Note: This written post features only my top 10 Spatial Puzzle games, but the podcast episode includes my picks plus 10 more picks from podcast guest, Ryan Flaherty. If you want twice the Spatial Puzzle gaming goodness via an audio discussion between friends, then check out our meaty episode!

Before one becomes a dentist, or even enters dental school, a prospective dental student in the US must take what is called the Dental Admissions Test.  This exam is an absolute beast of a hoop that one must successfully jump through if they wish keep their dental career dream alive.  Many folks (including myself) take off several weeks to spend 6-8 hours a day cramming biology, chemistry, mathematics, and more into our brains in preparation for the great spewing.  For a couple months or so, this pursuit essentially consumes your life as you cram, take practice exams, and cram some more as though you are trying to pour more knowledge fluid into an already overflowing brain bucket while patching up the leaky holes all over.

Oddly enough, there is one part of this exam that starts to feel like a game.  It is a section known as the Perceptual Ability Test, or PAT for short.  As the title describes, this section examines your ability to mentally visualize things such as 3D shapes, acute angles, and more.  The reason this feels like a game is that rather than solve problems or recall memorized information, you are challenged to rank angles, match keyholes, visualize folds, count cube surfaces, and more.  The reason for the PAT is because dentists are constantly using mirrors, x-rays, and models to visualize, shape, and diagnose teeth.  Thus, the PAT material is not so much something you can learn or memorize to be prepared.  Rather, it requires a spatially minded brain and a whole lot of practice to master the challenging types of questions you’ll encounter.  In a sort of sick and twisted way, this PAT practice becomes the “fun” part of your studying routine, and a great way to break up the monotony of the science subjects.  Over time, It’s quite satisfying to nail these questions with increasing competence.

Much like the PAT (but in a far more entertaining form), it is also very satisfying to take on spatial puzzles in tabletop games.  These puzzles usually take the form of cards and tiles which can be aligned, arranged, and overlapped in an open space of endless possibilities.  Typically, these games will punish you for poor spatial arrangements and reward you for clever planning.  While some games are pure spacial puzzling, others implement this mental challenge into a larger game packed with many more mechanisms.

We’ve had loads of fun exploring many games that include spatial puzzling in their repertoire.  Many titles in t  his genre have proven to be deliciously addicting and widely popular.  We’ve enjoyed them so much, that it is with great excitement that Bitewing Games here and now reveals our next published game to be… a meaty spatial puzzler.  That’s right!  We’ve been working hard these past several months to plan and prepare our next game for you.  You can find our grand reveal at the end of this post.  And in celebration of that reveal, today we’d like to share our Top 10 Spatial Puzzle games.  If you, like us, are a fan of many of these games and their puzzly goodness, then our next offering might just be up your alley.

But we’ll save the details for the end.  As for now, let’s talk about our favorite, highly recommended spatial puzzle games in no particular order…

Patchwork / New York Zoo

Might as well come clean right up front… there is definitely going to be some cheating involved on this Top 10 list.  It will actually consist of 13 games plus more honorable mentions at the end!  The reason for this dirty trick is simple: there are far more than 10 excellent spatial puzzle games out there.  Plus, some titles share so much in common that it’s too hard to mention one without mentioning the other.  Thus, with this first pick, we split the spotlight between Uwe Rosenberg’s Patchwork and New York Zoo.

Those of you who’ve seen my Battle of the Polyominoes article likely predicted that these games would end up here.  Polyominoes are to spatial puzzle games as dogs are to house pets.  They’re like a gamer’s best friend.  There is something about fitting various shapes together on a square grid that we gamers can’t get enough of.  This won’t be the only polyomino pick on this list—far from it—so let’s talk about what makes Patchwork and New York Zoo special.

Coming from the same designer, Patchwork and New York Zoo both feature an engaging rondel for tile drafting.  The former is all about an economy of spending and earning buttons while managing time to maximize positive points and cover up negative points to beat your single opponent.  The latter is instead an economy of breeding… that’s right… breeding animals in their exhibits at the zoo in a race to be the first to cover your board entirely before 1-4 opponents.  In both cases, you can enjoy pleasant themes mixed with compelling decisions from the polyomino connoisseur himself.  Which one is better is up for debate, but I say you can’t go wrong with either (or both).

Galaxy Trucker

While Patchwork and New York Zoo both contain elements of time economics or racing to the finish, neither of them are actual ‘real-time’ games where you are rushing your arrangements and burning your brain into overdrive.  But if that’s what you are looking for, Galaxy Trucker has you covered.  This wild, wacky game has been around for many years, but it recently received a new coat of paint with some minor tweaks to the formula.  Either version is dirt cheap and loads of fun, but you’ll need to have a group who can handle a bit of a rules dump up front.

While this one isn’t as family-friendly as it wants to be thanks to a few too many fiddly rules, it still has a major payoff for those who are fully invested.  The game consist of two acts: first, rush to reveal and arrange square tiles into a jumbled mess of a space ship that contains guns, thrusters, energy, shields, storage, and more.  The longer you take to arrange and nitpick your ship, the faster the best tiles will be claimed by other players because during this act you are scrambling to build your ships all at the same time and the tiles are first-come-first-serve.  The second act sees you laughing, cheering, and moaning as you send your ships on a risky voyage ripe with perilous dangers and delicious rewards.  Ship parts and sections get blasted and blown off, and all you can do is just hang on and hope you survive the journey.

Factory Funner

Speaking of rushing to grab tiles while cooking your brain, Factory Funner is also split into two phases: the first phase consists of brief real-time drafting, the second consists of crunchy spatial efficiency.  The cool thing here is that you are free to use connectors and other helpful tiles to your heart’s content, but each extra piece you use costs a dollar from your score.  As you have to add a new machine each round, you can also remove old pipes and tiles to establish new connections between the machine inputs and outputs.

The new version of this game (releasing within the next few months) comes to us from publisher BoardGameTables.com and features zesty new art, a non-real-time drafting variant for those who don’t like to be rushed, and the addition of a sixth player.

Pipeline / Curious Cargo

Since we’re on the subject of pipes, we might as well chat about the ultimate pipey games from designer Ryan Courtney: Pipeline and Curious Cargo.  Ryan burst into the board game industry with the critically acclaimed Pipeline, a slick economic brain burner about buying, refining, and selling oil.  While worker placement, loans, economics, engine building, and contract fulfillment are all major parts of this design, one of the standout features of this game is the pipe tiles where players must make long, winding connections of pipe of the same color to help refine their oil.  Purchasing and arranging these pipes is a compelling part of the challenge, and these different combinations of routes across dozens of domino tiles was something fresh and new in the spatial puzzle genre.

People loved it so much that the creators followed Pipeline up with another domino spatial puzzle game in Curious Cargo.  While many expected Curious Cargo to be a pure, simple distillation of the pipe element from Pipeline, in reality Ryan took this follow-up design as a challenge to cram as much complexity into a small box game as possible.  What resulted was a title that has perhaps been a little more polarizing in the industry.  This head-to-head shipping and receiving game contorts your brain with its even more difficult spatial challenges.  It demands much flexibility and adaptation from players as they draw tiles out the bag and must figure out how to best use those frequently less-than-ideal draws.  But I stand by my final statement in my review of this title: “Despite the emotional cuts, bruises, and occasional broken bones that this design doles out, I’ve found Curious Cargo to be one heck of a satisfying game.”

Azul

Let’s step away from the brain burning puzzles for a moment to talk about a few lighter options.  Azul mixes tile drafting with just a hint of spacial puzzling.  The sequence and location tiles added to your board is the core element of scoring, and it’s a challenge that comes into conflict with the dwindling drafting options of each round.  It’s just as important to be able to predict what tiles others will claim as it is to smartly plan your own moves.

Azul is one that ranks highly among our favorite 2-player games and 10 games everyone should try.  While there are now four versions of Azul out in the wild, I’m sticking with my guns and declaring that the original is the best.  At least that’s how things will remain until Azul: Queen’s Garden makes its way to the US for me to properly scrutinize it.

Carcassonne / Isle of Skye

If you’re looking to go even more classic and simple than Azul, then perhaps Carcassonne is the best candidate.  The procedure is dead simple: play the one tile in your hand anywhere into the growing arrangement of tiles and add a meeple on top of it if you’d like.  With the tiles, you’ll be accomplishing tasks as simple as growing, connecting, or enclosing fields, roads, or cities.  But the most important aspect is deciding when and where to add your meeples.  You see, these meeples are like investments in unfinished landscape features; the person with the most meeples in a feature when it becomes fully enclosed gets the big payout in points.  Things get extra spicy when opponents attempt to outcompete each other in the same region or when they try to sabotage the completion of a road or city.

Yet I can’t help but mention here another square tile game with an interesting twist.  In Isle of Skye, there is no shared, central region of growing tiles for players to add to like in Carcassonne.  Rather, you’ll be building up your own personal area as you’re pulled this way and that by the changing scoring criteria.  Each round, you’ll also be pulling 3 tiles out of the bag and deciding how to price them to either entice or deter your opponents.  Money is important here because you’ll desperately need it to be able to buy the best tile from a single opponent of your choice.  Plus, you’ll be using your own money to price your tiles, and if nobody bites, then you just bought them yourself for the price you set.

If you’re looking for a straightforward game that lets players dip their toes in the spatial puzzle waters by aligning and arranging matching features on square tiles, then you can’t go wrong with Carcassonne or Isle of Skye.

A Feast for Odin

For those of you who prefer your games sprawling and meaty, let’s now dive back into the deep end of spatial puzzle designs.  A Feast for Odin is a game that features a worker placement game board with over 60 possible spaces, hundreds of tiny polyomino tiles organized across several trays, and large player boards with supplemental island boards for you to arrange these many tiles over the course of a 2-3 hour playtime.  This is one big box game that will make you wish your table was at least… three times its size.

Yet, A Feast for Odin is one of the most satisfying Euros in existence thanks to Uwe Rosenberg’s steady design hand.  You’ll be hunting, raiding, farming, whaling, trading, and more to acquire viking goods that come in many shapes and sizes.  You’ll have to arrange these polyomino goods wisely in order to increase your income, surround and gain bonuses, and cover up negative points.  All the while, you’ll be feeding your vikings as they grow increasingly hungry throughout their many pursuits.  It’s a feast of game that is indeed worthy of Odin’s name.

Isle of Cats 

If you want to wrap your braintacles around one of the hottest polyomino games of the recent years, then Isle of Cats might just be what the doctor ordered.  You’ll be rescuing cats from the evil Lord Vesh by cramming them onto your boat board.  If that doesn’t already sound zesty enough for you, then consider that the other core mechanism of this game is card drafting similar to 7 Wonders or Sushi Go.

This game also has an easier, more family friendly mode for those who need it.  But either way, you’ll be playing a game that is currently ranked in the top 100 games on BGG and the BGG top 10 family games.  Need I say more?

Sprawlopolis

Those of you who are primarily solo or cooperative gamers, worry not, we haven’t forgotten about you!  Sprawlopolis is arguably the best wallet game that money can buy, and it is meant to be played solo or together.  It still blows my mind what the creators were able to pull off with only 18 cards:  The backs of these cards each have a unique scoring objective.  Your game will feature a random combination of 3 scoring objectives, and you’ll be using the remaining 15 card faces to arrange and layer a city of cards to try and achieve the scoring requirements.

You’ll lose points for each unique road, so it’s wise to try and connect them together to minimize damage.  Meanwhile, you’ll be trying to overlap and connect matching districts in all directions according to the tricky objectives of each individual play.  If the 3 objective cards are easy, then you’ll need a higher score to win.  This crunchy minimalist game comes highly acclaimed by many critics, and at such a low price you have no reason not to try it.

My City

Although this list was arranged in no particular order, we are going to end things off with my personal favorite spatial puzzle game.  While most of these games see players drafting or selecting tiles or cards to arrange in optimal orientations, My City makes its players fall victim to a bingo style draft.  A central deck with one card for each tile is shuffled at the start of the game.  Each round, the top card is revealed and players must decide where to place this building tile onto their city board.

One would surmise, as I once did, that such a system devoid of tile choice or player interaction would be aggressively dull.  Not so, dear reader.  Instead, this system creates an experience of suspense, risk, and anticipation as you plan and hope that the right tile will come out of the deck before you fill a suitable area in with something less ideal.  

A critical aspect of these rules is that you may spend a point to trash a tile rather than be forced to add it to your board.  And we haven’t even gotten to the real juicy part of the design:  My City is a legacy game where over the course of 24 sessions players will add stickers to their board, gain more tiles, encounter new challenges and objectives, and compete to be the ultimate city builder by tracking points earned during each play.  We’ve sung the praises of My City so much that our followers are undoubtedly now bleeding from all orifices and begging us to branch out to other games.  But alas, when one makes a Top 10 Spacial Puzzles list, one must listen to their heart and include the masterful My City among the champions.

Honorable Mentions

While there can only be thirteen games among the top 10 (our math is sound, don’t question it), the following are honorable mentions that we wish to list and celebrate so that we can minimize our chances of being flogged by spatial puzzle connoisseurs:

1. Blokus – classic, strategic goodness
2. Calico / Cascadia – hot new tile drafting and arranging games featuring animals
3. Arboretum – a tense cutthroat hand management game with a sprinkling of spatial arrangement
4. Railroad Ink – a solid roll & write of connecting highways and railroads
5. Barenpark – a favorite polyomino game for many… plus BEARS
6. On Tour – a roll & write about scheduling a tour by sequencing your route across the country
7. Sagrada – a popular game similar to Azul featuring gorgeous colorful token drafting (dice in this case) and arranging

A Bitewing Games Publication Reveal…

And here we have finally arrived… at the end of all things.  Or more accurately, at the end of all things yet published.  We are thrilled to finally unveil the next title that Bitewing Games will be publishing via a Kickstarter campaign in Q2 2022.  It is indeed a spatial puzzle game, but it is also a love letter to outdoor adventuring.  Introducing Trailblazers by designer Ryan Courtney:

Trailblazers are the gutsy folks who pave and brave the trails of the great outdoors.  Whether by hiking boots, cycling wheels, or river paddle, these tenacious travelers seek to feed their insatiable appetite for adventure.  With a scenic wilderness ever ahead and a freshly charted path upon the heels, one mustn’t forget to eventually find their way back to camp.  For there are always new environments to explore, further expeditions to undertake, and more trails to blaze.

In Trailblazers, players compete to earn the most points by building biking, hiking, and kayaking loops from their campsites of the matching trail type.  Each round, players are dealt eight trail cards where they’ll draft two cards, arrange those cards in their personal area, and pass their hand to the next player three times.  Cards must either be placed adjacent to or overlapping other cards.  While players can push their luck by aiming to construct long and elaborate trails, only closed loops that start and end at a matching campsite will score points.  Players also compete to fulfill “First To” and “End Game” goal cards.  After four rounds, the game ends and the player with the most points from closed loops and goal cards wins.

Compared to the travel edition for 1-4 players, the standard edition of Trailblazers features a second deck of trail & player cards so you can play with up to 8 players.  The box also contains two expansions (the Animals expansion and Adventurers expansion) that add another challenging layer of strategy and objectives to the experience.  

Trailblazers is the third spacial puzzle domino game by designer Ryan Courtney (the first two being Pipeline and Curious Cargo).  While they share a similar puzzly DNA that fans have come to know and love, Trailblazers differs by:

• Featuring simple, highly accessible rules in a 30 minute game for 1-8 players
• Boiling the gameplay down to pure spatial puzzling and card drafting with a dash of push-your-luck route building
• Using durable PVC cards that can easily be shuffled, dealt, drafted, and overlapped (found in the travel edition and deluxe edition)
• Including three challenging solo modes with a high skill-ceiling

Well there you have it!  We’re ecstatic to finally get that big news off our chest.  But we’re even more excited to launch this Kickstarter project next year!  For those of you who want to follow along or even try out the game early on Tabletop Simulator (once it is ready), simply subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter and join us for the ride!  In the meantime, keep on enjoying those spatial puzzlers!

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 Top 10 Spatial Puzzle Games + A Bitewing Games Publication Reveal! 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.

Welcome back to my Top 50 Board Games of All Time! If you missed part 1 of this post, then head on over and check out games 50-26. Today, we’ll be finishing things out by discussing games 25-1. That’s right, the cream of the cream of the crop…

25. Camel Up (Second Edition)

Best suited for everyone

Camel Up might be the most reliable party game in my collection.  If there is any game that I can place before a random assortment of 4-8 friends, family, or strangers, and expect them to request a second and third play in a row, that game is undoubtedly Camel Up.  None can resist the allure of betting on chunky, colorful camels as they race around the desert.  Between the stacking camels, dice-dispensing pyramid, memorably dramatic moments, popup palm tree, and shoot-for-the-moon strategies, this one has it all.

24. El Grande

Best suited for everyone

While it doesn’t have the party pizazz of Camel Up, El Grande has been another crowd pleaser at my table.  This classic strategy game of competing for area majorities is unmatched in its elegant flow and potent interaction.  Many designs since have wisely borrowed from El Grande’s master class mechanisms, but few, if any, have risen to its level of grace and wit plus the drama of revealing the contents of the towering Castillo.  It’s not really worth considering outside of the four or five player count, but within that range you’ll find consistently satisfying area influence, auctioning, and action drafting to be had.

23. Renature

Best suited for everyone (but be ready for some mean moments)

El Grande designer, Wolfgang Kramer, also brought us last year’s Renature with the help of Azul designer Michael Kiesling, and this is a game that I’m loving more and more with each new play.  One of the quickest ways to my heart is down the path of simple, clever brutality, and Renature is indeed beautifully simple, wonderfully clever, and deliciously brutal.  This game sees its competitors placing one domino onto the board at a time, and touching domino animals must match.  But the placement of a domino also allows one to plant an adjacent foliage piece, and these plant tokens are used to compete for area majority or even cancel out other player’s plants.  I stand by my declaration that this is the greatest domino game OF ALL TIME.

22. A Feast for Odin

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

While it has dropped out of my previous top 10 games list, that’s more a side-effect of many other stellar games climbing their way up my rankings than A Feast for Odin becoming any less enjoyable over time.  I would label this a heavy worker placement polyomino Euro game with relatively low-interaction.  When there are roughly SIXTY worker placement spaces to choose from—like a wide sandbox of strategies one can use to acquire points—it is typically quite effortless to stay out of each other’s way and do your own thing.  While this blog is riddled with me bemoaning low-interaction games on a regular basis, mostly due to their commonly stale dynamics and limited replayability, I find that A Feast for Odin is one of the few exceptions to my preferences.  The numerous interlocking concepts and mechanisms here are perfect for a warm, cozy, lazy few hours of puzzling perfection that still satisfies after all these plays.

21. Bus

Best suited for cold-blooded strategists

Bus is a game about building bus routes and transporting passengers around town, yet this design is no flowery Ticket to Ride.  Imagine a world where all people were predictable creatures of habit.  They go to the work, then head to the bar, then go home, rinse and repeat… as long as a bus route can get them there, of course.  On and on they cycle through this unchanging lifestyle, with the only exception being when a greedy bus line decides to STOP TIME.  Suddenly, everyone in town decides to work another shift in a row, or pull an all-nighter at the bar, or play hooky from their jobs and kick back at home, and all the buses that were prepared to take them to their usual next destination are suddenly hosed and empty-handed.  With completely open information and not even a hint of luck, Bus is a pure strategy game that has players feuding over the tight economy of passengers in an effort to scrape just a few precious point morsels from this ruthless game.

20. Tournament at Avalon

Best suited for everyone

If you really want to know what this wacky trick-taking card game is all about, I would direct you to my full review from last year.  Here’s a sample of what I said:

“If the possibility of falling behind early and spending the rest of the game trying to claw your way back to the top while your leading opponents pounce on you like sharks to a bleeding prey sounds dreadful, then steer clear of Tournament at Avalon… Then again, perhaps you are like me.  Maybe you’re happy to roll with the punches and simply want to experience trick-taking at its finest.  In Tournament at Avalon, you may be completely fine with being the favorite piñata of the round because you see the fresh gaping wound in your side for what it truly is: a firehose of retribution.  You may be the type of competitor who loves to form shaky alliances with fellow weaklings to surround and beat down the mighty.  And when you are the current King of the Hill, you welcome the opportunity to bob and weave around targeted attacks and gleefully watch as swinging blows skim past your head to land squarely on your neighbor’s face.”

19. My City

Best suited for everyone

Perhaps you’ve noticed by now that I have a soft spot for great polyomino games.  In my Top 50 board games of all time, we’ve already covered titans from master polyomino designer, Uwe Rosenberg, including A Feast For Odin and New York Zoo.  Yet the game that claims the crown to world’s best polyomino game, and the title that makes a strong case for being the best Legacy design yet, is none other than Reiner Knizia’s My City.  We’ve played this one 24 times now—that’s as many episodes as the game contains, so we’re not likely to play it much further with the “eternal game”—but that’s more plays than most other titles on this list.  We’ll always hold a special memory in our hearts for the journey we took through My City

18. Ethnos

Best suited for everyone

Ethnos remains one of my go-to gateway games (games to introduce people to the hobby) because it never fails to entertain newcomers while continuing to engage me.  While the art direction could use a drastic overhaul to match the family friendly nature of the design, none of that matters once the cards are dealt and the fun begins.  Turns are as simple as drawing a card or playing a set known as a “band of allies” of matching colors or creatures.  The band will net you points while the card on top of your band (the “leader”) grants you a special bonus and a token placement on the map.  Much like El Grande, players compete for points via area majorities.  While some folks complain of “top decking” in Ethnos, where you spend your turns drawing a card off the top of the deck until you find what you want, I find this to be a hollow complaint thanks to a little wrinkle that Paolo Mori includes in the design: Whenever you play a band of cards from your hand, you must discard the rest of your hand faceup into the market for other players to feast on.  Suddenly, you have to decide whether the “top decking” strategy is worth it for that one extra card, because everything else you draw will simply help your competition.

17. The King’s Dilemma

Best suited for a regular group of 5 players

Aside from My City, The King’s Dilemma is the only other legacy design that made my Top 50 Board Games of All Time, or even came close, for that matter.  The concept of a legacy game—a game whose rules and components permanently change over time based on the outcome and decisions of each play—is a fascinating, alluring, and popular feature in the industry.  But our experience with some of the more popular options has uncovered it’s ugly side-effects including rules & component management fatigue, forced narratives, messy productions, and unwieldy scheduling requirements.  Burnout is real within this genre, but The King’s Dilemma has soared over these common traps across our many plays by staying focused on the addicting core concept of political negotiation and bribing.  As you’ll soon find out with even higher rated games, I’m a sucker for a good negotiation game, and The King’s Dilemma hits the spot.  I love how the secret incentives can have me championing the cause of the good people in one game and sacrificing their well being for my personal gain in the next like the greedy posterity of a heroic monarch.

16. Wavelength

Best suited for everyone, especially groups of 6 or more

And here we arrive at my favorite party game, Wavelength.  Between Kyle’s video review and my own written review, we’ve covered the entire spectrum of reasons why we love this game. The simple truth is that Wavelength effortlessly captures the the feeling of a gameshow and generates engaging conversations and hilarious memories that last far beyond the party.  It was the first game I backed on Kickstarter, sending me down the rabbit hole of thrillingly creative possibilities.

15. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

Best suited for everyone

Now we are onto my top rated cooperative game, and not only that, but this is one of only two cooperative games that made my Top 50 Board Games of All Time.  Don’t get me wrong here, I dig a solid cooperative game such as Pandemic, Mysterium, and Horrified.  Yet those types of games obviously don’t quite hit the spot for me as all the competitive ones on my list.  So what makes The Crew so special?  In this mission-based trick-taking game, everyone’s turns matter and nobody can quarterback them through it.  The only communication allowed between players is a single token that lets you signal or imply information about some of the cards in your hand.  Each new challenge and each new hand of cards presents an obstacle that can often seem impossible to overcome, yet it feels amazing when your crew finally triumphs.  It’s an addictive challenge that takes players on an unforgettable 50-mission journey.

14. For Sale / For Sale Autorama

Best suited for everyone

We’re talking about my two favorite card games back-to-back between The Crew and now For Sale.  For Sale consists of two phases: auctioning coins for houses that become your hand of cards, then selling that hand of cards one at a time in a closed auction.  When I pass on the auctioning of the first phase, I have to pay half of what I’ve bid up to that point and take the lowest value face-up house.  So there is a game of chicken between players when nobody wants to take the grungy outhouse card, and thus the bidding war ensues.  Yet the outhouse card might be a great one to claim with a pass in a particular round if the other options aren’t that much better and spending your precious coins to avoid it will merely land you a slightly higher card.  The second phase becomes a game of predicting your opponents’ plays, as the bidding becomes a closed auction where everyone plays a single house card facedown and reveals their bid at the same time and the values of the money cards are dispersed to players according to who bid highest, who bid lowest, and everything in between.  Nothing feels worse than wasting your best card on an auction that everyone else played low for.  Conversely, eeking out the best money card of a round with a measly house makes you feel like a mastermind.  And that roller coaster of emotions is the magic of For Sale.

13. Root

Best suited for a regular group of hobbyist gamers

Root has to be one of the most aesthetically charming games on this list.  Screen-printed, wooden animal tokens and their more detailed card and board illustrations are all brimming with personality.  Rich colors of the woodland span from deep orange hues to refreshing green shades.  Card suits consist of mice, birds, foxes, and rabbits.  There is no shortage of warmth in the presentation of Root.  Yet this art direction was intentionally chosen because of the stark contrast it presents against the savage gameplay.  These woodland creatures are at war, and a negotiated alliance in one round can quickly become a callous betrayal in the next.  No animal is safe from a sudden beatdown, and only one faction will triumph.  With the consistent release of more expansions including animal factions over these past few years, and at least two more in the pipeline, it feels as though I could explore Root’s fascinating asymmetry for dozens upon dozens more plays.

12. Babylonia

Best suited for everyone

This may not be shocking to you, but Reiner Knizia’s Babylonia at number 12 feels like a bit of stealth ranking to me.  It’s one of the more recent Knizia’s which flew under my radar as I was gobbling up his most popular and revered titles.  Yet when I finally came around to Babylonia, I found it to be a rock-solid game that grew on me with each and every play.  This is a fast-paced, 45-minute strategy game that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed at the 2, 3, and 4 player counts.  Everything about picking up the clackity wooden tiles, slotting them into my rack, and deciding which ones to place onto the board and where makes for a deeply satisfying ritual.  My deepest thanks is owed to Space Biff, whose eloquently written review talked me into trying this brilliant jewel.

11. Inis

Best suited for everyone

While it is no longer my #1 game of all time, Inis remains an outstanding area-control experience of careful drafting, crafty cardplay, elegant combat, and sneaky intentions.  Because there are three different conditions one can aim for to become the victor, I’ve rarely seen a game that didn’t come down to the wire as players wrestled to become King of the Celtic Hill.  The production is a mesmerizing masterclass in capturing the mysterious theme thanks to Jim Fitzpatrick’s alluring illustrations and Dimitri Bielak’s lovely tiles.  Ultimately, Inis is as much about playing your opponents as it is about playing the game, and that subtle politicking is what makes it consistently satisfying for me.

10. Chinatown

Best suited for everyone

Out of all the games that made my top 10, Chinatown is the dark horse the snuck its way on here.  This pure negotiation experience beat out dozens of other personal favorites thanks to my many fond memories of it that match my enthusiasm to play it again.  I’ve found Chinatown to be a surprising hit with non-gamers that delightedly brings out both the best and worst in them.  The most generous and thoughtful of folks can immediately transform into vicious traders who see the hunger in your eyes for their prized possessions, so they seize the opportunity to milk you for all you are worth.  

9. Ra

Best suited for everyone

Perhaps Ra is so high on my list simply because I’ve been waiting to acquire my own copy for far too long.  Yet maybe it has made its way here due to the perfect blend of auctioning and push-your-luck that it provides.  How long will you wait to spend your best sun disks?  Wait long enough, and you’ll be one of the only ones left to bid on all the lucrative tiles.  Wait too long, and you may find the round ending before you’ve put your sun disks to good use.  Is this auction really worth fighting for?  Surely you aren’t going to let another opponent claim these tiles for so cheap, are you?  This game is jam-packed with tough decisions.  As a fan of auctioning games, it doesn’t get much better than Ra.

8. Age of Steam

Best suited for hobbyist gamers with thick skin

I just barely shared my thoughts on Age of Steam: Deluxe Edition in my last Candid Cardboard: New Release 1st Impressions post.  This train game rewards careful and opportunistic economic planning and punishes a lack thereof.  Yet players don’t only have to account for their own budget and round-to-round plans; they must also account for the plans of their opponents.  All it takes is for one player to steal away your goods cube, or build track on your planned space, or claim your needed bonus action, and you may suddenly find yourself losing a lot of money and points.  But the arc this game takes—from scraping by with a few meager deliveries, to prospering with massive gains in income and ambitious rail developments, to shrinking opportunities for points as the cubes diminish from the board—is a supremely satisfying experience.

7. Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

Best suited for hobbyist gamers with a big table… and maybe a side table, too

Last year, I sold my fully deluxified, mostly expanded, legendary boxed copy of Scythe and put some of that money toward a copy of Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy.  After spending several good hours playing multiple sessions of Eclipse, I have no regrets in swapping these two games.  That’s not a knock against Scythe, which I played and enjoyed a solid fifteen times.  But the change to Eclipse reflects a change in my personal gaming preferences.  Eclipse not only presents a wider range of freedom across its various actions and engine upgrades, but it also embraces a more interactive and tense 4X experience.  The memorable moments of war and betrayal are strong with this one, as I shared in my recent Board Game Birthday Marathon Musings.

6. Sidereal Confluence: Remastered Edition

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

Continuing on with the theme of epic space games, Sidereal Confluence features up to 9 wildly asymmetric alien factions cooperating with each other through chaotic cube-tacular negotiation.  Take the simultaneous trading concept of Chinatown, crank it up ten-fold, add in a couple thousand chunky cubes, and you’ve got yourself Sidereal Confluence.  The sheer amount of soulless components and icons in this game scared me off from trying it for the longest time.  But I was sorely mistaken to avoid this game, because all those bits and pieces are mere cogs in a system of player-focused deals and negotiations which are the beating heart of this excellent experience.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the remastered edition has given it a welcome makeover.

5. Hansa Teutonica: Big Box

Best suited for everyone

Despite Hansa Teutonica being over ten years old and looking even older, it remains undeniably refreshing amid the onslaught of sluggish, overly complicated, low-interaction Euros because it is fast-paced, streamlined, and wonderfully interactive.  The new Big Box version provides even more content to explore—it makes for an incredible package value that is not big in size, but big in content.  Quinns of Shut Up & Sit Down recently proposed that this might just be the greatest Euro ever, and I’m inclined to agree.   That’s why the big box version was my number one release of 2020. 

4. Brass: Birmingham

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

Brass hasn’t moved an inch in the rankings since I posted my Top 50 Games of All Time last year.  Even after several more plays, it remains just as engaging and enjoyable as the first time I tried it.  It’s solid at all player counts from 2-4, and I’ve yet to introduce it to a hobbyist gamer who didn’t enjoy it.  Brass: Birmingham makes a strong case for reimplementations considering the look of the original design and the reach that the new versions of Brass have had within the hobby.  If you are a hobbyist gamer looking to add a long-term, well-loved gem to your collection, you’d be hard pressed to find a better bet than Brass: Birmingham.

3. Tigris & Euphrates

Best suited for strategy gamers

The deeper I get into this hobby, the more I appreciate games that contain a wide dynamic range within a narrow rules space.  Reiner Knizia is more skilled at creating these kinds of games than any other designer in the industry; that’s why my Top 50 is crammed with his masterpieces, and that’s why Tigris & Euphrates, his magnum opus, is my number three game of all time.  Most turns simply involve placing a couple tiles or leaders onto the game board, but the points those tiles can earn, the ripple effect their positioning can have, and the wars and revolts that they can trigger are where things get incredibly meaty.  For an experience that appears to be abstract strategy through and through, it’s surprising how thematic of a civilization game this is.  The rise, prosperity, and fall of dynasties and kingdoms are epic arcs that most civ games can only dream of providing.  The many opportunities for clever moves and brilliant plays are what continually keep me coming back for more Tigris & Euphrates.

2. Crokinole

Best suited for everyone

Crokinole straddles the fence that separates board games from competitive sports and rides that fence to the moon and back.  Darts, billiards, foosball, and Jenga are perfectly fine indoor activities, but Crokinole takes the cake for me.  Like a meaner, faster, sexier version of curling, Crokinole sees its participants flicking discs to the center of a large, slick board as they ricochet off a center ring of posts and collide with other discs.  There’s far more strategy here than simply aiming for the center hole.  With enough plays, you start to realize that the planned positioning of your disc after you hit an opponent’s disc is just as important as knocking them off the board.  Crokinole works as both a 4-player party game and a 2-player showdown, and my board will remain a family heirloom for decades to come.

1. Pax Pamir: Second Edition

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

When every aspect of a game oozes with deliberate thought and delicate attention to detail, it’s hard not to be attracted to such an experience regardless of its theme or genre.  From the deeply intricate gameplay to the opulent multi-sensory production, none could call Pax Pamir: Second Edition anything but a labor of love.  Pamir transcends the level of consumer product and cements itself as a historical, philosophical, and strategic sandbox for participants to lose themselves in as they explore its nuances over the course of endlessly engaging plays.  To boil this game down to its mechanical pieces—a political area control tableau builder—is a disservice to its greater whole.  The vast card market, oscillating coalitions, tight economy, and unstable alliances all combine into a supple, historical harmony between musical chair loyalties and tug of war gameplay.

This concludes my Top 50 Board Games of All Time! I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey with me through some of the world’s greatest tabletop games, and if you’re still hungry for more gaming goodness then stick around with us here at Bitewing Games!

We are thrilled to be launching a Kickstarter campaign this summer featuring a bundle of three 20-minute games, including two zesty Reiner Knizia designs! Be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter so you don’t miss out on this killer filler bundle. Speaking of which, the upcoming May email will feature a concept art reveal for Reiner Knizia’s Soda Smugglers!

Article written by Nick Murray. If you found yourself nodding in agreement to some of his favorite games, then keep an eye out for the three upcoming games that he loved enough to publish! Nick’s first published design, Social Grooming, which will debut in a Kickstarter bundle alongside two games—Soda Smugglers and Pumafiosi—from critically acclaimed designer, Reiner Knizia!

The post Top 50 Board Games of All Time — 2021 Edition — Games 25-1 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

All this talk of bananas and ice cream, yet not even a mention of banana splits?  How is this even possible?  Find out in this episode of Tabletop Tastes #10: the importance of A Dynamic Arc in board games.

Arc of the Ingestion

I have a confession to make: I can’t finish bananas.  Even though I enjoy peeling back a ripe one and diving in to those initial bites, I almost always hit a wall.  At some point I look down at those last few bites and my body suddenly tells me, “Please make it stop.”  I completely lose my appetite for the fruit and reluctantly end up tossing the remains in the trash.

Is this true for anybody else?  Am I crazy here?  How can something start out so enjoyable and prematurely end so unappetizing?  My theory is that it must be related to that mushy, potassium-induced sameyness that comes with each bite.  That’s right, I think each bite of a banana is too samey.  

Let’s contrast this repetitive banana with a nice, dynamic pint of ice cream.  Imagine with me a classic pint of Ben & Jerry’s.  Or perhaps the incomparable Jeni’s, my personal favorite brand of ice cream.  Either way, do you recall how the experience starts out?

First, you pry off the lid.  Second, you scrape the thin layer of ice cream from the top of the lid for a small, supple appetizer.  Third, you dive into the pint itself.  Having just taken the ice cream out of the freezer, you chip away at the rock hard surface for even the tiniest morsels of that frozen goodness.  It’s nearly too cold to even taste, but you don’t care, and you simply can’t be bothered with waiting for it to warm up.

But of course, over time the ice cream begins to soften up as you clutch the pint in your cold, hungry fingers.  The bites become bigger, softer, and more flavorful.  Soon, you’re taste buds are reading at maximum saturation as the temperature hits that beautifully sweet spot.

What’s this?  You’re nearing the bottom of the pint?  And the edges of the ice cream are melty and liquidized, yet dripping with deliciousness.  But you can’t allow the pint to get too melty!  No, time is of the essence, and this ice cream is ripe for the finishing.  What once was a slow, melodic waltz become a frenzying race to consume every last bite before it becomes too much of a drink.  Downward you go!  Digging, scraping, and slurping until finally… it is finished.  You’ve just completed a delectably satisfying arc of the pint.

Do you now see the difference between the banana and the pint of ice cream?  One is excruciatingly unchanging in its consumption, presenting nothing new or exciting or compelling to bring you back for another bite.  The other is dynamically satisfying in its consumptive journey, ramping up slowly, reaching a peak of perfection, then urging you beyond your stomach’s limitations in a downhill rush to the finish.

Arc of the Play

In this sense, the best board games are also like pints of ice cream, containing a dynamic and engaging arc.  Meanwhile, the games that are like bananas usually get the big boot from my collection.

One big banana game that I played in 2019 was Dead Man’s Cabal.  While it had interesting decisions and an eye-catching production, the biggest knock against our experience with it was simply how samey every round felt.  The central goal is to pick up and place out skulls that line up and meet the requirements of a point card.  There are of course other actions you can take and secondary points you can pursue, but nothing felt evolving.  We couldn’t get ourselves to play another game after our first go, as the cycle of using skulls to get point cards grew stale within a single play.

One of the masters of dynamic arcs is Reiner Knizia.  Typically, his games start out wide open.  “Place a tile anywhere, there are loads of good options!”  “Play any card from your hand, it’s hard to choose wrong!”  Yet as the tiles or cards start going out, you begin to see long-term strategies and short-term opportunities emerging for each player.  Like the curling liquid of the melting ice cream against the walls of the pint container, things start to get even more deliciously interesting.  Tile chains gather momentum, card types gain purpose, and decisions grow in importance.  Players never have enough actions that they desperately wish they could take on their turns, and they must clench their butt cheeks between turns as they pray that no opponent swoops in and snatches away the next golden opportunity.  In this sense, Reiner is like the Ben & Jerry’s of the board game industry.  His pints of play are consistently satisfying and evolvingly interesting from start to finish.

Another banana I recently discovered was Raiders of the North Sea.  While the game has a novel mechanism of placing a worker and picking up a worker to take your actions, this loop grew old for me over its 80 minutes of play.  Over the course of the game, players see themselves reaching more expensive action spaces and thereby raking in more points and resources.  But a ramp up in cost, points, and resources is like a bump in a sidewalk… hardly noticeable to the average cyclist who is looking for a thrill.  These superficial changes do little to differentiate the rounds of play.

Contrast this viking placement game to another one, A Feast for Odin.  Uwe Rosenberg’s sprawling viking Euro starts players off with something like negative 60 points on their personal boards that they must cover up over the course of the game.  The opening round starts off slow and methodical, with players earning a small handful of tiny tiles to help them cover up the first of many spaces on their boards.  Ironically, early game is often the best time to acquire another player board with even more negative points that must be covered.  

As the rounds march onward, players gain more vikings to spend on stronger and more numerous action spaces.  Animals, income, and bonuses have a snowball effect that helps players to accelerate their economy.  When the final round nears, the game becomes a race to cover every negative point that you’ve neglected the entire game as you greedily pursued the many other dangling carrots.  This arc that starts with precarious investments and baby step turns, snowballs into huge gains of tiles and profitable tile arrangements, and concludes with a race to maximize points and cover nasty spaces is an arc that keeps this relatively solitaire game dynamic and interesting throughout.

Designed with the Arc in Mind

From a design perspective, lack of a dynamic arc is one of the most consistent problems I’ve seen in some of my prototypes and other designers’ prototypes.  It can be easy to get lost in the minor problems, suggestions, and improvements amid a playtesting session.  But smooth gameplay and novel mechanisms can only carry a design so far.  I recently found myself offering up a bunch of random ideas after a playtesting another person’s design.  But toward the end of the discussion, I took a step back from my minor complaints and suddenly realized that they were all part of a bigger problem: a missing game arc.  If the designer could stay focused on giving the game a satisfying arc, then the obvious changes and best ideas would likely fall into place.

Perhaps the most visible form of a gameplay arc is an engine builder.  If players can feel their actions and choices are gaining momentum and value, then their engagement with game tends to grow in parallel to this progress.  Yet, like the countless flavors of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, there are plenty of other ways to give a game a dynamic arc:

• A race where the stakes ramp up as the finish line nears
• An evolving game board or player area where a network sprawls outward or the opportunities narrow inward
• The formation of shaky alliances to bring down the dominant leader
• The development of bitter rivals in competition for dwindling resources
• The unfolding of secrets and uncovering of information in a game of deduction
• Containing multiple acts in a single game

The possibilities go on yet the pattern for success is the same.  If the turns or rounds all feel roughly the same, then you have yourself a boring banana.  Good luck pitting that against a dynamic pint of ice cream.  Of course, if I’m hungry enough and the bland samey food is quite filling, then you might catch me eating it anyway.

Continue on to Tabletop Tastes #11: Filling Turns

More killer games with a dynamic arc:

Satisfying Engine Builders: Roll for the Galaxy, Race for the Galaxy, Viticulture, Great Western Trail, Sidereal Confluence, Concordia, Dice Forge, Taverns of Tiefenthal

Evolving Game Board: Crokinole, Carcassonne, Tigris & Euphrates, Babylonia, Through the Desert, Brass: Birmingham, Age of Steam, Lords of Vegas, Ethnos, Bus, Condottiere, Blitzkrieg!,

Raising Stakes: Inis, Downforce, Camel Up, Pandemic, Undaunted: Normandy, New York Zoo. Scape Goat, The Quest for El Dorado, Men at Work, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, The Estates, Last Bastion

Multi-Act Games: Blue Lagoon, For Sale, Mysterium, Insider, A Fake Artist Goes to New York

Evolving Player Areas: Patchwork, My City, Curious Cargo, Wingspan, Isle of Skye, Azul, Sagrada, Castles of Burgundy

Unfolding Secrets & Uncovering Information: The Search for Planet X, Bristol 1350, Cryptid, Loot of Lima, Treasure Island, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

Forming of Alliances and Rivalries: Root, Pax Pamir (Second Edition), Cosmic Encounter, Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy, The King is Dead

What are your favorite games with a dynamic arc?

Article written by Nick Murray. To follow his designs as they come to fruition, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

The post Tabletop Tastes #10: A Dynamic Arc appeared first on Bitewing Games.

It’s been nearly a year since we received the last of 2019’s thousands of board game releases.

I waited until nearly May to make my top games of 2019 list, and I’ve since discovered loads of great games, some of which would have even made my top 10 of the year. The sad truth is that there is simply not enough time to keep up with all the best new board games that are constantly pouring down on the industry. Especially not if your FONYO (Fear of Neglecting Your Own) keeps you coming back to your under-played collection.

I recently heard some content creators squirming over their top 10 games of 2020 lists due to the overwhelming amount of great designs. I’m always surprised when content creators are declaring their best games of the year when that year hasn’t even ended yet. Unless you are Tom Vasel, you likely haven’t played every noteworthy release of the year, even months into the following year. A quick glance at my want to play list on BGG reveals that I’ve only scratched the surface of 2020’s bangers, and it’s going to take me many months yet to even come close to trying everything that has caught my eye.

So rather than make a premature 2020 list, I feel inclined to revisit the many board games of 2019 that I’ve tried. I considered updating my top 10 games list, extending it to top 15 or 20, or even ranking all of the games I’ve tried against each other, but none of those options had a strong appeal to me. Instead, we’re gonna separate all these games into 5 different categories: Lovers, Keepers, Dumpers, Flingers, and Seekers. Let the fun begin!

Lovers

Games that I’m still CRAZY about.

I’m a bit of an explorer when it comes to my hobbyist gaming habits. This is mostly due to the curious designer within. Sometimes it results in me playing hot potato with certain games (see Dumpers below), but it’s all worth it when I find an absolute gem that I love. The following are my cream of the 2019 crop (in no particular order):

• Pipeline– I recently talked about how Pipeline made a poor first impression at our table, but eventually we came around to its brutal economics. What can I say? I guess I’m a glutton for punishment. But with a little practice and a lot of thinking, you’ll go from scraping oil out of the bottom of the barrel to drowning in gallons of that greasy goodness.

• Blitzkrieg!– Paolo Mori is quickly becoming one of my top designers. His quick and accessible Ethnos has long been my favorite gateway game, and his difficult to obtain Dogs of War is what I asked Santa for this Christmas. Blitzkrieg deserves a spot among his greatest hits thanks to its elegant back and forth battles between 2 players at war.

• The King’s Dilemma– I finally tracked down a copy and can happily report that it was worth the wait. If you enjoy bluffing, bidding, and negotiation all wrapped into a light role-playing package, and if you can track down a group of 5 people to join you, then this is a must-play legacy game.

• QE– I now own a crap-load of auctioning games. It’s a testament to QE’s uniqueness that it firmly remains a title that I get excited to play. I love myself a golden opportunity to mess with other people’s heads and sneak away with the victory.

• Watergate– A zesty but simple tug-of-war 2-player game, certainly in the same ballpark as Blitzkrieg. I love ’em both. If you’re a big fan of this game, then the Geek Up bits coming in Q2 2021 might catch your interest.

• Babylonia– If you’ve got a soft spot for Knizia tile layers, like me, then you really should be getting yourself a copy of Babylonia. This one feels like a hybrid between Samurai’s tense tile majorities and Through the Desert’s dangling carrots and snaking connections. The big differences here are that points are constantly/instantly awarded, unique abilities/bonuses are up for grabs, and decisions have a much wider ripple effect.

• Maracaibo– This is the sole lover of 2019 that I don’t own. I had a blast trying it out for the first time. Yet Maracaibo fills the same niche as Great Western Trail, and I don’t even give GWT enough table time. I would recommend this one to anybody who appreciates an epic heavy Euro.

• The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine– This game probably deserves a spot in my top 10 games of all time. That’s how addicting and delightful it was to play through its 50 cooperative missions. I still stand by my review and declaration that this is one of greatest card games of all time. Thank goodness Kosmos has announced a sequel for next year!

• A Feast for Odin: Mini Expansion 2– Before this expansion, I looked at the shorter (6-round) version of A Feast for Odin as a joke. Why would somebody shorten this sprawling game by a single round and miss out on the big 7th round climax? This expansion changed that entirely. It essentially trades the uneventful first round of a 7-round game for an interesting, highly variable setup with an exciting head start for everyone.

• Inis: Seasons of Inis (expansion)– Inis is one of my all time favorite games, and this expansion was well worth the investment. Particularly the extra Epic Tale cards and area tiles, the harbors and islands, and the 5th player addition.

• Mandala– Mandala is as good as simple 2-player cards games get. I rank it right up there with the likes of Jaipur, Lost Cities, and Battle Line.

• Pax Pamir (2nd Edition)– Between you and me, Pax Pamir might just be my #1 game of all time. After plenty of plays at a wide range of player counts, it is still that good. This is a deluxe strategy gaming experience in a deservedly deluxe package.

• Age of Steam: Deluxe Edition– Speaking of all time greats, Age of Steam is a newer title on my radar (with only two plays so far) and it’s already knocking on the door of my top 10. That’s right, if you’ve been counting, we have three releases from 2019 that are worthy to be among my 10 best! That’s a good year, my friends. Of course, I may be cheating considering that Age of Steam and Pax Pamir originally released in years prior. At any rate, this is the perfect blend of punishing economics and crafty interaction for those with a blood-thirsty appetite and thick skin.

• Undaunted: Normandy– My wife and I finally closed out our campaign of Undaunted: Normandy, and it was the bomb. This is the kind of deck builder that made me realize I didn’t need Dominion anymore. We’re looking forward to diving into the next one, Undaunted: North Africa.

Keepers

Other games that have survived the purge of 2020.

Now, obviously the Lovers mentioned above are Keepers. But there are plenty of other 2019 releases that I enjoy breaking out when the setting is right. The following games are great options that have thus far survived my purging ploys.

• Aerion- I’m not much of solo gamer, but Aerion eliminates all of my personal barriers to entry. This puzzly little game has a quick setup, minimal bookkeeping, and addictive gameplay loop that I intend to see through to the end of its several included expansions.

• Cairn– Cairn is one of those abstract games that is good enough to keep around yet forgettable enough to not get to the table. In other words, we’ve only played it once so far, but it was solid.

• Caylus 1303– This updated classic absolutely pummels your average worker placement game with its refined balance, deep interaction, and juicy tension. Just don’t set your expectations for something exceptionally unique.

• The Quest for El Dorado: The Golden Temples– I would not recommend this standalone expansion to somebody who has never tried the excellent Quest for El Dorado, but it does make for an interesting change of pace on its own and an epic journey when combined with the base game. More thoughts here.

• Azul: Summer Pavilion– I’ve weighed and measured Summer Pavilion against its siblings and found it to be a more gentle, gamer friendly version. At the end of the day, vanilla Azul is my go-to thanks to its more dynamic player interaction.

• Dice Forge: Rebellion (expansion)- I haven’t played Dice Forge in over year, which tells you a lot about how it fares against the rest of my collection. Rebellion does add a whole lot of interesting variety for fans of the game, and I’m hoping to explore the rest of it soon.

• Horrified– There are far too many Pandemic copy-cats out there, but Horrified remains one of the best. It’s a fun one to break out with non-gamers that presents an undeniably charming theme.

• Men at Work– I always get a kick out of Men at Work whenever we break it out. Nothing beats Crokinole as far as dexterity games go, but Men at Work is an excellent option that puts Jenga to shame.

• On Tour– While it isn’t my favorite roll & write, On Tour is one of the easiest to break out and teach others. It’s a nice, easy way to start out a game night as players discover how far they can stretch their strategies.

• PARKS– I suspect that if I was forced to play PARKS enough, it would get the boot from my collection. There’s just not a ton of meat here that I frequently crave. But as a gorgeous, pleasant game, I’m ok with breaking it open every now and then.

• Trophies– A quick, simple, and pretty party game of quick thinking. This is the kind of solid stocking stuffer that I would recommend to anyone. That’s why it landed a spot on our Holiday Board Game Gift Guide.

• Unmatched– This series becomes more and more fun as you explore the variety of characters and pit them against each other. Who wouldn’t want to see Bruce Lee take on 3 raptors?! I’ve talked about some of the newer sets here.

Dumpers

Games that I dropped like a hot potato.

Many of these games made a strong enough impression for me to purchase and enjoy them for several plays. Others were a train wreck right from the get-go. Either way, I eventually found myself ok with never playing them again, and those that I owned were traded or sold away thereafter.

• Point Salad- Like a well-made salad, this game is tasty, addicting, and not completely filling. After a few plays, it doesn’t provide much incentive to keep returning for more. But for $15, it was fun while it lasted.

• Res Arcana– This is a solid design that any engine builder super fan should put on their radar. Unfortunately, we didn’t love it because the game feels like a ho-hum resource converter. Res Arcana was ultimately unable to escape the shadow of its own genericy.

• Wingspan + European Expansion– The presentation initially knocked our socks off, but our many plays over time demonstrated the law of diminishing returns. Wingspan contains a pretty narrow track for decisions and strategy; most turn actions will feel on-the-rails, for better or for worse. As a gateway engine builder, I can’t deny that I enjoy playing it. But as a game night go-to, it now struggles to do more than mildly amuse.

• Tapestry– I wish Tapestry had spent more time in the development oven. The fun factor of a session of Tapestry can vary just as much as the strategies and Civilizations themselves. Cutting certain elements, balancing others, and increasing players’ abilities to truly interact with each other on the map could have gone a long way to make Tapestry a consistent hit. Ultimately, I’d rather not roll the dice on how fun a 3-hour game will be.

• Tiny Towns– A solid bingo-style spatial puzzle that lost its luster after five plays. My City is also a quick, accessible Bingo-style game about building a town for points within the confines of a spatial puzzle… and frankly, it blows Tiny Towns out of the water. But to its credit, Tiny Towns can be played with up to 6 players!

• Jaws– An amusing, highly thematic experience that gets bogged down by an excessive setup, rules-to-depth ratio, downtime, and duration. Act 2 especially dragged on and thereby felt weaker than Act 1. Played it once and had no desire to play it again. But I still respect that shark meeple.

• Bruxelles 1897– I enjoyed how compact and dense Bruxelles 1897 is for a strategic, Euro-style card game. It makes me wish more games would follow suit by trimming the fat and getting to the juicy center. My only complaint is that the game lacks legs to get it beyond more than a few interesting plays.

• Cartographers– This award nominated flip & write lacked the tension that I love to experience in my favorites of the genre. More thoughts here.

• Dead Man’s Cabal– Some interesting decisions, a fairly solid production, but the turns with many steps (simple as they may individually be) are prone to regular AP leading to longer down time and slower turns. The game also seems to lack any true sense of progression or change over the course of its long playtime… what you are doing on the first turn is practically the exact same as what you are doing on the last turn. This makes Dead Man’s Cabal feel as though it overstays its welcome. It quickly got the boot from our collection.

• Era: Medieval Age– A hefty price tag for fancy parts and pieces amount to a glorified spreadsheet roll & write polyomino Yahtzee game. I admire its production ambition but can’t get past its clumsy execution. Too much time is spent reading spreadsheets, moving pegs, or arranging dice and not enough time is spent playing a game.

• Funkoverse– Shameless cash grab of an unimaginative game with an IP pasted on top. There was absolutely nothing in the game design that made it feel like the IP we tried (Batman). The gameplay of Funkoverse itself consists of mind-numbingly basic dudes-on-a-map mechanisms and offers no reason to exist. The bland design is just veiled behind colorful funkos and meaningless variety. Unmatched is a much better version of this.

• Rune Stones– A generic resource converter. While the deck building aspect of the game certainly works, it doesn’t fully embrace any of the mechanism’s strengths. Rarely do you feel rewarded for slimming your deck or punished for bloating it. Most of the differentiating traits between the cards just blur together into a dull, samey mush. Not for me, but I can see why others may enjoy it. Kyle has a very different opinion from me on this one, so it’s worth giving his video review a look!

• Tricky Tides– I was quite impressed with Tricky Tides. The artwork and presentation is what drew me in, but the interesting combination between pick up/deliver and trick taking is what really sold me on the game. My main downside would be that the game takes way longer than advertised. We would simply rather play a meatier game if we are doing a 4 player game for 90 minutes.

• Tussie Mussie– A simple, beautiful game of I Cut, You Choose that doesn’t provide a compelling reason to keep coming back for more plays. That’s obviously a tough ask for an 18 card game, but Sprawlopolis (from the same publisher) manages to pull it off.

• Welcome To: Outbreak Thematic Neighborhood– This one is a hot mess. Deep Water Games was clearly going with quantity over quality on these expansions. It seems they were in such a big hurry to crank these out that they didn’t bother to properly test, polish, and streamline this expansion. The rulebook is unclear, the added gameplay poisons the base game’s fun, and the graphic design muddies the visibility of your writing.

Flingers

Games that were amusing to try at least once.

I’m blessed to have some good friends who possess solid collections and a knack for teaching their games. Most of these are games they’ve introduced me to that made for a fun night.

• Paladins of the West Kingdom– A nearly solitaire game from a publisher I’m lukewarm on… all the more impressive that enjoyed this play. While the novelty of Architects and Raiders felt overshadowed by their blandness, Paladin’s blandness is overshadowed by its juicy arc. Not one I would buy, but I wouldn’t mind playing it again.

• Taverns of Tiefenthal- I can see why this is thought of as a spiritual sibling to Quacks of Quedlinburg. Taverns largely benefits/suffers from the same strengths/weaknesses as Quacks. On the other hand, Taverns quite possibly beats out Quacks for me because bad luck is much less punishing, strategic options feel more numerous, and the theme is even more charming.

• Animal Kingdoms– Solid, simple gameplay. Very easy to teach, but enough meat on the bone for interesting decisions. The kind of game you can play with anyone. Not sure if it would hold interest beyond a few plays, but it was fun to try at a convention.

• Last Bastion– Improves on the rulebook, production, and gameplay of Ghost Stories, yet still feels largely the same. Last Bastion/Ghost Stories is an engaging cooperative game that plays best at a rapid pace with experience players, but doesn’t reach the heights of my favorite co-ops because so much of the game comes down to luck of the dice.

• Tuki– From the publisher of Azul. Tuki is an amusing real-time dexterity game we tried at a convention, but not exceptional enough for us to throw down money on.

Seekers

Interesting games that still elude me.

Whether they haven’t hooked me enough to convince me to open the wallet, or they require a ideal setting that my current situation can’t provide, these are the games that hover over the fringe of my radar and elude my reach.

• Isle of Cats– This is the big game that was missing from my Battle of the Polyominoes comparison. Drafting + polyominoes + psychedelic cats certainly sounds interesting!

• Detective: City of Angels– We weren’t huge fans of Chronicles of Crime. While amusing, it was ultimately not as satisfying as a board game without a screen; and it honestly feels kind of pointless to play with other people. Detective: City of Angels appears to be the game we wanted out of Chronicles.

• Dune- A heavy, Shut Up & Sit Down approved war game that works best at 6? Sign me up! ….Anyone?….No? *Sigh*

• Nova Luna– I’m sure I would enjoy this one, but it seems so similar to Rosenburg’s Patchwork (aside from the polyomino tiles) that I struggle to justify the purchase. Can anyone convince me to bite?

• Rail Pass– A real time cooperative dexterity game where you pass trains that are carrying physical goods to each other causing a jumble of brains and arms. Best of all, when you want to pass a train along, you have to communicate by saying “Toot toot!”

• Barrage– A heavy, nasty economic game of controlling water flow with dams for power. The overwhelmingly positive critical acclaim surrounding this one tells me it is certainly worth a go!

• Shobu– An elegant, abstract game of pushing stones off wooden boards. I’ve heard good things about this one, and the presentation is just classy.

• L.L.A.M.A.– A simple Knizia card game is always going to catch my attention. If I were in a supremely casual setting perfect for a light card game with kids and/or grandparents, I imagine this would hit the spot.

• Medium– While I usually opt for something with at least a hint of strategy, this appears to be a light, funny party game I would enjoy. Two players hold a unique topic card and must simultaneously blurt out the same word that connects the two topics, that is if they are on the same wavelength.

This concludes my walk down memory lane of the best board games of 2019! Can you think of a Lover, Keeper, Dumper, Flinger, and Seeker from 2019? Share them with us in the comments 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 Revisiting the Best Board Games of 2019 appeared first on Bitewing Games.