Due to my family’s recent cross-country move, the opportunities for gaming have been slim lately.  Between packing, driving, and unloading a moving van, becoming acquainted with a new city, starting work at a new dental practice, and leaving my gaming group, I’ve been thoroughly starved of that gaming goodness.

As I’ve had more time to reflect on gaming than actually experience it, I figured this is the perfect opportunity for me to reflect on my journey into the hobby of tabletop gaming.  Call it a Board Gamer’s Odyssey, Autobiography, History, or whatever you please, but today we’ll be exploring many of the games and moments that made me into the designer, publisher, and gamer that I am today.  What games were my favorites at certain times in my life, and why?  Are they still among my favorites, or have they fallen out of favor?  How have my preferences changed over time?  Let’s do the Odyssey!

I owe my love of gaming to Grand Daddy Nintendo.  In my home, we grew up with a Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo.  I have fond memories of enjoying Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, Joe & Mac, Zombies ate my Neighbors, Bubsy, Donkey Kong Country, and getting wrecked every time I started The Legend of Zelda.  I had no idea that there were things such as Nintendo Power or magazines that could guide me through the trickier titles like Zelda.  I was simply a young lad with a love of play.  

I still have mad respect for one babysitter who kept me entertained by cruising through the entirety of Super Mario Bros. 3 and beating the game in one sitting, something that I could only dream of at that young age.  I don’t remember her name or what she even looks like, but she’ll always be that unicorn babysitter for me.  It wasn’t until high school that I went back and beat all the classic Super Mario 2d games. High school was a nice renaissance of Super Nintendo games and beyond where I shared my console with the tennis team and we spent the nights at the hotel taking on various old-school games.

I also remember the Christmas long ago where our family got a Nintendo 64 and spent the day racing through the tracks of Mario Kart.  It was probably the 64 that really cemented me as a Nintendo fan, and I didn’t need any further prodding after that in requesting games, handhelds, and systems for later birthday and Christmas presents.  Over time, we acquired a Playstation 1-4, Xbox, Gamecube, Wii, Gameboys, Nintendo DS’s, and more, and while our family wasn’t allowed to play M-rated games, I still managed to borrow or sneak a few classics into the basement including Halo 1&2 and others.

My strongest gaming memories growing up include discovering the wonder of each new Super Mario game, falling in love with The Legend of Zelda titles, playing endless hours of Smash Bros with family and friends, and celebrating Halo-ween and New Halo’s Eve more than once in high school.  Among my dozens and dozens of cousins, I was the one who beat down on everyone else with Fox in Smash Bros Melee.  Among my highly skilled friends, I was the one who trolled everyone else with Duck Hunt’s exploding cans, Animal Crossing Villager’s deadly tree and bowling ball, Piranha Plant’s spiky ball, and Simon Belmont’s relentless projectiles in Smash Bros Ultimate, and I was good at it.  Rather than loyally stick with a single “main” character, I have always loved to explore a wide variety of fighters and rotate through many of my best ones including King K. Rool, Inkling, Link, Samus, Min Min, Ridley, Piranha Plant, Simon Belmont, and more.

My group of high school friends were such hardcore gamers that one of them opted for an old school Super Mario Strikers tournament on Gamecube as his bachelor party feature activity.  It was perhaps the loudest, funniest, and most competitive video game memory that I have.  Yet our deep love for video games also resulted in somewhat of a collective aversion to board games.  I played plenty of classic board and card games with other friends and family, but it was almost never with my closest group of friends.

My parents aren’t necessarily the type to initiate a family game night, but there are some that they would frequently play with us growing up.  My mom, being a retired school teacher, always loved to break out Boggle and take us on with her spelling prowess… at least until us kids got old enough and smart enough to start beating her at her own game.  My dad was usually down for a session of Catan or Pit, provided he had the time and energy for it.  In my teenage years, our immediate and extended family got particularly hooked on the card game Play Nine thanks to its smooth flow and simplicity, but I eventually grew tired of it being a massive luck-fest with only one statistically optimal way to play.  While my family will still try to break out Play Nine every now and then, I now perform the acrobatics necessary to dodge such a long, tedious gaming session that goes for nine repetitive rounds.

Another fond memory I have is of Killer Bunnies.  This is the one game that I did get some of my close friends into, and a couple of us (myself included) amassed a complete collection of all the many packs and expansions during high school.  Whenever a bunny was exiled to outer space, we took such mechanisms literally by suspending the bunny card high above the table within the confines of a chandelier.  These wacky bunny hi-jinks culminated into an all day Northern Utah Killer Bunnies tournament which four of us signed up to compete in a quest to win the TWO HUNDRED DOLLAR grand prize gift card.  We had a killer shot at that prize too, as three of us made it to the finals and colluded as a secret team with the agreement to help each other, sabotage everyone else and split the prize money.  We ended up with 75% of the carrots, meaning we had a 75% chance of winning the game when the Magic Carrot was revealed, and yet we STILL LOST to another lucky son-of-a-gun.  That tournament roughly a decade ago may have been the last time I ever played Killer Bunnies, yet I kept my collection for several more years before finally admitting that it’s high-luck to long-playtime ratio was no longer for me, and I sold it off.

Yet the first board game that I truly fell in love with would have to be 7 Wonders.  7 Wonders captured our hearts and spurned our hunger for strategy gaming thanks to its accessible rules, quick playtime, and mind-boggling replayability.  This was also our first encounter with any strategic game that let everyone take their turn at the same time, and that revelation was glorious to me and my cousins, the ones I most frequently played this game with.  The diverse decisions of whether to invest in resources, lunge for wonder development, gun for military, sneak for science, and more were the perfect gateway drug for me into this hobby.  I have its designer, Antoine Bauza, to thank for really fanning the flames of my kindling love for tabletop gaming.

It was my love for 7 Wonders that drove me to acquire Bauza’s colorful Takenoko, relaxing Tokaido, and refreshing Hanabi.  The zesty productions and/or novel mechanisms within these designs opened my eyes to the possibilities out there.  Board games and card games didn’t have to be just that… a board or some cards.  They could be towering bamboo pieces, panoramic vacation vistas, reversed hands of cards.

With bellies hungry for more, we went on to discover and play-to-death more games including King of Tokyo, Dominion, Dixit and beyond until one pivotal day when I sat at the kitchen table reading the rules to a new game in our small collection: Photosynthesis.  I don’t believe the rulebook or this game had anything to do with what happened next, yet I remember it for the life-changing thought that entered my brain as Photosynthesis sat in front of me: “You know what would make for a cool game?  A game with Sasquatch and a Yeti and other mythological creatures who are all competing to become the most legendary creature.”  It was in that moment that Nick, the game designer, was born.

Out of that idea grew the game Creatures of Legendaria, an asymmetric, grid-based movement, Yahtzee-style dice game that was inspired by King of Tokyo and, oddly enough, Splatoon.  Before I knew it, I was designing custom dice, concocting creature abilities, drawing board game maps, and plotting world domination with what was sure to be the next Monopoly or Catan.  I had friends (or perhaps more accurately, victims) controlling a Basilisk or a Centaur or even old Nessy to claim territory, perform heroic or villainous deeds, avert angry mobsters, hoard treasure, and earn shrines to their glory.  Man, just reminiscing this one still brings back all kinds of nostalgic feelings of epic creativity.

The problem is, when you’re new to a craft and buried deep in the creativity of it all, you are completely blind to all the mistakes you are making along the way.  Mistakes such as lunging for asymmetric ability design before polishing the core gameplay.  Pushing for good looking art and premium prototypes before solidifying your shifting components.  Throwing the doors wide open for any player count before understanding the pacing and interactions at play.  Saying yes to any and every game piece without considering the cost and fiddlyness of it all.

But in retrospect, it didn’t matter whether my first design was good or not.  What mattered was that I had caught the bug for tabletop gaming.  My eyes were opened wide to the wonderful world of board games, and my appetite was even wider.

I wanted—no, needed—to know about all of the great games I had been missing out on all these years.  And who better to help me embrace this new culture than YouTube’s The Dice Tower and their hours upon hours upon hours of “Top 10” and “Top 50” and “Top 100” videos.  Of course, that doesn’t mean I embraced every game they recommended.  Suggestions like Concordia looked far too dull while others like Star Wars: Rebellion weren’t hipster enough for my tastes.  My ears would perk up much more readily for games like Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, Five Tribes, Yamatai, Clank, Ghost Stories, Downforce, and the like.  These were the types of games that rode the first wave of my insatiable hunger.

Of course, my environment was the other necessary ingredient in this equation.  While I attended dental school in a dark, musty, hundred-year-old building in Columbus, Ohio, where we were lectured and labored to the brink of death, I desperately sought entertainment and activities to bring balance to my life.  Fortunately, my wife and I lived in a townhome community packed to the gills with young grad-students and professional students who were just as poor and hungry for fun as us.  From one night to the next, we quickly found ourselves inviting over a wide variety of couples and individuals to try out the latest addition to our collection or the latest prototype I had been cooking up.

I designed what I knew and loved, which is why King of Tokyo bred Creatures of Legendaria, Clank and Ticket to Ride bred Yeti Shreddy, and Takenoko and Majesty: For the Realm bred Garden Contest: Show Gnome Mercy.  Ironically, all three of these game ideas were born amid the hectic finals week studying at the end of another semester of dental school.  It was as if a high-stress schedule and some sub-conscious procrastinatory defense mechanisms brought out the productive creator within me.

I formulated these games, offered them up to contests or publishers, hit the brick wall of rejection, went back to the drawing board, reimagined the rules, rinsed and repeated.  Yeti Shreddy had a particularly wild journey from energy efficiency board game all the way down to roll & write all the way back to sprawling deck-builder as I sought the best mechanisms to bring the idea and theme to life.  The very first version of it was cranked out in under a week right before it found itself at a table in the playtesting hall of Gen Con.

Gen Con was an eye-opener, to say the least.  I had no idea that the hobby was big enough to support its own yearly Disney World.  With registration lines winding out the massive convention building and far down the streets.  With thousands of hobbyists packed into rooms and halls like eager sardines in search of the next gaming fix.  Tables upon tables, booths upon booths of games and ideas and creations lined the convention floor.  I’m just proud that I was able to discover, fall in love with, and purchase Decrypto before it became the popular evergreen party game that it is today.

It wasn’t long after this first convention experience that I was riding the hotness wave and not even knowing it.  Gorgeous abstract drafting games Azul and Sagrada were all the rage, both in the industry and in our home.  Fresh new roll & writes Welcome To, Railroad Ink, and That’s Pretty Clever were more of our go-to favorites.  But these small, bite-sized games weren’t the only glowing designs to catch my eye.  Wingspan was teased out by Stonemaier Games.  A production featuring pastel eggs, a cornucopia of bird drawings, and a bird food dice tower for crying out loud.  I had to have it… and when I finally did, the production went on to exceed my expectations, and thus began the Stonemaier Craze in our home.

Viticulture and Scythe soon followed Wingspan into our collection.  The richly thematic productions mesmerized all who joined in on our Stonemaier gaming sessions.  After conquering the rulebook of Scythe, I was hungry and ready for even more meaty games.  This is where I decided to take a swim in the deep waters of board gaming with the sprawling table-hog known as A Feast for Odin.

My fears of treading into such murky gaming territory were assuaged by Paul Dean’s Shut Up & Sit Down review of A Feast for Odin, where he revealed to me that the game was more a wide wading pool than a deep drownable well.  Despite the endless tiny shapes and infinite action spaces and daunting rulebook size and inconceivable playtime, I could see the meaningful enjoyment of it all, and I was ready for the plunge.

A Feast for Odin wasn’t the first favorite that Shut Up & Sit Down introduced me to, but it was the heaviest.  While their videos initially felt scatterbrained, long-winded, and aggressively peculiar, I began to realize that many of their recommendations where right on the money.  With time, my appreciation for their British humor and wacky review style and strong gaming preferences grew.  

Quinns’ infectious love for solid card games served to expand my own interests, and he’s the reason why I gave a shot to sneakily fantastic yet unattractive designs including Ethnos, Condottiere, and Jaipur.  Despite my poor first impression of Pipeline, I couldn’t get Matt’s unbridled enthusiasm for oil out of my mind, and I eventually realized that such a richly adored game deserved a second chance at my table.  And Tom’s appreciation for Cole Wehrle designs including Root, Pax Pamir, and most recently Oath have aided me in my quest to convert all gamers to Wehrle fans.

It’s these videos that served as my treasure map and navigation compass while I sought out the best games both old and new.  Likewise, Shut Up & Sit Down’s podcast—featuring the above mentioned blokes and Ava Foxfort—has been a reliable source of gaming criticism and discussion during my journey into the depths of this hobby.  But they certainly aren’t the only contributors who deserve my thanks.  

Without the unabashed endorsement of So Very Wrong About Games, I may have never touched the wildly unique Cosmic Frog or talked myself into the dry looking masterpiece, Tigris & Euphrates.  Thanks to Dan Thurot’s insightful pieces, I’ve had the pleasure of discovering more collection essentials including Babylonia, Scape Goat, and Sidereal Confluence.  And it was No Pun Included who got me excited for the deliciously slim Irish Gauge.

And while I was finding critics who understood my needs and expanded my tastes, I was also encountering publishers and designers who consistently satisfied at our game nights.  Capstone Games quickly won me over with their fearless embrace of thinky, cutthroat, interactive publications including The Estates, Stick ‘Em, and Watergate.  Publishers Leder Games and Wehrlegig Games earned my trust with gorgeous, striking, and dynamic experiences including Root, Fort, and Pax Pamir.  And designer Reiner Knizia flipped my perspective on dry Euros with his characteristically elegant gameplay with emergent interactions.  It’s these types of reliable creators whose distinct styles have bestowed upon me such strong cravings that I can hardly resist each fresh concoction they pull out of the oven.

Speaking of Dr. Knizia, one especially noteworthy event in my board game odyssey is something I would label The Reinerssance.  While many longtime fans have been applauding Reiner’s designs in recent years as a return to greatness, I’ve been busy soaking up and savoring the best of his entire portfolio, from cult-hit negotiation game Quo Vadis to modern masterpiece and spiritual sibling Yellow & Yangtze.  He’s the only designer who owns two-and-a-half shelves worth of real-estate in my home, and nobody else even comes close.  It’s taken me nearly thirty attempts to even find a design of his that I’m ok with purging from my collection.  His work has had a profound influence on both my personal preferences and professional pursuits.

It’s through the lens of Knizia’s design philosophy that I’ve both narrowed my tastes in some areas and expanded it in others.  It’s the streamlined, interactive tension of The Quest for El Dorado that made it difficult to go back to the more solitaire Dominion or more messy Clank.  No doubt, his classic Through the Desert and Samurai prepared me to embrace and adore other deceptively simple Euros including Hansa Teutonica and Renature.  Thanks to Reiner Knizia, I’ve discovered that what I love most about gaming is not the extravagant components or lush artwork, it’s not the novel mechanisms or potent themes, rather, it’s the communal challenges that matter most.

Puzzles become boring once the optimal solution is found.  Shiny objects lose their luster when combined with enough familiarity.  Yet the one thing that never gets old, never remains static, never ceases to entertain is the players sitting around the table with me.  I’m not just referring to the faces that come and go from one gaming session to the next, although that is part of it.  I’m talking about the interesting personalities, unpredictable brains, and evolving interactions that reveal themselves from one round to the next or from one design to another.

If a particular game earns itself a long-term spot on my shelf, the most likely reason is that it allows its players to engage with each other in interesting, memorable, and dynamic ways.  This is the critical genetic trait that ensures a long, healthy lifespan in my collection.  But beyond that, highly interactive gameplay is becoming more and more the gateway by which any title even enters into my collection.

If I can spot that a particular design is a completely heads down affair with a puzzly novelty that will run out steam after only a couple plays, then I’d much rather not bother with it at all.  Yet at a deeper level, I still find less satisfaction even in a low-interaction game whose novelty hasn’t run out.  So much of life is already spent in my own head—dreaming about my wishful desires, worried about my daily needs, circling around my own problems—that games which encourage me to get inside others’ minds, read their emotions, predict their plans, and influence their intentions are like endlessly refreshing vacations into the wider universe of my fellow human beings.

As I’ve slowly unraveled this truth within my person, I’ve noticed myself shed games from my collection that fail to provide these “social vacations” for me.  Games like Wingspan, which I certainly admire for the all the creative passion that went into them, are games that no longer satisfy me.  It’s not enough for me to scour my personal play area, concoct an efficient plan, and pull off some cool combos whenever my turn comes around in hopes that my decisions add up to a better score than yours.  And the half-hearted conflicts of Scythe and Tapestry don’t do it for me either.  While I’ve learned and gained much from Stonemaier’s designs, productions, and business practices, I’ve simply lost my appetite for their style of play.

The same can be said for other games I started out loving including the roll & write genre, Gugong, the sequels to Azul, Splendor, Crusaders, Calico, and Barenpark.  Furthermore, there are plenty of popular hits that fell flat for me when I finally got to try them including Orleans, Altiplano, Santa Monica, Reef, Raiders of the North Sea, Terraforming Mars, Everdell, Rune Stones, Hadara, Lost Ruins of Arnak, and many more.  None of these games are bad, they’re merely bad for me.  There are of course exceptions to my strong biases such as the low-interaction polyomino legacy game My City, the solitaire thematic roll & write Super Skill Pinball, and more, but these are few and far between.

Besides saving money by avoiding misguided purchases, the main benefit of discovering, honing, and defining what does and doesn’t work for me is that my palate carries over into how I design and publish tabletop games.  I’ve learned that box inserts need do more than simply hold your components… like successfully keep things organized during storage and be easy to place pieces into or fetch pieces out of.  I’ve decided that luck works best when it enhances the tension, broadens the variety, and/or gives amateurs hope, and it works worst when it undermines calculated decisions or possesses a strong presence in a long game.  I’ve witnessed that art needs to supplement the experience without detracting from clarity and functionality.  I’ve found that aggressively mean mechanisms can be excellent ingredients in a board game if they are purposeful, expected, and strategic.  I’ve discovered that the quality of a rulebook can make or break the gaming experience.  I’ve determined that even more important than a design with a clever mechanism is a design with an engaging arc, meaningful downtime, and filling turns.  I’ve realized that the setup, teach, and teardown of a game can mean all the difference between making it to the table and collecting dust on the shelf.  And I’ve beheld that tension in board games is much like stress in life… without it, things can quickly feel dull and meaningless.

As I’ve made these small, important steps through life—from learning to play, to teaching and inviting others to play, to imagining new ways to play, to refining my preferences for play… I’ve slowly gained the confidence, experience, and drive that have made me into the gamer, designer, and publisher that I am today.  I’m sure that many other hobbyists and creators can trace a similar arc as mine.  Yet the fascinating part about it is that we are all originating from different sources and branching into unique directions through our individual tabletop gaming journeys.

We wouldn’t have the incredible Pax Pamir without Cole Wehrle’s love of history. 

We wouldn’t have the legendary Ra without Reiner Knizia’s professional background in mathematics.

And we wouldn’t have Soda Smugglers, Pumafiosi, and Hot Lead without a couple dentists who love board games enough to start a publishing company called Bitewing Games, to reach out to Reiner Knizia and assemble three of his fresh designs, to mold these designs into a connected collection and thoughtful production with the help of their wildly imaginative colleague and friend, Paul Halkyon.  All of the gaming experiences in my life have built up and coalesced into this moment… I both stumbled upon and intentionally created this opportunity to publish three 20-minute card games that delight and satisfy both the former, naive gamer and the modern, persnickety hobbyist in me.

This opportune moment of launching a Kickstarter campaign for a Reiner Knizia collection next month feels both like the culmination of a gamer’s odyssey and the blast-off of a creator’s journey.  As long as our Bitewing Games rocket ship doesn’t fatally explode as it attempts to exit the atmosphere, we have big big plans for what lies beyond. This Criminal Capers Collection is only the beginning…

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 Board Gamer’s Odyssey—My Journey into the Hobby of Tabletop Gaming 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!

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

The Grandfather of Deck-Builders

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

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

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

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

Vanilla Ice Cream

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

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

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

A Book’s Cover

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

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

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

Adding Flavor to the Formula

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

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

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

“Which friends should I neglect?” in Fort.

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

“Who should I attack?” in Undaunted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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I really appreciate when companies give a lot of love to even the little things in their product or service.  These touches can be as subtle as the crisp packaging of an Apple product, the non-messy cap on a Tide detergent container, and the dippable ketchup packets at Chick-fil-a.

I am likewise impressed when a publisher goes the extra mile to make their game look and feel good.  Perhaps no publisher out there understands this concept better than Stonemaier Games. When I first saw pictures of the 2019 darling, Wingspan, I said “Wow.”  But when I first opened and unboxed Wingspan, I said “WOW!”

The art is top tier, the box feels great, the containers are perfect, the eggs are slick, the cards are gorgeous, the game has a freaking bird feeder, the rulebook even feels good.  Say what you will about Stonemaier Games’ philosophy, but they know how to produce a game and it works.

PARKS is another game with a thoughtful production that rises to the caliber of its stunning art with inserts and tokens and bits that round out a deliciously beautiful package.  The gameplay doesn’t revolutionize the industry, yet it doesn’t need to when it deftly assaults nearly all of your senses with everything else.

Root makes a knockout first impression with its whimsical artwork, screen printed meeples, chunky battle dice, and painstakingly arranged player aids.  It’s brilliant production lures you in like a tasty appetizer, and before you know it you are waist deep in a much more meaty and nasty game than you could ever have predicted.  Even as the group gangs up on your beautiful birds and throws your Eyrie Dynasty into dreaded turmoil, there is no denying how pleasing the game looks to the eye and feels to the fingers.

Men At Work likewise tosses its hard hat into the ring of premium with colorful components that have the perfect size, weight, and feel to match its laser-focused dexterity gameplay… and nothing beats that feeling when you first open the game and get to press the snug plastic hard hats onto each of the wooden construction meeples.  Are these perfectly crafted hard hats essential to the gameplay? No. But are these perfectly crafted hard hats essential to the experience? YES.

I can think of no production more clever, more praiseworthy, or more essential than that of Wavelength. This is the kind of production that the designers crafted with the end in mind. They knew that in order to get the most of out of the concept, they needed a device that allows approximative gut-feeling guesses for teammates and dramatically climactic reveals from the psychic. The spinning target wheel, the clicky red dial, and the snappy blue screen are a thing of beauty. This device is a genius component worthy of Wolfgang Warsch’s brilliance. The game is even self-contained and almost instantly ready-to-rumble thanks to a carefully crafted box insert that eliminates the need for a table.

These games are so satisfying to setup and tear down, to touch and manipulate, to play and replay because the publishers were willing to invest in a thoughtful production.  Compare these games to other legendary titles like Terraforming Mars, Castles of Burgundy, and Ethnos, and you may notice a subconscious reluctance to play the underproduced games over the premium feeling ones.  No game needs a thoughtful production to be great, no game needs to be deluxified to be playable, but why not opt for something that looks good and feels good whenever possible?  

Wingspan, PARKS, Root, Men At Work, and Wavelength are gorgeously thoughtful productions that can all be bought at a perfectly reasonable price (when in stock, of course); these games raise the bar for not only their slightly higher cost-to-manufacture components but also the perceptible love, care, and ingenuity that went into their presentation.

Fortunately, even when a presentation is a bit of a train wreck, like the above mentioned Castles of Burgundy and Ethnos, these games are certainly salvaged by the crunchy meaningful decisions they provide.

Click on to check out Tabletop Tastes #4: Crunchy Meaningful Decisions

LOOKING FOR MORE SAVORY GAMES WITH A THOUGHTFUL PRODUCTION? TRY FEASTING ON ONE OF THESE:

• Tasty Tactility: Splendor, Azul, Sagrada, Dragon Castle, Tapestry, KLASK, Crokinole, Junk Art, Roll for the Galaxy, Takenoko, Five Tribes, A Feast for Odin, The Estates
• Tantalizing Table Presence: Dixit, Horrified, Skull, Arboretum, Modern Art, Tokaido, Welcome To, Railroad Ink, Oceans, Inis, Viticulture Essential Edition, Treasure Island, Tapestry, Yamatai
• Satisfying Packing/Unpacking: Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, KLASK, Onitama, Tortuga 1667, 7 Wonders Duel
• Home run Production: Camel Up (Second Edition), Pax Pamir (Second Edition), Brass Birmingham (Deluxe Edition), Scythe, On Tour, Dice Throne Season 2, Mysterium

Which thoughtful productions are most savory to you?

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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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