Lurker > Naye745

i thought michelle & victoria were easily the most annoying team in the premiere so the fact that they're #1 on inviso and darkx's lists is basically par for the course

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the meatblock is really bad, and the fact that it was actually a good strategic decision to just skip it outright was dumb

brian and greg are great though, brian has been on all sorts of tv ads before and after being on the show, i feel like i've even seen him around recently despite being about 15 years since tar7 aired!

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i think 7 is good enough. definitely not great though, and 5 and 12 are definitely the benchmarks for the different eras

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Underleveled posted...

Thinking ahead, out of the next five seasons, only one is actually fairly decent. The rest are all in my bottom third. Good luck.

same but i'm guessing our picks differ

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tar6 has one of the worst boot orders in the entire run of the show. basically every good/likeable team is out before top 6, the winners suck, and we're subjected to spousal abuse on live television. there's some very good parts (some incredible locations) but it's a trainwreck and not really fun to watch.

i think tar7 is pretty good though. it's not great, but it has enough going for it.

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sad to hear rodney has apparently leaned into rampant anti-semitism on his social media accounts

guess we can count him out from ever making a return appearance to the show

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i would expect both elaine and janet are shoo-ins to make it if they have any interest of returning again
wouldnt surprise me to see jamal noura dean or lauren again either

kellee is entirely up to whether she has any interest of going back and i'm not exactly certain that's happening

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understandable

part of me wonders if the casting folks are going to go out of their way to recast s39 people into later returnee seasons, in order to distance themselves from that disaster as much as possible

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oh nice, deangelo williams is awesome, i hope they do well

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amanda ahead of james is 100% wrong imo

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also i think season 4 is better than it's generally given credit for; the winners are however, uh...not stellar.

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ken & gerard were great. their friendship/partnership with the twins, and the crazy circumstances surrounding leg 11 were one of the storyline highlights of the season imho

flo sucked though. i'm sure she's grown up a lot since then but their win after the meltdown on the bikes/boats in vietnam was just unfortunate, for lack of a better description.

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throw this entire year straight in the trash

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i think wil is such a fascinating character, the disconnect between him and tara is incredibly painful but compelling, and the way it unravels at the very end is just unbelievable

tar2 kind of gets lost in the fold for me to some degree, between the big classic seasons (1 and 5) and the more modern ones, but it's quite possibly just as good if not better as the rest of them

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rewatching tar11 is something i hope to never do

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from my experience, spyfall is much better enjoyed with a group of friends in a setting where you can just hammer out 5 games or so in quick succession. unlike resistance/werewolf, you really don't want to get too attached to any individual game. the experience of asking dumb questions and having them become a meme in the next game (and silly stuff like that) is much better than any real gameplay "tricks" there imho

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i think rob and brennan get a lot of brownie points for being super friendly and positive toward the tar community during that first season

that was honestly true of most of the teams, including both the guidos and frank, but i think they went a long way as positive ambassadors of the show and themselves

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lords of waterdeep bored me, but to be fair worker placement is one of my least favorite game mechanics (especially relative to just about everyone else, ever)

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i'm a big fan of multi-use cards and i think bruges pulls that off very well. the whole color-coding of everything (and the palette used) is just very pleasing to me as well.

but the game is just SO tactical that i could see it being a turn-off for anyone who likes engine-builders and found themselves not really being able to make much or any long-term plans.

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yeah i read about that, and my misgivings with queen games aside, i'm intrigued

interestingly my excitement and worry for each game is the complete reverse:
macao has god-awful graphic design and a truly nonexistent theme, so a visual redesign is super compelling and welcome, but man i am going to scrutinize every gameplay change because the original is a masterpiece

bruges on the other hand is a really neat game but i think could take a step up with some reworkings - the card draws in particular can be painfully random at times and the game can feel a little too "hope and pray" kind of tactical, but i really liked the art and theme of the original, the canal-building and buildings are specific to the city, and the 165 (!) unique pieces of character art were absolutely joyful. the retheme should be fine, but it already seems a lot less compelling

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the big rub of isle of skye is that you all get to decide your bids in secret simultaneously, instead of one person agonizing over all the pieces at once, and that's such a huge difference to me. despite castle-building being way more compelling, and all the bonus-scoring being more intriguing in castles, i place isle way ahead for that reason.

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some comments on previously mentioned games:
puerto rico is a classic for a reason - the pieces around its central role-selection battle are good, but the battle to jockey for the perfect position with all the individual roles is always exceptional. you're pretty much guaranteed to have at least one play where you screw someone else over, and one play where you get screwed over, and it's grand.
although race for the galaxy takes some cues from this one, the race for the galaxy board game (new frontiers) is basically puerto rico both rethemed and with a little more spice, and i'd recommend it for anyone who is lukewarm on PR for the "iffy" theme

millennium blades actually surprised me how much i enjoyed it - it's a lot more fiddly and overwrought than anything i'm usually into, but the real-time aspect along with the success of carrying over the theme's "feel" to the actual game did a heck of a lot. level 99's other stuff left me lukewarm at best, this one's easily my favorite

voyages of marco polo is right around my top 10, and it's funny that you mention it as "another midweight euro" because that's totally how it comes across! but somehow it's surprisingly addictive - it's an exceptionally well-crafted game with lots of familiar systems, yet they work in tandem beautifully here.
if there's one thing that sticks out, it's also a game where each player gets a unique power - and the characters' powers are both unique abilities (not just stuff found elsewhere in the game) and super super strong. some reviewer once described it as everyone looking around the table and calling each other's characters OP, and i think that sums it up pretty nicely.

fuse is super cool, my only beef is that it's exceptionally hard for 2 and much more trivial with 5; it's not a disaster because you can always modify the difficulty if you want, but i wish it were a tad better balanced.

castles of mad king ludwig is one of those games people who like tend to REALLY like, and i'm oddly a bit in the middle. the fun shaped pieces make castle building legitimately exciting, you're not just tossing hexagons together like in suburbia, but really making something that feels unique.
the master builder is a "good" mechanic but man it can be an AP disaster, even for people like me that usually move along pretty well. the desire to not be punished immediately by someone else buying what you need or getting what they want cheap just brings out the agony.

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here's my current top 5 games:

1. dominion - the all-time classic. absurdly replayable, even with a handful of the now (also absurd) 13 expansions.
2. race for the galaxy - the ultimate value-for-time game, there's so much to chew on in a 30-60 minute, well, race.
3. the castles of burgundy - stefan feld is my guy, and this is arguably his best game, and undoubtedly his most popular. has a lot of depth but is also pretty accessible.
4. bora bora - stefan feld again, this one is sadly out of print and feels like it kind of flew under the radar of some of his bigger hits but man. what a supremely satisfying amalgamation of worker placement, engine/tableau building, and goal completion. it's one of those games that you spend the first half struggling to stop spinning your wheels, but when (and how) you get through makes it feel so good.
5. ra - the ultimate bidding game, and legendary designer reiner knizia's masterpiece. a testament to the "less-is-more" school of game design, and how much game you can pack in a handful of choices if you truly do it right. i'm always amazed at the clever plays and brutal mistakes i make every single time i play this one.

recently i've been playing a ton of macao (also stefan feld) on yucata.de and although it has solidly hung in the 6-10 zone in my rankings i feel like it could easily displace something here. another engine/tableau builder swirling around the most clever dice/action point mechanism of all time

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sucks that the worst Mario game of the lot was somehow the only one that advanced

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i did like hansa teutonica but it didnt grab me the one time i played it (and it was a little slower than i'd have wanted, we played with five and had some pretty ap-prone folks involved)

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seems like the inevitable (and correct) thing to do

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might be too late, might not matter, but might as well
GP7: Super Mario 3D World

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i have mostly played this one under the name "monikers", which has slightly different rules than you laid out. it's a fun party game though, people catch on to it pretty quick, and you can be reasonably competitive if you so desire

most of the stuff i said about party games and codenames fits here too. it's good! i just don't get the warm fuzzies quite the same way as my favorite stuff

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GP6: Super Mario 3D World

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GP5: Super Mario 3D World

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GP4: Super Mario 3D World

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GP3: Super Mario 3D World

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GP2: Super Mario 3D World

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+10 Super Mario 3D World
+9 Mario Kart 8
+8 Celeste
+7 Super Mario Odyssey
+6 The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
+5 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
+4 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
+3 Super Mario Galaxy 2
+2 Rayman Legends
+1 Portal 2

GP1: Super Mario 3D World

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vote for 3d world instead tbqh, its better than all three

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Immune: Super Mario 3D World
Boot: Xenoblade Chronicles

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i could reasonably make a top 20 of games i legitimately enjoy/rate highly but anything beyond that is gonna be stretching

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Immune: Mario Kart 8
Boot: Shovel Knight

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i think it's much more of a testament to rare's quantity than their quality that one would feel obligated to put many of their games in a theoretical "top 50", especially given the relative lack of third party support in the n64 era

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only one. rare's output in the n64 era is overrated as heck

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Immune: Mario Kart 8
Boot: God of War

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still one of my favorite things to quote

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i should have been paying attention to this sooner but at least mario 3d world is still around

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Immune: Mario Kart 8
Boot: God of War

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Immune: Super Mario 3D World
Boot: Sid Meiers Civilization V

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as much of anything as green stars do, basically (they're just sometimes-required collectibles)

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the needing flagpoles with all characters thing, btw, is only to unlock stamps which are not required for any of the levels to be unlocked. if you collect all stars/stamps/flags with one character you can still make it to the end.

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3d world level design is so much better, and there's literally only one world (12 stages) with "repeat levels", which are STILL more varied and interesting than the kinds in 3d land's alternate w1-8!!

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codenames feels like it has been around for like 20 years at this point, it's a game that's design feels both timeless and at home with other classic games

i wouldn't have it nearly this highly, but "party" games, even ones that are as clever/competitive/well-designed as this, just don't strike a chord for me as much as other stuff.
but, heck, i do very much appreciate that there are a lot of better options for such games nowadays. nobody has an excuse (especially right now, given all the s*** going on) to be stuck playing CAH anymore.

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i think i would like 3d land better if i hadn't played 3d world first and it wasn't so much better

3d land also has the problem of the entire "inverted castle" worlds being just too repetitive
there's a way to do repeat worlds/levels, and that really wasn't it

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