Top 10 Wish List Board Games

The list of board games is 1 through 10 instead of the other way around. This is a mistake, but how I wrote it, so I didn’t want to redo it.

1. Violet and the Grumpy Nisse

This one just sounds fun. It’s a two player trick taking game. I really love the sound of this as the two players kind of fight against each other for the tricks and each of them has some unique things for it. Right now it’s hard to get. I believe it was on crowdfunding, but I’m not sure it’s ever gotten a wide release.

One of the people is playing Violet, a girl who is on a journey to meet a friendly troll. Unfortunately she is going through the woods of the nisse, Torech who is not happy with that idea. He wants to stop her and get her light to go out and make her travel as hard as possible. I just love the idea and sound of that as a thematic trick taking game.

2. Nova Aetas Renaissance

This one I get to blame on Meet Me At the Table. I think that’s the only one that I can blame on them. There are others that will definitely get blamed on other YouTube channels. This one looks like a blast as you take a team of characters up against the enemies. I get a real Assassin’s Creed vibe to it, but it’s not that, there is an Assassin’s Creed Game. I like the story of the game and I like the “fun” that it looks like.

One thing that I really dig is how the action point system works. You move your characters along a rondel determining how many of their actions that they use. Some of it might be used on movement and some on fighting. They have to go up to the point where the next enemy is. But you can potentially work it to get a couple of turns pretty quickly. For me that’s a really fun concept and twist on a dungeon crawler. But it’s also still a dungeon crawler, tactical game, when it comes down to it.

3. Rove

This one I won’t be able to write much on. It’s still coming to crowdfunding and I’m very curious about it. What I know , and I don’t know much about the game play, is that it’s from a designer who made The Crimson Scales, a fan made expansion for Gloomhaven. They then built out something much bigger, their own epic campaign and fantasy game. How it is going to work mechanically, I’m not sure. But I think that this was supposed to fund on Crowdfunding last year, now it’s supposed to be this year. But I like it when companies are fine delaying to get it right.

4. Euthia: Torment of Resurrection

I passed this one by twice on crowdfunding, I kind of regret it. But Euthia looks like a lot of fun. It’s a competitive, cooperative or solo sandbox RPG style game. Competitive I don’t care that much about. But cooperative and solo, I care about those. Plus it’s now been picked up by Steamforge so that increase the chances that I might pick it up. It’s not a cheap game, but then again how many campaign games are. For me this would go onto a list of campaign games that need to be played.

5. Aeon Trespass: Odyssey

Aeon Trespass: Odyssey is another campaign game and another huge game. I want to find this one, but like Euthia, I’ve passed on it twice. It’s again one that I really want to play. From what I can tell it’s an epic boss battling style of game more than a dungeon crawler. Do I need another huge game like this, I don’t. But it’s one of those that if I find it used, I’ll pick it up. Right now I want to just get Kingdom: Death Monster started up or Oathsworn in that boss battler area.

6. Mind Up!

I watched this one played on The Dice Tower, so another one that I can blame on a YouTube channel. Mind Up! Looked like a lot of fun because it’s just a little card game that does some simple things. All your doing is playing out cards to get other cards. Which one you get depends on where your number falls into the order of cards played. After that it’s all about set collection and seeing how many points you get for getting cards of the same color.

I really want to get this one because I see it as a small and fun filler game. I love to find games like that, and it doesn’t eat up too much space on my shelf which is a good thing. As I’ve talked about before with Sea Salt & Paper, if a game is a small box filler game, it tends to stick around in my collection.

7. Café Baras

A coffee shop with capybara’s, I’m in. It is super cute sounding and from KTBG (Kid’s Table Board Games) it is going to look very nice. See everything I said about Mind Up being a small filler game, that is the same with Café Baras. From what I can tell, this is a hand management game about fulfilling orders. Cards are multiuse, which is fun and offers some solid tension, and well, did I mention that there are capybaras in the game?

8. Witchcraft!

This is a successor to a game Resist. Resist is not one that I’ve played, but one that looked interesting as a solid experience. Witchcraft, however, just sounds more interesting to me. And it is a solo only game, which I like as well. This one I can also blame on The Dice Tower for me being interested.

The mechanisms also sound interesting. I like the sound of doing some deck building and hand management in the game. But also with push your luck elements to it. I want to know more about how this one plays. Because how it looks, both mechanisms and aesthetically look intriguing.

9. Ancient Knowledge

Another one for the list of blame it on the Dice Tower is Ancient Knowledge.  Ancient Knowledge is a civilization building game. That’s an area of board gaming that I’d love to play around in more. Ones where you are building up tech trees and advancing what you are doing. And how Zee and others on the Dice Tower talk about Ancient Knowledge it just sounds really good.

A lot of these types of games you build to doing more and more and more. That’s the case here, but as time passes, some knowledge is going to be lost to the past. So the engine that you are building is always changing and you need to plan for those changes as the knowledge disappears. I like the sound of that so much, because it requires a good adaptive strategy and things move on.

10. Hoplomachus: Remastered

Finally, a Chip Theory Game, and I debated if this one would be my #10 on the list. Hoplomachus: Victorum is a game that I own. And it’s a solo only game, I need to learn the rules and play it. It’s kind of a campaign like experience from Chip Theory Games. And generally, I like the other Chip Theory Games that I’ve played. I really like Burncycle. And I think that Too Many Bones offers a ton of fun and is one that I want to dig into more.

Hoplomachus is more of a battling game and a battling arena for head to head combat. And on Board Game Geek, most people do prefer it at two. But it offers solo play and I want to try it. Unlike the others, because I own Hoplomachus: Victorum, it’s less likely that I’ll pick this one.

Final Thoughts

Right now, who knows when I might buy one of these board games. It isn’t high on my list to add in new games to my collection. Some of the small ones, or Rove which is yet to go to crowdfunding, are the most likely. But I want the chance to checkout any and all of these if I can over the next few years. For some of them, though, that might be a little bit.

Of these board games, which is the most interesting to you? Which is the one that you’d buy first and add to your collection?

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The interesting thing that comes from this is how it drives the secondary market. A game that is being printed again, Heat: Pedal to the Metal, sells for $150+ on eBay. It’s a $70 retail game. But it got popularity so that everyone wants it. So what games do I want that are out of print or had to find?

Hard To Find Board Games

Heat: Pedal to the Metal

This is one that is on my list. Heat is a racing game that is actually about racing. A lot of racing games are about betting on races. That is fun. I really enjoy Downforce and Long Shot: The Dice Game. I hope that Heat, though, it going to give me more of a racing feel. And, from what I can tell, it looks like it should. The card system is intriguing and turns our fast so you won’t feel like you bog down.

Aeons Trespass: Odyssey

This one is between print runs as they just announced a new Kickstarter campaign for it. And you will find that a number of these games are Kickstarters or crowdfunding games. It isn’t uncommon for them to completely disappear. They only come back if a new crowdfunding campaign happens.

Aeons Trespass: Odyssey is a big adventure, story, campaign game that I almost backed the first time around. But I felt like I didn’t need more. I should feel like that now, but it is getting great reviews. That’s the one thing nice about waiting. I often grab second printings of a game that gets a great review and miss out on some duds. But I want Aeons Trespass: Odyssey for sure this time around.

The Crimson Scales

This one is an interesting one as well. I hope that it will get reprinted. But The Crimson Scales is a fan expansion with classes, adventures, monsters, and more in the Gloomhaven system. And it comes in a massive box like Gloomhaven and is compatible with Gloomhaven. So a fan expansion for my favorite game, that is something I want to pick up.

But I wonder how I will track this one down. It is out of print, they have done two print runs. But, the creator of this expansion is making his own game, Rove, that is on my watch list. So is that going to mean the end of The Crimson Scales and I will have missed my run. Or is there enough demand to bring it back again?

Euthia: Torment of Resurrection

This is another Kickstarter game which means it is harder to track down. Though, it is interesting because the company that made it went under. Or they were close to, I don’t want to assume they are fully gone but I believe they are. They sold the rights to Euthia to another company, that company has produced a reprint. I skipped out on that one, but it is still a game that I want to get my hands on. I might even be able to late pledge it still, but it’s one that I want, but a campaign, so do I need it?

Vegetable Stock

This one is a different type of game. It isn’t a big game, but a small set collection, stock market game about vegetables. I know more about this one and how it works because of how simple it is. You draft vegetables and then the leftover vegetable pushes the value of that vegetable higher. It’s a clever and simple system that I hope will work for me like Point Salad works or something like that. Yes, they are both vegetable games, but I meant in weight and complexity.

Final Thoughts

I could spend a lot of money to track of these down. And the fact that Heat is selling for $150+ on eBay means that people are. But in that case of that one, especially, I know it is going to come out again. And when it does, I buy it then, I don’t need to pay extra just to have it sooner.

That said, I do have it on a watch list. If someone lists it for $80 with free shipping buy it now, I might get it. And with some of the others, or games that I left off the list, I might need to stumble across them in the wild. Or I might need to hope that my FLGS (friendly local game store) gets them in used. But is it something I need to track down, certainly not.

What is a game or two that you really want to track down?

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Pros

• Page Is Good
• Epic Adventure Game
• Price Point
• True Solo

Cons

• Price Point
• Aesthetic (possibly)

The Page

This is an interesting page for me. I put in my cons the aesthetic, and I think it might be the aesthetic of the page more so than the aesthetic of the game itself. The game looks different than most fantasy big box games. While it has dragons and monsters, it feels almost more grounded and more medieval in nature.

But on the flip side that same more simplistic aesthetic on the page itself, it seems a bit too much like it was done in paint. Now, they lay out things well on their page. I get an idea of what the game is about immediately, but at the same time, I also feel like if this was a new company, I’d be knocking them on it hard for not being polished enough.

The section that really stands out to me with this is the stretch goals or daily unlocks. Parts of the artwork look great. Other parts look unpolished, I guess that is what it comes down to for me. And like I said, I think it works for the game. It isn’t the flashiest, but it makes the game feel different. For the page, it just lacks the selling itself I’d expect.

The Game

The game itself does a lot of things that I like. Good character progression, from the looks of it. And while it’s not something that I seek out, I really like the idea that a character improves as things get worse. Cthulhu: Death May Die, I believe, does the same thing where you can unlock more abilities as you go more insane. So instead of feeling every hit as much, you fight harder for your life as the hits keep coming.

I also like that you make permanent changes to the world. This is basically a legacy element of the game but it isn’t a true legacy, I’d say. Basic idea is that as you play through the campaign and survive, your knights will influence the world, leave a mark on it. If and when you come back now what you’ve done before will make a difference on what happens next.

Also, for me, true solo is a huge add to the game. Just to clarify what that means, it means as a solo player I don’t need to control multiple characters. The game might be meant for 4 knights to go through it, but I can play it with one. It adds in squires as support, but the overall bookkeeping of all the knights versus some automated squires will make the game simpler to play.

As they say, the true solo helps you focus on the story. And I think that’s what interests me most is the story of the game. You’re going out as a knight, not as wizard, warlock, even a rogue or a fighter. You fight for your kingdom(s) and try and stop the monsters that are coming after you. That is pretty normal dungeon crawler, but it’s less an adventuring party, and more knights sent out on a quest.

Back or Brick

This one is a tough one for me. I definitely want to back it and right now I am for the $12 US no reward but access to pledge manager and early bird, if I decide to go in for more on it. So technically it is a Brick for me right now. I’m trying to convince myself with the pledge with no reward that I might play it later, I have room with the campaign games I own and have coming in, since I’m sure this will take a bit to deliver.

But in reality, I probably have enough to last me another five years or more, plus some on the way. So I likely won’t back this just because I don’t need another campaign game. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want this. And I think with Aeon’s Trespass coming out soon, we’ll get a better idea of what the company does. But I don’t think you’ll be disappointed if you back it.

So is this a Back or Brick for you?

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