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Best Travel-Friendly Board Games

Nick Murray — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 05:22:30 +0000

One question I constantly see in board game forums is this: “What are the best travel-friendly board and card games?” Whether you’re headed out on a business trip, visiting friends and family, or simply taking a vacation, it’s always nice to have something to entertain the group. Yet board games typically come in huge boxes that don’t always fit in a backpack, purse, or suitcase with your other belongings. This is the perfect time to have a travel-friendly board or card game that comes in a small package and/or takes up minimal space on a table.

With those needs in mind, I’ve assembled a list of the Best Travel-Friendly board and card games for any occasion:

Best Wallet Game – Sprawlopolis

Let’s get this one right out of the way. Wallet games are perhaps the most travel-friendly games that money can buy. One publisher, Button Shy Games, specializes in this type of bite-sized fun, and one of their best titles is Sprawlopolis or Agropolis. This is a design we’ve recommended extensively between our Top 10 Quick & Easy Solo Games as well as our Top 10 Spatial Puzzle Games because it takes 18 cards and turns them into a delightful challenge best suited for one or two players.

Best Standard Deck Game – Regicide

Even if you don’t own an official copy of Regicide, this is one that you can technically track down anywhere and everywhere because the design uses a standard deck of playing cards. Then, all you have to do is download the rulebook and you are off to the races.

Of course, buying the official Regicide deck is a great way to support the creators for making a fantastic cooperative experience for 1-4 players where you struggle to take down the Jacks, Queens, then Kings. This is one that comes with me to basically any game night because it slots so easily into my game bag and never fails to entertain for 10-30 minutes.

Best Trick-Taking Game – The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, Ghosts of Christmas

Trick-taking games are a dime a dozen, and the cream of the crop always hits the spot at our table whether I’m playing with hobbyist gamers or non-gamers. I’ll offer two suggestions here, both excellent and relatively new. The Crew: Mission Deep Sea was just crowned as one of my Top 15 Games of 2021 for being an addicting crowd-pleaser where you work together to complete wacky round objectives. Meanwhile, Ghosts of Christmas puts a twist on the formula by allowing players to play tricks into the past, present, and future in any order they wish; plus it’s the perfect game to take home for the holidays.

Best Pub Game – Skull, Art Robbery

I constantly hear folks online asking about the “best game to take to the pub.” My answer? Skull. Skull takes simple bluffing and makes it a riot of a time… whether you are inebriated or not. Each turn is as simple as placing a disc facedown onto your stash or bidding how many of everybody’s discs you think you can flip without revealing a skull. Just make sure your bartender doesn’t confuse the discs for coasters.

That said, many folks already own Skull. So for those of you who want something new and fresh, my follow-up recommendation is Art Robbery. This one features double-layered thievery—art robbers are splitting the loot with each other via forceful, sticky-fingered methods. The card play is simple enough that there is no chance of overwhelming your brain, yet the gameplay features some clever twists and funny moments making it perfect for a casual, raucous atmosphere.

Best Party Game – Insider, A Fake Artist Goes to New York

Need a small game for a big, boisterous group? Look no further than Insider and A Fake Artist Goes to New York by Oink Games. Oink Games are the masters of putting big, memorable moments into cute, tiny boxes. Insider is their take on 20 questions with a twist: What if the 20-question limit was replaced with a sand timer, and what if one questioner was secretly a traitor who already knew the answer and wanted you to guess it without you noticing that they guided you to it so they can steal the victory for themself? Meanwhile, a Fake Artist also has a traitor in that one person does not know the secret topic of the round and is trying to get away with artistic fraud and deception!

Best Table-less Game – Trophies

Portable party games are great for casual trips or gatherings, but what if your gathering place has no table to play upon? In that case, your best bet would be something like Trophies. Trophies is the simplest, most approachable game on this list, yet it’s also the loudest. One player clutches a stack of trophy cards and displays one card at a time to the group—each card displays a single large letter. The lead player then selects and reads aloud a category on the back of the deck such as “Something blue,” “Something slow,” or “Minor Ailment,” and the first person to call out a word that starts with the big letter and relates to that category earns the trophy card. Once the deck is gone, the player with the most trophies wins. Whether you’re the lead player judging and awarding the group’s words or a competitor wracking your brain for the first word that comes to mind, you’re bound to have funny time.

Best 2-Player Game – Schotten Totten 2

This next recommendation is for those of you who think this list is starting to sound more like a party list than a travel-friendly curation. Schotten Totten 2 is a recent release from one of the greatest 2-player (or any player count, for that matter) game designers of all time, Dr. Reiner Knizia. Featuring asymmetric strategy, a delightfully zany theme of chickens vs. scotsmen, and characteristically elegant rules, Schotten Totten 2 is the excellent standalone sequel to one of the most widely revered 2-player games (Battle Line / Schotten Totten). To top it off, the box isn’t much larger than a hen’s egg.

Best Family Card Game – Startups, SCOUT

We’re back with more adorable Oink Games, namely Startups and SCOUT! Both titles have been effortlessly approachable and addicting for my family members including siblings, cousins, parents, and more. Both games possess the simplicity of evergreens such as Uno or Phase 10, yet they also provide a superior strategy and tension that will keep you satisfied throughout. Startups is all about investing just a little bit more in companies than your opponents, while SCOUT sees players recruiting performers into their hand to help them put on a good circus show.

Best Cooperative Game – The Mind, The Game, Hanabi

If your family or friends shy away from competitive settings, then perhaps a cooperative game is in order? The Mind and The Game (yes, that is its title) are two peas in a pod of being games where players must collectively discard cards from their hands in ascending or descending order without saying anything. It doesn’t sound like much of a game at all, but somehow it works and it’s thrilling! Meanwhile, Hanabi is a beloved classic of holding your hand inside-out, meaning everyone can see your cards except you, and giving each other hints about the cards you can see. Hanabi has had such an impact on me that it inspired the creation of our upcoming publication, Gussy Gorillas, which takes the inside-out hand concept and turns it into a competitive game of trading and bluffing.

Best Social Deduction Game – Scape Goat, Durian

Speaking of bluffing, animals, and not seeing every card, Scape Goat and Durian have proven to be excellent games of deduction and deceit at our table. Durian is another Oink Game, yet this one comes with a tiny bell and a whole bunch of fruit cards. Every turn you and your fellow storefront apes must face a difficult decision: take another fruit order or tattle tale on an opponent? If you think your fruit orders exceed your inventory, then you can call the boss with the ring of a bell and hope that your theory is right, because if you’re wrong then he’ll get mad at you instead! Meanwhile, Scape Goat is all about throwing a fellow criminal under the bus without them even realizing it… the only problem is that poor sap might actually be you!

Best Solo Game – Under Falling Skies

I fully admit that Under Falling Skies is the largest box and thus the least travel-friendly game on this list, yet I wouldn’t hesitate to toss it into my backpack or suitcase if I knew I’d have downtime for a great solo session. This one has been featured a fair amount recently between my Top 10 Quick & Easy Solo Games as well as my Revisiting the Best Board Games of 2020. To put it plainly, there is much to love about this solo game featuring difficult dice decisions and pesky alien invasions.

Best Game to Take on Outdoor Adventures – Trailblazers

Now I could argue that Trailblazers also belongs in the Best Solo Game and Best Family Card Game categories, but today we’ll just focus in on its Outdoor Adventure compatibility. When Ryan Courtney and I were initially hashing out the production plan of his puzzly card game, Trailblazers, we found ourselves facing two clashing possibilities. On the one hand, Trailblazers could feature various modules or expansions that mix up the core gameplay and bring charming animal and traveler figures to the experience. On the other hand, we could make a travel-friendly version that features purely cards and focuses on the rock solid standard mode gameplay. The solution we settled on: Both? Both. Both is good.

While the Standard and Deluxe Editions of Trailblazers are best tailored for hobbyist gamers who want the most variety and content from a standard game box, the Travel Edition became our chance to really lean into the theme of hiking, biking, and kayaking with the packaging and material selection. We’ve seen many creative packages for board and card games from button shy wallets and pseudo book covers all the way to banana pouches and stuffed monkeys, yet there is one type of package that I’m surprised has been largely overlooked by publishers up to this point. To me, nothing says outdoor adventure and travel-friendly like a small clamshell case and carabiner, and thus our Trailblazers: Travel Edition was born.

Ryan admits that Trailblazers is his first published design that will appeal to casual and hobbyist gamers alike. With the help of artist Seth Lucas, who as worked on everything from hiking patches to John Muir books, we knew we could craft a game fit for both friendly local game stores as well as national park gift shops.

Beyond the ability to attach the Travel Edition to a backpack, we wanted to make sure the cards could hold up under endless plays and rigorous conditions. So for those who buy the Super Travel or Deluxe editions of Trailblazers, your game will come with 100% PVC cards (durable, water-resistant, plastic cards).

So whether you want an affordable, portable game or a box crammed with content, you’ll be able to acquire the travel-friendly clamshell case, carabiner, and PVC cards via the Trailblazers Super Travel or Deluxe edition when our Kickstarter project launches this August. You can subscribe to the Kickstarter pre-launch page here. And we absolutely need your help! Bitewing Games is only made possible and kept alive by the support of backers and fans of our published games. Thanks for your support!

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

The post Best Travel-Friendly Board Games appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Top 15 Board Games of 2021

Nick Murray — Sun, 27 Mar 2022 22:00:00 +0000

It’s almost April, which means that I’m properly late to the party in revealing my favorite board games of 2021! Why wait so long? Because I’ve been holding out for a few last-minute games to make their way to our table, particularly if my hunch tells me that they have a shot at my Top 15 Board Games of the year. I’ve also spent the past few months revisiting many of these new releases with third or fourth or sixteenth plays to discern exactly how they compare against each other.

I’m not the type who shies away from including reimplemented designs on my list, but this year I decided that reimplementations must feature gameplay changes to qualify for my Top 15. This includes anything from slight balancing tweaks to additional content, but those also tend to come with a new coat of paint (in theme and/or art style).

Ultimately, my list is a celebration of excellence in game design, illustration, and publishing. The board games that made my Top 15 earned their place by bringing innovation, excellence, and (most importantly) enjoyment to our table and the industry. 2021 was a killer year for tabletop gaming; let’s explore 15 reasons why…

15. Cryo

Cryo is a well-oiled machine of a worker placement sci-fi game. What it lacks in exciting new ideas, it more than makes up for in slim, trim, focused gameplay. Each mechanism is tightly interconnected to the overall objective of scavenging the catastrophic wreckage of your space ship and rescuing your colony’s faction on a cold, threatening planet.

Using only 8 unique cards and a small assortment of tile options, Cryo provides a wealth of strategic possibilities for customizing your engineering platform as you race for the most points. Much like the experience of gliding down fresh powder with your well-worn skis on a snow-day, the smooth system that Cryo provides is endlessly satisfying to glide through, despite its familiarity.

14. MicroMacro: Crime City — Full House

This list contains a couple of standalone sequels to excellent original designs—sequels which merited their way onto my Top 15 through sheer enjoyment factor. But these sequels certainly would have been even higher on my list if I hadn’t already played their predecessors dozens of times. At any rate, MicroMacro: Crime City — Full House is the first such sequel.

While Full House features a little more nuance to its criminal cases and visual trickery, it doesn’t really bother to shake up the formula established in the original game. Yet, that’s perfectly fine in this case. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Full House simply offers more of what we’ve come to love in this cooperative Where’s Waldo murder mystery bonanza: kills and thrills. I maintain that MicroMacro is one of the best 2-player cooperative games money can buy, especially for couples.

13. So Clover

I was initially dubious at the announcement of yet another word game where the objective is to get players to guess some words using another word as a clue (see also Codenames, Decrypto, Just One, and a gazillion others). Yet, as Cryo’s reliable worker placement system and MicroMacro’s proven search-and-solve formula have shown, just because you’ve seen it before doesn’t mean it can’t delight you.

The important thing here is that So Clover manages to stand out from its crowded (and seemingly perfected) genre by engaging everyone for every second of its lighting fast 30-minutes with a novel production featuring donut cards and dry-erase clovers. It wastes no time getting straight to the beating heart of what makes word games fun, and it uniquely does not require a large group of players to provide maximum enjoyment.

12. The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

And here is that other commendable sequel I was hinting at. Do you like yourself a tense card game? A clean cooperative design? A solid trick taking challenge? The Crew: Mission Deep Sea might just be one of the very best games IN ALL THREE GENRES, ever.

I’ve found that with the cooperative genre in general, the key to my heart is through limited communication, low upkeep requirements, tense challenges, and meaningful variety. The Crew effortlessly checks all of these boxes and keeps me unabashedly addicted to its gameplay loop from one hand to the next. That’s why I’ve played 111 rounds of The Crew (between The Quest for Planet Nine and Mission Deep Sea), and I still have no intention of stopping.

11. Kabuto Sumo

Speaking of games that I’ve played a ton of, Kabuto Sumo has proven to be another perfect 2-player game for my wife and I. Having backed the Kickstarter campaign, we were among the first to receive and play it, and it was an instant hit at our table. Thus, I’ve been frequently surprised to hear so many polarizing opinions on this one as the months have gone on.

Some folks, like us, are having a blast with this gorgeous little game of beetle wrestling and disc pushing. Others have merely shrugged their shoulders and wondered what all the fuss is about. Certain people have even come away claiming that there is nothing here in terms of meaningful decisions or strategic momentum. I’d like to formally invite you naysayers into my home where we will show you the true ways of the Kabuto. You must learn to wax on and wax off before you can master the art of the Sumo.

As far as dexterity games go, the disc-pushing of Kabuto Sumo is certainly more peaceful and nuanced than that of flicking discs or stacking blocks. Yet if you’re willing to invest in that nuance and get lost in the weeds of predictive physics—where wood pieces of various shapes, weights, and sizes collide with one another as you try to direct and control this gentle chaos on a raised platform—then and only then will you uncover the alluring magic of Kabuto Sumo.

10. Brian Boru: High King of Ireland

Trick taking games have long explored and experimented with various incentives for both winning and losing tricks. Few have gone as far as Brian Boru in grafting the clean mechanism of trick taking onto an entire board game and asking the question: What if both winning and losing a trick had unique, impactful consequences in an area majority game?

Brian Boru is a resounding success in its experimental combination of mechanisms. Hand management remains impactful as players must decide which cards to draft, when to play them, and how to use them to gain the upper hand in this gorgeous depiction of old Irish culture. This one is ripe with ripple-effect decisions thanks to its strategic flexibility and potent player interaction.

9. Mille Fiori

Thus begins the Reiner Knizia hot streak. What do I mean by that? Well, Knizia had one 2020 release (My City) that made my top 15 games that year with a second game (Schotten Totten 2) later earning a place among my ‘keepers.’ Not that my list actually means anything, but I’d call that a killer year for any designer.

Enter 2021… in terms of hot streaks, this year might rank among his very best in his 30 years of published games. Mille Fiori is my first reason why.

There is something so undeniably joyous about the ramp up in tension, points, and combos that Mille Fiori provides from start to finish. Yet where many point salad designs fail to have teeth within the competition, Mille Fiori is a real biter. Both the drafting of cards and claiming of board spaces are deliciously interactive in this glass game of ornate opportunism.

8. The Siege of Runedar

I tend to not click with big box cooperative games unless they are focused, streamlined, and high-pressured. Of course, keeping a design focused, streamlined, and high-pressured is Knizia’s specialty, thus The Siege of Runedar has been a good fit for our table.

What I love about this cooperative, deck-building, fortress defense game is that it strains and stretches you and your companions across several different wants and needs. You want to acquire a stronger weapon, but you need to stop the approaching orcs. You want to dig your way to victory by removing rubble, but you need to address the newly arrived catapult. The “wants” can help you in the long run, but the “needs” will lead to failure if neglected for too long.

This type of tough trade-off is common in solid cooperative games, but Reiner takes things a step further through interesting deck management decisions. And the icing on the cake is an ambitious production by Ludonova that brings the experience to life with raised walls and towers.

7. Whale Riders

Perhaps the only thing more breezy and joyous than Reiner Knizia’s Whale Riders is actually riding whales in real life. Either way, you’re in for a great time when whales are involved. Whale Riders makes for an excellent filler game in a gorgeous package. Nothing here is necessarily new or innovative, but the quick pace and tense tempo of this action efficiency game is what makes for a fresh experience.

I’m still amazed that I’ve been able to teach and play this game in under 25 minutes, considering the large box and plentiful tiles and cards. At such a short playtime for 2-6 players, Whale Riders is both highly flexible and endlessly approachable, making it easy to squeeze into any type of game night. The various different play styles it offers—from meandering along the coast for cheap goods to rushing to the pile of pearls at the end—have all proven to be viable strategies. There is something to be said for good, clean game design that pays no mind to trending gimmicks or excess bells and whistles.

6. Equinox

It was a tough toss-up to rank all these great Knizias against each other, but I ultimately found that Equinox just barely won out on my list by being the most deliciously cutthroat of the bunch. Equinox gives me feelings similar to Reiner’s best card games including Lost Cities and Schotten Totten in that often I don’t want to play any of the cards in my hand—somehow each card feels like a golden opportunity waiting to be unleashed if I can just manage to hold onto them a bit longer.

Thanks to the poignant creature betting and elimination, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this tense hand-management game at every player count. Equinox also features a couple key improvements over its predecessor, Colossal Arena. One improvement being the two additional creatures that bring the total creature count up to fourteen and the setup combinations beyond three-thousand. The other key improvement is found on the cards themselves, where Equinox uses clear graphic design to denote a creature’s ability rather than small, pesky text.

Where most betting games fall back on the convenient racing formula, Equinox stands out by honing in on interactive card-play and devastating creature elimination.

5. Ark Nova

A Feast for Odin has occupied a comfortable niche in my collection for the past few years by being a sprawling sandbox game perfect for long, cozy game nights with my wife. When I started to learn about Ark Nova, I wondered if this hot new game could manage to scratch a similar itch. After only one play, and continuing on through several more, I’ve been delighted to find that Ark Nova does exactly that. This is especially impressive when considering the fact that my wife loathes most games that are heavy-weight in their complexity.

I don’t believe Ark Nova has one secret ingredient that makes it a success at our table. Rather, I find that this epic zoo-builder is more than the sum of its parts. Thanks to a brilliantly interconnected system of action selection, tableau building, tile placement, economic juggling, and hand management—all of which provide lovely thematic touches—Ark Nova keeps us fully engaged from start to finish. It’s competitive Zoo Tycoon brought to our tabletop, and rarely is this board gaming hobby much more exciting than that.

4. Kemet: Blood & Sand

Kemet has long been a favorite of many area control connoisseurs since its initial release now one decade ago. I was quite tempted to jump into the design and see what the fuss was all about, but I instead decided to wait until the release of its evolved version: Kemet: Blood & Sand. The wait was worth it, my friends.

Kemet: Blood & Sand is essentially Kemet 2.0, with many changes and improvements brought to the system including a redesigned map, balanced powers, upgraded components, and fine-tuned gameplay. The joy of Kemet remains the hyper-aggressive gameplay mixed with a buffet of powers and creatures. No two plays of this game have ever felt alike as each player cobbles together a terrifyingly unique army. The ever-present challenge is to discover and exploit your opponents’ weaknesses while avoiding their strengths. The cherry on top is a tight combat system that is full of strategy and surprises.

3. Ankh: Gods of Egypt

2021 was a great year for Egyptian area control, apparently, because Ankh manages to be just as compelling as Kemet: Blood & Sand, if not more so. Ankh brings so many brilliant concepts to the table that it’s hard to know where to start. The action selection tracks are a fascinating feature that can strongly influence one’s tactics, particularly when an action reaches the end of its track thereby ending a player’s turn and triggering the next event. The conflicts present exciting opportunities for scoring points, building monuments, weakening opponents, and replenishing your hand. And the experience follows a dynamic arc where the two weakest players eventually combine into one insanely strong faction as everyone races to the end of the point track.

While Kemet kicks the doors open with an immediately impressive array of strategic opportunities, Ankh has been more sly and subtle with a streamlined system that grows on you from one play to the next. Each session has revealed new challenges to overcome and new strategies to explore, making it an alluring experience that rewards repeat plays. I haven’t tried Eric Lang’s other games, but I would be surprised and impressed if any of them were better than Ankh.

2. Radlands

While I’ve tried a good number of popular dueling games over the years including Dice Throne, Unmatched, Blue Moon Legends, Funkoverse, Riftforce, and Summoner Wars, I’ve never been majorly impressed with the genre. Something about the overly tactical “I slap you, you slap me” nature of these games never fully satisfied compared to other 2-player games and genres. But with Radlands, I’ve finally found an addicting and satisfying dueler.

Not only does Radlands raise the bar with a stunning art style and production, but it also hits the sweet spot of being blazingly streamlined yet surprisingly deep. The water economy is balanced on a knife’s edge, as are the huge variety of card abilities.

The flexibility allowed in the gameplay is perhaps Radland’s strongest feature… You can aim to hit hard and fast and hope to knock your opponent out before they have time to retaliate against your weak defenses, or you can carefully play the long game and slowly undermine your enemy while keeping your camps well protected and repaired. You can invest in new characters and store a little extra water for a later big turn, or you can junk your cards and blow your water for instant gratification from powerful but fleeting effects. Thanks to a brilliant system of action timing and event triggering, you almost always have time to anticipate and prepare for your opponent’s next maneuver.

Rather than leaning on cheap tricks and random surprises, Radlands confidently plants its feet on more strategic soil without losing any of the drama and fun of overpowered abilities and asymmetric dueling.

1. Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile

In an industry that cranks out thousands of new releases per year that makes hobbyists feel like they’re drinking from a firehose of recycled mechanisms and themes, it is rare to come across a game that brings true innovation to the table. Yet when those rare gems emerge, and when one can manage to assemble the right group to properly embrace the experience, these games are transcendent.

Oath flips the conventions of tabletop storytelling by turning the players from the audience into the story tellers. This game is not about recreating or reliving history, it is about writing it. It’s not about discovering tactical paths or uncovering strategic ripple effects, it’s about paving paths and creating ripple effects. It’s not about deciding the best player at today’s table, it’s about determining who will rule the next generation and how that kingdom will evolve or decay over time.

Oath demands much from its participants—namely a regular group of players who are willing to embrace both the highs and the lows of the experience—yet it gives even more in return. I never know what my next play of Oath is going to become… a joint quest to overpower and overthrow the tyrannical Chancellor, a covert operation to undermine the empire as a traitorous citizen, a ruler’s mad scramble to put out the fires started by pesky exiles, a struggle for territory or favor or secrets or relics… the possibilities are seemingly endless. In a game where the decisions of one play carry over into the next in an endless transformation of land, peoples, and power, I doubt I’ll ever grow tired of Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile.

Oath also wins my vote for Best Art and Best Production for having delightful art by Kyle Ferrin and excellent components (including top-tier rulebooks) from the team at Leder Games.

Biggest Snubs

Art Robbery

Art Robbery is another delightful Knizia design that ended up just outside my Top 15. It’s not the deepest card game out there, but Art Robbery does hit the spot in terms of quick simplicity and clever thievery.

Coffee Traders

I really enjoyed my first play of Coffee Traders. But that’s the problem, I haven’t managed to play it since. Unfortunately, this one requires a very specific type of group and a huge chunk of time to get to the table. Due to its sprawling, complex nature, Coffee Traders possesses far too many barriers to entry to have seen enough plays or earn itself a spot in my Top 15.

Best Reskin

Royal Visit

Royal Visit instantly became a household favorite among our 2-player collection when we tried this new reskin last year. And what a reskin it is! While the original game was amusingly themed after some drunk folks in Times Square, this new one feels more fitting for the tug-of-war mechanisms of attracting the king and his court to your chateau. The production is colorful, blocky, and serene. But most importantly, the gameplay has aged like a fine wine. This one would absolutely be in my Top 15 Games of 2021 if any part of the design was new.

Best Games I Didn’t Love

Mind MGMT

I still hope to revisit Mind MGMT eventually. Perhaps with a few months time or a different group of players it’ll finally click for us and become a hit as it has with so many others. Whether or not that happens, I still admire and respect this hidden-movement deduction game for the interesting tricks and clever twists that it has up its sleeve.

Riftforce

As I shared in my 1st impressions post, Riftforce does everything right save for committing one critical error in my book. I’m referring to the flat game arc where the start, middle, and end of the game all feel roughly the same. But even so, Riftforce packs a heck of a punch as a 2-player dueling game with neat asymmetry and tasty combos.

Worst Games I Adored

Family Inc.

My goodness, whose idea was it to make this game box so offensively large? This is one of the few times where I’m actually considering defiling the box and cutting it down to a proper size or replacing it entirely with more sensible packaging. The gameplay of Family Inc. isn’t the most revelatory either, but Knizia knows how to make even the dumbest of concepts amusing. This experience boils down to “flip a random tile and hope for the best,” yet it still manages to entertain a jaded gamer like myself.

L.A.M.A. Dice

I also get a kick out of Knizia’s other “dumb fun” game, L.A.M.A. Dice, and this one even comes in a properly small box! I almost feel bad putting this one under the “worst game I adored” category, because I actually think it’s a very smart design appropriately wrapped in a silly package. Most hobby gamers would likely shrug at it, but for us it is a blast of a filler game.

Best Expansion

Pipeline: Emerging Markets

Emerging Markets is the perfect expansion for Pipeline in that it brings impactful market variety to the experience. It’s a great one to jump into after a few plays of the base game, as it will keep you from getting too comfortable with a specific strategy. For being an expansion that I would never play Pipeline without, Emerging Markets takes that cake as my top expansion of 2021.

Best New To Me Game

Yellow & Yangtze

I thought this would be a much harder decision, but once I realized that Yellow & Yangtze was a “new to me” game last year, my choice couldn’t have been easier. While this list is already littered with far too many Knizias (I’m fully aware ;), I’m not about to leave off one of the very best designs in his massive ludography. Yellow & Yangtze is a triumph of a strategy game that I will never get enough of. Now who’s going to pick up the rights to this one and give us the expansion?

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The post Top 15 Board Games of 2021 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

1st Impressions of Mille Fiori, Merchants of the Dark Road, Brian Boru, Furnace, The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, & More!

Nick Murray — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 15:51:11 +0000

Mille Fiori

2 Plays

Mille Fiori, a relatively abstract game of glass manufacturing and trade, is the next combotastic, point-salady Euro to come from the good Dr. Knizia. It’s as if Witchstone was the start of a new design trend from Reiner where he’s taken a liking to the dopamine-inducing combos that are prevalent in modern gaming. So where does Mille Fiori stand in this crowded genre, and how does it compare with Witchstone?

There’s no point in beating around the bush here so I’m just gonna come right out with it: Mille Fiori is much, much better than Witchstone, and arguably the best medium-light point salad Euro to hit the market since Babylonia. But mechanically, Mille Fiori has much more in common with Witchstone, so I think it’ll be enlightening to compare them here.

First, I think it’ll be helpful to revisit my thoughts on Witchstone. After playing it twice, I said the following:

“[Witchstone is] 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.”

While the point salady nature of the game brought the experience down for me, I still feel that the strongest aspect of Witchstone—the part that made it mildly enjoyable—was the action selection mechanism of arranging clusters of domino tiles in your cauldron to trigger increasingly bigger combos. In a fascinating flip-flop of table turning, Mille Fiori manages to be a stronger design with an insanely generic action selection mechanism that supports a much more exciting and thoughtful game board of endless points and combos.

Mille Fiori comes with a large deck of 110 playing cards where each card represents a space on the board. It’s not exactly that precise, as many card types can be played on multiple different spaces within its matching section, but you get the idea. Each round players are dealt 5 cards where you’ll draft one from your hand, play the card to claim the space on the board, and pass your hand to the left to do it again. The last card of every round does not end up getting played or discarded, but it actually ends up in the face-up market for players to potentially claim later on with bonus actions.

That’s all there is to Mille Fiori: pick a card, play it to claim the spot, and pass your hand clockwise. This is what makes the game surprisingly approachable even for casual gamers. Yet it’s the tough decision of which card to play and the result of what that claimed space triggers that propels Mille Fiori above nearly every other point salad game I’ve tried.

The game board is divided into five general sections that match the various colors of the cards. The workshop region is all about creating growing clusters of your diamond tiles to score increasingly more points on them. The citizens area has players building pyramids with their diamonds where the higher up tiles score more points, but the lower tiles get scored again for everyone supporting the new addition. The trade area contains another type of positive player interaction where adding your diamond to a column scores that column a larger number of points for everyone already there. These friendly areas contrast nicely with the brutal housing row where one player can build up a nice chain of points that gets reset the moment somebody else throws their diamond in the row. Meanwhile, adding to the harbor moves your ship along the water for bonuses, but it also represents an investment in later points based on what occurs in the trade rows. Finally, every section presents a competition to complete a unique objective, and the first players to do so will claim the most end-game bonus points.

All this mechanical explanation, and yet nothing here sounds remotely more unique or interesting than what Witchstone or plenty of other similar point salad games have to offer. So where’s the potency in Mille Fiori? What is the secret sauce that makes this one a cut above the rest? Honestly, I’d say it all has to do with the elevated importance of timing, variety, and interaction. In games such as Witchstone and the like, it’s nearly always a good time to do anything, and everything you do amounts to roughly the same result. It’s a good time to clear the gems off your cauldron, to spread your energy network and get more witches on the board, to race around the circular track, to get more bonus cards, and so on… and all these things net you a similar amount of points plus a similar style of bonuses.

Meanwhile in Mille Fiori, there are constant traps where you can set up your opponents for big plays if you’re not careful. Likewise, there are opportunities for golden combos that are gone the moment someone claims them. Your hand will tempt you with one option to execute a killer combo for yourself versus another option to hurt an opponent who is about to score big.

Witchstone lets everyone set up neat chain reactions for themselves in a monotonous, self-congratulatory kind of way. Mille Fiori tosses these enticing combos into the center of the table like it’s the start of the Hunger Games, and then it sits back and lets players lunge and claw for them across many quick rounds of card drafting and space claiming.

One important thing to note is that Witchstone is still the better option if you are only considering these games for 2-player sessions. Mille Fiori claims it can hold up at 2-players, but the general consensus among folks is that you should only play it with 3 or 4. Despite that, the reason Witchstone quickly left my collection while Mille Fiori is here to stay is because the latter brings meaningful timing and impactful interactions to the forefront of the experience. The fact that it also comes in a pleasant production as a quick, approachable design is icing on the cake. Now we just need to get a North American publisher to sign on with Schmidt Spiel and bring it over to this side of the world so folks don’t have to order it from Germany like I did.

Current Rating: 8/10

Pipeline: Emerging Markets (expansion)

1 Play

Emerging Markets is probably one of the most subtle expansions that I own. I suppose I’m used expansions giving me an entirely new game board or fresh asymmetric characters and factions. But when you layout the randomized action tiles and market tiles on top of Pipelines’s board, and when you mix in the new valuations and technologies, the changes don’t hit you until the gears start grinding.

Suddenly, you feel the impact of there being only one (expensive) option for grey crude market oil. Next, you feel the effects of having all eight action spaces jumbled around and paired together in wonky ways. Sprinkle in a new technology or more, a strange valuation or two, and before too long, you realize that these five modules really shake things up.

For fans of Pipeline who have come to know and love the game after several plays, Emerging Markets aims to shove them out of their comfort zone with a wildly randomized market setup. It also dangles carrots over strategic paths that one may never have considered up to this point. The new techs offer exciting possibilities for those willing to invest such as oil specialization, tech traversal, and crude oil crusading.

There’s not much else to say about Emerging Markets. Its box is as slim as it is subtle, and the modules inside are both easily integrated and sneakily impactful.

Current Rating: 9/10

Furnace

2 Plays

I had an interesting experience with our home furnace recently. Essentially, it decided to go on strike. No matter how hard our thermostat told it to get going and warm up the house, it stubbornly refused to comply. I think our home got down to 58 degrees Fahrenheit one night before the sun rose and started filling the freezing void that our rebellious appliance left behind. That’s the kind of day where you wear a hoodie inside with the hood on, always.

What does this all have to do with Furnace, the board game? Absolutely nothing…

Furnace is a slim, focused combination of lucrative auctions, careful tableau building, and generic resource conversion. Over the course of its 4 short rounds, players cycle back and forth between the auctioning phase and the furnacing phase. The thing that elevates Furnace above its rehashed premise is the novel twist on auctions.

Players each receive their own set of discs valued one through four. Each round, several furnacy cards are laid out in a row and put up for auction. One at a time, players commit a disc to a card—the only restriction is that no card can have multiple of the same value or player color. So you might bid your big bad four on a valuable card, but I can swoop in with my little two and place it on the same card. How do you like them apples? While it seems like a pointless underbid, it’s not so pointless when you consider the consolation prize. Everybody loves a good consolation prize.

Furnace is all about using your discs to their fullest potential: acquiring the best cards to slot into your tableau, milking consolation prizes from cards that others really want, converting some coal into some iron or some iron into some coal or some coal and iron into oil and to ultimately convert your final product into points. There’s also the chance to put your resources toward upgrades, get some of your cards flipped to their stronger side, and really heat up that furnace of yours.

Aside from the novel auctioning mechanism, perhaps the best thing about Furnace is that it knows exactly how long it should be: which is blazingly fast and blessedly short. It hangs around just long enough for you to explore the interesting tension of where to place your auctioning discs and enjoy the satisfying arc of building an engine, and then it’s over as quickly as it began. Any longer and it would be overstaying its welcome.

But not everyone will be able to overlook the comparatively cold and lonely production phase where cubes are pushed and friends are forgotten. Not all folks will see the interesting auctioning phase as strong enough to carry the rest of experience on its back. And not all gamers will find enough reasons to keep coming back for more. I find myself trending toward this last of groups.

I’ve enjoyed both of my plays of Furnace, but it feels as though further plays will merely offer slight variations to my first two sessions. Whenever I get to December and revisit the best and most popular games of the previous year—with a more seasoned perspective on the hotness of yesteryear—I like to categorize some games as “Flingers.” Flingers are those games that were fun to try one or more times but that I ultimately don’t need to own. These are the games that made for a fun ‘one night stand’, yet it won’t fill me with regret if I never play them again. Furnace feels like it’s a strong contender for that category. Although perhaps if the game box wasn’t so unnecessarily large I’d be able to talk myself into keeping it around longer.

Current Rating: 7/10

Merchants of the Dark Road

1 Play

Based on what little I knew about the design, I went into this play anticipating that Merchants of the Dark Road would not be my type of game. The good news is that I ended up enjoying it more than I expected, but I suppose that’s faint praise considering the fact that I thought I was going to hate it. Indeed, I was surprised to find myself carefully crafting elaborate strategies and executing thoughtful tactics throughout our first play of the game. There was certainly a satisfying payoff to my competitive efforts, yet Merchants of the Dark Road remains the type of game that I’m not keen to play more of—especially if it includes teaching more newcomers.

The onboarding process for this game features a roughly 40-minute rules teach that equates to throwing a bunch of mechanisms in a blender, forgetting to put the lid on, and cranking the blender up to full blast. Within the blink of an eye, there’s suddenly a mess of mechanisms flung out in every direction. Resource gathering and contract fulfillment are dripping from the ceiling, polyominoes and dice are scattered across the floor, rondel actions and event cards are clinging to your hair and blinding your eyes, money tokens and tableau drafting are slopped on the walls, and worker placement considerations are embedded in every imaginable crevice.

The current Board Game Geek stats for Merchants of the Dark Road are a bit comical, if you ask me. This one currently sits at a 2.98 complexity rating (Medium weight) with a 60-120 minute estimated playtime. Our 40 minute teach plus 3 more hours of play (at 4 players) would suggest otherwise. This is really where Merchants suffers the most, in my opinion. It’s an unequivocal pain to teach and learn, it lasts too long, and it suffers from too much downtime. To be fair, I’m sure that experienced players could shave off a bit of time, but even 2 hours for a 4-player session still feels like far too generous of an estimate here.

Being an Elf Creek Games production, Merchants at least knows how to be lavish (particularly for the fully deluxe Kickstarter version that our group tried). The tokens are intricately designed, and the art is elaborate and evocative (as one would expect from the reliable Andrew Bosley). The only part of the production that stumbles is in the graphic design that struggles to differentiate certain spaces on the board or similar looking resources.

Overall, fans of crunchy Euros and premium productions will have plenty to sink their teeth into here. The best parts of the experience come from planning your actions with your worker dice, tailoring your resource economy to the tactical scoring opportunities, and chasing the two types of points (money and prestige) where your lower of the two will end up being your final score. Yet one can’t help but feel that perhaps a slimmer, trimmer version of this game could have existed and still provided a similar level of satisfaction. There were several board actions, entire animal tableaus, excessive bonus options, and tertiary resource tokens that were virtually ignored and untouched by our entire group. I’m certainly the type who typically prefers a much cleaner design—one that doesn’t start with a messy explosion of rules requiring hours of playtime to scrub through.

Current Rating: 5.5/10

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

8 plays

I’ve already written loads about The Crew from my review of The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. Everything I said there applies to Mission Deep Sea, the standalone sequel, so there really isn’t much more to add here. The only difference is the objective cards—which are mind-bogglingly better than the original game in every conceivable way (and I already considered the original a masterpiece of a card game).

Rather than simply say that this player must win this exact card, and this player must win these cards in this order, Mission Deep Sea throws out the entire concept and replaces it with a massive deck of very specific requirements. These objectives include things like “I must never lead a trick with blue, yellow, or pink” or “I must win the exact same amount of tricks as this player” or “I must not win any 9s” or “I must win the same amount of pink and yellow cards.” The possibilities are limitless here, and the way these objectives randomly combine together from one round to the next is what keeps the game fresh and exciting.

Much more than The Quest for Planet Nine, Mission Deep Sea feels like a game I can endlessly revisit (even after beating all the missions) because I’ll never see the same combination of objective cards. Essentially, you can astutely consider Mission Deep Sea the Toy Story 2, the Spider-man 2, or the Shrek 2 of card games. It takes a bona-fide classic and does it even better.

Current Rating: 10/10

L.A.M.A. Dice

2 Plays

Unlike 2019’s L.A.M.A, the newer ‘Dice’ version of this light game from Reiner Knizia is one that I got off on the right foot with. I introduced L.A.M.A. Dice to a couple different groups of 3 and 4 friends who don’t turn their noses up at a simple game of llamas, rainbows, and push-you-luck. I still intend to introduce them to L.A.M.A. the card game (where I can really give the design a fair chance outside of my non-ideal 2-player experience), but I couldn’t resist showing them the dice game first because it was a recent arrival at our household.

Sadly, L.A.M.A. Dice is one that publisher Amigo has not officially brought to North America (although the rumor is that it’s coming this year, or you can acquire it right now from some online retailers, if you know where to look). With the acquisition of a German copy and a simple download of the English rules, we were off to the races.

Each player is dealt six small cards that they’ll display face-up in front of themselves. These are worth their value in negative points (with llamas being worth a whopping negative 10 points), and your objective is to discard them from your tableau. On your turn, you’ll either quit the round and eat the remaining negative points left in front of you, or you’ll roll three 6-sided dice in hopes of matching some of your leftover cards so you can get rid of them. If nothing matches, you’ll have to take a matching card from the center market, but as the round goes on, these central cards dwindle and your risk of ‘blowing it’ ever increase. Basically, if your roll matches nothing in your tableau and nothing in the central market, then you’ve ended the round for everyone and you get nailed with your cards plus the leftover cards in the market.

While there is of course a big old dollop of luck to the game of L.A.M.A., the dice game transforms that luck into a collective experience of laughs, groans, and cheers. And because it comes in at a breezy 20 minutes, that means that you can get in, have a colorful little riot, get out, and be on to the next game in the blink of an eye. And who knows, maybe if you let the game stick around long enough, you’ll discover some sneaky strategies lurking beneath all the crazy chaos. It is a Knizia design, after all.

Current Rating: 7.5/10

Llamas Unleashed (Unstable Unicorns)

1 Play

Oh boy… Speaking of llamas, L.A.M.A Dice is not the only llama game I’ve tried recently. Llamas Unleashed (which is basically a reskin of Unstable Unicorns) is a game most akin to Cover Your Assets, Exploding Kittens, Munchkin, or the like. Simple rules, cheap gags, copious take-that, the works. It’s one of those games that somebody suddenly whips out and blindsides you with as you feel your heart drop to the pit of your stomach, crash through the bottom of your pelvis, and continue burrowing deep into the earth in an endless flee. There’s nothing wrong with other folks enjoying these experiences, but I loathe these moments when I find myself sitting down to game that aggressively tries to commit every imaginable sin in the game design book. A gathering for social entertainment suddenly transforms into a fight for survival as the game repeatedly bludgeons you over the head with a club as you desperately beg for a swift ending.

Of course, everyone has their own personal unwritten booklet of design sins. In the world of hobbyist gaming, one gamer’s trash is another gamer’s treasure. But to give you an idea of why Llamas Unleashed was a big miss for me, allow me to share the sins committed in my book:

Use roughly 6 pt font on all cards and cram them with as much gameplay text and flavor text as possible
Start players’ turns by drawing a card so they must then spend a minute or more reading the new card, internalizing the information, reanalyzing and rereading their entire hand, and then deciding to play one card or draw another card to end their turn.
Cram the deck with broken take-that cards such as this: For the rest of the game, half of the animals in the deck are now useless to you—you can’t use them anymore (playing seven animals into your tableau is how you win the game). Have fun drawing garbage!
Widen the player count as much as humanly possible so that the “30-45 minute” game can actually last hours at higher counts
Devote the bulk of one’s design efforts into coming up with silly puns
Confuse players by putting pictures of animals on non-animal cards and make them figure out an animal card type by reading the smallest text rather than using a simple icon.
Use different shades of blue rather than unique icons to designate the differences between cards
Needlessly put a bland game logo on the back of the cards rather than utilize any of the semi-decent art
Make the experience feel like climbing up a merciless slip-and-slide where your progress is constantly wiped out by another person’s random gotcha card
Make strategizing feel so worthless that ending the game becomes more appealing than winning the game

As one who tries to be a champion of the hobby, I just can’t condone designs like this that tend repel and deter folks from board gaming for a cornucopia of reasons. Of course, I say that with big rotten egg on my face, because Unstable Unicorns and its spinoff boxes have made millions of dollars on Kickstarter and beyond. Meanwhile, L.A.M.A. Dice can’t even manage to earn itself a timely North American version. Sometimes, the world is just a sick joke, but at least it has llamas in it.

Current Rating: 1/10

Brian Boru: High King of Ireland

2 Plays

I have an interesting history with games that graft trick taking onto a larger board game. My first experience with such a combination was Tricky Tides by Steven Aramini (one of the designers of Sprawlopolis). I enjoyed how Tricky Tides mixed trick taking with a pick-up-and-deliver objective of transporting goods on your merchant ship. The main hang-up I had with the experience is that it was longer and slower-paced than I would prefer.

Despite that reservation, I still used Tricky Tides as the initial inspiration for a design that I began working on several years ago called Balloon Jockeys. I settled on trick taking as the best way to recreate the feeling of piloting a hot air balloon where the restrictions of the cards in your hand and the lead suit of the trick would simulate the restrictions of being a floating balloon that is victim to the wind. The concept was exciting but, wouldn’t you know it, the main issue with that first design was that it was slow-paced.

Trick taking games are meant to be quick, snappy, and breezy, and bogging them down with supplemental mechanisms can suck the juices out of the fruit. I eventually found a way to speed up the proceedings of Balloon Jockeys, and the result was a big improvement. Perhaps eventually I’ll get around to actually finishing the design instead of taking thrilling detours publishing outside designs from folks like Reiner Knizia and Ryan Courtney, but that’s a matter for another time.

The reason I start with this long prologue is that I was well aware that Brian Boru was a trick taking game blended with card drafting and good old area majorities. Part of me worried that Brian Boru would have the same sluggish pace as Tricky Tides and Balloon Jockeys 1.0 because of the ambitious way it was attaching a quick card-playing mechanism onto a full-blown board game. After spending some quality time with the game, I’m both relieved and delighted to find that Brian Boru handles this mechanical mixture extremely well.

Each round proceeds through a phase of drafting cards into your hand followed by a phase of playing tricks to claim towns, forge alliances through marriages, garner favor with the Church, and tussle with invading vikings. If you lead a trick, you must decide which open town is in contention. As most trick takers go, the player with the highest number of the lead color wins the trick and in this case claims the town. Thereafter, they start the next trick in a new town of their choice.

The first wrinkle here is that nobody is forced to follow suit, but there are plenty of trick taking games with this wrinkle. The wrinkliest wrinkle of them all is that each card has a winning effect and one or two losing effects. So there is much more here than simply managing your hand to save the high value cards for the right moments. The main horse you’ll be strapping your brain to is the one that gallops through all the card effects as you decide which one you need right then and there.

In Brian Boru, it’s common to find yourself aiming to lose tricks because winning costs money you don’t have or want to spent and losing grants bonuses you desperately need. This is especially true when the chosen town of conflict lies in a region where points are pitiful or an opponent already has a commanding majority lead. Yet the fact that the winner of each trick gets to choose the next focal point of the map means that this person can have a major influence on region competition and hand management decisions.

The game starts out open and opaque… which cards should I draft? Which bonus do I need next? What regions should I gun for? In rounds one and two, the answers to these questions are more slippery and wispy. Yet as more discs go out on to the board and players start marching up the point track, things really start to come to a point. This is especially true when one remembers that coming in second or third place in a region amounts to absolutely nothing.

All the card effects are wonderfully alluring, yet you’ll have to prioritize them against each other because they all have their own form of majority competition. Only the most earnest suitor will gain the benefits of a glorious marriage, only the most aggressive viking combatant will earn renown and determine where the next dastardly viking token goes, only the most faithful Church followers can double their influence in a town with a coveted monastery. There are still plenty of incentives to pursue these tracks even if you can’t snag first place, but decisively exploiting the weaknesses of your opponents in the right tricks, rounds, tracks, and regions is what will ultimately determine who gets crowned the High King of Ireland.

From both Brian Boru and The King is Dead, the thing that I’ve come to appreciate about designer Peer Sylvester is that he can create a dynamic, shared experience between players where the strategies aren’t immediately obvious and the best decisions depend heavily on your opponents’ moves. Much like the legendary Dr. Reiner Knizia, Mr. Sylvester comes from the classically German game design school of thought that complexity should emerge from the collision of simple mechanisms and unique minds. For gamers like myself, this philosophy of ludology results in consistent satisfaction at the table. No amount of smoke and mirrors resource crunching will ever supplant the purity and potency of a player-driven design like Brian Boru.

Current Rating: 9/10

Image courtesy of Dan Thurot

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The post 1st Impressions of Mille Fiori, Merchants of the Dark Road, Brian Boru, Furnace, The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, & More! appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Top 10 Spin-off Board Games

Nick Murray — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:28:18 +0000

While the term ‘Spin-Off’ might inherently sound like a lesser version of its source material, movies such as Creed (Rocky) and Logan (X-Men), TV shows such as The Mandalorian (Star Wars) and Better Call Saul (Breaking Bad), books including The Lord of the Rings trilogy (The Hobbit) and the Wax and Wayne Series (Mistborn), and video games including Super Mario Bros (Donkey Kong) and Super Smash Bros (Nintendo) would beg to differ.

The world of board games is also rife with spin-offs, whether a publisher is milking the cash cow of a popular IP or a designer is exploring their clever concept from another angle, or both! Our consumerist society lives and dies by a constant blend of nostalgia and novelty. The benefit of a great spin-off game is that often it can end up being even better than the source that inspired it!

In celebration of our upcoming publication, Trailblazers—which is itself a spin-off of the critically acclaimed Pipeline—we’ll explore my Top 10 Spin-Off Games and how they iterate on their parent designs. And be sure to stick around for the end where I’ll reveal new juicy info and images on Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney!

7 Wonders Duel

7 Wonders is a card drafting, civilization building game that took the gaming world by storm in 2010. It went on to win dozens of nominations and awards including the coveted Kennerspiel Des Jahres. Players love how quick and crunchy the decisions are as well as the various strategies one can pursue from crushing military to crafty science.

Five years later, the designer of 7 Wonders (Antoine Bauza) teamed up with another prolific creator (Bruno Cathala) to bring us a 2-player dueling version of his classic in 7 Wonders Duel. Duel takes the core civ-building formula and turns the experience into a more tense, cut-throat, and interactive competition. It’s why I haven’t played regular 7 Wonders in years. While one player threatens to end the game immediately with a military victory, the other might be sneaking their way to a sudden science win. Every card you draft from the pyramid display opens up another opportunity for your opponent. And the expansions to this one add even more juicy layers to the strategy.

Blitzkrieg/Caesar

Staying on the topic of 2-player versions of beloved concepts, Blitzkrieg is a 2 player Paolo Mori design that shares much in common with his older 3-5 player game, Dogs of War. Both games explore an interesting combination of worker placement tug-of-war where you’ll commit your piece to a region to pull a region marker in your direction, and the space you place your piece on top of will often grant an immediate bonus.

Dogs of War remains one of my favorite games, but it really only works with 4 or 5 players. Blitzkrieg manages to offer me a similar tension of dangling carrots and shifting momentum in a lightning fast 20 minutes that only requires one more player. That’s why both of these games ended up right next to each other on my most recent Top 50 Games of All Time post. We’ll see if 2022’s Caesar—the spin-off of this spin-off—manages to also reach such lofty heights, but so far it’s looking very promising.

L.A.M.A. Dice

L.A.M.A Dice is a 2021 release that is based on the popular card game L.A.M.A., yet it hasn’t officially made its way to North America yet. Hopefully that will change soon, as we’ve found L.A.M.A. Dice to be a hoot at the table. This is a particularly surprising redemption story for L.A.M.A. considering my initial impressions of the card game weren’t too enthusiastic. I’ll be sharing my full thoughts on this game soon, but here’s a teaser for now:

While L.A.M.A. Dice plays out similarly to L.A.M.A. the card game, it also has some key differences that make it the more lively, loud, and laugh-inducing game of the two. Where the card game is more about quiet, subtle, and private hand management, the dice game is about clackety rolls, foolish decisions, public humiliations, and occasionally glorious triumphs. While there is of course a big old dollop of luck to the game of L.A.M.A., the dice game transforms that luck into a collective experience of laughs, groans, and cheers. And because it comes in at a breezy 20 minutes, that means that you can get in, have a colorful little riot, get out, and be on to the next game in the blink of an eye.

Patchwork

One cannot discuss board game spin-offs without discussing the legendary duo of A Feast for Odin and Patchwork. The legend goes that while esteemed designer Uwe Rosenberg was crafting and polishing his magnum opus—the dense and sprawling polyomino worker placement game A Feast for Odin—he began to toy with a smaller 2-player design that focuses solely on the polyominoes.

In this case, the spin-off ended up releasing a whole two years before its source material, but the end result was the same. We got two excellent games from a master chef who went on to craft many more polyomino designs. While Patchwork and A Feast for Odin cater to very different crowds, you never know if these two might be the gateway drug for polyomino lovers into the realm of heavy Euro games.

Pandemic: Iberia

Pandemic is an industry phenomenon that likewise has a cornucopia of spin-off titles thanks to its monstrous popularity and approachability as a cooperative game. While many Pandemic spin-offs would be great options for this list, I opted for my favorite of the bunch. This one features the opportunity to develop rail lines for faster travel plus a preventative buffer action of distributing water.

2 new actions, a different board, and a few rules tweaks doesn’t seem like it would make a big difference. Yet Pandemic: Iberia is the best version of any Pandemic spinoff or copy-cat that I’ve ever played. The stakes are raised, the strategy is deepened, the tension is thickened, and our love for Pandemic is rekindled.

Schotten Totten 2

I see many folks point to Battle Line / Schotten Totten as their favorite 2-player game and/or favorite Knizia design of all time. Who can blame them? This clever 2-player card game of forming poker sets across a battle line is ripe with tough choices, narrow defeats, and tight victories.

So what does a sequel to this masterpiece possibly have to offer? Surprisingly, a lot. Schotten Totten 2 approaches this tactical card game with a few interesting wrinkles that dramatically change the overall experience. Both players have asymmetric objectives and abilities as one defends their wall while the other tries to break through. Furthermore, each section of the wall features a unique formation requirement to keep you on your toes. This one continues to grow on me with more plays, which is why it’s absolutely worthy of this list.

Brass: Birmingham

Here we have another spin-off that seemingly split it’s fanbase right down the middle as to which one they prefer. But more than anything, I typically hear that fans of Brass are happy to play either Lancashire (the original) or Birmingham (the spin-off), and that’s the mark of a great spin-off based on a solid classic.

Birmingham offers a few twists to the Brass gameplay including a new scout action to obtain wild cards, several new industry types, and an additional commodity—the ever precious beer. It seems that folks who like more flexibility opt for Birmingham while those who glutton for punishment prefer Lancashire, but you really can’t go wrong either way.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is perhaps the only spin-off on this list where many fans claim that it makes the original game obsolete in their collection. That’s only because Mission Deep Sea possesses a more elegant mission structure that provides infinitely more possibilities. This is another one I’ll be discussing further soon (in an upcoming first-impressions post), but since you’re here I might as well spoil my conclusion:

Yellow & Yangtze

Tigris & Euphrates is one of my favorite games of all time thanks to abyss of layered strategy and brilliant interactions that exist in its box. While T&E has existed as a holy grail game for decades now, Reiner Knizia boldly decided to create a sister design to it only a few short years ago.

While I consider the original to be a perfect experience, it seems as though every T&E complaint that someone might have regarding luck of the draw, value of the tiles, usefulness of leaders in the late game, brutality of the conflicts, etc., has been considered and addressed in one way or another here in Yellow & Yangtze. Between the low-key enormous shift to hexagon spaces (from squares) and the shocking addition of yellow tiles (providing wild points), there’s an entirely new pool of possibilities to explore. It’s so brilliantly distinct that I consistently have a commitment crisis just deciding which of these two favorites I should play next.

Tournament at Avalon

Some designs just understand how to embrace chaos and capture its essence within a ruleset that still manages to make you feel strategically clever. Tournament at Camelot is one such design, and this trick-taking card game is further improved upon with the spin-off: Tournament at Avalon. I haven’t even played the original game, but I understand enough to know that what Avalon adds to experience is something I couldn’t live without. These improvements include more strategic flexibility for when you can play your wild cards plus even wackier powers that help make the most of this zany premise. Check out my full review of this spin-off here.

Honorable Mentions

Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
Pandemic Legacy
Ra: The Dice Game
The Quest for El Dorado: The Golden Temples
Undaunted: North Africa
Curious Cargo

Trailblazers—An Exciting New Spin-off

During my Most Anticipated Games of 2022 post, I shared how Trailblazers is to Pipeline as Patchwork is to A Feast for Odin. Some might cry that I’m doing Curious Cargo a disservice by not including it in this comparison, as it is technically another spin-off of Pipeline that is even exclusively a 2-player game (similar to Patchwork). That said, designer Ryan Courtney approached the design of Trailblazers in a dramatically different way from how he designed Curious Cargo. So let’s explore a little bit more of what makes Trailblazers unique from its windy pipe siblings.

From day one, Ryan has approached the creation of Trailblazers with two priorities in mind:

Make the game rules as simple and approachable as possible (contrast this to Curious Cargo which was intended to cram as much brain-burning, decision-making complexity into a small-box as possible)
Develop compelling solo modes to make this a solo-friendly game as much as it is a family-friendly game

These two design goals have been like a guiding North Star through the entire development of Trailblazers. We’ll save the discussion of that second priority for next month, but for now let’s explore what makes Trailblazers approachable for anyone yet satisfying for everyone.

An early digital prototype of Trailblazers that uses a modified version of the Pipeline tiles to test gameplay.

Many folks will point to the spatial puzzle aspect of Pipeline and Curious Cargo (the windy pipe domino tiles) as their favorite element of those designs. That’s because there is something inherently satisfying about finding and fitting the perfect tiles together to establish an elaborate network of routes. Pipeline utilizes this puzzle to fit into a larger economic challenge where the spatial puzzle aspect simply becomes: “build your pipes as long as possible to help you refine oil.” Curious Cargo cranks the spatial brutality up to eleven by giving you less flexibility in your tile options and more demands in what exactly needs to connect to where in order to ship and receive cargo of the curious kind.

Trailblazers features the same type of domino tiles (albeit these are cards, not tiles, and trails, not pipes or conveyer belts), yet this time the game steps completely out of the way and gives you a wide open field of endless possibilities. Gone are the economic considerations and shipping demands. Cast aside are the brain-melting conversions and pesky rules restrictions. Here, you’ll simply be drafting two cards from a hand of options and arranging and layering them however you’d like.

The other side of the coin that really gives Trailblazers a distinct flavor is the objective of the game: to construct loops that start and end at a campsite of the matching trail color. Like I mentioned previously, Pipeline asks its players to build long networks, Curious Cargo demands that they establish very specific and deliberate connections, but Trailblazers simply requests that your adventurous routes return back to their square camp card eventually. Yet between that time period of now and eventually (or more specifically, before the end of the game), you can blaze your trails however you’d like.

Each campsite card (such as this hiking one) has 8 spots for you to connect a loop of the matching type.

It seems almost too loose and free to be interesting, but the tension of the game is quickly uncovered when you must decide how far you wish to push your luck. How long and elaborate and winding are you going to make your trail before you focus on connecting it back to camp? How many loops are you going to invest your precious turns in before the final round of the game sneaks up on you and demands you complete them all? A loop that is 99% complete is a loop that will score zero points at the end of the game.

Yet this push-your-luck pillar of Trailblazers is exactly why a game with rules as simple as “draft two cards and place them however you want” is still satisfying for more ambitious and experienced spatial puzzlers. I consider myself a relative veteran, having played Ryan’s spatial puzzlers—including Trailblazers—many times. Yet I’ve managed to lose the game to complete newcomers because I flew too close to the sun and got burned by my lofty ambitions while my opponents played smarter and safer. And for a game that is over in the blink of an eye—usually about 30 minutes—I’m able to laugh at my failures rather than painfully regret my poor decisions or resent a stroke of bad luck.

A closer look at the hiking campsite card…

That’s the beauty of Trailblazers for me. It provides all the juicy spatial puzzling and brain-burning strategy that Ryan Courtney fans (such as myself) have come to love, yet it’s also a game that I can introduce to anybody and not completely crush them at thanks to its press-your-luck simplicity. For a hobbyist who still can’t get enough of Pipeline (and its zesty new expansion) and Curious Cargo, Trailblazers is absolutely my kind of spin-off game.

Want to follow Trailblazers all the way to its Q2 Kickstarter launch? Be sure to subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter where we’ll continue to reveal more art, components, and details over the coming weeks.

Early concept art for Trailblazers

The post Top 10 Spin-off Board Games appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Top 50 Board Games of All Time — 2021 Edition — Games 25-1

Nick Murray — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 02:13:17 +0000

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

25. Camel Up (Second Edition)

Best suited for everyone

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

24. El Grande

Best suited for everyone

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

23. Renature

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

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

22. A Feast for Odin

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

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

21. Bus

Best suited for cold-blooded strategists

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

20. Tournament at Avalon

Best suited for everyone

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

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

19. My City

Best suited for everyone

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

18. Ethnos

Best suited for everyone

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

17. The King’s Dilemma

Best suited for a regular group of 5 players

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

16. Wavelength

Best suited for everyone, especially groups of 6 or more

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

15. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

Best suited for everyone

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

14. For Sale / For Sale Autorama

Best suited for everyone

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

13. Root

Best suited for a regular group of hobbyist gamers

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

12. Babylonia

Best suited for everyone

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

11. Inis

Best suited for everyone

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

10. Chinatown

Best suited for everyone

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

9. Ra

Best suited for everyone

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

8. Age of Steam

Best suited for hobbyist gamers with thick skin

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

7. Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

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

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

6. Sidereal Confluence: Remastered Edition

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

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

5. Hansa Teutonica: Big Box

Best suited for everyone

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

4. Brass: Birmingham

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

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

3. Tigris & Euphrates

Best suited for strategy gamers

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

2. Crokinole

Best suited for everyone

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

1. Pax Pamir: Second Edition

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

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

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

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

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

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

Top 10 Family Board Games

Nick Murray — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 14:00:00 +0000

In this podcast-exclusive episode, Nick and Kyle discuss their top 10 family board games. With Nick having a million cousins and Kyle doing nearly all his gaming with siblings, parents, and his spouse, we’ve put plenty of titles to the test with our “non-gamer” family members.

Find out which board games are guaranteed to please at your next family gathering!

If you like what you hear, why not subscribe to the Bitewing Games Podcast through your favorite Podcast app?

1:10 – What do we mean by “Family Games?”
4:12 – Blokus
5:18 – Camel Up (Second Edition)
8:00 – Bohnanza
10:05 – Chinatown
13:18 – The Mind
15:15 – For Sale
18:03 – The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine
21:57 – Crokinole, Klask
24:52 – Ticket to Ride
26:05 – Condottiere
28:52 – On Tour
30:25 – Wavelength
33:27 – Ethnos
36:28 – Kingdomino
38:05 – Love Letter
41:02 – 7 Wonders, Sushi Go Party
42:57 – My City
47:26 – Between Two Cities
50:26 – Codenames, Decrypto
52:10 – Another teaser for our upcoming publications!

That’s all for our Top 10 Family Board Games! We’ll be back next week with our regular blog post & podcast episode! What are your favorite games to play with family and friends? Share with us in the comments below!

The post Top 10 Family Board Games appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Most Anticipated Board Games of 2021

Nick Murray — Sun, 03 Jan 2021 19:00:00 +0000

Not much of a reader? You’re in luck! This post also exists in podcast form shown below. Happy listening!

It’s about time to kiss (or more appropriately, kick) 2020 goodbye! As we hopefully look forward to a new year of long-awaited returns to normalcy, what better way to get hyped than to peek behind the curtains and get a glimpse of the most exciting board games to come!

I’ve cooked up quite the list with a variety of promising titles that might just deserve a spot on your wishlist. Several of these games were also explored in my Kickstarter Case Study: How to Win Backers and Fund Projects. Let’s see what’s on the 2021 menu…

Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile – Q2/Q3 2021

Pre-production copy from the Kickstarter updates

We might as well start off with my most anticipated game of 2021. Cole Wehrle’s magnum opus is right around the corner. With the publishing passion of Leder Games, the artistic flex of Kyle Ferrin, and the design chops of one of the industry’s hottest designers, we’ve got a recipe for success in Oath. Along the lines of Root and Pax Pamir, Oath is a highly strategic, cutthroat, and political game that best suits a group of regular players.

This title innovates upon legacy and campaign designs by taking the results of one game and integrating them into the objectives and setup of the next. Nothing is scripted or predetermined, rather the game organically follows a meta narrative controlled entirely by the decisions of the players. The ripple effect of players’ actions will be felt by all for games to come, and they can even keep record of this fascinating history in the Chronicle Session Journal (included in the kickstarter copies or likely to be available directly from Leder Games).

Kemet: Blood and Sand – Summer 2021

Kemet Prototype from the Kickstarter updates

The area-control darling, Kemet, has been an established favorite for nearly a decade now. In 2021, Matagot will be releasing version 2.0 with a completely revamped presentation, improved rules, and new gameplay. Matagot’s legendary dudes-on-a-map trilogy has proven its worth to me with the incredible card-drafting Inis and solid auction-style Cyclades; Kemet is the remaining classic that I have yet to try, and Blood and Sand appears to be worth the wait.

Talk about table presence. Kemet: Blood and Sands promises to have it in spades.

Hibachi – Fall 2021

Hibachi successfully funded on Kickstarter only a few weeks ago.

Hibachi flew a bit under the radar when it recently launched on Kickstarter, but it appears to be firing on all cylinders as a family-friendly set collection dexterity game. The design is a reimplementation of 2010’s Safranito that retains the core fun it presented.

Players toss poker chips onto a large board in an attempt to center the poker chip’s hole over ingredients and bonuses that will help the fill orders. The catch is that your poker chips are also used as a sort of blind auction for drafting order and other privileges. The value of your chips will stay face-down as you toss them onto the board, so a combination of skillful tosses and wise chip selections will ensure that you come out on top when the chips are flipped and the ingredients are claimed.

Grail Games promises that the leftovers from this Kickstarter will go to retail (or you can late pledge here), so keep your eyes peeled come Fall 2021 if you’re hungry to jump in on this fun feast.

Hibachi has a very similar presentation to the above pictured Safranito

Coffee Traders – May 2021

Capstone Games has gone all out with their debut of Coffee Traders. This heavy economic Euro from the makers of Wildcatters boasts over 650 deluxified, colorful components including wooden donkeys and plastic coffee beans! More importantly, the design promises a meaty, interactive competition within the sprawling coffee industry of the 1970s.

While we’re likely to see a more affordable, standard version of the game down the road, it’s hard not to get behind such an ambitious, beautiful project spearheaded by a highly capable publisher. If you can’t get enough sprawling Euros in your life, then this one is a no-brainer for any group of 3-5 players.

Whale Riders – Spring 2021

Vincent Dutrait nailed the art in Whale Riders

Dr. Knizia is on another hot streak spanning back to 2017 with the likes of Quest for El Dorado, Babylonia, My City, and more. Whale Riders brings us another team up of old faithful designer Knizia, ever stalwart artist Vincent Dutrait, and the consistently solid publisher Grail Games.

In this economic race, players must decide how to spend their 2 actions each turn as they ride whales along the arctic coast. You can sail ahead to claim the greatest treasures for yourself, but you’ll be missing out on golden opportunities along the way.

Next year, if you find yourself in need of a simple strategy game with enough subtle tension to satisfy everyone at the table, then you’d be hard pressed to bet against Reiner Knizia.

What first appears basic will quickly become tense in a Knizia strategy game.

Undaunted: Reinforcements – August 2021

Long live Undaunted

For fans of the Undaunted series, Reinforcements is the modular expansion you never knew you always wanted. This title will include new scenarios, units, and rules to keep the fun rolling. Compatible with both Undaunted games, this expansion even provides 4-player and solo modes for owners of either version. While the details are still sparse, this series already earned its right to the title of Undaunted when it initially debuted among the top board games of 2019. Undaunted will go down as one of my all time favorite deck builders thanks to its elegant flow and painful decisions. I’m thrilled to have more reasons to dive back into this excellent system.

A scenario in Undaunted: North Africa

Anno 1800 – Q1 2021 (English Version)

While the game setup isn’t exactly easy on the eyes, Anno 1800 doesn’t need to look amazing when it boasts the design talent of Martin Wallace, creator of Brass: Birmingham and Age of Steam.

Anno 1800 is based on the popular PC game from Ubisoft, but I’m more interested in what Mr. Wallace has done to create a city building tech-tree game. The German version is already on the market, and early buzz around this medium-weight Euro is positive.

Switch & Signal – 2021 (English Version)

Choo Choo!

Speaking of German games that have yet to make it overseas, Switch & Signal is a cooperative train game from one of the designers of Undaunted: Normandy. This game is as simple and accessible as Pandemic, yet thankfully it is not another Pandemic clone. Switch & Signal sees players guiding trains across a map of Europe or North America to deliver cargo to its destination before time runs out. Each turn involves deciding how to spend your cards to move trains, adjust signals, and switch tracks to keep engines along the most efficient paths possible.

There’s no official date for when this game hits North America, but we can safely assume that Kosmos is planning to localize and release it sometime next year, as it debuted in Germany just a few months ago.

Gotta switch those signals and stuff

Don’t Get Got: Shut Up & Sit Down Special Edition – Apr 2021

A crossover for the ages.

Don’t Get Got is a clever party game that has been around since 2018. It received high praise from popular critic site Shut Up & Sit Down in their highly entertaining review. Thereafter, Big Potato Games reached out to the funny folks at SU&SD and pitched a collaboration for a special edition which successfully funded on Kickstarter this year.

Don’t Get Got is a meta-game that can be sneakily tucked into the background of a game night, group party, or work environment. Each player receives a small wallet with unique objectives that typically require harmless but ridiculous tasks. These tasks span from “Get a player to compliment your hair” to “Make up a word and get a player to ask what it means.” The catch is that if players suspect foul play, they can call you out on your odd behavior and cause you to fail that mission. The first player to complete three missions wins the game.

I’m hoping to receive this game while I’m still at my General Practice Residency program with 7 other dental residents, where the setting is ripe for getting got!

This yellow missions will be flipped to nailed it or failed it, depending on whether you were able to get an opponent.

Ra (New Versions)- 2021

Dice Tree Games has announced Korean and German versions of Ra, but it’s likely to be language independent.

Ra, one of all-time greats of the auctioning genre, has been criminally out of print for years. It’s a game that perfectly mixes agonizing auctioning with precarious push-your-luck mechanisms. 2021 is the year where that changes. Dice Tree Games is a South Korean publisher known for its deluxe productions of Knizia classics including Modern Art and Winner’s Circle, and they have a version of Ra ready to release seemingly any day (the game is listed as a 2020 planned release).

25th Century Games, best known for its Splendor-like 2017 release, Space Explorers, is a US-based publisher planning to release an English version of Ra in Summer 2021 as well. Details are sparse, but this release will be one to keep an eye on for anyone looking to jump into this masterclass design. I reached out to Chad (25th Century Games) and learned that he’s aiming to “create the nicest quality and visual art version of the game to date.”

It sounds like a fantastic way for new fans to jump in or old fans to update their copy. Although for those who already own a copy (Alea, Rio Grande, or Uberplay versions in particular), Board Game Geek will be offering delectable Geek Up bits in the spring! All hail the year of Ra!

Geek Up Bits for Ra, coming Q2 2021

Tutankhamun – Jan 2021

Speaking of 25th Century Games, they’ll be releasing another Knizia design that has been refreshed and revitalized in Tutankhamun. Players travel down the Nile and collect artifacts in a race to 30 points. The rules are easy enough for any friends or family, simply move your boat downstream and collect the tile you stop on. The key is to have majority in artifact types and lunge for the special power tiles when the timing is right to end up on top.

Dead Reckoning – May 2021

Ian O’Toole makes killer box art.

Dead Reckoning is nothing short of ambitious. This mega-project from AEG and John D. Clair (Space Base, Mystic Vale) takes their card crafting concept to the next level. Transparent cards will be combined, flipped, and rotated within sleeves to create a deck-building experience that sends players on a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXtort, eXterminate) journey through piratism.

Card crafting is deck-building’s more extravagant cousin.

It also features a wildly creative combat system where cubes are dropped onto a battleship that sends them cascading across a battle board, giving a cannonball-like effect that determines the result of the attack by where the cubes land on the board.

A battle system that is much more elaborate than dice or cards. Fingers crossed that it is worth it.

This game has so many mechanisms and pieces crammed into it that I’ve opted to leave it on my radar and wait to strike if the reviews come in overwhelmingly positive. It won’t be simple or cheap, but it promises quite the epic adventure.

Kabuto Sumo – June 2021

BoardGameTables.com is back at it with another novel design and gorgeous production. Kabuto Sumo is inspired by coin-pushing arcade games and real-life rhinoceros beetle wrestling. That’s pretty stinking awesome if you ask me.

The entire concept for Kabuto Sumo just tickles my designer toes.

Players will be shifting the push platform around the sumo ring to line up their move of pushing a piece into the ring in hopes of shoving opponent beetles off. This combination of physics, tactics, and dexterity promise to be a breath of fresh air for any game night. The world can never have too many refreshing dexterity games, and Kabuto Sumo is teed up to be the next one.

The various modes of Kabuto Sumo. Each player will also have unique abilities and components to keep things interesting from one play to the next.

So, You’ve Been Eaten – 2021?

That’s right, the game is titled So, You’ve Been Eaten. With a name like that, it has to be good!…. Right?…

After initially rearing its head and riding high on the hotness wave of BGG, news on this title seemingly vanished… like it had been eaten. But more recent updates indicate that they’ve been quietly cramming even more tasty content into the game as they prepare for a Kickstarter launch.

The game claims that it is for 0-2 players. You read that correctly, zero players. A bold miner takes on a massive beast by burrowing into its intestines for crystals as the beast’s immune system fights back. Players can take on the role of either the miner or the beast… or neither?… in a 1v1, 1vGame, or GamevGame showdown.

Bristol 1350 – April 2021

The Dark Cities games have always taken the bones of a classic social deduction game and dressed them in various thematic mechanisms. From witch trials to pirate mutinies to wild west bank robberies to now escaping the Black Plague.

I’ve already played Bristol 1350 plenty of times leading up to my written preview of the design. The timing of this plague-themed game is uncannily coincidental, but the design has been a blast ever since I first tried it two years ago. I’m looking forward to experiencing the full vision that Facade Games had in mind for this quick, engaging gem of a deduction game.

John Company (Second Edition) – 2021?

John Company (First Edition)

Wehrlegig Games, the publisher of Pax Pamir (Second Edition), is cooking up their next project in John Company (Second Edition). Designer Cole Werhle’s most recent update reveals that the design has received a complete overhaul to help streamline the rules, focus on the game’s strengths, evoke the period art, and presumably deluxify the production. This heavy political economic romp is sure to be a strategically engaging and historically informative exploration of the British East India Company.

Period art that Cole Wehrle recently showed off as an example of the Second Edition art direction.

Railroad Ink Challenge – Q1 2021

The Railroad Ink family with siblings old and young

One of our household’s favorite roll & writes makes an explosive return with Railroad Ink Challenge. The Shining Yellow and Lush Green editions promise player interaction, special structures, and new dice to help keep the puzzle fresh and interesting for series veterans. The development team has also cooked up a cornucopia of extras from an Epic game board to loads of expansion dice.

Railroad Ink will feature loads of expansion content in early 2021

Iberian Gauge – Summer 2021

Sleek, sexy, and slender is how Capstone does their Iron Rail series

Like the previous two games in Capstone’s Iron Rail series, Iberian Gauge already exists among many other cube rails options. These cube rails games possess a common thread of stock investment, railroad expansion, and shared incentives. The key differentiator with the Iron Rail series is that publisher Capstone handpicks a solid design from the many options, gives it the Ian O’Toole makeover, and brings it to the masses. These slim, gorgeous boxes contain a single sheet of rules but pack a huge punch in roughly 1-hour of fun.

The Ian O’Toole effect

Sleeping Gods – Q1 2021

Sleeping Gods is designed, illustrated, written, and published by human Swiss-army knife Ryan Laukat.

Sleeping Gods was on our most anticipated games of 2020 list, and it’s back again for another round of hype! The good news is that this cooperative exploration adventure is right around the corner, with fulfillment planned to begin in January. Players will be chipping away at this epic adventure a little bit at a time, and they can save their progress and pack it back into the box at any time. I spoke more about how Red Raven convinced me to back their project in my Kickstarter Case Study: How to Win Backers and Crowdfund Projects.

Let’s all take a moment to bask in that box art.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea – March 2021

It’s back, baby!

Ooo baby, designer Thomas Sing is dipping back into the well in an effort to satiate my unquenchable thirst for more of his brilliant cooperative trick taking. All we know thus far is that we’re going from space to sea, but hopefully Mr. Sing still has a few more tricks up his sleeve to mix up the formula. Either way, I’m all in on this sequel to one of the greatest cards games of all time.

We’ve taken down all 50 missions of The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. Can’t wait to see what Mission Deep Sea brings.

Publishers To Watch

That’s right, we’re not done quite yet! Many publishers like to play their cards close to the chest, meaning that there are surely more hype-worthy games waiting to be announced and planned to be released direct-to-retail than the 19 we’ve already covered. We’ll point you toward a handful of publishers that have been on hot streaks recently and show no signs of cooling down.

Capstone Games: At the time of this writing, I’ve had the chance to try ten of Capstone’s releases of 2018-2020, and they have all been killer games. 2021 releases will include Coffee Traders, Iberian Gauge, Pipeline Emerging Markets (expansion), and more.

Leder Games: Most famously known for the deceptively charming and deeply asymmetric war-game Root, Leder Games is banking on their next mega-hit being Oath. But with Oath development wrapping up, they’ve shared that their next big project will be another Root expansion featuring militant factions of a Rat warlord and Badgers (expect a Kickstarter in Q1)! Patrick Leder is also working on his own spin on Twilight Imperium known as Void Lich. And who knows, maybe we’ll get a Fort expansion as well…

Boardgametables.com: I’ve found that the best approach to take with Boardgametables.com’s publications is to expect the unexpected. They’ve brought us a band touring roll & write, an unchained auctioning game, a thinky pirate treasure deduction game, a trio of pretty fillers, and soon a coin-pushing style dexterity game. Whatever they cook up next, it’s sure to be unique and well-produced.

Eagle-Gryphon Games: With recent killer deluxe versions of Rococo and Age of Steam, heavy hitters like On Mars, on upcoming refreshes such as For Sale Autorama, Eagle-Grypon games is not a publisher to be dismissed.

WizKids: WizKids has been bringing their A-game recently with the incredible Sidereal Confluence: Remastered Edition, spicy Tournament at Avalon, and juicy Super Skill Pinball 4-Cade, all from 2020 alone. I’m hoping they have just as good of a lineup for 2021.

Grail Games: This Australian publisher has earned a spot on my radar because of their ability to dig up and dust off the underdog games of yesteryear. Thanks to them, I’ve been able to discover and enjoy Knizia classics including Stephenson’s Rocket and Medici, and I’m excited to try Yellow and Yangtze and Whale Riders. Outside of Hibachi, they have many more exciting plans in the works for 2021 and beyond, including a Yellow and Yangtze expansion, an updated version of cult fan-favorite Fjords, and a two-player climbing card game known as ChuHan from the designer of Race for the Galaxy.

Osprey Games: This publisher is based in Great-Britain and has drummed up at least 1 killer title every year for the past few years. Those games include Cryptid, the Undaunted series, The King is Dead (Second Edition), and more. They certainly deserve our attention for whatever else they have in mind for 2021 besides Undaunted: Reinforcements.

Designers to Watch

We’ll top this post off with a list of designers that, much like the above mentioned publishers, are on hot streaks of their own. Whenever I catch wind of a new release coming from one of these creative folks, my ears always perk up:

David Thompson: I’ve talked plenty about David’s upcoming Undaunted Reinforcements and Switch & Signal, and that merely scratches the surface of David’s designs that are hitting the market in 2021. Others include War Chest: Siege (an expansion to Undaunted-like abstract game, War Chest), Soldiers in Postmen’s Uniforms (a WWII inspired solitaire game), Sniper Elite: The Board Game (a hidden moment design based on the video game series of the same name), and Dire Alliance: Horror (a cooperative/competitive tactical deck builder). And those are just the ones we know of. Needless to say, he’s certainly one to keep on the radar.

Paolo Mori: We’re big fans of Ethnos, a family-weight area majority game that was #8 in my most recent top 50 games of all time list. We’ve also been digging 2019’s Blitzkrieg, a 2-player tug of war game that made a fantastic 1st impression and still holds up after several more plays. There’s no telling what Paolo will do next, but odds are it will be amazing.

Alexander Pfister: This is the legend who brought us the excellent Great Western Trail, Isle of Skye, Maracaibo, and much more. His latest release, CloudAge, should probably be among the list of games up above seeing how the North American shipment appears to be delayed into the new year (thanks for nothing, Covid!). Regardless, the man is a machine who continues to impress with his designs. I expect to see another big one from him in 2021.

Wolfgang Warsch: From The Mind to Quacks of Quedlinburg, from Wavelength to That’s Pretty Clever, you know him, you love him, he’s Wolfgang Warsch! After seemingly bursting onto the scene in 2018, Wolfgang has been on a design rampage ever since. Hopefully he hasn’t run out of steam for 2021. You can do it, Wolfgang!

Kramer & Kiesling: Like Peanut Butter and Jelly, Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling have been tearing it up together for years with classics such as Tikal or Mexica and more recent releases including our Holiday Board Game Gift recommendation, Renature. Not that they actually need each other, as Mr. Kiesling is the genius behind Azul and Heaven & Ale while Mr. Kramer is mastermind behind El Grande and Downforce. Indeed, these gentlemen should already be on your 2021 watchlist.

Cole Wehrle: I started this entire post out with Cole’s upcoming design, Oath, and quickly followed it up with his returning hit, John Company (Second Edition), so you already know where I stand here. He’s both a lead designer/developer at Leder Games and he runs Wehrlegig Games with his brother, so anything coming from either company is going to have his fingerprints on it. Why do I appreciate his handiwork so much? Aside from him owning two spots in my top 10 games of all time, I’ve found Cole to be more interested in creating immersive experiences than tossing out gimmicky, shallow designs. He’s churning out arguably the most fascinating designs in the industry with the help of many talented colleagues. Keep it coming, Cole!

Ryan Courtney: Ryan is the newest published designer among those on this list. In fact, his first game, Pipeline, was categorized as a Lover in my recent revisit of the best games of 2019. His other design, Curious Cargo, continues to impress as well. The man takes “thinky” to the next level, and I’m there for whatever he cooks up next.

Uwe Rosenberg: It’s breeding!… It’s polyominoes!… That’s right, it’s Uwe Rosenberg. Uwe is one of the all time greats in the industry, and his most recent hits, including New York Zoo and Nova Luna, prove that he’s still got it. He’s always a safe bet when heading into a new year of releases.

Reiner Knizia: Alongside Cole Wehrle, Reiner Knizia is my absolute favorite board game designer. I own and love more games from Dr. Knizia than any other designer (15 and counting)! He’s best known for his decades old evergreens including Tigris & Euphrates, Lost Cities, and Ra, but he’s been on another hot streak with recent bangers including Babylonia, My City, and Quest for El Dorado. This man is the Willy Wonka of board games, with over 600 titles to his name. Of course they’re not all going to be amazing at that kind of output, but the sheer number golden designs that have come from this one mind is staggering. I’ll take three more decades of Knizia releases, please and thank you.

Hungry for more board game hype? Then continue on to PART TWO of my Most Anticipated Board Games of 2021!

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 Most Anticipated Board Games of 2021 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Revisiting the Best Board Games of 2019

Nick Murray — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 13:09:55 +0000

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

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

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

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

Lovers

Games that I’m still CRAZY about.

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

Pipeline’s pipey tiles

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

Blitzkrieg’s theaters of war

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

Stressed out king in the King’s Dilemma

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

QE is great fun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keepers

Other games that have survived the purge of 2020.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dumpers

Games that I dropped like a hot potato.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flingers

Games that were amusing to try at least once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seekers

Interesting games that still elude me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This concludes my walk down memory lane of the best board games of 2019! Can you think of a Lover, Keeper, Dumper, Flinger, and Seeker from 2019? Share them with us in the comments below!

The post Revisiting the Best Board Games of 2019 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Hurt So Good: Games that are Fun to Lose

Nick Murray — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 13:40:39 +0000

Here’s a fun fact for you: there are more losers than winners in the tabletop gaming hobby. That’s right, I’m talking about YOU, ya buncha losers! You….. and me *sigh.* Everybody. That’s just the way it is. Most games have player counts above 2, which means that, on average, each game crowns more losers than winners whenever it is played. Easy cooperative games are, of course, the exception to this rule. But that doesn’t take away from the reality that this is a hobby full of LOSERS.

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

Pax Pamir is a game of wavering loyalties and shaky alliances

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

It may look friendly and casual now, but just give it a few more turns before the knives come out.

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

The leaning tower of Junk Art

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.

Curious Cargo is as satisfying as spatial puzzles come

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

More Pax Pamir

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.

Never count yourself out in a game of Root

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.

Lords of Vegas is ripe for hostile takeovers

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

KLASK = Air Hockey + Magnets

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

If only I could draw a salad that good…

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

The latest version of Chinatown comes with tokens that look like Sprees candies instead of wooden discs

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.

How do you keep Television and Science Fiction separate over several rounds of clues in Decrypto?

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

The Mind… so simple, yet so challenging

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.

That feeling when you cover all the negative points in AFFO 🙂

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

The beautiful elegance of Skull

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

I started off with a good streak of wins in My City, but my wife’s board is significantly better now because of that

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: Godsend Cards (the stuff inside the piñata)

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

Bristol 1350: a game of sneaky symptoms

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.

Yoshi better activate that star FAST

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?

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2020 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide

Nick Murray — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 18:22:36 +0000

Tis the season to buy more board games for your friends and family! Our 2020 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide is here to guide you to some of the best options available. Whether you’re looking to get your significant other the best surprise or hoping to find the perfect game for your holiday party, we’re here to help you find the cream of the crop!

Browse all the lists by clicking through the page numbers at the bottom, or use the links below to take you directly to the most relevant list for your needs. If any game mentioned catches your eye, click on the provided link (on the game’s title) to find some options for purchasing it.

Note: This is a completely unsponsored article, and none of the information or links provided generate a profit for us in any way. This article is written purely as service to you from genuine fans of board gaming who love to share this awesome hobby. This list has been carefully assembled to be ultimate gift guide, whether you’re looking to buy the hottest new game or find a reliable classic. We sincerely hope we can help you and your gift receiver find your next favorite game.

Continue on to Page 2: Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer

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