Treasure Island: Captain Silver — Revenge Island

1 Play

I finally got to try the new expansion to one of my favorite refreshingly unique designs, Treasure Island, and it didn’t disappoint!  

I’ve always appreciated Treasure Island for its thematic treasure hunt style of gameplay where one player acts as Long John Silver who buries his treasure on a massive island and marks the spot with an X on his tiny secret map.  Meanwhile, the remaining players are pirates who scour the game board with dry erase markers as they search for the buried treasure and narrow their search with hints, clues, and bluffs from Captain Silver.

The mere act of tracing routes and circling search areas and sectioning off regions with markers on a game board makes Treasure Island a novel experience.  Add in the pirate bluffing, semi-cooperation, and devious manipulation, and this design becomes a real winner for me.

That said, this isn’t the type of game that I would want to play on a frequent basis.  I think it benefits most from long gaps between plays, and your mileage will vary depending on whether you prefer to be the deducing pirate or the Captain Silver puppet master. 

Additionally, most veterans of Treasure Island will tell you that the game board is too saturated and the markers are too weak, leading to difficult-to-read colors and markings on the board.  Up to this point, the suggested solution has been to replace the provided markers with neon markers or dry erase Chalk pens, which pop much better on the components.

Fortunately, the expansion amends this issue by including a game board with dimmed colors that make the standard markers stand out perfectly fine.  That’s one base game issue solved, and it’s not the only lifestyle improvement this expansion provides.

The expansion also features a sticker for Captain Silver’s player shield that tweaks and improves his movement capabilities for when he escapes his tower in the late game and books it to the treasure.  This is a rules tweak that has been suggested by the creators for years, one that we implemented into our plays long ago, but now the expansion makes it official.

Finally, many groups have complained that the game is too easy for pirates and too hard for Captain Silver to win.  I’d argue that the difficulty of the game depends heavily on the cleverness of Captain Silver and his chosen bluffs and clues, although there is certainly some luck involved in a game where players spend many actions tracing search circles based solely on gut feelings and probabilities.  But designer Marc Paquien and publisher Matagot heard this complaint and addressed it in a way that works for the entire spectrum of skill levels.  That’s because they have provided Captain Silver with ruse cards, and he is allowed to use multiple cards or stronger cards depending on the difficulty level that the group decided on at the start of the game.  These cards can allow Long John to dodge defeats or throw pirates off the scent of his treasure, buying him a little more time to snatch the victory for himself.

And some of these ruse cards are really spicy.  Such as an accomplice card that lets you move the treasure a short distance from where you initially buried it.  Or a traitor card that allows you to secretly recruit another player to join your team and cover your tracks by convincing others to search in dead areas.

Aside from these improvements, the only other feature the expansion provides is a second map.  This map comes with a couple unique clue cards, a different island layout, and a couple restrictions for pirates.  Specifically, pirates are not allowed pass through Urban areas with a move longer than 3 miles; nor are they allowed to do a large search action in any forested terrain.  These restrictions are balanced out in what feels like a tighter, smaller game board compared to the original island.  That said, I’m not sure if the changes are worth all the extra trouble of having to remind players what they can and can’t do on this board.

All in all, Revenge Island is an expansion that I feel was a worthwhile addition for a game that I enjoy to break out and introduce to people on occasion.  Yet at this point, it seems like Matagot should just discontinue the original game and release an updated version that includes all the improvements and additions in a single box.  This expansion is simply a bunch of improved replacements with a few extra cards and tokens thrown in for variety.  I’ve already tossed the old components and fit everything into the original box, and I think Matagot should too.

Current Rating: 7.5/10

L.L.A.M.A

3 Plays

L.L.A.M.A. has been sitting on my shelf long enough that I finally gave in to the temptation of trying it at 2-players, knowing full well that this is likely the worst way to play Reiner Knizia’s 2019 Spiel des Jahres nominated card game.  After three plays in a row, my fears were confirmed.  I come away from these plays offering what little praise I can muster, specifically: It’s better than UNO.

The game consists of a deck of cards ranging from 1-6 plus llamas, with eight of each card total.  Turns are blazingly fast as players must either play a card equal to or one higher than the number displayed on the discard pile, draw a card, or cut their losses and quit the round.  Llamas can be played on llamas or sixes, and ones can be played on llamas, thus resetting the cycle.

Just like in UNO, getting rid of cards is great, as cards left in your hand at the end of the round result in negative points according to their face value.  Furthermore, you only count each unique card once, so five 3’s in your hand is much better than a hand of 2, 3, and 4.  Llamas are the stinkers of the deck, in that they tack 10 negative points onto your score.  Yet point chips come in white 1’s and black 10’s, and if you manage to play all the cards in your hand, you end the round and earn the bonus of discarding one chip (black or white) from your score.

The only substantial decision of the game comes when you must decide whether to draw another card to keep your hopes of thinning your hand alive, or cut your losses and quit with the remaining cards in your hand as further dents in your score.  If your hand has a lot of duplicates, then quitting can have its benefits… the last opponent still in the round can no longer draw cards, thus they can only play legal numbers from their hand.  So I can try to quit early with a decent hand and hope that I’ve left my opponent with an even worse hand that they can’t get rid of.

It’s extremely simple, very luck driven, but again, there’s a least more meat on the bone than UNO.  Even then, this is a sad feast for a card game that leaves me wholly unsatisfied, especially having tried it at 2-players.  I’m sure that with a few more personalities around the table, things get more lively and decisions slightly more interesting.  But such gaming opportunities with others are too few and far between for me to even consider giving L.L.A.M.A such precious tabletop time.  The opportunity cost is too great for me to recklessly spend rare gatherings on games that are only mildly amusing at best.

For a game as cheap as L.L.A.M.A, I do find that there is one thread keeping it tethered to my collection… Specifically, five years from now, when I can play it with my wife and our two daughters who will be old enough to understand and enjoy the colorful simplicity of L.L.A.M.A.  I can guarantee you that they’ll be deeply familiar with this game long before they’ve ever even heard of UNO.

Current Rating: 4.5/10

Hibachi

1 Play

Hibachi is a new release from Grail Games that is a reimplementation of 2010’s Safranito by Marco Teubner.  Overall, Hibachi is nearly identical to Safranito with a few minor exceptions.  It seems that Grail Games has opted to streamline the rules and speed up the gameplay by selecting a standardized setup and flow that keep the game at a more brisk pace of earning ingredients and fulfilling recipes.  I haven’t played the original Safranito, but based on my experience with Hibachi and understanding of the differences, I think this new version has the superior ruleset and production.

This game caught my eye on Kickstarter late last year with it’s unique blend of skillful poker chip tossing and tactical sealed-bidding.  The objective is to toss poker chips onto a large board, buy or sell the ingredients that your chips land on, and be the first to fulfill three orders using the ingredients you purchase.  It’s a race that demands both dexterous prowess and smart budgeting.  

The game board is a large square with raised edges to help contain the sliding chips.  This board is made up of 9 large circular ingredient spaces, and 4 small bonus action spaces.  Players each receive a set of six large, hefty poker chips with a small hole cut out of the center.  They take turns throwing one chip at a time facedown onto the board, hoping to get the hole of their chip to stop over a desired space.  

I suppose there are different options for how to throw your chip, but most of us opted for a miniature frisbee toss technique.  It takes a bit of practice to get the wrist-flick and finger release just right, but we quickly found ourselves landing our chips in the intended spaces roughly 60 or 70 percent of the time.  The epic failures are absolutely part of the fun, and seeing a chip end up way too short or far always prompted a lively reaction from the table.  

There is certainly the opportunity for opponent screwage, as your sliding poker chip can careen into another well-placed chip and send it far off from where it began.  Yet one particularly nice improvement to Hibachi that Safranito lacked is the opportunity to collect a new chili card for each of your poker chips that end up in a dead space.  These chili cards can be spent in sets of two to substitute for a single ingredient when fulfilling an order.  So even your “invalid” poker chips don’t feel like a total waste.  Although another amusing rule here is that when the chili card pile runs out, the player with the most chili cards stashed in their hand must return all of them to the pile, so these wild cards have a frequent “use it or lose it” pressure to them.

But I’d say that the truly spicy mechanism here lies in the sealed bidding.  Poker chips range from 1-6, they’ll be flipped face up after the tossing phase is finished, and the player with the highest sum on a space gets exclusive rights to the bonus action or first dibs on the ingredient.  The only catch is that the ingredient will cost you the total value of your chips on that space, so you constantly must decide whether to bid high and guarantee yourself one of the precious few ingredients available, or bid low and hope that nobody swoops in and steals your desired card away.

But before the purchasing of an ingredient can happen, players have the opportunity to sell that ingredient from their hand for a price equal to the sum total of all players’ poker chips that are displayed on that space.  So when you see loads of chips aiming for the same spot, and you already have one or more ingredients of that type, you’ll find yourself tempted by the lucrative opportunity of selling your hard-earned cards for cash rather than saving them for victory.

The small bonus action spaces are not to be ignored either, as one of these spaces ended up winning me our first game.  One space allows you to toss an extra, unused chip from your hand after the tossing phase of a round is finished; this can turn the tide of a round in your favor, assuming your aim is true with the bonus toss.  Another space lets you draw as many ingredient cards as the value of the chip thrown so you can keep one in your personal stash.  The third space grants you a private recipe card that can be fulfilled at the end of a round and at the same time you fulfill a public recipe; where three fulfilled recipes instantly wins you the game, this is one space that can really give you a competitive edge.  Finally, the fourth space lets you steal the “master chef” token (a delightful wooden soy sauce bottle) mid-round, which means that ties and turn-order go in your favor for the buying and cooking phases.  

In our first play of Hibachi, my wife, Camille, caught an early lead and was the first to fulfill two recipes.  We were fortunate that later rounds were less successful for her and soon all players were tied at a sudden death standoff of two fulfilled recipes each.  Suddenly, the soy sauce bottle was the most vital space on the board, as the owner of the bottle would get to fulfill an order first to win the game.  Since Camille currently possessed the bottle and I sat to her right, I would be the last player to make a toss onto the board.  I managed to knock her own chip off the soy sauce bottle space and replace it with my own, and nobody had a chip on the bonus toss space, meaning I was able to snatch away the bottle and cross the finish line first by default of stolen turn order.

For a novel game that frequently makes you feel both intellectually clever and digitally gifted (and by digital I mean physical fingers ;),  I’d say that Grail Games nailed their company mission of breathing new life into a hidden gem.

Current Rating: 8/10

Nusfjord

1 Play

Uwe Rosenberg has yet to disappoint me after all of his designs that I have tried (I’ve now played 7 of his games).  Nusfjord doesn’t stray from this pattern of success, yet I’m beginning to see another pattern in Uwe’s design style.  

You see, I can’t help but shake the feeling that many of Uwe’s design children merely exist to cannabalize each other.  His farming games are overshadowed by his legendary farming games, his polyomino games are crowded out by his better polyomino games.  And while most of them are solid experiences in their own right, they all scratch nearly the same itch within their genre.  

Why would I play Cottage Garden or Indian Summer when I can instead play Patchwork or New York Zoo?  Why would I play Nusfjord when I can instead play A Feast for Odin, Agricola, or Le Havre?  Why indeed.

For those who are mega fans of Uwe Rosenberg and his style of game, like I am of Reiner Knizia, these questions are silly and pointless.  Why own both Blue Lagoon and Through the Desert?  Or both Yellow & Yangtze and Tigris & Euphrates?  Or both Babylonia and Samurai?  They’re basically all peas in the same pod, right?  And you certainly don’t need all six of those tile laying Knizia designs in your collection, right?  WRONG.  Now get your disgusting insinuations out of my face and leave me and my precious collection alone.

I have no place to judge… I can only speak for myself.  My problem is that I own and enjoy both A Feast for Odin and Agricola—both are incredible economic Euros—and I don’t play either of them nearly enough.  So when I’m hungry for a meaty Rosenberg game, which again is not nearly as frequent of an occurrence as my Knizia cravings, I’m already forced to decide between two underplayed classics.  On top of that, I desperately want to purchase Le Havre, and the urge has been with me for months since I first tried it, yet I haven’t been able to talk myself into it because I already have two underplayed Uwe economic classics.  Adding a third one to the mix is just asking for even more sadness and neglect.

All this is to say that I had a great time playing Nusfjord, but I would never proactively choose to play it over the above mentioned Triforce of A Feast for Odin, Agricola, and Le Havre.  Regardless, let’s talk a little bit about what still makes Nusfjord, the overshadowed younger sibling, a joy to play.

Do you like fish?  How about little blue fish meeples?  How about a pile of a hundred of them?!?  Now we’re talking.

Nusfjord is all about clearing trees, building a harbor, and being a fisherman in Norway.  Just like any good economic Rosenburg, the worker placement gameplay is tight & interconnected while the cards are varied and plentiful.  

The standout aspect of this design in particular (besides the oodles of fish) is perhaps the opportunity to sell and buy shares of each other’s fishing companies.  Selling shares will instantly earn you ever-precious money, but buying shares will nab you more fish from those players’ nets for the rest of the game.  The fish in this game are just as oily as fish in real life, keeping your economy smooth and flowing from one upgrade to the next.

While you’ll only ever get to use three workers each round, you’ll open up more opportunities and bonuses for using them with the help of local elders and erected buildings that you’ll add to your personal board.  Elders act as private, extra worker placement spaces that you’ll need to keep feeding in order to use them.  Buildings function as point and resource generators that can also improve your standard action options.

It’s a well-balanced sandbox of economic efficiency entertainment, something that Mr. Rosenburg has practically trademarked at this point, although Nusfjord is perhaps a bit more easy-going and luck-influenced than average.  Cards emerging from the decks and from under other cards can have a massive effect on the outcome of the game.  Major scoring objective cards are randomly dealt out in the late game, and it’s possible for one player to end up with a useless hand just as easily as a game winning one.  This is probably most people’s main complaint about the game.

At the end of the day, Nusfjord is still miles better than most of the resource exchanging Euros that have flooded the market.  Its only problem is that it will forever live in the shadow of its older, more interesting siblings.  As it’s supposed to last only 20 minutes per player, I hear that it’s particularly good as a fast 1-3 player game.  So perhaps there is hope for this game yet…

Current Rating: 7/10

5 Classic Games—Lightning Round

I’m still waiting for some delayed preorders to show up, so that’s all I have (this time) for impressions of new-ish games. But I’ve been playing loads of classics lately, so let’s do a lightning round featuring some of these…

Wildlife Safari

1 Play of 4 Games (Scores added together)

Wildlife Safari is not my favorite Knizia filler, but it’s definitely one of his better dead simple card games (I would play this over L.L.A.M.A., Whale Riders: The Card Game, Modern Art Card Game, etc.).

Simply play an animal card (number 0-5) and take any animal token. The game ends once all animal cards of one type have been played, and the last card played of each animal determines the scoring value of their matching tokens!

While I didn’t feel I had as much control over the game state as I tend to prefer in these types of games, it’s still a thrill to invest in certain animals, influence their values, and save a juicy card for a final boom or bust.

Current Rating: 7/10

Libertalia

1 Play

I’m a big fan of Paolo Mori’s work (we even had another great session of Ethnos this past week), but Libertalia feels its age in board game years. The gameplay of simultaneously selecting a card to bid for token drafting order was merely ok for me. I get the appeal starting with the same hands and having unused cards carry over from one campaign to the next, but I still don’t think the design merits the length it took to play. I would have much preferred to play a faster 2-campaign game or 3 speedier campaigns.

It seems as though the game possesses a variety of reasons to keep you coming back for more, but then it blows most of it’s surprises in one play and overstays its welcome by a lot. I realize this one is still ranked in the top 500 on BGG, but I think Ethnos and Dogs of War wipe the floor with Libertalia.

Current Rating: 5.5/10

Blue Moon Legends

2 Plays

I’ve been wanting to talk about Reiner Knizia’s famous Blue Moon Legends for a while now, but this is one meaty game that I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of. We’ve merely dipped our toes in the shallow end of the pool so far, sticking to the two recommended starting decks. Where I haven’t even jumped into the advanced rules or decks yet, I doubt I could offer much valuable input here.

But regarding our first couple plays, I’ve found Blue Moon Legends to be a tight, engaging game of chicken featuring a very Knizian flow of battles in the form of auctions. I’m not a fan of the artwork, and it is all the more disheartening to hear that a publisher nearly produced a new version (one that would presumably have more imaginative illustrations), but I’ll take what I can get at this point.

For those who enjoy diving deep into dueling games such as Summoner Wars, Magic: The Gathering, or other Living/Collectable Card Games, this might be a great option for you. On the other hand, Blue Moon is probably much more streamlined and subtle than what many CCG/LCG fans have come to expect from the genre, so I could see them coming away disappointed instead of delighted. I think this game is likely best for people who become intimately familiar with the decks where they can fully mine its tactical richness.

Current Rating: 8/10

Bohnanza

2 Plays

Bohnanza is a solid, accessible negotiation game, and you could certainly do much worse for a gateway card game, but I find that Chinatown & Quo Vadis scratch the same itch in roughly the same time much better. Both games offer more lively and interesting negotiations, more strategic flexibility, more tension, more drama, and they are equally accessible gateway games.

I suppose the main thing that Bohnanza has to its advantage is its wider player count and much kinder gameplay (in groups where that matters).

I think the art is better than people give it credit for (particularly the bean illustrations), but perhaps the core color palette (neon yellow) could be more… palatable. I also appreciate the novelty and pressure of the unadjustable hand sequencing—this is perhaps the most clever and interesting aspect of Bohnanza.

On the flip side, my least favorite part is how hosed you can feel when the game ends before you’ve had an equal number of turns. The only thing that counteracts this significant advantage is that ties go in your favor, but that’s little consolation when you had a couple cards in hand ready to score you more points on your turn.

As there are both faster card games and meatier negotiation games in my collection, I just don’t see this one getting played very often. At the same time, I’m reluctant to get rid of it, because I agree that it’s something special and worth breaking out every once in a while.

Current Rating: 6/10

Tower of Babel

1 Play

I hate nearly everything about the look and production of this game, and the theme doesn’t do much for me either, but Knizia is onto something here with the design. We ignored the unsanctioned special/action cards as others have suggested and stuck with the pure Euro goodness of contributing building cards to wonder construction and competing for the most contributions.

I like how quickly Tower of Babel plays and how it keeps players active throughout. I dig the offering mechanism with the interesting wrinkles of adding a trade card to your offer or gaining points for rejected offers.

On your turn, you’ll simply propose a wonder to progress the construction on and select one of the discs at that wonder to be both the building requirement and the scoring bonus of your turn. Your opponents can simultaneously offer matching cards from their hand, and you have the freedom accept any of their offers and/or add cards from your own hand. The catch is that you must accept every card in an opponent’s accepted offer, meanwhile rejected opponents score points for every card they offered. Indeed, rejection has never felt so good as it does here in Reiner Knizia’s Tower of Babel.

If your opponent adds a trade card to their offer, and you accept it, then they’ll get to keep the end-game scoring disc (instead of you) from a successful construction, but you’ll get to place your color of pieces instead of theirs for even more control of that particular wonder.

I think currently, part of me wishes there was more to earning the disc tokens than simply hiding them for set points at the end. But perhaps with more plays the layers will peel back and I’ll be fully satisfied with this aspect.

For those who enjoy uncovering hidden Knizia gems, I’d say this one is worthy of your radar. But I’d love to see this game get a full makeover where Dr. Knizia expands on the concept and the publisher makes it look like anything else besides this (I say this knowing full well that Tower of Babel was reimplemented into Planet Rush in 2016… but from the sound of it, most people prefer Tower of Babel).

Current Rating: 7/10

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

The post Candid Cardboard: 1st Impressions of Hibachi, Nusfjord, L.L.A.M.A., & Treasure Island Expansion appeared first on Bitewing Games.

It’s that time of year once more, my friends!  Now that the cardboard dust of 2020 has settled, as we find ourselves in the calm before the storm of 2021 releases, I’ve been reflecting on all the tabletop games I’ve ever played.  Within this mountain of ever growing titles, fifty designs have risen to the top.  These are the board games that have proven their quality over hours of play across many tables surrounded by friends, family, and strangers.  These are the games that I love and want to play more than any others.  Indeed, these are my current Top 50 Board Games of All Time.

If you’re even remotely familiar with my last Top 50 Board Games of All Time list, you’ll soon notice a DRASTIC change in most of the games and their rankings.  This change not only represents the many new-to-me discoveries of the past year, it also symbolizes a significant shift in my gaming tastes and preferences across the nearly 700 plays since my last top 50 list was created.

The list of games that I love is getting to be a crowded place.  To offer you a bit of context, I used the Pub Meeple ranking engine to pit individual games head-to-head against each other over and over until my I died of a broken heart for declaring so many of my beloved board game children to be inferior to each other.  Each game left outside of my top 50 hurt to leave out until perhaps the 89th ranked game.  There are still many designs beyond that which I truly enjoy playing, yet this low on the list is where I’m finally content with leaving them out of my Greatest of All Time post.  Perhaps next year we’ll have to extend this list to my top 75 or top 100, but it’s the excellent games which don’t make the GOAT list that give weight and credibility to the ones that do.

So let’s roll up our sleeves and wrestle with the rankings of the greatest games to grace my tabletop…

50. Watergate

Best suited for everyone

Watergate won’t be the last tug-of-war style game on my list, nor will it be the last Capstone Game here, but it was one of the very first of both categories that I had the pleasure of discovering.  This endearing 2-player game is far more accessible than it sounds or appears.  Yet the way each session plays out is consistently tense and refreshing.  My favorite aspect is perhaps the difficult decisions one must make within the hand management, between deciding whether to dispose of a card to use it’s powerful ability or retain it for its useful pull on the tug-of-war track.  Thanks to the asymmetric decks and objectives of the Nixon Administration vs. the Press and the dynamic unfolding of the pin board conspiracy, I don’t see myself tiring of this excellent design.

49. Arboretum

Best suited for mean, thick-skinned folks

I wonder if us hobbyist gamers sometimes take small box card games for granted.  These are rarely the games that I intentionally schedule a game night for, yet a really good one can often pack a bigger punch and provide more thrills and amusement than a longer and larger “event” game.  Arboretum is the first of these such titles on my list, and it’s as sharp as they come.  There is nothing quite like writhing in my chair because my cards are either too important to play so soon or too precious to discard.  Arboretum is a game where my entire hand feels this way almost the entire time.  I still adore this beautiful little design about trees, yet it’s probably fallen a bit since last year because it’s almost too bitter of a brutality pill for others to swallow when an opponent denies them the scoring on a tree type they’ve spent all game building towards.  If your group has thick skin, then Arboretum is a collection essential.

48. Modern Art

Best suited for any group of four or five people

If you liken an art museum to a snooze fest, then you should come and let Modern Art teach you the exciting intricacies of art valuations.  Modern Art is where my love for auctioning games was born, as the bombastic bidding takes center-stage here.  It’s essentially Dr. Reiner Knizia flexing his auctioning design muscles for up to an hour of richly thematic fun.  The mix of four auction types and the mystery of which artists will have the most valuable pieces hits the spot like a piña colada on a hot summer day.

47. Blue Lagoon

Best suited for everyone

Blue Lagoon is a bit of an unexpected hit of a purchase, despite that being a common theme with Knizia Games in my collection.  On the surface, it appears to be a generic abstract game with shameless Moana-like art.  You combine those two off-putting things together and only a name like Reiner Knizia and a cheap price of $20-30 could warm my icy heart enough to give it a chance.  Yet now here it sits among my Top 50 Games of ALL TIME.  I freaking love this family-friendly strategy game.  I very recently shared how it’s one of Dr. Knizia’s best designs thanks to its agonizing decisions and passive-aggressive opportunities across two subtly distinct rounds of play.

46. Irish Gauge

Best suited for everyone

Well, it’s not the third Knizia game in a row on this list, but it is a Knizia-like design.  What does Knizia-like even mean, you ask?  And why is that a compliment?  Much like the work of Reiner Knizia, Amabel Holland’s Irish Gauge is a vast wealth of deep and compelling gameplay born out of extremely simple rules.  So simple, in fact, that the rules fit onto a single sheet of paper.  It’s hard not to be drawn in by Ian O’Toole’s face-melting box art and clean graphic design, yet it’s the pleasure of placing trains, auctioning shares, and calling for dividends that keeps me thoroughly engaged in this cube-rail classic.

45. The Quest for El Dorado

Best suited for everyone

Phew, well I don’t know about you, but I almost had a panic attack straying from Reiner Knizia for so long.  Look, I get that his style of game isn’t for everyone.  And I can assure you that we won’t break into the double digits of Knizia designs on this list… but we do get awfully close (and you should probably brace yourself for a couple more of them in about two minutes).  Anywayyyyy, let’s talk about one of the best deck-builders ever designed!  Despite the miniature cards and sprawling components, The Quest for El Dorado marries deck-building to racing on a game board with seemingly effortless ease.  The game is so polished and simple that it can be easy to dismiss the genius mechanisms and satisfying flow hidden within.  This is a title that I can put down in front of my eight-year-old niece and thoroughly enjoy playing or break out with my fellow hardcore hobbyists for a charmingly cutthroat contest.

44. Great Western Trail

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

Allow me to be vain for a moment (if putting together this massive ranked list about cardboard leisure isn’t vain enough already) and share that the main thing that keeps me from loving Great Western Trail even more is the uncomfortable box art containing three massive faces of scowling, staring, soul-less men.  It’s like Mount Rushmore got lost in the Twilight Zone and landed itself in a dystopian Wild West.  Thankfully, publisher Eggertspiele decided that five years of heebie-geebies was long enough, and they’ve finally invested in a redesigned and drastically improved art style for the second edition coming later this year.  Yet I’m not so vain as to dismiss the intricate complexity that launches this heavy Euro game to greatness.  The mechanisms interwoven together include deck building with a herd of cattle, traveling with a cowboy along an action rondel, progressing economic potential along a railroad track, constructing buildings along the trail to help yourself and hinder your opponents, developing an engine within your evolving player board, and so much more.

43. Through the Desert

Best suited for everyone

As promised, we’re back with another irresistible adventure from the bottomless well of brilliance that is Knizia Games.  This time, we have pastel camels sprawling across a dry desert in search of lush oases, private piles of sand, and thirst-quenching watering holes.  Believe it or not, I was mildly underwhelmed with this game after my first play of it.  It was only with more plays at varying player counts that I uncovered my adoration of Through the Desert.  Once again, you can hear more about why I love this design in my recent Top 10 Knizia Games post.

42. Lost Cities

Best suited for everyone

Speaking of which, Lost Cities is the last I’ll speak of Reiner’s work for at least a dozen games, so you better eat up while you can!  Remember back when we were talking about Arboretum and how that is a painful card game where you don’t want to play or discard any of your cards?  Lost Cities takes those same hand management woes and cranks them up to ten!  The 20-point penalty for committing to a color is perfectly calculated to make you hesitate with every card you decide to play.  I especially love that you can start out a color with handshake cards that raise the stakes by doubling, tripling, or quadrupling your score, whether they are positive or negative points!  The temptation to commit to a color late can become strong as that color appears in your hand or in the draw piles, and the threat of a premature game end can make the final turns tight as noose!  I still stand by my previous statement that this is the chips and salsa of 2-player card games.

41. New York Zoo

Best suited for everyone

2020 was a great year for board games releases, and New York Zoo is the first one on my Top 50 games list to prove it.  Between the giant tray of animal meeples, the piles of polyomino enclosures, the emerging zoos on player boards, the bounteous breeding bonuses, and the roaming elephant action token, I find myself submerged in a colorful pool of play.  The race to fill your zoo first remains a refreshing change of pace from the common trope of gaining points for anything and everything.  Uwe Rosenberg and polyomino games pair together just as well as chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream…. Am I getting hungry or something?

40. Mandala  

Best suited for everyone

I’ve never been let-down by a play of Mandala.  The moments of difficult decisions and clever plays are a gift that keeps on giving.  The pleasant production consisting of a cloth “board” and colorful cards are merely a disguise for the confrontational gameplay that lurks beneath.  Your turns are spent essentially bidding for first dibs on the sets of colors in each mandala while feeding those sets for lucrative points.  Once a mandala is complete, the highest bidder chooses the first color to add to their scoring river, and frequently it’s best to take the cards that would help your opponent more than they help you.  

39. Jaipur

Best suited for everyone

Jaipur falls into the same category of simple, all-time greats within the 2-player card game genre.  It’s another one that doesn’t contain an immediate hook or obvious wow-factor, but it’s addictive flow grows on you over time.  I could tell you more about how Jaipur perfectly balances incentives against risks or goods against camels, but I wouldn’t be able to do it better than Kyle who put out a very slick 6-minute review of the game last year.

38. Cosmic Frog

Best suited for hobbyist gamers who appreciate the weird and wacky

We’re onto another one of my top releases of 2020 with Cosmic Frog!  Something about this punishing experience is so irresistible… sort of like staring at a sunset, or staying up past bedtime to watch another episode of your favorite show, or drinking soda while eating spicy food.  The more that Cosmic Frog hurts me, the more I want to play it.  Yet I’m far too greedy of a gamer to play the game defensively, and my greed continues to burn me.  Why send my frog groveling back to its vault with only one or two shards when I can load his gullet to the brim with goodies?!?  Why take only one action on my turn when I can spend a little oomph to double my productivity?!?  Why, you ask?  So my merciless opponents can come in and gut-punch me to another dimension and steal away everything I ever held dear.

37. The Estates

Best suited for mean, thick-skinned folks

While we’re on the topic of merciless gut-punching, we might as well transition to another one of my favorite blood baths, The Estates.  This one feels sort of like a sandbox game, where on your turn you have the freedom to auction off almost any piece still on the table, except players spend more time throwing sand at each other than building their own sand castles.  You may be the owner of the red company, but if I win the bid for that red building block, then you better believe I’m going to stack it in the negative point row to sabotage your score.  And if you let me get away with purchasing the Mayor token, then I’ll gleefully add it to your incomplete row where your buildings will now score you double negative points.  In The Estates, cruelty knows no bounds.

36. Lords of Vegas

Best suited for those who can tolerate a hearty dose of luck with their strategery

You know, it’s quite convenient that these games all ended up next to each other on my rankings.  Starting back with Cosmic Frog, we’re currently in the thick of some of the more polarizing games on my list.  It’s likely you either love ‘em or you hate ‘em, and Lords of Vegas is no different.  This is the game many have pointed to as “What Monopoly Should Have Been.”  Growing casinos, hostile business takeovers, big pay-days, gambling to steal money from others, and player turns spent blowing all your cash on greedy expansion schemes.  As an area control game with a flair for dramatic Vegas-style gambling, you’d be hard-pressed to find another game quite like Lords of Vegas.

35. Condottiere

Best suited for everyone

Kyle and I recently shared each of our Top 10 Family Games, and Condottiere was an easy one to add to this list.  It had proven it’s merit when I brought it on a vacation with relatives and they requested to play it multiple times over the many other games I had also brought and taught them that week.  Condottiere boils down to a card game of chicken where the last person to stay in gets to claim a territory if they committed the most troops, and the first person to control three adjacent territories or five total wins.  This game of chicken takes the form of an auction where you can commit troops from your hand to a battle, but that means you’ll have even less cards in the following round.  A major aspect of the strategy is to bluff your commitment and push others to spend too much for something that you don’t actually want, just so you can easily take a more important territory later.

34. Undaunted: Normandy & Undaunted: North Africa

Best suited for everyone

We’ve now arrived at my personal favorite deck-builder, the Undaunted series.  I’ve now played a combined total of 17 games of Undaunted (Normandy and North Africa) and we’re still going strong.  The many scenarios provided in these games help to keep each play fresh, and the asymmetry offered by each setup and faction make it doubly replayable.  The addicting loop of sacrificing a card to compete for initiative, deciding which actions to take with the remaining cards, and honing your deck in on the victory objective is as good as deck-building gets for me.  Just like in war, you’ll be sticking your neck out and taking big risks in hopes gaining the upper hand in this streamlined, 2-player, scenario-based war game.

33. Love Letter

Best suited for everyone

Love Letter might just be the best micro-game ever designed.  With only 16 cards and a handful of cubes, this design weaves together a tapestry of deception, deduction, drama, and delight.  Each player is holding one card in their hand, kept secret from everyone else.  On your turn, draw a second card into your hand and play one of them.  The goal is to be the last person standing or have the highest number when the deck runs out.  And the card actions and values are brilliantly crafted to where players can try to outfox each other with each quick round of play.

32. Treasure Island

Best suited for everyone

I adore how the pirate’s life comes alive in this island treasure hunt!  There is something so exhilarating about being Captain Long John Silver, marking the spot of your buried treasure on your private map, and then spending the entire game misleading the other mutinous pirates with vague, piecemeal information on your treasure’s whereabouts.  I also enjoy being one of those mutinous pirates, drawing on the large game board map, and scouring the island for the booty as I try to puzzle together the hints and clues before Long John escapes captivity and reunites with his treasure.  It’s been a while since I’ve played this wonderfully unique design, but that’s only because I’m waiting to receive my copy of the expansion which promises even more variety to the core experience.

31. Beyond the Sun

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

We’re back with yet another big 2020 release, and it’s really had an upswing in the rankings with my most recent plays of it.  In particular, Beyond the Sun was the very first game we played in our recent 2-part Board Game Birthday Marathon, and it ended up being the group favorite of the entire day.  We had a killer lineup of games that were played too, so that’s high praise indeed.  Beyond the Sun mixes tight resource management with branching worker placement actions on an evolving tech tree while providing a buttery smooth area control experience on the space exploration board.  The whole package comes together so beautifully that it’s all the more impressive to discover that this is designer Dennis K. Chan’s first published game.

30. Concordia

Best suited for everyone

As far as I’m concerned, Concordia deserves to be the real Catan of the board game industry.  It’s an accessible game all about getting your wooden settlements built onto the map, yet everything about Concordia is far more interesting and engaging than Catan.  You build up your hand of cards over time, and these not only serve as the action you take on your turn, but they also score you points at the end of the game according to how well you executed your game board strategy.  Concordia never fails to hit the spot, especially because you are not waiting for the dice to roll your numbers and trigger your resource production.  So maybe it’s time to give Catan the boot from your collection and introduce your friends to the REAL Catan which is the unbreakable Concordia.

29. Stephenson’s Rocket

 Best suited for Knizia fans and/or train game fans who plan on repeat plays

Like Beyond the Sun, Stephenson’s Rocket was another game we had the pleasure of enjoying at our recent gaming marathon.  While I can understand why it might be a bit polarizing due to the objective opacity and in-your-face nastiness, Stephenson’s Rocket is a game that really sings once you catch onto its crafty ways.  The opportunities for clever turns are subtle yet numerous in this design about extending rails, investing in industries, and bidding for control.  This game, in my opinion, is criminally underrated among Knizia’s designs and the board game industry itself.  To this day, I thank my lucky stars that I was able to discover it and snag myself a copy of Grail Game’s beautiful version.

28. Dogs of War

Best suited for any group of 4-5 players

Thus begins the reign of Paolo Mori on my top 50 games of all time list.  The man has landed himself not one, not two, but three spots among my top 30.  Dogs of War is the first that I have the privilege of acclaiming today.  While you could call this a worker placement game, I don’t really think of it as such.  Rather, I tend to think of it as a political tug-of-war strategy game.  Players act as Dogs of War who influence the battles that are taking place between noble houses.  The victor of each battle will be determined by whichever house receives the most support from players, and the players on the winning team will gain significant benefits.  The incentives to support a particular house on a particular round are many, and the challenge is to choose your allies wisely so that you benefit from the various battle outcomes more than any opponent.

27. Blitzkrieg!: World War Two in 20 Minutes

Best suited for everyone

For those of you who are unable to track down a copy of the out-of-print Dogs of War—or perhaps even more difficult is the challenge of gathering 4-5 players around one table—then Mr. Mori has just the solution: a new 2-player, 20 minute version of this game known as Blitzkrieg.  And what a heck of a 20 minutes this design is.  Those who dismiss Blitzkrieg for its generic look or plain production are simply missing out on one of the best new 2-player games in the industry.  The back and forth that occurs between two opponents as they attempt to conquer each theatre of war is a blast from start to finish.  Unlike most war games, there are no cards or dice involved here.  You simply select one of three tile options that are hidden behind your shield to play out almost anywhere onto the board.  The tile you choose and the spot you place it on may haunt you long after this 20 minute romp is over. 

26. The Mind

Best suited for everyone

I have to imagine that those who scoff at the simplicity of The Mind just haven’t uncovered the magic within.  The Mind captures the organic satisfaction of acting on gut-feelings and having those feelings confirmed by others without even word spoken between them.  It’s a cooperative game where the group must find an equilibrium, a rhythm, and a tempo together as they play numerical cards from their hands in ascending order without saying anything.  While it starts out laughably basic in round one, the difficulty quickly ramps up as more cards are dealt each round and the group loses more lives.  Some of the best board and card game designs on this planet attain such greatness because they trim away the fiddly supplemental rules and maintain a laser focus on what makes them special.  The Mind is one such design that remains a joy to play with the right people who are willing to invest in its unusual concept.

Continue on to the next post for the final 25 of my Top 50 Board Games of All Time!

Article written by Nick Murray. If you found yourself nodding in agreement to some of his favorite games, then keep an eye out for 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! Don’t miss out on this killer filler bundle coming in 2021! Subscribe to the Bitewing Games monthly newsletter to stay in touch.

The post Top 50 Board Games of All Time — Games 50-26 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Speaking of biting into sandwiches, you know that feeling when you bite into a too-dry sandwich and instantly wish it had some kind of condiment or sauce?  There are some sandwiches in this world that will soak up all the saliva from your mouth and try their hardest to keep you from having a pleasurable dining experience.  Instead of enjoying the flavors that it does contain, all you can think about is what’s missing from it.

This is comparable to the experience I’ve had with certain tabletop games… like Targi, for instance.  Targi is a clever 2-player worker placement game with mechanisms that are phenomenally unique and interesting; yet somehow I just couldn’t get into it.  My main issue with Targi is that the game is SO DRY. For a game that could be literally any theme, the chosen theme and presentation aren’t doing it any favors.  There is absolutely nothing exciting to me about collecting and spending salt, pepper, and dates. It all feels so mechanical. Collect bland things, spend them on bland things, rinse and repeat.  While the mechanics start out interesting, the novelty wears out long before the game is over. It’s a game that becomes difficult to see through to the end, much like a dry sandwich.

Compare this to another worker placement game that contains all the thematic sauce I could possibly want: Viticulture Essential Edition.  In Viticulture, players start a new round by deciding how early they want their workers to wake up; choose an earlier time and reap the benefits of having a head start on available spaces, let your workers sleep in and gain better bonuses due to… higher morale?  Hey, I love a good morning of sleeping in; it makes perfect sense.  

Next, players assign their workers to various activities in the vineyard.  Offer tours for profit. Plant grape vines. Harvest grapes. Convert grapes into wine.  Fulfill wine orders. Hire new workers. Etc. And top off the round by aging all of your grapes and wine!

Viticulture is a medium-weight Euro that is incredibly easy for me to teach to non-gamers (Tuscany expansion and all), thanks to its intuitive theme-inspired mechanisms.  More importantly, the game makes players feel as though they are actually running a vineyard. We’ve had some long sessions of Viticulture (especially with new players), but none of them overstayed their welcome partly because of the satisfying and genuine wine-making experience.

It would be criminal to talk of theme-inspired mechanisms without mentioning the fearless and illustrious Treasure Island. Treasure Island pits Long John Silver against the pirates against each other in a swashbuckling treasure hunt across a massive island where the first to find and reach the treasure wins! The game begins with the mutinied Long John marking an X on his secret map to designate the location of the hidden treasure; he then shares unique bits and fragments of this information to his captors, the pirates, sending them on a greedy wild goose chase while he executes a plan of escape to secure the treasure for himself! Players feel like bona-fide treasure hunters and scumbag pirates as they bluff to each other and chart paths and search zones across a large map with dry erase markers. What this game lacks in a perfectly balanced or consistent experience, it absolutely makes up for in an authentic adventure.

This contrast between wet and dry is why I just can’t get into most games that center around pushing cubes up and down tracks or converting resources into more resources into victory points.  If the condiments of a good theme are not available, perhaps the only other way for me to enjoy a dry sandwich game is to pair it with a quenching glass of crisp gameplay with complex ramifications.

Tune in next time for Tabletop Tastes #6: Crisp Elegance

LOOKING FOR MORE JUICY GAMES WITH THEME-INSPIRED MECHANISMS? TAKE A BITE OUT OF ONE OF THESE:

• Thematic Cooperative: Horrified, Pandemic Legacy Season 1, Spirit Island
• Thematic Party: Camel Up, Mysterium, Tortuga 1667, Captain Sonar
• Thematic Economic: Brass Birmingham, Modern Art, Container
• Thematic Whimsical: Clank!, Tokaido, Takenoko
• Thematic Family Game: Downforce, Jaws, Mechs vs. Minions
• Thematic Adventures: Sleeping Gods, Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island, Chronicles of Crime
• Thematic 2-player: Watergate, Undaunted: Normandy
• Thematic Dexterity: Flick ‘Em Up, Men At Work, Catacombs

What makes a game feel juicy and thematic for you?

The post Tabletop Tastes #5: Juicy Theme-Inspired Mechanisms appeared first on Bitewing Games.

There is something so satisfying about finding the chinks in an opponent’s armor and crafting a master plan around this vulnerability…  Like when your friends go all in on the leading blue camel of Camel Up, so you do everything in your power to slow down the blue camel and speed up the underdog red camel.  Or when you observe that your spouse will spare no expense at winning a certain category in an auction game like QE or Modern Art, so you gleefully jack up the bid knowing you have no intention of purchasing the item.  Or when your buddy starts throwing down oak trees in a game of Arboretum just as you acquire a high value oak into your hand, so you quietly keep it tucked away among your cards like a dagger waiting to be plunged.

Things get even more interesting when the actions of those around the table force you to adapt your strategy and pivot your plans.  When the opposing team in Decrypto starts to catch on to your clues, forcing your team out of their comfort zone and onto thin ice with increasingly precarious clues.  Or when your rival applies the military pressure in 7 Wonders Duel as they draft more cards to march the red token down the track toward your demise. Or when you are playing The Mind and your gut tells you it’s time to play that 62 in your hand, but as you slowly reach for it you feel your blood pressure rise as you notice that a teammate is thinking the exact same thing about the card in their hand.

I don’t believe that a game that lacks player interaction is a poor design, but I can’t ignore my preference toward games with player interaction.  I like the puzzly challenge that a good tabletop game provides, but I love when that challenge morphs, evolves, and transforms according to the personalities and brains of my opponents and/or teammates at the table.  

Whether it’s the hilarious discussions that Wavelength evokes, or the shakey alliances formed within Pax Pamir 2e, or the deceptive cooperation among pirates on Treasure Island, or the tightly intertwined closed economy of Brass: Birmingham, I never tire of adapting to the players around me.  A game with high player interaction is a game with high replayability and balance built right into its core system, because the game can take on an evolving meta with the same group and a transforming meta with different groups as they scramble to keep runaway leaders in check and allow underdogs to fly under the radar.

This hunger for such interaction is one reason why I just couldn’t get into mega-hits like Terraforming Mars, as each player spends most of the game focusing all their attention on their hand and player mat.  In games like these, it can even be difficult to tell when one person’s turn has ended, as nobody has any major reason to pay attention to other players besides something like late-game public objectives. Of course, I always have room for a good multiplayer solitaire in my collection when it contains so many of my other favorite flavors like a savory thoughtful production.

Click on to check out Tabletop Tastes #3: Savory Thoughtful Production

Looking for more highly interactive games? Give one of these a try:

• Cooperative Interaction: Horrified, Pandemic Legacy Season 1, Hanabi
• Euro-style Interaction: Concordia, Caylus 1303, Great Western Trail
• Drafting Interaction: Azul, 7 Wonders Duel, Inis
• Auctioning Interaction: Isle of Skye, For Sale, Ra
• Cutthroat Interaction: Root, The Estates, Arboretum
• Team-based Interaction: Tortuga 1667, Codenames, Captain Sonar

How salty do you like your player interaction? What games contain your favorite form of interaction?

The post Tabletop Tastes #2: Salty Player Interaction appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

#50 Roll for the Galaxy

Recommended for: Gamers

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

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

#49 Skull

Recommended for: Everyone

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

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

#48 Takenoko

Recommended for: Everyone

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

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

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

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

#47 The Quest for El Dorado

Recommended for: Everyone

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

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

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

#46  The Fox in the Forest

Recommended for: Everyone

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

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

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

#45 Startups

Recommended for: Everyone

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

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

#44 Dominion (Second Edition)

Recommended for: Everyone

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

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

#43 Watergate

Recommended for: Everyone

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

#42 Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

Recommended for: Everyone

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

#41 Decrypto

Recommended for: Everyone

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

If you enjoy Codenames, you have gotta try Decrypto!

Next Page: Games 40-31

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