Board 8 > my top 32 tabletop games

(+) Yeah! (+)

this sounds fun! for whatever reason, i have a hard time ranking certain types of games among others in my favorites list - and social deduction games are top on the list. i basically put the resistance/avalon up there in the top 10 to take the token spot of appreciation and leave everything else behind, but i do enjoy the genre a lot.

would be fun to see a list of the social deduction games all ranked at the end of this list to see where everything stacks up, then i could argue over which ones are too high! :p

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a lot of the remaining games are games i've played into the ground, i think. i'm still happy to play them, but not exactly "eager," if that makes sense, but it's hard to drop them in ranking just due to how much i've put into them! (and then there are the few that i am eager to get to the table but can't...)
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https://www.miniaturemarket.com/asmdis01.html

@Maniac64 - in case you're interested
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Thanks!

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Top 10 hype!

My favorite game still hasn't shown up. I think it's something you'd rank high, though availability has been an issue, but it's very well loved and high ranking on BGG. I'll hold out hope a while longer

These write ups have been great though. Can really feel the passion you have toward the subject.

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Based on your description I have doubts, but appreciate the hype! Somehow I don't actually have that much extra time during COVID-19, but I think that will change a bit.

No writeup is coming today, so I'll just post the breakdown of what's to come by rules complexity and game length:

Rules Complexity (out of 7); Length (minutes)
1; 25-40
1; 20
2; 25-40
3; 45-75
4; 45-75
6; 45-60
6; 240-360
7; 90-150
7; 180-240
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is that from 10 to 1 or 1 to 10

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that's not ranked in any order! just the 10 games that remain
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Ive really enjoyed reading these write-ups! Thanks for doing this thread.

Does one of those complexity/length combos appear twice? Theres only nine listed

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nope, i forgot one! i'm doing these off the top of my head

there's one more that's 0 complexity, 5-15 minutes :)
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i'm excited for the first handful of those games!!

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frosthaven/frosthaven/description

If anyone is interested, the sequel is up on Kickstarter now.

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frosthaven/frosthaven/description

If anyone is interested, the sequel to Gloomhaven is up on Kickstarter now.

I tossed in the dollar for now. Been chatting with a few friends and we're trying to decide if we want to get it or not, who would buy it, etc.

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i'm lucky that i have a dedicated group who is going to shell out for the game and i can just go along for the ride :)

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Can we get a recap list before the top 10?

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yup, here's the recap list, followed by #10!

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)

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)

Settle For It
111. Settlers of Catan (1995)
110. Ticket to Ride (2004)
109. Machi Koro (2012)
108. Yeti Slalom (2001)
107. Fire Tower (2019)
106. The Grizzled (2015)
105. God's Gambit (2014)
104. Sushi Go! (2013)
103. Ghost Stories (2008)
102. Paperback/Hardback (2014, 2018)
101. Bloody Inn (2015)
100. World's Fair 1893 (2016)
99. 4 Gods (2016)
98. Zombicide (2012)
97. San Juan (2004)
96. Dice Forge (2017)
95. 7 Wonders (2010)
94. It's a Wonderful World (2019)
93. Small World (2009)
92. Qwirkle (2006)
91. Roll for the Galaxy (2014)
90. Thunderstone (2009)
89. King of Toyko (2011)
88. Balderdash (1984)
87. Call to Adventure (2018)
86. Century: Eastern Wonders (2018)
85. Welcome (Back) to the Dungeon (2013, 2016)
84. Two Rooms and a Boom (2013)
83. Anomia (2010)
82. Coup (2012)
81. Lost Cities: The Board Game (2008)
80. Quadropolis (2016)
79. Love Letter (2012)
78. D-Day Dice (2012)
77. Turn the Tide (1997)
76. 6 nimmt! (1994)

Funded Awards
75. Burgle Bros (2015)
74. Shipwreck Arcana (2017)
73. Word Domination (2017)
72. Quacks of Quedlinberg (2018)
71. Acquire (1974)
70. Takenoko (2011)
69. Modern Art (1992)
68. Blokus (2000)
67. Ra (1999)
66. Tokaido (2012)
65. Isle of Skye (2015)
64. Seasons (2012)
63. No Thanks! (2004)
62. Terraforming Mars (2016)
61. Pret a Porter (2010)
60. The Mind (2018)
59. Tzolk'in (2012)
58. Pit (1903)
57. Jungle Speed (1997)
56. Cottage Garden (2016)
55. Agricola (2007)
54. For Sale (1997)
53. Dr. Eureka (2015)
52. Mysterium (2016)
51. Decrypto (2018)
50. Ghost Blitz (2010)
49. Ca$h 'n Guns (2014)
48. Pandemic (2008)
47. Hanabi (2010)
46. Raiders of the North Sea (2016)
45. Five Tribes (2014)
44. Karuba (2015)
43. Magic Maze (2018)
42. Celestia (2016)
41. When I Dream (2016)
40. Orleans (2014)
39. Dixit (2008)
38. BANG! The Dice Game (2013)
37. Power Grid (2004)
36. Glory to Rome (2005)
35. Viticulture (2013)
34. Scythe (2016)
33. Villagers (2019)

Spicy
32. Specter Ops (2015)
31. Azul (2017)
30. Splendor (2014)
29. VisualEyes (2003)
28. Captain Sonar (2016)
27. Kemet (2012)
26. Word Slam (2016)
25. Dominion (2008)
24. Spirit Island (2017)
23. Wits and Wagers (2005)
22. Food Chain Magnate (2015)
21. Century: Spice Road (2017)
20. Dracula's Feast (2017)
19. Pictomania (2011)
18. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (2015)
17. Concordia (2013)
16. Forbidden Island (2010)/Forbidden Desert (2013)
15. Castles of Burgundy (2011)
14. Werewords (2017)
13. Discoveries: The Journals of Lewis and Clark (2015)
12. Great Western Trail (2016)
11. Blood Bound (2013)
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10. Aeon's End (2016)

Category: Cooperative
Genres: Deck-building, combat
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 45-75 minutes
Experience: 15-20 plays with 2-4 players (2019)
Previous ranks: NR/100 (2016), NR/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player plays a mage trying to defend the town of Gravehold from a Nemesis. The Nemesis will attack the players' health and Gravehold's health by means of a Nemesis Deck. Each turn, a turn order card is drawn and the player or Nemesis will go based on that. On a player's turn, you prep a spell (or cast an already prepped spell) to an open breach on your player mat; buy cards for your deck; and power up intrinsic abilities unique to each mage. The Nemesis's deck consists of Minionsthat stick around and attack on every Nemesis turn; Power cards that are delayed-effect one-off abilities that players can prepare/respond to; and immediately-resolved abilities. The players lose if Gravehold's health or every player's health is reduced to zero; they win if the Nemesis's health is reduced to zero or the entire Nemesis deck is drawn.

Design - While it may not be the definitive deck-building game I've played, Aeon's End is certainly my favorite. As for why I wouldn't call it definitive, I actually think that Aeon's End's hybrid mechanics tend to shift the weight of decision-making in a different way than a pure Dominion type does.

Even setting aside all its other mechanics, Aeon's End is very notable because you get to choose the order of your deck. Now to be fair, you still have to cycle through your deck and you can't order every card. However, you choose the order in which you discard cards, and unplayed cards in your hand actually stay in your hand. This offers a potential for control far beyond the likes of Dominion; if you have two cards that combo particularly well (such as one gem - currency - that is worth twice as much if you draw it in combination with another of the same gem) then you can wait to play one until you draw the other, then play them together, which ensures you'll draw them together again. Additionally, because of the Spirit Island-esque ramp-up and runover effect, you can't just sit back and build and fine-tune the most fucking insane engine you've ever seen, like in Dominion. Instead, good play in Aeon's End usually involves spending almost no time ramping up economy and focuses big on getting damage spells, even early on, to control the threat of Minions.

Those Minions all serve a master. Unlike so many other cooperative games, Aeon's End gives you not only enemies to fight, but one specific boss to fight. Beat the boss, end the game. You're not trying to exterminate a neverending onslaught of faceless zombies (Zombicide), invaders (Spirit Island), ghosts (Ghost Stories), or even disease (Pandemic). Instead, each game is dominated and heavily characterized by the villainous Nemesis. Each Nemesis Deck consists of a blend of Nemesis card and generic cards, but even the generic cards often include the word "Unleash" on them, which behaves differently for each Nemesis - Rageborne, who charges and releases massive strikes; the Carapace Queen, who spawns baby spiders that will swarm you the more there are; Prince of Gluttons, who eats the available card market and inflicts damage or loses you the game when he exhausts that market; and Crooked Mask, who adds Curse cards to your deck, weakening your draw and forcing nasty effects on you. The uniqueness of these scenarios makes you feel like you're facing very distinct threats depending on nemesis.

The arc of Aeon's End is fantastic. Like in so many co-op games, the Mages and the Nemesis get stronger together. There's damage-control as you handle Power Cards, weather one-offs, and dispatch Minions. During the early steps your spells aren't as powerful, but you're able to spend time trying to build an economic engine and grab a good spell or two. Then you move into really trying to control damage and building your mage's powerful abilities. In the final phase, you're rushing to finish off the boss itself, because odds are you're simply not going to be able to do damage control any longer. It's exhilarating, and many games I've felt have come down to turn order.

That turn order is simple, brilliant, polarzing, and dare I say it, unfair. Instead of players going clockwise and the Nemesis acting at the end of each round, or end of each player's turn, there is a turn order deck with six cards in it: four representing players, and two representing the Nemesis. When a player's turn ends, you reveal a card from the turn order deck, and then that player (or the Nemesis) goes. It's by far the biggest injection of luck in the game - while this hasn't happened to me, it's almost impossible to fathom winning if when you start drawing Tier 3 cards (the usual point where it's win-or-die) you get hit by the four-Nemesis-turns-in-a-row sequence. What's much more common, and much more exciting, is "Okay, we'll win if any of us goes next... we have like 3:1 odds of that!... FUCK!"

Aeon's End is a little fiddly to set up, given that it's a deckbuilder with a stacked enemy deck and it's got HP for everyone and minions too. It's thoroughly worth it.

Experience - The first time I played Aeon's End, I played it six times straight. These are 45+-minute games. Now some of those plays were with the wrong rules, making it too easy, but that's how fascinating it was. I bought it off my friends after that session, since they already had Legacy, and have played it perhaps a dozen times since. I've played through every Nemesis, though we need to use the higher difficulty levels. It's been a very gaming pal #1-friendly game, so that's helped it to get to the table a lot - checks boxes like cooperative, sophisticated but not crushingly so, and enjoyably thematic.

Future - I'm not exactly burned out on Aeon's End as a system - I do want to try harder difficulty levels, replay bosses, try every combination of mages and cards. But that said, it's a card game, and that will trend toward the best cards floating to the top. I'd love to try out the different versions of Aeon's End that let you mix and match even more spells, gems, mages, and Nemeses.
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oh hell yeah, aeon's end is the one deckbuilding game i actually like that isn't dominion

and hey, what do you know, it has a supply of cards and not a market row. almost like that's a superior idea for a deckbuilder or something!!

the latest expansion was really good, unfortunately i didn't get to finish the last boss with my group cause of the 'rona. goddamn it :(

it's a rad solo game too! i've had a good time going two-handed against some of the hard rules bosses and holy hell are they difficult.

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Nice! Aeon's End was very fun from the few days I played it. I do love the turn order mechanic, because it leads to a lot of fun reactions from the playgroup stressing or celebrating. It's one I've been craving to play again.

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Aeon's End is probably at the top of my list to obtain

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never could get into aeon's end

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I've never played Aeon's End, but it sounds really fun

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Naye745 posted...

oh hell yeah, aeon's end is the one deckbuilding game i actually like that isn't dominion

and hey, what do you know, it has a supply of cards and not a market row. almost like that's a superior idea for a deckbuilder or something!!

the latest expansion was really good, unfortunately i didn't get to finish the last boss with my group cause of the 'rona. goddamn it :(

it's a rad solo game too! i've had a good time going two-handed against some of the hard rules bosses and holy hell are they difficult.

good to know about it solo! i haven't ever played a hobby-game solo, but aeon's end does feel like a good one for that

basically i experienced most of what i wanted from spirit island from aeon's end

KommunistKoala posted...

never could get into aeon's end

boo!

Tom Bombadil posted...

Aeon's End is probably at the top of my list to obtain

highly recommend for anyone who sounds remotely intrigued by the description i've given!
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spirit island is far too long and arduous for what i want a co-op game to be (i may have said this earlier!)
aeon's end has enough long-term thinking mixed with "you know what, i think i'll go this route" and a nice pinch of randomness to make a beautiful co-op stew

...i dont know what i was trying to do metaphorically there. but its good! and i dont even do solo games too often but aeon's is a perfect one for it

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more video gaming than board gaming lately (for the first time in 5 years)...
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Awesome, I'm glad I'm catching this thread towards the end- games I actually want to try!

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9. A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (2nd Edition) (2011)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Combat, area control, bidding, simultaneous action selection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 6
Game length: 240-360 minutes
Experience: 8-12 plays with 3-6 players (2015-2019), incl Feast for Crows expansion
Previous ranks: 7/100 (2016), 12/80 (2018)

Description - Six players take the roles of six of the great houses of Westeros (from A Song of Ice and Fire). Each player starts in their home territory with a fixed number of troops and, over the course of ten rounds, attempts to control the most castles (winning automatically if they reach seven castles). Each round consists of a Westeros phase, in which randomly revealed cards trigger events such as bidding on turn order/for tiebreaker preference/ability to use special order tokens; a planning phase, in which a special order token is placed on each territory in which you control a soldier, both land and sea; and a resolution phase, during which those orders are executed - primarily raiding, marching (and initiating combat), and consolidating power for power tokens or more troops.

Design - This is one of the only games on my list that's based off an IP, and I think it's fair to say that AGOT wouldn't particularly be the same game if it weren't based off ASOIAF. While not always the best for readability and visibility, AGOT's map is a beautiful recreation of Westeros, with the territory divided up much how George R. R. Martin's world is laid out. The free-for-all nature of the game also feels true to form; the combat character cards are recognizable; the order tokens all have houses' sigils on them; and the dominance tokens are large and thematic.

AGOT is heavily influenced by Diplomacy, which also uses the "planning phase" mechanic. The crux of the game relies on your troops: they defend your territory, support others in combat, march, and fight. You place face-down tokens simultaneously with other players, one on each troop, and then simultaneously reveal them. Then players go one-by-one to resolve the effects of the active abilities, most notably marching. Marching is the most fun activity, but you can only march a maximum of three times per turn without rules exceptions, and if you don't have one of the coveted star order token permissions, you can't march that third time at all. You also have a limited number of Support tokens and Defense tokens. With both soldiers and order tokens in short supply, expanding and holding territory forcdes difficult decisions the more you grow.

But aside from the core mechanics of the game, the game is the least elegant of all the games in my top ten, easily. There's a strange bidding mechanic that uses "power tokens," which are a completely unnecessary form of currency. The Westeros cards create swing-y effects each round. The balance can be off (with Lannister notably underpowered) and the kill system depending on winning a battle is rough. The house-card combat system is excellent with the simultaneous selection, but having to know your opponent's entire hand can slow the game down for anyone who doesn't know it intimately, and can result in a long analysis paralysis each battle. The swords/shields system can be really punishing and frustrating. Boats and ports have fiddly rules and are arguably overpowered. Mustering troops can be extremely frustrating.

So yeah, it's fiddly. Overall, does it add to the game? My answer is... probably. The fiddliness of the rules definitely exceeds the depth that's added; however, the thematic touches and randomness can actually be welcome. The random Westeros cards absolutely make the game more interesting; the star order icons are vicious but making the bidding crucial; the fine details are classic Ameritrash that rather enhance the sensation of it being "immersive." Of course Robb Stark has to worry about things being unfair if he's not busy mustering out ships. Sometimes you just lose the favor of the king's court and you just can't come back.

Experience - AGOT from April 2015 is easily the longest board game experience I've ever had. My first game was the only one I managed with the full count; with three or four completely new players - and novice gamers - it stretched out around nine hours, including rules explanation and teaching and stopping to eat. It was punishing; I played as the Lannisters and wound up only holding one or two castles after an extremely uneasy truce with the Greyjoys. It was a formative experience, my first time voluntarily delving into such a long experience with anticipation instead of fear. (Shoutout to the 3.5-game of Agricola around the same time, utter misery.) But despite being rough, it was memorable: I didn't have much at the end, but still managed to keep my home castles and to punish my neighbors, whom I at least ensured were unable to win as well.

From an emotional perspective, that first play was one of the tipping points that convinced me it was time to start watching Game of Thrones as well - I knew a ton from cultural osmosis, but had thus far held off on delving in. Game of Thrones (and ASOIAF) became my favorite IP until Seasons 7 and 8 and the interminable wait for Winds of Winter mostly killed it.

Since AGOT was too demanding in player-count and time and arguably emotion for regular game nights, I wound up joining a meetup group dedicated to the board game. I made it out maybe four or five times, playing with various sub-optimal player counts. During one of those games, I played Lannister and got blown off the map by the Greyjoys, which wasn't so fun, and during one of them, I played as House Tyrell and won on the tenth round, with the final march of the game, because we used the Tides of Battle cards and I drew a 3 to my opponent's 0.

My most recent play was just around a year ago. In anticipation of the final season of Game of Thrones, I finally bought my own copy of the board game and organized a game night with my main group. Only five of us played, and it was the zippiest of any game I'd played, clocking in around the four-hour mark.

Future - I bought my copy of AGOT knowing that I'd probably play it less than once a year. But I'm happy to have it in my collection because of what it's meant to me, and it's an event I can look forward to savoring again, if I can wrangle the friends for it.
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I picked up AGoT from Walmart on clearance for $18 last year but I still haven't opened it yet. It's on my to-do list for this year though, whenever it's safe to do board game meetups again.

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I feel like I missed the boat with this one (and battlestar galactica) when they first came out and it feels like they're unlikely to resurface among my friend group

which, hey, it's probably too long and ameritrashy for my tastes anyway! :p

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I like the game by itself, but I find it significantly more interesting with the alternate objectives Feast for Crows gives you
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Tag

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on a side note, i'm generally not a fan of "dudes on a map"-style games, though i'll certainly play them

by far my favorite of that subset of games is inis, which is really clever and perhaps more about managing the card drafting-portion than the actual dudes-on-a-mappery-portion

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still lookin forward to seeing whats next

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inspiring comment, plus this is a short one, befitting the game!

8. Bananagrams (2006)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Real-time, dexterity, word game
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 0
Game length: 5-20 minutes
Experience: 100+ plays with 1-6+ players (2015-2020)
Previous ranks: 5/100 (2016), 11/80 (2018)

Description - There are 144 square tiles, each with a letter printed on them. Each player is dealt a starting set of tiles and, simultaneously, attempts to connect all of the letters in a crossword, like in Scrabble. When any player uses all their tiles, they announce it, and everyone draws a new tile. Once all the tiles are drawn, the first person to use all their tiles is the winner.

Design - There's really not a ton to say about Bananagrams's design. The components are excellent - the tactile feel is huge - and the letter distribution is solid, and the rules... well, they hardly needed anyone to come up with rules - this is really a set of toys. That's honestly what lets the game of it shine through; word games are fun, and real time games are fun.

Ironically, the one area where you do want there to be some more superimposed rules - the mitigation of luck - is where the game comes up short. The game allows you to "dump" a tile with no real restriction, forcing you to pick up three more tiles to do so. Ostensibly this is a penalty, since you now need to fit more letters than another player; however, in practice, that's not much of a penalty at all, if you do get better letters and eventually force someone else to take the Q or J or whatever it was you didn't want. In addition, while whole-game luck should be around the same, the winner isn't whoever peeled the most throughout the game, but rather the person who finishes their final puzzle first - and in a close game, that places an extraordinary amount of weight on the final letter drawn - drawing an A, S, T, or E on the final letter, if the game is anywhere close, pretty much ices the game for you, while drawing a J ensures you lose.

Experience - That said - it's Bananagrams. Games go by lightning-fast and are super-fun at least 80% of the time. This is the very first game I played on that first game night in 2015, meeting the new host and waiting for others to join. I've played it alone a few times, with two players on quieter game nights and in a tournament of friends, with three players as we roomed together for a wedding, with four players to close out game nights, and with five or six players as opener or in-between games on bigger nights. I've gotten that massive play-count because of how damn addictive it is.

Future - I was given Bananagrams on my birthday years back. Fantastic gift. While at the moment, board gaming isn't big on my mind, there's no way Bananagrams won't find its way back to the table many, many times. A game like this feels pretty much impossible to wear out.
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Bananagrams is the kind of game, like Anomia, where the lack of flavor and flair keeps me from choosing it outright, but once I start playing it at someone elses suggestion, I cant stop.

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i have never played bananagrams somehow. i think it hit during a period of time where my boardgamery was at its relative lowest

but my mom is a tournament scrabble player, so it's still kinda strange i never found my way to giving it a go!

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I played Bananagrams once and liked it. My mom kicked my butt in Scrabble for years so I was able to surprise everybody by picking up Bananagrams real dang quick

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bananagrams is the anti-scrabble. scrabble can be cool when you make a move that scores a lot of points, but benefits memorization, analysis paralysis, and playing defensively. bananagrams asks for flexibility and speed and has no defensive playing at all!
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I own bananagrams!

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ring ring ring ring ring ring ring
bananagrams

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boop doop a boop a doop

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Pandemic legacy seems like something I would love to play but I doubt I will get the chance to do it. First time I've heard of it now, but glad I am!

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7. Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization (2015)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Resource management, card-drafting, tableau-building, action-point allocation
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 7
Game length: 180-240 minutes
Experience: 10ish plays with 2, 3 players (plus 10+ solo games on app)
Previous ranks: NR/100 (2016), 7/80 (2018)

Description - Each player leads a civilization from the beginnings of written history to the twentieth century in an effort to amass the most Culture points. On your turn, you draft technology cards, develop them with science, grow your workers, and send those workers to run those technologies. Each round, you produce resources and food and science and victory points; while across rounds, you need to deal with feeding your population, leaders aging out, corruption from too many resources, maintaining internal stability, and military events from the courses of fate and from your opponents.

Experience - I got Through the Ages almost blindly to play with the ex, who didn't play many board games but did like Civilization. It's too long to play with many people realistically, but I did manage a three-player game at least once. It's to date also the only game for which I've paid for a digital version; for a time, I was unable to get enough of it and playedi t on my smartphone during commutes.

Design - Through the Ages is easily the most truly intricate game on my list. Unlike A Game of Thrones: TBG, TTA's myriad systems all link together. It's not always elegant; the player boards have tons and tons of cubes on them that can be pushed around a little too easily, and the action point allocation means that turns increase in length later in the game. But, nearly every single bit of it makes sense: The number of resources you have to manage is a bit overwhelming, but each of them is justifiable when you drill it into your head.

Pretty much the only way to get culture points, other than military ops, is to build up your tableau so that its engine starts to run. Your tableau has zones for farms, science labs, military units, mines, and temples. In order to build a structure/assign manpower there, you need both stone ("resources" produced by your mines, indicating that it's being constructed) and a free worker (operating it, essentially). You can upgrade any of these categories if you have the appropriate technology cards for it, but you need to spend science points to develop them, and after developing the techs, those new mines/temples/labs/whatever require an increasing amount of stone to construct. You also need to increase your population to get those workers, which requires you to pay food. The engine works, and somewhere in there, you'll want to build some extra buildings which provide culture points.

On top of all that, there are the non-"engine" pieces. You'll need to keep your population satisfied with happy faces; the more population you have, the more happy faces you'll need - thematically, you'll usually build sports arenas or temples to raise your civilization's happiness. You'll elect leaders which give you special powers, one per age - you'll find the likes of Genghis Khan or Napoleon Bonaparte, who can give you military strength; Michelangelo or Bach, who can leverage your libraries and transform them to Culture (VP); and Bill Gates, who lets you turn your technology (science) edge into a more concrete (resource) edge. You'll want to spend down whatever resources you have, since if you have too many, then you'll experience government corruption as people start to hoard them for themselves. And of course, you'll need to build your military, because being strongest protects you from your opponents' attacks and allows you to make abstract forays to them as well.

While the goal of the game is to build the best tableau to gain Culture, your turn is driven by cards and allocating your actions. The technologies and leaders you want all come from a sliding row of market cards, which cost actions to draft. The passing of the cards represents the passing of the ages; some cards slide down after each player's turn, and the longer a card is on the market, the fewer actions it takes to draft it. Certain cards will be more competitive to draft, but the less competitive ones will be cheaper. You can make up for a technology deficit by drafting an Action card; often these will allow you to gain food/stone/science for free, or increase your population/build steps in your buildings at discounted rates. This draft and cardplay introduces a tactical element to go with the massive strategic implications of such an epic engine-builder.

The actions you have each turn can be enhanced overall, but are primarily determined by your Government, a special type of technology. Your government will determine how many urban buildings technologies you can populate, but more importantly will also assign you Cultural and Military actions. Upgrade your government by drafting and developing the appropriate card, and you'll get more CA/MAs. Those military operations are what allow you to build up your linear military strength, useful if you want to start skirmishes or wars with other players.

The complexity of a civilization is usually a feature, and not a bug. In this case, it actually starts to make this giant spreadsheet cube-pusher feel thematic. Aside from the techs and leaders doing what you'd think they would do - see sports arenas, Napoleon, etc. - everything is represented by a chart of yellow and blue cubes and where they're placed on specific cards. The incredible array of things to consider (and hell, the length of the game, which is 20ish massive turns) contributes to your sense that you're handling something epic and complex.

After getting familiar with the game (around 7 to 10 in-person plays in just a few months), I managed to reduce TTA's playtime to a slim three hours in person. It's a game that rewards long-term planning massively and will therefore cause analysis paralysis. You have a tremendous amount of control over the course of your civilization, but you're still subject to a variable (but generally fair) market. I'd say the biggest strength of TTA is that after many games, if the level of competition is there, I wish it were just a turn or two longer, because you're so much more powerful at the end of the game, and you're scraping for last-turn advantages. The flipside of course is that it is possible to be absolutely demolished, especially with the more vicious military cards. I generally stray away from using these confrontational cards too much, since they can be expensive for the winner and devastating for the loser, but the element is present.

Future - Since the person with whom I'd play TTA is no longer in my life, it's hard to see this hitting the table in imminent months. But it's a masterpiece of design and one of those brain-burners that I still hold out hope for. Maybe someday gaming pal #1 will be interested, or I'll get it out at a 3-player night where people are happy to play quickly.
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I absolutely love Through the Ages. It really captures the feeling of building up your civilization. Its definitely a top 10 game for me. I will play it anytime.

My only two complaints are -

- the incredibly steep learning curve makes the barrier of entry very high for new players. I've had multiple people who tried the game and hated it because they felt like they didn't have a chance and had to suffer through a six hour game they knew was impossible to win.

- it's virtually impossible to win if you ignore military. You dont need to go all in on military, but If one person ignores military, War On Culture becomes almost broken. Which sucks even more if you're not the non-military player and you don't pull any War on Culture cards.

I hear the expansion makes non-military strategies more viable, but I am still waiting for it to show up so I can find out!

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TTA is so so so good, but man it's an investment of time

I keep trying to get my friends who played it physically to get the digital version but still no luck

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i've heard the app (much like vlaada's other superstar, galaxy trucker) is fantastic

i still haven't played a full game of this though! it's longer than what i usually go for so i've never managed to actually make this happen with my friend who owns it

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cyko posted...

- the incredibly steep learning curve makes the barrier of entry very high for new players. I've had multiple people who tried the game and hated it because they felt like they didn't have a chance and had to suffer through a six hour game they knew was impossible to win.

i'd definitely make it a goal to take it easy on newcomers, especially with military

Naye745 posted...

i've heard the app (much like vlaada's other superstar, galaxy trucker) is fantastic

i still haven't played a full game of this though! it's longer than what i usually go for so i've never managed to actually make this happen with my friend who owns it

it takes 45-90 minutes to play alone on the app, so if you're ever interested...!
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6. Keyflower (2012)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Bidding, worker placement, tableau-building, tile-laying
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 7
Game length: 25-30 minutes per player
Experience: 6-8 plays with 3, 5, 6 players (2016-2018)
Previous ranks: NR/100 (2016), 6/80 (2018)

Description - Over the course of four seasons, each player builds a village of hexes. During each season, a set of hexes become available for players to bid on. On a player's turn, they either bid using their personal supply of colored meeples, or place meeples on a hex (in the market, in their village, or in someone else's village) to activate that hex's ability. While any meeple can be used to bid on/activate a hex, all subsequent bids or activations on that hex must be of the same color as the first. Most hexes have abilities that generate or convert resources, while some give victory points and others are used to upgrade your tiles to make them more powerful and be worth more points.

Design - Keyflower unites many of my favorite game design elements to become the second-highest-ranking eurogame on my list. Bidding and auctions are inherently fun. Building your own little village tableau is inherently fun. And worker placement in general is inherently fun. Keyflower has all of these, and each of these little steps is executed to near-perfection.

Unlike many other auctions, Keyflower dumps the entire market at you at once, and all of it is fair game. Allocating workers to one bid means that you pass up a turn in which you could be setting the color on another tile. You're able to divest out of a losing bid, but sensibly not out of a winning bid; however, getting into losing bids is dangerous because those meeples you place there must move somewhere else together, and they have to go somewhere that their color is allowed. The green meeples are a brilliant addition as well; you start the game with a random collection of red, yellow, and blue meeples, which you can replenish essentially once per round. However, certain hexes allow you to get green meeples - and if you corner the green meeple market, you can dominate bids with considerably fewer resources - as long as no one else gets the green as well. The color system is really what drives this aspect.

The tableau-building is also above average. Hexes are more fun than squares, and these have routes that you'll need to follow. Each tile in your tableau can be upgraded (flipped); most are not worth points otherwise. This is where Keyflower's entire resource and transportation minigame comes into play; like most eurogames, Keyflower has a standard array of resources you collect and spend throughout the game: wood, stone, metal, gold, and special tool tokens. What makes Keyflower unique is how you spend them. Instead of paying out of pocket, all of the wooden pieces of the board actually need to be on the location they're upgrading in order to perform the upgrade. Resources generated by local tiles appear on those hexes, while resources generated by your meeples on others' tiles go to your home tile. The same hex which grants the action to upgrade your hexes also allows you to push these resources between your hexes, so that they're available on the upgraded hex. It's a fantastic little mini-system that is the most abstracted from the core game of bidding and worker placement, but it makes the tableau-building that much more rewarding.

Then there's the worker placement. As with bidding, the color system makes the worker placement - a tile can be activated up to three times, if you use an increasing number of meeples (assuming you don't intentionally block it the first use by placing three meeples on it to start with). But, each activation requires you to use the same colored meeples that were used the first time. This can lead to competition from the green meeples once again, and monopolization of a tile if you have the best of its color. But the other coolest part of the worker placement is that you can place on any hex, not just ones in your village. You play a quarter of the game (Spring) with just a single hex in your village, and you only get additional hexes once the season is over. But you can still activate tiles - you just activate them directly in the marketplace. And later, you can get people's meeples into your own village when they place there... but it can feel rough when someone locks down your badass move/upgrade tile with a green meeple.

Even with each individual component popping, the blend of them actually elevates Keyflower beyond the sum of its parts. There is no divide between auction phase and activation phases; instead, on your turn, you either bid or activate. That gives each decision or action a massive opportunity cost. Keyflower constantly forces you to assign value to your actions. Auction and worker placement games have minimal confrontation, but because of the confluence of mechanics and the sheer number of potential contested battlegrounds, the board state will constantly be affected by others' decisions in a chaotic way. In the end, you can't math out everything, only determine which primary tradeoff you want to make, and hope that your opponents don't block you so you have no other options.

I haven't played Keyflower with 2 players or with 4 players, but for my money, it scales great between 3 and the 6-player full complement. The arc of the game remains the same: try to fetch the engine and powers in the first two seasons; finalize your engine and start planning victory points in autumn; and finally just focus on upgrading and gaining those potentially massive victory point tiles in winter. It leaves you wanting more but also gives a feeling of satisfaction.

Keyflower isn't the prettiest game. The tile art on the cardboard hexes is mostly functional, the meeples are standard grade, and the quality of the resources are pretty typical. The theme is laughably thin; I don't know the names of the majority of the tiles in the game, and the three basic resources of wood, stone, and iron are literally entirely symmetric. It's a game that succeeds based solely on the strength of its brilliant mechanics - and I have no qualms calling those mechanics brilliant.

Experience - I advised a friend buy Keyflower in 2016 without having played it. It was one of the earlier games I made it my responsibility to learn without being taught, and then teach myself. The sense of ownership (even though I didn't own the game itself) may have added to my enjoyment of it, and it definitely made me feel closer to the hobby overall. I've also generally done well at the game, which could definitely affect my opinion of it, in fairness, but I think as long as the game were played quickly, even a poor performance wouldn't cause me to think less of its excellence (contrast AGOT:TBG, where getting blown off the board as the Lannisters felt pretty bad).

Future - I'd really love to own Keyflower. The biggest fear is that it's a bit confrontational at two players (and you see fewer tiles, which makes planning more difficult). But as one of my favorite all-time euros (my favorite as of 2018), it is something I'd like in my collection at the very least.
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i actually got to play keyflower basically right when it came out, before i was super familiar, perhaps, with eurogames in general

it's really good, and has some super clever mechanisms, but i never really warmed to it. there's a big ol' tier of games below my favorites (say, top 25 or so) that are really good games that i just don't love, for whatever reason. thinking of classics like agricola and terra mystica here. keyflower really belongs right up there with those, and i think bgg (it's decently high there, yeah?) recognizes that

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i think keyflower's blend of mechanics surpasses most "good euros." that said, i want to play it a lot more to test that belief...!
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