulty level and shuffle them up. Then each round the mission leader draws 2, plays one, and puts the other one back on top. The mission card lists the minimum cards to draw for that round and also has an ongoing effect. Easy cards usually help the players by adding things like "you can't fail this round because of masks". The normal cards are inconveniences like "good luck charms can't be used this round". The hard cards are really annoying like "every time a hard knock is played, lose 1 morale".

There are also some changes to the base game rules like adding a maximum morale drop of 6 at the end of the round and speeches are no longer limited. Another neat feature is that it adds the option for a "Final Assault" or a "Last Stand". The Final Assault distributes the remainder of the cards in the trials deck to the players and is basically the last ditch effort before losing. The Last Stand is similar, but changes it so the players will lose when a 4th of the same threat is shown. If the players win that round, they still get a win, but posthumously.

Besides that, it adds unnecessary cardboard standees that you place in the middle of the table to represent if you're in the mission or not. And special rules for a two-player game and solo mode. I didn't like the two-player mode and I don't solo game.

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that sounds really nice! but... does it address my #1 concern, the absurd difficulty scaling?

(edit) i guess capping morale loss is a form of changing difficulty scaling
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also, this is the first cooperative game to go down! promise there will me plenty more, though rarer than player v player by a fair amount.
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SeabassDebeste posted...

that sounds really nice! but... does it address my #1 concern, the absurd difficulty scaling?

(edit) i guess capping morale loss is a form of changing difficulty scaling

Yeah the capping morale loss and not limiting speeches is definitely helpful. The amount of easy/normal/hard mission cards also helps. You can play with 4 easy and 8 normal, or 4 of each, or 2 easy, 4 normal, and 6 hard.

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I just played Gears of War for the first time last week. That is a very well done co-op board game.

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TTR > Catan > carcassonne is also my rankings of the gateway games.

Admittedly I have only played carcassonne with 4 where it just felt like a luck dominated game.

Catan (admittedly I think i've only ever played with one of the expansions) has too much of the win more effect. Also usually you can't trade with people that are new to it because they don't really know what they need.

Ticket to Ride is something super easy to get people into and fun. It's a little simple in strategy but there is enough there to be entertaining, and turns are fast.

Also tag. A few games on here that sound interesting and a few that i've played that I would rate (slightly) higher but excited to see what the top ranks are

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I finished putting together my yearly top 50 that I've done for the past few years. I might do a topic once yours is finished. I know I was doing one for my list last year that didn't finish, but stuff started getting in the way.

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this topic inspired me. I went through your list from previous years because I wanted some ideas of a few games to buy to add to my small collection. Mulling it over, but my shopping cart on Amazon is full right now =)

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cyko posted...

I just played Gears of War for the first time last week. That is a very well done co-op board game.

neat! i'm not generally into IPs that i don't love IRL - is part of your enjoyment from the universe?

Great_Paul posted...

I finished putting together my yearly top 50 that I've done for the past few years. I might do a topic once yours is finished. I know I was doing one for my list last year that didn't finish, but stuff started getting in the way.

it may be a while, i'm going at a pretty deliberate pace...!

MajinZidane posted...

this topic inspired me. I went through your list from previous years because I wanted some ideas of a few games to buy to add to my small collection. Mulling it over, but my shopping cart on Amazon is full right now =)

yeah, i feel bad right now because due to the sparseness of board gamers compared to video gamers on b8, a board games topic also becomes something of a gateway recommendation list... i'd recommend some of these, but they're not my favorites yet! good move to use my list from last year though :P we'll have some new entries, but it'll look fairly similar up top!
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Is the Bloodborne card game on this list by chance? I just saw it's on sale on Amazon and I wonder if it's worth it.

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