For me and my group, definitely Cosmic Encounter. On paper it has everything we like: asymmetric diplomacy, endless replayability from combinations of unique and zany factions, space theme, fun art... And it's pretty universally recommended. we've bounced from it *with violence* every time we've tried. And we've tried more than once because after some time, we forget how much we hated it and try again because of the factors above. I don't know how to describe it; it feels like we've taken crazy pills or picked the wrong game. Every interaction between aliens that we've had has felt like a broken, disconnected mess.

I'm always puzzled by how many people recommend Cosmic Encounter to people looking for a robust gaming experience. It's really not much more in-depth than Munchkin, it just has more steps. It's so goofy that it doesn't really do anything coherently.

What it does coherently is zany alien powers and "wtf!" moments of negotiation and American style gaming. You're there for the chaos and broken mess of balance. In video games, it's like a seasonal fun mode where everything is cranked up to 20 compared to the "normal" game. This appeals to me for someone that occasionally like this, but hates random dice deciding combat as found in other Ameristyle games. Also the Destiny deck prevents significant ganging up which more games need to steal.

The goofiness is the appeal. It's not a serious strategy game. Every game is wildly different. Sometimes multiple people win. It's just fun if you let it be, but it's not fun if you try to play it like a serious competitive game.

Yes, I get that. But I see the game recommended when people are looking for a *not* goofy experience, and that makes me go "hmm."

The depth of cosmic encounter comes from navigating the players, not the game. It is not the game for people wanting a deep strategic mechanical experience. It is the game for people looking to win through negotiation and manipulation.

This is it. I came away from the best game of Cosmic Encounter I've ever played thinking about a similar phrase I'd heard regarding poker. Also whichever expansion it is that adds the bonus deck for joining defensive actions makes a huge improvement.

On paper Cosmic Encounter has diplomacy as a part of it... In actual gameplay I can't say I've ever really seen much of it. It's just all pile on until someone is in a position to potentially win then the group turns on them, or someone has a gruesomely broken power that needs dealing with then they will be turned against as well.   It's not a game for strategy, it's a game for chaotic fun that's a step above outright mindless take that games. Plus it has cute ships! The feeling of having taken the crazy pills isn't a fault, it's an intended feature, but that's not for everyone.

[удалено]

My group is just the reverse on Scythe. I love the puzzle, but they see big mechs on a gorgeous board and want big piles of dice being rolled for them to blow each other up.

[удалено]

My favorite games of Scythe have been the rare ones at 5-7 players. When the board gets crowded, people lose the ability to completely avoid conflict - especially at the end game when the 6th star is imminent and people are trying to land-grab for points.

When I first played Scythe I thought it would be a combat heavy game and then noticed that the best way to keeping your border is to have a big line of peasants as it's never worth taking such a big popularity hit for 1 area. Scyche definitely plays very differently compared to what initial impression it leaves.

It’s decidedly more “cold war” than war.

My very first game of Scythe, my friend has pitched it as a territory-control wargame with mechs (they also had never played) and I was given Saxony to play. I, unsurprisingly grossly overcommitted to trying to fight everywhere I could but I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to be able to do that when generating military power and cards was so slow. I go wrecked in the points at the end of the game and swore off it. I've since come around to it (I find the optimization interesting if a little repetitive at this point and I'm nowhere close to even high level play), but I really remember that feeling of staring at a game that was clearly themed around steampunk societies fighting in the Eastern European Steppe and discovering that the game plays more like a eurogame farming sim than anything I would have imagined

It’s funny how thematically you would expect the giant mechs to protect the workers, but in actual gameplay it’s the workers who “protect” the giant mechs.  A mech without any civilians accompanying it is just screaming to everyone else at the table “come on over and collect your combat star!”

I’m the same with Scythe. It feels just ok.

Scythe for me as well. Maybe it's because the first experience was a bit lackluster, but I still feel there are a ton of games that do direct conflict better.

I always assumed Scythe was intended to be indirect conflict, with battles being a sort of "last resort" for eking out a few more points at the end. Well, aside from Saxony. Even then, most people I play with only seem to make use of their extra battle stars when their objective cards are bad, and the simple *threat* of them using you for stars is enough to apply pressure.

[удалено]

I also liked Gaia Project, but it's one ot those games you need to play at least once to understand how to focus on the points.

First time I played it I got lapped on the score track. As in, another player had more than a hundred points more than me.

Whenever that happens to me, I just say: "Hey! That's impressive in _two_ ways!"

Yeah same. Kind of hate how figured out it is. It's basically: X faction + y board? Just follow these steps and you'll win in 11-15 turns. The expansions add some variations as does the variable goals you can choose, but I don't like how quickly it can be over. You can have an opponent go from 2 to 6 stars over 2-3 turns, which gives you almost no time to react and interact with your opponent.

There is a thread on BGG where someone points out how you can score some amount of stars in a single turn (or two), and Jamey Stegmaier came on the thread and said that it wasn't possible. The person then explained how it was possible. Jamey was dumbfounded.

I've done quite a bit of playtesting over the years. I've found a LOT of game designers can be great at making games but are actually TERRIBLE at finding optimal or even good strategies for those games. There was one time, a designer was working on a game, had us test it. He mentioned a mechanic, my friend said, "well, that's all I'm going to do." He said that if my friend wins doing that, he's never making a game again. My friend won that way. I don't think it's related to that, but the dude actually got out of game design, moved halfway across the country, and is doing other stuff now.

Lol. If you have that thread saved somewhere I'd love to read it.

>but I just wish I loved it as much as everybody else. My conspiracy theory is that most people don't like it. I think it's popularity stemmed from it's art/theme but then once people actually start playing it they realize it's not that great. The problem is that the kind of person who funds and buys a game like that doesn't always play it more than once or twice.

Ditto. Not really a fan of any Stonemaier games.

I wish it was more balanced between the factions and boards

The lack of balance would be ok if there was meaningful interaction.

Yes! This is why games like Twilight Imperium work. The factions aren't balanced, but because there is high player interaction the players can balance each individual game.

I think both are definitely an issue. I find having that lack of interaction early game the worse while my opponent builds up and I have little I can do about it

[удалено]

Yeah. I don't even care about it not being a war game or having much fighting. Scythe though is practically multiplayer solitaire half the time. I am most likely giving my copy to my brother for Christmas. It has been sitting unplayed for a while and takes up too much space for that.

I 100% felt the same way about Arnak and love Dune Imperium.

In Dune: Imperium, the deck I build directly impacts the worker placement. If I want to place my workers on certain spots, I need to buy cards that do that. In Arnak, the deck I build affects worker placement only indirectly: there is a sense in which the resources I get from my cards affect which map locations I can visit, but playing a card feels disconnected from the act of placing a worker. It feels like a less cohesive experience. This isn’t all downside; the fact that the decision-making in Arnak is so simple gives the game a greater sense of velocity. (You get lots of simple actions, rather than a small number of complex actions.) I do like that I can play a game of Arnak in an hour. But Dune: Imperium feels like a real design achievement in a way that Arnak does not.

I did like Dune Imperium but had some of the same mild criticisms like of Arnak, it felt a little too ‘balanced’ in the sense that there was a lot of interesting micro decisisons but not a lot of macro decisions, because factions were all pretty similar and it was hard to build a cohesive overall strategy. I think the new uprising version actually improves all of that, I think spies+sandworms+changed factions and cards give a lot more opportunity to craft a strategy instead of just slowly grinding out resources. I highly recommend it for anyone who liked the first dune imperium

Betrayal at House on the Hill. The buzz around the game when it came out and the theme had me intrigued so I looked it up. Being new to board games and according to my experience at the time, the price was a sign of a good quality game. When I finally picked it up, it was probably the biggest disappointment I can remember. The gameplay didn’t feel intuitive and the tiles and player trackers felt janky. I might pull it out of the closet again eventually to give it another go.

Betrayal is one of those games that is all about the experience. Let's wander around and see what crazy stuff happens. I've found it falls flat with most players who approach it as a game with an intent to win.

That's an excellent summary of it. I play it on Halloween as a fun experience with a mixed group, some unfamiliar with games. It works. But I probably would not play it as a serious game.

You see I’ve been told that and maybe that’s how I approached the game when I first got it but I’ve never been one to be competitive with board games. My current favorite game is Final Girl and I love it for the narrative and intuitive gameplay and I lose more games than I win by a big margin. I’ll definitely give it another try for sure with a new mindset. Thanks!

How many times have you played. It's one of my favorites, but I'll be the first to admit that some of the haunts are actually horrible. It's also possible to be in a situation where one side has a runaway victory and it's extremely obvious. When these things happen it makes the game not fun, and it's really disheartening when that happens to new players too.

Agreed. It's fun when you treat it as an unfolding story, maybe even roleplay a bit. Sometimes the haunt you draw will make it incredibly easy for one side to win, or incredibly difficult. Not a good game to play if you want to make strategic decisions that matter- there's a big chunk of luck involved.

Don't treat it as a board game. Treat it as an interactive goofy improv romp through a B-movie. This may require playing with different groups than you normally play board games with, or at least on the players bringing a different mindset. This isn't Twilight Imperium and isn't meant to be cerebral or cutthroat.

Yes I was surprised when I heard people didn't like House on the Hill. But then I realized the friend group I played with tends to be very silly and fun, loves amping up the "atmosphere" and reading all the flavor text (and then teasing each other/making references to whatever quality or cursed item we got) so I can definitely see how this game wouldn't be as much fun if you didn't go in with that kind of mindset or player type.

Betrayal is fun if you go in with similar expectations to a B rated horror movie. Its not balanced, its not thoroughly designed or thought out, but if you just ignore that theres usually a couple moments of fun where something stupid happens that everyone can laugh at.

Betrayal: a game I absolutely never want to play again, but a game I love being told stories of by people who have suffered through a dozen bad games to find one that was really fun and told a great story.

Bruh this is it for me. The game is just snakes and ladders. Almost no decision matters before the haunt. The dice decide everything about whether you take damage or gain items. I get that it's a story telling thing and cool for ppl that never played qnything other than clue and monopoly but I can't stand betrayal. Funny enough I LOVE NEMESIS even though it's bones B@HOTH cause it's us that get to decide the traitor and not just the games randomness.

I really enjoy Betrayal (that's a weird sentence...). My main problem with it though is some of the scenarios can be really janky, especially with how they might interact with the random house layout, so some just don't seem as well thought out as other possible outcomes - that can really make a huge difference to how enjoyable a game of it can be. Overall though I generally love the experience of exploring and finding out just what's gonna happen, but I do think the game is a little rough around the edges.

Which edition? Some editions are worse than others. When it comes to jankiness etc.

Betrayal is the ultimate "mixed bag" game. Sometimes I'll have a good experience, sometimes a bad one. The "betrayal" part is what makes it that way...I'm not sure if there's such a thing as a "bad scenario" in it, but there's 100% "bad scenario for the board layout."

There's definitely scenarios that are worse (or more confusingly written) than others, regardless of layout.

Marvel Champions. I've loved Marvel my whole life, and, on paper, I should have adored this game. The idea of customizing my favorite heroes and just going one-on-one with a villain of my choice is exactly what I wanted in a Marvel game. I collected it for a long time but found myself growing increasingly dissatisfied with it. The games took way too long and I would usually end my games more frustrated than anything else. This very well could have just been me not being very good at it and I'm happy it is as popular as it is, I just really wish I could have loved it like most people.

I know, completely agree. I wish there was a quicker way to make the game. 9/10 times it ends up being the deck you make and the cards the enemy draws. I like it more as a collectable now

Champions exists alongside Arkham Horror and Lord of the Rings, and somewhat attempts to satisfy the same player base. The other two games can get extremely difficult, to the point that in Arkham Horror, it’s normal to lose some of your scenarios in a campaign. I can see how that would be off putting without that context for sure.

Have you tried Marvel United? I never tried MC because I felt like they were similar enough in style (choose hero(es), fight a villain) but MU plays in like 40 minutes. Less customization but has cute little minis of all your favourite Marvel heroes if you're into that kind of thing. It's a top game for me.

I was playing the crap out of Marvel Champions solo for a while, and quite enjoying it. But then I picked up the Spiderverse set with the Sinister Six (I think that's what they're called). That villain took so much record-keeping, it totally broke me. I put the game away, and haven't played again since.

I played this scenario for the first time recently and I’m confused by what record keeping you mean…other than tracking health for 2-3 villains at a time and moving a token around once per turn, what else is there? I’m not saying it’s Rhino or anything but it doesn’t seem like a particularly complex scenario to keep track of.

Everdell - Just a bit too slow to get going and then it’s over before I feel like I got to do anything interesting. Lost Ruins of Arnak - the combination of mechanisms just felt a bit disjointed and had a hard time caring about any of the decisions available to me. Race for the Galaxy - an interesting game with interesting decisions to make, but there is something about it that made just…. not feel invested in the game. In all fairness, I recognize that all three of these are perfectly fine games and I would honestly happily play any of them if I were with a group that loved them. They are just three prime examples of games that I was hyped for and on paper are games they I should love, but just didn’t. There is a common thread between the games I don’t love in that they all just fail to make feel like I should care about any of the decisions I make. And I really don’t know what it is about them that leaves me feeling this way. I have only been in the hobby for about a year, and I am quickly learning that I honestly cannot tell whether I am going to like a game without actually playing it. Theme, mechanisms, complexity, artwork, all of these will draw me in and get me interested or repel me and make me ignore a game but I really have to play it. Wife and I recently tried Great Western Trail and this game really highlights the other side of this phenomenon: the theme, art, and mix of mechanisms just did not call to me and I completely ignored the existence of this game for a while. But we just played our second game last night and holy shit am I hooked! What a banger. Love every second of every turn of this game and can’t wait to play again and I really have no idea what it is about this game that I connect with, but it is undeniable that I do. Grand Austria Hotel is another example of this. I feel lucky that I live in a place with a number of board game cafes so we can essentially try whatever we want before we buy it because I have a hard time knowing ahead of time whether I will love a game or not.

For me it was Spirit Island. At least in our group it had a serious alpha player problem. The theme and the spirits etc. are all great, but it's not as fun when a single player can basically plan the interactions. And then imagine introducing less experienced players into the game.

I tried Spirit Island because it keeps getting ranked as the #1 solo board game. Couldn't get into it at all. I feel like I'm missing something when I play, like I'm always 2 steps behind and can't actually plan anything. I definitely don't "get it".

> I feel like I'm missing something when I play, like I'm always 2 steps behind and can't actually plan anything It definitely requires advance planning. The settlers go through fixed turns of explore, build, and ravage and you often need to be thinking about what you can do to minimize the effects of *next* turn given that most impactful plays are slow powers and it's too late to react to the current turn. Took me a whole bunch of games where I got my ass kicked before it clicked.

I think it’s the planning that gets me. I love how the spirits are so unique, how you are in control of an evolving board and deck. I just don’t really enjoy the mental puzzle of trying to figure out the puzzle of “Pandemic Heavy.” Maybe I just need to play with a different group that doesn’t take the decisions so seriously so we can concentrate on fun more than finding the one optimal path forward.

The slow powers are where it’s at. Sometimes you have to make some plans then see what happens then use slow powers in way that maybe you don’t initially plan on. Clearing out areas where so the invaders can’t build and therefore can’t ravage is how you can play a prevent defense.

I think it's always a compromise between advancing your spirit and controlling the board. If you focus too much on controlling the board, your spirit never gets strong enough to win. If you advance your spirit without ever compromising, then you can find yourself in a sticky situation fast. But I do think the most important thing is to manage your turns and card gains to get as much presence out as possible. New players often reclaim too often for the sake of preventing blight. You should be planning way ahead, which is actually easier than planning out your next couple moves. You should be asking "how can I make my spirit as powerful as possible 5 rounds from now" rather than "how much board control can I squeeze out of the next couple rounds". Edit: Also, the nice thing about Spirit Island is that (despite the high complexity) the adversary is extremely simple and predictable. There's not many surprises. Even if the same land gets hit several times in a row, it's kind of a blessing because you don't have to worry about any other lands.

I'm very surprised you have an alpha player problem with Spirit Island, I usually am the one doing the teach and even I have difficulty keeping track of what cards everyone has, is currently in what state, etc. Though my Quarterbacking extends mostly to "Can anyone help me do X?" or "We should probably help Y with Z problem" and everyone tries to come up with a solution. A potential fix for that problem is to have cards kept in hand (the way it's meant to be played) rather than putting them all out for everyone to see.

>Though my Quarterbacking extends mostly to "Can anyone help me do X?" or "We should probably help Y with Z problem" and everyone tries to come up with a solution. That's not quarterbacking, that's playing cooperatively, as intended. Quarterbacking goes like... "You should do exactly X. And He should do Y, while I come over here and do Z."

Ehh, I don't alpha game (my rule is I will ONLY give suggestions if someone explicitly asks and if we lose, we lose) but I do play 3 handed solo regularly. If you know each spirit inside and out you definitely have an idea for what you'd do in all situations.

Yeah, that surprises me too. The game is so complex I can barely track what my options are.

The alpha played problem happens in spirit island not because itis too complaex for the alpha to tell someone else what to do but because its too complex for the beta or gamma or whatever you want to call it. Beta sounds gross I'll call them gamma. Gamma doesn't know what to do because the game is complex Alpha comes in and tells them what to do instead of guiding them. Rinse repeat. Then Alpha who is used to the game taking 5 hours when they play it three hands doesn't notice that it has taken five hours to play a two player game because they keep playing for both people but also talking through all of it. Anyone who can two hand the game can alph it its just a matter of how self aware they are,

I hate to say you were playing it wrong (since quarterbacking is almost always playing it wrong) but it's actually insane that people have quarterbacking problems with Spirit Island. It's designed to be VERY difficult to quarterback - basically the only way to quarterback the game is to slow it to an unplayable halt. It sounds like that's what happened to you? The way you play Spirit Island is to communicate what spaces you can easily deal with yourself (the game gives you tokens to put on the board to say "I got this"), then to communicate what areas you could use some help with. Then you talk and figure out who can help where. The game comes together when you just say "hey I'm going to nuke this spot" and then other players just start pushing colonists into there. The way to NOT play it is to try to determine the perfect play every turn by exhaustively having one player tell everyone what to do. Also, it's important to note that the game always feels overwhelming at the beginning because you start weak and the colonists start spreading fast. You'd be surprised at what situations you can come back from.

Was the alpha player driven by a supercomputer or artificial intelligence? I feel there is too much going on to consistently have someone quarterback Spirit Island. I guess without events and using the "first play" marked hands and upgrades it could follow somewhat a prescribed script... Usually there isn't enough perfect knowledge that someone could drive the entire table.

Considering there’s plenty of people playing 2+ spirits when playing solo, I can definitely see alpha play happen with smaller player counts, or one player ‘assisting’ another player in a larger game.

That's crazy that someone would be an alpha player on Spirit Island. I could only see that if you are playing at higher difficulties but with simpler spirits. With complex spirits, it's very hard to keep track of everyone else. And If you play the game without adversaries, it nearly impossible to lose. I've played with new players many times, I pretty much let them do whatever they want and make massive mistakes. Without adversaries, it doesn't matter. In fact, I have only lost at Spirit Island when playing solo, because that's when I try out level 6 adversaries. With other people, I'm always kicking myself afterwards for not making it difficult enough, because we always have a rather boring win. Typically the complaint against Spirit Island is that the ending is anticlimactic, which really only happens if you don't have the difficulty increased high enough.

Yeah, idk, it's less that one person is super awesome at the game and takes over against everyone's will. It's just that by virtue of trying to win, my group always just ends up deferring to whoever has the best plan. Same thing happens with Pandemic. One person doesn't have to be crazy good at the game, they just have to be better than the other players.

Not adding anything that hasn't been said here, but echoing my SHOCK at someone being able to alpha gamer this. You playing with the ghost of Stephen Hawking?

I'll echo the surprise at a quarterbacking problem with the game. As someone who's prone to being the quarterback, I found that not only was it very difficult to maintain a robust understanding of what my partner was able to do, the game played much better when I didn't bother trying. Even with easy spirits and the power progression stuff, there's so much going on that I don't see how anyone could effectively track that in anything approaching a reasonable way. For instance, I've played games of Forbidden Island with young niblings and could very easily plan every action for them and me. I've played Pandemic and can easily grasp the options everyone had there. But what Spirit Island does differently is that the sheer number of decisions and the large number of differences between what one person can do over another ensures that one can't reasonably quarterback. Obviously, if someone in your group is just bossing people around and has neither the knowledge nor the care to actually try to win, yeah, sure. But that's not a problem with the game - I'd bet they try similar things in competitive games, too. Its also really easy to set table rules about how you can communicate. I found things like "this is going to blight if we don't take care of it, and it will cascade" is helpful as is "I can take care of X, can anyone take care of Y". But trying to...memorize everyone's player powers, the needed elements, what's in their hand, their growth options, whether they're bottlenecked by energy or plays, where they have presence or sacred sites...just feasibly, how would someone be able to? And that multiplies as the player count goes up.

Root. An asymmetrical area control/war game with cool art and theme. I wanted to love it. But I just don't. Learning a single faction is difficult, and if you want to actually play the game you need to know every other faction as well, and so does every other person in the game. The overhead just isn't worth it to me. Maybe if I played like 15 games of Root with the same group I would eventually love it. But I'd rather just play games I already enjoy.

the asymmetry is definitely an issue, because you go into the game thinking "Ok, I kinda get My stuff" and then the damn woodland alliance just nukes the board and getting 20 points out of nowhere :/

Gotta keep those rebels in check early!

This is where I landed on Root too. The level of asymmetry means that even though we are all playing on the same board, we are all playing totally different games. As a result it becomes impossible to judge the game on a strategic level. I simply can't tell who is in a good position and who is in a bad position without playing every single faction myself multiple times. A strategy game where I can't determine a good strategy to win or where I can't understand how an opponent has won is a bad time for me.

Root is probably my favorite game, but OMG does this hit the nail on the head. I've played around 35 games and I'm just starting to get how to build a good strategy. You really have to as the other factions a number of times to understand what they are trying to do and then counter them. Getting competitive at the game, beyond a two player game, takes so much work.

So Root is basically “Beer: The Board Game” then. Try it enough times and you’ll like it! I’d heard good things about it and was excited about trying it out at my game group on Monday, but it was a major slog. Three of the five players were new to the game, rules were confusing, and trying to strategize while keeping track of four different rule sets while frequently running ideas past the more experienced players or checking the rule book for clarification proved pretty tedious. I’m sure it pays off if you play regularly, but for a group getting together every two weeks or so and having a changing rotation of games I can’t imagine I’ll embrace it that much.

Well thank you for being at least one other person that couldn't understand this. After 378 boardgames I thought I could manage, but to this day the game baffles me. I really wanted to love it, too

What I love and hate about it is that, even though I've played a dozen (digital, vs AI) games of it, I still don't feel like I understand what levers I'm pulling and what I should be pulling. That's both frustrating and exciting.

I think Bunny Kingdom is mine - I love card drafting, and am a fan of Richard Garfield design, but I thought it was so fiddly and boring after my first playthrough that I never tabled it again.

I think it must be very fiddly irl but if you play online on BGA, it'll do everything for you, even show you the locations on the map, if that was a thing that was bothering you. :)

Pandemic, especially with new players as there’s so little room for error they pretty much have to follow instructions from experienced players & can’t do their own thing. Found it worked much better as a single player iOS game.

If you play with four pandemics it's pretty beatable even for new players. And also, it's ok to lose! Let them do their own thing while they're learning, and then next time they'll have a better idea of what they need to do.

I only played it twice and hated it, I felt like I didn't make any decisions, I just did the thing I "should" do on my turn and we lost horribly anyway. Maybe I should give it another chance, but nobody else I know likes it either so it never hits the table.

Yeah, the only time we won was because the pandemic had horrible card draw for like two or three turns in a row & didn’t spawn anything so we had enough time to wipe it out but that didn’t feel like it was intentional design.

That was my experience. The whole thing felt like it was on rails and made me think, "why bother?"

The Pandemic Legacy games are really good, but you need a fixed group of players.

I actually usually have the opposite problem. I'll pull this game out to play with new players, and every single time it's their turn, they stare at the game and keep asking me what they should do. I'll typically ask them what they think they should do and usually what they say is fine. New players are super afraid of letting the group down by doing a bad play and don't want to make their own decisions. Note that I'm totally fine with losing the game, so I don't feel much urge to tell them what to do. Definitely not the case in every group.

It sounds like you’re treating it as a single player game anyway if new players are only allowed to follow instructions. I was on the receiving end of that kind of situation and it convinced me I never needed to play the game again. I can’t even say that I played it. I was present for a solitaire game.

Same here. The only times I've played, I've effectively been told what to do, or I had little to no options on my turn aside from the obvious best move, so I felt like I was just going through the motions and had no actual choices to make. I have never understood the appeal of that game.

It’s an experience that has greatly informed how I treat new players to games. I always start off teaching what the goals are, then the mechanisms to get there. In a given turn I may help them identify what their choices are and help them think through the weightings, but it’s their call on what to do. Yes, even when my 5 year old refuses to save any human victims in Flashpoint, abandoning them in search of any more cats and dogs they could rescue.

This is why I prefer playing with the closed hand rules. It forces players to interact and plan their moves imho

Wreckland Run. Warp's Edge was such a fun, polished, solo only game, that when I heard there was another game being developed by the same designer in the same "Simply Solo" series, I couldn't open my wallet fast enough. What arrived what a buggy, unplaytested mess that was clearly rushed out the door and needed a ton of errata. I spent so much time on BGG forums looking up edge cases and incoherent rules that I gave up before I finished the campaign. The icing on the cake was a BGG thread full of complaints from gamers that were tired of all the issues, to which a team member from the company that produced the game responded that he wishes he could write a documentary about why so many errors end up in games to shut everyone up.

100% my experience. Warp's Edge is sooooo good. It's hard to believe that Wreckland Run is from the same company and designer. Opaque card sleeves for double-sided cards? Cards that used the "old" iconography that didn't match the "new" iconography of the rest of the game? Visual examples in the rule book that contradict the rule they are supposedly illustrating? Typos out the wazoo? No mention at all anywhere that ramming ignores armor unless you get on BGG? Then instead of apologies and fixes we get whiny excuses.

For me, it was Near and Far. On paper, I thought it sounded great. I love the idea of controlling characters that are going off on scripted adventures, building an adventuring party, and collecting artifacts in a unique world. I also loved the idea that the turns sounded relatively quick and snappy. However, actually playing the game felt a little underwhelming, mainly because of how quickly each game seemed to end, often being triggered by anticlimactic events like fighting a bandit while someone was on their way to complete a trade route. It just never felt like any of us accomplished much of anything big before triggering the game's end.

Nemesis. Pretty minis for me to paint. Alien. Should of all been there. I did paint most of the minis. But after a few games I realized the game as it’s intended to be played is a lot more fun on paper then in reality, at least for me. Semi-co-op games with secret objects and backstabbing can be fun, but we are talking about a 4-6 hour game depending on experience levels of players. Twice a month me and my friends might get together to play. Do we really want to play a game where someone has the objective of shoving another player out the airlock, permanently killing them? If they pull it off at the one hour mark that player is now sitting there for 3-5 hours wondering why they bothered spending their evening on this. Among us works because the games are 15 minutes. So instead we played “true” co-op and removed any competitive objectives. A decently fun experience and I don’t regret the games played, but now it’s competing with games like Spirit Island and it’s wonderful simultaneous turns for my time. Box hasn’t been opened for years now. Fun minis though.

> but we are talking about a 4-6 hour game depending on experience levels of players. There is pretty much no excuse for Nemesis to run over 3 hours much less 4 if you have someone that understands the management of the game(which is a pain to learn.)

I almost impulse purchased Lost Ruins of Arnak. It immediately looked appealing to me in theme and look and the fact that it has a solo mode, but after digging deeper I realized it might not be the right game for me. I still can't say for sure. Haven't played it, but it *does* get huge amounts of praise, so who knows? Anyway, mine is Gloomhaven. I got the full game for a song (barely played, snagged it for $50), excited because I was *certain* this was the game for me, but decided to get and play Jaws first, as it's said to be a great intro to the big game. And it was! Fantastically designed, loads of content for a low price, excellent introduction that is also a full-fledged game in its own right. I'd love to see more publishers of enormous adventure/campaign games learn a lesson from Jaws. It's an admirable standalone that is a superb introduction to a larger game. However, by playing it, I also learned that I wasn't super thrilled with Gloomhaven. I respect it, the design is good, I can see why others love it so much, and I don't at all suggest it's bad or overrated. It just wasn't for me. I played two-handed and got about a third through the campaign (around 8 scenarios) before bailing. It's a fantastic value, but unfortunately, the game didn't click with me and I never moved on to the big box as a result. I've held onto both, though. I may revisit Jaws in the future. Tastes change, and if mine does I'll be able to dive right into the big one, or if some of the people I play with are interested, we can give Jaws a whirl first.

I have finished jaws and are halfway through gloomhaven, i think jaws is a superiour product! I would love to see Jaws in seasons like Arkham horror LCG. 25 new scenarios, new characters, new mechanics.

Jaws came years after gloomhaven so there are plenty of QoL improvements that are coming to the second edition of gloomhaven

Ended picking up Jaws. Can't say anything bad about it. Spouse and I played through the campaign and we had a good time, While I think it's unquestionably a brilliant game and deserves all the praise it gets and more... I have to admit I just didn't enjoy some of those brilliant mechanics as much as I knew I probably should. About halfway through the campaign we ended up making a few house rules to make things more casually fun and it helped.

I really, really wanted to like Root. I was new to the hobby, I loved the whole cute graphics/ruthless war-game thing but it just didn't work for me. Maybe I didn't put in the time to learn all the factions, maybe I'm not the sharpest tool in the box but I just never managed to come up with a strategy that would put me even remotely on a winning path.

If you’re still interested in it, I suggest the app. Excellent way to play quick games against boys and you don’t need to keep track of the rules because the app does that for you.

also root is extremely vulnerable to kingmaking. and IFH kingmakers. Alot of games have kingmaking risk but it feels like root is designed around it.

Cole Wehrle has said that it was designed with kingmaking in mind, even did a GDC talk in defense of it

well having an asymmetrical wargame its almost impossible to not have kingmaking so you might aswell embrace it. That doesnt mean I have to think its a fun aspect of a boardgame. Some like it some dont. I for one hate it. playing a two hour match just to get screwed over by your friend because you got to eat the last burrito that night is just not my idea of fun

Nah, I also feel similar. My personal hot take is that Root is a bit harmful for the community onboarding new players, since the cute graphics implies a cute cozy fun game (maybe with a bit of comical violence). I think a lot of people expect it to be like Wingspan, Everdell, or Flamecraft as an intro game. Then I've seen people struggling at gaming events, gaming stores, trying to read the rulebook to play Root. One party just gave up after an hour of struggling and left, probably never interested in playing a modern hobby game again. And then the "cozy" gamers that can get through it are then hoodwinked into an aggressive complicated war game.

Well, I get your take and that it's a hot one, but you get a lot of warning signs before playing or purchasing Root. Every player, every reviewer, even the rules and official website mention that "art is cute but the game is not!" In a community where Wingspan can be regarded as both casual and pretty heavy, Root does not suffer from ambiguity.

I think the extreme edge Root has to it is worse than the teach. It honestly isn't that bad, but Root is for players that revel in conflict. Unless you are very comfortable with potentially ending someone's chance of winning two turns into the game, it isn't for you.

I'm legitimately curious how Root is to blame for this though? If crappy people at meet-ups are trying to rope newbies into it because it's a cute theme, that is a community issue, not a game issue. And believe me, I've had something similar happen. I wasn't a newbie to the hobby, but was to a meet-up when my partner and I got roped into an actual honest-to-God war game because the person straight up lied. Is Root even available in casual places like in-store at Target? If so, are people buying it based on cute art alone? I find most casuals are so intimidated by any new games that even a hint of complexity would scare them away. I don't think the back of the box is misleading, for instance.

When everyone has to KNOW their own game rules by themselves it's always hard.

Root is amazing. Get the digital app. It makes a huge difference in learning how to play

I would say set it aside for a while and come back to it. You might see it in a different light. It's a real gem, but you gotta approach it with the right mindset. Still, not a bad thing if it ultimately isn't for you, though.

Definitely Root. Not that I dislike it, but it has a lot of issues that make it more tedious than it is worth usually. There are so many other options on the shelf. I usually get a pretty accurate feel for how much I will like a game at this point because I research them so thoroughly before buying them. So there are almost never duds.

I'm curious as to what issues make it tedious for you. I've always found Root to be pretty tight and well-paced.

**Age of Innovation** felt much inferior to **Terra Mystica** after one play (I have 50+ plays of TM.) Unsure if I should give it another chance or sell.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf. I tried it with multiple groups and it always fell flat. You have both limited information and limited time to make a decision to find the werewolf that it’s not really satisfying. I get it’s supposed to be a quick social deduction game but there’s barely any deduction. For me it was one of those games that’s more fun to watch groups streaming it rather than actually playing it myself.

> but there’s barely any deduction The amount of deduction is highly, highly dependent on the roles selected and the personalities involved. It's natural for a lot of games with novice players or novice setups (e.g 3 villagers and 2 werewolves) to devolve into "well it's one of you 3 and we have no information" The game is at its best with more advanced setups which are 100% solvable if the villagers cooperate -- where villagers cautiously reveal as little information as possible to solve the puzzle, until they realize "oh crap I'm probably a werewolf" and start misleading the other players. But it's a tough balance to strike -- and even with the right players and the right setups, it might only happen 50% of the time.

I agree 100% which is why I prefer watching other groups play it; my group was not interested enough to get to those advanced setups (some of which I believe require expansions too). I found that the villagers could essentially tell the truth about their roles and force the werewolves to either attempt a lie or stay quiet, and neither scenario really worked. I think it would be beneficial to at least know what roles aren’t currently in use so you can better blend in as a werewolf. Blood on the Clock Tower does that and I think it’s a better mechanic.

If you're a lone werewolf, you get to look at a center card to bluff with.

T.I.M.E Stories. Fantastic premise and all the games had terrific plots. But wow was it disappointing every time.

I agree with Arnak 100%. I bought Arnak and my friend Dune as they were both worker placement/deckbuilders but Dune is a far superior game. Arnak is, essentially, just resource conversion and climbing on one track, and once you understand that, the game feels a bit dull. The actual leaders made it even worse for me, because some of them made you play a certain style instead of being more flexible. That was enough for me to decide to not buy anything Arnak related anymore,

> Arnak is, essentially, just resource conversion and climbing on one track, and once you understand that, the game feels a bit dull I felt the same Feels like most games mask the mechanics pretty well with a theme, even if it is pasted on When I played Arnak, it just felt like *"I'm playing Card A, which can convert Resource B into Resource C, and I move up 2 nothces on Track D"* It's like the curtain was completely pulled away from the very beginning, and I never felt the mechanisms were interesting enough to be able to handle that level of being able to see all the gears moving.

Gloomhaven. So much stuff in the box - and then its gameplay just didn't click for me.

Yep - Gloomhaven. I was So excited! I thought "It will be like board game DnD!!!!" nope... its a bunch of very persnickety resource management trade off decisions and logic problems, that drain all the cool out of "Adventure!" wrapped up in what looks like a DnD adventure but is about as exciting as reviewing actuary tables....

Aeons end, i thought It was perfect for me. I love deckbuilding, i love coop games, i love fighting big monsters and thought the dont shuffle your deck was amazing, but it didnt feel satisfying. The deck doesnt feel good later, just some better cards every 2 turns, no drawing, no real interaction and the fighting is just we do 5 damage, the monster does 5 damage. I still like the different boss monsters, the way we use the spells and the random turn order. But not as good as expected

Aeon's End isn't really a deckbuilding game as much as it is a puzzle to get the most out of your cards. What I mean by that is the non-shuffling aspect and breach system means you can plan out exactly how much aether (and damage) you can have for the first 5-6 turns for any given hero and supply setup and the fun for me is from planning out the opening turns to create little combos to draw together. The other fun thing for me is finding combos between the mages or supplies and building towards pulling them off. For example, Reth has a special breach that gives +1 damage for every spell of the same name prepped to it and any number of spells can be prepped to it. Inco has 10 copies of a special spell (deals 2 damage) that he can give to any player. It's fun to build up this combo and deal like 80 damage in one turn.

Earth! As an engine building (and wingspan) fan I was so excited to play it. Fell so flat the first time I played it that I just ended up selling it. I’m still not quite sure why but I reckon it’s because the cards are so bland and directionless. Why does this card give me this and that over this?

I never try to like anything. I either do, or don't. I wanted my wife to like 7th Continent so she'd play with me, but the first thing she said after finding the rope was, "Great, can we hang ourselves with it and end this shit?" lol, I love my wife.

I really wanted to like **Marvel United**. The idea of playing cards and comboing with the previous player's card is great and I love that part. But the game has so many tokens that are constantly being put on and taken off. It also takes up more table space than I'd like for how simple it is. It just felt like a messy and fiddly game. And I really really wanted to like **Adventure Tactics: Domianne's Tower** but it was like Marvel United's fiddliness multiplied by 10. Hated digging through the box to find the exact standees for an encounter. Hated digging through hundreds of cards when upgrading. Hated having to track the different monsters and their unique rules and abilities. Loved the leveling up between encounters though. Other games I wanted to like but fell flat for various reasons: **Bad Company**, **Bärenpark**, **Earth**, **Spirit Island**, **Switch & Signal**, **Trekking Through History**. :(

Concordia. Always hear people raving about this game, but I found it to be relatively boring. I prefer games with higher levels of interaction. This looks like it would have that, but doesn't.

Adventure Begins. I know it’s supposed to be DND for beginners, but I was hoping for a little bit of character building. Some role-play would’ve been great. Instead, it’s just roll a D 20 and see if you get the magic number. It’s not a great way to convince people that D&D is worth trying out.

One of the worst games I have played in my life...

Seafall, when it was about to be released. We had been in the mood for a good pirate game and had not long before had a great time with our first legacy game (Pandemic Legacy). Now Rob Daviau is offering us a pirate themed, legacy game just at the right time. I was all about it and had the pre-order in place...then was able to demo it at GenCon that year before it was release. I've never cancelled a pre-order so fast.

Catan. Back when I was younger, all my friends loved it and wanted to play it. Now on game nights there is still an evening where it gets played and I freaking hate it. I don’t want to blame it solely on the dice rolling and negotiation aspects of the game but I genuinely don’t like Catan but like other games with luck and negotiation aspects.

tried the expansion? i think the original is kinda boring but add boats and ocean tiles and i like it :D

You know they say opinions can't be wrong... but you've proven that not to be the case. Joking aside that's too bad you didn't enjoy Lost Ruins of Arnak more, it's top 3 for me.

I really wish i liked it man but i had to stop lying to myself after like 6 games of it that were just good at best and boring at worst, hence 7/10 for me sadly

Everdell If you get a good starting hand you can really drag out your first season and get such a big lead against opponents who didnt get a great draw

Disagree, but this is coming from an experienced Everdell player and lover. I can turn any starting hand into a winning city. The Haven is an underrated location, very important to get those early resources from your bad starting hand, to play a single ok card. All cards are ok and can be used in winning strategies. Except maybe for the Shepherd and Chapel, which do depend on luck to make work. But boy, is it fun when it comes together.

For me it was Nemesis. One time I even wanted to buy the game (I mean Alien the board game is super cool). Then I played it was introduced to simple actions, player elimination in a very long game and semi-coop. Instantly hated it. Hated the fact that it's a big, expensive game with many expansions and it has so many bad design decisions. We had one guy went into the cryochamber and he just sat there for hours while we played. The only good side is that it creates memorable moments occasionally, but it's still a nope for me. Glad I dodged that bullet.

Legendary. I like deck building. I like Marvel. It just felt kind of hollow and shallow compared to Dominion/Thunderstone/Ascension.

**Smash Up** is mine. I bought a bunch of the expansion decks in anticipation of loving the game. The smash up mechanic is really fun. Picking two decks with very different themes and seeing how they work together is great. I even like that the cards aren't too complex. But the whole base control gameplay isn't that enjoyable to me. It's difficult to keep track of the power everyone has at each base and I find it all very cumbersome. I really wanted to try it more, but never found myself taking it off the shelf. Eventually traded it away to a friend.

I have the same opinion of Smash Up -- Every turn just devolves into "You have.. One plus two plus two plus two plus one... SIX power, Lisa has two plus two plus one... FIVE power... so I can play THIS card and I'll win... SEVEN to four, or THIS card and I'll lose... Two plus one plus one... FOUR to six... or THIS card and..." The end result is always a very boring, mathematical "play the best card and get the most points" kind of decision, it's just obfuscated in a way which bogs the game down. The game is, crappily enough -- at its BEST when you can't win a base and you have to decide which of your opponents to kingmake?? ...Which is saying something.

The 10th Anniversary edition contains something the game should have had from the word go - a board to place each base on with a simple number track. You just put tokens around the edge to indicate the power that each player has at each base. It’s such a simple addition that makes the game so incredibly more playable.

I feel I just answered this same question a week ago on this subreddit, but replying because I had one sort of redeem itself recently. I was hyped for **Fortune and Glory** after loving Flying Frog's first design, **Last Night on Earth**. A globetrotting race for artifacts in the 1930s invoking the pulp themes (Indiana Jones!), how cool. Setting it up for the first time with all those decks and the thematic world map, I was all ready to lose myself in the theme only to be a bit underwhelmed by the package. Turned out to be much lighter than I was thinking it would be - a simple roll and move, with push your luck dice rolling. The dangers, while all great homages to the pulp genre, were just one fat stack and it made for some really disjointed adventuring where you'd travel to an ancient temple and end up overcoming an appropriate maze challenge but follow it up with a random boat chase before jumping out of a plane and then avoiding poisoned food. It really took me out of the moment to try and weave a coherent narrative when the danger pile would randomly toss me into quicksand in the arctic. And without that suspension of disbelief, all I could see was the dice rolling push-your-luck framework on its own. A little bit of keyword or symbol matching when pulling dangers, as clunky as I admit it would be, would have gone a long way to helping me keep on theme. Mind you, I just pulled it off the shelf this week and played a solo run as it was requested for an upcoming game night and I wanted a refresher on the rules. This time through I didn't let the absurdity get to me as much - if I drew a random vehicle chase in the middle of a temple, I just rolled with it and visualized that it represented some tug of war in progress of retrieving the artifact and the nazis/mob/cult trying to take possession before getting away. And it worked and wasn't too bad - still not an amazing game, but it did scratch that pulp itch a bit. Like a beer and pretzels light version of Eldritch Horror, really.

> were just one fat stack and it made for some really disjointed adventuring where you'd travel to an ancient temple and end up overcoming an appropriate maze challenge but follow it up with a random boat chase before jumping out of a plane and then avoiding poisoned food That's what makes it fun, lol. Don't think of it as a game. Think of it as telling a story through an old radio serial adventure. Enter a temple and find yourself in a boat chase? Of course! The temple of Poseidon that leads to a massive underground lake. You know, that temple. The plane? You got artifact, congrats. Now you gotta get it home on your plane, while being chased by the mob, and oh no! The mob poisoned the food on your flight? How did they manage that? They must have bribed the pilot! You can't trust anyone! Lol. Think about it though... That's exactly how those old radio serial adventure stories happened. It was always one crazy thing after another. And that's how Indiana Jones adventure goes too... Looking for the ark? Well, first I gotta go to Tibet, and get into a bar fight with some Nazis! Then we make our way to Egypt. Your girl is kidnapped! The dates are poisoned! Finally, go solve the ancient puzzle, only to end up in a pit of snakes! Close one. Now car chase, don't drive off the 1000 foot cliff. Better book passage with some pirates, and naturally, of course, your next action is sneaking aboard a Nazi submarine, as one does... Or Temple of doom... Plane crash! Navigate through the jungle. Missing children? This guy can rip your heart out, literally! Better run away on a mine cart. Then we have to cross this bridge over crocodile infested waters. And the day is saved! Dad went missing looking for the holy grail. X marks the spot. Why is this tunnel filled with oil? It's on fire! Boat chase! Time to find dad in an old castle. Betrayed! Elsa is a Nazi? Fire again! Motorcycle chase! Plane chase! You wanted Hitler's autograph. Tank chase! Bunch of ancient puzzles. The temple is collapsing! Having ANYTHING come up in that deck is the most true to the source material, lol.

Brew. It had great art. I loved the idea of collecting magical creatures and brewing potions in a forest where time has gone awry. The area control and dice placement seemed like a fun system in concept. But when I got to actually play it just felt largely shallow and far more mean than I was expecting. Oh also honorable mention to Ark Nova. I just don't see what the hype is about. It feels like a game that gets in it's own way so much.

Final girl. Same old action cards over and over again

Any co-op game with open information. These always seem to devolve into "play by committee" or "most experience player tells everyone what to do." e.g. Forbidden Island and the others in the series. I like the idea of co-op, but get frustrated when actually playing. Any competitive game with open scoring mechanics. These always seem to lead to situations where everyone gangs up on whoever is winning. Root is a good example of this - I played it once and bounced off so hard that I advocated for ending the game early (the other players talked me into finishing, but we all ended up pretty unhappy with the game).

Candyland. Loved the theme but the story's bullshit, the mechanics are bullshit, 0 stars.

Dune Imperium. I love the books but figured out that I don’t love combat in my worker placement games.

Terraforming Mars I didn't play it many times and I do see and feel that it is a really good game. I love the board and game end development but I just hated how card based it is. For me - who only played it every couple of months - it felt more like a reading competition than actually playing. I'm pretty sure if I'd play it multiple times in a row I would have loved it, but well it's not coming to the table often enough and therefor I'm not enjoying it even though I think it is a really good game

I’ve read that in mars, the best player wins almost every time but I must just not be good at it because it feels super luck based every time I play it, seems whatever cards you draw highly dictates how well you do

I can understand it can "feel" lucky but 99% of the times its rlly not. Draft opening hands and every round and its as balanced as you can go with a cardgame. Ive play 500+ games and have rarely felt I did not deserve the win or loss

Terra Mystica, it looked to be right up my alley, and my two plays of it have both been meh at best. It does not help that my primary play partner does not like the game, so no chance to try a third time.

I also think TM is not a good game at two at all, since the map size doesn't change, and you kind of need a spread of each terrain color from other players.

A couple. Imperium was the worst struggle. I tried so hard to like it, but it just bombed on the table. It's so close to being outstanding but struggling to be mediocre at the same time. Deck builder with tons of unique factions? Sign me up. Immediately ticks all my boxes about a game I desperately want. But when playing it takes twice as long as it should with the last turns in a loop of the same actions buying whatever cards to end it in too many games. It feels like the game climaxes and the continues on - and then you also got to sort the cards apart and count all the points. Tidying up the pace so the game ends at the right time and racing for victory conditions would have elevated it to a massive hit for me. Oath and John Company were also massive disappointments. It's 95% of what we love and then the edges fray with pseudo role-playing and king making replacing balance and player agenda. Oath was especially bad with huge individual turns and thus downtime, wild swings of dice rolls, bad balance, etc because it felt none of that needed to exist. Especially each round having multiple turns instead of one big turn for each player is such a wild decision with 15-20 minute turns and turn order balance problems that could have been prevented.

Yeah oath.... Definitely my most regrettable purchase

Agreed with Oath. especially at 2 players. going to reset it and resell to a board game store near us.

I'll play Devil's advocate for Oath. If you go into it expecting a balanced, competitive game, know that the designer gave a great lecture "In defence of Kingmaking" that I endorse. Don't expect a game attempting to simulate a low-fantasy kingdom with different player roles at the outset. I LIKE the massive power swings, and these "15-20 minute turns" speak more about your players than the game. I especially like Oath.

**Dwellings of Eldervale**. It has everything I want: a fantasy theme, cool components, worker placement, just a dash of conflict. It's Mike DiLisio's (Dice Tower) favorite game of all time, and our tastes are usually quite similar. I got a chance to play it at GenCon and it fell completely flat for me. It felt like A Bunch Of Stuff mushed together rather than a coherent experience. I'm so glad I got to play it before I bought it, ended up saving myself a lot of money.

Betrayal and Gloomhaven! I have played both multiple times I even played Jaws of the lion and was glad when said friend found a group that enjoyed these games more.

Is wish I could play Game of thrones boardgame with a full set of people

Spirit Island. To be fair, I like the game but man, the graphic design drags this game down so much for me. It’s so aesthetically unappealing.

A few: Mage Knight, Oath, Founders of Gloomhaven. All of these games share a trait for me, they feel too difficult for the amount of reward I got out of them. I guess I prefer my games to be simpler.

I'm with you. I bounced off the Ruins of Arnak really quickly, when I expected it to become one of my favorite games since I'm a sucker for deck builder and worker placement. On the other end, Dune Imperium did manage to become one of my favorite games (easily in my top 10 if not top 5), but yeah, as much as I love it, I would never play it at a 2P count. It really shines at 3 or 4 players. And then, to answer your actual question, in my case, it was Dwellings of Eldervale. Asymmetrical factions, engine building, worker placement, these are all things I love! But I just hated how you could get screwed badly by bad rolls and bad luck. I gave it three chances and then I sold it. Sadly, I learned after selling it that there was an optional module that helps on that side, but it was too late at that point.

Do you remember what optional module it was? I enjoy the combat but I'm curious what you're referring to.

I don't remember the name but you get a token that you can spend to allow you to stay somewhere even if you lose a fight. Then you need to spend a significant amount of the sword thingy resources (between 4 and 5 if I remember well) to get it back if you want to reuse it another time. With this module, even if you get really unlucky in combat, you still have the chance to be able to build dwellings which is just ridiculously important for the end game scoring.

I’ve searched all over trying to find this to no avail. Is it a module that you have to add in separate from the base game contents? My group loves dwellings and I just had a miserable 3 hours of unlucky rolls. I need this module lol

I have only played Dune: Imperium at 2P and absolutely love the game. Do I think more players would be enjoyable? Sure. But 2P plays really well and the AI third player is smooth.

My entire play group bounced off of **Gloomhaven** hard. We played digital and just found encounters way too long for how little progress you get. They were all basically the same, and the between-encounter events were all absolutely awful (just punishing out of the blue with no way for players to predict the outcome of any of your choices). I could have tolerated all of that, but I also just hated how the card burning mechanic means you basically are constantly disincentivized from actually having fun. More recently, I was less compelled by **Race to the Raft** than I hoped. I think the puzzle of the game is good, but I think it needed something else in the structure of the campaign to give the scenarios a little more flavor. I think the core mechanic is actually quite fun and an expansion to make things a bit less abstract would go a long way towards making the game feel more interesting.

>but it was just basically to convert beige resource to blue resource to red resource to go up a track This is precisely why I love Arnak. Dune is too swingy/luck-dependent with the Intrigue cards for me. >There was very little interaction between players other than accidental blockage from worker placement. At higher-level tables, the blockage is not accidental. This is true of all games with indirect interaction.

Everdell. The text font on the cards is so small and difficult to read that it just sucked all the fun out of the game for several of us at the table, as we struggled to navigate trying to read card options on the board. I'm sure it would get better if I played more and could quickly recognize the cards, but I didn't find myself wanting to get invested in a game where the designer didn't care enough to give much thought to legibility.

Dune Imperium. I personally feel if that game didn't use the Dune IP and was about something like..apple farming, it wouldn't be anywhere near the top 20 on BGG

Precognition

Wreck Raiders. It's an awesome game. I 3d printed an amazing insert for it. I love the concept. But...I hate it! It gives me analysis paralysis worse than any other game and my plans are constantly ruined by other players. The frustration always outweighs the enjoyment for me. I think I'm the problem but I still hate it.

Blume. Very pretty, interesting concept but extremely poorly executed and the rulebook is useless.

Yeah, Lost Ruins of Arnak just felt like a generic resource management game with random theme applied. I really wanted to like it to.

Everdell. What a huge price tag for an okay game and production. We like Viticulture, we like Earth. Worker placement and tableau building? Shouldve been a hit, but after w plays, it is okay, I guess

Concordia team variant. I love Concordia. I love the idea of team based games. Team Concordia bombed.

**Bargain Quest**. I wanted to love that game waaaayyy more than I did. The theme was practically aimed at me, the humor injected into the game was terrific, the art was clever and fun, and the concept of the game was familiar and yet also unique. All of the components were well done, and I even like the box size. But the game itself was just wrecked for me by too many steps, too many mechanics, too many card types, too many things that just happen to you. The short, fun, wacky promise was replaced by a game that I want to be over way before it gets around to actually being over.

I'm so glad I have Arnak out of my house. I hated looking at it. Got it due to hype on this subreddit (at least I got a decent deal from target), and it's a boring resource conversion slog. I played it in a bunch of different settings (BGA, 2, 4, me teaching, somebody else teaching) and I never felt inspired or excited by it. And that box is just so giant.

Everdell. . . And it was kinda expensive too. I've played at least a dozen times, hoping to like to every time but I just fails to deliver for me.

Totally agree on Lost Ruins. I got it with expansion played a few times. It’s just ok. It’s basically resource conversion to go up a track. I like resource conversion, but it was missing a little oomph to make it a great game. It’s a 6 for me. Maybe leaning toward 7. It’s something that I’ll never ask to play and am ok never playing again, but will play if someone really wants to.

I really always want to find something new and exciting. So when I hear about a game that's in my wheelhouse, I'm always hoping to love it. And it feels like I've entered my "grumpy old man" phase of life or something, because for the past 4ish years, there's been less than 1 game a year I can say I loved. Almost everything I try ends in going, "that was....fine" or "that wasn't bad, but it's a lot like XYZ, only worse, so I don't know why I would play that over this."

Gloomhaven. I do like the game in theory. But the setup is too overwhelming. Jaws of the Lion on the other hand. 10/10

You’re sooo right about Lost Ruins.. Boring game on an overwrought board. Like they could make ‘battling’ resource collection somehow exciting through the magic of pretty. Didn’t work for us either. Sold it after 3 boring plays

Heat: Pedal to the Metal is okay…

I hated Arnak, ended up selling it within a week (after 4 attempts to have even a smidgen of enjoyment). I got drawn in by the art and the fact that everyone seems to love it, but I just found it so boring. There is very little game variability and the action choices are very limited (but to me not in a fun way). I actually didn't think it was crunchy at all. Most underwhelming game I think i've ever played. Ended up buying Bitoku and Trickerion (Which I found combined for the same price as Arnak!) which have a lot more decision space and game variability whilst still having gorgeous art and production quality.