Out with the Ratings, in with the Prognosis

Before we dive into today’s games, I wanted to give you a heads up about a change I’ve implemented into my first impressions.  This change is regarding my “Current Rating” system that I was using up to this point.  

For many months now, I’ve been concluding my thoughts on each game with my current rating using a numerical scale out of 10.  This rating system is pulled directly from Board Game Geek, and it works perfectly fine as a way for me to quantify my feelings toward a game.  For example, if I felt a game was “good” and one that I’m “usually willing to play” then I would rate it a 7, as the BGG system directs.

As I said, that works great for me.  But I’ve begun to realize that it doesn’t necessarily work great for you, the reader.  To one person, a 7/10 could mean the game is barely passable, to another, it could mean it’s an epic failure, and both of those people would come away with a message that I did not intend to give.  Another example: While I keep and enjoy many 7/10 board games in my collection, I won’t go near a 7/10 video game or animated movie.  Or I might play a very good game and rate it a 6 simply because it’s not my style while at the same time rate an imperfect game a 10 because it is perfect for me.

I certainly tried to be consistent with my ratings, and maybe that helps for folks who regularly follow my impressions.  And I suppose if you have come to rely on my numerical ratings in any way then you could always add me as a geekbuddy on BGG and still track my ratings that way. But at any rate (ha ha), I feel it would better serve everyone if I did away with vague numbers and used a system that is more clearly understood and properly interpreted.

So of course, being a dentist who enjoys inserting dental puns into this hobby and industry (see our company name: Bitewing Games), I couldn’t help but replace my numerical ratings with a prognosis.

A prognosis is generally used in medicine as a forecast of the likely outcome of a situation like a disease or ailment.  So if a tooth with a cavity has a good prognosis, that means the dentist thinks it is fixable with a filling or crown and has a good long-term outlook.  If it instead has a poor prognosis, then they’ll usually recommend the tooth be extracted.

A forecast or prognosis feels like a fitting system for board game impressions as well.  Generally, I have the opportunity to play a game only one, two, or three times before sharing my impressions.  So while I tried to qualify my old ratings by using the word “current” and following the BGG system, and while my feelings toward a game rarely change in any significant way upon further plays, I think this new prognosis system will be more fair to the game and clear to the reader.  Here is how it works:

I’ll conclude each impression by giving the game a prognosis based on the following scale (definitions included):

Prognosis: a forecast of how the game will likely fare in my collection, and perhaps yours as well.

Excellent– Among the best in its genre.  This game will never leave my collection.

Good– A very solid game and a keeper on the shelf.

Fair– It’s fine. It’s enjoyable. But I’m not likely to seek it out or keep it around.

Poor– Really doesn’t fit my tastes; not one I want to revisit… but hey, that’s just me.

Hopeless– Never again. Run & hide. Demon be gone.

And while I feel this is a much better system, it’s still secondary and supplemental to the true meat and potatoes of these posts: everything that comes before the prognosis.  So enough with the appetizer, let’s get to that meat and potatoes…

Indigo

1 Play

I’ve been biding my time on Indigo for far too long.  The main obstacle being that the game is out of print in the US and completely abstract, meaning it was much easier for me to muster the motivation to acquire and play dozens of other Knizia Games before finally coming around to this one.  The thing that finally pushed me over the edge was discovering that it is available for purchase through Amazon Japan, and I was able to combine this game and Rumble Nation (more on that later) into the same order to get more bang for my buck on international shipping.

But I always figured I would enjoy Indigo whenever I finally got around to trying it.  It turns out that my hunch was correct.  We tried the game at 4 players where the shared incentive gameplay is maxed out.  In the 4-player game, you share three gates, one with each opponent.  The objective is to connect the gems on the board to your gates where you and your opponent will each gain a gem whenever one exits the board through your gate.  This is achieved through taking turns placing a hex tile on any empty space of the board and pushing gems along the route that they connect to.

Player turns are very Carcassonne style, where you have a hand of one tile to put out wherever you like, then you push gems through your tile (if any connect) before drawing another tile to end your turn.  You’ll set out pushing valuable rewards toward your gate of preference, maybe getting help from the opponent who is also at your gate there, only for another stinking person to come in and reroute the gem in a different direction.

Temporary alliances are formed and destroyed as the turns march onward and players cooperate together and/or sabotage each other’s plans.  It’s hilarious to see a gem get so close to one gate only for it to be connected to another long path and see it slide way off to the other end of the board.  Indigo may present itself as dry and abstract, but it’s certainly full of laughs, groans, and cheers, and it is brilliantly approachable thanks to its simple rules.  

The most important factor within the competition is the challenge to maintain a balance of favoritism where no opponent is helped too much.  Of course, I’m also interested to try the 2-player game, where everything becomes zero-sum and the experience changes dramatically.  Either way, I find Indigo to be a triumph of a family game and yet another feather in Knizia’s crowded cap.

Prognosis: Good

Savannah Park

1 Play

After being scared off from the Capstone Family Brand by my disappointing play of Juicy Fruits and near-miss feelings toward Riftforce, I talked myself out of picking up Savannah Park.  That should have been the end of the story, but I’m lucky enough to have a friend who is a massive fan of Savannah Park and happily let me try his copy.  I was still very keen to play this one, given the convenient opportunity, as Savannah Park is designed by the famous duo, Kramer and Kiesling (Renature, Mask Trilogy, and much more).

This competitive bingo-style game is all about arranging your animal hexes into large, point scoring clusters on your board.  Each player takes a turn calling out a specific animal tile, then all players must find and reposition that tile on their own boards, flipping the tile to its permanent side on the new space that it is moved to.  It’s a game of uneasy commitment where you must constantly lock things into place, usually at the most inconvenient of times and locations.

Of course, cementing a tile in one position means that you have opened up another space (wherever you just picked it up from).  So whenever it is your turn to call out a tile, choosing which spot to open up can be just as important as selecting which place to move the tile to.  The goal is to cluster matching animals together with their watering holes which become point multipliers for each other at the end of the game.  Yet you’ll have to steer away from burning trees which have the potential to eliminate your tiles from your board and severely undercut your scoring potential.

In a sense, Savannah Park is Calico (tight spatial puzzle pain) meets Tiny Towns (competitive bingo).  With Calico and Tiny Towns, I certainly enjoyed my initial plays yet eventually had my fill of them and passed them along to other gamers.  Savannah Park at least starts out along that same trend of being a solid, engaging puzzle that I get a kick out of.  There’s no telling whether I’ll find out if this one breaks the mold and holds up longer, but I have no qualms recommending it to those who are interested.

Prognosis: Good

Railroad Revolution

1 Play

I recently shared how I was bewildered (yet still pleasantly surprised) by the deceptive game Russian Railroads / Ultimate Railroads for how it threw out everything I had come to know about train games.  No route building, no shared incentive interactions, nothing.

Well now I’m just starting to feel trolled by this genre, as I recently tried Railroad Revolution and witnessed a similar subversion of expectations.  Perhaps this all has something to do with the title alliteration… This one is a worker placement train game, and while it does have route building, it doesn’t have much else of what you would expect from that combination.

I’m used to worker placement games featuring some form of interactive blocking as a core premise.  It’s usually the case of: I’m taking this spot, which means nobody else can.  Although sometimes other players can still go to that same spot for a higher cost.  Yet there are now more worker placement games than there are stars in the sky, so of course you can also find the ones that let players go anywhere they want any time they want.

But the less that worker placement games feature critical action exclusivity, the more that they lose their juicy tension.  Within this realm, worker placement simply becomes another form of solitaire action selection.  This is the place where Railroad Revolution has chosen to pull into station.

Each player has their own board featuring four possible actions: build a station in a city that you are connected to, extend your rail network, build a telegraph office, or sell some stuff on your board for money.  Each turn you’ll simply place a worker on one of those four spots and take the action.  There are no restrictions for what can be placed where or how many times, and your workers will instantly come back to your supply the moment your supply runs out.  So in reality, it’s simply an action selection board where the only thing that matters is the order in which you choose your actions and the color of worker that you place on them.

Railroad Revolution stands out by featuring four different colored specialized workers, and each one triggers a unique bonus when placed across all four possible action spaces.  Thus, the interesting decision space arises from the challenge of discerning which of the 16 bonuses best suit your assortment of workers.  It’s a compelling, if largely heads-down, efficiency puzzle.

The only time you’ll worry about your opponents is whenever they build a station or telegraph office in a spot before you, because the first person to a location earns a small, exclusive bonus displayed at that site.  But for the most part, players have much bigger fish to fry than the little extra bonuses that they may or may not claim.

Whether you are there first or not, your buildings mostly result in earning more workers, moving up tracks, and gaining points.  There are of course ways to build a bit of an engine or work toward personal objective points.  These things will steer you toward a specific strategy.

While the action planning is certainly engaging, I’d give a poor prognosis to the life expectancy of Railroad Revolution.  A few tiles mixed up on the board is rarely enough to keep these kinds of solitaire efficiency puzzles from growing stale fast.  When I’m in the mood for a worker placement game, I’m wanting to be savagely blocked at valuable spaces and painfully squeezed by opportunity costs.  Games like Bus, Caylus 1303, and Agricola are particularly good in this area.

Another problem is that I find myself becoming an increasingly harsher critic for this overdone style of game.  I’ve now seen dozens of these games that combine worker placement, economic efficiency, track advancement, and point mongering.  At some point, you start to wonder why you are investing all of your energy learning another recycled Euro with all of its custom icons and exhausting rules and unique terminology if it all merely tastes like the last game and the one before that and the one before that….  Don’t get me wrong here, it’s absolutely fine for designers to iterate on successful concepts, and it can often be fun for us gamers to explore those differences.  But when that next iteration is a medium or heavy weight game that requires a meaty teach yet churns out a samey experience, I can’t help but wonder if it was time well spent.

Prognosis: Poor

Spectaculum

2 Plays

I’m always a bit surprised to hear people accuse Reiner Knizia of designing “themeless” games or games with “pasted on themes.”  From talking to him and listening to his interviews, my take is that Reiner doesn’t really use dry mechanisms as the starting point for a new design.  Rather, he imagines what kind of experience he wants to give the players, and this leads him to a theme and mechanisms that match that intended experience.

Obviously I’ve never seen Reiner follow this design style in practice—as a gamer, fan, and publisher, I’ve only seen the end result of that process.  But even from my perspective, I’d say that most of the Knizia Games in my collection have genuine themes that fit the mechanisms and/or emotions of the game fairly well.  

I would agree that Reiner’s games don’t always appear to be as thematic as others—possibly because he prefers to trim out the fat or simplify down the systems rather than permit thematic fluff in his games.  But I would argue that Tigris & Euphrates is a far more thematic civilization game than Tapestry.  And Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation is more thematic than Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth.  And The Quest for El Dorado is more thematic than most deck builders.

For as much as I complain about modern Euro games being dry and soulless, I’ve played far more Knizia Games, and its rare for me to have the same complaint within his ludography.  Yet where he has over 600 published games across decades of game design, you’re definitely going to come across some titles with paper-thin themes.  Spectaculum is one such design.

Spectaculum is, at its heart, a cube rails game.  Only the cubes have been replaced with discs and the railroads have been replaced with traveling circuses.  The objective is still the same: make the most money.  But rather than buying and selling stocks in railroad companies, you are sponsoring and releasing circus performers.  And rather than reaching new towns and cities for economic gain, the circus companies are delighting crowds or flubbing performances resulting in an increase or decrease of their value.

While the production tries its hardest to remind you that it’s a traveling circus game, the theme instantly washes off the moment players start taking their actions.  From there, it’s simply a cold, calculating, tactical procession of buying low, selling high, and influencing stock values.

On your turn, you may sponsor and/or release a performer up to two times.  You also must place the three disks hidden in your hand which were randomly drawn from the bag.  Or you can play the tactical variant (my preference) where you always have a 4th disk in your hand but still only place 3. Disks must be placed adjacent to their own color, and the objective is to cover the tiles on the map.  These tiles can increase/decrease a circus’s value by up to 3 or they cause an immediate payout of 2 ducats per performer of that color you own.  These payouts can go in either direction—as an expense or as dividends.

So just like all other cube rails games, you have shared incentives (when multiple players are sponsoring the same color) and incentivized sabotage (when opponents own more stock in a company than you).  Of all the cube rails games I’ve tried, Spectaculum is the least opaque of the bunch—meaning it is fairly obvious what players can and should do with their discs and investments.  Push purple to ruin because they own it, help yellow to gain value because you own it, buy blue while it’s cheap and surrounded by positive tiles, sell red while it’s expensive and before it reaches negative tiles, etc.  Yet because you aren’t sure which three disks your opponents drew out of the bag for their next turn, the tough decisions come in the form of hedging bets and taking risks.  And the bag draw means that you can’t always do what you want to, you have to adapt to the colors entering your hand.

The fact that you can decide whether to sell a stock (release a performer) early or ride it until the end of the game for a final payout makes Spectaculum feel less like a cube rails game and more like a stock market game (similar to Bear Raid).  There’s enough fuzziness to the possibilities that you’ll try to make a good decision but rarely be confident that it was the right one until several turns later.

It’s a solid design, as one would expect from the Maestro.  But it is also overly tactical, incremental, procedural, and dry.  And it is prone to petering out toward the end when one or more colors are blocked off from remaining tiles yet players keep drawing those useless colors from the bag.  

As a stock market manipulation game, I still prefer Bear Raid which features more dynamic strategies and dramatic moments.  As a shared-incentive Knizia design, I definitely prefer the faster and funnier Indigo or the far more tense and strategic Stephenson’s Rocket.  But as a cube rails game, Spectaculum certainly stands out for being approachable and offering some key twists to the core objective of making money.  The main problem is that I have too many other games that scratch the same itch far better.

Prognosis: Fair

Super-Skill Pinball Ramp It Up

3 Plays

Well, it was a good run, folks.  Bumpers were bumped, flippers were flipped, points were scored, combos were achieved, and pinballs were flung.  And I certainly appreciated the thematic touches that Super-Skill Pinball brought to the dead-horse genre of roll & writes.  But after 12 total plays (between the original 4-cade and now this sequel, Ramp It Up), I think it’s safe to say that I am thoroughly burned out on Super-Skill Pinball and its largely heads-down, high-score chasing genre.

Unfortunately, this style of game has proven to strictly adhere to the law of diminishing returns.  If I’m to play a solo or solitaire style of game, then I much prefer my challenges to present a grueling win/lose scenario than a high score chase.  I’ll always choose a tense objective over a meandering one.  But like a dog who catches a car they’ve been chasing, when I triumph over the win/lose obstacle, I’m not sure what to do with the game next… unless it presents me with new obstacles and challenges to overcome. 

While Super-Skill Pinball has proven to be a system that is endlessly expandable—with 12 different tables already released across 3 games, and undoubtedly more on the way—the core challenge and decisions remain largely the same from the 7 tables I’ve tried.  The variety is awesome, to be sure.  But the manner in which I play the game has plateaued long ago.  No longer do I feel like I’m discovering new strategies or honing my skills.  It doesn’t matter what combination of dice rolls or table theme that you put in front of me, I’m still on autopilot selecting the optimal decision out of a narrow range of choices.  And when a game becomes less an explorative adventure and more an on-the-rails exercise, that’s when you’ve lost me.

So does that mean that Super-Skill Pinball: Ramp It Up is a bad game?  Absolutely not.  12 voluntary plays out of any system is miles better than what most games would ever get out of me.  And we found much joy in the clever ideas and thematic touches that each table and the overall design itself conjured.  But if you’re like me, then Super Skill Pinball—or basically any roll & write for that matter—will have a limited shelf life with a high risk of genre burn-out.  On the other hand, if you’re just looking for something to wet your whistle for at least a few solid plays, then Ramp It Up will likely hit the spot.

Where else will you find a pinball-themed board game that expertly evokes its source material on multiple levels and offers you a wide variety of exciting themes from Star Trek to pro wrestling to casino heists and more?

Prognosis: Fair

Rumble Nation

2 Plays

I’ve come to find that there are a lot of dangerous rabbit holes in this hobby.  Holes that you barely step into—just dipping your toes, really—and next thing you know you’re plummeting to the darkest depths.  These holes would include things like Dice Tower or Shut Up & Sit Down videos, Board Game Geek’s labyrinth of rankings and forums,  Kickstarter’s endless stream of hype-infused offerings, the ludography of legendary designers like Reiner Knizia or Uwe Rosenberg, accessories including metal coins and card sleeves, the mesmerizing allure of designing or publishing your own games, and the discovery of international game store webpages.

That last rabbit hole is perhaps the most recent one to get me.  Once you cross the line (known as the ocean) and start ordering games from overseas through Amazon or obscure foreign shops, then you’re in for a world of expensive shipping and delightful hidden gems.

Rumble Nation is one that I recently ordered through Amazon Japan (alongside Reiner Knizia’s Indigo which is bafflingly out of print in the US).  English speakers are often spoiled in this industry in that most games include a set of English rules and components, even if the game does not originate from an English publisher.  This is true of Rumble Nation—a game that hit my radar after Kellen’s (Board Game Barrage Podcast) raving of its quick, simple area majority goodness.  There’s another rabbit hole for you—board game podcasts.

Rumble Nation is basically what you get if you condense El Grande down to 30 minutes and replace the turn bidding and action drafting with strategic dice designation.  On your turn simply roll 3 dice and pair 2 together.  The sum of the pair determines which exact area you add cubes to and the solo die determines how many cubes you add there.  You’ll take turns deploying your forces until all player cubes are out on the board, then you’ll simply resolve each area in ascending order—handing out first and second place points as you go.

The magic of Rumble Nation is not found in something like novel mechanisms, fancy components, or a strong theme.  Nothing here is particularly new, fresh, or exotic.  Rather, it’s the tight weaving of clever, careful mechanisms that form an airtight tapestry of interesting decisions and exciting outcomes.

It’s true, you are a victim of your dice rolls, but you can always re-roll one time if you don’t like your first dice results.  And you can split your three dice however you’d like.  If you put all your cubes out first, then you’ll sit as victim to your opponents for the remainder of the deployment phase, but going out first gains you the benefit of winning every single tiebreaker.  If you gun for the low value regions (2, 3, 4, etc.) then you’ll be winning way less points, but those regions are resolved first and the winner of each region gets to add two reinforcement cubes to every adjacent region that has yet to be resolved, most notably the large-point regions.

Rumble Nation is as tight of a design as they come.  It’s polished down to a perfect pearl of a game that maintains a razor-sharp focus on what matters most: tough decisions and tense interactions.  It may not offer much in terms of style or pizzazz, but it absolutely packs a punch.

Prognosis: Good

Azul: Queen’s Garden

1 Play

With a fourth Azul game out in the wild, and a chocolate edition on the way, I can’t help but wonder when the Azul fatigue will set in (if it hasn’t started already).  The danger of milking an IP until it runs dry is that newcomers can be overwhelmed while veterans can become burned out and disillusioned.  But I suppose the benefit is that the creators get easy money while super fans get more of what they love.

At the very least, Azul: Queen’s Garden differentiates itself from its three siblings by being the least Azul-like game.  Gone is the circle of factory displays where players draft tiles from one display and push the rest into a center pool.  Gone is the narrow, focused range of 5 or 6 tile types.  This is replaced with 12 tile combinations (of symbol and color) and a growing line of tile displays that can all be drafted from like a center pool.  In Queen’s Garden, you’re not only drafting and arranging the chunky bakelite tiles, but you’re also drafting and arranging the garden expansions that create spaces for your tiles to be placed.

The six tile symbols are associated with a point value and placement cost ranging from 1-6.  If you want to place a 6-point tile from your drafted supply, then you’ll need to pay 6 tiles and/or expansions from your supply that have a matching symbol or color.  Where you’re not allowed to pay with exact duplicates, Queen’s Garden becomes a tight game of economic decisions where the only thing that can bail you out of an expense that is just out of reach is the precious joker tile.  You start with few joker tiles and can earn more by fully surrounding a garden feature (printed on your player board) with tiles.

The objective of all your garden construction feels very similar to something like Calico.  The goal is to connect tiles of the same symbol and/or color in order to score big points at the end of the game (they’ll only score their full value if they are part of a set of 3 or more).  You can also earn round points by simply having colors or symbols in your garden that match the round wheel.

A while back, I wrote an article that compared the first three Azuls and crowned my favorite of the three. I had pinned the original Azul as a pure cutthroat classic, Stained Glass as an awkward spin-off, and Summer Pavilion as a friendlier gamer’s version.  I suppose Queen’s Garden joins the family as the heaviest game with less punishing drafting interactions yet more punishing spatial/economic planning.  Where it does more to separate itself from the pack yet squarely targets hobbyist gamers, I’d say that Queen’s Garden renders Stained Glass and Summer Pavilion even more obsolete.  My favorite remains vanilla Azul for its sharp simplicity and heightened drafting interaction, but at least Queen’s Garden has something genuinely unique to offer.

Prognosis: Fair

 An Empty Throne

2 Plays

We’re finally on to another of my most anticipated games of 2022, delivered merely weeks after the close of the Kickstarter campaign, as promised.  I suppose that’s the benefit of calling your company Small Box Games and restricting your components to a tuck box, sheet of rules, and deck of cards.  Full marks to the publisher for a solid turnaround and production in that regard.

I’ve heard talk of designer John Clowdus from his most popular designs including Omen: A Reign of War and Mezo.  Furthermore, quick 2-player games are right up our alley (we’ll be publishing a line of 2-player games before too long), so I was looking forward to my time with An Empty Throne.

Straight out the box, the first thing that caught my eye was just how much text is printed on all the cards.  The fronts all have sentences or even paragraphs of text, the backs have text (on roughly half the cards), and most shocking of all—the rulebook has text 😜.  Seems a bit hypocritical for a wordy person like myself to be complaining about too much text, but here were are.

The decision to have a wordy deck is a double-edged sword: On the one hand, you can find basically all the rules of the game laid out clearly on the text of those cards.  On the other hand, you’re going to spend a whole lot of time reading and re-reading cards.  To be honest, the game would probably be 1/3 its length if you simply cut out all the time we spent reading the cards in our hand and on the table.

So my only question for interested folks is this: What is your tolerance for text?  If your tolerance is super low, like my wife, then you probably won’t enjoy the game, even if you understand the strategy and win.  If your tolerance is reluctantly middling, then you’ll likely enjoy the game but wish it could exist in a cleaner form—and there is a very real risk that you’ll abandon the game far sooner than it deserves to go back to your other 2-player favorites that demand less energy and effort.  But if your text tolerance is high, then you are in for a real treat.  My tolerance is probably somewhere between those last two.

An Empty Throne reminds me of games like Air, Land, & Sea or Battle Line where you are competing head to head with another player by lining up your cards across fields of play.  The big difference here is that each field is not in direct competition with the opponent cards across from it.  You’re still watching your opponent’s every move and looking for ways to disrupt their plans, but their success in a field does not prevent you from having success in that same field.

In that sense, the game is a bit friendlier.  The goal is simply to score the most points by assembling proper sets of cards (“coalitions” that trigger “flipped fields”), retaining valuable cards in your hand (“Refuge Kiths”), or simply arranging sets of cards that exceed 12 in their total value.  Your turn consists of two different actions (from three possible choices), and those actions basically consist of playing, drawing, or moving cards.  As the game can end rather quickly, you’ll feel the pressure to draw the best cards from face-up piles and synergize your actions by playing cards into the right fields at the right time to trigger both recruit and impact abilities.

Those abilities are probably where the game is most interesting.  Each card essentially features a “when sitting on top of the deck” ability and a “when played” ability.  If I play a card from my hand into a field, then I can either trigger the deck’s ability (from the draw pile sitting in that same field), or I can trigger the played card’s ability.  But, if those two cards are the same suit or the card that I played has a lower value between the two, then I can efficiently trigger both abilities.

The meat of Empty Throne lies within the card abilities and game state manipulation.  You can trigger combos that result in a surprise coalition and flipped field (earning you 2 valuable end-game points), and you can slow down your opponent by messing with their played cards (through returns, steals, or swaps).  

For a 15-30 minute game, it’s quite an amusing little system to explore.  The frustration comes in the fact that there are 8 different card types, most with 2 unique abilities (Recruit and Impact).  These 13 effects are unique enough to be situationally interesting, yet similar enough that they blur together and are virtually impossible to memorize.  So like I said, you spend a lot of energy reading and re-reading cards.  But is it worth all that effort?… Depends on who you ask.

Prognosis: Good

Trailblazers launches next week on Kickstarter! Check out the pre-launch page and follow along.

Prognosis: a forecast of how the game will likely fare in my collection, and perhaps yours as well.

Excellent– Among the best in its genre.  This game will never leave my collection.

Good– A very solid game and a keeper on my shelf.

Fair– It’s fine. It’s enjoyable. But I’m not likely to seek it out or keep it around.

Poor– Really doesn’t fit my tastes; not one I want to revisit… but hey, that’s just me.

Hopeless– Never again. Run & hide. Demon be gone.

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, including the upcoming Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

The post 1st Impressions of Savannah Park, An Empty Throne, Azul: Queen’s Garden, Super Skill Pinball: Ramp It Up, and more! appeared first on Bitewing Games.

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.

Nick is joined by his lovely wife, Camille, as they discuss their Top 10 Board Games for Couples.  Whether you have a SO, a friend, or a stranger willing to play a 2-player game with you, we think you’ll find some killer suggestions within this discussion.

1:29 – Meet Camille
5:57 – About this list
7:53 – Cami’s 1st pick
11:29 – Nick’s Best Huge Sprawling Game
16:29 – Cami’s favorite no brain required game & Nick’s Most Prized Possession
20:46 – Nick’s Best Cooperative Game
23:43 – Cami’s next polyomino pick
25:08 – Nick’s Most Addictive Game
28:48 – Cami’s Chess-style preference
30:43 – Nick’s Most Polarizing Game
34:43 – Cami’s go-to card game
37:08 – Nick’s Best Non-Confrontational Game
40:31 – Cami & Nick’s Endlessly Entertaining Pick
44:17 – Nick’s Best AP-Inducing Game(s) + Cami’s similar alternative
50:13 – Cami’s favorite classic
53:21 – Nick’s Old Reliable Choice
56:03 – Cami’s final pick
59:00 – Nick & Cami’s Favorite New Game
1:06:11 – An exciting upcoming reveal… (Click here to follow along)

The post Top 10 Board Games for Couples — Podcast Exclusive 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!

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Azul is one of the hottest board games of the past decade for hobby gamers and casuals alike. The only problem is, there are now THREE versions to choose from. So which Azul is best?!? Let’s find out…

Cats or Dogs? Hot dogs or Marshmallows? Snowmen or sandcastles? Eating or sleeping? Which is best?!? These are the eternal dilemmas that mankind must struggle over. For surely all things must be ranked and compared until a universal tier list has been established spanning all thoughts and things between existence, imagination, and beyond.

No single man or woman has the capacity to complete this daunting task alone. Indeed, we must each do our own part in contrasting the few things within our grasp and hope that one day our posterity will place the final piece into the tier list puzzle and our collective efforts will bring humankind to knowledge perfected.

Today, I do my small part… Which Azul is best, you ask? Let us begin.

Azul (2017)

Let’s talk about Azul, the OG, the one that started it all. If you want a nice overview of the whole game, check out Kyle’s video review or written review. I’ll be skipping this part and jumping straight to the comparisons.

Since its release in 2017, vanilla Azul has been one of the hottest board games in the market. It is currently ranked the #1 abstract board game of all time. It makes sense that this version of Azul is currently ranked higher than its siblings, as it is the one that started it all. But does it still hold its ground against newer reincarnations?

Azul is undoubtedly the most accessible version of the three. It contains the simplest combination of rules and mechanisms, making it the easiest to teach to your friends and family. It often gets recommended by Azul series veterans for this very reason. Personally, I find this recommendation logic to be silly.

If you look at all three versions of Azul, they all fall into the same complexity level. Boardgamegeek.com has a universal “complexity scale” that is used by players to rank the complexity of individual board games. The scale ranges from 1-5, with 1 being “light” and 5 being “heavy.” All three Azuls land in the medium-light ranking and they range from 1.78 (Azul) to 1.99 (Azul: Summer Pavilion). When people recommend vanilla Azul purely because it is the most accessible, they are really splitting hairs here. If a player can handle the simplest version (Azul), then they can certainly handle one tiny extra rule or layer of the other versions.

So where does this Azul truly stand out? After playing each version several times, it is obvious to me that the original Azul contains the most tension and interaction of them all. I’m not just talking about the occasional final draft dump of too many tiles into your negative-point floor line. Because of the simplicity of tile placement, this game makes reading your opponents’ boards and predicting their decisions not only possible, but essential.

For example, I may look at my board and determine that I‘d really like to have that pair of reds over here, but that last blue over there is absolutely critical to my success. I can’t take them all in one turn, so what will I do? As I examine my wife’s board, I note that she could benefit from taking either of these options as well! Oh boy… So then I analyze deeper… I try to immerse myself into her mind. What tiles does she care about most? What option does she dread being snatched up by her opponent? I suddenly realize that she likely cares most about that pair of reds and equally as much about a triplet of black tiles. As risky as it sounds, I know that I can ignore that essential blue for another turn and snatch the reds out from under her first!

While predicting an opponent’s moves is deeply satisfying, I’ve had moments in vanilla Azul where I was able to predict three opponents’ moves and take advantage of this knowledge. This isn’t because I’m some kind of Azul genius (my wife has more wins than I do), rather, it’s because the simplicity of the design and elegance of the drafting allows for a tremendous amount of tactical telepathy between opponents. The reimplementations of Azul sacrifice this tantalizing ingredient in order to add more depth to the tile placement and scoring.

Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra (2018)

What an odd duck, Stained Glass is. For all you Harry Potter fans, this version is the Luna Lovegood of the Azul series. All three Azuls have (nearly) the exact same drafting mechanisms, but I would argue that this one has the most unique tile placement and scoring mechanisms.

While a round of Stained Glass can end just as brutally as a round in vanilla Azul (with one person raking in a huge blow of negative points), it ultimately elects to make the tile placement and scoring more flexible and strategic.

Players have a one-directional glazier figure that they will position above a single column where they can place their tiles. The only way to reset your glazier to the beginning of your columns is to burn an entire turn and miss out on drafting tiles. Leaping far with your glazier to fill later columns will slow down your initial progress but accelerate your later scoring. This would seem like the only optimal way to play, but the changing bonus point color and dwindling drafting options will keep players on their toes.

While I appreciate the depth that Stained Glass adds to its player boards, I simultaneously miss the interactive depth that it sacrifices within the central factory displays. In this game, I am much less frequently scanning the competition and their layouts. Opponents simply have too many options for me to feel like I’m a frequent factor or brilliant mind-reader at the table, and I have much more important things to puzzle out on my own board.

Azul: Summer Pavilion (2019)

I like to call Azul: Summer Pavilion the most gamer-friendly version of the three. Why is that, you ask? Simply put, Summer Pavilion minimizes the feel-bads and maximizes the feel-goods.

While negative points are still a possibility in Summer Pavilion, they are essentially obliterated compared to the other Azuls. No more do you have to dread the possibility of a pile of negative-point tiles landing in your lap. You can even save leftover tiles for the next round!

Further unlike the other Azuls, there are no immediate commitments to placing tiles on your player board. The decision of where to place a tile is much less frequently filled with regret later on, as you only ever place tiles after all the drafting in a round has taken place. And if that’s not enough breathing-room for you, there are even more options of where you can place a single tile on your player board, especially when one color acts as a wild each round to fill in your needed cost gaps.

The Summer Pavilion player board is like a continual pinball machine where tiles are landing all over the place ringing more point bells and flashing more colorful bonuses as one combo leads to another. The end-game bonuses are equally as diverse and enticing. This Azul gives players so much to feast on once the drafting ends and the placement begins.

If vanilla Azul is a knife-fight in a phone booth on a stormy night in London, then Summer Pavilion lives up to its name as a sunny afternoon on a beach towel by the Pacific Ocean. As you can guess, Summer Pavilion trades significant tension for copious rewards.

So which Azul is best?!?

At last, we have arrived. When I first played through each Azul, I felt as though they were equally valuable and beautifully unique children. But alas, they are not my children, and they are most definitely not equal. After a clash of titans upon the tops of the tables, only one can emerge victorious…

I must declare to true champion to be Azul (2017)!

More than any other version, vanilla Azul has me reading my opponents’ boards, predicting their moves, and executing tactical drafts to take advantage of their probable behavior. Later versions elect to reduce this depth of player interaction by expanding options for tile placement.

While the OG Azul is definitely the meanest of the three (a downside for some people), it is undoubtedly the most tense and thrilling. If you’ve read my blog series, Tabletop Tastes: My Favorite Flavors in Board Games, it should come to no surprise to you that I crave the spicy tension and salty player interaction that classic Azul provides.

Even so, I can’t fault players for declaring Summer Pavilion to be their favorite. It is both highly forgiving and deeply rewarding. When I first played it, I was tempted to jump ship and put it above the rest. The productions even have incremental improvements with each new version. But going back to the first Azul and noticing the contrast between them helped me to realize what I love most about this series.

While vanilla Azul is on the highly tense and interactive end of the spectrum, and Summer Pavilion is on the happy rainbow end of the spectrum, Stained Glass feels more and more like the weak link between them. By attempting to combine both the spicy and the sweet elements of its siblings, it fails to find a cravable corner of its own. Don’t get me wrong, Stained Glass is a solid game! It just struggles to justify its place on my shelf as it sits between classic Azul and Summer Pavilion.

Which Azul is your favorite? If you haven’t played them all, does a specific version catch your eye?

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“What are the best board games for 2 players?”

My father-in-law just texted me that very question last week. Why I didn’t already have this blog post written – who knows? My immediate response was “for who?” Is the game for your parents who have only ever played Uno? Is it for your friend who loves 3-hour long strategy board games? Let’s way oversimplify this and categorize the games into two groups.

1 – Light Games. These games are typically shorter, easier to learn, with simpler decision making. These games are really for anyone.

2 – Medium Games. These games are typically for your friend who is a bit more into board games and won’t mind having to read through a rulebook, and who wants “meatier” decision making.

THE online place for board games is Board Game Geek. There you can find a scale of “weight” or complexity. The scale is ranges from 1-5. Now, it isn’t scientific, but it is helpful to know generally how complex a game is. As a reference Uno is ranked 1.1 and Risk comes in at 2.0. We’ll include the BGG (Board Game Geek) weight as a helpful reference.

Top 10 Best Board Games for 2 Players (in no particular order):

Light Games

Jaipur

2 Players // 30 minutes // 1.5 BGG

A fast-paced card game with a blend of risk and luck. In Jaipur you are collecting and selling goods, deciding how long to hold onto cards before selling them to earn points. This 30 minute game is played over 3 rounds, and there is nothing that says you can’t just play one round, for an even shorter 10 minute game. This may be my number 1 recommendation for a two player game – see our video review for more details.

The Mind

2-4 Players // 15 minutes // 1.1 BGG

This is more of a stocking stuffing, filler type of game. In the world of gaming this is far from a full meal, more of a very light snack. The Mind is a deck of numbered cards from 1-100. Players each have a hand of cards. The goal is for each player to lay their cards in ascending order…but there is no talking. So, you are just left to guess at what point you should lay your next card. It sounds silly, and it is. But this silly, fun game is sure to bring some laughs. It plays well with 2, and even plays up to 4 players.

Hanamikoji

2 Players // 15 minutes // 1.7 BGG

Hanamikoji (also published as Jixia Academy) is deceptively simple game of I cut, you choose. It’s much like when you cut some slices of steaming hot pizza and secretly pray that nobody takes the slice with the biggest, juiciest toppings. Because both players are working with incomplete information as to where each card lies, there are plenty of opportunities for crafty plays.

Welcome To

1-100 Players // 25 minutes // 1.8 BGG

It seems weird that a game can play 1-100 players, but Welcome To… is a phenomenal game in part because it works for a lot of different group sizes, including 2 players. This game is a lot of fun in that each player has the same set of cards available to them, so by the end of the game there are no complaints of “I just didn’t get good cards.” Each player has a piece of paper where they will build houses along with parks, pools, and more.

Mandala

2 Players // 20 minutes // 1.9 BGG

Mandala claimed a spot in our top 5 board games of 2019 with its crisp design and engaging fun. The game contains only 6 different types of cards represented by their color. On your turn, you may either play a single card to the middle and draw 1-3 more, or play any number of cards of the same color to your side. Things get wild as both players strive to cut off their opponent from high scoring cards.

Patchwork

2 Players // 30 minutes // 1.7 BGG

A game about quilting may seem like it wouldn’t work in the market, which is all the more impressive that hobby gamers rate this high enough to land it in the top 100 games of all time. Patchwork offers such an interestingly unknowable dichotomy of incentives between time, buttons, and shapes. This puzzly polyomino game will keep you coming back to patch a quilt together again and again.

Medium Games

7 Wonders Duel

2 Players // 40 minutes // 2.2 BGG

The 2-player version of the classic 7 Wonders. The unique method of collecting cards in this game provides opportunities for meaningful decision making. Cards are laid out in a pyramid, where players are only allowed to take uncovered cards – this lets you really strategize as you take cards and uncover cards for your opponent. Themed around constructing different wonders of the world, this game with beautiful art and meaningful decisions comes in as one of the best board games for 2 players.

Dominion

2-4 Players // 30 minutes // 2.4 BGG

Dominion is the tried and true classic deck building game. There is a “market” of cards available for each player to purchase. Players place these purchased cards into their own deck, which grows throughout the game and will be re-shuffled over and over. This game is beloved by many for a very good reason. There are certainly meatier games in this same category, but Dominion is an easy go-to recommendation from me, especially for someone just getting into the board game hobby.

Azul

2-4 Players // 45 minutes // 1.8 BGG

Azul is undoubtedly one of the best board games for 2 players. Players take turns drafting colored tiles to their player board. Later in the round, players score points based on how they’ve placed their tiles to decorate the palace walls. Extra points are scored for specific patterns and completing sets. There are a lot of great decisions to be made in this game, and it is absolutely wonderful at 2, 3, or 4 players. See our video review for a more in-depth discussion.

Five Tribes

2-4 Players // 40-80 minutes // 2.9 BGG

I have fond memories of playing the age-old Mancala in elementary school… mostly of getting crushed by another girl in my class. Yet, I have even fonder memories of playing Five Tribes. This colorful game takes the simple action of Mancala, picking up a bundle of bits from one section and distributing them into other sections, and morphs it into a full blown board game.

When distributing a single bundle of meeples in Five Tribes, the rule is that you have to drop the final meeple onto a tile that already contains its color; then you earn all the meeples of that color from that tile (including the one you just dropped there). You must choose your color bonus wisely, as each meeple color rewards you in a unique way.

That wraps up our recommendations for the best board games for 2 players! Of course, we know this rabbit hole goes much deeper than 10 games. Add your suggestions in the comments below!

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Now that last year’s offerings have had time to settle in our stomachs, we take a look back and declare our top board games of 2019!

Honorable Mentions

While they didn’t quite make the top 10, these games were still winners in our book…

Horrified

Horrified puts a nice monster-movie spin on the cooperative system made popular by Pandemic. Players team up to save the town from multiple monsters including Dracula, The Invisible Man, The Mummy, and more! This one is great for casual fun with families and friends! But make no mistake, it’s no pushover.

On Tour

I first played On Tour at Origins 2019 at a fancy Craps-like table with a large group of strangers. It was highly satisfying to take a turn rolling the two beefy dice by chucking them across the table against its padded walls. While I wasn’t able to bring the table home, On Tour has earned a spot on my shelf as a simple and satisfying roll & write. On Tour’s tightness proves that even a game without player interaction can have plenty of tension.

Unmatched

While the gameplay in Unmatched doesn’t necessarily wow me, the presentation does! Quinns from Shut Up & Sit Down describes it best by calling it “popcorn fun.” The ever increasing variety of heroes and packages are somehow always enticing me to dive in for more light, combative amusement.

Irish Gauge

Admittedly, Irish Gauge probably deserves a spot in my top 10 games of 2019, and perhaps even my top 50 games of all time. It’ll have to stay in the honorable mentions for now because I’ve only played it once and it technically released before 2019. But Capstone games decided to bring it to mass market last year, and they did a knock-out job with with production. I’m hungry to dive back into this elegant railroad game with a 1-sheet rulebook and a world of Irish possibilities.

PARKS

PARKS is a feast for the eyes and some warmth for the soul. This game is the perfect case study for how to do a thoughtful production. The serviceable gameplay is propelled by its presentation into an absolute pleasure of an experience. After an hour of light fun, you will come away with a hunger to visit a National Park.

Next Page: Top 10 Board Games of 2019

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Introduction

I dove into the deep end of the board game community over a year ago. With helpful guides including Shut Up & Sit Down’s recommended games, The Dice Tower’s Top 100, Board Game Geek (BGG) rankings, Geekbuddy comments, and more, my hunt has led me through the “Cult of the New”, Cult of the Classic, and many games in between.

I’ve played and purchased more board games in the past year than I have in my entire life, and it has been a blast! The true catalyst that launched me into the hobby was when I discovered a passion for designing board games during the summer of 2018. My experience learning and playing new-to-me tabletop games has been one of both research and adventure, discovery and inspiration. As I’ve sought to feed my creative drive, I’ve also uncovered an explorative hunger and developed a personal palate. Playing board games and creating board games are cyclical interests for me that have consumed much of my free time since they began.

So while I feel my understanding of the board game industry is well researched and experienced on one hand, I realize my complete amateur status on the other. Perhaps my perspective will offer you something new to consider, and I certainly hope you won’t hesitate to offer me suggestions as well.  

If you feel we may have similar tastes, and you have a BGG account, please feel free to add me as a Geekbuddy! I’m always eager to hear what you fine folks think of any games I am curious about, and I’ve found the Geekbuddy tool to be invaluable in narrowing down my wishlist. It’s also possible that your suggestion for me is already on my wishlist, so check out my most anticipated new-to-me games list!

So without further adO, I present to you my current Top 50 Games!

#50 Roll for the Galaxy

Recommended for: Gamers

I seem to like this game more every time I play it. Always engaging and interesting with loads of variety. The rules and symbols can seem intimidating at first, but the player shields contain basically all the information you need to play the game (and remember the rules). Very well done production.

I realize how popular Terraforming Mars is, but Roll for the Galaxy is my preferred space engine builder thanks to its zippy play time, better production, and higher fun factor.

#49 Skull

Recommended for: Everyone

Skull is a game of bluffing filtered down into its purest form. I love those moments when I can get on a roll and make my opponents feel like I am reading them like a book.

If you enjoy bluffing games like Poker, but you want a game that throws out everything but the good old bluffing, then Skull is for you!

#48 Takenoko

Recommended for: Everyone

Fantastic family game. We absolutely love the theme and components; the presentation is a home-run. The feeling of watering bamboo tiles to build bamboo towers and moving the Panda to eat bamboo comes together so nicely.

The event die is interesting in how it encourages players to adapt their strategy on each turn.

There is definitely a significant amount of luck involved in drawing the right or wrong objective cards (especially late in the game). This can make some plays quite frustrating for competitive players.

The Takenoko: Chibis expansion helps with mitigating some bad luck and adds some really interesting mechanics to the game, so I would suggest getting the expansion if you enjoy the base game.

#47 The Quest for El Dorado

Recommended for: Everyone

There’s something about this game that is so slick, streamlined, and satisfying. Perhaps the obvious answer is: Reiner Knizia. I love how this deck-builder makes you plan ahead and consider the long-term consequences of buying all those machete cards when a dense area of water and villages lie ahead in the distance.

There’s also something to be said of a game that contains all the essential rules on the thin rectangular player boards, making for an easy-breezy teach leading to an epic, tense race.

The Quest for El Dorado has served as a major case-study and inspiration for the snowboarding deck-builder that I’ve been designing myself.

#46  The Fox in the Forest

Recommended for: Everyone

I grew up playing Rook from time to time with relatives. Having an auction based on your hand of cards always felt like such a clever way to mitigate luck in a trick-taking game. It never occurred to me that losing a trick could be just as much fun as winning a trick.

Enter The Fox in the Forest. I love how players can spend early tricks baiting their opponent, testing the waters, while late tricks find them desperately struggling to balance their wins and losses. Man, I need to play this again.

As I’ve been designing a trick-taking game inspired by hot air balloon competitions, The Fox in the Forest has been instrumental in helping me refine the mechanisms of my design.

#45 Startups

Recommended for: Everyone

I picked up Startups very recently (thanks to the fine folks at SU&SD), and found it to be delightfully similar to Arboretum. Both games reward clever hand management among calculated discards and well-timed plays. Startups is certainly the milder of the two, but still a solid card game I’m hungry to play again.

Startups is also my introductory game to Oink Games; their minimalist design and production is actually quite charming, in my opinion. I stumbled across Startups in a random board game store while out of town, and now Insider is next on my list to try. I’m also quite familiar with the famous A Fake Artist Goes to New York, although I haven’t played it, as it shares some similarities with a party game that my wife and I have in the works.

#44 Dominion (Second Edition)

Recommended for: Everyone

Dominion reminds me of a good bowl of vanilla ice cream. It’s nothing flashy, but it’s a fine-tuned base of deck-building that seemingly goes well with almost anything. Sometimes it’s just nice to go back to some smooth, quick simplicity and bask in Old Faithful.

To me, this game has plenty of tension within the decision space of cards to purchase and cards combinations you hope to draw; but for those looking for more player interaction, it seems that the later deck-builders it inspired fill this need better. I’m particularly enamored with Arctic Scavengers adding in the option to save a card for combat (even as a bluff) rather than play or discard it; this particular mechanism fits perfectly into my snowboarding deck builder design of storing cards as a snowball stash.

#43 Watergate

Recommended for: Everyone

Watergate captures and streamlines the element of tension that I’ve so come to love in my favorite games. This is the only game that I don’t own and haven’t played multiple times (yet), but it left a massive first impression with its novel historical theme and focused gameplay. I love that the cards have multiple uses and provide a deeper decision space beyond just deciding which card to play but how to play them.

#42 Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

Recommended for: Everyone

Deception takes the ever popular Werewolf/Mafia style of social deduction gameplay, combines it with the basic premise of Clue, and gives it just enough mechanical framework to satisfy everyone involved. The cognitive deducers can feel clever as they narrow down the probable weapon and key evidence, and the social influencers can steer the discussion and cast suspicion.

#41 Decrypto

Recommended for: Everyone

Decrypto blows the ever popular Codenames out of the water for me. I love how the clues you offer contain long-term consequences. The game forces you to think outside the box by avoiding new clues that are to closely related to old clues. One of my favorite moments is during a tie-breaker when teams must guess the exact words of their opponents.

If you enjoy Codenames, you have gotta try Decrypto!

Next Page: Games 40-31

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They may not be universally loved, but everyone should at least try a cooperative game, and Pandemic is the one that has stood the test of time. It pits you and your friends against the game itself. Will you find a cure before time runs out and humanity is doomed?  You may find that you prefer a bit more tension and competition between players, but you might just discover that you enjoy the experience and dynamics of working as a team.

KYLE – SUSHI GO PARTY!

An adorable game that is simple enough everyone can play, but interesting enough that few people will turn it down. Sushi Go Party introduces the mechanism of drafting – each player has cards in their hand, selects one card, and passes the rest onto their neighbor. And that is the game. You select and pass cards, with the goal of creating unique collections of Sushi. Different types of Sushi provide different point combinations. It is fast to learn and to play, and did I mention how adorable the little Sushi are? Go find out for yourself!

 

NICK – THE MIND

The Mind is less a structured game and more a thrilling experience with lots of tense and exciting moments. Super easy and entertaining to teach and introduce to others.  Kudos to Wolfgang Warsch for creating such a brilliant and innovative activity!

This simple game throws out everything you’ve come to expect in a standard board or card game (strategic planning, calculated maneuvering, etc.) and boils down the fun to the purest essence of playing by gut feeling.  Everyone must cooperate to play their hand of cards in ascending numerical order in increasingly harder rounds without communicating ever.  The Mind is surprisingly basic, but you will be shocked by how addicting it is.

 

KYLE – DOMINION

A unique type of game called deck building. You are certainly accustomed to traditional card games with a center draw pile that each player gets to draw from. How about a game where each player creates their own “center draw pile” that only they get to draw from during the game? This is Dominion, the classic deck building game. This game has personally provided me with hours and hours of entertainement, and is a game everyone should try!

NICK – TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES

This classic was first published in 1997, but the design was so rock solid that it didn’t come with an expiration date and it has seen many reprints since!  I’m not a huge fan of Chess, but that is perhaps the best thing to compare T&E to.  The difference is that T&E is a 2-4 player civilization-building tile-laying game with a little bit of luck and a lot of hidden information thrown in to keep things interesting.

There is an astounding amount of cleverness and depth to be found within T&E. I’m still a complete novice to it, but there’s no denying that this game is legendary. It’s designs like this one that have influenced my strong preference toward games containing low-complexity rules with high-complexity consequences over games containing high-complexity rules with low-complexity consequences.

What a bang for your buck! Love Letter is nothing more than 16 cards and a few red cubes, but boy can this game entertain. Love Letter lets you use your deductive skills to see if you can outwit your opponents by guessing which card they may have, or at the very least outplaying them by playing one of the 2 cards in your hand. The game plays in under 10 minutes, but it creates an amazing experience and is so simple to learn. This certainly is a game everyone should try, I’ve got a feeling you’re going to love it!

KYLE – DIXIT

Whether you love Apples to Apples due to its party-style fun or hate it due to its tiresome 2000’s popularity, we think Dixit might be the game for you.  With gorgeous whimsical art (instead of bland words) and a cleverer scoring system, Dixit is the Apples to Apples killer for us.

One player is the “storyteller” each round who plays a secret dreamlike image from their hand while giving a clue that relates to this image.  Next, all other players mix a card of their own among the storyteller’s image, and then the images are revealed and players must vote to determine which card is the storyteller’s.  The catch is that the storyteller’s clue can be neither too hard nor too easy, as they only score points (along with the players who guess correctly) if only some but not all of the players vote their card.

If you want to try a cooperative version of Dixit, we also whole-heartedly recommend Mysterium!

 

NICK – WAVELENGTH

For me, Wavelength beats out other party classics including our very favorites (Decrypto, Codenames, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, etc.) because of its consistent and simple one-two punch of memorable discussions and exciting reveals. To me, it earns a perfect 10/10, a score which I have never given a party game. Maybe 10 or 50 or 100 plays from now I’ll feel differently about it, but it’s genuinely hard to imagine myself enjoying it any less thanks to its tantalizingly endless possibilities.

This is the kind of production that the designers crafted with the end in mind. They knew that in order to get the most of out of the concept, they needed a device that allows approximative gut-feeling guesses for teammates and dramatically climactic reveals from the psychic. The device is a genius component worthy of Wolfgang Warsch’s brilliance.

KYLE – WACKEE SIX

Wackee Six is a game of speed, where you are trying to lay cards in ascending order in the center of the table…but everyone else is doing the same, so you have to be quick. Think Skip-Bo, but without turns. My mom loves it and my dad hates it. Are speed games for you? You’ll never know till you give one a try.

NICK – CONCORDIA

It still shocks me how short and simple the rule book is for this game. If elegance is a living being, then Concordia birthed it. Your deck of cards are used to their full potential in an impressive Eurotastic way. If you haven’t played this one before, you have no excuse not to.

I’m excited to see my design partner, Kyle, explore Concordia’s core hand-management mechanism in his blossoming family game design, Three Ring Circus. Concordia is the only game I’m very familiar with that has this satisfying hand-builder idea of adding multi-purpose cards into your hand and periodically up-taking your entire discard back into your hand to play again.

KYLE – COVER YOUR ASSETS

Take That! That is the type of experience you are having as you sit to play Cover Your Assets. And that isn’t for everyone, some people just want to play nice and don’t want to steal cards from another player. And others love nothing more than meniacally laughing as they steal the assets, or cards, of another player. You may find that you like to play fair and not hurt any feelings. But you may find that you like the playful banter and competition that Take That games have to offer, and Cover Your Assets is a game everyone should try to decide for themselves.

NICK – CROKINOLE

I have never played Crokinole before I asked for a Tracey board this past Christmas. After watching Quinns’ excellent SU&SD review of the game, I knew that this one was right up my alley and so I took the plunge.

Crokinole is without a doubt one of the sexiest games in existence. From the flicking and gliding to the ricochet clacking to the strategic positioning and jaw-dropping maneuvers… this is as supple as it gets. If there is any game in my collection that I will be playing until the day I die, it will surely be Crokinole.

 

KYLE – WELCOME TO…

Usually in a game you get mad cause you didn’t pick the right card and your neighbor did, right? No fair!!! Well, in Welcome To each player has a piece of paper showing a neighborhood. You will write house numbers on the houses to form a nice neighborhood. Is this sounding boring? It’s not! Just stick with me. 3 cards are laid out on the table, and each player selects one of the numbers to use and writes it on their paper. Each player has the same cards to choose from throughout the game so there is no “I didn’t get the right card.” Everyone had the same cards. This is called a “Roll and Write” game, and is certainly a style of game everyone should try.

NICK – EL GRANDE

El Grande is the Grand Daddy of area control games, and its buttery smooth gameplay hasn’t aged a day. It is an intense game that I can get almost any group fully invested in. We haven’t even touched the included expansions yet as the base game continues to satisfy. Area Control games have quickly become one of my absolute favorite mechanisms, and El Grande is the epitome of why.

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