Lost Ruins of Arnak
Holiday Lists Table Top

Holiday List – Medium Games

We did our list of games that are nice for those more casual gaming times but you still want to play a game. And I like a lot of the Welcoming Games quite a lot, which you can find here. Medium Games are kind of the step up, the ones that have a few more rules and more going on. And I think that’s where board games are their strongest with the medium games. So which ones make my recommendations for the holidays.

Medium Games

Meadow

Meadow is amazing nature game, but for being a cute game it’s actually very thinky. It’s about building up a meadow with different animals building out kind of an ecosystem and building it up. But compared to Ecosystem which was on the welcoming list, Meadow is a more complex game. And a lot of that comes from how you get the cards to build up.

Meadow uses a four by four grid of cards that you get to take from. But to take one, you need to place a marker at the edge of the board. And once a marker is placed there, no other one can be placed. So it’s possible that the one card you really need isn’t going to be available to you, if you don’t plan out your moves or other people move into the wrong spot.

Then it’s all about layering the cards to get up to scenes and score. But it’s really about balancing the picking of your different cards to add to your hand and how efficiently you can build up to point scoring cards. Plus there are a few extra powers or actions to take that can really change up what you’re doing or giving you flexibility. The game play is simple that way, but can cause turn angst as you try and find the best play.

Ascension

There are two deck building games on this part of the list. Ascension is the easier one. Ascension is what I’d call a pure deck building game. You score points for adding cards to your deck or defeating monsters, but all you’re doing is playing out cards from your deck and adding in more of them.

It is a game about combos and that is another part I like about the game, but part of what pushes it past just being a good welcoming game. Plus the artwork is not the best, but that’s a side point. The game really shines as you start to know how it works as well because turns become fast in terms of knowing the cards. But they can still take a bit if they end with a lot of card draw and combos, which it should.

Ascension is on the lighter side of medium weight. But for people getting into the hobby it’s going to seem different and there is going to be a learning curve. And if you mix in a lot of the expansions or pick any of the standalone expansion boxes to just play with, it can cause more complexity as well.

Sagrada Box
Image Source: Amazon

Sagrada

Another one on the lighter side of medium weight games is Sagrada. Sagrada is a die drafting game of making a stained glass window. This one again could fall into the simple games or welcoming games. There are a few elements that can add to the complexity of the games.

The main mechanisms of the game are simple, though. You pick a die and you place it on your board adjacent to another placed die. There are rules, though that you can’t have it adjacent to the same number of the same color. That’s not that hard to avoid, except that some of the spots need to be specific numbers and colors. So now that becomes more of a puzzle to figure out.

The more complex side of things is that there are some powers that you can activate. Those powers let you break the rules, some of them are pretty simple. You might draft two dice in a row, that one is easy to understand. But moving two dice of the same color or breaking placement rules around number of color placement rules. But in the simplest terms, this is dice drafting game that people will pick-up easily.

Clank! In! Space!

The other deck building game is definitely a heavier medium game. Clank! In! Space! isn’t just a deck building game, it’s also a push your luck game as you try and get an artifact that’s worth the most points and get out.

I really like that Clank! In! Space!, and I could have picked other deck builders, offer a deck building plus experience. It actually has a board, it’s not just cards that you’re building up. And you use those cards to navigate the board because some of them have movement. You also need to deal with guards and be able to attack them which is also on your cards.

Of course, all of this you’re trying to do while avoiding making noise, your clank. Because you make noise and the boss, Lord Eradikus gets activated, he’s going to to start dealing damage and try and take you out before you can escape. Because you only can win if you make it back to the cargo bay before you’re knocked out. If you don’t, well, you risked too much. So there is a nice balance of that push your luck for more points, but not too much.

Lost Ruins of Arnak

I need to have a worker placement on the list, it’s one of the most common types of games. And I think there are a lot of good games in the worker placement mechanism that make for fun medium games. Lost Ruins of Arnak is about exploring jungle, working your way up a research track and a lot of fun elements to it like that.

The main mechanisms int he game are actually two fold. There is the worker placement where you go out and gather resources to either be able to go and explore or go up the research track. Otherwise you are also buying cards and building a little deck of cards. So there is deck building in there as well. It’s not like a big deck building game where you end up with a ton of cards, but the cards you do get help power your other actions or get more resources.

I think that the Expedition Leaders is almost a needed expansion for Lost Ruins of Arnak, though. Why, because it makes you a bit more unique. Each leader has something special that they do with their camp. IT adds a bit more variety to the game and a bit more complexity. If you want to work up to it, I think it’s a great option to add in, but for me, I played it without and wanted a bit more but with it, it’s one of my favorite games.

Arkham Horror LCG
Image Source: Fantasy Flight

Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Finally we need some sort of story and thematic game on the list. Arkham Horror: The Card Game is going to be that. This is a card driven story game where you are an investigator in Arkham or another New England coastal town where there are cultists and old ones and plenty for you to deal with and hopefully not go insane from.

And it is really just a card game. Though there are a few tokens for resources and then for when you do a challenge. But with the cards they manage to create a good variety of locations and investigators and story that you play through. And it is a bit of a campaign as well, though it tends to be arcs that you can play through that go quickly. It isn’t a thirty session campaign, it might be six.

Each investigator is going to be a bit different as well. Some of them are honestly not that good at investigating. But that is okay, they are good at dealing with the monsters and horrors that are going to try and take you out. You need that balance of characters as you play and it makes for a fun deck construction as you try and bolster what your character is good at and upgrade them to make future challenges easier.

Final Thoughts

There are so many games that I could put in this section. Games like Ra is great. Aeon’s End and XenoShyft are great deck building options. Dwellings of Eldervale and Asking for Trobils would be other worker placement. There is a ton, like I said, that I can pick.

For me, I really like this weight or type of game because they are pretty easy to learn but have a lot of decisions. Some might consider those light, and we’ll get to heavier games. But I like that combination, especially to bring in people who I’ve gotten into gaming.

If you’re looking to dive into more and deeper games, which one looks the most interesting to you or do you want to try?

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