Over the last 6 months, my table has been somewhat inundated with the works of Vladimír Suchý. This wasn’t entirely on purpose, but his games have just happened to come into our possession. Last night (at time of writing) I played my 5th game of his, so I felt the urge to make a quick list of the games I’ve played, and their rankings!

First, what makes a Suchý game, a Suchý game? I find that Vladimír Suchý’s key trait in the games of his that I’ve played are twofold. An interesting action selection mechanism, and a tight turn economy. Suchý games are not ones that let players take 50 turns, instead players need to figure out how to squeeze blood from a stone, where missing out on a single resource could be catastrophic to their game experience. But let’s talk about the games in detail below! As always, my top lists are completely subjective and are likely to change with time, and take this whole list with a pinch of salt as (except for Underwater Cities) I’ve only played each of these games once.

5 – Evacuation

Evacuation is a bit of a tragedy, in that I was so excited to play this game. From the first moments I saw the preview images of two planets snaked by a winding track, and heard the theme of ‘the old world is dying, players need to disassemble their engine from the old world and transport it to the new world’, I was frothing at the mouth with excitement. The mere concept of shipping goods between planets and needing to manage when to take down a fabrication plant on the old world and establish one on the new world was fascinating.

In play, however, we found that the shipping goods aspect of the game fairly dull and uninteresting. We did not play the race mode, opting to play for points instead, which may have been a folly. Evacuation plays over 4 rounds, and ships only move between planets at the end of each round. This means each ship you buy can be used twice in the game. In our experience, the old world was fairly lush with resources, so it felt more action efficient to just build new ships and send them over, leaving a graveyard of one time use rockets on the new world. The points mode lets the game go the full four rounds, and by the end of the final round, all of our productions on the new world skyrocketed, and we all pretty much completed everything that we set out to do.

That said, I really loved the asymmetric tech tree each player gets to grapple with, and there were tonnes of interesting decisions to make throughout the game. Evacuation sits at the bottom of my list, but it’s the game that I want to return to the most. I’m sure there are hidden depths for me to plumb, and it surely has the potential to rocket up this list.

4 – Pulsar 2849

Pulsar 2849 is probably the least memorable game on this list. Not to say it’s a bad game, heck, even Evacuation sitting at the bottom of the list is still a super rad game. It’s just hard to remember all the nuance that makes Pulsar 2849 special.

Pulsar 2849 is a dice drafting game where players are setting out to harness the powers of the stars. The action selection mechanism is driven entirely by dice, and there’s even a neat aspect where you need to find the median dice available, and taking dice on either side of that median has some effects.

This is the game that I remember the least well, as Pulsar 2849 has a lot going on, and it’s been a few months since I played it. I remember liking it, but not loving it (you’ll notice it didn’t make it onto my top 100 list). Pulsar 2849 is absolutely a game worth checking out if you like bigger space games with lots of decisions, and when dice power the action selection mechanism.

3 – Woodcraft

The cover of Woodcraft camouflages a complex game with a tranquil wrapper. You’d be forgiven if you saw the brightly coloured forest nymphs cheerfully toiling away at their craft in a serene forest landscape and assumed it would be a light and breezy experience.

Woodcraft’s action selection wheel is probably the most interesting of all the Suchý games I’ve played. Each action is a tile on the wheel that slides to the next quadrant each time it’s used, with the rewards for tiles left behind growing as actions move along the quadrants. It’s a great system, obviously improved upon the action selection wheel in Praga Caput Regni (which I’ll talk about very soon). The most used actions get no bonuses at all, while the ones languishing in the back can rack up some serious benefits.

The downside is that this whole game is tied to a recipe fulfillment or contract fulfillment game, which ends up being deeply unsatisfying for me. I’ve always found recipes to be inherently luck based, and can skew a tightly balanced game, as happens here. Woodcraft is an action efficiency puzzle, and it seems like one player can just luck into collecting the perfect contracts. Less actions spent acquiring the final goods to fulfill a contract can really give a player a distinct advantage.

Despite my aversion to contracts, Woodcraft is still an incredibly interesting game. Players have a ton of tools at their disposal to acquire, transform, and manipulate your resources, and the action wheel creates interesting decisions, especially when the bonus you desperately want is aligned with an action you do not need.

The last two paragraphs sound really down of Woodcraft, which is unintentional. You can also check out my first impression post of it here, where I was a lot more excited and positive.

2 – Praga Caput Regni

With an action wheel like Woodcraft, Praga Caput Regni is another action efficiency puzzle, but instead of fulfilling contracts, Praga is more of a point salad where every action you take can result in a deluge of effects and bonuses.

In Praga Caput Regni, players are in Prague, developing mines and quarries, building walls and houses, and advancing along the Kings Road to deliver the eggs needed for the Charles Bridge. There are a ton of ways to squeeze efficiencies out of every action, and plenty of opportunities to bulk up each action so it gives you more when you take that action.

Each action tile on the action wheel each contain two of the 6 actions. When you take a tile, you can choose either of the two actions depicted and preform it. If the tile was further along the wheel, you get points for taking it. If it was further back, you’ll have to pay gold for the privilege of taking that tile. Along the inside of the wheel is an additional bonus that you get when you take the tile.

By the end of the game, each action feels like a slot machine of bonuses. “I’ll take this action, which gives me two stone as a bonus, and my technology lets me earn points when the stone is my bonus, I’ll take this action, which gives me extra points because my action is upgraded, and I’ll produce gold, which also gives me two points, and egg, and another point and a stone…”. That sentence sounds crazy, but in the context of the game, it’s a pretty normal turn. The biggest downside to Praga Caput Regni is that if you make a mistake and want to undo your turn, it’s seriously onerous.

1 – Underwater Cities

Underwater Cities was my first Suchý game, and it remains my favourite. The action selection here is a mix of worker placement and hand management. Each turn, you need to play one of your workers on one of the colour coded actions around the board, and play a card. If the colour of the card matches the colour of the action, you get to do both!

Again, action efficiency at it’s finest. There are 3 eras of cards with scaling powers, and the economy grows dramatically. In the first few rounds, you’ll barely scrape a living, but by the end of the game you’ll be searching for anywhere to spend your copious amounts of loot.

I think Underwater Cities is one of Suchý’s most popular games, and for good reason. It’s a brilliant game that gives you plenty of time and actions to achieve your goals. You probably won’t achieve everything you set out to do, but you’ll likely get lots done. The puzzle in Underwater Cities is balancing expanding your underwater colonies with improving your existing infrastructure. It’s an eminently replayable game that I always enjoy going back to.