Nerd Alert
We live in the golden age of board games (so far). It's impossible to keep up with every new hotness on the market, but I ke...
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I'm a little late to the discussion, but I have some posts backlogged in my reading list that I'm just getting to now. Thinking primarily from a mechanics perspective, here are some of my favorites:
Dungeon Lords: Happy Anniversary
The unique take on Worker Placement in this game is genius. All players secretly pick the three action spaces they want to go to, but every action space works slightly differently based on whether you're the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd player there. And, if you're the 4th one to go there, you can't take that action. Furthermore, the first two actions you pick this round, you can't use next round. It becomes such a brain burn of trying to figure out what to do this turn, what order to do it in, plan for the next turn, and making educated guesses on where other players are going to go based on their current resources.
Five Tribes
This game takes the basic concept of Mancala and makes it a strategy game. A 5x5 grid of tiles is set up on the board and then meeples, in 5 different colors, are placed in groups of three on every tile. On a player's turn, they pick up a group of meeples from one tile and then drop them off one by one, moving to adjacent tiles. Different actions are triggered both by the color of the final meeple placed and the specific tile it's placed on. It's an ever-changing puzzle with lots of different ways to score points and several paths to victory.
Abyss
There are a lot of things I like about this game. The primary action is a sort of push-your-luck draft. A player draws a card and then can keep it, or draw another one. When a player draws all the way up to a sixth card, they have to take it, but also get a pearl (which is the primary currency of the game). However, every time a card is drawn, before the player can choose whether to take it or keep drawing, the player to their left has the option of buying that card for 1 pearl. If they decline, the player to their left gets the option to buy it. Once an opponent chooses to buy a card, they can't buy another one for the rest of that player's turn, but then the other player's now have to pay 2 pearls, if they want to purchase a card. It's a very simple mechanism, but it keeps every player engaged, even when it's not their turn.
Awesome write-ups, thanks for sharing! These all sound cool - I'd never heard of Abyss but it's definitely on my list now. I've been wanting to try Five Tribes for ages.
Amazing compilation. I heard praise about Galaxy Trucker as well, will have to try it eventually. Whitechapel reminds me of Scotland Yard, but the repetition element giving clues is a nice addition to ease the hard situation of the police. Gravwell sounds like a mind-bent RoboRally :)
We really like Puerto Rico, a German-style production game. It is super-balanced, there's no uncounterable strategy AFAIK. I heard praise about Race for the Galaxy, made by the same author, but didn't try it yet.
Also, let's not forget about card games! A plain deck can host hundreds of kinds of games, easy to carry at all times, and great to make connections to others.
Thanks for this review!
I love Puerto Rico too! That's a great description, nobody can run away with the game on one strategy. I haven't tried any of the others you mention, the list grows again :)
Galaxy Trucker and Gravwell sound pretty neat, will have to check them out.
The boardgame group I used to frequent played a lot of Pandemic. Occasionally we'd branch out to Carcassonne or Ticket to Ride or something, but we always came back to Pandemic. Somehow it's fun to lose together.
Those three are all favorites of ours! I really love Carcassonne, that game has a wide appeal and never gets old for me.
I've also got a soft spot for Pandemic: The Cure - it almost made this list. It takes the same idea as Pandemic and pares it way down - there's just 5 continents instead of a bunch of countries, and each player gets personalized dice to dictate what actions they get that turn. The diseases are also unbalanced dice, weighted so that different colors will distribute more often to different territories. It's much more streamlined, you can play a round in 30 minutes, but is still carefully designed and still captures that same style of gameplay.
I absolutely love Galaxy Trucker! My only gripe with it is that it's quite difficult to learn. Because of this, any new player that joins us is destined to have a bad time.
I'd love to give GloomHaven a try, but I think I'd rather someone else taught it me rather than buying/learning it myself 😅
Few of my favourites:
Totally agree on both points - Galaxy Trucker is pretty punshing for your first several games! Gloomhaven is also definitely an investment, and it's not everyone's cup of tea, so it's worth having it shown to you first. We actually completely missed a rule and made the game a lot easier for ourselves in our first two scenarios, which made it all that much harder when we started playing tougher scenarios with the right rules!
Thanks for list, I've been wanting to try both Lords of Waterdeep and Azul. I'll be on the lookout!
I looooove board games! It's pretty much my only hobby at the moment aside from some video games. I prefer the puzzly and mechanically complex games, the ones that tax your brain and require thoughtful planning to perform well.
Vital Lacerda is a designer (and by far my favorite) of such games. The Gallerist, Kanban: Automotive Revolution, Vinhos and the upcoming On Mars are very brilliant designs of his. His games really twist your mind in a way that you didn't think was possible while playing a board game.
Other games I enjoy are Brass: Lancashire, Gaia Project, Concordia, Feudum, New Frontiers (heavily influenced by the aforementioned Puerto Rico). If you enjoy thinky strategy games, but without much confrontation, those are some very solid choices.
This is an amazing list - the only one I've even heard of is Concordia. Definitely saving this comment, thanks for the suggestions.
I used to be quite active in the board game scene and even created my own card-game which was supposed to be a stepping stone towards creating a board game.
I had launched my Kickstarter and instantly realized I set the goal too high but didn't want to relaunch. Running the KS took too much out of me so never attempted to try again.
kickstarter.com/projects/dtab/get-...
I had put the game together in less than a month and it required little playtesting to tweak the game.
This is because I did data-modelling on day 1. Most board game developers create a game and do play tests rarely open an excel spreadsheet.
I really like games that can be played in 15mins. Easy to learn, with a pattern to success.
Games I like:
I fatigued of board games after 3 years and switch to retro-video games but now I'm not doing much of either.
This looks really awesome! I like the style, very unique and seems to fit the style of the game well.
Interesting point about data modelling. I always assumed board game design was reliant on some level of trial and error, but it makes sense that you'd be able to balance it before-hand to some extent as well. Cool stuff.
Oh of course you also play boardgames :lol:
One of my favourite mechanics that sticks in my mind was in an old Martin Wallace game - something to do with empires. The combat mechanic involved rolling 2D6 - and using the difference. Way to quickly build a normal distribution of results iirc.
Ah, that's pretty clever! I love stuff like that - simple but effective.
I've been eyeing Pyramid Arcade for a while. You might have just pushed me enough over to actually pick up a copy. I love abstract strategy games and games have found quite a few unique ones from independent designers. My husband and I have a 10 game rule, we don't judge a game until we played it 10 times.
Last 5 previously played (10 games in a row):
4 Tribes - Loved it! Great simple 2 player game. Easy to setup and teardown.
Desolate - Loved it! Really like the theme and retro graphics. You are trying to survive on an alien infested space station.
Captain Treasure Boots - Ok. I really wanted to like this one but it seemed to be too repetitive for my taste.
Cam - Loved it! A smaller version of a Parker Brother's classic (Chivalry/Camelot). More complicated than checkers but simpler than chess.
Chameleon - Loved it! I love simple chess variants and the ceramic components are really nice.
Currently playing:
I don't blanket recommend Pyramid Arcade, I think a lot of folks wouldn't get much out of it - but it sounds like it's right up your alley! That's a good rule of thumb - I definitely need to spend more time with some of the Pyramid games before writing them off.
Thanks so much for the list - yet another that's almost entirely new to me! I've played a few rounds of Roll for the Galaxy at a friend's and it's already on my "to buy" list. I'll be on the lookout!
I'm kind of stuck playing lightweight-ish games as I have to find games I can play with the kids :)
I love King of Tokyo! I've been looking for a sale for a while - I'd love a copy, but have trouble shelling out for a game that really isn't that much more than Yahtzee. Tons of fun though.
Just add some images in-between!
My son likes some of these games. Right now he's into "Monster of the Week."