It’s been nearly 2 years since my last post of this type, and much has changed within my collection! Games have come and gone (more come than gone), the collection has traveled with me across the country, we at Bitewing Games have begun publishing board games, and my tastes have morphed and evolved with time.

One thing that hasn’t changed in the past couple years: my favorite designers are still Cole Wehrle and Reiner Knizia. For me, these two designers are best able to hit that sweet spot of emergent strategy, unfolding dynamics, and spicy player interaction. Yet I’ve enjoyed many styles of games from various creators within diverse genres. Let’s explore these shelves…

This cheap white shelf as been with me for as long as I can remember, from holding a beanie baby collection as a child all the way up to holding a board game collection as a man-child 😆. This top section features the following:

• My 6 favorite Oink Games in their charming rectangular boxes.
• A couple solid wallet games from Button Shy (Sprawlopolis and Seasons of Rice)
• An unplayed copy of Don’t Get Got: SUSD Edition that I have no idea when I’ll get to play (the setting has to be perfect)
• Some reading material from a couple of my favorite video games (Breath of the Wild and Cuphead)
• A clock hand-made by my grandfather who was a talented carpenter
• Our favorite party games: Wavelength, Decrypto, Deception, So Clover, Camel Up, Codenames, etc.
• Some of our favorite dexterity games**: Men at Work, Junk Art**
• Various classics

Moving down, we’re onto some solid abstract strategy games in the top left, favorite deduction games in the top right, and a good mix of old and new in between. Some fun facts here:

• 7 Wonders was my favorite game during/after high school (before I really fell down the rabbit hole of tabletop gaming), but now I haven’t played it in years.
• Pandemic Iberia is our preferred version of Pandemic (we’ve culled all the other versions)
• Takenoko was an early favorite gateway game for my wife and I, but like 7 Wonders it hasn’t been played in years. We’re saving this one for our girls, though—the production is a delight.
• I would love to upgrade our version of Great Western Trail, but I’m kind of waiting to see which one in the trilogy ends up being “best.”
• Under Falling Skies quickly became my favorite solo game after trying it, but even that has now been beat out by our upcoming publication, Trailblazers. Ryan Courtney has designed a massive amount of solo content for it that has me hooked.

Now we’re onto our weird Tetris shelf! Where the previous one was more about grouping party or abstract games together, this one is pure chaos featuring my pitiful attempts to fit stuff into the empty spaces. Although I suppose this top section has a little bit of sense to it:

• As you can see front and center, we recently received the final copies of our first publication: Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers Collection. I’m super stoked for how these turned out in terms of color scheme, character design, and component quality. One of the best things about being a publisher is seeing your vision for a design come to life.
• On both sides of that collection, you’ll spot two recent acquisitions that I’m eager to try for the first time: Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation (a widely revered 2p Knizia game) and Santiago (a classic negotiation game).
• We’ve also been enjoyed a couple epic plays of Eclipse: Second Dawn this past month.
• Finally, you’ll mostly find nearly all of our multiplayer card games crammed into this bottom area. Shout-out to Quinns at SUSD for his infectious enthusiasm for small-box card games. I love it when a little game packs a big punch.

Let the box Tetris chaos begin! There is no rhyme or reason to how these games are organized, but I sure enjoy them!

• Roxley’s Iron Clays (in the top right) see heavy use at our table for any game that uses money and doesn’t already have upgraded metal coins or something. I would say this is hands-down the best kind of upgrade a hobbyist could add to their collection.
• I’m just now realizing that I’ve accidentally put my two favorite Martin Wallace games next to each other—Brass: Birmingham and Age of Steam. It was destiny, I suppose. But that also reminds me, I really need to try Brass: Lancashire.
• Faiyum is another recent acquisition waiting to be played…

We’ve made it to the bottom of my wacky Tetris shelf featuring many more favorites!

• The size of El Grande Big Box is has become straight-up offensive at this point. If Bitewing Games had the chance to reprint it, we would do so in a heartbeat and the box would be slim and slick! I’m with the fans on that one, and hopefully the publisher hears our cries.
• Lords of Vegas is probably among my Top 5 games I’m itching to play again. It’s been far too long.
• Speaking of top games, Pax Pamir: Second Edition was my number 1 game last time I ranked my Top 50, and it remains one of my all-time favorites.
• I had the chance to help playtest the upcoming Amun-Re: 20th Anniversary Edition (including some of the expansion modules) and it was good fun! I’m eager to see what Vincent Dutrait has cooked up for that version.

This next shelf was left in our current home by our landlord, and thank goodness for that—it’s already full! This top section features some real bangers. I’m mega-hyped for the next Root expansion, yet I never even get enough plays of all the current factions.

Here we have some of my all-time favorites mixed with some games I really need to play more of.

• The Great Zimbabwe is new and unplayed
• Coffee Traders is still sitting at only 1 play despite my best efforts to get it to the table again
• Blue Moon Legends is one that we’ve barely scratched the surface of
• Meanwhile, we’ve got games like Oath, Radlands, Hansa Teutonica, Sidereal Confluence, A Feast for Odin, and others here that have been some of my favorite releases of recent years.

2-player games get a lot of love at our house, but now I’m struggling to keep them all on one shelf! We’ve got some stellar Knizias on the far left, some old gems holding strong in the middle, and some excellent tug-of-war games sprinkled throughout. My wife, Camille, says that her favorites of these include Lost Cities and Royal Visit.

Ooo baby! Now here’s a section we’ve all been waiting for. As you can see, the good Dr. Knizia has his own dedicated shrine in my collection (the only thing missing is a portrait of the man 😆). You’ll notice that he loves his big box designs, as do I.

First off, I’d like to formally apologize for having separated Through the Desert from its Euro Classics siblings. I can see now that I am a tyrant for this grievous error.

Next, I know what you’re all thinking… where the cuss is Ra?!? Funny story there, I actually ordered it from GameNerdz when it was the deal of the day several years ago and it turned out that they accidentally sold more copies than they had and I was hosed. Haven’t acquired my own proper copy yet, particularly because I’ve been waiting on this new version from 25th Century Games. So close, yet so far away…

Finally, let’s all share a moment of silence for the end of a spectacular collaboration between Grail Games and Knizia…. May your games live on in our hearts and at our tables. Hopefully Bitewing Games can do our small part to help fill the void for Knizia fans—we do have 7 upcoming Knizia Games in our publishing lineup!

All I know is that I’m probably going to need an entire bookshelf for Reiner before too long 😬.

This here is a spare shelf featuring… leftovers, haha. Ironically, the contents of this picture range from least exciting to most exciting games in my entire collection. Let’s skip the least exciting and get straight to more interesting stuff:

• Garden Contest was the third game I ever designed. It’s one that got to an amusing-to-play point in its development process (I even pitched it to a few publishers), but in retrospect I think it would need some drastic changes to be worthy of publishing. So it currently just takes up space.
• Count Your Chickens is our toddlers’ favorite game, so that’s something 😆. They’re still too young for me to toss them into the deep end quite yet, but we do enjoying breaking out Junk Art blocks and Renature dominos as well.
• Alright, alright. Admittedly, neither Garden Contest nor Count Your Chickens were exciting at all, but those with a keen eye will notice that the white box in the top left is indeed wrapped in official Knizia Games rubber bands, straight from the Doctor’s Factory. This one is a playable prototype of Reiner’s next tile-placement game (following the likes of Tigris & Euphrates, Blue Lagoon, Yellow & Yangtze, Babylonia, etc.). All I’ll say for now is that it should both delight fans of this legendary line of games with its characteristic game-board tension and interaction while surprising and winning over newcomers with some really satisfying combos and chain-reactions. Expect a crowdfunding campaign next year!
• Speaking of mysterious white boxes, those other three smaller ones also feature our upcoming publications: prototypes for Gussy Gorillas, Trailblazers, and two 2p Knizia games.
• You’ll also notice some weird plastic contraptions hanging around here, one white and one black. These are prototypes for binoculars (or a viewer) that is used for our upcoming party game, Con Artist. Con Artist and Gussy Gorillas are my two designs that have survived the development gauntlet to land themselves on our publishing schedule. I’m very excited about those ones!

We’re at the end of my shelves here with games that are on the chopping block from our collection (although the Feast for Odin expansion is simply an empty box that I should recycle one of these days).

• Lowlands is actually one we haven’t even played yet, but after owning it and not touching it for two years I’m starting to wonder if the writing is on the wall.
• Tzolk’in is one I really enjoyed the first two times I played it, but after a long hiatus I came back to it and realized that I’m really burnt out on this style of game (abstract economic Euros with loads of resources and tracks plus a mechanical gimmick to kind of make it stand out from the crowd).
• Codenames Duet sat in shrink-wrap on our shelf collecting dust for years until we finally tried it recently and found… that we really disliked it, haha. The best part of Codenames is the group discussions and banter, Duet has none of that.
• Riftforce and Meadow are both solid games that I think a lot of people will love, but we found that they’re not quite for us. Riftforce was a little too cyclical/repetitive from start to finish while Meadow is a little to chill and easy going for my tastes (akin to games like Parks, Tokaido, etc.).
• Tucked behind Meadow is two more games on the chopping block: Blue Moon City (gasp!) and Downforce. BMC is fine, but I’d rather play the 40+ other Knizias in my collection.  Downforce can be fun as well, but we vastly prefer Camel Up and Winner’s Circle which are consistently more exciting and satisfying, imo. Also sitting on top of these games (barely visible) is En Garde (gasp!), which is… fine, but probably too dependent on card counting for my tastes. And you probably noticed that we have plenty other 2p games to keep us happy and this version is too big for its own good.
• What the heck is Ankh, one of my favorite releases of last year, doing here? Well, my buddy who lives 5 minutes away went all-in on the Ankh Kickstarter, so I have no need for this retail copy.
• Gloomhaven: JotL is a solid one, but I grew tired of it due to excess fiddliness and not quite having the right group to fully enjoy it.

And of course I have to show off my two prized jewels: a gaming table and our Crokinole board. This is what happens when you carelessly spend your tax returns all in one place 😆.

Before we finish up here, I’ll leave you with some more fun anecdotes:

Shelf of Shame (unplayed and in my collection for longer than 2 weeks):

• The Great Zimbabwe
• Don’t Get Got
• Lowlands
• Faiyum
• Undaunted: Reinforcements
• Skull King

Games I’m itching to get back to the table asap:

• Lords of Vegas
• Decrypto
• The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
• Pipeline + Emerging Markets expansion
• El Grande
• The Estates
• Root
• Undaunted
• Orongo
• Yellow & Yangtze

Games I don’t currently love, but I’m reluctant to cull:

• MIND MGMT (maybe this play will be the one I love)
• Rheinlander (feels so close to being another Knizia classic for me)
• Quacks of Quedlinburg (fun until I get wrecked by the whip chips, which happens far too often)
• Ticket to Ride, 7 Wonders, Takenoko (saving them for our kids)
• Seasons of Rice (too small and fine to purge)
• Take 5 (and everything else surrounding it)

Games that are criminally underplayed (please don’t hate me):

• Cosmic Encounter (1 play)
• Coffee Traders (1 play)
• Agricola (2 plays)
• Quantum (1 play)
• Cairn (2 plays)
• Race for the Galaxy (2 plays)
• Istanbul (2 plays)
• MIND MGMT (2 plays)
• Iberian Gauge (1 play)
• Blue Moon Legends (2 plays)
• Fugitive (1 play)

Favorite Reviewers/Content Creators:

• Shut Up & Sit Down – I can attribute the discovery of many of my favorites to them, although they seemed to take the biggest hit during COVID in terms of game coverage.
• So Very Wrong About Games – Knizia Connoisseurs and my favorite podcasters. Brutally honest yet refreshingly genuine.
• Dice Tower – The best source for sheer widespread coverage of even the most niche games. I don’t have to agree on every opinion to still appreciate all the awesome stuff they do for the hobby.
• Board Game Barrage – A fun bunch that I’d love to game with sometime. Fun fact, I’m friends with Kellen’s brother, Griffin (we went to the same dental school), yet I didn’t even know they were brothers until after graduating. Small world!
• Dan Thurot / Space-Biff – The best board game writer in the industry, by my estimate
• Going Analog – Christina and Shoe are delightful. I get a kick out of their podcast discussions.
• Bitewing Games – I’m allowed to put myself on here, right? I’ve gotta at least acknowledge that our podcast, blog, and Youtube channel exist. 😆

Best “Hidden Gem” Finds:

• Quo Vadis? (One of my favorite negotiation games)
• Durian (picked this up before anyone was talking about it and love it)
• Wavelength (the first Kickstarter I backed off of pure gut feeling)
• Rapido/Excape (one of Knizia’s best dice games, OOP in the US!)
• Condottiere (got some SUSD love years ago, but mostly forgotten now)
• Parade & Archeology: New Expedition (spotted these both on Quinn’s shelf during his own collection tour)
• Art Robbery (probably my favorite Knizia I’ve imported from Europe… well, aside from Siege of Runedar… and Mille Fiori… but 3rd place is good, no?)
• Dogs of War (shame on CMON for neglecting this one after its initial release)
• Mandala (also took a chance on this one before anyone was talking about it, and it’s now among my favorite 2p games)
• Orongo (shout-out to the Reiner Knizia Enthusiasts guild over on BGG)
• Winner’s Circle (the Dicetree Edition is awesome!)

Wishlist Games (excludes anticipated upcoming releases):

• Container – looks like a classic that is prohibitively expensive and out-of-print
• Dominant Species – another classic that I’m intimidate by but interested in
• Ginkopolis – not sure whether I’ll love this one, but I suspect I’ll at least like it
• Le Havre – played this once and really enjoyed it
• Into the Blue – Reiner Knizia’s yahtzee meets area majority. Not available in the US
• Troyes – This would be perfect for my Monday night Euro crew
• Indigo – I suspect I would really love this shared incentive Knizia game
• Space Worm – Another obscure Knizia that mixes Snake with Roll & Write, just wish it was easier to acquire
• That Time You Killed Me – I’m interested to see what the buzz is all about

If you enjoy our Bitewing Games content, then we’d love your support this summer! Keep an eye out for the retail release of Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers Collection and the Kickstarter launch of Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney—both of which should happen roughly in July! You can follow along by subscribing to the Bitewing Games newsletter today.

Thanks for joining the tour! Here’s a little teaser of a player card for Trailblazers to close this post out:

Article written by Nick of Bitewing Games.Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the upcoming Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

What games do you recommend for me based on my collection?

The post A Tour of Nick’s Board Game Collection appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Kyle joins Nick to discuss games they’ve been playing recently:

Lost Legacy – 4:08 
Winner’s Circle – 10:47
Cascadia – 18:33
Spyrium – 27;14
My City – 34:37
Parade – 42:39

Subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter to follow our latest content and upcoming publications.

The post Recent Plays Chat: Cascadia, Winner’s Circle, Parade, My City, Spyrium, Lost Legacy — Podcast Exclusive appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Due to my family’s recent cross-country move, the opportunities for gaming have been slim lately.  Between packing, driving, and unloading a moving van, becoming acquainted with a new city, starting work at a new dental practice, and leaving my gaming group, I’ve been thoroughly starved of that gaming goodness.

As I’ve had more time to reflect on gaming than actually experience it, I figured this is the perfect opportunity for me to reflect on my journey into the hobby of tabletop gaming.  Call it a Board Gamer’s Odyssey, Autobiography, History, or whatever you please, but today we’ll be exploring many of the games and moments that made me into the designer, publisher, and gamer that I am today.  What games were my favorites at certain times in my life, and why?  Are they still among my favorites, or have they fallen out of favor?  How have my preferences changed over time?  Let’s do the Odyssey!

I owe my love of gaming to Grand Daddy Nintendo.  In my home, we grew up with a Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo.  I have fond memories of enjoying Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, Joe & Mac, Zombies ate my Neighbors, Bubsy, Donkey Kong Country, and getting wrecked every time I started The Legend of Zelda.  I had no idea that there were things such as Nintendo Power or magazines that could guide me through the trickier titles like Zelda.  I was simply a young lad with a love of play.  

I still have mad respect for one babysitter who kept me entertained by cruising through the entirety of Super Mario Bros. 3 and beating the game in one sitting, something that I could only dream of at that young age.  I don’t remember her name or what she even looks like, but she’ll always be that unicorn babysitter for me.  It wasn’t until high school that I went back and beat all the classic Super Mario 2d games. High school was a nice renaissance of Super Nintendo games and beyond where I shared my console with the tennis team and we spent the nights at the hotel taking on various old-school games.

I also remember the Christmas long ago where our family got a Nintendo 64 and spent the day racing through the tracks of Mario Kart.  It was probably the 64 that really cemented me as a Nintendo fan, and I didn’t need any further prodding after that in requesting games, handhelds, and systems for later birthday and Christmas presents.  Over time, we acquired a Playstation 1-4, Xbox, Gamecube, Wii, Gameboys, Nintendo DS’s, and more, and while our family wasn’t allowed to play M-rated games, I still managed to borrow or sneak a few classics into the basement including Halo 1&2 and others.

My strongest gaming memories growing up include discovering the wonder of each new Super Mario game, falling in love with The Legend of Zelda titles, playing endless hours of Smash Bros with family and friends, and celebrating Halo-ween and New Halo’s Eve more than once in high school.  Among my dozens and dozens of cousins, I was the one who beat down on everyone else with Fox in Smash Bros Melee.  Among my highly skilled friends, I was the one who trolled everyone else with Duck Hunt’s exploding cans, Animal Crossing Villager’s deadly tree and bowling ball, Piranha Plant’s spiky ball, and Simon Belmont’s relentless projectiles in Smash Bros Ultimate, and I was good at it.  Rather than loyally stick with a single “main” character, I have always loved to explore a wide variety of fighters and rotate through many of my best ones including King K. Rool, Inkling, Link, Samus, Min Min, Ridley, Piranha Plant, Simon Belmont, and more.

My group of high school friends were such hardcore gamers that one of them opted for an old school Super Mario Strikers tournament on Gamecube as his bachelor party feature activity.  It was perhaps the loudest, funniest, and most competitive video game memory that I have.  Yet our deep love for video games also resulted in somewhat of a collective aversion to board games.  I played plenty of classic board and card games with other friends and family, but it was almost never with my closest group of friends.

My parents aren’t necessarily the type to initiate a family game night, but there are some that they would frequently play with us growing up.  My mom, being a retired school teacher, always loved to break out Boggle and take us on with her spelling prowess… at least until us kids got old enough and smart enough to start beating her at her own game.  My dad was usually down for a session of Catan or Pit, provided he had the time and energy for it.  In my teenage years, our immediate and extended family got particularly hooked on the card game Play Nine thanks to its smooth flow and simplicity, but I eventually grew tired of it being a massive luck-fest with only one statistically optimal way to play.  While my family will still try to break out Play Nine every now and then, I now perform the acrobatics necessary to dodge such a long, tedious gaming session that goes for nine repetitive rounds.

Another fond memory I have is of Killer Bunnies.  This is the one game that I did get some of my close friends into, and a couple of us (myself included) amassed a complete collection of all the many packs and expansions during high school.  Whenever a bunny was exiled to outer space, we took such mechanisms literally by suspending the bunny card high above the table within the confines of a chandelier.  These wacky bunny hi-jinks culminated into an all day Northern Utah Killer Bunnies tournament which four of us signed up to compete in a quest to win the TWO HUNDRED DOLLAR grand prize gift card.  We had a killer shot at that prize too, as three of us made it to the finals and colluded as a secret team with the agreement to help each other, sabotage everyone else and split the prize money.  We ended up with 75% of the carrots, meaning we had a 75% chance of winning the game when the Magic Carrot was revealed, and yet we STILL LOST to another lucky son-of-a-gun.  That tournament roughly a decade ago may have been the last time I ever played Killer Bunnies, yet I kept my collection for several more years before finally admitting that it’s high-luck to long-playtime ratio was no longer for me, and I sold it off.

Yet the first board game that I truly fell in love with would have to be 7 Wonders.  7 Wonders captured our hearts and spurned our hunger for strategy gaming thanks to its accessible rules, quick playtime, and mind-boggling replayability.  This was also our first encounter with any strategic game that let everyone take their turn at the same time, and that revelation was glorious to me and my cousins, the ones I most frequently played this game with.  The diverse decisions of whether to invest in resources, lunge for wonder development, gun for military, sneak for science, and more were the perfect gateway drug for me into this hobby.  I have its designer, Antoine Bauza, to thank for really fanning the flames of my kindling love for tabletop gaming.

It was my love for 7 Wonders that drove me to acquire Bauza’s colorful Takenoko, relaxing Tokaido, and refreshing Hanabi.  The zesty productions and/or novel mechanisms within these designs opened my eyes to the possibilities out there.  Board games and card games didn’t have to be just that… a board or some cards.  They could be towering bamboo pieces, panoramic vacation vistas, reversed hands of cards.

With bellies hungry for more, we went on to discover and play-to-death more games including King of Tokyo, Dominion, Dixit and beyond until one pivotal day when I sat at the kitchen table reading the rules to a new game in our small collection: Photosynthesis.  I don’t believe the rulebook or this game had anything to do with what happened next, yet I remember it for the life-changing thought that entered my brain as Photosynthesis sat in front of me: “You know what would make for a cool game?  A game with Sasquatch and a Yeti and other mythological creatures who are all competing to become the most legendary creature.”  It was in that moment that Nick, the game designer, was born.

Out of that idea grew the game Creatures of Legendaria, an asymmetric, grid-based movement, Yahtzee-style dice game that was inspired by King of Tokyo and, oddly enough, Splatoon.  Before I knew it, I was designing custom dice, concocting creature abilities, drawing board game maps, and plotting world domination with what was sure to be the next Monopoly or Catan.  I had friends (or perhaps more accurately, victims) controlling a Basilisk or a Centaur or even old Nessy to claim territory, perform heroic or villainous deeds, avert angry mobsters, hoard treasure, and earn shrines to their glory.  Man, just reminiscing this one still brings back all kinds of nostalgic feelings of epic creativity.

The problem is, when you’re new to a craft and buried deep in the creativity of it all, you are completely blind to all the mistakes you are making along the way.  Mistakes such as lunging for asymmetric ability design before polishing the core gameplay.  Pushing for good looking art and premium prototypes before solidifying your shifting components.  Throwing the doors wide open for any player count before understanding the pacing and interactions at play.  Saying yes to any and every game piece without considering the cost and fiddlyness of it all.

But in retrospect, it didn’t matter whether my first design was good or not.  What mattered was that I had caught the bug for tabletop gaming.  My eyes were opened wide to the wonderful world of board games, and my appetite was even wider.

I wanted—no, needed—to know about all of the great games I had been missing out on all these years.  And who better to help me embrace this new culture than YouTube’s The Dice Tower and their hours upon hours upon hours of “Top 10” and “Top 50” and “Top 100” videos.  Of course, that doesn’t mean I embraced every game they recommended.  Suggestions like Concordia looked far too dull while others like Star Wars: Rebellion weren’t hipster enough for my tastes.  My ears would perk up much more readily for games like Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, Five Tribes, Yamatai, Clank, Ghost Stories, Downforce, and the like.  These were the types of games that rode the first wave of my insatiable hunger.

Of course, my environment was the other necessary ingredient in this equation.  While I attended dental school in a dark, musty, hundred-year-old building in Columbus, Ohio, where we were lectured and labored to the brink of death, I desperately sought entertainment and activities to bring balance to my life.  Fortunately, my wife and I lived in a townhome community packed to the gills with young grad-students and professional students who were just as poor and hungry for fun as us.  From one night to the next, we quickly found ourselves inviting over a wide variety of couples and individuals to try out the latest addition to our collection or the latest prototype I had been cooking up.

I designed what I knew and loved, which is why King of Tokyo bred Creatures of Legendaria, Clank and Ticket to Ride bred Yeti Shreddy, and Takenoko and Majesty: For the Realm bred Garden Contest: Show Gnome Mercy.  Ironically, all three of these game ideas were born amid the hectic finals week studying at the end of another semester of dental school.  It was as if a high-stress schedule and some sub-conscious procrastinatory defense mechanisms brought out the productive creator within me.

I formulated these games, offered them up to contests or publishers, hit the brick wall of rejection, went back to the drawing board, reimagined the rules, rinsed and repeated.  Yeti Shreddy had a particularly wild journey from energy efficiency board game all the way down to roll & write all the way back to sprawling deck-builder as I sought the best mechanisms to bring the idea and theme to life.  The very first version of it was cranked out in under a week right before it found itself at a table in the playtesting hall of Gen Con.

Gen Con was an eye-opener, to say the least.  I had no idea that the hobby was big enough to support its own yearly Disney World.  With registration lines winding out the massive convention building and far down the streets.  With thousands of hobbyists packed into rooms and halls like eager sardines in search of the next gaming fix.  Tables upon tables, booths upon booths of games and ideas and creations lined the convention floor.  I’m just proud that I was able to discover, fall in love with, and purchase Decrypto before it became the popular evergreen party game that it is today.

It wasn’t long after this first convention experience that I was riding the hotness wave and not even knowing it.  Gorgeous abstract drafting games Azul and Sagrada were all the rage, both in the industry and in our home.  Fresh new roll & writes Welcome To, Railroad Ink, and That’s Pretty Clever were more of our go-to favorites.  But these small, bite-sized games weren’t the only glowing designs to catch my eye.  Wingspan was teased out by Stonemaier Games.  A production featuring pastel eggs, a cornucopia of bird drawings, and a bird food dice tower for crying out loud.  I had to have it… and when I finally did, the production went on to exceed my expectations, and thus began the Stonemaier Craze in our home.

Viticulture and Scythe soon followed Wingspan into our collection.  The richly thematic productions mesmerized all who joined in on our Stonemaier gaming sessions.  After conquering the rulebook of Scythe, I was hungry and ready for even more meaty games.  This is where I decided to take a swim in the deep waters of board gaming with the sprawling table-hog known as A Feast for Odin.

My fears of treading into such murky gaming territory were assuaged by Paul Dean’s Shut Up & Sit Down review of A Feast for Odin, where he revealed to me that the game was more a wide wading pool than a deep drownable well.  Despite the endless tiny shapes and infinite action spaces and daunting rulebook size and inconceivable playtime, I could see the meaningful enjoyment of it all, and I was ready for the plunge.

A Feast for Odin wasn’t the first favorite that Shut Up & Sit Down introduced me to, but it was the heaviest.  While their videos initially felt scatterbrained, long-winded, and aggressively peculiar, I began to realize that many of their recommendations where right on the money.  With time, my appreciation for their British humor and wacky review style and strong gaming preferences grew.  

Quinns’ infectious love for solid card games served to expand my own interests, and he’s the reason why I gave a shot to sneakily fantastic yet unattractive designs including Ethnos, Condottiere, and Jaipur.  Despite my poor first impression of Pipeline, I couldn’t get Matt’s unbridled enthusiasm for oil out of my mind, and I eventually realized that such a richly adored game deserved a second chance at my table.  And Tom’s appreciation for Cole Wehrle designs including Root, Pax Pamir, and most recently Oath have aided me in my quest to convert all gamers to Wehrle fans.

It’s these videos that served as my treasure map and navigation compass while I sought out the best games both old and new.  Likewise, Shut Up & Sit Down’s podcast—featuring the above mentioned blokes and Ava Foxfort—has been a reliable source of gaming criticism and discussion during my journey into the depths of this hobby.  But they certainly aren’t the only contributors who deserve my thanks.  

Without the unabashed endorsement of So Very Wrong About Games, I may have never touched the wildly unique Cosmic Frog or talked myself into the dry looking masterpiece, Tigris & Euphrates.  Thanks to Dan Thurot’s insightful pieces, I’ve had the pleasure of discovering more collection essentials including Babylonia, Scape Goat, and Sidereal Confluence.  And it was No Pun Included who got me excited for the deliciously slim Irish Gauge.

And while I was finding critics who understood my needs and expanded my tastes, I was also encountering publishers and designers who consistently satisfied at our game nights.  Capstone Games quickly won me over with their fearless embrace of thinky, cutthroat, interactive publications including The Estates, Stick ‘Em, and Watergate.  Publishers Leder Games and Wehrlegig Games earned my trust with gorgeous, striking, and dynamic experiences including Root, Fort, and Pax Pamir.  And designer Reiner Knizia flipped my perspective on dry Euros with his characteristically elegant gameplay with emergent interactions.  It’s these types of reliable creators whose distinct styles have bestowed upon me such strong cravings that I can hardly resist each fresh concoction they pull out of the oven.

Speaking of Dr. Knizia, one especially noteworthy event in my board game odyssey is something I would label The Reinerssance.  While many longtime fans have been applauding Reiner’s designs in recent years as a return to greatness, I’ve been busy soaking up and savoring the best of his entire portfolio, from cult-hit negotiation game Quo Vadis to modern masterpiece and spiritual sibling Yellow & Yangtze.  He’s the only designer who owns two-and-a-half shelves worth of real-estate in my home, and nobody else even comes close.  It’s taken me nearly thirty attempts to even find a design of his that I’m ok with purging from my collection.  His work has had a profound influence on both my personal preferences and professional pursuits.

It’s through the lens of Knizia’s design philosophy that I’ve both narrowed my tastes in some areas and expanded it in others.  It’s the streamlined, interactive tension of The Quest for El Dorado that made it difficult to go back to the more solitaire Dominion or more messy Clank.  No doubt, his classic Through the Desert and Samurai prepared me to embrace and adore other deceptively simple Euros including Hansa Teutonica and Renature.  Thanks to Reiner Knizia, I’ve discovered that what I love most about gaming is not the extravagant components or lush artwork, it’s not the novel mechanisms or potent themes, rather, it’s the communal challenges that matter most.

Puzzles become boring once the optimal solution is found.  Shiny objects lose their luster when combined with enough familiarity.  Yet the one thing that never gets old, never remains static, never ceases to entertain is the players sitting around the table with me.  I’m not just referring to the faces that come and go from one gaming session to the next, although that is part of it.  I’m talking about the interesting personalities, unpredictable brains, and evolving interactions that reveal themselves from one round to the next or from one design to another.

If a particular game earns itself a long-term spot on my shelf, the most likely reason is that it allows its players to engage with each other in interesting, memorable, and dynamic ways.  This is the critical genetic trait that ensures a long, healthy lifespan in my collection.  But beyond that, highly interactive gameplay is becoming more and more the gateway by which any title even enters into my collection.

If I can spot that a particular design is a completely heads down affair with a puzzly novelty that will run out steam after only a couple plays, then I’d much rather not bother with it at all.  Yet at a deeper level, I still find less satisfaction even in a low-interaction game whose novelty hasn’t run out.  So much of life is already spent in my own head—dreaming about my wishful desires, worried about my daily needs, circling around my own problems—that games which encourage me to get inside others’ minds, read their emotions, predict their plans, and influence their intentions are like endlessly refreshing vacations into the wider universe of my fellow human beings.

As I’ve slowly unraveled this truth within my person, I’ve noticed myself shed games from my collection that fail to provide these “social vacations” for me.  Games like Wingspan, which I certainly admire for the all the creative passion that went into them, are games that no longer satisfy me.  It’s not enough for me to scour my personal play area, concoct an efficient plan, and pull off some cool combos whenever my turn comes around in hopes that my decisions add up to a better score than yours.  And the half-hearted conflicts of Scythe and Tapestry don’t do it for me either.  While I’ve learned and gained much from Stonemaier’s designs, productions, and business practices, I’ve simply lost my appetite for their style of play.

The same can be said for other games I started out loving including the roll & write genre, Gugong, the sequels to Azul, Splendor, Crusaders, Calico, and Barenpark.  Furthermore, there are plenty of popular hits that fell flat for me when I finally got to try them including Orleans, Altiplano, Santa Monica, Reef, Raiders of the North Sea, Terraforming Mars, Everdell, Rune Stones, Hadara, Lost Ruins of Arnak, and many more.  None of these games are bad, they’re merely bad for me.  There are of course exceptions to my strong biases such as the low-interaction polyomino legacy game My City, the solitaire thematic roll & write Super Skill Pinball, and more, but these are few and far between.

Besides saving money by avoiding misguided purchases, the main benefit of discovering, honing, and defining what does and doesn’t work for me is that my palate carries over into how I design and publish tabletop games.  I’ve learned that box inserts need do more than simply hold your components… like successfully keep things organized during storage and be easy to place pieces into or fetch pieces out of.  I’ve decided that luck works best when it enhances the tension, broadens the variety, and/or gives amateurs hope, and it works worst when it undermines calculated decisions or possesses a strong presence in a long game.  I’ve witnessed that art needs to supplement the experience without detracting from clarity and functionality.  I’ve found that aggressively mean mechanisms can be excellent ingredients in a board game if they are purposeful, expected, and strategic.  I’ve discovered that the quality of a rulebook can make or break the gaming experience.  I’ve determined that even more important than a design with a clever mechanism is a design with an engaging arc, meaningful downtime, and filling turns.  I’ve realized that the setup, teach, and teardown of a game can mean all the difference between making it to the table and collecting dust on the shelf.  And I’ve beheld that tension in board games is much like stress in life… without it, things can quickly feel dull and meaningless.

As I’ve made these small, important steps through life—from learning to play, to teaching and inviting others to play, to imagining new ways to play, to refining my preferences for play… I’ve slowly gained the confidence, experience, and drive that have made me into the gamer, designer, and publisher that I am today.  I’m sure that many other hobbyists and creators can trace a similar arc as mine.  Yet the fascinating part about it is that we are all originating from different sources and branching into unique directions through our individual tabletop gaming journeys.

We wouldn’t have the incredible Pax Pamir without Cole Wehrle’s love of history. 

We wouldn’t have the legendary Ra without Reiner Knizia’s professional background in mathematics.

And we wouldn’t have Soda Smugglers, Pumafiosi, and Hot Lead without a couple dentists who love board games enough to start a publishing company called Bitewing Games, to reach out to Reiner Knizia and assemble three of his fresh designs, to mold these designs into a connected collection and thoughtful production with the help of their wildly imaginative colleague and friend, Paul Halkyon.  All of the gaming experiences in my life have built up and coalesced into this moment… I both stumbled upon and intentionally created this opportunity to publish three 20-minute card games that delight and satisfy both the former, naive gamer and the modern, persnickety hobbyist in me.

This opportune moment of launching a Kickstarter campaign for a Reiner Knizia collection next month feels both like the culmination of a gamer’s odyssey and the blast-off of a creator’s journey.  As long as our Bitewing Games rocket ship doesn’t fatally explode as it attempts to exit the atmosphere, we have big big plans for what lies beyond. This Criminal Capers Collection is only the beginning…

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

The post Board Gamer’s Odyssey—My Journey into the Hobby of Tabletop Gaming appeared first on Bitewing Games.

1. It only requires a table, a game, and players.  

Cold rainy weekend keeping you from venturing outside?  Sounds like the perfect opportunity for a lazy Sunday of A Feast for Odin!  Stuck in quarantine with your family amid a pandemic?  Legacy game My City has you covered!  Got a tight entertainment budget?  Even 15 dollars can get you a ton of mileage within a game like The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine.  

2. It challenges your intellect and engages your emotions.

As much as I enjoy an adrenaline-pumping video game, they typically don’t challenge me quite like a session of Galaxy Trucker or Age of Steam against live humans.  And while television and social media is trying its hardest to turn our brains to mush, board games like Curious Cargo and Concordia are the mental trainers who force one’s intellect into all kinds of acrobatics and gymnastics.  Fifty years from now, I hope I’ll still happily accept anyone’s challenge to a game of Tigris & Euphrates where only the cleverest can emerge victorious.  My hunch is that such activities are much better for the aging mind than the daily episodes of Wheel of Fortune or Family Feud. Moreover, I love the range of feelings that board gaming can evoke including joy, fear, surprise, betrayal, hilarity, pride, paranoia, camaraderie, and more.

3. It removes folks from their screens and brings them face-to-face.

If there’s anything in this world that we need, I’d say it’s less screen time and more people time.  Codenames is the perfect solution to this problem.  I much prefer the opportunity to get into someone’s head via their careful clues than dive into their internet drama via their latest hot take.  My fondest memories with friends are not the back and forth gifs sporadically sent between smartphones, rather, they are frequently the wild goose chases I send them on via Treasure Island or the surprisingly deep conversation we have in Wavelength over the deceptive athleticism of Jack Black.

4. It’s a world of endless ideas and plentiful possibilities

Nothing has stimulated my imagination quite like the wide world of tabletop games.  Where else do people get to embody a cult of lizards who gleefully accept the woodland outcasts of Root as they sharpen their diabolical daggers of retribution?  What other medium allows plain old humans to simulate a submarine showdown complete with sneaky mines, targeted torpedos, and chaotic communication in a loud, rowdy game of Captain Sonar?  From quilting blankets that attract cats to quarreling over the King’s dilemmas, nothing has given me a wider playground of possibilities to immerse myself in.  It’s these sparks of imagination that kindled my own creativity, ultimately launching me down the path of publishing games about smuggling soda pop in suitcases and grooming the fur of fellow primates.

5. It teaches us useful lessons and develops skills.

While school is great for learning times tables and capital cities, I’d argue that board games can be even better for developing practical skills. These skills include critical thinking, probability analysis, agency & consequences, risk management, sportsmanship, interpersonal relationships, collaboration & competition, problem solving, listening & instructing, reading comprehension, and much more. Games almost always present a problem and leave it up to their participants to work out the solution.  The problem can be adding more odd, chunky shapes to a teetering tower in Junk Art, managing a complicated oil business in Pipeline, or solving a murder mystery in Deception: Murder In Hong Kong.  As much as textbooks and lectures love to prescribe solutions, templates, and techniques, life’s problems range far beyond such boundaries.  These frequent challenges require quick thinking and reward innovative ideas.  Board games are like a micro-simulation of life and its problems, allowing players a safe space to fail forward from one play to the next. And our experiences at the table can have great effects on how we handle the challenges of life.

6. There is a game for anyone and everyone.

One of the nicest thing about possessing a diverse collection board games is that I’m always able to pull something off my shelf that is perfect for its participants.  It doesn’t matter what your experience level or preferences are, the wide world of board games has you covered.  Not in the mood to think hard about each and every decision?  Let me introduce you to a cooperative game that runs solely on gut-feelings, namely The Mind.  Or perhaps we can put your catlike reflexes to the test with a rousing round of KLASK.  Need a gentle activity for the sensitive souls in your gathering?  Why not plan out your perfect neighborhood in Welcome To or guide one another to the hidden word in Just One?  Have some siblings who love to give each other a good beating?  Go on and take each other to the woodshed with a session of Tournament at Avalon or Cosmic Frog.

7. It’s tactile, tangible, and tantalizing.

There’s something truly magical about the clackity, colorful, chunky components that come in cardboard boxes of various shapes and sizes.  Whether its digging into your dark bag for potion ingredients in the Quacks of Quedlinburg, balancing your hard-hatted worker meeples on the girders of Men at Work, or plopping the camel dice out of the plastic pyramid of Camel Up, the sensory experience of tabletop gaming is something that we’ve all more fully appreciated during this past year of virtual conventions and socially distant simulations.  It’s the satisfaction of solid physical components that has spawned entire webpages, brands, and markets focused on deluxifying games in a quest to maximize the look and feel of a design.  It’s why I sometimes spend more money than the cost of a game itself to acquire Roxley’s Iron Clays or BoardGameGeek’s Root bags or Etsy’s Age of Steam organizer to make future plays of a game all the more decadent.

8. It creates memories, generates traditions, and fosters relationships.

Becoming a hobbyist gamer is like joining a closely-knit club of cultists who are always anticipating another gathering while they tirelessly seek to convert more candidates to their cause.  One of my favorite questions to ask people is, “What kind of card or board games do you enjoy playing?”  Whether their response is Uno, Gloomhaven, or anything in-between, we instantly have a reason to hang out and become better acquainted.  We’ll surely encounter moments to remember such as my ruthless sabotaging of everyone’s investments in The Estates or your crafty manipulation of the group’s focus in Insider.  And we’ll have many traditions to treasure including Wednesday night games, yearly Origins Game Fair, and annual Christmas Crokinole.

9. It has a great shelf life and solid resale value.

While fashion has its flings and technology ages poorly, board games forever retain their value as long as the components remain intact and the game can find its audience.  We’ve discussed the ins and outs of culling and collecting, purging and surging, and the beauty of this hobby is that I can find and enjoy a playable copy of thirty-year-old Quo Vadis while recouping much of the costs of a played-out deluxified Scythe or an ill-fitting Sleeping Gods.  Treating one’s collection like a living, breathing library of curated activities and opportunities is half the fun of this crazy hobby.

10. It utilizes the universal language of play.

Hobbies often reward those who are creative, athletic, courageous, or business savvy, and such required skills can often become barriers to entry.  While games always revolve around winning and losing, the tabletop gaming hobby makes winners out of all who are here to play.  And no matter who you are or where you come from, play is a universal language of life.  Play is what sharpens the working saw and lightens the burdens of life.  Play can be found in the uncovered traps of Skull and the colorful clues of Mysterium.  It can be felt in the competing coalitions of Pax Pamir and the cascading combos of Race for the Galaxy.  It can be heard in the ruthless negotiations of Sidereal Confluence and the painful groans of Stick ‘Em.  The act of play in the company of strangers become friends, friends become family, and family become enemies is precisely why this hobby is so relentlessly addicting and endlessly satisfying.

Why do you love tabletop gaming? Share with us in the comments below!

Article written by Nick Murray. Keep an eye out for his first published design, Social Grooming, which will debut in a Kickstarter bundle alongside two games from critically acclaimed designer, Reiner Knizia! Don’t miss out on this killer filler bundle coming in 2021! Subscribe to the Bitewing Games monthly newsletter to stay in touch.

The post 10 Reasons Why Tabletop Gaming is the Best Hobby appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Let’s talk about the games that are leaving or entering my collection, and why!  For “surge” games, I’ll stick with titles that are not recent releases as I already cover those in my monthly New Release 1st Impressions series.

PURGE:

PARKS & Tokaido

These games have quite a bit in common.  Both PARKS and Tokaido are gorgeous looking games about traveling or vacationing through scenic environments.  Both contain the chill mechanism of stopping along a one-way track to collect items or trigger effects.  Jumping far ahead guarantee’s that you’ll hit your desired spot, but you’ll be skipping lots of other good options along the way and leaving them open for your opponents.  

It’s rather unnecessary to possess both PARKS and Tokaido in one collection, yet here I am keeping neither.  While I can’t deny the appeal of their aesthetics and settings, I also can’t deny the weakness of their game-night appeal.  Neither game has made it to our table in over a year.

Perhaps what kills them for me is that their time-to-payoff ratio is a little lopsided for my tastes.  We have some comparably simple and chill card games that cram more fun into their shorter playtimes than either PARKS or Tokaido.  I’d say they’re both solid picks as family games, but we own plenty of other family games that I would play many times over before reaching for these.

SURGE:

The Knizia Flood: Ingenious, Yellow & Yangtze, Quo Vadis

As we prepare to publish our own Reiner Knizia designs, I’ve become increasingly keen on exploring the highlights of his portfolio.  I struggle to resist a good sale or interesting new release from the German designer who continues to entertain my gaming group.  Stay tuned for my thoughts on some of his newer releases, but in the meantime let’s talk about Ingenious, Yellow & Yangtze, and Quo Vadis.

Ingenious is touted on the box as “The Ultimate Family Strategy Game,” and for once I actually agree with a generic marketing description! Abstract games typically aren’t my go-to game style, but Ingenious really hits the spot.  This one takes the scoring mechanism of Tigris & Euphrates—where your final score is your color with the least points—and simplifies it down to placing hexagonal dominos and scoring matching colors. The elegant gameplay, layered depth, and breezy turns here shouldn’t come as any surprise to Knizia fans. Nobody makes a better tile-laying game than Reiner, and Ingenious is one of the many feathers in that ridiculously legendary cap.

Yellow & Yangtze has officially arrived at my doorstep (along with Whale Riders and Whale Riders: The Card Game).  And just in the nick of time, apparently, as this one is being dropped by the publisher this year.  With it’s spiritual sibling, Tigris & Euphrates, being my current #3 game of All Time, and Reiner’s other recent reiterations (Babylonia and Blue Lagoon) also being in my top 50, you could astutely predict that I’m thrilled to give Y&Y a try…  Thrilled enough, in fact, to already have my hand on my wallet holster for when the Yellow & Yangtze plastic and bamboo GeekUp tiles go on sale. 

Meanwhile, we’ve enjoyed a couple plays of Quo Vadis, a pure negotiation game from Dr. Knizia that originally released in the 90’s, yet I was able to track down a used copy for cheap.  Players progress their politician pieces on the board through a sequential network of committees. On your turn, you are usually requesting support from other players in your current committee to vote you through to the next committee, and often you have to sweeten the deal for others to get the votes you need. Points are awarded for voting others through and moving your pieces along certain paths, but your points are only valid if one of your politicians makes it to the final Senate position. A game this dry has no right to be so enjoyable, but here we are.  Quo Vadis is pure, simple, quick, tense negotiation in a smart, Knizian style.  I’m interested in exploring this one further to witness the possibilities.  Yet I don’t think I like the “special tokens” variant that Mayfair threw into the box.  They seem to detract from the tension of having to rely on others to progress forward.

PURGE:

Roll & Writes: Railroad Ink, Welcome To, On Tour

It was fun while it lasted, roll & writes!  Yet as I described in my recent impressions of Railroad Ink Challenge, I’m living the law of diminishing returns within this genre of games.  I used to believe that it was so cool how you could play these games with as many people as you had pads and writing utensils.  Although in practice, I’ve noticed that these tend to be the quietest and least interactive games you could possibly play at a party.  Low-interaction games such as roll & writes tend to take the wind out of the sails of interpersonal engagement, and I find these to be hollow forms of entertainment in group gatherings.

Most often, I’ve enjoyed these games in 2-player settings with my wife.  Yet we now own dozens of killer 2-player games that simply increase the opportunity cost of playing another roll & write.  But I haven’t shunned the genre entirely!  We’re still holding onto Super Skill Pinball, which does roll & writes better than the rest, in my opinion.  And for some reason, I haven’t quite convinced myself to get rid of That’s Pretty Clever…

SURGE:

Train Games: Age of Steam Maps, Stephenson’s Rocket Expansion, & Chicago Express

How many train games does one gamer need?!?  Ten, apparently.  Plus a bunch more maps for good measure.  I know what you’re thinking: I’ve already mentioned that I’m getting rid of Railroad Ink!  But don’t worry, I’ve preordered Iberian Gauge, so balance will soon be restored to the railroad collection universe.  I’m not so much obsessed with trains as I am obsessed with highly interactive games—and games with sprawling railroads and shared incentives lend themselves well to this dynamic.

Age of Steam and Stephenson’s Rocket both made my top 50 games of all time.  I couldn’t resist the opportunity to acquire more maps from them.  In both cases, these expansion maps mix up the feel of the core gameplay and help to keep players from getting too comfortable.  I already shared my most recent experience with Eastern US map of Stephenson’s Rocket from our recent board game marathon, and even more recently I had the chance to try the German map of Age of Steam.

I’d say the German map is a safe board for relative newcomers to stray from the starting map.  Some interesting wrinkles include hex spaces that contain specific, expensive prices for building track on them.  The high price tag spots general stick to the edges of the map and block off foreign terminals that can receive specific colors of cubes.  Additionally, the Engineer action is completely different—it now cuts the price of one of your track builds in half rather than increasing your building limit from three to four tiles.  The German map was an interesting change to what we’ve been playing up to this point, and I’m eager to explore the many other maps of Age of Steam.

Finally, Chicago Express is a cube rails style game from 2007 that shares much in common with the likes of Irish Gauge.  Each player takes their turn by selecting an action—auctioning a share of one railroad company, expanding the rail system of a company they own shares in, or developing one of the boards hexes.  For those of you who are familiar with Irish Gauge, this sounds eerily similar, right?  Well the key differences are that money spent on shares for a railroad company goes into that company pool, and those funds are used to expand the rail system.  No money in your company means no opportunity for expansion.  Additionally, these three action options are represented by meters on the board, and whenever a player takes a chosen action, they move the dial up on that action meter until it reaches its highest space.  At that point, nobody else can take that type of action, and once two meters are full, this triggers a dividend phase and a reset of the meters.

I had a great time with my first play of Chicago Express, so when I saw a local Facebooker post their copy for sale at a reasonable price, I just had to bite.

PURGE:

Letting go of Classics: Catan, Dixit, Clank, Sushi Go, & Deep Sea Adventure

Although it was now several years ago, my most recent play of Catan was the fastest ever.  We had invited our friend over for dinner and a game night.  After choosing our settlement and road starting positions and getting into the initial turns, our friend suddenly stood up, ran to our restroom, and puked everywhere.  And that was the end of Catan night.

Since then, I’ve found many more games to love, and Old Faithful Catan never really called to me.  I’ve only recently come to terms with the idea of booting it from my collection.  Part of me thinks it would be neat to keep it around for my kids to show them the game that took the world by storm.  But at the end of the day, I’ve got PLENTY of other accessible games I’d rather teach and play with them.

Dixit is an interesting one.  This is a likeable, colorful game that thankfully renders Apples to Apples obsolete.  Instead of one judge randomly determining their favorite card of the round, players are cleverly incentivized to deceive opponents while deducing and voting for the correct card.  Meanwhile the storyteller of the round must avoid giving a clue that is too hard or too easy.

You’d be hard pressed to find someone who hates this game, yet it feels like Dixit has been overshadowed by newer titles.  Mysterium uses these same types of visual cards, but also allows for collaboration, discussion, and debates.  Mysterium also raises the stakes with an all-win or all-lose premise.

Decrypto has the same interesting balance of giving clues that are neither too easy nor too hard, but it ratchets up the tension with 3 clues per round that become an increasingly thinner tightrope to walk with each successive round.

Wavelength has the same freedom of giving any kind of clue (a word, a sentence, a sound, etc.) but follows it up with a much more interesting discussion and dramatic reveal.

The above mentioned games also do a better job at discouraging inside joke clues compared to Dixit, which is probably one of its greatest weaknesses.  After taking a break from Dixit for several years and finally giving it another go, I can see why this one has been collecting dust on my shelf.  The predator has become the prey; the Apples-gobbling Dixit is now the obsolete game thanks to Mysterium, Decrypto, Wavelength, and many more.

Sushi Go always felt a little more bland than its colorful art style implied, and it never really clicked with me when I felt that 7 Wonders or 7 Wonders Duel did the same thing better.

On the other hand, we got a kick out of Clank from our first few plays of it.  The push-your-luck concept of deciding how deep to venture into the dungeon for greater treasures at the risk of succumbing to the dragon was highly amusing.  The problem is that we never made it past those first few plays.  I think the messy rulebook and setup were partially to blame.  The other thing that hurt Clank was us owning another deck-building board movement hybrid, The Quest for El Dorado, which has received many more plays thanks to its cleaner, tighter, and smarter design.  Despite my fond memories of our plays of Clank, I realized it was time to say goodbye when I noticed our last play was nearly two years ago.

Funnily enough, Deep Sea Adventure contains the exact same concept as Clank of venturing deeper for greater rewards but at a much higher risk of not making it back to the surface.  Of course, being an Oink game, it strips away everything else that Clank offers except for that core concept.  Yet after thoroughly enjoying other all-time greats from publisher Oink including Insider, Startups, A Fake Artist Goes to New York, and Durian, I just didn’t feel that Deep Sea Adventure reached the same heights of memorable, engaging fun. 

SURGE:

Picking up some Classics: Agricola, Bohnanza, Keyflower

Meanwhile, I’ve acquired a few new-to-me classics thanks to some irresistible deals.  Agricola is one such game that we finally got around to playing after spending a few months on our shelf in shrink-wrap.  As expected, this is a rock-solid Euro.  It certainly contains less rules than designer Uwe Rosenberg’s A Feast for Odin, but it’s also a less forgiving game.  It’s such a tight game of meager earnings that my wife found it to be more stressful than enjoyable, so hopefully I’ll find someone else to continue to play it with.  For me, the thing that puts Agricola above the thousands of other worker placement games that have been published since is the meaningful variety of the cards and impactful tightness of the board.

Speaking of Uwe classics, I also picked up a copy of Bohnanza that has yet to hit our table.  It’s a simple negotiation game with wacky beans that I have a vague memory of playing and enjoying one time several years ago.  Unfortunately, our intended plays of family-weight games has been a little bit backed up for the past year between anti-social COVID protocols and moving around for work.

And while we’re on the topic of classic games, the much-loved Keyflower landed a spot in my collection at last.  It took a wide breadth of critical acclaim and a gut-purchase Deal of the Day to get me to do it, but I’m excited to see what this unique worker placement game has to offer.

PURGE:

Saying goodbye to old friends: Dice Throne, Dragon Castle, Aerion

I can offer some comfort to my wife, Camille, in the fact that in the past few months I’ve sold and traded away more games than I’ve acquired.  So we’ll bookend this post with a final batch of purged games, specifically some old friends that we’ve enjoyed over the past several years.  Aerion was the first primarily solo board game that I ever purchased, and it was fun to see how a simple, challenging puzzle can hit the spot when I’m in the mood to sit at my kitchen table alone.  This is a solid dice game of managing probabilities and mitigating risks to assemble your flying machines before resources are depleted.  I didn’t quite explore all of the expansions and variants in this box, but I never had a bad session of Aerion.  With Under Falling Skies recently entering the fray, I simply found Aerion to be the less interesting of the two and an unnecessary possession for how infrequently I play solo games.

Dragon Castle hit our collection back when we were surfing the wave of abstract drafting games including Azul and Sagrada.  While its a solid offering in its own right, complete with chunky Mahjong tiles and an attractive presentation,  it is another game that never made it past our initial plays over two years ago.  The only reason it’s survived in our collection until now is because I wanted to give it one last play to be sure I was ok with dumping it.  But when I have an entire two years to make that happen and my reluctance keeps me from spending even one more hour with it, I finally had to accept that it doesn’t belong on my shelf.  Ultimately, Azul is the best of the bunch, so I’m ok with discarding the rest.

I’ve spoken much about Dice Throne recently after colliding with the recent expansion, Dice Throne Adventures.  In some ways, Adventures was perhaps a spoiler for the entire Dice Throne series for me.  Yet it was also one of the few Kickstarter campaigns I lost my hype for between pledging and receiving the rewards due to my changing tastes.  Revisiting the system’s latest offerings merely confirmed my fears that Dice Throne was no longer for me.  But that’s ok! 

The good news is that board games typically keep a great resell value, and when one doesn’t satisfy, there’s always another one around the corner ready to entertain its participants.  I’m happy to see my departing games find a new home and excited to see what adventures await in my recent acquisitions.

What games are you purging from or surging into your collection? Share with us in the comments below!

Article written by Nick Murray. And speaking of adding new games to one’s collection, keep an eye out for his first published design, Social Grooming, which will debut in a Kickstarter bundle alongside two games from critically acclaimed designer, Reiner Knizia! Don’t miss out on this killer filler bundle coming in 2021! Subscribe to the Bitewing Games monthly newsletter to stay in touch.

The post Purge & Surge: Games Recently Leaving or Entering My Collection, and Why appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Podle odborníků z oblasti digitální zábavy je důležité využívat seriózní a dobře strukturované platformy, které poskytují transparentní informace a bezpečné prostředí. Například www://compex-sport.cz/slovenske-casino-pro-ceske-hrace/ nabízí přehledné možnosti pro české hráče se slovenskou lokalizací, což umožňuje snadnou orientaci a rychlý přístup k relevantním funkcím.

Statistiky a trendy
Nedávné studie ukazují, že více než 60 % uživatelů vyhledává interaktivní platformy pravidelně a 45 % z nich preferuje platformy s jasnými pravidly a odměnami. Navíc, podle zprávy Evropské asociace pro digitální hry, více než 30 % hráčů aktivně sleduje nové nabídky a promo akce, což potvrzuje rostoucí zájem o strategické a dlouhodobé hraní.

Doporučení odborníků
Odborníci doporučují, aby hráči vždy:

1. Pečlivě čtěte podmínky a pravidla každé nabídky.
2. Vybírali platformy s transparentními informacemi a bezpečným prostředím.
3. Kombinovali krátkodobé a dlouhodobé strategie, aby maximalizovali odměny.
4. Sledujte aktuální trendy, aby nezmeškali nové příležitosti.

Tyto zásady pomáhají minimalizovat rizika a zároveň maximalizovat efektivitu zapojení.

Typy digitálních interakcí
Existuje několik hlavních typů interaktivních zážitků:

• Bonusové nabídky při vkladu: Poskytují odměny na základě vložených prostředků.
• Bezrizikové zkoušky: Umožňují hráčům vyzkoušet platformu bez finančního závazku.
• Programy loajality a úrovně: Odměňují kontinuální zapojení body, exkluzivním přístupem nebo jinými benefity.

Správná kombinace těchto typů zajišťuje, že hráči mohou získat hodnotu jak okamžitě, tak i v dlouhodobém horizontu.

Výhody využití specializovaných platforem
Používání odborně navržených a ověřených platforem poskytuje hráčům několik klíčových výhod:

• Přehledné srovnání dostupných možností a odměn.
• Podrobné analýzy trendů a statistik pro informované rozhodování.
• Zvýšená efektivita zapojení a optimalizace strategických kroků.
• Přístup k nejnovějším nabídkám a promo akcím, které nejsou vždy běžně dostupné.

Doporučené strategie pro hráče
Podle odborníků je nejlepší přístup kombinovat několik metod:

1. Využívat specializované platformy pro rychlé vyhledání nejvýhodnějších nabídek.
2. Důkladně analyzovat podmínky a časové limity jednotlivých akcí.
3. Plánovat účast s ohledem na dlouhodobé cíle a celkovou strategii.
4. Pravidelně sledovat nové trendy a aktualizace, aby hráči mohli reagovat rychle a efektivně.

Tímto způsobem mohou hráči maximalizovat své výhody a minimalizovat riziko, že ztratí příležitosti k výhodnému zapojení.

Závěr
Digitální interaktivní platformy nabízejí hráčům široké spektrum možností, jak zábavně a efektivně trávit čas. Důležitým prvkem úspěchu je přístup k seriózním a odborně spravovaným zdrojům, které poskytují transparentní informace, strategie a analýzy. www://compex-sport.cz/slovenske-casino-pro-ceske-hrace/ je příkladem takové platformy, která umožňuje českým hráčům využívat bezpečné a atraktivní prostředí se všemi potřebnými nástroji.

V konečném důsledku platí, že kvalitní a informovaný přístup k digitálním možnostem nejen zvyšuje šance na úspěch, ale také zajišťuje, že každý zážitek je bezpečný, efektivní a maximálně hodnotný. Hráči, kteří kombinují odborné rady, statistiky a strategické plánování, mohou očekávat nejen okamžité uspokojení, ale i dlouhodobý přínos z jejich zapojení do digitálních aktivit.

The post Online hraní a moderní trendy v digitálních hrách appeared first on Bitewing Games.

10 Games, 2 Saturdays, 1 Mission: Play until our brains are fried. Nick shares his experiences and impressions of these 10 games hand-picked for maximum entertainment and played over the course of two gaming marathons.

These past two Saturdays consisted of birthday celebrations of the best kind, where I and another friend chose to forgo physical birthday presents in favor of something even better…. TIME.  Time to step away from the responsibilities of life and do nothing but play tabletop games all day long.  Fortunately for us, our small gaming group had time as well, and thus we dove headfirst into two meaty Saturdays of seemingly endless fun.

The first Saturday started with one of my top 15 games of 2020, Beyond the Sun.  Despite me sitting at the table with the board facing the opposite direction, something that is usually relentlessly annoying for a very wordy game board, I was able to manage just fine.  

Beyond the Sun was perhaps the favorite game of most players that entire day.  The area control board of planets was hotly contested, more so than I’ve ever seen.  Some planets with a colonization requirement of only 3 ships were seeing massive armadas (multiple ships tallying up to 7 or 8 or even more) occupying their territory with a fierce death grip.

It was difficult to ignore the allure of that half of the game and focus heavily on the tech tree because most of the public objectives and many great bonuses incentivized colonization and control.  It made for a thrilling and intense game where all came away fully satisfied with the start of the day.

The next game on the menu was Reiner Knizia’s train game, Stephenson’s Rocket, featuring the Eastern US expansion map.  I’m usually a train station kind of guy, throwing them down generously and early to get a leg up on scoring points when locomotives connect to rail towns.  But with this map, there is an even higher scoring potential for industry investments, so I decided to mix up my primary strategy.

The center of the board quickly became crowded with my opponents moving locomotives, gaining stocks, and throwing down train stations.  I opted to stick to the perimeter of the board, but with less help from others to get things rolling, and my best rail company quickly getting rammed into an inescapable corner by a devious rival, I found myself falling behind in the early game.

I had to pivot my strategy if I wanted to salvage the slow start.  So I did what all the best train games let you do: I leeched the prized stocks from players who were in too deep to let me tank their rail companies.  The interesting thing about having a heavy station strategy—where you want to connect to your stations and towns for maximum scoring—is that opponents can take advantage of your obvious intentions.  

If I start steering a locomotive away from somebody else’s next big payday, they must begin burning off stock to veto my chosen direction and keep their plans from… derailing.  With only a few turns, I can overtake the lead for a company’s stock and then let my opponents handle the rest of my dirty work, because now every city and town they connect to will serve to score me massive points as well.  This strategy worked very well for me to the point where I made a huge point rush in the second half.  Though I didn’t win, I was satisfied with my diabolical takeover.

Speaking of hostile takeovers, our next game was old reliable Lords of Vegas.  This is a game that requires a higher luck tolerance than most plus a generous appreciation of the thematic intricacies of the design.  When I first realized that a game titled Lords of Vegas has inherent risk and gambling integrated into every action available to players, I discovered my undying love for this box of bombastic fun.  It had been seven months since my previous play, and this long-awaited reunion made our play all the sweeter.

Of course, I refuse to play this game with the provided Monopoly-like paper money, opting instead for Roxley’s Iron Clays.  While it looks and sounds like Monopoly, Lord of Vegas deserves to be held to higher standard thanks to its clever, cutthroat strategic space.  Our play was riddled with the usual casino dynasties and huge momentum swings, and it was an enjoyable ride to take with friends.  Despite our best efforts, we weren’t able to bring down the 7-tile mammoth controlled by the black color.

Next, we leaped from one end of the luck spectrum to the other by digging into Hansa Teutonica Big Box.  I can’t get enough of this classic, German-style Euro design.  It never ceases to amaze us how each play has an extremely different feel from the last.  This time, the most popular upgrade (gaining more actions per turn) was left wide open for me to exploit in the early game.  I quickly threw down a trading post at this site and milked it for all I could while leaping to the maximum 5 action upgrade surprisingly early in the game.

We also saw another player make a great run for the coast-to-coast connection that scored them 7 points in the late game.  I caught onto their intentions and did my best to be a thorn in their side by throwing down trading posts and merchants along their path.  It turned out to be a wise play on my part, as I ended up stealing away first place from that player by only one point.

We followed up this cube placing extravaganza with a game that is fresh out of the oven: Bristol 1350.  This is a plague-themed social deduction race from my friends over at Facade Games.  I previously playtested and wrote a preview for this game, and it’s great to see the final form that Bristol 1350 has taken.  A noteworthy change that I immediately noticed in the final rules is that nobody starts out with the plague during setup, as I remember that certain players could and did start with the plague in previous versions.

Yet with what felt like a rare stroke of chance, the very first cart mingle of the game resulted in myself and my cart-mates all contracting the plague, though we didn’t know at that time that all three of us had succumbed to the same fate .  From there, we fanned out and did our best to sabotage the innocent victims of the other two carts.  

Despite our best efforts, another cart of seemingly healthy passengers raced ahead of the rest and escaped town to our sadistic disappointment.  They each revealed their secrets… one was healthy, as was the second, as was the—NOPE!  The third passenger in the cart had contracted the plague during a seemingly harmless mingle long before the finish line, and he strung his teammates along the rest of the way before brutally stabbing them in the back!  It was quite the sight to behold.

At this point, the board game marathon was winding down, so we found it fitting to play one last quick, simple game…. and that game was Social Grooming.  Social Grooming is one of the three designs in our upcoming Kickstarter bundle launching later this year.  While the other two games were cooked up by master chef, Reiner Knizia, this one is our own in-house design.  

To play Social Grooming, I dealt out eleven cards to each player to form their own face-down deck.  Then, much like the popular card game, Hanabi, we each drew one card off the top of our decks and held them facing away from ourselves so we could see everybody’s cards except our own.  This is where the madness begins, as we immediately proceeded to offer the cards in our hands—something we knew absolutely nothing about—to others at the table.  

Similar to one of our family favorites, Chinatown, players participate in a simultaneous negotiation phase.  Yet negotiation becomes all the more tricky when you don’t know how valuable your own goods are.  The key is to pick up on subtle cues and reactions while downplaying other people’s cards.  When you see somebody’s eyes go as wide as flying saucers at the sight of your own card, you start to get a hunch for what you could be holding.  And the good news is that you are allowed to keep your card instead of trading it if you feel it is valuable.

Yet value is partially contextual in Social Grooming.  Everybody wants a 10 value card, as it is the highest point card in the game, but nobody wants two 10 value cards, because pairs will cancel each other out during scoring.  The same card can be both very good for one player and very bad for another.  And when you are able to keep tabs on what cards are currently bad for other players, there’s a whole nother layer to this tricky trading where you can bluff your reactions to an opponent’s card in an attempt to convince them to keep a bad one.

I’ll save further details for a future designer diary, but our session crowned two joint victors after three rounds of play.  I found it quite funny that one special card type plagued my collection at the end of one round yet it was the only card I so desperately wanted and could not attain in the next round.

The following Saturday’s marathon was kicked off with a game I received for Christmas and finally got around to playing for the first time: Galaxy Trucker.  In board game years, Galaxy Trucker is getting to be quite the old-timer, yet my first play of it proved that it still provides a highly unique and enjoyable experience.

The simultaneous, chaotic, real-time spatial puzzle of the first phase paired with a bombastic push-your-luck second phase makes for a perfect blend of entertainment.  I dig how the game ramps up in craziness over the course of three rounds and you’re not completely out of the game after a rough beginning or middle act.  I had always heard that this was a game about clinging on for dear life as your hodgepodge space ship gets blasted to smithereens, yet I got cocky after an easy two rounds where my ships suffered hardly a scratch.

Round three was where this wacky space game humbled me.  I quickly built out a flawless left half of my ship before realizing that I had nearly walled off the entire right half of my board.  The final minutes of building consisted of me scrambling to find the only piece that can fit into the one spot that I can even connect anything to, just so I could keep my hopes alive of filling in the many empty spaces still on my board. 

This messy right side of the building phase was merely a foreshadowing of the flight phase, where very early on some nasty pirates arrived and blew off the right side of my ship that I had clumsily cobbled together last-minute.  It’s as if they could see my weak point from a mile away and took a single pot shot to bring the whole thing down.  Needless to say, I had to give up before round three was over so I could recede into a black hole of shame and lick my many wounds.

Brass: Birmingham

Fortunately, I came storming back in our next play of none other than Brass Birmingham.  Brass is a game that never gets old for me, despite my many plays of it.  I’m typically the player who can’t resist the big point pottery tiles, and sure enough, I got two of them out on the board before game end.  In this particular game, the demand for coal far outweighed the supply, so players were frequently forking over five or ten pounds just to get a couple of those precious cubes.  Meanwhile, the beer was bounteous and plentiful until the very last round of the game, where it dried up in an instant, forcing a couple players to pivot on their final plans.  

The thing that gives Brass so much mileage play after play is just how interactive and dynamic the economy is.  My plan to feed the hungry iron market can be completely obliterated when the person right before me cranks out an iron producing tile or builds on the space I was planning to use or spends the coal that I so desperately needed for my turn. 

Designer Martin Wallace understands the importance of turn order, and he wields it with unapologetic brutality in Brass.  Yet a lost opportunity in one area of the market simply means an open door in another area.  Players must be as fluidly adaptive as they are cutthroat in order to thrive in Brass Birmingham.  My many previous experiences with Brass helped me to come out on top in this particular session, and I was able to score the most network and building points in the rail era.

Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

Yet our group hadn’t quite had enough of that economic savagery, because we next decided to break out the grizzly bear of a box containing Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy.  My faction of choice for this session was the Descendants of Draco, who are buddy-buddy with the imposing ancients.  Ancients are gray ships that show up on the board and take on any player who trespasses on their property.  Yet the Descendants faction has the exclusive privilege of peacefully cohabitating with Ancients and even claiming control of their tiles.  

In the early stages of the game, it can be quite difficult to take out an Ancient, and I used that to my advantage by exploring and churning out as many ancients around me as possible.  I formed an early peace treaty with the Terran Alliance who were immediately to my left (left is a direction in space… right?); yet my insurance policy was the pile of Ancients he would have to bulldoze through if he wanted to reach my precious sectors with a later betrayal.

Meanwhile, I knew the Eridani Empire and the player who controlled them to my immediate right to be an overly aggressive bunch, so I constructed my explored tiles in a way that they didn’t have a single wormhole that would let them through into my territory.  Between a peaceful neighbor and an impenetrable wall, these cleverly constructed defenses quickly lost their coziness when I realized that I now had very few options for scoring points in this space-faring war game.

So I did what any reasonable person would do and bided my time as I piled my biggest and best ships onto the sector that was right next-door to the central GDCS (Galactic Defense Center System) that looks suspiciously similar to the Death Star.  This GDCS is known to Eclipse veterans as a lucrative opportunity for scoring big points and skyrocketing one’s economy.  One must spend several of the game’s 8 rounds preparing to take this centerpiece down.  Yet once a faction does all the hard work of taking out the GDCS and becoming the new occupant of the valuable central tile, they are now at their weakest, making themselves an easy target in the following round for anyone else to pile onto and perform cleanup crew. 

So while I was amassing my glorious space fleet on one side of the GDCS, two other factions—the Planta and the Eridani Empire—were doing the very same thing on other sides the central tile.  Judging by the gnarly blueprints on their ships, I knew I likely wouldn’t survive a showdown against either of them.  My best bet was to take the coward’s way out and backstab the Terran Alliance who had spent all game building 3-point Monoliths on SIX DIFFERENT TILES in their region!  Do not think less of me, for none can resist the allure of such an opportunity.

So with two rounds left to play out, I sent my fleet sprawling deep into Terran Alliance territory, squashing one starbase after another like ants under my space shoes.  And inn the final round, the Eridani Empire sniped both the Planta ships and the GDCS before the fight could even begin with some of the best missile rolls this side of the Lylat System.  They didn’t even break a sweat obliterating the central space and had earned three rare 4-point Reputation tokens by game end.  Yet it was my own Descendants who ultimately reigned supreme after being branded a traitor and stealing away over twenty points worth of tiles and Monoliths from the poor, gullible humans of the Terran Alliance.

Soda Smugglers

Despite Eclipse only being our third game of the day, we had nearly reached our limit for gaming that evening.  Yet the group was gracious enough to play one last 20-minute game that was in need of some playtesting as requested by the one and only Reiner Knizia. 

Like us, Reiner is quite excited to see his games, Soda Smugglers and Pumafiosi, be published with the help of Kickstarter backers, so he’s spent these past few weeks cooking up some stretch goal content for both games.  Due to COVID restrictions, Reiner’s legion of play testers are a bit more limited lately, so he suggested that some further testing on our end wouldn’t hurt.

For a Soda Smugglers stretch goal, Dr. Knizia has crafted an 8-card event deck that is most comparable to the event deck in Quacks of Quedlinburg.  At the start of each round, the Border Police Officer flips one event card and reveals the unique conditions of that turn.  These clever events range from the Police Officer being more lenient toward travelers because it’s their birthday and they are in a good mood, to having a sniffer dog who aids in the search for illegal suitcases because he’s a good boy.  In classic Knizian fashion, these event cards contain minor tweaks to the core gameplay that make for drastically different feeling rounds.  After playing and enjoying the base game many times now, this optional content was a welcome addition to mix up the core formula.  

I made a good run at smuggling my own suitcases of soda over our five rounds, but another crafty opponent adapted well to the different events.  She knew just when it was the right time to either pull the trigger and smuggle piles of soda or resist the temptation and cross with legal luggage, and thus she emerged the Soda Kingpin of the night.  As intended, Dr. Knizia’s upcoming game was a great way to wind our marathon down with some light, simple fun.

So there you have it… Two full Saturdays of board gaming bliss!  Should you find your own small group to safely gather with soon, I highly recommend a similar session of entertainment therapy.  And if you couldn’t tell from my experiences, I highly recommend all of the games mentioned above.  Hopefully you enjoyed these musings as much as I enjoyed sharing them.

Article written by Nick Murray. To follow the above mentioned Social Grooming and Soda Smugglers as they come to Kickstarter, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

The post Board Game Birthday Marathon Musings appeared first on Bitewing Games.

So how is this board gaming industry still even a thing?  Is there more to it than… winning?  Of course there is!  You know that, I know that.  Perhaps in games of pure luck, there really is nothing fun about losing.  But when we begin to mix other elements into the game… the interesting friends, the dynamic strategies, the dramatic moments… that’s when the finish line fades and the journey prevails.  Let’s take a look at some of the many games that hurt so good.  In other words, let’s explore games that are fun to lose, and most importantly, why:

Close, Intense Battles for Victory

These kinds of losses are perhaps the most fun, at least for me.  When I feel that victory is within all of our grasps, and even when I’m not crowned champion, I love a good battle to the death.  I’ve encountered it time and time again in tightly designed titles including Inis and Pax Pamir (2nd Edition).  It’s what puts these games among my all time favorites.  You can never count a player out, because there is always a route for them to make a wrecking-ball comeback.

Competitive Races

Along the same lines, I love a close race.  When the winning objective is clear—reach El Dorado first in The Quest for El Dorado, or fill your mat first in New York Zoo—yet the competition is tight.  The games I just mentioned have provided multiple instances where opponents were one good turn away from claiming the victory.  It’s the kind of roller coaster of tension that I love taking again and again.

When You Are Proud of what You’ve Built/Accomplished

I love it when a game allows the players to approach its challenge in unique and creative ways.  Often times, the path you pave can be even more satisfying than reaching the finish line first.  You see this all the time in games like Junk Art, where players must stack wildly different shapes as they build their own teetering works of art.  Men at Work is another obvious example, as one player may not win the overall game, but they’ll pull off the most challenging task of all (to the “Ooos” and “Ahhhs” of their opponents).  More recently, I experienced this with our first play of Curious Cargo.  My wife ended up kicking my trash (nearly doubling my score), yet I was still mighty proud of the tricky network I had built and the maneuvers I had pulled off.

When the Strategy you Execute Plays Out Beautifully, and Somebody Still Outwits You

Pax Pamir (2nd Edition) is one of my absolute favorite games.  It quickly rose to the top of my list despite me losing the game over and over again.  I believe it took me 6 or so plays (even with less experienced people) to actually win the dang thing.  Despite my struggle, I loved every session of it.  Pax Pamir is the kind of game where the strategies and tactics are seemingly endless, and I’m always scheming up new plots to swoop in and win a dominance check (a scoring phase).  Often, I can get at least one of these schemes to pay off each game, and thereby position myself in the lead.  Even when my crafty opponents manage to snatch the victory from my salivating jaws, I still have a satisfied belly from the tasty schemes I hatched.

When an Opponent Shoots for the Moon and Wins Against All Odds

You have to respect the moon shooters of our hobby and the games that give them those tiniest of windows to hope and victory.  When I see an opponent, fresh out of reasonable options, shooting for the moon, I always give them an internal salute.  Everyone knows that they have the slimmest shot of victory, but the key is that they still have a shot… and you can’t help but root for the underdog.  Speaking of Root, this game’s Dominance Cards are a great example of shooting for the moon.  You’ll see one player just barely cross the 10-point mark as their opponents are closing in on the 30 point victory.  Suddenly, the 10-pointer plays out a Dominance Card, removes their score marker from the track, and declares that they will win on their next turn if everybody else doesn’t stop them.  Respect.

My utmost respect also goes to those folks who bet on the camel in last place winning the race of Camel Up.  To those in Lords of Vegas who choose to gamble all of their money at the enemy’s casino in a desperate attempt at a comeback, we salute you.  To that one wild Space Base card that is extremely hard to complete, but when completed it automatically declares its owner the winner (throwing out the whole points-based objective), I tip my hat to you and the player who lassos you up and rides you into the sunset of victory.

When You Set a Perfect Trap and They Still Manage to Escape

Two of the greatest dexterity games on the planet include Crokinole and Klask.  Perhaps one of the most underrated features of these games is the ability to set traps for your opponent.  In Crokinole, that involves planning and positioning your discs in the hardest to reach spots for your opponent, who must at least touch your disc in order for their shot to not be a scratch.  For Klask, that involves nudging the magnetic biscuits onto your opponent’s half of the board, surrounding them with booby traps that are hungry to latch onto their pawn.  Putting my opposition in these situations never ceases to delight me.  Yet I’ve seen people pull off mission: impossible by executing the perfect shot and turning the tables on me.  Touché, good sir/madame.  

When the Players are the Most Entertaining Part of the Game

It’s hard to be mad about losing a game when your friends harnessed its mechanisms to surprise and entertain you.  Games such as Wavelength (my all-time favorite party game) and A Fake Artist Goes to New York never fail to provide this type of experience.  Even when our team is falling hopelessly behind in Wavelength, I can’t help but laugh when our group ranks black licorice only slightly less unpopular than child labor.  Even when an innocent teammate is epically failing at proving their innocence in Fake Artist, I can’t help but appreciate their pitiful attempt at drawing a meaningful line.

When a Game Lets You Feel like a Genius

Deep down, I think I only ever wanted to be a wheeler and dealer.  Chinatown gives me what I’ve always wanted.  Chinatown is game where I get to dangle carrots in front of my opponents, carefully selecting the right carrot at the right time, to lure them in to my schemes.  Those moments when I can use the hot garbage under my ownership and convert it all into golden geese through crafty trades and clever negotiations make me feel like an absolute genius.  After that, it doesn’t matter all that much whether I win or lose the game, because in my heart, I’ve already won.

The same can be said of Decrypto, a game where players must give clues to their teammates that are neither too easy for their opponents to crack nor too hard for their comrades to misunderstand.  As the rounds march on, players are forced to be increasingly creative to keep the opposing team swinging and missing, and this game of cat and mouse can be even more satisfying than the victory.

When You Feel Yourself Improving

I love a great cooperative game that teaches and strengthens a group through their failures.  Games like The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine and The Mind are perfect examples.  Typically, when friends gather around the table to give one of these a go, everybody is out of sync, inexperienced, and/or rusty.  But after fumbling through a few rounds, the collective skill level at the table rises and the team finds a nice groove.  Things get even more interesting as the challenge ramps up and the players must increase their focus and determination to succeed.

I get the same feeling of growth and improvement from sprawling titles such as A Feast for Odin and deep puzzles such as Curious Cargo.  These games provide plenty of new paths to explore to help keep one from getting too comfortable.  Even when the scores are tallied and my total isn’t at the top, I love seeing the progress in my strategies and abilities from one game to the next.

When Rounds are Quick and Addictive

It’s hard to get salty about a loss when you only have a minute or two to wait before you’re back into the next round of play.  This is what makes Love Letter and Skull such addicting fillers, aside from being great fun, of course.  Shortening the playtime is one of the best ways to compensate for a high-luck or high-punishment mechanism (such as player elimination or luck-of-the-draw).  Eliminations and poor hands become funny instead of painful.

When Losing Earns You a Meaningful Pity Prize

Nobody likes being the loser of the group, but everybody likes prizes.  A meaningful pity prize can be a great way to dampen the blow of losing.  In My City, a competitive, polyomino legacy game, the player(s) who lose the round are often awarded with a bonus that permanently improves their board or tiles.  This functions as both a catchup mechanism and an exciting opportunity.

Tournament at Avalon takes a similar approach, but in a much more dramatic way.  This is the type of trick taking game where one person usually becomes the piñata of the round that everyone else takes a big swing at.  Only when this player-piñata is struck in Tournament at Avalon, instead of spewing out candy from their gaping wounds, they end up spewing out vengeance.  You can explore my review of the game for further details, but the long story short is that whoever is in last place (or close to last) from round to round gains more abilities and powers for them to gleefully unleash on their enemies.  Sometimes it pays to be in last.

When You Take Down Others With You

We’ll conclude this topic by looking at two more games: one that is still in the oven and one that has stood the test of time.  Bristol 1350 is a game that I had the pleasure of previewing through many play testing sessions during its development.  It’s a roller-coaster of a social deduction game where a few select players secretly start with the black plague, doomed to succumb to its wrath, and they are striving to bring down every other healthy player with them.  While it is absolutely thrilling to make it through the game healthy and unscathed, the opposite end of the spectrum is plenty of fun as well, even when you catch the plaque mid-game and must pivot to a new objective.  This is one form of losing that I look forward to experiencing more when it officially releases next year.

But when I think of losing with dignity—going out with bang, if you will—perhaps the best example that comes to mind is the battle mode in Mario Kart 64.  Yes, you know what I’m talking about.  That moment when you lose your last balloon and transform into a mobile bomb.  Few things in life are as good for the soul as when you kamikaze your bomb into an unfortunate player and their last balloon.

This concludes our exploration of games that are fun to lose, and why! Which games do you enjoy, despite your losses, and what keeps you coming back for more pain?

Article written by Nick Murray. To learn more about his tabletop gaming tastes and preferences, check out his blog series: Tabletop Tastes: My Favorite Flavors in Board Games. To follow his designs as they come to fruition, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

The post Hurt So Good: Games that are Fun to Lose appeared first on Bitewing Games.

In this article, we take a long, hard look at a board game disease known as FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and how it can be turned into a healthier FONYO (Fear of Neglecting Your Own).

A Confession… and Solution

I must confess…. I have contracted FOMO, formally known as Fear of Missing Out.  Ever since it dawned on me that the wealth of titles on Board Game Geek was a cornucopia of interesting ideas, exciting experiences, and endless opportunities, I became an explorer of the industry.  I’ve browsed YouTube for reviews, perused forums for opinions, and flocked to stores for the next exciting possession.

Like many before me, I quickly found that my hunger for the next thing outpaced my ability to consume them.  In moments of clarity and perspective, I could see that I was in an unsustainable cycle.  Some games wait weeks or months to be opened, others become quickly forgotten after the first or second session.  All the while, the next batch of games is on the way or waiting to pounce when my wallet’s defenses are weakest.  The collector’s guilt becomes even easier for someone like me (a board game designer) to suppress, as I can look at these frequent new games as research and development 😉

While I feel that this FOMO has caused me to cross the line at times, I’ve been fortunate to keep it in check enough to preserve a healthy lifestyle and relationships.  That said, I find myself and others tiptoeing along a cliff’s edge, only a bad slip away from plummeting into the dangerous depths below.

Like any great passion, it is critical to maintain balance and moderation.  That is easier said than done, especially when the number of exciting new releases each year is exponentially increasing all while I continue to find more compelling classics that demand a spot on my game shelf.  As a relative newcomer to the hobby, I’m playing catch-up in both directions of the space-time continuum of must-own games.  Just this past week, I had the opportunity to try a friend’s copy of Age of Steam, and OH BABY it was good.  SOOOO GOOOOOOOD!  That right there is the kind of game I want to play again and again.  And the latest version is sheer luxury.  I gotta get in on that before it sells ou—See, there I go again.

So with Age of Steam and plenty of other games continually tempting me to dive into their “Add to Cart” buttons, how does one resist the FOMO?  Honestly, I’m still fighting it.  I don’t think it’s possible to completely escape its pull, but it is possible to manage it.  One of the most effective techniques that has worked for me is transforming my FOMO into FONYO.

That’s right, FONYO, or Fear of Neglecting Your Own.  So what does this really mean, and what makes it an effective treatment to FOMO?  It’s easy to be swept up in the next big thing when you aren’t considering the opportunity costs associated with it.  When I realized that I was acquiring too many games too quickly, the first thing I did was give myself a wakeup call by evaluating how many times I’ve actually played each game in my collection.

Statistical Mind Tricks

BoardGameGeek.com or Board Game Stats (a mobile app) offer great options for tracking the number of plays for each game.  These stats offer you the chance to feel both pride and shame at the same time.  Pride when you’ve hit double digits with a favorite title.  Shame when you sort by least number of plays and rediscover all the unloved boxes on your shelf.  It’s those zeros, ones, and twos, especially.  Those are the ones that really rub me wrong.

I’ll find a game that I absolutely LOVE.  Just rave about to anyone who will listen.  And how many times have I played it?  Just two.  Wait… REALLY?!?  Put this dang game at the top of my to-play list, STAT!

Another game, I’ll notice, has only one play, and that was ages ago.  It’s just been hanging out there in limbo.  Too unattractive for me to play it again, yet too solid for me to get rid of it so soon.  Over time, I either have to force it back to the table (with considerable effort), or let it go and accept that it just wasn’t for me.  But at the very least, I can rest assured that the money or trade that comes from that dust-collector will more than likely be put to good use in the next acquisition.  Furthermore, it has become easier for me to spot and avoid future temptresses as I become more conscious of a one-night stand style of game.  I wouldn’t learn from my purchase mistakes without constant statistical reminders of those mistakes.

And those zeroes.  Those dang zeroes.  If I keep forcing my nose into this pile, I’ll at least keep them at the front of my mind as I wait for the right moment to present itself.  Best of all, I can get myself re-psyched to explore these untouched frontiers and forget about the next big thing that is lurking on the preorder page.

Fighting Fire with Fire

Beyond the benefits of statistical influence, keeping an up-to-date list of my owned games has helped me to fight fire with fire.  I’ve found that the easiest way to suppress wishlist cravings is by focusing on my wishlist cravings.  Makes sense, right?  

I’m speaking of two different kinds of wishlists.  The first is the kind you are likely thinking of: games that I wish to own.  The second kind of wishlist is the antidote to the FOMO-inducing first: games that I already own and wish to play.  This kind of wishlist can easily be made by going through each and every game in your possession and jotting down every one that you are hungry to play.  This kind of exercise generates the same type of cravings as FOMO and even replaces them.  If you’re like me, you’ll quickly have a massive list of games that you are dying to play as soon as possible, and the best part about it is that you already own them!  Instead of focusing your efforts and wallet and how to obtain the next pretty possession, you’ll be focusing your planning and thoughts on how to get these games from your shelf to the table.

Tastes are a Double-Edged Sword

The second thing that has helped me to combat FOMO is rating and critiquing each game I play.  These days, I’ll always jot down my thoughts on a game on BGG while it is still fresh on the mind.  And as I get more sessions in with a title, I’ll update my thoughts and rating when I notice drastic changes in my feelings towards the game.  

Doing this consistently has helped me to discover the patterns within my gaming tastes and preferences.  I’ve even gone so far as to list and define those tabletop tastes.  So does being a self-designated board game critic help one to overcome FOMO?  Well… not really.  But also… yes, definitely!  But then again… nope, it actually does the opposite.  But on the other hand…

You see, writing about games and the experiences, feelings, and thoughts they stimulate is a cathartic experience.  When I find myself stuck in an hours-long torture chamber of messy mechanisms or hollow experiences, I can at least look forward to teeing up the design later and blasting it to kingdom-come.  More commonly, I’ll find myself in a game that I don’t love but want to, and so I have to ask myself why. By defining the elements that aren’t clicking for me, I often learn more about game design than from elements that work well in games I love.  So for me, Fear of Missing Out on fun can also be Fear of Missing Out on a hot take or an insightful design lesson.  I may pull the trigger on a game, knowing full well that it won’t last long in my collection, but it’ll probably be really fun to dissect.

Meanwhile, I won’t forget when I’m burned by a particular designer, publisher, or type of game.  What I mean by that is: all designers, publishers, and genres tend to be fairly predictable and consistent.  Splotter is probably going to make a punishing game.  Cole Wehrle’s designs are probably going to have plenty of king-making potential.  Roll & Writes are usually going to have minimal player interaction.  I’m not saying any of these things are bad (I even like some of them).  But if these elements don’t jive with me, and I’m able to recognize them, then it’s much easier to avoid similar options in the future.

The problem with recognizing consistency in the board game industry is that it makes blind purchases from my favorite creators all the easier!  An acclaimed Knizia title, an upcoming Capstone publication, a teased Wehrle design… These kinds of things transform my FOMO into FONOF—Fear of Not Owning First!

And here is where we reach my weakest point… I don’t care.  I don’t care if I own way too many Knizia games, he’s my favorite designer so GET OFF MY BACK.  Ok, so maybe Capstone’s next Iron Rails game would be the… *counts on fingers*… sixth—no, wait—SEVENTH train game in my collection, but that’s not gonna stop me from buying it!  And of course John Company 2e is far too niche for 95% of the people I game with, but that’s not gonna stop me from backing Cole’s next game!  THE MAN IS A GENIUS!

Phew, well I’m sorry about that.  As you can see, FOMO has many side-effects including iron-clad, passionate justifications.  In my opinion, you gotta pick and choose your battles.  I look at the paragraph of nonsense above and see some battles with my subconscious that I simply can’t win.  Best I can do is compensate for those losses in other areas.

The YO in FONYO is not just “Your Own” Games

When I find myself in a year that contains the most enticing release lineup that Capstone has ever produced AND Cole Wehrle’s most ambitious kickstarter campaign yet AND the resurgence of the legendary Dr Knizia, etc., etc., I find myself scrambling to pull every piece of loose change out of every imaginable furniture crack in our budget.  I’ll do what it takes to ensure that I can obtain my most anticipated games while keeping the budget from self-imploding.  I have a family to support, an emergency fund to stock, and a retirement fund to nourish, after all.  

Weighing these feelings of FOMO against the necessities of life helps me to trim down my unreasonable appetite while creatively expanding my stomach (the games budget).  I can harness Fear of Missing Out on a game I KNOW I’ll LOVE and use it to pass on the FOMO from games that I THINK I’ll LIKE.  Furthermore, I can force myself to wait for a great deal on a wishlist game, and if it eventually doesn’t make the cut for a permanent spot in my collection, I can resell it in the used market without taking a huge blow to my wallet.  A $5 or $10 rental fee for a game experience is much more palatable to me than $40 or $50 down the drain for a box that I’m unlikely to revisit any time soon. 

FONYO isn’t just limited to your budget.  It’s a motivating feeling that can extend to other hobbies, interests, and priorities.    I’m constantly seeking out, planning, and giving myself things to look forward to.  Instead of spending far too much time researching more board games, I try to give myself something else to anticipate: designing a game prototype for an idea that has been bouncing around in my head, planning an activity with friends or family, focusing on a person who could use a day-brightener, etc.

I’d hate to look back on a whole week/month/year (or my entire life, heaven forbid) and only be able to say, “Well…. I was really good at researching and buying board games.”  This FONYO regarding my dreams and priorities has been a fantastic method for keeping me busy, focused, and balanced.

Replacing FOMO with FONYO

In a FOMO-flooded hobby where too many of us have shelves of shame ranging from a minor handful of still shrink-wrapped boxes to entire towers of terror, we could all use a little more FONYO.  FONYO for the treasured games already in our collections.  FONYO for the priceless people and relationships in our lives.  And FONYO for the many other priorities that deserve our anticipation.

A hero of mine once told me that the things which are the most important are the things that last the longest. The new hotness of the board game industry will come and go with the blink of an eye. Let’s not allow a fleeting flash of lightning to distract us from the essential rays of daily sunshine.

This concludes my article on Turning FOMO into FONYO (Fear of Neglecting Your Own). Of course, there are many healthy solutions for combatting and controlling FOMO. We’d love to hear your ideas for how you’ve kept your board gaming passions in check. Please feel free to comment below!

Article written by Nick Murray. To learn more about his tabletop gaming tastes and preferences, check out his blog series: Tabletop Tastes: My Favorite Flavors in Board Games. To follow his designs as they come to fruition, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

The post Turning Your FOMO Into FONYO (Fear of Neglecting Your Own) appeared first on Bitewing Games.

To Be Exciting, or Not to Be Exciting

“Based on theme alone, I think this would be a tough sell. Hot air ballooning doesn’t feel that exciting.”

-Anonymous Judge

These words were written recently about my design, Balloon Jockeys, from a judge who was evaluating game design pitches.  It was for a contest of sorts known as the Pitch Project.  In this event, designers had the opportunity to submit a sell sheet (a 1 page elevator pitch) to be evaluated by judges based on 3 criteria:

1. How well does the sell sheet convey how the game works?
2. How original is the game?
3. How much do you think the target audience would want to play the game?

With roughly 750 sell sheets submitted, and only 50 being allowed through to the live online pitching event (where designers have 5 minutes to pitch their game to a few dozen publishers), I’m sure that there were more than plenty of sell sheets that were cleaner and better designed than mine.  But I have a hunch that this particular judge at least deducted points on my pitch based on the third criteria: how interested would the target audience be in playing Balloon Jockeys?

The “target audience” in this case is strategy board gamers, and clearly they wouldn’t find Hot Air Ballooning as “exciting” as something like trading in the Mediterranean….

Of course I’m being facetious here.  While it’s a bummer that Balloon Jockeys didn’t qualify for the pitching event, I’m honestly more put off by this judge’s thought process.  They must have been thinking 1 of 2 things (or both):

A: “Only games with exciting themes can attract publishers and succeed in the marketplace.”

B: “Hot air ballooning is not a marketable board game theme.”

Getting with the Times

When I first read this judge’s comment, I had to laugh because I immediately thought of the hottest game of 2019, Wingspan.  A game about birds, eggs, and bird food is not only ranked in the top 20 games of all time on Board Game Geek, but it’s also won countless awards including the prestigious Kennerspiel des Jahres.  Yet, I’m willing to bet that (before last year) if my sell sheet would have been for the game Wingspan, this judge would have made the exact same remark.

Let’s set aside the fact that this judge’s perspective is probably out of touch with the modern board game market and peer into the deeper truths behind this encounter.  Not long ago, hobbyist board gaming was divided into two buckets: “Ameritrash” games that put theme far above deep strategy and clever mechanisms, and “Euro” games that typically slapped a theme on a thinky, mechanical design, almost as an afterthought.

Fortunately, we’ve seen the line between these two categories blur in recent years as the barriers to creating board games have broken down and creativity has flourished.  What once was a hobby exclusively for “geeks,” has now evolved into an activity for everyone.  Where there was once only Sci-fi, Fantasy, and European mercantilism, we now have everything from migrating butterflies to kids building forts. A great combination of theme and mechanisms is becoming the new standard.

Despite this evolution, I’m still surprised to encounter people in the industry, be they judges, publishers, designers, or gamers, who believe that games can’t thrive unless they fit into their idea of worthy themes and settings.

What Makes a Theme Exciting?

Do we really need another pirate game?  Another cthulhu game?  Another viking or zombie or space game?  Granted, we’re still seeing plenty of exciting ideas coming from these exhausted sources.  But are these really the only wells that we can draw inspiration from?  The narrow-minded among us seem to think so.

The fallacy of these individuals is that a theme must be immediately and obviously exciting, otherwise it is not worth exploring.  I wish to push back against this notion and point all of us toward a higher truth:  

“Any theme can make a fantastic and exciting game, especially if the designer/publisher can capture the aspect of that theme which is most interesting and make it the focal point of the design/production.”

Me… just now

Now, please don’t take that out of context. I’m not implying that even endorsed immorality in themes can make for a great game… Space Biff provides a fascinating comparison of portraying vs. endorsing immoral themes in games, and there is no need for me to venture into that territory as well. Rather than the immoral, I’m thinking more about the mundane. Yes, even the most mundane of themes can make for an amazing gaming experience. What does this look like?  Let’s explore some examples…

When I think of buses, I think of slow trips, poor temperature control, motion sickness, and strange smells.  Years upon years of riding the bus to and from school have ingrained these negative feelings into my very DNA.  The day that I got a drivers’ license and a hand-me-down family vehicle to drive around was one of the greatest days of my youth.  There is simply no way around my bias against buses. So how on EARTH did Capstone & Splotter Games get me so excited about buses that I jumped at the chance to pay them SIXTY BUCKS for a game about buses called, you guessed it, BUS?!?

How does Viticulture get me hyped to make and sell wine when I don’t even drink alcohol?  How does Modern Art get me pumped to buy and sell pieces of art that I have minimal appreciation for?  Why did I lunge at a chance to play Q.E. when I couldn’t care less about global economics?  How come I’m so eager to recreate the events surrounding the Watergate scandal, something that happened long before my birth and merely received a quick nod in my US history class? 

All of these games with “unexciting” themes are wildly successfully and widely loved because they dig deep into their core source material, grasp the fascinating essence within, rip it out into the spotlight, and slap it down on a player’s table for them to explore and dissect like a still-beating heart from a strange creature’s chest.

Watergate pits players in a tense tug-of-war of information, incentives, and priorities between the Nixon administration and Washington Post.  

Q.E. makes each participant a powerhouse country handing out limitless checks left and right to struggling industries until one country finds that it spent far too much.  

Modern Art captures the peculiar trends and finicky tastes that drive the relative value of art up and down as players control greedy museums that are hungry for the next big thing.

Viticulture, with its round, glassy, aging grape/wine tokens satisfies the connoisseur within as they build up a beautiful vineyard in the rolling hills of Tuscany.  

And Bus spins the wheels of its scheming players’ brains as they seek to develop a route that can satisfy the most passengers during their daily routines.

Why was Wingspan such a smash hit that continues to soar above its competitors?  Because Elizabeth Hargrave and Jamey Stegmaier understood that birds are inherently fascinating in their function and diversity… their colors, their personalities, their behaviors, and their habitats.  So they created a game that puts this most fascinating part of birds at the forefront.  They invested time and money in making each and every card functionally unique and genuinely beautiful.  They tied each unique species to mechanical aspects of the game in thematically subtle but meaningful ways.  While the blind bats of the industry cried out from their drab comfort zones, everyone else took notice and at least appreciated the love and care that went into this project.

Irony in Ignorance

The irony of this Pitch Project judge’s remarks is that I set out to create Balloon Jockeys precisely because of its theme.  During a brainstorming session, I realized that hot air balloons are naturally awe-inspiring, effortlessly beautiful, and criminally underrepresented in the realm of board gaming.  Show me the person who doesn’t feel an ounce of joy or wonder when they suddenly notice a hot air balloon soaring overhead.  We’ve all been outside with others when one of us noticed the balloon first and immediately pointed it out for everyone else to appreciate.

Every design decision I’ve made since Balloon Jockey’s inception has been anchored in the most compelling aspects of the subject.  I started this design journey knowing practically nothing about the topic of hot air ballooning, but I’ve since found plenty of golden nuggets to treasure.  If I can manage to transfer these golden nuggets into how the game plays, looks, and feels, then I have zero doubts that it will find plenty of fans, regardless of whether the theme initially excites them or not.

As time goes on, I hope to see more and more unconventional themes that are magnified into exciting experiences.  I hope to see publishers, designers, judges, and gamers step outside their comfort zones, think outside the box, and uncover the extraordinary within the ordinary.

This concludes our exploration of What Makes a Board Game Theme Great. Despite my difference in opinions with one particular judge, I want to be clear that, as a designer, the Pitch Project has been an excellent resource and worthwhile event… even for Balloon Jockeys! Our current plan now is to self-publish Balloon Jockeys through Kickstarter (campaign expected late 2021 at the earliest). To follow our designs as they come to fruition, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

Article written by Nick Murray. To learn more about his tabletop gaming tastes and preferences, check out his blog series: Tabletop Tastes: My Favorite Flavors in Board Games.

The post What Makes a Board Game Theme Great? appeared first on Bitewing Games.