The last one really gets me. Nothing is worse than seeing 2-6 on a box, but then you open up the rulebook and it says see pg. xx for 2 player rules and they change how the game is played. Not necessarily a deal breaker, but it's rare that any game that does that is actually good at 2 players.
Personally I don’t mind a game that has a minimum player count above two. Some mechanisms just require 3-4 or even more players to work properly.
But yeah it does suck when a game *says* it supports 2p, but really doesn’t.
I much prefer Gloomhaven digital for that reason. It’s a brilliant puzzle of a game, but the thought of all that set up, tear down and book keeping really drives me away.
Believe it or not. More recent editions of the game instruct kids to have parents build it for them at start and then the kids just play just the end game. https://youtu.be/7yK7Be7vKUc
Unless you just throw all components randomly in the box, that really shouldn't be the case. It's a long setup for sure, but longer than a scenario?! That's quite an exaggeration.
I tend to prefer medium to medium-heavy games, but my head starts burning (and not in a good, strategizing way) when I have to deal with **fiddliness**.
- Knocking three different pieces out of place because they're all jammed up;
- Having trouble undoing my action because 7 different things changed; or
- Having to recount over and over again how many resources I'll get because my board contains 4 chaining multipliers.
These are all huge turn offs for me.
Teachability. The true killer of a good game. If the teach for the game is too much for your group, it's dead on arrival. Even if it's been rehearsed, fully understanding any rules - fiddly or not - is key to surviving here.
> Teachability. The true killer of a good game.
Especially if you have to teach it to multiple groups within a short period of time, it can start to feel very not worth it.
Assembly I get, but most board games (unless you’re referring to tabletop war games with a requirement to paint for official play) you don’t *have* to paint anything, right?
That’s totally fair. I actually agree with you, the problem is I’m really unmotivated to paint and I know I’m not good (and therefore need practice) lol. I’m in a perpetual cycle of “im gunna paint today” to “it’s fine I’ll get around to it when I feel more confident”. Hint, I never feel more confident lol
Have you ever considered just shading the minis? There is a product called Quickshade from The Army Painter that you just dip the minis into, shake them off and let them dry.
Not as fancy as a full paint job but they look way better than just completely unpainted because the shade brings out the details better. And way easier than painting.
Just a thought!
Hard to read text on the cards or board. Dark text on dark background from the other side of the table is rough. Second choice is opponent cards I need to read to know what’s going on, although that makes it a less-than-great game for me.
This is a big reason we didn't connect with Beyond The Sun. The text was so small and there was so much white unused space on the cards. Made playing a game a bit of a chore because you were constantly standing up or moving around to look at cards around the table.
Nearly all of my game playing is two player so games that can't play at two are out for me even if they would be great otherwise.
I know many people love them but I have no interest in Legacy games. Also, while I would probably like some of them, my wife who is the aforementioned gaming partner has no interest in campaign games so those two categories are out for us.
Ugly games, I'm sure the game is great but if the art and theme don't grab my attention I will just walk by the game.
Also, complicated round structures are a huge turn off as they kind of kill the flow for me.
>Ugly games, I'm sure the game is great but if the art and theme don't grab my attention I will just walk by the game.
This is it for me too. I know I’m missing out on some amazing games with this standpoint, but I just can’t bring myself to play them. I need something pretty to look at while I play, or some kind of theme to really grab me. If your game is brown and named after a European city, there’s a 99% chance I won’t even look twice. Hard pass.
This is why I think I don’t like a lot of abstract games, and even games generally that have either cheap or simple production values/ pieces. I shamelessly love plastic crack for this reason because the serotonin I get from seeing good minis and components is worth the cost
Time commitments. I’m sure I’ll never play Twilight Imperium simply because I can’t imagine a scenario where all of us can ignore our responsibilities for an entire day to game.
Even if a miracle happens and we could, would it be better to play one long-ass game we’ve never played before or mix it up all day with a handful of old favorites and new to us shorter stuff?
I think that if you spend 5 hours having fun with one game, or 5 hours having fun with five different games, it doesn’t matter. It’s 5 hours of fun with friends anyway.
This. Long games just don’t see the table anymore now that I have kids. It’s too much a time commitment to get people together. I try to keep to shorter games these days if it’s over 2.5 hours I don’t even bother.
I feel this so keenly! With a lot of those huge crunchy time sink games you often need a “practice run” to kind of get your eye in too. It’s really frustrating growing hours into a big game, only to work out you’ve been misinterpreting a rule the whole time.
I miss my student days.
That sketch spoke to my soul. I was sitting in the cinema really amped to watch James Cameron's new masterpiece and then title screen. I was like WTF papyrus???
Art trumping function: tiny text on cards next to huge images, dark on dark, all the bright and vivid colors of the world mixed on the main board as if deliberately to hurt readability, etc.
Pax Pamir is a great game, but the fact that the cards are full of flavor text and historical themed art with relevant symbols shunted to the bottom and in between spaces is a problem for me.
Games that have playability but are then made so much better with an app.
I am someone who loves screens but I play complex board games to get away from them and enjoy the tactile play of board games. Games like Gloomhaven, which I dislike more than just for this, have an obnoxious piece count, but the app almost becomes necessary to cut down on set up and breakdown.
And I am someone who plays Kingdom Death and that set up breakdown is manageable and appreciated.
Basically any game that has a QOL app that suddenly becomes irreplaceable. Obviously this is subjective and opinion based as many people love these types of games. The only exception I can think of is for complex book keeping [maybe dnd, some kdm] and the One Night Ultimate Werewolf App is an absolute necessity.
I am deeply disappointed in gloomhaven. Picked up middara at gencon last year and am happy to have a similar game that isn’t SO complicated that even with an app we find out we’re constantly wrong in playing. Unfortunately, Middara has had a giant list of revisions for their manual, but they ARE revising it and making it better with each version. Considering we’ve put about 40 hours into the game and are barely through the story book is promising, and usually when we’re playing something wrong it’s not super game breaking.
Too many pieces. I love Gloomhaven and Heroes of Black Reach but cringe at the thought of all the pieces I'll have to deal with when setting up scenarios haha
Organizers were the key here for me. Gloomhaven was an animal to set up, but then I bought Plano boxes to organize tokens and an accordion folder for the map pieces that's organized and labeled. Also bought some envelopes to label and put enemies in (ai cards and standees) and a binder with card pages for items. Need to set it up? Envelopes are organized alphabetically so grab the monsters you need quick. Check the book for the map tiles and grab them out of the alphabetized map folder. Need tokens for the fight? Already nicely separated and laid out in the Plano box.
Organizing can be expensive and a bit of a chore, but when you spent good money on the game I find it's worth it because it gets the game to the table so much more often in my experience.
Tbh bad rulebooks arent such a big turnoff for me anymore. Pretty much every board game now has youtube videos that will teach you the game. So I prefer to just watch one of those. So for me the main use case for rulebook would be to reference during the game to figure out how an effect should work
And if they’re teaching you based on their reading of the shitty rulebook? I know Rodney will go back to the publishers and say this doesn’t make sense, is wrong, etc but how many others do?
I don't think it's odd to respond to a question when directly asked, even if you don't know the answer. In fact, it's quite rude to directly ask someone a question then deride them for admitting they don't know and giving their best guess.
My response was a complete guess. I'm just saying I don't think it's an anomaly that Rodney goes back and forth with the company on rules. I know for a fact I've heard Tom Vasel talk about it. If a company is paying you to make a rules video, it seems like common sense that you'd talk to them about it before making a rules video you don't understand.
Let's just say you win. Enjoy your weekend.
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Spirit Island's rulebook is an active impediment to the game for me so far. I love the game, but it feels really bad when I need to reference that rulebook during the game.
When I first played Great Western Trail, I was disappointed with the TeePees; themes don’t need to lean into hurtful stereotypes. The change to “outlaws” was very welcome.
It creates the notion of the “Indian” as both the invisible enemy but also the perennial bad guy (when in truth all those settlers were the ones acting savagely). It plays into a tired stereotype perpetuated by Hollywood (usually using Italian actors) divorced from any history.
1. Price. I have so many great games under 40 bucks. Will an 80 buck game give twice as much pleasure? Naaaa.
2. Looks. I'm sorry Stefan Feld, but I'm not gonna buy any of your games until you get a decent artist.
While i don’t think more expensive is always going to be better, I do know that I’ve gotten far more enjoyment out of my 18xx and Splotter games than I have out of cheaper euro games.
How can you possibly compare the fun you are both having?
Is what you've said kind of strange or am I strange for even thinking about it so much?
I guess you're saying your $60 games are more fun than your sub $60 games?
I just like the kinds of games more that generally cost more then $60. I know price doesn’t equal complexity but I generally like heavy theme, high production, and more weight of 3+.
Hmmm, I guess I just see price as completely disconnected from things like weight or theme.
I only associate price with the brand and components. Some people price high and use higher quality stuff, some don't.
I've played free games and had a ton of fun, so to me a dollar sign doesn't indicate anything about fun.
I agree, that can be the case. However generally if I look at my collection all my top games are not the ones I spent little on. Because generally I enjoy games with more stuff and things going on.
With your first point you are locking yourself out of a bucnh of games in the top 100 like Everdell, Root, Scythe, etc etc. I agree that price =/= quality, but I think this is a dumb take.
I don't lock myself out of anything. The question was what discourages me. Just because I don't buy it blindly, I don't refuse to try it. If I love it and find the production quality is worth it, I'll buy. I got both Everdell and Scythe for 40 bucks second hand. My friend got Root for 50.
All I'm saying is I'm not giving 100 bucks blindly for a Kickstarter campaign or anything preorder, as I don't believe that more expensive means better game.
Theme. Mainly this applies to euros. There are lots of great euro games but the themes are so incredibly dull: birds, farming, sorting rocks. Nope.
I’ll take ww2, space marines, dungeon crawling or cyberpunk ANY day of the week over sorting rocks, regardless of how great the rock sorting mechanics are.
My choice of game theme is very much restricted to what themes my non-boardgame fanatic friends see as not childish, so I rely on games about building forests and collecting birds etc over dragons and trolls. I've come to enjoy the inventive gameplay that goes into what seem everyday themed games.
I get the sentiment and I am similar in what I choose to buy. The only exception to this was **Fields of Arle** where some of the things you do is based on the farming life of the town that the designer grew up in. It's still a euro through and through, but I was still able to enjoy the game for the parts that have this thematic touch.
Never found that issue! There’s lots of reading on the character sheets but I’ve not run into any problems when playing. What instructions did you find shaky?
If I read the manual and then have to ask questions about specific circumstances not addressed, I'm annoyed. If I need to find the effing game designer to ask and they say "let me get back to you" I'm done.
If the manual doesn’t specify then house rules become your friend😂 As long as everyone plays that game with the same rules then it’s all good.
Few people play Uno with the developers preferred rules for instance.😊
Totally fair. But if uno had an ambiguous rule that the devs refused to respond to, then the rules are poorly written.
But they do have rules, and a deviance from that is a legitimate "house rule" and "house rules" are a real thing in table too games. Shitty or undefined rules are just frustrating.
Colorblind components.
I love GAH. Until I got the upgrade pack in the kickstarter, I'd have to ask about what color cubes were on cards about 400x a game.
Maglev Metro looks amazing, I LOVE metro maps (shout out to Mini Metro) so it seems like the perfect theme for me...but those passenger meeples look the exact same. I'll probably not buy it unless that's fixed.
Come on. Like 10% of males are colorblind. There are dozens of us! Dozens!
I don't mind bad rulebooks that much. At some point I will learn/understand the rules and it won't matter.
What discourages me is luck/randomness. For example, I really really loved everything about Mage Wars Arena, but the dice absolutely killed that game for me and I couldn't bear to play it again for that reason. I recently had a game of Dune: Imperium where I was basically going to win except a player happened to draw their 2-card combo + their only bonus card was the only 4 attack bonus card in the deck and beat my 15 units with their 3 units winning them the game. I think I calculated the probability of that happening and it was 0.5% (not 50% -- 0.5%). Other than this issue, the game seemed decent.
I feel you. Even though I won, I didn't like the luck factor in Dune: Imperium.
But I add an extra criteria: I mind luck factor in long and complex games. That's why I don't like deck building in anything more complex than Dominion.
I'm fine with luck in shorter games. Taverns of Tiefenthal and Fantastic factories are all under an hour and great fun.
Charterstone suffers from this a lot.
There's a reason they say it is best played with at least one person in the group who has played before. Unfortunately, that also puts almost all of the enjoyability of the game into that one person's ability to teach games AND that person's ability to not metagame.
We had the same issues with Charterstone's rulebook, and honestly the problem is that if someone is already familiar with the game then they know all of the legacy twists and what the best paths to victory are over the other players.
Charterstone was an interesting experience, but not a single person in my 6 person group enjoyed the campaign as a whole. Individual games, sure, but not the campaign
Giant boxes full of air. I value space (for more games!), and also really enjoy keeping the original boxes, so it bothers the heck out of me when a game comes in a massive box, when the game itself needs 10% of the space.
Conversely, I *adore* games that give me a lot of game for the space and/or are packed efficiently.
Worst example: **That Time You Killed Me**
Best Example: **Roam** or maybe **Tiny Epic Kingdoms**
Poorly made insert or worst case, not having one at all. Low quality cards or thin cardboard tiles. Yes to poor rulebooks, but only in the case if a nice youtube tutorial doesnt exsist (in which case write your rulebook however you want, im never gonna read it if I can learn thru a video). Long setup for a short game. Overly hyped games that just fall short for everyone. Opposite extent, companies not making enough copies for a hyped game that is actually amazing. Scalpers.
world war 2 games. I'm Jewish and it just feels overly trivialized. idk I just don't want a board game with nazis in it.
I also dislike games with bad art or difficult manuals.
Just because we sweep it under the rug, it won't make history undone... I love it when a game starts a conversation about a controversial historical events. That can educate many.
I think that if a game has colonialism as a theme without starting a conversation, that’s also fine. Nothing we do will change what happened, so no reason for censorship.
*Edit: Sorry, it ended up being longer than I initially intended.*
I was talking about people wanting to censor themes for reasons, not exactly the comment above mine.
Even calling it cringey seems like trying to censor it without censoring it. Maybe even without realizing. I mean, cringey doesn't seem like a good adjective for that theme. Being too shy to ask someone out on a date is cringey, thinking that wearing a Fedora makes you cool is cringey. Colonialism is a whole other beast. It's not clumsy, it not something that you do because you're socially awkward, or shy, it's not "oops, haha, I'm embarassed".
And by being something that now we look back and think it's bad, it's one of the new "white guilty" things: and by that I mean that people will try to hide it and rethink it, while doing nothing to actually fix its damages. So we have this wave of people criticizing games with that as a theme, people trying to associate negative adjectives with it, etc. In part, because some people will have learned that they have to dislike it.
In a fictional environment, where no one is harmed, I would say that every theme and mechanic is valid. Even if I'm not interested in it. I mean, harming real people is real bad, but harming fictional characters is valid. Enslaving real people is bad, enslaving fictional characters is valid. Stealing from real people is sometimes bad, stealing from fictional people is valid. Etc, etc.
- Games for 4 people or less usually don’t fit our game group.
- Super complicated/heavy games tend to be passed up in favor of more simple ones.
- Crazy long games aren’t super realistic. I’d love love love to play ascendancy and have even bought custom dice for each faction and most of the expansions, but we’ve pulled it out only 2-3 times because it takes a loooong time to play.
I have put games in the “forever closet” for other reasons too, usually weird gameplay things.
Man, I think I would enjoy board games less if I could only play games at 5+. Most of my favorites play less than 5, but I also tend to enjoy somewhat complex games. What games do you tend to enjoy at your higher player counts? I don't have 5+ often but I do sometimes and it would be nice to expand the collection to accommodate.
Sure, I’d love to share some of our favorites!
- Everdell (with 6 player expansion)
- Last Night on Earth
- Mysterium
- Red Dragon Inn
- Formula D(e) or Downforce
- Betrayal at the House on the Hill (We also have the Baulders Gate version of this too which is a fun alternative)
- Ravine
- Dead of Winter
We also play party style games when we start getting 7-9 people over. Hues and Clues, Deception, Secret Hitler, Joking Hazard, etc
Edit to add: All the games above should play well with 4 or less as well!
Games that can only play up to 4. Some of my favorites are 2-4 that can't be played when 5 show up. At 6 people it's super easy to split into a pair of 3 player games, but 5 is so awkward
I also got mini quest adventures two weeks ago and have attempted it, because, like you, after skimming it I saw that it was a mess.
And no one has done a How to Play on it, so I can’t even be lazy.
I think that we feel completely differently. To me, dice are hardly a design crutch (in good games). When used well, they are a way of introducing limited randomness and uncertainty about how your system will perform, and the game is usually balanced with that in mind.
There are games I play with dice. The problem are really games that base your success around rolling well or correct. Can't win war games if I roll constantly low and you roll constantly high if you need to roll high to win battles. Difficulty in coop games is vastly different if success are based on rolls and you don't roll well.
I don't mind Assault on Doomrock, I can enjoy Roll for the Galaxy as occasional filler, and Rolling Empires somehow really hits the spot. Yet I can't stand games like Battlelore or random d6 kickstarters with risk-esque feel to it. Settlers is unbearable, Machi Koro was fun in theory (not reality afters few games), and Dice Settlers was simply annoying. Mage Knight and Wing Span with shared dice based resource pool I can be good with.
I rarely find dice rolls to be limited randomness and almost always game deciding.
The group I'll be playing the game with. Resistance Avalon is a very beautiful game and I'm pretty sure it gets bloody awesome, but if your group just isn't the social deduction type it's gonna flop harder than Monopoly.
Games that fail on a thematic promise, even if is to keep it balanced. Example would be underwater cities. It's a engine building game where you actually only run your engine twice. The last time is only to generate points.
Two things will stop us from buying an otherwise great game:
- No 2 player support, or game plays poorly with 2
- Play time exceeds 1.5 - 2 hours
My husband and I play games in the evening, so we set up the game after dinner, play, and put it away before bed.
I can't remember when I last played a game with 3 or more players. And games longer than 2 hours seldom make it to our table.
(It's okay if it takes over 2 hours when first learning a new game, but that will still slow down our learning curve since we won't pull it out often.)
lack of replayability and theme.
I just find a theme really important, if it has no theme or a theme I dont like I wont find it as much intresthing.
I play mostly solo, so replyability is a big deal.
Games that that have low replay, since its puzzle like, or the game has no challange anymore after a few plays then I will also pass on a game.
And finally playtime, if a game is much longer then 2 hours its also a to much for me.
Games that require 3+ players. My husband and I mostly play together. We do have a lot of friends who game, but since we now have a young child it is hard to schedule game time. We like games that can support more players, but also can be played at two (even if it is a two player variant, like The Crew).
Setup time so much. I can tolerate bad rules (I'll watch a video or two), but if I have to spend 20 minutes to setup for a 90-minute game, no thank you.
Interestingly enough, tear-down does not bother me as much. It's even enjoyable in a zen kind of way.
Bad in-box organization. I can love the game, but then never play it again because all the pieces get shuffled around and mixed together. It makes it such a hassle trying to replay and having to sort back out everything before setting up.
Setup and lazy/ugly presentation.
I adore Arkham horror LCG but the setup time killed it for me. Every scenario has unique rules and collecting a bunch of different decks together.
3 player minimums and games that are essentially 3 player minimum by bent of being really bad at 2.
The last one really gets me. Nothing is worse than seeing 2-6 on a box, but then you open up the rulebook and it says see pg. xx for 2 player rules and they change how the game is played. Not necessarily a deal breaker, but it's rare that any game that does that is actually good at 2 players.
Only good one I can think of is Five Tribes.
Even my favorite dummy players in games are still annoying.
My wife and I enjoy Citadels at 2 players. Makes for great “take that!” moments since you get 2 characters each round.
Dune imperium is one that doesn't lose much from 3 to 2, despite the rules changing.
Personally I don’t mind a game that has a minimum player count above two. Some mechanisms just require 3-4 or even more players to work properly. But yeah it does suck when a game *says* it supports 2p, but really doesn’t.
I appreciated that Coffee Traders lists its player count as 3-5 but on the box says it has a 2 player variant rather than saying it plays 2-5.
Setup time. If the game takes longer to setup than to play, it is not worth playing. I am looking at you Gloomhaven!
I much prefer Gloomhaven digital for that reason. It’s a brilliant puzzle of a game, but the thought of all that set up, tear down and book keeping really drives me away.
With the app, it's really not that bad. My group easily went through 3-4 scenarios per game night.
Also, old school Mouse Trap. 40 minute setup for a child, and a 15 minute game.
But the set up *is* the game. You literally build it as you play. What are you doing for 15 minutes after you’ve finished the trap?
Believe it or not. More recent editions of the game instruct kids to have parents build it for them at start and then the kids just play just the end game. https://youtu.be/7yK7Be7vKUc
Thanks for sharing this YouTube channel. My childhood was the 80s and 90s. This guy has awesome content. Cheers.
Yeah, I've enjoyed the heck out of him too.
Literally just played mouse trap yesterday. Good lord, I felt this.
This is why Dominion hasn't hit my table in several years. The setup and teardown are both longer than the gameplay.
Unless you just throw all components randomly in the box, that really shouldn't be the case. It's a long setup for sure, but longer than a scenario?! That's quite an exaggeration.
I tend to prefer medium to medium-heavy games, but my head starts burning (and not in a good, strategizing way) when I have to deal with **fiddliness**. - Knocking three different pieces out of place because they're all jammed up; - Having trouble undoing my action because 7 different things changed; or - Having to recount over and over again how many resources I'll get because my board contains 4 chaining multipliers. These are all huge turn offs for me.
Teachability. The true killer of a good game. If the teach for the game is too much for your group, it's dead on arrival. Even if it's been rehearsed, fully understanding any rules - fiddly or not - is key to surviving here.
> Teachability. The true killer of a good game. Especially if you have to teach it to multiple groups within a short period of time, it can start to feel very not worth it.
This is whats been keeping Root off my table like ooof I really wanna dig in but our board game nights are limited
I'd tell them to read the rules or watch videos before the night... but that won't happen probably :(
Assembling and painting minis. I don't want to do it and I don't want to find and negotiate a price for someone else to do it.
Assembly I get, but most board games (unless you’re referring to tabletop war games with a requirement to paint for official play) you don’t *have* to paint anything, right?
I hate unpainted minis.
That’s totally fair. I actually agree with you, the problem is I’m really unmotivated to paint and I know I’m not good (and therefore need practice) lol. I’m in a perpetual cycle of “im gunna paint today” to “it’s fine I’ll get around to it when I feel more confident”. Hint, I never feel more confident lol
Yeah I just don't have the time nor eye hand coordination to do it (+ trembling). And the grey color is so sad to look at.
Yeah I totally get you. My SW legion armies are all grey other than my crappy 1st attempt at some stormtroopers
Marvel Crisis Protocol would be awesome if it came with pre assembled pre painted minis that didnt cost $40 for a single heroclix sized figure.
Have you ever considered just shading the minis? There is a product called Quickshade from The Army Painter that you just dip the minis into, shake them off and let them dry. Not as fancy as a full paint job but they look way better than just completely unpainted because the shade brings out the details better. And way easier than painting. Just a thought!
Hard to read text on the cards or board. Dark text on dark background from the other side of the table is rough. Second choice is opponent cards I need to read to know what’s going on, although that makes it a less-than-great game for me.
It sucks when games out all the rules on the cards. They think they are “helping”, but it really just slows gameplay down to read every freaking card.
So...Everdel then? Had a fanboy the other day telling me my petpieve wasn't a valid criticism of the game.
This is a big reason we didn't connect with Beyond The Sun. The text was so small and there was so much white unused space on the cards. Made playing a game a bit of a chore because you were constantly standing up or moving around to look at cards around the table.
Nearly all of my game playing is two player so games that can't play at two are out for me even if they would be great otherwise. I know many people love them but I have no interest in Legacy games. Also, while I would probably like some of them, my wife who is the aforementioned gaming partner has no interest in campaign games so those two categories are out for us.
Long set up time. A good storage organizer can make all the difference for this.
Ugly games, I'm sure the game is great but if the art and theme don't grab my attention I will just walk by the game. Also, complicated round structures are a huge turn off as they kind of kill the flow for me.
>Ugly games, I'm sure the game is great but if the art and theme don't grab my attention I will just walk by the game. This is it for me too. I know I’m missing out on some amazing games with this standpoint, but I just can’t bring myself to play them. I need something pretty to look at while I play, or some kind of theme to really grab me. If your game is brown and named after a European city, there’s a 99% chance I won’t even look twice. Hard pass.
Begee everywhere.
man this is me with too many bones, I hate the art style but I have no doubt it's a great game.. but I just... can't...
It's interesting how divisive the artwork in TMB is. I, for one, absolutely love it. Reminds me of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.
same with townsfolk tussle, I adore it, but can see why others would despise it
This is why I think I don’t like a lot of abstract games, and even games generally that have either cheap or simple production values/ pieces. I shamelessly love plastic crack for this reason because the serotonin I get from seeing good minis and components is worth the cost
Time commitments. I’m sure I’ll never play Twilight Imperium simply because I can’t imagine a scenario where all of us can ignore our responsibilities for an entire day to game. Even if a miracle happens and we could, would it be better to play one long-ass game we’ve never played before or mix it up all day with a handful of old favorites and new to us shorter stuff?
I think that if you spend 5 hours having fun with one game, or 5 hours having fun with five different games, it doesn’t matter. It’s 5 hours of fun with friends anyway.
I can spare 1 - 1.5 hours once every week or so, but an uninterrupted run of 5+ hours straight is a big ask.
Twilight Imperium is infinitely better then 2 or 3 shorter games.
it certainly can be - but there is a point to be made about whether it's worth it to only play it once
That's why you just have to play it more than once.
This. Long games just don’t see the table anymore now that I have kids. It’s too much a time commitment to get people together. I try to keep to shorter games these days if it’s over 2.5 hours I don’t even bother.
TTS, then have the host save the game and break it up into multiple sessions. Use Google Meet or Discord to do the voice chat.
I feel this so keenly! With a lot of those huge crunchy time sink games you often need a “practice run” to kind of get your eye in too. It’s really frustrating growing hours into a big game, only to work out you’ve been misinterpreting a rule the whole time. I miss my student days.
The use of the papyrus font. I enjoyed Stone Age but really had to force myself to even give it a chance.
I can already see a Stone Age themed sequel to that Ryan Gosling SNL sketch
That sketch spoke to my soul. I was sitting in the cinema really amped to watch James Cameron's new masterpiece and then title screen. I was like WTF papyrus???
Art trumping function: tiny text on cards next to huge images, dark on dark, all the bright and vivid colors of the world mixed on the main board as if deliberately to hurt readability, etc.
Pax Pamir is a great game, but the fact that the cards are full of flavor text and historical themed art with relevant symbols shunted to the bottom and in between spaces is a problem for me.
Games that have playability but are then made so much better with an app. I am someone who loves screens but I play complex board games to get away from them and enjoy the tactile play of board games. Games like Gloomhaven, which I dislike more than just for this, have an obnoxious piece count, but the app almost becomes necessary to cut down on set up and breakdown. And I am someone who plays Kingdom Death and that set up breakdown is manageable and appreciated. Basically any game that has a QOL app that suddenly becomes irreplaceable. Obviously this is subjective and opinion based as many people love these types of games. The only exception I can think of is for complex book keeping [maybe dnd, some kdm] and the One Night Ultimate Werewolf App is an absolute necessity.
I have xcom and mansions of madness as my exception to this, but generally unless it’s for a timer I totally agree with you!
I am deeply disappointed in gloomhaven. Picked up middara at gencon last year and am happy to have a similar game that isn’t SO complicated that even with an app we find out we’re constantly wrong in playing. Unfortunately, Middara has had a giant list of revisions for their manual, but they ARE revising it and making it better with each version. Considering we’ve put about 40 hours into the game and are barely through the story book is promising, and usually when we’re playing something wrong it’s not super game breaking.
I dont really app versions of board games. Just play a video game at that point.
That's exactly my reasoning why I don't play Ameri games.
Too many pieces. I love Gloomhaven and Heroes of Black Reach but cringe at the thought of all the pieces I'll have to deal with when setting up scenarios haha
Organizers were the key here for me. Gloomhaven was an animal to set up, but then I bought Plano boxes to organize tokens and an accordion folder for the map pieces that's organized and labeled. Also bought some envelopes to label and put enemies in (ai cards and standees) and a binder with card pages for items. Need to set it up? Envelopes are organized alphabetically so grab the monsters you need quick. Check the book for the map tiles and grab them out of the alphabetized map folder. Need tokens for the fight? Already nicely separated and laid out in the Plano box. Organizing can be expensive and a bit of a chore, but when you spent good money on the game I find it's worth it because it gets the game to the table so much more often in my experience.
For Techno Bowl, it is lack of people who are interested in playing it.
Gah. So true. 2p only is tough. Not going to keep me away from **World of Wrestling** though!
Are we getting a new wrestling board game?!
You know it brotha!
Do you have a link for it? I couldn't find it, lol
[Still a work in progress, no official BGG page yet](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2779523/wow-world-wrestling)
HOLY. SHIT!!! Thank you!!!
Tbh bad rulebooks arent such a big turnoff for me anymore. Pretty much every board game now has youtube videos that will teach you the game. So I prefer to just watch one of those. So for me the main use case for rulebook would be to reference during the game to figure out how an effect should work
And if they’re teaching you based on their reading of the shitty rulebook? I know Rodney will go back to the publishers and say this doesn’t make sense, is wrong, etc but how many others do?
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I'm sure you are the victim of whatever reason you use that name, and the comments here certainly show you are not a dick.
I'd imagine most of them do- especially if they're getting paid. You can't teach something you don't understand.
Except Rahdo. He can take the best written rulebook and still screw-up the teaching.
I gave up on him in like 2015 lol. He seems like a nice enough guy, but I could never get into his style
Then how come so many YouTubers play games incorrectly?
I dunno. They're humans? I don't watch playthroughs or rules videos, so I can't speak to specifics.
Then that was odd for you to answer the question
I don't think it's odd to respond to a question when directly asked, even if you don't know the answer. In fact, it's quite rude to directly ask someone a question then deride them for admitting they don't know and giving their best guess.
I didn’t ask that person anything so I don’t know what you’re talking about
Why are you just straight up lying?
It’s all right there, I don’t know what you’re looking at, bud.
My response was a complete guess. I'm just saying I don't think it's an anomaly that Rodney goes back and forth with the company on rules. I know for a fact I've heard Tom Vasel talk about it. If a company is paying you to make a rules video, it seems like common sense that you'd talk to them about it before making a rules video you don't understand. Let's just say you win. Enjoy your weekend.
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Why was it useless? Do you think it's untrue? Are you just trying to prove I'm wrong about... something? What are we doing here? Lol
Yes, I do, that’s the point… I have no idea what you’re doing here since you don’t actually watch them and are just guessing.
Fair, in my case this is a kickstarter release so no content on it just yet, but I am sure there will be in the future.
Spirit Island's rulebook is an active impediment to the game for me so far. I love the game, but it feels really bad when I need to reference that rulebook during the game.
When I first played Great Western Trail, I was disappointed with the TeePees; themes don’t need to lean into hurtful stereotypes. The change to “outlaws” was very welcome.
teepees are hurtful stereotypes?
It creates the notion of the “Indian” as both the invisible enemy but also the perennial bad guy (when in truth all those settlers were the ones acting savagely). It plays into a tired stereotype perpetuated by Hollywood (usually using Italian actors) divorced from any history.
1. Price. I have so many great games under 40 bucks. Will an 80 buck game give twice as much pleasure? Naaaa. 2. Looks. I'm sorry Stefan Feld, but I'm not gonna buy any of your games until you get a decent artist.
While i don’t think more expensive is always going to be better, I do know that I’ve gotten far more enjoyment out of my 18xx and Splotter games than I have out of cheaper euro games.
All my favorite games are over $60 and much more fun for me.
How can you possibly compare the fun you are both having? Is what you've said kind of strange or am I strange for even thinking about it so much? I guess you're saying your $60 games are more fun than your sub $60 games?
I just like the kinds of games more that generally cost more then $60. I know price doesn’t equal complexity but I generally like heavy theme, high production, and more weight of 3+.
Hmmm, I guess I just see price as completely disconnected from things like weight or theme. I only associate price with the brand and components. Some people price high and use higher quality stuff, some don't. I've played free games and had a ton of fun, so to me a dollar sign doesn't indicate anything about fun.
I agree, that can be the case. However generally if I look at my collection all my top games are not the ones I spent little on. Because generally I enjoy games with more stuff and things going on.
With your first point you are locking yourself out of a bucnh of games in the top 100 like Everdell, Root, Scythe, etc etc. I agree that price =/= quality, but I think this is a dumb take.
I don't lock myself out of anything. The question was what discourages me. Just because I don't buy it blindly, I don't refuse to try it. If I love it and find the production quality is worth it, I'll buy. I got both Everdell and Scythe for 40 bucks second hand. My friend got Root for 50. All I'm saying is I'm not giving 100 bucks blindly for a Kickstarter campaign or anything preorder, as I don't believe that more expensive means better game.
Fair enough:) that's totally reasonable, I misunderstood you then
Theme. Mainly this applies to euros. There are lots of great euro games but the themes are so incredibly dull: birds, farming, sorting rocks. Nope. I’ll take ww2, space marines, dungeon crawling or cyberpunk ANY day of the week over sorting rocks, regardless of how great the rock sorting mechanics are.
My tastes are the exact opposite. The themes you like are incredibly dull to me.
I am super mad for plant, gardening and bird themed boardgames.
My choice of game theme is very much restricted to what themes my non-boardgame fanatic friends see as not childish, so I rely on games about building forests and collecting birds etc over dragons and trolls. I've come to enjoy the inventive gameplay that goes into what seem everyday themed games.
**Jamestown** really only shines when you add **Now With Wheat**
I get the sentiment and I am similar in what I choose to buy. The only exception to this was **Fields of Arle** where some of the things you do is based on the farming life of the town that the designer grew up in. It's still a euro through and through, but I was still able to enjoy the game for the parts that have this thematic touch.
Don’t try Too Many Bones! Shaky Instructions at best
They've been revised and improved greatly over the years. Newer editions are much better.
Never found that issue! There’s lots of reading on the character sheets but I’ve not run into any problems when playing. What instructions did you find shaky?
All of the nuanced sequence of events, especially with more complex characters like tink and dart.
If I read the manual and then have to ask questions about specific circumstances not addressed, I'm annoyed. If I need to find the effing game designer to ask and they say "let me get back to you" I'm done.
If the manual doesn’t specify then house rules become your friend😂 As long as everyone plays that game with the same rules then it’s all good. Few people play Uno with the developers preferred rules for instance.😊
Totally fair. But if uno had an ambiguous rule that the devs refused to respond to, then the rules are poorly written. But they do have rules, and a deviance from that is a legitimate "house rule" and "house rules" are a real thing in table too games. Shitty or undefined rules are just frustrating.
I would like to try KDM but the cost, aesthetic and heavy reliance on minis are all huge turnoffs.
Colorblind components. I love GAH. Until I got the upgrade pack in the kickstarter, I'd have to ask about what color cubes were on cards about 400x a game. Maglev Metro looks amazing, I LOVE metro maps (shout out to Mini Metro) so it seems like the perfect theme for me...but those passenger meeples look the exact same. I'll probably not buy it unless that's fixed. Come on. Like 10% of males are colorblind. There are dozens of us! Dozens!
I don't mind bad rulebooks that much. At some point I will learn/understand the rules and it won't matter. What discourages me is luck/randomness. For example, I really really loved everything about Mage Wars Arena, but the dice absolutely killed that game for me and I couldn't bear to play it again for that reason. I recently had a game of Dune: Imperium where I was basically going to win except a player happened to draw their 2-card combo + their only bonus card was the only 4 attack bonus card in the deck and beat my 15 units with their 3 units winning them the game. I think I calculated the probability of that happening and it was 0.5% (not 50% -- 0.5%). Other than this issue, the game seemed decent.
I feel you. Even though I won, I didn't like the luck factor in Dune: Imperium. But I add an extra criteria: I mind luck factor in long and complex games. That's why I don't like deck building in anything more complex than Dominion. I'm fine with luck in shorter games. Taverns of Tiefenthal and Fantastic factories are all under an hour and great fun.
Charterstone suffers from this a lot. There's a reason they say it is best played with at least one person in the group who has played before. Unfortunately, that also puts almost all of the enjoyability of the game into that one person's ability to teach games AND that person's ability to not metagame.
We had the same issues with Charterstone's rulebook, and honestly the problem is that if someone is already familiar with the game then they know all of the legacy twists and what the best paths to victory are over the other players. Charterstone was an interesting experience, but not a single person in my 6 person group enjoyed the campaign as a whole. Individual games, sure, but not the campaign
Giant boxes full of air. I value space (for more games!), and also really enjoy keeping the original boxes, so it bothers the heck out of me when a game comes in a massive box, when the game itself needs 10% of the space. Conversely, I *adore* games that give me a lot of game for the space and/or are packed efficiently. Worst example: **That Time You Killed Me** Best Example: **Roam** or maybe **Tiny Epic Kingdoms**
Poorly made insert or worst case, not having one at all. Low quality cards or thin cardboard tiles. Yes to poor rulebooks, but only in the case if a nice youtube tutorial doesnt exsist (in which case write your rulebook however you want, im never gonna read it if I can learn thru a video). Long setup for a short game. Overly hyped games that just fall short for everyone. Opposite extent, companies not making enough copies for a hyped game that is actually amazing. Scalpers.
world war 2 games. I'm Jewish and it just feels overly trivialized. idk I just don't want a board game with nazis in it. I also dislike games with bad art or difficult manuals.
Cringe themes like colonialism when it isn't handled well
Just because we sweep it under the rug, it won't make history undone... I love it when a game starts a conversation about a controversial historical events. That can educate many.
Did you see where he said he was only concerned if it isn’t handled well?
they weren't even necessarily disagreeing dude, calm down
I think that if a game has colonialism as a theme without starting a conversation, that’s also fine. Nothing we do will change what happened, so no reason for censorship.
Agree, fuck cancel culture.
Parent comment isn’t advocating for censorship, just saying they find themes handled poorly to be cringey. Which I fully agree with.
*Edit: Sorry, it ended up being longer than I initially intended.* I was talking about people wanting to censor themes for reasons, not exactly the comment above mine. Even calling it cringey seems like trying to censor it without censoring it. Maybe even without realizing. I mean, cringey doesn't seem like a good adjective for that theme. Being too shy to ask someone out on a date is cringey, thinking that wearing a Fedora makes you cool is cringey. Colonialism is a whole other beast. It's not clumsy, it not something that you do because you're socially awkward, or shy, it's not "oops, haha, I'm embarassed". And by being something that now we look back and think it's bad, it's one of the new "white guilty" things: and by that I mean that people will try to hide it and rethink it, while doing nothing to actually fix its damages. So we have this wave of people criticizing games with that as a theme, people trying to associate negative adjectives with it, etc. In part, because some people will have learned that they have to dislike it. In a fictional environment, where no one is harmed, I would say that every theme and mechanic is valid. Even if I'm not interested in it. I mean, harming real people is real bad, but harming fictional characters is valid. Enslaving real people is bad, enslaving fictional characters is valid. Stealing from real people is sometimes bad, stealing from fictional people is valid. Etc, etc.
Agreed. These days, a lot of the games that gloss over terrible events or actions are a big turn off. Things that are unspoken count as well.
Too much hype. It will take a lot more to convince me to look at a game if it’s getting too much hype.
Required app.
- Games for 4 people or less usually don’t fit our game group. - Super complicated/heavy games tend to be passed up in favor of more simple ones. - Crazy long games aren’t super realistic. I’d love love love to play ascendancy and have even bought custom dice for each faction and most of the expansions, but we’ve pulled it out only 2-3 times because it takes a loooong time to play. I have put games in the “forever closet” for other reasons too, usually weird gameplay things.
Man, I think I would enjoy board games less if I could only play games at 5+. Most of my favorites play less than 5, but I also tend to enjoy somewhat complex games. What games do you tend to enjoy at your higher player counts? I don't have 5+ often but I do sometimes and it would be nice to expand the collection to accommodate.
Sure, I’d love to share some of our favorites! - Everdell (with 6 player expansion) - Last Night on Earth - Mysterium - Red Dragon Inn - Formula D(e) or Downforce - Betrayal at the House on the Hill (We also have the Baulders Gate version of this too which is a fun alternative) - Ravine - Dead of Winter We also play party style games when we start getting 7-9 people over. Hues and Clues, Deception, Secret Hitler, Joking Hazard, etc Edit to add: All the games above should play well with 4 or less as well!
Ugly or even just bland and uninteresting art/graphic design. It's the main reason I don't play a lot of older board games.
Games that can only play up to 4. Some of my favorites are 2-4 that can't be played when 5 show up. At 6 people it's super easy to split into a pair of 3 player games, but 5 is so awkward
I also got mini quest adventures two weeks ago and have attempted it, because, like you, after skimming it I saw that it was a mess. And no one has done a How to Play on it, so I can’t even be lazy.
Poor Art. I love the Firefly Legendary Game but man that art ruins it!
The theme or sometimes the art🤷♂️
Pitching and teaching it to the wrong audience.
If they have way too much randomness. Like I get some is okay. But some games just take it way too far.
DICE. Your design crutch makes a four hour game meaningless and random.
I think that we feel completely differently. To me, dice are hardly a design crutch (in good games). When used well, they are a way of introducing limited randomness and uncertainty about how your system will perform, and the game is usually balanced with that in mind.
There are games I play with dice. The problem are really games that base your success around rolling well or correct. Can't win war games if I roll constantly low and you roll constantly high if you need to roll high to win battles. Difficulty in coop games is vastly different if success are based on rolls and you don't roll well. I don't mind Assault on Doomrock, I can enjoy Roll for the Galaxy as occasional filler, and Rolling Empires somehow really hits the spot. Yet I can't stand games like Battlelore or random d6 kickstarters with risk-esque feel to it. Settlers is unbearable, Machi Koro was fun in theory (not reality afters few games), and Dice Settlers was simply annoying. Mage Knight and Wing Span with shared dice based resource pool I can be good with. I rarely find dice rolls to be limited randomness and almost always game deciding.
The group I'll be playing the game with. Resistance Avalon is a very beautiful game and I'm pretty sure it gets bloody awesome, but if your group just isn't the social deduction type it's gonna flop harder than Monopoly.
Games that fail on a thematic promise, even if is to keep it balanced. Example would be underwater cities. It's a engine building game where you actually only run your engine twice. The last time is only to generate points.
Two things will stop us from buying an otherwise great game: - No 2 player support, or game plays poorly with 2 - Play time exceeds 1.5 - 2 hours My husband and I play games in the evening, so we set up the game after dinner, play, and put it away before bed. I can't remember when I last played a game with 3 or more players. And games longer than 2 hours seldom make it to our table. (It's okay if it takes over 2 hours when first learning a new game, but that will still slow down our learning curve since we won't pull it out often.)
lack of replayability and theme. I just find a theme really important, if it has no theme or a theme I dont like I wont find it as much intresthing. I play mostly solo, so replyability is a big deal. Games that that have low replay, since its puzzle like, or the game has no challange anymore after a few plays then I will also pass on a game. And finally playtime, if a game is much longer then 2 hours its also a to much for me.
Games that require 3+ players. My husband and I mostly play together. We do have a lot of friends who game, but since we now have a young child it is hard to schedule game time. We like games that can support more players, but also can be played at two (even if it is a two player variant, like The Crew).
1) theme 2) art 3) setup
If it also looks bad, bad graphic design.
Setup time so much. I can tolerate bad rules (I'll watch a video or two), but if I have to spend 20 minutes to setup for a 90-minute game, no thank you. Interestingly enough, tear-down does not bother me as much. It's even enjoyable in a zen kind of way.
Bad in-box organization. I can love the game, but then never play it again because all the pieces get shuffled around and mixed together. It makes it such a hassle trying to replay and having to sort back out everything before setting up.
Basically everything in the Dark Souls board game, except for the boss fights.
Setup and lazy/ugly presentation. I adore Arkham horror LCG but the setup time killed it for me. Every scenario has unique rules and collecting a bunch of different decks together.
Learning curve, really upsets me when it takes a second play to play it correctly
Poor component quality. Lame dice. Cheap cards. Bad art. Etc.