Otter and I have had a few arguments about how we each rank and rate the board games we play. We both use Board Game Geek’s collection feature, and add our rankings to each game we play. If you’re unfamiliar with BGG’s system, there’s a 10 point rating scale, and they publish a guideline on how they suggest you rate a game, although admitting that ratings are completely subjective.
10 – Outstanding. Always want to play and expect this will never change.
9 – Excellent game. Always want to play it.
8 – Very good game. I like to play. Probably I’ll suggest it and will never turn down a game.
7 – Good game, usually willing to play.
6 – Ok game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood.
5 – Average game, slightly boring, take it or leave it.
4 – Not so good, it doesn’t get me but could be talked into it on occasion.
3 – Likely won’t play this again, although could be convinced. Bad.
2 – Extremely annoying game, won’t play this ever again.
1 – Defies description of a game. You won’t catch me dead playing this. Clearly broken.
The argument that Otter and I have, is that I follow this chart pretty closely, and because of that, the vast majority of the games I rate are a 7 (36.7% of the games I’ve ranked are a 7). I feel like this is fair and true to my feelings on most games, most games that we play end with a “That was pretty good. I’d play it again. Don’t necessarily love it, but I didn’t dislike it.”. The real reason for this, is mostly because our group has played a LOT of games, and we’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out what games we like, and which ones we don’t. If a game doesn’t look like it’s going to grab any of us, it’s not going to see any table time, as time is our most precious resource.
Otter argues that because I rate almost everything between 7 and 10, that I really have a 4 point scale. He, on the other hand, tries to use the whole scale to greater effect. The games that he kinda likes if he’s in the right mood, the 5’s and the 6’s, those drop to the bottom of the scale as 3’s and 4’s, because those end up being the worst games he played that year. Meanwhile, average games languish on the 5’s and 6’s, and there are a couple new 9’s and 10’s every year too.
Now, I should be clear here, these ratings don’t really matter. We’re both totally valid in having our own systems that work for us, as every system has flaws. Like, my system’s flaw is that there are so many 7’s, that it’s hard to differentiate which of those 7’s I like more than other 7’s. The flaw with Otter’s system is that we’ve all been somewhat conditioned to believe that a 6 or below is just bad. Like, if someone told me a game is a 5/10, but reaction would be “ooh, what’s wrong with it?”
This leads me into the second part of this post. Why I don’t have scores in my reviews. I’ve always felt that reducing a review (of anything) to a number, or a binary (like thumbs up/thumbs down, or recommend vs not recommend), doesn’t really get at the heart of a review. For me, a review should be a person’s experience with the product, and a discussion of the merits and flaws. All people have different opinions, but the qualities that make one person run for the hills, might just be what makes another person beam with delight., For instance, I love real-time games, and the stress it produces, but at least half the board gamers I know absolutely detest them. Conversely, games that feature a lot of diplomacy, or bartering, or trading just do not land with me.
And that’s why I don’t like giving a number in my reviews. I’d hate to have a giant 4/10 plastered at the top of a review, and then have someone dismiss the game entirely without reading my reasons why I rated the game a 4/10. A game I think is trash absolutely could be someone else treasure. Terraforming Mars and Grand Austria Hotel are two examples that come to mind, I’ve rated them a 5 and a 4 respectively, but my opinion is very much in the minority.
I try not to, but when I read reviews, I immediately jump to the rating, which ultimately colours my opinion of the content of the review. I subconsciously put a lot of stock into the rating, even though not all 7’s are created equal. Another reason I don’t put ratings in my reviews is because my ratings do change over time. Sometimes, when I rate a game, I’m not in a good mood, or I just had a bad experience with a game. Now, I’m usually pretty good at separating my feelings about a game from my attitude or specific experience at the time, but every now, and then I’m surprised when I like something much more on a repeat play just because the space in which I’m playing a game is different.
Much more often the reverse happens. Where I have a really great session of a game, only for it to fall flat later when whatever silly mood we were in has worn off. Fog of Love is probably the best example of this.
Do you rate the games you play? Do you adhere to BGG’s criteria, or have you defined your own rating scale! Please let me know of all the ways to rank games in the comments!
I never really gave ‘engagement’ much attention before I started this blog. I was never all that into social media, beyond having a Facebook account to keep up to date with the friends I left behind after I moved away. I wasn’t on Instagram, or Twitter, or Pintrest, or any other broad social media platform. I did watch a lot of YouTube, and there were a few years when I was mildly obsessed with Reddit, and obviously I had a Board Game Geek account, but for the longest time, I was a ghost. I had these accounts with all my subscriptions to get notified when something new popped up, and I would spend all my idle time consuming content, but I would never like or comment on anything.
Anyone who’s watched more than the smallest amount of YouTube content is familiar with the call to action. “Like, comment, and subscribe!” You see it everywhere now, on recipe blogs, at the end of news articles, and to this day, at the start, middle, and/or end of most YouTube videos. And the reason for that is that engagement is incredibly important for content. Having people like and comment on your content tells the social media algorithms that the piece of media you just consumed, was good or enjoyable, and makes it more likely to be delivered to others. It also serves as validation to the content creator that they aren’t just screaming into the void, that someone out there is enjoying their creative output.
Board Game Geek has a couple “Hot” sections on their home page if you scroll down a bit. It only takes 30 thumbs up to break into the top 5 slots of the “Hot In-Depth Reviews”, and it seems that rarely the top spot is even breaking 100 thumbs up or getting more than 10 comments, unless it’s a negative review of a wildly popular game.
The point that I’m trying to make here is that it feels like engagement today is much harder to come by. And part of that I’m sure has to do with the fractured nature of social media. If I watch The Nerd Shelves review of Furnace, should I give it a thumb up and comment on BGG or on their YouTube page? Or do I like and comment on their Twitter post? Or, do I start a conversation in their Discord server? Everyone will have different preferences on where they choose to type their words, but from my observation, it feels like more and more people are doing what I used to do. Silently consume the content, then move onto the next thing.
Looking at the stats on my own blog, in the month of March I released 12 posts (most of those being my top 100 games as of 2024). I got 1,351 views from 725 visitors. I got 14 likes and 4 comments, all month long. This was actually a great month in terms of traffic and engagement! For the entire year of 2022 I had 3,454 views, 72 likes, and a whopping 10 comments on all of my posts for the whole year.
Look, I know I don’t do all the things that encourage people to engage. I generally don’t include call to actions in my posts, nor do I spend much time on social media promoting my own posts. I really prefer to just let my blog exist organically. But I do want to encourage you to engage with your favourite creators. Commenting on their posts, even if just to stay “thanks for the review” is incredibly exciting, especially to smaller creators. A lot of creators put a fair amount of stock into their subscriber numbers, as shown by the frequency of “subscriber milestone” posts I see on Instagram, Facebook, and BlueSky.
I won’t lie, I like seeing my numbers go up. It validates all the work that I put into this blog. An average review for me represents several hours of work, including the time to play the game in question enough times to have an opinion on it (the actual sit down and write part is generally between 1 – 2 hours). There’s also a financial burden that I’m shouldering. My domain and WordPress account costs me about $80 per year, and that’s having the most basic of websites. Daniel Wynter of BoardGameFeast recently posted about how his website hosting costs quadrupled since last year, leaving him with a $300 bill and made him reconsider his options. I met up with The Nerd Shelves last November, and they showed me their livestream space. The lights, microphones, and cameras all cost real money, let alone the fact that they have to have space in their house for that equipment and set-up.
What I’m trying to say here is, content creators put forth their time, money, and energy into creating content, many just for the sake of creation. None of us are getting “YouTube rich“, nor are we earning enough money to recoup our costs creating this stuff, let alone making a profit that could be considered a ‘fair wage’ for the work that we do. If you like what people are creating, I implore you to let them know. Liking and commenting is exciting for us, we want to hear from you! Subscribing let us know that we have an audience, and encourages us to increase our output. I know I would continue to maintain this blog without it, but it sure feels a lot nicer to have feedback from readers, rather than feeling like I’m screaming into the ether.
For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to define what I consider to be the “Big Box” trademark. A Big Box edition of a game is a single release that contains the base game, and all the content released for that game up to this point. Think Galaxy Trucker: Anniversary Edition or Istanbul: Big Box or the more recently released Village: Big Box.
Other things have been called big box (notice the lower case b’s in this case, as this is not a title but simply a descriptor). Alea had a big box line which included the likes of The Castles of Burgundy, Broom Service, and Ra. These boxes were somewhat larger at the time, but are what I would consider to be a fairly standard box size these days. Fantasy Flight games had their “Coffin Box” games, like Twilight Imperium: Third Edition or StarCraft: The Board Game. Now those are some BIG boxes. There’s also the storage solution big boxes, like the Wingspan Nesting Box, or the Terraforming Mars big box. These products are generally big boxes with a couple of storage trays for you to “condense” a game and several expansions into a single box. None of those are the subject for today.
Voidfall has a big box, but it’s not a Big-Box
Going back to the capital B Big-Box. When I hear a game is getting a Big Box edition, I assume it’s an “everything” collection. A one-stop shop to get all the content for a game. Every Expansion, extra promos, and the base game, all in one convenient package. Some of these big box games are nearly the same physical size as their base games (like Hansa Tetunica and Istanbul). Others really swell their footprint (like galaxy trucker).
Now, releasing a big box edition isn’t without its criticism. Some argue that releasing an edition like this punishes fans of the game. The ones who bought the game on release, the ones who sought out the expansions as they came out. This is because often the cost of the big box is less than the cost of all the components individually. Another controversial moment is when a big box includes exclusive content. Isle of Skye and Ultimate Railroads committed this sin of releasing new content in their big boxes, forcing fans who want everything to either double up on a game, or sell off their first edition stuff and buy it again new. This situation is probably the one I dislike the most.
One last area where big box games can fall short is when they don’t include all the content. Going back to Isle of Skye, the big box included a new expansion, and one other expansion called Druids. The controversial Journeyman expansion was omitted from the Isle of Skye Big Box. Such drama!
The old Castles of Mad King Ludwig was in the same size box as Suburbia
I recently picked up the Castles of Mad King Ludwig Royal Collectors edition, which at the time had been advertised as containing all the content for the game. Basically a big box, right? Before the game had finished being delivered to all those who backed the crowdfunding campaign, a new campaign launched for a new expansion. No one said you have to buy every expansion to the games you enjoy, but the situation is mildly infuriating.
So, I’ll be the first to admit that I enjoy Big Box editions of games. I generally don’t buy expansions on their own, so getting all the expansions at the same time as getting the base game works well for me. Usually. Games like Hansa Teutonica and Ultimate Railroads were good opportunities to get the expansions that were otherwise difficult or expensive to get up in Canada.
One hidden downside of big box games, is that they present an additional cognitive barrier to getting the game to the table. Not only do you have to pick the game you want to play, you also need to pick which of the included expansions are you going to play with. Sure, we know we want to play Russian Railroads, but should we play the base game, German Railroads, or Asian Railroads? To learn how to play I’ll have to flip around the book, dodging the sections that don’t pertain to how we’re choosing to play.
Ultimate Railroads Rulebook
Something I’ve noticed lately, is that after I acquire the big box of a game, it actually gets played less. I’m less likely to haul it out to a public meetup, and the barriers I listed above can make me sigh at the end of a long day. Sifting through trays and trays of unneeded expansion bits is enough to make me choose a different game. This paradox is a bit problematic, as I do really enjoy the convenience of a Big Box game. From having everything together, to acquiring hard to find expansions at a reasonable price.
Hopefully, just being aware of the Big Box Paradox will allow me to mentally overcome the barriers. Sometimes being able to name a feeling is enough to overcome it entirely. That’s what I’m hoping for!
As board gamers, we’re all acquainted with the idea of a ‘Shelf of Shame’, or ‘Shelf of Opportunity’ if you’re looking to put a positive spin on your pile of unplayed games, but recently I found myself thinking about my Shelf of Dust. The games that have gone the longest since I last played them, and yet, they’ve survived multiple rounds of culling, selling, and trading.
What are these games that are just gathering dust on my shelf, and what are the qualities that keep me from moving these games out of my house? I think first I need to examine why I move games out of my collection.
The primary reason for me to move a game on is space. I have a game closet, and the agreement with my partner is that I keep all of my games in that one closet. Now, it’s full, but definitely not bursting, but if I want to acquire a stack of new games, I need to make room for them. The second main reason I move games out is for money. If I can sell a game, I turn around and use that cash on a new board game acquisition, and I love getting new-to-me games! I recently sold Massive Darkness, which I had last played in 2018 for $150, and used that cash to buy Castles of Mad King Ludwig: Royal Collector’s Edition. A worthwhile trade in my opinion.
The third reason I move games out of my collection usually comes down to the fact that I’m just not playing those games anymore. Games that I feel like I’ve played enough, and I’m not likely to be pushing my game group to revisit, gets the boot. I’m lucky in that I haven’t had to re-acquire any games I’ve gotten rid of (yet), as I feel like I have a pretty good handle on knowing when I’m done with a game.
So, what are my dusty games and why have I kept them around?
Some games are just so small, that I literally have no reason to move them along. The Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game was last played on August 5th, 2016, but the box is less than the size of a paperback book, and I’m not exactly going to reclaim a lot of space. There’s no real point in getting rid of it, but if I’m not playing it, there’s no point in keeping it, right?
Other games are fairly precious to me because they were fairly influential in my origin as a board gamer. Forbidden Desert (last played on October 6th, 2018) was the first cooperative game that my wife and I got REALLY invested in. We have a ton of coop games now, but every time I consider which games I want to get rid of, I look at the metal tin and immediately think “Not that one, moving on!”
Some games are games I’d really love to play more, but my current game group just doesn’t allow for it. Games like Tak (last played December 24th, 2018) and Le Havre: The Inland Port (Last played June 12, 2020) are because I’ve pretty well stopped playing 2 player games. I used to play two player games a ton with my wife, but since our kids were born, we’ve both been too tired in the evening to play a game against each other.
Writing this post has encouraged me to pull a few games off my shelf and put them up for sale. Games that I KNOW I’m never going to play again (The Settlers of Catan, Apples to Apples, Harry Potter: Codenames). There is great value in keeping a well curated collection. More choices aren’t always better, and if you’re not going to play these games, getting them out of your space gives you more room to manoeuvre. Maybe you’ll feel less stress when you look at your games as they’re precariously stacked and crammed into every spare square inch. Less stress means you’re more encouraged to go to your games and pull one off the shelf!
What are the games in your collection that have sat dormant the longest? What’s kept you from moving them out of your collection to make room for new games? Let me know in the comments below, especially if your games are dustier than mine!
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but we recently welcomed a new child into our household. He’s our second kid, and what’s different this time around is my partner is now self-employed, and is not eligible for parental leave, meaning I get to be the recipient of 35 weeks of parental leave. To celebrate, I’ve refreshed my top 100 games of all time, but the in the process of doing so, I was left pondering how I rank games, and how to generate this top 100 list.
I know a lot of people swear by the Pub Meeple ranking engine method. For those who don’t know, Pub Meeple is a website that lets you import your BGG plays and helps you rank them. It shows you two games at a time, and you simply select which of those two you like more. It’s a great system, but I’ve run into a couple of flaws that made me not want to use it this time around. First, I’ve played too many games. To generate a list via Pub Meeple, it would take around 2,500 comparisons. It took me, like, 4 days last time, and what’s weird, is that my feelings about certain match-ups would change from day to day depending on my mood! It’s a great system, just, not for me anymore. Side story, I recently had my mom use it to find her top 50 games (we’ve only played 50 games together) and it took her, like, 20 minutes. Eventually I’ll share that list, but not today.
What I did instead was to revisit all the games I’ve played and give them a 1 to 10 ranking. I more or less follow the BGG standard for user ratings. A 10/10 game is ‘outstanding, always want to play and expect this will never change.’, a 7/10 is a ‘Good game, usually willing to play.’ and a 3/10 is ‘Likely won’t play this again, although I could be convinced. Bad.’ You get the idea. Some other reviewers have their own ratings scale, like Blue Peg Pink Peg have a 0 to 6 rating for all their games, where a 0 is a terrible game and a 6 is a collection essential. I’ve seen everything from a binary thumbs up and thumbs down, to 5 stars, to a 100 point rubric system where each part of a game gets a score and the final rating the sum of those scores.
If you’ve read any of my reviews before, you may have noticed that my rating for a game is absent from the review. And this is because I feel like putting a number rating on a review doesn’t tell the whole story. A game for me might be a 10/10, but it’s a real-time game, which automatically makes it a thumbs down for someone else. I try to make my game reviews a more nuanced discussion where I talk about what I like and dislike in a game, and hopefully give you enough of my opinions to make an informed decision whether it’s a game you might like to play as well. But I’ve gotten off-topic.
I went through all the games I played and refreshed their ratings. I then sorted the games by their ratings, with 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Then, within each ranking, sorted each set of game based on which ones I like the best. Not all 10s are created equal, you know! The end result was a list of over 100 games, roughly in the order that I prefer them. I’ll start posting my top 100 in early March, so look forward to it then.
One thing that quite surprised me about my top 100 games, was that there were a significant number of games that I ranked an 8/10 that didn’t even make it into my top 100! We live in an age where a game can be a Very good game that I like to play. I’d probably suggest it and would never turn down a game, and still not be in my top 100. Too many great games is a good problem to have.
Want to hear this post in a podcast? Check out the Talking Tabletop Podcast Episode 4 to hear my voice read these words, amongst other great contributors!
I feel like this post may be preaching to the choir, as I suspect the intersection of person who reads a board game blog and person who takes an active role in teaching and introducing new games is close to a circle. Regardless, it’s something that’s been on my mind lately, and for those of you who listen to this and aren’t the primary game teacher, I hope you appreciate the person you have in your life for the role they fulfill.
Firstly, my background. I am the primary rules teacher for our game group, and our usual cadence is that we meet on Wednesdays at one of our houses (we rotate who hosts for the evening). Usually on Monday the host will drop a couple game suggestions, and everyone will give their opinion on what they’d like to play, in addition to confirming their attendance.
That’s a lot of rules…
I am usually the one who pulls up the rulebook and give it a read through. Then, on game day, I generally take the rulebook and give the abridged version to the group. If any questions come up, I usually know where to find them in that book, just due to the fact that I’ve read the book at least once, so I’ll read out the rule as written, and sometimes we’ll debate the meaning of the rule.
I don’t always learn well from JUST reading a rulebook, and in fact, I learn best when I have the game in front of me and I can move pieces as I talk through the rules, that’s how I best internalize rules, by doing. Over the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at teaching my friends how to play, one of the tricks I’ve learned works well is to get everyone’s hands on pieces during the set-up. Get one person to shuffle cards, get the next person to sort components, get the third person to place tokens on the board, things like that.
That said, by the time game night rolls around, I’ve generally already spent 30 minutes to an hour researching the game, even if it is just reading a book and looking for FAQs and Errata’s. It’s a hidden time cost, one that doesn’t always get recognized. Depending on the complexity of the game and the quality of the rulebook (Hansa Teutonica, I’m looking at you), that can flex in either direction. Personally, I find it incredibly difficult when rulebooks have thematic names for all the different aspects that’s only mentioned once at the start of the book and never again. Like, the first time I read the rule “For 1 action, a player may displace another player’s trader from a house along a trading route (not from an office). To do so, he removes the other player’s trader and replaces it with his own trader or merchant from his personal supply; however, the displacing player must pay a penalty by moving an additional trader or merchant from his own personal supply back into his stock.” I had to stop for a second and just shake my head. It makes sense when you’re actually playing Hansa Teutonica, but out of context, just as words on a page, it’s hard to make sense of it.
In Hansa Teutonica, cubes are traders and discs are merchants.
Going a bit further, game teachers have an extra cognitive load to bear. In addition to playing their own game, developing their own strategy, they also end up being the arbiter of the rules, watching each other player’s turns to make sure no rules were missed. If rules questions come up, the teacher needs to stop thinking about their strategy and pivot to looking up the specific question in the rule book.
Now the ugly part. With new games comes rule mistakes, and sometimes, hurt feelings. I get an awful, sinking feeling in my gut when I teach a game one way, only to realize halfway through that we’ve made a critical error. Sometimes it comes up on a player’s turn and I get a “I didn’t know that was a rule! I wouldn’t have done this if I had known that!”. I get it, it sucks when the wind is taken out of your sail because of a mistake. Thankfully, no one in my group gets really heated, we all know it’s just a game. We’ll debate how best to rectify the situation, either play out the rest of the game with the rule as we’ve been playing it, or undo turns to make the aggrieved party whole
Leaning and teaching a new game is difficult. There’s a lot of nuance that you don’t always glean from just reading a rulebook, sentences that don’t make sense when taken out of context of the gameplay. I recently had someone tell me a story of a time they taught a rule wrong at a public meet-up, and one of the players threw a bit of a fit and just… left.
There’s a lot of stuff in the Voidfall box
The inspiration for this post mostly comes from my recent Voidfall experience, whereby the time we took the first turn, I had invested like, 6 to 8 hours in unboxing, organizing, re-boxing, learning, and setup. 6 hours of my time that I’m spending, so our group can have a better experience.
In the end, all I’m trying to say is, if you have a game teacher in your life. Say thanks! Acknowledge the effort they’re putting forth for the group, and if they make a mistake, be lenient.
And if you’re not willing to be lenient, then take on the task of teaching the games. Be the change you want to see in the world.
