Every year I encourage the members of my regular game group to create a top 100 games of all time. Today I’m continuing the series in which I trash on my friends favourite games, because apparently, I hate fun.
Hate is a very strong word, and most of these games I would still play. These are games that I would call ‘fine’ and would play if Bigfoot was really keen, but they are not games I would ever suggest playing on our game nights.
Today I’m picking on Bigfoot. He would identify himself as a euro gamer, while not specifically some who delights in trading cubes, he does seem to excel at it. Bigfoot is generally ‘the person to beat’ and more than once we’ve finished a game only to find his score is more than the rest of ours combined. While he’s not totally against the odd direct conflict game, his preferences are firmly in the economic side of the spectrum. For each of the games on this list, I’ve included where in his top 100 each of these games sit
Gaia Project #2 & Terra Mystica #14
My dislike for Gaia Project stems more from my dislike of its spiritual prequel Terra Mystica than anything else. While Gaia Project does address some of the more common complaints from its predecessor, such as helping prevent getting pinned in the corner and unable to do anything, It doesn’t do enough different to make me enjoy it.
I find the actions in Gaia Project to be prohibitively expensive. My biggest complaint is that I don’t like having to manage four different resources (Ore, Knowledge, Credits, and Power), to do anything, and that I always seem to be short on at least one of the resources, grinding my progress to a halt. I also complain about runaway leaders, It’s tough to watch one player pass early because they ran out of a resource, and watch another player take action after action, rush up a technology track, gain more benefits and start the next round in a much better position. I know this can be resolved if you ‘git gud’, but I’m just a scrub.
Gaia Project and Terra Mystica both reward players who plan out far ahead, and are able to squeeze efficiency out of every last action, and I’m jealous of those who have cracked the puzzle and able to score more than 50 points in every game. I can see that Gaia Project and Terra Mystica are very deep games that reward those who put the time and effort into learning the system.
Somewhat ironically, I really enjoy Clans of Caledonia. It shares the resource generating buildings of Terra Mystica, but combines everything into one resource (gold). It also has a fluctuating market a-la Navagador, which is one of my favourite Mac Gerdts games.
Gloomhaven #6
My first experience with Gloomhaven wasn’t great. The other three people I was playing with were not exactly the best at learning and remembering all the rules to a game, so it fell to me to learn and run the game’s system for the group. We played 12 times over the course of a couple of months with 6 losses before we as a group decided not to continue with the campaign.
Flash forward to just a couple of weeks ago, I gave Gloomhaven another shot via the video game on Steam. This experience helped me figure out why Gloomhaven always left a sour taste in my mouth. My fundamental problem with Gloomhaven is I don’t like the core of the game, the card burning mechanic.
If you haven’t played, the core of the game is that you have a hand of cards – between 8 and 12, depending on your character. Every card has a top half and bottom half. On your turn, you pick two cards from your hand, and you do the top action on one card and the bottom action on another card. After you play those cards, they go into your discard pile. To get your cards back, you need to rest, which will “burn” one of your cards, removing it from your supply for the rest of the mission. If your entire hand of cards is burned and/or you can’t play 2 cards on your turn, you’re ‘exhausted’ and you’re out off the game for the rest of the mission
This means your hand is functionally your timer for the game, your options will dwindle as the game goes on, feeling like a noose tightening around your neck. Your hand is being depleted quicker and quicker, and you need to complete the objective.
Most of your strongest actions will burn the card instead of sending it to the discard pile, which means to do a big cool thing, you just straight-up burn the card. It’s that fundamental aspect that I dislike, I feel like I’m being punished for doing the big cool thing, and that’s not how I like my games to feel. If I’m playing a combat-centric game, I want to be a big damn hero, not a rag-tag adventurer just barely making it out of each encounter alive.
All that said, I can see why Gloomhaven is so beloved. It’s a tight and clever puzzle with lots and lots AND LOTS of good, tough decisions to make. When you manage to survive the encounter with a sliver of health left, it feels great! But I don’t derive joy from that kind of game. I don’t enjoy feeling powerless during a battle. I tend to swing more towards the Massive Darkness end of the spectrum. A big dumb dungeon crawl where I’m chucking handfuls of dice and slaying a Elite monster in a single blow.
There aren’t many dungeon crawl games that I enjoy, but I have had a bunch of fun playing Massive Darkness (Raphaël Guiton, Jean-Baptiste Lullien and Nicolas Raoult), and Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth (Nathan I. Hajek and Grace Holdinghaus)
Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar #26
Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar by Simone Luciani and Daniele Tascini is a game that absolutely has depth and the capacity for mastery. Tzolk’in‘s main hook is how it simulates the passage of time. In the centre of the board is a large gear, and connected to that gear are five other smaller gears with spaces to place workers. Every round, the centre gear will turn one space, moving all the workers one spot up their tracks. On a player’s turn, they can either play workers from their supply (costing corn if they play more than one) or take works off the gears and preforming the associated actions.
Tzolk’in absolutely rewards mastery and forward planning. It’s not enough to take Tzolk’in one turn at a time, you need to be making plans and moves several turns in advance. While it is satisfying when all your place can come together, I struggle with Tzolk’in in that I just cannot seem to balance long term strategies with short term goals. I can place a worker down knowing that I want to pull him off in four turns, but in just two turns I find myself up the creek with no corn and no workers and required to pull my workers off early only to have something to do!
Tzolk’in a neat game, and I appreciate that some will enjoy its strategic offerings more than I have. It’s fine, and I wouldn’t deny playing it again, but it’s not one that I’ll ever suggest to play.
El Grande #60
This one is easy, I simply don’t like area control/area majority as a mechanic. I don’t find it fun or interesting. El Grande is a pure distillation of area control, that’s all there really is to this game. If you enjoy area control games, look no further because this one will serve you well. It’s just not my cup of tea. You go and enjoy your gerrymandering, I’ll be over here playing dexterity games.
I was inspired by the Board Games Hot Takes podcast’s recent episode where they discussed the games from the Board Game Geek top 100 list that they haven’t played yet, and discussed 5 of the games they want to play and 5 that they don’t want to play. I feel personally attacked by Tim for not wanting to play Food Chain Magnate, which is my #1 favourite game of all time!
Before I begin, some numbers. As of the time of this writing I only own 9 games in the top 100, but I’ve played 71 of them. From the remaining 29 games I broke all of them into two groups, ones that I do want to play (20 games on this list), and ones that I don’t want to play (9 games on that list). Without further ado, lets get on with the list
Games I want to play
Aeon’s End
Aeon’s End by Kevin Riley is a cooperative deck building game that has a couple of unique aspects that really interest me. I should preface this by saying I inherently enjoy deck building games (Like Hardback and Super Motherload to name a few). I think the aspect that Aeon’s End is most famous for, and what has me most interested is the mechanic where you don’t shuffle your discard pile when reloading your deck, making you think about the order in which you discard your cards. I like the idea of being able to plan a strategy and combo, and be sure that you’ll pick up the cards in the correct order.
I also like that Aeon’s End doesn’t feature a card river (like Star Realms or Paperback). While a card river can offer a lot of variety and interesting states of play, I prefer the feel of a designed puzzle. I want my game states to be winnable and not have the cards that work best during the end game appear right at the very start.
Android Netrunner
Richard Garfield and Lukas Litzsinger’s Android Netrunner is a behemoth that I’ve always wanted to get into. Being a two player head to head game it requires you to have a partner who gets equally into it with you, or a small group that you can cycle between. The asymmetric nature of the game, one player taking on the megacorporation and the other taking on the role of the hacker makes me extra excited. Unfortunately I’m not really in a space to dedicate the amount of time necessary to really get into Android Netrunner properly, and I’m not willing to wade into the world of Netrunner enthusiasts and play against strangers online.
If you’re interested in learning more about Android Netrunner, Tom Brewster from Shut Up & Sit Down released a video recently detailing why you should consider playing this game, despite lack of support from the publisher, Fantasy Flight Games.
Mechs Vs. Minions
Mechs vs. Minions was Riot Games foray into the board game space. I’ve heard it was a passion project for a few of their staff members (Chris Cantrell, Rick Ernst, Stone Librande, Prashant Saraswat, and Nathan Tiras are credited as designers), which sees to be true as they’ve only published two games since 2016 (their other game Tellstones: King’s Gambit was released in 2020 to very little fanfare). Mechs vs. Minions is a cooperative action programming game set in the League of Legends universe. In Mechs vs. Minions players are programming their actions far in advance and trying to complete objectives while dealing with the chaos that is combat and damage that can throw your entire plan off one step and send you spiraling off into a corner.
I haven’t played very many action programming games, but they intrigue me. I like chaos and needing to plan out 5 moves in advance, and I delight when plans go awry. The only thing that has prevented me from buying this game is the prohibitive shipping cost that I just can’t justify. I’ve had Mechs vs. Minions on my wish-list for years and apparently my wife has come very close to buying it for me on several occasions, but each time she adds the product to her cart, she balks at the shipping cost. I do have an acquaintance in town who I know owns this game, perhaps one day I’ll carve out some time to play it with him.
Too Many Bones
Much like Mechs vs. Minions‘s sticker shock preventing me from pony-ing up the cash to buy the game, Too Many Bones shares a similar fate. At an eye-watering CAD $200, Too Many Bones is a bit of a white whale for me
Too Many Bones by Josh J. Carlson and Adam Carlson is a dice rolling adventure game for 1 to 4 players where each player controls a unique character with multiple classes to choose from. This box from Chip Theory Games contains no cardboard aside from the box itself, everything is made out of waterproof materials, like plastic or neoprene. I’ve seen more than one person rave about the gameplay and the excitement that Too Many Bones delivers to it’s players, and it’s a system that I desperately want to dive into, but at this point I’m too far behind. The latest crowd funding campaign had a reward tier called “The Ultimate Completionist” that included everything that has been produced for Too Many Bones up to this point, and they were asking for USD $1,100 (a discount of $231 off MSRP). That’s a current that I’m not willing to wade into.
War of the Ring: Second Edition
I wish I had a better reason to want to play War of the Ring: Second Edition by designers Roberto Di Meglio, Marco Maggi, and Francesco Nepitello, but my reasoning is simply because I love the Lord of the Rings. that’s it. I know this is a big, epic 2 player only game and the likelihood of me actually finding a copy is rare, and I generally don’t like direct conflict or war games, but I feel in this case that my love for the theme will overcome my distaste for the mechanics.
Games I don’t want to play
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
I have a bit of a rant about why I don’t like Gloomhaven, which I’ll include when I finish Bigfoot’s Trash Taste post, but the crux of my issues with Gloomhaven are that your hand is functionally the timer for the game. The options available to you dwindle as the game goes on, feeling like a noose tightening around your neck. Your hand is being depleted quicker and quicker and you need to complete the objectives. Most of the scenarios I’ve played end not because we take too much damage, but just because we run out of time, this actively punishes you for exploring.
Most of your strongest actions will burn the card instead of sending it to the discard pile, which means to do a big cool thing, you just straight up remove the card from your supply for the rest of the scenario. it’s that fundamental aspect that I dislike, I feel like I’m being punished for doing the big cool thing or for exploring, and that’s not how I like my games to feel. If I’m playing a combat-centric game, I want to be a big damn hero, not a rag-tag adventurer just barely making it out of each encounter alive.
In case you were wondering, I’m also not a fan of the Souls-borne genre of video games either.
Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 & 2
My experience with Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 kind of soured me on the rest of the Pandemic Legacy games. I didn’t like the consequences of a bad game, if a city (or cities) fall because of unlucky card flips, that city was much harder to work around and more likely to be a pain in the butt in subsequent games. I felt disincentivised to branch out and try new characters; the ones we’ve been using all game have gotten several improvements and until they’re lost forever, there’s was no real reason to deviate.
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is Otter’s favourite game, and I’m sure he cringes every time I slander it (actually when it’s written, it’s libel. But it’s not libel if it’s the truth). I don’t know if the follow up games resolve my issues with the system, but I’m not willing to commit myself to 12 – 24 more plays to find out.
Twilight Imperium: Any Edition
Twilight Imperium is the holy grail for some people. It’s a big event game that requires a lot of planning and scheduling to even get to the table, as it’s best when played with 6 players. Twilight Imperium is a game of galactic conquest, with lots of variability, and a epic saga emerging from the gameplay.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone talk about Twilight Imperium without regaling me with the glorious details of the rise and fall of their opponents during the game. While it sounds like an epic and amazing experience, I just don’t have the spoons to play a game that routinely takes longer than 6 hours to play, especially a game that has as much direct combat as Twilight Imperium. My actual nightmare would be to sit down at the table, get beaten in a combat in the first hour, and spend the next five hours trying to do anything while knowing there’s no chance of a comeback.
I’m envious of those who can prioritize and commit to playing Twilight Imperium at all, let alone more than once, but I know myself and I know I would enjoy myself so much more by just playing 4 different 2 hour games over 1 epic 8 hour space opera.
On Mars
I have a love/hate relationship by games designed by Vital Lacerda. They’re usually big, complex, and thematic games that simulate a facet of life, like building a car in Kanban or robbing a bank and evading the police in Escape Plan. In these games each individual turn is simple and straightforward, but there are half a dozen interlocking mechanisms and mechanics that you need to be intimately familiar with to succeed.
On Mars looks to stay on the same track as the rest of Lacerda’s designs, clocking in at a 4.66 out of 5 on BGGs complexity rating. While sometimes all I really want to do is to sink my teeth into a complex game, I’m at a stage of life (parent to a toddler) where the thought of a brain burning game just exhausts me. Maybe when I’m all growed up and have spare time again I’ll go on a massive Lacerda binge.
I will say that I absolutely adore Ian O’Toole’s cover for this game. It looks absolutely stunning!
Eldritch Horror
Somewhat ironically my birthday is October 31st, and I generally dislike the entirety of the horror genre. Eldritch Horror by Corey Konieczka and Nikki Valens looks to be a fine game; a streamlined version of Arkham horror where players embark on a cooperative adventure working to solve mysteries and protect the world from the Ancient One. I just have no love for the entirety of the Cthulhu mythos. If horror, mystery, and Cthulhu is something you enjoy, I’m sure Eldritch Horror is a treat. unfortunately I am not, so I am repelled.
Every year I encourage the members of my regular game group to create a list of their top 100 games of all time. Today I’m starting a new series in which I explore my friends’ favourite games and specifically look at the games they chose to put onto their top 100 that I hate.
Hate is a very strong word. To be honest, most of these games I would still play. These are games that I would call ‘fine’ and would play if someone was really keen, but are not games I would ever suggest playing on our game nights.
The first person I’m picking on today has chosen his alias to be Otter. He would identify himself as a classic Euro gamer; someone who enjoys trading cubes and deterministic gameplay over luck and dice. While not totally against the odd direct conflict game, his preferences are firmly in the economic side of the spectrum.
I’ve ordered this list, starting with the games at the very top of his list, not in the order of how much I dislike each one.
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 – #1
Ooooh boy coming right out of the gate with a spicy take. I’m not a big fan of Pandemic Legacy: Season 1. There are a lot of aspects that could be contributing to my opinion, such as the fact that I haven’t finished the campaign yet, or the fact that I’ve only played it two players. I’ve purposefully hidden the paragraph below for those who may be sensitive to spoilers. Highlight the text if you want to read some of my reasons for not liking Pandemic Legacy: Season 1
Some of the reasons I don’t like Pandemic Legacy are very arbitrary. I don’t like that one of the viruses turns people into ‘faded figures’, which is very reminiscent of zombies, which is just a concept that I’m extremely tired of. I also don’t like that in a 2 player game it feels like we HAVE to use a certain subset of characters or we have no chance of containing the virus or even winning. I also don’t really like the consequences of a bad game, if a city (or cities) falls because of a unlucky card flip, that city is now harder to deal with and more likely to be a pain in the butt in subsequent games. Further to that we are disincentivised to branch out and try new characters; the ones we’ve been using all game have gotten several improvements and until they’re lost forever, there’s no real reason to deviate.
The paragraph above is white text with a white background. Highlight to read, but be aware there are spoilers.
In the end, I would so much rather play base Pandemic, which is an excellent experience beginning to end. Sometimes when I want to shake up my co-op game experience, I’ll pull out one of the alternate Pandemic versions, such as Fall of Rome, Rising Tide, or even The Cure (if I want to roll a lot of dice). That offers much more variety for me, and I don’t need to bring the same group of people back together again and again to play through a campaign.
Side bar, that last complaint, bringing the same group of people back together again and again is the crux of most of my complaints with all Legacy and campaign games. If someone is dedicated enough to return regularly to play Pandemic Legacy again and again with me, I’d almost certainly rather be introducing them to the wider world of board games. I know this speaks to my own need for discovery, but Pandemic is such a great introduction to cooperative games that once I’ve gotten someone hooked with it, there’s so many other experiences I’m keen to share with them.
Alchemists #10
Alchemists designed by Matúš Kotry and published by CGE in 2014 was pitched to me as a Clue-style deduction game, but much more interesting and ‘gamey’. This pitch didn’t particularly excite me as I hadn’t played Clue since I was 9 or 10 years old and didn’t have particularly fond memories attached to that game.
What Alchemists actually is, is a worker placement game with a deduction element. The deduction either needs to be managed by an app, or have a player act the role of a moderator and manage the deduction element. Alchemists features 8 different ingredients all of which have a positive or negative value in 3 aspects (confusing, I know). The goal of the game is to deduce the aspects of each of these ingredients and publish theories proving you are the smartest Alchemist at the table. It’s entirely possible to publish false theories in an effort to rush your opponents into also publishing their half-baked theories, after which you and the scientific community at large can mock them mercilessly.
What I don’t like about Alchemists is that the system is opaque and obtuse, and you can get really unlucky. The method for gathering information is you first need to take an action spot, which may cost you money if someone mixed a red potion before you did. Then, you mix two ingredients into a caldron and they’ll pop out a result, consuming the two resources. The result you can use to deduce some information, and once you have enough information, you can figure out the individual properties of each ingredient. In one of my games I matched 3 different pairs of ingredients together and every time they turned out to be the the equal and opposite of each other, giving me almost no information I could work with and leaving me far behind everyone else. Eventually I was able to use that information to figure out each of the ingredient’s aspects, but it was too little too late. Everyone else had already published their papers and sold their potions to eager explorers.
Other things that rub me wrong are the lengthy playtime. Alchemists is easily a 2 hour game, longer if you’re learning how to play. It’s also difficult for new players, as they can’t really ask clarifying questions lest they give away some of their secret information. Hopefully whoever teaches this game can clearly impart the logic puzzle, or the new players will be left feelings stuck for a very long time. It’s also fairly punishing, making a mistake or missing timing your moves can dearly cost you, which feels particularly bad in a long game.
On a more positive note, I really love the art and production of Alchemists, and the rulebook was hilarious. If everyone is of an equal skill level, Alchemists can be a fun afternoon, but high academia is just not for me.
Stockpile #12
Sometimes it’s hard to discern where a heavily random game is good, and where it’s bad. Why do I love Galaxy Trucker, but despise Stockpile?
Stockpile is a stock market manipulation game where players each have a small amount of hidden information. Each round players will seed portfolios with shares in a company, then bid on which portfoliton you want to acquire. After acquiring a portfolio, you have the option to sell some stocks, then the market moves. Each of the 6 companies will move either up or down. If the stock hits the top of the track, it splits, doubling your stake in the company. If it goes bankrupt, all those stocks in your portfolio have become worthless.
Stockpile feels very random and unfair. The player who knows if a stock is going to go bankrupt due to a massive -3 movement has such a better piece of information than the player who knows that another stock is just going to go up by one. Often, you’ll have information about a stock, but then never have the opportunity to take action on that information. If you know American Automotive is going to go up 2, but you never see those shares, that information is essentially worthless. Sure, you could try to barter or psyche out your opponents, but that pales in comparison to actually knowing the hidden information and using it to your advantage. You can know that if the Automotive company is going up by 2 then the odds of the other stocks going down are marginally higher, but it’s just not enough to make meaningful decisions.
I do like the asymmetric player powers, and the expansion turns up the randomness even further by including dice that dictate how the market will move, making it even more volatile. If I’m going to play a game where I feel like I have no control, it may as well be extra random and I can make my own points by going heavily into bonds.
Grand Austria Hotel #13
I really wanted to love Grand Austria Hotel by Simone Luciani and Virginio Gigli. With my hospitality background I adore the theme of serving coffee and cake to guests before seeing them to their rooms. In practice, however, Grand Austria Hotel feels plodding and tedious. Most of the decisions feels dictated by the dice, which somehow always seem to be exactly wrong. I’ve had instances where I look at the dice and think “This is awful! I can’t do anything with this!”, re-roll the dice, only to find that the re-roll is somehow worse than the original state!
Perhaps it’s foolish of me to expect something exciting when strudel is one of the main resources. I find myself frustrated every time I play, especially as I see my opponents racking up combos and hiring staff that cascade into dozens of filled rooms and fully progressed on the emperor track thanks to a well timed pull of a guest, or a perfectly timed dice roll. What makes Grand Austria Hotel even worse is the snake draft, which somehow seems to elongate the downtime in-between turns. “GAH” is all I can really say about this one…
The Oracle of Delphi #24
A Stefan Feld race game, I was so excited when I first sat down to play The Oracle of Delphi. I was on a bit of a Feldian kick, having just played The Castles of Burgundy and Trajan, so I was very excited to see what this new, colourful box had in store for me.
Unfortunately what I found was a race to complete three sets of four different objectives. At the start of the game you’re weak and trying to get anything done feels like a chore. As you complete some objectives you get benefits that make you stronger, but you’re also taking on penalty cards. If you get too many penalties, you have to skip a whole turn which feels AWFUL in a race game.
Two of the four tasks you’re trying to complete are pick-up and deliver, and the entire board is seeded from the start. The first player to go can end up with a huge advantage by being able to pick up and drop off resources directly next to the start while others need to cart their goods clear across the sea. The objectives that aren’t pick-up and deliver are entirely random, either rolling dice and hoping you clear the threshold or flipping a face down tile and hoping it’s your colour. These objectives just don’t make for an interesting game in my opinion.
Finale
There are a few other games on Otter’s list that I’m not the biggest fan of, including Lorenzo il Magnifico, Teotihuacan: City of the Gods, Ticket to Ride, and Mombasa, but I’ll leave roasting those games to another day.
Feel free to tell me I’m wrong in the comments; lambast my opinions and accuse me of being uncultured swine! I dare you to write 2,000 words slamming 5 of my favourite games of all time, which you can read about by clicking here.
February 8th, 2022 marked the 1 year anniversary of Meeple and the Moose. I started writing this blog because I hadn’t seen my game group in person for nearly a year, and I was craving 2 things: physical board games, and a broader board game community.These two cravings led to me exploring the solo modes of the board games I already owned, and to write about my thoughts and experiences.
Over the last year I’ve published 50 posts related to board games, mostly reviews and counting down my top 100 favourite games (as of March 2020 when I created the list). I’ve started Twitter and Instagram accounts, neither platforms which I had ever used before, and I’ve played a lot of great games!
When I started Meeple and the Moose it was more of a creative writing outlet; a way to get the itch to write out of my system. I found that I really enjoyed engaging with the wider board game community! I’ve started watching lots of twitch streamers, and commenting on other people’s creative works, and I have enjoyed seeing the responses to the words I’ve been putting out into the world.
Something else I really enjoy doing is tracking my plays and stats regarding board games. I track:
The games played
Who played the games with me
The scores of each player in the game
Where the game was played
How long it took to play the game (rarely, I very often forget to push the start button on the timer)
I’ve often been asked “why do you track these things? Can’t you just enjoy playing the games?” and while the real answer is ‘no, you uncultured swine’, apparently that answer “isn’t good enough” and I’m told to stop “being rude to my mother.”
Before I get into why I track, here’s some stats about my board game plays as of February 2022:
I’ve recorded 1,244 plays of 336 different games
33% of my plays included 4 players
My average win rate is 40%
My H-Index is 17 (I’ve played 17 different games at least 17 times)
I’ve played 54 games 5 times or more
I’ve played 34 games 10 times or more
I’ve played 10 games 25 times or more
I’ve played games with 111 different people
My most played game is The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, followed by Pairs, (36 and 33 plays respectively)
Data doesn’t care about your feelings
The first, and most prominent reason that I track my stats is because humans are so damn bad at intuiting numbers. For example, one of my favourite games is Food Chain Magnate, and I would have said that I had played it at least 20 times. I also would have thought that each game took at least 4 hours to play because it is such a big game that’s full of decisions.
Looking at my stats, I’ve played Food Chain Magnate 14 times, and the average play time is closer to 2.5 hours (I almost always play with 4 players). Knowing that the game will likely be over in 3 hours means that if I want to play it during a weeknight, I have to have the game set up before my guests arrive. Keeping track of these details helps me plan better game nights.
2. Trends interest me, and help me become a better gamer
Have you ever played a game and been unsure of what certain things are worth? You wonder if you should you spend your whole action acquiring three bonus points, or if that is a waste of time. Tracking the final scores in my games helps me be a better gamer and game teacher, as I can tell people what they can expect for the final score. Three points is a big deal in Agricola, but it’s negligible in The Castles of Burgundy.
A friend of my built a tool called Goodat.games that collects game play data submitted to Board Game Geek and finds the average score. I find this site to be very helpful in my journey to be a better board gamer
3. Because it’s fun!
Honestly, I just like looking at the insights page. I enjoy seeing which games are getting played, how many plays I’ve had, and how many different games I’ve experienced over the course of a month, or year. I love looking back and reflecting on the games I’ve played, or having a witty response when someone mistakenly states that they are new to a game. For instance, when one of my friends says “I’ve never played this before” I can retort with “We played it together on March 17th, 2018 at the board game café. You won.”
I also enjoy putting together lists of my favourite games, and it’s very helpful to be able to filter games solely to ones that I’ve played before.
2021 was a whirlwind of a year. The year began with a newborn in the household, we in BC were under heavy lockdown (in this case, heavy lockdown means no visitors) which continued until June!! My game group had been playing games via Tabletop Simulator since late March 2020 which gave us access to a ton of games that we wouldn’t have been able to play otherwise. Thankfully, come the summer we were allowed to gather again and we’ve been playing in person ever since, even including a Cabin-Con retreat!
This list will include several games that were not released in 2021, and that’s okay. This list is to showcase the best games that were new to me this year! While I am often a victim of wanting to play the newest games as they release, I do enjoy going back and finding the gems that I initially missed.
In 2021 I managed to get in 257 plays of 110 different games, 45 of which were new to me. Before I get to my top 10 games I want to mention that the ‘honorable mentions’ list is really strong. Q.E., Dinosaur Tea Party, Fantasy Realms, Forgotten Waters, Underwater Cities, The Isle of Cats, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Sheriff of Nottingham, Gods Love Dinosaurs, Under Falling Skies, and Lost Cities: Rivals. Most of these games are ones that I could classify as good, but I need to play more. Also, most of the games on the honorable mentions list were played digitally, which I’m sure influences how much joy I feel when thinking about them again. You’ll likely find some of these games hitting my Top 100 list the next time I put it together!
#10 – Regicide
Regicide by Paul Abrahams, Luke Badger, and Andy Richdale was the biggest surprise to me this summer. I heard that there was an intriguing and challenging cooperative game using a standard deck of 52 cards. If you have a deck of cards, you can play this game right now!
I’ll admit that while it’s billed as a cooperative game, I’ve mostly played it solo. Regicide also has a significant amount of luck involved to win, so it’s not uncommon to get a bad card flip and find yourself just hosed. I’ll also admit that I haven’t been able to beat Regicide yet… I’ve gotten to the final boss, but fell just short due to an aforementioned poor card flip.
While you can play Regicide with any generic deck of 52 cards, Badgers from Mars has released a specific deck with some thematic artwork that looks fantastic.
#9 – Project L
Project L is spatial relation Splendor. I love the polyomino puzzles, the engine building, the colourful acrylic pieces, and the striking minimalistic visual design. I won’t reiterate all of my thoughts and feelings about Project L here as I’ve already written about it in depth, but I will mention that Project L continues to hit my table with groups both new and well versed in the board game hobby.
#8 – The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine
I played a lot of trick taking games with my family as a kid, mostly games Phase 10 and our own variation called Sticks, but I really didn’t expect to love 2019’s The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine by designer Thomas Sing as much as I did.
Introduced to me at the end of a very long day during Cabin-con 2021, the whole group fell for this game hard. We played ~20 games back to back to back, just constantly going back for more. I’m kicking myself for not playing The Crew earlier; Otter kept bringing it to game night week after week and it just kept not hitting the table.
#7 – Cascadia
Cascadia by Randy Flynn is the Flatout Games darling child of the year. I’ve heard so many people talk so positively about this nature themed tile laying/ drafting game, and for good reason! Cascadia is a fun, light, attractive puzzle. Players draft ecosystem tiles and animal tokens and try to arrange them in perfect ways to earn the most points.
Cascadia is often compared to Flatout Games previous Kickstarter project Calico. While I prefer the latter, a lot of people report enjoying the easier, less restrictive puzzle of Cascadia.
#6 – Beyond the Sun
Beyond the Sun is a phenomenal game made even more impressive when taking into account that this is Dennis K. Chan’s first design. Beyond the Sun creates an analog experience for everyone’s favourite aspect of Civilization, tech trees. The big main board has several columns indicating the ‘level’ of each technology with lines going from left to right indicating each technology’s prerequisites. What makes this game interesting for repeat plays is that each level of technologies has a whole deck to choose from.
I’ve only played Beyond the Sun once, but I’m very excited to explore this game even more. I’m even looking forward to an expansion that offers some more asynchronous player powers, and am eagerly excited to see what else Dennis K. Chan has in store for us board gamers.
#5 – MicroMacro: Crime City
MicroMacro: Crime City by Johannes Sich is another game that I covered in depth this year. I played the demo and really loved the ‘Where’s Waldo?’ style gameplay mixed with a feeling of time passing. Being able to trace a criminal’s steps backwards through the city, or follow someone fleeing from an event like a bank robbery brought such joy to my wife and me.
I love that as you’re following the threads of one case you can start to notice other things going on in the periphery, things that you can make a mental note of something that you’ll probably need to come back to in a later case, but it’s not too obvious as to whats going on that you feel like you’ve accidently solved another crime just by stumbling upon a vital clue.
In my review I wrote that I didn’t plan on keeping the first game around, as it’s kind of a one and done game. I did recently pick up the follow-up game, MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House but haven’t had a chance to break it out yet. From what I read, we can expect two more MicroMacro: Crime City games in the near future, and some cases that will span all the maps. We’ll see if those work well, and just how fun it will be to try and manage 4 different maps spanning the entirety of my living room floor, especially now that my newborn has leveled up to toddler.
#4 – Calico
Calico by Kevin Russ came to Kickstarter in October 2019, and delivered partway through 2020. I didn’t really learn about it until early 2021. My wife and I were in a game store perusing their selection when Calico caught my eye and wouldn’t let go. I loved the charming, cozy kitten on the cover and I had heard from a friend that it was quite the puzzle. They weren’t wrong, I found my head in my hands for most of the playtime as I compromised and was forced to slowly give up some of the points I was hoping to achieve, unable to fulfill all (or any!) of the scoring objectives!
Most of my plays of Calico were solo when I posted my review in June. Since then I’ve introduced a lot of people to the world of Calico and found nothing but praise. The aesthetic is cute and charming, the puzzle is satisfying, and the replayability is excellent. I love that Flatout Games includes scenarios in the back of the rulebook, allowing experienced players to add on some additional challenges. I absolutely love Calico and look forward to playing it every time.
#3 – My City
I don’t recall much fanfare around Reiner Knizia’s tile laying legacy game My City when it released in 2020. I first experienced My City during Cabin-con 2021, after a brutal, grueling game of Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile by Cole Wehrle, and a very late night of unboxing and playing Anachrony by Dávid Turczi, Richard Amann, and Viktor Peter. My City was exactly the game we needed; light, easy to learn and play, fast, and very little rules overhead. We played 6 games back to back, and then another 6 games the next day. Most of the group at Cabin-con agreed that My City was ‘the game of the con’, meaning it was the overall favourite experience
My City takes only 15 minutes to play, and plays a lot like Rüdiger Dorn’s Karuba (which I talked about breifly here). Each player begins with an identical set of polyomino tiles. Each turn a card is flipped up and all players must place the tile depicted on the card on their board. You can (almost) always choose to pass instead of placing the tile, at the cost of a single point. After all players are ‘out’, the scores are counted and the highest score wins.
We took to this game famously. Since Cabin-con it’s been often requested, more as a game to finish off the night, rather than make it the objective of the evening. We all liked it so much that when Black Friday rolled around and Boardgamebliss.com had it available for $20, we all bought our own copies, eager to introduce our families to this game during the holiday season. While I haven’t finished the legacy campaign yet, and haven’t played the ‘eternal’ game (without the legacy components), I can wholeheartedly recommend My City, especially at the lower price point compared to most other legacy style games.
#2 – Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated
I used to own the original Clank! a long time ago, but traded it during a local math trade as it just wasn’t getting any plays in my group. It was light and easy to play but we found ourselves favouring other deck-builders such as Paperback by Tim Fowers or Super Motherload by Gavan Brown and Matt Tolman. Because my main game group tends to prefer playing a large variety of games, the push-pull tension of Clank! just didn’t resonate with us. No one wanted to be the person to snag the cheapest, easiest artifact and escape the dungeon, even if that was the best choice. We just didn’t want to ‘waste’ a play by getting in and getting out as fast as possible.
So colour me surpised when Otter found a copy of Clank! Legcay: Acquisitions Incorporated for sale, used. It was fully unplayed and in mint condition, so we bought it. I had my misgivings before diving in, but I found my misgivings to be totally unfounded. I had an absolutely blast making my way through Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated. We played 4 games back to back during Cabin-Con 2021, and another game shortly after.
Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated sprinkles narrative and discovery throughout it’s playtime, tasking players to reach certain spaces to access the next part of the story. It tickles my need for discovery just right. While the underlying game is still ‘just’ Clank!, I’m hopelessly excited for each new game. I immediately beeline to the next story section, eager to place stickers all over the board. Sometimes it pays off and I do very well in points, other times not so much! I have a blast every time and cannot wait to complete this adventure
#1 – Bullet❤️
I really didn’t know what to expect from Bullet♥︎ by Joshua Van Laningham and Level 99 games. No one I knew or trusted turned me on to the game. All I knew was that I liked Level 99 Games’ previous projects and that I enjoy the anime aesthetic.
What I found was an engaging action-packed, push-your-luck puzzle game, full of tense decisions. Now, I love real time games and I love puzzles so it’s absolutely no surprise that Bullet♥︎ appeals to me in the way that it did. Most of my time with Bullet♥︎ comes from the solo Boss Battle mode. I wrote about Bullet♥︎extensively here so I won’t rehash my thoughts too much. All I will say is that I continue to love Bullet♥︎ and I expect that if I can find a group to play this with more often, Bullet♥︎ will quickly climb up my list of top 100 games.
Thanks for reading my list of top games that were new to me in 2021. Let me know in the comments which games were new to you in 2021 and which ones you’re looking forward playing the most!
In November 2021 my gaming group (Bear, Otter, and Bigfoot) and I rented a cabin and spent a weekend playing board games all day and night. Here’s how it went, and at the end I’ll let you know what I loved and what I would change for next time.
Prelude
A little background about our group; we meet every Wednesday around 6:30PM at one of our homes (the person hosting rotates evenly) and play games until around 9PM or 10PM. The four of us are each avid gamers, so our lists of games that we want to play grows faster than we can play them.
On some level I have always looked at the big conventions with envy; booking off three whole days to just play board games sounds like a dream. We have gone to a couple local conventions to meet others and play new games, but we have found that we always gravitate towards just playing with each other. We have known each other for almost 7 years now, we all love a lot of the same games, and we know that we can trust each other to be appropriately invested in the game. We avoid the uncomfortable situation of having a player who does not respect the hobby. For instance, at one of the local conventions a fifth player asked to join our table, and then he was on his phone through the whole rules explanation and had to be told it was his turn every time. Each time his turn came up he’d ask ‘alright, what happened?’ and ‘How do I play? Can I do this?’, making it obvious he did not listen to the rules, or even bother to engage with us at the table.
We talked as a group about going to a large convention, but eventually decided that there wasn’t much point in going to a whole big convention, paying the entrance fee, renting a hotel room and travelling only to play games with each other the whole time. We decided we would prefer to rent a cabin locally instead. Thus the idea of Cabin-Con was born.
Leading up to Cabin-Con we created a Google Sheet to curate our game selections for the weekend. We each listed the top three games we wanted to play over the weekend. Bigfoot had received his all-in Kickstarter pledges of Anachrony and Oath during Covid and was eager to have those hit the table. I purchased a ‘used’ copy of Clank Legacy from someone locally (they had bought the game, took the shrink off and punched the tokens, but their game group never got around to playing it), so I wanted to add that to the experience. Bear was particularly eager to play Eclipse, as we had played it a couple weeks ago and he wanted another chance to become the supreme leader. We all included many other lighter games that we owned and each had a chance to mark which ones we wanted to veto, or lift up as a priority.
The master play list became:
Clank Legacy
Food Chain Magnate
My City
A Feast for Odin
Oath
Anachrony
Eclipse
Thursday
Originally check-in was listed for 5pm, but the cabin owner allowed us to check in early, around 2:00pm. We arrived, unpacked the coolers of food and drink, and assembled the game library.
By 3pm we were unpacked and ready to begin. We started the weekend with a round of Arboretum by Dan Cassar, which is always a hit. We learned and played Lost Cities: Rivals by Reiner Knizia, and we each really enjoyed it! It was interesting how our first few auctions sold 2 or 3 cards for 6 dollars, while subsequent auctions were giving away 8 cards for 4 dollars! I look forward to breaking this out again to see how the auctions change on repeat plays and with experienced players.
Cartographers by Jordy Adan came up next, which was my very first time playing in person. I really love Cartographers, to the point where I’m likely going to buy my own copy so I can play with my family when I visit them for the holidays.
With three 30 minute games under our belt we unboxed A Feast for Odin and learned the rules (Our group usually learns new games by putting it on the table and I read over the rulebook, speaking out loud the important parts with each of us clarifying what we find ambiguous. It’s a system that seems to work well for us). With A Feast for Odin set up and learned, we paused for dinner, provided by Bear (who pre-made a bunch of meals and froze them, so only a re-heat was necessary).
I had only played A Feast For Odin by Uwe Rosenberg once in 2017. My vague recollections helped keep me with the pack. I focused on breeding sheep and shearing them to cover the negative point spaces on my board, but found it quite difficult to keep up with the rest of the group. In addition, none of the occupations I pulled were particularly helpful until the end of the game, making my resource engine stall early. The final scores were 58 (me) 64 (Otter and Bigfoot) and a massive 104 point victory for Bear.
I made a note to myself to spend some more time with A Feast for Odin in the future, as it’s quite the intriguing puzzle! It also helps that I really enjoy a lot of Uwe Rosenberg’s games, although my favourite remains Agricola.
Originally we planned to have a fire each night, as the cabin had an outdoor firepit. Unfortunately, it rained heavily all weekend. We consoled ourselves with a game of Citadels by Bruno Faidutti, which felt unnecessarily back-stabby in my opinion. That said that, it was the only game I won on Thursday, so I’m sure that says something about me.
Friday
Friday morning began slowly with a cup of coffee and a walk on the beach while I waited for the rest of the group to get out of bed (one of the joys of having a child under one year old is that I can’t sleep in anymore). By 10:30am a breakfast of bacon and eggs had been consumed by all and we began the first full day by breaking out Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated by Andy Clautice and Paul Dennen.
We had played the original Clank! only a handful of times before we decided that it ultimately wasn’t for us. The tension of delving deep into the dungeon and trying to get out in time wasn’t terribly satisfying for us, as none of us were willing to be the person who grabs the cheapest, easiest treasure and gets out quickly. We also found that we prefer other deck builders like Hardback by Tim Fowers and Jeff Back, and Super Motherload by Gavan Brown and Matt Tolman. Nevertheless we were compelled to buy the game for the Legacy aspect alone.
We played 4 games back to back where it became clear that my goal wasn’t to win each game, but to hit as many story encounters as possible. Clank! Legacy satisfied my desire for discovery with every story that got read and every sticker that got placed on the board (which was a lot). I had somewhat hoped to playthrough the entire box during the weekend, but I bowed to the will of the group and packed it away after four rounds. I’ll be pushing them to play it again during our Wednesday night game sessions until we finish the entire campaign.
The rain had cleared up by this point so we chopped some wood, made a fire, and ate dinner outside. After dinner we just chatted while sipping whiskey. We’ve known each other for so long, but so rarely do we ever just sit around to talk. When we gather, we know that each other person is just as eager to play a board game so it becomes our default activity very quickly.
At 7:30PM we cracked open the Anachrony Infinity Box. The game was still in shrink wrap so we got to work on punching, sorting, and learning the rules for this massive game. Around 10:30PM as we took our first turns I saw the same fear in their eyes that would take the heart of me. A low-level despair had set in the group around the second half of the rule teach; 2+ hours is a long time to prepare to play a board game. Thankfully the first few rounds of Anachrony flow quickly and we all caught a second wind and carried through to the end, getting to bed closer to 2am.
I really enjoyed the theme and production of Anachrony. I recognize that having the thick, heavy mechs to hold your workers is entirely unnecessary, but now that I played with these toys, I’d have a hard time playing without them. They serve very little function other than to turn this 2D board game into a 3D spectacle, but I found joy in that spectacle. If there was one word to describe Anachrony, it would be “cool”.
Now that I know how to play Anachrony, I looked over some of the expansions (side note, expansion rule books are SO MUCH EASIER to read when you already know how to play the base game) and am very excited to return to this world soon to explore the modules and expansions included in the Infinity Box. From what I hear, the Fractures of Time expansion is more or less a requirement going forward.
Saturday
The plan for Saturday was to play two or three games of Oath, then My City and perhaps Brass in the evening. Inspired by Friday night’s pain of having to un-shrink wrap and punch the pieces before playing, Bear, Bigfoot, and Otter all got to work preparing Oath and My City while I made pancakes.
Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile is not the first game designed by Cole Wehrle that we’ve played. Bear is a huge fan of Root, and Bigfoot really enjoys Pax Pamir. I found it incredibly difficult to conceptualize the mechanics of Oath, even using the ‘first turn guide’. The rules questions came fast and furiously, which made me very thankful for The Law of Oath, which made it really easy to find most of the answers. We plodded through Oath with Bear as the Chancellor who took the Cursed Cauldron early and found a card that let him ignore all skulls on his attacks. From then on fighting him became an exercise in futility as we’d clash against him, push him out of a zone, and then he’d throw himself against us, his skulls not affecting his army, and his cauldron instantly regenerating his army. He was a force that couldn’t be reckoned with.
If Anachrony has a word to describe my experience (Cool), then the word I would use to describe Oath is ‘frustrating’. During the game I felt powerless. I had all my relics taken from me and my army slaughtered. I had no resources and felt like I was an ant fighting against a God. It was not a fun experience for me, and it took nearly a full 5 hours to play. Most of that play time I attribute to players taking agonizingly long turns, but I still do not feel compelled to return to this experience. I really appreciate what Cole Wehrle was trying to achieve with the living game aspect, and it’s entirely likely that I got some rules wrong, but direct conflict games generally aren’t my bag already, and even if I was on the winning side of this war, I don’t want anyone at my table to feel like they’ve just spent 5 hours at a game and had all their progress ripped away from them.
I may return to Oath, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up in the ‘for sale’ pile before I do.
After Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile my brain felt swollen. To decompress, we opened My City by Reiner Knizia. Little did we know, this would be voted as game of the con! My City is a polyomino tile laying legacy game. Played over 24 episodes, broken into 12 chapters My City eases players into the game by starting with an incredibly basic game, and slowly adds more pieces and mechanics over time. After each game the board is cleared of all pieces, the winners get to fill in some circles marking their achievement, and some stickers are placed on the board, with more helpful stickers being distributed to those with the worst score.
We played the first two chapters in one sitting (6 episodes) before packing it away. To mill the remaining time to dinner, we played The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine by Thomas Sing. The Crew is a cooperative trick taking game that like My City, eases players into the complexity over the course of several games. The Crew has a logbook of 50 mission it tasks players to complete, beginning with just getting a single card to a specific player. As we completed missions and moved through the story things began to get more complicated, ensuring players won tricks containing specific cards in specific order, and even one game dictating that one player could not win any tricks at all.
After dinner we were compelled to return to The Crew, and ended up playing 21 games when all was said and done (only 12 successes though). The Crew is a dead simple game and one that I will introduce to my family as I know they’ll love it.
Once we exhausted ourselves on The Crew, we switched to an older favourite, Vikings by Michael Kiesling. We followed that up with the fascinating bidding game Q. E. by Gavin Birnbaum where players can bid anything to win, but the player who spends the most money is eliminated. In this particular game, the first bid began at $150, and bids quickly swelled up to $7,000 and beyond.
At this point Bear called it a night. The rest of us played another crowd pleaser, Azul, also by Michael Kiesling. This one ended with a sour taste in my mouth as on the last round Bigfoot drafted the final tile I needed to complete a colour and row. He couldn’t even use that tile, it went directly into his negative points pile! The betrayal! The audacity! In the end it wouldn’t have even mattered, his score eclipsed mine by nearly 20.
Finally for the day was Project L by Michal Mikeš, Jan Soukal and Adam Spanel. You can read more about my thoughts of Project L here, as my opinion still hasn’t changed. It’s a satisfying engine building puzzle that charms most people who get their hands on the fun little pieces.
Sunday
Sunday morning was full of wind and rain. Another breakfast of eggs and sausage while cleaning the cabin. With coffee brewed, bellies full and the cabin clean, we had 2 hours to spare before check-out. We played another 6 episodes of My City while discussing what highs and lows we experienced over the weekend.
Conclusion
This was our first time participating in an extended gaming marathon. The most we had done in the past was ‘game days’, gathering at someone’s home in the mid morning and staying into the evening. I really enjoyed gathering together at a cabin, as that level of separation left us each dedicated to the weekend. We weren’t thinking about the chores around the house that we weren’t getting done, or any major interruptions, nor did anyone have to drive to go home, leaving each person to drink as much or as little as they wanted with no repercussions.
I really love food, which shows in that I wasn’t willing to skip breakfasts, or even skimp on them. I enjoyed having a full breakfast each morning. Bear and I are both ex-cooks and were more than happy to prepare all the food while Otter and Bigfoot did the vast majority of the dishes. I don’t know how much they valued the home cooked meal, or if we could have just ordered pizza every night, but the food brought me joy. There was also no end to snacks; charcuterie, chips, candy, chocolates, muffins, you name it. We feasted like kings.
While the temptation for me was to use Cabin-Con to play as much of a legacy game as possible, or dedicate several hours to experiencing grandiose games, I concede that the most fun experiences were the parts where we played multiple games (most of which we already knew how to play) in quick succession.
Next time, I would demand that all games coming to Cabin-Con at the VERY LEAST need to be unshrinkwrapped and punched. I would probably even prioritize learning how to play the games ahead of time, even if only to ease the mental load of learning so many games in such a short amount of time.
This is not gonna happen next year
I recognize that I’m particularly blessed to have a game group that’s comfortable enough to dedicate an entire weekend to go to a cabin and play board games, and that we all have partners who respect our hobbies to let us disappear for days (this is especially true for the two of us that have children who are under a year old).
I look forward to doing Cabin-Con again, and I appreciate that it reminded me that sometimes the most fun isn’t always found in the biggest experiences, but the four 30 minute games that are tried and true. I’ll do my best to remember that from now on.
