Board 8 > another year of tabletop rankings and writeups

(+) Yeah! (+)

I haven't played a lot of competitive dungeon crawling games (Munchkins and something Thunder stone?), but I do really enjoy the bloodborne card game. It's been a pretty solid warm up game for my group before we get into more involved things such as terraforming mars or robo rally.

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BBCG isn't on this list. i played it once at a con and thought it was a neat. i HIGHLY doubt it simulates the video game at all and it's not very thematic, but it mainly fixated around trying to land a big hit with your cards at the right time. think a team game of SSB where you're competing for KOs and you keep cherry-picking your teammates' KOs. but with cards.

i'd have to play it more to get a better sense, but i had fun with it. as peaf said, it's probably more on the fillerish side than "centerpiece"ish.
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I haven't actually played Catan (or TTR or the weirdly title French one), but I'd like to one day.

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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 =)

Come on Boko, shop local! I know for damn sure you have two good LGSs in driving distance, mainly because theyre also the two I have within driving distance.

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trdl23 posted...

Come on Boko, shop local! I know for damn sure you have two good LGSs in driving distance, mainly because theyre also the two I have within driving distance.

Hmmmmmm maybe. I'm just not really a brick and mortar kinda guy anymore.

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105. God's Gambit (2014)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Sequence-building, separate hands
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 5-10 minutes per hand; 30-40 minutes per game
Experience: 8+ hands over 2-3+ sessions with 4-6 players (2015-2017)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 54/80 (2018)

Summary - As the friend who owns it describes it, "Uno with special powers." You're dealt a hand of cards with ranks and suits (though with considerably cooler, manga-esque art), and when it's your turn, you either discard a card matching either the rank or suit of the top discarded card, or play in front of you any card and activate its ability (determined by rank). The sum of the ranks in front of you and in your hand at the end of a hand is your score, but if you go out first, you always score zero.

Experience - We've played this as a filler a few times. Becoming accustomed to the cards always . I've got a long history of playing card games, though normally trick-tacking games and poker (neither genre is really represented here). But I played those games with a different crowd and in largely different capacities, not as a hobby game.

Design - One reason God's Gambit feels so much more "card game-y" than "hobby game-y" - it is uniform across rounds. Basically, the game is divided into hands, and the "winner" of a hand is the person who goes out first. At the end of a hand, you take your score and add it, and then you just deal out the next hand... which plays out identically to the previous hand. The only continuity between hands is the score, and the game length is some number of hands until someone exceeds some number of points. Relatively few games on this list have this mechanism.

As a result, the story arc of any given game is quite short. I of course love short games and quick decisions and have spent countless hours playing Spades, Hearts, Asshole/Chinese Poker, and the like. But those games have felt like they had a different purpose. When I play a hobby game, I got for uniqueness, and the overall experience of GG doesn't feel that unique, even though the gameplay itself is smooth and the art is trippy.

Future - I mean, sure, if the appropriate friend brings it to the appropriate game night as a filler option. There are a few other games on this list that work similarly, and I think getting to know what each card rank does effortlessly would probably aid this game in rising higher - if it feels as intuitive as those playing card games, then maybe it reaches that seamless level of enjoyment.
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That sounded interesting as an alternative to uno but then i realized the only people i would play uno with is my grandmother and she wouldn't understand anything more complex. And if i'm playing a game with others i'd rather play something other than an uno variant >.>

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well, it probably bears noting that the additional elements make it far, far superior to uno. you do get to make cool decisions about whether to discard a card (and not get the points on it, which are bad) or use a card (and have to get the points, but get a cool ability). and it doesn't have the same feels-bad plays as uno.

that said, if you don't want to get it, it's just as well. not the easiest game to buy.
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SeabassDebeste posted...

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

Actually, I have never played nor been remotely interested in the Gears of War video game series, but I enjoyed the board game. To me, it feels like a blend of Space Hulk and Nemesis if you've ever played either of those. If you're into co-op games (especially with a sci-fi theme), it's definitely worth checking out

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104. Sushi Go! (2013)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Card-drafting, tableau-building, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30 minutes
Experience: 4-6 games with 4-5 players (2015-2017)
Previous ranks: 76/100 (2016), 70/80 (2018)

Summary - Sushi Go! is a pure card-drafter. Each player has a hand of cards (each representing a piece of a meal you might have at a sushi restaurant), and simultaneously everyone chooses one to keep and passes the rest of the hand to the left. They then pick up the hands passed to them and rinse and repeat. Three largely identical rounds are played and scored, with some very slight carry-over.

Experience - As the rankings of Catan and TTR show, I didn't always take the best to gateway-level games, even when I started. I've played several games of Sushi Go! and can probably name what each type of card does off the top of my head, though I've never quite had one experience hit "the spot."

Design - Sushi Go! has a lot going for it. It's got a great theme, a simple ruleset, nominal player interaction, and the satisfaction of producing a meal. It's a perfect complexity and playing time for what it is. You can try to discern what your opponents will do, push your luck with the set collection mechanic (am I feeling sashimi?), perform nifty combos.

The problem, I guess, is that what it is... isn't that great? It's a pretty straightforward point salad, and I'm not sure that such a style of game needs hate-drafting. I mean, I suppose chopsticks enable you to do a combo, but why wouldn't this game just have an open-table draft instead of drafting hands? I know that's not the game, but basically Sushi Go! feels like it gives remarkably low highs, even as it avoids any particular lows. And this isn't even talking about high games vs low games; even within a game there are very few high moments.

Future - Sushi Go! is higher here than on previous lists, and that is probably due to the exhaustion inherent in ranking 133 games. I have little-to-no desire to play SG!, though I wouldn't really object to playing it. The main reason I'd be in interested in picking it up again is to give my new gaming partner, who likes both cooking and cooking games as a theme, a chance to see if she's into it.
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I have a similar opinion on Sushi Go. I like it and will play it if offered, but I will likely never request it. One of my gaming friends did get Sushi Go Party and I liked the extra variety it has, but he sold it due to rarely getting it played.

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sushi go is a very cute game and i've had a pretty good time with it honestly

there are better drafting games out there, but for its exceptional accessibility it gets brownie points

sushi go party is pretty legit too

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Sushi Go is good fun. I like it. I almost got it as a White Elephant gift a couple of weeks ago but it was stolen from me. I got Push instead. I consider it an upgrade though.

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Sushi Go is... fine?
Sushi Go Party is an absolute blast with 6+ players and I will never say no to playing it.

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103. Ghost Stories (2008)

Category: Cooperative
Genres: Point-to-point movement, dice combat, threat management
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 60 minutes
Experience: 2 games with 4 players (2016, 2017)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 54.5/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player controls a warrior defending a village from a siege of ghosts. The village is a 3x3 grid, and each turn, an increasing number of ghosts spawn (via a deck of nemeses) and advance on the village from one of its four edges. Players move around across the town to defend different edges of it, rolling dice to attempt to defeat the ghosts. You win if you survive the entire deck plus defeat a boss.

Design - Ghost Stories is pretty clever and it has great table presence - a cool-looking village with different tiles where you can perform actions; enemies on cards that keep advancing; a mind-crunching puzzle. In a staple among many dudes-on-a-map co-op games where the board keeps escalating its threats, characters have slightly different special abilities, so you might want to delegate responsibilities to a future player's turn even if an issue seems urgent.

Experience - The thing is, Ghost Stories earns its "wow, this is stupid-hard" reputation. I've played it twice - once at a meetup and once on a friend's copy - and each time, it just felt punishing. That's really the single word that best describes my GS experience. Other co-op "threat management" games can overwhelm you, but either you can outrace the overwhelming threat, or you get more and more powerful.

Ghost Stories feels like it has neither. You can't outrace, because the victory condition is outlasting. But there also doesn't feel like there's a power progression, so as far as I've seen, you just get ground down. I think we got close to seeing the boss, but didn't either time.

Future - Now there's an obvious incentive to replay Ghost Stories: beating the bastard of a game. But the feeling I get after an hour of stress until finally being overcome is not "let's do that again!" but rather "oh... okay." The highs are there in the game, but they're infrequent. Maybe there's some "git gud" that needs to happen, and we just need to grind through until we get to that level. But if a difficult co-op discourages a repeat try... that's worrying.
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have def heard good things about sushi go party - does it have more interesting food types than the base?
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Ghost Stories sounds like Arkham Horror Lite.

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i've played neither arkham horror nor eldritch horror, but from what'd i've read, i don't think that's super-accurate. ghost stories is more euro-y than ameritrash-y.
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SeabassDebeste posted...

have def heard good things about sushi go party - does it have more interesting food types than the base?

Yes, and it really helps each game feel very unique.

Each food category (ex: appetizer, entree, side, dessert) has a number of foods to choose from before the game, so the deck is customized to what the group wants to go for. Each of the foods have different mechanics (ex: only get points if no one else played miso soup this turn, if you have more than 2 eels you lose points). I almost consider the base game to be like a videogame demo - it's fine for a quick session but once it's done there's not really any point in going back to it. Party is the full game.

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102. Paperback/Hardback (2014, 2018)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Deck-building, word game, spelling
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 45-90 minutes
Experience: 1 play of Paperback, 2-4 plays of Hardback with 4-5 players (2015, 2018)
Previous ranks: 58/100 (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Paperback is the first true deck-builder to appear on this list: each turn, you begin with a fixed number of cards. These cards have a combination of special abilities (such as drawing new cards) and currency (which you can use to purchase more cards, or victory points). In Paperback, your cards are letters, and you can only play them to gain their ability/currency if you can spell a word using it and other letters in your hand.

Design - Paperback and Hardback do one great thing among spelling/word games, in that they just let you form whatever word you want. It's simple to form a word with a wildcard; all you have to do is turn your card upside-down (losing its ability) and it becomes a wild-card letter. That JJZZN hand can become "JAZZY" fairly quickly (and the J/Z are likely going to give you some good benefits).

There's not a whole ton to cover in terms of the.design decisions. These games don't attempt to reinvent the wheel; designer Tim Fowers essentially recognized that spelling is inherently fun, and that deckbuilding is inherently fun, and then composed a game from those two elements. Paperback is slightly cleaner with a fixed marketplace, while Hardback has a few more complications (different card "suits") but has a more deterministic endgame with its victory point track. The games really want you to be able to form words; you're allowed to cry for "ink!" to draw more cards in Hardback, and Paperback encourages you to ask other players for help if you can't think of one yourself, and at no cost to yourself (but to a small benefit of the person whose idea you take).

As a result of the "just do what feels nice" philosophy that appears to have guided their design, Paperback/Hardback doesn't feel particularly well play-tested or optimized on the small scale. Like in other deckbuilders, spending more money will net you a more powerful card. But unlike those other deckbuilding games, in order to use those cool abilities you've acquired, you've now got to shoehorn a V or whatever into your hand. As a result, like in other Scrabble-esque games, you might find yourself making tradeoffs in your hand where you forsake a five- or six-letter word for a three-letter word that's more powerful. That's part of the strategy, but as usual, I generally prefer incentivizing cleverness in words rather than forsaking good letters to accommodate bad.

Experience - These games certainly don't leave you wanting in terms of length. My first game of Hardback went well over an hour, though admittedly the players were slow and we weren't playing simultaneously, which you really ought to. Granted, aside from racing for buying letters, it's not the most interactive game, which again, means that its mechanisms (spelling/fun vs deckbuilding/engine-building) feels a little misaligned.

If you do manage to get a fun deck going though, it's definitely good fun, and the game can develop a nice rhythm, especially in Hardback, where late in the game you might just be pushing for the most points you can get to race to completion, rather than buying words.

Future - Will rarely ask for a word game that lasts this long, but Paperback and Hardback do have a fairly unique blend of mechanics in a word game that gives them legs. That said, they're the type of game that will never be 1. the focus of a game night 2. played at almost every game night or 3. played repeatedly when they do come out. Bearing those caveats in mind, their niche is very limited, but I enjoy them fine.
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hardback really feels like the superior version of the game, but i've had fun with both of them

as far as deckbuilders go, they're pretty harmless and enjoyable

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Peace___Frog posted...

Yes, and it really helps each game feel very unique.

Each food category (ex: appetizer, entree, side, dessert) has a number of foods to choose from before the game, so the deck is customized to what the group wants to go for. Each of the foods have different mechanics (ex: only get points if no one else played miso soup this turn, if you have more than 2 eels you lose points). I almost consider the base game to be like a videogame demo - it's fine for a quick session but once it's done there's not really any point in going back to it. Party is the full game.

does sound a bit more interesting. again, not huge on drafting in general but it at least sounds slightly higher-stakes than regular sushi go.

Naye745 posted...

hardback really feels like the superior version of the game, but i've had fun with both of them

as far as deckbuilders go, they're pretty harmless and enjoyable

"harmless and enjoyable" is accurate - and will describe many games in this tier.
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yeah that's fair. if i made a list of all the games i've played, i'm not sure where all these kinds of games would show up exactly - i can have fun with them, they're pretty decent games, but nowhere near the ones that really move the meter for me

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v interested in paper/hardback so kinda a bummer to see it in this tier

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if you like deckbuilders that aren't necessarily super mechanically tight and you're interested, you'll probably like paperback/hardback. it's at least as good as say the harry potter deckbuilder, the DC deckbuilder, or ascension.
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I've played Paperback once and I liked it, haven't gotten to Hardback yet. One gaming friend really likes Tim Fowers and has almost his entire library, so I do have the option to play it.

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I never played plain old Sushi Go, but Sushi Go Party has been a big hit with almost all of the casual gamers I have introduced it to. And it moves very fast - even with 8 players.

Hardback was okay, but being a deckbuilder, you cycle through the same cards. And the key to winning almost any deckbuilder is to keep your deck as small as possible to keep pulling the combo you put together as mich as possible. So, Why bother trying to be creative when It was worth more points to spell the same couple of words over and over? It got stale quickly.

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cyko posted...

I never played plain old Sushi Go, but Sushi Go Party has been a big hit with almost all of the casual gamers I have introduced it to. And it moves very fast - even with 8 players.

Hardback was okay, but being a deckbuilder, you cycle through the same cards. And the key to winning almost any deckbuilder is to keep your deck as small as possible to keep pulling the combo you put together as mich as possible. So, Why bother trying to be creative when It was worth more points to spell the same couple of words over and over? It got stale quickly.

Having never played paperback or hardback, i feel like not making words reusable would be an easy house rule to fix that?

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i feel like its pretty tough to reuse words without losing a lot of value? like you could play that way but it hardly seems optimal

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101. Bloody Inn (2014, 2018)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Tableau-building, card-drafting
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 40-60 minutes
Experience: 2 plays (2015, 2017) with 3-4 players
Previous ranks: 81/100 (2016), 56/80 (2018)

Summary - Everyone is an innkeeper in the titular inn. Over the course of two seasons, as guests (represented by cards) visit the inn, players take turns drafting them into their hands (to be used to perform actions or convert to "annexes"), killing them (for money), and burying them (to dodge the cops and ensure the cash). Most of these actions require discarding cards from your hand. The game goes two iterations through the deck.

Design - While there are plenty of games where you play as a criminal or someone evil, there's still something uniquely morally decrepit about murdering your guests and competing over it. Ghoulish!

Anyway, Bloody Inn was one of the earlier games I played that frustrated me because of card economy: every card has a printed ability, but you can only play some. And that's not just because you have to pay for the cards, but also because the cost of playing a card (and many other actions) is discarding other cards. You get two actions per round, but almost half of those actions will be picking up a card, even as you have to figure out which of the cards in your hand is the one that's worth keeping.

There is a slight temporary specialization effect - for each action you can take, there's a type of card that doesn't have to be discarded to pay the action cost. When to invest in and divest of these "engines" is a key decision point in the game as well.

Experience - Bloody Inn holds a soft spot in my heart. My first play was rather unremarkable in terms of game itself, but it was one of the earlier eurogames I could nicely grasp in the halcyon days at a meetup. It felt a little too tight in terms of cards.

My second play is also notable - it had been well over a year since I'd learned the game, but at the meetup, someone brought it and people were looking for something to play. I sat and relearned the rules, then taught them, then played the game. Not the greatest of company for that one, but it felt really good being able to process rules on my own and then teach others in the same sitting. I was better able to grasp the game, and that ability to comprehend what's going on is very satisfying.

Future - I don't think I like BI quite enough to buy it, and I'm not sure if it'll come up at meetups. Doubtful that my friends will acquire it either, but as a non-centerpiece game, I'd be happy to pick it up and relearn it again.
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100. World's Fair 1893 (2016)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Area control, card-drafting, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30-50 minutes
Experience: 2 plays (2016), 3 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 55/80 (2018)

Summary - Set during the famous exhibition in Chicago, your goal is to control areas of the fair (which is conveniently abstracted to a circular map with equally sized slices). There are cards representing historical figures in each of those areas, and by placing a worker into a section, you can take one of the cards. Periodically through the game, you get scored based on plurality of workers in each area, and at the end of the game, you're scored based on the sets of cards you've collected.

Design - Another neat theme wrapped in a cute euro - Erik Larsen's Devil in the White City, which my group once read for book club, covers the titular fair (though H. H. Holmes fails to make an appearance here). Anyway, for such an assumingly bright-colored map, the competition is pretty damn tough. I like that each of the cards you get has a bunch of flavor text on it. And I like advancing the game timer using the train tickets, which are player-driven.

Experience - This is one of the games on this list that made the least impression on me. I can think of several reasons why: It's frictionless to learn, it's short to play, and while I played it twice, both plays were fairly close in time (not necessitating a full rules recap) and a long time ago. And obviously, it was neither incredibly good nor noticeably bad.

Area control euros are a tough sell for me, specifically those of the "keep placing dudes in here, you want to have the most, but others can place more, too" variety. When jostling becomes so competitive, the main loser is the one who comes in second at their most invested area, while the people who know how to avoid conflict opportunistically benefit. Consolation prizes are few and far between there, and I always seem to be embroiled in the wrong conflict(s). At a certain point, I just need to be able to fight my way out of it and stop staring at lost opportunity costs!

Future - The friend who owns this seems to have dropped off from our gaming group with no explanation. He's still in the group chat, but basically never responds anymore. So it's unlikely to get to the table. But I wouldn't mind being reacquainted with the game so I could speak on it with more authority again - again, it's quick and painless, so it's a no loss situation to cycle through libraries.
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I remember hearing the concept of Bloody Inn and being intrigued. I wanna try it but not enough to get it.

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99. 4 Gods (2016)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Real-time, tile-laying, area control
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 20-30 minutes
Experience: 2 plays (2017, 2018), 3-4 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Each player is a "god," working in real time to build an island by laying square tiles onto it - from the outside border in. Each laid tile must touch two existing tiles, and it must follow placement rules such that geographical features are continuous. Each god is associated with a terrain type and gets to place prophets (meeples) onto that terrain type. Players can also put down "cities" into unclaimed spots, but a tile laid on that city will destroy it. The endgame scoring includes unrazed cities, razed cities, and territories controlled by plurality of prophets.

Design - 4 Gods is in some ways a Carcassonne being played in real time, with the tile-laying and area control mechanics married to one another. Being in real time helps it out, since it reduces downtime.

That said, for a real-time game, 4 Gods is actually rarely frenetic. In practice, it works more like simultaneous action selection and opportunistic sniping. There's a hand management aspect to the game that limits your ability to draw tiles which can leave you being pretty deliberate and spending time trying to figure out where you can place wisely. It's not downtime, of course, since you need to be ready to strike, but later on in the game especially, you have relatively few options on where to put your pieces. There's also this concept about "free hands," which lends itself to trying to dump your discarded tiles instead of going for optimal placement. If your hands aren't free, you can't really do anything.

I really enjoy the way the map in 4 Gods comes together. Being built from the corners inward is visually unique compared to the Carcassonne style where you start from the center and go out.

Experience - I've only played 4 Gods twice, and again, it's area control, so I hardly perform great at it. But it's novel and it's cute and I do want to refresh my memory on it (along with so many other games!) - fortunately I play with the owner pretty frequently, so maybe we can make that happen soon.
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Great_Paul posted...

I remember hearing the concept of Bloody Inn and being intrigued. I wanna try it but not enough to get it.

i'm almost always in favor of try-before-you-buy. BI definitely fits there, though it's so lightweight it has limited downside if you buy and don't like it.
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i liked bloody inn but didnt love it

usually multipurpose cards are a big draw for me and they're fine here, but they didn't feel like they allowed you to build enough of an engine. i dunno for sure though! i only played it once

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98. Zombicide (2012)

Category: Cooperative
Genres: Dudes on a map, campaign, dice combat
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 45-120 minutes (depending on campaign)
Experience: 1 play of Zombicide: Black Plague (2015), 1 session of Zombicide: Season 2 (2016) with 4-6 players
Previous ranks: 65/100 (2016), 64/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player is represented by a miniature on the board. Everyone works together to kill zombies (by rolling dice at certain distances), represented by other miniatures on the board. You can search for equipment and unlock doors, and depending on scenario, you might have to escape the map, survive/kill some number of zombies, or find some sort of item.

Experience - I'm not sure I should really even be ranking Zombicide, because by nature, a game like this is meant to be played as a campaign. You can't really get a full experience from one sitting, especially not the near-tutorial levels. I played once at a meetup, which was fine, and once with a friend group that's not the best to play games with, and it was kinda rough, especially the Season 2 scenario - downtime was high, too.

Design - Zombicide's ruleset can be fiddly in terms of upkeep with zombies, but the gameplay itself is pretty simple. You get some number of movements, plus actions. You try to make yourself more powerful. You try to avoid confrontation, or you try to slaughter the hell out of zombies. Almost every decision is straightforward. Your miniature looks great, and the zombies look evil, and the cards you forage for to look for items or weapons (see Dead of Winter) are kind of a mediocre mechanism. But when you're all in it together, it feels less pointless and more like you're working toward something. And that something is killing zombies. I can't comment too much on the game since there are so many scenarios I haven't played, but this game is super Ameritrashy and not exactly attempting to be elegant - you just gotta enjoy killing them zombies.

Future - So out of carelessness, partially, Zombicide is a good deal higher on this list than it has been, leapfrogging some games, despite my not having played it (or those games it leapfrogged!) recently. Why? Probably because with distance from everything, the games I've played become "oh, I'd like maybe a refresher on that," while Zombicide becomes this wistful, "if only I could get a campaign of this going." I'd have near-zero interest in playing another tutorial round of Zombicide; that isn't particularly fun. But getting to dungeon-crawl for real over multiple sessions and seeing new levels? Ahh, if only my friends owned that. Alas, instead they play Gloomhaven with another friend of theirs, and I'm campaignless.
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Naye745 posted...

i liked bloody inn but didnt love it

usually multipurpose cards are a big draw for me and they're fine here, but they didn't feel like they allowed you to build enough of an engine. i dunno for sure though! i only played it once

i absolutely felt this way. the total number of turns is super-finite, and due to the cost system you wind up having to hire workers super-often. my second play was a little better because i gave up the idea of being able to get any sort of real control and just embraced that i should focus on one obvious, short goal at a time. not sure how that "strategy" or the game would hold up to like a dozen plays, but i highly doubt i'll ever get that many in!
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zombicide seems like exactly the kind of games i don't play

i'm sure it's perfectly good for what it is, but what it is is not my cup of tea

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Late reply, but nice to see Catan down already. It's a perfectly fine game, but feels like a stepping stone into more in depth board games. Good intro for fans.

Zombicide is pretty fun for what it is, but I'm not really into dungeon crawlers much, because my probably least favorite thing that can happen in board games is quarterbacking. Of course it all depends on your play group, but if you aren't discussing what is going on, why even play with people, so there will be naturally some form of quarterbacking, and I just don't like it.

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Zombicide is one that I never did get into. Nobody I game with has it, so I don't see me playing it in the future. I guess I'm not really eager to play it, but I'd probably try it if given the chance.

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TomNook posted...

Zombicide is pretty fun for what it is, but I'm not really into dungeon crawlers much, because my probably least favorite thing that can happen in board games is quarterbacking. Of course it all depends on your play group, but if you aren't discussing what is going on, why even play with people, so there will be naturally some form of quarterbacking, and I just don't like it.

the balance between optimization and letting everyone do their own thing is very tricky in co-ops. that said, zombicide seemed to me simple/"casual" enough to defy a need for qb'ing. but again, i haven't gotten deep enough.

i'm sure it can be fun! i just want to experience it...!
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SeabassDebeste posted...

the balance between optimization and letting everyone do their own thing is very tricky in co-ops. that said, zombicide seemed to me simple/"casual" enough to defy a need for qb'ing. but again, i haven't gotten deep enough.

i'm sure it can be fun! i just want to experience it...!

Semi-co-ops are some of the most fun, and I have a feeling there are going to be some higher on your list. That's the best way of playing co-op IMO, and pretty much avoids qb'ing, and even if someone does do it, it ends up coming off as a mini-mind game between players since people don't know for sure. But ones where you can have multiple ways to win, whether it's helping allies or killing them, with conditions that get triggered by unforeseeable circumstances, or maybe hidden win agendas that each player has. Those kinds of games are a real blast. Looking forward to see which ones are on your list!

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I have Zombicide Black Plague, its pretty fun, and I think the theme works better than it does in OG zombicide.

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I have Zombicide Black Plague, its pretty fun, and I think the theme works better than it does in OG zombicide.

i definitely preferred black plague. also not surprised to see you as the lone zombicide bolsterer!
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Should I post what I bought from your list last year? or would that be SPOILERS

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tough call - the list has not changed very much from last year! do you want to send it by PM?
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I'm a bit behind, but I'll throw my bit in and say Ghost Stories is TOO HIGH.

The game is winnable, but you have to do the optimal action. Which is code for: The game plays itself. There's no room to do anything by choice, so it's not even really a co-op game. Players just figure out what the smartest thing to do is, then do it.

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isnt that true of many co-ops? i have not specifically played ghost stories but aside from games with imperfect information, that is literally what you are looking at for most of them

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Co-ops usually have difficulty variations for the people who find them too hard, and for the people who want a challenge. I haven't played Ghost Stories so I'm not sure about that one.

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sure, but i mean "find out what the smartest thing to do, and then do it" is literally what you do in co-op games

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