Lurker > Naye745

blokus is okay. its undoubtedly the most fun with four, but it cant help but feel a little random on whether people decide to crowd out your own territory or not.

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it's an underwater adventure ride

modern art is a really neat game and i've enjoyed it a decent amount every time i've played. obviously, if you can't stand auctions or bidding games in general i think you're not going to have fun no matter what you do, but it's among the best of that genre. the art/production of the most recent version is also exceptional and showcases real artists, which is super neat

that said, it just sits in the shadow of its massively superior knizia auction cousin, ra. dunno if you've played that one and it will show up later on this list, but my word, ra is such a wonderful and special game that really squeezes the finest juice out of the auction and set collection mechanisms.

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yeah theres a bit of truth for that to me too, which is why i'm arguing for esentially a remastered/updated version of a game from 2000-2001 as the best ever lol

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yeah while i still hold original pokemon crystal as my favorite pokemon game, heart gold/soul silver are (i think) legitimately the best pokemon games ever made. surprised they aren't on the list!

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there's a rule in the expansion that gives you a bonus 3 points for a set of each type of card, and i would argue it's essential (and should totally be part of the base game rules).
going ham with the panda and eating bamboo is generally stronger than anything else.

as far as the game goes, it's cute, and has a nice table presence, but is fairly mediocre. my biggest gripe is the weather die feels really uneven, and some bad rolls can really put you behind through no real fault of your own

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it's an underwater adventure ride

quacks is pretty good, not sure how much legs it's got, but i've also heard the expansion is great (and helps with that)

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it's an underwater adventure ride

tpp was a goddamn adventure

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bad take

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i have never played those games but shipwreck arcana does have half the name of one of my favorites

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the gap between my favorite and least favorite games of yours from this tier is quite impressively large :)

i have some thoughts on century: eastern wonders but i'll wait until spice road for that too

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friedmann friese has some gems and some stinkers, but at the very least really messes around with a lot of different ideas and mechanisms and it's fun to see the results

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have you played fuji flush? it's definitely a little less thinky (and therefore more random) than 6 nimmt, but i still sort of dig it anyway

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this is a classic, and my friend has an old school copy with one of its many alternate titles, but i've never gotten the chance to play it

some day, perhaps...

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i played quadropolis once and thought it was fine but didn't grab me. it feels like a good game but is not exceptional in any regard - there are better quick tactical games/city builders/mid-lightweight games from days of wonder - and thus has fallen through the cracks a bit.

love letter is great for what it is, but as far as fillers go, coup and (especially) welcome to the dungeon have it beat for me.

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coup is good - it's not perfect, but it's very solid for a 5 minute fillerish game. the novelty of g54 is appealing but most of the combinations aren't that great, i remember having some very good games and many imbalanced crappy ones.

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oh man.

i want to play paper mario.

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i played two games (same night) of 2rb with 10 people and it was definitely fun but i just dont have a strong opinion like i do with say resistance or secret hitler or werewolf/mafia

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welcome to the dungeon is fantastic. amazing how much game you get from such a small set of components

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all i know about this game is it looks pretty

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its not true on any difficulty, even the one with 7 epidemics!

there are only like 8 actions, many of which are similar anyway, so the decision space is inherently pretty limited
it's a game that doesn't overextend its complexity (unless you're playing with like every expansion) so it is of course more "solvable"

but the entire game is about deciding how much risk to assume based on what you know, and working with what you have as efficiently as possible. despite this, you can take gambles on what level of risk to assume based on the information you have, and sometimes that will work out and sometimes it'll burn you. on the hardest difficulties, if you're unlucky enough, you're gonna have to do some of that to win.

look, i think i get your point about the game, and without having played arkham horror i can't really make a good counterpoint about that game, but your description of the game being absolutely solvable is just wrong, even if you could reasonably write an AI that would have an effective and consistent strategy. pandemic and similar co-ops aren't for everyone, but i don't think that's a design flaw like you seem to insinuate

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base pandemic has limited options but if you think there's only a single predetermined path to victory, even in that game, you would be wrong

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i guess i'll have to see what's near the top of these rankings before passing judgment on your taste lol :) :) :)

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i think king of tokyo is fairly fun but it offers considerably less depth than many of the previous 10 games or so on your list and that's important to me. dice forge, 7 wonders, and roll for the galaxy have a solid amount of stuff going on and comparable replayability

i think there are a handful of winning strategies (though of course what is ideal depends on the cards available) and yeah, avoiding tokyo is generally the right move

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SeabassDebeste posted...

Naye745 posted...
i think roll's first expansion is almost essential - it really helps flesh out the produce/consume strategies versus the aforementioned dev/settle tableau rush that seems pretty strong in base roll.
'
i mean embarrassingly i've never played with an expansion, always go for dev/settle rush, and always manage to lose anyway

from what i've read, the best players on BGA go heavy into explore/dev, basically grabbing a pile of good scoring devs and some 6's and going to town fast. p/c is hard to get a lot out of, especially in the wrong player counts, in base roll

i have never played base thunderstone (heard it was too much of a dominion clone and i hate ascension) but i thought thunderstone quest was fine enough!

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SeabassDebeste posted...

Also, is it just me, or is it hard to remember to indicate that you're done placing your dice?

we always slam (or maybe more lightly place) our cups face-down front of the screen to indicate placement completiion. its cute, feels satisfying, and makes it clear where everyone is in the game process.
i think the (sometimes tedious and lengthy) exploration phase is a little more problematic in terms of holding up the game tbqh

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this implies that the decision space is so small to be obvious! and also that the games with more freedom don't also have more randomness to make your "open" decisions largely moot

i dont think co-op games are quite as straightforward as you make them out to be, anyway

legacy season 2's brand of pandemic certainly (without spoiling) gives you a thorough enough set of options that optimizing that decision space seems impossible

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it took me a few plays before 7 wonders grew on me - a healthy knowledge of the available cards and careful attention to the resources is key and makes the game feel a lot less random

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race to me is definitely the better game, but they're both great

i think roll's first expansion is almost essential - it really helps flesh out the produce/consume strategies versus the aforementioned dev/settle tableau rush that seems pretty strong in base roll.

the second expansion is super cool but is also absurdly expensive - i'll probably end up picking up a copy at origins or somewhere when i can get it for a discount. but i've enjoyed the hell out of a friend's copy when i've gotten the chance to play

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small world is okay

"bidding" on the race combinations is a very neat feature and a cool game

i just could give a crap less about risk-ish dudes on a map confrontation

it's not particularly mean spirited but could still come down to politicking in many situations, which is...less than ideal. at least it's a good looking game

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i have never played san juan! which is impressive because i have played hundreds and hundreds of race for the galaxy games. more than anything, i just expect to be disappointed in it by comparison, though i'm sure it's perfectly fine in its own right.

race, though, holy heck - if my biggest gripe are games that are far too long for their complexity/depth, then the counterpoint are the designs that manage to pack so much game/decision space into a small playtime. race might be the absolute best at being a ~30/45 minute game, handling up to 5/6 players comfortably (with the expansions that support that count of course), and just loading you with interesting choices. tableau building and multi-purpose cards are already my thing to begin with, but race is just an impeccably designed game that still throws me surprises after hundreds of plays. that's pretty rare.

i dunno how this list will turn out (and this isn't a criticism, i swear) but the thing that really differentiates me from the bgg posters and dice tower viewers of the world is how much i like a game that i can really sink my teeth into - a game that will not just impress me the couple times i play it, but can earn my interest over and over and over again. games are still kind of expensive! and i love that feeling of a game that truly feels like it takes my money's worth.

edit: sorry to spam your topic here! there were some interesting games to comment on! :)

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also this is true of many card drafting games but is worth saying - the fact that it smoothly and impressively plays up to 7 players is a huge deal. there might be a little less agency, but you can still do a lot (unlike carcassonne) and there's no downtime. it's still 100% worth owning just for that imo

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7 wonders actually grew on me a lot after playing it more. i think even the base game has a surprising amount of depth for what it is - managing resources and really taking advantage of your opponents' play can go a long way.
that said, the first expansion is so good i nearly view it as essential. leaders gives the game that strategic oomph that it's sorely lacking, and really rounds out the game as a whole. later expansions (cities, new wonders, babel, armada) all have some fun things going on but don't feel like nearly as huge a game-changer as the first expansion

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sure, but i mean "find out what the smartest thing to do, and then do it" is literally what you do in co-op games

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isnt that true of many co-ops? i have not specifically played ghost stories but aside from games with imperfect information, that is literally what you are looking at for most of them

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zombicide seems like exactly the kind of games i don't play

i'm sure it's perfectly good for what it is, but what it is is not my cup of tea

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i liked bloody inn but didnt love it

usually multipurpose cards are a big draw for me and they're fine here, but they didn't feel like they allowed you to build enough of an engine. i dunno for sure though! i only played it once

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for some reason i really got into pokemon picross and played it, literally every day (to get the daily currency units), for about 9-12 months and beat it 100% (with 0% of my money spent on it)

i guess what i'm saying is we all have our vices

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i feel like its pretty tough to reuse words without losing a lot of value? like you could play that way but it hardly seems optimal

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yeah that's fair. if i made a list of all the games i've played, i'm not sure where all these kinds of games would show up exactly - i can have fun with them, they're pretty decent games, but nowhere near the ones that really move the meter for me

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hardback really feels like the superior version of the game, but i've had fun with both of them

as far as deckbuilders go, they're pretty harmless and enjoyable

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well they just brought back literally 5 of its teams for season 18 (four of whom placed 8th through last!)

i remember liking the 7th placers a decent amount. and their crazy footrace victory in the first episode (i think that was s14?!)

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samus returns is definitely on my short list - especially given my love of metroid

i played a little bit of a friend's but was busy and lost my place and etc...it was alright though

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it sort of is a "remake" but it's fantastic. basically a best hits/remix of sorts of base + touched + twisted. and of course with all the warioware charm

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ive never played d.i.y. but warioware rules in general so i feel like i missed out. it came out right before i actually got a 3ds so i missed the boat a little there

(also i'm assuming and hoping warioware gold is showing up later here)

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14 was...pretty good? i just got tired of margie and luke and jamie and cara pretty damn fast

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sushi go is a very cute game and i've had a pretty good time with it honestly

there are better drafting games out there, but for its exceptional accessibility it gets brownie points

sushi go party is pretty legit too

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i bought aa5 but i've been avoiding playing it to irritate wigs because i haven't been in the right mood to delve back into an aa game again

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yeah i sort of hit a wall with the layton/ace attorney games after layton 3/aa4 so i feel like i missed out on some good stuff. there's just so much stuff and not enough time nowadays :(

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this list makes me wish i had bothered to play more than just the first 3 layton games

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i've never actually gotten to play the grizzled but i do appreciate its theme combined with mechanics

its a relatively simple co-op game about ww1 that somehow nails the theme and treats it appropriately. that's pretty darn cool to me

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it's an underwater adventure ride