We’re onto the letter B now while I go through my game collection. I think it says more about how many games I have than anything when I didn’t realize I had that many games that started with B. But before I begin, if you want to see my whole collection, you can find it in the link below on Board Game Geek.

You can find my whole collection here.

Numbers

A’s

B’s

Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate

So the next one will be another game in the same family, but I wanted to keep them separate because while I like Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate and feel like it gets some things better, I prefer the other one. This one is a semi-cooperative (or fully cooperative) exploration game where you are taking Dungeons and Dragons type characters through Baldur’s Gate, a town, and exploring, finding items, omens, and events. Eventually there’ll be enough omens and a poor roll will happen and a haunt will begin. This will either be fully cooperative, 20% chance, or one person will be the traitor. The game changes to trying to stop whatever bad thing is happening to Baldur’s Gate.

Status: Played

Betrayal at House on the Hill and Legacy

This is the original, plus the newest all lumped into one section. I really need Covid to be over enough to get Betrayal Legacy to the table. But I’ve played the regular game a lot, and I really like it. It’s a janky, sometimes broken game, but I love it, because it’s a wonderful horror game that feels sometimes like a real horror film as you explore the creepy house and wait for the haunt to happen, and sometimes it feels like you’re the Scooby Gang in a bad horror movie because of how weird things are. There have been some scenarios that haven’t worked well, but most of the time people end up having fun with it, and I’m really excited to try Betrayal Legacy.

Betrayal at House on the Hill: Played
Betrayal Legacy: To Be Played

Blood Rage

This game was one of the earlier area control games that I played, Risk was the first, but most other games I had played up to that point from more modern board games weren’t area control. I love Blood Rage because it has area control, but that’s less of a thing for it. Instead, it’s all about figuring out that combo of upgrades, fighting, and quests that are going to get you the most action points and the most points overall so you can win the game. It feels like it should be a very confrontational game, but it always plays less like that and is really interesting as to what strategy you end up picking. This game also sells itself well too on the table because it just looks interesting and it looks as epic as it is. I like that it’s a game that is epic in a reasonable play time without being a campaign as well. I have the Gods of Asgard expansion that I need to play with sometime.

Status: Played

Blossoms

This is a primarily two player push your luck flower game. I picked it up because it looked simple and cute, and it definitely is that. The game you are basically pushing your luck to see how much you can grow your flowers before you cut them. The taller they are, the more points they are worth, but if you draw one of the flower types that you don’t have planted and can’t plant, then you bust and it’s the other person’s turn. So do you cut a decently tall flower or risk pushing just a bit further but also risk not cutting a flower on your turn. It’s an interesting choice that I think works well, it would work less well if the game took longer, it says 30 minutes, but I think it should go even faster than that.

Status: Played

Boomerang

This one you might have seen recently in a Point of Order. This is a draft and write game where you are drafting cards to fill in spots on your map of Australia to score points. It’s pretty standard roll and write in what it does on the sheet, but the drafting of cards means that you can be strategic, taking a card that might score someone else more points if there’s nothing that great for you. But because I just got this in, I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, of course, but it’s a roll and write style, and I tend to enjoy those a lot.

Status: To Be Played

Boss Monster: The Dungeon Building Card Game

This was a game that I originally played someone else’s copy while I was getting into the board game hobby. I liked it because it has some interesting strategy and I liked old computer games like this one portrays where you are going through a dungeon, fighting/dealing with whatever is in that room and going onto the next one. This is a twist on that in board game form, and one where you aren’t the heroes, but you’re the boss monster at the end of the row trying to create a dungeon that can do enough damage to take out heroes. My one knock on this game and that keeps it from being played that often is that it has “take that” elements to it. By that I mean that you might have something planned that’ll work out well for you and I can with a card just be like, “nope, not happening” and I might get more cards like that than you do or I might play them all on you so it doesn’t seem as fun. But one thing I really do like is that you are attracting different types of heroes, and the person who has the most of a symbol in their dungeon gets that type of hero, and you know which heroes are coming. But you might not be able to defeat that hero and too many wounds, you die and are out of the game. So you kind of have to get into the head of your opponents at times and create ties so that you don’t take damage.

Status: Played

Brew Crafters; Travel Card Game

I honestly don’t know a ton about this one, but I do want to play it. It was given to me as a gift, and it just hasn’t gotten to the table yet. But it’s about brewing beer and as a fan of both brewing and drinking beer, I am interested in the theme. It looks like it should be a fun little game, but I need to get it to the table.

Status: To Be Played

Bring Your Own Book

This was a game that Kickstartered pretty early on, I think it might have been game 3-4 that I backed. It is a party game where there’s a person who is “it” like in most party games who is going to pick their favorite. Everyone else brings (picks) a book to use. The person who is it reads a prompt and then everyone else has some time to dig through their book and try and find a sentence or part of a sentence for the response. There’s a limited amount of time, and who knows what book you decided to bring, so sometimes you can find the perfect thing, or thematic thing, and sometimes it is a dry bit of technical reading that is hilarious. This game suffers like the Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity types that you need to know your audience. How do I tailor my response for the person who is it. But like Stipulations, which I enjoy, this game changes, you might will eventually see the same prompts, but a line from a fantasy book versus a biography, versus a D&D adventure book versus a technical manual, those are all going to be really different.

As always, the two questions, which is your favorite from the B’s, and what, based off of this and my previous part of the list, should I look at getting or playing for the letter B?

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