I think that most board gamers start out going wide with their collection and then eventually move more towards going deep. But we should probably start off with what wide and deep mean.

A Wide Collection

A wide collection is when you have a wide variety of games. The collection doesn’t have to be huge, but it is all over the map because you are learning what you like to play. This means that you have party games, story games, gateway games, classic games, euro games, and amerithrash games. And really, you have everything in between as well.

When you go out to buy a board game, you don’t think so much about how much you’ll like the game versus how cool a game looks. Now, those two might be the same thing, but with looking at a box cover, you’re less likely to know how a game will paly as you start your collection. So you look at games that look different from what you have.

A Deep Collection

A deep collection is when you know what you like in a board game. And you buy fewer random games, but are more apt to pick up an expansion for something you have. You look at the back of a box and you know how a game plays. And you know if that game is for you or not. So a deep collection might be deep in the euro games that it has, or amerithrash games.

What it won’t have is the variety of different genres of games. It might have some, just so you can play a party game with a non-gamer, or a really nice looking euro game in your amerithrash collection. But more likely it’ll have a lot of games of similar types and expansions for those games. So more of what you already like.

Why Does It Change?

Well, it changes because I know what I like And you will grow to know what you like as well, if you’re early in the hobby. And that is a good thing. Why, it means that you tend to buy less duds. Some games just won’t work for you. And that is true for every gamer. There are going to be people who like those games and some who don’t, and just because people do doesn’t mean you will.

For me, something like Brass: Birmingham. That is a heavy euro game, maybe not the heaviest, but heavier. With my taste in games, I know I wouldn’t buy it. It isn’t that I wouldn’t play it, but as a type of game, it isn’t going to fit in my collection. I look at my collection and there are other games I’d play before it, all the time. Why, because I’m not a big euro gamer, I know that about myself.

But, there are people who are big euro game fans. So they probably wouldn’t put something like Reichbusters in their collection. So while Reichbusters is a solid investment for me, it isn’t for them. And I also know that with Aeon’s End, for example, I like it enough that I want expansions for it. So I have all of it. It means my collection could be more diverse and have more games, but I know I like what I have.

Is Either Better?

I think some would argue for both. A wide collection means you have more variety of games to play with more people. However, if you don’t love those games, do you really want to play them? It’s a bit of a pickle that you can get stuck in, having games to have the variety but never playing those outside of what you really like. On the flip side, if you only have what you really like, you need to have a group that likes the same things. It limits who you can play a game with.

I also think that it’s important to go through the stages. If you are just getting into the hobby and find that you like deck building games, let’s say Dominion in particular. You could go deep, you could get everything for Dominion, and there’s a lot to get. That would be a deep Dominion collection. But it is also not aiding you in if you like more or other types of games. Now, maybe you have a game store that you can play other games at, so you get exposure that way. But for a lot of people they don’t have that option and they are the supplier of games for their group.

Final Thoughts

Two things for final thoughts, one, is that it’s fine to spend as much or as little time as you need in both areas. Because I think that you do bounce back and forth over time some. But don’t feel like you need to rush to figure out what you love. That could take months or years to get that figured out.

Secondly, if you know what you like, don’t use that to limit what you’ll try. I think there are times gamers get into a gaming rut. All amerithrash games are bad, all euro games have no theme, if a game have take that at all in it are trash. Most might not be your type of game, but because a game looks one way doesn’t mean that it is.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

Often with this type of gamer, they are going to look at games that tell a story. I’m talking about two different types of stories here, first there is the campaign style story or games that inherently tell a story, but also board games that provide story through the game play.

Two Quick Examples

So, I hope that makes sense, but if it doesn’t, I do have a couple of quick examples to give in two games that are actually in the same family of games. That would be Pandemic and any of the Pandemic Legacy games.

Pandemic Legacy is a game that has story baked into it. You play through months and story unfolds as you go. You unlock things mid game that add to the story and as you progress month to month your goals change and story continues to progress.

Pandemic, it doesn’t have all the trappings that Pandemic Legacy does. But Pandemic still tells a story. It does that through the game play and the players as diseases pop up around the world, you name them. There are hot spots that develop where no matter how much you try and keep them down they always seem to come back up again. The medic gets tired of going back to Lagos over and over again to deal with it because you just can’t avoid it coming back up. Those stories come out of playing the game.

Story Campaign Games

So I’ve given one example of the two different types of games, but I wanted to talk about each of them in more depth. We’re starting with story driven campaign games. These are the big games that people are going to think of when it comes to story. The Gloomhaven, Sword & Sorcery and other similar games out there. These games often go through Kickstarter because they have a lot of minis and they are harder to sell in retail stores.

When done well, these games really develop and interesting narrative to them. Good storytelling should have you invested in what is going to happen next in a book and that is the same with a campaign game. If I can play a session and at the end I’m not ready to play again, that means that there are one or more of a couple of flaws with the game. This could be that the story isn’t that engaging, or it could be that the game play itself isn’t that amazing. I talk about Sword & Sorcery when it comes to this sort of thing. I think the story is fine, it certainly isn’t bad, but the mechanics are so dice chucking focused that the game feels like it removes some meaningful decisions from you just by a roll of the dice. Gloomhaven on the other hand has well balanced and interesting mechanics to the game to go with a solid story, so it kept on sucking me back in to play more and more.

Story based campaign games aren’t that hard to find, and if you want to find some, here are a list to checkout.

Campaign Games

• Gloomhaven
• Reichbusters: Projekt Vril
• Folklore: The Affliction
• Clank! Legacy
• Aeon’s End Legacy
• Pandemic Legacy (Seasons 0 through 2)
• Shadows of Brimstone
• Legacy of Dragonholt
• Forgotten Waters
• Roll Player Adventures

And there are a ton more as well, but those are just a few that I have sitting on my shelves or coming through Kickstarter.

Games That Bring Out Story

Now, this could be taken one of two ways, that’s why I wanted to give the example of Pandemic above and how that tells a story. There are games that you get stories from and then there are games that bring out story. Uno would be a bad example of this. In Uno you might tell the story of how a friend got Uno three times only to get draw four played on them each time. That’s a story about the game not the game telling a story.

What I’m talking about are those games where the theme is there, at least enough, so you really feel the story coming out of it. A game like Marvel Champions can tell a story of a super hero fighting a super villain as if it were in the comics, but without comic panels, it just gives you a very loose framework as to what the super villain is up to. Call to Adventure is another one, and this one is more intentional, but you get generic fantasy story elements for what your adventurer is doing and at the end it’s helped create this epic story for your heroes journey.

The game creates, through mechanics and minimal story telling elements, a story that is captivating each time you play. The theme doesn’t even have to be so strongly there, but the mechanics need to be smoothly integrated into the game so that you don’t see them standing out. Instead you just play the game and what you are doing in the game just makes sense. While writing a massive story for a huge campaign game can be daunting, I think creating a game that tells a story in a one off experience is probably even more challenging.

Games With Story

• Pandemic
• Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade
• Call to Adventure
• Blood Rage
• Aeon’s End: War Eternal
• Grimm Masquerade
• Marrying Mr. Darcy
• Marvel Champions
• Specter Ops
• Clank! In! Space!

These are the first games that popped into my head. I surprised to think of Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade, but it does a good job of telling the story of playing pinball. It’s a weird thing to think about, but it does a good job of it and creates a memorable time.

Is This Type of Board Game Better?

Personally, for me, I enjoy it more than a pure dice chucker or a pure cube pusher. And I think when getting people into the hobby, this is a strong selling point for a game. A euro game can be too dry, and an amerithrash game to be too lucky and sometimes just too big for new gamers. I think especially games from that second category, games that bring out story, are great to hook new players into the gaming hobby. But it won’t be the cup of tea for everyone. Some people will love the epic Amerithrash games with tons of swingy combat and randomness in them. For others, randomness needs to be highly minimized. So I don’t know that games that tell stories, campaign or otherwise, are better, but I do like them better.

How about you? What games tell the best story for you?

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

The Euro Gamer

This gamer is all about the mechanics. If a game has really interesting mechanics, focuses on those mechanics, and allows them to strategize a lot, they’ll like this game.

I think another name for this gamer would also be the strategy gamer. This person likes to pick a strategy and be able to build towards it throughout the game without having to change and deviate from it much at all. It’s all about taking the set of inputs at the start of and throughout the game and implement a long term strategy that can get them the most points.

The Amerithrash Gamer

Also known as Ameritrash, Amerithrash just has a nicer ring to it and also sounds less derogatory to the gamer. This gamer likes their big games that have a lot of theme but a lot more randomness. For an Amerithrash gamer, theme is king and they are more willing to overlook mechanics if the game has a lot of theme.

So, another name for an Amerithrash gamer would probably be a theme gamer. This gamer is going to be fine with a whole lot more randomness, less laid out rules, and changing states of the game and events shaking up the game, as long as it is thematic.

The Party Gamer

This one is pretty simple and probably not reading an article about different types of gamers. This is the person who might dip their toe into a game like Monopoly or even Ticket to Ride, but they really only play party style games. For them, the point of a game is to make them laugh. The funnier they find the cards or a theme of the game, the better that game is going to be for them. They look at board games as another form of entertainment like a movie or television show where it is the entertainments job to provide the fun, not incumbent at all upon the person watching, reading, or playing it.

The Omni-Gamer

This gamer likes all games whether they are Euro or Amerithrash, they are going to be willing to sit down and play most any game and probably find something fun with it. They’re even cool sitting down and playing a party game.

I think that a lot of gamers almost fall into this category of being an Omni-gamer. Most, however, will have one way that they prefer, whether it’s the more strategic Euro style sensibilities or the heavily involved theme of Amerithrash. But they’ll be willing to play most any game, at least once.

The Experience Gamer

I think that all of them that I’ve written to up to this point are gamers that most board gamers would find to be pretty normal. Euro and Amerithrash are two very accepted styles of board games and games that gamers often have strong opinions on.

I think that there is a fifth type of gamer, and I think that I fall into this one. I will say that this might skew a little bit more towards the Amerithrash side, but not completely there. While I don’t mind dice chucking madness like you get in a lot of heavy Amerithrash games, I prefer games that give me an experience. A lot of Amerithrash games do that because they have heavy amounts of theme and theme as king gives a lot of interesting experiences.

But I think of gamers like Gloomhaven and Lords of Hellas, two games one that has a story running through it and another that doesn’t, but both aren’t just your standard dice chucking game with minis. Then again, both of the games do have some minis. Gloomhaven does have some randomness with a modifier deck, but you are able to tailor that as you play so it’s less random, or more random, or more randomly better. And the card play in Gloomhaven and how you build your deck is definitely strategic. With Lords of Hellas, sure you can go fight giant monsters, but it’s done through card play again, and you can pick various strategies from just building temples to fighting lots of monsters to beating up on other players to building statues. The main thing about those two thematic but not really Ameritrash games that drew me in was the experience I had playing it.

So I think there is a fifth gamer option, and that is the experience gamer. This is the gamer who doesn’t care about the mechanics, if they are great or bad, doesn’t care about the theme, if it’s dripping with theme or non-existent, they care about the experience of the game. This is also made trickier by the fact that experience can depend on the other players at the table as well, but most of the time I can separate that player experience from the game experience.

What type of Gamer Are You?

Let me say, while some board gamers might look down upon other types of gamers, all types of gamers are good board gamers and true board gamers. Just because ones taste doesn’t match with someone else’s or because party games are easier to learn and play than other games doesn’t make them worse or better. I really want to hammer this home because often gamers look down on other types of gamers, and I want to see the hobby grow.

So let me know in the comments below what type of gamer you are, or over on Twitter and Facebook.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

The Collection

Numbers

A’s – B’s – C’s – D’s – E and F’s – G and H’s – I, J and K’s – L’s – M’s – N, O, and P’s – Q and R’s

S’s

Sagrada (and Expansions)

I wish that I had backed Sagrada on Kickstarter, not because there is anything special with that edition really compared to what I have, but because I like the game that much. This dice drafting game just works and looks amazing on the table. The theme of stained glass windows appeals to most everyone, even non-nerdy gamers. And the concept of taking a die and placing it into your stained glass window makes sense. Add in that the dice look amazing in the windows because they are translucent, it sells the game even more on the table.

Status: Played

Santorini

I don’t always love abstract games. But Santorini looks great on the table, and that counts for a lot in a game, in my opinion. Especially for a game that is abstract. The simple game play helps the game be even more appealing. You are just moving a piece and building a level. The goal is to make it to the third level of a building, which is simple enough. And when the game becomes too simple, you can add in god cards which give players powers.

Status: To Be Played

Say Bye to the Villains

I like extremely tough cooperative games. Say Bye to the Villains fits that mold perfectly as I have yet to win it. But for me, I don’t see that as a negative, mainly because we are always close to winning. None of the games feel like we’re too far away which is saying something considering how many times I’ve played it. It also helps that the game play is simple enough. You are just playing cards that eat up time, and the game isn’t too long either. For some people it would be a negative, but for me, it’s a good thing. It feels like there’s always just one more thing to do in the Say Bye to the Villains than you have time for.

Status: Played

Scattergories

I have a game from 1988 on my list. And yes, I play Scattergories still. Scattergories is a party game that works well since it depends on the players creativity but not on in-jokes. It also works well over Zoom which has gotten it played several times this year. The game is simple and everyone understands what is going on when played. Scattergories isn’t a game that I’ll pull out all the time, but people have fun when it is pulled out. And it’s a game that everyone knows because it’s been around so long.

Status: Played

Scrabble

If you thought Scattergories was old, think again. I have Scrabble in my collection as well. Scrabble being published in 1948 might make it the oldest game in my collection. I still enjoy playing Scrabble, though. I prefer regular Scrabble to the “quick” Scrabble or Banagrams. The main reason is that Scrabble has more strategy and tactics than those do. In Banagrams it is purely pattern recognition and while I am good at it, it isn’t as fun. I prefer to think about how I might be setting up my opponent in Scrabble and the strategy that comes with that.

Status: Played

SeaFall

I wanted to like SeaFall so badly. And it’s funny that I do have a copy of it still. I was gifted a copy that a friend got for cheap. SeaFall promised that it was going to be an epic seafaring game where the story unfolded as you explored. Instead, we got a story that was a mess and complicated but only because it didn’t unfold in order. Compared to other Legacy Games, story happened much more randomly and the games themselves took too long. I wanted a game that told epic punchy story about adventure on the high seas. And, I think that is possible within SeaFall, how the story works, though, needs to be reworked.

Status: Played

Second Chance

I like flip and writes as I’ve said many a time before. Second Chance is a simple flip and write. You try and fill as much of your square as possible and that’s it. To do that you are putting in polyomino like shapes onto your board. If you can’t place one of the two shapes, you get a second chance card, a card only you can use. If you are able to use it, you stay in the game and continue playing. If not, you are out and count up the empty spaces you have left. The game is that simple. But it works well because it gives a chance for people to be creative in how they fill in the shapes. You doodle on them so you can tell what is filled and what isn’t, or create patterns. And that part of the game is really a lot of fun. Plus, the game works for everyone since it is so simple.

Status: Played

Sentinel Tactics: The Flame of Freedom

Honestly, I ordered this game on accident. I thought I was ordering another expansion for Sentinels of the Multiverse, but I ordered Sentinel Tactics. Thankfully I ordered a standalone game, not an expansion for Sentinels Tactics. Sentinel Tactics still takes place in the Sentinels of the Multiverse world, but is a tactical game, as the name implies. You move chits around a modular board playing through scenarios that have you trying to beat a villain. I hope it’s good, I know one person who said it was interesting, if not, I got it on a steep sale, so I can always use it to get store credit at my FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) for a game I want.

Status: To Be Played

Sentinels of the Multiverse (and Expansions Galore)

What, this game comes after Sentinel Tactics alphabetically, who’d have guessed. I picked up the base game used from my FLGS. Sentinals is a game that I’ve wanted to try for a while because of the superhero theme. Then when Tom Vassal played it on a What’s Appening stream for the Dice Tower, I decided it looked good enough to pick up. Then, Black Friday rolled around and Greater Than Games had a massive sale. So I picked up a ton of expansions for it, almost a literal ton. I believe it was 17 expansions for it, plus Sentinel Tactics. I still need to get it to the table, and I plan on starting just with the base game, but I love the superhero world and the comics that come with some of the boxes.

Status: To Be Played

Shadowrun Crossfire: Prime Runner Edition

I picked this one up recently as well. Shadowrun Crossfire first came onto my radar when I played it at Fantasy Flight Game Center off of their demo wall. I knew when I played it that I’d pick it up eventually. I really like the world of Shadowrun. A world where big corporations are running things, and hackers go on runs to try and get data and take them down. The cyberpunk setting works really well for me. I know there are some knocks on the game with how slowly characters level up, but I am still excited to play through it’s campaign.

Status: Played

Shadowrun: Sprawl Ops (with Cooperative Expansion)

This game was a bit of a mess getting it from Kickstarter. The shipping company messed up royally, and while we did get cool extra boards, the creators who were doing updates were not professional about everything. I don’t have any issue with the publisher Catalyst Game Labs, but with Lynnvander Studios, I’d be hesitant to back any of their projects again. The game looks amazing and has a great cyberpunk aesthetic, though, so I am excited to play it. And the game comes in a massive box, where even the box looks awesomely cyberpunk.

Status: To Be Played

Shadows of Brimstone: City of the Ancients

I have some beefs with this game, though it is still on my shelf. The main beef I have is that it sucks to put together. All the little minis come in a lot of pieces and are not easy to put together. This sounds like it’s been rectified to some extent in other prints of this box. However, the game itself is a lot of fun. It’s a weird west game where you are pushing deep into a mine to try and complete objectives. But there are monsters in there, and you might stumble into a whole other world if you aren’t careful. I want more time to play it, but I have to reassemble my minis first, which might be a good winter project, assuming I remember how they go together.

Status: Played

Shadows of Kilforth: A Fantasy Quest Game

I have mentioned a few places that have caused me to pick up games and Shadows of Kilforth is one of those game. This fantasy game with an Eastern flare to it, was one that I saw the original, Gloom of Kilforth played on the Rolling Solo channel on YouTube. The game play looked interesting, so when a sequel showed up on Kickstarter, it felt like a good game to back. I still think it will be, I just need to get it sorted and ready for the table. This game is one that I should be able to play solo on Malts and Meeples in the new year sometime.

Status: To Be Played

Shakespeare

I’m ashamed of how long this game has been on my shelf without getting played. My wife picked it up for we as a gift, and as a game that she’d also like the theme of. But it’s euro game, so I don’t get those off my shelf as much. I am interested in it as I like the theme of putting on a play. Getting costumes, actors, sets, and more ready sounds like a lot of fun, I just haven’t played it yet. I am excited to try it still, I just need to sit down and learn the rules so we can get it to the table.

Status: To Be Played

The Siblings Trouble

I picked this one up off of Kickstarter because of how much I had enjoyed Lift Off! from the same design and company. This one is a light RPG like game that is targeted for families with kids. It is meant to be a way to get that RPG feel without having as much of a ruleset as something like Dungeons and Dragons does. I’m waiting until the toddler is old enough to play it with us because the game looks very cute.

Status: To Be Played

Silver: Amulet (and Coin, Bullet, and Dagger)

Silver: Amulet was a game that I got to try at GenCon in 2019. The game has a puzzle feel to it as you are trying to score the fewest points in your village. The twist comes with being able to swap out two cards for one card, if the cards are the same number. Add in a lot of powers on your cards, and you have an interesting puzzle. And then to top that all off, you don’t know what most of your cards are at the start of the game. The amulet, coin, bullet, and dagger all do different things, so depending on which version you play there will be a unique special power. And the cards you play with between the games can be mixed together, you just need one set of each number to make it work.

Status: Played

Silver & Gold

Roll and write, you know the drill. I like them, and this one does something cool. You fill in spots on cards, which seems bad. But the cards are dry erase, so you can play with them over and over again. It is a clever twist as you start to do set collection with them and score points off of which ones you have filled in. You still make combos though. If you cross of a treasure spot, that allows you to fill in another spot on any of your cards, and there are palm trees that are worth points as well. Super small sized game, but looks to pack a lot of game into it.

Status: To Be Played

Skip-Bo

The section of old games apparently. Skip-Bo is a classic game that I grew up playing less than I’d want in some ways. Fairly often for a simple card game Uno would be the game picked. But Skip-Bo had more interesting game play to it than Uno does. I like figuring out how to place your discards in the most optimal way possible, and sometimes stopping early to try and lock an opponent from being able to play easily. Now, the game can drag because of poor card draw, but it is generally quite fast.

Status: Played

Skulk Hollow

A two player game that was on Kickstarter. Again from the same company as Lift Off! Skulk Hollow is an asymmetric two player game. One person plays as the fox kingdom and the other as the old guardian that has awakened. The fox player needs to get onto the guardian, since it is to too large to beat otherwise, and take out it’s different actions. The monster generally has it’s own objective, but can by taking out the fox leader. The game has simple card play but is very tactical in nature and the box comes with multiple leaders for the fox and guardians for a ton of replayability.

Status: Played

Skull

The first time I played Skull, I wasn’t sure how much I liked it. It had weird coasters that you played with, and it was a push your luck sort of game. However, the more I played it, the more interesting it became, how did you successfully bluff someone into picking from your pile which has a skull in it, when that will bust you if you get stuck with the bid. The bluffing is what makes this game, it doesn’t have a lot of strategy to it, but if you can bluff and read your opponents you’ll do well in this game. And the coaster shaped “cards” are still weird.

Status: Played

Small World (and Small World Underground)

Small World was one of the gateway games for me that got me into the hobby. I like how it has Risk elements, but it’s actually fun. It has a lot of attacking and defeating your enemy, but in a fun way. You aren’t rolling die like in Risk, the battles are determined just by if you have enough pieces of cardboard to beat an area. The powers and races make this game work though, because something like undead ghouls or flying halflings are just silly, and you can get some great combinations, like commando elves or flying sorcerers that can put a bit of a target on your back. Game is a lot of fun every time I play it, which is about once a year.

Status: Played

Sonora

I’ve talked about roll and writes, and flip and writes, even a draft and write, but I haven’t mentioned my flick and write. Sonora is a combotastic [blank] and write game. To start your turn you flick disks around a board which determine who much you get to put in certain areas. Some of them are simple race to completion, others have you putting pieces in like they are Tetris, or filling in dots, or closing off sections of the board. It has a ton going on, and if you get the right things, you then get more to fill in other areas and it can repeat even more. It is extremely satisfying.

Status: Played

Specter Ops

A game that I picked up used, but that was on my radar for a long time. Spector Ops is a one versus all game, but the one is hidden. They are moving around to various objectives trying to get them all. The concept is so interesting to me. I want to play both sides of it, see how well I can hide where I’m at and see how well I can deduce where someone else is going. It feels like it should be a good and challenging experience.

Status: To Be Played

Splendor

Splendor is a light and small engine building game. You are collecting gems to get cards that have permanent gems and sometimes points. And you can use those permanent gems to get even more cards which games on them and the process repeats until someone has 15 points. The game is really simple to play, the theme is not there, but that’s okay. It is meant as an introduction to engine building and it works for that. Not one I want to play all the time, but I keep it on the shelf for what it is.

Status: Played

Star Wars: Destiny

Fantasy Flight Games foray into collectible card games. It was a fun game because it wasn’t only card it was nice chunky dice as well. And I like the Star Wars theme better than say, Magic the Gathering. The issue is that the game isn’t quite as good, and people didn’t get into it as much. Destiny is now a retired game, but one that had a good following and people were sad to see leave. What I think worked well was that none of the cards were rarer than the others. So you got good stuff all the time. That was part of what killed it as well, Magic works because it has a massive secondary market for it for FLGS’s, Destiny had none.

Status: Played

Star Wars: Imperial Assault

The Star Wars dungeon crawl. This game does one thing that I really wish the Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth did, and that is that it is adjacent to the main story and the main characters. But I can’t play as Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, those are characters who just make appearances. But out of the base box, you are still playing around the original trilogy storyline. The game also has an app, so it can be one versus all, but it can also be fully cooperative. I need to play it more because I’ve liked the plays I’ve had.

Status: Play

Star Wars: Unlock!

The unlock games are basically escape room games in in a box. And the Star Wars: Unlock! game is a game that is an escape room in a box with a Star Wars theme. I like these games because they are very puzzly and can give you an experience while you play them. I’ve heard that the Star Wars: Unlock is a bit easier than some of the other ones, but I’m fine with that as it’ll be more accessible to more people. I want to play this over the holidays, and that’s the one downside, once you’ve played an unlock game once, you can’t play it again because you’ll know how it goes, still $30 for three hour long experiences in a group isn’t bad.

Status: To Be Played

Stipulations

I talk about this game a lot, mainly because I really like it was a party game. Stipulations asks the question, what horrible thing will your friends come up with. If you have the super power of flight, what’s the stipulation, or the dream job of being a movie actor, what is the stipulation. This game does what most party games do, it ends up with a lot of in jokes, but it is a fun time and compared to something like Apples to Apples which is basically always clean or Cards Against Humanity which is always dirty, Stipulations can be tailored to those whom you’re playing with.

Status: Played

Super Fantasy Brawl

I’ve decided that I really like games that Mythic Games puts out, or at least in concept. Reichbusters looks like a fun twist on a dungeon crawl, and Super Fantasy Brawl seems like a really accessible two player fighting game. The game has chunky minis that look great, and simple but interesting card play. I like that you play three cards on your turn and those cards have to be of different colors, but each character, of the three you have doesn’t correspond to a color, so if you get a red and a yellow card for one character, you can activate that character twice, from my understanding. I really want to give this one a whirl as it has an epic table presence for a fairly simple seeming game, rules wise.

Status: To Be Played

Super-Skill Pinball: 4-cade

You know the drill, I love my roll and write games. And I like the theme on this one a ton. I like the idea of playing a pinball machine and seeing what the high score is that I can get on it. I like the mechanics of how the ball can bounce around and how it will only bounce certain ways and generally down. You are also trying to bounce it up higher and complete combos on things, just like in real pinball to get even more points. And it’s called 4-cade because there are 4 different machines that you can play.

Status: To Be Played

Sushi Go Party!

This was another early game for my collection as it was on Wil Wheaton’s Table Top show. It is a card drafting game, a mechanic that I quite enjoy, with set collection as well. The game works well, even though with new players you sometimes have someone get off on what they are drafting. Sushi Go Party! also gives you ways to change everything up, so that you can have different combinations of foods on the menu. The game has a very cute table appeal and is just a hit basically all the time.

Status: Played

Sword and Sorcery (plus Expansions)

Sword and Sorcery is a classic dungeon crawl game. This one is pure Amerithrash dice chucking fun. I like how much mitigation you have, but only mitigation in having multiple symbols to use on the dice and being able to reroll dice. My knock on this game is that it is almost a little bit too easy at times. You get great weapons for completing things and now you are hitting really hard and can take down monsters fast. Granted if you roll poorly no matter what you’ll do poorly. I wish it had a bit more of a story to it, but overall, the story isn’t too bad and the game is meant to be mainly a dice chucking dungeon crawl anyways.

Status: Played

Sword Art Online Board Game: Sword of Fellows

I love Sword Art Online, one of my favorite anime, and I’ve watched it multiple times. I am also working on a game idea based off of some of the isekai themes from it. But this game is a bit sad, the anime is big and epic, this game is tiny. it does get some things right, mainly the combat of switching in and out and not letting the bad guy go feels like it matches the theme. I need to play this one not solo, because I think it might be better that way and have less upkeep for one player. I’m hoping some day we’ll get a truly epic Sword Art Online board game.

Status: Played

So that’s all of the S’s, there are ton of them. I hope that you were able to stick it out, hte rest of the list will be a lot shorter. There are so many good games in the S’s as well and a lot that I need to play. Which one should I play first? Do I have something that seems like it’s missing to you? I’m guessing people will say Scythe, which I owned, but got rid of.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

Unfortunately I can’t drop in anything more than I link, like I do with Kickstarter for the page, you can find it here.

Pros

• Space Theme
• Great Track record
• Exploration period
• Campaign Game
• Leveling, upgrading
• Ship and planet parts of game
• Aesthetic/Graphic Design

Cons

• Cost & shipping

Page

This is Awaken Realms, and this is their own crowdfunding site, it is going to look good. They know what to throw up to get people to check it out, and they’ve been advertising this a ton. I think it’s important to note that, because it’s been launched for all of an hour and 5 minutes on their own platform and it is at $467,000. Now that’s a lot of money, this game is going to make a ton of money for them, but it’s a risk because I’d guess this would be over a million or near that, if it was on Kickstarter.

But besides that little note, Awaken Realms really knows how to create a great looking game and a great looking page. Tainted Grail had a nice dark moody look to it that matches the game, this page gives you that sense of excitement and largeness of the game and space. And while certainly, from some of the playthroughs if you check them out, things can go wrong, this game looks like it’s less dark and more about the massiveness of space, exploration and adventure.

I also like that with this new layout the pledge levels aren’t off to the side, you can see what you’re pledging when you go through the whole process and the page has bookmarks/navigation along the side for more than just risks. This whole page looks really nice and functional for what I need. And now, I will say, the playing section, that part as I always say, I want it higher and more, but Awaken Realms generally has done a great job with games, so I don’t need as much from them, they have done a great job with getting playthroughs out.

The Game

This game has a lot of things that attract me to it. There is dice rolling, which isn’t one of them. I don’t’ mind dice rolling, but the fact that you’re rolling dice and that’s a bit part of the game on the planets doesn’t have me super excited. Now, I don’t think that it’s going to be a bad part of the game, but I like a lot of mitigation of the dice rolls, or better yet card play, but there also seems to be some of that as well, or planning that comes with it.

I do really like how the game is split into two phases, there is the ship phase. You’re doing things around the ship, playing through that book so that you can get ready for the next planet that you decide to go to, and you have a wide variety of planets to go to that you can pick form. You can upgrade the crew, the lander, the ship itself, you can do a lot of different things, heal up, whatever it might be, and that’s a big part of this big game, so I do get my euro piece to it which apparently I want.

Then you get down to the planet, and there’s a ton of story, you’re exploring, looking for things, trying to complete missions, fight aliens and monsters and ideally not die, but let’s be honest, it’s an Awaken Realms game, you’ll die at least 4 times. And you can go back to planets again, but whatever state you left that planet in is what it’ll be like when you get back there again, which I think is really interesting and makes the game feel even more epic than it would have otherwise.

Back or Brick

Not going to draw this out, this was an instant back for me. I signed up for the notification when this was put up on Gamefound right away when they announced that they were going to do their own crowdfunding site. And the question I had for myself was minis or not. I did end up going with the minis because they look amazing, Awaken Realms did minis before board games, but they feel like they’ll add more to the immersive experience of the game.

How about for you, is this a back or a brick?

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

You can find my whole collection here.

Numbers

A’s – B’s – C’s – D’s – E and F’s

G and H’s

Gloom

This is a fun little story telling card game, and one of the earlier “new” games that I picked up after watching it played on Wil Wheaton’s Table Top show. What drew me to this game was how creative and morbid they were with everything, and how a game could have such a silly objective, such as killing of your family for the fewest points possible to get the win. What keeps this on my shelf, even though I haven’t played it in a few years, is that it’s just such a fun time when you do play it. You get into the morbid absurdity of it and collectively tell such a tragic but absurd story.

Status: Played

Gloomhaven (Forgotten Circles Exp and Jaws of the Lion)

Gloomhaven is my favorite game of all time, so clearly I’ve played it a lot, and I’ve beaten it and the Forgotten Circles expansion, I haven’t beaten Jaws of the Lion yet. What I love about Gloomhaven is just the large, sprawling story that it tells and the very Ameritrash feel, but also the Euro game sensibilities in the combat and combat cards come through, and no dice. Now, I like dice chucking, but I’ve found that I really like that tactical nature of the game play in Gloomhaven where it is much more buttoned down than a pure dice fest. This is a massive game with a massive rule book, but not that difficult when you get into it.

Gloomhaven and expansion Status: Played
Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion: To Be Played

Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension

This is a game that I picked up in San Diego because I had a few hours to burn before seeing family and after I was out of my hotel, so of course I went to a game shop. This is one that I had seen played on Rodney Smith’s channel, Watch It Played, and that looks like it was a lot of fun. I’m glad I made the purchase as I’ve had fun with it, trying to time out things so that I can rocket forward by spending the right fuel as you try and get your spaceship to escape a black hole and get back to your own dimension. What makes this one fun is trying to read what the other players are going to be doing, you know half the cards they have, but what else might they have to power their ships, how fast will it go compared to yours will that move them closer or further from you. And I like how some fuels move you closer to the nearest object while others push you away or pull them all closer to you. It’s a clever idea that works well in a game.

Status: Played

The Grimm Masquerade

I almost missed this one, but you wouldn’t know that had I not said it. This game I like as a deduction/social deduction game. I think what works well is that it really is more deduction than anything else. In this game you are at a masquerade and you’re trying to guess what Grimm’s Fairly Tale characters everyone is. Now that should be obvious, Rumpelstiltskin and The Beast form Beauty and the Beast should be pretty obviously in why they are, but let’s say magic. What I really like about this game is the two cards you give or keep each turn. You draw one and you have the choice of giving it to someone or keeping it for yourself and they have an item on it that you might want, because if you collect enough of one, you can win, if it’s the right one for your character. The second card you do the opposite thing from the first one, so if I give it away, I have to keep the second card. But the downside is that you have a weakness and if you get enough cards of that type, you are out of the round and can’t get the rose which is worth a bunch of points. I like the push and pull of that as you have to consider, do I take something that’s just neutral for me because I know if I get another of a certain item I’ll be out? It’s just a really good and quick deduction game.

Status: Played

Hanabi

This is a weird game, in that you have a hand of cards and they don’t face you, so you can’t see your cards, but you can see everyone else’s cards. This is also a game about hold information in your head, not just for yourself but what clues other people have been given already about the cards in their hands. You’re trying to play down cards from 1 to 5 in different colors, but you are limited in how you can talk, and of course you can’t see your own cards. It’s a nice simple game, but one that has a lot going on when you really get down to it.

Status: Played

Hanamikoji

I was going to say that this probably my favorite game to play with two, but there is one that I like better, but it’s the best two player only game that I have. This game has you trying to win the favor of Geisha so that they will come to your restaurant, you do that by giving them gifts. But what works so well in this game is how you give the gifts, each player, per round, does four actions, put down two cards face down that won’t be used for gaining favor, one face down that will be used for gaining favor, giving your opponent the choice of 3 cards which they get one and you get two for gaining favor, or giving your opponent a choice between two sets of two cards for gaining favor. That’s it, and both of you can do those actions in any order, if you can figure out what your opponent might have, you can make them have some really hard choices as to what to take, but it’s always a bit of a risk. Great two player game.

Status: Played

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

This is Harry Potter in a deck building game, as you face off against the different bad guys from the books with the characters of Harry, Hermoine, Ron, and Neville. What is really interesting about this game is that as you start you’re playing through the first book, then they add more cards and of things from the second book and you get more, and then the third, fourth, and all the way up through the 7th. It’s basically a campaign game that takes you through the whole Harry Potter series Now that does mean that the first game is pretty simple but later ones are longer and more challenging, but you can do cooler and different things than before.

Status: Played (partially)

Hats

This was one of my most anticipated games from GenCon 2019 after seeing it played by Man vs Meeple. This is an interesting game with an Alice in Wonderland theme, but really it’s a unique card game. in this game your hand of cards are cards you’re playing onto the table in the middle of the game, the cards you take off the table are the ones that you use for scoring. And scoring is fun as well, because there are more suits than there are spots at the table, and the table might have brown in two different spots, not everything will be scored, so you need to push for some colors, sometimes, and then hold one or two back so you can play it down and that color will be scored. But a card on the Mad Hatters table can be replaced if someone plays the same color or a higher number over that card, so it’s a real balancing act and puzzle, great at two very thinky, fun at four, but much more random.

Status: Played

Hearts

Yes, I own a deck of cards. Hearts is a pretty fun trick taking card game. I don’t play it often, but I won’t say no to a game.

Status: Played

Heaven & Ale

This is a game that I talked about recently in a Point of Order post. It’s a euro game which normally isn’t my cup of tea, or pint of beer in this case. However, because of the beer theme, and a reviewer who I like their reviews and generally like their taste said it was one of their top games, and because it was deeply discounted for Black Friday, I grabbed it. This is a game that you can basically call a puzzle as you are putting out tiles, getting resources, trying to get the most victory points, I’m interested to try it when I can play with people in person again.

Status: To Be Played

Heroes of Terrinoth

There are some YouTube channels that you’ll see often on my posts, Rolling Solo is one of them. He highlighted this game a while back, and when I spotted it used at my FLGS, All Systems Go, I decided to grab it. In this game you are playing as heroes trying to defeat scenarios, which might be searching for something, going to different places and fighting monsters, and eventually dealing with a big boss. What I thought was interesting was how you had four abilities and you’d have to reset them at times, so it isn’t just about doing the same thing over and over again. Plus, you can upgrade those abilities, and how that lets you focus your character in a few different ways, just in the scenario itself.

Status: To Be Played

The Hobbit

I like Lord of the Rings a lot, so when The Hobbit game from Fantasy Flight was on sale, I decided to pick it up. This is a really interesting game as it’s almost semi-cooperative in nature. As a group you need to deal with a series of challenge points, and you can raise your stats to do that. But not one player will be able to deal with all of the challenges, so you need everyone to have raised their stats as well. To do this you are playing cards from your hand with numbers on them, the higher the number the further you’ll move in your group of travelers. But going the furthest doesn’t always mean you’ll get the best thing, but you also might not want to always get the best thing, because if someone is lagging behind too much in their stats, it’ll make it more likely that Smaug will move forward and everyone will lose the game. It’s a clever system that I enjoy.

Status: Played

Homebrewers

Have I mentioned that I like beer? Homebrewers is a game all about being a home brewer and in a home brew club where you are trying to brew the best beer to get points at Summerfest and Oktoberfest. You do this by getting ingredients, putting them on your beers, brewing those beers, and then each ingredient has some power of some sort, it might be you get $2, or you could move up another beer on how well you can brew it, it all depends on the ingredients that you have on the beer. So if you’re smart with how you do it, you can brew one beer to influence more or to make things easier. It’s a nice engine building game that gives you a lot of fun options and things you can do, and it also plays well at two players.

Status: Played

Hues and Cues

Final game for the letter H, Hues and Cues is a fun, new, party game from The Op, formerly USOpoloy. What I like about this game is that it’s a different kind of party game. In so many you are trying to make people laugh, or something like that by what you do or write, Hues and Cues challenges you to give good one word and then two word clues to get people as close as possible to the color you want. I like that you want people to guess right, but also for the players, guessing close works as well. But you can’t just say something like Sky Blue, as that tells you that the color is some shade of blue, but your one word clue could be sky, so what do people consider sky, or maybe you give a clue that has people going in the wrong way, you then can give another clue to get people closer again. It also works pretty well via Zoom, just everyone should be looking at a monitor to get the colors as close as possible to each other.

Status: Played

What’s your favorite game from the G’s and H’s? Is there one that stands out as one that you’d want to try or one that I should try that I don’t have in this letter range?

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

• These are my favorite, you want what people consider best, see the Board Game Geek Top 100
• If a game you love isn’t on the list, it might be be coming, I might not have played it, and if I have, it’s 101
• If a game looks cool, I have links to buy it from CoolStuffInc or Amazon, or you can grab most at your FLGS
• There are a few games, Destiny 2 Player versus regular Destiny where if they are basically the same thing, I only do one of them

80. Lift Off! Get me off this Planet!

This game has the honor of being the first game that I backed on Kickstarter. When I backed it, I did so without really having the gaming collection that I have no or the experience gaming, I just thought that the game looked fun, and, well, I was right. This game is pretty simple, you move around aliens to get them off the planet, but there is some challenge, because you need the right stuff to get them off the planet, and you need the moon to be in the right phase to get them off the planet at certain locations. So while the game is simple and very cute, there is some strategy, there is some timing, because if you don’t have enough resources placed at the right time for the launch, you might have to wait for the moon to travel around again. The game looks great on the table, and while it’s not one that I pull out and play a ton, it is a fun one to play.

Last Year: Not Ranked

79. Codenames: Pictures

Now, you will not see Codenames on the list, I’ve come around on it a little bit, but I don’t enjoy Codenames that much. Linking the words can be done, but there are some issues with it, people need to know all the words and all the possible meanings/slang for the words to really make it work. With Codenames: Pictures, there are just a whole lot more interesting ways to connect the pictures. It makes the game faster, a bit easier, but also has more memorable moments and memorable clues where you can get a lot of answers. Codenames: Pictures just has more of the party feel to the game for the weight that it’s at and I like it for that.

Last Year: 75

78. Dead Men Tell No Tales

I’m a big fan of cooperative games, and Dead Men Tell No Tales is a fun pirate themed one where you are going onto a cursed and burning pirate ship to try and grab all the treasure and leave before the ship burns and you get cut off from either the treasure or your escape. The game can get to you in a lot of ways with the fire, the guardians, the skeletal crew and just a nice challenging feel that has a bit more going on than base Pandemic, so is a bit less of a gateway game. But if you have someone in your life who likes games and pirates, and is even just familiar with modern gaming, this is a really enjoyable game. Not one of the cooperative games that gets played most often, but one I like quite well.

Last Year: 81

77. King of Tokyo

When we talk about gateway games, King of Tokyo has to be one of them that comes up. It uses a Yahtzee style dice rolling in a fun way as you all take on the roll of monsters who are battling it out over Tokyo. The game plays fast and you can either win by knocking out all the other monsters (the most fun way), or by getting points (also fun, but less punching). You can improve what you do by getting power and buying cards. And you can go into Tokyo where you can punch everyone, but the issue is everyone can then punch you. The game is fast, it’s pretty silly, and while there is player elimination, that rarely happens and then the game continues for a long time. Overall, just a fun gateway game that works best at the higher player counts.

Last Year: 37

76. Sword & Sorcery

I promise you this isn’t the only dungeon crawler on the list. It’s the first just because compared to some of the others on the list, the story isn’t as interesting. But there are some parts of the game that I really like. I like the leveling up mechanic and I like that you have two sides to each character. It makes the game feel like I could play it again with the same characters and it would play differently. And this is a true Amerithrash game where you have a big handful of dice for an attack or defense and you better roll well or you might be in trouble. And while the game has a massive rulebook and a few trickier rule things, like who a boss monster might target and how that changes, the game is actually pretty easy, you just move, explore, and fight basically, and fighting is done with the dice. I wish the story felt like it had more choices to it, but that’s about my only knock on it.

Last Year: 25

75. Skull

A very different type of game than most on my list, this is a push your luck bluffing game. Each player has a hand full of cards, a bunch of roses and a skull. Players take turns putting down a card in their own stack, face down, until someone bids on how many cards they can flip over without hitting a skull. The trick to it is that you have to flip over all of your own cards first. So if you’ve placed your skull in your stack, can you bid, just to push someone else’s bid higher so that they’ll hit yours and bust, or will you bust yourself because you’ll be stuck flipping over your own skull. There’s some interesting strategy in how you play and how you bid, but really it’s about reading the other players at the table to figure out what they’ve done.

Last Year: 99

74. Risk Legacy

First Legacy game on the list and just first overall legacy game in the hobby. While this game doesn’t have the story that the more modern ones do or try to have, the game play is still a lot of fun. It’s risk, but there’s more, you aren’t just fighting over the world, you’re fighting over bases and you’re trying to complete missions and if you can pull them off, you get victory points and the first person to hit the victory point threshold wins. Plus, all of the factions are different. And you get to decide how they are different as you add stickers to them, so you can make them better at attacking or better at defending, or maybe you get more troops to start. There’s all sorts of different strategies that you can take, but it still feels like classic Risk for the most part, it just goes much faster. Overall a fun time especially if you like Risk but can’t play it too often because it lasts too long.

Last Year: 79

73. Pandemic Legacy Season 2

Back to back legacy games, Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 is a bit further down on my list than Pandemic Legacy Season 1. I think that it tries to do a lot of new and different things, and while I think it does most of them well, it bogs down a little bit with all the new things you need to learn. That said, for being quite different than Season 1 and base Pandemic in what you’re trying to do, the mechanics seem really familiar and can get going on the base game quickly, there’s just a twist on to everything. So if you haven’t just gone from one type of Pandemic to the other, you’ll probably be able to pick up on those changes quickly. The story is very interesting, and there is a lot of legacy content in the game.

Last Year: 84

72. Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate

I like all of the Betrayal games, this one is just a bit further down on the list, because while I like the D&D theme to the game, it just doesn’t seem as epic and as good a thematic fit as horror does. This one does have some cool features though, class powers are awesome. I like that about 1/5 of the scenarios have no betrayer, there is just some monster or something that you have to do as a group, that makes it easier to keep track off since some of the haunts (betrayals) can be a bit tricky to understand and if you’re the betrayer you don’t have anyone to ask. They also fix an issue that can arise in the regular game where the haunt happens too fast. It’s still swingy and tricky to understand all the haunts, but I like it a lot and I like the silly random moments that you can have in the game, and the great rolls or the horrible rolls you can have.

Last Year: 35

71. Magic: The Gathering

By far the biggest game on the list, and actually a game that I have sold most of what I have for it, because I don’t have a consistent group to play with for the past few years. But I still really like the game. I especially like playing EDH (Commander). I never got into the competitive magic scene, but for more casual play and people not busting the bank buying stuff, I think it’s a lot of fun. I really can get into the deck building because you can come up with all sorts of odd and interesting combos and for me coming up with something odd and seeing if it can work is a blast. I like to try strange strategies and see if they’ll work or build a whole deck off of the concept of flipping and coin and see what happens with that and how well that’ll work. A few years ago this would have been higher, it’s just not one that I’m sure I’ll get to play that often anymore.

Last Year: 60

A whole lot of moving and shaking on my list. I think some of that is because, or the ones that are dropping, I like another game that does something similar that much better so it takes a bit of a hit. At least that is what I’m guessing. Still, I was a bit surprised to see a few of the games having dropped as far as they did from the 20’s and 30’s. Still really enjoy those games, just might not be the ones I pull off the shelf to scratch that game playing itch.

What is your favorite from this part of the list?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

I knew, going into Gloomhaven that it was a beast of a game but I was up for that. I thought that I’d enjoy it from the get go because of how the combat worked, how the scenarios worked, and how there was story to the game, and it’s been almost two years of playing almost every other Tuesday, plus some long Saturdays knocking out a bunch of scenarios, but it was worth it.

If you’re been following my Top 100 Games, you would know that I had Gloomhaven as my #1 game. And there are a lot of reasons for it, the story aspect, the unique combat, and the giant epic nature of it all really speak to me and have helped me figure out that I like games like that a lot. Also the bit of a legacy aspect to the game is a ton of fun as well. Is it a perfect game, I don’t think so, but it’s the closest that I’ve found.

Let’s talk about it a little bit more in detail, because I think there are two primary things that hold people back, besides the size of the game, and that’s, do the characters feel different, and do the scenarios feel different?

Do the Characters Feel Different?
I think that this is a clear yes for me. We unlocked every character in the base game and we’ve played all but two of them (plus there’s a new one in the expansion), and the characters have felt different. Some of them were great at healing, some of them would boost others attacks, some of them would go fast and do bits of damage, but always been in and out. Others would go in there and tank and even others would do massive amounts of damage, but were a bit of a glass cannon. There were ones that slung spells, and some that played riffs. Each of the characters felt unique and basically all of them felt like you can tailor them a little bit to how you wanted to play. And while I always wanted to find a tank, I didn’t feel like I was missing anything by pretty often playing a support type of character in the game, because how the supported was different for each character. And yes, we all probably had our favorites coming out of the game, but I don’t think any of us hated a character that we played or even disliked a character because they felt weaker or anything like that.

Do the Scenarios Feel Different?
Now, while the characters feel different, I think that this is one of the areas that Gloomhaven isn’t perfect. It’s not much of knock, but there are a lot of scenarios where the win situation is just kill everything, so that part of the scenario feels the same. And we also happened to hit the run in, grab this thing, and run back out a number of times in a row. But, while the end goal most have been similar fairly often, the story leading in was always interesting and helped the scenarios feel different, but more so than that, the monsters made scenarios feel different. A black imp is very different than a drake which is very different than a skeleton archer in what they do. So you had to play now you played each scenario differently and that’s often where you got most of your differences. Plus, then, you have the unique characters. There were some scenarios that we had to wait until we had a better team to come and deal with it, but that was part of the fun of the game that made scenarios feel unique, there were some characters that were just better in different types of scenarios, and generally, even if they weren’t ideal, you still had a chance to figure it out.

Overall, I don’t really have complaints about Gloomhaven. Maybe that some of the scenarios or more of them anyways, could have been goal oriented, but combat is easier to explain and make as a goal than something that’s trickier, and there was good variety in combat anyways. While I don’t think that Gloomhaven is going to be the game for everyone, I think that a lot of people will enjoy it. The combat is a bit more tactical than your standard Ameritrash game and there is more story than Euro games. And while it is big, the game, once you’re into it, isn’t that difficult, it might just take a couple of scenarios to teach someone who doesn’t do dungeon crawl games all the time.

Overall Grade: A+
Gamer Grade: A+
Casual Grade: C+

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

There is a grand-daddy of all area control games, and that’s Risk. Probably as I was describing area control, that’s what popped into a lot of peoples heads, trying to control the continent so that you can get the bonus troops. So while you might be getting the two bonus troops from Australia, how do you get out of Australia so you don’t have to try and take over Asia, because that will never work. However, if that’s what you’re thinking of for area control, you might not be a big fan of area control games. Risk has one major issue that cropped up in it and other older area control games. That being the one that I might have one troop and you might have twenty, but because I’m the defensive players and win ties, I might be able to deplete your troop if I get lucky rolling the dice.

Risk also has one more fairly large issue besides the dice, and that’s the length of game and the fact that a player can be eliminated and then might have to sit around another four hours if they want to see how the game ends. Thankfully, that’s a part of a lot of area control games that has since gone away. In every game I mention below, if you are knocked off the board, you are always able to come back, or in the case of Star Wars: Rebellion, if that was to happen, that would likely just end the game, especially if the Empire did that to the Rebels.

Modern area control games do several things to try and mitigate die rolling, though some of them still use that as the luck for the game so that doesn’t because a complete strategy game.

Star Wars: Rebellion is a game that has more going on in it than just area control, but there is that aspect where if you have more planets and certain planets you’ll be able to build more ships. The combat is based on a die pool that you build with the troops you have. There are a couple of things to make this not just a die roll to see who wins. First, you have the ability to negate hits by playing cards or add in additional hits by playing cards. You have a limited number of cards, but you can possibly get more as you go through combat. Also, the ships or troops you bring in do damage of certain types, depending on the color of dice, and same with how ships take damage. While there is some universal damage, it means you could easily out number someone, but if your troops can’t hit their troops as well, they can come in and wipe you out. This is one that is still primarily die rolling through, but it’s not longer just pure luck.

Smallworld is probably the most Risk like in terms of area control on the list, because the game is purely area control. You get points for controlling certain areas and any skills that you might have. But Smallworld removes basically all luck from the game. The luck comes from correctly using your race and special ability and being able to find one that is working well. However, when taking over an area, the rule is simple, you need one more piece of cardboard, the troops are cardboard, than is on the spot you are trying to take over. Where there is a tiny bit of luck is that you can push for a final take over at the end of your turn. So if you have one guy left and you want to take over a spot with one guy on it, you can roll a die that hope to get two or better. The downside is that this isn’t a normal six sided die so there are multiple blanks and multiple ones that are going to stop it from succeeding most of the time.

There are some games that just do away with die rolling for area control. Blood Rage and Cry Havoc are two examples of how this can work very differently. In Blood Rage you have an action point economy that is helping you put troops onto the board into areas. The areas have a certain number of spots for troops, so you can try and totally control and area, but if you out number your opponent in the area or you have good combat cards, you can try and take over an area to get the reward while it is contested. The luck in this combat comes from playing a variety of combat cards, though only one per combat. Some of the combat cards just add a large combat value, others may cancel other combat cards or steal some of their rage, which are your action points. So while winning a combat is generally the best, there are strategies where you can play without controlling too many areas.

Cry Havoc, a game about collecting gems on a crazy planet. In fact it reminds me a lot of Avatar. This is extremely unique area control. So you score based off of having the most gems at various times, but to have gems, you must control the areas with the gems. So you’re in conflict with the other players over the areas. Instead of doing a straight swap of troops or rolling to see if you kill, there is a combat board. There are three areas of the combat board, you can control the area, kill the other persons troops, or take prisoners. What’s interesting with this is that even if your troops in the control the area are killed later in combat, if you have the most there, you still control the area. So the combat has a bit of a puzzle feel because of the order of combat. Then there are cards you can play that allow you to adjust combat once you’ve seen what your enemy is doing as well. It is an extremely unique combat for area control and one that seems fairly polarizing.

Now, all of these are games where area control is a huge part of the game and you are looking to keep control of areas throughout the game. Area control does go into other games as well.

An interesting example of this is a combat game still, but is handled differently than most games like it. The game is Sword and Sorcery. It’s a pretty standard dungeon crawler, but it looks like a lot of fun. I haven’t played it yet, but it’s a game that I might track down for live streaming at some time. In the game there are a couple of different options for controlling spaces while fighting an enemy. If you have more characters than the enemy does in the area, you might get a special bonus, if you have twice as many characters, then you get an even better bonus. However, the same is true if the enemies out number the troops. This means that you have to go in with force yourself, and you may not want to divide and conquer in some situations, but you might also want to divide and conquer in others to keep the troops from all rushing to a single injured party member.

Area control is a mechanic that can show up in a number of games. Clearly I have it focused more on combat games. I think that there are some games with area control that might have more of an Euro aspect to them, but a lot of them are more the Ameri-thrash games. The reason for that is that a lot of area control does rely on luck, so it is less planned than a lot of euro games are. However, there are likely some games out there that are handling it in a Euro game, and even Cry Havoc has some Euro tendencies for a combat area control game.

What are some area control games that you like? For the most part I like all of the games I’ve talked about with the exception of Risk, and even Risk I’ve had plenty of fun times playing it. Area control games can be fun, but you have to be willing to be cut throat.

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

Starting with the most popular

Roll and Write: This is a genre of board game where you are rolling dice and then filling in numbers, lines, areas, of a game board that is probably just your game board to try and get a higher score than other players. The original example of this game is Yahtzee. Yes, roll and write is that simple of a genre, but it’s having a huge moment now with the biggest game being a German game, Ganz Schong Clever. They’ve evolved past Yahtzee in their scoring, and while it’s a genre I haven’t gotten into, they tend to be a bit more clever in their game play versus Yahtzee which is just telling you the numbers.

Then moving to the classic

Euro Gaming: The next is also a genre of games, they can also often be called worker placement games, though that is a slightly separate genre. These games are the ones where the result of the game all comes down to math. You can figure out an optimal strategy and there isn’t going to be all that much that can be done to stop that strategy. They started to change that, as of late, with making the boards tighter so that you had to plan out things a bit more or taking it away from everyone having to do everything to score enough points to win.

Point Salad: I wanted to put this one next to Euro gaming as a lot of them can be point salads. What this means, is like a salad, you can have a ton of different things in there. So in a game, that means you are scoring points at the end of the game in six or seven different categories that make up your total score. Games like Five Tribes and Seven Wonders are two prime examples of those games. It allows you to customize your winning strategy based on another a things.

And now to one that’s more a favorite

Card Drafting: Card drafting can be a mechanic in a game or the basis of some games. The idea is that you have a hand of cards, you are selecting one card from that hand to play and then passing it on to the next player who is selecting a card from that hand either until all the cards have been played, or there is one left in the hand. This can be done several hands during a game, or it can be a lesser part of the game, maybe just at the start of the game. Two games that use it as the basis of the game are Sushi Go! Party and Seven Wonders. In those games, drafting is the whole game as you’re trying to make sets and score points based off of different criteria. A game like Blood Rage uses it at the beginning of each age to help you strategize and then you play with those cards, it’s similar in Near and Far where you draft cards at the start of the game.

Hate Drafting: So, clearly tied into the one above. Normally when you are drafting, you want to draft cards that are best for you. But in games like Sushi Go! Party and Seven Wonders, you will have an idea of what the other players want or need, so you might draft a card that doesn’t really help you, but it stops other players. Generally, this isn’t a great strategy for the person doing it, unless all the cards are equally as bad for them, but sometimes you do it to stop a large number of points just to keep yourself in the game.

The another genre that was popular and still is going strong

Deck Building: It’s a genre that has cooled off a little bit, probably more so because there are fewer games coming out in the genre that are new, and more expansions instead for older games. In these games, you have a base deck, or some resources to start buying cards, that builds up your hand and your deck. So by the end of each game, the players deck is personalized to them. The biggest game in this genre is Dominion. It has a pasted on theme of medieval times and is really about quickly drawing cards, getting money, and buying victory points. There have been a lot of games since Dominion got the genre to take off that have come out like Marvel Legendary, Xenoshyft, Hogwarts Battle, Clank!, and many more. This also can include games like Arkham Horror LCG and Magic the Gathering. They take it a slightly different way in that you are building your deck before the game is played, but the deck can still be customized to what you want.

Abstract Game: These tend to be the logic based and puzzle based games. A game like Quoridor or Blokus fall into the abstract game. It’s about thinking through and figuring out the puzzle for your given game situation. They also tend to have little theme on them, or if there is theme, it’s pasted on and there is disconnect between the theme of the game and the mechanics of the game. Dominion is a solid example of a game that could be an abstract game without any theme and it would still function just as well, but the theme makes it a more visually appealing game.

That takes us to one of the last overarching genres

Ameri-trash/thrash: It’s really Ameri-trash, but Ameri-thrash is more fun to say. These games are all about theme, whereas a lot of Euro games, their big genre counterpart, focus in on a lot of minute details and figuring out logically how to win, Ameri-trash have more luck involved. They also tend to be a lot more steeped in theme and have theme tying into the mechanics of the board game. Games like Gloomhaven or Near and Far are two prime examples. Ameri-trash games also have more randomness in their games. While Gloomhaven doesn’t have too much randomness, for Near and Far, you are rolling a die quite often to find out if you can complete a skill challenge or win a fight. You see the randomness more so in dungeon crawl sorts of games, such as Star Wars: Imperial Assault.

Gloomhaven takes us into another genre of game as well

Cooperative or Coop: These games are as they sound, you are all playing together on the same team and playing against the game to see if you can beat it or not. There’s no special mechanical piece that is tied into this, beyond that you are all on the game team. The game that caused this genre to take off was Pandemic which has come out with a ton of version and variations on the base game. Gloomhaven and Star Wars: Imperial Assault are also games that fit this genre, but Imperial Assault only does because of an app, before it fit into another genre.

One versus All: This is the other genre. Classic RPG’s fall into this as well as dungeon crawl board games. In these games one player is playing the bad guys, or the antagonists, and everyone else is playing cooperatively against them. In an RPG, that is going to be the game or the dungeon master and it’s a similar situation in dungeon crawl games.  So Star Wars: Imperial Assasult, can be played as a dungeon crawl where one person plays the imperial characters and the other players play the heroes against the bad guys. The app changes that so that no one has to miss out on the story. There are also other games that don’t fit into either the RPG or dungeon crawl genres, like Not Alone where one person controls a monster that is trying to track down all the red shirts from a crashed alien ship.

I probably should define this category next

Dungeon Crawl: I’ve mentioned it a few times, so you probably have some idea what this is, so I’ll talk about it fast. This is a game where you are going through a scenario or going up against bad guys moving through a game board, exploring new areas, and trying to complete some objective(s). Games like Gloomhaven, Descent, and Star Wars: Imperial Assault fall into this genre. You might be thinking that you don’t remember any dungeons or many in Star Wars, but that’s more of a genre given name now that a specific.

Back to more coop games for a second

Semi-Cooperative Games (Hidden Traitor): This is a genre that is closely related to cooperative games and probably wouldn’t be as strong if it wasn’t for cooperative games. In these games you are basically playing a cooperative game where all the players have the same objective. That is, all of them but one (or more depending on the game). Those players are trying to sabotage the mission for the players or have their own objective. However, they are trying to not be found out. Games like Dead of Winter, Shadows over Camelot, and Battlestar Galactica are the biggest in the genre that really needs to get more games.

Social Deduction: This is the category that seems to be stealing a lot of the hidden traitor games. In these games, you have players who are in secret roles and you are trying to figure out who the werewolves, fascists, cannibals, or whatever the games theme says the bad guys are. It is similar in some ways to a hidden traitor game but there is one huge difference. These games are built around trying to draw out that information and all the mechanics are around that deduction piece. So games like One Night Ultimate Werewolf, The Resistance (Avalon), Donner Dinner Party, and Secret Hitler are all examples of this, but the best one, in my opinion, is Deception: Murder in Hong Kong as there is more game to it than games like One Night Ultimate Werewolf or The Resistance.

That brings me to one final trio of definitions. There are so  many more things that I could write about, and I might do a part two, but this will be enough for now.

Light Weight: Probably an area that I could have described games sooner, but games are generally put into three different categories of weight, though the last one you never really hear the weight added to it. A light weight game is going to be a game with fewer rules and fewer options in the game. There can still be more strategy to the game, but it’s simple to sit down and play that game. weight in game can refer to strategy, complexity of the rules, and length of set-up/number of fiddly bits, but generally mainly the first two. Games like Splendor and Ticket to Ride are light weight games to me. While they are a bit more complex than the standard of Monopoly, they don’t offer that much strategy and complexity. Interestingly enough, a strategy abstract game like Quoridor also falls into this category even though it has a lot of strategy and thinking too it, because the rules and game play are very simple.

Medium Weight: Medium weight games are, shockingly, a step up from light weight games. They are going to offer more complexity in their interactions. You have to think through more of what you are going to do, and you can plan out multiple turns, but are more apt to have to adjust on the fly. They still aren’t getting into the area where they are too mathy or too much strategy where you are having to plan out a lot of turns in advance. Five Tribes is a great example of this where you have a number of decisions and options that you can do, and someone can take your move from you but also might not. Century Road: Golem Edition, is another game that is a bit on the lighter side of medium weight games, but builds up good strategy in the game and gives you quite a number of options.

Heavy: Heavy games are steeped in strategy and complexity of the game. A game like Gloomhaven falls into their category. There are a lot of rules to keep track of, there are a lot of little fiddly bits, there’s a lot of set-up, and there’s a lot of strategy. A lot of larger Euro games also fall into this category because you have to figure out what is going to be your best possible turn to get the most possible points from the game. I do want to point out that these games don’t always have to be the hardest games to play, once you know how to play t hem but they can often be more difficult to learn and have strategy that you need to know to be able to play the game well.

There are a lot of definitions, are there some terms that I’ve missed (or haven’t gotten to yet), that you are curious about?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here