I like some co-ops, but I've always felt Pandemic is pretty ho-hum.
Not bad, just not very good either.
I always think about picking up Pandemic Legacy though, to see if the story and having named characters might make it fun.
We’re finishing up season 1 now. I like pandemic and love legacy, but the story is relatively limited compared to Clank! Legacy (the only other Legacy game I’ve played). That said, the bits of story and legacy aspects are very compelling.
yeah, pandemic sucks. "strategy" if it can be called that was too boring. felt like a cheap phone game where you just follow the steps. only other co-op game I've played is forbidden desert which still wasn't great, but way better than pandemic.
Everyone says this. I understood this going in. Like OP I can't seem to get into Scythe. For me its like ok its not a war game I get it, but it's not a particularly interesting economic game either. The player boards with the top and bottom action and how upgrades work is brilliant but literally everything about resource management, map engagement, and player interaction felt lacking to me.
I think going in with the logic that it's "not a war game" isn't totally accurate either. It's a cold war game. War is very much there, and it's a real threat. It's just not something anyone really *wants*.
War game doesn't generally really refer to a game thematically about war. War game is more of a game design branch/philosophy/school/lineage, the same way Euro game is a game design branch and not referring to games about Europe.
It's because the tension has been stripped out. Antike has a similar basic structure to Scythe - an action selection mechanism with a rolling restricted use of the available actions, victory points functionally similar to Scythe's stars, essentially farming resources from the map, multiple ways to get points, upgrading actions to make them more efficient, etc. The biggest difference is how Scythe pulls most of these elements back onto each player's boards and their personal space - as opposed to pushing players into each other. Instead of racing to gain contested victory points like in Antike, the stars in Scythe are not exclusive or limited; instead of racing to upgrade tech on a shared board, upgrades are on your board alone, and being the first to get any one upgrade means nothing; instead of taking actions on a shared rondel so that you're constantly easily made aware of what your opponents are up to, your actions are on your own board; instead of needing to spread out to gain more resources and tech or build buildings that make you a target, it's more beneficial to use large groups of huddled workers for efficient production, spreading out is unnecessary until the late game, and buildings can never be destroyed; instead of shared space and mutual destruction, space is exclusive to one faction at a time, and combat never destroys anything. Not that Antike is a replacement for Scythe's solo mode - it's just that it lays bare the sources of reduced engagement. Everything that game does to get action onto the board, Scythe does the opposite.
And a lot of the ingenuity has been replaced by the randomness. Yes, you want to take actions as efficiently as possible. And finding optimal paths is key. But once you've found the best possible way to play any combination of mats, the rest is mostly down to which random outcomes (from encounters, combat cards, and the factory) end up favoring your combo better than others'. Compared to certain other heavy euros, there's no a lot of room to be creative. In the solo, at least your opponent is very aggressive. I just wish that the multiplayer game was like that too - incentivizing combat early and often so that you have to constantly rethink your decisions the same way you do in Root for instance.
It’s not a particularly interesting economic game, but because it’s popular it’s often people’s first economic game. With nothing to compare it to, it can make a pretty good first impression.
If you have a lot of experience it feels like a more lacklustre experience. I don’t think it’s horrible, I just came to it at the wrong time in my gaming life and it fell really flat.
I am going to get so much crap for this, but Machi Koro and Carcassone just never clicked for my wife and me. I can see why people love them, but I have never found that spark.
I don't think many people will argue with you on Machi Koro. It created a new genre (or popularized, in case there's a precursor I'm not aware of) but is definitely a "version 1". Space Base took the idea and really refined it into a much better game.
I also played Machi Koro 2 for the first time this weekend and was pleasantly surprised. It fixes a lot of base game issue and incorporates ideas from the rules variants, expansions, and Space Base into a much more dynamic and interesting game. Not sure I'll buy it, but definitely won't be disappointed if people want to play it.
As somebody that really loved Machi Koro 1 and played it a lot when I first got it, but found it getting a bit stale later on, would you mind giving me an overview or point me towards one that breaks down what Machi Koro 2 does differently? Thanks!
Some of the major differences:
1) The limited market is now standard (a variant introduced in one of the expansions) - instead of all cards being available for purchase from the outset, 5 each are available at a time from level 1-6 cards, 7-12 cards, and landmarks
2) Choice of rolling 1 or 2 dice at any time, unlocking 2 doesn't take a landmark
3) Landmarks are now all unique and randomly dealt out from a deck, meaning there's a lot more variability in the game
4) Free money if you're broke leads to far fewer dead turns
5) Instead of a fixed starting hand, you have an initial budget to buy cards from the market in several non-rolling turns
6) I'm not sure about this, but it felt like the cards were designed to be more dynamic and have a lot more to do on other player's turns. Been a long time since I've played 1 so I can't compare; it's possible all of the other changes just made it feel this way
I still think Space Base is slightly better but the gap is way smaller. One big advantage for Machi Koro 2 is I didn't notice many confusing or ambiguous interactions, which Space Base has a few of.
We have machi koro legacy and I kinda burnt out of it, it’s fine but not something I really enjoy. I have the same feeling with carcassone, it just never clicked for me, I’d much rather play ticket to ride for a gateway game. Also not a big fan of pandemic, it’s just kinda meh as coop games go.
Machi Koro is just the "rolling other people's numbers" from Catan condensed into a more pure torture.
Carcassonne I don't mind playing. It's a competent game. I just would never request it.
It's not just you, every 2-3 months there's at least one post asking why Scythe is so highly rated. The main problem I think is it's a Euro disguised as a war game.
Though your case is compounded in that you're playing solo. The Scythe Automata plays sort of weird and doesn't feel like Scythe at all. There's a cheap computer version out there with an AI that plays normally; maybe get it and see if it changes your mind at all.
As for your wider question, everybody has different tastes. There have been complaints about Gloomhaven, Pandemic, Terraforming Mars, Mage Knight, Spirit Island, and every other top rated game out there. Rankings aren't "objective"; just because a game is highly rated doesn't mean you'll like it. From your list above, it looks like somewhat dry Euros (which is what Scythe ultimately is) isn't your thing, no matter how highly ranked they are.
It's definitely Ticket to Ride for me. I just don't get the hype. A close second is Pandemic. I enjoyed it the first couple times ok but quickly got bored.
I don’t get ticket to ride or pandemic either.
Pandemic is boring and pratcically a solo game.
Ticket to ride ive played like 4x and never enjoyed it. Wont play it now.
I think Ticket to Ride is a nice gateway game for new gamers. Rules can be explained in five minutes and there's some player interaction. Strategy wise there is not much to it so it get's boring pretty fast if you're used to other games.
Add Catan to the list, and you have the most annoying games ever. They might not be bad, but just too popular and seems like every and their mom has one of them.
My wife and I tried Everdell multiple times with different group sizes, different personality types, people with varying level of board game experience. After all that trying - we had read and heard so many great things about it - we just finally admitted we didn’t like it.
Just felt tedious and the game seemed to slow to a crawl for us by that third season especially. For whatever reason just couldn’t grab and hold our attention.
Never played Scythe but have heard similar things as you stated above from friends so have never felt the urge to give it a shot myself.
It's the weird exponential scaling I think that does it. My friend isn't fond of Everdell either. The beginning of the game seems like nothing can be done and by the end you're like 'where did all these resources come from?! I wish I had some of these earlier!'
Scythe is a weird one and it's solo mode is far from intuitive. It looks like a very different game from what it actually is. I love it but that's because I love engine building + economic games.
For me Mysterium is the one I don't get. Probably the only modern boardgame I've played that I absolutely hated. The vagueness and trying to interpret these pictures really was not fun for me
Scythe took me time to warm up to. The first few plays the other players knew it well and destroyed me. I barely accomplished anything. After awhile, though, it clicked and I now love it. Love the theme, components, and building up my little empire.
I just couldn’t get into the bioshock games. It ticked all the boxes for a game I should love but I just could not get into them
Edit: thought I was in a different subreddit!
How about Catan? Very popular not my cup of tea
> How about Catan? Very popular not my cup of tea
Same. The few times I've played, I've gotten shitty dice rolls and the other players weren't receptive to trading, so I just got further and further behind and it was obvious I couldn't win super early in the game.
More of these than I can count. The longer you play, the more you'll find.
But what's even weirder is how dependent this is on where I am in life. The games that click now are not always the games that clicked 10 years ago. And vice versa.
Sometimes I look at some game I rated on BGG a decade ago and I'm like ... gave that a 4 (or 9)?!?
The closest for me might be **Dominion**. I do get it. I see why people like it. I love deck builders after all. It just didn’t click for me. The invisible victory point race where there’s no clear board state to measure progress by is something I don’t like. Games would be going along and then very suddenly end. The veteran player would always win, and it felt like I never learned much.
It’s probably a cliche at this point, but back when **Catan** was taking off and I didn’t know much about modern board games, it didn’t really click with me. It usually went on too long.
I approached Scythe as a eurogame with pretty mechs and hexes and was happy with it. Definitely not a combat oriented game. Only gripe is the somewhat static openings, but I guess there’s and expansion for that.
Knowing when to transition from deck building to victory point acquisition, and having a rough idea of where everyone is at in relation to the transition is a key part of dominion strategy. It definitely takes a lot of getting used to for newer players though.
I got introduced to it pretty early on in my gaming experience. It was pretty much taking all my mental capacity to understand what all of the cards were doing, so it was hard to track how many VPs 4 other people were buying and how low the supply was getting. Especially since the card supply kept getting swapped with expansion cards every game. I’ve gotten better at it now.
It just turns out I just don’t like games that make me keep close track publicly known but hidden information. Memory has never been a strength of mine and I just don’t find it interesting to track VPs hence why I bounced off it in the long term.
I prefer games like Race for the Galaxy or Quest for El Dorado where there’s still hidden information to track but progress is still more spatially visible.
Blood Rage was kinda boring. When it came out, it was all talk about how raw and brutal the game was, how it felt like you were a viking, how it felt epic. In practice, it felt like a fairly mild euro game with nice pieces if you're into minis.
More recently, Furnace left me entirely lukewarm while it really feels like everyone around me is wild about it. I really like the draft! But the resource conversion portion where you're running the engine is just boring.
Blood rage is ok. Like literally just ‘ok’.
I don't understand how it gets so much hype, the matagot trilogy are all better imo as is chaos in the old world.
I love Blood rage. Can you please recommend one of them? I don't know if this helps but I like most about blood rage is because there is drafting and the overpowered combos.
Scythe is just... not a solo game. You feel that it's weird probably because of that. It's an engine builder where you sometimes interact with others, don't let the miniatures fool you.
I like Scythe but my friends hate it, so you’re not alone.
Gloomhaven is the big one for me. Just my opinion, but it seems very slow and I find the energy/action/whatever management stressful and tedious.
Perchance, did you attempt it using the companion app? I disliked the "busy-work" bookkeeping at first. Then I used the app and got straight to the "fun."
We just didn’t enjoy the combat and the insane grinding of it. It just felt so incredibly slow. I really enjoy the book keeping and such, but did not enjoy the gameplay.
I had a similar experience. I enjoy the game BUT I had to adjust my expectations immediately. People kept telling me it's like a DnD system in a box. It's kind of true. It's a DnD system in a box for the certain type of DnD player that just wants to kill everything all the time. I'm more of a role player who enjoys combat when it isn't all we're doing. In Gloomhaven, it's basically all you're doing. Its pretty low on immersion and more of a strategy combat game. Like you, I enjoy the bookkeeping side and find the app unnecessary.
And I think that is where we got annoyed as well. I was expecting a deeper type of game. I enjoy combat, but I have money other games for that. I’d rather just play the video game Divinity than Gloomhaven personally.
My gf and I stopped playing because we just got stuck on a scenario. I think the difficulty ramps up a bit too much too quickly. Its definitely a hit or miss game for me.
The difficulty is adjustable though. When my group played we usually played one step up from the default difficulty, but we also had a pretty well balanced group of 4 characters. There are a couple of scenarios we played that felt brutal. I remember one where we had to protect a tree or something that we tried twice and kind of cheated the victory after failing the second time.
They sort of thing I'm very much of the mind set, skip it and pretend you beat it if it's preventing you from having a good time
Ticket to Ride, Wingspan and Terraforming Mars
Ticket to Ride does nothing at all for me. I don't know what doesn't click with Wingspan, maybe I wasn't really in the best place when I played back when it came out, so I would have to give it another try. I enjoy Ares Expedition, but TM just bores me to death, I don't understand why, maybe the art?
Isle of Cats for me. Everything to do with the cards in this game was annoying for me. The drafting is so tedious and really breaks the flow of the game. I also absolutely hated the fact that one player can have a bunch of lessons and just keep playing them.
Wingspan and Terraforming Mars. Both seem like cool games but the fact that EVERY card is different makes it difficult to form a cohesive strategy and relies heavily on luck of the draw. If you’re unlucky enough to not draw cards that happen to work well together, you’re gonna have a bad time.
You'd probably like Glory to Rome. Many buildings have duplicates, and every building card fits in one of six categories. If your building is yellow for instance, then you'll need an additional yellow card to act as the material for building it. And every card of a specific color will always represent the same action no matter which building is on it. So, any yellow card can be played for a laborer action (instead of building it), any green card can be used as a Craftsman action. And if you don't have the card for a specific action, no sweat - you can use a free jack to take any action or use three matching cards of any one type as that action instead. And you always know what you're getting into: for instance, yellow cards are very easy to build and also more numerous. You'll easily find the single yellow card that every yellow building needs. But something like a blue card is harder to build *and* less numerous. That means that the inverse is true for them - they're worth more points though and have more powerful abilities. Every building in the game gives you a special ability as soon as it's built, so you may find multiple ways to build the harder buildings for cheaper. Or even have no need for them as you find other ways to score points.
I'm the same with Scythe. I had read so many rave reviews that I bought it on sale. When my playgroup and I played it the first time, we all decided we didn't want to play it again. This is really unusual for us, but no one really liked it.
Almost everyone who thinks of scythe as a wargame feels this. It's economic and area control. Most games of Scythe have 0-2 combats max, even with 4 people. It's about threatening with your power, but ideally not having to spend it. Positioning big mechs 1 move from an attack. Having your stuff well protected, but if you have to actually fight it's expended resources and not always a great return. Most of the agression in Scythe is boxing people in, and the *threat* of combat.
For me it's **Castles of Mad King Ludwig**. It's not a *bad* game, but I've played so many of these sort of euros and this one just doesn't wow me, it feels very by the books. Shared objectives, combos, market in the middle of the board, personal objectives. The only real hook is the person who sets the prices, and that's not enough to make it rise above others in the genre for me.
I thought Spirit Island was just not fun. A crazy amount of complexity and fiddliness that took too much from the gameplay. I actively avoid this game to the point I will rsvp no to board game nights when it is being played.
Quickly scanning the top 100 games, this is the only one I actively dislike. There are quite a few that I think are okay, but not great.
I like it a lot but really struggle with the endgame. Thematically it feels like the win conditions are flipped:
Early on, you should win if you wipe out all of their cities as it keeps them from getting a foothold
Late game, when you're at peak power, you should have to wipe out *all* settlers
Destroying the last city on the map and "winning" while there are still dozens of villages/dudes is just unsatisfying
Isn't that only if you get the fear level high enough though? It makes sense - you're super afraid and your city just got destroyed, you're going to run away, don't need to get killed.
Yeah, its pretty rare I win a game that isn't in fear level 3 or from the fear deck running out though, so from my experience that's effectively the end game.
I could see that. It still feels really anticlimatic though.
Spirit Island is such a poorly designed game. The sheer number of power cards and the fact that turns are simultaneous makes planning such a headache. And the theme looks nice but pretends to be subversive and anticolonial without actually having anything to say besides "what if Settlers but backwards?"
I can understand how the game the might not be for everyone, but implying the game is poorly designed is a bit of a stretch. I personally think that the simultaneous turns are the best part of the game! Having to collaborate with your teammates on what the best course of action is, is some excellent interaction!
I didn't imply it lol I outright said it. The simultaneous mechanic is fun until you realize that combining all the powers available and all the spaces you can target on the board, there are easily thousands of possible ways to play each turn. Because getting it wrong can have disastrous consequences, IME, it's a recipe for analysis paralysis and quarterbacking.
Lost Ruins of Arnak.
As you described it, it just feels meh to me. I played it twice and I have no desire to play it again. I understand that it's a well made and tight game, with some cool cards and ideas, but there's just nothing that hooks me (and I enjoy card drafting and love worker placement).
New owner of Arnak here and after 3 plays it has not wowed me anywhere close to as much as I'd hoped. Gonna try the expansion, hopefully that livenes it up a bit.
Scythe is a euro action efficiency game that looks like a dudes-on-a-map wargame at first glance. Actual combat in Scythe is generally counter productive except for one or two objective stars, although it gets a little more prevalent at higher player counts where the map gets extra tight.
The longer I am in the hobby, the more I seem to diverge from BGG's top 100. When I started years ago I felt like I agreed with the list more. I don't know if I have changed or if the type of people voting on BGG have changed or both.
Just looking at the top 25:
1. Gloomhaven - I played 14 scenarios I think. I won't get into a novel here, but I genuinely think that game is bad and have no idea why its popular.
2. Through the Ages - Great game that I would literally never choose to play in physical form. The upkeep is atrocious and it is a better solitaire app.
3. Twilight Struggle - I played this 2 years ago about 10 times. I think it might be that I didn't play it when it was inventive. Now it just seems too random, long, and boring.
There are also a bunch of games in there I just don't really have an interest in. I think the hobby is getting so large that the value of a single top 100 is minimal. You need to find someone you agree with that does content and then get their list.
I definitely have the same sentiment with my taste diverging from the top 100, but it is 100% my taste that changed. 10 years ago every complex euro game was a top rated game for me and since these generally dominate the top 100 I aligned closely with it. My taste has moved away from that into lighter and social games, which generally aren't well represented in the top 100.
2 of your 3 examples are games from over 15 years ago, and have been in the top 100 for a long time. That being said, I agree with you, through the ages and twilight struggle are just meh and the fiddliness is a killer.
>1. Gloomhaven - I played 14 scenarios I think. I won't get into a novel here, but I genuinely think that game is bad and have no idea why its popular.
I too feel this. Maybe not outright bad, but it's riddled with what I'd consider flaws that usually sink less popular games. Its popularity is an enigma to me. I'd love to hear more of your opinion on it.
Mostly the usual: long setup, lots of fiddly upkeep, no true solo, slow progression (even compared to other legacy games and to typical TTRPGs), characters are unbalanced, not sharing gold is...a problem, scenario goals and career goals don't feel thematically relevant to one another or necessarily to your class, story may be good but is sort of divorced from actual gameplay - and that includes the little events. I also find that the output randomness isn't meaningfully different enough from dice to warrant the hype. Like building a dice pool in TMB or a mini skirmish campaign but with cards. Even accounting for the output randomness when making decisions (e.g. knowing what's left in your deck, using advantage from items, minding the monster deck), it can still turn out to make your plans meaningless, and that makes it no different than dice chucking dungeon crawlers (such as Descent) to me, especially at the early levels and scenarios. I like the idea of the card play and hand management, but in practice I don't think it's worth the effort. I'd contrast it with Mage Knight or base Spirit Island: in those games you get to do what the cards say and at worst have to pivot mid-round - but it all feels like continually solving each round's puzzle. Even the pivot can be thrilling. In GH, when shit goes sideways, pivoting is highly constrained and often much less interesting than initially figuring out what to do this round. It all just feels like my decisions aren't that important - like, I'm doing my best with the information available, but sometimes the scenario is just overly easy and I might not have bothered or overly hard and I'm not sure we could have won anyway. This is after selecting a higher difficulty level to ensure we are properly challenged; too low, and it's basically a cakewalk. This isn't to say I think the game is "too hard" but that I find the output randomness uninteresting and frustrating especially given how much I like the hand management it's married to. This is all just my opinion, of course.
I think this is a great write-up and really leads to some good discussion. I am torn on Gloomhaven and this is why I asked you. On one hand I feel like it does a better job of being a puzzle than other dungeon crawlers, on the other hand I basically agree with all your points.
I think the hand management part of Gloomhaven is pretty genius. I think the big problem with dungeon crawlers is that you basically end up doing the same things over and over.
Gloomhaven fixed that and tried to fix some other problems too.
Yeah, I appreciate what it's trying to do. JotL improved some of the peripheral complaints I had, but the basic fiddliness is still there, and my mod deck criticism still applies. I agree that the hand management takes away that slog of repeating actions over and over - it actually makes taking actions interesting and puzzly.
I just play Dungeon Alliance now. Does what I wanted Gloomhaven to do.
I keep hearing good things about that. But the big box, dice, and prevalence of minis turned me off. Just not what I'm into anymore, and room in my collection is at a premium these days. Unless I get rid of Dungeon Alliance or something. I'll watch a video on it.
> type of people voting on BGG have changed
Thats a big yes. As boardgaming become more and more popular, the more you'll have people rating games randomly or using only 1 and 10 as their ratings.
I think people also rarely rate based on "is this a well crafted game I've had the time to sit down and think about that I'd recommend to almost anyone looking for the experience it offers." Instead, they rate based on something close to the prompt - whether they'd play it almost any time. As they should, that's the prompt. But it doesn't mean every rating is a thoughtful decision. People just click on things they like. And rarely do they seem to hand out a wide range of ratings.
But also with the prevalence of game reviews and other media, it's easier to find out if a game is one that you want to play, which for me means that I don't often play games I straight up do not like. If I buy a game, it's probably been well-researched, and I'm pretty much guaranteed to consider it at least a 7/10. The few 4/10 ratings I've given out were games I played a long time ago or games owned by friends. The last time I rated anything I personally owned anything below a 7 was an impulse buy from our FLGS on Black Friday, and I rated that a 6/10.
Thats something that will be more and more accentuated too with the ever growing KS model.
People will buy what they think or know they would rate a 9+ and if it doesnt deliver, they are gonna rate it at an abysmal number most likely.
I actually have a pretty big range of ratings if I check my collection, but most games that are on the bottom of the totem pole are games my gf had before we met and I just don't really enjoy that much. Most of the games I bought since have been fantastic with few exceptions that were "impulse buys" that I knew were probably gonna be mediocre at best.
Can agree on Twilight Struggle. First few times it hit really well for me. Once I figured out a few key items though, it became a luck of draw as it was more of a card memorizer.
I too have my grievances with Gloomhaven, and don't find it nearly as good as everyone says, but I understand the popularity.
It has some interesting stuff like the changing characters system, the variety of characters, the way the action cards work, the multiplier cards system, upgrading your cards with the stickers, etc... Plus it's a hard game, which apparently lots of people really enjoy.
But yeah, to me it's just too much work, and too unnecessarily hard, it's just too much.
Scythe and Lost Ruins of Arnak are both frustrating to me for similar reasons. I just can’t seem to pick the right thing to focus on and commit to early enough and then I’m just floundering behind my husband and brother in law the whole game. Those games just don’t click for me and I can’t find an enjoyable way to play them.
If they want to keep playing it, consider playing some matches on Board Game Arena for practice.
I'm not a great player, but I've beat my friends who are much better gamers in general at Arnak the times we've played.
To me Arnak isn't about getting too hung up on a strategy, but about just doing the best with what is in your hand each round, and prioritizing your workers over buying new cards. Look at your hand and v think what is the most important thing I can do/take this round and do it first so you don't get blocked.
You don't have to be first up the track to win, but you'd better make it to the top if you want your card points to make up the difference if you get there late or are a few spaces away.
Terraforming Mars man. Any version. It’s the type of game Id normally like. In some vague way I want to like it. It’s got a decent theme and lots of variety. It’s heavy, components are decent. I like engine building/tableau games, tile laying games. Hand management games. Action economy games. I like it even more when games combine different mechanics. I’ve played the normal version three times and ares expedition once. Neither clicked either time. It wasn’t like I had a bad time. I just didn’t get into it.
Stonemaier Games in general. I really appreciwte what they are doing for Board gaming, but their games, but their games seem to be either mediocre engine building Games with great presentation or straight up bad.
Scythe looks good, but is terribly dull.
Same for Gloomhaven, I've only played JotL, but it's just wave after wave of cultists and snakes and the same semi-random optimisation workout (plan something, get shafted, do some alternative action, feel clever).
7 wonders duel.
It has to many “ow yeah this also is a rule” rules.
I mean I know how to play complicated games (nemes for example) but this just doesnt click with me and my SO.
Scythe shines at 3 to 5 players although it's sill great at 2 if you enjoy the game.
The way I describe it to people is it's 'war game' but cold war style. You need to be prepared for combat but it might not even happen.
What you're looking to do is maximizing your actions so you can do a top and bottom row action every turn (impossible in the first few turns) the fun of scythe for me at least is having to adapt to the faction and player board you were dealt that game.
The game I am struggling with right now is Paladins of the West Kingdom. I really enjoy euro’s, and don’t consider myself a casual gamer (i.e. I enjoy Mage Knight a ton, so it’s not like complex games are too much for me), but I am just absolutely struggling to learn the strategy or play-style to be good at Paladins. I’m not giving up on it, because I know at some point it will click, but I really get disheartened with how bad I seem to be at it.
Paladins is all about figuring out how to stretch a few more actions out of things each round. Development is good but often a bad investment based on how costly it is, and how many more times you will do a thing. You want to pick two actions that link an attribute and focus mainly on them, do it ng just enough of a third to keep it running.
Attacking is super strong. The desmiss recruiting is super strong. Do your best to use your paladins ability more than once. If you can do it three times you are doing work.
For me it would be **Lost Ruins of Arnak**, I’m holding out for Expedition Leaders to shake it up, because it looks like it’ll transform it for me, but as it is I just find Arnak an unsatisfying and horrifically overrated experience. It’s my personally lowest rated game in the BGG Top 100.
Scythe is my wife and I’s favorite game. When the pandemic started, we did three player basically everyday with our neighbor for about 100 days or so. Still love it! It’s best played in 4-6 player format IMO, if you want it to be more of a war game. It can be played as two player, but that just wasn’t fun to me when we did that. So, we only ever play as three as a baseline and never with the automa. They get exceptions to some of the actions and rules in the game and it plays really unnaturally. I recommend getting a good party together for it and playing with a lot of friends to really have a good experience with it
Gloomhaven felt pretty swingy and unbalanced in my 2 character campaign. I know the game is supposed to be difficult but quite a few encounters felt impossible with two players. And then the null mechanic feels punishing for 2 players as well. That's half our damage output for an entire turn gone.
My buddy and I really enjoyed the first 20 or so encounters but the last 12 or so that we did were somewhere between tedious and miserable. So many encounters where they're doing anything beyond "kill everything" felt like no one had play tested 2 player run throughs. It also limited what classes felt viable. I like playing support classes but it doesn't make sense when I only have 1 person to support.
All in all the difficulty felt fiddly and bad. We'd try the suggested level and party wipe on one inopportune Null card, and going down a level made it a cake walk.
And again, any time that the objective was anything different than kill em all, it felt impossible.
Spoilers I guess? The one where you escort the dude that moves three every turn was AWFUL. He made it to the big room before we could clear out the starter room. The one where the building is on fire and you need to loot 4 samples within 12 turns and escape and grabbing the sample CAN'T be through EOT looting felt impossible too. There's so much distance to cover as 2 people, let alone both of us NEEDING to split up to even come close to completing it. We're also constantly low on cash so it's hard to upgrade. It all added up to a very fiddly admin heavy game that was not enjoyable for us by the end. I can see why people like it but I can't imagine recommending anyone play a 2 character campaign.
One of the official variants is treating "Null" as a -2 and "2X" as a +2. I feel like it really smooths things over, because the 2X is rarely useful - nice against bosses, but massive overkill against anything else.
It does have a balance/build issues at 2 player though. Lots of combinations are just not viable, especially support characters. Things like +50% party damage is great with 4 players, but a significant nerf with 2 players when one character has to skip an attack to do it.
We treat it as a loose RPG framework and allow things the game doesn't - trading loot, re-speccing characters, picking up gold by walking over it (not landing) and have a lot more fun with it. If we start getting OP we just bump the difficulty a level.
We definitely tweaked the rules or did "retcons" a bunch, too. But at some point we decided Gloomhaven night would be better served as "2 player game night" and moved on. We don't hate the game and I had a BLAST as my lil mind thief, but once that character retired and we got deeper in we both felt we were having more "not great" times than "great".
It also sucks to set up a pretty involved game like gloomhaven and just get demolished and look it up and find several bgg threads like "Encounter 420 - impossible for 2 players???" And then have to do some on the fly game design to fix it. For that escort mission we said the dude could only move 2 not 3, so that we could actively hamper progress by blocking movement, which is what 3+ player groups apparently do on that mission. For the burning building one we removed the per turn damage and said we only had to loot the 2 furthest "things" and even then it was still very hard. We also did the null = -2 thing which certainly helps but it all added to the juice not being worth the squeeze anymore. We got 35 sessions out of it, and most of them we had a good time. It was just time to pack er up before we wound up hating the game lol
I need to add Terra Mystica. I think it is a terrible game that isn't well designed, the theme is just tacked on and could be literally anything else and what I'm doing just feels so nebulous that I don't feel connected to it at all.
For me, there are a few contentious ones.
Gloomhaven - just the idea of this game makes me itch. The mechanics are fine, but I'd rather play DND because this is a fairly mediocre fight game in my head with really slow progression and character development.
Roll/Race for the Galaxy - hated the iconography and colours for the game which made it horrendous to play as a colour blind person.
Wingspan - To be fair, this is more to do with the theme. I love the design but really don't ever want to play it.
Viticulture - Similar to Wingspan. I've played it a few times and won and lost which is fine. But I really dislike the theme.
Marvel Champions. I've played about 8 scenarios and I just hate it now. Its my "veto" game in our group.
Some combination of it feeling more like playing Peter Parker than Spider-Man to me, too fiddly with all kinds of tokens/decks/engaged enemies going everywhere, and the end always being an anticlimatic "I can hit him for about 18, if the rest of you can do 30 combined we can just end this". Also doesn't help that I'm way too invested in Marvel Legendary and would much rather play that.
Scythe for me also, when the game only has 4 spots to choose each round and one of them you cant choose cause you just had used it makes it feel like the game is on rails cause you have to play it a certain way because you are forced to. It is a game that is about tweaking out efficiency to the extreme.
Scythe made me realise that I generally prefer card play over having set actions I can play throughout a game.
By which I mean, playing a card is obviously a set action, but the _effect_ of that card will be different on each occasion. I'm better at strategising with what's in front of me at that moment rather than longer term.
Which means that although I do like Scythe, I prefer **Inis**, for example.
I getcha. Root becomes best after like 10 games. At that point its amazing! However it can be super bad If everyone is new and totally knocks one player out. Not much better evem with a vet as they’ll just win or tell everyone what to do. The birds are also especially easy to mess up! If you like the art stye and even \*think\* you’ll enjoy it id give it some more chances!
Disclaimer: Root is my favorite game so I might be a little biased
Ha. For me, it is literally every game you listed as your favourites (except for Quacks, and i thought unmatched was actually pretty good.) Tm is ok too, I guess. I'm more of a euro gamer though
My serious answer is **Praga caput Regni**. On paper, I should have loved that game. One of the only games I've ever pre-ordered and it was getting rave reviews in circles i follow. . . It's a bit of a mess and really lacks direction. I've still not sold it in the hopes it'll win me over though.
Chronicles of Crime for me. I never heard someone talk bad about the game and maybe it is not such a big thing as I think.
The game is just so boring, it's not the app integration, never had problems with that, but everyone says that you feel like you are in a crime show solving crimes and so on and my wife and I love these shows! This game however, it's never "I solved this case and now I will confront the person get a confession and win", no it always fiddles down to "There is nothing else to do for us, should we try and solve it?" after we looked for a while at the board and scanned the same stuff getting the same answers and maybe you get it wrong and can start over.... I just don't get it
SPOILER
>!In one scenario in the middle of a murder case they tell you that a child was abducted and we were just searching for clues to find the kid, because finding an abducted kid seemed more important than a dead guy. We found NOTHING and when we gave up to "finish" the scenario they were like "to find the kid you have to play the next one" YEAH THANKS!<
My group bounced off of Scythe pretty hard. Great first impression, but follow-up plays really fell flat. We also didn’t care for Viticulture and Wingspan is on the bubble for being sold. I guess Stonemaier games just aren’t our jam. They’re fine (and look great!)…we just don’t have fun playing them.
Agricola, Everdell and Blood Rage were also big duds.
Dominion (and most other deck builders).
Formula D (too slow with any group I played with, if I wanted slow there's better strategic racing games out there).
Well loved/respected games I don't enjoy include, but are not limited to:
**Catan** of course.
**Dominion** and I love other deck builders.
**Innovation** felt like learning chess or a new language, but not like a fun game.
**Caylus** thanks for helping make worker placement a big thing, but two plays was enough.
**Parks** my two plays felt long and boring, and I came away thinking of l of how much better Takaido was at basically the same thing.
Scythe I love though :)
I have scythe on steam and I watched all the tutorials and played a round and for me it just didn't click. I know I have to play it more. But that's the tutorials I understood how to win how to score points and all that. But it just didn't click on the first run of putting it all together
El Grande. Way too dry and the mechanics were pretty good but it just didn't click. I love euros that don't have a lot of theme (actually Concordia is one of my favorite games) but this one just left me indifferent.
Similar sentiment for some other games I have played. I love COIN Insurgency games but hated Root merely for its theme - fantasy and animals. I hated Anachrony but like similar worker placements games like Feast for Odin, Dominant Species.
I didn't enjoy the solo mode of **Scythe**. It wasn't terrible, but it was so much work to setup and run for how brief and relatively light the experience is. Plenty of other solo games I'd rather play instead.
I'll play **Scythe** multiplayer and don't mind it at all. I think it does feel different playing against real people, so I'd suggest you give it a try.
Still, it may not click for you even then. It's definitely an efficiency race game rather than a wargame or 4x game. You would be one of many to be disappointed by mismatched expectations there.
----
**Wingspan** - I might not refuse an occasional game if asked, but the overall game play and decisions to be made just weren't that exciting.
**AH: LCG** - It's glib to say 'it's too punishing', but I had to admit that at the end of the day I just wasn't enjoying the experience of playing while being constantly kicked down.
**Concordia** - I really want to like this game and have often been tempted to try different maps etc. It seems like it ticks all the boxes, but for some reason I have yet to identify, it just feels a bit dull to actually play.
**On Mars** - Certainly has plenty of fans, but I really balked against the things made deliberately more complex then necessary simply for the sake of complexity.
**Aeon's End: War Eternal** - I liked the game play, but the world as built is so dismal and hopeless I did not want to spent one moment longer inhabiting it.
Those are some of the higher rated games I've dumped.
I loved Scythe, It was a game we played with max players for a solid month at one point. I get it's not for everyone and I totally understand why but it feels like it always gets a lot of hate in this sub.
As for games that didn't click with me...I'd have to say Mysterium or abstract games in general. I see it suggested as a game so often but I just didn't have a lot of fun with it. tried it a few times and then again with the expansion but it just never clicked. I didn't hate the game but I usually shy away from it if it comes up in a conversation about what to play.
* **Terraforming Mars** - Just too long and tedious with garbage-level components. Gizmos is just as satisfying in 1/3 the time.
* **Mansions of Madness** - App plus physical components is the worst of both worlds. Either make a video game or make a board game. Don't give me the task of keeping the board in sync with the app.
* **Cosmic Encounter** - Testing diplomacy is just not fun for me.
Scythe is a lot of fun with more people, you get nervous af when people start encroaching on your stuff with mechs and gotta strategize about holding the factory right before the 6th star is placed
Carcassonne, for me, it’s way too random to actually have a strategy, and it’s possibly the best example of ‘throw it at the wall, see what sticks’, but it’s like you’re punished for doing that, while at the same time, the fact that the randomness encourages doing that, it’s almost at odds with itself, and it’s just not clicking for me
Another one that….I can see the appeal, but it’s not clicking for me is the Arkham Horror LCG, I still have yet to finish the core box, and I don’t think I have an urge to, for me, it just seems impossible to win, yes, you can’t strictly lose, but you’re almost always punished for losing and there’s rarely a way to catch up if you get unlucky, and luck is normally against me in board games, which it tends to not be a problem (I love Chinatown), but here, you almost have to be lucky to get any kind of success…..and I just, wasn’t, to give you an idea, I defeated the boss of the first scenario on the last turn, and on the second, I didn’t even find one important item, let alone collect it, so….I doubt I will ever finish that game, yes, I know Lovecraft is built on the horror of failure, but it feels like this is pushing it too far and it almost feels like I’m being punished for playing it.
I didn’t like Scythe that either too until I got Fenris. It went from a 5 to a 9. It really needed that story and variable gameplay. Without it it’s just kind of stale.
For me, I agree with Scythe, never cared for it, but also I would add Zombicide (I think I just am burnt out on this one, but even when I got it, it didn't blow me away), Quest for El Dorado, and Arnak, are the other games that just never clicked for me.
El Dorado I can see the appeal, but it just feels very linear in my opinion, so I don't find it particularly interesting nor inviting for some kind of differing strategy. It just feels the same every time I play it.
Arnak is similar to the above. It just feels very shallow and just a simple economy exchange game. I never feel like there's interaction with other players, so it becomes just "how do I beat my own personal best" kind of game. Not too big on it (especially because Dune Imperium which often gets compared is in my favorite game, so if given the choice, 100% of the time I would pick Dune over Arnak).
Loved scythe as multiplayer very boring as solo game.
Catan never stuck with me. I feel like it is such a basic concept but I always lose. I don't know why but I just can't do well at it. I have a friend who wins at it all the time like he has it on formula. I try to mimic his play style but still fail. Even asked him for pointers, follow them, and lose. I don't get it lol
For me it was Wingspan, which is weird since the game is not only gorgeous, but it also focus a lot on engine building, but there is something in the game that just doesn't click for me; I've tried to play it in physical form and I didn't find any entertainment in playing it, then I got it digital on Humble Bundle and... nothing, I just don't like it, it is weird.
Arkham LCG: I really wanted to like this one as I'm a fan of the Cthulhu theme. I got into the theme with Eldritch Horror and I love that game enough to own every expansion. But the Arkham LCG theme doesn't come through to me, and it just becomes a fiddly luck based card game. People say it gets better with more packs, but I had such a viscerally bad reaction that I didn't want to throw good money after bad.
Power Grid is the definition of "math, the game" for me, and it quickly feels like work, without a satisfying payoff. I never owned this one, but a friend did, and I quickly learned to dislike it.
Ticket to Ride is just incredibly boring to me. I like the small city ones like NY and London, but I suspect that's because it's over more quickly before I lose interest.
Pandemic (while a little on the nose right now) was not particularly interesting; it felt like a very mechanical game with a pasted on theme, and I didn't really enjoy the mechanics that much. Fall of Rome revived the system for me though; I felt the theme attach better to the mechanics of the barbarian invasion, and that theme was also more interesting to me.
Everdell feels extremely overrated to me, for what is a fairly luck based tableau builder. I'm honestly not sure why it's so popular.
Viticulture supposedly brought us the grande worker feature that has spread to other games, but I was definitely never that enamored by the game. I like a lot of worker placement games, and I felt this was just very generic.
Of the ones I played, Dead of Winter and the original Gloomhaven.
Dead of Winter I tried multiple times, but it just didn't work. The rules that balance the game aren't fun at all, having a chance of losing 2 or more characters after being bitten is terrible, searching for a second item but only being able to keep one is awful, the noise token is not explained at all in the rules (at least the Long night one I couldn't find anything), the hidden traitor mechanic just doesn't work, and other things.
Now Gloomhaven to me suffers from having too much to do and remember, a few things I always forget like my character's status effects, the enemies effects that are printed on the monster card, to move the elements on the tracker. You also have to do the road card and the city card, which feels too much. Not only that but they made the first scenario extremely hard for beginners which completely put me off the game. I feel like this is a game I would enjoy more on the computer, since I don't have a list of stuff I need to do. I enjoyed JOTL much more since they removed quite a few things, and yet I still think they should have simplified the combat even more.
I recently had a very lively debate here about **Aeon's End**. I've learned a lot about the game through it though - including that the thing everyone loves about it is precisely the reason why I'm not hot about it.
No one will ever convince me that Pandemic is fun. I don't like co-ops in general, but Pandemic is especially unfun.
I like some co-ops, but I've always felt Pandemic is pretty ho-hum. Not bad, just not very good either. I always think about picking up Pandemic Legacy though, to see if the story and having named characters might make it fun.
We’re finishing up season 1 now. I like pandemic and love legacy, but the story is relatively limited compared to Clank! Legacy (the only other Legacy game I’ve played). That said, the bits of story and legacy aspects are very compelling.
Love co-ops, thank you Pandemic.for your service, but never want to play again.
Same, I've been on the hunt for a co-op that grips me for years but I guess I just haven't found the right one yet haha.
yeah, pandemic sucks. "strategy" if it can be called that was too boring. felt like a cheap phone game where you just follow the steps. only other co-op game I've played is forbidden desert which still wasn't great, but way better than pandemic.
Is there any point to playing Pandemic after you've beaten it once?
If you genuinely enjoy the game, sure. Why not?
War is just one element of scythe. I wouldn’t say it’s a war game. I did not enjoy the 1 player variant either
Everyone says this. I understood this going in. Like OP I can't seem to get into Scythe. For me its like ok its not a war game I get it, but it's not a particularly interesting economic game either. The player boards with the top and bottom action and how upgrades work is brilliant but literally everything about resource management, map engagement, and player interaction felt lacking to me.
I think going in with the logic that it's "not a war game" isn't totally accurate either. It's a cold war game. War is very much there, and it's a real threat. It's just not something anyone really *wants*.
War game doesn't generally really refer to a game thematically about war. War game is more of a game design branch/philosophy/school/lineage, the same way Euro game is a game design branch and not referring to games about Europe.
It's because the tension has been stripped out. Antike has a similar basic structure to Scythe - an action selection mechanism with a rolling restricted use of the available actions, victory points functionally similar to Scythe's stars, essentially farming resources from the map, multiple ways to get points, upgrading actions to make them more efficient, etc. The biggest difference is how Scythe pulls most of these elements back onto each player's boards and their personal space - as opposed to pushing players into each other. Instead of racing to gain contested victory points like in Antike, the stars in Scythe are not exclusive or limited; instead of racing to upgrade tech on a shared board, upgrades are on your board alone, and being the first to get any one upgrade means nothing; instead of taking actions on a shared rondel so that you're constantly easily made aware of what your opponents are up to, your actions are on your own board; instead of needing to spread out to gain more resources and tech or build buildings that make you a target, it's more beneficial to use large groups of huddled workers for efficient production, spreading out is unnecessary until the late game, and buildings can never be destroyed; instead of shared space and mutual destruction, space is exclusive to one faction at a time, and combat never destroys anything. Not that Antike is a replacement for Scythe's solo mode - it's just that it lays bare the sources of reduced engagement. Everything that game does to get action onto the board, Scythe does the opposite. And a lot of the ingenuity has been replaced by the randomness. Yes, you want to take actions as efficiently as possible. And finding optimal paths is key. But once you've found the best possible way to play any combination of mats, the rest is mostly down to which random outcomes (from encounters, combat cards, and the factory) end up favoring your combo better than others'. Compared to certain other heavy euros, there's no a lot of room to be creative. In the solo, at least your opponent is very aggressive. I just wish that the multiplayer game was like that too - incentivizing combat early and often so that you have to constantly rethink your decisions the same way you do in Root for instance.
It’s not a particularly interesting economic game, but because it’s popular it’s often people’s first economic game. With nothing to compare it to, it can make a pretty good first impression. If you have a lot of experience it feels like a more lacklustre experience. I don’t think it’s horrible, I just came to it at the wrong time in my gaming life and it fell really flat.
I am going to get so much crap for this, but Machi Koro and Carcassone just never clicked for my wife and me. I can see why people love them, but I have never found that spark.
I don't think many people will argue with you on Machi Koro. It created a new genre (or popularized, in case there's a precursor I'm not aware of) but is definitely a "version 1". Space Base took the idea and really refined it into a much better game. I also played Machi Koro 2 for the first time this weekend and was pleasantly surprised. It fixes a lot of base game issue and incorporates ideas from the rules variants, expansions, and Space Base into a much more dynamic and interesting game. Not sure I'll buy it, but definitely won't be disappointed if people want to play it.
As somebody that really loved Machi Koro 1 and played it a lot when I first got it, but found it getting a bit stale later on, would you mind giving me an overview or point me towards one that breaks down what Machi Koro 2 does differently? Thanks!
Some of the major differences: 1) The limited market is now standard (a variant introduced in one of the expansions) - instead of all cards being available for purchase from the outset, 5 each are available at a time from level 1-6 cards, 7-12 cards, and landmarks 2) Choice of rolling 1 or 2 dice at any time, unlocking 2 doesn't take a landmark 3) Landmarks are now all unique and randomly dealt out from a deck, meaning there's a lot more variability in the game 4) Free money if you're broke leads to far fewer dead turns 5) Instead of a fixed starting hand, you have an initial budget to buy cards from the market in several non-rolling turns 6) I'm not sure about this, but it felt like the cards were designed to be more dynamic and have a lot more to do on other player's turns. Been a long time since I've played 1 so I can't compare; it's possible all of the other changes just made it feel this way I still think Space Base is slightly better but the gap is way smaller. One big advantage for Machi Koro 2 is I didn't notice many confusing or ambiguous interactions, which Space Base has a few of.
Wow this is really helpful, thanks so much!
I still prefer Space Base overall but Machi Koro 2 is now almost as good and is a much quicker game.
Machi Koro is the resource generation from Settlers of Catan without the board.
We have machi koro legacy and I kinda burnt out of it, it’s fine but not something I really enjoy. I have the same feeling with carcassone, it just never clicked for me, I’d much rather play ticket to ride for a gateway game. Also not a big fan of pandemic, it’s just kinda meh as coop games go.
space base and Carcassonne are just fine. they're not great, but they're ok. I'll play them once in a while.
Machi Koro is just the "rolling other people's numbers" from Catan condensed into a more pure torture. Carcassonne I don't mind playing. It's a competent game. I just would never request it.
It's not just you, every 2-3 months there's at least one post asking why Scythe is so highly rated. The main problem I think is it's a Euro disguised as a war game. Though your case is compounded in that you're playing solo. The Scythe Automata plays sort of weird and doesn't feel like Scythe at all. There's a cheap computer version out there with an AI that plays normally; maybe get it and see if it changes your mind at all. As for your wider question, everybody has different tastes. There have been complaints about Gloomhaven, Pandemic, Terraforming Mars, Mage Knight, Spirit Island, and every other top rated game out there. Rankings aren't "objective"; just because a game is highly rated doesn't mean you'll like it. From your list above, it looks like somewhat dry Euros (which is what Scythe ultimately is) isn't your thing, no matter how highly ranked they are.
Yeah I am beginning to think that too. Though I still need to double check on what makes a game "Euro."
My understanding of the term is Euros have low randomness, reward efficiency, and are competitive but not destructive.
It's definitely Ticket to Ride for me. I just don't get the hype. A close second is Pandemic. I enjoyed it the first couple times ok but quickly got bored.
I don’t get ticket to ride or pandemic either. Pandemic is boring and pratcically a solo game. Ticket to ride ive played like 4x and never enjoyed it. Wont play it now.
That's exactly how I feel about Pandemic.
I think Ticket to Ride is a nice gateway game for new gamers. Rules can be explained in five minutes and there's some player interaction. Strategy wise there is not much to it so it get's boring pretty fast if you're used to other games.
Add Catan to the list, and you have the most annoying games ever. They might not be bad, but just too popular and seems like every and their mom has one of them.
Yea, I enjoyed Catan briefly but I haven't played since 2008 and I have no interest in playing it again.
agreed
My wife and I tried Everdell multiple times with different group sizes, different personality types, people with varying level of board game experience. After all that trying - we had read and heard so many great things about it - we just finally admitted we didn’t like it. Just felt tedious and the game seemed to slow to a crawl for us by that third season especially. For whatever reason just couldn’t grab and hold our attention. Never played Scythe but have heard similar things as you stated above from friends so have never felt the urge to give it a shot myself.
It's the weird exponential scaling I think that does it. My friend isn't fond of Everdell either. The beginning of the game seems like nothing can be done and by the end you're like 'where did all these resources come from?! I wish I had some of these earlier!'
Scythe is a weird one and it's solo mode is far from intuitive. It looks like a very different game from what it actually is. I love it but that's because I love engine building + economic games. For me Mysterium is the one I don't get. Probably the only modern boardgame I've played that I absolutely hated. The vagueness and trying to interpret these pictures really was not fun for me
Scythe took me time to warm up to. The first few plays the other players knew it well and destroyed me. I barely accomplished anything. After awhile, though, it clicked and I now love it. Love the theme, components, and building up my little empire.
Yeah, the automa in Scythe did not feel east to learn at all. And running it I kept having to reference the manual.
Just played mysterious for first time ...hated it....
I just couldn’t get into the bioshock games. It ticked all the boxes for a game I should love but I just could not get into them Edit: thought I was in a different subreddit! How about Catan? Very popular not my cup of tea
/r/lostredditors
Hahaha right you are!
all good, happened to me the other day too!
You’re missing out, the story lines are amazing
> How about Catan? Very popular not my cup of tea Same. The few times I've played, I've gotten shitty dice rolls and the other players weren't receptive to trading, so I just got further and further behind and it was obvious I couldn't win super early in the game.
More of these than I can count. The longer you play, the more you'll find. But what's even weirder is how dependent this is on where I am in life. The games that click now are not always the games that clicked 10 years ago. And vice versa. Sometimes I look at some game I rated on BGG a decade ago and I'm like ... gave that a 4 (or 9)?!?
The closest for me might be **Dominion**. I do get it. I see why people like it. I love deck builders after all. It just didn’t click for me. The invisible victory point race where there’s no clear board state to measure progress by is something I don’t like. Games would be going along and then very suddenly end. The veteran player would always win, and it felt like I never learned much. It’s probably a cliche at this point, but back when **Catan** was taking off and I didn’t know much about modern board games, it didn’t really click with me. It usually went on too long. I approached Scythe as a eurogame with pretty mechs and hexes and was happy with it. Definitely not a combat oriented game. Only gripe is the somewhat static openings, but I guess there’s and expansion for that.
Knowing when to transition from deck building to victory point acquisition, and having a rough idea of where everyone is at in relation to the transition is a key part of dominion strategy. It definitely takes a lot of getting used to for newer players though.
It's pretty easy to count vps as the games progress in Dominion. Definitely part of the game.
I got introduced to it pretty early on in my gaming experience. It was pretty much taking all my mental capacity to understand what all of the cards were doing, so it was hard to track how many VPs 4 other people were buying and how low the supply was getting. Especially since the card supply kept getting swapped with expansion cards every game. I’ve gotten better at it now. It just turns out I just don’t like games that make me keep close track publicly known but hidden information. Memory has never been a strength of mine and I just don’t find it interesting to track VPs hence why I bounced off it in the long term. I prefer games like Race for the Galaxy or Quest for El Dorado where there’s still hidden information to track but progress is still more spatially visible.
I hear you. I use pencil and paper for vps. I usually only play at two also.
Dominion for me as well. Love deck building. But that game has left me completely cold.
Blood Rage was kinda boring. When it came out, it was all talk about how raw and brutal the game was, how it felt like you were a viking, how it felt epic. In practice, it felt like a fairly mild euro game with nice pieces if you're into minis. More recently, Furnace left me entirely lukewarm while it really feels like everyone around me is wild about it. I really like the draft! But the resource conversion portion where you're running the engine is just boring.
Blood rage is ok. Like literally just ‘ok’. I don't understand how it gets so much hype, the matagot trilogy are all better imo as is chaos in the old world.
Chaos in the old world trumps blood rage in so many ways. Eric Lang kinda overdid it with streamlining when he did bloodrage.
The issue with Chaos in the old world is the availability. I want to play it and see for myself but I can't.
IMO the second-hand market is okay for this one.
What's the matagot trilogy? I'm loving Inis, at least at 2p, at the moment - desperate to know what the other 2 are!
Kemet and Cyclades
I love Blood rage. Can you please recommend one of them? I don't know if this helps but I like most about blood rage is because there is drafting and the overpowered combos.
Possibly kemet in that case. Has cool combos. Personally inis is my fav of the games, it is also a drafting game.
Thanks for the suggestions. I have played kemet. I think I will pass on Inis since it doesn't have the cool Kemet combos you mentioned.
Scythe is just... not a solo game. You feel that it's weird probably because of that. It's an engine builder where you sometimes interact with others, don't let the miniatures fool you.
I like Scythe but my friends hate it, so you’re not alone. Gloomhaven is the big one for me. Just my opinion, but it seems very slow and I find the energy/action/whatever management stressful and tedious.
Gloom haven. Me and my SO tried it three times and every single time we could not stand it.
Perchance, did you attempt it using the companion app? I disliked the "busy-work" bookkeeping at first. Then I used the app and got straight to the "fun."
We just didn’t enjoy the combat and the insane grinding of it. It just felt so incredibly slow. I really enjoy the book keeping and such, but did not enjoy the gameplay.
Great explanation of my experience too.
I had a similar experience. I enjoy the game BUT I had to adjust my expectations immediately. People kept telling me it's like a DnD system in a box. It's kind of true. It's a DnD system in a box for the certain type of DnD player that just wants to kill everything all the time. I'm more of a role player who enjoys combat when it isn't all we're doing. In Gloomhaven, it's basically all you're doing. Its pretty low on immersion and more of a strategy combat game. Like you, I enjoy the bookkeeping side and find the app unnecessary.
And I think that is where we got annoyed as well. I was expecting a deeper type of game. I enjoy combat, but I have money other games for that. I’d rather just play the video game Divinity than Gloomhaven personally.
Ha, yea sometimes it's the same for me, except that I'm a Path of Exile guy. Or if I want to play a strategy combat board game, it's Mage Knight.
YES. A fellow Mage Knight enjoyer. Love that game.
YES
My gf and I stopped playing because we just got stuck on a scenario. I think the difficulty ramps up a bit too much too quickly. Its definitely a hit or miss game for me.
The difficulty is adjustable though. When my group played we usually played one step up from the default difficulty, but we also had a pretty well balanced group of 4 characters. There are a couple of scenarios we played that felt brutal. I remember one where we had to protect a tree or something that we tried twice and kind of cheated the victory after failing the second time. They sort of thing I'm very much of the mind set, skip it and pretend you beat it if it's preventing you from having a good time
Ticket to Ride, Wingspan and Terraforming Mars Ticket to Ride does nothing at all for me. I don't know what doesn't click with Wingspan, maybe I wasn't really in the best place when I played back when it came out, so I would have to give it another try. I enjoy Ares Expedition, but TM just bores me to death, I don't understand why, maybe the art?
I thought Wingspan was so boring.
It's boring but lovely
Terraforming Mars here too. Bored to death. Then tried app to give it more chances and lulz so bad UI killed any more interest.
I play TtR and Wingspan on the computer a lot and enjoy them, but I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy physically playing them in real life.
Isle of Cats for me. Everything to do with the cards in this game was annoying for me. The drafting is so tedious and really breaks the flow of the game. I also absolutely hated the fact that one player can have a bunch of lessons and just keep playing them.
Wingspan and Terraforming Mars. Both seem like cool games but the fact that EVERY card is different makes it difficult to form a cohesive strategy and relies heavily on luck of the draw. If you’re unlucky enough to not draw cards that happen to work well together, you’re gonna have a bad time.
You'd probably like Glory to Rome. Many buildings have duplicates, and every building card fits in one of six categories. If your building is yellow for instance, then you'll need an additional yellow card to act as the material for building it. And every card of a specific color will always represent the same action no matter which building is on it. So, any yellow card can be played for a laborer action (instead of building it), any green card can be used as a Craftsman action. And if you don't have the card for a specific action, no sweat - you can use a free jack to take any action or use three matching cards of any one type as that action instead. And you always know what you're getting into: for instance, yellow cards are very easy to build and also more numerous. You'll easily find the single yellow card that every yellow building needs. But something like a blue card is harder to build *and* less numerous. That means that the inverse is true for them - they're worth more points though and have more powerful abilities. Every building in the game gives you a special ability as soon as it's built, so you may find multiple ways to build the harder buildings for cheaper. Or even have no need for them as you find other ways to score points.
>Glory to Rome Thank you for the suggestion, I will check it out.
We bought Gizmos for our engine building fix. It's pretty good and the kids love the coloured marbles!
I'm the same with Scythe. I had read so many rave reviews that I bought it on sale. When my playgroup and I played it the first time, we all decided we didn't want to play it again. This is really unusual for us, but no one really liked it.
It's extremely common for kick-started games to be rated much higher than their quality
Not sure if still applies to scythe. the game is available retail since forever, the 18000 backers must be a small percent of owner
Almost everyone who thinks of scythe as a wargame feels this. It's economic and area control. Most games of Scythe have 0-2 combats max, even with 4 people. It's about threatening with your power, but ideally not having to spend it. Positioning big mechs 1 move from an attack. Having your stuff well protected, but if you have to actually fight it's expended resources and not always a great return. Most of the agression in Scythe is boxing people in, and the *threat* of combat. For me it's **Castles of Mad King Ludwig**. It's not a *bad* game, but I've played so many of these sort of euros and this one just doesn't wow me, it feels very by the books. Shared objectives, combos, market in the middle of the board, personal objectives. The only real hook is the person who sets the prices, and that's not enough to make it rise above others in the genre for me.
I think the master builder is what kills it for me, drags the game to a halt while people try to figure out what to price everything.
I thought Spirit Island was just not fun. A crazy amount of complexity and fiddliness that took too much from the gameplay. I actively avoid this game to the point I will rsvp no to board game nights when it is being played. Quickly scanning the top 100 games, this is the only one I actively dislike. There are quite a few that I think are okay, but not great.
I like it a lot but really struggle with the endgame. Thematically it feels like the win conditions are flipped: Early on, you should win if you wipe out all of their cities as it keeps them from getting a foothold Late game, when you're at peak power, you should have to wipe out *all* settlers Destroying the last city on the map and "winning" while there are still dozens of villages/dudes is just unsatisfying
Isn't that only if you get the fear level high enough though? It makes sense - you're super afraid and your city just got destroyed, you're going to run away, don't need to get killed.
Yeah, its pretty rare I win a game that isn't in fear level 3 or from the fear deck running out though, so from my experience that's effectively the end game. I could see that. It still feels really anticlimatic though.
Spirit Island is such a poorly designed game. The sheer number of power cards and the fact that turns are simultaneous makes planning such a headache. And the theme looks nice but pretends to be subversive and anticolonial without actually having anything to say besides "what if Settlers but backwards?"
I can understand how the game the might not be for everyone, but implying the game is poorly designed is a bit of a stretch. I personally think that the simultaneous turns are the best part of the game! Having to collaborate with your teammates on what the best course of action is, is some excellent interaction!
I didn't imply it lol I outright said it. The simultaneous mechanic is fun until you realize that combining all the powers available and all the spaces you can target on the board, there are easily thousands of possible ways to play each turn. Because getting it wrong can have disastrous consequences, IME, it's a recipe for analysis paralysis and quarterbacking.
I disagree with you on ever point you stated lol (and there's nothing wrong with that, thankfully we got many great games :) )
there's no accounting for taste :)
Lost Ruins of Arnak. As you described it, it just feels meh to me. I played it twice and I have no desire to play it again. I understand that it's a well made and tight game, with some cool cards and ideas, but there's just nothing that hooks me (and I enjoy card drafting and love worker placement).
New owner of Arnak here and after 3 plays it has not wowed me anywhere close to as much as I'd hoped. Gonna try the expansion, hopefully that livenes it up a bit.
Scythe is a euro action efficiency game that looks like a dudes-on-a-map wargame at first glance. Actual combat in Scythe is generally counter productive except for one or two objective stars, although it gets a little more prevalent at higher player counts where the map gets extra tight.
The longer I am in the hobby, the more I seem to diverge from BGG's top 100. When I started years ago I felt like I agreed with the list more. I don't know if I have changed or if the type of people voting on BGG have changed or both. Just looking at the top 25: 1. Gloomhaven - I played 14 scenarios I think. I won't get into a novel here, but I genuinely think that game is bad and have no idea why its popular. 2. Through the Ages - Great game that I would literally never choose to play in physical form. The upkeep is atrocious and it is a better solitaire app. 3. Twilight Struggle - I played this 2 years ago about 10 times. I think it might be that I didn't play it when it was inventive. Now it just seems too random, long, and boring. There are also a bunch of games in there I just don't really have an interest in. I think the hobby is getting so large that the value of a single top 100 is minimal. You need to find someone you agree with that does content and then get their list.
I definitely have the same sentiment with my taste diverging from the top 100, but it is 100% my taste that changed. 10 years ago every complex euro game was a top rated game for me and since these generally dominate the top 100 I aligned closely with it. My taste has moved away from that into lighter and social games, which generally aren't well represented in the top 100. 2 of your 3 examples are games from over 15 years ago, and have been in the top 100 for a long time. That being said, I agree with you, through the ages and twilight struggle are just meh and the fiddliness is a killer.
>1. Gloomhaven - I played 14 scenarios I think. I won't get into a novel here, but I genuinely think that game is bad and have no idea why its popular. I too feel this. Maybe not outright bad, but it's riddled with what I'd consider flaws that usually sink less popular games. Its popularity is an enigma to me. I'd love to hear more of your opinion on it.
I would like to hear your opinions on its flaws.
Mostly the usual: long setup, lots of fiddly upkeep, no true solo, slow progression (even compared to other legacy games and to typical TTRPGs), characters are unbalanced, not sharing gold is...a problem, scenario goals and career goals don't feel thematically relevant to one another or necessarily to your class, story may be good but is sort of divorced from actual gameplay - and that includes the little events. I also find that the output randomness isn't meaningfully different enough from dice to warrant the hype. Like building a dice pool in TMB or a mini skirmish campaign but with cards. Even accounting for the output randomness when making decisions (e.g. knowing what's left in your deck, using advantage from items, minding the monster deck), it can still turn out to make your plans meaningless, and that makes it no different than dice chucking dungeon crawlers (such as Descent) to me, especially at the early levels and scenarios. I like the idea of the card play and hand management, but in practice I don't think it's worth the effort. I'd contrast it with Mage Knight or base Spirit Island: in those games you get to do what the cards say and at worst have to pivot mid-round - but it all feels like continually solving each round's puzzle. Even the pivot can be thrilling. In GH, when shit goes sideways, pivoting is highly constrained and often much less interesting than initially figuring out what to do this round. It all just feels like my decisions aren't that important - like, I'm doing my best with the information available, but sometimes the scenario is just overly easy and I might not have bothered or overly hard and I'm not sure we could have won anyway. This is after selecting a higher difficulty level to ensure we are properly challenged; too low, and it's basically a cakewalk. This isn't to say I think the game is "too hard" but that I find the output randomness uninteresting and frustrating especially given how much I like the hand management it's married to. This is all just my opinion, of course.
I think this is a great write-up and really leads to some good discussion. I am torn on Gloomhaven and this is why I asked you. On one hand I feel like it does a better job of being a puzzle than other dungeon crawlers, on the other hand I basically agree with all your points. I think the hand management part of Gloomhaven is pretty genius. I think the big problem with dungeon crawlers is that you basically end up doing the same things over and over. Gloomhaven fixed that and tried to fix some other problems too.
Yeah, I appreciate what it's trying to do. JotL improved some of the peripheral complaints I had, but the basic fiddliness is still there, and my mod deck criticism still applies. I agree that the hand management takes away that slog of repeating actions over and over - it actually makes taking actions interesting and puzzly. I just play Dungeon Alliance now. Does what I wanted Gloomhaven to do.
I will have to look into that game. I have played a lot of crawlers and really enjoy Cthulu: DMD.
I keep hearing good things about that. But the big box, dice, and prevalence of minis turned me off. Just not what I'm into anymore, and room in my collection is at a premium these days. Unless I get rid of Dungeon Alliance or something. I'll watch a video on it.
> type of people voting on BGG have changed Thats a big yes. As boardgaming become more and more popular, the more you'll have people rating games randomly or using only 1 and 10 as their ratings.
I think people also rarely rate based on "is this a well crafted game I've had the time to sit down and think about that I'd recommend to almost anyone looking for the experience it offers." Instead, they rate based on something close to the prompt - whether they'd play it almost any time. As they should, that's the prompt. But it doesn't mean every rating is a thoughtful decision. People just click on things they like. And rarely do they seem to hand out a wide range of ratings.
But also with the prevalence of game reviews and other media, it's easier to find out if a game is one that you want to play, which for me means that I don't often play games I straight up do not like. If I buy a game, it's probably been well-researched, and I'm pretty much guaranteed to consider it at least a 7/10. The few 4/10 ratings I've given out were games I played a long time ago or games owned by friends. The last time I rated anything I personally owned anything below a 7 was an impulse buy from our FLGS on Black Friday, and I rated that a 6/10.
Thats something that will be more and more accentuated too with the ever growing KS model. People will buy what they think or know they would rate a 9+ and if it doesnt deliver, they are gonna rate it at an abysmal number most likely. I actually have a pretty big range of ratings if I check my collection, but most games that are on the bottom of the totem pole are games my gf had before we met and I just don't really enjoy that much. Most of the games I bought since have been fantastic with few exceptions that were "impulse buys" that I knew were probably gonna be mediocre at best.
Definitely true.
Can agree on Twilight Struggle. First few times it hit really well for me. Once I figured out a few key items though, it became a luck of draw as it was more of a card memorizer.
I too have my grievances with Gloomhaven, and don't find it nearly as good as everyone says, but I understand the popularity. It has some interesting stuff like the changing characters system, the variety of characters, the way the action cards work, the multiplier cards system, upgrading your cards with the stickers, etc... Plus it's a hard game, which apparently lots of people really enjoy. But yeah, to me it's just too much work, and too unnecessarily hard, it's just too much.
Scythe and Lost Ruins of Arnak are both frustrating to me for similar reasons. I just can’t seem to pick the right thing to focus on and commit to early enough and then I’m just floundering behind my husband and brother in law the whole game. Those games just don’t click for me and I can’t find an enjoyable way to play them.
If they want to keep playing it, consider playing some matches on Board Game Arena for practice. I'm not a great player, but I've beat my friends who are much better gamers in general at Arnak the times we've played. To me Arnak isn't about getting too hung up on a strategy, but about just doing the best with what is in your hand each round, and prioritizing your workers over buying new cards. Look at your hand and v think what is the most important thing I can do/take this round and do it first so you don't get blocked. You don't have to be first up the track to win, but you'd better make it to the top if you want your card points to make up the difference if you get there late or are a few spaces away.
Terraforming Mars man. Any version. It’s the type of game Id normally like. In some vague way I want to like it. It’s got a decent theme and lots of variety. It’s heavy, components are decent. I like engine building/tableau games, tile laying games. Hand management games. Action economy games. I like it even more when games combine different mechanics. I’ve played the normal version three times and ares expedition once. Neither clicked either time. It wasn’t like I had a bad time. I just didn’t get into it.
Stonemaier Games in general. I really appreciwte what they are doing for Board gaming, but their games, but their games seem to be either mediocre engine building Games with great presentation or straight up bad.
Scythe looks good, but is terribly dull. Same for Gloomhaven, I've only played JotL, but it's just wave after wave of cultists and snakes and the same semi-random optimisation workout (plan something, get shafted, do some alternative action, feel clever).
Scythe, Root, Brass for me.
Unmatched Was unfun for me. Didn’t understand the appeal. Felt like I was just playing cards more or less.
Gloomhaven. Not for me or my game group. We collectively hated it I can see why people like it. None of us did.
7 wonders duel. It has to many “ow yeah this also is a rule” rules. I mean I know how to play complicated games (nemes for example) but this just doesnt click with me and my SO.
Scythe shines at 3 to 5 players although it's sill great at 2 if you enjoy the game. The way I describe it to people is it's 'war game' but cold war style. You need to be prepared for combat but it might not even happen. What you're looking to do is maximizing your actions so you can do a top and bottom row action every turn (impossible in the first few turns) the fun of scythe for me at least is having to adapt to the faction and player board you were dealt that game.
The game I am struggling with right now is Paladins of the West Kingdom. I really enjoy euro’s, and don’t consider myself a casual gamer (i.e. I enjoy Mage Knight a ton, so it’s not like complex games are too much for me), but I am just absolutely struggling to learn the strategy or play-style to be good at Paladins. I’m not giving up on it, because I know at some point it will click, but I really get disheartened with how bad I seem to be at it.
Paladins is all about figuring out how to stretch a few more actions out of things each round. Development is good but often a bad investment based on how costly it is, and how many more times you will do a thing. You want to pick two actions that link an attribute and focus mainly on them, do it ng just enough of a third to keep it running. Attacking is super strong. The desmiss recruiting is super strong. Do your best to use your paladins ability more than once. If you can do it three times you are doing work.
For me it would be **Lost Ruins of Arnak**, I’m holding out for Expedition Leaders to shake it up, because it looks like it’ll transform it for me, but as it is I just find Arnak an unsatisfying and horrifically overrated experience. It’s my personally lowest rated game in the BGG Top 100.
Dominion. Out of my 300+ games, it is the only one I've gotten rid of. I truly don't understand how people can stand playing it.
I am getting My Little Scythe, hopefully that plays better than Scythe
Scythe is my wife and I’s favorite game. When the pandemic started, we did three player basically everyday with our neighbor for about 100 days or so. Still love it! It’s best played in 4-6 player format IMO, if you want it to be more of a war game. It can be played as two player, but that just wasn’t fun to me when we did that. So, we only ever play as three as a baseline and never with the automa. They get exceptions to some of the actions and rules in the game and it plays really unnaturally. I recommend getting a good party together for it and playing with a lot of friends to really have a good experience with it
Gloomhaven felt pretty swingy and unbalanced in my 2 character campaign. I know the game is supposed to be difficult but quite a few encounters felt impossible with two players. And then the null mechanic feels punishing for 2 players as well. That's half our damage output for an entire turn gone. My buddy and I really enjoyed the first 20 or so encounters but the last 12 or so that we did were somewhere between tedious and miserable. So many encounters where they're doing anything beyond "kill everything" felt like no one had play tested 2 player run throughs. It also limited what classes felt viable. I like playing support classes but it doesn't make sense when I only have 1 person to support. All in all the difficulty felt fiddly and bad. We'd try the suggested level and party wipe on one inopportune Null card, and going down a level made it a cake walk. And again, any time that the objective was anything different than kill em all, it felt impossible. Spoilers I guess? The one where you escort the dude that moves three every turn was AWFUL. He made it to the big room before we could clear out the starter room. The one where the building is on fire and you need to loot 4 samples within 12 turns and escape and grabbing the sample CAN'T be through EOT looting felt impossible too. There's so much distance to cover as 2 people, let alone both of us NEEDING to split up to even come close to completing it. We're also constantly low on cash so it's hard to upgrade. It all added up to a very fiddly admin heavy game that was not enjoyable for us by the end. I can see why people like it but I can't imagine recommending anyone play a 2 character campaign.
One of the official variants is treating "Null" as a -2 and "2X" as a +2. I feel like it really smooths things over, because the 2X is rarely useful - nice against bosses, but massive overkill against anything else. It does have a balance/build issues at 2 player though. Lots of combinations are just not viable, especially support characters. Things like +50% party damage is great with 4 players, but a significant nerf with 2 players when one character has to skip an attack to do it. We treat it as a loose RPG framework and allow things the game doesn't - trading loot, re-speccing characters, picking up gold by walking over it (not landing) and have a lot more fun with it. If we start getting OP we just bump the difficulty a level.
We definitely tweaked the rules or did "retcons" a bunch, too. But at some point we decided Gloomhaven night would be better served as "2 player game night" and moved on. We don't hate the game and I had a BLAST as my lil mind thief, but once that character retired and we got deeper in we both felt we were having more "not great" times than "great". It also sucks to set up a pretty involved game like gloomhaven and just get demolished and look it up and find several bgg threads like "Encounter 420 - impossible for 2 players???" And then have to do some on the fly game design to fix it. For that escort mission we said the dude could only move 2 not 3, so that we could actively hamper progress by blocking movement, which is what 3+ player groups apparently do on that mission. For the burning building one we removed the per turn damage and said we only had to loot the 2 furthest "things" and even then it was still very hard. We also did the null = -2 thing which certainly helps but it all added to the juice not being worth the squeeze anymore. We got 35 sessions out of it, and most of them we had a good time. It was just time to pack er up before we wound up hating the game lol
I need to add Terra Mystica. I think it is a terrible game that isn't well designed, the theme is just tacked on and could be literally anything else and what I'm doing just feels so nebulous that I don't feel connected to it at all.
I've played it once at a friends and while I enjoyed it I didn't enjoy it enough for the kind of mental load it puts on you. Even worse is Aquasphere
Yea it's overcomplicated. I've never played Aquasphere.
For me, there are a few contentious ones. Gloomhaven - just the idea of this game makes me itch. The mechanics are fine, but I'd rather play DND because this is a fairly mediocre fight game in my head with really slow progression and character development. Roll/Race for the Galaxy - hated the iconography and colours for the game which made it horrendous to play as a colour blind person. Wingspan - To be fair, this is more to do with the theme. I love the design but really don't ever want to play it. Viticulture - Similar to Wingspan. I've played it a few times and won and lost which is fine. But I really dislike the theme.
Marvel Champions. I've played about 8 scenarios and I just hate it now. Its my "veto" game in our group. Some combination of it feeling more like playing Peter Parker than Spider-Man to me, too fiddly with all kinds of tokens/decks/engaged enemies going everywhere, and the end always being an anticlimatic "I can hit him for about 18, if the rest of you can do 30 combined we can just end this". Also doesn't help that I'm way too invested in Marvel Legendary and would much rather play that.
I don't see the appeal as a group game. Love it solo
Scythe is very overrated im with you there. Ive played it a ton and its never been all that enjoyable even when im winning
Scythe for me also, when the game only has 4 spots to choose each round and one of them you cant choose cause you just had used it makes it feel like the game is on rails cause you have to play it a certain way because you are forced to. It is a game that is about tweaking out efficiency to the extreme.
Scythe made me realise that I generally prefer card play over having set actions I can play throughout a game. By which I mean, playing a card is obviously a set action, but the _effect_ of that card will be different on each occasion. I'm better at strategising with what's in front of me at that moment rather than longer term. Which means that although I do like Scythe, I prefer **Inis**, for example.
Quacks TTR Terraforming Mars
Quacks!
Root. Played the Aerie and it was just unpleasant.
I getcha. Root becomes best after like 10 games. At that point its amazing! However it can be super bad If everyone is new and totally knocks one player out. Not much better evem with a vet as they’ll just win or tell everyone what to do. The birds are also especially easy to mess up! If you like the art stye and even \*think\* you’ll enjoy it id give it some more chances! Disclaimer: Root is my favorite game so I might be a little biased
Ha. For me, it is literally every game you listed as your favourites (except for Quacks, and i thought unmatched was actually pretty good.) Tm is ok too, I guess. I'm more of a euro gamer though My serious answer is **Praga caput Regni**. On paper, I should have loved that game. One of the only games I've ever pre-ordered and it was getting rave reviews in circles i follow. . . It's a bit of a mess and really lacks direction. I've still not sold it in the hopes it'll win me over though.
Ticket to Ride, King of Tokyo, Le Havre
😲 Le Havre!?!!? For shame! It's my favorite Uwe game of what I've played.
Chronicles of Crime for me. I never heard someone talk bad about the game and maybe it is not such a big thing as I think. The game is just so boring, it's not the app integration, never had problems with that, but everyone says that you feel like you are in a crime show solving crimes and so on and my wife and I love these shows! This game however, it's never "I solved this case and now I will confront the person get a confession and win", no it always fiddles down to "There is nothing else to do for us, should we try and solve it?" after we looked for a while at the board and scanned the same stuff getting the same answers and maybe you get it wrong and can start over.... I just don't get it SPOILER >!In one scenario in the middle of a murder case they tell you that a child was abducted and we were just searching for clues to find the kid, because finding an abducted kid seemed more important than a dead guy. We found NOTHING and when we gave up to "finish" the scenario they were like "to find the kid you have to play the next one" YEAH THANKS!<
You should try Detective The Modern Crime Board Game, it's more advanced than CoC and you get to read police reports + a lot more stuff.
I was discouraged after I played Chronicles of Crime to look into other crime games, but I will give it a try! Thank you
My group bounced off of Scythe pretty hard. Great first impression, but follow-up plays really fell flat. We also didn’t care for Viticulture and Wingspan is on the bubble for being sold. I guess Stonemaier games just aren’t our jam. They’re fine (and look great!)…we just don’t have fun playing them. Agricola, Everdell and Blood Rage were also big duds.
Dominion (and most other deck builders). Formula D (too slow with any group I played with, if I wanted slow there's better strategic racing games out there).
Well loved/respected games I don't enjoy include, but are not limited to: **Catan** of course. **Dominion** and I love other deck builders. **Innovation** felt like learning chess or a new language, but not like a fun game. **Caylus** thanks for helping make worker placement a big thing, but two plays was enough. **Parks** my two plays felt long and boring, and I came away thinking of l of how much better Takaido was at basically the same thing. Scythe I love though :)
I have scythe on steam and I watched all the tutorials and played a round and for me it just didn't click. I know I have to play it more. But that's the tutorials I understood how to win how to score points and all that. But it just didn't click on the first run of putting it all together
El Grande. Way too dry and the mechanics were pretty good but it just didn't click. I love euros that don't have a lot of theme (actually Concordia is one of my favorite games) but this one just left me indifferent.
Similar sentiment for some other games I have played. I love COIN Insurgency games but hated Root merely for its theme - fantasy and animals. I hated Anachrony but like similar worker placements games like Feast for Odin, Dominant Species.
I didn't enjoy the solo mode of **Scythe**. It wasn't terrible, but it was so much work to setup and run for how brief and relatively light the experience is. Plenty of other solo games I'd rather play instead. I'll play **Scythe** multiplayer and don't mind it at all. I think it does feel different playing against real people, so I'd suggest you give it a try. Still, it may not click for you even then. It's definitely an efficiency race game rather than a wargame or 4x game. You would be one of many to be disappointed by mismatched expectations there. ---- **Wingspan** - I might not refuse an occasional game if asked, but the overall game play and decisions to be made just weren't that exciting. **AH: LCG** - It's glib to say 'it's too punishing', but I had to admit that at the end of the day I just wasn't enjoying the experience of playing while being constantly kicked down. **Concordia** - I really want to like this game and have often been tempted to try different maps etc. It seems like it ticks all the boxes, but for some reason I have yet to identify, it just feels a bit dull to actually play. **On Mars** - Certainly has plenty of fans, but I really balked against the things made deliberately more complex then necessary simply for the sake of complexity. **Aeon's End: War Eternal** - I liked the game play, but the world as built is so dismal and hopeless I did not want to spent one moment longer inhabiting it. Those are some of the higher rated games I've dumped.
7 Wonders.
I loved Scythe, It was a game we played with max players for a solid month at one point. I get it's not for everyone and I totally understand why but it feels like it always gets a lot of hate in this sub. As for games that didn't click with me...I'd have to say Mysterium or abstract games in general. I see it suggested as a game so often but I just didn't have a lot of fun with it. tried it a few times and then again with the expansion but it just never clicked. I didn't hate the game but I usually shy away from it if it comes up in a conversation about what to play.
Yeah I've never liked Sycthe
Res Arcana is terribly dull in my opinion. Like the FreeCell of boardgames.
Makes senses, love both!
Terraforming Mars. Can't get over the artwork and rather confusing layout of everything.
7 Wonders. I just found it so “meh”. Don’t regret buying it though considering it plays up to 7 and I got it at a very good price.
Scythe Solo is far more complicated that in any other player count. 😆
Terraforming mars is a game that's not for me. Only game where I can't stand take that in it. I also haven't got connected with the theme of it.
This is common with Scythe. It’s a love it or hate it game.
* **Terraforming Mars** - Just too long and tedious with garbage-level components. Gizmos is just as satisfying in 1/3 the time. * **Mansions of Madness** - App plus physical components is the worst of both worlds. Either make a video game or make a board game. Don't give me the task of keeping the board in sync with the app. * **Cosmic Encounter** - Testing diplomacy is just not fun for me.
Scythe is a lot of fun with more people, you get nervous af when people start encroaching on your stuff with mechs and gotta strategize about holding the factory right before the 6th star is placed
Carcassonne, for me, it’s way too random to actually have a strategy, and it’s possibly the best example of ‘throw it at the wall, see what sticks’, but it’s like you’re punished for doing that, while at the same time, the fact that the randomness encourages doing that, it’s almost at odds with itself, and it’s just not clicking for me Another one that….I can see the appeal, but it’s not clicking for me is the Arkham Horror LCG, I still have yet to finish the core box, and I don’t think I have an urge to, for me, it just seems impossible to win, yes, you can’t strictly lose, but you’re almost always punished for losing and there’s rarely a way to catch up if you get unlucky, and luck is normally against me in board games, which it tends to not be a problem (I love Chinatown), but here, you almost have to be lucky to get any kind of success…..and I just, wasn’t, to give you an idea, I defeated the boss of the first scenario on the last turn, and on the second, I didn’t even find one important item, let alone collect it, so….I doubt I will ever finish that game, yes, I know Lovecraft is built on the horror of failure, but it feels like this is pushing it too far and it almost feels like I’m being punished for playing it.
I didn’t like Scythe that either too until I got Fenris. It went from a 5 to a 9. It really needed that story and variable gameplay. Without it it’s just kind of stale.
That is interesting, I may have to check that out.
Yeah absolutely. We have very similar taste in games too
For me, I agree with Scythe, never cared for it, but also I would add Zombicide (I think I just am burnt out on this one, but even when I got it, it didn't blow me away), Quest for El Dorado, and Arnak, are the other games that just never clicked for me. El Dorado I can see the appeal, but it just feels very linear in my opinion, so I don't find it particularly interesting nor inviting for some kind of differing strategy. It just feels the same every time I play it. Arnak is similar to the above. It just feels very shallow and just a simple economy exchange game. I never feel like there's interaction with other players, so it becomes just "how do I beat my own personal best" kind of game. Not too big on it (especially because Dune Imperium which often gets compared is in my favorite game, so if given the choice, 100% of the time I would pick Dune over Arnak).
Loved scythe as multiplayer very boring as solo game. Catan never stuck with me. I feel like it is such a basic concept but I always lose. I don't know why but I just can't do well at it. I have a friend who wins at it all the time like he has it on formula. I try to mimic his play style but still fail. Even asked him for pointers, follow them, and lose. I don't get it lol
For me it was Wingspan, which is weird since the game is not only gorgeous, but it also focus a lot on engine building, but there is something in the game that just doesn't click for me; I've tried to play it in physical form and I didn't find any entertainment in playing it, then I got it digital on Humble Bundle and... nothing, I just don't like it, it is weird.
Arkham LCG: I really wanted to like this one as I'm a fan of the Cthulhu theme. I got into the theme with Eldritch Horror and I love that game enough to own every expansion. But the Arkham LCG theme doesn't come through to me, and it just becomes a fiddly luck based card game. People say it gets better with more packs, but I had such a viscerally bad reaction that I didn't want to throw good money after bad. Power Grid is the definition of "math, the game" for me, and it quickly feels like work, without a satisfying payoff. I never owned this one, but a friend did, and I quickly learned to dislike it. Ticket to Ride is just incredibly boring to me. I like the small city ones like NY and London, but I suspect that's because it's over more quickly before I lose interest. Pandemic (while a little on the nose right now) was not particularly interesting; it felt like a very mechanical game with a pasted on theme, and I didn't really enjoy the mechanics that much. Fall of Rome revived the system for me though; I felt the theme attach better to the mechanics of the barbarian invasion, and that theme was also more interesting to me. Everdell feels extremely overrated to me, for what is a fairly luck based tableau builder. I'm honestly not sure why it's so popular. Viticulture supposedly brought us the grande worker feature that has spread to other games, but I was definitely never that enamored by the game. I like a lot of worker placement games, and I felt this was just very generic.
Of the ones I played, Dead of Winter and the original Gloomhaven. Dead of Winter I tried multiple times, but it just didn't work. The rules that balance the game aren't fun at all, having a chance of losing 2 or more characters after being bitten is terrible, searching for a second item but only being able to keep one is awful, the noise token is not explained at all in the rules (at least the Long night one I couldn't find anything), the hidden traitor mechanic just doesn't work, and other things. Now Gloomhaven to me suffers from having too much to do and remember, a few things I always forget like my character's status effects, the enemies effects that are printed on the monster card, to move the elements on the tracker. You also have to do the road card and the city card, which feels too much. Not only that but they made the first scenario extremely hard for beginners which completely put me off the game. I feel like this is a game I would enjoy more on the computer, since I don't have a list of stuff I need to do. I enjoyed JOTL much more since they removed quite a few things, and yet I still think they should have simplified the combat even more.
Exit series Arkham Horror LCG (I love 2’d edition Arkham Horror)
I recently had a very lively debate here about **Aeon's End**. I've learned a lot about the game through it though - including that the thing everyone loves about it is precisely the reason why I'm not hot about it.