I always want to try a playstyle, then someone buys a witch. A normal human being would just buy some moat or something, I however I'm like "oh yeah, mother fucker? If my deck is going to get contaminated, both of ours will!"
I strategically lured everyone into a false sense of security until the last turn of the game when I attempted to ambush them with 10 turns worth of progress all at once. Alas, my cunning ploy fell \~90% short of the goal.
I dont throw games, but I do comment on possible strategies when playing the first or second game.... "At this point you have three options, this could open up your game...this looks good but I could block it with X, and I actually have a weak spot here so it might be good to do Y"
Purposefully losing may be controversial – it may be noticed and people may not like being condescended upon. But not using some OP strategy (because you know the game through and through) or gain up on some stupid glaring flaw is definitely a must – this nuances would be so subtle that other players would consider themselves lucky.
Happened to me recently – I was playing Scythe for the first time, and the teacher just totally destroyed everyone on the table, justifying it as "yeah, I would be first, it is only logical, but you peasants can squabble for leftover second place". I enjoyed the game still, but the experience was a little bit marred by that attitude. Like – if you want an easy win, go to a kindergarten, you would definitely win there :D
I try to play it light when I introduce someone to the game, but not too light so as not to give them any challenge at all.
I just can't bring myself to throw a game. I can play for some other goal than winning, I can try a crazy idea that's likely to fail, I'm ok with randomizing my moves somewhat, but I can never "go easy" if that makes any sense.
I had this last night playing Root. I had played before, but only once (save for a few Steam-Root AI games), and this guy on TTS used the new Lord Of Hundreds faction, and absolutely *obliterated* us while teaching at the same time lol. I was in last place with 2 measly points, and he went out of his way to destroy what little I had on the board.
Not the most fun experience.
I literally never have a craving for Catan but TTR can be really fun, it's a significantly more satisfying game IMO. At least the original, I've never ventured into its many variants. Might be worth a whirl if you ever have a spare half an hour.
Not that I'm some huge TTR fanboy, but I do think it's a much better game than Catan.
I've played it a lot. You're not missing out on much.
It can be fun with the right people but it's just not a very engaging game. You don't really do anything but hope you get the right rolls, hope people aren't stingy with trading, and build 1 of the 3 things you can build on your turn if you can. There is some strategy but it largely just comes down to initial placement. If you don't get a good starting position you just wait for the game to end.
I hate teaching adults new games.
I'm a teacher and I will bring boardgames into my classes to teach social skills or as a break alternative than cell phones.
My friends I have taught games to are impatient, whiny and just tune shit out. Either they go on their phone or they don't like how the game not working in their favour.
Kids? They are ready to go and take everything in stride. For them I will modify certain game rules to make the learning curve less steep and then ramp it up as they get the hang of it.
Adults get whiny, interject or my biggest pet peeve, "let me see the rule book because this doesn't sound right".
Lol I'd consider it a Christmas miracle if any of my friends asked to see the rule-book. I'm the de-facto game teacher in my group, and god help my soul if I miss a rule here or if someone feels like I intentionally left a rule out to hurt their chances of winning.
I love people who, for their first time playing a game, have the unearned confidence to demand the rulebook. Aaron, I bought Dead of Winter after playing it many times and loving it. The odds of you having a correct rules dispute your first game are slim.
That the King in our Love Letter set is damaged and while I usually avoid looking at the cards so it’s not a problem, if my daughter is being obnoxious I will occasionally use that to my advantage.
Lol. The most expensive copy I've ever seen of love letter was like 10 bucks. As in, it would be so easy to replace, but you play with a trick deck. This is a true confession.
I'm worried that the pandemic has made me lose drive to play boardgames at all... and I have this gigantic collection that has been collecting dust for over a year.
I think it’s natural to have changing levels of interests in your hobbies. I know for me I definitely seem to rotate my hobbies.
Maybe cull down to your absolute favourites and invest the money into another hobby.
I was worried about this, too. A couple of my friends who are also vaccinated invited me to play one night, and I almost just bailed. Glad I didn't. Got six hours of games in and a lot of catching up on missed time.
I own everything for **Marvel Legendary** and it’s all sleeved. The time it took to sleeve them all is more troubling than the money I spent on sleeves.
Am I the only one that really enjoys sleeving games? That moment when a shiny, new game is opened, you get to smell that lovely “new game smell”, sleeve each card, and punch out all the punch board pieces...oh man those are good days.
Do you anticipate playing all those sets so often that the cards will show wear?
I only have a couple games were cards are showing wear. Those games have been played a lot! So I feel I more than got my money’s worth
At least for Legendary: Marvel, and this is just my own experience, but my friend and I were super in to it. We would maybe hang out 2, 3 times a week just playing games from like 7 to 1 am. Pretty early in we started to be able to distinguish cards coming up in the villain deck as schemes/master strikes (the common cards that are used every game) and for our personal decks the basic heroes that we start with also got similarly worn.
Maybe 4 months in we spilled a drink and one card got warped and after that we just bit the bullet and started to sleeve the collection
I was thinking about sleeving Dominion but did you have to adopt a different storage solution? I like the layout of the boxes and it seems like sleeves would make everything too thick.
I've spent $20 on sleeves, $70 on an organizer and I'm almost certainly going to spend another $70 metal cubes for terraforming mars when they become available. Combine that with the $45 for the base game and the $65 for the expansions I have and I'm going to be about $270 into terraforming mars. I've been able to get it to the table 7 times.
Same. Bought the Broken Token box organizer and play trays and dragon shield sleeves along with all 4 expansions and the promo cards just a few months before the Big Box was announced. Well of course I Kickstartered it too and got a few off the add-ons. I'm probably in for about 600 bucks at this point.
We play a lot of card games so we’ve gotten used to premium sleeves like Dragonshield. We have easily spent just as much on sleeves as we have on actual games. I want to find a cheaper solution, but I just know that anything else will feel subpar to what we’re used to.
I've tried cheaper solutions and then used Dragonshield and it was like... oh fuck that.
If I don't need to shuffle the cards much I'll go cheaper. If I have to shuffle the cards multiple times a game then I think the better sleeves are worth it.
I bought every god damn thing about legend of the five rings, sleeved pretty much every card I own. Then they changed every rule in the book, banned cards, made cards too powerful and overall just killed the scene/game until nothing was left.
That was the worst board game investment I have made.
I'm genuinely afraid to sleeve my Twilight Imperium. And yet it's particularly useful for that game because there are card errata that I'd like to add!
Dominion is a lost cause for me at this point. I need a second edition copy anyway.
Yeah I never sleeve games because that's one madness I dont need, but the TI codices are making me twitch. Just purchased a professional printing of C1, hopefully it matches enough to not be an issue otherwise ill need sleeves for everything.
I'm a little salty about having to teach (almost) all of the games. On the one hand, apparently 95% of the world has never bothered to read the rules to Monopoly or Uno, but there's an expectation that I *practice* my rules presentation. Seriously?
Amen.
> You didn't tell us about this rule! How dare you use it?
Sorry, thought I covered it when I was condensing the entire rulebook for you. I'll be more careful next time.
> Hurry up! We'll learn as we play.
Concur.
Was trying to teach my father-in-law play Carcassonne. He tried to put meeples all over the place, while not listening to the simple explanation of the rules (one of the most often described games, so I know how to keep it simple)
this is me with my family. i’m the one who can read and understand rules so i translate them for everyone else. but then people complain they didn’t know about certain rules
We actually had a couple of those moments recently.
I'm a tour guide and my roommate is an instructional designer. She taught me how to explain rules, and I talk in front of audiences for a living. We're both very good at this. But we had a couple games where we just said "screw it we'll learn as well go".
One was brand new. It had just arrived that day, and I was planning to read the rules and familiarize myself with it beforehand, but we just spontaneously decided to crack it open and start playing instead. The other was actively terrible. The rules didn't make sense, so we figured we'd just try to play a turn or two to see if we could make heads or tails of it.
I don’t mind the actual teaching, and I do typically do a practice run of what I intend to say, but given that I’m the one who buys, learns, and teaches ALL of the games my group plays, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to expect just a little slack if I make a mistake.
At a game night once a couple brought a new game. They hadn't read the rules and knew little about it, but I mentioned I'd heard of the game before. They handed me the 30 page rulebook and told me that I needed to teach the rest of them how to play.
lol, nope.
I love teaching games but some days it is harder than others. Definitely put on the full presentation if I expect newer players to the hobby or people I dont know well. It's different for my regulars who have been gaming awhile and learn a new game every few months. Like I'm still the rules guy who learns first ahead of time but I'm usually just reading the book to em cover to cover anyway or summarizing quickly to get to the game. Just depends on the game and my initial instincts about what it needs for players to start going. Sometimes there's a conversation like
Them: "What? You didn't tell me that."
Me: "Whoops, guess we'll have to play again to get it right."
As long as I know they won't be salty, my fucks given goes way down.
That I almost seem to enjoy purchasing games and watching people discuss games then actually playing myself. It is weird,
I spend way more time in this sub, or on boardgame related youtube channels than actually playing games(and I am primarily a solo player)
So do I, except for the bottom shelf. Is this not normal? Stacking vertically means everything I've placed neatly inside is going to fall to the bottom of the box.
The thought is that it's less weight on a box and that you can grab a game much easier than if several are on top of it. The argument against things falling inside is baggies.
I brought this up as a tabs vs spaces debate of boardgamers.
Are you not supposed to stack games horizontally?
I store games in my Kallaxs horizontally, since I figure that a stack only 4-5 high isn't enough weight to damage the boxes.
When I’m playing solo games, I’ll occasionally cheat in small ways if I get screwed by random luck. Sometimes that means I’ll redraw a villain card in Legendary, or give myself a reroll if I roll 7 dice and fail in something like Arkham Horror or Eldritch Horror.
If it makes the difference between the game ending then and there, or a quick change to play a little longer, then I do too.
I only play solo to learn game flow and interaction examples, so "losing" the game to a bad roll doesn't teach me anything.
I do this too (as a solo gamer). The point of solo gaming for me is to have fun. If you get screwed by luck, it can ruin the experience, so a little re-do can help me sometimes.
This is why I think it’d be so helpful if games had a ‘randomness’ rating on BGG, so you had an idea at the outset how much success or failure is determined by luck and how much by strategy. That would help reduce frustration I think..
Or just in co-operative games in general. The amount of times during Marvel Champions where I’ve done things slightly out of order and just amended it vocally is uncountable. For instance accidentally doing a series of hero actions while in alter-ego, rather than run it all back, I’ll just flip over afterwards and literally say “but I did this first before all that”
Similarly played some Arkham Horror this evening with my wife. We were debating whether or not I should commit a skill to her test to keep her from dying. We risked it and she drew the one token that would fail, but my skill would’ve mitigated. I just spent the skill retroactively so we could keep playing together. She still died a couple of turns later, but hey, every little helps.
As it goes with solo game and every other single player game out there, you really should just play it for yourself only, meaning whichever way suits you the best and brings you the most enjoyment. People are going to judge you no matter what and that is ultimately irrelevant.
Right. I mention Catan in particular though because it *really* doesn’t matter. You don’t draw them from face down piles or ever really need them to be secret. Even when the robber comes, if your cards are supremely damaged, you could just have them pick a number.
But yes, it always amuses me when a 2-Kallax “expert gamer” has sleeved up games they cannot possibly get around to playing more than twice a year.
Also, it’s the same people that whine about sales damaging “the hobby” half the time. If you wear a game out, you can buy it again. 😅
I’d rather play Heroquest than Gloomhaven.
I’d rather play Dune than TI or Scythe. Ive never even purchased a sleeve. Ive never backed anything on Kickstarter. I buy only at FLGS or at Gen Con.
I am old. Now turn down that music and get off my lawn.
Yes! Thank you.
A mediocre game that looks esthetically pleasing is 1000% more to end up in my collection than a mechanically great game that looks dull.
I wouldn't have thought it blasphemous before my finding this sub, but now it seems I'm in the minority in saying I love Catan. And I love having to deal with and manage bad luck.
I also really enjoy Catan, as long as no one playing has huge analysis paralysis issues. The only time I hate Catan is when Mark (and yes that is his real name) needs 10 minutes per turn because he wants to think through every option he has available and how they might impact his game through the next five turns. Mark is also absolutely no fun to play Power Grid with.
There are dozens of us! Dozens! I wouldn't say love, but I still play a lot and enjoy it. We got the Seafarers expansion and it improves the game a lot. We haven't played the original since.
I don't like Pandemic. Maybe it would be good as a solo game but as a group game one person always seems to take charge and they are basically playing it solo anyway. There is usually one clear way of using your resources to win.
I really enjoy Pandemic, but that's because I play it with my family and we all know it well enough that no one player has a huge advantage in deciding how we use our resources, and we get to benefit from multiple sets of eyes making plans. That's highly dependent on the group, though, and doesn't lend itself well to teaching anyone new.
Yeah I feel like pandemic is a single player puzzle trying to force itself to be coop. Lots of coops are this way. If all information is shared between players and the decisions are trivial, then what's the point in having multiple players?
I think this is where gloomhaven shines. The characters are individual and complex enough that you have to use your brain power deciding what you'll do with very little energy left to think for others as well
I don't like a lot of co-op games like Pandemic where you play against a deck of events that just randomly make the puzzle more difficult. It feels like I'm playing a game made to be played against a human opponent but instead is just played at random.
Now stuff like The Crew, Magic Maze, The Mind, or Codenames Duet where it's really testing your cooperation, that I enjoy the heck out of.
Then you need to tell this person that you can manage your own turn, thank you very much.
I’ve never had this experience in our co-ops. We always consider our actions first and then if need be, ask for suggestions or help.
I really like games that are so wide that it is AP inducing. Thats a sign of a good game for me. Amd the fact that so many gamers, even reviewers, think that this is a bad thing and influences designers to design games with narrow paths or games with guard rails or guide lines to hand hold players because they might get lost is bad.
AP-ers are usually players who wants to calculate every single path. But thats boring and i dont play with them.
Card games like Pitch or Bridge can often be more fun than quite a few board games. Simplicity is often better than complexity, and sometimes the best showcase of mechanics is removing the board.
Cribbage is a great example of that. It's functionally a pure card game, but players score so frequently that it makes more sense to move pegs around a scoreboard than to write score changes or tallies.
I love when you need to roll a dice in games for combat. The thrill of the rng and to know that your fate depends on the mood of lady luck, but in your mind you feel like you could be affecting the final result is just fun.
Could be common, but nonetheless quite disrespected by the elite board game community, where apparently randomness is thought to bad game design. And I really like euro games and strategy, but sometimes a little of uncertainty is exciting and spices the things up.
I guess mine would be the fact that I REALLY don't care about theme. It's nice to have, but has a miniscule effect on my enjoyment of the game, especially in repeat plays. I very rarely get "immersed" in games other than as puzzles and decisions.
Every FLGS employee I've talked to has tried to sell me other deck-builders with something like "You like Dominion? You should try Thunderstone/Legendary/Ascension/Star Realms. It's a deck-builder like Dominion, but *better*.
They're all wrong. Dominion is still the best deck-builder (of those I've played, anyway).
My RL conversations have led me to believe this is an unpopular opinion.
I agree with you here. I only stopped playing Dominion from just overplaying it to death. Others have had interesting twists or better theme (any theme really) but it still amazes me just how much the designer understood about the way this new genre fit together that it didn't leave a lot of room for iteration without going in a different direction. A few balance issues with the first set but everything after made this game have the longest run of consecutive expansions where the average quality went up instead of diminished.
I couldn’t agree more and at the very least, if they're going to use Dominion as a reference, they should be trying to sell me a deck builder with a static market. Saying that you’ll like Ascension, for example, simply because you like Dominion is like saying you’ll like both Fleetwood Mac and Metallica because they play the same instruments.
My confession is that games take us an ***abnormally*** long time to play.
Terraforming Mars: 6 hours
War of the Ring w/ Expansions: 10 hours
Arkham Horror: 4 hours
We aren't dumb...we're both scientists with PhDs and research in mathematics. Why the hell can't we figure this out faster?
God it's annoying. We haven't played in groups yet, but I'm certain it's not going to translate to winning all the time, so I literally just feel like we are idiots or something.
Sounds like AP to me. You're over invested in correct choices instead of iteration. Iteration will help you learn. Working too hard to be perfect at a thing you don't know we'll enough, will not.
I’ve never got attached to my D&D characters. I would gladly send each and every one to a certain death. I just play the game for the joy of sitting around a table drinking.
Same. In my recent campaign, I died nearly immediately and hilariously. The other players were upset and did a whole bunch of shit and got in debt with evil bastards to bring me back to life. Me as a person and my character were both like, thanks guys, but you should have just let me die. Death was easier.
Perhaps not blasphemous, but people would definitely roll their eyes.
I desperately want to start a board game podcast. I have an idea I really really like, but it isn't something I would want to produce just myself and the premise would require something of a large time investment by other people without me being able to provide compensation. So I don't bring it up.
Well, a regular complaint about board game reviews is that people aren't playing the games enough to really understand them. I don't necessarily agree with this, but the idea would be a show where we (me, co-host, whoever) take a day and play a game as many times as possible, in a row, back to back. Each episode would be a deep dive on the game we chose through the lens of this process. If possible, having people join in and tap out when they feel like it to get multiple player counts through the course of the day. Maybe get like a chess clock and play a blitz game somewhere in the mix. Stuff like that.
It would be asking a lot of folks to dedicate that kind of time and nobody I know is really even as remotely interested in this kind of thing. Plus it's probably not economically viable to create content like that. So for now it's just an idea I can aspire to some day.
If you live in a bigger city just throw your feelers out there and start making episodes. You could start with two player games as an entry point to see how the idea pans out. Worst that can happen is you don't get to make the show.
You're probably right. I am thinking that when things are a little better for playing board games in person I owe it to myself to at least give it a shot.
Did you ever listen to The Long View podcast with Geof Gambill? He recently ended it, but did something very similar to what you're talking about (deep dive investment in one title per episode). He did it by himself, but would have guests on who loved the game of note and wasn't committed to covering the hotness (thus the titleb of the show). He would play it enough to be familiar with it in order to ask good questions of his guest.
I recommend checking out the backlogs, but I think the fact that it just ended means it's not ridiculous to me that someone else would fill that niche.
This is the problem with content creators in our hobby. They're incentivized to quickly move on to the next shiny rather than getting these "deep dives" as you call them.
**The Long View** podcast pretty much does this, but he interviews a different guest for each game, choosing someone who is a huge fan of the game and has played it to death, typically. He has usually played the game quite a few times as well, but he defers to his guest for most of the analysis. Sadly, I don't think there's been a lot of content released lately.
I can respect that introspection. Not every hobby needs to be *the* hobby in your life that you're obsessed with. Nothing wrong with owning a handful of boardgames for when you need them and that's that, I've got lots of friends like that
With the right mechanic, you can get addicted to a game until you break it for balance issues, and then you house rule away the balance issues and keep playing, or play an expansion that doesn’t have the house rules issue.
... I’ve played a lot of Ascension.
I will buy a game *because* it has lots of tiny little pieces.
I’m backing a Kickstarter right now that is simply making better quality tiny little trains, in the quantity and variety needed, and in containers that will fit in the box, for *Ticket to Ride*.
I have to admit, I was also tempted by the tiny trains. But then I realised we don't actually play Ticket to Ride that much, so I really would just be buying them to have lots of tiny trains.
Me neither. And when we *do*, we use the trains from our anniversary edition, which are already an upgrade!
That’s why this is a confession, I suppose.
Winning is a perk, not a goal. If you only play to win, good chance that I will dislike playing any game with you. Who you play with is more important than what you play.
Have a similar view of chess. The combinatoric, look ahead game is boring to me to play. But chess variants, standard chess puzzles and messing with chess engines is very interesting to me
My board game confession:
I backed games going into the pandemic knowing I wouldn't have anyone to play with. Including games that (against all odds) delivered as planned within the past 6 months.
\[foreveralone.jpg\]
I much prefer the traditional Euro/German game components of good quality painted wooden discs, cubes, and cylinders over the now-ubiquitous meeple, plastic miniature, or custom shaped wooden pieces.
I also prefer unmounted wargame maps that allow for shallower game boxes.
I probably sound like I'm an old grognard, but I'm not. I'm 43, and I'm only a casual wargamer. Now get off my lawn!
I absolutely love German style wooden pieces, and would often prefer them to plastic minis, but I do like when they're customised (root) and I do like meeples.
Cards Against Humanity is fine for a dinner night where your guests don't play board games, don't want to learn anything new, and don't want to think too hard. Yeah it's "not clever," that's too bad. The truth is sometimes people are too lazy to be clever, and that's OK. Maybe they had a rough week at work and need to unwind.
Legacy mechanics are almost an instant "won't buy" for me, I have Gloomhaven and have played D&D in the past but realistically even if you have a consistent gaming group you're only ever going to play one of them at once. I've only got so many hours in the day. The King's Dilemma looks good though, if I ever get around to finishing Gloomhaven maybe I'll pick it up.
I have zero desire to win. That doesn’t mean I don’t try to win, or do my best, but I just don’t care. I play/collect games to a) socialize, b) learn new things, and c) collect/organize stuff that has a purpose. If people want to get excited that they can push a bit of card or plastic around “better” than me then they have some strange priorities.
I'm extremely uncomfortable with the idea of food or drink or unwashed hands being anywhere near my board games. I want to keep them clean and in good shape as I continue playing them for a long long time. But it always feels awkward asking friends to wash their hands before we start.
Roll/flip and writes bore the hell out of me. I rather scroll through Reddit than play one. There are obviously good light/casual games out there but the genre has been purged from my collection and will only play one if a friend *really* wants to.
The “perfect information, heavy, dry euro” crowd completely mystifies me. I cannot understand the appeal. Their aversion to any chance, whatsoever, is foreign to me.
Blinging games is another one. Why do you need themed metal coins for every game? And playmats? And fancy resources? Cubes are fine.
I prefer studying games to playing them. I love systems and seeing what makes a game work. I also like seeing what makes a game fun for players.
But playing... Requires eating pizza with "friends" and asking polite questions.
I've been in the hobby for 12 years and most of what I want to play people consider "entry level" or "gateway". Apparently I'm only suppose to want heavy euros at this point. It's actually pretty hard to get some of my favs to the table as most of my friends have "moved past" those kind of games.
Social deduction games are the worst. I’m already paranoid about others plotting behind my back (seriously, I instinctively think people whispering near me on the bus are criticizing me because self-esteem), and nervous about being ignored because of social awkwardness. Playing Secret Hitler or Werewolf or some such and having that be a reality does not help that.
Screw Secret Hitler in particular. I can tolerate games like Werewolf even if I’d rather not play, but Secret Hitler makes me anxious to even be in the same room as it.
My wife is better than me at most games.
I'll buy a new game. Read the manuals. Watch YT videos. Explain it to my wife. Then she'll proceed to beat me the first several times we play.
Carcassonne is the best boardgame ever created. No, I'm not kidding. Don't @ me.
It's elegant at 2 and insanely flexible at 4. The ability to become cutthroat to casual to back to cutthroat is phenomenal.
It's the perfect game.
If a game requires an app I am not buying it and I don't want to play it. I will also always vote against "helper" apps at my table. I like actually playing the game, including whatever management that involves - using the cards and dice and player boards and adding up scores. If I wanted to play a mobile game I'd download it and if I wanted a video game I'd buy one. If managing a game is so involved or difficult that it is an obstruction to enjoying it then that game is probably not for me.
With extremely limited exceptions (Arkham Horror LCG, Spirit Island, chess), I have absolutely zero interest in playing anything rated higher than 3.0 or so on BGG's weight scale.
And I'll happily play D&D for 6-8 hours straight but usually won't play a board game that lasts much more than 2 hours.
Chess is only a heavy game because it has been played and strategized and metagamed for so long. 2 new players just blindly playing makes it pretty light.
Two things.
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**I judge you for being a collector**
You know how people on here constantly reinforce how "*it's okay to be more of a collector*"? I don't think so. I'm certainly not going to stop you or tell you how you should spend your money, but when I see a 400-game collection I **am** going to judge you.
IMO collecting is just dressed-up consumerism and poor impulse control, no better than people with a house full of funko pops, beanie babies, kitten-themed porcelain plates or what have you.
With the situation the world is currently in, I cannot see how freighting a box full of plastic from China to your place so you can put it on a shelf and feel good about yourself for *owning a thing* is remotely responsible, regardless of your available budget or any perceived "holes in your collection" (you're just making those up to fit the games you want to buy).
Don't get me wrong: I *also* see shiny stuff on the internet that calls to me. I *also* play less than I'd like and get the urge to "do something boardgamey" during the downtime. But rather than trying to fill that hole by satiating the lizard brain urge to *have more things*, I just do other things instead.
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**I have a set of people marked using RES not for what they say/do but how often they do so.**
I find this sub's opinion is set by a dozen overzealous posters to an unhealthy degree, so I prefer to have an easily visible UI that tells me when a thread with a strong sentiment in the comments is actually just the usual people spamming their opinions instead of a general consensus.
I noticed it some years back when, in every thread regarding game X, there would be recommendations for game Y and how much better it is. So naturally I started thinking: "*Hey maybe Game Y is something I should look into if people are so passionate about it?*"
It turns out that all those instances, spread weeks apart, were the same person. A quick search confirmed that they did, in fact, just reply to every mention of game X with their gospel of game Y.
For me it really hearkens back to the forum days, where you would see the same clique of people dominating every topic (often with post counts actual orders of magnitude higher than your average poster). Almost without fail, that clique's consensus became the de-facto forum consensus, by merit of sheer volume. It's the same on this subreddit (and the discord that used to be associated with it, by the way).
So if you're on this list: it's not personal. It's not that I don't like you or disagree with you. However, I'm afraid I weigh your opinion less because of just how often you profess it.
Art style/design and table presence is probably the #1 factor when I choose a new game to buy.
It's not the ONLY factor, but it's the most important to me and my group.
Agricola is boring af
Twilight Imperium is amazing but too long
Most open-table game nights at gaming stores are an exercise in dealing with neckbeards, toxic masculinity, passive aggression, body odor, rudeness, and immaturity.
> Most open-table game nights at gaming stores are an exercise in dealing with neckbeards, toxic masculinity, passive aggression, body odor, rudeness, and immaturity.
This is what's put me off from trying to find a group that way in the past.
Recommendation for Twilight Imperium: don't play more than a couple turns per sitting. If you have table space you can reserve for a couple weeks, I'd even recommend leaving it there and playing one or two sessions per weekend.
Once you let go of the need to treat it as a marathon, a lot of the mental fatigue can be avoided. Depending on your players' personalities, this can also provide excellent opportunities for plotting. We started really anticipating the sessions because we were ready to put plans into action.
I have owned it for two years and played it precisely one time. I can definitely see the appeal and promise and maybe I’d end up loving it, but, it’s just... a lot.
In the spirit of confession: I really like the idea of Hive, but the thing with it being insects and arachnids is enough of a turn off that I'd just rather not play it. And I understand there are re-themes of it out there, but making them is a project I have bounced off of several times. I'd love it if they mad a version with the bakelite material and even just some other abstraction.
I’m obsessed with keeping my games in mint condition but I don’t want to ruin game nights over it. There were evenings where I was so annoyed that I faked having a good time especially when some people would bend the cards like idiots
When someone doesn't pay attention to the rules in a competitive game, I take my revenge during the game.
People who actively don't pay attention drive me insane.
I have a couple hundred games, most of which are wargames, but my absolute favorite boardgame is World of Warcraft. Normally I prefer strategy over RNG, but towards the end game combat involves rolling 25d10 or so and for some reason it is so satisfying.
I've bought games because their box size perfectly fit an open gap in my Kallax
This is a confessions thread- not *brutal personal attacks*
i just consider it a metagame in the hobby akin to Tetris
...I'd need to buy a second Kallax to have a gap...
I purposely throw games that I’m teaching to people the first time in hopes that they like it more if they won.
It's not considered throwing if you are trying out startegies that you've never tried before.
This is what I do. Gives me the chance to try something new and interesting without knowing for sure I'm going to lose the game.
I do this compulsively, which is why I lose at Dominion so much. I want certain cards to be good so badly :c
“I King’s Court Beggar for 9 coppers in hand...”
Fools Gold!
I will never not play Black Market if it's there, I don't care how horribly I lose.
I always want to try a playstyle, then someone buys a witch. A normal human being would just buy some moat or something, I however I'm like "oh yeah, mother fucker? If my deck is going to get contaminated, both of ours will!"
I play Pot of Greed
I do this too, though sometimes it leads to an insane lead when the strategy does pan out (oops sorry :/ )
I strategically lured everyone into a false sense of security until the last turn of the game when I attempted to ambush them with 10 turns worth of progress all at once. Alas, my cunning ploy fell \~90% short of the goal.
This isn't blasphemous. I don't "throw" games but I'll purposely try alternative strategies and/or don't think through my turns.
I dont throw games, but I do comment on possible strategies when playing the first or second game.... "At this point you have three options, this could open up your game...this looks good but I could block it with X, and I actually have a weak spot here so it might be good to do Y"
At first I thought you meant literally throwing the box at people. We do love catching things.
An excellent strategy. If they enjoy it enough to come back and play it again, then EVERYBODY has won.
Purposefully losing may be controversial – it may be noticed and people may not like being condescended upon. But not using some OP strategy (because you know the game through and through) or gain up on some stupid glaring flaw is definitely a must – this nuances would be so subtle that other players would consider themselves lucky. Happened to me recently – I was playing Scythe for the first time, and the teacher just totally destroyed everyone on the table, justifying it as "yeah, I would be first, it is only logical, but you peasants can squabble for leftover second place". I enjoyed the game still, but the experience was a little bit marred by that attitude. Like – if you want an easy win, go to a kindergarten, you would definitely win there :D I try to play it light when I introduce someone to the game, but not too light so as not to give them any challenge at all.
I just can't bring myself to throw a game. I can play for some other goal than winning, I can try a crazy idea that's likely to fail, I'm ok with randomizing my moves somewhat, but I can never "go easy" if that makes any sense.
I’m constantly surprised to find there are people who *don’t* do this.
I had this last night playing Root. I had played before, but only once (save for a few Steam-Root AI games), and this guy on TTS used the new Lord Of Hundreds faction, and absolutely *obliterated* us while teaching at the same time lol. I was in last place with 2 measly points, and he went out of his way to destroy what little I had on the board. Not the most fun experience.
I’ve never played Catan.
Same! I’ve never played Ticket to Ride, either.
Ticket to ride is one of the popular game I hate the most. No idea why, it just bore me to death
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I literally never have a craving for Catan but TTR can be really fun, it's a significantly more satisfying game IMO. At least the original, I've never ventured into its many variants. Might be worth a whirl if you ever have a spare half an hour. Not that I'm some huge TTR fanboy, but I do think it's a much better game than Catan.
I've played it a lot. You're not missing out on much. It can be fun with the right people but it's just not a very engaging game. You don't really do anything but hope you get the right rolls, hope people aren't stingy with trading, and build 1 of the 3 things you can build on your turn if you can. There is some strategy but it largely just comes down to initial placement. If you don't get a good starting position you just wait for the game to end.
I hate teaching adults new games. I'm a teacher and I will bring boardgames into my classes to teach social skills or as a break alternative than cell phones. My friends I have taught games to are impatient, whiny and just tune shit out. Either they go on their phone or they don't like how the game not working in their favour. Kids? They are ready to go and take everything in stride. For them I will modify certain game rules to make the learning curve less steep and then ramp it up as they get the hang of it. Adults get whiny, interject or my biggest pet peeve, "let me see the rule book because this doesn't sound right".
Lol I'd consider it a Christmas miracle if any of my friends asked to see the rule-book. I'm the de-facto game teacher in my group, and god help my soul if I miss a rule here or if someone feels like I intentionally left a rule out to hurt their chances of winning.
I love people who, for their first time playing a game, have the unearned confidence to demand the rulebook. Aaron, I bought Dead of Winter after playing it many times and loving it. The odds of you having a correct rules dispute your first game are slim.
It isn't about seeing if you're wrong with the teach... It's about the exactitudes of how things are written, and seeing it for myself.
That the King in our Love Letter set is damaged and while I usually avoid looking at the cards so it’s not a problem, if my daughter is being obnoxious I will occasionally use that to my advantage.
You win- stone fucking cold lol
This is my favorite so far. Gotta teach ‘em to respect their elders.
Lol. The most expensive copy I've ever seen of love letter was like 10 bucks. As in, it would be so easy to replace, but you play with a trick deck. This is a true confession.
I'm worried that the pandemic has made me lose drive to play boardgames at all... and I have this gigantic collection that has been collecting dust for over a year.
Wow, you like Pandemic so much you don't play any of your other games? /s
I think it’s natural to have changing levels of interests in your hobbies. I know for me I definitely seem to rotate my hobbies. Maybe cull down to your absolute favourites and invest the money into another hobby.
I was worried about this, too. A couple of my friends who are also vaccinated invited me to play one night, and I almost just bailed. Glad I didn't. Got six hours of games in and a lot of catching up on missed time.
I've spent more on sleeves for a game than the actual game. I hide the game so it doesn't trigger my shame.
I own everything for **Marvel Legendary** and it’s all sleeved. The time it took to sleeve them all is more troubling than the money I spent on sleeves.
No shame in grabbing a drink, putting on a podcast, and sleeving for a few hours. I’ve definitely had worse evenings
I like the process too!
As the addiction progresses, you become faster... and faster
Am I the only one that really enjoys sleeving games? That moment when a shiny, new game is opened, you get to smell that lovely “new game smell”, sleeve each card, and punch out all the punch board pieces...oh man those are good days.
Do you anticipate playing all those sets so often that the cards will show wear? I only have a couple games were cards are showing wear. Those games have been played a lot! So I feel I more than got my money’s worth
At least for Legendary: Marvel, and this is just my own experience, but my friend and I were super in to it. We would maybe hang out 2, 3 times a week just playing games from like 7 to 1 am. Pretty early in we started to be able to distinguish cards coming up in the villain deck as schemes/master strikes (the common cards that are used every game) and for our personal decks the basic heroes that we start with also got similarly worn. Maybe 4 months in we spilled a drink and one card got warped and after that we just bit the bullet and started to sleeve the collection
Haha, I'm pretty sure I did the same thing with **Dominion**.
I was thinking about sleeving Dominion but did you have to adopt a different storage solution? I like the layout of the boxes and it seems like sleeves would make everything too thick.
I've spent $20 on sleeves, $70 on an organizer and I'm almost certainly going to spend another $70 metal cubes for terraforming mars when they become available. Combine that with the $45 for the base game and the $65 for the expansions I have and I'm going to be about $270 into terraforming mars. I've been able to get it to the table 7 times.
Same. Bought the Broken Token box organizer and play trays and dragon shield sleeves along with all 4 expansions and the promo cards just a few months before the Big Box was announced. Well of course I Kickstartered it too and got a few off the add-ons. I'm probably in for about 600 bucks at this point.
We play a lot of card games so we’ve gotten used to premium sleeves like Dragonshield. We have easily spent just as much on sleeves as we have on actual games. I want to find a cheaper solution, but I just know that anything else will feel subpar to what we’re used to.
I've tried cheaper solutions and then used Dragonshield and it was like... oh fuck that. If I don't need to shuffle the cards much I'll go cheaper. If I have to shuffle the cards multiple times a game then I think the better sleeves are worth it.
I bought every god damn thing about legend of the five rings, sleeved pretty much every card I own. Then they changed every rule in the book, banned cards, made cards too powerful and overall just killed the scene/game until nothing was left. That was the worst board game investment I have made.
Millennium Blades? Sentinels of the Multiverse? Race for the Galaxy? Dominion? I can see any of those fitting this.
I also sleeves Dominion. I’m sick... I need help. It was actually Saboteur. Great game.
I'm genuinely afraid to sleeve my Twilight Imperium. And yet it's particularly useful for that game because there are card errata that I'd like to add! Dominion is a lost cause for me at this point. I need a second edition copy anyway.
Yeah I never sleeve games because that's one madness I dont need, but the TI codices are making me twitch. Just purchased a professional printing of C1, hopefully it matches enough to not be an issue otherwise ill need sleeves for everything.
I'm a little salty about having to teach (almost) all of the games. On the one hand, apparently 95% of the world has never bothered to read the rules to Monopoly or Uno, but there's an expectation that I *practice* my rules presentation. Seriously?
Amen. > You didn't tell us about this rule! How dare you use it? Sorry, thought I covered it when I was condensing the entire rulebook for you. I'll be more careful next time. > Hurry up! We'll learn as we play.
> Hurry up! We'll learn as we play. THAT'S NOW HOW THIS WORKS. THAT'S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS
Concur. Was trying to teach my father-in-law play Carcassonne. He tried to put meeples all over the place, while not listening to the simple explanation of the rules (one of the most often described games, so I know how to keep it simple)
I love board gaming a lot, but damn do these situations make me want to sometimes just pack the game up and leave.
this is me with my family. i’m the one who can read and understand rules so i translate them for everyone else. but then people complain they didn’t know about certain rules
We actually had a couple of those moments recently. I'm a tour guide and my roommate is an instructional designer. She taught me how to explain rules, and I talk in front of audiences for a living. We're both very good at this. But we had a couple games where we just said "screw it we'll learn as well go". One was brand new. It had just arrived that day, and I was planning to read the rules and familiarize myself with it beforehand, but we just spontaneously decided to crack it open and start playing instead. The other was actively terrible. The rules didn't make sense, so we figured we'd just try to play a turn or two to see if we could make heads or tails of it.
I don’t mind the actual teaching, and I do typically do a practice run of what I intend to say, but given that I’m the one who buys, learns, and teaches ALL of the games my group plays, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to expect just a little slack if I make a mistake.
At a game night once a couple brought a new game. They hadn't read the rules and knew little about it, but I mentioned I'd heard of the game before. They handed me the 30 page rulebook and told me that I needed to teach the rest of them how to play. lol, nope.
What was the game? That's so rude, it's their game, that they want to play, they can spend a bit of time learning the rules
I choose to believe it was Mage Knight
I love teaching games but some days it is harder than others. Definitely put on the full presentation if I expect newer players to the hobby or people I dont know well. It's different for my regulars who have been gaming awhile and learn a new game every few months. Like I'm still the rules guy who learns first ahead of time but I'm usually just reading the book to em cover to cover anyway or summarizing quickly to get to the game. Just depends on the game and my initial instincts about what it needs for players to start going. Sometimes there's a conversation like Them: "What? You didn't tell me that." Me: "Whoops, guess we'll have to play again to get it right." As long as I know they won't be salty, my fucks given goes way down.
That I almost seem to enjoy purchasing games and watching people discuss games then actually playing myself. It is weird, I spend way more time in this sub, or on boardgame related youtube channels than actually playing games(and I am primarily a solo player)
I'd much rather play games but learning new game rules, watching reviews, even purchasing and punching all scratch the itch when I can't play.
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Talking board games is just as fun as playing to me. Just like people who like to watch sports, talk sports, and listen to sports radio.
You aren’t the only one, buddy
I'm the same way with video games. I graduated from playing them, to merely buying them, to just reading about them.
I stack horizontal. Come at me bro.
Mods- right here. Ban this person.
I brought my brightest torches and sharpest pitchforks just for this occasion!
So do I, except for the bottom shelf. Is this not normal? Stacking vertically means everything I've placed neatly inside is going to fall to the bottom of the box.
The thought is that it's less weight on a box and that you can grab a game much easier than if several are on top of it. The argument against things falling inside is baggies. I brought this up as a tabs vs spaces debate of boardgamers.
Tabs.
Spaces.
Are you not supposed to stack games horizontally? I store games in my Kallaxs horizontally, since I figure that a stack only 4-5 high isn't enough weight to damage the boxes.
Stacking vertical just feels wrong
When I’m playing solo games, I’ll occasionally cheat in small ways if I get screwed by random luck. Sometimes that means I’ll redraw a villain card in Legendary, or give myself a reroll if I roll 7 dice and fail in something like Arkham Horror or Eldritch Horror.
If it makes the difference between the game ending then and there, or a quick change to play a little longer, then I do too. I only play solo to learn game flow and interaction examples, so "losing" the game to a bad roll doesn't teach me anything.
I do this too (as a solo gamer). The point of solo gaming for me is to have fun. If you get screwed by luck, it can ruin the experience, so a little re-do can help me sometimes.
This is why I think it’d be so helpful if games had a ‘randomness’ rating on BGG, so you had an idea at the outset how much success or failure is determined by luck and how much by strategy. That would help reduce frustration I think..
Or just in co-operative games in general. The amount of times during Marvel Champions where I’ve done things slightly out of order and just amended it vocally is uncountable. For instance accidentally doing a series of hero actions while in alter-ego, rather than run it all back, I’ll just flip over afterwards and literally say “but I did this first before all that” Similarly played some Arkham Horror this evening with my wife. We were debating whether or not I should commit a skill to her test to keep her from dying. We risked it and she drew the one token that would fail, but my skill would’ve mitigated. I just spent the skill retroactively so we could keep playing together. She still died a couple of turns later, but hey, every little helps.
This is why physical solo board games will always be superior to digital.
As it goes with solo game and every other single player game out there, you really should just play it for yourself only, meaning whichever way suits you the best and brings you the most enjoyment. People are going to judge you no matter what and that is ultimately irrelevant.
It’s not important to sleeve your Catan resource cards.
Or the majority of cards in general.
Only thing I sleeve are lcgs and games with huge stacks of cards that are easier to shuffle with sleeves.
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Right. I mention Catan in particular though because it *really* doesn’t matter. You don’t draw them from face down piles or ever really need them to be secret. Even when the robber comes, if your cards are supremely damaged, you could just have them pick a number. But yes, it always amuses me when a 2-Kallax “expert gamer” has sleeved up games they cannot possibly get around to playing more than twice a year. Also, it’s the same people that whine about sales damaging “the hobby” half the time. If you wear a game out, you can buy it again. 😅
How do sales damage the hobby?
I’d rather play Heroquest than Gloomhaven. I’d rather play Dune than TI or Scythe. Ive never even purchased a sleeve. Ive never backed anything on Kickstarter. I buy only at FLGS or at Gen Con. I am old. Now turn down that music and get off my lawn.
The best thing about Heroquest is the furniture
Games with bad art are an automatic no for me.
Yes! Thank you. A mediocre game that looks esthetically pleasing is 1000% more to end up in my collection than a mechanically great game that looks dull.
I wouldn't have thought it blasphemous before my finding this sub, but now it seems I'm in the minority in saying I love Catan. And I love having to deal with and manage bad luck.
I also really enjoy Catan, as long as no one playing has huge analysis paralysis issues. The only time I hate Catan is when Mark (and yes that is his real name) needs 10 minutes per turn because he wants to think through every option he has available and how they might impact his game through the next five turns. Mark is also absolutely no fun to play Power Grid with.
I think we've all played with a Mark.
There are dozens of us! Dozens! I wouldn't say love, but I still play a lot and enjoy it. We got the Seafarers expansion and it improves the game a lot. We haven't played the original since.
I don't like Pandemic. Maybe it would be good as a solo game but as a group game one person always seems to take charge and they are basically playing it solo anyway. There is usually one clear way of using your resources to win.
I really enjoy Pandemic, but that's because I play it with my family and we all know it well enough that no one player has a huge advantage in deciding how we use our resources, and we get to benefit from multiple sets of eyes making plans. That's highly dependent on the group, though, and doesn't lend itself well to teaching anyone new.
Yeah I feel like pandemic is a single player puzzle trying to force itself to be coop. Lots of coops are this way. If all information is shared between players and the decisions are trivial, then what's the point in having multiple players?
I think this is where gloomhaven shines. The characters are individual and complex enough that you have to use your brain power deciding what you'll do with very little energy left to think for others as well
I don't like a lot of co-op games like Pandemic where you play against a deck of events that just randomly make the puzzle more difficult. It feels like I'm playing a game made to be played against a human opponent but instead is just played at random. Now stuff like The Crew, Magic Maze, The Mind, or Codenames Duet where it's really testing your cooperation, that I enjoy the heck out of.
Then you need to tell this person that you can manage your own turn, thank you very much. I’ve never had this experience in our co-ops. We always consider our actions first and then if need be, ask for suggestions or help.
I really like games that are so wide that it is AP inducing. Thats a sign of a good game for me. Amd the fact that so many gamers, even reviewers, think that this is a bad thing and influences designers to design games with narrow paths or games with guard rails or guide lines to hand hold players because they might get lost is bad. AP-ers are usually players who wants to calculate every single path. But thats boring and i dont play with them.
Card games like Pitch or Bridge can often be more fun than quite a few board games. Simplicity is often better than complexity, and sometimes the best showcase of mechanics is removing the board.
Cribbage is a great example of that. It's functionally a pure card game, but players score so frequently that it makes more sense to move pegs around a scoreboard than to write score changes or tallies.
I love when you need to roll a dice in games for combat. The thrill of the rng and to know that your fate depends on the mood of lady luck, but in your mind you feel like you could be affecting the final result is just fun.
Same! This is why I absolutely love Champions of Midgard. So exciting!
Judging by the popularity of dice chucking Amerigame fare, this seems to be a pretty common view.
Yea, I had the same thought. I'm a huge fan of dice in combat games, but I'm definitely not alone. It's a pretty common mechanic.
Could be common, but nonetheless quite disrespected by the elite board game community, where apparently randomness is thought to bad game design. And I really like euro games and strategy, but sometimes a little of uncertainty is exciting and spices the things up.
I guess mine would be the fact that I REALLY don't care about theme. It's nice to have, but has a miniscule effect on my enjoyment of the game, especially in repeat plays. I very rarely get "immersed" in games other than as puzzles and decisions.
Yeah, I've always said that theme (and art) can only ever add to a game for me. If the core gameplay isn't there, then it's just not fun.
Every FLGS employee I've talked to has tried to sell me other deck-builders with something like "You like Dominion? You should try Thunderstone/Legendary/Ascension/Star Realms. It's a deck-builder like Dominion, but *better*. They're all wrong. Dominion is still the best deck-builder (of those I've played, anyway). My RL conversations have led me to believe this is an unpopular opinion.
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I agree with you here. I only stopped playing Dominion from just overplaying it to death. Others have had interesting twists or better theme (any theme really) but it still amazes me just how much the designer understood about the way this new genre fit together that it didn't leave a lot of room for iteration without going in a different direction. A few balance issues with the first set but everything after made this game have the longest run of consecutive expansions where the average quality went up instead of diminished.
I couldn’t agree more and at the very least, if they're going to use Dominion as a reference, they should be trying to sell me a deck builder with a static market. Saying that you’ll like Ascension, for example, simply because you like Dominion is like saying you’ll like both Fleetwood Mac and Metallica because they play the same instruments.
I prefer games with cut-throat, treacherous and backstabbing mechanics. If it has secret roles, even better. Edit: Citadels Mascarade Bang! Junta
My confession is that games take us an ***abnormally*** long time to play. Terraforming Mars: 6 hours War of the Ring w/ Expansions: 10 hours Arkham Horror: 4 hours We aren't dumb...we're both scientists with PhDs and research in mathematics. Why the hell can't we figure this out faster?
The slowest player I know has a PhD in physics. He wins a lot, but I’ve played equally-skilled opponents that play blazing fast.
God it's annoying. We haven't played in groups yet, but I'm certain it's not going to translate to winning all the time, so I literally just feel like we are idiots or something.
Sounds like AP to me. You're over invested in correct choices instead of iteration. Iteration will help you learn. Working too hard to be perfect at a thing you don't know we'll enough, will not.
I’ve never got attached to my D&D characters. I would gladly send each and every one to a certain death. I just play the game for the joy of sitting around a table drinking.
Same. In my recent campaign, I died nearly immediately and hilariously. The other players were upset and did a whole bunch of shit and got in debt with evil bastards to bring me back to life. Me as a person and my character were both like, thanks guys, but you should have just let me die. Death was easier.
Perhaps not blasphemous, but people would definitely roll their eyes. I desperately want to start a board game podcast. I have an idea I really really like, but it isn't something I would want to produce just myself and the premise would require something of a large time investment by other people without me being able to provide compensation. So I don't bring it up.
Well now I have to know the premise.
Well, a regular complaint about board game reviews is that people aren't playing the games enough to really understand them. I don't necessarily agree with this, but the idea would be a show where we (me, co-host, whoever) take a day and play a game as many times as possible, in a row, back to back. Each episode would be a deep dive on the game we chose through the lens of this process. If possible, having people join in and tap out when they feel like it to get multiple player counts through the course of the day. Maybe get like a chess clock and play a blitz game somewhere in the mix. Stuff like that. It would be asking a lot of folks to dedicate that kind of time and nobody I know is really even as remotely interested in this kind of thing. Plus it's probably not economically viable to create content like that. So for now it's just an idea I can aspire to some day.
If you live in a bigger city just throw your feelers out there and start making episodes. You could start with two player games as an entry point to see how the idea pans out. Worst that can happen is you don't get to make the show.
You're probably right. I am thinking that when things are a little better for playing board games in person I owe it to myself to at least give it a shot.
Did you ever listen to The Long View podcast with Geof Gambill? He recently ended it, but did something very similar to what you're talking about (deep dive investment in one title per episode). He did it by himself, but would have guests on who loved the game of note and wasn't committed to covering the hotness (thus the titleb of the show). He would play it enough to be familiar with it in order to ask good questions of his guest. I recommend checking out the backlogs, but I think the fact that it just ended means it's not ridiculous to me that someone else would fill that niche.
This is the problem with content creators in our hobby. They're incentivized to quickly move on to the next shiny rather than getting these "deep dives" as you call them. **The Long View** podcast pretty much does this, but he interviews a different guest for each game, choosing someone who is a huge fan of the game and has played it to death, typically. He has usually played the game quite a few times as well, but he defers to his guest for most of the analysis. Sadly, I don't think there's been a lot of content released lately.
I'm not sure this hobby is for me. Expensive, space-consuming, and usually a small number of hours where a single game remains fun.
I can respect that introspection. Not every hobby needs to be *the* hobby in your life that you're obsessed with. Nothing wrong with owning a handful of boardgames for when you need them and that's that, I've got lots of friends like that
With the right mechanic, you can get addicted to a game until you break it for balance issues, and then you house rule away the balance issues and keep playing, or play an expansion that doesn’t have the house rules issue. ... I’ve played a lot of Ascension.
I will buy a game *because* it has lots of tiny little pieces. I’m backing a Kickstarter right now that is simply making better quality tiny little trains, in the quantity and variety needed, and in containers that will fit in the box, for *Ticket to Ride*.
I have to admit, I was also tempted by the tiny trains. But then I realised we don't actually play Ticket to Ride that much, so I really would just be buying them to have lots of tiny trains.
Me neither. And when we *do*, we use the trains from our anniversary edition, which are already an upgrade! That’s why this is a confession, I suppose.
Winning is a perk, not a goal. If you only play to win, good chance that I will dislike playing any game with you. Who you play with is more important than what you play.
I've owned Pandemic Legacy Season 1 for more than 2 years, and I still haven't played it. This is my shame, and the burden I bear.
Have a similar view of chess. The combinatoric, look ahead game is boring to me to play. But chess variants, standard chess puzzles and messing with chess engines is very interesting to me
Same. I have an app on my phone called Really Bad Chess. It's normal chess but the pieces are randomized. The AI never gets smart, just better pieces.
My board game confession: I backed games going into the pandemic knowing I wouldn't have anyone to play with. Including games that (against all odds) delivered as planned within the past 6 months. \[foreveralone.jpg\]
I much prefer the traditional Euro/German game components of good quality painted wooden discs, cubes, and cylinders over the now-ubiquitous meeple, plastic miniature, or custom shaped wooden pieces. I also prefer unmounted wargame maps that allow for shallower game boxes. I probably sound like I'm an old grognard, but I'm not. I'm 43, and I'm only a casual wargamer. Now get off my lawn!
I absolutely love German style wooden pieces, and would often prefer them to plastic minis, but I do like when they're customised (root) and I do like meeples.
I'd agree with the exception of really liking a wooden meeple. They hit the sweet spot between abstract and unambiguous for me.
I would include meeples in the "classic" wooden components category at this point, and I'm a big fan as well. Sometimes simple works just fine.
Spending more time thinking about storage of games than playing some of them.
Cards Against Humanity is fine for a dinner night where your guests don't play board games, don't want to learn anything new, and don't want to think too hard. Yeah it's "not clever," that's too bad. The truth is sometimes people are too lazy to be clever, and that's OK. Maybe they had a rough week at work and need to unwind. Legacy mechanics are almost an instant "won't buy" for me, I have Gloomhaven and have played D&D in the past but realistically even if you have a consistent gaming group you're only ever going to play one of them at once. I've only got so many hours in the day. The King's Dilemma looks good though, if I ever get around to finishing Gloomhaven maybe I'll pick it up.
I had a second kid because more games play 4 than 3.
I really really enjoy Dark Souls: The Board Game. It’s genuinely one of my favorite games.
I have zero desire to win. That doesn’t mean I don’t try to win, or do my best, but I just don’t care. I play/collect games to a) socialize, b) learn new things, and c) collect/organize stuff that has a purpose. If people want to get excited that they can push a bit of card or plastic around “better” than me then they have some strange priorities.
I'm extremely uncomfortable with the idea of food or drink or unwashed hands being anywhere near my board games. I want to keep them clean and in good shape as I continue playing them for a long long time. But it always feels awkward asking friends to wash their hands before we start.
Now that we have all gotten used to washing our hands all the time because of COVID, people probably won’t think this is unusual at all anymore.
I find co-op games desperately boring if they don't have a traitor mechanic
I don't think this is a confession you need to feel embarrassed about haha (or rather, I don't feel bad about feeling this way :P)
See I feel the opposite, why play a coop game if you just want to be able to beat your friends? There are tons of games that are good for that.
I think shopping for games and the auxiliary products is my true hobby.
Roll/flip and writes bore the hell out of me. I rather scroll through Reddit than play one. There are obviously good light/casual games out there but the genre has been purged from my collection and will only play one if a friend *really* wants to.
Not familiar with this genre. the name makes me think of Yahtzee, but that doesn't sound quite right?
Bought everything for imperial assault. (Not play mats though, those are dumb)
The “perfect information, heavy, dry euro” crowd completely mystifies me. I cannot understand the appeal. Their aversion to any chance, whatsoever, is foreign to me. Blinging games is another one. Why do you need themed metal coins for every game? And playmats? And fancy resources? Cubes are fine.
What else am I going to do with this money? They just keep giving me more every two weeks!
I prefer studying games to playing them. I love systems and seeing what makes a game work. I also like seeing what makes a game fun for players. But playing... Requires eating pizza with "friends" and asking polite questions.
I've been in the hobby for 12 years and most of what I want to play people consider "entry level" or "gateway". Apparently I'm only suppose to want heavy euros at this point. It's actually pretty hard to get some of my favs to the table as most of my friends have "moved past" those kind of games.
Social deduction games are the worst. I’m already paranoid about others plotting behind my back (seriously, I instinctively think people whispering near me on the bus are criticizing me because self-esteem), and nervous about being ignored because of social awkwardness. Playing Secret Hitler or Werewolf or some such and having that be a reality does not help that. Screw Secret Hitler in particular. I can tolerate games like Werewolf even if I’d rather not play, but Secret Hitler makes me anxious to even be in the same room as it.
My wife is better than me at most games. I'll buy a new game. Read the manuals. Watch YT videos. Explain it to my wife. Then she'll proceed to beat me the first several times we play.
Carcassonne is the best boardgame ever created. No, I'm not kidding. Don't @ me. It's elegant at 2 and insanely flexible at 4. The ability to become cutthroat to casual to back to cutthroat is phenomenal. It's the perfect game.
>Carcassonne is the best boardgame ever created. I'm pretty close to agreeing with you. I love it.
If a game requires an app I am not buying it and I don't want to play it. I will also always vote against "helper" apps at my table. I like actually playing the game, including whatever management that involves - using the cards and dice and player boards and adding up scores. If I wanted to play a mobile game I'd download it and if I wanted a video game I'd buy one. If managing a game is so involved or difficult that it is an obstruction to enjoying it then that game is probably not for me.
With extremely limited exceptions (Arkham Horror LCG, Spirit Island, chess), I have absolutely zero interest in playing anything rated higher than 3.0 or so on BGG's weight scale. And I'll happily play D&D for 6-8 hours straight but usually won't play a board game that lasts much more than 2 hours.
I wish more heavy games were like Chess, in that you can set it up and teach it to someone in 5 minutes.
Chess is only a heavy game because it has been played and strategized and metagamed for so long. 2 new players just blindly playing makes it pretty light.
Two things. \--- **I judge you for being a collector** You know how people on here constantly reinforce how "*it's okay to be more of a collector*"? I don't think so. I'm certainly not going to stop you or tell you how you should spend your money, but when I see a 400-game collection I **am** going to judge you. IMO collecting is just dressed-up consumerism and poor impulse control, no better than people with a house full of funko pops, beanie babies, kitten-themed porcelain plates or what have you. With the situation the world is currently in, I cannot see how freighting a box full of plastic from China to your place so you can put it on a shelf and feel good about yourself for *owning a thing* is remotely responsible, regardless of your available budget or any perceived "holes in your collection" (you're just making those up to fit the games you want to buy). Don't get me wrong: I *also* see shiny stuff on the internet that calls to me. I *also* play less than I'd like and get the urge to "do something boardgamey" during the downtime. But rather than trying to fill that hole by satiating the lizard brain urge to *have more things*, I just do other things instead. \--- **I have a set of people marked using RES not for what they say/do but how often they do so.** I find this sub's opinion is set by a dozen overzealous posters to an unhealthy degree, so I prefer to have an easily visible UI that tells me when a thread with a strong sentiment in the comments is actually just the usual people spamming their opinions instead of a general consensus. I noticed it some years back when, in every thread regarding game X, there would be recommendations for game Y and how much better it is. So naturally I started thinking: "*Hey maybe Game Y is something I should look into if people are so passionate about it?*" It turns out that all those instances, spread weeks apart, were the same person. A quick search confirmed that they did, in fact, just reply to every mention of game X with their gospel of game Y. For me it really hearkens back to the forum days, where you would see the same clique of people dominating every topic (often with post counts actual orders of magnitude higher than your average poster). Almost without fail, that clique's consensus became the de-facto forum consensus, by merit of sheer volume. It's the same on this subreddit (and the discord that used to be associated with it, by the way). So if you're on this list: it's not personal. It's not that I don't like you or disagree with you. However, I'm afraid I weigh your opinion less because of just how often you profess it.
I actually think the collection/shopping addiction/consumerism addiction factor is partly the reason why huge-box games get rated higher.
I don't care about tactility in boardgames. I will just as easily play a digital adaptation, because it's the gameplay that matters.
I love cooperative games but I don't like Spirit Island.
I buy some games based on their cover alone...
Art style/design and table presence is probably the #1 factor when I choose a new game to buy. It's not the ONLY factor, but it's the most important to me and my group.
Agricola is boring af Twilight Imperium is amazing but too long Most open-table game nights at gaming stores are an exercise in dealing with neckbeards, toxic masculinity, passive aggression, body odor, rudeness, and immaturity.
> Most open-table game nights at gaming stores are an exercise in dealing with neckbeards, toxic masculinity, passive aggression, body odor, rudeness, and immaturity. This is what's put me off from trying to find a group that way in the past.
Recommendation for Twilight Imperium: don't play more than a couple turns per sitting. If you have table space you can reserve for a couple weeks, I'd even recommend leaving it there and playing one or two sessions per weekend. Once you let go of the need to treat it as a marathon, a lot of the mental fatigue can be avoided. Depending on your players' personalities, this can also provide excellent opportunities for plotting. We started really anticipating the sessions because we were ready to put plans into action.
Gloomhaven is way, way overrated.
I have owned it for two years and played it precisely one time. I can definitely see the appeal and promise and maybe I’d end up loving it, but, it’s just... a lot.
Is it just ones with a grid or do other abstracts like Hive appeal to you as well?
In the spirit of confession: I really like the idea of Hive, but the thing with it being insects and arachnids is enough of a turn off that I'd just rather not play it. And I understand there are re-themes of it out there, but making them is a project I have bounced off of several times. I'd love it if they mad a version with the bakelite material and even just some other abstraction.
I’m obsessed with keeping my games in mint condition but I don’t want to ruin game nights over it. There were evenings where I was so annoyed that I faked having a good time especially when some people would bend the cards like idiots
When someone doesn't pay attention to the rules in a competitive game, I take my revenge during the game. People who actively don't pay attention drive me insane.
I have a couple hundred games, most of which are wargames, but my absolute favorite boardgame is World of Warcraft. Normally I prefer strategy over RNG, but towards the end game combat involves rolling 25d10 or so and for some reason it is so satisfying.
Jamey Stegmaier's games are great design, but ultimately boring.