Board 8 > a short ranking of the tabletop games i played in 2021

(+) Yeah! (+)

58. Port Royal

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/156009/port-royal

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Push-your-luck, set collection, tableau-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 25-40 minutes
First played: 2016
Experience: 4-5 plays with 3-4 players, over 2 sessions
Previous ranks: N/A

In Port Royal, you're trying to get twelve VP by buying cards. Like so many other push-your-luck games, on your turn you start flipping from the deck. Stop, and you collect the coins (in the form of face-down cards that stay face-down) printed on all the ships revealed. But flip too many ships and you're toast. Your coins are used to purchase some cards from the draw, which can be added to your tableau for points and to give you economic advantages on future turns.

Like so many other push-your-luck games, Port Royal doesn't quite push my buttons that well. I do think the game is competently designed, but I just always seem to suck at these, and that might take away from my enjoyment. It's a little tough to watch an opponent build a huge tableau and a dozens cards on their turn, while I'm forced to bow out of the race early on my turn because I haven't accumulated enough cards with swords on them or whatever. This might be the type of game that you enjoy more as you develop better basic strategies; certainly there are games like that higher up on my list. Presumably if I were the one working the unstoppable engine, I'd be having more fun.

Notably, Port Royal is designed by Alexander Pfister. His other lighter card game Oh My Goods! is pretty comparable in complexity and playtime. He's also responsible for the clever little simultaneous action selection game Broom Service, and for one of my favorite eurogames that I didn't play this year, Great Western Trail. So if you've enjoyed his other work, it might be worth trying this one out, even if it isn't exactly my cup of tea.

57. Flamme Rouge

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/199478/flamme-rouge

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Simultaneous action selection, racing, hand management
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30-45 minutes
First played: 2018
Experience: 2 plays over 2 sessions, 4 players
Previous ranks: N/A

Flamme Rouge has you controlling a team of two cyclists, competing against other players' cycling teams to win a race on a two-lane track. Your two cyclists, a sprinter and a rouleur, are each represented by a small, personal deck of numbers (from say 3 to 9 for a sprinter, or 4 to 7 for a rouleur), which tells you how much to advance once it's your turn. Each turn, all players simultaneously draw two cards from each deck and then choose one of each to play. During the reveal, these cards are resolved from the front of the pack to the back of the pack, and then the used cards are discarded for good.

There are a bunch of subtleties that make Flamme Rouge more interesting than "pick the highest number for all of your cyclists," or worse yet "just pick randomly." They basically all relate to the way the game attempts to represent thematic elements of cycling.

The first is that the course is not static - it has hills, and no matter how hard you're pedaling at once, you're not going to get that far up a hill in one go. So if you're around there, you're hoping to draw some mid-range numbers to get you over the hump. Trying to manage your cards so you are not wasting good cards going up and down hills is important.

The next important mechanic is the fatigue card. If no cyclist is directly in front of you at the end of the round, you're going to face wind resistance, which gives you fatigue. Like in so many other deckbuilding games, once you run through your deck once, you'll be shuffling the discarded cards to draw through again (though minus the actual energy cards you've spent on this leg.) The fatigue card only has a movement value of 2, so a fatigued cyclist will of course be a slow cyclist.

The final twist mechanic of Flamme Rouge is the slipstream. Not only can you use cyclists in front of you to shield you from fatigue, you can also take advantage of the air they displace. At the end of the card resolution, If your cyclist is exactly two slots behind the next-closest cyclist, your cyclist will automatically slip into the spot directly behind the one in front of it. This process happens from back-to-front - and any cyclist that is directly behind one that is being slipstreamed up will slipstream up as well.

Together, this creates a fascinating dynamic in the game where bikers will tend to cluster - none of them particularly wants to be first and not only get fatigued, but also let other cyclists piggyback off their hard work and catch right up with a slipstream. You'd rather try to sprint out so far that no one can slipstream you, but it's a long course. Finding the balance is tricky.

But then, while the game is interesting because of this slipstream mechanic, the second time I played it (and the only time I played it in 2021), the way everyone clustered into the pack kind of made the dynamic a little... uninteresting? It felt somewhat arbitrary the person who managed to pull out the right cards at the right moment. That could potentially have been the result of slow play or the wrong group dynamic; perhaps that outcome is actually pretty rare.

In most eurogames, a close outcome usually makes the game more interesting. It's sad when someone falls helplessly behind, and dull when someone takes an insurmountable lead. That won't happen in Flamme Rouge, but because of the nature of the theme, you kind of want a little more of that dynamic, especially late in the game. Perhaps this recent play was a little duller for not having it, and that's okay as well - I do seem to remember there being a little more excitement in the first game. But I do think it's still really cool on paper - an incredibly clever little game about trying to outmaneuver your opponent to gain the smallest of edges, and then relying a bit of luck at the end to charge to the victory.

56. Machi Koro

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143884/machi-koro

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Tableau-building, economic, dice-rolling
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30 minutes
First played: 2015
Experience: 3-4 plays over 3-4 session with 4 players
Previous ranks: 61/100 and 94/100 with expansion (2018), 65/80 (2018), 109/133 (2019)

Machi Koro is a dice-rolling game where you aim to build a city by buying the requisite structures on cards. On your turn you roll a die, and depending on the number that is rolled, you - and/or other people who have that number in their tableau - gain monetary rewards. You can then spend those rewards to buy new structures to add to your city. You need for specific structure to win the game, but can also purchase other cheaper structures to build your engine on future turns.

If you've played Settlers of Catan or Space Base, Machi Koro should feel pretty familiar. That "other people roll dice, YOU get stuff!" mechanic always feels good. It's extremely simple to teach; there is only one type of resource to consider; and it's pretty transparent what you want. I have three main concerns with Machi Koro

First is that it's pretty boring to go for cards that reward you only on your own turn. Part of what keeps Machi Koro interesting is that "ding ding ding" effect on other players' turns; when you only get it on your own turn (and even then can easily roll a worse number), the game becomes less exciting.

Second is that the game doesn't feel like it rewards rolling multiple dice enough. At the beginning of the game, you can only roll one die, but once you build a train station - one of the four winning structures - you can roll two instead. The problem is that your infrastructure at this point only rewards dice rolls from 1 to 6, and no one else is yet rolling doubles. So why invest in higher numbers, and why roll for those higher numbers, other than dodging cafes (see point 3)? The game doesn't last that long, and the payoff horizon doesn't feel great compared to just mostly doubling down on single-die values. But perhaps that's just part of the game's arc and is intentional; after all, at some point you are probably likely to roll more than one die - just not necessarily on the regular.

Finally, it does not feel good to buy red cards. Red cards have the special ability that when someone else rolls your number, they pay you. It can feel really good to take money away from your opponents, but it fucking sucks to lose money on your own turn. Since the game otherwise has no real interaction, this purely negative sort of play is a weird feels-bad in a feels-good game. And because of its power, it makes sense for everyone to load up on the cafes. My only time playing MK in 2021 was with inexperienced players at a meetup. They'd enjoyed every game we played up 'til that point, but MK kind of took the wind out of their sails, especially once I had several red cafes going and I was getting rich when others rolled 3s.

The Harbor Expansion does give you more opportunities to roll more dice, but it's actually considerably worse as a game. It drags a game that is, if nothing else, short and sweet, into a 45-to-60 minutes affair. It lets you keep rolling dice repeatedly, increasing an individual turn length and thus downtime. And it forces you to evaluate a dynamic card marketplace, which you don't need in a game this simple. I'd strongly vote against that.

With all this said, I think Machi Koro is still a pretty fun gateway-level game. It was one of the first games I won when I started hobby-gaming; it is considerably smoother to play than Catan with fewer mean moments; and it can provide many feel-good moments when you start getting rich every turn. The primary factors are ones that don't seem *that* bad to fix; perhaps a few more options at each number and especially a few more attractive alternatives to red cards would really help the game out.

Flamme Rouge is the first game on the list that I've actually played. I really like it too and the Peleton expansion only makes it better: more pieces, teamand cobblestones. It also add breakaways, so up to two riders start ahead, though they suffer a penalty.

I do think that there's a risk of permanently falling behind if you're not careful.There are also multi-stage rules, that I admittedly haven't tried out yet, that look quite interesting, as you keep half of your exhaustion cards for the next stage and there's a general classification, just like in the Tour de France.

It's a great game that doesn't take too long and it usually has a lot of excitement. As long as you don't play with six for one stage, because then someone is bound to end up halfway the stage with two riders in the back with no chance of coming back.

55. Settlers of Catan

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13/catan

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Route-building, map development, economic, dice-rolling, open trading
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 90-120 minutes
First played: 2011
Experience: 15+ plays with 2-4 players
Previous ranks: 86/100 (2016), 66/80 (2018), 111/133 (2019)

In Catan, you settle the land of Catan, which is formed by numbered hexes of five different terrain types corresponding to five different resources. Your settlements go on the corners of hexes, where up to three hexes meet. On each player's turn, they roll two dice, and every player gets rewarded with resources if their settlements touch hexes with that corresponding number. The active player can then freely trade resources with other players and build structures: roads, settlements, cities, or cards, by paying the corresponding resource costs.

Odds are that if you're reading this, you have heard of Catan and have possibly played it yourself. It is one of the games that "started it all," causing a huge stir in the US when these games were still known as "German games" instead of "eurogames." For me, Catan was also one of the first hobbyist board games I played. And I hated it - it felt like it took a really long time; I spent more time trying to grasp the rules and the resources than playing; I got boxed in; and everyone else seemed to be doing a lot of trading, while I had no resources to trade or ways to make points.

Those factors still bother people about the game, and in my eyes, rightfully so. Catan is capable of having many feels-bad moments - when your settlements get boxed in and you can't do anything about it, when a 7 comes up at the wrong time, when you're being left out of the negotiations for any reason, when you're getting a robber played on you, when the dice simply hate you and you can't roll your resources, when people play "take that" cards like Monopoly, which steals cards from your hand as well; when the game feels just a little (or a lot?) too long.

But there are elements of design in Catan that are really smooth. The structure of the island is great. The economic engine at heart is great. Getting stuff on other players' turns is great. Allowing this free-form sort of interaction is actually pretty unique among the more solitary eurogames these days. The role of luck and the rough edges can create stronger emotional responses than the less touchy games that are more popular among hobbyists these days. The game blends strategy and luck and interaction, and the randomized map and elements like the ports ensure some variety in the setup from game-to-game.

One more cool thing about Catan - and this is not super-unique, but again, is kind of cool - is that it's a racing game, with an endgame determined by the person who scores ten points first. There is no endgame scoring; the person who crosses the finish line first wins outright. And I think that can definitely heighten the drama of the game a bit, compared to performing arithmetic at the end of the game.

My experience playing Catan since that first play has never been as negative. Not knowing the rules is a non-issue now; not only are the rules themselves both simple-to-grasp and almost fully internalized for me, but also I no longer have an intrinsic frustration at the discomfort of not knowing rules that well. That said, I think the single thing that can most kill Catan is how long it takes before it's your turn. Catan when people's turns are less than thirty seconds is engaging and snappy and fun. When people are negotiating and pondering in the minute-plus range on their turns, the pace can quickly turn to a slog, and it just feels that much worse when on your rare turn you turn up nothing.

Four players is the canonical best count for Catan, but to me, I really enjoy three-player. The map doesn't get as congested, and your turn comes around more often, and there are fewer trades to deliberate. The game may just take fewer turns overall, as people are more quickly able to get landmarks such as Longest Road with fewer hindrances. Perhaps that's not how Catan is meant to be played, but the speediness and relative non-meanness of that format has been good to me.

Oh wow, I was actually thinking about your rankings the other day and somehow missed this topic until now!

I've been meaning to ask, have you saved the other lists you've made before? I always think that I want to save them for board game recommendations, but I always forget to do it...

yeah, i have the last two topics i made on my drive - i'll PM you the link, since it does theoretically contain spoilers for this one :P

54. Wingspan

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/266192/wingspan

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Tableau-building, card-drafting, resource management
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 60-90 minutes
First played: 2019
Experience: 3 plays with 3-5 players
Previous ranks: N/A

In Wingspan, players each are trying to create their own little bird sanctuary. You do this by drawing and drafting different bird cards from a common deck or face-up supply and placing them onto your tableau. Birds go into one of three different rows representing habitats. The twist that makes Wingspan interesting is that you can spend an action to activate one of your habitats - and then each bird in that habitat that has an activation ability will trigger and reward you. You can also choose to lay eggs on your birds for points and potential between-rounds bonuses.

Here is another of the more famous games on this list. Wingspan has made a ton of noise and pushed its way into the mainstream. On top of that, it's one of the most prominent hobbyist games out there designed by a woman. (Perhaps it's my poor ability to remember designers, but of all the "designer games" I see on my list above this, none of the designers I know offhand are women.) While I wouldn't say it's reached Catan levels of ubiquity, Wingspan definitely feels responsible for bringing in a lot of new audiences, captivated by the unique theme, beautiful art, delightful birdfeeder, and friendly/addictive mechanics.

For me, the first three are definite if not massive pluses. Bird collection simply does not appear in that many games as a theme, and the cards look beautiful on the table. The birdfeeder is entirely unnecessary as a component but adds to the table presence as well.

As for the gameplay itself - well, it's pleasant. There's no real negative player interaction in Wingspan. You compete in classic indirect eurogame ways - taking the common dice that have the food other players want, trying to do the best in categories, and the like. There are also some clear feels-good design decisions - each turn is relatively snappy due to the structure of the game; you only take one action when it's on you. And of course, activating your big row of actions, or laying eggs on your birds later for points, can be very satisfying.

While Elizabeth Hargrave designed this game, it was published under Stonemaier's umbrella. And it kind of has that "Stonemaier feel" to it: great production, non-negative interaction, and an emphasis on the flow of the game. The calculus of the game feels like it leans toward the rougher parts of the game being sanded off, rather than the stronger gameplay elements being polished to a sheen. The final act of the game, many will note, mostly rewards you for just running your engine in rather obvious ways (and the fact you have fewer actions in later stages obviously encourages you to exploit rather than invest). The lack of major interaction means you're basically constructing your own board. And I'd say the game doesn't feel quite deep enough to make your own puzzle that interesting. As a counterexample to the game right below it, Wingspan will never make you feel bad like Catan will repeatedly do. However, it also is unlikely to get the cool responses when things click that Catan can.

All that said - it's pleasant and playable, and that might count for a lot. For a lot of games, the appeal of being able to get it to the table with a lot of different people could be enough. I don't personally own Wingspan, and I'm not particularly interested in it, but it's a nice hobby game that many people will play and that is not offensive. And that counts, right?

53. Diamant

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/15512/diamant

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Push-your-luck, multiple hands, simultaneous action selection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 15-20 minutes
First played: 2019
Experience: 3-5 plays with 5-8 players over 2 sessions, plus online play as Incan Gold

Diamant is a classic push-your-luck game. Players are exploring a cave for treasures, and each step they take, they simultaneously must decide whether to go deeper. Going deeper means that a tile is flipped for the collective table - so anyone who's in it when the spiders attack, or you fall into that pit of spikes, is eliminated at the same time. But if you leave, you do get to keep what you've collected so far, plus some booty that is split between everyone who has left on the same trip.

Also implemented as Incan Gold (and on BGA), Diamant's simultaneous choice mechanic is one of its strongest points. You don't know who will persist, and you don't know who will chicken out. Your best course is determined very strongly by this, but none of you knows precisely what the other does. Trying to cut bait at the moment everyone else does will result in both of you losing out. But while you can never get screwed by another player by staying in, you can get wrecked by the collapsing tunnel. It's a cool bit of tension and a game of chicken.

I also kind of suck at these games and they just don't click great for me. There's nothing wrong with Diamant's design, but for some reason I just feel bad when I see others continue on and on without me. I guess that's part of the emotional hook of the game - it feels so good to be the only person going deep into a tunnel and then winning, especially when others are rooting against you. But I feel kind of lame sitting there and rooting against others while being bitter at my fellow cowards. Maybe I'm the crazy, bitter one.

Diamant's speed is its other key design point (enhanced by the simultaneous play). No single decision should take more than fifteen seconds, so as long as you haven't left the adventuring party, you'll essentially never have true downtime. And playing a high number of players means there's really no situation where Diamant shouldn't be at least a reasonable pick.

52. Chameleon

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/227072/chameleon

Category: Player vs team
Key mechanics: Hidden roles, clue-giving, word game
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: <10 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 3 plays over 1 session with 4-5 players

In Chameleon, each player knows a word on a grid, linked by topic... except for the secret, titular chameleon player. Each player then gives one word. After that, the non-chameleons collectively have one guess to figure out who the chameleon is, while the chameleon tries to blend in and figure out what the word is.

What a wild game. Chameleon feels like distillation of the early game Spyfall, which worked almost exactly the same way. Bringing the game down to a single round of saying a word is brilliant, and the categories are better varied than single locations. Thinking up the perfect word to clue in everyone without making it obvious what the word is, or to be just vague enough where you're covering the right word but without having to know it, requires a ton of creativity and trying to play your audience correctly.

That said, it's not super-strategic - as in all social deduction games, a perfect clue in your eyes can be blown up by the table, while by pure luck, the table could just out you as the villain - correctly or incorrectly. If you go first as the chameleon, you're probably dead. You just are. Luck plays a massive role in it. And it can feel punishing and stressful. And all that is fine! For a microgame, I thought it was a fun novelty and I'd definitely play it again if people are into it.

51. Hey Robot

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/292350/hey-robot

Category: Team vs team
Key mechanics: Clue-giving, novelty
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 0
Game length: 20 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 1 play with 4-6 players

Hey Robot is one of the absolute simplest games here. When it's your team's turn, you choose someone to be the active player, and that player chooses a word on a word grid. They then talk to a device like Amazon Echo or Google Home and ask the device a question. If the device's answer includes the keyword, you score points.

That's it. That's the game. It's fun. It's clearly a game, but it definitely begins to veer into the "activity" category because the core goal is so simple and since there's no real interaction with anyone else. But it does succeed as a party game/icebreaker activity simply because it's fun not only to play your turn, but to watch other people try to understand how you can get Google to say (for instance) "bedroom" without using either of the associated words.

Nice novelty experience.

Chameleon is a pretty fun party game. I like it.

Machi Koro is an ok game with the harbor, but you have to use a house rule to make the dynamic market work (so well that it actually got used in the later Big City version)... but even then it's still not as good as Space Base

the Millionaire's Row expansion is straight-up bad though

th3l3fty posted...

Machi Koro is an ok game with the harbor, but you have to use a house rule to make the dynamic market work (so well that it actually got used in the later Big City version)... but even then it's still not as good as Space Base

yeah, this seems fair. that said space base feels a lot harder to track visually than machi koro.

i've only played the harbor expansion and i don't think we used the market fix. the decisions are probably more interesting; problem is that the tradeoffs to make that happen were pretty ugly

I actually find Space Base to be a lot easier to track than most games that require paying attention on everyone else's turn.

more soon

50. Dream Crush

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/315059/dream-crush

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Guessing, narrative
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 30 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 1 play with 6 players

Dream Crush is one of the silliest games on this list, and it very very barely qualifies as a game. It's more of a reading exercise. There are three images of reality-TV-looking people displayed. Each round, all of the characters will be "put into" a situation, giving you information about their characters/how they react to those situations (i.e., they're meeting your family, and they swear in front of your niece). You are supposed to evaluate their characters based off the sum of the way they react in these situations, and choose who you would want to date based off that. At the same time, you predict other people's dream crushes.

First, for the reason this isn't a real hobby game: Games like this, which reward you for guessing other people's answers correctly, obviously depend on people answering "honestly" about whom they'd date. (Similarly, "games" like Cards Against Humanity also depend on people genuinely picking a card for a real reason or whatever.) You should play to win while guessing other people's choices, but absolutely not when you're making your own. Can your friend overcome their distaste for the wannabe Instagram influencer if they find out the influencer also shares their same taste in movies and loves the same pets?

The fun from the "game" really comes from just discussing your answers after the fact. It's an icebreaker novelty type of game where you justify your ridiculous answers or complain about how you know your friend would never date someone who slurped their soup loudly. It's not much of a game, but it was a good (one-off!) experience.

49. Similo

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/268620/similo

Category: Cooperative
Key mechanics: Clue-giving, deduction
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 5-10 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 2-4 plays in 1 session with 2 players

In Similo, there is a board of cards depicting images of people with names. One player is given a secret character that the other player must guess. The cluegiver is given a hand of other character cards. On the cluegiver's turn, they give one of their cards to the guesser, who then uses this card as a clue to eliminate a predetermined number of of the remaining characters on the board. After three or four turns, the guesser will be down to only one character remaining - if it is the correct character, the team wins.

This is one of the simpler deduction games out there. The game is insanely quick, but it's quite neat, with a fixed length, beautiful art, and near-non-existent setup time. If you don't pre-communicate what your clues mean, it's a pretty great trying to mind-meld. Marie Curie? Oh, it must be a woman, let me toss out some men this time. George Washington? I guess it's a political figure, so I'll toss out the scientists. Wait, what do you mean that Washington was supposed to convey "they're white"? So many of them are white! The game will feel a bit more like Mysterium than Codenames, but the brevity and simplicity of it are huge factors in its favor.

Because the game is so short/limited in decision space, and only has a limited number of great cartoon portraits, I'm not sure if it would hold up to extreme repeated play. But playing this game several times was a great sliver of afternoon.

48. CrossTalk

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/215371/crosstalk

Category: Team vs team
Key mechanics: Clue-giving, word game
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 10-20 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 4-6 plays in 1 session with 6 players

CrossTalk is a clue-giving team game, where each team has a spymaster alternates giving a word clue for a secret word, which is the same between the two teams. Whichever team first guesses the word will win the round. Before the game starts, the spymaster can also write down a special clue word that only their team knows.

So I guess the way CrossTalk is supposed to work is, your hidden word gives you extra context for what the real word is, and the above-the-table clues are outwardly kind of hard to decode (as you don't want them intercepted by the other team.) It's got a Decrypto-like element to it. Cool stuff, right?

Well... I mean the problem is that the lack of restriction on the hidden word is so strong that it alone kind of wound up solving the whole game a lot of the time. It's certainly pretty enjoyable to run through, but I just didn't feel that strongly connected to the game when - as a pure example - your spymaster secretly passes your team the word "Russian." All it then takes is "falling" and "blocks" (or whatever) to hit Tetris.

Now giving clues is still really fun if the other team messes up, but at least in my games, it felt like the game would rarely go beyond a rally of 2-3 clues before one team would have it. Those 2-3 clues were really fun, though!

47. Aquatica

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/283393/aquatica

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Tableau-building, card-drafting
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 30-60 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 1 play with 4 players

Aquatica is a classic tableau-builder - each player runs their own underwater kingdom, playing character cards from hand to draft locations onto your tableau. The cards on your tableau can be slid upward for action points, and as they slide upward, different benefits will be granted. Sliding a location all the way upward allows it to be scored for points. There are several different conditions to race for that, when one player has enough, can end the game - including cards in hand, special manta tokens earned, and more.

The design for Aquatica is very cool. I really like the sliding tableaux and the multiple endgame conditions is a clever way to give players goals, even if the player who triggers endgame isn't automatically the winner. If you've ever played Scythe, this should feel similar to the star system, where you're rewarded for taking things to their natural endpoints, but that is hardly a guarantee that you will win the game. The mechanic of sliding your locations up to gain resources is also very satisfying.

One small downside I had with this game was that it felt a bit heads-down; as with many tableau-builders, it can become very difficult to track everything your opponents are up to, so when your opponents swipe achievements from you, it sometimes comes as a random unpleasant surprise. But that could just be a lack of experience - surely if you develop a better feel for these mini-races then it becomes more interesting.

Still keeping up with this topic each time it's updated, in case you were wondering if anyone was reading it. <3

same

Yep, me too.

Yup

thanks everyone! progress has been slow due to motivation/focus being slow, but this will continue

46. Le Havre

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35677/le-havre

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Tableau-building, card-drafting, economic
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 6
Game length: 150-180 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 1 play with 3 players

In Le Havre, you're running your business out of a port by building up a tableau. Each round, common resources pile up, and you either get to grab some of those common resources or use a building - i.e. part of someone's tableau (including your own). The overall goal is to amass the most money using these buildings to perform economic tasks such as building more buildings, collecting resources, and transforming resources into points.

Le Havre is an older Uwe Rosenberg title, and it shows a lot of the Uwe fascinations: lots and lots of different actions, breeding animals, converting one resource into another, feeding workers. For most of the game in my experience, it was satisfyingly complex and juicy - but toward the end of the game, tableaux exploded so much in size that I was entirely unable to follow what other players were doing and what trades they could make, and mostly just lasered in on buying the buildings that seemed like they'd pay off most.

I wish I could say more, but the game became progressively more heads-down and fever-dream-ish! I'd still give it a shot, but would probably prefer to play with two players so there's a little less to track and so that it plays faster.

only experience i have with uwe is learning how to play feast for odin once (not actually playing it). whew theres a lot in that game

45. Kabuto Sumo

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/320390/kabuto-sumo

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Dexterity
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 0
Game length: 10-20 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 2 plays over 1 session with 4 players

In Kabuto Sumo, you attempt to push your opponent's wooden disc off of a crowded board by entering more wooden discs of varying sizes and shapes onto the board. Any disc you knock off becomes yours to enter in a later round.

For context, it's probably useful to have this visual aid:

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/6669027/kabuto-sumo

I thought this was a really nice little filler/novelty game - it's not something I'd play over and over. However, it aesthetically checks a lot of happy boxes - these wooden tokens all look fantastic, and it's very satisfying to see the way that they move as you push your piece on.

Despite not having much dexterity - you just have to pick an angle and push with your finger at a slow pace - it's also deceptively unintuitive and tricky. As you'd expect, entering a larger discs is more effective for displacing discs on the other side of the board from you. But you'd be surprised at how much discs shift before they get displaced. The rules and mechanics are incredibly simply, but physics has a way of frustrating your plans.

Overall, a neat distraction and a cool table-piece.

KommunistKoala posted...

only experience i have with uwe is learning how to play feast for odin once (not actually playing it). whew theres a lot in that game

yeah, i think there might technically be fewer actions you can take in le havre compared to AFFO, but they're not as centralized as AFFO, so it can be even more confusing. but yeah, AFFO obviously exhibits the same uwe tropes that i mentioned in le havre!

my friends with a ton of uwe games moved away :(

I own Agricola and Caverna, but somehow I've never gotten around to Le Havre or Feast for Odin

more to come tomorrow

Are we going to see IDW's Batman: The Animated Series: The Board Game on this list?

nope - haven't even heard of that one!

sorry, was a bit sick this last week. more will come!

This is still going? Cool.

yes it theoretically is

you know what, let's try to get a few out today while i bask in this celtics win

44. Telestrations

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/46213/

Category: Non-competitive
Key mechanics: Drawing
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 0
Game length: 10-20 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 8+ plays over 5+ sessions with 4-8 players

Imagine Telephone and Pictionary - Telestrations is a hybrid, mass-market game where each player simultaneously draws a different secret word, then passes their drawing in the same direction and guesses what was handed to them. These drawings are then rotated yet again so the next player can also draw, based on the previous player's guess.

So, the thing about Telestrations is, it hasn't really made my past rankings lists because... it's not really a game. It's an enjoyable group activity. Its ruleset doesn't really provide opportunities to make it more of a game, and it (like many party games with looser rules) often is more fun when people aren't necessarily "doing the best they can" - i.e. they're putting in guesses that are wild even though they have little chance of being actually correct; or they're drawing vaguer pics instead of more accurate ones.

But play it with the right people and it's still fun. The reactions people have when they receive a picture, or the way you flip through things at the end, is always great.

The last time I played - well into 2022 at this point - I stumbled upon what I thought might be a cool variant (assuming I know the rules correctly). At the end of the game, instead of flipping through your book from front to back to show how it evolved, flip from back to front - i.e. show what the final result was, and then slowly reveal what each person was actually trying to reconstruct/guess until you hit the beginning. More mystery and tension, plus more opportunities for sympathy this way IMO.

43. 6 nimmt!

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

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Simultaneous action selection, hand management, separate hands
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 20-30 minutes
First played: 2015
Experience: 20+ plays over 8+ sessions with 4-8 players

6 nimmt! is an interesting abstract card game. At the beginning of a hand, each player is dealt ten cards from a deck with numbers 1 through 104, while four cards form the beginning of card buckets on the table. Each turn each player simultaneously chooses and reveals one card from their hand. These cards, in order of lowest to highest, are placed in the corresponding bucket (defined by the most recently played card in each bucket). If your card causes the bucket to hit six, you get the cards in the bucket, which are worth varying degrees of negative points. A hand ends when all ten turns are completed, and then new hands are played until one player has accumulated 66 negative points.

One of the neatest parts about 6 nimmt! is that anyone can play. You can literally play completely randomly - without looking at your hand - and still be participating. This is also of course its greatest weakness; the semblance of player interaction and strategy can feel awfully shallow if you're not locked in on how to handle the actual strategy and tactics and luck of the game. Players on Boardgamearena seem to be able to get Elos of 200+, which means there has to be some sort of consistency to it - which is way beyond me, of course. Still, if you do put in the thought, you can make educated guesses on where other players will try to place, and either bluff or not bluff where you want your own cards to go and how that will shape the board in the upcoming round.

As I mentioned, 6 nimmt! is on BGA. It also plays a ton of players, which means it got a lot of run for me during pandemic online game nights. At this point I actually find it a little slow online due to how long it takes to resolve each hand, which is a little ironic - it's somehow more enjoyable to move those cards physically, since it doesn't take a lot of thought (unlike some other games where BGA's automation feels key). It's an easy enough game to give a shot - never going to be the single high-point of an evening, but a nice complementary piece given its easy weight and accessibility.

yea allowing for high player counts has gotten 6 nimmt a good amount of play since we started playing stuff on BGA

6 nimmt! is probably the favorite game of the moderators that come to my biweekly online board game night.

tag

42. Deadwood 1876

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/245197

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Hand management, take that, temporary alliances
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 30-40 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 1 play over 1 session with 6 players

In Deadwood 1876, your goal is to end the game with the most gold by winning a Final Showdown. But that gold is revealed through flipped cards. Your player token is in one of three locations, and you collect a balance of gold and guns throughout the game, all while either temporarily being allies with the people in your location, or by fighting those allies and trying to force them out of your locations.

This is probably a game where I'd have a lot more to say back in November, when I played it on that wild weekend of gaming. My major memory of the game is that it's not quite as hectic as it seems; while there is a lot that happens outside of your control - you do go one player at a time instead of simultaneously - the game moves a little slower than you'd think. It takes a fair bit of time to gather your guns and gold, and it's pretty difficult to move locations in the way you actually want. That said, the game's silliness definitely comes through, and if you're okay with a semi-arbitrary outcome that feels a little divorced from the decision-making that happens in the game, it's at least a cool experience.

The awkwardness of Deadwood 1876 is that it occupies a weird space between party game and "gamer's game." It's just a little long and fiddly to be a true party game - think Good Cop, Bad Cop (but less unfun), but it's a little too chaotic with too few turns for a more regular game. I can imagine that it gets better as everyone is more experienced with the game, it plays faster, and everyone has a better of idea what they should be doing.

41. Watergate

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/274364/watergate

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Hand management, card-driven game
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 30-40 minutes
First played: 2019
Experience: 10+ plays over 6+ sessions with 2 players

In Watergate, one player plays the investigate press and the other plays the Nixon campaign during the 1970s. The press attempts to connect Nixon to informants via evidence tokens on a board, while Nixon's team tries to win five momentum tokens and thus get the president reelected. Each round, players draw up from their respective decks and then alternate their turns playing cards either for action points (which allows them to move the evidence tokens and momentum marker) or for their printed abilities, which have diverse effects.

I really think Watergate is incredibly cleverly designed. The only other game I've played like this is Twilight Struggle; also themed during the Cold War, the two games share in common the "card-driven" system - where you choose between the card's numerical value to do a basic action or the card's text which lets them do a unique action. Here, your uses of the action points are extremely important - both the momentum marker (which is Nixon's victory condition) and the evidence tokens (the Press's victory condition) are incredibly important. Then there's the Initiative token as well.

The game has this really nice visual appeal. No specific things looks great - the art is black and white photography; the board is pretty basic-looking - but the evidence web is geometrically really satisfying, with Nixon in the center of an intricate network of informants on criss-crossing evidence token slots. Really looks like those evidence boards you'll see on TV that detectives use.

dont know much about the game, but amazing concept and theme.

keeping this alive, more will come

This still alive?

it allegedly still is - haven't been good about making time for this, but i will again

40. Wordsmith

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/274364/watergate

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Word game, real time, dexterity
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 0
Game length: 5-10 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 2 plays with 4-6 players in one session

In Wordsmith, you're given pieces of letters - arcs, line segments, the like. Your goal is to assemble these pieces into letters, and those letters into words - as many as possible, within the time limit.

I freaking love word games - one of my absolute favorite games, which I didn't wind up playing in 2021, is Bananagrams. Wordsmith definitely qualifies as that, and it also has some geometric/tactile fun-factor because you get to actually form your letters. It's really fun assembling them.

The reason why Wordsmith doesn't rank higher - I'm just not convinced that this game has the legs. It's super-fun to form those words and just move on and on, but it's also a speed-based word game that has a high novelty-factor. I don't own this game and would happily play it again, but wonder if further plays would take the shine off of it.

39. Century Eastern Wonders

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/242574/century-eastern-wonders

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Point-to-point navigation, resource management, order fulfillment
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 45-60 minutes
First played: 2018
Experience: 4-6 plays with 3-4 players

The second in a Century trilogy, Eastern Wonders has you controlling a spice merchant navigating Asian isles via boat, laid out in hexes. Each turn, you get some movement points and send your boat to different hexes, and on each hex you land on, you can place an outpost, gather spices, or trade spices (with the game). The trades you can execute depend on the hex that you land on. Placing certain trading posts gets you special rewards, and you trade your collected spices to fulfill orders and gain victory points.

Century Spice Road, the first of the Century games, is one of my favorite gateway games. It gets you quickly into the action by acquiring cards, and then you just run your engine with your head down.

Eastern Wonders complicates things by introducing a spatial element. You have to plan your route to sequence where you harvest your yellow spices and where you upgrade them to the next tier (of which there are four), or when you hit upon that perfect sequence of upgrades. And then you have to plan your route to race your boat to the corners of the map. In the meantime, everywhere you land, you should be trying to plan out which upgrades you can unlock on your board.

It's a pretty fun puzzle - trading spices for other spices is just kind of inherently satisfying. But at the same time, the races it introduces feel tight in a way that isn't that intentional in terms of player interaction, and it's a fair bit more difficult to discern your opponents' capabilities of grabbing certain objectives. So to me, there's more aimless milling about in the center of the map - obviously less satisyfing. Still, it's fun to slowly get more powerful, to watch the board fill up beautifully, and to finally get those objective tiles for VP, because they do take so much effort. I just wish the satisfaction-to-work ratio were a little higher!