Board 8 > Iceman's Board Game Topic (Rankings, Reviews, Sessions, Discussion)

(+) Yeah! (+)

I think we've got some other folks here that enjoy board games, right?

My regular group has recently reformed thanks to two of our four members moving back to our hometown, so I'm getting the chance to play very regularly on weekends after a few years of sessions that were few and far between. Figured it might be fun to get a little discussion topic going here so I have another outlet for engaging with the hobby during the week besides just mindlessly exploring BoardGameGeek and Kickstarter.

And, because it's been a good while since I did any kind of ranking project here, I thought I'd make it a twofer. I've got a little over 40 games that I feel experienced enough with to include in a full ranking. Rookie numbers to some but still enough to be of interest to people, maybe?

Beyond that, even though I just plastered my username into the topic title, my hope is that anyone will feel free to come in here and share everything board game-related that they want - their own rankings and reviews, reports from their game sessions, whatever crowdfunding launch is triggering their FOMO that day, it's all welcome. I just feel like chatting about tabletop gaming.

Here's a list of what I'm including in the ranking to begin with.

7 Wonders
A Feast for Odin
Anomia
Azul
Boss Monster
Calico
Cards Against Humanity
Cascadia
Codenames
Dead of Winter
Dice Forge
Dune: Imperium
Eldritch Horror
Everdell
Exploding Kittens
Flamecraft
Fury of Dracula
Great Western Trail
Happy Little Dinosaurs
Here to Slay
Hues and Cues
Inis
King of New York
King of Tokyo
Kingsburg (2nd Edition)
Last Bastion
Machi Koro 2
Marvel Dice Throne
Mysterium
Obsession
Photosynthesis
Root
Sagrada
Scythe
Secret Hitler
Sequence
Spirit Island
Sushi Go!
Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza
Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef
Twilight Imperium: 4th Edition
Viticulture
Wavelength
Wingspan

That's 44 games total, but I reserve the right to add games to the list if they happen to hit the table from my group's unplayed shelf of shame, which currently consists of:

Dwellings of Eldervale
Merchants of the Dark Road
Vindication
Windward

Would love to know if anyone here has experience with any of those that they want to share!

Rankings and writeups will be posted more or less as I have the time and feel like it - not gonna try to adhere to any kind of schedule and I'm not in a particular hurry since the ranking is kind of secondary to the discussion I'm hoping for here.

In the meantime, anyone have any crowdfunded games (or other preorders) that they're waiting on? I've got a few, but it's gonna be quite a while before any are in my hands.

Guards of Atlantis II
https://gamefound.com/en/projects/wolffdesigna/guardsofatlantis2new
Absurdly excited for this one - seems like a very high percentage of people that play it have it as one of their absolute favorite games. I held off on the initial campaign because it seemed pointless to get without a consistent group, but now that I do have one of those I finally pulled the trigger on the game and one hero pack.

Hybris: Disordered Cosmos
https://gamefound.com/en/projects/aurora-game-studio/hybris-disordered-cosmos-rivalry
This game seems like it could be a complete mess with just too much going on, and even if it's not, it might end up being a little too out there for my friends. But a heavy steampunk-Greek-mythology game with all of these different mechanisms that I tend to enjoy is so perfectly up my alley that I feel like I owe it to myself to try it. Think the resale market should be good enough that I can at least get most of my money back if it flops.

The Old King's Crown
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eerieidolgames/the-old-kings-crown-a-tale-of-royalty-rebels-and-ruses
This wasn't on my radar at all until a couple weeks ago, and now the hype train seems to have suddenly gone out of control for it. I definitely think the rulebook needs another few passes (which the creator is aware of), but this has a chance to be a really, really cool bluffing/bidding game that makes you feel really clever to win. And it goes without saying but that art is incredible.

been playing a good amount of of Ark Nova solo on boardgamearena recently. fun game that I should play more multiplayer of.

as for new games, post-Essen Spiel and seeing some stuff about them I'm waiting for Evacuation and Path of Civilization to hit the US market. Evacuation seems really cool as you start with an economy/engine, but you have to kind of take it apart at the right time as you are evacuating a dying planet and moving to a new one. Since it's under Rio Grande Games it should be pretty easy to get soon I imagine

Path of Civilization is a civilization game (surprise) but with simultaneous actions that looks like it could rival 7 Wonders as an approachable civ building game. I don't think it has any talk of a release over here in America yet sadly, but hopefully soon

Also Nucleum just because people compared it to Brass + Barrage, but I haven't really looked into it at all beyond that.

jealous that your gaming group has re-coalesced! my activity has largely dropped off a cliff and been quite sporadic since the pandemic other than with my partner. instead i've gotten a lot into playing online on board game arena

i've played about 60% of the games on your list, some of them just once and some many times. here are the ones i have never touched:

Calico
Cascadia
Dune: Imperium
Eldritch Horror
Flamecraft
Fury of Dracula
Happy Little Dinosaurs
Here to Slay
Kingsburg (2nd Edition)
Last Bastion
Machi Koro 2 (though i have played machi koro)
Marvel Dice Throne
Obsession
Sequence
Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza
Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef
Twilight Imperium: 4th Edition

curious to see which ones you consider best!

also go my Dune Imperium

likely in my personal top 3 games, digital release is soon! haven't had the chance to play the expansions with my group sadly but even the base game alone is still great

Oooh, interesting. I have a board gaming group I go to occasionally, so I've heard of a few of these and never played, but also played several too. Interested to see what your thoughts were.

This list is inclusive of the ones I have played:

7 Wonders
Boss Monster
Codenames
Exploding Kittens
King of Tokyo
Machi Koro 2 (I played the original with an expansion - dunno if this is different from that)
Sequence
Sushi Go!
Twilight Imperium: 4th Edition (dunno what edition but I played this once)
Viticulture
Wingspan

Ark Nova is a game I'm curious to try, but something about its look has always turned me off of it a bit. I didn't realize it was on BGA, though - good opportunity to give it a go.

I definitely saw a lot of praise for Evacuation post-Essen, been meaning to check out a playthrough video. Love the idea of the game.

Anyway, let's get the ranking started with some stuff I don't care for.

44. Cards Against Humanity
Expansions Played: None
I know it's pretty low-hanging fruit among "serious" members of this hobby to hate on CAD, and it's not like it completely ruins my night if we've got seven or eight people hanging out and one of them drops this on the table, but I still would never come close to describing it as an enjoyable time. I'd rather just, like, talk to people. It was kind of funny the first couple times I ever saw it when I was, like, 14 years old. Nowadays, I just spend an hour-plus hoping for maybe one little laugh, or maybe finding some humor in disturbing our especially prudish friend. Even then, though, we can accomplish that without this "game."

I don't know, I've already spent more words on this writeup than it deserves. Next.

43. Fury of Dracula (Third Edition)
Expansions Played: N/A
I wish I had better things to say here, because I quite like the very base idea of this game. It's a One vs All, Hidden Movement battle where one player controls Dracula and the others control hunters from the original novel trying to stop him from growing his influence over Europe. Dracula moves using a deck of secret location cards (played facedown) while the hunters attempt to track him - if they visit a location he's been to recently, that card gets flipped up and the trail is found, hopefully granting enough info to deduce where he's gone since.

In theory, this should lead to a lot of tense, interesting decisions where you slowly piece together what little clues you find and try to get into the Dracula player's head and eventually come to a reasonably educated conclusion about how to proceed. In practice, you're really just going to end up flipping a mental coin more often than not. Stumbling on the city Dracula visited four turns ago is rarely helpful because there's probably no one close enough to take advantage of it, and even if there is, there's probably still not enough information to actually determine which direction he went afterwards with any confidence. I don't know - maybe my friends and I are just really bad, but anytime we found Dracula, it felt like luck instead of cleverness.

But even if there is some deep deduction gameplay here that I missed, your elation at being smart enough to find your quarry would likely be short lived once you remember that means you have to fight him now. Your prize for winning a guessing game is another guessing game. The combat system here is just a card-based Rock-Paper-Scissors farce that most closely resembles one of those soccer penalty kicks where the goalie jumps in the complete opposite direction of the ball. Unless you're playing against poor, predictable Bart Simpson with his "always pick Rock" strategy, there's no way to play the mind games needed to succeed as the hunter - Dracula will almost always have multiple options available to him that are advantageous, to the point that you simply can't counter all of them and you'll be, yes, flipping a mental coin again. One of these options is for Dracula to take bat form and, unless you play the exact card to stop him, teleport multiple cities away and force you to start the metal-detector-on-a-beach search again.

All of this would be more acceptable if it was a quick affair, but it's not - this game's #1 problem is that it takes forever to play for even experienced groups, and it simply does not justify its length. I enjoy the original Dracula lore and I'll give Fury credit for being thematic, but there's just too much annoyance going on in this box for too few moments of fun. I should note that I never played as Dracula, and I've had people tell me that I'd probably like the game better if I did. I could believe that, but in a One vs All game, if the only player having fun is the One, that's still lousy design. This is not a solo game and my having a good time shouldn't be predicated on getting a specific role. It actually soured my opinion on One vs All forever. I'm sure there's decent stuff out there, but it seems like a setup that's absurdly hard to balance from both a fairness and fun factor standpoint.

Can someone just make a good Castlevania board game instead? Maybe one where fighting is actually fun? Just spitballing here.

I've never played Cards Against Humanity, since that sort of humor isn't my thing, but I have played Apples to Apples and a couple other variants. It's alright enough but if I'm picking games, it's not going to be a game I encourage. Something like Codenames or Wits and Wagers are still fairly casual games, that I'd rather instead, if I'm with a group that wants something more casual.

42. Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game
Expansions Played: None
One of the first modern board games I ever played, and it's a wonder that it didn't send me running from the hobby at all speed.

Dead of Winter is a semi-cooperative zombie game, which is a bad start. "Semi-cooperative" is not an adjective that most board gamers tend to enjoy, and there are few genres of media I'm less interested in than zombie stories. But close-mindedness never did anyone any favors, so I accepted the offer to give it a shot, and it was just all downhill from there.

You and your friends play as members of a small colony of survivors of whatever apocalyptic event led the world to this state. Broadly, the game revolves around these survivors making excursions out of the colony to look for stuff - food, gas, that sort of thing. The harder you look, the more chance you have of drawing the zombies' attention. Each round, you have to find enough supplies to put into a community pool while fending off those zombies. Everything that goes wrong decreases the community morale, and if you lose too much, game over. And oh boy, will things go wrong.

For example, every time you go anywhere, you have to roll a die to see if anything bad happens to you. Most of the time, something bad will happen to you, up to and including INSTANT DEATH. You've set up the game. You've set up your character. If there are new players, you've sat through an interminably long rules teach that eventually just amounts to "you can do a few basic actions and roll dice to see what happens." On your first turn, you decide to go to the Hospital to look for some supplies, aaaaaand you roll the die and are killed immediately. That effect can even cascade to other players, killing multiple at once through pure chance. What a worthwhile experience that was.

What else is going on? Well, the semi-cooperative part of Dead of Winter is twofold. First, everyone has a secret personal objective to go along with the overarching group objective. For an individual player to win, not only does the group as a whole have to achieve victory, that player also has to complete that objective. But beware - there may also be a traitor in your midst! They win if the rest of the group loses and they accomplish some other stuff too. Honestly, I don't really remember the traitor mechanic that well because we tried it once or twice and then never again. Why? Firstly, because the game is hard and random and full of those self-serving secret objectives enough already. More importantly, the traitor's primary method of sabotage is to add utter junk to that collection of community resources I mentioned earlier. The biggest problem here (not the only one, but the biggest) is that all non-starter items tell you what location they come from. So if at the end of the round, the pile is full of garbage from the Hospital and only one player has been there, gee, I wonder who the traitor is.

That's an oversimplification, of course, and there's ways to mitigate the obviousness, but those ways are riskier and I think y'all get the idea of why I hate the mechanic regardless. It never made the game better, and even if the traitor gets found out relatively early, they've probably had plenty of time to do enough damage to the colony that everyone else is going to lose anyway. The personal objectives suck too, though. Too often, you'll realize partway through the game that you have no shot of accomplishing yours (frequently through no fault of your own) and be forced to sit there for another 90-120 minutes with no hope of victory, just trying to help the group now. Putting aside that this is punitive and boring beyond words, it also really gets in the way of the whole theme and intrigue of the scenario. And yes, you read that time right - this is another game that is just way too damn long for how repetitive it really is. Apparently there's a variant in the rulebook that removes the personal objectives and makes the game fully cooperative. We never played that, but even if it solves a couple of the problems I've listed here, it won't solve the boring turns or game length, and it'll introduce new ones like quarterbacking.

I haven't even mentioned the Crossroads cards, which are essentially flavor text dumps that are so far up their own ass that they should have the Ouroboros on the back instead of the actual crossroads symbol. On your turn, another player secretly draws one of these, and if you meet conditions listed on it, the card activates and crap happens. Usually bad crap. Actually, always bad crap, because even if the card effects aren't punishing, you still have to listen to someone read a long, overly dramatic paragraph to set it up.

I hate this game. I'll give it points for the atmosphere, I guess, sort of, but that's all it has going for it and I could get 95% of that tension from a 30-minute social deduction game. The only reason it ranks over Fury of Dracula is that if everyone does die and lose immediately, the game was at least short. It's idiotic, but it was short.

41. Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza
Expansions Played: N/A
Party game. Players flip over cards from their hand, like in War, into a central pile while sequentially saying the titular words. If the card you flip over matches the word you say, everyone slaps the pile. The last slapper takes all the cards. First one out of cards wins.

I played this once because my wife's non-board-gamer best friend owns it. Someone's hand got hurt (because that's what happens in hand-slapper games) and that was a wrap on TCGCP for the night. It wasn't my hand and it didn't take all night, so it still ranks above the bottom 3. I'm sure I'll have to play this multiple times again in the future and I'm not looking forward to it.

Slow at work today, so here's one more.

40. Eldritch Horror
Expansions Played: Forsaken Lore, Mountains of Madness, Strange Remnants, Under the Pyramids
We've had a One vs All game, a semi-cooperative game, and now a fully cooperative game already - noticing a pattern yet?

We're still in the realm of games I never want to play again, but I will at least give Eldritch Horror credit for producing the odd enjoyable session out of the relatively many that we played once upon a time. You and up to seven other people play as, uh... Researchers? Investigators? People? People. People from wildly different places and backgrounds, trotting around the globe trying to stop a Lovecraftian evil from obliterating the world. There's a ton going on here, decks upon decks upon decks of cards, flavor text for days, tons of different characters all with varied upgradable attributes and unique abilities, and at the center of it all is an Ancient Monster that also comes with its own abilities and card decks.

Despite all that, the win condition for the players is always effectively the same: complete a number of tasks determined by player count before enough time passes and things happen for the horror to enter the world. Fight monsters, find clues, close otherworldly gates - it's a regular ol' supernatural adventure with twists and turns aplenty. In the end, though, success or failure will all come down to the whims of a bunch of D6s. Run afoul of a local crime syndicate in Europe? Roll a die to see if they break your leg and impair your movement for the next round. Looking for a clue in Africa? Roll a die to see if you actually find it or become afflicted with a horrible disease. Travel through a gate? Roll a die to see if you go insane on the way back. In combat with a Cultist? You guessed it - roll some dice. Generally speaking, you succeed on your current mission if you roll a 5 or 6. Anything else is a failure.

This is meant to be a tough, punishing game, so it feels a little wrong to complain about the amount of times things don't go your way. But man, too often, this game just feels like it's repeatedly kicking you in the crotch. Every action matters here - you've got a supremely limited amount of time to accomplish everything you need to do to win while putting out little fires all over the place, and failure on one turn is often completely crippling because problems will snowball out of control very quickly. With the odds being so against you on nearly every roll, it just creates a feeling of hopelessness for the majority of time spent playing. Thematic? Sure. Fun? Not usually. And with the need to be so efficient and coordinated, you're often going to be forced to quarterback at least some of the time if you want to have any shot at winning at all.

The bottom line is that most of our sessions with this game didn't exactly come down to the wire. Either we officially lost relatively early, or we knew we were going to but felt obligated to see things through anyway. Why would we do that? Sunk cost, mostly. This game's setup time alone is obscene with the amount of decks that need to be separated and shuffled, and (stop me if you've heard this before) it takes forever to actually play, too. I feel the need to clarify that I don't mind long board games - in fact, I tend to prefer them. But they have to be interesting all the way through, not just for portions. And "challenging" for a co-op game becomes a problem when it crosses over into "unbalanced." Forget the random nature of the dice; there are basically no controls in place for what kind of Encounter cards you might draw at the end of each turn. Some of them will include negative effects even for successes, some of them will target attributes for your character that make things impossible even when that sort of thing is supposed to be somewhat mitigable, etc. Even drawing monsters is completely random more often than not - it's like a really bad Dungeon Master using random.org to determine encounters and sending a giant pack of wyverns at a Level 1 party with no additional thought.

In short, there have been way too many attempts at this game that seemed to just descend into an unwinnable state early on, and rarely did it feel like we had anything to do with that when it happened. Even some things that are determined by player count feel wonky - setup and victory conditions are the same for 4 players as 3, for example, or for 6 as 5, and that extra player who is or isn't there makes an enormous difference.

I think I can sum up the problem with Eldritch Horror by telling you about our most successful playthrough, which came when I, through a combo of lucky rolls and draws, quickly amassed a large arsenal of weapons (and other helpful things, but mostly weapons) early on that allowed me to pretty much steamroll every instance of combat for the rest of the game. We won fairly handily, but while it was fun in the moment (especially as I was annoying my friends by repeating the "Anyway, I start blasting" meme every time I fought something), it doesn't feel that satisfying on reflection. I don't even remember what Ancient One we were facing or what character I played or any other details from the session beyond the fact that I had guns. Another time, victory or defeat came down to one dice roll, for which my best friend's wife confidently stepped in and said, "I got this," only to roll a 1 and seal our loss - again, one memorable moment at the end of a very long session that we can recall no other details of.

I WANT to like this game badly, but it just rarely hits its sweet spot, and even when it does, it doesn't make for an experience that's all that satisfying. Having so much luck inherent to every part of the adventure means that not only do you feel cheated when things go completely off the rails, but you also don't feel particularly accomplished. You just happened to roll better that time. I've got no problem with luck-based games in and of themselves, but when one lasts for 3 or 4 hours and I spend the whole time fairly convinced that any decisions I'm making are secondary to the dice, it's asking a lot.

Maybe it would help a little if I had more attachment to Lovecraft and the flavor text didn't wear thin so quickly. I'll at least give it credit for being written much better than something like Dead of Winter. But again, if we're two hours in and I've just been Cursed for the third time and my sanity both in and out of the game is rapidly depleting, I just don't want to hear it. I want to accelerate the inevitable loss so we can do something else.

I just eventually hit a point with Eldritch Horror where I don't know what I'm supposed to get out of it. "Fun" feels like it was a tertiary or quarternary concern here.

Think I've played Elder Sign and Arkham Horror once each, but not Eldritch Horror. I think they have similar mechanics though and probably evoke similar feelings so I'd agree with them being pretty far down the list

Theoretically, cooperative games sound nice and friendly, since you're all working together. In practice, I think they're often more frustrating, when there's disagreement about what everyone should be doing. I feel like competitive games are actually nicer...

cards against humanity - i don't even rank this as a board game but yes it sucks. apples to apples is better honestly because it doesn't rely on shock value or just plain racism and other forms of punching down

fury of dracula - curious to try but you've enumerated all the reasons i would never buy before trying. a LONG hidden movement game with few clues and massive disadvantages seems rough! that said i do enjoy specter ops - imperfect but has way fewer of the issues you mention with FOD (combat and deduction and game length).

dead of winter - i was very interested in this game when it came out, partially because it was the hotness, and partially because avalon was my favorite game and i was looking for games with similar feel. by the time i actually did play it, i had a lot more board gaming experience, and it felt like it flopped. maybe it's better with more play, but spending half the game digging through a small deck for the right card in a fetchquest was real bad, and yeah, the exposure rolls sucked too. that said maybe your group needs to play a little faster? sounds like you're experiencing 2.5h+ games?

TCGCP - never heard of this. it actually sounds hilarious, but maybe it could use a different method of competition other than slapping - like grabbing the totem in jungle speed, one of the greatest dexterity components of all time lol

eldritch horror - this is another one that i was interested in way back when, but basically every positive thing i've ever read about it comes with a lot of caveat emptors, and i've since lost interest. cthulu-adjacent themes never really seem to do it for me anyway.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say competitive games are "nicer," but I get the argument and certainly agree that cooperative games can be frustrating a lot of the time.

Not even from a disagreement standpoint; they're just hard to get right. Unless all players are at an exact equal skill level, you're almost always going to run into an issue of quarterbacking unless A) the game is designed around reducing or explicitly limits table talk between players, both of which hurts the overall cooperative feeling, or B) the game is easy enough that some players can kind of just do the tabletop equivalent of button mashing without compromising success, which also isn't exactly a satisfying experience for anyone.

The more sprawling co-op games like Eldritch Horror feel like they should be littered with memorable moments of team triumph, where even the most disastrous playthrough leaves you with the recollection of one incredible roll of the dice that everyone around the table is sitting on the edge of their seat for, where weeks later you can collectively relive the exact circumstances and board state that led up to it. That would make all the overhead and frustration worth it - a unique shared experience that you can't get from competitive games because you're all on different teams there and, by definition, one player's success is another's failure.

But my group has way more stories like that from competitive games. And I guess you could say that part of the reason is that in at least some aspect of the design philosophy (at least for good games), there's a consideration that even players who are losing should be having fun. Everyone losing together, especially in an utterly dominant fashion, after struggling against unfair odds just leads to a feeling that time was wasted. A competitive game at least ensures that one person comes away feeling accomplished, and usually it's more than that because the others can feel like they made them earn it in a balanced battle.

So maybe in a way, you're right that they're nicer. Guess it depends on your definition.

some people say spirit island is quarterback-proof due to its complexity - curious to see your opinion on that

i think games that are designed around communication restrictions are cool too. hanabi, codenames (duet), etc

that said yeah i also tend to enjoy most pandemic-likes, the games that actually are QB'able, as long as i like the people i'm playing with

re: Dead of Winter, it's certainly possible that some of the longer playtimes are the fault of my group, which at the time included more members and so was pretty much always played at 5 and definitely had some people that are prone to overthinking things. And hell, it's entirely possible that some of those games just felt longer than they were because of overall dullness.

Anyway, it occurred to me that it might be fun to include an ownership status and future outlook for the games in the ranking, so here are those for the stuff that's already gone out.

CAD: Owned by multiple friends outside the normal gaming group. Certain to be played again in the future and I see no way it'll ever get any better.

Fury of Dracula / Eldritch Horror / Dead of Winter: All owned by a friend who used to live nearby and now lives very far away. Doubt they'll ever get played again, because I'm sure not buying any of them, and they probably wouldn't rise much anyway.

TCGCP: Mentioned in the writeup.

The wife and I were moving apartments this weekend so there wasn't a ton of time for games, but we still managed to get in one play apiece of Root and Flamecraft, though everyone was exhausted for the latter and kind of sleepwalking through everything we did. One of those games has steadily gotten to the point where it's falling on my list a bit, but the other is rising.

I am also not a huge fan of dead of winter

Also tag

39. Mysterium
Expansions Played: None

Well, it's pretty, at least.

In all seriousness, I do understand the appeal and popularity of this game... Sort of. Personally, though, it just feels silly, and I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say maybe that's because I simply don't think in the sort of abstract ways Mysterium wants me to think in. Regardless, this is a personal ranking where I'm not trying to evaluate "objective" quality, so since it's fallen flat every time I've played it, it's dropping here.

It's a cool idea. Mysterium is another co-op game where one player is a ghost who was murdered long ago. Everyone else plays as a medium trying to communicate with it and solve the mystery of its demise. Cell reception isn't great in the spirit world, so not only do the mediums have a limited time to link up with the ghost, but the ghost also can't really say much. That "communication" involves the ghost drawing a hand of cards with nothing on them but art, handing a couple out to each medium that are supposed to serve as clues, and hoping that they can mind-meld enough that they can eventually identify the suspect, location, and weapon. Yes, it's Clue, but ABSTRAAAAACT.

Here are a few examples of the kind of cards you'll be seeing. A cannon shooting fireworks. A bear reading a book. A top hat. An umbrella hanging from a moon. A rat playing chess... or standing on a chessboard... or something. Even the art itself is confusing; forget trying to interpret some kind of meaning for it. It's often completely arbitrary, and that's if the ghost even gets something useful. The fact that they have to draw all the cards they use means that there will be plenty of times where nothing in their hand has anything to do with anything else.

Every step of this game just feels like a stretch of the mind. So many instances of "Well, I'll just pick this card, I guess, since I don't know what the hell" on the side of both the ghost and mediums. What ends up happening is that a group meta will unfold very very quickly with repeated plays (and sometimes it doesn't even take that long) where everyone decides the most effective method is just to match up the colors on the cards or something and eliminate all actual thought. And so the game becomes pointless, because either you're playing that way (the "right" way) or you're artificially making things harder in a COOPERATIVE game.

It's just... Messy. Multiple phases within multiple phases, a final stage that makes absolutely no sense thematically and barely any sense mechanically (where you can pretty easily lose even if you've done everything else perfectly), a big box with useless components, all for what is really just a glorified party game.

Sorry, Mysterium, but any game where I'm a spirit detective but am not actually Yusuke Urameshi is a game that has failed.

Collection Status and Future: No one I know has ever owned this - only ever came out at board game cafes. Not likely to ever be played again.

38. Exploding Kittens
Expansions Played: Imploding Kittens (... I think)

Dumb, harmless simplicity. Players take turns drawing from a deck until they draw a bomb, in which case they're eliminated from the game. Other cards do things like let you peek at and rearrange the top of the deck, force other players to draw multiple times, or defuse the bomb you just drew. Wacky art and humor brings the experience together.

It's, you know, fine. You have to be willing to embrace the intended mindlessness of it. I wouldn't suggest this for a game night with my regular group in the same way that I wouldn't take a New Year's Eve party with my wife's friends as an opportunity to bust out Eclipse. It teeters on the edge of being more of an activity than a game, but if you're playing multiple rounds (which is easy - they're quick) it can be fun to see the mind games that people fall into where they're suspicious of whether someone's trying to take revenge on them for an attack in the previous game.

All in all, I've had fun times with this every once in a while. Granted, I think that's mostly been because the group dynamics were just too good those nights (in other words, it was more in spite of the game being played than a direct reflection of its quality), but I think it's fair to count that as a mark in its favor. Group dynamics can't save every game, after all - that at least speaks to some amount of fun included. Exploding Kittens comes out in the same kind of instance where people would otherwise be reaching for CAD or TCGCP, and I'll choose this over either of those 1000 times out of 1000.

Collection Status and Future: I actually own this myself because I bought it before I ever got involved in serious board gaming. It's buried in a closet at my parents' house somewhere and I'm not going to go looking for it.

And with that, we've come to the end of our first tier!

Games I'd Rather Never Play Again Tier
44. Cards Against Humanity
43. Fury of Dracula (Third Edition)
42. Dead of Winter
41. Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza
40. Eldritch Horror
39. Mysterium
38. Exploding Kittens

Fine in Certain Contexts Tier
37. ???
36. ???
35. ???
34. ???
33. ???
32. ???
31. ???
30. ???
29. ???
28. ???

So far I agree with the the four I've played completely (44, 42, 39, 38) and also have no desire to play any of them again.

I would personally put mysterium below dead of winter though because i feel like its more likely to have extended downtime

I think I agree with your assessment of Exploding Kittens of being above all the games you've described so far.

I only maybe played one or two games of Exploding Kittens, which was maybe enough for it to not outstay its welcome. I thought it was decently alright for a simple game, though yeah it's not deep and I'd rather play something less random if I had a choice. Though I'll take short and random over lengthy with questionable design (or any game with slapping).

i like the cooperative part of mysterium. it'a more fun if you take the opportunity to trash talk one another's guesses and come up with ridiculous justifications when your guess is a stretch. to me the worst part is actually how long it takes to set up. i enjoy it overall though.

i thought exploding kittens sucked hard but i greatly dislike uno-likes, especially ones with nope cards. like CAH i don't really rank it.

Colegreen_c12 posted...

So far I agree with the the four I've played completely (44, 42, 39, 38) and also have no desire to play any of them again.

I would personally put mysterium below dead of winter though because i feel like its more likely to have extended downtime

As much as Mysterium aggravates me, there's nothing in it that I hate as much as I hate the Dead of Winter exposure die. It's also shorter.

That said, rankings within tiers are going to be fairly arbitrary until we get into the top ~third of the list.

37. Wavelength
Expansions Played: N/A

Wavelength is a team vs team game that plops down a big, colorful dial on the table and makes it into a fun little guessing game. The dial has a sweet spot spectrum on it that gets randomly turned and revealed to one player on a team. That player draws a card with a pair of opposites on it (anything from HOT/COLD to GEEK/DORK) and gives a one-word clue to tell them where the bullseye is. So, if the card is TALL/SHORT and the sweet spot ended up aaaaall the way to the left of the dial, that player might say "Wembanyama." Other players discuss, turn the dial indicator as appropriate, and score based on how close they get.

I often seem to see this lauded as a top-tier party game, but honestly, it just feels like most other party games to me. You've got a central gimmick (the dial) and mechanics designed for table talk with a lot of freedom for creativity and opportunity for post-round incredulity along the lines of "You think Timothee Chalamet is attractive?" It works well for family functions and other mixed-generation gatherings and/or people that just feel like drinking a bit and not thinking too hard.

The novelty wore off kinda quick for me, though. Most of the cards aren't that interesting, especially after they've come up once or twice, and some of the ones that are... Well, it's not exactly in a good way for a game that wants to appeal to those mixed groups and such. Imagine bringing this game to a work luncheon and having "Worst person in the world / Best person in the world" come up. There is no clue that could be given that wouldn't start a fistfight.

The dial itself mostly works well as an implement, but there are times when the sweet spot alignment accidentally gets changed when you're opening and closing the cover to hide it. Usually doesn't make a big difference but it's an odd defect for something that's so integral. Also, this is maybe just a personal nitpick, but the dial probably could do with being a bit smaller. Bullseye placements can end up being a little too abstract for my tastes if they're not at an extreme or very near the center, especially when plenty of cards don't have a ton of room for nuance.

I'll give Wavelength points for not being super group dependent, which is what lands it in a tier above the Exploding Kittens of the world.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by friends in my regular gaming group, but I think the novelty wore off a bit for them too because it hasn't hit the table in a while. Granted, that's partially because we haven't had a lot of bigger gatherings in a while. I'm sure I haven't played my last game of this and while I can't say I'm looking forward to next time, I don't dread it. It just isn't likely to ever get any better for me.

36. Sequence
Expansions Played: N/A

The go-to game for my family for many years, and I think it's overhated. Good? No. Essentially completely luck-based? Sure. But by the standards of its era, it's not a terrible time. When so many other families in the world reach for Monopoly anytime they want to play a board game and mine reaches for Sequence, I'm a very lucky man.

Draw cards from a combined deck of two standard 52-card decks, play cards, put a chip down on the board for the card you played. Each card has two spots on the board except Jacks - two-eyed Jacks are wild, one-eyed Jacks let you remove an opponent's chip. First to get 5 in a row (or two separate instances of 5 in a row if you like) wins. Can play with up to three teams or individuals. Teams are better, especially if you agree to limit talk between teammates.

It's uber simple, but you at least have to pay a little attention. Cards on the board are arranged only semi-sensibly, so if you're completely autopiloting you might miss things every once in a while. You might also get the odd satisfying moment where you remove an enemy chip for a card that is no longer in the deck and therefore would require a wild card to replace - very possible to really mess up an opponent like that.

Not much more to say about it. Good for what it's trying to be.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by me. Certain to come out plenty of times in the future but will never be anything more or less than what it is now.

I'm a huge fan of board games. CAH at the bottom is rightfully deserved.

Mysterium is kinda strange. I like the premise, but yeah, it always feels like a bit of a stretch and I think Dixit is just much cleaner. The last phase of Mysterium still confuses me to this day.

Wavelength might be a top 3 board game for me! It's definitely a game heavily reliant on in-jokes, which I'm completely fine with. While I tend to like more think-y games, most of the people I play with tend to be on the light end of the spectrum, so I can't take something really complex. Wavelength is perfect and it works for me because some of the prompts really make me think on what's a good clue.

Sequence is basically the exact same game as Gimme Five (I think the only difference I know of is that the cards are in different spots on the boards) which i have a soft spot for since its something i would play with my family all the time when i was younger.

NBIceman posted...

"Semi-cooperative" is not an adjective that most board gamers tend to enjoy,

:(

For CAH/Apples I kinda want something in the middle. Apples is a bit too squeaky clean for my tastes, and CAH is WAY too raunchy and edgy. I think I'd like it if I did the same concept with a deck customized to myself and my friends. That or I just got burned out on the whole concept.

I missed it in the post above, but heck yeah Sequence.

My favorite Exploding Kittens moment is when my agent of chaos wife got bored and used the card that lets you move the bomb. Everybody tied themselves in knots trying to wifom where she would've put it, but it turned out she just stuck it in there completely at random. I think she wound up blowing herself up with it, even.

I'd like to play more semi-cooperative games, because I think there's ways to do it well. I've had a game called Sons of Faeriell on my radar for a while that seems to have a lot of potential on that front. Just haven't pulled the trigger on it yet.

AriaOfBolo posted...

My favorite Exploding Kittens moment is when my agent of chaos wife got bored and used the card that lets you move the bomb. Everybody tied themselves in knots trying to wifom where she would've put it, but it turned out she just stuck it in there completely at random. I think she wound up blowing herself up with it, even.

Yeah, this sort of thing is why I don't think EK is quite as bad as a lot of people. Someone in the group will end up taking the "decisions" way more seriously than they deserve and it will lead to funny accidents like this.

Doesn't mean I like the game, but I'll give it a little credit for the potential to fall ass-backwards into something entertaining.

Arkham Horror (2nd edition, not the shit they sell now) is my favorite board game ever, and Eldritch Horror felt like a way worse version of it. Arkham is certainly WAY more cumbersome, but your decisions feel like they matter more, and you can more easily stack the odds in your own favor. Of course, Arkham pretty much requires the Dunwich expansion since it adds a ton of QoL; baseline Arkham is rough and prone to huge death spirals. Thematic, but not super fun.

have heard that about AH, that it is bulkier than EH but keeps more atmosphere because of it. but since my fear of EH relates to bulk... well...

think i'd probably enjoy a few rounds of sequence

wavelength feels way more like an activity than a game to me (like just one) - i enjoy it round to round but because there's no game arc i don't get invested. the game end condition and scoring also feel quite arbitrary.

The fact that AH is set on a more local level -- just Lovecraftian New England as far as Earth goes -- adds a lot, too.

35. Happy Little Dinosaurs
Expansions Played: None

This game is weird. At its core, it's really just a trick-taking game, but it plays like absolute chaos.

You play as a dinosaur trying to escape disasters... Or something. Each round, a card is flipped over with a Disaster on it, which can be one of three types plus a wild card. All players play a card with a number value from 0 to 9 facedown and reveal simultaneously. Everyone gets a chance to play additional cards with other effects to manipulate the scores until everyone passes consecutively. High scorer earns points equal to that score. Low scorer takes the Disaster card. Collect all three types of Disaster or three of one kind and you're eliminated. First to 50 points or last dino standing wins.

For such a simple game, there's a bizarre amount of rules overhead that confuses us all more than I feel like it should, and the rulebook itself is not a great helper. The components are nice and the art is cute, and setup and playtime are quick enough to get in multiple rounds in a short period anytime you want - Unstable Games is at least reliable on those fronts. I'm just not a big trick-taking fan, though, and a version this simple is not going to be my jam, even considering the hand management and push-your-luck aspects tossed in. HLD's brand of humor also doesn't land with me - the "Emotional" disaster cards in particular make light of things like your friends making plans without you or embarrassing gaffes on a first date, and that sort of joke has just never made me laugh.

It's not awful, though. It's a nice, small, affordable filler game and nothing else.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by me. Bought by my wife when she was just getting into board games. I don't think it'll ever really see much more play in our usual group but I'll be glad to have it around to play with our eventual kids.

34. Boss Monster
Expansions Played: None

Look, I'm here on a video game message board with a seventeen-year-old account - obviously a small card game with a retro video game aesthetic is going to stand out to me on a shelf and tempt me to impulse buy it. Which is exactly what happened.

Fun little theme for a game, where you play as a monster trying to devise the perfect dungeon that is enticing enough to lure in adventurers to be killed without attracting so many that some survive the deathtraps and come to defeat you instead.

Simple little card game with a lightning-quick setup and easy teach. It affectionately rips off your Metroids and Castlevanias and throws in plenty of chuckle-worthy references to other nerdy pop culture standouts. The flavor text is fun, which is a nice bonus for a light warm-up game that gets everyone around the table that little bit more involved, and your strategy will be affected just enough by what other players are doing that it behooves you to maintain at least some awareness.

The strategy itself just isn't all that deep, though. I don't mind games like this being pretty luck-based, because it's not like I bring out Boss Monster with the goal of conducting a hyper-competitive main event for game night. But there's not a whole lot of variety, either, and limited replayability is definitely something that affects the viability of a filler game.

As it is, it really only works as an occasional palate cleanser. Every collection needs some games like that, and the charming look of Boss Monster makes it a good one for me personally. But it's not something I'd ever really recommend. I've heard the expansions help at least a little, so that's something I might look into eventually.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by me, but it hasn't hit the table in a while. Filler games in general have a pretty high turnover rate in my group, no idea whether that's a common thing. As I mentioned, if I ever find an expansion for dirt cheap somewhere, I could maybe see a little revival for this game that would bump it up a couple slots, but I don't think it'd jump a whole tier or anything.

haven't played HLD but it sounds cute and fun

boss monster feels like it could be much more satisfying than it actually is. it's definitely a bit of a disappointment from a gameplay perspective given how great its aesthetic and theming are

Just one today.

33. Anomia
Expansions Played: N/A

Anomia: "Inability to remember the right words such as names of people or objects."

Simulator games seem to be all the rage in the video game world these days, but board games are countering with Anomia, AKA "Uh, um, uh!" Simulator.

Anomia sets a central deck on the table. Each player, in turn, will flip over a card from the top directly into a stack in their play area. Each card has a symbol and a category on it, and if the symbol matches one on the top card of another player's stack, you both have to race to name something belonging to the category on your opponent's card. The winner takes both cards, and when the central deck runs out, the player with the most cards wins.

Sounds like the easiest game in the world. But when you play with higher player counts (which you basically always should), it instantly becomes impossible to pay attention to everything. You'll be fumbling for even the simplest category. "Name a color?! Uh, uh, um!" The deck also holds "Wild Cards" with two different symbols and no category, so if two players have the symbols on that card, they have to scramble for an unexpected face-off. And obviously when a card is taken, the one underneath is revealed, so you will often have a quick series that gets many players involved one after another.

I think one of the reasons I'm not always a big fan of party games is that a lot of them seem to promote laughing at your friends' stupidity. Don't get me wrong, that's undoubtedly fun, but A) it does get old a little quick if it's the main conceit of an activity, and B) my group can do that just fine without the aid of a party game - often it happens in more serious board games anyway. Anomia has this, but I feel like it's built even more around laughing at your own stupidity. Why couldn't I think of a last name? I have a last name! I'm the biggest nerd here, why couldn't I name a video game?!

Feeling dumb in games is just never pleasant. Even in something unserious like Wavelength, if I have a couple of rounds in a row where I know I've given bad clues, it bothers me a little. But in Anomia, those moments are great, especially when they cascade. So many times, I'll lose a face-off and be too busy chuckling at the absurd mental blank I just drew to notice that another face-off was immediately triggered that I proceed to also lose. I love the "Wait, did Brian just try to name Frodo as a fairy tale character?" moments as much as anyone, but it's good to break those up with some good ol' self-owns, too. Anomia crafting its whole identity around the amusement of utter failure creates an atmosphere I haven't seen replicated anywhere else.

This glowing review so far probably makes it sound like I'm dropping this too early, but Anomia has kind of a critical flaw for a party card game in that it's not really very fun to play multiple rounds back-to-back. Since you go through the whole deck for each play, there aren't really any surprises on a runback. The luster doesn't wear off entirely - people will still struggle plenty - but it's definitely less funny to watch your friends try desperately to name an astronaut the second time around in one night.

For that reason, I think it probably works better as a warm-up game before the main game or activity of the night than as something that's being counted on to carry the fun for an hour or two at a party. The problem with that is that if you're pulling this out with, say, your regular board game group, there's a higher chance that you'll have just three or four people, and Anomia does lose a bit of its shine at those counts.

In general, though, I'd wholeheartedly recommend it for both cases. It's inexpensive and sets a lovely mood for either occasion even if it's not perfect in either regard.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by a couple of different friends and certain to be played fairly often in the future. Not going to rise or fall much, though, because it's not like this is a game that's really going to show anything more on its twentieth play than its second. I will say that I wouldn't mind picking up Anomia X at some point for cheap if the opportunity presents, because the nature of the game kind of seems to lend itself to a dirtier version that doesn't suck. It'd probably be funny to see the prudish couple on the periphery of our friend group having to suddenly name a fetish in a panic, for example.

Yeah I played Anomia for the first time at a convention and it was a blast, but definitely can't replay much with the same group.

I need to do one of these topics sometime. I helped run a board game club in college and currently own well over 100.

seems low - i love anomia. i don't think that it needs to hold a lot of same-night replay value to have a great niche. (and i do think it can handle probably 2 runthroughs pretty easily in a night!)

i love the way you articulated how the game lets you laugh at your own stupidity in a very gentle way. that said i greatly enjoy the "erring under time pressure" element of almost all party games. when there's a timer and you do something dumb, it's just expected since no one can function perfectly under major pressure, and when you succeed it feels all the better

(glanced at the list and of the 20 games left that i have played, i think i would probably have anomia arguably above over half of them. but it obviously is a game that fills a pretty casual niche in comparison to many of those.)

I had legitimately no idea the world had turned so hard on CAH, this is actually kind of fascinating to discover. For parties with non-gamers it was always easily among the safest bets for tabletop fun in my experience.

Always had lots of fun with it in my group in our college days but it's largely been shelved just because we've pretty much exhausted it at this point and are all big enough nerds to have fun with more complicated stuff like what I'm sure will populate everything from the upper low ranks here.

The problem with CAH is that when you've heard a good joke once, you've heard it a thousand times. A lot of the cards are whiffs with which there are very few prompts they could even get a chuckle.

In my experience though, the worst part is invariably the people. There are some clever and witty plays I've seen, but in any group, the majority of the "judges" will just go with the most outrageous answer even if it's boring as hell

i've never personally had a good time with CAH, but i know many people have

Like I said in the writeup, I don't have the vitriol for CAH as an activity that some board gamers do. But as an actual "game" itself, it's sorely lacking in almost every conceivable way.

SeabassDebeste posted...

(glanced at the list and of the 20 games left that i have played, i think i would probably have anomia arguably above over half of them. but it obviously is a game that fills a pretty casual niche in comparison to many of those.)

I don't think I'll be blowing anyone's mind at this point to say that more casual/party games do tend to have a bit of a ceiling for me, yeah. They were hard to rank because yeah, some of them do their job perfectly or almost perfectly. But I still just tire of them quickly and find myself wanting to play something that has a little more to it.

I eventually started playing CAH trying to make the most mundane responses possible.

32. Hues and Cues
Expansions Played: N/A

There's not much to this game and, as its placement in this tier implies, I wouldn't want to see it on the table more than once in a blue moon. That being said, the few times I've played it, I've always had more fun than I expected to. I guess it would technically still fall in the "party game" category, but it's on the fringes - my delineating factor is essentially whether a moderately inebriated person could still semi-competently participate.

Super straightforward. You've got a board in front of you displaying 480 colors. One player draws a card with a few of those colors on it and picks one to give a one-word identifying hint for. All other players place a marker on a board color to make their guess, and then the clue giver has the option to also give a two-word hint; if so, players can make an additional guess. Once done, you place a little 3x3 box on the board with the original color at its center, in which the guessers get points for how close they were and the clue giver gets points for every guess within that box.

The idea that makes this game work is that describing colors is hard, and basically impossible without using something as a reference. If you're like me (i.e. horrible with anything artsy), you'd usually start off by using another color as that relative point, then use words like "lighter" or "darker" or some such, and then in frustration move on to something like "It's like Barney the dinosaur."

Hues and Cues's restrictions force you into that third, funny step immediately, which makes a tough task even tougher while keeping it as something that literally everyone can do to some extent. It makes for just a nice little game that's likely to lead to a laugh or two, like when my group realized that my color-oriented painter wife was the only one of us who has any idea what chartreuse is or when you get a quote like "What the hell color do you think Pikachu is?!" It does a good job of encouraging that post-round argument between players that make party games enjoyable while avoiding making the game itself feel like it's just an ancillary vehicle for that goal.

It's quick, simple, and easy to teach. Has a really nice niche as a night-ender where everyone's kind of tired of thinking hard and just feels like chatting or keeping one eye on Sunday Night Football or something, but still wants to also have a game on the table. It's also easily the best game on the list so far for families, in my opinion.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by no one right now - only played at board game cafes a few times. I expect I'll find a used copy for $5 somewhere eventually and buy it just for the sake of messing with my color-blind friend one day.

Actually, in all seriousness, this is a game I could see rising a bit in the distant future when my wife and I have kids. I imagine a lot of potential humor in a young child using their limited frames of reference in the world for colors and getting frustrated when no one understands their clues.

played hues and clues once and had fun though i don't see it as been particularly replayable (whereas anomia i think is a bit more)

Xiahou_Shake posted...

I had legitimately no idea the world had turned so hard on CAH, this is actually kind of fascinating to discover. For parties with non-gamers it was always easily among the safest bets for tabletop fun in my experience.

Always had lots of fun with it in my group in our college days but it's largely been shelved just because we've pretty much exhausted it at this point and are all big enough nerds to have fun with more complicated stuff like what I'm sure will populate everything from the upper low ranks here.

I mean, that's about my experience. It was kinda fun once or twice but it was all any of my casual friends ever wanted to play for quite some time, and it did not hold up to that level of repetition, especially when I had my hopes up for a Real Game TM. Shock value and casual social games weren't really ever my things, either, so it was never going to really super be my fave anyway.

I wouldn't say no to a clone more tailored to my interests and spice level, though. Even Apples to Apples I don't really *mind*

I'm happy word games have really blown up in the light weight game space. Codenames, Decrypto, Just One, and So Clover are all excellent and accessible and can still be humorous with the right crowd in a legitimately organic way.

I still need to play So Clover

Apologies for the lack of updates. Work gets insanely busy this time of year for me and with family time over the holiday weekend I didn't have many free moments.

31. Secret Hitler
Expansions Played: N/A

All I'll say about the theme here is that it's never really been an issue for my group, but I completely understand why it would be for others and I would never tell anyone that they're wrong for that.

As far as the game itself goes... It definitely feels a little weird even ranking this sort of social deduction game on a list alongside something like Eldritch Horror. You have to really squint to see how they technically belong to the same hobby. But whatever, it's on BGG so I'm not going to be pedantic.

Roles are assigned randomly at the start of the game. "Liberals" are a majority, but don't know anyone else's affiliation. "Fascists" know who each other are and who "Hitler" is. "Hitler" also does not know anyone else's affiliation. Each round, everyone elects a President and a Chancellor who enact laws based on liberal and fascist policies drawn randomly from a deck that is weighted toward the latter. Liberals win if five liberal policies are enacted or Hitler is killed. Fascists win if six fascist policies are enacted or Hitler is elected Chancellor after three or more fascist policies.

Funnily enough, this game actually consistently delivers something that I complained about EH totally whiffing on: memorable moments where you can accurately recall every detail of that time when everything went completely, gloriously right or painfully, hilariously wrong. I saw my best friend have a complete head-in-hands crisis questioning the strength of his marriage (in a funny, lighthearted way) after his wife looked him dead in the eye repeatedly and managed to totally fool him in one game. Another game ended after a galaxy brain mind-meld between me and a friend of a friend that I hardly knew at all, where she as Hitler realized with impressive speed that I as a fascist was actively trying to covertly sabotage myself in a fashion where only she was in a position to call me out for it and put her above suspicion. Another saw two of our heavier drinker friends, both Liberals, obsessively and loudly tunnel on each other with Hitler suspicions for the entire game, only to fall ass backwards into a victory when the actual Hitler got a little too cute letting a Liberal policy through and basically got screwed over by luck of the draw afterwards.

I don't really have much more commentary about the game outside of applauding it for setting up a framework that encourages those sorts of moments. It's not all that innovative and there have definitely been some annoying games where the fascists won through very little fault of their own thanks to favorable draws. But it works as the beer-and-pretzels game for large groups that it's trying to be. Internal metas will develop and you'll eventually get used to the deck enough to be at least somewhat calculating if you want to be. And sometimes, honestly, it's just fun to point at your friends and yell and call them fascists. There's just something about it.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: I think my best friend and his wife own this, but it hasn't come out in a long time, mostly because our bigger friend gatherings are pretty rare these days. I think the game wears out its welcome fairly quickly if played a lot, but doing this writeup has kind of put me in the mood to bust it out for a round or three. As is the case with most games to have dropped so far, though, I don't imagine it'll ever rise much further.

while not the game i've had the least fun with, probably my least favorite game on this list. it takes one of the great designs and basically just makes it worse.

slightly related but has anyone here played blood on the clocktower

hear so much praise for it

Likely no ranking to drop today, but I'm hoping to finish out the current tier with the last two games in it tomorrow!

Last couple of weekends have included some really great game days. Nothing new from the Shelf of Shame yet, but we've packed in some long sessions. Cascadia, Dune: Imperium, Great Western Trail, Here to Slay, Machi Koro 2, Marvel Dice Throne, Root, and Scythe all hit the table for us, some of those for the first time in a very very long while. All of the four remaining tiers for this ranking have at least some representation there, by the way, although none of them have seen much movement!

Both of the next couple games to drop are probably gonna be a bit controversial, interested to see the response.