Top 42 Part 1 (42-36)

I've been thinking about doing a Top n list of games for awhile now. My first thought was 100, but I realized I didn't really like the tail end games, so that wasn't going to work.  Then I thought 50 would be a  nice even number, but that's a little too plain.  So I give to you a Top 42 in honor of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxay.  I'll run my list in 6 weeks of 7 game segments, so be sure to come back every week for the new list

#42 Sorry Sliders
Sorry Sliders is a neat little dexterity game.  There isn't a lot of strategy, and ultimately it comes down to how well you can slide your sliders, but it's a fun game.  It's quick to play and easy to teach, making it a game I can play with just about anyone.  Not my typical fare, but still a fun game every so often.

#41 No Thanks!
No Thanks is a filler card game.  Each turn there a numbered card gets flipped over, and you have to either place a chip on it to pass, or take the card with all the chips.  Your goal is to get the least amount of points, but all cards count positive.  The trick is in a run of cards, only your lowest counts against you, and then all chips help lower your score.  The downside is you never know if the card you need to bridge your run is even in the game, since some cards are randomly removed.  All in all a fun filler game which I enjoy, but not something I play all the time.

#40 Blokus
Blokus is a puzzle game where you're trying to get all your pieces on the board, and stop your opponents from doing the same.  The board is large enough for everyone to do this easily, except for the rule that you have to only touch a diagonal edge with your own pieces, you can never go adjacent to any of them.  This causes players to expand quickly, so they have the most room possible for tricky pieces.  I really like the puzzle aspect of the game, but I don't play it much, else it would be higher on my list.

#39 Mystery Express
Mystery Express is a deduction game in the ilk of Clue.  I love logic puzzles, but Mystery Express is far more than that.  It's not about figuring out what thing is missing, it's about finding the thing that only has 1 copy instead of 2.  This distinction adds a lot more mystery to the game, since in order to rule something out you have to see both copies in the same turn, because cards get passed around between players.  I've rarely won this game, but I always have fun playing it.  It takes a little long for what it is, but all of those turns matter for trying to figure everything out.  It's another one I don't play as often as I'd like, but it's a great alternative to clue, and a fun way to spend an evening solving a murder.

#38 Say Anything
Say Anything is a party game which is best described as free-form Apples to Apples.  The "judge" asks a question, then everyone writes down their answer.  The judge then secretly selects the winning answer and all players place bets on which one the judge chose.  Points are then awarded based on guessing the judge's choice, as well as having other players guess your card.  I prefer this over Apples to Apples, because the limitation is in the player's creativity.  There are also more ways to score points, and clearly defined guidelines, whereas Apples can lead to judges choosing cards for all the wrong reasons.

#37 Give Me the Brain!
You're a zombie working in a fastfood restaurant.  You have one combined brain. Let the hilarity commence.  With cards like "Is this meat vegetarian? Uh you mean did the cow eat meat?" and "I need the brain, my hand is locked in the safe" It's just a fun mess.  Sure, the game has balance problems, and too many ways for you to have no chance to win, but that's ok, it's fairly quick.  This isn't a strategy game, but it's something you can play at a party, or that Zombie theme night you've always wanted to throw, and people will have a good time.

#36 Colossal Arena
Colossal Arena involves controlling monsters, playing cards to support them in combat, and a fight to the near death.  Ultimately, it's a betting game, but you have a fair amount of influence over the various creatures.  If you have the most invested in a creature, then you are it's "backer" meaning you get to use it's special power when you play a fight card to support its survival.  This continues until every creature has a fight card and a single creature has the lowest value (range 0-10).  The problem I have with the game is that public bets allow for one player to be targeted by the others.  The other issue is how the game ends.  You either have 3 creatures left, or you run the draw deck. The draw deck tends to run out far too quickly in a 4 or 5 player game, which means the true end only happens in a 3 player game. Just know going in, great 3 player game, ok 4 player game, not the best 5 player game.  I do enjoy the various creature powers, but the game does become samey after a bit.

I'm Going to Warfare Your Planets

Detail on the two bigger ships

Eminent Domain

• Designed by Seth Jaffee
• Published by Tasty Minstrel Games
• For 2-4 players
• Plays in 30-60 minutes, or roughly 15 per player

Overview

Eminent Domain was the first game that got me on the Kickstarter bandwagon.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Kickstarter, the basic idea is that a person/company puts up a project and offers various funding levels for the public.  If the project is successfully funded the backers get charged and eventually get their product.  If it isn’t funded, then no money is charged.  I’m a subscriber to the TMG newsletter, so that alerted me to the project.  My first reaction of Em-Do was that it was just another deckbuilder, this time set in space.  It still looked interesting, and there was more to the game, so I decided to fund it.  It took awhile to get the game, roughly 9 months after funding, but it was well worth it.  The game offers a bevy of strategies, and a lot of choice for each player.

A pile of ships destined for great warfare

Components  

I was pleasantly surprised by the component quality.  The cards are excellent quality, the wood tokens are solid, but the warfare ships are amazing.  I’ve actually considered using them for painting practice, since there are so many, but I’ve yet to get there.  This game doesn’t have a lot of components, but what is has are great quality, and they get big credit for having plastic ships when they could have just done warfare counters.  Em-Do gets a 10 for functionally, a 6 for amount, and an 8.5 overall in components.

Game Mechanics

The mechanics of Eminent Domain are fairly simple to someone who’s played other deckbuilding games.  On your turn you may take an action, which is playing a card from your hand for it’s effect.  After your action, you take a role card from the center, and you may “kick” it with like cards from your hand.  Then each of your opponents may take the same action without the leader bonus, or they may dissent, and by dissenting they draw 1 card from their deck into their hand.  

The different types of actions and roles are fairly straightforward, but deciding what the best one is at any point creates a strategy that trumps Dominion.  There’s also a very interesting take on technology in Em-Do.  What you can research depends on the planets you control, and once one player takes a specific thing, no one else can get that.  There are also 3 technology levels. The first consists of improved versions of the standard actions There are also 4 versions of each one, so these don’t run out.  The second start to do unique things, with one acting as a permanent tech that stays in front of you rather than cycling through your deck.  Level 2 are also worth 2 points a piece.  Level 3 techs are all permanent and are worth 5 points.  There’s only 1 in each of the 3 research branches, and offer the user rather game changing benefits, such as drawing 2 cards when dissenting as opposed to just 1.

I had 4 "advance" planets, at least 3 produced resources

All in all, very interesting mechanics, and a lot to explore still for me. A very solid 9/10.

Player Interaction

There’s no direct interaction in Eminent Domain, rather the designer opted for a more subtle route.  The ability to anticipate your opponent’s role and follow or dissent accordingly is very intriguing, though when you play with the same people, you start to notice tendencies, and plan accordingly. 

9/10 for taking the subtle approach, but it would be nice to affect what someone else does in their empire.

Theme

Eminent Domain takes place in space and I suppose you can read more into things. You play a galactic ruler, deciding between warfare and colonization of planets.  You can survey new worlds, produce and trade resources or pursue technology, but don’t get fooled into thinking that Em-Do is a space civilization game.  You could peel off the space theme, change some names around, and you’d still have the same game.  For me the theme here isn’t that important, nor does it shine through.  

A “meh” 4/10 in theme for me.

Some of the different role cards

Learning Curve 

I’m going to give two cases for a learning curve here.

If you’ve never played a deckbuilding game, it’s a Moderate learning curve.

If you have played a decbuilding game, it’s a Short-Moderate learning curve.

Both ways you probably need a game to understand why things work the way they do, but you may catch on earlier depending on your teacher. 

Why I like this game

I like Eminent Domain because the gameplay is straightforward, yet I always have choices to make on my turn.  I’ve also played almost all close games, usually 1st and 2nd within 3 points of each other, and to me close games make things more fun.  

Why I don't like this game

I already talked about theme, but that doesn’t really bother me.  The main aspect I don’t like is how the game feels the same most of the time.  There isn’t tons, aside from technology, that make the game feel different from play to play.  Sure, different planets do different things, but that’s not going to last forever.  

My Empire with resources, and 3 permanent technologies

Replayability

There are a lot of different victory paths to explore in this game. You have to choose how to turn over planets, either warfare or colonization.  Both have merits, and it’s hard to do just one exclusively.  The other thing is how much technology do you pursue?  Tech will help you do different things, but alone it won’t win you the game.  The thing I’ve noticed lately is how useful a produce/trade strategy is.  It rarely depends on other players, but it can be helped immensely if someone works with you on that route.  

All that being said, I fear how long Em-Do will be interesting.  I think they need an expansion to increase the tech options, and maybe add in a new action/role card.  I like the game, but I want more from it.

Overall

It’s a fun game. I like playing it, and I love how 3 or 4 of us can all take different paths to victory and end up really close to one another.  It proves the game is balanced and we all enjoy it.  It’s enjoyable to try new things.  I’ve yet to explore all the technology cards, but I’ve made good use out of some I never thought I would play.  

Overall I give Eminent Domain an 8.5/10 with the caveat that given an expansion, this could jump to a 10.

Will you like this game?

If you enjoy deckbuilding games, this is one of the better ones out there.  Also, if you’re looking for a quick 2-player game with a lot of options, this is probably a good bet.  It’s hard for me to explain why I like this game so much.  I think it did what I wanted Race for the Galaxy to do, and it was easy to pick up and play.  Maybe it was the months of anticipation with Kickstarter, or maybe it’s having my name in the rulebook.  All in all, it’s just a fun game.

Each Planet has a warfare cost (ships)
and a colonize cost(colonize cards under planet)
If you complete one, you can take it over for an action

Amusing Story about a Gameplay

The first time we played with 4 players the final scores were along the lines of 32-31-30-30.  Right then, I knew we’d play a lot of games, since we have nothing else that gives us tight games.  Also, there’s nothing like using a tech to score 12 points on your last turn, ending the game, and then losing by a single point.  I was out of it all game, and to be that close to a win was a great personal triumph.  

Final Thought

Thank-you Seth Jaffee and TMG for creating an in game start player method.  Saying something like “players choose a method that they all agree on” is just a cop-out.  Putting first player on one player aid while the others were blank was just brilliant, so thank-you for that.

(All photos are taken by the writer and part of actual gameplay)

Want to buy Eminent Domain and support BoBG?

Contest Update

I've shortened what you need to do to enter the Say Anything Contest.  It's now just an e-mail and two little things, which should take you all of 2 minutes.

You have until the end of January to enter for a free game, so give it a go, and also look and various articles for extra entries.

All the info you need is on the Contest page which you can find at the top of the page.

Happy contesting!

Mousetrap - It's a game? And a Bonus Review

Mousetrap: Part game, part construction project.  When you boil down Mousetrap, you end up with a simple roll and move game, which is typical of most games in this series, but there's a bit more than that here.  The fun part for most people was the creation of the full mouse trap, and watching something you built function.  I think as a child, I probably played the actual game twice.  I wanted to play by the full rules, I really did, but building and triggering the trap was always more fun.

I think Mousetrap is ultimately judged on the toy factor.  It's a fairly simple game, with little choice, but it's a pretty fun toy.  So, the question becomes how to make Mousetrap better.  My answer, don't try.  Play it as a toy, let the kids have fun with it, and when they're looking for better games, go elsewhere.

It's probably a cop-out to recommend the Adventurers again as a next step game but I think it works.  You have a fair amount of the toy factor, but Adventurers combines the toys with a decent game.


BONKERS or SCORE!
Since that was relatively short, I'll give you a bonus micro review.
It's a Milton Bradley game from the 1978 called This Game is Bonkers or Bonkers for short.  The object of the game is to get 12 scores, the first one to do this wins the game.  So how do you score? There are 3 ways; 1st you can roll a 12, 2nd, you can land on the score spot, and 3rd, you can get caught in a loop.  Now, this would be very simple, and take a very long time, but whenever you land on an empty spot, you can place a tile that tells you how to move.  At first, this takes awhile, but eventually there are combos that lead you to scores.  Also, if you land on a spot that someone else occupies, you get to roll again.  This goes on until you land on an empty space after you've placed a tile, or until you "Go to Lose!"  Every player is also given a token that allows them to send another player to Lose.  Now, the fun part of this game is yelling "SCORE!" whenever someone scores a point, and sympathizing when someone goes to "LOSE."

Now, is this a great strategic game? No, not at all,  But, it's a great way to start or end a game night.  I know it's not in production anymore, but there are ebay copies, as well as thrift store and garage sale possibilities.  It's a fun game with numbers, and if you approach to have fun rather than to win, you'll be glad you played it.

Also remember, it's the people that make things fun, appreciate those people who play games.

Sodoku

I like to think of Sodoku as the Mathematician's Crossword puzzle.  I was never, and probably never will be much good at crossword puzzles, but something clicked when I saw my first Sodoku puzzle.  Now, this isn't a boardgame persay, but it is a puzzle, and puzzles can be games, so hence the article.

What triggered this post for me was an article that proved that it is impossible to solve a Sodoku puzzle with only 16 clues. Proof  Now, the mathematics does get a tiny bit tricky, but I see it as more logic than math.

This brings up the idea of "solvable" games. That is, a game with limited options where the best move in any circumstance can be determined.  Checkers is an example of a solvable game.  Chess is to an extent, but there is not a complete solution as of this post (at least not one I know about).  A simple to solve game such as Checkers still holds some appeal, at least until you see the solution, but partially solvable games are where the fun happens.

Think of your favorite game. If you look at the different things going on, there are probably some things that you always see as being the best thing to do.  Other times, things are less defined.  It's a tricky balance to maintain, but I hold that it is a necessary balance.  A game with all luck will leave the victor less than satisfied and the losers complaining of bad dice rolls, or bad card draws, but a game with no luck tends to see the same person always winning, and dominant strategies emerge, which takes the fun out of the game.

Soduku has sharpened the logic of the people who solve the puzzles.  The puzzle is full of deductive reasoning, and the more you can do that, the better you'll be at some boardgames.  Sure it won't help you the next time you play Farkle, but it might help you when you play Liar's Dice.

Star Trek Fleet Captains

I got a new game on Wednesday January 18th.  I debated getting fleet captains since I first heard about it, but was turned off by the price.  I paid $80 at my local game store, MSRP is $99.95 meaning $100, and the cheapest online price I could find was $65.

So why get it at my local game store?
1, it was there, meaning I could open it today and play it this weekend rather than sometime next week.
2, good to support the local store when I can.
3, I had a $20 gift card, so it was like paying $60, making it the cheapest option to me.

Now, I've yet to play it, so I won't talk about the gameplay or do an official review, so my first video will have to suffice.

Come back later for a full review, which will come after I play it.

Replayability

One of the key factors I look for in a game is replayability, or the ability for the game to be interesting over repeated plays.  The subject is very subjective, because what defines interesting, and what defines repeated?  I have to address the matters in a personal way, so my biases will not only creep in, but this article will be oozing with personal bias.

First some definitions.  Interesting to me in a game means that the players have to figure out how to deal with each other's actions and figure out what to do in order to win.  Specifically, players can do something that gives them the element of surprise, or do something unexpected that makes others adapt.
Repeated: a desire to play more than one game within a short amount of time. I know this is still vague, so for me, with the knowledge that I play games about 3 times a month, usually for long game days on the weekends, sometimes more, sometimes less.  All of that is to say that playing a game about 10-15 times in a year is repeated.

If you take a look at my list of games played two main things stick out. First, there are a few games I have played a lot, and secondly, a lot of games I have played a few times.

Here's some of the play count list, without the game names

• 207, 189, 74, 45, 45, 37
• 32, 32, 28, 27, 23, 21

For those who know me well, it's no surprise that Cosmic Encounter and Dominion take spots 1 and 2, and there's a great reason for that; they are replayable games.  Those two are perhaps the best examples of near infinite variety. Assuming a 5 player game of Cosmic, there are currently 5,273,912,160 possibilities of alien power combinations.
And for Dominion as of the Hinterlands expansion and including the BGG promo cards (total of 157 cards) there are 6,790,908,493,212,710,000,000 which is 6 sextillion, 790 quintillion, 908 quadrillion, 493 trillion, 212 billion, 710 million possible set-ups to play, which can be doubled if you want to worry about a colony game, or no colonies.

Needless to say, neither of those numbers will ever be approached in my lifetime, yet alone in games I play.  Also, my apologizes to the non mathematically inclined, didn't mean to scare you with large numbers.  So why those two games as my top two played?  Well the answer is fairly straightforward. I like the way those games play in their simplicity (once you know what's going on), and then the things that give them variety make me want to try the different combinations.  I think the lack of changing features is an aspect of why the big name games don't do well in comparison.  There isn't a new challenge to figure out, or some new strategy to explore, it's all the same again and again.

Now, everything I've presented leads to the possibility of most games meeting the criteria.  At first I thought that might be a problem, but I realized that the great thing about hobby boardgames is that they are vastly replayable.  There are hundreds of games published each year, yet I'd wager only a fraction of them see even 10 plays.

There was a bit of an outcry over Risk Legacy, which has components for 15 game plays, and then the modifications are done.  At first this bothered me, and then I looked at how many games I had played more than 15 times.  For me, that answer is oddly enough, 15.  Now, I expect that to nearly double by the end of the year, but still, if you get 15 plays out of a $30-$40 game, that's not bad.  It comes down to $2-$3 per play for one person, which is fairly cheap entertainment.

Replayability seems to be at war with new games.  I love opening a game, learning the rules, figuring out new strategies; but I realized in writing this that the true measure of a game for me is how much I play it in the long run.  Carcassonne was the first game I ever owned, getting it back in 2007.  Back in those days I didn't log my plays, else it would be in the 15+ category, but it's a game I'm still playing today.  Same thing with Ticket to Ride, Cosmic Encounter and Pandemic, which are all games from my early days of gaming.  It may take awhile to get to 15 plays, but the good ones are worth the time.  It's also nice to play a game without having to reference the rulebook.

I hope this encourages you to pull an old favorite off the shelf and give it a play.  I did with Pandemic this past weekend, and though we lost miserably twice (getting 8/9 starting cities all in the red area is just plain rough), we were all glad we played it again.

Comment with the game you've played the most, or a few of them for an extra entry into the Say Anything Contest. And don't forget to enter the contest, you've got until the end of the month.
There's a link at the top of the page for all the details.