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We all have these games, right? The games we love to play, but for some reason or another, just CANNOT seem to earn a victory? Today I’m presenting the 5 games that I have with the most plays, and 0 wins. Here we go!

Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar – 4 plays

Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar by Simone Luciani and Daniele Tascini is an incredibly interesting game. For those who said “gesundheit” after I said Tzolk’in, here’s the introduction. Tzolk’in is a worker placement game that features a series of gears on the main board. On your turn, you can either place one or more workers on the lowest spots on each of the outer gears, or pick up some or all of your workers. At the start of each round, the centre gear turns one space, which in turn rotates all the other gears. As your workers ride their gears, the actions they are able to preform get more and more lucrative. Sounds easy, right?

So why have I never won Tzolk’in? Really, at only 4 plays, it’s not the most outrageous claim. I will say that for a long time I harboured resentment to Tzolk’in and refused to play it. Only recently did I give it another chance and found some enjoyment in the system.

Tzolk’in is a slow strategy game. You really need to be planning 4 or 5 turns ahead, and orchestrate your grand move. Pulling all of your workers off their spots at the same time, and ensuring you have enough resources to do all that you want to do. Turns out, I’m not a very good coordinator.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Tzolk’in. The problem is me. And that I’m dumb. That’s about it.

Yokohama – 6 plays

Yokohama by Hisashi Hayashi, is a gorgeous game about running your president and merchants around the pyramid shaped town, while trying to earn goods and trade them for points. You drop merchants off all over the board, then move your president to one of the spots, and collect stuff based on how many merchants you had there. You can erect trading stalls for extra points and merchant power in future actions. There’s a ton of great mechanics going on in Yokohama that makes it a cool and interesting game. My challenge, lies in the fact that Bigfoot has won 5 of the 6 games I’ve played. Sometimes games just speak to certain people and they run away with it every time.

Evolution – 6 plays

Evolution by Dominic Crapuchettes, Dmitry Knorre, and Sergey Machin has a similar problem to Yokohama. Bear has won every single game I’ve played. In Evolution, players are growing and developing species to become the fattest of them all. By playing trait cards from their hand, they can either expand their species population, size, or spawn a whole new species all together. Of course, they can also play trait cards to each species to make them unique, to adapt to the world around them.

I quite enjoy Evolution, there are so many unique situations that come up just based on all the traits and how they get placed onto each of the cards. I don’t know how Bear does it, but he seems to stymie me no matter what strategy I try. If I play defensively, he manages to build an amazing food generating engine. If I become a carnivore, his creatures suddenly develop pack herding, and/or climbing, and/or hard shells, and I starve. If I’m the one who’s gorging at the watering hole, with a ton of amazing defences, out comes the intelligent carnivore who pokes the perfect holes in my defences.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that every strategy has a counter, and Bear is superbly proficient at finding the holes in my hard shell armour.

Hardback – 11 plays

This one is a bit of a sore spot for me. My wife and I both love Paperback by designer Tim Fowers, so when Hardback hit crowdfunding, I didn’t even hesitate. Both Paperback and Hardback are word based deck building games, but Hardback seems more in line with other deck building games like Star Realms, where the cards have suits and can synergize with one another. A few other very important differences between the two, Hardback has a push your luck element where you can draw extra cards from your deck, but you HAVE to include those cards in your word, and instead of having wild cards that clog up your deck, you can turn any of your hand cards backward and use it as a wild. Subtle, brilliant changes that make for an excellent follow-up.

Hot damn, has my wife figured this game out. I don’t really know what I’m doing wrong, but she kicks my butt 6 ways to Sunday. I’ve asked her what her strategy is, and she just says “get lots of points, quickly!”. Thanks for the tip…

Through the Ages (both versions) – 37 Plays

This is the one that surprised me the most. Through the Ages and its follow up Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization by designer Vlaada Chvatil is a brilliant civilization building game. Run entirely by cards, players draft technologies, wonders, and leaders to try to make their civilization the most cultured. There’s a fine balance to strike between generating enough food and ore to build your civilization, and earn science to develop it further. There’s a lot of spinning plates to manage in Through the Ages, and if you neglect even a single one, you’ll wind up paying for it.

The vast majorities of these plays have been via Board Game Arena, and I’ve played with at least half a dozen players, but no matter who I’m competing with, I’m routinely at the bottom of the pile. I’ve played the Android app dozens of times against the computers, and I do fairly well there! I just can’t seem to crush *ahem* I mean best any human opponents. Probably something to do with empathy or some other aspect of my personality that makes me unfit to be a warmonger.

And those are the 5 games that I have the most plays in, with absolutely 0 wins. What are the games that you just can’t seem to grasp a victory in?