What is is that really can grind your gears? You get a new board game, you’re excited to play it and then, no, it’s that one thing. All of us have them, but what they are might be different for everyone. Quackalope did a video on this recently, I’ll post it down below. Five trends that need to stop in board gaming. I though, what are mine, so let’s get into my list (in no particular order).

Top 5 Board Game Pet Peeves

5. Standees

What, you don’t want grey minis in your game? Standees are better than minis because you get color, let’s go through the hierarchy here.

• Painted Minis
• Acrylic Standees
• Unpainted Minis
• Meeples
• Belly Button Lint
• Pawns
• Standees

I’m talking about those cheap cardboard standees that get jammed into a plastic stand. To store them, you probably need to take them out. Then after you’ve played the game five times the bases are ruins on the cardboard so you need to start putting them in sideways. Then you try figure out if you can play the game with Monopoly pieces, realized you got rid of your copy, and just go straight to belly button lint.

But seriously, they suck, it shows off your artwork in a bad way that looks weird because the the machine can’t cut too closely just in case it’s off slightly. So you got a bulky bit of some color around the outside edge. And yes, they do start to breakdown pretty quickly over time. So stop putting standees in your game.

What, they are the cheapest option, tells me your game is cheap. Why do I want to buy a cheap game that a company won’t put the effort into the pieces. I got no faith that you’ll put the effort into making a good game. And don’t worry, standees aren’t the only thing that tells me your game might not be good. Skip ahead to #1 and see that one as well.

4. Enough Room For Card Sleeves

Yes, I’m going to catch heat for this one. And I’m saying this a bit tongue in cheek. I don’t mind if you put room for sleeves into your box and into your storage solution. In fact, if you want to do that for the sleevers because you’re a deck building game and the cards are the game and get handled a lot, do it. But understand that not everyone sleeves.

So how do you work that balance, give me foam. You aren’t shipping the game sleeved. So all your cards are in one little part of the box. Then if you don’t sleeve the cards are rattle around in the box. That space in the box when you ship it is open, so give me foam in that space. I can cut it down to size, or better yet you’ve planned it out well and it’s about the right amount with just a little wiggle room for the cards.

If you sleeve, you throw it away. If you don’t, you keep it in. It’s the best of both worlds. And while my next one is about not wasting space, this is not a waste of space to account for that.

3. Valley of the Shadow of Death

I’m coming after you with this one Fantasy Flight Games. I love a lot of your games, but your inserts suck. So much so that I generally throw them away. And I get it, this is one I overlap with and I new the reason for this before watching the Quackalope video, you do this to make the game look bigger.

Why does a game need to look bigger? Multiple reasons. Firstly, a larger box means you can maybe sell it for me. You might still sell it cheaply, but a Ticket to Ride size box says $40, even if you don’t get as many components. Also, it stands out on a shelf. When it is a in a bigger box you won’t be as apt to gloss over it.

But make good use of that space if you need to have the larger size. Give me a workable insert, not just some cardboard padding out the side. A spot for the five minis in the game to go and the dice. A well for the tokens once I’ve punched them out. A nice spot for the card. Not some random valley in the middle of the box created by cheap cardboard.

2. No Player Aids

I can’t remember which game this came up in recently for me. I opened it up, I started looking at it, and all I could think was, why isn’t there a player aid. Planet Unknown possibly. And Planet Unknown is a pretty simple game. But it would not be hard to put out a turn order for it. And then the game has 5-10 symbols in it. That’s not a big card, give players a player aid, it won’t take up that much more space on the table.

And your player aid doesn’t need to be the greatest detail. But if you use a symbol and I need to flip to back of the rulebook to look at find that symbol, or heaven forbid in the rulebook, then get a page number and flip to that in the rulebook to get the details, that is player aid thing. And really, if your turns take more than three steps or you have more than three options on a turn, give me a player aid.

Finally, give me enough for the player count. (I remembered the game, Tiny Turbo Cars) But back on topic, if a game plays four players, four player aids. No two player aids. Yes, it might make the production a bit trickier, maybe an extra sheet per game for the cards. If that’s an issue, add more to the player aids. But with Tiny Turbo Cars and Planet Unknown, I might go see if there are player aids on Board Game Geek. That’s not the communities job to make them.

1. NSFW Expansion

If you create one of these for your game it tells me one thing in particular. You don’t have a game. Your goal is to get as close to Cards Against Humanity or whatever party game and make a million dollars. Which, let me just put this out there, you won’t. Cards Against Humanity did and more because it was the first. You are the millionth, you get $1.

But really what it tells me is that you don’t have a good design for a game. The selling point of your game isn’t the game, it’s that you have a not safe for work expansion. It’s that your game is edgy and maybe your base version you can play with grandma, but when you want to get a little edgy and spicy, let’s insult people groups we don’t like. Or make sex jokes because we’re in college. Or make fart jokes because we’re four years old.

Final Thoughts

This is a bit tongue in cheek throughout. Each of them is something that I want to see improved upon, and each of them has exceptions to the rule. Some of them are more annoying than others but easier to overlook than others because it doesn’t inform me as much about how much effort was put into the game.

At the same time, I see a ton of game companies out there creating amazing games that skip or miss all of my pet peeves. So if they can do it, why can’t more. And really, if they can do it as a retail company, it means you’re being cheap.

Yes, there is a desire to keep board games at a good price point. Yes, it can make your game more expensive or cut into your profit margin. But if you can create an experience that doesn’t have frustrations, that will grow the hobby more. A good experience is better for your bottom line and will get your more sales than you game being cheap on a shelf.

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