Board 8 > my top 32 tabletop games

(+) Yeah! (+)

Another excellent choice! Keyflower is another one of my all time favorites. It's an incredibly interactive euro-style game and it scales really well at different player counts - even all the way up to six players.

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i think my main beef as someone who plays a lot of 2-player games is that it loses some of what makes it special at that count. obviously you can still compete over tiles, but the interactivity of the auction/worker-placing/whatever-you-want-to-call-it mechanics with the differently-colored meeples is a big draw and doesn't play as well with 2

whereas a lot of games with less direct interaction tend to scale down to 2 just fine

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yeah, that's fair! i'm guessing it's painfully zero-sum. screwing someone in a multiplayer KF game is rare but satisfying (a friend once waited until a round was almost over to outbid my lone green meeple with two), whereas i feel like it'd be every other move in 2p.

cyko posted...

Another excellent choice! Keyflower is another one of my all time favorites. It's an incredibly interactive euro-style game and it scales really well at different player counts - even all the way up to six players.

agreed!
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i mean, 2p games can be pretty agressively zero-sum in general but i just think you gain a lot from the extra player(s) in the equation to use their tiles/compete for the season's tiles/etc. it's a lot of the flavor of the game, at least!!

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bumpo

As someone who just started getting into tabletop gaming in the past year, I've been using this topic to help me choose what to start my collection with. Recently bought Aeon's End and have been loving it. Looking forward to seeing your top 5!

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thanks! more to come!
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I bought Spirit Island after reading your write-up and only got to play one round of it before lock down with close friends, but it was a lot of fun and we can't wait to play more. It'll be a lot of fun showing my less game savvy crew the game lol

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5. A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (2nd Edition) (2015)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Collectible card game, tableau-builder, player combat
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 7
Game length: 30-60 minutes
Experience: 100+ plays with 2 players, 2-4 plays with 3-4 players, incl online (2015-2020)
Previous ranks: 3/100 (2016), 3/80 (2018)

Description - AGOT:TCG is a LCG (Living Card Game) that finished its run early in 2020. Like Magic the Gathering, it was expandable and put the impetus on you to build your own deck out of a large set of cards, and you played your deck against others. In the game, you control one of eight factions in the ASOIAF universe. Each round is split into subphases, the most important of which consist of a simultaneous plot card reveal, drawing cards, using cards to build a tableau of characters and locations, and using your characters to attack your opponents or to defend from your opponent's attacks. The goal of the game is to win 15 Power, which can be accumulated by a wealth of card effects, or by winning challenges.

Experience - After my initial foray into the world of ASOIAF with AGOT:TBG, I decided to get into the LCG, since it appeared to allow you to play a smaller number of players. The game came out in the fall of 2015, which was perfect timing, and I got in by November or so. Problem was, you needed more than just a single copy of the base core set to field any fun decks; the pre-built suggestions were inconsistent and unfun. I delved into what it would take to make the game fun and discovered that it had a dedicated fanbase from the first iteration of the game, mostly on CardgameDB, Reddit, and Facebook.

Through these resources (and about a dozen different game-devoted podcasts), I discovered that in fact, you needed three copies, and expansions were beginning to come out already. In order to make any interesting decisions, you really had to give your deck meaning. But then, as I fell into the rabbit hole, I started identifying more with the AGOT community instead of my board gaming friends. I wanted to participate in their tournaments, and soon the nicely assembled beginner-friendly decks gave way to a single constructed deck that I fruitlessly attempted to parlay into tournament victories. The community in my city isn't as robust as you might hope for as big of a city it is, but Thrones became a weekly appointment, and many weekend days - including multiple Gen Cons - were devoted to traveling around the city or even out of state to other tournaments. I've got several memorable losses, some memorable wins, and enough plays to forget about many of them as well.

I've fallen out of the community in the last two years or so, but the community really made it - I'm still able to follow along on Facebook threads at the game-memes, and when it does come time for a tournament, if I'm willing to travel, I'm almost always able to find someone friendly enough not just to provide me a deck, but to recommend and construct a good one for me to play there. And I still have fun playing it.

Design - If you've ever played Magic the Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh!, you know what you're getting into here. You build up a set of dudes and play some cards to empower them, then start sending those dudes after your opponent's dudes, and get some help from special effects. AGOT has these qualities, of course, but it deepens it with several different layers.

There are three primary differences between AGOT and the other games I've mentioned. The first is the round structure. In many card games, the gameplay is relatively uninterrupted. I draw my card, then I play my dudes, then I attack your dudes (and you perhaps get the opportunity to react), then maybe I play a few more cards, and then I pass. Then you do the exact same set of steps. AGOT takes more of a round structure, where we both draw our cards at the same time. Then you play your dudes, then I play my dudes. Then you make your attacks, then I make my attacks. This tactical element means that the ability to bust out combos that depend on playing and then immediately using cards/guys is significantly weakened - theoretically, your opponent will always have the ability to react and adapt (unless of course they have no answers). AGOT co-opts Magic's "tapping" system as "kneeling"; i.e. turning a card sideways to indicate usage. Due to the system of the challenge phase, deciding which characters to leave standing for defense and which to commit to attacking provides great tradeoffs.

The next is the plot deck. AGOT has a simultaneous action selection plot phase, during which each player selects a card from a separate deck, known as a plot deck, and simultaneously reveals it. This is the beginning to each round, and a plot card can have not only a powerful immediate effect (such as killing all characters, or letting you draw cards, or letting you kneel characters, and more), but it also has ongoing conditions that determine how the round goes. Some some state that certain challenge types cannot be made; some give extra strength to characters; some reduce the gold cost of cards you play. The plot cards also give you the stats that help you determine who is first player, how much money to collect during the plot phase, and how potent your successful challenges will be. The simultaneous nature of the plot phase feels utterly unique to Thrones; among high-level players with evenly matched decks, the plot phase can win or lose games.
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And finally, there's the challenges phase. As I've already alluded to, the fact that one player's challenges immediately follow another's is unique to AGOT. But what's even more interesting is that you can initiate three different types of challenges each round: military, intrigue, and power. Each character has icons that indicate which type of challenge it can participate in. A challenge is defined by the rewards for winning it, the claim. In a military challenge, the closest analog to a game like Magic, winning a military challenge means the opponent has to lose a character. The cool thing about this is that the loser gets to choose which character(s) to kill when a challenge is resolved, and whether you win a challenge by 10 points or in a tie (since attackers win ties), the claim is the same, because there are no life points to lose. An intrigue challenge lets the winner discard a card from the loser's hand at random, preventing this from being a safe area - it does not affect the board state. And finally, the power challenge lets you steal power from your opponents. Since power is the win condition, this is obviously an important challenge - but since it affects neither the board state nor the opponent's hand, it can be weaker early on. The reward for winning a challenge unopposed is gaining a power, so there's plenty of incentive to try to wreck your opponent's board state.

AGOT, at least early on, also did a great job making the decisions in the challenge phase the most important part of the game. For one thing, most event cards, unlike Spells or Sorceries in other games, usually do not do anything super-impressive alone. You can't just play an Event card and suddenly have a huge dude on the board, or suddenly kill your opponents' dudes. Events interact with the game generally in the challenge phase; you can stop a character's defense or attack with an event, or you can get targeted kill on an opponent's character if you win a challenge. There are also lots of other ways the game rewards winning challenges through characters' innate abilities; a character who has the common Renown keyword gains power on itself when it wins a challenge. And losing a character matters; you can have multiple copies of Tywin Lannister, but if he dies in a challenge, you can no longer play those extra copies of him - he's dead!

If there's a downside to AGOT, it's that not every game is guaranteed to be fun. It's very possible to experience NPE (negative player experience) in the game; losing a key dude can often mean you're on your way to defeat, but defeat can be slow and agonizing - a rush deck will win quickly while seemingly not damaging you too much; an aggro deck will obliterate your board but still win relatively quickly; but a control deck can take ten plots to sink in an inexorable kill. There's tremendous variance in how a game plays out, and many decks de-emphasize the challenge phase, which to me can feel disappointing. (One example is the Shadows mechanic, introduce almost three years into the game's run; many cards can enter play outside of the marshaling phase, and when they do, they can do something ridiculous.) Power creep can also devalue interesting strategies in favor of degenerate combos.

That said, with the right matched decks, AGOT is strategic, dramatic, tactical, thematic and beautiful. Highly recommended.

Future - Between COVID-19 shutting down in-person tournaments, the difficulty of buying and organizing cards, and the game no longer being supported by Fantasy Flight Games, it's hard for me to recommend making AGOT your lifestyle game at this point. However, it's well supported on theironthrone.net and by the playerbase on Facebook, and if you just want to play casually, you can still buy starter decks or used sets pretty easily. One of these days I'll get around to doing that more. 'Til then, I actually played in a tournament online at the start of the quarantine and had a decent time doing it. It's not the same as in person, but it did give me access to all the cards, and I didn't have to leave home to do it. As I get more and more reps in other games, I imagine AGOT LCG will drop more and more, but it had an almost unmatched run for me.
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Black_Hydras posted...

I bought Spirit Island after reading your write-up and only got to play one round of it before lock down with close friends, but it was a lot of fun and we can't wait to play more. It'll be a lot of fun showing my less game savvy crew the game lol

oh awesome, glad i could be of help! SI is great and i really wish i had people dedicated enough to play with where i could play some of the less beginner-y levels and spirits!
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The only CCG/LCG I really got into was Pokemon. I had a ton of fun playing it with my friends. Our experience mirrors yours except that I had a group of 6 I would play with every week and some or all of us would travel to various tournaments. I am still friends with all of those guys and most of them are still part of my core gaming group.

We got into it at the very beginning, but after abut two years of playing frequently, our interest faded when the initial Base, Fossil and Jungle sets were declared no longer valid for tournament play. We were dumbfounded that the cards we had invested so much time and money into acquiring were no longer allowed to be used. Basically, if you wanted to keep playing, you were required to buy new sets.

The reality that CCGS exist to make money set in and it completely erased my interest in CCGS - even though I loved constructing decks and had a lot of fun with Pokemon while it lasted.

My main deck for tournaments was a Moltres wildfire deck and it served me quite well - I managed to take 2nd place twice in larger tournaments but I never did win one....

...Until about 3 years ago at Gencon - one of my gaming buddies persuaded me to join a sealed deck tournament - just for old time''s sake. We practiced a little before the tournament and when the time came, I took the cards I was given and assembled a deck just like the old days.... and I went undefeated. 5-0 to take first place. And I only defeated one little kid (in the first round, lol).

Man ... just reading about your LCG experience got me VERY nostalgic... and it wasn't even the same game!!

Listen up - anyone who has never gotten into a CCG/LCG, be warned - THEY WILL CONSUME YOU!!!


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I'm about due to get into a new card game probably

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cyko posted...

The only CCG/LCG I really got into was Pokemon. I had a ton of fun playing it with my friends. Our experience mirrors yours except that I had a group of 6 I would play with every week and some or all of us would travel to various tournaments. I am still friends with all of those guys and most of them are still part of my core gaming group.

We got into it at the very beginning, but after abut two years of playing frequently, our interest faded when the initial Base, Fossil and Jungle sets were declared no longer valid for tournament play. We were dumbfounded that the cards we had invested so much time and money into acquiring were no longer allowed to be used. Basically, if you wanted to keep playing, you were required to buy new sets.

The reality that CCGS exist to make money set in and it completely erased my interest in CCGS - even though I loved constructing decks and had a lot of fun with Pokemon while it lasted.

My main deck for tournaments was a Moltres wildfire deck and it served me quite well - I managed to take 2nd place twice in larger tournaments but I never did win one....

...Until about 3 years ago at Gencon - one of my gaming buddies persuaded me to join a sealed deck tournament - just for old time''s sake. We practiced a little before the tournament and when the time came, I took the cards I was given and assembled a deck just like the old days.... and I went undefeated. 5-0 to take first place. And I only defeated one little kid (in the first round, lol).

Man ... just reading about your LCG experience got me VERY nostalgic... and it wasn't even the same game!!

Listen up - anyone who has never gotten into a CCG/LCG, be warned - THEY WILL CONSUME YOU!!!

i meant to respond to this! in 2017 or 2018 gencon, my AGOT-playing friend fell like 0-2 or 1-2. he dropped out and decided to play magic the gathering instead, and wound up winning.

as a kid i played a lot of yugioh - the metagame at my school is a treasured memory. the fad was passing (and power creep was already weakening my deck) but i finally quit when cards came out so powerful that they were banned, and quickly half my deck was banned cards.
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4. The Resistance: Avalon (2012)

Category: Team vs Team
Genres: Hidden roles, social deduction, voting
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 25-40 minutes
Experience: 100+ plays with 5-10 players (2013-2019)
Previous ranks: 1/100 (2016), 4/80 (2018)

Description - Each player is assigned either to the Good Team (majority) or the Bad Team (minority, but know who one another are). The goal for each team is to win three of the five "missions." The missions are divided into a nomination step, when a leader nominates a team of players. Then there is the approval step, where every player gets to vote publicly on that team. If the team is approved by the populace, the team secretly votes on whether the mission will succeed (good team wins), with a single failing vote being required to fail the mission. Avalon's twist on the Resistance formula is Merlin, a good guy who secretly knows all the bad guys - but whom the bad guys can target to win the game.

Experience - More than any other game, Avalon is responsible for my modern board gaming. I used to play AIM and B8 mafia a ton when I had more time and patience and fire in my belly. While it isn't the same playing in person with people who don't play all day all the time, in-person mafia is how I played the first time; and after I moved on from online mafia, I did enjoy the occasional face-to-face game. In 2013, during a party with people I wasn't super-familiar with, I suggested we play mafia. Turns out the roommate of the host once played a lot of mafia online as well.

I hung onto that connection. Three months later, she invited me to join a game of Avalon. For a year, I'd play Avalon with that group. One of those friends is the one who introduced me to other hobby gamers and got me into the hobby. It got played probably hundreds of times those first few years. The pace has slowed now that I see those friends less and play more euros (and, to be honest, don't play at all during the quarantine) but it's still near and dear to my heart.

Design - For its ideal player counts - 7, 8, and 10 - there is no finer good vs bad social deduction game than Avalon. At all of these player counts, the good guys need to be perfect in order to win that fifth mission. Resistance was originally a derivative of mafia, and it perfectly captures that feeling of a battle of wits. As a bad guy, you need to deceive and mislead, while as a good guy, you need to suss out the lies and figure out whom to believe. And the only information you're given is the behavior of the other players - whom they believe, how they vote, and of course, what happens when the mission is approved. The best tension in the game comes from the dichotomy of the public vote, where it's all bluster but the truth is obscured, and the private mission, where you don't know who sabotaged a mission, but whether a mission succeeds or not is determined.

A few elements make Resistance better than Mafia. The first is that it can be played entirely without a moderator other than for someone to know the words to say before the game starts. Then there's the voting/leader system - while discussion is a free-for-all, the voting is structured as a simultaneous action, where you can easily tally a yes/no instead of letting everyone pick someone randomly. And tied to this is that there is no player elimination, which allows people even more effectively to lurk into the endgame.

You can of course player Avalon however you want. When I started out, I was all about the battle of wills - there's no stakes unless someone risks getting actually hurt in real life - and you can really see how people react when accused. By playing with players who are considerably less into the game, I've taken more of a laid back style and now tend to encourage quick votes with less confrontation. There's no way to pretend that the emotional investment of getting into each other's faces and fighting ot the death is more engaging, but a wider range of people is able to appreciate playing at a saner pace without hot tempers, and that is more important to me these days.

There are two design flaws in Avalon, to me. The first is that the Merlin mechanic is slightly an issue, because bad guys can win completely randomly. The implication here is that good guys should be winning three missions far more often than bad guys, if you want the overall win rate to be 50-50. (In recent years, we definitely prefer playing with the Oberon role, a bad guy who's unknown to other bad guys, and who therefore causes double-fails and bad guys succeeding on missions much more often.)

The second is not a game design flaw per se, but one that can impact your enjoyment of the game a lot: it's only as fun as the competence of the players. Unlike a worker placement game, Avalon is literally all interaction. Now you don't need to be best friends with everyone playing, but you do need to trust everyone to be playing somewhat competently. We sometimes do play with someone who just rarely ever talks, and when he talks, gives weak opinions. There's adding a wild card, and then there's adding someone who's mainly dead weight and isn't really contributing... but whose vote (and allegiance) need to be inferred or at least attempted, in order for the game to work. Playing Avalon with a bunch of non-gamers is also likely a no-go; if everyone votes Accept on every mission and questions only the people who reject the first mission, the game is very unlikely to have any space for strategic discussion.

Future - The fire doesn't burn as intensely, but I'm still ooking forward to the next time I have seven people who want to play Avalon.
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Yoooo Avalon

Ah. Could play forever

avalon always good time

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avalon/resistance are pretty much the perfect versions of mafia for me; i get that some people like the experience that a huge game of werewolf/mafia brings, but avalon just distills all of that experience into one tight, compact package. the rules are as complicated as they need to be, and there's still all of the moments of brilliance/agony you get in those longer games

it's also in my top 10! i think we finally hit a cross-over, yahoo

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Playing as the power roles in avalon is a blast

Nothing beats getting assassinated as percival after solving the game

Naye745 posted...

avalon/resistance are pretty much the perfect versions of mafia for me; i get that some people like the experience that a huge game of werewolf/mafia brings, but avalon just distills all of that experience into one tight, compact package. the rules are as complicated as they need to be, and there's still all of the moments of brilliance/agony you get in those longer games

it's also in my top 10! i think we finally hit a cross-over, yahoo

i find it rather doubtful we'll have any more overlap. curious to see your (and others' top X lists after this is over!)

turbopuns3 posted...

Playing as the power roles in avalon is a blast

Nothing beats getting assassinated as percival after solving the game

percival is my fav role to play, but my fav outcome is often being merlin and having the bad guys pass me over because i was "too obvious"
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I literally played Avalon for the first time last night on https://netgames.io/

...I didn't go well. One of the bad guys just could not really understand the rules for some reason and simply always voted for the mission to succeed, so the good guys immediately cleared the first three to win. Then the assassin randomly chose Merlin by luck. I don't think it's possible to have a worse round. I'm sure it gets better I guess.

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it's a game very sensitive to the players you play with, for sure.
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hmm

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should continue tomorrow!
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SeabassDebeste posted...

AGOT is heavily influenced by Diplomacy, which also uses the "planning phase" mechanic.

By the way, any diplomacy players here?

People pull together Diplomacy games every so often- I think they play like twice and then get annoyed and leave it for a year or two. I think Kraid/Fake was usually the driving force but I don't remember who else. I played it once and decided it wasn't the game for me.

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3. Codenames/Duet (2015, 2017)

Category: Team vs Team/Cooperative
Genres: Limited communication, clue-giving, word game, party game
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 20 minutes
Experience: 200+ plays over 100+ sessions with 2-12+ players (2015-2020) incl Pictures, Deep Undercover
Previous ranks: 2/100 (2016), 2/80 (2018)

Description - A five-by-five grid is populated with words, and a random card is shown to one or two "spymasters." That card indicates words that the spymaster wants the guesser(s) on their team to guess. The game alternates between a spymaster's giving a single-word clue and a number of words that that clue corresponds to, and the guessers' guessing which words are theirs. In a typical game, there are two spymasters on different teams, and the first team to cover all its words wins. In Duet, each player is a spymaster, and both cooperatively try to guess the words on the other side of the card.

Design - Codenames is Czech designer Vlaada Chvatil's best creation. It tickles many of my favorite mechanisms - clue-giving, team/cooperative play, word games. These all encourage outside-the-box thinking, and plus you can try to develop rapport with your teammates. There's ample opportunity for trash-talking on people's turns. Because of the team aspect and the faith you need to have in one another, you'll inevitably experience moments with high stakes of "dammit, why didn't you know what I was thinking," or "I can't believe you caught that connection," or even "man, you got lucky guessing a word I didn't intend," or "AHHHH I MISSED THAT CARD."

Of course, the usual disclaimer applies: with tabletalk a near guarantee in a game, the players you play with will inevitably matter as well. Language barriers can apply, and people with no sense of humor will drag the game down, and some spymasters are too afraid to give more than one-word clues. In such a case, it's actually nice that the game provides the means to go at your own pace, as well. Among games that lend themselves to tabletalk, Codenames tends to be more forgiving than, say, Avalon. The one thing I highly recommend about playing Codenames in a group is to use a timer - it ironically can reduce the pressure on clue-givers, since you understand that it'll be imperfect. As the rulebook says: "You don't need to say 'This clue is a stretch.' Of course it's a stretch - it's Codenames!"

Experience - Codenames is the first game I heard of before its release (Gen Con 2015), got hyped for, and then had paid off. While the game was in short supply at the time, one of my friends got a copy from Gen Con and it almost immediately became my favorite non-Avalon game in the rotation. I've played it with family, friends of friends, non-gamers, strangers - in living rooms, on the floor, picnic tables, pubs, online, on B8. There are fantastic apparatuses to play the full original game online, though it would be nice if they could also do one for Duet - we've been using Google Sheets to handle that.

I will say that Pictures and the "Deep Undercover" version (with lots of words related to sex and drug use) are noticeably worse, but they aren't a bad change of pace.

Future - Until lockdown is over, it's still not really gonna happen that I play many games in person. That said, Codenames has been a great go-to with 6+ in e-hangouts, and Duet with the Google Doc has been solid as well. It's no longer as addictive as it once was - I've easily had sessions six games long - but I don't think its genius will ever be lost.
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In case anyone who sees this is interested in Diplomacy, I made a separate thread for it specifically

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78794443

Also, on topic, Codenames is the perfect game for awkward numbers or indecisive groups

Codenames is not my first choice but I've played it with a few groups and it has always gone fine

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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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Curious if we'll see Hive in the top 2. It's simultaneously one of the simplest games to pick up and one of the most difficult to really master. I absolutely love it and it makes me sad that I never learned chess at a young age.

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2. Time's Up! Title Recall (2008)

Category: Team vs Team
Genres: Clue-giving, limited communication, memory, real-time
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 25-40 minutes
Experience: 50+ plays with 3-10 (2016-2019) incl Time's Up, Monikers
Previous ranks: NR/100 (2016), 1/100 (2018)

Summary - Not a designer game at all, Time's Up! has been branded as "Celebrity," "Fishbowl," and "Monikers." There is a deck of cards with titles of movies/books/games/shows on it. On your turn, a timer is flipped, and your job is to get your partner(s) to guess as many cards as you can from the top of the deck. The deck is passed at the end of your turn. When the deck is emptied, the cards are shuffled back and play resumes, but with new rules. In the first pass, anything goes as a clue. In round 2, the cluegiver is restricted to a single word. In round 3, no words are permitted, only charades-acting.

Design - It's probably worthwhile to reiterate that in my love of Time's Up!, I don't particularly credit the publishers/credited designers of this mass-market publication. It's a parlor game that you can literally play with a fishbowl. The best aspects the publishers gave are 1. an excellent list of words to guess and 2. a nice timer and 3. a solid rule-set.

To me, titles of works are simply more accessible and enjoyable to guess than people, where if you don't know them, you just don't know them. You can usually try to piece together ways to clue someone in on "Game of Thrones" if they don't know it (albeit perhaps not in time); however, "Tyrion Lannister" would by significantly less guessable by someone with zero knowledge. The titles in TU:TR are diverse and popular; most people familiar with American/western culture will know most of the printed words, and there will be a few that people don't, which adds to the fun. You'll get to see who knows what, and gaps in people's knowledge can lead them to explore further. (I learned about the song "Take Me Home Country Roads" thanks to TU:TR!) It's a nice trip through the cultural and pop cultural canon.

The timer for TU:TR is well-suited to my tempo. For my money, if the words are relatively known, then almost everyone can successful clue for at least one word. But it also remains tight enough that later rounds can be tough, and it generally prevents people from running out the deck before everyone gets a shot.

Finally, I think a few rules in the edition I played are key. There's no skipping in round 1, where free talking is allowed. This forces people to reckon with the same difficult cards at length, til they're ingrained on your brain. In rounds 2 and 3, skipping is permitted; however, when you do so, you lose the chance to guess that word. As an extra note of pressure, if you guess wrong, you auto-lose the word. This prevents a pure memorizer from just reciting every possibly related word to the clue until getting it right - precision is demanded.

It all creates a tight, enjoyable experience. Time is always of the essence. Memory is a huge equalizer here; if you have no idea what "Game of Thrones" is but someone is able to guess it on the clue "Ned Stark is from this," then round 2 you'll be able to say "Stark!" as your clue, as if you knew it yourself. Because the clues are so limited in rounds 2-3, knowing the wordpool better makes you a more effective guesser as well. The shorthand and rapport that develop in a game always delight.

The only downside I've found with the rules I play with, is that sometimes people just skip in rounds 2-3 way too quickly, instead of trying a dumb clue or acting like an idiot to solicit a guess. In this way, you can hunt for easier words, which does score you more points but feels inevitably unethical to me.

Experience - I encountered Time's Up! in its original "guess the people" form at a meetup. I was waiting to play my then-favorite game Avalon, and we played this as a filler. The snappy energy of it was instantly contagious, hitting my favorite buttons: team play, trivia, speed, clue-giving, acting (something no other game on my list has)... once I got it, I brought it to a different meetup, and playing it with someone there became the basis of another close friendship - quite a fruitful one in gaming terms. It became my absolute favorite way to close a game night.

To me, the game is more fun with the more punishing rules compared to Monikers or the like. A lot of people may dislike the pressure that comes from having to be right on the first guess, or by the short timer, or by the lack of blurb you can read aloud in round 1. Or they might not like not knowing stuff and feel disadvantaged. It's all understandable.

Time's Up! exercises different mental muscles from a lot of designer games. It has a lot in common with Trivial Pursuit and Taboo and Charades and even concentration/memory matching games. But it mixed in opportunity for creativity, binds things together in a game-y way that pulls it beyond "I don't know this word," and pushes people's buttons. I find that the level of engagement in a 4-player (the ideal count) TU is as high as it gets: you're either giving clues, listening for clues, or directly guessing. If played with people of similar skill, it's excellent. You can get measurably better during a single game with a single hot streak - or you could choke and just cave in and let it get in your head.

That engagement is ultimately what put TU so high, and it's what nearly all my favorite games have in common. Codenames lets everyone try to bond with their cluegiver; Avalon forces you to reckon with who is lying while trying to convince others of your own version of the truth. But while the pressures of social deduction and creative wordplay in those games can lead to less overall engagement, Time's Up has one of the absolute highest hit rates in terms of getting people's juices flowing. Whether they rise to the challenge or crack under the pressure - or both in the same 30 seconds - it's always a thrill.

Future - Here's hoping for the pandemic to end for real...
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Naye745 posted...

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.

agreed, and i think that's part of what makes codenames so brilliant, and why I'm so happy to see its success. as you can see from my #2 game, i have no issue with the timeless designs if they're great vehicles for fun. and the game providers give great frameworks for fun beyond (e.g.) just passing people free alcohol or whatever.

(to me, CAH isn't fun. there's only one active player, the card reveals are awkward because you need to pretend to laugh, and then the decision is usually arbitrary. i recently read a great (old) piece by SUSD on it. i don't follow them but am glad they could articulate so much of what makes it bad.)

Nelson_Mandela posted...

Curious if we'll see Hive in the top 2. It's simultaneously one of the simplest games to pick up and one of the most difficult to really master. I absolutely love it and it makes me sad that I never learned chess at a young age.

i actually haven't played hive more than once in person, so it didn't make this list. i agree it's chess-like, but to me chess-like is not something particularly aspirational!
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Great choice! I picked up Times Up Title Recall about a year ago and. I think it has become my favorite party game. You need to think on your feet and be willing to be a little ridiculous. The game also creates new inside jokes and some great stories. It definitely scratches a different itch than a strategy game, but it's a very entertaining game.

You also nailed why I don't like CaH or Apples to Apples. There's Always One or more people that just pick their cards arbitrarily or they intentionally choose the stupidest card and it really kills the entertainment value of the game.

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pleasantly surprised at another time's up fan!

#1 probably this weekend, will be busy for a few days
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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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decided to wrap this today after all!

1. Hansa Teutonica (2009)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Action allocation, area control, route-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 45-90 minutes
Experience: 15-18 plays over 10-15 sessions with 3-5 players (2019-2020), incl 1 play each of Britannia Expansion, East Expansion
Previous ranks: NR/100 (2016), NR/100 (2018)

Summary - Each player competes in the Hanseatic League of Traders in late-medieval Germany, attempting to score victory points by building networks. All of your actions in Hansa Teutonica are based on claiming routes: filling the empty spots between cities on a route with your personal traders and merchants, and then taking an action to clear that route out. Players can compete for control of cities, upgrade their action abilities, bump each other off of routes, and teleport their pieces around the board. Points are awarded for controlling cities, gaining bonus tiles, and connected offices.

Design - Hansa Teutonica is competition - distilled, concentrated, injected-in-your-veins competition.

This may be surprising, because you can view Hansa Teutonica as a sort of point salad. There are multiple ways to gain points during the course of play (controlling cities that people complete routes on; placing your presence on a spot with a printed VP; completing routes) and five different ways to gain points in endgame (full upgraded skills; control of cities; bonus markers; network; Coellen table. Point salads offer many routes to victory, which can sometimes reduce the sense of direct competition. But the thing that makes the varied ways of getting poins so clever in Hansa Teutonica is that they all come down to one singular mechanic: claiming routes.

To understand why it's contentious to claim routes, let's look at the initial board state: claiming a route the "traditional" requires three or four actions minimum: the two or three actions required to place your traders/merchants along a route, and then the final action to claim the route (thus removing those pieces from the houses on the route). So far, so good. But when the game starts, a player only gets two actions per turn. Drop two dudes (represented by wooden cubes and discs) on a route, and you're basically asking for someone else to drop in and block you.

There are myriad consequence and features that arise from this moment. Let's talk first about the displacement action. For an action - same as placing a piece normally - you actually have the ability to kick someone off of an occupied house (and onto an adjacent route), but you must "pay" a worker - i.e. send one from your available "supply" to your unused "stock." That stock will continue to grow as you displace others and claim routes, while your supply will dwindle - in order to replenish your useful supply, you need to take a bag action, which moves three pieces from your stock back to your supply.

Okay, so obviously you can block people. But other than cause a minor inconvenience for them, why would you do that? Here's where the brilliance of Hansa Teutonica begins to shine through: when you're kicked off the route, you get to move your piece to an adjacent route... and you also get to place on an adjacent route one of your pieces from your stock. By getting kicked, you get to bypass both bringing that extra piece into your supply via the bag action and having to spend an action placing it onto the board.

And what if your opponent doesn't take the bait and displace you? And what of those displaced and newly birthed pieces? What if you don't like any of the adjacent routes? Well, here's the great thing - pieces you place (or that are displaced) are not married to their homes. The fifth and final type of action (after claiming routes, placing pieces, placing with a displacement, and replenishing stock) is arguably the most interesting: for an action, you get to move two of your pieces from houses on any route to open houses on any other route. This is tremendously powerful; making pieces fungible this way enables blocking to become something like a market: if someone wants to take a route, you can park your pieces there and make them "pay" you to get out of it. You can then take that payment and claim your own routes with them.

Brilliantly, this avoids the prisoner's dilemma of a bash-the-leader situation. In many other high-interactivity games,

Those five actions constitute every single "action" a player takes. It's the route-claiming that unlocks powers, but as I mentioned, at the beginning of the game, you get two actions per turn, you can bag for three pieces to replenish your stock, and you can move two pieces around. However, by claiming routes leading to certain cities, you can upgrade any of the respective abilities. Inevitably, the action city Gottingen sees a run on it at the beginning of the game - the jump from two actions per turn to three actions is immense. With only two routes leading into it and three spots on each route, it immediately becomes a clusterfuck of blocking, moving, and attempts to claim it. Then there's the move upgrade; claim this route, and you have the option of getting yourself a new merchant (which has double-whammy bonus of being twice as expensive to displace, and twice as beneficial to have displaced). Moving your pieces also becomes a greater threat when you can move three instead of two pieces; most routes require three pieces or more to claim.
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It becomes immediately obvious how valuable these specific routes are in a vacuum. Indeed, everyone charges Gottingen in particular early on to upgrade their action-count. Why wouldn't everyone just keep rushing to the maximum five actions? Well, there are three awesome mitigating factors to it. The first is that for the action track in particular, this is not immediately profitable: in order to upgrade from three to four actions, you'll need to claim the route twice, as opposed to the once it took to upgrade from two to three. Because the difference between four actions and three actions is already less constricting than between three and two, the payoff drops off a lot. Next, there's opportunity cost: the longer you spend powering up, the fewer opportunities you may have to zip around the rest of the board scoring points; meanwhile, a player who claims the Gottingen route but controls the city will score several victory points off of your repeated forays for the action point.

And finally - most importantly - it's the other players' job to block your ass. If one player does manage to get five actions early on with others at three, that player will eventually win the game. However, due to the ability to block routes and make them more expensive, other players will both slow down an action-route fanatic and profit off that player's monomania. That player will eventually gain an upper hand in single-turn actions, but the advantage gained by others may present an insurmountable lead.

Okay, so that's how you power yourself up, and that's how you fight others. How does claiming a route actually result in points? You can upgrade your player board to the maximum for 16 theoretical points, but that's hilariously inefficient in the grand scheme of things if that's all you manage to accomplish. The vast majority of routes on the board do not grant power-ups. Instead, you'll want to fill them primarily to establish offices. If you possess the appropriately shaped piece (i.e. trader or merchant) and privilege, instead of upgrading your powers, you can instead send one of your traders or merchants to fill an office in one of the two endpoint cities. Privilege refers to a special, upgradable player ability. A player with the most offices in a city controls that city. Control a city, and throughout the game you'll gain a point each time anyone (including yourself) completes the route(s) leading to that city; at the end of the game, you get two more points for that control.

But you can lose that control as well. In order to control a city, you must have the most offices there. Usually, you'll only have one there. But in case of a tie, the tiebreaker is the person who last placed an office there! You may spend your time happily constructing your route and then establishing an office, only to lose control the very next time someone else claims it and establishes their own office in the same city, placing their trader in the office to the right of yours. You've earned yourself only one measly victory point and will not get the two at the end of the game. But it doesn't just become a race to get tons of offices into a city - and that's due to privilege. See, each city has pre-defined allowed offices. Only a pre-defined number of offices - between one and six in the base game - can be established in a city, and they're locked behind privilege. The first open office spot is usually white (the lowest level). But after that, to fill an office, you must upgrade your privilege track on a route leading to Stade. You can try to rush around the board claiming lots of white offices, but without upgrading that privilege, you'll find yourself losing that control quickly to people who invested in privilege.

If it seems like I dug an unusually high amount into the tactics and strategy of the game here, it's because Hansa Teutonica truly has what they call emergent gameplay. Because of the chaos in a 2+ player game and the vastness of your options on each turn, it is nowhere near as abstract and dry as a game like Go or Chess (or yes, Hive). But there are still vast strategic options and near-zero luck (other than bonus-tile draw). And the game is transparent enough that after a single play - or before it ends - people are realizing what they could have done better, would do better in a next play, and can still do better in the current game. And due to the limited number of actions per turn with zero "cleanup phase" and high interference, even normally AP-prone players can take relatively snappy turns. You can attempt to play Hansa Teutonica solitaire, but the joy in it comes from maneuvering and identifying what's cheapest, who's likely to kick you (and gift you free pieces). What's the best valuation? What's the best play? All this in a game that can easily end in sixty minutes.

I didn't even get into Bonus Tiles, probably a necessary mechanism to incentivize people to go for otherwise seemingly low-value routes. They're maybe the least elegant and perhaps most slightly broken element of the design. But with players' ability to clog bonus tile routes as well, that isn't really a big strike against the game as a whole.
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Experience - I first played Hansa Teutonica at Origins last year. It was an innocuous try at their old gaming library, which missed some of the hotter stuff I might have wanted to try. Having heard this was good and mean, I sat and learned the rules from an atrocious rulebook. I then brought it to a group of five of my friends, who found it just okay. Eventually in that game, I started hammering the action route and got to five actions, then started upgrading my board with a route that I owned. I won by a wide margin, with more than one opponent distantly behind. People found it... mostly meh. I saw potential.

Later at the same con, one of those friends, two more, and I took the same game and played a four-player game. This game went considerably faster given that two of us knew what we were doing. And also notably, I attempted to employ the same strategy: rushing to five actions. People noticed what I was doing and, instead of blocking me, attempted to copy it. My friend who'd previously played also did that, but first spent a turn to gain control of Gottingen. I protested against everyone who was aping my strategy - can't you see you're feeding him points?! But it was no good - we hammered that city, and he raked a bunch in. Now eight to twelve points won't be game-breaking usually, but because he was gaining those points so early in the game and because of the 20-in-game-VP-limit timer, this meant that I had incredibly limited time to make use of all the actions I'd just piled up. I was unable to capitalize on the action advantage as the game slipped away too quickly to make up the VP deficit.

That game went snappily and unpredictably, and to my delight, it led to a rematch. In this rematch, a different friend staked out an office in Gottingen. However, this time, seeing what happened last time, people were both more reticent to go hard on actions. This might lead the controller of Gottingen to repeatedly claim the action route himself, but everyone else, seeing this, clogged the routes leading into it, making that strategy a non-starter. This third game was much heavier on blocking and moving and attempting to build routes and exploit other opportunities for scoring. And that is how we started to see the true brilliance of the game: it emerged when we saw the amount of impact we could have on a metagame.

I believe a Big Box printing of Hansa Teutonica was issued earlier this year, at the time of Origins, it was out of print. No worry. I immediately went and paid approximately double price to have it shipped to the USA from Poland. It was that good. It's almost certainly the longest, deepest strategy game that anyone asks to play more than once in one sitting. (Five-player games sensibly take longer to complete than four or three, which are historically more common counts for me.) I've had at least five game nights where Hansa Teutonica was played twice. It's unheard of, and it's clear to see why.

Future - While I'm not sure about HT ranking #1 overall, I am certain it's #1 in the non-social/party category, with a bullet. It's a shame it doesn't really play two players, which means it has gotten zero play during quarantine. The couple I play with most will be moving out of my city before the end of quarantine, so I don't know when I'll next play. But whenever that moment comes, I'm looking forward to this bad boy returning to the table. I don't know how long HT can hold the #1 spot - it could lose it to Time's Up again, for instance - but just writing about it reminded me of why I love it so much.
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final list

Eaten By Sea Monsters
133. Secret Hitler (2015)
132. Good Cop, Bad Cop (2014)
131. Survive: Escape from Atlantis! (1982)
130. Sheriff of Nottingham (2014)
129. Dead of Winter (2014)
128. Imperial Settlers (2014)
127. But Wait, There's More! (2011)
126. Word on the Street (2009)
125. One Night Ultimate Werewolf (2014)

Gunned Down
124. Guillotine (1998)
123. Sagrada (2017)
122. Innovation (2010)
121. Quiddler (1998)
120. Tak (2017)
119. Mascarade (2013)
118. Cosmic Encounter (1977)
117. A Fake Artist Goes to New York (2012)
116. Boss Monster (2013)
115. The Godfather: Corleone's Empire (2017)
114. Carcassonne (2000)
113. Colt Express (2014)
112. Bohananza (1997)

Settle For It
111. Settlers of Catan (1995)
110. Ticket to Ride (2004)
109. Machi Koro (2012)
108. Yeti Slalom (2001)
107. Fire Tower (2019)
106. The Grizzled (2015)
105. God's Gambit (2014)
104. Sushi Go! (2013)
103. Ghost Stories (2008)
102. Paperback/Hardback (2014, 2018)
101. Bloody Inn (2015)
100. World's Fair 1893 (2016)
99. 4 Gods (2016)
98. Zombicide (2012)
97. San Juan (2004)
96. Dice Forge (2017)
95. 7 Wonders (2010)
94. It's a Wonderful World (2019)
93. Small World (2009)
92. Qwirkle (2006)
91. Roll for the Galaxy (2014)
90. Thunderstone (2009)
89. King of Toyko (2011)
88. Balderdash (1984)
87. Call to Adventure (2018)
86. Century: Eastern Wonders (2018)
85. Welcome (Back) to the Dungeon (2013, 2016)
84. Two Rooms and a Boom (2013)
83. Anomia (2010)
82. Coup (2012)
81. Lost Cities: The Board Game (2008)
80. Quadropolis (2016)
79. Love Letter (2012)
78. D-Day Dice (2012)
77. Turn the Tide (1997)
76. 6 nimmt! (1994)

Funded Awards
75. Burgle Bros (2015)
74. Shipwreck Arcana (2017)
73. Word Domination (2017)
72. Quacks of Quedlinberg (2018)
71. Acquire (1974)
70. Takenoko (2011)
69. Modern Art (1992)
68. Blokus (2000)
67. Ra (1999)
66. Tokaido (2012)
65. Isle of Skye (2015)
64. Seasons (2012)
63. No Thanks! (2004)
62. Terraforming Mars (2016)
61. Pret a Porter (2010)
60. The Mind (2018)
59. Tzolk'in (2012)
58. Pit (1903)
57. Jungle Speed (1997)
56. Cottage Garden (2016)
55. Agricola (2007)
54. For Sale (1997)
53. Dr. Eureka (2015)
52. Mysterium (2016)
51. Decrypto (2018)
50. Ghost Blitz (2010)
49. Ca$h 'n Guns (2014)
48. Pandemic (2008)
47. Hanabi (2010)
46. Raiders of the North Sea (2016)
45. Five Tribes (2014)
44. Karuba (2015)
43. Magic Maze (2018)
42. Celestia (2016)
41. When I Dream (2016)
40. Orleans (2014)
39. Dixit (2008)
38. BANG! The Dice Game (2013)
37. Power Grid (2004)
36. Glory to Rome (2005)
35. Viticulture (2013)
34. Scythe (2016)
33. Villagers (2019)

Spicy
32. Specter Ops (2015)
31. Azul (2017)
30. Splendor (2014)
29. VisualEyes (2003)
28. Captain Sonar (2016)
27. Kemet (2012)
26. Word Slam (2016)
25. Dominion (2008)
24. Spirit Island (2017)
23. Wits and Wagers (2005)
22. Food Chain Magnate (2015)
21. Century: Spice Road (2017)
20. Dracula's Feast (2017)
19. Pictomania (2011)
18. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (2015)
17. Concordia (2013)
16. Forbidden Island (2010)/Forbidden Desert (2013)
15. Castles of Burgundy (2011)
14. Werewords (2017)
13. Discoveries: The Journals of Lewis and Clark (2015)
12. Great Western Trail (2016)
11. Blood Bound (2013)
10. Aeon's End (2016)
9. A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (2nd Edition) (2011)
8. Bananagrams (2006)

Maximum Privilege
7. Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization (2015)
6. Keyflower (2012)
5. A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (2nd Edition) (2015)
4. Resistance: Avalon (2012)
3. Codenames/Duet (2015)
2. Time's Up! Title Recall (2008)
1. Hansa Teutonica (2009)

some final thoughts to come, at random times
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Man neither of my favorites on there.

Betrayal at House on the Hill
Tales of Arabian Nights.
No Tsuro of the Seaa either which I've managed to get my family into.

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I've only played Betrayal once. It was kinda fun but IMO not very "game-y," in the sense that your decisions, especially during the first half of the game, don't have a lot of impact on the course/outcome of the game.

Never played Tales of Arabian Nights.

Only played Tsuro once but it was nice - super fast abstract. Never played the Seas variant of it - hear it's pretty good but a little more complex than Tsuro.
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amending an earlier unfinished paragraph:

Brilliantly, this avoids the prisoner's dilemma of a bash-the-leader situation. In many other high-interactivity games, players are disincentivized to bash the leader, but they all want others to engage in conflict, because conflict weakens both parties. In Hansa Teutonica, players should actively seek to block the leader - and anyone else! - because blocking is its own benefit. That cutthroat zero-sum nature of a lot of abstracts is not present.

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Fun list to follow, thanks for all the hard work!

Do you keep up enough with upcoming releases to be able to comment on whether there are any you're looking forward to in the next six or twelve months?

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Wow. That was an unexpected number one. Hansa Teutonica has been on my Wishlist for a long time, but it always look like the theme was very lacking. It doesn't quite look like the definition of a Soulless Euro Style game - it does seem more interactive than most Euro games - but still dry on theme and components. Those aspects don't bother me - I love Euro games, especially Euro games that can be interactive without being directly mean (I hate Take That games where all or most of the decisions you have made in a game can be rendered meaningless by one action taken by anther player). But as we have gotten older, a number of my friends have grown fonder of flashy games with great pieces and a strong theme. Some of them have gotten burnt out on what they consider "dry victory point games".

I definitely prefer games that reward multiple plays and develop a metagame. The problem with that is that my gaming friends and I simply own WAY too many games. Unless it's a filler game or one several of us know how to play, we rarely play games once a year because everyone wants to try the latest game we picked up. We are also a chatty bunch, so in a 5-6 hour gaming night, we would typically get through only one or two games. So, who knows if we will ever get to Hansa Teutonica.

Either way, thanks for the great list! It took a while, but it was very interesting to read through your opinions and see where our tastes align and where they differ. I don't have time to do a full write-up, but I think I know my Top 25 or 30 board games, which I could post here.


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NBIceman posted...

Fun list to follow, thanks for all the hard work!

Do you keep up enough with upcoming releases to be able to comment on whether there are any you're looking forward to in the next six or twelve months?

Thanks!

Alas I don't really follow new games too much. I follow the r/boardgames subreddit, and that's where I get most of my news. My married friends (who are now moving away) have a Kickstarter fiend among them. They buy a lot of new games. I also used to attend meetups in my city quite frequently, including at a board game cafe where I'd intentionally pick new games myself.

For recent releases, I have yet to play any form of Gloomhaven, but I think Jaws of the Lion sounds much more palatable with my girlfriend (who I'm moving in with today). But buying heavy games feels like a trap too - we blasted through Aeon's End, but Spirit Island has yet to see a complete runthrough (with her). Maybe living together I can get it to the table more, but I'm not super-optimistic.

Hansa Teutonica's big box is also something I'm "looking forward to," even if I don't get it.

Maracaibo has been out for a while, but I'm looking forward to playing it. I suspect it won't quite live up to GWT but it's still interesting. Another sequel I'm interested in is Gaia Project, since I've gotten in some reps of Terra Mystica online since the quarantine started.

cyko posted...

Wow. That was an unexpected number one. Hansa Teutonica has been on my Wishlist for a long time, but it always look like the theme was very lacking. It doesn't quite look like the definition of a Soulless Euro Style game - it does seem more interactive than most Euro games - but still dry on theme and components. Those aspects don't bother me - I love Euro games, especially Euro games that can be interactive without being directly mean (I hate Take That games where all or most of the decisions you have made in a game can be rendered meaningless by one action taken by anther player). But as we have gotten older, a number of my friends have grown fonder of flashy games with great pieces and a strong theme. Some of them have gotten burnt out on what they consider "dry victory point games".

I definitely prefer games that reward multiple plays and develop a metagame. The problem with that is that my gaming friends and I simply own WAY too many games. Unless it's a filler game or one several of us know how to play, we rarely play games once a year because everyone wants to try the latest game we picked up. We are also a chatty bunch, so in a 5-6 hour gaming night, we would typically get through only one or two games. So, who knows if we will ever get to Hansa Teutonica.

Either way, thanks for the great list! It took a while, but it was very interesting to read through your opinions and see where our tastes align and where they differ. I don't have time to do a full write-up, but I think I know my Top 25 or 30 board games, which I could post here.

Thanks! It's obviously more encouraging to do these lists with others around. I'd love to see your top 25-30. And yes, I did feel like it was an unexpected #1 myself too! It's close between it and Time's Up!, but I think it's kind of nice to have a "designer game" on the top of the list. They obviously scratch insanely different itches.

I didn't touch on the theme in Hansa Teutonica, but I actually love it in a meta way. Like, look at the cover art: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/43015/hansa-teutonica

This guy actively wants you to be bored! He's offended at the idea of you having fun playing this game! 80% of the game is literally moving cubes around. 19% of it is moving wooden discs around. And 1% of it is using cardboard tokens to... well, move cubes and discs around. The theme of the game is almost satirically euro - you're literally building trading posts in medieval Germany. Like holy shit.

Because the lack of theme is so stark, you can't really compare it to euros like Feast for Odin, Agricola, Through the Ages, or Viticulture. Once you open the box, there's pretty much nothing there that evokes any of its theme - you're building some sort of network, sure, but the theme abstracts itself so much it's arguably less thematic than even Chess or Go, which have classic wargame themes. If your group could see the humor in that then they may enjoy it.

That said, I think the map actually looks pretty nice, so it doesn't hurt the eyes. And wood is pretty too.

RE: its fit for you otherwise - the metagame and the length of your gaming session - the chattiness is a really big component here, I think. I think I've had 4-player games wrap in 45 minutes, and the setup is literally one minute, if everyone pitches in. It's not hard to run two sessions in a row.

RE: the interaction - it's sublime. Let's look at the classic Catan and TTR - in Catan, blocking someone off can literally fuck over their entire game. The only benefit to the blocker is blocking someone else out (and indirect gains). Trading can feel bad for the person behind. And there's nothing good-feeling about the robber. Likewise, TTR's blocking depends on arbitrarily drawn tickets. HT's version of blocking feels intentional and not like meanness. IMO of course.
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I didn't know about the Hansa Big Box! Thanks for the tip on that one. For $35 with the expansions included, that seems like a no brainer! I think I will need to pre-order that one. If nothing else, it will look good on my shelf.

I will pull my list of favorite games and post it later. It looks like there are about 30 games I rated 8.5 or higher on BGG. After a quick glance, it looks like 7 or 8 of my Top 30 are also in your Top 30 (and 4 more between 31 and 40). And I think about half of my Top 30 aren't on your list at all.

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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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I don't have time for detailed write ups, but maybe I will some day. Here are my Top 30 favorite board games -

1. Eclipse
2. Power Grid series
3. Star Wars Epic Duels w/ custom decks

4. Agricola
5. Keyflower
6. Dominion series
7. Puerto Rico
8. Russian Railroads

9. Race For the Galaxy
10. Pandemic Legacy Season 1
11. Azul
12. Ticket to ride series

13. Scythe
14. Castles of Burgundy
15. Through the Ages
16. Viticulture Essential

17. Millennium Blades
18. Voyages of Marco Polo
19. Captain Sonar
20. Fuse
21. Anachrony
22. Castles of Mad King Ludwig
23. Star Wars: the Queen's Gambit

24. Time's Up Title Recall
25. New Frontiers
26. Terraforming Mars
27. Agricola: All Creatures Great & Small
28. Sagrada
29. 7 Wonders Duel
30. Shadows Over Camelot


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But wait theres more is so low I am actually upset

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