Ranking My Fantasy Games

46: The Red Dragon Inn

This should be a game that I like more than I do, it’s basically a hand management game around drinking in a bar after you’ve been out adventuring and gambling to win money and getting in fights. And I suspect I do I like this game more than I think. I just don’t like it at high player counts. Most of the time when I play The Red Dragon Inn it is over the recommended player count, to me this is a 4 player game only. I don’t want fewer, I don’t want more. At four, it’d feel like good silly fun and not a slog.

45: God of War: The Card Game

God of War is another theme in a game that I should love, but the game around it wasn’t that great. The deck building was interesting in the game. But the card play and the monsters that you fight, those aren’t all that interesting. It feels like the game was meant for mass market without hitting mass market. Or it’s a weird area in between mass market and hobby.

44: Kodama: The Tree Spirits

This is one that barely falls into the fantasy area. Yes, it does have the tree spirits, but that’s barely part of the game. It’s more about building out trees trying to create runs of the different things that you want. In concept it’s not that bad, and in game play it is okay. Kodoma is one of those games where I think a lot of people will enjoy it, and it’s not a bad game, but it won’t be many people’s favorite game.

43: Stuffed Fables

This is a game, in Stuffed Fables, I should maybe have given more tries. The theme of a being stuffed animals and toys of a kid trying to get their blanket back that was stolen, super cute. And the game was cute when I played it, but also more complex than it should be. I get what Plaid Hat Games is doing with their adventure book games, but with changing rules it just made it more complex than I wanted.

42: SeaFall

SeaFall, people would probably put that to the bottom of their lists because it is not a good legacy game. Though, legacy games, to me, have higher standards than most other games. If I am only going to get a limited use out of it, it needs to be epic. I liked the mechanics pretty well though they needed to be less punishing. But the story was a bit too scattered, though, with some tweaking, could be made better.

41: Near and Far

Well, I just wrapped up Sleeping Gods, that isn’t on the list yet, so I like it better. For me, Near and Far is a cool concept, a cool world, and just falls flat. The game has story, and even vignettes of story like Sleeping Gods, but it’s more mechanics than anything. And I think since it’s competitive the game couldn’t get away from the mechanics as much as how you score points.

40: Legacy of Dragonholt

Legacy of Dragonholt is another one of those games that isn’t bad, but could have been better. The system for an RPG/Choose Your Own Adventure game is fun. The story is okay, and that’s what kept me from diving back into it. It wasn’t that the concept of the story wasn’t good, but the execution of it felt too YA (young adult) and not a well written YA story, but one that got published because other YA books similar were well done and popular. I’d love to see Fantasy Flight come back to this system, keep some of the ideas and just improve the writing.

39: Fae

Fae is a fantasy game in cover art only. It is really an abstract game where you are a fae creature who is then hidden from everyone else and you try and score the most points. The game is good, and I like the challenge of trying to score points but not make it too obvious so that people tank your fae’s scoring. A clever idea and very abstract.

38: Legends of Andor

Another game that was in my collection and then left. And another one that is fun, it is an efficiency puzzle of how you get through the story as effectively as possible so you don’t trigger end game too early. My issue with it is only a me issue, I have too many campaign games. I let it go when I realized I would only ever play the starting scenario at least for right now. When I have capacity for that campaign, then I might get it back.

37: Sword & Sorcery

Sword & Sorcery left my collection, but that’s because I did play through the campaign. It is a fun campaign but one that I knew I wouldn’t revisit. The depth of game play is fun for a lighter dice chucking game. And the story is also light, well, in terms of the decisions that you make. I wish the story branched more, and that your powers would change up more, because once you found a few good things, you just did those.

36: Shadows of Brimstone: City of the Ancients

Shadows of Brimstone is one that hasn’t left my collection as a campaign game, but maybe should. The only issue is that I need to glue the figures back together. My first gluing didn’t stick as well as it should have, because I didn’t use the right glue. But also, it’s a theme that I don’t have games for, the weird west. So monsters and other worlds all messing with the old west. I love that theme and there aren’t many games or good books that I’ve found with it.

35: Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth

Another campaign game, and another one that left my collection just because I wasn’t going to get to it anytime soon. But it’s Lord of the Rings, and app assisted from Fantasy Flight Games. The story was fun that I did play through. The writing was well done, which I appreciated, and you can see is something that’s important to me. Definitely a good one for Lord of the Ring fans, which I am.

34: Krosmaster: Arena

This is a skirmish game with fantasy characters casting spells, summoning monsters, and hacking and slashing away. I like that you pick and build the teams that you play with. I like the dice rolling and how you can play with secondary objectives so it’s not just knock out your opponent. But you can play just with knocking people out as well. Krosmaster is one I would keep but I didn’t have people to play it with, and now I have another skirmish game or two that I put over it.

33: Too Many Bones

This one will probably move up the list when my Gamefound comes in for the latest expansions. Not that I own any other Too Many Bones, but that might start me getting more. This is kind of a short campaign game where you fight some battles and then fight against a boss. But where the game really shines is how you build up your characters. Each of them do different things, and how you level them up gives you room to explore a character multiple times. Plus it’s a different fantasy world than anything else out there.

32: Lord of the Rings: Journey To Mordor

This is a roll and write game, but it is a fun little one. Not one that I own or one that I’d go and seek out to add to my roll and write collection. But Journey to Mordor basically has you advancing your Hobbit on their journey to Mordor while trying not to let the Nazgul get you. Very simple roll and write but it has a little more player interaction, so it feels different than some.

31: The Hobbit

Speaking of Hobbits, we have The Hobbit. This is a competitive game about dwarves trying to get treasure, which is kind of what the book is as well. I like the mechanics where you are leveling up skills based off of cards you play. But you want to balance it so everyone levels up because you can’t defeat the monsters all by yourself. So it’s semi-cooperative, but not in a way that someone is working against the group, it’s just that sometimes you let another person get the better thing.

30: Deadly Doodles

Another roll and write game, and this one I think has dropped a little on my list. It’s a good simple roll and write where you are trying to get treasures, find weapons and defeat monsters. And what you do gives you points. There are some different dungeons which add in more things to do as well, which I need to play around with.

29: The Lord of the Rings

And even more Lord of the Rings, this is the classic Fantasy Flight Game. I like how it plays through the books. And you play as the Hobbits taking the ring to Mordor. It is fairly abstracted, but the locations you go and the scenes you play through are all very Lord of the Rings, so it feels more thematic than just with what you are doing. Plus it’s a really tough cooperative game and I like those.

28: Titan Race

Normally I don’t love games that have a lot of in your face, try and mess the other person over, but Titan Race is a lot of fun. This is a fast game and a silly game with great fantasy in it. Titan Race is very silly and I like how the tracks work. You can either do a race where you loop over the same board over and over again, or you can do a grand prix and go over three boards and each board does different things. And those things make the game even sillier.

27: Claim

Claim is a two player trick taking game which is odd. Plus the first hand you play doesn’t actually give you a score, it is how you build your hand for trick taking. It’s such a clever idea and I like that it plays really fast. The fantasy theme comes in that the different suits are fantasy races. And each of those fantasy races has it’s own powers, or they might. Some of them there are just more of, whereas others have powers. A knight always beats a goblin, for example. So it puts even more of a twist on trick taking in a way I really enjoy.

26: Paper Dungeons: A Dungeon Scrawler

I don’t know where this one will end up, so middle of the list is good for right now. I don’t know where it’s going to end up because I’ve only played this roll and write game once. And I liked it a lot, it’s a dungeon crawler as a roll and write. But as compared to Deadly Doodles where you go into a dungeon and cross over stuff, you do a lot more in this game. You level up your heroes, you have powers and abilities, you craft items and brew potions. And the better you do in other things, better you can explore. A lot going on, but not too hard.

25: Skulk Hollow

Skulk Hollow is a game of woodland creatures, the Foxen, fighting against a Guardian. It’s a two player only game and one that is very asymmetrical. As the guardian my goal might change from game to game, depending on which guardian I am. And the Foxen, well they always want to beat down the Guardian. And the Foxen can change up depending on who their leader is. Really cute game and fast to learn and play.

24: Silver

I think I say this every time I talk about Silver, but it reminds me of a game I played growing up with a deck of cards. In Silver you have a village in front of you and you want the lowest score possible. You know what two of the cards are in your village. You don’t know the other three. So now you swap cards out or play them for powers to get rid of cards in your village and lower your score. It’s simple, it’s fun, there’s a lot of take that, yet it feels nostalgic in a good way.

23: Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure

Clank is a fun push your luck, deck building, dungeon delving game. You want to get the best treasure that you can, but as you get cards, make noise, and well, annoy the dragon because it’s their horde, now the dragon starts damaging you. So you could jump in, grab the first thing you see and run, but if someone else can make it out, now they have more points and better treasure than you. Really fun game and easy enough to play for most people.

22: Deranged

Deranged might fall more into a horror game. But there is a magical gate and fantastical monsters who are out to get you. And you yourself can become one of those fantastical monsters if you don’t deal with your curses and get out in time, why, because you might become Deranged. The game has a lot going on, but I like the dual use cards and the theme of the game. A little horror I’m most certainly interested.

21: Village Attacks

Village Attacks is another darker themed game because you for sure are the monsters. And after a long day of terrifying villagers, you are ready to settle down. But nope, here some villagers to break down your door because clearly you’re the monsters, not the people trying to trash your place. That sounds light, and I find it silly, but it is themed dark. Still a very nice tower defense type of game.

20: The Grimm Masquerade

Themed with Grimm Fairy Tales, The Grimm Masquerade is a deduction game. You are each a masked party goer, one of the Grimm characters. You are of course looking for something, a glass slipper for Cinderella, but also have something you don’t want. Can you get what you need or make everyone else bust before they figure out who you are?

19: Ascension: Deckbuilding Game

Another deck building game, Ascension is fantasy themed. Really, like most pure deck building games, it’s about building up an engine that gives you points. I just like this fantasy theme and variability of it better than something like Dominion. But that’s not what we’re talking about. This lets you get heroes and casters and sages and constructions to fight monsters, get more income and buy more cards. I like that it offers a ton of different strategy for the game.

18: Res Arcana

Res Arcana is another in theme only fantasy games. You are basically building out an engine to get points and who can do it better to get points faster. I like it though with the theme of brewing potions and dragons and places of power. It makes it feel different, and I also like that you only have 8 cards to make your engine with.

17: The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game

The Dresden Files are my favorite fantasy series. I love the world that Jim Butcher has created. The game, it does a good job of giving you the pieces of that world. But you need to know the world to connect them together. So it’s not the best fantasy game or story game for everyone, but if you know the series, it’s a lot of fun to play.

16: Small World

Small World is Risk with fantasy creatures, crazy powers, and well, a whole lot more fun. What really works is that this is a small board. The game is in your face, but it’s in everyone’s face. The option of hiding away in Australia is gone that you’d have in Risk. Plus, you get crazy combos. Flying Halflings, Seafaring Giants, Wealthy Trolls, all of them are possible. Really accessible game too for most new gamers.

15: The Lost Expedition

This one is on the list because of the expansions and promo cards. I don’t think in the base game there is anything too fantastical, but werewolves, fountain of youth, yeah, those are fantasy. This is all about surviving to get to the lost city of Z. The game is a really good cooperative one that if you have someone who is a alpha player, it keeps them from being too much of one.

14: Century: Golem Edition

This is another one where the theme is fantasy, but game play doesn’t really shine through on that. Still, the artwork and gem pieces are great, and I wouldn’t want a different theme. It’s a hand management game where you are building up cards in your hand to use them to turn gems into other gems until you get the right combinations to get golems. And the golems at the end of the game give you points. What is so amazing about this game is that turns are super fast, so while there are good decisions to be made, it doesn’t take long to get back to your turn.

13: Potion Explosion

We’ve all probably seen the app games where you get like colors to touch and that removes them from the board and if more hit, those are removed as well. That is what Potion Explosion is. You are making crazy potions by pulling dice and trying to get the like colors to hit. Light game with a great table presence.

12: Root

Root was one where I was thinking, is this actually fantasy. Well, let’s see, it’s animals fighting and building, so yes, that seems like fantasy. But really, it’s a confrontational game where you fight it out with your group trying to get points to win the game with everyone trying to keep everyone else in check. Great asymmetrical game, just know it’ll take some time to teach. And don’t let the artwork fool you, this is not a nice sweet happy game.

11: Roll Player

Roll Player is a game about making your Dungeons and Dragons (or Generic RPG) character. You draft dice to put them into various stats for your class. It’s a lot of fun as you try and match up colors and get the numbers right to score more points. Plus you buy up gear and abilities which can influence your stats or points as well. And that’s the game, it’s about building up your character.

10: Spire’s End

Spire’s End, coming soon to Malts and Meeples is a story adventure game. In Spire’s End you wake up to find a spire has appeared at the edge of your town and many people are missing. You and others go into the tower, fight monsters, make choices, and generally go on a weird and dark adventure. Really like this one as a solo game.

9: Super Fantasy Brawl

Super Fantasy Brawl, it’s in the name that it’s fantasy. Super Fantasy Brawl is a two player skirmish game where you are trying to complete objectives in an arena and knock out your opponents. Complete objectives, get trophies. Knock out your opponent, get trophies. The first to five wins. What I really like is the turn speed, you play up to three cards, one of each color and do what it says on the cards. And the cards you play determine who moves. Light game but very tactical in how you play.

8: Cartographers

The second game I have in the Roll Player world, won’t be the last. But Cartographers is a roll and write game where you are making a map of the land. And you get points for making it in certain ways. Forests surrounding mountains might give you a point or two, things like that. What makes it fantastical is that you put monsters on the map as well. And you don’t put your own down, you put them on your opponents board in the worst spot for them to make them score negative points.

7: Sleeping Gods

Sleeping Gods, well, you can watch me play this one I just wrapped it up over on Malts and Meeples. Sleeping Gods is a big adventure game where you, as the crew of the Manticore are transported to a new world. You want to get home, but in order to do that you must awaken the sleeping gods and all you know is that totems might help with that, not where to find them. So it’s really a sandbox game of exploring, finding quests, fighting monsters and more.

6: Roll Player Adventures

Roll Player Adventures, the final Roll Player world game, this is an adventure game set in the world of Roll Player, using mechanics or dice mechanics that feel like Roll Player, and it’s really good. I really like that Roll Player Adventures is an easy game to learn and a lighter game to play. A lot of the big adventure games can have a lot to keep track of and a lot of tokens. Roll Player Adventures has enough, but not too much. And the world you play in isn’t too dark.

5: Aeon’s End

Aeon’s End is another deck building game and the highest on the list. This is a cooperative game where you play as breach mages trying to fight off nemesis that come through. The game does two really interesting things for me. Firstly, you never shuffle your deck. So when you discard cards you can kind of put them in an order. And the other is that turn order is random. There is a deck, in a two player game, which has two activations for each character and two for the Nemesis. On a really bad draw you could go twice with each character and then two Nemesis turns, plus then shuffle that up again and two more Nemesis turns.

4: Lords of Hellas

Lords of Hellas is fantasy in the future, or mythology in the future. It’s a cyber world of Greek gods. An odd setting with some amazing miniatures and mechanical creatures. But a really good game with some rough edges and a lot of ways to win. To me that is one of the best parts of the game where you are able to win in a number of different ways. You might fight monsters or build and control a monument or take over areas, how you play is up to you and the powers you have.

3: Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

Tainted Grail, if Roll Player is light fantasy or happy fantasy, Tainted Grail is very dark fantasy. The world of Avalon is falling apart, the Menhir that drove back the wyrdness are failing and you aren’t sent out to stop it. You are sent out to find out what happened to the people who are better equipped to do this than you. But the story in Tainted Grail is amazing and one that I highly recommend people track down, which can be hard. Also know that this is a survival game with a ton of story, if you want the story, play in storymode, I am.

2: Dice Throne

Odd one to put on the list but Dice Throne is very much fantasy. It is fantasy head to battling in almost a Mortal Kombat type setting but it is still fantasy. My Pyromancer is going to blast your Barbarian with fire or then there is a Seraph or a Treant or a Gunslinger, all sorts of things, and you can take any of them up against each other. I’m so excited, it isn’t that far out to when Marvel Dice Throne will be delivered, several months but not that far. And Marvel Dice Throne is compatible and can be played with everything else I already have.

1: Gloomhaven

Finally, my #1 game of all time, Gloomhaven, This is a massive fantasy game of dungeon crawling combat. It is amazing and what really makes it is the card play. You pick two cards to play, one will determine how fast you go. Then when you go you use the top of one card and the bottom of the others to move and attack, so you can set yourself up for some epic turns or make it flexible to cover a changing board state. And there are so many different characters that are interesting to play as.

Final Thoughts

I love fantasy as a theme. A lot of my favorite series are fantasy for books in particular. And for board games, there are a lot of games that use the fantasy theme. But when you get down to some of my favorite games of all time, the big fantasy games are hard to beat. I think that my Top 3 games are all fantasy games. And I even skipped some games, like stuff in the Lovecraftian Mythos because while they are fantasy, I feel they are more horror. Maybe I’ll do a horror game ranking soon.

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If you want to checkout some more detailed lists, Liege of Games has a list, I know Tantrum House normally does one, though they do half a month at a time, and BoardGameCo all on YouTube have lists. I’m mainly using that BoardGameCo list because, well, there are 41 different games on the list. And that is enough to keep me busy talking about it for a while.

Anticipated March Crowdfunding

Far Cry: Beyond

This one is interesting to me because I don’t know a ton about it. And honestly there isn’t that much available for information on Board Game Geek and it’s just a Kickstarter notify page. But I expect that this one is going to be big. A popular IP and a long running IP. And I know that some of the channels, Quackalope and Dice Breakers are already doing some coverage on it. So it’s coming up fast and there will be more information as time goes on.

Obviously what draws me to this, from what I can see, is that there is going to be a campaign to the game. This is one that I’m most definitely going to checkout but have more tempered interest in because I don’t know the IP all that well.

The FOG: Escape from Paradise

The FOG got onto my radar because of their advertisements on Facebook. The game seems like one that I’d be interested in. There is fog rolling in and you are trying to get all of your people off of an island. I like a game with a good horror theme to it. And I find it interesting how you control as a guardian to help your survivors navigate off of the island.

On the downside for me, I think the art looks just okay. It looks a little bit inconsistent or more so, the graphic design and text of The FOG looks inconsistent with the rest of the game. Plus, the game itself looks very abstract, not that it’s a bad thing, but it’s one that I want to know more about.

Maul Peak

Maul Peak is the follow-up to Skulk Hollow. And I really like Skulk Hollow. I enjoy Skulk Hollow a lot where it’s two different asymmetric competing factions. One person plays as the guardian who has their objective to win. And the other as the Foxen who are trying to take down the guardian. It’s a simple game but very tactical which I really enjoy.

I don’t think that Skulk Hollow has hit retail. I know that Pencil First, not everything will get that wide a release being they are a smaller company. So Maul Peak which should be more goodness like Skulk Hollow is very interesting. And for a spot to pick-up the game, it’ll be great for a lot of people. For me, I want to see what it adds, if anything, because I have Skulk Hollow which I still need to explore more.

The Bad Karmas

The Bad Karmas is an interesting one because I am curious about the game. But I am more interested about the Teburu system. I saw this demoed, through a window, at GenCon in 2019. It’s basically a gaming platform that can tell what you rolled, have chip enabled cards and characters and that takes care of a lot of housekeeping that bigger board games can have. Plus then sounds an handling story elements.

I am worried about the tech on this one. They clearly have spent a lot of time refining things and making sure they had a game to go at the launch of the system. I want to know how fast other games will start to adopt and use this system. And if you need the system to be able to play it. I expect the price tag to be high on this, but hopefully it’ll lead to some interesting board game improvements and expand the development space. But also, I don’t need every game to add it in.

Tidal Blades: Rise of the Unfolders

Finally, the game I am most interested in, Tidal Blades: Rise of the Unfolders. I almost backed the first Tidal Blades, and I’m glad that I didn’t. I watched the Dice Tower play with the prototype and that looked amazing, but the game play didn’t quite seem like it matched my style. Now they are doing a dungeon crawler for the second one, and I love dungeon crawlers.

That really interests me in this game is how it plays around with cards. It sounds like you are building up columns (or rows) of cards and then you activate them. But so you end up with a rising and falling action with your cards and building up those sets of actions. Plus then it is a dungeon crawl and the world of Tidal Blades, even the first game, extremely interesting.

What Are You Looking Forward To?

Let me know if there are any that I missed that you’re really excited for. I’m sure as I dig into more of the games as they hit crowdfunding I’ll find more that I’m interested in. Right now, though, I do think there’s a decent chance I don’t back anything big in March. Granted, Unsettled will wrap up in March, and that might be one of the biggest campaigns, after Marvel Zombies that I back this year.

Let me know what interests you in the comments below.

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Tofu Kingdom, Brewcrafters Travel Card Game, The Mind & Cthulhu Fluxx

I lumped these together. They are all smaller games, I gave them a chance, and while they aren’t bad, I have a number of smaller games that I’m going to pull off the shelf before them. And often that’s why games leave, something like Cthulhu Fluxx was a great gateway game for me, but now I have others.

I think that most people might be surprised by the Mind. My experience with that was just okay at the best. The game with it’s, you can’t share information is fine. But also leads to long chunks of time of people not talking. I wish there was more fun and funny going on for a game that is so simple. The Mind is like Cosmic Encounter for me as well, where it is very group dependent.

Gloom

Gloom is a very fun game. It has transparent cards and you are trying to kill off your family with them having the most miserable lives possible. And you tell stories as you do it. It’s a blast to play, and I haven’t played it since before I was married. I was dating now wife but we were maybe engaged. That’s over 7 years.

So, you can guess why this one is leaving. I just don’t play it often enough, or at all anymore. If someone else has it and pulls it off the shelf to play, I will play it and love it. I might even buy it again at that point. But right now, even though it’s a small game, it opens up room for other small games to try and play.

Werewords

This one came into my collection not that long ago and now it’s leaving my collection. I am always trying to find a second social deduction game that I like. I even watched on Board Game Geeks YouTube channel Werewords played and thought that it’d be it. It’s a game of twenty questions with a traitor, the concept even sounds fun.

But it’s like so many social deduction games, when it comes down to it, you are just guessing. If you don’t guess the word you will take a random stab at whom the traitor is and probably be wrong. If you’re the traitor and the word is guessed, you’ll give a random guess on the seerer unless they were extremely obvious. I want more deduction in my social deduction is what it is, I guess.

Werewords is a solid game, it’s just not for me.

Onirim

This one might surprise people. I like Onirim as a solo game. But it’s going away for three reasons. The first being Orchard: A 9 Card Solitaire Game, then A Gentle Rain – another solo game, and finally, because I own the app. I can still play Onirim, but I’ll do on the app. And there will be much less shuffling.

I know that a lot of people even like the app better because it does all the shuffling. I still think I prefer the physical game, but if I’m going to play a solo game right now, it’s going to be Orchard or A Gentle Rain. They are easier to get out and play, so sorry, Onirim, you’re leaving the collection. Again another really good game and this one is for me, but I just have others to play now.

The Siblings Trouble

This is one that I never actually played. I picked it up because when it was on Kickstarter, I had backed the companies other game, Lift Off! and wanted to back another one of their projects. It’s a kind of RPG like game that is tailored for kids. But it came out at the same time as No Thank You, Evil! A kids RPG that has more support. And I likely would just play D&D with my kid eventually.

Hex Roller

I got this game quite recently, I played it, and I’m selling it. Hex Roller is not a bad roll and write. But it isn’t a game where what you do will change much. The dice rolls will change things up, but the mechanics don’t change. So I’ve played it, and I’m passing it on to someone else.

My knock on Hex Roller is that while the scoring is simple, the teach is not. The rules are a little bit weird for how you take dice and use them. It just teaches harder then a game that doesn’t have that much going on should. I understand that they wanted the game to be clever and give you lots to think about, but it’s just a solid game. Not good enough for me to come back to.

Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger

This is a really fun and goofy game. It is also a story game that has limited replayability. Now, I am not done with the story, so why am I getting rid of it. It’s easy, I know two maybe three people who own it. If I want to play it again or play it the whole way through, I can.

Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger is a great time. It’s goofy and fun to sit around and play. If you play lighter games, I definitely recommend it. But most likely, like me, you’ll end up selling it once you’re done with the story. The downside is I won’t get much for it, the upside is, someone can play it and enjoy it again.

Blossoms

Blossoms is a two player push your luck game. You are trying to grow flowers and then harvest them at the point that it’ll give you the most points. It’s a pretty little game, though in a larger box than really needed. But it is a two player game, so the question I asked myself, how many two player only games do I need?

The answer didn’t include Blossoms. When I look at my two player games, I would pick Hanamikoji before it, Skulk Hollow, 7 Wonders Duel, Fox in the Forest, Fox in the Forest Duet. All of those I’d play before Blossoms. Blossoms is just a little bit too simple for when I want to play a two player game. But if you have a parent or grandparent who likes more classic feeling games, Blossoms would be great.

Cry Havoc

This is a tough game for me to get rid of. I really like Cry Havoc. This is another situation where I just own other games I’m going to play before it. Cry Havoc is asymmetrical area control. If I want area control that’s pretty complex, Blood Rage. If I want asymmetrical, well I own Root now. Cry Havoc is leaving because I own enough other games that do similar things. And I own enough other games that I’d play before it.

It is a bit of a casualty of my Top 100 that I just wrapped up, actually. When going through the Top 10 and seeing games like Lords of Hellas and Blood Rage, th ose will get played before Cry Havoc. So even with Cry Havoc just missing at 103 and being there last year, it’s time for it to go.

Castle Panic

This is getting bumped because of a future Kickstarter that is coming. It’s also getting bumped because it’s too easy a cooperative game. Now, some of that is that I’m older than the target audience. This is a tower defense game for 10 year old kids or younger. It’s not targeting someone like me. Village Attacks as a tower defense game is.

But this is a game that I win too often. And again, I think that’s with the target age. A 10 year old will want to win more often than they lose. I personally like to lose about 60-70% of the time when playing a cooperative game. In my Top 100 I have Say Bye to the Villains, I have yet to beat that game. I don’t think I’ve lost Castle Panic.

Lift Off!

I just talked about this one, it’s the first game that I backed on Kickstarter. I am greatly tempted to keep this one. I’ve played it a few times but it hasn’t been in years. It’s a fun little game, and I like some of their other games. I still have Skulk Hollow which won’t be leaving anytime soon.

This is one that I am tempted to keep to just play a few more times. It is also a game that isn’t going to come off my shelf all that often. It’s like Castle Panic in that it’s younger focused, not my gaming group, and there’s enough other games I’ll play before it.

Dicecapades!

For a mass market game, Dicecapades is generally a lot of fun. You get goofy things like stacking dice. Or you roll a die and need to do that many push-ups. Or you roll a die and there is trivia. Wait, there is trivia, what does that have to do with dice , the answer, nothing. And that’s why I don’t pull it out anymore.

Everything else in the game is fun, but you need to answer a trivia question on a random area that is determined by a die roll. If you get it wrong, you stay and then do it again next turn. Meanwhile, everyone else is doing goofy fun things, until they get stuck on trivia as well. And if I roll sports before you roll movies, because that’s what we know best, I get going faster just based off of luck.

It is a mass market party game, it is supposed to be lucky. But it’s just not that fun when you get to trivia. Remove the trivia from the game, I’d probably keep the game. It’s one that I can play with cousins and non-gamers. But with trivia, it’s annoying. If I want to do trivia, I own Wits & Wagers.

Star Wars: Imperial Assault

Now, this is the tricky one, and it might stay. I want to play this game. The intro scenario to teach you the game, I’ve played it twice. But it’s a campaign game, and it’s a campaign game with an app before apps were common. So the app itself isn’t great. Not bad, but not great. And I don’t have a group to play this game. So it’s a lot of work to play solo.

If I had a group, I’d play it. I might even play it solo, if I go through the introductory scenario again. But am I going to do that when I have Isofarian Guard coming sometime, Destinies coming that can be played solo, Middara, Roll Player Adventures, Solomon Kane, Deep Madness and more? I think it might leave like Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth did. Not because it is a bad game, it isn’t, it’s a lot of fun, but because I own so many.

16 Games of Shelf Space

It’s a tough list to cut. I look at Star Wars: Imperial Assault, Cry Havoc, Onirim, and Gloom especially, and I really enjoy all of those games. But the question is, will I play them? Or am I just keeping them on my shelf because I like the idea of getting back to them sometime?

I think it’s more the latter than I’d actually get back to the games. And some of them, Gloom in particular, that depends on the group. If you like a tell a story, it works well, if you just play the cards, the game is fine. So, all of these are leaving, probably over the weekend, to get traded into my FLGS. And I’m looking at a few games, Escape The Room and Star Wars Unlock, that I need to play to then free up more space.

Which one, if you could get one of these games I’m trading in, would you want to play most?

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Pros

• Story Game
• A Different/No Win Type of Game
• Price of Game/Shipping
• Miniatures but not Miniature Heavy

Cons

• A Different/No Win Type of Game
• Less Interesting Characters

The Page

This page has a ton of information on it, in some ways, I wish there was more about Mythwind and how it’s played on it. Yes, we get to see all the components, but it feels like it’s lacking when it comes down to what you are actually doing in the game.

That said, with the components, they do a good job of highlighting what comes in the game. And I think since each character seems to be different in how they play. This shows you what are you going to get, it just it a bit too much in that you need to scroll past a lot before you really get to the game.

The Game

This game seems very interesting in that you don’t really win the game. Instead you just play around with your engine and get that working and experience the world and what it has to offer. It is supposed to be a game in some ways like Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing. Those games give you things you can do and search for and explore, but winning isn’t part of what you do in the game. It’s a weird concept for a video game or a board game, to me.

Clearly with the video games, both Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing are very popular. So, rightfully so, it was only a matter of time before this style of game became a board game. And while I’m not extremely inspired by character classes, farmer, crafter, woodsman, etc. they make sense for the style of game. I like that they tell you what characters will play like in terms of similar games.

And I do like that you do have some goals. It’s again like Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, or even something as simple as Cookie Clicker, they keep you coming back to get more. They give you enough rewards, enough goals, that you want to come back to the game and get some more.

Back or Brick Mythwind

So is Mythwind a back or a brick for me? I think that right now it’s a Brick. This game seems really fascinating to me. I like the idea of just having a persisting world that builds out and grows as you go. A town that you can determine it’s path. I don’t know what I love the idea of something that is just an achievement/leveling game for progression. If I could have this game set-up all the time, and I will say with the Game Trayz it looks easy to set-up. But I don’t think it’s a game I’d pull off the shelf to set-up that often. Unless I get addicted to it, in which case it’d stay set-up for a month and played a lot.

How about for you, is this a Back or a Brick?

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Pros

• Cooperative and a hard cooperative game
• Fantasy and Post Apocalyptic
• Good in Box storage solution
• Asymmetric factions
• Available to try on TTS

Cons

• Kickstarter Exclusive
• First game Created
• Information Overload

The Page

First, even though I say it’s a con that it’s the first game they’ve created, and that’s always going to be a con, this is a company that seems to know Kickstarter really well. The page is laid out like I expect a Kickstarter page to be laid out and they actually do a decent job of giving you an idea of what the game is about. There’s a ton of information on the page. That is another thing I have in the cons, the amount of information. Let me make this very clear, I like all the information on the page, but there is a ton of it. I’d prefer to see this much information and dig through all of it then less.

The Game

New section, because I feel like I cover this half in the page and half in my back or brick, and it should have it’s own section.

The game really interests me for a few reasons, hence why I dug deeper into the page. I like cooperative games and I’ve been interested in trying 4x games like Twilight Imperium and Heroes of Land, Air, and Sea. But those are big competitive games, so I’m curious about this one being cooperative. Then you put it in a magical and post-apocalyptic setting, and that makes it even more interesting. I love a good world where most everything has gone wrong. There seems to have been a lot of thought put into this game from the asymmetrical player powers, to every player needing to beat the enemies, not just collectively, so I feel like there’s a lot going on in the game, of needing enough for yourself, but needing to leave stuff for others as well. Finally, I like that this game sounds hard, I like to win cooperative games 30% of the time, that’s about right for me, unless they are story games then let me progress, and this seems like it’s a tough one ,and I like that. It also seems like you’ll be able to scale the difficulty level, which I like as well.

Back or Brick

Short and quick is a brick for me. Now, that said, it might become a back because of the TTS. If I can play on TTS (Tabletop Simulator), I will have a better idea of how the game would work for me. This is one that I’m bummed isn’t coming to retail because I feel like I need to see it in action more. I know that I would like it, but is it one that I could get to the table all that often. Definitely one that I want to try and keep my eye on though and could be sold on to pick-up.

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

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Skulk Hollow is an asymmetrical strategic game where one player takes on the role of foxes who live in the area and the other player ancient guardians that have awoken. The Foxen are trying to disable the guardians while avoiding having their leader perish. To do this, they have to get close enough to the guardian and either shoot them or leap onto them and hack away with their swords. The Guardian, on the other hand is trying to take out to Foxen leader, but they’ll also have some additional objective. It might be getting a certain number of tentacles into play or just taking out a certain number of the foxen heroes. Whomever completes their objective first wins the game.

The game play is pretty simple. Each player has a certain number of cards in their hand and they can play a number, this varies for the Guardians as there are several different ones out of the box that can have varying numbers. These all you to move, attack, maybe heal, leap onto the guardian, or whatever it might be. What’s impressive is that while the Foxen always have the same decks, each Guardian has their own unique deck, and that’s because all the guardians have their own unique ability. Raptra can fly whereas Grak can stomp, so those abilities show up uniquely on the Guardians own deck. Some of the Guardians, and some of the Foxen folk can augment their turn by having spent cards to collect what basically amounts to energy, which can allow them to take various free actions as well by spending the cubes. The game really gets down into a game play where you are trying to guess what your opponent has in their hand and using your cards as efficiently as possible.

I’ve talked some about what makes the two sides asymmetrical and how the guardians all play differently and have different objectives, but it isn’t just them. The Foxen also have the ability to change up their faction. With the Foxen you have the ability to change out your leader. In the base game, they suggest that you go with the Foxen King who has more health than the other Foxen leaders but no special abilities. The abilities of the Foxen leaders can be healing or giving additional moves or pulling cards back from the discard pile. That can change up how the Foxen play as well, and really adds to the replayability of the game. Just out of the box, you have four guardians and four leaders, so you have 32 unique plays of the game with playing both sides once in each combo, which should be plenty to allow you to go back and try a set-up again with it feeling different.

Thus far it’s mainly been about the game play. But I’d be remiss not to talk about the quality of the game. I’ve been very impressed with the quality of Pencil First games and this game definitely keep the standard high. The Foxen meeples are nice, the cards a great, and the boards for the different Guardians are really nice as is the board of the Foxen lands. But what brings the quality level up a lot is the production quality of the guardians. This could have been a game where they created plastic molds and we ended up with impressively detailed minis, but they didn’t do that, because that wouldn’t have matched the aesthetic of the rest of the game, instead we got wood meeples for each guardian. But they aren’t your classic meeple sculpt, they are amazing and fairly large cut outs that match the shape of the monster board. So it’s a very unique cut that makes each Guardian feel unique, and some of them come with extra wooden pieces as well, such as Raptra with a cloud for when they are flying. This really makes the game pop on the table and gives it a similar aesthetic feel to Root.

Now, the game isn’t perfect. You can get into situations where one or the other side will just slowly bleed until they are gone, but they can prolong the game. This happened in a play that I had and while 40 minutes seems generally accurate for the game, that play took over an hour. There was a bit of teaching to that time, but it reached a point where I was pretty sure I was going to lose as the Guardian, but , not being familiar enough with the game, we just didn’t want to scoop. I think especially with the more basic Foxen leader and Guardian this is more apt to happen because of how the winning condition is combat. So I’d be healing to not be able to do something to then have it taken away to heal again, and repeated for a while. This isn’t a massive negative to me, mainly because, I haven’t found this to be the normal for the game. And maybe with a bit better luck in terms of card draw I could have gotten out of it, but it didn’t happen. Just know that it is possible that sometimes one side could be in a position that it’s nearly impossible for them to come back from but not quite dead and that last little bit can be slow.

Overall, this is a really fun game. I think the rules are simple enough and the strategy/tactics are high enough that it is a good game for both more casual players are board gamers. The look of the game also helps a ton because of how cute the artwork is. One of the artists has worked on Disney projects before, and this has an animated Robin Hood feel to it’s look. I think that’ll help sell people getting the game to the table. Skulk Hollow is a good two player game that has an appeal for most people, I’d think.

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

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Unintentionally, both new games were asymmetrical games where the different factions/races/groups have different ways to score points. In Cry Havoc it’s a little bit different through as you’re fighting on a planet over crystals. We played at the full player count, so one person played the humans, one played the machines, I played the pilgrims, and one player native creatures, the Trogs. You are battling, producing crystals, building up technology, and recruiting troops.

Cry Havoc is part area control game, but it’s really more of a crystal control game. Depending on what races are played, you might not worry as much about controlling areas, but it is something that players have to be concerned about. It also has a bit of deck building aspect to the game as you add cards into your deck that allow you to do the actions of building, recruiting, and moving your figures around the board.

Besides the different races, which I’ll talk about some more soon, one of the interesting thing is combat in this game. In most games with area control you’re looking at a few different standard ways of doing combat. It could be rolling a bunch of dice based off of what troops you have, it could be rolling dice and playing some cards, it could be simple numbers and playing some cards. Cry Havoc does it a little bit differently. It splits up combat into three different parts.You have control of the territory, capturing of troops, and killing off of troops and you split up your combatants over all three areas. In the top part, controlling the territory, the person who has the most troops there wins control of the territory. Whomever has the most on the second part, capturing enemy troops, will capture a troop, this gives a point each turn. Finally, any troops who are put on the bottom section, killing off enemy troops, then kill off a troop. You go from top to bottom figuring out what happens, so even if in the third part someone kills off a person’s majority in troops, that person still maintains majority. However, each player gets a chance to play combat cards which may allow them to change troops, or might change the order that things are figured out in. It’s a very unique combat system and I enjoyed it, though, I was playing the Pilgrims and they aren’t a combat heavy race to play.

Let’s talk a little bit about the different races:

Humans are a fairly straight forward race to play. They are primarily about controlling as many territories as possible and they can take over territories without actually moving into them, as long as they are empty. They have, also, a number of buildings that can help them control an area of combat by adding the equivalent of extra troops to some area of combat.

The Machines are focused on killing things. Their buildings are known as Shred Drones and Orbital Strikes, the Shred Drone can take out a troop in a neighboring territory prior to combat, and the Orbital Strike can remove someone from anywhere on the board. They want to soften up spots for battle and then walk in and take over without much trouble. Then they can leave bunkers behind to help them defend areas after they’ve moved on to their next conquest.

The Pilgrims are not a combat focused race. These four armed aliens really just want the crystals. I could have won with them, but I forgot to use their special ability one round. But they want to find their own corner of the map, hunker down, produce crystals and score points often with a lot of crystals. They are the only ones who can store crystals instead of just scoring for where they are on the planet, and that’s what I forgot to do. But along with producing crystals, they really need to build a lot, because that’s how they produce the crystals both into their own pool and onto their locations.

Finally, the Trogs are only a playable race if you are playing four players, otherwise, while they are always on the board, they are the native inhabitants of the planet and there are a lot of them. However, they are always going to be spread out because there are Trog nests all over the planet that you have to deal with. The fact that they are native to the planet means that they can move around the planet easier, but it also means that they can get spread out on a lot of fronts if they aren’t careful.

I enjoyed this game a lot. It has a nice presence on the table, the game play is pretty straight forward, so once you are into the game, you can just move along quickly and each round is made up of three actions, but you go around taking those actions one at a time, so peoples turns don’t really bog down. However, the rule book, while pretty well written, does run into some issues. The game is made by Portal Games which is out of Poland, and their rule books are not known for being the best translations into English. Most of the stuff for this game makes sense and is laid out well, and they do have examples which is nice, but the explanation for the end of game isn’t great. If you’re looking to learn, I’d check out Rodney Smith from Watch it Played on Youtube and either watch him play the game with his son or watch his how to play video for it just for clarification before you play the game the first time.

Overall this is a good game. It’s pretty straight forward, and all the races seemed to play differently. The combat mechanisms aren’t going to be for everyone, but they are unique and I like them for that reason. This is a game that works well and felt very balanced in my opinion. I mean, for our game, we had the Trogs win, but they one by two points, and then two of us were tied for second, the Machines were lagging behind, but their minis looked the coolest on the board.

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

Have you played Cry Havoc before? What are your thoughts on it if you have?

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This is a game made by the same people as Vast: The Crystal Caverns, another asymmetrical game where each person is trying to complete their own objectives and score points in their own way. In Root, players take on one of the four different factions, there are also two more in an expansion, and battle for control of the forest. They do that by crafting items, building in locations, and moving about and fighting each other but each does it in their own unique way.

The Marquise de Cats already have most of the forest as they start on the board in every spot except one, and they are looking to use their superior creature count, at the start of the game, to control the forest, build more buildings, and really set-up their dominance in the forest. They do this primarily by adding building that allow them to craft items, build more buildings, and recruit more cats into the forest. However, if they lose too much ground, they might find their production a little bit low. The Marquise de Cats are probably the most straight forward of the different factions to play.

The Eyrie on the other hand are very regimented birds. They also start on the board, but only in a single location. The player picks a leader of the birds and that determines some of what they can do, because the birds are basically building out a decree, and the decree says that things must be done in a certain order in certain places, and if you ever can’t do the decree, the birds go into turmoil and your leader is overthrown and a new one comes onto the board. They are an interesting one to play, and while the game calls them low complexity, because of the fact that you’re locked into doing things in a certain order and at certain locations, you really want plan out what you’re adding to your decree, because you have to keep adding to it every turn, and if you aren’t careful and you go into turmoil, you could end up in a situation where you’re losing a number of points if the decree fails.

The Woodland Alliance is really focused on causing uprisings. They are sowing unrest on the board at the start of the game, and trying to get locations to revolt. If other players have enough creatures in locations, it can stop you from being able to sow unrest there. But once they start getting those on the board and they start causing revolts at locations, other players need to worry because they can spread fast, and they can definitely take advantage of the Eyrie and Marquise fighting against each other to seed unrest.

Finally, the vagabond is just going along through the forest, trying to find gear to improve their actions. They use their gear to be able to do more actions on their turns, and go on quests. The vagabond, like the Woodland Alliance, has a bit of a ramp to the character, because they need to have enough items to be able to complete quests, but once they can start completing the quests, their points will start growing quickly as the more quests that they do of the different colors, the more points they get.

I’ve personally only played the Eyrie, and they are a ton of fun to play. I kind of agree with the makers of the game that the Eyrie are a low complexity faction to play, but I wouldn’t say they are that easy. I had a large decree set-up that allowed me to recruit a lot of troops, move some, attack a little, and then build some of my roosts, so eventually I wouldn’t have been able to continue doing the decrees, but I made it through almost the whole game with a single leader. However, watching the Woodland Alliance and Vagabond being played, both of those seemed like a lot of fun as well. Even with the Marquise de Cats having a more straightforward playing style, you are often having to be the player who keeps everyone in check because of your starting board position and that definitely seems like it could be tricky.

In our game the Vagabond won because the Eyrie was growing so quickly, and the Cats hunkered down that they were playing against each other almost to the point of a stalemate. And the Vagabond was able to get their questing rolling and started getting a lot of points. Then the Eyrie had their decree broken by the cats, and there wasn’t anything that the Woodland Alliance was able to do to stop the vagabond. It made it interesting to see how you had to watch out for the different factions in different ways. The Woodland Alliance got hurt a fair amount by the fact the Cats and Eyrie grew so quickly, it kind of locked the Alliance out of a lot of areas, so they were lagging behind point wise, but the Alliance player still had fun playing them.

Now, clearly I had a lot of fun with the game and playing it, and everyone having different abilities and different ways that they play the game is very cool. That said, the game does have one fairly major drawback. It’s not a game that is fast to teach to new players. If everyone is new, you have to go through what each faction does and how they work as well as the basic actions of the game. So it can take quite a while, and there can be a number of questions about the game and how things work as well. It’s probably a game that is worth checking out reviews or “how to play” videos online ahead of time for all players so that you can get it up and running fast.

That said, the points are score quite quickly. That does mean that the actual game, for how long the game takes to teach, does move by at a good pace. Even the turns that players take are pretty quick. Add in to that some interesting strategy and while you aren’t involved in other peoples turns, you still have to pay attention to what they are doing, there isn’t that much mental downtime in the game. It helps keep the game quite engaging throughout, as long as you can make it through the rules.

Overall, it’s a fun game. I do think that this game will be a miss for some groups because of the complexity of teaching the game, though, if they can make it through that by watching a video to learn how to play or something along those lines if they aren’t good at just sitting and listening to rules, most groups will like this game. The artwork on the game is amazing, and the cards are goofy and cute so the game feels less heavy than it is on some ways.

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

The casual grade gets a big knock because of how long it takes to teach the rules, a casual gamer isn’t going to want to sit through rules that are that long. As a gamer, I barely wanted to sit through rules that were that long.

Have you had a chance to play Root? If so what did you think of it, and what is your favorite faction?

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