Weirdest. Board Game. Ever.
wallacepolsom
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

⁂
Xuebing Du
YOU ARE THE REASON
trying on a metaphor

roma★
🪼
Sade Olutola

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
$LAYYYTER
Cosimo Galluzzi

Janaina Medeiros
occasionally subtle

@theartofmadeline
NASA

#extradirty

shark vs the universe

pixel skylines

oozey mess
seen from United States
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seen from Chile
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seen from Singapore

seen from France
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seen from Poland
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@gamingcrutch
Weirdest. Board Game. Ever.
I’m sure there’s a smoother way to integrate this... Until then!
2015 10 x 10: Top 10 List!
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!
Midterms
Here’s my play list through the first half of the year!
The Latest and Greatest
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 Two of them have easily made it onto my latest iteration of my as-yet-unpublished, recently-refigured Top 50 Games of All Time.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.
On SUPERGAMERS!
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.
Annual Gaming Challenges
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.
The Rosenberg Effect
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.
Game Design
Fun Fact: I’m doing that!
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.
Tonight, I ran
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.
Top 50 of 2014 - update (and other things)
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.)
What the hell is chat for?
-Ahhh technologyyyy hello? Alex? David?
Yooooo. What's up?
Solo Board Gaming
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)
David's Top 50 Tabletop Games (2014) - Intro
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?
Top Games of 2014
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.
Caverna as a Solo Game
I'm really surprised.
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.
Love Letter as a 2-player game
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.