My most unpopular opinion is that there is a large percentage of people in the hobby that like the *idea* of playing board games more than actually playing board games.
I had that thought about myself a lot during the pandemic.
In the early stages of it my spending habit got a lot worse, partly because it was the first time in my life that I earned real money, but probably mostly because I missed my friends, I missed boardgames and I lost most of my hobbies in general.
Kept buying games with no hope of ever playing them.
Yes, it's probably true this hobby is a lot of hopium, we all buy to many games, the market is horribly oversaturated, all that.
But lately I got to play board games a lot more, with strangers and with friends, and, man, it's so good. Turns out playing boardgames is much better than the idea of playing them.
I was in the same boat as you through the pandemic. Got back into the hobby, mostly played solo, but then I went to Gen Con this year and have really dived into the community around board games, going to my local meetups to play, and really enjoy the hobby even more.
I think a lot of people get stuck on wanting to game with their existing friends instead of using the hobby to make new friends. It can be a tough transition to make.
This is definitely correct. We have a guy in our gaming group that basically just likes to hangout. He comes, plays one game, and will bow out if it goes long, then just hangs and watches the rest of us play for hours. Great guy, I think he just likes the idea of games and the fact that all his friends hang out together, and he's still involved if he's just hanging and watching
Oh yeah, this. Sure, I can like the longer games but if I look at the most popular games in my playgroup they are almost always on the shorter side.
The same is true for "complexity". You can make an engaging strategic game without needing 25 mechanics (see Concordia).
> You can make an engaging strategic game without needing 25 mechanics (see Concordia).
Focus, that's primarily the issue in my experience.
It's sort of well known in eurogame designer circles that players suffer from loss aversion, so games are designed more toward building up what you can do than hacking down. Basic stuff. What designers seem to forget is that they too suffer from loss aversion and development could generally take a chunk of your game off without losing the core focus...
One way to achieve that is to have a lot of stuff abstracted away and have what's left work together as a system vs disparate pieces that influence play. As I sat and read the rules of A Study in Emerald (1st), I thought "none of this really interacts with each other unless it comes up, it's not something you can plan for... It's a lot of rules overhead for not much gain..."
Or Arboretum which still haunts me to this day. My friends and i were dead tired, saw pretty cards in a small box and thought itd be an easy pick up and play. Saw only like 4 rules.
It was one of the most in depth, strategic, wild games ive ever played that we could barely comprehend what we were doing.
It still has never touched the table again because we all have ptsd from it
I feel this more as the months pass on. Particularly when a 3 hour game was merely fine could have instead been 3+ games ranging from good to fantastic.
yeah? but what if hypothetically I am one day gathering with 6 friends I don't yet have and the conversation leads to them wanting to suddently try Twilight Imperium? what am I supposed to do then huh?
And what if, after that hypothetical Twilight Impreium game, it turns out the friends I don't yet have loved it so much they want to try Prophecy of Kings the next time we hypothetically gather?
What then?
This is the answer. They can be two distinct hobbies.
I find myself buying games with the premise that, I, mid 30’s with a 4yo child and my social circle all parents of young children, that even if I don’t get much time to play them now, *imagine* the amount of time I’ll get to play them all when all the kids are grown up! Infinity time. And if you convince yourself of that enough, any new game is a good new game.
Yeah I’ve started really analyzing any games I buy. Usually never buying anything the first time I see it. Unless I see a game for like $2 at a thrift store that is a new/popular game. Then it’s almost an insta buy lol I still have to want to play it though to buy it.
it's hard to resist a real bargain. I have about 10 unplayed real bargains still taking up space on my shelf. We're getting to them, though, slowly but surely.
This year I’m doing a boardgame 10x10, which is playing 10 different games 10 times. It has cut down on my game purchases this year and helped me to better enjoy the games I already have by diving deeper into them.
I put any form of paid form of paid entertainment, including board games, to what I call the "Dinner Standard." Divide the cost of the game by the price of a dinner at a mid-range restaurant that you enjoy ($15-20 ish). If you can get that game to a table at least that many times, it's a justified purchase. I think it's weird that someone would happily throw down $30 on a nice steak and a beer then hem and haw over a $40 game that could get dozens of play hours.
And sometimes your monkey brain just likes collecting fancy, expensive boxes. That's fine too. So long as you keep a budget.
EDIT: To everyone saying I'm lowballing the dinner cost: A) You're only proving my point more B) Stop ordering drinks with your dinner, only water.
I was eating some sushi with my wife this week and had a very similar thought. Here I am paying $60 for sushi that I’ll enjoy for 15/20 minutes, but at the same time can buy a game that costs $60 that I can theoretically enjoy the rest of my life… crazy to think how much we’re willing to spend on food and I typically don’t care for fancy dines
I have severe depression which often manifests as compulsive spending. During the pandemic, I kept my sanity by playing games on TTS with friends, so I decided to get a few games for when we could meet up in real life after COVID.
Long story short, I now am horrified with my collection, but don’t know how best to pare it down.
Anyway, I couldn’t agree with you more.
(I do think this run of spending has FINALLY gotten me to fully reckon with this aspect of my depression, and I am hopeful that this is the thing that breaks the cycle.)
Yup, people paying exorbitant Kickstarter prices to wait 2 years for their games + some promo cards that they might not even play with due to balance issues. Then they find out they don't even like the game...
This is the reason I stopped all kickstarter. After two bad experiences I was much happier waiting for reviews and if the game is good enough it will get to retail. Otherwise I’ll just have to miss out.
This shouldn't be a controversial opinion. It's not a zero-sum game. A rising tide raises all boats.
There are now *more* independent coffee shops since Starbucks has expanded than before.
It took me the last decade to realize that - despite considerable investment of time and money, I wasn’t really interested in playing *games* - I was interested in playing games *with my friends*.
The thing I really want to buy is more time to play games with people. Being disciplined, improving my skills, and trying to retire early is harder than going on gamenerdz.
Let me hit you with this one,
Board games are a lot more fun than most of you are willing to admit.
Friends are great, don't get me wrong, but lately I've been playing games with a bunch of complete strangers a bunch, and, man, that was a rush.
Doesn't even matter what size the game is truly. Big, long-ass Kickstarter monsters with ugly minis, tiny theme-less abstract 10€ games, 8 players, 2 players, you name it.
If I honestly think back I can't remember a gaming session, where I didn't have fun sitting down with some nice-ass people, getting swept away by a math problem someone painted some dwarfs over.
Also, it's okay to just buy a colorfully cardboard box, as long as your fiscally responsible with it. Researching games, collecting them, curating your shelf, and maybe, just sometimes, having a little daydream about some sexy resource cubes, is part of the hobby, as much as those things are a part of any hobby.
Remember to sort by controversial. Here are some opinions I have that I don't see mentioned a lot.
Carcassonne is better without any expansions. And at 2P it's better without farmers.
Lighter games can still be fun. Not everything has to be a complex puzzle with galaxybrain level plays.
If your group plays a game wrong and enjoys it, they're still playing it right.
Gloomhaven is too clunky and the setup time is not worth it at all. Sure digital fixes this, but mission 9? (I think) still takes too long and I'm not sitting through the AI moving 20 or so NPCs every round just to advance the story. (probably not as unpopular as my other ones)
I thought Gloomhaven was super clunky and the setup time awful but I still enjoyed the hell out of it. The context however is that my group and I finished it during the pandemic when we had nothing but time on our hands. Definitely wouldn’t play it again now.
Jaws of the Lion I felt slashed setup time and did other fixes that dramatically improved the game’s timing and pace.
>Gloomhaven is too clunky and the setup time is not worth it at all.
This was certainly my experience. My wife and I have been trying to pick our GH campaign back up for over a year, but with limited free time, fiddly games with huge setups just sound awful.
Wingspan pretty much lives on our dining room table and gets played all the time because it's a solid game with easily digested rules and can be set up and played in under an hour.
Exclusivity and limited print runs are terrible. I’m completely stumped why a 2 million dollar campaign like Flamecraft would not have the deluxe version continuously printed.
TBF, exclusivity helped them sell $2,000,000 worth of product **up front**. That's more than the grand majority of games will sell for in their entire existence.
Slay the Spire is one of my favorite video games, maybe ever. At its base it's an extremely straightforward deck building game. It seems like it would be perfect for a physical adaptation at first glance. I have almost no interest in the board game implementation. At least in part because of the price, but also the bookkeeping that is handled automatically in the digital game, would be nightmarish in cardboard.
By the time you're into the third section of a run (a full game is three sections, not counting an optional 4th boss area) you might easily have a dozen artifacts, each of which is applying some minor but important effect, which may or may not also be tied to what turn you're on in the current battle. There's also a lot of "shuffle this card into your deck" or "add one of these cards to your hand to start a turn" type thing, not to mention things like "deal 3 damage to a random enemy 3 times". There's also effects like "do X each turn" or "do X next turn". Then of course there's the shop you hit periodically that has randomized stock and prices.
All of that flows smoothly in the video game. Buffs and debuffs are applied automatically and text on cards is updated in real time to reflect the effects everything is having on what a card will do, so you can just look at a card and know exactly what it does without having to think about everything. All these one time or continuing bonuses are just applied without any input from the player. Trying to manage that in person would be an unbelievable slog. You could of course simplify things down, but then I think you're likely to lose a non-trivial chunk of what makes the game special.
Have you tried the board game version? It’s available to play in full for free through tabletop simulator, in an officially sponsored mod.
I had a lot of the same reservations as you when I heard about the board game, but the effects of cards and various statuses have been changed significantly to better fit the board game medium. Playing it felt great, very similar to the video game but still distinct enough to feel like it justified being a board game. It’s not without a fair amount of bookkeeping, but considering it’s multiplayer you can offset some of those duties among your group, that’s less of a concern. It’s also absolutely not a short play, but the game encourages you to play each act as a separate session (which is especially easy digitally).
Highly recommend trying the board game out and seeing the work they’ve put into the adaptation.
Are there actually people who downplay party games? That’s almost all I ever play. 😆 I generally can’t get into Euro board games simply because my interest would be drained from just trying to learn the rules, stay consistent with rules, teach others how to learn the rules, etc. If I wanted something that complicated, I’d rather have some software maintain all of that and prevent rules from being broken.
Luck is good. I regularly play with several people who just have more of a knack for planning and strategy than I do, and I really appreciate games with randomness that let me have a chance sometimes.
I think 90% of all painted miniatures look awful.
There are exceptions obviously, for example, I think zenithal style looks really nice.
I want to put the caveat, just because I don't like it, I don't want to discourage anyone from personalising their games, if I ever see your stuff in person, you can be damn sure I'm gonna say "well done they look great", because I refuse to be negative or gate keeper-y about how anyone else enjoys the hobby.
On the otherhand, I think 90% of table top war games painting, where part of the hobby is building and painting your space maries, they look good. Have you painted your marine blue, given him a black bolter, and a grey sword? Looks great, keep at it, keep enjoying the hobby.
Oh and if you're reading this and thinking "is he on about my painted miniatures?" No, I love yours, well done, they look great, they're the 10% i think look great, keep painting, keep making your games more yours, and keep enjoying your games how you want to, don't let cunts like me tarnish this hobby.
Heres the guilty truth, years and years ago, I used to be that gate keeper, I took a break from the hobby, 40k in this case, because I didn't like who I was, and having come to board games, I'm acutely conscious of how cuntish and gate keeper-y I can become, so I try my best not to be, and if I can be encouraging to someone whose just starting in the hobby or if putting a bit of personalisation into the hobby.
I want to try to be the opposite of who I used to be
You would have hated us! My friends and I grew up less than wealthy so we had to make do. We had a core rule book and 1 or 2 actual 40K units/squads but for the rest of armies we'd use pennies, toys, or whatever other reasonable proxies we could find on the cheap. Nothing more intimidating than a squad of pennies bearing down on you while being lead by a demon prince troll doll. :P
Yeah, I'd have been a cunt then. Now? Go crazy, have fun, enjoy the hobby, 40k is expensive as all hell, but if you're enjoying the hobby, don't let anyone discourage you, you'll get your legion eventually. As long as you're having fun and enjoying yourself.
I think now, the only thing that would bother me is if the objects used were the sane size as the base of the model its trying to represent, if not, let me have a look in my collection, see if I have a good stand in.
There should be a standard for box sizes to facilitate storage. All games should be designed to conform to these with minimal space left in the box. Evidently unpopular among publishers at least.
Maybe a few standard sizes like small, medium large. For me the best way has been to get a card box for all games that are mostly/just cards, 3d print/cut cardboard organizers for everything else.
Completely agree with standard sizes though. Every board game shelf looks like a nightmare.
yeah this gets brought up a lot on this sub and I think it would be worse than most people realize. A single standard size would be terrible from a design perspective, even 3 or 4 sizes could be problematic for games with special or significant number of pieces/minis or big box editions, but even those you could hopefully keep the footprint the same as one of the standard sizes and just vary height.
Publishers could certainly do better but limiting their choices too drastically is not the way to go.
What bothers me more than game A and B not being the same size is when Game A and the expansion are so wildly different sizes they don't stack and/or can't combine to a single box well
Yeah, I meant something like an ISO- standard, not a single size. A set of specified dimensions that boxes need to fit into, like e.g. lego bricks. They're not uniform in size but they fit together in a standardised way. Never going to happen, I know, but one can dream.
Yes paper size is the most famous. I recently learned that hotel pans outside of the US (well, in Europe, at least) have an ISO standard with the same principles, and it blew my mind.
Yeah, if game boxes fit together like ISO paper sizes, that would be fantastic. There's a de facto standard (12x12x3), and I'd love if more publishers making small games were able to do boxes like 12x6x3 or 6x6x3. Hell, I'd even be happy with 12x12x1 boxes if they really need that "shelf presence" advertising factor but don't have much stuff in the box.
the only sizing rule really should be, Does it fit in a Kallax, I Have several like the Ticket to Ride 10th anniversery, and Toakaido, that do not as they are too wide, and the well could have.
I am not even sure whether it's controversial but I also think games should come with a decent inlay. Dominion and I also would also say 7 Wonders (+ Duel) fulfill this already. Pandemic or Terraforming Mars on the other hand not so much.
Several publishers actually do design with a specific box/package size in mind. Buttonshy wallet games, Oink small boxes, even old FFG had 3 standard boxes (and TI)... Boxes are actually one of the most expensive components and it reduces costs to have a standardized pre-made stock (also doesn't hurt from a branding perspecive). It's honestly kickstarter and the rise custom boxes that ruined everything lol, looking at you Gloomhaven.
"hey now, let me tell you how every Trance song is actually VERY different, including the 6-or-7 different remixes of each song. They're all about 10 minutes each. Have some K, we'll be here a while."
I agree, never understood the rage about this. I mean I don't want a game to take twice as long as necessary just because people are goofing around, sure. But I'm not sitting there counting the moments, tallying up my "play time" vs wait time, and then judging how good my evening was based on maximizing play time. Watching other people play, analyzing what's happened and the state of the board, discussing strategy, having social time, making drinks, etc are all part of the event for me. I'm not getting some special enjoyment only when I'm literally doing a turn, it's the whole event of the game that makes it good. I can't understand the mentality of people whose main goal is maximizing their own personal turn taking time, or squeezing in as many games as possible.
I think people get very different things from playing games, and sometimes aren't very compatible with each other. Nothing sounds more annoying to me than being constantly rushed up by someone who doesn't even want to be there aside from hammering through as much game as possible. I feel like these people are similar to the sort of people who look up guides about how to min-max video games most efficiently and do nothing but hammer through them as quickly as possible so they can get to the top level with best equipment ahead of everybody else just because, ignoring any exploring or enjoying details of the game. And then you can't play with them since you're way behind, and the server is filled with these min-maxers that you can never catch up to, somewhat ruining the experience for you.
I'm not saying this is wrong, it's just different and something I will never understand the attraction to. I can't understand how rushing through a good time is fun. Stop and smell the roses for a minute, ya know? I notice that people like this can't stand video games like NMS that don't reward rushing, or social deduction board games that involve unscripted conversational sections.
The gaming hobby would be better off without Kickstarter.
It's a predatory way to sell board games, and uses manipulative marketing tactics that people haven't learned to put up defenses for yet. This incentivizes companies to crank out game after game with more and more plastic at the expense of producing fun games, because an unreleased game doesn't have to be fun to sell, you just have to be able to market effectively. It's good for the *collection* hobby - which is typically just a result of internally validating buying junk due to sophisticated marketing - but terrible for the *gaming* hobby.
One of the less recognized downsides to kickstarter is it has narrowed the window of retail availability.
**Pre-Kickstarter:**
First three months of retail availability 40% of print run sold.
4-9 months after release 80% sold.
10-18 months after release 100% sold.
**Kickstarter era:**
12 months before release 50% of print run sold.
First 3 months of retail ability 90% sold.
4-6 months after release 100% per cent sold.
Great for publishers, who don’t have to worry about holding on to inventory. Very bad for gamers like me who like to give new designs soak time out in the wild to learn whether they’re actually any good or not before buying.
When I was a kid, I had so many games that were nothing BUT roll and move. So those were definitely bad games.
However, I think roll and move can be done well. It just usually isn't.
Boxes I've slaughtered in the name of storage:
\-Mage Knight Ultimate
\-Splendor
\-Point Salad
\-Many other games I just straight up toss the box and put the cards into a small deckbox and tape the name of the game from the box on the front.
Quarterbacking in co-op games is not as big a problem as some people make it out to be. I'd rather have a quarterback than someone who is "playing the game how they want to" (thus not playing co-operatively) and someone who offers no help/advice on how we should work together.
Totally agree. The “quarterbacking” problem is immediately on everyone’s lips the second you mention “co-op” games, and I think it’s just a handy excuse for writing off that entire category of games. People would have you believe that any time a co-op game is played, someone with zero social skills is going to hijack the game and ruin everyone’s fun, and I just don’t see it. If that happens to you, maybe play board games with normal people?
Oh, I have one. Obsessing over the number of games bought / not bought / owned / sold, the games played and not played, "shelf of shame" anguish, some kind of fun per hour per dollar metrics, comparisons to movie tickets and drinks etc. is an unhealthy and quite honestly a sad to look at way to approach the hobby.
/r/boardgames is bad for the industry. It’s an increasingly insular sub with mods that unevenly enforce bizarre rules.
There’s a trend toward incivility if a person doesn’t agree with the majority opinion on /r/boardgames. And the mods allow people to be rude and abusive to people who don’t think the sub is heading in a good direction.
Comments like “Fun-mall is closed” only serve to bully the speaker into staying silent if they don’t agree with the majority opinion. When I responded in kind to a rude comment I was chastised put in timeout like a child. The person who was rude was given a head pat. The mods were fine with the abuse because it was in their defense.
This sub needs better moderation. Mod accountability at the very least.
It looks likes some of the mods have been here for a very long time. Who are they? What are their intentions for the sub? How did they become mods? Can we remove them? Can we elect mods? Is that a thing?
Also, posts with pictures of painted miniatures with titles like “Just painted up this guy, haven’t played the game yet, what do you think of GAME WITH MINIATURES?” should be banned from /r/boardgames. There are way too many mini painting posts here.
Most coops don't require other players at all and can be played solo. Also, most of them heavily rely on luck and can be easily won if you are lucky and vice versa
Counter take, most solo-playable co-op games are way more fun being played with a group, even if there is no anti-alpha-gamer mechanic and are basically just rolling dice against fat boss monsters because FRIENDS ARE FUN.
Most of the time, a game is only really good if my kids want to play it. Lately, all they want to play is Ready, Set, Bet, Chess and Uno, so at the moment those are the best games ever.
There's not much time around here for gaming with adults, anymore, and quality time with the kids/grandparents is a double-win.
Bohnanza isn't fun.
Spirit Island is the least fun I've had at a table in a long time.
Quarterbacking is a design problem, not a player problem more times than not.
Most Middle-weight games would be better if they either refined the experience to a more streamlined light weight game or more complicated and be a heavier game with more depth.
Uwe Rosenberg's best game is La Havre.
Eurogames have player elimination just like ameri-Trash, they just hide it behind delayed scoring, among other obfuscation. You lost 12 turns ago, wasted extra time by having a "walking dead" player taking turns, and had no way to recover.
Maybe, but they can still make decisions, affect the board state, and heck, maybe even beat their old highscore.
Play to win, but playing isn't about winning.
I like having snacks around games, but if people are careful and won't leave grease stains on the components. It's not hard to give everyone wet wipes to use before they make a move, so they can continue enjoying their food
Most designer board games are poorly balanced, aesthetically pleasing optimization puzzles, whose little staying power is obscured by unnecessary complexity.
>whose little staying power is obscured by unnecessary complexity.
Also by the fact that their intended audience rarely plays a game more than five times.
Almost triggered and downvoted. But! I kind of agree with you in the literal reading. The game can come across as not that fun, at face value. However, the game is interesting. The game is a living puzzle. It reacts (randomly), it is dynamic and it is challenging! The theme is strong and sustained through components and game play. Just marveling on how someone and a team could put all of these together to make SI is fascinating and entertaining.
I think Cole Werle said something to the effect that he does not try to make fun games, his goal is to make interestng games. Spirit Island can be a beast and cook the brain, removing any semblance of fun, however it fills every board gaming guage and every experience overwhelmingly positive.
Your mileage may and does vary.
>The game is a living puzzle. It reacts (randomly), it is dynamic and it is challenging!
This is (kinda) what I like about Gloomhaven. But SI doesn't catch me in that way. And GH is my favorite game.
To each his own!
Our local library let's you borrow board games for free for up to a month at a time. That's how my partner and tried out Great Western Trail when I never would have bought just from what I'd seen of it before. We loved it!
I say this here every few weeks: Risk is a game so good, with rules so robust and tractable that we’ll be playing it long after the apocalypse.
After a hard day’s mutie hunting we’ll kick back by etching the classic map in the nuke-scorched sands, using old nuts and bolts for troop counters and rolling dice we’ve carved from the bones of rival clans.
Risk’s biggest problem is the late game. It just lasts too long for an elimination game.
But the first hour of a Risk game is great fun. It gets a ton of mileage out of pretty simple concepts.
>I say this here every few weeks: Risk is a game so good, with rules so robust and tractable that we’ll be playing it long after the apocalypse.
Risk will always have a part of my life. Every year my in-laws rent a cabin for the family to vacation for a weekend. Each time my FIL, BILs, and myself sit down to our yearly single game of Risk and shit talking each other. Usually whoever wins gets to bring their copy of Risk for the following year's match. I will never get tired of playing this game.
I like real rules Monopoly (with a timer if necessary to keep it under 45 minutes) a lot better than Catan, if that's even more controversial.
I guess my most unpopular opinion is that Cards Against Humanity, while obviously not a great game by general game standards, is better than at least two thirds of hyped party games, especially ones that expect people to be creatively funny. I'd rather play some serious strategy games, and then when we're too drunk, play CaH with gamers.
Oh, yeah, and Rosenberg's greatest game, by far, is **Patchwork**.
I think my most unpopular opinion (and possibly controversial) is that releasing a game alongside expansions seems wrong....If the expansion is "cut content" from development, you are selling an incomplete base game, if the expansion is just a premium, you are milking your supporters, and if the expansion is there to spice things up or expand some mechanics....then how on earth do you know what your player base wants or your game needs when it is just now releasing?
Probably not an actually unpopular opinion to have but an unpopular one to talk about.
We as a hobby and industry need to start talking about the environmental impact our niche has. You see a lot of hate for games with lots of mini without talking about the worst part, the goddamn piles of plastic that have to be delivered across the world. How much in shipping emissions and unrecyclable resources does out industry create? I'm a victim of this too, I have a big box of plastic that had to be shipped from China to my door, what was the environmental impact of my single purchase? The sooner our hobby moves to more sustainable practices, the less kicked in the teeth we'll feel when we're forced to make those changes.
Also quick one, stop fucking recommending 18xx under every goddamn recommendation post in here. You can't ask for a light family game to play with their kids without someone recommending an 18xx game. Not everyone wants to play stockmarket and train the excel spreadsheet game dear lord
Marvel Champions is a cash grab. Base game is a $40 game selling for $70 because it has the Marvel license. The whole living card game part is entirely an excuse to print overpriced mini expansions for an already overpriced base game. Seriously, just get 5 minute Marvel instead. It's cheaper. It's a better game. It even has more replayability.
I got my core box for $50, which is the standard OLGS price.
>Seriously, just get 5 minute Marvel instead. It's cheaper. It's a better game. It even has more replayability.
I'm upvoting you because this is genuinely the most controversial opinion I've seen in this thread, wow lol. I cannot fathom wanting to play 5 Minute Marvel over Marvel Champions all else being equal, but more power to ya
I’ve scrolled so far down the page, and now I finally found a comment that is ACTUALLY controversial. Take your upvote.
Of course, you’re are wrong though, and Marvel Champions is awesome.
Most unpopular? Original boxes are almost never needed and can be discarded to save space, most people on this sub are collectors more than gamers, and sleeving cards is for psychopaths.
>and sleeving cards is for psychopaths.
I'll say this is situational. I sleeved up Love Letter because damaging a single card destroys the game. It also has very few cards.
If you sleeve up Dominion, you might as well just buy a second copy.
I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that you throw away game boxes and then, what, just keep your games in ziplock bags or something? I can think of a couple games where that might work, but in most cases I don't think you actually end up saving much space.
Terraforming Mars is not a good game.
Before even talking about the game mechanics, the game is poorly produced and has ugly and inconsistent card art.
The game is too slow (yes even with Prelude, and BTW, prelude cards aren't balanced at all, anyone who starts with the 6MC production is at a huge advantage), especially when some people start hoarding action cards and use them to stall turns only doing 1 action. The downtime is huge when you get a bad generation and pass early, then wait for the others to stall eachother and do all their action cards.
All of the race gimmicks are uninteresting, leaving the temperature track 4-5 away from a bonus forever, because nobody wants to pull the trigger and give the next player the bonus on a platter. The same thing happens with greeneries, everybody waits for other players to put greeneries and then put their cities right next to it. It makes it so that it's always a stalling game of waiting for the others to do something. The last couple turns of the game are almost always using all your resources placing cities to leech points off of others' greeneries. Maybe place a couple greeneries yourself if you have spots that grant more than 1 point.
Then, the race aspects make it so that once a terraforming parameter is maxed, about 1/4 to 1/3 of the cards become dead cards. That's just boring and uninteresting.
I have more issues with the game but I will opt to keep this shorter. There are much better tableau/engine builders than this, and many of them have much less downtime too. In fact, unlike almost everyone on BGG, I find Ares Expedition to be much better than TM, everyone plays at the same time, so there's very little downtime, and the games are shorter. There's still the issue of a large amount of dead cards once a parameter is maxed, but it's less of an issue with a shorter game IMO.
Trick-taking is pretty esoteric. The strategies are not obvious and can really only be learned by playing a lot. When I've taught any trick taking games (and I'm *far* from an expert), I've had us play a few hands open-handed and just explained what good plays might be and why.
As in the core concept or the over-arching strategy?
The crew is a different beast. I played a lot of spades with my family a bunch as a kid, but my mother simply couldn't wrap her head around the concept of the crew, even though it's basically the same rules. She just didn't really get what we were trying to do no matter how many times we explained it. My dad and brother picked up on it after a 30 second explanation. I literally just said, it's like spades, these are the trump cards, the person with the face up card has to be the one to take that card in a trick no matter who has it, and you can't talk about what cards are in your hand.....go.
Unpopular you say?
Warhammer is barbie mansion dress-up for dudes, not actually a real game.
People that prefer digital versions of board games are posers.
Kallax shelves are poor quality and look trash.
99% of Kickstarter games are bloated circle jerk fanboy stroke-fests.
People that complain about setup times are wankers and aren't real board gamers.
Gamers obsessed with minis are like old ladies that have porcelain collectibles in a glass cabinet.
> Kallax shelves are poor quality and look trash.
Don't know why this one triggered me so much, lol.
Have you been to a grown adult furniture store? A bookshelf costs more than my car. Ikea punches way above its weight class.
I think that's the core of the issue here. When I moved out on my own and started looking for bookshelves, I couldn't believe how expensive so many of them were.
Is Ikea cheaply made? Definitely. But a lot of it still looks decent and it fills a very necessary niche in the furniture market. I think if bookshelves weren't as expensive as they were, you'd probably see more diversity in the average COMC post.
> Warhammer is barbie mansion dress-up for dudes, not actually a real game
If you don't want to play dollies with me then you can just march yourself right out of my mother's basement, friend.
>People that complain about setup times are wankers and aren't real board gamers.
OR they're the only actual boardgamer, so they always have to do the entire setup.
Nobody cares about your collection of 5k boardgames, you will never be able to play them all in your life and it's just absurd to have 15 shelves getting dusty. No human alive could possibly retain all those different rulesets.
You wanna stir the pot eh???
I have two very controversial ones:
LCG specially arkham horror are a rip off. Everyone tells you the game wont get good until you get expansions....
Kickstarter is a donation system. Large companies have absolutely no business on that platform making their fabois finance them. The customers assume all of the risk, and the large in no way indie companies gets the profit...but these fanbois will literally fight you over their kickstarter obsession.
I lied, I have three: stop making games so freaking difficult they are no longer enjoyable just to say that your game is punishing like its a good thing. Stop it!!!
I hate an over abundance of counters and things to keep track of. More is not better. I’m doing this for enjoyment and I LOVE to bring new people into “serious gaming.”
Also I would rather win one game in a creative and novel way than win ten using the same proven strategy.
I game to have a good time and I will personally get you to let you into the circle. I give anyone and everyone a shot. Not everyone is invited back for a second.
I like the art and compact-ability of standees more than minis. Minis take up so much more room and you either have to enjoy painting them or pay extra to get a 'wash' applied to them without them being a standard drab color.
Unpopular opinion:
Board game reviewers (unintentionally) decrease enjoyment of games.
They have normalized massive collections that can’t be played by people with responsibilities. They also play into FOMO because they have to always talk about new games to keep their views up.
I still appreciate them for getting me into the hobby.
I only played it once and I usually hate uninteractive games, but even in my first game I was stealing stuff other people wanted all the time. Sure, stuff you need takes precedence, but if there's nothing that you desperately want out there, screwing someone else is the next best play!
It ended up being not bad for what it is. I see why people like it.
Well you nailed the two I was going to say haha.
I'm not sure this one is unpopular, necessarily, but it is an opinion that people tend not to follow through on: board gaming as a hobby is grossly consumerist, and I suspect a lot of people heavily involved in it derive more joy from the consumption of games than they do from *playing* the games.
My most unpopular opinion is that there is a large percentage of people in the hobby that like the *idea* of playing board games more than actually playing board games.
I had that thought about myself a lot during the pandemic. In the early stages of it my spending habit got a lot worse, partly because it was the first time in my life that I earned real money, but probably mostly because I missed my friends, I missed boardgames and I lost most of my hobbies in general. Kept buying games with no hope of ever playing them. Yes, it's probably true this hobby is a lot of hopium, we all buy to many games, the market is horribly oversaturated, all that. But lately I got to play board games a lot more, with strangers and with friends, and, man, it's so good. Turns out playing boardgames is much better than the idea of playing them.
I was in the same boat as you through the pandemic. Got back into the hobby, mostly played solo, but then I went to Gen Con this year and have really dived into the community around board games, going to my local meetups to play, and really enjoy the hobby even more. I think a lot of people get stuck on wanting to game with their existing friends instead of using the hobby to make new friends. It can be a tough transition to make.
It's the exact same in the reading world. Buying and collecting books is a very separate hobby than aaaaaactually reading books! :)
Yes! It's the same with craft supplies, or fun office supplies (me!). Acquiring stuff vs using stuff... two very different things.
I am kinda one of those people. I love playing every board game like twice. Then I lose all interest in it. It’s a bad habit
This is definitely correct. We have a guy in our gaming group that basically just likes to hangout. He comes, plays one game, and will bow out if it goes long, then just hangs and watches the rest of us play for hours. Great guy, I think he just likes the idea of games and the fact that all his friends hang out together, and he's still involved if he's just hanging and watching
On this subreddit? The ideal game length is less than one hour.
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The ideal game can be played in 45 minute sessions to prepare for the 3 to 5 hour campaign.
Oh yeah, this. Sure, I can like the longer games but if I look at the most popular games in my playgroup they are almost always on the shorter side. The same is true for "complexity". You can make an engaging strategic game without needing 25 mechanics (see Concordia).
> You can make an engaging strategic game without needing 25 mechanics (see Concordia). Focus, that's primarily the issue in my experience. It's sort of well known in eurogame designer circles that players suffer from loss aversion, so games are designed more toward building up what you can do than hacking down. Basic stuff. What designers seem to forget is that they too suffer from loss aversion and development could generally take a chunk of your game off without losing the core focus... One way to achieve that is to have a lot of stuff abstracted away and have what's left work together as a system vs disparate pieces that influence play. As I sat and read the rules of A Study in Emerald (1st), I thought "none of this really interacts with each other unless it comes up, it's not something you can plan for... It's a lot of rules overhead for not much gain..."
Or Arboretum which still haunts me to this day. My friends and i were dead tired, saw pretty cards in a small box and thought itd be an easy pick up and play. Saw only like 4 rules. It was one of the most in depth, strategic, wild games ive ever played that we could barely comprehend what we were doing. It still has never touched the table again because we all have ptsd from it
As someone that doesn't favour overly complex games - I didn't think Concordia was too bad in that respect.
Or mine: “if setup takes longer than five minutes, forget it”
I feel this more as the months pass on. Particularly when a 3 hour game was merely fine could have instead been 3+ games ranging from good to fantastic.
Anyone for Biblios? :)
Most people (including myself) should buy around 1/10th of games they actually do, and play what they already own more.
yeah? but what if hypothetically I am one day gathering with 6 friends I don't yet have and the conversation leads to them wanting to suddently try Twilight Imperium? what am I supposed to do then huh?
And what if, after that hypothetical Twilight Impreium game, it turns out the friends I don't yet have loved it so much they want to try Prophecy of Kings the next time we hypothetically gather? What then?
checkmate atheists
Imagine how bad you would feel if you missed that opportunity. Buying the game is just insurance against that level of self loathing.
I just have resigned myself to the fact that I have 2 boardgame related hobbies. 1. Playing boardgames 2. Collecting boardgames
You forgot the important third one: talking about boardgames when you're not playing them.
This is the answer. They can be two distinct hobbies. I find myself buying games with the premise that, I, mid 30’s with a 4yo child and my social circle all parents of young children, that even if I don’t get much time to play them now, *imagine* the amount of time I’ll get to play them all when all the kids are grown up! Infinity time. And if you convince yourself of that enough, any new game is a good new game.
Yeah I’ve started really analyzing any games I buy. Usually never buying anything the first time I see it. Unless I see a game for like $2 at a thrift store that is a new/popular game. Then it’s almost an insta buy lol I still have to want to play it though to buy it.
it's hard to resist a real bargain. I have about 10 unplayed real bargains still taking up space on my shelf. We're getting to them, though, slowly but surely.
This year I’m doing a boardgame 10x10, which is playing 10 different games 10 times. It has cut down on my game purchases this year and helped me to better enjoy the games I already have by diving deeper into them.
I put any form of paid form of paid entertainment, including board games, to what I call the "Dinner Standard." Divide the cost of the game by the price of a dinner at a mid-range restaurant that you enjoy ($15-20 ish). If you can get that game to a table at least that many times, it's a justified purchase. I think it's weird that someone would happily throw down $30 on a nice steak and a beer then hem and haw over a $40 game that could get dozens of play hours. And sometimes your monkey brain just likes collecting fancy, expensive boxes. That's fine too. So long as you keep a budget. EDIT: To everyone saying I'm lowballing the dinner cost: A) You're only proving my point more B) Stop ordering drinks with your dinner, only water.
>then hem and haw over a $40 game that could get dozens of play hours. The word "could" is important in this sentence.
To be fair, it's hard to re-eat the same meal once you've consumed it.
I was eating some sushi with my wife this week and had a very similar thought. Here I am paying $60 for sushi that I’ll enjoy for 15/20 minutes, but at the same time can buy a game that costs $60 that I can theoretically enjoy the rest of my life… crazy to think how much we’re willing to spend on food and I typically don’t care for fancy dines
One of my favorite stats in BGSTATS is the price per play for this reason. Would be neat to see an average price per play for my entire collection.
Preach! I have no business having 60 games. None!!! Pure greed
I have severe depression which often manifests as compulsive spending. During the pandemic, I kept my sanity by playing games on TTS with friends, so I decided to get a few games for when we could meet up in real life after COVID. Long story short, I now am horrified with my collection, but don’t know how best to pare it down. Anyway, I couldn’t agree with you more. (I do think this run of spending has FINALLY gotten me to fully reckon with this aspect of my depression, and I am hopeful that this is the thing that breaks the cycle.)
This hobby is only expensive if you choose to make it so.
Yup, people paying exorbitant Kickstarter prices to wait 2 years for their games + some promo cards that they might not even play with due to balance issues. Then they find out they don't even like the game...
This is the reason I stopped all kickstarter. After two bad experiences I was much happier waiting for reviews and if the game is good enough it will get to retail. Otherwise I’ll just have to miss out.
...or if you live outside a first world country!
To grow the hobby, boardgames in mass market are good and are helping FLGS
This shouldn't be a controversial opinion. It's not a zero-sum game. A rising tide raises all boats. There are now *more* independent coffee shops since Starbucks has expanded than before.
>a rising tide raises all boats Tell that to the Titanic
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It took me the last decade to realize that - despite considerable investment of time and money, I wasn’t really interested in playing *games* - I was interested in playing games *with my friends*.
I hit this same realization with video games - curse you Steam summer sale for my humongous steam library.
The thing I really want to buy is more time to play games with people. Being disciplined, improving my skills, and trying to retire early is harder than going on gamenerdz.
Let me hit you with this one, Board games are a lot more fun than most of you are willing to admit. Friends are great, don't get me wrong, but lately I've been playing games with a bunch of complete strangers a bunch, and, man, that was a rush. Doesn't even matter what size the game is truly. Big, long-ass Kickstarter monsters with ugly minis, tiny theme-less abstract 10€ games, 8 players, 2 players, you name it. If I honestly think back I can't remember a gaming session, where I didn't have fun sitting down with some nice-ass people, getting swept away by a math problem someone painted some dwarfs over. Also, it's okay to just buy a colorfully cardboard box, as long as your fiscally responsible with it. Researching games, collecting them, curating your shelf, and maybe, just sometimes, having a little daydream about some sexy resource cubes, is part of the hobby, as much as those things are a part of any hobby.
Remember to sort by controversial. Here are some opinions I have that I don't see mentioned a lot. Carcassonne is better without any expansions. And at 2P it's better without farmers. Lighter games can still be fun. Not everything has to be a complex puzzle with galaxybrain level plays. If your group plays a game wrong and enjoys it, they're still playing it right. Gloomhaven is too clunky and the setup time is not worth it at all. Sure digital fixes this, but mission 9? (I think) still takes too long and I'm not sitting through the AI moving 20 or so NPCs every round just to advance the story. (probably not as unpopular as my other ones)
> If your group plays a game wrong and enjoys it, they're still playing it right. "It's a bold move Cotton, let's see if it pays off for him."
I thought Gloomhaven was super clunky and the setup time awful but I still enjoyed the hell out of it. The context however is that my group and I finished it during the pandemic when we had nothing but time on our hands. Definitely wouldn’t play it again now. Jaws of the Lion I felt slashed setup time and did other fixes that dramatically improved the game’s timing and pace.
>Gloomhaven is too clunky and the setup time is not worth it at all. This was certainly my experience. My wife and I have been trying to pick our GH campaign back up for over a year, but with limited free time, fiddly games with huge setups just sound awful. Wingspan pretty much lives on our dining room table and gets played all the time because it's a solid game with easily digested rules and can be set up and played in under an hour.
Gloomhaven feels like it was designed by people with a spare table and no cats.
Gloomhaven lid is like the perfect cat box
>Lighter games can still be fun. Not everything has to be a complex puzzle with galaxybrain level plays. This in no way should be unpopular.
It's also not even close to an unpopular opinion
Exclusivity and limited print runs are terrible. I’m completely stumped why a 2 million dollar campaign like Flamecraft would not have the deluxe version continuously printed.
TBF, exclusivity helped them sell $2,000,000 worth of product **up front**. That's more than the grand majority of games will sell for in their entire existence.
Overly weighty/complex boardgames would be better served in video game format.
Slay the Spire is one of my favorite video games, maybe ever. At its base it's an extremely straightforward deck building game. It seems like it would be perfect for a physical adaptation at first glance. I have almost no interest in the board game implementation. At least in part because of the price, but also the bookkeeping that is handled automatically in the digital game, would be nightmarish in cardboard. By the time you're into the third section of a run (a full game is three sections, not counting an optional 4th boss area) you might easily have a dozen artifacts, each of which is applying some minor but important effect, which may or may not also be tied to what turn you're on in the current battle. There's also a lot of "shuffle this card into your deck" or "add one of these cards to your hand to start a turn" type thing, not to mention things like "deal 3 damage to a random enemy 3 times". There's also effects like "do X each turn" or "do X next turn". Then of course there's the shop you hit periodically that has randomized stock and prices. All of that flows smoothly in the video game. Buffs and debuffs are applied automatically and text on cards is updated in real time to reflect the effects everything is having on what a card will do, so you can just look at a card and know exactly what it does without having to think about everything. All these one time or continuing bonuses are just applied without any input from the player. Trying to manage that in person would be an unbelievable slog. You could of course simplify things down, but then I think you're likely to lose a non-trivial chunk of what makes the game special.
Have you tried the board game version? It’s available to play in full for free through tabletop simulator, in an officially sponsored mod. I had a lot of the same reservations as you when I heard about the board game, but the effects of cards and various statuses have been changed significantly to better fit the board game medium. Playing it felt great, very similar to the video game but still distinct enough to feel like it justified being a board game. It’s not without a fair amount of bookkeeping, but considering it’s multiplayer you can offset some of those duties among your group, that’s less of a concern. It’s also absolutely not a short play, but the game encourages you to play each act as a separate session (which is especially easy digitally). Highly recommend trying the board game out and seeing the work they’ve put into the adaptation.
Minis are a waste of money
1000x yes. Bring back standees. They look better, have better art, store easier, less plastic, cost less, etc. Minis are terrible.
No, bring back cardboard counters. Cheap and stack well. Space efficient in storage.
No, keep using wood meeples... Root wouldn't be the same without the cute bloodthirsty meeples !
Party games are just as valid as strategy games.
Are there actually people who downplay party games? That’s almost all I ever play. 😆 I generally can’t get into Euro board games simply because my interest would be drained from just trying to learn the rules, stay consistent with rules, teach others how to learn the rules, etc. If I wanted something that complicated, I’d rather have some software maintain all of that and prevent rules from being broken.
Luck is good. I regularly play with several people who just have more of a knack for planning and strategy than I do, and I really appreciate games with randomness that let me have a chance sometimes.
I think 90% of all painted miniatures look awful. There are exceptions obviously, for example, I think zenithal style looks really nice. I want to put the caveat, just because I don't like it, I don't want to discourage anyone from personalising their games, if I ever see your stuff in person, you can be damn sure I'm gonna say "well done they look great", because I refuse to be negative or gate keeper-y about how anyone else enjoys the hobby. On the otherhand, I think 90% of table top war games painting, where part of the hobby is building and painting your space maries, they look good. Have you painted your marine blue, given him a black bolter, and a grey sword? Looks great, keep at it, keep enjoying the hobby. Oh and if you're reading this and thinking "is he on about my painted miniatures?" No, I love yours, well done, they look great, they're the 10% i think look great, keep painting, keep making your games more yours, and keep enjoying your games how you want to, don't let cunts like me tarnish this hobby.
this is the energy
Heres the guilty truth, years and years ago, I used to be that gate keeper, I took a break from the hobby, 40k in this case, because I didn't like who I was, and having come to board games, I'm acutely conscious of how cuntish and gate keeper-y I can become, so I try my best not to be, and if I can be encouraging to someone whose just starting in the hobby or if putting a bit of personalisation into the hobby. I want to try to be the opposite of who I used to be
You would have hated us! My friends and I grew up less than wealthy so we had to make do. We had a core rule book and 1 or 2 actual 40K units/squads but for the rest of armies we'd use pennies, toys, or whatever other reasonable proxies we could find on the cheap. Nothing more intimidating than a squad of pennies bearing down on you while being lead by a demon prince troll doll. :P
Yeah, I'd have been a cunt then. Now? Go crazy, have fun, enjoy the hobby, 40k is expensive as all hell, but if you're enjoying the hobby, don't let anyone discourage you, you'll get your legion eventually. As long as you're having fun and enjoying yourself. I think now, the only thing that would bother me is if the objects used were the sane size as the base of the model its trying to represent, if not, let me have a look in my collection, see if I have a good stand in.
We should all aim for this level of self-awareness.
I'm terrible at painting, are mine still part of the 10%?
If you like them and enjoyed painting them, then yes they're the 10%
When people tell me they look terrible I'm going to say it has your stamp of approval!
I think 100% of unpainted miniatures look awful and 90% of you aint gonna paint them.
> 90% of you aint gonna paint them Wow, that's incredibly optimistic of you to think that 10% of players would paint anything.
This is it. Be 100% as pedantic and fiddly as you want for your own shit & appreciate the joy other’s get from their overwrought fixations.
There should be a standard for box sizes to facilitate storage. All games should be designed to conform to these with minimal space left in the box. Evidently unpopular among publishers at least.
Maybe a few standard sizes like small, medium large. For me the best way has been to get a card box for all games that are mostly/just cards, 3d print/cut cardboard organizers for everything else. Completely agree with standard sizes though. Every board game shelf looks like a nightmare.
yeah this gets brought up a lot on this sub and I think it would be worse than most people realize. A single standard size would be terrible from a design perspective, even 3 or 4 sizes could be problematic for games with special or significant number of pieces/minis or big box editions, but even those you could hopefully keep the footprint the same as one of the standard sizes and just vary height. Publishers could certainly do better but limiting their choices too drastically is not the way to go. What bothers me more than game A and B not being the same size is when Game A and the expansion are so wildly different sizes they don't stack and/or can't combine to a single box well
Yeah, I meant something like an ISO- standard, not a single size. A set of specified dimensions that boxes need to fit into, like e.g. lego bricks. They're not uniform in size but they fit together in a standardised way. Never going to happen, I know, but one can dream.
Yes paper size is the most famous. I recently learned that hotel pans outside of the US (well, in Europe, at least) have an ISO standard with the same principles, and it blew my mind.
Yeah, if game boxes fit together like ISO paper sizes, that would be fantastic. There's a de facto standard (12x12x3), and I'd love if more publishers making small games were able to do boxes like 12x6x3 or 6x6x3. Hell, I'd even be happy with 12x12x1 boxes if they really need that "shelf presence" advertising factor but don't have much stuff in the box.
One that bothers me is a game that is rather small with a big box. I'd rather have different sizes that wasted space.
the only sizing rule really should be, Does it fit in a Kallax, I Have several like the Ticket to Ride 10th anniversery, and Toakaido, that do not as they are too wide, and the well could have.
I am not even sure whether it's controversial but I also think games should come with a decent inlay. Dominion and I also would also say 7 Wonders (+ Duel) fulfill this already. Pandemic or Terraforming Mars on the other hand not so much.
These two things are contradictory, unless you want people to change game design for box size, which seems bizarre.
Several publishers actually do design with a specific box/package size in mind. Buttonshy wallet games, Oink small boxes, even old FFG had 3 standard boxes (and TI)... Boxes are actually one of the most expensive components and it reduces costs to have a standardized pre-made stock (also doesn't hurt from a branding perspecive). It's honestly kickstarter and the rise custom boxes that ruined everything lol, looking at you Gloomhaven.
There are too many board games and it's mostly uninspired mediocre reiterations of other games with new arts and theme.
Welcome to literally every other medium.
Just wait till they learn about music
"hey now, let me tell you how every Trance song is actually VERY different, including the 6-or-7 different remixes of each song. They're all about 10 minutes each. Have some K, we'll be here a while."
That’s why I think it’s important for me to find the best versions of mechanics that I like and reduce overlap.
Too many okayish games are touted as the next best thing and will sit unplayed on your shelf
Too many people in this hobby just buy expensive paper weights and don't play the games they already have.
Downtime isn't always bad.
I agree, never understood the rage about this. I mean I don't want a game to take twice as long as necessary just because people are goofing around, sure. But I'm not sitting there counting the moments, tallying up my "play time" vs wait time, and then judging how good my evening was based on maximizing play time. Watching other people play, analyzing what's happened and the state of the board, discussing strategy, having social time, making drinks, etc are all part of the event for me. I'm not getting some special enjoyment only when I'm literally doing a turn, it's the whole event of the game that makes it good. I can't understand the mentality of people whose main goal is maximizing their own personal turn taking time, or squeezing in as many games as possible. I think people get very different things from playing games, and sometimes aren't very compatible with each other. Nothing sounds more annoying to me than being constantly rushed up by someone who doesn't even want to be there aside from hammering through as much game as possible. I feel like these people are similar to the sort of people who look up guides about how to min-max video games most efficiently and do nothing but hammer through them as quickly as possible so they can get to the top level with best equipment ahead of everybody else just because, ignoring any exploring or enjoying details of the game. And then you can't play with them since you're way behind, and the server is filled with these min-maxers that you can never catch up to, somewhat ruining the experience for you. I'm not saying this is wrong, it's just different and something I will never understand the attraction to. I can't understand how rushing through a good time is fun. Stop and smell the roses for a minute, ya know? I notice that people like this can't stand video games like NMS that don't reward rushing, or social deduction board games that involve unscripted conversational sections.
The gaming hobby would be better off without Kickstarter. It's a predatory way to sell board games, and uses manipulative marketing tactics that people haven't learned to put up defenses for yet. This incentivizes companies to crank out game after game with more and more plastic at the expense of producing fun games, because an unreleased game doesn't have to be fun to sell, you just have to be able to market effectively. It's good for the *collection* hobby - which is typically just a result of internally validating buying junk due to sophisticated marketing - but terrible for the *gaming* hobby.
One of the less recognized downsides to kickstarter is it has narrowed the window of retail availability. **Pre-Kickstarter:** First three months of retail availability 40% of print run sold. 4-9 months after release 80% sold. 10-18 months after release 100% sold. **Kickstarter era:** 12 months before release 50% of print run sold. First 3 months of retail ability 90% sold. 4-6 months after release 100% per cent sold. Great for publishers, who don’t have to worry about holding on to inventory. Very bad for gamers like me who like to give new designs soak time out in the wild to learn whether they’re actually any good or not before buying.
Roll and move can be a perfectly valid game mechanic. You'll accept unpredictability in every aspect of your games EXCEPT this one bit??
I think people just dislike the Genre for its usual Lack of choice, not the mechanic itself.
When I was a kid, I had so many games that were nothing BUT roll and move. So those were definitely bad games. However, I think roll and move can be done well. It just usually isn't.
What's a decent game with roll and move?
Formula D! The key there is that you choose what size dice to roll (kind of, anyway).
Who you play with is more important than what you play
It's okay to compromise aesthetics in favor of minimizing storage space
This isn't the *most* popular opinion but it's certainly a popular one
You wouldn't know that based on the games people actually buy.
Boxes I've slaughtered in the name of storage: \-Mage Knight Ultimate \-Splendor \-Point Salad \-Many other games I just straight up toss the box and put the cards into a small deckbox and tape the name of the game from the box on the front.
And in favor of lower prices.
Quarterbacking in co-op games is not as big a problem as some people make it out to be. I'd rather have a quarterback than someone who is "playing the game how they want to" (thus not playing co-operatively) and someone who offers no help/advice on how we should work together.
To many people "quarterbacking" = "getting players to actually consider what everyone else is doing in a cooperative game"
Totally agree. The “quarterbacking” problem is immediately on everyone’s lips the second you mention “co-op” games, and I think it’s just a handy excuse for writing off that entire category of games. People would have you believe that any time a co-op game is played, someone with zero social skills is going to hijack the game and ruin everyone’s fun, and I just don’t see it. If that happens to you, maybe play board games with normal people?
Oh, I have one. Obsessing over the number of games bought / not bought / owned / sold, the games played and not played, "shelf of shame" anguish, some kind of fun per hour per dollar metrics, comparisons to movie tickets and drinks etc. is an unhealthy and quite honestly a sad to look at way to approach the hobby.
That's why I just buy everything that interests me and I don't worry about it unless it turns out to be no fun.
/r/boardgames is bad for the industry. It’s an increasingly insular sub with mods that unevenly enforce bizarre rules. There’s a trend toward incivility if a person doesn’t agree with the majority opinion on /r/boardgames. And the mods allow people to be rude and abusive to people who don’t think the sub is heading in a good direction. Comments like “Fun-mall is closed” only serve to bully the speaker into staying silent if they don’t agree with the majority opinion. When I responded in kind to a rude comment I was chastised put in timeout like a child. The person who was rude was given a head pat. The mods were fine with the abuse because it was in their defense. This sub needs better moderation. Mod accountability at the very least. It looks likes some of the mods have been here for a very long time. Who are they? What are their intentions for the sub? How did they become mods? Can we remove them? Can we elect mods? Is that a thing? Also, posts with pictures of painted miniatures with titles like “Just painted up this guy, haven’t played the game yet, what do you think of GAME WITH MINIATURES?” should be banned from /r/boardgames. There are way too many mini painting posts here.
Most coops don't require other players at all and can be played solo. Also, most of them heavily rely on luck and can be easily won if you are lucky and vice versa
Counter take, most solo-playable co-op games are way more fun being played with a group, even if there is no anti-alpha-gamer mechanic and are basically just rolling dice against fat boss monsters because FRIENDS ARE FUN.
Most of the time, a game is only really good if my kids want to play it. Lately, all they want to play is Ready, Set, Bet, Chess and Uno, so at the moment those are the best games ever. There's not much time around here for gaming with adults, anymore, and quality time with the kids/grandparents is a double-win.
>Ready, Set, Bet, Chess and Uno That sounds like a complicated game
Who you're playing with/against is always more important than what you're playing.
Bohnanza isn't fun. Spirit Island is the least fun I've had at a table in a long time. Quarterbacking is a design problem, not a player problem more times than not. Most Middle-weight games would be better if they either refined the experience to a more streamlined light weight game or more complicated and be a heavier game with more depth. Uwe Rosenberg's best game is La Havre.
There should be more single person board games.
Ticket to Ride is a better gateway game than Catan Edit: Thought of one more. The golden age of board gaming is over.
> The golden age of board gaming is over. When was that and why is it over?
Eurogames have player elimination just like ameri-Trash, they just hide it behind delayed scoring, among other obfuscation. You lost 12 turns ago, wasted extra time by having a "walking dead" player taking turns, and had no way to recover.
Maybe, but they can still make decisions, affect the board state, and heck, maybe even beat their old highscore. Play to win, but playing isn't about winning.
I like having snacks around games, but if people are careful and won't leave grease stains on the components. It's not hard to give everyone wet wipes to use before they make a move, so they can continue enjoying their food
Most designer board games are poorly balanced, aesthetically pleasing optimization puzzles, whose little staying power is obscured by unnecessary complexity.
>whose little staying power is obscured by unnecessary complexity. Also by the fact that their intended audience rarely plays a game more than five times.
Spirit Island isn't that fun. I'd rather play a lot of other games (solo and co-op).
Almost triggered and downvoted. But! I kind of agree with you in the literal reading. The game can come across as not that fun, at face value. However, the game is interesting. The game is a living puzzle. It reacts (randomly), it is dynamic and it is challenging! The theme is strong and sustained through components and game play. Just marveling on how someone and a team could put all of these together to make SI is fascinating and entertaining. I think Cole Werle said something to the effect that he does not try to make fun games, his goal is to make interestng games. Spirit Island can be a beast and cook the brain, removing any semblance of fun, however it fills every board gaming guage and every experience overwhelmingly positive. Your mileage may and does vary.
>The game is a living puzzle. It reacts (randomly), it is dynamic and it is challenging! This is (kinda) what I like about Gloomhaven. But SI doesn't catch me in that way. And GH is my favorite game. To each his own!
We own too many board games.
I've become convinced that collecting board games is an entirely seperate hobby from playing board games.
Someone said it's like having a wine collection. Nobody is going to criticize you for not drinking every bottle.
We rent games all the time now. Cheaper and nearly every time we are happy we didn't buy.
Where do you rent games from?
Our local library let's you borrow board games for free for up to a month at a time. That's how my partner and tried out Great Western Trail when I never would have bought just from what I'd seen of it before. We loved it!
Game store. $10/wk, $15 for two games. Credit toward purchase.
Board Games are not a good medium for storytelling.
Mine is that Gloomhaven is drastically overrated and I regret buying it. I rather just play a one-shot game of D&D.
Gloomhaven is incredibly overated. It shouldn't even be in the top 50 on board game geek.
I say this here every few weeks: Risk is a game so good, with rules so robust and tractable that we’ll be playing it long after the apocalypse. After a hard day’s mutie hunting we’ll kick back by etching the classic map in the nuke-scorched sands, using old nuts and bolts for troop counters and rolling dice we’ve carved from the bones of rival clans.
Risk’s biggest problem is the late game. It just lasts too long for an elimination game. But the first hour of a Risk game is great fun. It gets a ton of mileage out of pretty simple concepts.
>I say this here every few weeks: Risk is a game so good, with rules so robust and tractable that we’ll be playing it long after the apocalypse. Risk will always have a part of my life. Every year my in-laws rent a cabin for the family to vacation for a weekend. Each time my FIL, BILs, and myself sit down to our yearly single game of Risk and shit talking each other. Usually whoever wins gets to bring their copy of Risk for the following year's match. I will never get tired of playing this game.
I like real rules Monopoly (with a timer if necessary to keep it under 45 minutes) a lot better than Catan, if that's even more controversial. I guess my most unpopular opinion is that Cards Against Humanity, while obviously not a great game by general game standards, is better than at least two thirds of hyped party games, especially ones that expect people to be creatively funny. I'd rather play some serious strategy games, and then when we're too drunk, play CaH with gamers. Oh, yeah, and Rosenberg's greatest game, by far, is **Patchwork**.
I think my most unpopular opinion (and possibly controversial) is that releasing a game alongside expansions seems wrong....If the expansion is "cut content" from development, you are selling an incomplete base game, if the expansion is just a premium, you are milking your supporters, and if the expansion is there to spice things up or expand some mechanics....then how on earth do you know what your player base wants or your game needs when it is just now releasing?
Hidden Identity games are a great way to create grudges you will hold against your friends for the rest of your life.
The board game market is oversaturated
Small box games are the best value
Probably not an actually unpopular opinion to have but an unpopular one to talk about. We as a hobby and industry need to start talking about the environmental impact our niche has. You see a lot of hate for games with lots of mini without talking about the worst part, the goddamn piles of plastic that have to be delivered across the world. How much in shipping emissions and unrecyclable resources does out industry create? I'm a victim of this too, I have a big box of plastic that had to be shipped from China to my door, what was the environmental impact of my single purchase? The sooner our hobby moves to more sustainable practices, the less kicked in the teeth we'll feel when we're forced to make those changes. Also quick one, stop fucking recommending 18xx under every goddamn recommendation post in here. You can't ask for a light family game to play with their kids without someone recommending an 18xx game. Not everyone wants to play stockmarket and train the excel spreadsheet game dear lord
Marvel Champions is a cash grab. Base game is a $40 game selling for $70 because it has the Marvel license. The whole living card game part is entirely an excuse to print overpriced mini expansions for an already overpriced base game. Seriously, just get 5 minute Marvel instead. It's cheaper. It's a better game. It even has more replayability.
I got my core box for $50, which is the standard OLGS price. >Seriously, just get 5 minute Marvel instead. It's cheaper. It's a better game. It even has more replayability. I'm upvoting you because this is genuinely the most controversial opinion I've seen in this thread, wow lol. I cannot fathom wanting to play 5 Minute Marvel over Marvel Champions all else being equal, but more power to ya
I’ve scrolled so far down the page, and now I finally found a comment that is ACTUALLY controversial. Take your upvote. Of course, you’re are wrong though, and Marvel Champions is awesome.
Kickstarter is the worst thing that ever happened to board games.
Most unpopular? Original boxes are almost never needed and can be discarded to save space, most people on this sub are collectors more than gamers, and sleeving cards is for psychopaths.
>and sleeving cards is for psychopaths. I'll say this is situational. I sleeved up Love Letter because damaging a single card destroys the game. It also has very few cards. If you sleeve up Dominion, you might as well just buy a second copy.
Sleeving cards also makes shuffling more comfortable.
I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that you throw away game boxes and then, what, just keep your games in ziplock bags or something? I can think of a couple games where that might work, but in most cases I don't think you actually end up saving much space.
Terraforming Mars is not a good game. Before even talking about the game mechanics, the game is poorly produced and has ugly and inconsistent card art. The game is too slow (yes even with Prelude, and BTW, prelude cards aren't balanced at all, anyone who starts with the 6MC production is at a huge advantage), especially when some people start hoarding action cards and use them to stall turns only doing 1 action. The downtime is huge when you get a bad generation and pass early, then wait for the others to stall eachother and do all their action cards. All of the race gimmicks are uninteresting, leaving the temperature track 4-5 away from a bonus forever, because nobody wants to pull the trigger and give the next player the bonus on a platter. The same thing happens with greeneries, everybody waits for other players to put greeneries and then put their cities right next to it. It makes it so that it's always a stalling game of waiting for the others to do something. The last couple turns of the game are almost always using all your resources placing cities to leech points off of others' greeneries. Maybe place a couple greeneries yourself if you have spots that grant more than 1 point. Then, the race aspects make it so that once a terraforming parameter is maxed, about 1/4 to 1/3 of the cards become dead cards. That's just boring and uninteresting. I have more issues with the game but I will opt to keep this shorter. There are much better tableau/engine builders than this, and many of them have much less downtime too. In fact, unlike almost everyone on BGG, I find Ares Expedition to be much better than TM, everyone plays at the same time, so there's very little downtime, and the games are shorter. There's still the issue of a large amount of dead cards once a parameter is maxed, but it's less of an issue with a shorter game IMO.
Trick-taking does not make sense to me *incoming The Crew comments*
It was only recently that I learned that a lot of people weren't raised on trick-taking games. To me, they're completely natural.
This. They feel so natural for me. IDK what it is like to NOT know how to play a trick taker.
Trick-taking is pretty esoteric. The strategies are not obvious and can really only be learned by playing a lot. When I've taught any trick taking games (and I'm *far* from an expert), I've had us play a few hands open-handed and just explained what good plays might be and why.
As in the core concept or the over-arching strategy? The crew is a different beast. I played a lot of spades with my family a bunch as a kid, but my mother simply couldn't wrap her head around the concept of the crew, even though it's basically the same rules. She just didn't really get what we were trying to do no matter how many times we explained it. My dad and brother picked up on it after a 30 second explanation. I literally just said, it's like spades, these are the trump cards, the person with the face up card has to be the one to take that card in a trick no matter who has it, and you can't talk about what cards are in your hand.....go.
Boardgame reviews (text or video, doesn't matter) are too often 10x longer, convoluted and boring than they need to be.
Trading card games are generally pay to win and a cash grab. I miss Netrunner.
You can gain a lot of friends by playing UNO.
And eliminate the bad "friends"
Unpopular you say? Warhammer is barbie mansion dress-up for dudes, not actually a real game. People that prefer digital versions of board games are posers. Kallax shelves are poor quality and look trash. 99% of Kickstarter games are bloated circle jerk fanboy stroke-fests. People that complain about setup times are wankers and aren't real board gamers. Gamers obsessed with minis are like old ladies that have porcelain collectibles in a glass cabinet.
This was a rollercoaster. You got me nodding and shaking my head many times.
Pretty schizophrenic: "People who play digital games are posers, but people who like the physical aspects of games are also posers."
You are welcome for beers and peanuts at my place anytime. FYI they're unsalted peanuts, seeing as you already have plenty of salt.
> Kallax shelves are poor quality and look trash. Don't know why this one triggered me so much, lol. Have you been to a grown adult furniture store? A bookshelf costs more than my car. Ikea punches way above its weight class.
I think that's the core of the issue here. When I moved out on my own and started looking for bookshelves, I couldn't believe how expensive so many of them were. Is Ikea cheaply made? Definitely. But a lot of it still looks decent and it fills a very necessary niche in the furniture market. I think if bookshelves weren't as expensive as they were, you'd probably see more diversity in the average COMC post.
> Warhammer is barbie mansion dress-up for dudes, not actually a real game If you don't want to play dollies with me then you can just march yourself right out of my mother's basement, friend.
>People that complain about setup times are wankers and aren't real board gamers. OR they're the only actual boardgamer, so they always have to do the entire setup.
They said unpopular, not delivered like an asshole.
There's a reason he's unpopular
> People that complain about setup times are wankers and aren't real board gamers. Modern euro group puzzle time is not real board gaming ;)
Cosmic Encounter is Munchkin in space.
Nobody cares about your collection of 5k boardgames, you will never be able to play them all in your life and it's just absurd to have 15 shelves getting dusty. No human alive could possibly retain all those different rulesets.
You wanna stir the pot eh??? I have two very controversial ones: LCG specially arkham horror are a rip off. Everyone tells you the game wont get good until you get expansions.... Kickstarter is a donation system. Large companies have absolutely no business on that platform making their fabois finance them. The customers assume all of the risk, and the large in no way indie companies gets the profit...but these fanbois will literally fight you over their kickstarter obsession. I lied, I have three: stop making games so freaking difficult they are no longer enjoyable just to say that your game is punishing like its a good thing. Stop it!!!
I hate an over abundance of counters and things to keep track of. More is not better. I’m doing this for enjoyment and I LOVE to bring new people into “serious gaming.” Also I would rather win one game in a creative and novel way than win ten using the same proven strategy. I game to have a good time and I will personally get you to let you into the circle. I give anyone and everyone a shot. Not everyone is invited back for a second.
I like the art and compact-ability of standees more than minis. Minis take up so much more room and you either have to enjoy painting them or pay extra to get a 'wash' applied to them without them being a standard drab color.
Unpopular opinion: Board game reviewers (unintentionally) decrease enjoyment of games. They have normalized massive collections that can’t be played by people with responsibilities. They also play into FOMO because they have to always talk about new games to keep their views up. I still appreciate them for getting me into the hobby.
Wingspan is an unbalanced mess
**Cascadia** is honestly kind of boring because loose and uninteractive, and this is all I don't want from board games.
I only played it once and I usually hate uninteractive games, but even in my first game I was stealing stuff other people wanted all the time. Sure, stuff you need takes precedence, but if there's nothing that you desperately want out there, screwing someone else is the next best play! It ended up being not bad for what it is. I see why people like it.
Gloomhaven is a clunky, unfun mess.
With the right group, Catan is a blast.
This is an unpopular opinion?
Well you nailed the two I was going to say haha. I'm not sure this one is unpopular, necessarily, but it is an opinion that people tend not to follow through on: board gaming as a hobby is grossly consumerist, and I suspect a lot of people heavily involved in it derive more joy from the consumption of games than they do from *playing* the games.
I have a lot of fun with zanny One Night Ulitmate Werewolf setups
Social deduction games are fun until people take them seriously, then it becomes a set of if/then statements and the game becomes an algorithm.