https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/102365/10-great-games-i-dont
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I’ve played 8 of those and I think I agree. Granted, if that was what was coming to the table, I’d still play and make the most of it. I can’t think of many games I loathe enough to keep me from playing with friends.
I can think of several I just have no interest in playing (Splendor, Scythe, etc) and would rather sit out.
Great post. I feel like they are games you can lose by making poor decisions, rather than win by making great “risk based” decision.
I used to love Agricola. Now, I can’t even feed my peasants (see my latest decathalon game). If you make a mistake, you can’t recover.
Anyone else get into Wingspan? My wife and I play two player and have played a lot of games (maybe 100?) and still love it (we have expansion now)
Theme / Design / Puzzle - all top shelf
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It is brilliant.
Soo… Gloomhaven? Is it as good as it seems?
I have played maybe 10 games solo, so I can’t comment on the grand arc of the narrative. The core loop is pretty great—each turn, you’re making decisions which balance several factors, and that process is very stimulating. However, it’s not a balanced game, the mechanics (though cool) fit the theme very poorly, and the elegance of the basic card play which creates the major dynamics is surrounded by a giant pile of janky, not particularly intuitive rules. So, as a gameplay experience, I find I go into any particular game with no idea whether it’ll be a cakewalk or virtually impossible for me with the characters I happen to have brought, and I’m never very confident that I’m playing everything right, despite the core of the game being pretty simple and mechanically brilliant.
I got frustrated at one mission which had some enemies I just couldn’t damage at all with most of my attacks, and set the game aside for a while. The problem now is that retrying the same mission is relatively costless but also unrewarding unless I get massively lucky, while going elsewhere to try a different mission is a bit risky. So I have to just suck it up and see what happens on the road, but I’m bitter that the game has put me in that position. As a result, I haven’t played in long enough that now I’ll basically have to relearn the game all over again, which is irritating because it seems like it could have been easy to do that if they’d cared to streamline it to focus on the fun part.
So, that’s a lot of negativity. I do still hope to get back to it, so it’s not that bad. But I also got into kind of a dead end with one of my characters, who has a personal goal on which I’ve had no opportunity to make progress yet. When the game is giving you a feeling of progression every time you play and advancing the story, it’s wild and exciting.
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I think Gloomhaven is fairly brilliant. It’s 95% tactical combat, and the storyline isn’t really much to write home about, although some of the writing is genuinely funny. However, I find it’s great to play because you have some differences from the norm; you’re playing mercs, so you don’t share loot, and often grabbing items and gold in a dungeon for you is at odds with the party’s victory, so that creates a little tension and is more fun with more players. Your deck also functions as a timer, and you can end up exhausted too soon if you’re not smart about it. You can’t share all your information in combat, so you have to learn what your character can do and watch the other players to see what they can do and try and learn their abilities and how best to work together. Characters have personal quests and they do retire, which is something I love about the game. Good variety of classes available, but some are strictly better for larger parties.
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Who has any great gaming accessories? I have a nice star field mat for X-Wing, and some CCG-sizes mats that I use for tableau builders like Terraforming Mars. Other than that, I don’t us much that isn’t included with any given game. I just ordered one of those fake leather foldable dice trays off Amazon since my kids seem to thing that rolling dice is about how close you can get the to the edge of the table without going over; it looks cheap but may be what I need.
I have a few inserts from Insert Here. They are really well done and they come packaged as if they’re in the box already, so it’s obvious how they’re supposed to go in the actual box.
A great selection of games available. Even if he doesn’t have it, if you buy him a copy of the game he’ll make you an insert (which would make the insert really expensive, but some people have money to burn LOL)
Since they come pre-assembled, it’s much better for me than Broken Token or any of the other ones that you have to put together.
Ah, yes, inserts. I forgot about those. I have Broken Token inserts for Caverna and for one of my Pathfinder card game sets, but I never touch those games so I forgot about them…
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One of the accessories I’m surprised aren’t widespread are player trays. I have some I made which have a felt-covered bottom (good for picking up cards or rolling dice) and a raised lip with a groove to hold cards on the front and back. They’re marvelous for tons of games, especially when playing with kids who need help to organize their stuff, or when playing solo multi-handed, to keep each character’s stuff together.
I’m partway through an updated design which I intend to have card-sized wells with diagonal floors which go right to the edge on the right and left. The idea is to make it easier to have a short deck which stays in place and is easy to draw from, but also to be able to use that slot for little bits in games which have more of those, and fewer decks of cards. But I need to make a jig first, and I’m not sure exactly how to do it so the bottom will be smooth.
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You know what would be great? Some sort of felt-lined, spring-loaded deck box with a half cover so they deck is always kept tight but you can easily draw from the top…hmmm…mental gears engaged…
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We played the Bloom roll and write game by Gamewright. It was simple and went over well as a family game, but I would play Noch Mal over it in a heartbeat. I also thought there was a fundamental ambiguity in the rules that I had had to do some research to clarify, which is unfortunate for such a simple game.
And when will be able to order a set of these from you? : )
Like @Mirefox, I have a broken token one for Caverna, but I think that’s it. That game sort of necessitated it. But I also never get it to the table : /
So, the trouble is, I need to find a reliable way to use a router at a very consistent angle into the wood, ideally at varying heights and angles. My crappy first-pass idea for a simpler jig is two wooden wedges attached to each other only at the ends, and with a channel down the middle for the router bit. If I could secure that to the workpiece, I could run the router up and down that channel, giving me a groove the depth of which increases toward one side. Then take that jig, insecure it and slide it a little to one side, secure it again, and make a second groove overlapping the first. Do that a bunch, and I should have the result I’m looking for.
Trouble is, I know it won’t really work. First of all, trying to get a genuinely flat surface at the bottom of a routed polygon requires greater precision and control than I can usually summon. That could maybe be fixed with later sanding. Second, each groove removes some of the wood in the workpiece on which I intend to rest the jig, which means that the jig needs to be both pretty wide, to span that gap, and also have a very precisely flat bottom, in order to avoid wobbling a bit as it goes. And all of that assumes the workpiece itself isn’t detectably warped or bumpy. Which means that to do it right is beyond my abilities. This is why I’ve been stuck on the project for months—I ask myself if it’s worth half-assing it, decide I should try and think of a better way, and then fail to.
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I think I understand what you’re describing, though it’s been years since I’ve done any woodworking.
It sounds like you’d need to build an angled jig at exactly the angle you want–kind of like a desk riser but on a slant. But then have a channel in it, with a router sled on top. Is that about what you’re thinking?
The genuinely flat surface is a challenge, but you could use a flat piece of wood and assemble them after the router cuts, which is more or less what I think most of the wooden organizers do. Which, ahem, may be, as you wrote, beyond the abilities of our intrepid gamer.
I may also be imagining this wrongly! It just sounds cool : )
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Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this as a single piece, made with subtractive methods. Maybe it would be better just to make a rectangular well with some shallow angled grooves on the sides, so that a thin piece of MDF could slide in to give me the good deck support with easy card-drawing I want.
Really, what I ought to do is buy a laser cutter and make the whole thing that way.
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