Negotiation is one of my all-time favorite ingredients in tabletop games.  It’s a mechanism that steps out of the way and lets the players do the talking, literally.  For me, one of the most satisfying elements of this hobby is the above-the-table interaction that happens between opponents and/or teammates, and negotiation offers this in spades.  Not only that, but it often allows individuals to bring their own personalities into the competitive experience.  

Are you the generous type who offers favors out like candy at Halloween, all the while earning good karma that will pay off in the long run?  Or are you a greedy wheeler and dealer who tries to milk your competition for all they are worth?  As long as participants are open to making deals and hearing offers, then you’re bound to have a blast with a good negotiation game.

With Bitewing Games soon launching a crowdfunding project for not one but two negotiation games, I’ve been playing and exploring many of the all-time greats in this genre.  We are finally ready to reveal our own publications, so in celebration of that reveal I’d like to share my personal Top 10 Negotiation Games.  Be sure to stick around after perusing my list, because I’ll have some exciting new details to reveal for fans of this mechanism.

Chinatown

What better way to start this list off than with the 1999 classic, Chinatown?  Chinatown has become one of my all time favorite games to introduce to anybody (gamers, non-gamers, family, friends, you name it) thanks to its smooth approachability and lively antics.  Players are seeking to establish the most profitable businesses on the block by acquiring connected lots and building certain businesses on those lots.

Negotiation is at the beating heart of this game, as each round you’ll secretly choose to acquire a few lots from the hand of cards that are dealt to you.  You’ll also draw business tiles from a bag that range from take-out to laundry to flowers and more.  Then, you’ll reveal your lots and tiles and let the wild rumpus begin!  In real time (no clockwise turn structure here!), players simultaneously make offers and negotiate trades of their lots, business tiles, and money.  The rules offer complete freedom in what you offer, how you trade, and how you earn the most money to win the game.  The real fun comes in figuring out how to wring lot 43 from an opponent’s grasp or in realizing how desperately your neighbor wants your dim sum tile and basking in their desperation.  Chinatown never fails to be a hit at our table.

The King’s Dilemma

From a decades-old classic to the second-newest release on this list, The King’s Dilemma features an exciting mix of legacy role-playing, epic kingdom politicking, and tense auction voting.  This one is admittedly not quite as easy to get to the table as Chinatown, as it requires (ideally) 5-players who are willing to assemble semi-regularly and play through roughly 12-20 sessions.  But if you have the right group for it, then you are certainly in for a romp!

This one sees players acting as influential advisory houses to the king.  Together, your council faces an endless stream of dilemmas that have long-term consequences on the military, culture, economy, and moral of your people.  You will use your power (through voting auctions), your money (through bribing), and your wit (through persuasive conversation) to decide the fate of the kingdom as you seek to fulfill your house’s secret agenda.

Cosmic Encounter

Might as well keep the time period whiplash going by jumping back to the oldest game on my list: the legendary Cosmic Encounter.  This is one that I’ve labeled “the pizza” of board gaming, and I stand by that comparison.  The real draw of Cosmic Encounter, and the reason why it has stayed relevant and seen updated versions since its 1977 release, is the fact that it offers an infinite combination of wacky alien powers for players to explore.

Yet the element that keeps its old gears greased is undoubtedly the opportunity for negotiation.  It doesn’t matter that one player’s alien ability is infinitely more powerful than any other, because that simply means the opponents must team up to overcome the galaxy’s Goliath.  While it’s a competitive game at its core, Cosmic Encounter allows its players to collectively dictate who crosses the finish line and victoriously colonizes five planets—resulting in one or multiple winners.

Sidereal Confluence

Let’s continue along the space theme with my next pick, Sidereal Confluence.  While this one also features asymmetric alien powers, like Cosmic Encounter, its gameplay is actually much closer to Chinatown.  If Chinatown is the simultaneous negotiation game made for anyone and everyone, then Sidereal Confluence is the hardcore hobbyist version.

This one is so outlandishly ambitious that I still can’t believe how well it comes together.  I’ll tell you what: the first time I heard about this game I was immediately running in the opposite direction.  Featuring 268 cubes, 9 alien factions whose names simulate a spelling stroke, and multiple hours of resource conversion.  No thank you.  Yet beneath this rough exterior hides one of the greatest negotiation games ever designed.

Here, you’ll find all the chaotic fun of Chinatown with infinitely more layers of strategic possibilities.  All deals are binding and virtually nothing is off limits—you can promise a share of the profits from your convertor to the player who helps you fuel it, or even lend the convertor itself to a neighbor when you find it useless to your needs.  You can exchange planets for ships, ships for food, food for protection, protection for research—the list goes on!  While this sprawling game initially appears alien and unwieldy, it’s surprisingly straightforward, laser-focused, and entirely engaging once the rounds get going.

Quo Vadis?

From the new hotness to another old classic, let’s now examine Quo Vadis.  I never try to hide my biases on any post, but fair warning, I’m definitely biased and personally tied to this game (more on that later).  But even if Quo Vadis was completely unrelated to Bitewing Games, it would still be on my Top 10 Negotiation Games list.  That’s because this one is a playground of pure, zesty politics from one of my favorite designers, Reiner Knizia.

Believe it or not, Quo Vadis is now over 30 years old and among the very first notable releases from Dr. Knizia.  It is certainly starting to look its age in board game years, yet the core experience is as spicy as ever.  The game is a race to squeeze one or more of your senators into the Inner Sanctum before it fills up, because only those who have reached the Inner Sanctum qualify for victory.  The only problem is that it is extremely hard to get there without the help of your opponents.  Through bribing, voting, exchanging favors, and sometimes even backstabbing, only the most cunning players will rise to the top of the Roman Senate.  But you can be the last to cross the finish line—getting in by the skin of your teeth—and still claim the victory for yourself!  That’s because the winner will be the Inner Sanctum player who earns the most laurels from successful campaigns and lucrative deals along the way.  It’s simple, it’s fast, and it is incredibly thrilling.  One must balance the pressing urgency of reaching the Inner Sanctum with the lucrative opportunities to hang back and milk your opponents and the game board for laurels.

As much as I love this game, I’ll be the first to admit that has a few flaws.  Most notably, the board loses some of its tightness and the table some of its tension if you’re playing with 3 people instead of 4 or ideally 5.  And if those people are new to the game, then getting them excited about this grungy old box and bone-dry board is usually a challenge.  Finally, those who enjoy a broader trading sandbox from games like Sidereal Confluence will obviously feel a bit more restricted here.  It’s understandable for some players to come away from the relatively dry Quo Vadis being thirsty for a little more juice in their negotiations.  To that end, I’m thrilled to share that Bitewing Games and Reiner Knizia have worked to address every major flaw in this classic game—so stick around to hear about Quo Vadis evolved.  But for now, let’s pay our respects to the original Quo Vadis and continue on to my next pick…

Root

Root is one of a few picks on my list that features negotiation as a secondary or supplemental mechanism to the core experience.  In fact, the best place you’ll find negotiation in this game is actually within the first expansion thanks to the Riverfolk Company faction of profit-seeking otters.  This commercial crew offers their services to the other woodland critters by displaying their hand at all times and setting prices on their offerings.  Not only can opponents buy cards from your public hand, but they can also use your riverboats to get around the board easier and utilize your mercenaries to bully their targets more effectively.

Being a good merchant otter is not only about setting the right prices for your services, but it’s also about keeping your finger on the woodland’s pulse and enticing your opponents with offers they can’t refuse.  Yet negotiation can even be found outside of the Riverfolk Company as players can form an alliance with the Vagabond or collaborate with enemies to destabilize an even bigger threat.  Designer Cole Wehrle is known for embracing the memorable meta that can arise from a board game, and Root is all about gaming the players.

Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile

If gaming the players is the kind of thing you are looking for, then Mr. Wehrle’s later design, Oath, might be an even better fit for you.  Oath was my favorite release from last year—I’m now 11 meaty plays into it and still having a blast.  But that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone.  Nooooooo way, you better know what you’re getting into with Oath before you take the plunge.

If you too want to have a blast with Oath, then you ideally need a regular group of 3-5 players.  Your group needs to be totally okay with a lengthy rules explanation, a cloudy first play (or more), an unwieldy labyrinth of strategic possibilities, a wide range of emotional highs and lows, and the ever present possibility of kingmaking looming over each game’s outcome.  In many ways, Oath is less about reaching a competitive conclusion and more about charting a civilization’s journey.  But if you’re here for the negotiations and politicking, then you’ll find plenty to love.

Each result of a play of Oath has a direct effect on the setup of the next—like a pseudo legacy game that is constantly morphing and never ending.  The winner of one game always becomes crowned (or continues) as Chancellor in the next.  This Chancellor’s goal is to hold their new oath (a unique victory objective) while keeping the Exiles of the kingdom in check.  Often, the Exiles and their followers can become so dangerous and unwieldy that the Chancellor may be compelled to offer citizenship to a lowly Exile in a desperate attempt to retain control.  The problem is that this Exile-turned-Citizen will do everything in their power to succeed the Chancellor as they cooperate together.  

One of my most recent plays of this game saw one exiled player forcing his citizenship upon me, the Chancellor of the session, and convincing me to share my war bands and power with him to help maintain order in my Empire.  And each time I trusted him with my resources, he immediately stabbed me in the back by revealing secret plans and motives of his own.  Fortunately, the other exiles proved to be a large enough threat that he was compelled to concede his ulterior motives for the next era and help my Empire maintain its grasp on the land.

Inis

Interestingly, Cole has cited that one of his main inspirations for Oath was in fact Inis, by Christian Martinez.  That’s more due to the fact that Inis and Oath both feature multiple paths to victory within a tumultuous power struggle—yet they both possess elements of negotiation as well!  Ironically, the only place that you’ll really find negotiation in Inis is within the conflicts between warring players.

The thing I love about conflict in Inis is that it is completely devoid of things like combat dice and power cards.  These tropes are replaced by a simple question: “Would you like to stop fighting?”  If the answer is no, then players will continue to slap valuable troops out of each other’s armies or precious cards out of each other’s hands until one retreats or is wiped out.  But if the answer is yes—and both players can agree to stop before one or both are virtually annihilated—then the conflict is over.  Simple as that.  The different bands will simply coexist on the same board space.

Inis remains a brilliant game of political power grabbing that is further improved by several of the modules in its expansion.  I’m all ears for the recently announced second installment in this “political trilogy” from designer Martinez and publisher Matagot titled Galactic Renaissance.

Lords of Vegas

Speaking of one game being the inspiration for another, Lords of Vegas actually owes some of its DNA to the previously listed Chinatown according to the designers of this next game on my list.  It certainly makes sense when you look closely enough.  Both games see players taking control of lots on a square grid and seeking to erect businesses across connected lots in order to gain the most profits.  Yet where Chinatown is pure, unadulterated negotiation, Lords of Vegas is a game of cutthroat casinos ripe with entrepreneurial gambling and sprinkled with the opportunity for trading and negotiation.

In this 12-year-old fan favorite, players are constantly risking their hard-earned cash on ambitious endeavors.  These pursuits include everything from building, upgrading, and spreading owned casinos to hostile takeovers of the competition or even high-stakes gambling to steal each other’s cash.  With all of these thrillingly thematic possibilities, it can be easy to forget the advantageous opportunity to trade at any time.  The ability to trade most anything—including money, lots, dice in casinos, and actions—can really help tip the scales of luck in your favor.

Bohnanza

We’re going to close this Top 10 out with another classic trading game that has long been a favorite of many gamers across the world.  Apparently the gateway to becoming a legendary German game designer is by starting with a simple negotiation game.  As Reiner Knizia began his design journey with Quo Vadis (among others) so Uwe Rosenberg started his ludography with the bean-trading card game, Bohnanza. Many frown upon the garish art style of this game, but I personally find it to be quite charming and iconic.

While I personally gravitate toward games that offer more strategy and flexibly in their negotiation possibilities, Bohnanza remains a worthwhile and amusing classic thanks to its unique locked hand card play.  Here, you are not allowed to rearrange any cards in your hand, and you must play them into your fields in order.  This forces players to give up beans to their opponents in hopes of receiving others, as you’ll score more points if you are able to play multiple beans of a single type in a row.  For those who are curious, Bohnanza sits as the most family-friendly negotiation game on this list. If you’re wanting to get gamers or non-gamers hooked on this genre, then Bohnanza, Chinatown, and Quo Vadis are the three best entry points.

Honorable Mentions

No top 10 list is any good without a handful of honorable mentions, right?  At the very least, these mentions help to dampen the outrage of passionate fans who saw their favorite negotiation game shafted on my list.  So let’s get into them!

• John Company: Honestly, I have no doubt that the second edition of this game was merely a few months away from making my Top 10 list and pushing off another title listed above.  Cole Wehrle is a favorite designer of mine (if you didn’t notice from Root and Oath being mentioned above), and John Company is his most negotiation-focused game of all.  I can’t wait to dive into this one when it finally releases in Q3!
• Rising Sun: I’ve heard two main things about Rising Sun.  1) It claims to be a negotiation game but many detractors say that’s a weak claim at best.  2) Many folks also say that this is the weakest design of the Eric Lang / CMON trilogy (Blood Rage, Rising Sun, Ankh).  So will I ever get the chance to try it?  Who knows.  But here it is.
• Twilight Imperium: These next two games are probably the ones that will get me in the most trouble with negotiation fans (because they are on my honorable mentions rather than my Top 10).  I’m still not sure whether I would enjoy this 8-hour extravaganza or simply be annoyed that I didn’t spend an entire day playing 4-10 other games that I know I love instead.  But from the sound of it, those who enjoy TI are hooked from their first play and ever hungry for more plays.
• Diplomacy: Another beast of a game (roughly 6 hours) that apparently must be played at exactly 6 or 7 players who will likely enter as friends and leave as mortal enemies.  Diplomacy apparently takes the back-stabbing part of negotiation and makes it a glorified feature in this epic game of military might.
• Dune: Dune, like TI and Diplomacy, has been around for decades, although it recently received a facelift.  These games also share the common problem of possessing many barriers to entry and requiring the perfect group (in this case 6 players hungry for a heavy 3-hour game).  Dune features deeply asymmetric factions, shakey alliances, and secret treachery.
• Pax Pamir: While Pax Pamir is one of my all-time favorite board games, I couldn’t justify fitting it onto my Top 10 list when negotiation is such a light feature compared to the other games in contention.  The most negotiation you’ll find here is mostly in the table talk—convincing others to join or support your faction and work against opponents.  Of course, you can also waive the forced bribes present in the game if a player is seeking to help your cause—but most often those bribes are enforced because the economy is so tight here.
• Genoa: I’ve come close to tracking down a copy of Genoa, and perhaps that’ll happen before too long.  This one seems to be a bit more polarizing—either you love the dynamic gameplay that Genoa provides, or you hate it for being too long and dry.
• Moonrakers: This is undoubtedly the hottest negotiation game at the moment as Moonrakers is currently having its second smash-hit Kickstarter campaign featuring all kinds of expansion content. What happens when you combine negotiation with deck-building in space? Only Moonrakers can answer that question.
• Panic on Wall Street: I rarely hear about this 2011 game, but it still has its fans.  This one is about loudly negotiating and trading stocks for 3-11 players in only 30 minutes.
• Catan: “Two sheep for a wood?” How could I not mention one of the most popular trading games of all time?
• Spartacus: A Game of Blood and Treachery: Like Quo Vadis, Spartacus is also about competing for power in Ancient Rome.  Only the competition here plays out in gory gladiatorial arenas rather than dignified senatorial committees.  Apparently this one got a somewhat recent reskin as well.

Introducing Zoo Vadis and Gussy Gorillas

I started this post by sharing how negotiation is one of my all-time favorite ingredients in tabletop games.  So of course, as a publisher, I’m eager to keep this genre alive and contribute to the list of legends which include the games noted above.  For my tastes, this might be the most exciting project that we’ve had the privilege to work on.  Let’s dive into the next two releases coming from Bitewing Games… 

Zoo Vadis

When I reached out to Reiner regarding Quo Vadis, I had a vision for what the game could become.  We weren’t interested in simply painting over the cracks in the design.  Rather, I dug through over 30 years of data (thanks BGG) and presented my analysis to Reiner including several development goals for the game.  Then off he went with his decades-old design to give it new life—like a phoenix reborn from the flames.  I’ll be sharing a full publisher diary before too long on all the nitty gritty details behind the evolution of Quo Vadis to Zoo Vadis, but for now let me simply explain the end result, Zoo Vadis:

What if the animals were the ones who ran the zoo?  

…Presumably, this wild government would be built upon the support of fellow creatures and fueled by the fame, attention, and prestige of wide-eyed visitors.  Naturally, the most aspirational beasts would lobby for a position in the star exhibit, and the lead star would be elected Zoo Mascot.  

In order to join the star exhibit, each species must campaign its way up the hierarchy of enclosures with the majority support of animal voters.  And the lead star will be the species that has earned the most laurels from both raving fans and jealous rivals along the way.  

How does one gain support and earn laurels?  Through crafty politicking, clever negotiations, and ruthless schemes.  There can only be one Zoo Mascot, after all.

Where are you going?  That is the ultimate question of Zoo Vadis.

Zoo Vadis is an evolution of Reiner Knizia’s cult-classic negotiation game, Quo Vadis?.  It retains the elegant, political gameplay that fans have come to love while introducing many innovations and improvements by:

-Enhancing the 3-player game and tailoring the board to all player counts through neutral, bribable figures—roaming peacocks

-Widening the player count with a second game board for 6-7 players

-Expanding the possibilities for strategic negotiation with asymmetric animal abilities 

-Increasing tactical opportunities with new special laurel tokens

-Broadening the appeal of the theme and presentation with vibrant zoo art by Kwanchai Moriya and Brigette Indelicato

-Enlivening the production with chunky animal figures and functional player screens

Like the original design, the game ends immediately when the Star Exhibit is full.  Only the animals who have reached the Star Exhibit qualify for victory, and the winner is the player with the most laurels.

Gussy Gorillas

Before Bitewing Games had ever reached out to Reiner Knizia or Ryan Courtney, we had a couple designs of our own that had survived the gauntlet of playtesting and were games that we were eager to share with the community.  One of those is Gussy Gorillas, and we’re jazzed to finally be publishing it alongside Zoo Vadis in our upcoming negotiation games crowdfunding campaign…

Gussy Gorillas are a peculiar group of primates that strive to keep each other gussied up and well-groomed. Through social grooming, these apes remove dirt, insects, and debris from the difficult-to-reach and difficult-to-see places of each other’s fur. Reciprocation is expected and awarded in this kind of monkey business! The player who acquires the most diverse and exotic collection of groomed goods will earn the respect of their fellow primates and be awarded the golden banana of victory.

In Gussy Gorillas, players start out with a personal deck of face-down cards. Without looking at the card(s) in their hand, players simultaneously trade or keep their hand, one or two cards at a time, to form a personal collection. Once all cards have been traded or kept, players tally their collections and the highest score wins — but pairs can cancel out and special cards are not always helpful, so trade carefully!

Similar to the popular game Hanabi, in Gussy Gorillas players hold their cards facing away from themselves…but instead of being a co-operative memory game, this is a competitive negotiation and bluffing game. Things get even more interesting once players realize that every card can either be very good or very bad for one’s collection, depending on the context. You’ll have to convince your opponents to keep bad cards for themselves and give great cards to you if you want to swing away with the win…

There are still plenty more juicy details to share over the coming months and we hope to have your support when Zoo Vadis and Gussy Gorillas launch this January!  The best way to help Bitewing Games and not miss out on these upcoming releases is to subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter. Bitewing Games is only made possible and kept alive by the support of backers and fans of our published games.   Thanks for your support!

What is your favorite negotiation game?  Share in the comments below!

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 Top 10 Negotiation Board Games + A Bitewing Games Publication Reveal! appeared first on Bitewing Games.

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

25. Camel Up (Second Edition)

Best suited for everyone

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

24. El Grande

Best suited for everyone

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

23. Renature

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

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

22. A Feast for Odin

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

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

21. Bus

Best suited for cold-blooded strategists

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

20. Tournament at Avalon

Best suited for everyone

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

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

19. My City

Best suited for everyone

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

18. Ethnos

Best suited for everyone

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

17. The King’s Dilemma

Best suited for a regular group of 5 players

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

16. Wavelength

Best suited for everyone, especially groups of 6 or more

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

15. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

Best suited for everyone

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

14. For Sale / For Sale Autorama

Best suited for everyone

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

13. Root

Best suited for a regular group of hobbyist gamers

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

12. Babylonia

Best suited for everyone

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

11. Inis

Best suited for everyone

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

10. Chinatown

Best suited for everyone

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

9. Ra

Best suited for everyone

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

8. Age of Steam

Best suited for hobbyist gamers with thick skin

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

7. Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

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

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

6. Sidereal Confluence: Remastered Edition

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

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

5. Hansa Teutonica: Big Box

Best suited for everyone

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

4. Brass: Birmingham

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

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

3. Tigris & Euphrates

Best suited for strategy gamers

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

2. Crokinole

Best suited for everyone

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

1. Pax Pamir: Second Edition

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

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

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

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

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

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

Digitálna éra priniesla nespočetné možnosti zábavy priamo do našich domovov. Jednou z najpopulárnejších foriem sú interaktívne online platformy, kde hráči môžu skúmať rôzne hry a využívať špeciálne ponuky. Tieto prostredia kombinujú zábavu, súťaživosť a možnosť okamžitých odmien, čím oslovujú široké spektrum používateľov.

Platformy, ktoré ponúkajú bezpečné a prehľadné rozhranie, sú kľúčové pre pozitívny zážitok. https://www.slovakiaplay.sk/online-casino-paysafecard/ poskytujú hráčom transparentné podmienky a jednoduché možnosti platby, čo je základom dôveryhodného prostredia.

Pohľad odborníka
Podľa odborníka na digitálnu zábavu, Martina Kováča, je dôležité, aby si hráči vyberali platformy, ktoré kombinujú bezpečnosť, intuitívne ovládanie a rôznorodosť hier. “Efektívne využívanie týchto platforiem si vyžaduje vedomý prístup, ktorý minimalizuje riziká a maximalizuje zábavu,” hovorí Kováč.

Štatistiky a trendy
Nedávne prieskumy ukazujú, že viac ako 70% používateľov trávi pri online hrách 3–5 hodín týždenne. Rovnako až 60% hráčov preferuje platformy, ktoré ponúkajú flexibilné platobné možnosti a bonusové odmeny. Tieto čísla ukazujú, že dôvera a pohodlie sú pre používateľov kľúčové faktory pri výbere platformy.

Kľúčové kritériá pri výbere platformy

1. Bezpečnosť a licencie: Overené platformy s regulovaným prostredím minimalizujú riziko podvodov.
2. Prehľadnosť a jednoduchosť: Intuitívne rozhranie zvyšuje komfort a umožňuje lepšie sústredenie sa na zábavu.
3. Rozmanitosť hier: Široká ponuka hier uspokojí rôzne záujmy používateľov.
4. Bonusy a odmeny: Spravodlivé a transparentné odmeny motivujú hráčov a zvyšujú ich spokojnosť.

Tieto faktory pomáhajú používateľom vybrať si platformu, ktorá najlepšie zodpovedá ich potrebám a očakávaniam.

Typy hier a interaktívnych aktivít

• Hry s okamžitou výhrou: Ponúkajú rýchle odmeny a jednoduché pravidlá.
• Súťažné turnaje: Umožňujú porovnávanie zručností s inými hráčmi.
• Odmeny za vernosť: Platformy motivujú pravidelnú aktivitu prostredníctvom bodov a exkluzívnych ponúk.
• Tematické akcie: Sezónne alebo špeciálne udalosti pridávajú novú dynamiku a zvyšujú zábavu.

Správnym kombinovaním týchto možností môžu používatelia maximalizovať svoj zážitok a získať najviac z každého zapojenia.

Výhody používania renomovaných platforiem

• Jednoduché porovnanie dostupných ponúk a odmien.
• Prístup k detailným analýzam a trendom.
• Zvýšená efektivita pri rozhodovaní a zapojení.
• Bezpečné a regulované prostredie znižuje riziko problémov.

Používanie profesionálnych platforiem umožňuje účastníkom sústrediť sa na zábavu a zároveň optimalizovať svoje rozhodnutia.

Odporúčania odborníkov

1. Vyberajte platformy s jasnými a transparentnými pravidlami.
2. Venujte pozornosť licencovaným a overeným zdrojom.
3. Kombinujte rôzne typy hier a aktivít pre maximálny zážitok.
4. Sledujte nové trendy a aktualizácie, aby ste využili najnovšie ponuky.

Implementácia týchto odporúčaní zabezpečí, že každý používateľ dosiahne spokojnosť a zábavu s minimálnym rizikom.

Záver
Digitálna zábava prináša možnosti, ktoré sú flexibilné, zaujímavé a odmeňujúce. slovakiaplay.sk/online-casino-paysafecard/ poskytuje používateľom profesionálne prostredie, ktoré kombinuje bezpečnosť, prehľadnosť a rozmanitosť aktivít.

Vďaka platformám, ktoré poskytujú odborné porovnania a detailné analýzy, môžu používatelia optimalizovať svoje rozhodnutia a zažiť zábavu na najvyššej úrovni. Transparentné podmienky, flexibilné platobné možnosti a rôznorodosť hier sú kľúčom k pozitívnemu zážitku a dlhodobej spokojnosti.

Správnym využitím dostupných nástrojov a odborných odporúčaní môže každý používateľ zvýšiť efektivitu svojich rozhodnutí a dosiahnuť lepšie výsledky pri digitálnej zábave. V konečnom dôsledku tieto platformy transformujú spôsob, akým ľudia pristupujú k online zábave, čím zvyšujú jej hodnotu a kvalitu.

The post Moderné možnosti zábavy online: komplexný pohľad na digitálne hry appeared first on Bitewing Games.

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

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

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

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

Lovers

Games that I’m still CRAZY about.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keepers

Other games that have survived the purge of 2020.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dumpers

Games that I dropped like a hot potato.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flingers

Games that were amusing to try at least once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seekers

Interesting games that still elude me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honorable Mentions

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

Horrified

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

On Tour

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

Unmatched

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

Irish Gauge

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

PARKS

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

Next Page: Top 10 Board Games of 2019

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