I’ve played board games well over 100 times this year. I’ve actually played over 175 different games! But these were the first ten that I played more than 10 times (or sessions) apiece, and I’ve ranked them, with my thoughts, from 10 to 1.
Strap in, and enjoy!
10) Splendor - 11
-Engine-building, racing, abstract
The Concept:
Simple - take chips that represent gems. Use those chips to buy cards that also represent gems (and sometimes victory points). There are also Patron tiles that will give you 3 VP if you have cards that match the color amounts printed on them. 15 victory points indicates the last round. Most points after everyone takes the same number of turns wins.
Thoughts:
This is on the list because I played it 10 times. I’m pretty much done with it, or at least I’m done playing this game with people who play it a lot. Some games come alive the more you play them, and others just fizzle out. This one fizzled out pretty bad for me. Like, I’ve played with people who I feel learned these tricks of the game from watching other people play, then incorporated them and found out why other people use them. I don’t want to play a SUPER SERIOUS game when I play Splendor - I like to take this game a little bit more casually. I like to smell the roses of my gem engine being built, not have to absolutely race and perfectly micromanage my way to the finish. If I want to do that, there are plenty of other games I’d rather play. Like, say, Snowdonia.
9) Snowdonia - 10
-Worker placement, racing - kind of
The Concept:
You and the other players are building the railroad to the top of Mount Snowdon in Wales. Get the resources you need to complete tasks along the way for victory points, and also to fulfill contracts for even more points. The game ends on the round when the final piece of track has been laid.
Thoughts:
This is NOT your father’s train game, not by a long shot. Snowdonia has a couple dimensions to its timing that keep the players on their toes. The first is the weather - on a sunny day, you can excavate and lay track incredibly fast. On a rainy day, work slows down and each of those actions yields fewer results. On a foggy day, the lack of visibility makes it impossible to take certain actions. The other is the bag of resource/event cubes. Every round, a number of cubes is drawn from the bag. Resources are placed in their respective areas, but if you pull a white cube, there is a non-player rival company that is much more efficient than any player will ever be. They will lay track, or build entire stations, or clear away several pieces of rubble in the blink of an eye, driving the game closer to completion and stealing scoring opportunities away from the players. This dynamic game situation is unlike any other I’ve seen, giving what is otherwise a drab-looking and straightforward eurogame some much needed tension.
The ten times I’ve played it this year is not enough. I would gladly play it ten more. The expansions, which are only small decks of cards, are completely modular with the base game, allowing for that one box to grant you a variety of flavors that keep the game fresh even longer.
8) Quixx - 10
-Dice-rolling, abstract.
-Session game, not individual play.
The Concept:
6 dice - 2 white, 1 red, 1 yellow, 1 green, 1 blue. On your turn, you roll all 6. Call out the total on the white dice for everyone to score if they choose. Then, score a combination of exactly one colored die and one white die. Don’t like or can’t score either pair? Then you take a strike. Play ends immediately after two die colors are locked (by rolling a 2 or 12 and having scored 5 previous numbers in that color), or after a player scores their 4th strike.
Thoughts:
That’s it. That’s the game. The genius in it is that Red and Yellow can be scored in order from from 2->12, and Green and Blue can be scored in order from 12->2. This makes almost anything useful for at least something at any point during the game, and keeps the excitement alive from beginning to end. Even when the game is drawn out with bad rolls, it can’t be drawn out forever - it becomes a game of attrition as the strikes start to roll in.
A ton of breezy fun, easy to play 3 or 4 times in a row (which I often did, so I totaled probably 25 plays but only counted this game in ‘sessions’ of plays and not individual plays). There’s not much to this one, but it still got more bang for your buck (well, $10-15) in entertainment than many games on the market.
7) Tajemnicze Domostwo (Mysterium) - 18
-Co-op, asymmetrical
The Concept:
Clue meets Dixit, cooperatively. One player acts as “The Ghost,” who has been dead for 100 years. For one week, however, the veil is pulled back, and a gaggle of investigators (the other players) have assembled at the mansion to try to solve The Ghost’s murder. The Ghost accomplishes this by giving the investigators dreams (represented by picture cards) for their murderer, the murderer’s weapon, and the location where the murder took place. The investigators have seven nights (rounds) to figure out what dream the Ghost is giving them, and then to figure out which of their dream was the real sequence of events.
Thoughts:
The first thing I want to say is that setup for this game is a bear. It feels like it takes twenty minutes to half an hour, and is the biggest obstacle to my complete enjoyment of the game at this point (an app or website/chatroom implementation would be grand). Thankfully, if you’re playing with friends (and really, why wouldn’t you be?) there’s enough to talk about and catch up with to keep everyone occupied until the game is ready to go. No big deal.
I love being the ghost. I love being an investigator. It doesn’t matter for me, but I’ve noticed some people really don’t like being the Ghost. I can understand why - it’s a big responsibility. You have to sit stonefaced while the ‘brilliance’ of your clues goes unnoticed or misinterpreted, and round after round there’s that ONE PERSON whose card is just impossible with the Dream cards you’ve been given. If the group fails to solve your murder in time and the game is lost, the blame falls solely on your own shoulders. But this is just a game after all, right?! Again - no big deal. At least not for me. You get to play again, and tell the loudest complainer that they should give it a try if they’re so sure being the Ghost is that easy. It often shuts them up, or in the worst case it’s a pleasant experience.
All of this said, I recently played the new US Mysterium release. I have to echo the people that say that 90% the added stuff is completely unnecessary. The addition of the full “Final Dream” instead of just choosing the True Culprit to the end of the game is good, but the point system based on voting is extraneous. The new weapon/room/suspect art is six of one, half a dozen of the other in my book, as the key elements are pretty much all still there. Thankfully, at least the localized version is entirely modular with the original game so you can pick and choose the tiny tweaks you think are worth using.
I enjoy the game, and can easily see myself playing it for years and years to come, but the enthusiasm to play this game over and over and over again is gone. Am I burnt out on it? No, not really. I’d just like to see one week go by when it doesn’t make the final cut of games to play on a given night - which speaks for the game’s popularity and probable longevity.
6) Battle Line - 12
-Card game, tactical
-A nice tangled web of easy logic that constantly demands your attention.
-Tactical game - must respond to your opponent.
The Concept:
It’s you and your enemy facing each other on the battlefield. The main line has 9 points, demarcated by flags that are anyone’s for the taking. How do you take them? By proving beyond a shadow of any doubt that it belongs to you. Three-card poker hands form a hierarchy of formations, and once you can show that every card that can beat you has already been played somewhere else, you can claim that flag. How do you win, though? Well, get any three flags in a row, or any five flags total. Be careful, though - beyond the 60 troop cards (6 colors, 1-10) there are also 10 tactics cards that can mess with the cards that are already on the table or break the rules of the game.
Thoughts:
I love Battle Line! The flow of the game is so smooth, and there’s always just enough forethought that you have to put into your moves that it’s engaging without being overwhelming. You could play that card, yes, but if you do, it give your opponent all the information they need to choose their strategy for this flag they want to win.
There is really no such thing as a crappy starting hand, either. A 1-2-3 straight flush isn’t as good as an 8-9-10, sure, but it’ll at worst force your opponent to waste their resources stealing that flag from you instead of claiming a different one somewhere else. Just the decoy you needed while you wait for your hand to improve… The tactics card mechanism is clever, too - you can never draw and play them all, because if you have played more than your opponent so far, you aren’t allowed to play any more Tactics until they at least match you in that regard. So if you’re the other player, and your opponent’s hand is full of Tactics cards, you can basically starve them out by not stooping to such cheap tricks and letting your own troops do all the talking.
Another quick game that takes about 30-45 minutes to play and feels like a complete tactical experience from beginning to end. I absolutely love how complete information is necessary to claim a flag, and the decisions you are forced to make because of something so simple. You also never know when playing a card yourself will allow your opponent to play a card that seals your own fate. You can think a move ahead, maybe two, but nothing nearly as convoluted as chess. Simple game, simple rules, many depth. Wow.
5) Eminent Domain - 10
-4x, deckbuilding, role selection, racing
The Concept:
You are trying to build a galactic empire, conquering/colonizing worlds, building an economy, and/or developing technology in a race to prove you are the best emperor there is. How do you do it? With a deck of cards. Every turn, you may play a card for its printed Action, and then you must always play a separate card for its Role. If it’s your turn to Lead, you get to take a little stronger action, then others may choose to either Follow your lead by playing their own cards that support that Role, or they may Dissent and draw a card into their hand that either broadens or magnifies their own ability to perform Actions and Roles on subsequent turns. The game ends when either one or two stacks of the Basic Action cards run out or the victory point tokens dry up. Then, you finish up the current round and the player with the most victory points is the winner.
Thoughts:
I don’t like Twilight Imperium III. I haven’t had a chance to play Eclipse or Tiny Epic Galaxies or Pocket Imperium yet. I don’t particularly to care to play the last two, but Eclipse is pretty high up on my “to play” list. Until then, though, Eminent Domain is my 4X (Expand, Explore, Exploit, Exterminate? I think?) game of choice, scratching the itch for both Glory to Rome-style role selection and outer space domination.
This game is pretty straightforward - there’s not much else to say about it really. This is another game where the expansion adds a lot to the base game - it takes the bland same-ness that tends to haunt Dominion-style deckbuilding games and instead offers each player a unique starting deck that sets them on a course that won’t even necessarily keep players out of each other’s way - sometimes you see two warmongering or two economic juggernaut players driven head-to-head by the starting cards. Is anyone actually railroaded by their starting alignment? No. No one ever is. The planets you attack/colonize and the cards you acquire/buy shape your strategy far more than where you begin. That part of the game doesn’t change.
I could play this game another ten times as well. There’s so many strategies and starting scenarios and technology cards that I just haven’t tried at all, and a playthrough always feels meaty enough but never overstays its welcome.
4) Codenames - 10
-Party, word
-Session game, not individual plays
Concept:
Two players act as “spymasters,” one for the red team and one for the blue team. The objective? For each spymaster to get their team members to guess all of the words in a 5x5 grid that belong to their color. How do they do this? By giving clues in the format ‘Word, number” where the word is a one-word clue that relates to the given number of cards on the grid. Teams go back and forth until one team either guesses all of their words correctly, or one team guesses the Assassin word that causes them to lose immediately.
Thoughts:
Vlaada Chvatil - can he do no wrong?
Even in abstract party games, he knows how to bring both the fun and the heat. He knocked it out of the park with Pictomania, a devilishly difficult Pictionary-style game where conveying your message is important and it’s every man for him or herself. Codenames, however, is a much more traditional team-style game. It moves incredibly fast, another game that lends itself well to multiple plays and everyone taking turn as Spymaster at least once.
I got my 10 play sessions of codenames in over the last month and a half. There’s no signs of it slowing down either. A game this fast, this engaging, this thought-provoking, and this fun, with as much variability as it has with its plethora of word cards and color grids should keep finding its way to the table with no trouble for a long, long time.
3) Troyes - 10
-Dice-rolling, dice placement, area majority, hidden goals
-Your point-scoring card involves point-scoring actions - this means other players moving in on your stuff also get their own points along the way.
The Concept:
The city of Troyes is besieged from without and within by intrigue between the nobility as well as barbarian marauders, thieves, and other more civil unrest. Every turn, players wield their influence in the civil, military, and religious realms to gain the favors and reap the benefits of different personages throughout the city in order to prove themselves the most powerful family in all of Troyes. Each Lord of Troyes also offers its own secret scoring paradigm randomly dealt out at the start of the game, and all players will score on all of them. It’s up to you to try to keep your economy afloat while sussing out your opponent’s goals and trying to score the most points possible off of their cards while secretly doing the same for you own.
Your power is wielded in the form of dice color-coded to the different facets of the city’s inner workings - white for religious, yellow for economic, and red for military. Your power can also be bought from other players at a fixed price, and you have no say which of your dice are so disloyal to be swayed by a couple pieces of gold. Of course, you still get that gold, so you can’t complain too much. Each action you have, you send a die or group of dice out into the city to either combat the events facing the city, activate the ability of a personage that you have influenced, wrest power from other players in one of the building on the board, or contribute to the construction of the cathedral (And yes, I think this game is better than Pillars of the Earth by a fair margin). The game goes for two more rounds than the number of players, and whoever has earned the most victory points from various things over the course of the game, plus the points from endgame scoring goals, is the winner.
Thoughts:
Oh, this reprint can’t come fast enough!
The first time I played Troyes, I was frustrated and gave up halfway through. I thought the game was incredibly clunky and awkward and the rules were unreadable and it was just too much of a chore. I’m glad I gave it a second chance. My appreciation for this game has only grown with every play I get in.
What makes this game so replayable is that it’s a game where you are truly playing against the other players. You have to both obscure your own Lord (or Lady, if you have the expansion) while trying to suss out the goals of the others. Sure, you’re all defending the city, you’re all contributing to the Cathedral, you’re all growing your little economy - but why? Every action you take can mean any number of things, and this constant questioning is the real meat of Troyes. It’s a sort of “social deduction” game without all the pass/fail ally/traitor stress that comes from games like The Resistance or Battlestar Galactica. It’s more more akin to Dead of Winter in this way - we’re all doing these non-binary things, but for different reasons. It doesn’t involved boldfaced lying, it just involves a shrug of the shoulders.
The combinations of personages and Lords/Ladies means the board is truly always a little bit different, and everyone is sitting in front of the exact same board with the exact same variables equally applicable to all players. Even if you do play the same game twice, with the same exact setup and the same people, I think the plethora of decision points in the game would take it down a greatly different path. Ten more plays would be awesome.
2) Hanabi - 14
-Card game, co-op
The Concept:
The players are, as a group, trying to put on the best possible fireworks display for the audience. This is represented by five stacks of cards, each stack a different color. Players must play from 1 up to 5… or try to anyway. The difficulty is that you cannot look at your hand of cards - only your opponents can. They will give you clues pertaining to which cards are of a certain number, or a certain color. Their clues must give complete information. You can either use that information to determine that a card is playable, or is safe to be discarded to restore the group’s supply of available clues. The game ends either after the deck of cards runs out and everyone takes their final turn, or when too mistakes are made and the group just ends up blowing themselves up.
Thoughts:
I love love love Hanabi. I love teaching it, I love playing with people who play it a lot. I hate playing it with people who cheat and don’t play the game as it’s intended. I mean, your group can do whatever they want for themselves - that’s the beauty of these games; once you own it, your mileage is whatever you want to get out of it - but I think the game as written and intended is beautiful and challenging and a way better trust exercise than falling off a picnic table into everyone else’s arms. The moment of doubt you feel at least once in this game when you decide to ditch a card that you’re afraid is important or playing a card that you’re afraid is wrong is exhilarating to me. Small, but exhilarating.
This is another game I could play for a hundred more times, easily. If you ever want in on a game of Hanabi, just say so and I’m there.
1) Concordia - 12
-Hand management, role selection, trading in the Mediterranean
The Concept:
Build the biggest and best trading empire in ancient Europe, and gain the most favor from the gods to win! Everyone starts with the same hand of cards. Choose one of them to grant you its action, play it to your discard, do that action, and it’s the next player’s turn. You also have a card in your hand that lets you pick up the rest of your cards, and rewards you for waiting as long as possible to do so. Simple.
Every card will also score you points at the end of the game based on specific conditions, and you’ll get that number of points multiplied by the number of cards with that condition that you have in your hand at the end of the game.
The game ends when the final card has been bought from the market deck, or after someone has built their final house. Every other player gets one more turn, and then the cards are scored for the first and only time in the game.
Thoughts:
And Concordia is my winner of the year. I love this game. I played it for the first time in 2015, and it’s become one of my favorite games of all time. Why, you ask? It’s a sandbox game that doesn’t look like a sandbox game. There are so many strategies, and the limited random board setup of city tiles provides enough variation and interesting situations that force all the players to make tough choices.
Turn order and will-they or won’t-they fuel the tension in every turn of Concordia. Will the city you’re aiming for get stolen? If so, what will you do? Will your card get bought? If so, then what? Which card will score you the most points at the end of the game? What do you want your specialty to be - provinces, cities, goods types, colonists, or goods specialization? How do you make that happen? How can you also hinder your opponents?
This game also has my favorite type of indirect player interaction - the same type of frustration of worker placement when the player before you flips over that bonus goods tile you were SURE would still be there on your turn, as well as the escalating city prices of Power Grid when the player before you plops down a house in that city you were all ready to move into this turn but now the gold cost has been doubled, and when you produce goods, you also produce goods for everyone else in your province. Sure, you may get three cloth out of this move, but you’re handing your opponent the goods they need for another colonist, and they’ve been buying all the cards that score for colonists at the end of the game!! At least you can be assured that everyone else is at some point thinking the same thing about you at many other points during this game!
Twelve times isn’t enough. Twelve more probably isn’t enough. With the new Salsa expansion that is coming out this year, I believe the game is indeed only going to become even more flavorful. If I ever had to get rid of my entire collection except for one game, I think this might be the game that I save. Well, this and Evolution because I would really prefer my wife not kill me. But I digress - Concordia has enough depth to keep players coming back for more, enough bite to keep it tense, and an elegant simplicity at its core that allows it to be palatable to a wide range of gamers.
Here’s my play list through the first half of the year!
Mysterium 14 plays
This game is awesome. This hit 10 by the end of February, I think? It’s cooperative Clue meets Apples to Apples, with pictures. One player is a mute ghost who has 7 nights to give clues to the remaining players, who are paranormal investigators, to help them figure out who killed them, with what, and where.
Splendor 10 plays
Splendor finally hit 10 plays this past weekend at a Splendor-themed event. This gem-’themed’ engine-building game is a quick play at half an hour to 45 minutes with simple and solid rules and mechanics.
Battle Line 8 plays
From the creator of Lost Cities comes this 2-player game, where the players basically have 9 simultaneous 3-card poker hands to build, the winner of each claiming a flag. Three flags in a row or five total wins the game. Much thinkier than you might imagine - you can claim a flag whenever it is impossible for your opponent to contest you for it. Sometimes it’s after your opponent has played all three of their cards, sometimes after they play none.
Concordia 8 plays
How did this not win the Kennerspiel des Jahres last year? Seriously. Fantastic trading/expansion game, and the merging of hand management action selection as well as the cards you purchase all scoring points at the end of the game is brilliant.
Roll for the Galaxy 8 plays
A fast, easy implementation of Race for the Galaxy. Something about this has worn thin for me, though. Don’t own it, don’t know that I will. A different game has claimed the lighter space-themed 4x game crown.
Snowdonia 8 plays
I love this game so much. It’s got some bland design, but this straightforward railroad-building worker-placement game has a really cool game timing mechanic. Fear the white cubes!!!
Dungeon Petz 7 plays
Vlaada Chvatil is certainly up there in terms of revered board game designers, right next to Reiner Knizia and Uwe Rosenberg. This entry into his canon takes some cutely gross monsters and lets players send their imp employees to work raising and caring for these petz.
Eminent Domain 7 plays
THIS is the space exploration and conquest game that has stolen my heart. It’s a perfect fusion of Race for the Galaxy’s theme and mechanics and the ever-so-popular deckbuilding mechanic (Dominion, Star Realms, etc). Love this game.
OddVille 7 plays
Haven’t played this game in a long time! A shame, since it’s so short. A fun take on Carcassonne-ish city building with a hint of worker placement/resource management.
Troyes 7 plays
This game is almost impossible to learn on your own. Even the guy who taught it to me has been playing with the wrong rules. It’s one of THOSE games. But it’s also awesome. The expansion makes this game so much better than without it - am I fending off the events plaguing the city because I score points for event cards at the end of the game? Or maybe I’ll score influence at the end of the game? Or maybe I need the influence to pay for one more meeple to put on the board to score more points for meeples in buildings? It’s up to you to guess, because ALL of our secret objectives score for every player. I’m pretty sure I’ll finish the plays for this without too much trouble.
Hanabi 6 plays
This 2013 Spiel des Jahres winner reminds me of some of my favorite video games - fast, and perfection lingers JUST out of reach, but seems oh, so attainable.
The Palaces of Carrara 6 plays
I don’t think this will get much further than this... My wife and I basically discovered the game is fairly broken. I’d be interested to play it a few more times to see if it’s true, but there’s a strategy we discovered where whoever plays it tends to win. That aside, this shifting-market brick-buying city-building (?) game is really fun and really fast. Good luck getting your hands on it, though.
Qwixx 6 plays
I’ve played wayyyyyy more than 6 games of Qwixx, but I consider each set of games of Quixx as a single “play.” It’s a fun, light diversion. Great way to kill 15 minutes. It’s a dice game where almost anything is good, and you can score things even when it’s not your turn, so there’s no real downtime.
Akrotiri 5 plays
I love tile-laying. It’s one of my favorite things. I also love “reverse-deduction,” like in Forbidden Desert or Tobago, where you have a grid and have to narrow down where in the grid the treasure can be found. This game combines the two flawlessly. Build the archipelago, try to align the elements to match the map cards in your hand, and find the hidden Temples that put you one step closer to victory. In the meantime, you have to fund your expedition by picking up and delivering goods. This two-player-only game definitely scratches some itches I seem to get a lot.
Harbour 5 plays
You have one worker, and on your turn you move this worker to a building and do what the building says. You buy buildings, which are worth victory points, to add to your particular dock and reserve the action there for yourself, unless your opponent wants to pay you a good to borrow it. This is another dynamic market game - reading and manipulating supply and demand is the key to winning this miniature version of Le Havre.
Patchwork 5 plays
Speaking of Uwe Rosenberg, this is one of his games. It’s another tile-laying game, where you are trying to buy these Tetris-like quilt pieces and fit them on your player board. The kicker here is that some of them take longer to incorporate into your quilt than others, and that is the actual timer on the game as players move their pieces around the time track for each piece they add.
Targi 5 plays
The perfect compact worker-placement game, for two players only, with yet another elegant twist on the mechanic - you place along the outer edge of a grid, adding two additional workers to the cards on the board where your three workers intersect.
Thunderstone Advance: Towers of Ruin 5 plays
Solo Thunderstone is really hard, okay? When you’ve got everything that’s come out so far for the “Advance” game, the randomizers can get quite unlucky.
Tiny Epic Kingdoms 5 plays
I won this game during International Tabletop day back in April. This fantasy-themed take on the lead/follow role-selection type of game is far from the best. I’m still not sure I really like it terribly much, but it’s been fun trying to find out? Which is pretty good for ‘free.’
Played a couple really great games new-to-me lately! Two of them have easily made it onto my latest iteration of my as-yet-unpublished, recently-refigured Top 50 Games of All Time.
I also have a new job!!! A regular job! That will allow me to afford, oh, I don’t know, a video camera! And maybe even a microphone! And maybe even let me do a podcast or a vlog or some such! I won’t need super-amazing video editing software either - I doubt the Dice Tower uses Final Cut Pro or anything.
I need to review one of the greatest weird games I’ve ever seen. Youtube only has ONE review, and even then, BGG only links to one or two blogs in English that have reviewed the game. Poor thing is so obscure! I mean, when you play it it’s easy to see why, but when it retails on Amazon regularly for $14 it sort of begs the question of whether or not it’s worth that money. If you want to find out what this oddity of gaming is all about, try looking up Siena.
There is no secret when it comes to the goal of playing a game; winning. Sometimes that winning takes different forms. Maybe you want to outdo your previous score, maybe you want to finish in not-last place, maybe you want to finish ahead of a rival, maybe you want to finish second because there’s one player who you know will always win this game every single time. Maybe winning is hitting the all-time high score list on Board Game Geek (if your particular game has one, or if ANY game has one.)
I’m sure your threshold for “winning” varies from game to game, as does mine, but its always about finding a way to make sure you have fun. However, there’s one gaming method that establishes a clear divide between two distinct camps - that of the “serious” gamer, and that of the “casual” gamer.
I’m sure you’ve seen the supergamer, or maybe you haven’t. They’re the ones who count the point advantages and disadvantages of every move they make. They’ve played the game so many times that they realize what you’re holding even before you fully do. They know what the winning strategies are, and if you don’t know them, you will lose the game you are playing. They and other serious gamers have talked about this. They have done their research, and other serious gamers have done the work for them to dig up. Or, of course, they’ve done the work themselves via a plethora of plays.
There’s nothing wrong with this. I think it’s cool that some people have fun treating every board game with the same intensity as chess has been studied. But I’m starting to wonder if deconstructing a board game into 3 exclusive viable winning strategies is really worth it. When they’re playing with other serious-gamer friends, that’s great. Let them compete for each of those. When playing with casual gamers, is that something they can shut off? Is it something they should feel obligated to shut off? Is it something casual gamers should resign themselves to and “settle” for considering second place victorious? Do we score board games on a curve? I think we do. And as long as we are truly having fun in it, I don’t think that’s a terrible thing.
Growing up in Cleveland (or maybe in my family?), one thing I learned was that it is always better to have a team that is fun, enjoys themselves, is interesting to watch, and is just successful enough. If a good team had to be sacrificed to have a winning team, that was anathema. That very much flavors my approach to board games and playing with these supergamers.
For casual gamers, I think most games are in a sense “sandbox games.” We know the rules, we try to make the most of them, and see who fumbles through it the best. Even on multiple plays, as we discover what is more or less “successful,” we never strive to be tournament-ready for any game we play. It’s why I love turning new players loose on Caverna. It’s why my favorite experience with supergamers is playing their 'learning’ game (though really, they tend to discover their pathways very quickly) or first game with a different player number (it’s AMAZING how much that throws them off). I feel like we’re all on a level playing field.
If my supergamer friends were to start their own meetup group to have a game night where they go to 11 all night long, would I want to join it? Do I want to learn from the starting gate what the only 3 Caverna moves are to ensure the slimmest chance at victory? To know how many points I’m sacrificing by taking a wheat to begin my farming strategy instead of adventuring to get animals early? To find out that it’s best to never go adventuring? Or to always go adventuring? Why would I want to know these things? Would I find it fun? I think I could, with some games.
I’m starting to think about gaming like the way I think about consent. When you have people who agree to sit at a table and know what to expect for themselves and out of the other people involved, you’ve got a great experience ahead no matter what happens. I know I do. There may be one winner, but there are no real losers. Unless, of course, you’re one of those people who gives up halfway through because the journey isn’t as good as the destination and whine and ruin the experience for everyone else. This is why gaming groups are great. I’ve met the supergamers. I’ve met the sore losers. I know who they are, so I can control my experiences a little bit if I feel I need to on a given night.
But is this just what we tell ourselves? Is this what Conservatives hate about America? This bandying about with ideas like “being happy with the KIND of game, not whether or not you won?” Is this anti-bootstrap-lifting nonsense making us weaker as a nation? etc.
Only if professional, optimized board gaming is an actual matter of life and death, or a viable way to make a living, I suppose. Otherwise, in the end it’s just a hobby. BGG doesn’t send me a tax document with a list of my wins and play-to-win ratio to claim on my 1040 or anything. But then again, maybe I’m just not serious enough for that yet.
The most popular one I’ve heard of is the “10x10″ Challenge, where over the course of the year you play at least 10 different games 10 times apiece. This is my first time ever doing it, and not sure that I’m doing it quite in the spirit of the thing (to get a better handle on games that require multiple plays to “master”) as much as in the spirit of gaming as a hobby on the whole (to play games and have fun).
One alternative to this that I’ve heard from a local gaming friend of mine is to play through the alphabet! Either 1, 2, or 3 different titles per letter (your mileage on Q, V, and X may vary). What would a list like that actually look like if you started from the top of BGGs rankings and looked down? Well, I’ll tell you.
# - 7 Wonders (18), 1960: The Making of a President (103), 1830: Railways and Robber Barons (105)
A - Agricola (6), Android: Netrunner (7), Age of Steam (54)
B - Brass (15), Battlestar Galactica (26), Bora Bora (89)
C - Caverna (4), The Castles of Burgundy (11), Caylus (19)
D - Dead of Winter (17), Dominion: Intrigue (20), Dominant Species (24)
E - Eclipse (9), El Grande (23), Eldritch Horror (25)
F - Five Tribes (62), A Few Acres of Snow (135), Flash Point: Fire Rescue (157)
G - A Game of Thrones: The Board Game 2nd ed (36), Goa (50), Go (61)
H - Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage (63), Hansa Teutonica (68), Here I Stand (74)
I - Imperial (76), Imperial 2030 (90), Imperial Settlers (94)
J - Jaipur (98), Jambo (315), Jamaica (372)
K - Keyflower (28), Kemet (64), King of Tokyo (107)
L - Le Havre (13), Lords of Waterdeep (29), Lewis and Clark (70)
M - Mage Knight Board Game (8), Mage Wars (35), Memoir 44 (82)
N - Nations (41), Navegador (91), Notre Dame (140)
O - Ora et Labora (40), One Night Ultimate Werewolf (126), Orleans (500)
P - Puerto Rico (5), Power Grid (10), Pandemic (43)
Uwe Rosenberg has done pretty well for himself over the years. To many, he is one of the “masters” of board game design. On BoardGameGeek, three of his games are in the top 20 (well, top 15, but that’s not quite as round as 20). What do I make of his oeuvre? Read on to find out.
Bohnanza (1997)
According to Board Game Geek, Bohnanza was made while he was still a student, I’m assuming in university. The premise of the game is this - you, as the players, are bean farmers, and you’re trying to make the most money off of those beans. The more of each type of bean you can “grow” before harvesting, the more money you’ll make off of that particular type of bean.
The game gets interesting in the free trading that happens every round. It’s like Catan’s trading, but someone’s actually always interested in what you’ve got to offer. You can give away the game that way, usually by trading a rare bean (that makes more money with a smaller set) for a couple more common beans (which need higher quantities to see a good return), but hey, nobody’s perfect.
Depending on the number of players, the game ends after two or three (or maybe four?) times through the deck. This may seem like a lot when you get started, but when people start hoarding cards in their hands (or the sets get really huge) the second time through is much less intimidating.
A more socially-interactive game than many of his others, it’s an interesting one, to say the least. It’s amusing and much more ‘fun’ than most of his subsequent work, with a couple key exceptions, though the number of expansions that surely complicate the gameplay exponentially is eyebrow-raising.
I’ve played it once, and I’d be willing to play it again.
Uwe Difficulty: Medium
Uwe Ranking: 2 Bean plots.
Babel (2000)
Currently unplayed. A two-player only game that appears to be in a vein similar to Reiner Knizia’s Battle Line or Lost Cities.
Agricola (2007)
The most-lauded ‘classic’ that also introduced, at least to a wide audience, many of the kinds of mechanisms (and themes) Rosenberg is known for, Agricola currently sits at #7 on BGG’s top 100. Agricola is a game about farming, and BOY is it hard.
Don’t listen to the proponents who tell you that the game is ‘fun.’ It’s not, really, unless you’re really into the brain-burners, if you want to have to squeeze every drop of sustenance out of the land to keep your family from having to beg for their supper every harvest.
They’ll tell you that the REAL game is in the card drafting during setup. You receive cards for Occupations your family members can take to help ease some of the pressure, as well as Minor Improvements to make around the house to tip the advantage in your favor. Playing them down, however, will cost one of your precious actions. That’s one fishing trip, one trip to the forest for wood, that you’ll NEVER be able to make again, so make sure it’s well worth it!
Beyond that, you also have to fill your homestead with stuff. You can use crops or house expansions or fences for your livestock (which you’ll want to breed and then mercilessly grind the newborns into meat pies) to do it, but you’ll lose points for failing to do it. You’ll lose points for every type of farm animal you didn’t manage to squeeze in while you were busy scraping for food. It’s kind of a chore.
The first two games of Agricola I played, I did not enjoy it much at all. The third game was the first game where I finally paid attention to the cards at the start of the game and tried forming an actual strategy. I did okay. I felt like I had some control over the game. I never starved. That’s all I can really say about it. What does it say about a game for your best positive thought on it to be “I never starved.”?
Uwe difficulty: Extreme
Uwe ranking: 2 food
Le Havre (2008)
I finally got around to playing Le Havre last night. I was a little trepidatious because of things I had heard from some gaming friends of mine that were less than fond of it. Seeking to do my due diligence as a gamer trying to absorb as much knowledge as I could, I decided to suck it up and give it a go.
Boy, I’m glad I did.
Le Havre both feels familiar and distinct at the same time. It’s like Agricola, but you have no homestead and only one worker. It’s like Caverna, except the tiles are randomized and only three are ever available at once. Instead of trying to diversify your farm as much as possible, you have one objective - have the most gold at the end of the game.
That’s right, by the way: you only have one worker. Ever. The two halves of Le Havre are these: Every turn, new resources are added to a market board (like the action spaces in Agricola/Caverna). Then, the active player chooses to either take one of the bunches of resources (the Franc offer, the fish offer, the wood offer, etc) OR they can put their worker on a building card and use that building’s action. That’s where all the resource conversion and other fun things happen. The catch here is that in order to use a building owned by the city or another player, you have to pay the bank or that player, respectively, resources - usually Franc(s) or food.
This game isn’t a short one either - a round consists of 7 turns and a harvest/feeding phase (with escalating feeding needs to keep the pressure on), and a 3 player game lasts for 18 rounds. The game I played with two newbies, including myself, and someone very familiar with the game took 3 1/2 hours to teach and play. That’s similar to a few of Rosenberg’s other games (Like Agricola and Caverna), but I keenly felt the length of this game more than the others in a way Agricola only sometimes approaches.
One of the biggest complaints about Caverna is its lack of randomness, and one of the complaints I have about Agricola is that a lack of familiarity with the cards gives the game a learning curve that is basically insurmountable for new players and gives veterans a distinct edge when playing. Le Havre, or at least this game of it that I played, was a pleasant in-between. I thought Caverna was a decent 'sandbox’ game (where you have a plethora of viable paths to success) but after playing Le Havre I finally understand what Caverna’s detractors are talking about. Now, you can’t WIN Le Havre by doing whatever you want (the guy who taught the game last night said there are exactly three paths to winning. He’s very knowledgeable about these things.), but as I mentioned before, you can find intellectual or creative success (i.e. not starve, and still feel like you played the game your own way) via a wider array of paths.
Uwe difficulty: Extreme
Uwe ranking: 4 steel ships.
At the Gates of Loyang (2009)
Definitely another departure, the Great Uwe stretching his wings and trying a new approach to the same concepts. Loyang is about merchants selling to customers, and managing your supply of crops from growth to the market stand.
The length of the game is marked not by new action/harvest cards, but by each player’s deck of field cards. Nine cards mark the nine rounds of the game, and at the start of each round your farm expands. You have to carefully plan what crop to plant where and when, as you’ll be able to harvest one vegetable from each field every round as well. Do you need more radishes? Can you wait until later? Or will there even be enough time to harvest all your radishes before the game is over? It’s definitely an interesting take on a common Rosenberg problem.
The bread and butter of the game, though, are the customers. Every turn, players draft cards from a common deck that contain some extra fields, customers, other market stands that allow for the exchange of goods, and helpers that often stick around until you activate their one-off benefits and dismiss them. You build and manipulate your connections when you need to, to get the vegetables you need when you need them, to try to make enough money to advance one more step on your path to glory (and each successive step costs more and more money to meet).
I’ve played this one once, and would be far more than willing to give it another go. Definitely one of his more straightforward games without too many degrees of separation from what you need and the number of steps you need to go through to get there.
Uwe difficulty: Medium
Uwe ranking: 3 returning customers
Merkator (2010)
Currently unplayed. About trading in the Mediterranean and collecting all kinds of goods and delivering on contracts. Time is a currency you either gain or spend depending on how long it would take to travel from one port to another or to carry out some actions.
Ora Et Labora (2011)
Currently unplayed. I know the least about this one. What I do know is that it involves a giant dial thingie that tracks how many of a resource you get when you take it. Cuts down on the number of cool shaped and colored wooden pieces you need, though.
Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small (2012)
Currently unplayed. Looks like a two-player version of Agricola with Caverna’s building tiles on it.
Le Havre: The Inland Port (2012)
Currently unplayed. A two-player version of Le Havre with Rosenberg’s dial mechanic.
Glass Road (2013)
Currently unplayed. Also has something to do with Rosenberg’s dial mechanic.
Caverna (2013)
Ah, Caverna. The game I wish Agricola could have been.
As I mentioned before, I now understand one of the main complaints about Caverna, but I don’t think it dampens my enthusiasm for it that much.
I don’t care that it’s too easy, because I think Agricola is way too hard. I sit down to play a game because I want to have fun, and Caverna allows me to do just that. This three-play ‘fun’ curve of Agricola was a one-play fun curve for Caverna, as I think most games should be. I was able to leave my first game successful and satisfied, certainly having not fully optimized every move, but I’d filled up my board most of the way! I’d gotten most of the animals! I hadn’t starved! I wasn’t totally blocked from useful actions! I was able to successfully leverage some building tiles quickly and easily, and even reward myself for following my own strategy by finding a building tile whose end game scoring bonuses reflected some aspect of the fruits of that strategy!
Le Havre is, for me, a great middle ground between the breeziness of Caverna and the crunch of Agricola, but if I want the full Rosenberg treatment without much if any of the drag (and sometimes that’s just what the doctor orders), Caverna fits the bill perfectly.
Uwe difficulty: Hard
Uwe ranking: 5 rubies.
Fields of Arle (2014)
Currently unplayed. A two-player only game, but on a Full Rosenberg scale. All kinds of upgrading goods Le Havre style, but there is a ton of tools and improvements (in a way) that are always present, like Caverna’s static spread.
Patchwork (2014)
For Patchwork, Rosenberg scaled things WAAAAAAY back. In fact, if you saw this game sitting on a table and was asked who had designed it, you would likely not be able to guess correctly. After a brief rules explanation, however, you can see a couple of his familiar fingerprints: periodic income, and trying to fill up as much of a board as possible.
You are making a patchwork quilt, but you only have so much ‘time’ to do it. No, not real-time - this isn’t Galaxy Quilter - but each piece has both a ‘button’ cost (the currency of the game) and a ‘time’ cost (the other, more limited currency of the game). The active player is whoever has used the least amount of time, so consecutive turns at one point or another aren’t out of the question. Every ten spaces or so (and more frequently as the game nears the end) you get income based on the number of buttons printed on the pieces you’ve added to your quilt. In between those on the time track are single square ‘patches’ that the first player to reach will use to fix those tough-to-fill holes in their quilt. In the end, whoever has the most buttons and the fewest open spaces on their quilt board will win.
Simple to learn, simple to play, this is Rosenberg at his breeziest, most casual, and arguably his most fun.
Uwe difficulty: Mild
Uwe ranking: 4 buttons
All photos taken from the publisher, promotional images, or BoardGameGeek.com (according to google image search)
Been working on a prototype for a card game that’s gone.... interestingly. The system works, mostly. The theme is pretty solid. The mechanisms are a little brutal, but can be easily tweaked.
I’m not going to share any more details about it than that, because reasons, but I do want to say that I’m glad I’ve done it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last few years, it’s that if you want to do something, you have to just DO IT. Start small, too. Once you prove to yourself you can write a short story, then start on a novella. Finish the novella. Now you can handle a novel. Finish a novel, then write another one!
My wife and I are working on a board game as well. We’ve been planning it off and on for the last year and a half or so, and it’s been difficult to know how to proceed and when to cross over into prototype territory. Now that I’ve made one prototype, it certainly doesn’t feel that hard to make another. I see how actually playing the game exposes weaknesses in the initial rules concept, and how surprisingly easy those weaknesses are to tweak and fix.
I don’t expect this first prototype will become wildly popular - it was just an exercise to prove to myself that completing a game design is possible, that my seed of a concept and a document of my notes and my ideas can become a concrete thing with moving parts that actually WORKS - but it’s done more to bolster my confidence than any grade in any class ever gave me.
I was hoping to run a game. I didn't. Instead, tonight I ran away.
I was bad. There's no denying that. Yes, I directed the person I may have played the game with somewhere else where they might have fun so they weren't left in the lurch. After that, however, I passed up the store owners while they were talking to other people and slipped out the back exit.
How did this happen? And how did I discover I'm actually part of the problem in the first place? Well, that's under the cut.
The scene: the last Saturday gaming night one of the local game stores holds every month. This is not the only gaming night they hold, by far. They hold at least two additional events there every single week. I attend their midweek event regularly. But this was different - this was Saturday.
I had a game I particularly wanted to bring to the table, that I hadn't played in a while - Archipelago (fantastic, but a BEAR to teach/learn). I let one of the owners know this earlier in the week, and again when I arrived tonight. They were eager to see this happen, and even began to mention this to a couple people that came in.
One gamer was receptive, another few hung back, more interested in finding something else to do with their time that night. In fact, they were waiting for one person in particular to show up (who was running late, no less) and didn't want to start anything until he got there. Another game was filled with a couple people I was more comfortable with, which didn't bother me. They were quite friendly and the game filled up quite naturally. But Archipelago? No such luck.
The hoverers were an interesting bunch as well. They're all podcasters. The varying success of those podcasts is unknown to me, but they very much exuded this "old boys' club" air about themselves. They were a clique, plain and simple, waiting for their final member to arrive to get the game started. Eventually, a purportedly drunk other friend of theirs (their assumptions corroborated somewhat by some slight stumbling and letting some light roughhousing go a little too far) arrived with a copy of Le Havre, and a couple of them peeled off.
I was sitting, 10 feet away, with my copy of Archipelago sitting on the table.
Another couple was there, too, setting themselves up in a corner getting ready to play Machi Koro. Which I guessed was fine. They were new. I didn't know them. I was too nervous to introduce myself. That's my own fault.
Oh yeah, this isn't to mention how I managed to piss off one of the podcasters earlier that night. A pair of friends perusing the store had picked up a copy of Thunder Alley, a racing game, and the podcaster sprung up. "Oh no, not that! That's one of two games I gave a 1 on Boardgamegeek!"
The owners quickly stepped in to mention that plenty of people like it and it's a fine game. I was a little appalled. So when they mentioned they were looking for a party game and this podcaster readily mentioned Citadels as a great option, I made sure to note that I gave it a low score myself. He clearly took issue with this and tried to defend it. I continued to dismantle it. "You know, I play the assassin and call out the Thief!" he says. "Yeah, Every turn. And someone's automatically out of the round every time."
"Well, tough," he says. "That's life."
"Yeah, but I play games to have fun, to get away from life," I say.
He shuts up, but clearly doesn't offer me any friendly glances from that point onward.
Back to that point in the night, one of the two remaining people looking for a game is aforementioned podcaster. Whether he's actually upset at me or not, I have no intention of finding out. I'd rather just avoid the situation entirely. Archipelago is an okay game with 2 players if you're NOT trying to teach it, but I would have to. That was out. Playing Machi Koro with a bunch of new people I didn't know when they were clearly going to enjoy it well enough with 2 or 3 was something I rather didn't want to risk at that point. I wasn't about to join Drunk Le Havre, either. No one else had shown up, really. Well, there was one guy who, like me, seemed to have a particular game in mind he was open to playing. (Which apparently can be the problem with themed game nights - everyone's excited to bring and play THEIR contribution, naturally.) Besides that, no one was there that I knew to act as my anchor/pillar with other new people. That's a thing I need. And maybe something I too easily rely on after I've made my initial group of acquaintances at a new place. I don't know.
But anyway, that was the point where I mentioned to my potential gaming partner that there was another table looking for a game, and maybe he could see if they were looking for another player since I was thinking about heading out. While the owners were distracted, I ducked out.
Thankfully, one of those new friends was hosting an event elsewhere in town, so I went to where that group was. I was told that this isn't the first time they've heard someone say that - it was why they were holding a separate group in the first place where they could play with their particular friends without feeling like they were being excluded by others.
Or, apparently, without being pressured by the staff to intermingle with new gamers.
Huh, I thought. Had I actually become part of the same type of clique that had just intimidated me out of the store? My mind flashed to a couple weeks prior, when after playing a game with a few newcomers to a store, a couple other members of this group and I wanted to play another game afterward and quickly reached our player limit, leaving the newcomers in the lurch. I had felt kind of bad about it, because I felt like it was partially my fault that those new people didn't stick around for much longer afterward, like we immediately kicked them out of the group as soon as we'd all warmed up to each other.
But now I realize... we'd made plans. As a group of regular gamers familiar with each other, we used that familiar context to negotiate the next game amongst ourselves. And we made sure those gamers weren't abandoned to their own devices, entrusting them to the owner available for gaming that night. We did our part, right?
I'm sure we could do better. Actually, I know there have been other times I can recall where I WAS the person who left my comfortable group to play with another, to try to get to know more people (well, a couple more people - there's always at least one I'm already acquainted with, or almost always. It's hard to pin down what my tendency is, actually), or teach people a game they want to know that I already know (authority and a desire on the part of others to learn is a GREAT crutch for me, too. This is why I could be an AWESOME honors math teacher... but no teacher teaches only honors classes and I'm not dumb enough to think I'm equipped for the full range of the spectrum of academic eagerness). I really don't think I'm a part of the problem. In fact, I've only been around for four months! And I've never felt unwelcome during any point of those four months until tonight, so I don't think the others I've gamed with are a part of the problem either.
Except for those darn podcasters! Unapproachable, undeigning. They really are the only intimidating people I've met since I've started going there. I guess it's time to stop worrying about myself and my gaming acquaintances a bit. In fact, I'm still meeting new people in my own "clique," if it even exists. I'm meeting new gamers all the time. My circle is still growing. Not exactly the sign of exclusion, if you ask me.
I can also attribute this to personality types. Gamer types, what have you. Some people are healthy extroverts. They're good at making people feel welcome and inviting them to try something new with them. There are people in the middle, who will try to include others in their plans from time to time. There are others who will only wait by the walls for the other two groups to invite them to join in. Then there are the podcasters.
Really, though, othering them like that, as a group, is unfair. One of them was really nice, and sort of reminded me of me a little bit. We'd talked a bit (well, i stood around and listened and chipped in rarely) and he was cool. Once the others arrived he blended in with them. Definitely a member and not a "leader." And the guy they were waiting for when I left is cool, too. I've gamed with him and had a fantastic time. Actually, that eliminates half of the group as the problem right there.
Mr. Anti-Thunder-Alley was a big factor. And another podcaster who I've never really met or played with before is the other. Oh, and drunk guy who they apparently know, too? There's such a weird alpha-male gamer population. Most of the people I play with seem to be there to hang out with anyone and have fun. Teach and learn in equal measure, have some hangups but will generally play pretty much anything. I understand some level of elitism - they run podcasts so they need to play this or that - or preference, but... I don't know. I don't know what these guys were looking for, but it definitely wasn't a general evening of socializing and friendly competition.
And really, I was looking for my friends, too. So neither was I. Does that mean I look like a "Podcaster" to newcomers, too? I hope not. I'll try to be better about that in the future.
I keep forgetting this was supposed to be a list of my top 50 of 2014 and NOT "all time." Because I've played SEVERAL new games since the new year, some of which certainly supplant my list. But I want to keep it up-to-date! But if I don't get started on SOMETHING then it's never going to get done. lol I'm starting to think I'll make a blurb for each game and then make a masterpost linking to each game's article as I write it. Then I can adjust those from year to year with any new insights I have. So I'll keep to the original list, then, and I'll insert anything new as we go!
Still might do this audio-style. My headset might be decent enough to handle the task.
I also started compiling some top ten/five lists for different thematic genres or game mechanics (fantasy, sci-fi, horror, tile-laying, deckbuilding, worker placement, etc) to start writing about soon. I'm gonna go NUTS with google spreadsheets getting those sorted out!
So keep an eye out! There's more to come. (Also a possible addendum to the Solo Play article... did you know Star Realms has a solo/co-op expansion? You can buy the Gambit pack on Amazon for about $10.)
Not every person likes every game. It sounds obvious, but when you play a game with one group of people, get really excited about it, buy it, and then introduce it to another that just doesn’t, you learn that lesson again, but in a much more material way.
This isn’t the first way that I became appreciative of solo gaming, but it was the most profound. I first learned of it when realizing I didn’t have a game group, but I really liked board games. Video games are often the wrong length for me, except for casual ones where I’d grow tired of it and put it down in about the same amount of time anyway.
Besides, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m pretty darn sucky at socializing. I spend a lot of time by myself and not going out. Even now, I have a meetup I attend on Wednesdays and that’s basically it for my scheduled social interactions. I just moved to a new town where I know virtually nobody (not a big change from when I got into board gaming either), so the solo aspect of gaming is growing in importance.
What makes a good solo board game? I’d say they’re largely the same things that make a good cooperative board game (as most cooperative board games can also be played solo - my mother has played countless games of Pandemic this way) - difficulty of success, the ability to scale that difficulty to keep the game interesting, those sorts of things. In addition, some solo modes are also made more enjoyable by comparing scores to benchmarks, either mentioned in the rulebook (good) or found somewhere like the boardgamegeek forums (useful, but not great).
So what are some good solo games? What solo games aren’t quite as rewarding as their multiplayer counterparts? Let’s take a little survey, at least through my experiences.
(Roughly in order from least to most favorite)
Shadowrun: Crossfire
This game SAYS it can be played solo. I have my doubts. Haven't done it myself, but the rules flex pretty well for other numbers of players, so why not? Creating a separate character apart from the one you'd use with other players is simple enough, too. A fast setup and tear-down game that resets quickly for another go, I'm sure there's worse solo games than this.
Nations
I’ll admit that I haven’t played this game solo yet, much to my curiosity. For being my favorite civ-building game, surely I would have given this a run by myself by now! Alas, I have to defer to the rulebook.
The game basically included a “solo expansion” in the form of purple tiles that dictate some automated actions and difficulty thresholds from turn to turn. After totaling your score at the end of the game, the rulebook has a scale in the back to test your score against (incredibly helpful. Thank you, Nations.) and determine your level of success. Seems elegant and complete enough in theory to be enjoyable at least.
Thunderstone: Advance
This dungeon-crawling deckbuilding game is something I’ve normally only played cooperatively and never played solo, but, interestingly, the co-op and solo games have the same basic idea. Instead of comparing your victory points to your opponents, any monsters that you can’t defeat leave the dungeon and form a pile of “successful invaders” to the village. At the end of the game, you compare your victory points to the total points of the invaders. Depending on the setup, the co-op version is wickedly difficult, and a huge sense of accomplishment when you win. I can only imagine the solo version is much the same. Yet another game where you know at the end just how you did.
The biggest barrier here? Setup. When you own all of Thunderstone Advance (and don’t play by Epic rules) all the randomizing and searching at the beginning is a little too long for what the game is, and getting the heroes and monsters back in order is a pain too.
Snowdonia
I love Snowdonia. Oh my God do I love Snowdonia. It’s a simple worker placement game that in a sense is a free-for-all, but the game plays too. It’s a game on an unknown timer. No deck to look at, no tokens to feel for, just a bag of treacherous white cubes waiting to steal your victory points out from your nose, to thwart that plan you’ve been laying out for the last four turns and finish the railroad before you can.
This solo mode captures that same spirit, and is once again an elegant non-departure from the regular rules of the game, you’re just the only one doing anything. Since the game runs on a timer already, why not go up against it yourself and see how well you can do?
This is where things go a bit off the rails, however. (Get it? RAILS?) You can play it, and it is a bit satisfying, but… there’s no scale in the rulebook to tell how good you did. There’s also no way to lose. You just have this -number- on a pad of paper. What?
Thankfully, the threads on BGG inform a little better: 180 points seems to be the threshhold for “pretty good run.” 200+ seems like the level where you can feel like you’ve actually accomplished something (as far as the intersection of “actually accomplish something” and “playing board games” is concerned). Still, some real sense of urgency or competition (“giving the game” points equal to its accomplishments as if it were a player? Somehow allocate contracts to “the game”’s achievements? Allow “the game” to score on YOUR contracts? Subtract the game’s accomplishments from yours when scoring contracts?) would elevate this experience a great deal.
Pandemic / Forbidden Island / Forbidden Desert
Matt Leacock doesn’t design his games with a solo mode in mind, but he also doesn’t need to. While taking control of multiple players may be business as usual for alpha gamers, the experience can still be enjoyable and potentially eye-opening for non-alphas playing solo. New ways to strategize while not costing the team the game, seeing how you can do WITHOUT an alpha around, playing around with the difficulty, all of it. None of them are too burdensome on the setup or teardown and are easy enough to reset, allowing for back-to-back solo plays with no trouble.
Lord of the Rings (Reiner Knizia game)
See Pandemic/etc above.
Elder Sign
Why you’d want to put one investigator against the entire weird and dark museum is beyond me, but you can. Successfully, no less. The difficulty here (at least in the base game) is pretty low, I’ve found, but haven’t played it with all of the Ancient Ones yet. I hear the app is pretty rewarding, too. Also easy to reset.
Castle Panic (+ The Wizard’s Tower)
I’m not the biggest fan of a game needing an expansion to be fun (read: any challenge at all), but Castle Panic is my exception. The base game, while fun, is just such a walk-in-the-park (I played several games solo. Won all of them handily.), so I was happy about the added choices and challenges (and that drawstring bag for the monster tokens! Worth the price alone.) provided in The Wizard’s Tower. The rules for the solo game are smooth and simple (referring to the rulebook for expansion errata is universal to all quantities of game participants), and once again, there’s a sigh of relief when you win. Like Friday, you can most definitely lose Castle Panic; usually, I’ve found, from a stray boulder you just didn’t quite prepare yourself for well enough.
Archipelago
This exploration/market-management Euro is already a game with objectives, and the solo expansion is similarly geared. It consists of a deck of cards with the same type of objectives, but also a reasonable timer on those objectives. The faster and more efficient (and sometimes luckier) you are, the better you score on the card’s victory levels. Because so much of the setup of Archipelago stays in the box, it maintains a quick setup and teardown, again allowing for multiple playthroughs in one sitting.
Archipelago is one of those games where, at the end, you feel like you’ve accomplished something, like Minecraft or Legos or building models, so the experience itself isn’t a bad way to spend 45 minutes. According to the BGG forums, attaining the gold level of any of the solo cards is virtually impossible, so making that my goal would be more Sisyphean than I’d like. As it stands, the solo expansion is still an enjoyable way to get a solid game to the table.
Chrononauts
This little card game is another pass/fail solitaire, with built-in recommendations for making the solo game easier or harder. I played it on the basic difficulty and WOULD have won, if I didn’t make a stupid mistake somewhere along the way. For this version, you have the time Patches and Inverters (which allow you turn linchpins in history into alternate versions, throwing connected events into paradox, which you must fix with Patches) and must create the historical conditions required for each of seven time-travelers to return to the version of events they consider home. You only get one go through the deck of cards, so you have to plan carefully as you go.
Caverna/Agricola
Solo Caverna is pretty darn fun. For a game with little to no randomness, it becomes as literal a sandbox game as you can imagine. You can try out different strategies - furnishing combos, herding vs farming, mining vs furnishing, adventuring vs not, all kinds of things - without interference from other players. This means you don’t spend as much time thinking on your feet, but you can let your imagination run. For someone like me, who plays the game more casually than intensely, it’s delightful.
I’ve gone to greater lengths on Caverna’s solo mode here.
I hear the Agricola solo mode has several different variations, but I’m not as big of a fan of Agricola, so I have little reason (and no copy of my own) to try that out. It seems like the occupation system might actually shine in solo mode, though - I guess you get to keep one from one runthrough to the next or something? And the difficulty ramps up? Sounds cooler than regular Agricola to me.
Friday
There are some games that are designed specifically for solo play. Friday is probably chief among these, or at least the only one widely available that I’m aware of. I’ve also played it in a sort of cooperative variant, where my mom and I squished our brains together to try to make the most of it.
You can lose Friday. You can lose Friday really quickly. Once your life tokens run out, you’re done. Thankfully the fast setup means that you can play through it several times, like normal Klondike. You can raise and lower the difficulty, and you COULD compare your scores to others, but even surviving feels like enough of an accomplishment that even your own high scores list takes a backseat to winning.
I think that inherent to every critic and reviewer's list comes a certain amount of bias based on their environment and tastes and everything else. Opinions are inherently biased. All of them. So here are some of mine, up front.
- Like rahdo, a game that plays well with two is almost always going to score better with me. If something makes it higher that doesn't play well with two, that's a hella good game indeed. (There's at least one of those.)
- I like cooperative games. I like games that bring people together and not destroy friendships (I'm lookin' at you, Diplomacy! With a sidelong glance to Twilight Imperium III). I wouldn't say I like them -more- than competitive games, but they're on equal footing with me.
- One of my two gaming groups has a member who is particularly finicky about the level of competition in their games. For them, it's either co-op or "multiplayer solitaire" kinds of games, or else you're out. For that reason, trying to find games of those types that are also appealing or interesting is somewhat of a priority. Why don't I just find a different gaming group if the player is that picky? Well, we'll see what happens there (to borrow a phrase) "as time goes by," I guess.
- I like to think that my tastes are fairly broad, and I hope my list bears that out to some degree. As far as whether or not I'm a member of the "cult of the new," I think it's too early to say. I mean, I'M new for crying out loud! Every game I play, whether it's from 2014 or 1990, is new to me. I don't think I qualify for the cult of the new for another 5 years or so.
EDIT: Oh yes, stupid me! I hate dice. I prefer games of skill over games of luck. I don't mind reacting to randomness, but I don't at all like relying on it.
What else colors my list? I think I might just have to leave that up to you to decide.
Also wondering if I should get myself a microphone or a headset and record this for podcasting purposes. Might be more accessible that way. Thoughts?
I could do this for last year as well, probably, but this is the first year that I've really been into gaming and actually played enough games to have an amount that I actually like!!!
So what games have I played that came out in 2014 and what did I think of them? It's time to count 'em down.
It's an overlord vs. team-style game (a la Descent) from Japan where the team is a group of time-travelers assigned to prevent Bad Stuff from happening to characters in four different locations throughout a city. The machinations of said Bad Stuff are carried out by the overlord player, who tries to manipulate the characters' moods and movements. Every day, the players play their own cards on the same characters to try to nudge their fates in different directions. If the team succeeds in preventing everyone from dying through a single loop, they win. If not, they get thrown back to the first day and have to try again. If they don't succeed before their allotted number of loops runs out, the overlord wins.
One of the big interesting factors of this game, aside from the morbidness and time travel aspects, is that there are only very specific times that the team can communicate with each other - usually only between loops. Can everyone remember what they wanted to say and everything that happened when and communicate clearly what their plans for the next loop are? The high customizability of the scenarios is also interesting. The Mastermind's book provides all of the basic information and suggested assignments of roles to characters, but there's nothing stopping a well-versed player from going completely off-script and engaging in a real chess match with a team. Chess isn't terribly inappropriate here either, because the overlord is always having to set his plans in motion a few turns in advance and trying to not have the players be able to suss them out.
The gameplay itself is simple - the mastermind plays cards, the heroes play cards, all cards are revealed and resolved, character roles/abilities trigger, move on to the next day. Reset the loop if necessary. Repeat. The resources the game provides gives the team at least somewhat of an edge - like seeing opponents' cards in a game of clue, the way things happen or don't happen allow you to logically eliminate roles and scenarios and hone in on who you need to stop from being where and when. Really, this is like Clue if the murder hadn't happened yet and someone was playing as the murderer knowing the cards in the envelope. It's an interesting game that also provides a tool for players to get creative with. Its uniqueness, innovative design, and replayability earn it a spot at #5 on my list.
4) King of New York
King of Tokyo was fun and light monster-on-monster action, and King of New York adds the only thing that King of Tokyo was missing - landscape destruction!!! The thematic experience is now complete. The less-useful sides of the original dice are now taken up by more interesting choices - the Destruction face that lets you crush buildings and military units to gain points, energy, or health, and the Ouch face, where those same military units shoot back at you, providing more opportunities for you to be hurt while not occupying Manhattan.
King of New York gives you just enough to do and another way to gain points and health, keeping everyone in the game just long enough to maximize the fun and not overstay its welcome. I'd definitely buy this over the original if you don't own it yet.
3) Star Realms
There are Star Realms TOURNAMENTS already! That's how accessible and wildly popular this 2014 release is. Oh yeah, and it's fun, too.
I've grown sick of CCGs. Having been through Pokemon and YuGiOh and Digimon and Magic, I now wonder how much better my time and money could have been spent on more replayable board games. This is why I've come to love deckbuilders - I scratch the same itch, but without spending hundreds of dollars on a bunch of cards I'll never use.
My deckbuilder of choice is Thunderstone Advance (played as the co-op variant whose rules are found in the Root of Corruption expansion). Sure, new sets come out about twice a year, but nothing ever goes out-of-date or -rotation or any garbage like that. Still, if only there was a small one that provided enough variation from game to game that could just fill that role in my gaming without all the setup and randomizing and fit in a single deckbox... OH WAIT. That's Star Realms.
The genius of Star Realms is its portability and thus simplicity. Players have their own starting decks of 10 cards and a single deck of other starships and space stations occupies the middle of the table, with a row of 5 cards set out available for the players to buy. That's it. Like every other deckbuilder, you get actions and purchases. Unlike every other deckbuilder (but like a few), you get to launch attacks at your opponents until one of you runs out of "Authority" (life) points, giving Star Realms the same competitive feel of perennial juggernaut Magic: the Gathering. That's not to say this game is groundbreaking in any way, I just think this is the perfect option for someone looking to fill a CCG-sized void in their life without spending CCG money. It's a solid iteration of the formula, no frills attached, and I think that makes it a good staple for absolutely anyone's game library.
2) Evolution
GUYS, THIS WAS A KICKSTARTED GAME! AND IT ARRIVED ON-TIME!
I like pointing that out particularly because it still seems like such an anomaly. I hope that becomes less of an issue as soon as possible, but alas.
That excitement aside, what you have in Evolution is a fairly family-weight game with an educational edge that also provides players with interesting choices and a mostly-open sandbox. Once again - a game that's mostly nothing but a deck of cards.
The crux of Evolution is keeping as many species as possible and giving your species abilities that give them the advantage over other species (and players) when it comes to eating or being eaten. The points at the end of the game are given for number of species, number of traits played on those species, and the bulk for the amount of food your species have eaten over the course of the game. The first and second are mitigated largely by carnivores, species given the "Carnivore" trait that allows them to eat vulnerable species (not protected by horns, defensive herding, a hard shell, a bigger body size, etc), and the third is limited by how high the population of your species are (for every point in population, you must consume one food). Limiters are placed on the available food by food cards selected by each player every round (Trait cards have a food number on them, and each player chooses one card from their hand to place in the middle to control how much food is available later in the round).
The game plays relatively quickly - it ends when the deck runs out and each player gets 3 cards plus 1 card for every species you have, and people get to 3 and 4 species pretty fast - and the rules are mostly simple and straightforward. Errata in the rulebook clears up any misunderstandings that couldn't be put onto the cards themselves.
I've played this four or five times, and I can't say I've ever pursued the same "strategy" twice. It's very much a game that you as a player have to adapt to just as your species do, and the quick thinking and quick gameplay make this a deeply satisfying long (an hour or so) filler.
1) Shadowrun: Crossfire
I feel like I've not played much in the way of Tabletop RPGs over the years. I've had the third edition BESM core rulebook for a long time now, but never played it. I've been in a few 3-session D&D campaigns (before the group or the DM fizles), an Exalted campaign or two over the course of a summer, a stilted World of Darkness campaign (boy, do I miss Mage!) and about a year of Shadowrun.
As far as sheer worldbuilding and imagination and versatility goes, combined with experience, I have to give the edge to Shadowrun.
The world of Shadowrun is rich. Everything goes, and everyone knows it. Magic has reawakened in a Blade Runner cyberpunk world, and with it came a resurgence of mutations that transformed some ordinary humans into different fantasy races. You can find Orcs outfitted with cybernetic modifications swinging a samurai sword, your oh-so-typical elf mages, introverted humans using their wheel-mounted iPads communicating with their team mid-job while lounging safely (or not-so-safely) in the confines of the abandoned warehouse they squat in.
Catalyst Game Labs has chosen in 2014 to take this world, this game, this system, and implement it as a multi-session deckbuilding game. Pathfinder has done something similar, sure, but how well does Shadowrun's card game port relate to the original experience?
In short, incredibly.
Shadowrun is tough, and a game where death is hardly ever permanent. To this end, in the beginning stages, the game is REALLY tough. You will lose, until luck swings in your favor enough times to let you take the reins of your own fate as a team.
Yes, I said "as a team." Crossfire is a cooperative deckbuilder that suits 1-4 players, and the thematic tie isn't hard to see. Need to do some sidework away from the rest of the team? Run on your own. Someone else running with another team for today? Run with two or three. Got a full team? Then get to work and get it done!
If you had to boil the types of jobs in the RPG down to their core, any of them exciting enough to pull the whole team together for can fit into one category - infiltration. The game represents this with two different (beatable) missions: Crossfire (an infiltration gone bad) and Extraction (where you have to rescue and protect a captive Client). The Decker/hacker gets to work disabling security measures and extracting information, the Street Samurai handles any strongarms in the way, the Face negotiates the way past suits, and the Mage, well, slings some lightning bolts around.
Of course, no run ever goes smoothly. Crossfire has two different types of ways to make things go wrong: Obstacles (which come in "Normal" and "Hard" difficulties) and Crossfire Events (that shape the rules and conditions for a round of turns). New ones come out frequently, based on the type of job your team has decided to take on.
As any normal deckbuilder, every player has a starting deck of cards (7 here), and a (Black) market of cards available for purchase. One simple but crucial difference here is that the cards you purchase are immediately available in your hand, unlike other deckbuilders like Star Realms, Thunderstone, and Dominion. You have to communicate with your team to make sure no one else wants one of the cards out there, and plan your buys based on what they might also have in their hands or what obstacles everyone is facing. There's a lot of strategy, and while it may be easy to "Alpha game" beginning players, no one can truly predict what the team will find around the next corner, and any Alpha will soon find themselves humbled by the obstacles and Crossfire deck.
Giving this game true potential as a weekly gaming event are the character upgrades. Completed missions give the team members Karma points (experience) that can be spent on upgrades to their characters. Some allow you to gain additional health (my wife made me take this upgrade because my fragile elf was dying too quickly and she [or her tough-skinned and big-boned orc - see the roleplaying potential here?] was growing impatient with failing mission after mission) and others allow you to manipulate your starting deck, starting money, or grant you other bonuses and abilities for use during the run.
The level of immersion is up to the individual or the group, but the breadth of that scale is impressive for a game that's just a few decks of cards and a pack of stickers. The difficulty of the missions and the thin line between success and failure, the rewards reaped by acheiving that team victory, and its thematic link to the Shadowrun experience are all what tie in to Crossfire's replayability, and why it's my top board game of 2014.
I've never played Agricola solo before. In fact, I've only played Agricola twice. It's just not my kind of game. Lots of people love it, and I know why they do, and I think that's great that that game works better for them. Caverna just happens to work better for me.
So when I pondered what Caverna would be like solo, I imagined it would play exactly like it does when playing with more than one player. I imagined that doing this would completely replace the multiplayer experience. After playing it solo twice tonight, I can happily report that these preconceptions could not be further than the truth.
My first playthrough resulted in a score of 23. I had absolutely no animals and very few furnishings, but I did end up with 5/6 dwarves and a lot of crops. Then, as I thought back on my playthrough, it hit me-
This version of the game is all about timing. Since the spaces on the board are reduced and the available ones reset to zero after they accumulate 6 goods, you have to make the most of your moves when you take them. Find other things to do to keep busy while wood builds up on your logging. Clear some farmland with sustenance and slash and burn! Do the same for your excavation. Now there's 4 rubies? What are you waiting for? Might as well use that wood and stone to build yourself a dwelling; you can start making babies next turn! Don't want to waste time! And don't let those sheep reset on you! Ah!
And on and on it goes. Which furnishings will help you the most and fastest with the resources you have left? That's up to you! Go adventuring or not, it's up to you! Once you get this idea of timing down, something COMPLETELY foreign to multiplayer Caverna, you can settle in and have a good time. Sure, in multiplayer you have to grab actions before other people can, but you also have to grab actions AFTER other people have already narrowed down your options. You have to make the best with what you have and manage your resources based on other people more than anything else. But in solo Caverna, it's you vs. the clock.
"But David," you ask, "If the setup is the same every time and you figure out the optimization, what's left? Why keep playing solo?" I haven't tried it enough to know for sure, but there are countless combinations to be tried! Sure, you'll want to get to 6 dwarves as fast as you can every time (well, that's my current strategy - game 2 got me to 94 [with NO adventuring] so it was a HUGE improvement), but that still leaves you build actions to wiggle with. How many more resources could I have gotten if I had gone adventuring more instead? If I had equipped myself with more delayed resources, or other variable VP furnishings and cut down on some actions instead? Is it worth it to trade out the actions and resources required to gain 3 or 4 more actions with a sixth dwarf, or should I spend the time gathering and reproducing on other things since a dwarf is only worth 1 VP at the end?
So many questions! So many answers! And as long as you can find a way to make it fun (why not see how high you can get with just the basic furnishings? Or take out some of your favorite furnishings and see how well you can do without them? Restrict yourself to only two dwarves for the entire game? Up the harvest requirements to 3 food per dwarf? What about four?), Caverna will keep harvesting rewards. Just like video games, you can find countless ways to add challenges and raise the replayability factor of solo Caverna, and you won't even ruin your multiplayer experience when you do.
EVERY game of Love Letter is a 2-player game at some point during every hand, sometimes for a few turns in a row. So if you're going to knock it for being a "bad" 2-player game, what's the point of playing it at all? It doesn't really pick up any complexity with 3 or 4 players either. So you can pick what player you "attack" with your card's ability? Big whoop. If you enjoy it with more, you can enjoy it with 2. In fact, I would say that 2 players is MORE intense, because it takes that showdown-style tension from every other hand and infuses it into the entire game, and no one is left sitting around with nothing to do and wondering if they have time to grab something to drink before the next hand starts.
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