Board 8 > a short ranking of the tabletop games i played in 2021

(+) Yeah! (+)

I played hanabi for the first time just last week. Group was more math-orientezmd and we had some drinks, so it wasn't super tryhard.
Definitely a great time that I'm excited to play again.

I thought Hanabi was a fun concept but I don't have a burning desire to play more

AriaOfBolo posted...

I thought Hanabi was a fun concept but I don't have a burning desire to play more

this is pretty fair - hanabi doesn't actually set off any fireworks in my heart. but i have at least one friend whose mind was born by it, and i've gotten a ton of use out of the tiny box with my more casual gaming friends on trips.

my partner unfortunately isn't big on hanabi (or many of my old favorites!) so it will probably continue to see its reps decline. but i also got the game for $5 at target, so i'm very happy with the run it's gotten

AriaOfBolo posted...

I thought Hanabi was a fun concept but I don't have a burning desire to play more

this is pretty fair - hanabi doesn't actually set off any fireworks in my heart. but i have at least one friend whose mind was born by it, and i've gotten a ton of use out of the tiny box with my more casual gaming friends on trips.

my partner unfortunately isn't big on hanabi (or many of my old favorites!) so it will probably continue to see its reps decline. but i also got the game for $5 at target, so i'm very happy with the run it's gottenPeace___Frog posted...

I played hanabi for the first time just last week. Group was more math-orientezmd and we had some drinks, so it wasn't super tryhard.
Definitely a great time that I'm excited to play again.

glad to hear about positive experiences!

22. Splendor

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148228/splendor

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Card-drafting, resource management, tableau-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 20-35 minutes
First played: 2015
Experience: 20-40 plays with 2-4 players

In Splendor, you draft resource gems of five colors and use them to purchase three tiers of cards from a public offer. Your turn is either collecting resources, reserving a card from the public offer so only you can buy it, or spending gems to purchase a card from the offer. A bought card adds one gem's permanent purchasing power. The game ends when someone hits fifteen victory points - printed on the purchased cards, or gotten via achievements of buying those cards.

My first play of Splendor was not fun. It was early on in playing eurogames, and it felt tight, tense, slow, and passive-aggressive. While my opponents took their time making their decisions, I'd stare at my card and just hope no one reserved it, or I'd stare at the gems and hope no one took the ones I needed.

I revisited Splendor a few years after that and found it greatly different. These days, that sort of tension is a lot more pleasurable to me. I more easily accept what is and isn't in my locus of control. I play faster, and I don't get too invested in outcomes. And of course, the people I played with that time during the revisiting played al ot faster too. For a time, Splendor became, like Hanabi, a staple game to bring to game nights where there would be less experienced players - it's pure and simple and lets people experience strategic fundamental eurogame play and get some satisfaction out of it.

And I think some of that satisfaction comes from the very lizard-brain dopamine hit of becoming more powerful. While the optimal way to play Splendor isn't to engine-build, very few games distill the experience of "engine-building" down the way Splendor does. Even a game like Catan has more tiers of involvement; you have a dice-based random method of resource generation there and have to deal with area control and hidden cards. In Splendor, you want gem, you go out and get gem. And then once your card is in place, future cards are easier to buy. Incredibly straightforward.

I would be remiss not to omit Splendor's physical form in its appeal. While its visual art is almost comically bland, it crucially involves extremely satisfying weighted chips to represent the gems. I believe that Asmodee's current printed version uses lighter, cheaper plastic, but the experience of clacking and stacking the original, beefy discs adds a wonderful tactile layer.

I mentioned that building a massive engine wasn't the actual the strategic way to play Splendor. Because the game has a VP limit of fifteen, there is a race element. It turns out that in most high-level play, at two- or four-players especially, doing a high-point card rush tends to be better than trying to spend all of the early- and mid-game building up low-value cards to build an engine. (I say early- and mid-game, because in such a strategy, you'll have under three points for the vast majority of turns before rapidly collecting several points in later turns).

Splendor is a game I've actually played enough at to get "okay," and it holds up to more competitive play reasonably well. While anyone who sees a high-VP-rush strategy work once can grasp its basics, developing just the right amount of engine-building based on the tactical card offer and the noble achievements in the game is the layer that really separates the best from the mediocre (like me).

Splendor is an all time classic for my group, largely because as you say:
In Splendor, you want gem, you go out and get gem.

I have a friend who tries suggesting Splendor way too often but I still enjoy the occasional game

I played a ripoff digital reskin of Splendor, not knowing that's what it was, and liked it pretty okay.

21. Acquire

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5/acquire

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Tile-laying, hand management, economic
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 45-90 minutes
First played: 2016
Experience: 5-8 plays with 4-6 players

In Acquire, each player is a real estate investor, founding, expanding, and investing in different hotel companies in a mostly undeveloped city. On each turn, you must lay a square tile from the six in your hand. The tile gives you the coordinates in the city where it goes. Lay a tile next to a single other tile and you found a hotel, gaining stock in it. You can then buy additional stock in any hotel. Lay a tile so that you join two hotels, and an acquisition happens; the smaller hotel is acquired by the larger, and the largest two shareholders receive additional buyout money. The bigger a hotel is, the more valuable its stock at the end of the game.

Acquire is perhaps the oldest game on this list - it dates all the way back to the 1960s. But it carries many unmistakably "modern" design sensibilities - strong focus on player agency, mitigating luck, and indirect player interaction. The primary focus of interaction in Acquire, beyond the actual acquisitions, lies in which hotels you choose to expand (helping those shareholders) and which companies you choose to buy into (creating competition for ownership of those companies). These forms of economic interaction can be deeply satisfying and appear in many beloved modern games as well.

The process of a hotel getting acquired is also a fun procedure that creates some pomp and circumstance and gets many players involved. Obviously, being one of the top two shareholders gets you a cash payout, so that's always a win. But after that, players can choose to sell their stock (the only source of *getting* liquid money from the game!) or trade the acquired stock at two-for-one for the acquiring stock. Anyone who bought in at this point gets to have some fun.

One of the key points of tension that makes Acquire so delightfully tough - just like Food Chain Magnate, people will usually have a chance to react to your move before you can chain stuff together. Here, I'm referring to the tile-laying/stock-buying order. You can't buy stock and then immediately lay a tile, making that stock more valuable. Instead, your turn goes lay tile, then buy stock. So if your plan is to expand the Continental chain and gain value on your stock, you'll need to buy stock into Continental a turn before you actually expand it - and in so doing, give everyone else a shot at Continental as well. How do you stop yourself from tipping your hand? Hard decisions!

If there is an area in which Acquire shows its age, it's probably in its production. The grid and the artwork are very bland, and it uses paper money for transactions. That said, the stocks themselves are printed onto nice thick stock that feels good to manipulate.

Performing well at Acquire eludes me still. After half a dozen or more plays, I've yet to win a game, and I think I've yet to come in even second place. There certainly is some element of strategy - the companies you want to invest in and grow, of course. While you can pick among six tiles in hand to play, admittedly there is a fair bit of luck; holding the right tiles means that you can angle yourself perfectly for a merger or to found a hotel when it's your turn, while others do not have anywhere near that degree of control. And while you clearly want to be majority/minority holder in as many companies as you can, my last game - in which I think I might have led payouts - I still performed highly mediocre. What exactly is the secret sauce preventing me from doing better? Is it that you really want to be holding the most valuable hotel, even if it means not being able to wheel and deal throughout the game?

The one sad part about Acquire is that you can get blown out. It shouldn't happen that often, but making a big mistake with liquidity early (i.e. buying a bunch of stock that doesn't get acquired) can mean you have very little else to do in the game, especially if you don't have the tiles to ensure those companies get acquired. This was exacerbated in a six-player game, which is probably one over the sweet spot of five. Often there will be one player feeling left behind. But I think the game overall isn't particularly rough-edged and is pretty beginner-friendly. - definitely worth trying, in my eyes.

20. Blokus

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2453/blokus

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Tile-laying, abstract
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 15-25 minutes
First played: 2017
Experience: 5-10 plays with 4 players

Blokus is a puzzle game where you compete to lay the most Tetris-esque tiles down from your hand onto a shared map. Each player starts with the same set of tiles onto a square grid, with the restrictions that your first tile starts on your own corner of the map, that each subsequent tile must touch an existing tile of yours, and that your pieces must only touch one another at their corners, not on edges. Eventually the space on the map runs out; at that point, the player whose remaining tiles have the least stuff on them wins.

Unlike many of the previous games on this list (but not unlike a few games above it!), Blokus isn't a "designer game" - it was published by Mattel, which is more "mass-market." It also lacks a lot of the parts that make designer games feel "designer-y" - lots of rules, a solo element, any sort of sense of progression. It feels more like a puzzle, or Chess, and while there are a ton of tactics, I'm not sure there's a ton of depth (admittedly not necessarily a modern game trait).

That said - I've never had a bad game of Blokus. Every time, it's a fun little spatial puzzle. Every time, it's tactical, with something of a race to the center before, and you need to figure out how to get "through" your opponents' pieces.

And that's where the puzzle/knife fight really begins. That's actually one of the greatest dynamics of Blokus - while your pieces need to touch your own pieces on the pieces' corners only, you're allowed full adjacency to your opponents' pieces. And since your opponents' pieces also only touch each other's corners, that means that if you can get your pieces' corner to fit into one of your opponent's corners, your subsequent piece can actually go over their two pieces and break into the other side. But you can also effectively block your opponents' pieces - while laying adjacent to your opponent's piece just provides a cozy neighbor, placing a piece so that it's in an opponent's corner square - well that's war.

I don't have a ton else to say about Blokus - I think a lot of it just comes down to beauty in simplicity. It looks great on the table, it feels great to snap a nice plastic piece into the hard grid, and its straightforwardness makes it incredibly quick to play. It's clearly more filler than main event for me, but it fills that role pretty perfectly at the right player count. Now that player count is very restrictive, but if people show up while others are playing Blokus, they can easily spectate for ten minutes to watch the resolution of this clever design.

19. Isle of Skye

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/176494/isle-skye-chieftain-king

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Tile-laying, auction, point salad
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 45-60 minutes
First played: 2017
Experience: 6-10 plays with 4-5 players

In Isle of Skye, each player builds their own isle of square tiles containing features like livestock, mountains, fields, roads, boats, and lakes. The game runs a set number of rounds. In a round, each player simultaneously draw three tiles that become that player's "marketplace"; they get to set prices on them. Then, each player in turn can buy up to one tile from an opponent, paying that opponent in cash. If no one buys your tile, you buy it from the bank. Then, tiles are laid, points are scored according to a changing rubric based on the contents of your island, and income is distributed.

For a legitimate medium-weight euro, one of the great strengths of Isle of Skye is its quick playtime. The fixed number of rounds ensures a relatively consistent playtime. And the simultaneous play of almost the entire game (other than purchasing), keeps the downtime quite low.

But the game isn't exactly lean and mean, either. It's a confluence of mechanics with somewhat visually involved tiles and a scoring track that's relatively straightforward but requires some head-space maneuvering. Each round of scoring is based off a different subset of four criteria - for example, boats might score in rounds 1, 3, and 5 this game, while animals score in rounds 2, 4, and 6. Or boats might not score at all during a given game, or they might only score once. In that sense, it's a little point salad-y, but because the randomized scoring conditions are laid out all at the beginning of the game, you can determine what you're interested in at the beginning. You can have a lot of fun just trying to construct a nice little island.

But of course, the layer that covers the tile-selection and -laying is actually the auction. I'm a huge fan of marketplaces where players interact in this economic way. There's such a fine balance between ensuring that you have a trickle of cash by having others buy your tiles, and trying to keep your own tiles to score them. Get both your tiles bought in a round, and you may end up with only one or zero tiles to place for the round - but you go into next round flush with cash. Buy everything and keep your own islands, and you get three tiles for tons of points - but your next round is handicapped, and you actually can't even set high prices for the tiles you draw! Really interesting tug of war in terms of incentives.

In the end, Isle of Skye isn't a dramatic game. It's highly consistent. The player interaction will lead to some fist-shaking and face-palms as people get their most desirable tiles sniped from them or realize they're buying something for their own island at way too high a cost. But other than that, the most exciting thing that will happen is that you manage to enclose your little scroll and get to do a little dance to yourself.

And honestly, I think that's really nice. Not every game has to have soaring emotional highs - Isle of Skye instead manages to have a multi-level puzzle, none of which is murderously difficult, but which together can put your brain through several paces. The ebb and flow of the economy ensures that each player experiences dips and scads of cash throughout. And its compact playtime for its relative intricacy is great.

18. Sidereal Confluence

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/202426/sidereal-confluence

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Real-time, trading, tableau-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 7
Game length: 120-180 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 1 play with 6 players

In Sidereal Confluence, each player controls an asymmetric alien race. Over the course of a fixed number of rounds, players can openly, in real time, trade resources and ships, used to play cards into their tableau and activate powers. Once everyone is finally done transacting, there is a production phase, during which tableaux's cards can generally convert resources into points or more resources.

I'll be honest - the details of Sidereal Confluence, like those of Circadians: First Light, are vague in my memory. This is by far the highest-ranking single-play game on the list. It's also a huge fucking mess of mechanics and fiddliness. When we set it up, even after assembling components, the rules explainer spent perhaps five minutes explaining to each player at the table what their faction did. And we grasped incredibly little of each other's. Ships...? Research...? Ehhh.

But the thing is, my experience with Sidereal Confluence was exactly what was promised: a singular experience, like a fever dream. Time seemed almost abstract since I was never waiting for it to be my turn. I would be occasionally frustrated that I wasn't getting the trades I wanted, but I was never bored. It was just this constant flow.

Well, except for the actual income/upkeep phases. The game turns into a confusing grind during those phases as everyone plays heads-down, does stuff with ships, fiddles around a bit. It's unfortunate, but getting the inputs to drive these engines in your tableau is what motivates the absolute trip of the trading phase, so it's a price worth paying for this great game. Sidereal Confluence is undoubtedly an "event game"; sadly I think there's no reason for me ever to purchase it because of that. But if the opportunity arises again, I'd love to get it on again.

Sidereal is definitely a unique experience

even its title is unique!

Sidereal Confluence: Trading and Negotiation in the Elysium Quadrant

Have you tried Forbidden Sky?

It's the "sequel" to Forbidden Island & Desert.

I don't know how it works but I'm curious about it as a fan of Island.

Glad this is still up and about! Excited to see top 10.

Maniac64 posted...

Have you tried Forbidden Sky?

It's the "sequel" to Forbidden Island & Desert.

I don't know how it works but I'm curious about it as a fan of Island.

i haven't! friend of mine had it but we haven't had a game night in too long. damn you pandemic. have definitely heard it is inferior to island/desert, but would still like to try it firsthand

Accel_R8 posted...

Glad this is still up and about! Excited to see top 10.

thanks - gonna try to crank out some leading up to and through the long weekend!

17. Ticket to Ride

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9209/ticket-ride

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Route-building, card drafting
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 40-60 minutes
First played: 2015
Experience: 8-15 plays with 2-5 players (including one each of Europe and Africa)

On a shared map - the original being the USA - players draw cards to build rail routes between cities. Each route needs to be filled using a certain number of same-colored train cards. Players gain points for laying track - the longer the track the better payout per train car - and for fulfilling their personal (secret) route tickets. Your turn is either drafting train cards (via a facedown deck or a faceup offer), taking a new route ticket, or laying a single track.

So many of the games on my list are rough on the first go and have managed to work their way up into hall of fame territory. Ticket to Ride is a stone-cold classic, dating back to 2001 and probably the second-most famous hobby game today after Settlers of Catan. It was one of my first hobby games, and I found its runtime long and the gameplay somewhat inoffensive, but not particularly pleasant. It took too long to do anything, and the game didn't need to be as long as it was, and blocking sucked, and I hated waiting for my turn. My games of Europe and Africa in the next year and a half didn't change my opinion much.

I've played a lot more eurogames since then, including several games more of TTR. My opinion has changed big time in that timespan, and I think it 100% has to do with playing the game way faster. There is technically a large decision space in TTR, but an experienced eye/attentive gamer can effectively reduce that decision space to like two or three decent options and wing it. When 80% of the turns take under fifteen seconds, the downtime shrinks to near-nothing, and suddenly the game is incredibly engaging. Instead of feeling passive-aggression, I can joke about what's happening in a relaxing way and laugh if I get blocked or someone else gets blocked. Similarly with Splendor, I feel like simple passive-aggressive euros get a ton better when played quickly and without too much concern about the outcome.

And as a result, I've actually requested TTR recently. The game is legitimately beautiful in a "classic eurogame" way - instead of having beautiful art on individual tableaux - in its own way pretty - you've instead got brightly contrasting trains criss-crossing a very sizable map. And if you draw your turns quickly, you spend less time "heads down" thinking about your hand and more "heads up" sweating out the board. And man, the game really sings much more.

The original TTR has one undeniable weakness, which is that its cards are micro-sized. Fortunately, future editions largely use standard-sized cards and avoid giving hand cramps. TTR is one of the three "classic gateway" games alongside Catan and Carcassonne, and these days, it's the one I'd most rather play.

TTR Europe good stuff. Adding the train stations or whatever (and two? extra route types) definitely improved on the USA version I played first

so i only played europe and africa once each, back before i really liked TTR. at the time, i did like the fact that the game was less punishing with the stations (tunnels? whatever let you use a blocking route), and it's probably a slightly more balanced map.

now, i think i really like that i know USA's cities pretty well (which shortens the amount of time trying to figure out where a route goes) and the fact it has basically no other rules makes it even easier to parse. that said, i'm sure i could also probably handle the mental load of a few more rules pretty happily!

16. Medium

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/242529/medium

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Word game, guessing, separate rounds
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 0
Game length: <1 min per turn
First played: 2020
Experience: 10+ sessions with 3-10+ players

Medium is a party-style game composed of individual mini-turns. During a mini-turn, a player and the player to their left or whatever are partners. Each reveals a word card from their hand at the same time. Then, they must try to think of a related word and, after a countdown, announce it simultaneously. If they succeed, they score points. If they fail, they must use the incorrectly matching words to try to arrive at yet another word, though of course the original words are banned. There is one final attempt in a third round as well if the players again fail to match.

The above describes basically every single detail of Medium's gameplay. The dirty little secret about Medium is that it's not much of a game at all - rather, it's an activity, more akin to a drinking game than a hobby game. If not for the nice production of the box and the art on the back of the cards, it certainly would come off that way.

But yeah, it lacks game-i-ness. The rules are incredibly loose; because of its entirely open-ended nature, like Just One, you basically just play until you feel like it. The game is hardly calibrated any other way to ensure consistent experiences. And there's absolutely nothing stopping players from just saying "dog" every time, even if it doesn't relate to the words on the table, or (less game-breakingly) just defaulting to "thing!" or "person!" when it gets too difficult. The downtime scales poorly when you exceed four players. There's little enforcement of the rules, and the way the scoring works (you're awarded highest points for getting the guess right on the first try) is somewhat contrary to the most fun part of the game, which is when you somehow match on the third try (when you guys have gone from "corn" and "bread" to "dog" and "white" to "dalmatian" and "fur" to somehow matching on "Cruella" or something). Also, picking the same two cards leads to the same answers, so your replayability can be limited by the deck and people's choices.

The upside of Medium is pretty clear though - it's a fun sort of spectacle that matches the vibes of non-gamers. There is one final game above Medium that similarly lacks game-i-ness. But since the pandemic has started, a lot of my IRL gaming has gone down without actual hobby gamers. So we take out activities like Medium, and we just sit around watching players shout at each other as we drink and eat cheese and crackers, and we add clarifying rules or challenges or let other people jump in if they want, and we don't keep score. And you know what? It's a great time!

I didn't play TTR until relatively recently. It's pretty solid! Kinda parallels Catan (which was my gateway) for me in that it's rarely my super first choice but I'll see it and be like oh that one's nice

15. Dracula's Feast

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/159575/draculas-feast

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Hidden roles, social deduction
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 15-30 minutes
First played: 2017
Experience: 30+ plays over 10+ sessions with 4-8 players, incl with extra roles

Dracula's Feast is a hidden roles game, having each player secretly assigned a classic monster - the titular Dracula, Alucard, Van Helsing, the Boogie Monster, a Werewolf, and more. The goal of the game is, on your turn, to make a successful Accusation - by revealing your own role and then attempting to simultaneously guess each other player's role. Until you're ready to make that accusation, you can either Whisper between players - secretly inquiring if a specific player is a specific role - or Dance, a mutual proposition where you and an opponent look at one another's cards.

If you've been following my lists for a while, you might recognize Dracula's Feast as a mainstay - it's been a longtime favorite of mine, and the only game I've ever backed on Kickstarter, because a friend of a friend of a friend designed it.

I love hidden-roles social deduction games - I came up through B8 mafia! - and Dracula's Feast is, in my eyes, one of the absolute best of the genre. The variable player powers are awesome, and I love how the tenor of a game can change so much depending on what roles are in - games with the Boogie Monster or Werewolf should feature much more dancing; games with heavy reliance on roles like the Trickster and Alucard will feature extra "are you Dracula?" queries. It's not a perfect game - I think Dr. Jekyll is a little too fiddly, Beelzebub isn't particularly fun, the Werewolf feels OP, and Van Helsing is too strong in a game with over six players. I actually quite like the extra roles, but they add a fair bit of complexity, and more annoyingly, they require a second reference sheet, which feels like a sin to me.

But the core mechanics of the game are extremely well thought out. With a tight player count, you very often find yourself juuust about ready to make an accusation before someone else has it figured out. Whispering and dancing are both super-fun; people pass cards face-down with sketchily drawn yes and no to represent the whisper, and it's never not fun to say "Would you join me for this dance?" And of course, the table can ooh and ahh depending on whether the invitee rejects the asker. The game moves ultra-fast, with no turn realistically taking longer than thirty seconds. And of course, an accusation process is fantastic - because all of the role cards have additional accusation cards, there's the fantastic satisfaction in dealing those out to players, collecting their answers, and flipping over all yeses (or even more hilariously, all nos).

As I said, if I would change this game, it would be largely in terms of rebalancing roles a little bit. I don't mind a little bit of OP, but I'd like a slightly more ideal scaling. I actually also have the second edition and a Kickstarter-exclusive expansion Cthulu and Friends, but I have yet to get those to the table. I've massively gotten my money's worth out of this game - the Kickstarter was something like $25 for some truly delightful art and an extremely clever mid-player count game - but I'd still love to get more plays on this game. Someday I'll regularly have 5-6 players again. Someday!

14. Bloodbound

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/130877/blood-bound

Category: Team vs team
Key mechanics: Hidden roles, social deduction
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 10-20 minutes
First played: 2015
Experience: 30+ plays over 12+ sessions with 6-12 players

In Bloodbound, each player is a vampire-cultist looking person, randomly assigned to one of two clans. A player also has a rank, one to nine, which is associated with special powers. The leader of a team is the team with the lowest rank. The game centers around a dagger, which is either passed to another player or used to stab another player. Getting stabbed means showing damage, which people can use to deduce your rank/clan. The game ends when someone is killed. If the killing player successfully killed the leader of the opposite clan, their clan wins. If they killed anyone else, then their clan loses.

I love the concept of these social deduction games. The endgame is so decisive - either you successfully killed someone, or you didn't. That's not to say it's always climactic, since the last few moves once most everyone is revealed can be a technicality, but the process of getting there is always cool.

There's also just something cool about the turn structure of Bloodbound - you don't go in a circle, and it's not entirely freeform. Instead, the player with the dagger is the active player. And that player determines who plays next, either by passing the dagger - a way of either deferring responsibility or conferring trust - or by stabbing someone, obviously an aggressive move that also gives information to the table. It's a very direct way of getting other people involved in the game, and I love the in-your-face but also nothing-personal player interaction in the game. The game also allows for other players to intervene in a stab by offering to take their rank token (and thus both reveal their rank and use their one-time player power) - though the stabbed must accept the offer.

Bloodbound doesn't entirely cast you into the dark and make you stab completely at random. At the beginning of the game, you get to see the color (but not rank) of one player sitting adjacent to you. (Naturally, this information can be obscured by a special role.) And when players get stabbed, they can take two damage tokens in an order of their choice - a question mark or a color (of their team). The tokens they are allowed to take are determined by their rank, so even before you've hit the rank token, you've got some information.

I find Bloodbound best at six or eight. Higher than that, and the game can often be determined by which leader gets arbitrarily targeted first, and it takes longer to get everyone involved. However, everyone's ability to get involved in the conversation to deduce a leader, or to offer their rank token as tribute, keeps the game pretty engaging still. And the runtime doesn't get too much worse.

I first played Bloodbound on the day I'd say that I really started playing hobby games. Remains one of the neatest social deduction games in my eyes.

13. Magic Maze

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209778/magic-maze

Category: Cooperative
Key mechanics: Real-time, limited communication, map exploration
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 5-10 minutes
First played: 2018
Experience: 30+ plays of 10+ scenarios with 2-5+ players

In Magic Maze, each player helps to control a party of four consisting of an elf, a dwarf, a barbarian, and a mage - represented by pawns - in a complex shopping mall. Each queste must discover their weapon, exploring the map by sending the appropriate quester to a respective edge of a tile, and then, once all weapons are secured, to send the questers each to their special exits.

The main catch is that you don't control just one pawn - you control all pawns, but you only get to move any pawn in one of the cardinal directions, and only one player gets to perform each special function such as exploring or going up escalators. Talking can only happen during special breaks, though you can shake a pawn to get someone's attention. Different scenarios slightly alter the rules and add further complexity or tiles.

Very few games can be as silently infuriating as Magic Maze. The game is deceptively difficult to play given how insanely simple each rule is. The game is visually noisy to the point that even without the pressure of a timer or playing without communicating, it's actually pretty difficult to decipher at times, giving a "Where's Waldo?" type of effect. And that red "ATTENTION" marker can be used hilariously passive-aggressively.

The game also very deliberately plays against natural player/human instincts. It feels really natural to want to control "your" character, but no matter where you're sitting, you're actually responsible for all of the characters. Because each revealed square mall tile contains so many walls, you may see a path for a pawn to go - but you're depending on other players to move that pawn like three times just to traverse half a tile! And sometimes you can get so fixated on what's going on with one pawn you forget about another, or you're so mesmerized by two players being in sync you forget that it's your responsibility to continue the motion. Or the ATTENTION marker gets thrown in your face and you have to frantically check all of the pawns to see which one you have to move... or if you're responsible for resetting the timer so you don't get a game over.

While 4p is the "canonical" MM experience, this is certainly one of those games that will be easier with 2p, and can arguably be as fun or more fun. As I said, there is a large component of unintuitiveness in Magic Maze's controls. But of course, when you touch the pawns often enough and your mind actually locks in... it's pretty amazing. And because it's easier to enter that zone with 2p, a lot of my most fun/least frustrating experiences have come at that count.

12. Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/291457/gloomhaven-jaws-lion

Category: Cooperative
Key mechanics: Point-to-point movement, dungeon-crawler, campaign, hand management
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 6
Game length: 90-150 minutes
First played: 2020
Experience: 10-15 plays (covering 10-12 scenarios) with 2 players

Jaws of the Lion is a cooperative campaign game. Each player controls a fantasy character (guard, ax-thrower, etc) through a variety of scenarios where you travel through dungeon areas and smash hordes of enemies such as living corpses or monstrosities, all represented by miniature figures or cardboard standups on hexes.

The game's core loop involves a simultaneous card selection phase, in which each card is used either for its top action (generally combat-related) or its bottom action (generally support- or movement-related). Between rounds you can level up your character, get combat cards, or gear to improve your strength.

You may have heard of Gloomhaven, BoardGameGeek's #1-ranked game overall. It was an unexpected smash hit in 2017. I've never played and likely will never play base Gloomhaven (especially physically), but Jaws of the Lion is a not-quite-sequel. The primary innovation in JotL, as I understand it, is that the maps for each scenario are right in the scenario book - i.e. you can just open up to a page and place your minis right on that scenario book. It's really clever and helps cut down on the setup.

But my god, there is still so much setup. Characters. Attack cards. Attack modifier cards. Equipment cards. Enemies, each of which have their own attack cards, plus a deck of enemy attack modifier cards. Counter chits. (So many counter chits! Hit points, status markers, trap indicators!) Scenario over, time to go shopping? Break out the marketplace deck! This is by far the biggest drawback to JotL, and it's the primary reason it hasn't been played a ton more in my household. It's also quite a table hog; while the map itself isn't that big, you need all sorts of zones just to store all these counters and cards - not to mention your player board and the glossary nearby.

But the game itself is very neat. The central feature of it is hand management; you really want to bash your enemies, but you need to get into range and figure out how to mitigate damage that's done to you. You need to figure out how to do this rather quickly without running too much, because you also have a built-in turn timer, wherein you have to lose a card every time you refresh your hand. While it's far from the most attractive game for me, JotL also looks quite nice on a table - I don't have a lot of games where I've got a miniature player figure facing off against these nicely printed standup monstrosities.

The writing is mostly hackneyed, but you're slaying demons, who cares? It's fantastically exciting to get a new card, and the game constantly foists choices on you about which card to take when you level up; which card to bring on your adventure; which card to use this turn; and which purpose to use that card for. So many choices!

Again, the biggest thing stopping JotL from hitting the table more is that it feels like work. Sadly I get some dread thinking about the time invested in setting it all up, and all the trouble of tracking monster movements and hit points, and inevitably we lean some other direction instead. But I'm still pretty interested in finishing this campaign, and it still fits a cool, unique spot in my collection as my only dungeon-crawler.

love the indie hit gloomhaven

just finished playing through the original and jaws of the lion in the steam version. great stuff and skips the dreaded set up. would definitely recommend if you can get a group together

Gloomhaven is pretty fun on Steam but seems like it'd be a nightmare in physical form

AriaOfBolo posted...

Gloomhaven is pretty fun on Steam but seems like it'd be a nightmare in physical form

I've been playing the digital version as well and I can't imagine ever playing it on tabletop. Which is a shame, as the game is fantastic. The core gameplay is so good, forcing you to make difficult decisions every turn and the unlockable content keeps you playing.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/gloomhaven-92f741

also as it turns out it's currently free on epic games store

KommunistKoala posted...

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/gloomhaven-92f741

also as it turns out it's currently free on epic games store

thanks, i did wind up smashing this just before the sale ended - not sure i'll play it but nice to have!

11. The Crew

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/284083/crew-quest-planet-nine

Category: Cooperative
Key mechanics: Trick-taking
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 1-5 minutes per hand
First played: 2021
Experience: 50+ plays over 5-10 sessions with 3-5 players

The Crew is a cooperative trick-taking game with limited communication. The deck, rather than a standard fifty-two-card deck, consists of forty cards - four suits from 1 to 9 and one trump suit from 1 to 4. In a given hand - determined by a campaign log - you generally will draft objective cards at the beginning - i.e. you must win the trick containing that card. A hand ends as soon as all objectives are achieved (or one is failed).

If you've ever played trick-taking games like Hearts or Spades, you know the gameplay of The Crew, which is part of its effectiveness - these are games I grew up loving, and can often still enjoy more than hobby games outright due to their mindlessness, ease of play, and partnership. The Crew is fully cooperative, but of course it has some limited communication mechanics that make it pretty appealing.

The base game contains around fifty scenarios, and I've never brought out The Crew and not had people want to play more than one scenario. The simplicity and satisfying familiarity of the rules enable people to dive in quickly, and perhaps more importantly, the quick playtime of the game allows people to iterate and get better and progress. That's one of the great strengths of The Crew - the campaign gives you a constant sense of progress. Granted, I've never played with one group of friends enough to get more than twenty-ish missions deep, but to be even at that point is a win in my book for such a small-cost, small-box purchase.

The Crew is widely regarded as one of the best games of its weight class. And I think while it lacks some of the "hobby game" flavor that you might want, that accessibility can help it to get more reps, which is great for its utility.

The Crew is fantastic. still need to play the second one

I wanted to like The Crew, but I brought it out with three completely different groups of friends and it fell pretty flat with each of them. I was a little surprised since I thought the co-op aspect would appeal to them, but after playing several rounds in one sitting with each group, noone wanted to play it again.

I'm not sure why, but for a light, co-op card game, Hanabi has been much more well-liked by my friends.

cyko posted...

I wanted to like The Crew, but I brought it out with three completely different groups of friends and it fell pretty flat with each of them. I was a little surprised since I thought the co-op aspect would appeal to them, but after playing several rounds in one sitting with each group, noone wanted to play it again.

I'm not sure why, but for a light, co-op card game, Hanabi has been much more well-liked by my friends.

that's very interesting. hanabi i suppose is more of a unique game, which may help its appeal. its length is more matches that of a "hobby game," so you develop a lot more arc in a single play as opposed to needing 4+ plays in a session.

10. Herd Mentality

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/311322/herd-mentality

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Simultaneous, guessing, separate hands
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 0
Game length: 30 seconds per round
First played: 2021
Experience: 10+ sessions with 5-8 players

In a hand of Herd Mentality, a player draws a card and poses a question such as "what is the best eating utensil?" Everyone then simultaneously gives an answer, and the players who chose the most common answer get a point. If a single player answered something no one else answered, they get the cow, which prevents them from winning the game until someone else gets the cow, even if they score the most points otherwise.

I don't think any real ingenuity went into the design of Herd Mentality - it's essentially Family Feud, just not a game show. The fun of it comes almost exclusively from the interaction of the players and seeing what everyone answered - it's kind of fun to see how everyone divides into teams; some players will choose what they think others will say over what they're thinking themselves; others will answer honestly because they can't anticipate others' responses; some will be totally blindsided by what's going on. There's a little bit of extra fun that comes from the cow - a minor cone of shame.

Still, this is one of the games I have gotten the absolute most plays out of since I was introduced to it, simply by dint of not always being in a group conducive to more think-y games. And I love it for that.

9. Resistance: Avalon

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/128882/resistance-avalon

Category: Team vs team
Key mechanics: Hidden roles, social deduction, voting
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30-60 minutes
First played: 2013
Experience: 100+ plays with 5-10 players

In Resistance: Avalon, players are secretly divided into a blind majority (good team, knights of Arthur) and a minority that knows one another (evil team, minions of Mordred). The game is contested over five missions. During a round, a rotating "leader" nominates a team of players to execute the mission - but all players then get to publicly vote on whether or not the nominated team is approved to execute the mission. Good players win a mission if all the players on an approved team secretly vote for success.

Avalon is the first game that really brought me into "the hobby." Coming from a mafia background, it has some very obvious appeal - public voting, an informed majority vs an uninformed minority, potential for high emotions. Avalon "improves" over mafia by being better at a smaller player count and not having player elimination - by far the part of mafia that can most ruin your game. Compared to base Resistance, Avalon also introduces the Merlin role, which is something like the cop in mafia, with the caveat that Merlin, if guessed by evil, will automatically lose the game for the good team.

Further strengthening Avalon is the variety of different roles that you can optionally add to balance things out. I almost always play with Merlin, Percival, and Morgana; however, Mordred can strengthen the bad team in a favorable player-count for good, Oberon can weaken the bad team in a favorable player-count for bad, and the Lady of the Lake can be used in desperate straits of an 8- or 10-player game to add more dynamic information to the game. These little added complexities and information dials really allow you to fine-tune your experience. (My favorite configuration is to include Merlin, Percival, Morgana, Mordred, and Oberon in a 7- or 8-player game.)

It's hard to overstate how important of a game Avalon was to me in terms of my life. By playing Avalon, I directly met the friends who would introduce me to my other board gaming friends, and that is now my primary friend group in my city. And of course, tabletop gaming is now probably my most important hobby, because of how easily it can be shared among somewhat-like-minded individuals. And at the time, Avalon was all I wanted to play - I'd bring it to any occasion where we expected more than five people would get together. I felt like I could learn a lot about how a person thought based on how they played Avalon.

These days, I understand the game is not for everyone, and my passion for arguing has also waned a lot. My partner isn't a big fan of lying games, and I entirely respect that. My closest board gaming friends are also not so much into arguing, preferring indirect interaction and simply playing rather than being confrontational and debating with a crowd. But while the game doesn't make it off my shelf as much, I still greatly admire its design, and it occupies a large place in my heart.