Rorschach

2 Plays

It’s a tale as old as time.  Party game gives one person at a time the spotlight.  This chosen one must stretch their mind to connect a random combination of words and/or images to each other.  Or perhaps they merely toss out a topic or clue and await the input of everyone else to provide them with things that relate.  Either way, the rest of the group then must attempt to read this person’s mind or predict their psychology as they analyze and discuss the words, images, or topics on display.  

The throne to this age-old formula has been claimed by the one and only Decrypto, the number one party game on Board Game Geek, long live the queen.  But to be honest with you, this trend really caught fire with the legendary Codenames and its many spinoffs.  Although some would claim they prefer the cooperative version of this formula that released in the same year… yes, I’m talking about Mysterium.  Yet we mustn’t forget that Mysterium only reached such lofty heights from standing on the shoulders of Dixit.  Admittedly, Dixit is simply an evolved version of Apples to Apples… which was also rehashed by the inhumane cards which must not be named.  Although at this point, we’ve climbed so far up the family tree that it’s hard to see how these oldest of branches relate to the freshest of fruit known as Rorschach.  Plus I failed to recognize Wavelength along this genealogy of party games, and that’s like failing to mention Novak Djokovic when discussing the greatest tennis players of all time.  Shame on me.

What I’m saying is that Rorschach is a design that slots itself right into this very genre.  Snug as a bug on a party game rug.  It attempts nothing flashy, dramatic, or revolutionary with its ruleset and components.  It shows no urge to rewrite the script or reroute the flow of traffic.  The differences in the recipe here—and the payoff in flavor—are much more subtle and nuanced.

The core hook of this party game is found within the title and on the box cover itself.  That means it’s a good box cover and title.  The visuals at the heart of Rorschach are inkblot images which originated from the game’s namesake, Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach.  Supposedly, the way that the human mind interprets and gives life to an abstract image can say a lot about the state of that mind.  But rather than use these images to diagnose a friend with seasonal depression or uncover a family member’s phobia, the challenge of this game is merely to see each inkblot image from the eyes of the test subject of the round.

In Rorschach, players are divided into two teams, and each team takes turns offering up a test subject who must connect three words to three inkblot images.  This is performed by placing tokens facedown onto the image cards that match the tokens which designate each topic card.  Then the group must guess which images the test subject connected to which words.  

At first, the inkblot images all look roughly the same.  Merely a symmetrical smudge of black ink with some corners here or some squiggles there.  But thanks to the three face-up word cards which players are forced to use, the mind begins to fill in the blanks with details and silhouettes and settings that transform an incoherent mess into a tangible topic.  And it is within the cycle of these inkblot images starting out seemingly meaningless, irrelevant, and unrelated, but slowly coming to life with the help of one’s imagination that we find the magic of Rorschach.

Of course, you can also get this kind of creative sensation from the likes of the previously mentioned classics (Codenames, Decrypto, Mysterium, etc.).  So besides the thematic variation of the inkblot images themselves, what makes Rorschach stand out?  To be honest with you… I’m not sure.  I love Wavelength for its juicy conversations, Decrypto for its crafty outfoxing, Codenames for its high stakes successes and failures, Mysterium for its rich setting, and so on.  Where does Rorschach carve its special niche in this crowded genre?  Perhaps nowhere.   Yet where does Rorschach fail as a modern party game?  Also nowhere.  I had a delightful time with this game and the people who joined me at the table to play it.  The challenge was ever present, the laughs were frequently had, the discussions were consistently lively, it was solid entertainment all around.

But that’s the benefit of being a solid game that pivots the spotlight from itself back onto the players.  It doesn’t have to be innovative, mind-blowing, the best in its class, balanced on a knife’s edge, or jam-packed with content to keep me happily engaged.  I’m simply content to psychoanalyze the interesting people around me.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I’m challenged to do it better than the opposing team across the table.  I am a shameless competitor, after all.

Current Rating: 6.5/10

Regicide

8 Plays

Regicide manages to pull off a trick that few other designs have accomplished.  Specifically, it gets me excited about a game that only uses a standard deck of cards.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that Regicide is the best game I have ever played that uses a standard deck of cards.

And despite my preference toward competitive games, this one gives me vibes similar to my all-time favorite cooperative game: The Crew.  This is because it features limited communication, crunchy decisions, and challenging gameplay that is quick and addictive.  The bang for your buck is maximized in this production with a pretty deck of cards packed into a small, affordable tuck-box (if you purchase the official version).  Of course, you could also simply use any old deck of cards lying around at your home and easily download the rules here and even supplement these with the free app here.

Speaking of the rulebook, that is my only minor compliant with this entire experience.  The way that combos, animals, and abilities are explained leave too much open to interpretation.  The rules are missing some key clarifications which we initially struggled over, and we eventually filled in the blanks with our own rules that felt the most natural, fair, and intuitive.  But this gripe was easier for me to forgive considering the staggering amount of creativity on display within such a limited design space.

Before I felt a moment of frustration during our first few plays of unanswered questions, I actually felt enormous ecstasy from the thrilling gameplay concept after my initial read-through of the rules.  Players are up against a series of 12 bosses going from minor Jacks all the way up to imposing Kings.  They use the rest of the deck (aces through 10s in each of the standard suits) to attack these bosses using the value of each card played until the boss’s health is depleted.  At the end of an active player’s turn, if the current boss is still alive, then they will attack that player who must then discard a value of cards equal to or exceeding the boss’s attack value.  If the wounded player cannot discard the full amount of damage taken, then everyone loses the game.

Beyond the interesting core concept of Regicide, my first dose of excitement came when I learned about the suits.  Each suit has a special ability when played: Hearts replenish your draw pile known as the tavern, Diamonds replenish everyone’s hands with more cards from the tavern, Spades shield all players from boss attacks, and Clubs deal double damage.  Designers Paul Abrahams, Luke Badger, and Andy Richdale could have left it at that, and this would have been plenty exciting on its own.  But they instead added in another interesting wrinkle: the suit of the current boss nullifies the matching suit ability from the cards that players use during that battle.  Oooo, now that’s spicy.

But what of low value cards such as 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s?  These are always the worst cards in any game that uses a standard deck, including this one, right?  Well, not necessarily.  You see, a hand cluttered with multiple low cards of the same value is actually a juicy opportunity for combos.  Low value cards of the same number can be played together in sets as long as their combined value doesn’t exceed 10.  Additionally, you receive the benefit of all suits used in that set (assuming the boss doesn’t currently have a matching suit).  So I could play 3s of diamonds, spades, and clubs and thereby draw 9 cards into our hands, gain us 9 defense, and deal 18 damage to the boss.  That’s what I call a good combo.

It’s tremendously satisfying to take down each boss, but the designers even took that challenge a step further.  If your group can manage to deal damage equal to the enemy’s exact health value (20 for Jacks, 30 for Queens, 40 for Kings), then instead of discarding the defeated enemy, you place it straight on top of the tavern draw pile!  As these cards have the best attack values in the game (10, 15, and 20 respectively), earning some royalty into your army can be huge boon as the bosses become increasingly difficult to beat.  

All of these juicy mechanical interactions are further supplemented by ace combos (adorably referred to as animals) and jester abilities.  And the icing on the cake is just how difficult yet rewarding the overall experience is as you fail and fail again but uncover intricate strategies and gain useful experience along the way.  I’m always impressed when a big box game such as Coffee Traders or Oath comes together into a coherent sprawling sandbox of play.  But what Regicide manages to pull off with the most basic, generic, and standard of components is likewise remarkable and enchanting.

Current Rating: 9/10

Fort: Cats & Dogs Expansion

1 Play

The Fort: Cats & Dogs Expansion is going to be a tough one to discuss because my enjoyment of the base game has been on the decline right as we’ve tried out this new expansion.

The theme, presentation, and novel concepts here still delight me, but after eight plays of the game, I find myself growing weary of Fort for three main reasons:

1) The game is always a pain to teach newcomers.  The rules come with baggage in the form of excess icons and exceptions.  It ends up making this one of the most meddlesome small box games in my collection for teaching.

2) Fort is hardly ever as short as it wants to be.  Doesn’t matter how experienced my opponents are, the turns are slow and the playtime far exceeds the 20-40 minute range.  I know that’s not true for everyone, but 20-40 minutes feels optimistic for most groups.

3) Decisions are too frequently obvious.  This is the one that really takes the wind out of Fort for me.  Usually, my hand of five cards contains 1 obvious play, so I do it.  Occasionally, when I actually have more than one decent option, the differences are as poignant as getting one extra point here or a couple extra resources there.  I’m an addict to gameplay tension, and I find myself too frequently experiencing withdrawals during Fort.

That said, the expansion here is a fine addition to the game.  The most charming aspect being the strong thematic integration of cats, dogs, and their behaviors.  Cats are as unwieldy as always—they’ll ditch you at their leisure if another player’s yard catches their eye—but they are nice to have when they’re around.  As long as you have an attracted cat in front of you, it’ll grant you a repeating benefit.  The hard part is remembering to take advantage of it while it is hanging around.  

Meanwhile, the dogs are added into players’ starting decks and they’ll only leave you if you neglect them.  Like kids, they end up in your yard if you don’t use them on your turn, but at the start of your next turn, they’ll wander off to your neighbor’s discard pile.  You can instead use them for their suit, like a regular kid card, but the real object of the dog cards is to take advantage of their abilities and add them to your doghouse.  Once can fulfill a dog’s requirements, simply play it from your hand instead of kid.  Dogs offer powerful one-time abilities and 7 points to the player with the most dogs in their doghouse at the end of the game.

Both the dogs and cats are modular additions to the game, meaning you can add one or both to your session of Fort.  We chose to dive into the full expansion and added both to our play.  They certainly open up the decision space a little more, as cats make you want to leave specific cards in your yard while dogs pressure you into using them or losing them.  It’s a solid addition for sure.  Unfortunately, regarding my feelings towards Fort as a whole, it’s too little, too late.

Current Rating:  The expansion is good, 7/10.  The overall game has dropped to 6/10 for me.

Calimala

1 Play

Let’s step away from the latest hotness for a moment to take a quick peek at 2017’s Calimala.  Despite it being a more recent Euro, this production presents itself as aggressively dull on all accounts.  We’re talking cloth mercantilism in old Europe featuring wood, brick, cubes, and beige.

So why on earth did I venture to try to such a game? This is a question that increasingly nags at me with each such game session.  Don’t you people ever grow tired of these generic resource efficiency games?!? 😂 Haven’t we gained and spent enough wood already?  Perhaps we should use all that wood to build ourselves a box big enough to hold these games so we can toss them all in, forget about the box, and finally allow ourselves the freedom to think outside of it.

Ok, rant over.  Beyond my growing prejudice toward all games that rehash this generic concept using the same hand-me-down dressings, I quite enjoyed the feature mechanisms at play here.  You get a novel worker placement mechanism that undoubtedly was the genesis for this game paired with pacey sequential scoring.  That’s where Calimala hides the good stuff.

Place your worker disc on a space between two actions and do both of those actions.  On top of that (no pun intended), any discs under the one you just added to the stack are reactivated, meaning even more actions for the owners of those discs!  As for the fourth disc at the bottom of the stack, instead of activation it is sent to the next scoring tile where another chance at points is resolved.  Furthermore, that disc which ends up on the scoring tile counts toward tiebreakers in the area majority competitions.  It’s clean, brilliant, and poignant.

Oddly enough, this is the third worker placement game I’ve tried this year where you place your workers in-between the actions instead of directly on top of them (the other two being the colorful Cryo and somehow even more sapless Spyrium).  Despite the overlap, all three games have approached this concept in a different manner.  Cryo is more about blocking and boxing out others from valuable actions.  Spyrium’s surrounding workers determine the costs and payouts of action options for everyone.  Calimala’s discs trigger positive player interactions.

Since you can activate a particular action by placing your disc on up to four possible sides of it, it becomes important to pay attention to which other players you are helping by reactivating their own discs.  It’s best to avoid helping those who are in the lead on the scoreboard or directly competing with you in certain areas.  On top of that, you’ll frequently have the agency to determine whether or not a scoring phase is triggered by adding your disc to a full stack or not.  You can rush the scoring of an area before competitors can weasel their cubes in there or you can play the long game and increasingly clog up the spaces in an area that will score much later in the game to deter others from any hope of out-competing you.

There are many opportunities for swinging the momentum of an area in your favor.  This is particularly true thanks to the action cards.  Any time your activated disc cannot do one of the two actions next to it, you instead draw an action card.  This is essentially your opportunity to bank an action for later, where you can play as many cards as you want before or after each board action you take.  While luck of the draw will determine what specific actions end up in your hand, you can usually implement these into your plans and use them to your advantage as long as you aren’t near the very end of the game.

Within Calimala, we find a modern Euro with streamlined rules, bitey gameplay, and novel action selection mechanisms—all of which keep to a reasonable game length.  Is it really fair to ask for anything more from today’s Euros?  Many folks will happily gobble up such an offering.  You know who you are, and it is to you that I fully recommend this solid design.  For those of you who need far more spice and pizazz to go along with your crunch, this one will likely taste as bland as it looks.  Currently, I find myself somewhere in-between.  I appreciate all the working cogs within this system, I just wish Calimala had done more than the bare minimum in its theme, setting, and presentation.

Current Rating: 7/10

Witchstone

2 Plays

Witchstone is perhaps the least Knizian Knizia of all the Knizias I’ve ever played. In fact, I’ve played many non-Knizias that are more Knizian than this.  Perhaps that’s because this game is only half Knizia, although it feels maybe a quarter Knizian at best.  Confused yet?  Me too.

What I’m saying is that Witchstone was codesigned by Martino Chiacchiera and Reiner Knizia.  As I understand it, Martino came up with a combo-y concept for a Euro game that was inspired by Knizia’s Ingenious, he approached Reiner about the design, and they decided to work on it together.

The DNA shared between Witchstone and Ingenious can be found in the hexagonal domino tiles and the objective of placing and arranging together matching symbols with these tiles on a hexagonal grid.  The similarities stop there.  Ingenious plays fast and loose as it sees you scoring in straight lines outward from your tile along rows of matching symbols.  Witchstone sees you activating actions with these symbols on a large game board where you get to do each action as many times as the size of the cluster you’ve added your tile to.  Ingenious features a shared hexagonal grid board where you can anticipate and cut off opponents from critical scoring opportunities.  Witchstone provides personal player boards where nobody else can interfere with your tile arrangements and combos.  Come to think of it… I lied.  These games share one more thing in common: I believe they are both best played at 2-players… although for very different reasons.

Ingenious is best at 2 because it allows for the most strategy, planning, and anticipation against your competition.  Witchstone seems best at 2 simply because adding a third or fourth player seems to add no benefit to the experience and merely extends the game length.  While players are building routes and snatching up bonuses from opponents across the shared board of Witchstone, the game still manages to feel mostly solitaire, which is the first element that feels un-Knizian.  The real meat of the gameplay lies in your own personal player board where you must assess your five tile options and determine which one can be placed in the best spot for the best immediate combo.  It is of course wise to position your tiles in a way that you leave room for future combos; so this challenge of arranging, sequencing, and combo-ing your tiles is probably the most engaging aspect of the game.

There are several tile symbols that activate different action options including:

-Claiming routes with your energy tokens that score points and allow you to move witches around the board

-Placing witches at your tower and transporting them along your routes or other player’s routes to score points and claim a bonus action token

-Moving your owl around a rondel to earn every point token and bonus action token you pass along the way

-Clearing crystals off your board to earn bonus actions and make space for more tile clusters

-Moving up the wand track to earn points or bonus actions

-Claiming a scroll card that provides private objective points or bonus actions

Forgive my use of the Taco Bell analogy on yet another game this year… But essentially, Witchstone is your classic Taco Bell menu of action options.  The few core ingredients of beef, cheese, and tortillas (or in Witchstone’s case: points and bonus actions which earn you more points and more bonus actions) are renamed and rearranged into a wide menu of options that appear to be different but roughly taste and feel the same upon ingestion and digestion.  Somehow it’s both exciting and repetitive to explore these different menu options.  And I especially worry that this repetitiveness will quickly overtake the excitement with further plays.  And here we find another un-Knizian trait in Witchstone: it’s fundamentally a point salad game where every action and every strategy results in roughly the same effect.

Where anything can result in more points and/or more actions, it’s as though everything you do in the game feels good.  But when everything feels good, there is a noticeable lack of tension and drama to the experience.  I’m used to Knizia games giving me painful decisions and unfolding dynamics, but Witchstone merely provides increasingly larger combos.  It trades potency for pleasantries.  So of course, with the right crowd, Witchstone will really hit the spot.  As for myself, I find that I quickly grow tired of ‘pleasant’ games.  Give me that raw, stinking potency, baby.

Current Rating: 6.5/10

Riftforce

2 Plays

I went into Riftforce expecting a Schotten Totten / Battle Line style of game, but I was surprised to find that this one is much more of a dueling design than anything else.  While there are elements of hand management and attacking or defending sections of the rift, these features are overshadowed by the asymmetric abilities and damage dealing.  

Similar to other dueling games I’ve played in recent years such as Summoner Wars and Unmatched, you’ll be chipping away at the health of your opponent’s units until you’ve wiped them out.  You’ll score a point for each enemy card eliminated, and the first to twelve points after an equal number of turns wins (if you get there on the same turn, then you keep playing rounds until someone breaks the tie).  Depending on your four chosen guilds, you may have ways to protect your damaged cards from certain death such as healing or moving them to a safer position.  But eliminating cards is only half the battle.

The other way to score points is with the “Check and Draw” action of drawing your hand back up to 7 cards and scoring a point for every rift space where your cards are unopposed by enemy cards.  You won’t be allowed to select and milk this action every turn, as you can only take it if you have less than 7 cards.  So you’ll often have to choose one of the other two action options: 1) play up to 3 cards of the same number or guild type into the same rift space or into 3 adjacent spaces, 2) Discard a card and activate the powers of up to 3 cards that match its number or guild type.  

Your deck consists of 4 unique guilds that you and your opponent drafted at the start of the game.  Each guild has 5’s, 6’s, and 7’s with more 5’s than 6’s and more 6’s than 7’s.  I rarely had problems playing or activating three cards in a single turn, as I often found many cards of the same number or type in my hand.  If you plan your actions well, you’ll be able chart multiple turns in advance.  That way you’ll get the most value out of hand before needing or wanting to draw more cards.  You’ll often find yourself stretching your hand out because usually your opponent will try to patch up any holes along the rift to prevent you from getting easy points when you Check and Draw.

There’s some interesting combo potential within the power activation action.  It’s even possible to avoid the death of your card, strengthen your rift defenses, and eliminate an opponent’s card all in the same action.  The plant guild lets you open holes in the rift by moving enemy cards to different spots while doing damage to them.  The water guild can attack, move, and attack again.  The lightning guild can chain two attacks across multiple enemies if the first blow is deadly.  The shadow guild teleports around the rift and deals minimal damage, but it scores an extra point if that damage is the final blow.  With 10 possible guilds and an endless amount of combinations, there is an exciting amount of variety to explore here.

This design has really nailed down the elegant, turn-by-turn tactics of a dueling game.  Each action option has weight and each card has purpose.  Yet the overall experience fell flat for us, much more than I was expecting.  While the game is made up of solid ingredients, the resulting meal failed to fully satisfy.  After giving it some thought, the main issue I can identify is one of a flat game arc.

Over time I’ve found that the most satisfying games, whether they are dead simple or overwhelmingly complicated, always feature a dynamic arc.  What that means is that the overall experience and feeling of the game morphs, evolves, or changes over time.  Essentially the first turns feel different from the last, even if they don’t look different.  The game is broken up into first, second, and third acts by vibe and aura.  This is a topic I’ve explored in another article, and it explains why Ice Cream Pints and A Feast for Odin capture my heart far more than Bananas and Raiders of the North Sea.

Unfortunately with Riftforce, I found that my many actions and turns all blurred together into a tactical cycle without any change in mood.  Where Schotten Totten / Battle Line features a tentative 1st act, a risk-taking 2nd act, and a brutal 3rd act, Riftforce simply gives you Actions A, B, and C to wash, rinse, and repeat as you march your token up the point track.

In the deepest pits of dental school, where the first and second year students toil away by drilling on plastic teeth attached to mannequin heads, one learns the important difference between “errors” and “critical errors”.  Perfection in dental procedures such as fillings and crowns is much like a fable—even the student prodigies rarely capture such unicorns.  Usually, some aspect of a tooth preparation will at least be a half-millimeter too wide here or a couple degrees too acute there.  It’s ok to have minor errors as long as the overall work is sound.  The important thing is that you avoid critical errors that result in an automatic failure.  Errors such as drilling into the wrong tooth, burrowing all the way to the pulp of the tooth, obliterating a restoration’s chances of lasting any reasonable amount of time—those kinds of things.

Critical errors in board games are much more subjective than those found in dentistry.  A game could be considered successful even if it only ever brought enjoyment to one person.  Yet these many years of gaming and analyzing have helped me to discover my personal critical errors in tabletop gaming.  One of these is undoubtedly the lack of a compelling game arc.  Riftforce is a prime example of a game that does absolutely everything else right, yet its one critical error undermines the experience for me.

Current Rating: 6/10

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 Candid Cardboard: 1st Impressions of Witchstone, Riftforce, Rorschach, Regicide, Fort: Cats & Dogs expansion, Calimala. appeared first on Bitewing Games.

I always look forward to comparing, ranking, and declaring my top games of the year.  When I tune in to other content creators’ lists, I’m frequently fuming or cheering at their selections and omissions: 

“How could you leave this MASTERPIECE completely off your list?!?” 

“Thank you!  THAT’s what I’m talking about!  This gal just gets it!” 

“Yeah, I played your favorite game of the year, and I seem to recall it being a HOT MESS!”

“Can confirm, this game is freaking LEGENDARY.”

But at the end of the day, these lists represent the unique experiences that people shared with a particular design, and they reflect one’s individual tastes and preferences within a medium that mixes art, entertainment, and narrative.  Ultimately, these lists are a celebration of designers, illustrators, publishers, and countless others who had a vision, worked tirelessly to make it a reality, and succeeded at bring joy to others.  

Despite my vain, passionate feelings on this subject, I fully acknowledge that my rankings are no more right than others.  All I can offer is some insight into how this list might provide some unique benefits.  So let’s talk about that for a moment.

Every hobby has it’s own subgroups of individuals and types.  You have the casual dabblers—those who merely enjoy a simple, convenient sampling here and there.  The hardcore campers—those who find their sweet spot, set up camp, and pay no mind to their wider surroundings because they are content with digging deeper and deeper into their cozy niche.  Then there’s the hungry explorers—this is what I consider myself within the industry.  We explorers set out to find the very best within each region, the cream of the crop.  And there are very few categories that we don’t extract enjoyment from.  We certainly stub plenty of toes and hit plenty of dead ends along the way, but the constant feeling of discovery within a world of creativity makes it all worth it.

I’m likely one of the more critical explorers in this hobby, as I’ll hold no punches against games that don’t land for me. Concerning tabletop games, my strongest biases are probably against sprawling, cumbersome cooperative designs and any game that heavily prioritizes tangible style over mechanical substance.  You’re not gonna see these types of games on this list because they just don’t speak to me from a design perspective, so I didn’t even seek out an opportunity to play them.  Anything that flaunts its components or theme so hard that I have difficulty seeing a clever and clean mechanical underbelly gives me enough reason to leave it alone while keeping an open ear out for them among the critics I follow.

I’m not surprised by many of the games that have ended up on other’s top 2020 lists.  I’m much more surprised by the games that haven’t ended up on other’s 2020 lists!  These are the unsung gems that I’ve set out to play and analyze to ensure that they’ve gotten the love and attention they deserve.  This is why my list is debuting in March of 2021 rather than December of 2020.  And this is why I’ll return at the end of this year to revisit 2020’s releases again, just like I did with my Best Games of 2019 list.  Come December, we’ll be looking back at the Lovers, Keepers, Dumpers, Flingers, and Seekers of 2020 after an extra year of playtime.  As for now, we’ll stick with my current top 15 board games of 2020. 

Fair warning: you may find some of these selections to be upsetting. Several of my top 15 are either second editions, re-implementations, or basically re-printings.  And for those of you who feel inclined to protest, I suggest you first direct your pitchforks and torches to popular reviewers Shut Up and Sit Down or No Pun Included, who hilariously and entirely selected games that existed before 2020 as their top games of 2020.  I only jest, they’re a bunch of great folks who had great picks all-around.

I debated whether or not to include these remixed games among my rankings. Ultimately, I realized that without their 2020 versions, I may never have discovered these absolute bangers.  If that excuse is not good enough for you, then you are welcome to simply cross those out on my list and shift everything else beneath them upwards.

Finally, let me just add one more hot take:. Anybody who claims that 2020 was a weak year for board game releases has simply spoken too soon…  or they are a “hardcore camper” in the hobby who is unsatisfied with their particular genre of releases.  This was one of the most excruciating lists I have ever had to rank.  Pushing certain titles down the hierarchy had me writhing in pain.  Leaving several of these gems outside of my top 15 feels like tossing my precious children out of the house, locking the door, and abandoning them to the desolate cold.  I played at least 20 new firecrackers from last year, and at the end of this post I’ll be sharing even more remaining contenders.  2020 was unquestionably a killer year for board game releases.

Top 15 Board Games of 2020

15. Beyond the Sun

The first thing I want to say about Beyond the Sun is that I’m honestly shocked that this game didn’t end up higher in my rankings.  I agree with So Very Wrong About Games’ Mark Bigney in that this is one of the best new Euros of 2020.  But full merits are given to this stellar design and the other 2020 releases that just barely squeezed past it on my personal rankings.

Beyond the Sun is a triumph thanks to its unflinching commitment to being extremely good at one particular thing: A Tech Tree.  The possibilities branch ever outward in this space civilization game where the actions start out few and simple yet quickly multiply into many powerful options.  The strategy of developing your technologies is well-balanced against the opportunities for controlling and colonizing the systems of space.

For anyone looking for the best Euro of 2020, Beyond the Sun is a strong contender.

14. Iwari

Iwari is a breath of fresh air every time I play it.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that this gorgeous production is a visual and tactile pleasure.  But there are plenty of games that can reach that bar these days.  What sets Iwari apart from the pack is its simple, breezy gameplay mixed with insanely clever rules.  I can easily recall these 3-2-1 rules from memory: Play up to 3 cards to place 2 pieces in 1 territory, then refill your hand back up to 3.  Boom.  That’s all there is to it.  The only thing that functionally matters about each card is its color.  Play some colors and draw some more.

I’m gonna toss out some phrases like candy on Halloween.  If any of these mean anything to you, particularly if they fill your heart with childlike joy, then you’ll know that Iwari is must-try for you because it evokes strong feelings of the following:

• Cube Rails
• Knizian Elegance
• Dynamic Player Interaction

For the rest of you, Iwari compares quite similarly to the worldwide phenomenon known as Ticket to Ride.  The key differences are that Iwari contains more depth and room for strategy, but feels entirely abstract.  That’s quite easy to forgive because, again, this game is a real looker.

13. Durian

If you aren’t familiar with a publisher known as Oink Games, they are an extremely charming Japanese brand known for their tiny, rectangular boxes crammed with stylish components that make for quick, simple, and (usually) engaging games.  Shut Up and Sit Down does a great job reviewing a whole heaping of their games, even ranking them into tiers from “Worst” to “Average” to “Best.”

The 3 Oink Games that made their top tier include A Fake Artist Goes to New York, Insider, and Startups.  I can confirm that that all 3 of these titles have been hits at our table and keepers in our collection.  Wait, I thought we were supposed to be talking about Durian! Why all this preamble?!  Oh, that’s right.  Because Durian is one of the latest offerings from Oink Games, and I’m here to formally nominate it to be ranked in the Top Tier list alongside the Big 3!

Durian is the type of game you can set down in front of your complexity-averse mother-in-law, get her fully engaged in the competition, and yet still have a blast playing yourself.  That’s exactly what I did very recently when she flew out to help take care of our newborn.  We had such a great time trying the game that we found ourselves back at it the very next night!  

This game of deduction and bluffing sees players acting as clerks running the same store.  Each person displays one inventory card toward everyone else and away from themselves.  You can’t see the types or amounts of fruits on your own card, but you can see all the other cards.  Thus, everybody has imperfect information about how much inventory is in this fruit store.  One at a time, players take an order card from the deck and add it to the center, deciding which of the two options on the card to add as a customer order.  The moment a player feels that the orders exceed the inventory, they can instead ring the bell, calling the grumpy gorilla manager to inspect the problem.  Players lay all the inventory cards face up and determine whether the tattletale made the right call.  If they did, then the previous player (in turn order) takes the blame for taking the last order!  But if not, then the tattletale gets punished for their false alert!  Whoever has the lowest sum of angry manager tokens at game end wins!

Durian just hits the SPOT as a filler game.  It has the perfect amount of luck, drama, suspense, and mystery to make for tense, addictive rounds that end with a thrilling ring of a tiny bell.   Even at 3-players, we’ve had so many memorable rounds.  Despite us playing the game many times, I still haven’t won it a single time.  Yet those moments of me being one decision away from sweet victory, confidently ringing the tiny bell, and watching it all crumble under the gleeful eyes of my mother-in-law as I discover that I was horrifyingly wrong about my own inventory card is a memory that holds a special place in my heart.

12. Fort

From the moment Leder Games announced Fort, I knew we were in for a treat.  How can a game that is illustrated by the legendary Kyle Ferrin and all about being kids who build forts, make and steal friends, and collect toys and pizza not be pure delight?!  Spoilers:  It is pure delight.

Although, you have to come into Fort with the right mindset.  Those who see that this is a “deck builder” and come rolling in with their truckload of associated expectations are either going to be pleasantly surprised or bitterly disappointed by this subversive design.  Within Fort, you won’t find many of the popular ingredients that most deck builders contain like mega-combo turns or meticulously crafted player decks.  What you will find is refreshing and rare deck building ingredients including significant player interaction.

Fort is less about calculating the entire trajectory of your strategy and more about rolling with the punches.  This works extremely well because the game plays so quickly.  There are also a good handful of icons to learn at the beginning, but they’re well designed and easily remembered thanks to the handy player aids.  While this game contains surprisingly more rules than its appearance suggests, the act of playing Fort feels nimble, whimsical, and joyous.

11. Renature

Ever heard of a little game called Azul?  You know, one of the top selling board games of the past several years?  Well I would suggest that Renature deserves to be the next Azul, and that’s not just because they share the same father (designer Michael Kiesling).  Consider this: both Azul and Renature are pretty games with chunky pieces.  Both games serve up elegant rules above a platter of agonizing decisions with a hearty dollop of cutthroat nastiness on top.  Only Renature is MORE.  More elegant, more agonizing, and much, MUCH nastier.  When the placement of a single domino and a single plant token can cause my wife to say in a burst of rage, “I’m never playing this game with you again,” that’s when you know you’ve found a rare treasure.

In fact, now that I reconsider it, Renature likely won’t reach the same heights as Azul simply because of how evil it allows its participants to be.  Don’t get me wrong, I am in LOVE with the diabolical opportunities this game presents, but you’ll require some thick skin to get through this fiery furnace of fun, especially at 2-players.

You’re probably wondering if I’m even talking about the right design at this point.  Yes, I am talking about the cute, cuddly game with colorful animal dominoes and cheery chunks of foliage and bright sunflower tokens.  Speaking of dominoes, I’m gonna plant my flag right here and declare that this is the greatest domino game of all time.  Come at me, Dominites!!!

10. Cosmic Frog

What a strange beast of a game, that Cosmic Frog.  Across the entire list of my Top 15 Board Games of 2020, this one is likely the most polarizing.  My personal experience with Cosmic Frog up to this point has been ripe with bad luck.  Yet for those who can appreciate the bizarre, refreshing package that this game provides, those moments of horrible luck are part of its memorable charm.

That charm oozes from every inch of the production.  Take one look at the psychedelic art or read a brief description of this whacky concept and you’ll get what I mean.  Players control 2-mile-tall cosmic frogs that leap through the interstellar aether, consuming planetary shards that are stored in their gullets, before disgorging their gullets of valuable terrain into their inter-dimensional vaults.  Simple enough, right?  Only these frogs can hit each other so hard that they vacuum the shards out of each other’s gullets or even blast their victim into another dimension learning their vault unprotected.

This is the only game I’ve ever encountered that transforms turn order into a randomly shuffled deck.  That’s right, on one end of the spectrum you can sometimes have multiple turns in a row, on the other end you might be waiting what feels like AGES for your next turn to show up.  Designer Jim Felli fully embraces this chaos by asking players how far they wish to push their luck.  By making player turns feel like unicorn sightings, players develop this insatiable hunger and greed to milk each turn for all its worth.  The problem is that you only get one free action each turn; if you want to take a second action, you’ll have to spend precious Oomph, and less Oomph in your supply translates to a larger target on your back because Oomph gives frogs significant advantages when spent in combat.

The luck in Cosmic Frog is like a huge serving platter where players must decide how many expensive drinks in fragile glasses they are willing to carry at once.  Successful deliveries can equate to huge gains, but a tilt of the platter can be disastrous.  I’m the type who can’t resist using up all the precious platter real-estate, and thus I’ve landed myself in more than a few self-inflicted messes.

I think at this point you know whether this is game for you.  And if it is for you, then boy are you in for a trip!  So BUCKLE UP!!!

9. Scape Goat

Like Durian, this is another under-the-radar gem that I haven’t seen on ANY top games of 2020 lists.  I can’t exactly blame anyone for judging this game by it’s cover, because one can’t help but assume that the goat puns are the only standout feature here.  Let me be perfectly clear that such brash assumptions are entirely WRONG.

Scape Goat is the epitome of a sleeper hit.  At the time of this writing, which is nearly three months into 2021, this game has a whopping total of 222 owners and 62 ratings and an overall rank of 7,930 on BoardGameGeek.com.  For those of you not familiar with the stats, that’s a depressingly low number for one of the freshest designs in the entire party deduction genre. 

The conventions of social deduction are flipped on their head here.  From the get-go, everybody knows exactly who the Scape Goat of the round is because their individual cards reveal this person to them, except one player’s card is lying to them and that player could be YOU.  

So do you think you’re the Scape Goat?!  Why is she acting that way?  Why did he take that card?!?  You better run to the police before your traitorous gang throws you under the bus!  But hold up, you’ll jeopardize everything if you aren’t actually the Scape Goat…

While your own teammates might scare you off within the game, don’t let the term “party” scare you off about this game.  This one is meant to be played with only 3-6 people.  And if you want experience the most paranoid-induced 5-20 minutes of your gaming career, then you’d be wise to pick up a copy of Scape Goat.

8. New York Zoo

We’re on a roll with the animal games here, so let’s continue with the excellent New York Zoo. What can I say about this delectable racing game featuring diverse polyomino enclosures and colorful animal breeding that hasn’t already been said? I’ve already spent paragraphs upon paragraphs gushing over this design in my feature article, Battle of the Polyominoes, where New York Zoo is a close runner up to the greatest family-weight polyomino game of all time (more on that later).

What lands New York Zoo so high on my Top Board Games of 2020? Satisfaction. The pleasure of moving an elephant around a rondel. The relief of claiming the perfect piece to fit your zoo. The amusement of breeding penguins and kangaroos and arctic foxes. The achievement of snatching a precious rollercoaster from the supply. The pride of timing your moves and your spaces perfectly while predicting your opponent’s decisions. And the ultimate satisfaction of completing your zoo first and becoming the winner.

7. Undaunted: North Africa

Undaunted: Normandy made my top 10 games of 2019, so it should come as little surprise that Undaunted: North Africa is keeping the hot streak going. Despite this Undaunted sequel retaining the same core system, we still haven’t grown tired of this stellar head-to-head deck builder. This fusion of deck building and tactical war commanding is a match made in heaven.

North Africa cleverly builds on its predecessor by polishing the rules, speeding up the playing time, increasing asymmetry, and smoothly implementing vehicles. Yet, for complete newcomers to Undaunted, I still might recommend Normandy first because it is a solid game that will provide you with at least a dozen worthwhile plays and make the jump to North Africa feel like an exciting evolution of the fun. But you really can’t go wrong with either game.

The Undaunted series will go down as one of the most played experiences in our entire collection thanks to its tense decisions interlaced with slick gameplay across many thrilling scenarios.

6. Tournament at Avalon

I’ve been enchanted by this trick-taking game ever since my first play of it. The extra large cards and the appropriately thematic art contribute to a highly satisfying card game with charmingly medieval brutality.

There is no winner of each trick in Tournament at Avalon. Rather there is merely a loser who plays the lowest card and takes the trick of played cards into their “wound” pile which will bring them that much closer to death. All of the other rules, powers, special cards round out this compelling entree for a fantastic feast of fun.

No other game makes me as excited to be in last place as this one. Last place means that I get to have a unique, overpowered ability for an entire round. Last place means that I’m the closest to activating my secondary power. Last place means that I can rally my fellow opponents around a common cause: bringing down the leader.

You can explore my full review of this riotous romp here.

5. Curious Cargo

Speaking of full reviews of stellar games, Curious Cargo earned one from me recently as well. One key takeaway from my review is that this 2-player puzzler isn’t for everyone. It’s best suited for those who love spatial analysis, crave dynamic player interaction, and feed on adaptive challenges.

I can’t get over how dense and indulgent this small box feels. The PVC material used for the six unique player boards, the screen printed wooden cargo tokens, the player forklifts, the long truck tiles, the double-sided conveyer tiles, the Kwanchai Moriya art… Mmm, mmm, MMMM. Of course these would all mean nothing if the game wasn’t also highly compelling and repayable challenge.

Curious Cargo is all that and a bag of chips. It’s one that I just don’t see myself ever turning down a chance to play.

4. My City

Well, it’s time to make good on my promise from back when we were talking about New York Zoo. The design that has proven to be the greatest family-weight polyomino game of all time is Reiner Knizia’s My City. You don’t have to take my word for it! Go look for yourself! My City took down heavyweight champions Patchwork and Barenpark, for crying out loud!

Beyond being the GOAT (greatest of all time) in that category, I’m gonna throw down the other gauntlet and say that this is the best legacy game by a country mile. Legacy game fans may cry foul here, citing the lack of a heavy narrative to accompany this mechanical rollercoaster, but I’ve yet to see a legacy game as slick, streamlined, and focused as My City.

No other Legacy game that I’ve encountered fundamentally changes my entire strategic approach from one play to the next like My City. No other Legacy game I’ve encountered feels as gut-wrenching, tense, and personal as My City.

I named the city on my player board Wolverton, in honor of the gray wolf symbol on my board. We’ve been through soaring highs and crushing lows, Wolverton and I. We’ve seen eras come and go… times of prosperity and times of famine, times of opportunity and times of trouble. From the stickered trees to the cursed rocks, from the winding river to the sprawling buildings, there’s a familiar coziness to this game that I will desperately miss when we conclude our final episode that is now only a few plays away.

My only hope is that the good Dr. Knizia will give us a sequel to My City before too long…

We now enter the top 3 games of 2020 which, admittedly, all have existed in some form before last year. Since I’m making guilty admissions, I’ll also toss this one out for you to chew on: I’m not confident in how I ranked these games against each other. It feels like my opinion on how these should be ordered could change tomorrow… or in an hour… or right now—One second, let me just swap number 1 with number 3… Yeah that’s better… Hold on! Number 2 looks like it accidentally got pushed one lower than it should. We’ll just bump that one back up…. there we go! And then we’ll just tidy things up by rearranging 3 with 2 and 2 with 1… and voila! I now present to you my top 3 Board Games of 2020!

3. Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

Every hobbyist gamer deserves a good war game in their collection. An old, reliable friend who will always be there for you when have large table, a few enthusiastic companions, and a wide chunk of free time that all need spending.

And no, I’m not talking about a war game like the previously mentioned Undaunted: North Africa. I’m talking about a wooly mammoth war game that rarely emerges from its spot on your shelf but always makes a splash when it does hit the table. I’m talking about the kind of game that often requires 2 or 3 tables, 4 or 5 hours, days or weeks of prior planning.

This is the type of game that I considered a “bucket list” experience. I figured, “Hey, if I ever get the chance to play somebody else’s copy of one of these mega-hits, then that sounds great! But there’s no way in heck I’m dropping 100 bucks or more on a game like that when I don’t even know if I’ll ever get to play it!”

At least that was my attitude until I met Eclipse: Second Dawn. The creators of Eclipse looked long and hard at what gamers love about this genre and what barriers are keeping everyone from enjoying it more. Eclipse Second Dawn, a reimplementation of the 2011 original, was their answer. And this game is one heck of an answer!

Within Eclipse, we have a sprawling, epic game that can be played in a very reasonable 2-3 hours (maybe 4+ for complete beginners). We have a stunning production that feels perfectly tailored to enhance and supplement the entire experience. And we have a whole cornucopia of engaging decisions and weighty consequences within this beautiful blend of Euro-like management and Sci-fi style conflict.

2. Sidereal Confluence: Remastered Edition

Sidereal Confluence is all about being a wildly unique alien who exchanges resources and ideas with other intergalactic beings in a quest to maximize your strengths and develop new technologies.  In other words, it’s an epic simultaneous negotiation game featuring cubes, converters, and asymmetric factions.  

While the original edition of Sidereal Confluence released in 2017, and I was fully aware of it before 2020, it was 2020’s Remastered Edition that finally convinced me to give this game a try.  The Remastered Edition changes nothing about the core gameplay; rather, it aims to increase readability, clean up graphic design, improve the rulebook, provide a useful teaching guide, and modernize the overall look of the game.  Call me vain, if you must, but this newer version is infinitely more attractive and approachable, and that’s precisely the push I needed to dive in to this negotiation romp.

Even subtle touches such as trimming the alien names down from “KJASJAVIKALIMM” to “K-JAS” on the player shields is a wise change to avoid scaring off newcomers.  Despite the thematic liberties that Tauceti Deichmann has taken to challenge our lingual abilities, his design is as rock solid as ever.  The fresh makeover is a fitting production that matches the high quality of the design.  

This is the ultimate negotiation game where almost anything goes as players desperately strive to acquire the resources and converters that will propel them to victory.  Few things are as satisfying as turning a pile of useless resources in a cornucopia of opportunities via the art of negotiation.  Just be prepared for a crowded table and lot of noise, as this game hosts up to 9 players, and things can get wild.

While it demands much in terms of time, space, and participants, this is an all-time favorite that will undoubtedly make it to my table for years to come.

1. Hansa Teutonica: Big Box

Hansa Teutonica is the type of German game design that wipes the floor with other Euros before gobbling them up with glee. It requires no decks of cards, no piles of money and resources, no desperately extravagant variable setups… It simply gives each player a small board with a bunch of cubes and a few discs and challenges them to use these “tradesmen” wisely upon the game board.

Each turn, participants have 5 options for spending their 2 actions (or more actions, if they develop their player board). Actions are as simple as placing a tradesmen on an open space along a route, moving your tradesmen already on the board to other spaces, paying extra cubes to bump another player’s tradesmen and take its place, establishing a trade route along a path that you completely control, and restocking your personal supply of tradesmen.

The layout of the game board and the development opportunities of the player boards are what make this simple premise exquisitely deep. The playing field is ripe with golden opportunities for those who can discern the strategic intentions of their opponents and exploit these to their benefit. Like a little point leech embedded in the fur of a beast, players can establish trading posts to profit off of the efforts of others. Yet decisions become more precarious and more tense as the three possible game-ending conditions threaten to cut the legs out from under your strategic grand finale.

Be warned, inexperienced players are more susceptible to strategic group-think, where one area or aspect is perceived as superior to the rest. An expert player can quickly make such assumptions look foolish by exploiting the blind spots. And herein lies another great secret of this unassuming classic: Hansa Teutonica is a living, breathing game that will grow with the experience and knowledge of the players surrounding it. When the group meta zooms in too closely on one strategy, that simply opens the door wider for one creative schemer to sneak off with the victory. Only those with an open mind and a courageous trigger finger will come to love and appreciate the deceptive depth that keeps the dynamics of Hansa brilliantly balanced.

The entire game looks and sounds like standard Euro fare, but make no mistake, Hansa Teutonica is leaps and bounds ahead of the pack. With its shared incentives and network building, it holds much in common with timeless train games. Through its elegant rules, brisk pace, and boundless depth, it resembles the legendary designs of Reiner Knizia. By its complex interactions and dynamic opportunities, it shames the vast majority of Euros releasing today.

Hansa Teutonica: Big Box is a fitting tribute to a modern classic and the perfect place for newcomers to jump into the fun. While it would have been nice to see something like an Ian O’Toole-caliber makeover to the visual presentation, this design and production is a well-oiled machine that has no problems producing one of the finest tabletop experiences in the entire industry.

Remaining Contenders

Whether we’re awaiting a North American release or simply a re-print of these unavailable titles, these are the games that will almost certainly make an appearance in my Revisiting of the Best Games of 2020 (coming this December):

Anno 1800

Economic Euros are a staple of tabletop gaming, yet there were very few new ones that successfully captured my heart in 2020.  Last year’s Rococo Deluxe is one such game that is solid on all accounts, yet I couldn’t quite find the magic within that would earn it a long-term spot among my collection.  For games like this, the elephants in the room will always be our all-time favorites: Brass: Birmingham, Great Western Trail, Concordia, A Feast for Odin, Pipeline, etc.  These are the kind of greedy elephants that don’t like to share time at the table or space on the shelf with lesser animals (at least at my household zoo).

Yet within the the green shrubs of opportunity hides a promising beast, waiting to pounce on my unsuspecting collection when it is localized in North America.  The blood of a greedy elephant courses through its veins, as it is a sibling to Brass Birmingham and child of Martin Wallace.  This sneaky predator is known as Anno 1800, and its time has nearly come….

Of course, it just as easily might leap from the bushes and land on its face, embarrassing itself at my table.  We shall see!

Nidavellir 

If I had a dollar for every time I heard the phrase, “This game is a Splendor killer,” I would have….. 5 dollars, probably.  Nidavellir is the latest title to add to this imaginary wealth.  And despite my increasing numbness towards anything Splendor-like, Nidavellir in particular has pinched me back to a sense of intrigue with two simple words: constrained bidding.  What the heck is exciting about that, you ask?  Consider this… Three absolute bangers in my collection contain this same mechanism of bidding for something using the limited options in your hand: namely Ra, High Society, and For Sale.  So with the early positive buzz this one has received, I’m definitely planning to check this light weight, accessible game out.

Kyoto

I’ve got a hunch that Kyoto will be surprise banger of a game.  It sees players representing selfish countries that have come together to negotiate unselfish topics, specifically climate change.  I get the impression of mix between Q.E.’s amusing theme and Chinatown’s engaging gameplay.  It’s also coming at us from the hot new publisher, Deep Print Games, who recently busted open the industry’s Saloon doors with the fantastic Renature.  I could be wrong, but Kyoto is at least one to keep on the radar.

The Search for Planet X

My household enjoys a good deduction game including the popular Cryptid and more recent Loot of Lima.  The Search for Planet X appears to be among the best of the bunch, and it’s one I’m looking forward to trying whenever it decides to show up in stores again.  This game keeps things running smooth with a handy app, freeing up players to focus in on the space riddle at the table in a hunt for Planet X.

Switch & Signal

I’ve already talked about this highly accessible cooperative train game in my most anticipated board games of 2021 list, and now I’m back double dipping on this title in my remaining candidates for the top games of 2020.  So is this game a 2020 release, or a 2021 release?…. The answer is yes…. probably.  Kosmos seems to be dragging their feet getting it to North America, but like the little engine that could, I think they’ll eventually come around.

Sumatra

Even after hearing the Shut Up & Sit Down Podcast’s lukewarm reaction to Sumatra, I can’t help but try it for myself.  This light set-collection game intrigues me with it’s characteristically Knizian elegance.  The game is a simple as either move ahead one space or hang behind and draft another tile, but players set the pace of the movement by forcing others to keep up with the pack in this chill game about touring an island.

Best Art

Fort – Kyle Ferrin

Not only does the theme of Fort snuggly fit Grant Rodiek’s design. It also perfectly matches Kyle Ferrin’s art style. Kyle does a masterful job evoking all of the weird, wacky wonder of being a kid. I’ll let his art do the talking:

Best Art Runner-Up: Cosmic Frog

Best Production

Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy – Lautapelit.fi

Just to be clear, the best production does not equal the most expensive game. Our pick for 2019’s best production was the $35 Wavelength thanks to the way its production felt essential to the experience. Yet in this year’s case, the best production of 2020 is, in fact, the most expensive game on this post: Eclipse Second Dawn.

Without the Game Trayz in this box that serve to organize, enhance, and streamline the Eclipse experience, this game would be significantly more cumbersome. As it is, Eclipse’s production serves to carry it over the barrier of “event game of the month” into a much more approachable “feature game of the night” by reducing playtime, simplifying setup, and deluxifying the experience. This game both looks and feels freaking phenomenal.

Best Production Runner-Up: Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

Best Expansion

Root: The Underworld Expansion – Leder Games

The Underworld Expansion to Root offers even more of that asymmetric good stuff! The new board is gorgeous and shakes things up nicely while the new factions are delightfully unique and solid additions. The moles are a tasty tableau builder while the crows are slimy sneaksters.

Our plays have been very well balanced and competitive between the new and old factions. No complaints here! This one is absolutely worth the purchase if you are a fan of base Root.

Best Expansion Runner-Up: Downforce: Wild Ride

This concludes our Top 15 Board Games of 2020! What were your favorite new releases from last year? Share with us in the comments below!

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

The post Top 15 Board Games of 2020 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

It’s funny how just a little bit of time can turn fresh bread to stale, ripe berries into rotten, and a good egg salad to bad.  We’ve all tried to eat something that has lost its freshness, and the difference is usually too strong to ignore.

Likewise, a little too much downtime between your turns in a board game, or worse yet, useless downtime between turns, can make a game quickly feel stale.

Dominion is typically a game with minimal downtime… until it isn’t.  Add in enough players or increasingly combotastic decks and suddenly you might be waiting forever for others to draw and play their entire deck every time it is their turn.  This was my experience last time I played Dominion, and it made a new deck builder, Fort, all the more refreshing when I got the chance to try it.  

I’ve recently talked about how Dominion hasn’t aged well as more and more deck builders hit the market.  One of my least favorite parts about it is how I can play an entire game and never need to pay attention to anyone else’s turns.  It usually doesn’t matter to me what other players are doing on their turns, so when it’s a long wait between my own turns, the fun starts to get a little stale.

Fort solves this problem by giving players the opportunity to follow their opponents’ actions.  You must constantly decide whether to use a card from your hand to ride the coattails of other players or save it for your own turn.  This gives me even more to consider as I end my turn and draw my next hand, as I’m thinking about plan A and plan B options depending on what carrots my opponents dangle.

Potion Explosion reveals a similar downtime problem to Dominion, where all time between your turns is woefully meaningless and painfully slow.  Usually the best ingredient to pick is claimed by the current player, so planning out your choice beforehand is pointless.  Every turn starts with a brand new marble-rack state where the active player must analyze the new options while everyone else waits and stares into the void.

Jaipur is also a set collection drafting game with much less exciting components than potion tiles and sliding marbles on a rack.  Yet I’m always laser-focused on those spice points and fabric tiles and camel cards when my opponent is deciding what to take or play.  It helps that the turns in this 2-player game are so snappy.  But more than that, every turn that my opponent takes feels like they are reaching into my box of prized treasures and stealing them right out from under my nose.  Jaipur strikes a tense balance between risks and incentives, strategies and tactics, highs and lows, and it all hinges on what I choose to leave out for my opponent based on what I think they will do.  This is why Potion Explosion was booted from my collection while Jaipur holds a space within my shrine of stellar card games.

The worst kind of downtime is when it has minimal payoff.  I can play a game of Root or Pax Pamir where the downtime is fairly high, yet I treasure that time to be able to survey the game state and search for my best path forward.  I also respect the time my opponents take to make a move when the stakes are high and poor decisions can be ultra punishing.  But when a light, breezy game like Santa Monica waltzes onto my table and eats up seemingly just as much downtime, I begin to get impatient. 

In this cozy beach crafting game, the analysis-to-payoff ratio is far too high for me to excuse its sluggish pace.  Once again, you have a game where I couldn’t care less about what is going on with my opponents’ play areas, and the turns aren’t fast or remarkable enough to disguise the void of downtime.

I’ve found that the best way to combat downtime in a low interaction, low complexity game is either zippy turns or simultaneous play.  Games like 7 Wonders and Sushi Go have stayed popular for so long partially because everyone takes their turns at the same time.  Pick a card, play it, pass your hand, repeat!  Meanwhile, Reiner Knizia’s classic designs have staying power because the turns are quick and simple but they pack a punch. It’s a beautiful tempo for a game when you just want to get to the fun.

The best board games in the industry find ways to freshen or minimize their downtime. The most obvious ways to accomplish this include simultaneous play or zippy turns. Other designs, like the above mentioned Pax Pamir and Root, disguise their downtime by making the game captivating throughout or giving players plenty to think about in-between their turns.

Another way to freshen downtime is by embracing it! This can happen when other players’ turns are fun to spectate or strategically useful. Who doesn’t enjoy watching an opponent take on an interesting dexterity challenge? Likewise, witnessing a competitor’s turn as they give away juicy information in a deduction game can be highly rewarding.

Ultimately, nobody prefers to eat stale bread, rotten berries, and bad egg salads.  Similarly, gamers don’t want play games with stale, sluggish downtimes. But I suppose that exceptions can be made if the design brings balance to the universe with a clean setup and teardown.

Tune in next time for Tabletop Tastes #9: Clean Setup/Teardown

More great games with fresh downtime:

Simultaneous Play: Quacks of Quedlinburg, Taverns of Tiefenthal, Chinatown, Magic Maze, Captain Sonar, KLASK, Sidereal Confluence, Don’t Get Got, My City, Welcome To, Railroad Ink, Super Skill Pinball, QE, Race for the Galaxy, Just One, On Tour

Fun to Spectate: Crokinole, Men at Work, Junk Art, Skull

Useful Opponent Turns: Cryptid, Treasure Island, Downforce, Loot of Lima, That’s Pretty Clever, Bristol 1350, Spyfall, Scape Goat

Zippy Turns: Blue Lagoon, Azul, Blitzkrieg!, Bus, Ethnos, Irish Gauge, The Quest for El Dorado, Love Letter, Tournament at Avalon

Captivating Play: Camel Up, For Sale, Modern Art, Wavelength, Condottiere, The Crew, The Mind, The Estates, A Fake Artist Goes to New York, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, High Society, Isle of Skye, The King’s Dilemma, Mysterium, Ra

Thinky Downtime: Age of Steam, Brass Birmingham, Great Western Trail, Pipeline, Tigris & Euphrates, The King is Dead, Samurai, Inis, A Feast for Odin

What are your favorite games with a fresh downtime?

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

The post Tabletop Tastes #8: Fresh Downtime appeared first on Bitewing Games.

To Be Exciting, or Not to Be Exciting

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

-Anonymous Judge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting with the Times

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

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

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

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

What Makes a Theme Exciting?

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

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

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

Me… just now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Irony in Ignorance

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this series, we take a fresh look at classic games and explore how they hold up in the modern board game industry. This post will discuss the beloved deck-builder, Dominion: How Has it Aged?

The Grandfather of Deck-Builders

When Dominion first hit the board gaming world in 2008, it made a tidal wave of a splash that flooded the market with flattering copy-cats and caused a ripple effect in the industry that can still be seen today. It was the first game of its kind, a kind that would soon be categorized as “deck-builders.” So what was it about this novel concept of adding cards to your personal deck and crafting your unique engine that caught on like wildfire?

Deck-building just might be the #1 mechanism for triggering dopamine release. What other board game mechanism rewards their players on nearly each and every turn? Players constantly get to purchase more cards, customize their decks, and reap the benefits as they draw, play, purchase, rinse, and repeat.

Deck-building has proven to be a hit with publishers as well. It’s the kind of mechanism that is infinitely expandable, widely applicable, and easily reproduced. It’s no wonder that Board Game Geek reports that nearly four-thousand deck-building products (games, expansions, promos, etc.) exist in the market, but it’s impressive to think that basically none of these existed before Dominion (2008).

One cannot just blow off Dominion as a flash in the pan. Two different versions of the game still hold spots in the top 100 ranked games of all time. Yet, as mentioned above, Dominion has inspired a lot of ideas since its inception. From simple rethemes and updates of the same formula, to entire evolutions and fusions into much more ambitious ideas, the deck-building genre has seen a big-bang of developments over that past 12 years. So the question we now explore is this: Is Dominion, the grandfather of deck-builders, even relevant anymore?

Vanilla Ice Cream

When taken in as a whole, one could argue that Dominion, with its nearly TWENTY expansions, is absolutely still relevant. The IP, with its hundreds upon hundreds of cards, is essentially a money printer for Rio Grande Games. You can still often find it being played in board game cafes, stores, and homes as a quick and easy go-to, like an everlasting vanilla ice cream that can never be replaced. It may still be able to post up a healthy amount of plays and purchases (perhaps more than any other deck-builder), but as Monopoly has so dutifully demonstrated, that doesn’t mean it’s still a great game.

Indeed, like old-reliable vanilla ice cream, Dominion could also be regarded as dull, colorless, and unimaginative. The theme and look of the game are about as dry as a slice of burnt toast. The engine is all about increasing draws, actions, purchases, and treasure in the name of maximizing points.

The pool of player interaction isn’t much more than a puddle, either. Adding more competitors to a session does little more than increase your downtime between turns of playing these cards to get some more of those cards for your deck. And when we take a step back to look at the deck-building genre as a whole, we can more easily notice just how much Dominion shows its age.

A Book’s Cover

Put the production of Dominion next to equivalent components from the likes of Fort or Taverns of Tiefenthal and the contrast in presentation might be sharp enough to sever a limb. Dominion, like many Euros of the past, suffers from bland-look syndrome. This was something that thinky games could get away with for the longest time… whether it was in the name of budget restraints or focusing in on mechanics or sheer lack of competition.

With the rise of Kickstarter, the fall of barriers to entry (in designing and publishing), the age of the internet, and more, board games have to try harder to stand out, and thus gamers benefit as a result. We see it in the customer-focused productions of Stonemaier Games, from the classy grape/wine tokens of Viticulture to the mesmerizing mech art of Scythe to the cornucopia of hand-drawn birds in Wingspan. It’s also found in the deep, murky colors of Brass: Birmingham and the mesmerizing monsters of Spirit Island and the screen-printed woodland wonders of Root. In the modern board game industry, attention to detail can no longer be limited to functionality and design of play.

As the games of today look better and better, many games of yesterday look all the worse. Dominion is the epitome of this effect, but we should never judge a book by its cover alone.

Adding Flavor to the Formula

The brilliance of Dominion is found within its addictive simplicity. Draw, play, purchase, shuffle, repeat. This simple formula takes players down many paths as different combinations of cards enter their hands or start in the market. Each unique setup is a new challenge to discover the best path to victory. Changing even one card option can affect the relative value of every other card that can be purchased. It’s the kind of novelty that never wears off… at least until you discover all the more that modern deck builders can accomplish.

Take the crunchy, agonizing choice of “Which card should I add to my deck,” and then add to it…

“Which direction should I go?” in Clank and The Quest for El Dorado.

“Which friends should I neglect?” in Fort.

“When should I stop?” in Quacks of Quedlinburg.

“Who should I attack?” in Undaunted.

“Should I save my prized, unique cow for the big payoff of Kansas City or give old Bessie away here and now for some quick pocket change?” in Great Western Trail.

These mechanical combinations have made for some of my favorite experiences in gaming. As a result, going back to Dominion can taste so… flavorless. These other games follow all the essential steps of Dominion’s recipe for how to make a solid deck builder:

• Variable setup
• Catchup mechanisms
• A variety of tempting market options
• Big moves and combos
• Balanced strategies

And then they add in all kinds of flavor and texture to the dish. Whether its the evocative theme, stunning presentation, layered mechanisms, or all of the above, these evolutions in the genre can make it difficult to go back to Old Faithful. Why settle for mere playing and purchasing cards when I can instead race through the jungle, run from the dragon, build a fort, command a platoon, concoct a potion, herd cattle across the Wild West, and so much more?

“But Nick, none of these games are as replayable as Dominion and its 20 expansions!” I get it, a game with variable setups and variable turns is going to have loads of replayability. But a game with strong player interaction and human influence on top of that is going to have near infinite replayability. Dominion struggles to reach those heights with a mere Witch attack card here and Moat defense card there.

Give me a game that makes my hands clammy when my wife suddenly books it back out of the dungeon to trigger the deadly dragon countdown. Show me the thrill of a wild opponent who attempts a kamikaze blitz past my firing snipers in a mad dash for control of the final objective. Allow my friend to flaunt his icy heart by parking his explorer right in my way, blocking my easiest path to El Dorado as he dilly dallies in deckonomics.

People are the ultimate variable in board gaming. Where some games like Dominion choose to turn players into cogs of a system or puppets of a string, other designs hand the strings over to the players and let them be the puppet masters at the table. For my tastes, a game like Dominion feels too suitable for a robot who scans the starting market of cards, processes the best route to victory, and executes the strategy without a worry for external factors.

These days, so many deck builders elicit more feeling than basic dopamine-like effects. I’m inclined to forever appreciate Dominion and its legacy but ultimately let it rest in peace.

This concludes my exploration of Dominion: How Has It Aged? Of course, this article is purely subjective and we welcome your thoughts and opinions in the comments below!

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

The post Dominion: How Has It Aged? appeared first on Bitewing Games.