Polyominoes are just plain fun.  The satisfaction of piecing together uniquely shaped tiles is genuine and organic.  It’s a mechanism that began with the everlasting Tetris, extended with the classic Blokus, and continues to be explored today.  

In 2020 alone, we have seen roughly fifteen new board game releases that use polyominoes as their core or secondary mechanism.  It’s a trend that seems to be on the rise for designers and publishers, and for good reason!  A Feast for Odin is perhaps the meatiest polyomino game of them all, and it ranks in the top 25 games of all time!  Meanwhile, Isle of Cats was released just in the past year, yet it currently sits in the top 200 overall games and top 15 family games.

While there are now far too many polyomino games for me to ever comprehensively cover, I have played enough of them to have a solid idea of the genre.  Today, I’d like to pit four of these titles against each other in a Battle of the Polyominoes.  The criteria for this post’s competition includes games that I’ve played at least 3 times and are family-weight, accessible, polyomino centered designs (sorry, A Feast for Odin!).

I also have to give an honorable mention to the big one I haven’t played, Isle of Cats. If you like psychedelic cats and/or card drafting, then it’s absolutely worth a look! Anyway, the actual contenders of this matchup are the following:

Patchwork

Coming in a an overall ranking of 85, abstract ranking of 4, and family ranking of 9, Patchwork is the quilting titan of the polyomino genre and the big dog of today’s competition by none other than Uwe Rosenberg himself.

Barenpark

Often mentioned in the same breath as Patchwork, Barenpark is the other widely beloved polyomino game about building a bear park with charming tiles. This cozy puzzler comes at us from acclaimed designer, Phil Walker-Harding.

My City

My City is our first young challenger to the polyomino throne.  This legacy-style game is backed up by the design chops of Reiner Knizia and the credibility of being a 2020 Spiel des Jahres nominee.

New York Zoo

Finally, New York Zoo is fresh out of the oven, yet it earned a place in today’s matchup simply by coming at us again from arguably the master of polyomino designs, Uwe Rosenberg, and one of the most highly acclaimed publishers of the past few years, Capstone Games.

We’ll compare and contrast these games in several categories.  Each game will be ranked against the others (1st through 4th) and awarded points (4 through 1 point, respectively). For any ties, points will be combined and split amongst the tied games.  These categories are specifically:

1. Polyomino Pieces
2. Player Boards
3. Theme & Presentation
4. Accessibility & Elegance
5. Supporting Gameplay & Mechanisms
6. Depth & Replayability

Without further ado, let us commence the Battle of the Polyominoes!

Polyomino Pieces

Why we’re here…

4th Place: Barenpark

Barenpark features 20 uniquely shaped polyomino tiles with 4 different bear enclosure types and the 5th type being a green area (for park guests). 

Aside from the green area tiles, each tile within its type also awards its owner a specific number of points shown on the tile.  What makes this dynamic interesting is that the first tiles drafted from the animal house section will have more points than lower tiles in the drafting stacks.  This puts pressure on the players to be among the first to draft from each stack, but that’s easier said than done when only certain shapes will fit best at specific times during the game. 

Ultimately, the component limitation of having only 20 shapes with mere slight differences in their values makes Barenpark’s tiles the least interesting of the bunch.

3rd Place: My City

My City starts each player with 24 tiles comprised of 8 shapes of 3 different colors.  While that doesn’t sound like much, the function and number of each player’s tiles evolves and increases as this legacy game progresses from one episode to the next.  I’ll be the first to admit that My City’s tiles look the blandest of the four, but the ways in which Dr. Knizia uses them over time is both beautifully simple and wonderfully brilliant.

2nd Place: New York Zoo

New York Zoo’s polyominoes put up quite the fight by coming in at roughly FIFTY unique shapes!  This alone makes it quite the treat to have to figure out how to position these shapes together within the allotted boundaries.  On top of that, the enclosure tiles live up to their name by having the ability to house one type of animal on each tile and 1 animal on each space of the tile.  This being a racing game (rather than a victory point game) makes the tile dynamic even more interesting, as players can either gun for smaller tiles to fill their enclosures with animals faster (and thereby earn bonuses) or opt for larger tiles that cover their board quicker to win the race.

1st Place: Patchwork

Patchwork’s tiles reign supreme with its 34 unique shapes and the fascinating economic dichotomy between button cost, time cost, and button income that each tile contains.  This gives players 4 factors to consider every time they are selecting a tile to place on their board.  One would never guess that quilt patches are more interesting than animal enclosures, but that’s exactly how things shake out here.

Player Boards

What good is a pile of polyominoes without some boundaries to contain them?

4th Place: Patchwork

Patchwork’s player boards are as bare-bones as it gets.  This is probably for the best, as we just established that Patchwork has the most interesting and complicated tiles.  Uwe wisely knows when to keep things simple, but that doesn’t change the fact that these boards are as bland as they come. 

The only standout feature of Patchwork’s boards is the 7-point special token that is awarded to the first player to completely fill a 7×7 grid within the board.  Covering the remaining spaces is still critical, as players will lose 2 points for each space they fail to cover.

3rd Place: New York Zoo

3rd Place: New York Zoo’s box contains more player boards than one would expect to find.  This is a welcome feature that tailors the experience to each player count (by adjusting the size of the space that must be filled) and serves to balance the player order (by giving the later players—who are less likely to fill their board and win the game—a more advantaged board).  Furthermore, each space of the board carries much more weight as you must fill every space, and do it first, in order to win the game.  The helpful player aid icons on the board are nice reminders as well.

2nd Place: Barenpark

Barenpark’s player boards are its bread and butter.  Players start out with only one-fourth of their board, a square park area, and each area is packed with carrots dangling across its spaces.  As players cover up these icons on their boards, they earn bonuses such as green area tiles, animal house tiles, enclosure tiles, and new park area boards to expand their playing area.  This feature forces players to decide between fitting tiles perfectly together or racing to cover spaces and earn the best bonus tiles. 

Each park area board also contains a pit that cannot be covered, but will have a huge point bear statue placed on it as soon as the player manages to cover every other space on that board.  It always feels good to earn a bear statue, and it’s better to do it early as the bear statue tiles will decrease in value as players claim them.

1st Place: My City

While Barenpark seemed like the clear choice for best player boards due to the dynamic features explained above, after more consideration, it became obvious that My City is the true victor here.  At the start of My City, each player is given their own personal board that will accompany them for the rest of the legacy campaign.  Players are instructed to name their city and record their victories at the top of the board while the play area itself transforms and evolves from one episode to the next. 

Each episode, winners will find themselves placing stickers that increase the challenge of their board while losers earn bonus stickers that improve their odds of victory for the rest of the campaign.  The base map already starts out with interesting objectives and obstacles including winding rivers, obtrusive mountains and forests, enticing trees, and pesky rocks.  These features are further amplified by the requirement to start your first tile next to the river and place each successive building next to another already on the board. 

While the other three games let players put their polyominoes wherever they want, My City forces participants into one uncomfortable challenge after another.  Players must maneuver their sprawling city around the obstacles while they surround the bonuses and cover the penalties.  These tricky decisions across the player boards are classic Knizia at his finest, and they cement My City as the best player boards in this polyomino battle.

Presentation & Theme

Not to be underestimated.

3rd Place Tie: Barenpark & Patchwork

And here arrives the part where all the bear and quilting fans come after me.  I’ve awarded both Barenpark and Patchwork a tie for third place.  Yes. that means I’ve ranked a dull town building theme above them both. 

The ranking of theme or art itself is subjective, but I’m looking at much more than just the setting of these games.  Space Biff offers a great look into setting vs. theme… the gist of it is that the setting is the how the game looks and sounds, but theme is how the game feels.  The button tokens of Patchwork and the bear tiles of Barenpark are absolutely charming, but these themes could be literally anything and it wouldn’t affect one’s understanding or experience with the games. 

Furthermore, the presentation of these games is absolutely bare-bones.  With Patchwork, you get a big empty box to toss your bajillion cardboard pieces into for a nice homemade maraca.  With Barenpark, you get an insert that defies all logic and is probably more trouble than it’s worth.  Worst of all, Barenpark has the same MSRP as New York Zoo.  You’re getting a box of less stuff with relatively inferior quality for the same price.

2nd Place: My City

My City’s presentation and theme are leaps and bounds ahead of the the 3rd placers.  This is immediately obvious when you open the box and find… wait for it… plastic bags for your components.  GASP.  And a functional insert.  DOUBLE GASP. 

Jokes aside, the production for My City is actually super nice, especially for the price.  The legacy chapters are separated into sealed envelopes and the components are extremely well planned. 

Beyond the presentation being superior, the theme is subtly but meaningfully integrated into the gameplay by Dr. Knizia.  Your first building tile must be placed adjacent to the river.  Why?  Because communities need water to thrive.  And you can’t cover the river with a building… this also makes sense.  You have to spread out your tiles from wherever you start; you are not allowed to jump from one corner of the map to another because you’re building a city, not cities.  Without spoiling later additions, new buildings and features are added to the game with rules and objectives that continue to carry at least a bit of thematic sense to them.

1st Place: New York Zoo

New York Zoo takes the cake with a home-run presentation—we’re talking 100+ animal meeples plus a tray to hold them, just to scratch the surface—and an irreplaceable theme.  Making each tile an “enclosure” that can hold animals of the same type that will breed in sets of two or more just makes sense.  Of course the theme isn’t airtight (how does a full enclosure of animals translate to a roller-coaster?…Is there some kind of zoo animal black market we don’t know about?!), but this game is an absolute visual delight and tactile pleasure where you actually feel like you are building enclosures and breeding animals.

Continue on to Page 2 of the Battle of the Polyominoes: Accessibility & Elegance, Supporting Gameplay & Mechanisms, Depth & Replayability, and Final Results!

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

Close, Intense Battles for Victory

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

Competitive Races

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the Players are the Most Entertaining Part of the Game

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

When a Game Lets You Feel like a Genius

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

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

When You Feel Yourself Improving

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

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

When Rounds are Quick and Addictive

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

When Losing Earns You a Meaningful Pity Prize

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

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

When You Take Down Others With You

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

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

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

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

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

Have you ever opened a box and discovered a dementor emerging from it to give you the dreaded kiss of death as all light and hope is vacuumed from your body?  Even worse, have you ever bitten into a tasty looking sandwich only to encounter a mouthful of soggy bread? I have… several times. These boxes or “sandwiches” were called things such as Phase 10, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Mexican Train, Monopoly, and more.

Some games just make me die inside, and the ones that do it best are the ones that completely lack meaningful decisions.  If the game is playing me and my actions are on autopilot, then I might as well be soulless. But I’ve found that meaningful decisions are not always a black and white affair.  There are plenty of games that get stuck in that gray area of mildly amusing yet ultimately hollow decisions.

My most recent hollow encounter with a somewhat soggy game was the 25-year-old classic known as Take 5 or 6 Nimmt! It comes close to hitting that sweet spot with its simple gameplay and suspenseful reveals. The issue is that there is not enough structure to the design where choices feel clever or victories feel earned. You see a player have to “take 5” because of the card they revealed, but no other player reaps the psychological reward of directly causing their opponent’s misfortune. The game is not tight enough to be able to take calculated risks or make clever predictions.

For Sale, on the other hand, absolutely wipes the floor with Take 5. It is likewise a filler card game from the 90s with simple gameplay and suspenseful reveals… but For Sale’s decision space has a real crunch. In the first phase, a set of houses is auctioned off each round where passing earns you the lowest house of the set (at half the price of your stopping bid) while the highest bidder pays full price for the best house of the set. One must bid wisely during the first phase, as leftover money counts as points; furthermore, the houses in your hand are then sold for even more points in secret auctions where selling a better house relative to your opponents will earn you a better money card. This tasty combination of bluffing and bidding morph an appetizer game into a fantastic feast of fun.

One game that I love to appreciate but not to play is Flamme Rouge.  From a design standpoint, the game is a delight. The rules and mechanisms form a sweet melody of authentic cycling; the winding track and classy bikers stir the heart with their thematic charm.  Unfortunately, from a decision standpoint, this game lacks purpose and thrill. Each turn feels a bit too arbitrary and random as players are unable to predict their opponents and can only hope to succeed at the single interesting decision of the game: when to start sprinting.  The game succeeds at being safe family fun, but not in making me feel clever or keeping me fully engaged. At least if you asked me to play Flamme Rouge, I would rarely turn down the opportunity to enjoy this mildly amusing bike race… unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Betrayal at House on the Hill.

Betrayal is the Toby Flenderson to my Michael Scott in every conceivable way.  This average, unassuming game somehow manages to suck my soul from my body and rid me of all happiness and hope.  Fun theme and concept aside, the game amounts to moving, stopping, drawing a card to discover what happened to you, and rolling some dice to determine a result. Now you can decide to move upstairs or downstairs… you can decide to move left or right… you can decide whether you want to try to win or try to lose… but that is unfortunately as deep as the well goes. Never did I encounter a tough decision, an interesting puzzle, a tricky situation. Never did I feel clever, crafty, or mentally stimulated.  If you want an experience where random thematic stuff happens to you and your friends until somebody eventually pulls out the win, then you may enjoy Betrayal. As for me, I will keep singing, “Goodbye, Toby!” as I have no intention of seeing this one again.

I prefer experiences that frequently allow me to take a calculated leap of faith.  Who doesn’t love that feeling a game offers when every option of a decision feels too essential to reject, yet only one can be selected?  Or when a seemingly simple choice makes you hesitate as you realize the ripple effect it can have? There is something about the agony of those decisions that hurts so good.

My top games with meaningful decisions would no doubt include Arboretum with its tight scoring qualifications and juicy hand management, Tigris & Euphrates with its deep well of action ramifications from the simple placement of a tile, A Feast for Odin with its wide sandbox of worker placement fun and tasty challenge of covering the dozens of negative victory points, and Inis with its clever balancing act between passing to gain hand advantage and playing to gain board momentum.

I recently had the chance to try 2019’s Watergate which was a complete playground of meaningful decisions.  Each card provides an opportunity to play it for token movement along the tug-of-war track or for a unique event that may result in the card being trashed due to its one-time use limit.  Determining the specific benefits and sequence to use from your hand feels critical in staying one step ahead of your nemesis.

Gugong is another example that takes itself from good to fantastic with the luscious decision space it provides.  The gift cards are where the game really shines. One must decide the best order and location to play out these cards, and the mechanisms surrounding how and when you can play them are the beating heart of this clever worker placement style game. Gugong entices you with a constant stream of good reasons to exchange one gift for another…. the action locations, the card actions, the destiny dice, the cards available to claim, the cheap action opportunities, barring other players from an action, etc. It’s an exquisite flow of sneaky cultural corruption across a well-balanced expanse of interesting options.

While every game in my diet needs to have interesting choices, because I dread a soggy-sandwich game that lacks meaningful decisions, the most memorable ones often contain theme-inspired mechanisms.

Click on to explore Tabletop Tastes #5: Juicy Theme-Inspired Mechanisms

LOOKING FOR MORE GAMES WITH A CRUNCHY DECISION SPACE? TRY CHOMPING ON ONE OF THESE:

• Optimization Decisions: Scythe, Brass: Birmingham, Concordia
• Gut-Feeling Decisions: The Mind, The Quacks of Quedlinburg, Skull
• Deep Strategy Decisions: Onitama, Tzaar, Samurai
• Risky Decisions: The Estates, Treasure Island, Startups
• Costly Decisions: Patchwork, PARKS, Isle of Skye
• Sandbox Decisions: Five Tribes, Great Western Trail, Dominion

What games give you the crunchy decision space you need?

The post Tabletop Tastes #4: Crunchy Meaningful Decisions appeared first on Bitewing Games.

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!

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