How To Play Tikal

In Tikal you want to get the most points. You get points for having treasures and majority at temple locations on scoring rounds. At the end of the game once all players take a scoring round the player with the most points is the winner of the game.

Two Part Turn

Turns are split into two parts, though the second part is where the majority of the turn is. So let’s talk quickly about that first part. On your turn the first thing you do is place a tile. It must be connected to another tile and accessible. To be accessible there must be a stone connection to another tile. If you draw a volcano you do a scoring round which we will talk about in the next section.

Once you place a tile you are able to do up to 10 action points of actions. The different actions cost different action points. I won’t go through all of them, just some highlighted ones.

• Place a worker
• Move a worker paying action points for stones that you cross
• Uncover part of a pyramid
• Find a treasure

Like I said, there are more, but these are some of the highlighted ones. When you uncover part of a pyramid you make it taller. The taller it gets the more points it is worth in a scoring round. And when you find a treasure, it is set collection. The more of a type of treasure that you have, the more points they are worth in a scoring round.

Scoring Rounds

The other big element is the scoring round. When a volcano tile is going to be placed each player takes a scoring turn. On your turn you don’t draw and place a tile. Instead you just spend action points to take the actions defined above, plus any of the others you want.

At the end of your scoring turn, you score points for temples that you own the majority at and for treasures you have. Then the next player takes a scoring turn. So it is possible that multiple players might score a temple as majority changes as they move workers.

What Doesn’t Work

No real complaints for this one. Because of how scoring works the area control is not too in your face. But you do need to pay attention and manage a few things based off of what your opponents are doing. Probably the biggest thing that might get some people is when placing tiles you can maybe mess or block off areas temporarily to limit how your opponent can build out. That is the most negative interaction in the game and it’s not very negative.

The other slight negative is that the treasures are less impactful in scoring. Having a lot can help, but scoring temples that are worth a lot of points is just better, for the most part. But some of my negative opinion with them might be me messing up my scoring in the first game. Still it is more luck based to see if you can create sets because sets are worth more points, if it’s just a one off, that is a wasted action to get it in some ways.

What Works

Firstly, I really like how the Tikal scoring works. I messed that up big time in my first game. That’s not an issue to mess it up in a game as long as you learn from it. But I like that it isn’t just straight area control. If I take control of an area I get the points for it. Then if you score after me, you can move in and gain control of that area. Now I might block that if I can cap it off so that the temple is completed, an action I didn’t mention, but that is limiting points in the future for me as well.

Let’s talk about that capping off action. You need majority. And it is going to cost you all of your workers there. And they don’t go back into the worker pool, they are just gone. So that is a nice tradeoff as you decide what to do. Do I want to have a ton of workers available further into the game, or if we fight over a spot is it worth spending a number of workers to lock in that scoring every scoring round?

I like the action point system in Tikal as well. I think that it’s pretty slick and easy to understand. Once you take a turn you generally know the actions. There is also nice strategy in figuring out how you want to spend your actions or when you should put out a tent, an action that costs five action points, to help you get into the further reaches of the jungle.

Who Is Tikal For?

I think that Tikal is a game for people who like that action point management and that feeling of exploring while optimizing your scoring. Now that is saying a lot. It is less of a puzzle than some games, say Lost Ruins of Arnak, with a similar theme. So this one is pretty welcoming game and easy to understand and play.

It is not going to be a game that I’d introduce someone to as their first game. It is also probably not going to be a game where heavy euro gamers are going to feel like there is enough going on. But it’s that nice welcoming action point game for people who have played a few games, like Catan and Carcassonne, and they want a bit more.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Tikal

I really enjoy this game and system. I was not sure I was going to when I started, but it is easy to learn and play. Like I said the one thing that tripped me up was that I score at the end of my turn on a scoring turn. I easily could have gotten more points the first game had I remembered. That is a rule that I would drill into the heads of people I play with at the start of the game and then remind them at the scoring round. It is something unique about the game, so something to remind about.

This is a game that I want to add to my collection. Now, I know there are a lot of games like that which I play on BGA. I think that Tikal is a good one because there is a bit more going on to it and some things that make it feel unique as compared to other games in my collection. And I like it because it is quite easy to teach. Even with all the actions, I assume there is a cheat sheet like on BGA, that the players can see what everything costs. So it makes teaching the game faster and easier to get Tikal to the table.

My Grade: A-
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: B
Strategy (out of 10): 6
Luck (out of 10): 2

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How To Play ROVE

ROVE is a solo only game where you are trying to complete seven missions. In each mission you need to configure the placement of various modules from the ROVE lander that has broken. To do this, you spend energy. One energy allows you to activate a card. So let’s talk about how it works with the modules.

Each module has a specific way that it can move and a special power. The special powers, however, are only a single use per game. And you need to complete seven missions. So you plan carefully when you use those powers. Otherwise the modules move in different ways. One needs to cross over another module but it can move in any direction. A couple others can just cross over modules but might move only diagonally, for example.

Once you complete one mission you flip out a new mission card and you refresh your energy cards so that you have five, on normal, or fewer, four or three for hard and impossible settings. You do this until you have seven cards into play for missions and you either have run out of energy trying to complete a mission or you complete them all. If you do, you win.

What Doesn’t Work

This game takes up a bit of space. As you move all of the cards around things are going to shift a fair amount. So for a solo game that is just 18 cards, and six of them really in play that take up so mush space, it’s a bit of a table hog. Now that said, it’s really not that much space. But let’s say it’s not a game that you could easily play on a TV tray or something like that, it needs more space.

What Works

I like the different levels that you can play the game at. I played twice and the second game, on hard, I felt like it was actually a bit more challenging. When you get energy cards and you have two three energies available, you never really feel the crunch of movement. But with four cards and you just have twos and ones, well there is more intensity there. I think that hard is probably where I’ll play the game most, though I’m sure I’ll dabble with impossible and lose quickly.

The game is also fast. I was worried when I pulled the game off the shelf and learned the rules that with seven missions it’d be a very slow game. But it’s definitely not a slow game. I got through two plays in about half an hour. And that’s a great amount of time for a game like this. Each mission is it’s own puzzle, but you quickly figure out how to solve them as you go and you come up with a plan before you start moving cards around.

Finally, it’s a silly little thing, but I like how the cards create a picture, or panorama as you go. And you get to see what the silly little robot is doing, that’s a great fun element to the game. It takes what’s really a very mechanical puzzle of a game and gives you a goofy little element to it to inject the theme. It’s something that works well, and is just that nice little bit of flavor.

Who Is ROVE For?

This is going to be for that person who loves solo games. Sometimes a solo game could maybe be a two player game if you want to just work together and talk through ideas. But ROVE is really focused down on figuring out that challenge as to where you place everything. And because of that it’s a bit of a quieter game. Obviously I talked through it all on my video, but off camera, I think I’d just play it as a quieter time, so it’s truly a solo puzzle of a game.

My Final Thoughts on ROVE

I enjoyed ROVE quite well. The theme is fun and it is really bolstered by the little artwork in the game. Without that, the game really focuses on functional cards, which isn’t a bad thing, more just a statement of how the cards are in the game.

I want to know what the expansions add to the game. Because, I didn’t mention this as a negative, because the game balances for it, I feel like the game is a bit easy on the normal mode. Hard feels like a normal mode to me and I think that impossible could even be a good challenge from time to time, though I do expect that to be near impossible. But if the expansions add a little bit of complexity to the game, where it feels like the challenge would be harder, than I think my grade on the game would go even higher.

My Grade: B
Strategy: A
Luck: D

Just a reminder, that I changed up the scales so that you can know how lucky or strategic a game is. ROVE is very strategic in nature. Not maybe for super long term planning, but when it comes down to have everything works. And there is some luck in what is flipped, but it’s very minimal for the game. It’s more that you need to be good at having reactive strategy.

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How to Play Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift

There is a lot going on in this game, and I want to do it justice, but there is just too much to talk about everything that is going on. So let’s just go over the basics of what happens. Perdition’s Mouth is a cooperative dungeon crawling game. Players take on the roles of heroes, from tanks, to spell casters, rogues, and more trying to get through either a campaign or one off scenario.

Players, on their turn, use action points to move around a Rondel and select the action that they want to do. This can be move, charge, attack, a special action, rest, defend or a combination of those or variation on those. And that is the characters action for the turn. It means you can really plan out everything that you are doing, and you know how much you can do because of how many action points you have. Those are what you spend to move around the Rondel or move across terrain.

Then after the players go, the insectoids and cultists go. They also have a Rondel which determines what action they take. And unlike the player characters who activate a Rondel action, the cultists and insectoids activate all of them they pass over. So you can get some really big turns of spawning monsters, them moving and attacking.

In the end, the players goal is to get their characters off of the map and ready to move onto the next scenario, if you are playing the campaign version.

What I Didn’t Like?

The rule book for Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift is just okay, and this is the revised edition. The issue with it is somewhat that there is a lot to it. And there is a lot to it without there being an index at the end. Give me an index to find things quickly while I’m playing and learning the game. The game itself is pretty easy to follow when you play. But the rules could be done better for learning.

That’s my main negative. I do think for some, the darkness of the theme will be too much. It leans into that Kingdom: Death Monster thing where it is dark and shocking for the sake of being dark and shocking. For me, it doesn’t bother me that much, I get that this is supposed to be a grim and dark world. But at times, it seems like a bit too much.

What Did I Like?

I really like that all the characters are different in the game. In my campaign I ran a tank and a caster. The caster has less defense, less healthy, but some more powerful abilities, especially with movement. And in a game where you want to get out of the scenario, not always kill everything, movement is good to have. And of course, a caster can attack from range. The tank needs to get in there and take those hits when they can. And it feels like a good balance of characters.

I also like how simple the enemies are to activate. You flip a card and see how many spaces they move on their Rondel. And then you activate them pretty easily. So even though they might move a random number of spots on the Rondel, you can kind of guess what they might do. And then a card flip for an attack modifier makes it simple to play them. You don’t need a ton of rules to figure out what each enemy does.

I also like that characters use cards to boost their actions. And you play them out from your hand. But the enemies use a modifier deck. It means as a player, I can pick precisely what I am doing. But as the enemies attack me, I don’t know what they are going to do exactly. It is the right level of randomness. I know mainly what the enemies will do, but sometimes they’ll get through and do more than expected.

But, you can see more thoughts on Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift in the video I did on it below:

Who Is This For?

Dungeon crawler fans and euro fans. I think if someone is looking to move the more perfect information Euro style games, this might work very well for them. Because Perdition’s Mouth is a game where you do know almost all the information.

I also think this will work well for people who want that darker game like Kingdom: Death Monster, but don’t want the massive commitment. The fact you can play a one off for Perdition’s Mouth is nice. And then if you want a campaign, you can have one, but it isn’t hundreds of hours to get through it.

Final Thoughts on Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift

I do have quite a number of things I like about the game. But one negative, and it’s not a negative of the game, but more so of the space, which I haven’t mentioned. Perdition’s Mouth is a dungeon crawl game. So when I look at it, I need to compare it to other dungeon crawl games. And I do think this one is good, but it isn’t upper echelon for me.

On the flip side, it likely will stick in my collection for at least a while, because of one big thing. I can play it as a one off. It is nice for a few reasons, you don’t have the randomness, but the big one is I can pull it out and play without committing to a big experience. If I want to, I can play a short campaign. Gloomhaven was 150-200 hours of my time, Perdition’s Mouth will be less to play a campaign.

Finally, and this could be in the things I like, I do like the no dice. That’s one thing that I’ve found is that something like Sword & Sorcery compared to Perdition’s Mouth, I don’t miss the dice at all. I don’t strongly dislike dice, but it offers a more interesting long term puzzle for the game.

My Score: B-
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: C-

Notes:

Generally for casual gamers, I am going to rate these bigger and heavier games lower. I think a casual gamer learning this would be a difficult experience. I also think that Perdition’s Mouth with an experienced teacher and casual gamers wouldn’t be too bad. But purely everything being done by a casual gamer, it’d be hard for them.

Also, Thank You to Dragon Dawn Production for sending me a copy of the game to review.

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***Disclaimer***
These rankings are the opinion of yours truly, and if you don’t like them, that’s okay. We all have different tastes in games and that is great. There are some games that I’ve only played as a demo, and I felt like I got enough of a feel to put them on the list, thanks GenCon for all the demos. These are living rankings so next year I’m sure that things will change, so I’ll probably be doing another one next year. Thanks to Board Game Geek for letting me enter/rate my collection and games I’ve played. Thanks to Pub Meeple for creating a tool that pulls in those games that I’ve rated and creating a ranking tool. Again, the numbers and names will be linked to Cool Stuff Inc and Amazon if you’re interested in the games.

10 – Deception: Murder in Hong Kong
I am not that much of a fan of hidden role games like Werewolf, Mafia, Secret Hitler. I don’t mind playing them, but for the most part, it feels like randomly guessing with no real information to go on. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is not like that. What makes this game seem different is that you have way more information to go on because of the role of the forensic scientist. They are handing up reports from the basement where they have their lab, unfortunately their reports are a bit generic. So you are having to guess a clue and murder weapon by the end of the game that the killer has in front of them. However, the murder has a an accomplice who is trying to help throw everyone off the trail, but without making it too obvious. Then there was a witness to the crime who wants to get people on the right track, they know who the murder is but not the clue and murder weapon, but not too obviously, because if the murder and accomplice can pin point the witness at the end of the game, they still win. The game is a ton of fun and it comes with a ton of different content. There is always a “How” and “Where” report that the forensic scientist sends up, but the rest of the reports can be the state of dress of the murder victim to being if there was noise made during the murder. It’s a really fun deduction game that has a ton of talking to it and people declaring that they couldn’t possibly be the murder. It’s a game that you generally sit down and play two or more times in a game night because it goes over so well, and it plays a large group.

9 – Clank! In! Space!
This one surprised me a little by being so high, but I do really enjoy the game. In Clank! In! Space!, you are racing around the spaceship of an evil alien overlord who has a ton of trophies in his compartments on the ship. And, as an adventurer, you want to liberate a trophy so that you can become famous. Now, you do this by building up a deck of cards that allows you to purchase better cards for the deck and move and fight things. Plus, you have to get a key code from the ship to be able to get into the trophy room. So there is a bunch going on in this game, but it’s basically a deck building game. What works well for me is that it has more going than that, and the clank mechanic. The clank mechanic is basically you making noise as you stumble around the ship trying to find your way to the treasures and this evil alien is paying attention to that. So you want to make as little noise as possible, because you make too much, he’ll get you and you’ll be out of the game. But if you don’t make much clank, you can possibly get in to the good treasure, but it also might take a lot longer and then there is a higher chance that your clank (cubes) will be drawn from a bag, the few that are put in there. The game has a nice push your luck element to go with the deck building aspect, and I basically always want to push my luck. The game also isn’t a serious game, the cards riff off of various sci-fi films, TV shows, and stories. I don’t know that this game would work with a more serious theme. It’s a bit longer of a game than some deck builders, but the rest of the game play doesn’t cause it to overstay it’s welcome.

8 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
Yes, 2nd Edition is important here as that is the game with the app that allows you to play through the scenario without someone having to run the scenario. This is a Lovecraftian themed game where you take on the role of investigators in the 1920’s. You’re called to a mansion or some location to investigate something strange that is going on. And whatever it is, it’s strange. Maybe it’s a town that is controlled by deep ones, maybe it’s a ritual that is meant to summon an elder god, or maybe it’s time travel plus probably everything else mentioned. With the app, there are a lot of scenarios that you can play through, and because the app knows what expansions you have for the game, it can change up how the mansion you are exploring or whatever the location is, looks and move rooms around. In the game, you are fighting monsters, investigating the case, solving puzzle, and probably going insane. It’s like a lot of Fantasy Flight Games Lovecraftian games that way, but this game has so much to it that you feel like you can play a scenario a couple of times, and even if the overall story doesn’t change, your experience with it will. And with the app, there are a lot of scenarios, some that require expansions, and some that don’t. This game really gives you a nice feeling of tension as you have to balance investigating with fighting. The game is also nice, because it offers different scenarios of differing length, so if you want to play for an hour and a half, you can do that, but if you want to play a longer game, you can do that as well. I believe that the app even lets you save, though, I haven’t used that feature yet, because we’ve always played through a scenario. This game uses the app well in that it doesn’t take over the game, but it makes the game easier to play.

7 – XenoShyft: Onslaught
The highest deck building game on the list, XenoShyft is a deck building game that has more than just the deck building aspect. It is Starship Troopers the board game where you are on a mining planet dealing with a bug infestation. But the bugs aren’t little or medium sized cockroaches, these are giant bugs who are going to destroy your base. The base has more health with more players, but with more players, you are going to be dealing with more monsters in each wave. Each player has their own side of the base to defend. However, you can aid other people. So if I am in charge of the med bay, I can heal your troops, but I only have a limited number of cards, and each player can have up to four characters to defend their base per round, and there are four bugs coming to get them each round. While this game has a deck building aspect to it, I feel like it’s also just as much a tower defense game as you watch the bugs slowly whittle away the bases hit points. This game has a good amount of pressure to it, and while it feels like it shouldn’t be impossibly hard, I don’t have a high win percentage. In whatever player count you’re playing at, you feel like you never have enough things to deal with each players side of the base. And I really like challenging cooperative games. This game as a lot of things going for it, and the cooperative nature of the deck building and being able to build up your deck and what you are getting, but then being able to sh are that with others makes this game feel unique compared to most others.

6 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
I really like my Lovecraft board games, and this one really has a lot of story to it. You take one or two characters on an adventure as you try and solve the weird things that are happening in your town. This game, I guess, could technically be consider a deck builder, but you build the deck prior to the actual game. But each investigator has a unique deck of items. So the waitress, she might have a knife or something like that, but she’s not going to be as well armed as the FBI agent. In this game, which is a living card game, you are playing as a character or two and using resources to get cards and abilities into play, discarding cards to help you make checks to fight a monster or to investigate and gather clues while you are watching the bad guys schemes also count up until the point where you might have lost the game. One of the cool things about this game is that you have the ability to upgrade your deck in between games. You get experience points that you can spend, so maybe you have a decent revolver that has four bullets, you can get a six shooter that has six bullets now to replace it, so you can use it longer (that is a made up example). Along with that, this is a living card game, what that means is that there are more scenarios that can be made, and it is just more cards that are added to your game. You can play the game multiple times, though, through a story because you have different choices you can make as a group, and you have to decide which one is better. I like this game solo and I like it two players as well. I think that the living card game aspect could be a barrier of entry for some people, but the games aren’t long and you don’t have to play more than the base game if you don’t want to. And I realized I forgot one thing, in this game, you are trying to defeat challenges with various skills, pretty normal stuff for all the Fantasy Flight Arkham games, but in this one, instead of rolling dice, you are pulling tokens from a bag that can modify your result. It’s a fun twist that works like a die roll, but if you want to play a story focused game, you can make the bag easier, less negative numbers, or if you want to change yourself, you can make it harder. That ability to scale difficulty is really fun and make plays seem different.

5 – T.I.M.E. Stories
And now for something completely different, though still story driven. In T.I.M.E. Stories you are from an agency that is worried about the time stream and what might be happening and how people can use it for evil (I suspect I’m actually a bad guy or at least my boss is). You play through different scenarios that challenge you to explore locations, find clues, and solve the mystery that is happening. To do that, your consciousness is sent back into a vessel which can and probably will die or you’ll run out of time. But the good thing is, you can be sent back again and your boss will only be somewhat mad at you. T.I.M.E. Stories is a really cool game where you get little hints, from time to time, of a story that is going on that’s larger. And all the scenarios I’ve played thus far have felt different. The first one we were trying to stop something from happening in an Asylum. The next one we were trying to rescue someone during a zombie outbreak, and the final one we were in an alternate dimension in a fantasy world. And there was way more stories and locations than that, that I haven’t played yet. This game, is so much fun, the downside is that you can’t replay it once you’ve solved it, at least not for a while. You’ll probably always generally remember the puzzles, but the scenarios aren’t too expensive, you can play with up to four people, and you get more playing time out of each scenario than you would watching a movie, or at least we have. There are red herrings in there too that make the game harder as you are racing against a clock, time track, to be able to get everything solved before time runs out, and generally you have to reset at least once. I love this game, and I have the next scenario waiting for me, just need to schedule a time to play it.

4 – Betrayal at House on the Hill
I’m going to have this game higher than a lot of people, because there are some issues with the game. Mainly, when reading through a scenario for the haunting, which is the second half of the game, the betrayer or the other group, might have some issues clearly understanding their goal. Or their goal might be super easy. But that’s just part of the game and actually feels fairly thematic when it’s easy or when it’s hard. In this game, you are a rag tag group of ghost hunters, or thrill seekers, or just there because some dared you to, or a creepy child, who are investigating a creepy haunted house. You are finding rooms, finding items in rooms, and dealing with the creepy things that are going on. Eventually, you’ll have found a number of omen cards and a roll will happen and you might have a haunt happen. If it doesn’t, you continue until the haunt does happen because someone has found an omen card and failed their roll. Then you look up a scenario based on the omen and the room it was found in, and you play through that as the second half of the game, each side with a semi secret way to win. This game just drips theme for me and while it can be a bit stressful being the betrayer figuring out what you need to do by yourself, the game generally works. Each haunt feels different, and that’s some of the reason it doesn’t always feel balanced. The fact that a haunt can happen early in the game as only a little bit of the house has been explore or late in the game after almost everything is found is fun as well. This is a really good horror themed game for me, though I know it won’t be for everyone. I’d recommend you give it a try and try to get immersed in the story and feeling of the game, versus seeing if everything is fair and balanced.

3 – Pandemic Legacy Season 1
It was going to be on the list, and I’ve loved my experience with the game. I won’t go into too much on how it works, but as a legacy game, you are finding out new bits of story, new mechanics, and tearing up things as you go along. Pandemic is a game where you are part of a team trying to cure diseases and uncover what is going on in the world because there are those diseases spreading. The game is a ton of fun, and I’ve played it through twice. The story is linear and simple, but there is enough to it that it’s compelling. It’s also compelling, because Pandemic isn’t that easy a game as a the base game, and Pandemic Legacy Season 1 isn’t that easy a game either, plus you soon have to start balancing new things against the normal win condition which is just curing all four diseases. When I played through it a second time, a few years later, I played it solo on Malts and Meeples and I certainly didn’t remember everything for the game, though, I remembered the big plot points fairly well, just not when they would come up in the game. Each character that is played has their own abilities and you can improve them as time goes on, but you can also lose them if they get stuck in too many bad situations. The game really works well, and now it’s come down in price some. If you haven’t played this game, I’d highly recommend it, because there was a reason it was #1 on Board Game Geek for a while.

2 – Blood Rage
Most of the games in my top 10 have some story driven aspect to it. This game does not. However, this game has so many cool things about it. It has a great Norse theme to it as you are a Viking clan who are fighting for control over Yggdrasil and other sections of the nine realms. You start out in each age by drafting cards that help you with your strategy. Maybe you look to upgrade your clan leader so that they are more powerful. Or maybe you make it so that you get more glory if your clan members die in battle. Maybe you focus on being strong in battle or recruiting monsters. The drafting part of the game, while quick, really helps shape how you play the game. Then you try and take over areas of the map in order to improve your abilities, such as action points so you can take more actions, how many points you get for winning a battle or how many troops you can have on the board. Once everyone is out of action points, one of the realms is lost and you start again. Blood Rage plays fairly quickly for a game with a lot of minis and a lot going on in it. And the game feels different each time you play, because the cards that you draft are going to change up your strategy, and if you go too much into one strategy in an early age, players can block you from that strategy in later ages. And if you can focus on a single strategy, it might allow you to win the game, but there isn’t a strategy that seems too much stronger, whether your are fighting or peaceful. This game is just a ton of fun to play, and I finally got a copy, because right now it’s hard to find.

1 – Gloomhaven
My #1 game matches up with Board Game Geeks #1 game overall. Gloomhaven is a massive dungeon crawl game where you and a group of adventurers go through and fight monsters trying to figure out what is happening in the city of Gloomhaven and the lands surrounding it. This game is so much fun, because it’s a massive campaign game that has some legacy style aspects to it, mainly putting stickers on cards to improve them, but you can play it again completely. The combat and movement in this game are fun as well, as you play cards, picking them based on abilities, but also number at the top of one of them, because that determines how fast you act, and possibly if you are ahead of the monsters. Plus, with that, you get experience points which allows you to put in better cards, but the higher level you get and the better cards you have in there, the harder that the monsters get as well. You also have a goal that your character is going for, both overall and in each scenario. The scenario ones help you improve your character even more, but the overall one, that one causes you to retire and unlock a new character. Then you get to pick from all the unlocked characters and join the party again as a new character. There are a ton of scenarios in the game, as I’ve been playing it with a group of three of us and it’s taken us playing almost every other week for three hours in an evening, and it’s almost been two years. The game is amazing, it’s massive, and I think it’s going to scratch the itch for ameritrash players because it is so story driven, but the combat actually has a bit of a more strategic feel because you are playing cards and modifying with more cards, so it’s less random than rolling dice. I also think that, even though Gloomhaven is a massive game, it’s pretty straight forward once you have a few core concepts down, so while it might be intimidating to start, if you have someone who knows the game well, I think that more casual gamers would be able to join in the game and have a blast. This was an easy #1 game for me and as I was sorting I knew there wasn’t a chance anything would be higher.

So there it is, my top 100 games. I know that I’ve played a game since this started or since they were ranked that would probably be on the list. So this is definitely a living list. Thanks for coming along on this ride with me.

Let me know what games in the top 10 and top 100 look cool to you. Are there any that you love as well or love more than I do? Are there any that you really want to try?

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To start out with, there is one thing that I really look for in a game, though not every game, but Theme is extremely important to me. Theme helps me get immersed in the game, and while I really can lean into tactics of the game and the strategy, without a good theme, though, I’m less likely to pick up again, and if the theme doesn’t come through, I’m not that likely to continue playing a game. If it’s just a puzzle, once I’ve figured out the puzzle, even if that puzzle is variable, I’m less interested in playing it again. That’s a lot of the reason that I don’t like Dominion. You are just finding the puzzle in the collection of random cards you’re going with, and that’s it. The theme could be about trading coins and it wouldn’t make a difference for the game.

And within theme, there are certain things that I’m apt to be more interested in. I’m a huge fan of Fantasy, Horror, and Sci-Fi. Thankfully, there are a ton of games with those themes. Now, let me say, I’m not a fan of Medieval games with a light fantasy sprinkling on it, but really you’re trading cubes. I want fantasy, and I like a slightly darker fantasy. Things like Gloomhaven and Sword and Sorcery, yes, they are epic fantasy, but they have some odd things going on that don’t just make it the standard heroes rushing in and smashing everything. I’m excited to get games like Apocrypha to the table, because it’s a dark urban fantasy setting. And with horror, while I don’t mind something like zombie horror, I prefer that Lovecraftian style of horror or campy horror. Which, isn’t always the best, because Kristen claims I don’t need 8 different Lovecraft horror games, I suspect that’s wrong, but I also don’t get all of them to the table that often. With Sci-Fi, I don’t know that I have any subset that I love more than others, I think that I have a harder time finding Sci-Fi games that really excite me because a lot of them can end up being cube pushers, and I’m really looking for that theme or that continuing story.

That’s another big thing that I really like, I like Story Based games. Now, that can fall into a few different categories. There are games where you are playing a one off story/scenario where you have an objective that you’re trying to complete. I find that sort of game okay. It’s definitely not my preferred type, but if the scenario is strong, I’m cool with that. I prefer campaign or legacy style games. Now, not all legacy games are story based but they often still keep the pretense. Charterstone which is a fun game theoretically has a story, but in reality, it’s the loosest of threads holding it together. And I’m going to say that I prefer campaign games where you don’t end up destroying stuff, because I have a couple of copies of Pandemic Legacy Season 1 that I had a blast playing and I’m not sure I want to get rid of, but what am I going to do with them? I should just harvest them for parts. Thankfully, there are a ton of campaign games out there, and now there are more legacy games that once you’re done with them, you can continue playing them. Charterstone is a great example of this, but there’s also games like Betrayal Legacy, Aeon’s End Legacy, and Clank! Legacy that allow you to continue playing them. And while I’m less likely to play them once the main story is done, it’s nice that it’s not just a one time investment.

Now, I mention that Charterstone doesn’t have much story to it, and I don’t think it really has much theme to it, but if the theme is light, there are ways to make it feel like more than it actually is. The biggest way to do that, and another thing that makes me interested in a game is Great Artwork/Bits and Charterstone has both of these. The art is consistent and nice and you feel the lightness of the world that Stonemaier Games created through the artwork is great. And the coins in there are amazing, and the little tuck boxes and magnetic boxes are nice in the game. So those aesthetic pieces are very important. Or there are games like Clank! In! Space! where there are some nice pieces, but the cards don’t have the best artwork, but I like it because the art references something and sometimes you just want to figure out what the joke is that is on the card. Another example of a game that has great pieces but not a great story/theme is Century: Golem Edition where it’s a good engine building game, but there’s no theme. The art is just amazing and the pieces, the coins and gems and gem cases are great. That game just looks good on the table.

When a game is that more abstract style, I can enjoy heavy strategy games, but I tend not to be great at thinking five turns ahead or twenty to the end of the game, so I don’t always do the best, I might think two turns ahead, So for those more abstract games, I prefer Family Weight games. And I have a lot of family weight games in my collection, some that are more introductory games like Catan, Ticket to Ride and Carcassone, but there are some very abstracted ones like Photosynthesis and Century: Golem Edition that I have as well. Now, Photosynthesis is probably heavier than family weight, but go back to that aesthetic paragraph, that’s where it belongs. But Century: Golem Edition is a great example of a game that is a family weight strategy game that looks amazing and is very abstracted away from the looks. Like, why does it matter that you’re getting gems to trade gems, but the strategy is still simple enough that it’s fun and I can pull it out with any group. Sagrada is another game like that. And there are reasons why I have Azul over Sagrada and that’s because the theme, while not there, is easier to sell than Azul, even to myself.

I haven’t even touched on mechanics, and really I’m cool with a lot of mechanics. I like Area Control, Cooperative, Deck Building, Action Points, Engine Building, Drafting and so many more I’m sure. But if I were to pick one that stands out above the others that I love, that would be Variable Player Powers. I love it when I have a character that does something slightly different than other people. Some of the reason that I like it so much is that it allows me to be slightly different and unique than everyone else in the game. And it means that I have to think about my strategy in a slightly different way than everyone else. That means that every time that I play the game the game is going to feel different or could feel different. I enjoy it when it’s fully asymmetric like Root or Cry Havoc, but those are harder to teach because they can be completely different as to how you play. So games like Small World where you have different races and powers that get put together, that’s great because you feel unique multiple times during the game. Though, that makes the game very light in Small World, so games where you have one that you’re playing with throughout the game is great, that’s one thing I love in Xenoshyft: Onslaught, because I have a unique starting deck and unique powers throughout the game.

Now, that’s a lot of information, but I wanted to write this because of my TableTopTakes for Dominion yesterday and just thinking about some of the responses from Board Game Geek that I got when posting it there. Some very good ones and some that basically just said, “You’re wrong in every sentence” without providing any reasoning for saying that. When I do a review and give my ratings, I try and think about the game as to why someone might like it as well, and while a grade will suffer if I don’t like it, I try to base it on more than just that. And really, I do like most games, there are just some that I’m going to gravitate towards and overlook flaws in the game because it’s my type of game. Plus, there are some games that I’ll read a 30 page rule book for because it’s my type of game and if it’s not my type of game, I’m less apt to get it.

Hopefully that helps clear up some of why I don’t like Dominion or why I love some games that might be less popular, Xenoshyft: Onslaught for example. Obviously, everyone is going to have their preferences and I hope that I can somewhat divorce myself from mine when I look at a game, but that’s certainly not possible to fully do. But beyond that, I’m curious to know what other people look for when they look to buy a game or what intrigues you about a game to get you to pick it up?

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Blood Rage is a game that has a lot going on it as you play through three ages, building up your clan to see if in the end yours can be the strongest. This takes place over a number of different actions and strategies. In the game you start each age by drafting a hand of cards that you’ll use in combat, to improve your troops, or even hire monsters. From there, you play those cards, spending action points for them, but not just those cards, you can spend action points to raid places and get their power, fight the other clans to keep them from raiding, and try to make it to Yggdrasil and gain even more glory. If you lose a battle, you will lose your troops though, and they’ll go to Valhalla. Then you reset your action points for the next age and start again, but the map is smaller as Ragnorak happens destroying various locations around the board.

For me, the biggest strength of this game, there really isn’t a part that I don’t like, is the card drafting. If you want, you can focus in on combat and seek to win as many battles as possible and gain glory that way. But it’s also a viable strategy at times to draft cards for Loki that allows you to cancel cards or gives you points when your warriors die. Or maybe you don’t draft the cards that just influence battles, maybe you look to build a large collection of monsters and get them onto the table, or to upgrade your clan and clan leader. I don’t think that there is a better strategy than another, and as long as you’re keeping an eye on what other people are doing, you can slow them down. Now, the Loki strategy can be strong, but when someone starts going that way in the first age, you can do things to stop it in the second age by just drafting a card or two that is needed for the Loki strategy to keep it away from that player. That’s the case with most of the strategies, though, so you do need to hate draft, as it’s called, in this game, if you don’t, someone is going to be able to pull away.

This game also has amazing minis which make it look great on the table. These minis might not even take part in the game as every monster might not be drafted or even used as while the monsters have strength, they can’t go into Yggdrasil and they cost more to get onto the board if they die. Even your clansmen though look really nice and give the game a good table presence. But the monsters are the ones that set it apart from other games. I think that this game would, however, still be plenty fun if it was tokens with different colored backgrounds on the board. But that would make it trickier with the monsters since there is only one copy of each monster in the game, and with the minis, you put your color base on the monster to make it easily identifiable to figure out what player a monster belongs to.

I also really like how simple combat is in this game. In Blood Rage you simply add up the total on the clansmen in a place, two for a leader, one for each warrior, and varies for the monsters. Then everyone gets a chance to play down a single card to modify their attack. And some of the modifiers are massive, like +6 to an attack that would normally be a 3, but there are also cards that steal things like action points that can mess with a player, so do you play a lower plus card to try and stop someone from messing with the battle by messing with it yourself, or do you try and just go for that big swing to guarantee the win. So there is a bit of variability to it, but you aren’t figuring out a dice pool and rolling like you get in some games. The card play is simple and enjoyable.

Blood Rage is just a really enjoyable game. And I think even with a name like Blood Rage that it’s a game that a lot of people can enjoy. The mechanics are pretty straight forward, and while it can seem like there’s a lot going on at times, once you realize how the action point economy works you know what you can do. The game also helps by limiting the number of characters in locations, but even with that limit, because you might be in a battle, you are engaged on other people’s turns. I would say that this is the game you take out after playing some gateway games, because it could be a bit much for a new gamer.

Overall Grade: A+
Gamer Grade: A+
Casual Grade: B+

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But we finish off with action points. What are action points, they are points or tokens that tell you how much you can do on a single turn. Maybe you can take five actions, and then you allocate those points to specific actions you can take, like moving or attacking.

5. Dead Men Tell  No Tales
A cooperative game, in this one you are spending actions to try and find treasure on a pirate ship that is haunted and currently on fire. You have to contain the fire, try and find the treasures, deal with skeletal deck hands, and you have a certain number of actions you can take to do all of that. This game is like a lot of cooperative games in that you feel like you can never do enough. The interesting thing this game adds in with action points is that you can pass on your unused action points to the next player. So it might be that you are limited in what you can do, but the next person has a lot of useful things that they can do. You can move closer into position to set-up what for your next turn and then pass any unused action points to the next player so that they can do more. In a lot of cooperative games the action points are static but you can act upon other characters, in this one, you can’t do that, but you can pass out action points.

4. Dead of Winter
Dead of Winter is an interesting game on this list as it uses dice as your action points in the round. The dice don’t encompass every action you can take in the game, but the strongest actions, the ones that help you complete objectives are going to spend a die. Not only that, but the number you roll on the dice makes a difference as well. Some characters aren’t able to search or kill zombies with a low die roll. So in that case your die, which is supposed to be your strongest action is now made weaker and it looks like you are hurting the colony and people are starting to suspect you are the traitor more, but at the same time, they can see the roll, so they know it wasn’t great. And then you get more dice and actions when you have more survivors, but you are also responsible for more zombies showing up and more mouths to feed and making the game harder that way.

3. Arkham Horror LCG
This game doesn’t use the points as a physical token, but a lot of the games with action points don’t. Action allowance might be a good way of describing it as well, because you have a certain total number of actions you can take on a turn. Arkham Horror does this well, limiting you to two actions, and while you can do the same actions multiple times, you always feel the crush of not being able to do enough. Arkham Horror LCG is a placeholder on this list for all of Fantasy Flights Lovecraftian games as you feel the crunch Arkham Horror, Elder Signs, and Mansions of Madness as well. It’s a system that works well for them as it keep the tension high when you don’t have enough actions to do everything that you’d want.

2. Blood Rage
Action points are huge in Blood Rage as you try and get into territories, move troops around, and be able to hang in the round long enough to stop your opponent from doing what they are trying to do. What I like about the action point system in Blood Rage is that certain actions cost a certain number of action points. And the monsters, who are possibly more powerful or useful in some other way, also have action point costs. So you’re trying to balance using your action points so that you don’t run out much before anyone else, because once you are out of action points, you are out of the round at least in being able to take the large actions that are going to be most useful long term.

1. Pandemic Legacy
This game does great with action points, basically each turn the active player spends up to four action points, moving around, curing diseases, trading cards, and finding cures. Then as the game continues, you gain more and more actions that you can take. At the end of the game, you’re trying to balance out these actions in hopes that you’ll be able to survive. Pandemic does a really good job with these actions, because it evolves over time. A lot of games have more of a static action pool with maybe unique characters have special player power actions that they can take, but Pandemic Legacy, both seasons one and two, give more options as you play and unlock more of the game.

There are a ton of games that use this action point/action selection mechanic. It’s a strong mechanic for adding tension to decisions, because you’re almost always short of the action points you want to use in a round. This mechanic, however, isn’t always an ideal for players who might have AP, because it makes your choice really matter. But let’s talk about some honorable mentions:

Forbidden Desert/Forbidden Island – Cooperative exploration games that feel like Pandemic light.
Flash Point: Fire Rescue – Another Pandemic like game that also has a bit of a Dead Men Tell No Tales feel to it as well, this time you’re being fire fighters though.
KrosMaster Arena – Plan your movement and attacks in this Chibi MOBA style game. A little bit simple at times, and almost ways a best way to use your action points.
The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game – This game is all about the Fate Points, as the action points are called. It’s a pool of action points which is a very different feel from a lot of the games as you as a team have to replenish and manage that pool of points.

What are some of your favorite games with action points? Is action points/action selection a mechanic that you enjoy?

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Worker Placement

Worker placement is a very common mechanic in board games, an in particular in Euro games. It basically means that you’re placing out a piece to do some action or get some resource back. At the end of the game you’ve built up some collection of resources, cards, money, or points. You might like worker placement games if you like games that have a lot of thinking and a whole lot less luck. The luck can come from what cards you’re able to get, but generally you can plan out what you’re going to do for the whole game early on in the game. To me this is a knock on these game, as well as that they are often themed around trading in the Mediterranean which I don’t find exciting. For one of these games, if I’m to enjoy it, the turns have to be fast, and while there doesn’t have to be a plethora of variability in it, there shouldn’t be a single option in the game that is so strong that everyone feels like they need to follow the same path. Games like Puerto Rico have a method to what should be taken when and what actions should be done when, and that isn’t fun to me. However, Charterstone does a good job of having very fast turns with the exception of a few turns that matter the most, and to me, that’s a good worker placement game. You have lots of options, but your turns go fast so that no one is sitting there wondering what to do, and if you are sitting there thinking, you know it’s a big decision.

Deck Builder

This was one of the biggest mechanics in board games for a while with games like Dominion and Marvel Legendary leading the market. Now another mechanic is bigger and I’ll get to it in a minute. Deck Building games have everyone starting out with the same few cards in their own personal decks, then as time goes by you can purchase more cards to add to your deck customizing it so that it plays like you want it to play. In my opinion, something that is purely a deck builder, probably isn’t much of a game. Dominion, the biggest deck builder out there, has a theme that doesn’t matter to the game, and the only thing it has going for is the fact that when people know what they are doing it goes fast. There are other games that make your cards actually mean something like Xenoshyft: Onslaught, Marvel Legendary, or Clank! In! Space!. These games the cards mean more than just giving you an action, a buy, and some money, but they maintain the simplicity of the deck building for the most part.

Bag Builder

This is a subset of a Deck Builder in some ways. Instead of building up your own deck of cards you are either separately or jointly building up a bag of tokens, cubes, dice, whatever it might be, so you are drawing randomly from that. Clank! In! Space! adds this as an addition to it’s game as you’re trying to not make too much noise so Lord Eradikus doesn’t get you. Basically it’s the same thing as a deck building mechanic, just with the other possible elements.

Roll and Write

This is the biggest one out there right now and most of you probably have heard of a game that does this from a long time ago, and that’s Yahtzee. While Yahtzee is the original, it has definitely progressed beyond that at this point. Now you might be building railway lines or you could be doing city planning, but based off of what the dice say, that gives you an idea of what to fill in. Personally, I still enjoy Yahtzee and I haven’t done anything else in this mechanic, but I am tempted to pick one up sometime soon. These sorts of games tend to be fairly simple and easy to teach so they are a good faster game that you can pull out with a lot of different levels of gamers and often with larger groups as well.

Drafting

Now, I split up deck builders and bag builders, but with drafting, this can be a lot of different things. Most of the time people are going to know of card drafting, but there are games where you draft dice. What I like about drafting is that the games can range from simple games like Sagrada and Sushi Go! Party to more extensive games like Blood Rage. So it’s a mechanic in games that is pretty easy to build up to the more complex games because you have a lot of different steps along the way. With drafting, I also like the fact that it makes you make a decision. It might be obvious, like you need another eel in Sushi Go! Party otherwise you’ll lose three points, or it might be tough, because you don’t want to pass the eel to the next person getting your cards because they need the eel to score seven points, but you’re also not sure that there’s going to be another eel coming to you. Or in Blood Rage you have to determine what you want your strategy to be, do you want to get points for winning battles or maybe do you want to get troops onto the map faster, it allows you to customize your playing style.

Action Points

This is a mechanic that can be overlooked a little bit because most games that have it, like Blood Rage, also give you other mechanics that are just as interesting. However, Action Points are another one of my favorite mechanics in a game because it forces you to make tough decisions again. How many points do you want to spend to move a troop into a territory to try and take it in Blood Rage, or do you want to spend points to upgrade your troops? Something might cost two points versus one point, so is it better to do a one point action twice or a two point action once? You have a limited resource that is counting down faster than you want it to, and you never feel like you have quite enough to do everything you want, so you have to make a tough decision at some point in time. Blood Rage is a game that really focuses on this, though the drafting can dictate how important that is for you.

Hand Management

In some ways like a deck builder, hand management could be you determining and selecting different cards to be in your hand. But it can also be determining when you might play a card from your hand that might be identical to everyone else’s hand of cards or how you diversify your hand. Two games come to mind when I think about hand management that I have and they both do it in different ways. In Not Alone as the survivors of a wreck on an alien planet, you have a certain number of places you can go, so you have to determine where you want to go to avoid the alien and hope that everyone doesn’t go to the same spot or talk to determine a strategy so that you don’t all go to the same spot. But with your identical hand, you are now debating through a lot of different options that everyone has. Or in Gloomhaven, your hand is your life, if you lose cards from your hand too fast, you might die before the scenario is done. So do you use the card for the amazing ability to help kill off the monsters faster to complete the mission or do you use more basic abilities so that you can survive longer in a scenario if the scenario isn’t going fast.  Both of these games keep a good tension between using your cards or holding onto your good cards.

Area Control

Area Control is another mechanic I like, it often means that if you control a certain area you get a benefit. This is another mechanic that Blood Rage uses, as you are trying to have the strongest force in an area to pillage it and gain the improvement from the area or to complete a quest that you have. There are also some games that are more focused on area control and it is if you control all the areas you can win the game. Risk, while not a great game, is an area control game. I enjoy these game generally because they encourage conflict for all players because you can’t let anyone get too powerful. While Risk is pretty lucky, games like Cry Havoc, Blood Rage or Smallworld cut down on the luck aspect while allowing the game to flow nicely and quickly through combat or through control. That can be a downside with area control games is that the combat causes the game to bog down and you end up spending all of your time on combat or on a few turns, leaving other people waiting.

Variable Player Powers

This one is and isn’t a mechanic in my opinion. I think though it is worth calling out here as there are some people who love it. Basically, variable player powers means that each persons role in the game is going to be different. While there might be a lot of overlap, everyone has something that they can do that is unique to them. In Root, each player plays a different faction of woodland creatures, and you can see in my review of it how it works generally, but they do things in a very different way from other people having very unique player powers depending on which faction you pick. Or in Smallworld, you are taking different race and power combos. Those are extreme examples of a lot of variability, but a game like Cry Havoc, everyone is basically doing the same thing, you have slightly unique player powers. It can run a fairly large range that way from completely different powers to similar roles but slightly tweaks. Another example of that lesser change is Pandemic where people can all do the same actions, but each person also has their own unique thing they can do, and you may or may not use that unique power on a given turn.

What are some mechanics you like? What are some that I’ve forgotten as I’m sure there is a number I haven’t touched on. Are there any mechanics that you’ll actively avoid?

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