How To Play Yaxha

Yaxha is a pyramid building game. You are going to make a selection of cubes that you want to add to your pyramid. Then you stack those cubes onto your game board. A lot of the game is going to be about how you choose the cubes and how the cubes score for you.

Getting Cubes

In BGA you select the card that has the cubes you want on it. Every player does that at the same time. In person you use a card to indicate which of the groups of cubes you want. Again, everyone does that at the same time. If you match with no one, you get those cubes to add. If you and someone else match, you then see who has the lowest tie breaker card. That person gets that one and the other person gets the leftover one. Finally you swap your tie breaker card so you won’t win a tie with that person the next time.

Placing Cubes

Then the other big part of the game is placing out your cubes. You need to place them on the lowest level or a a spot on a higher level that is completely filled in. You place starting at a 4 by 4 grid, then 3 by 3 and up to a single cube on top.

On the first level you place cubes however you want. That is going to change based off of how you score in the game. But we’ll talk about scoring next. After the first level, you must place a cube adjacent to a cube of the same color. That might be adjacent below, but if you can’t, you discard a cube.’

Scoring

Once your pyramids are built, you score them. There are two different scoring areas. The first way to score is special bonus scoring cards. These give you objectives as to how to place out your cubes. It might be something like all five colors visible on the bottom layer and you get five points. But they vary in what they are.

The other, bigger, scoring way is that you look at your different colors visible on your pyramid. You find your biggest group of visible cubes for each color and you score them. The larger the group, the more points you are going to score. But keep in mind, cubes in the middle of your pyramid on levels one and two, the 4 by 4 and 3 by 3, don’t count for scoring. The player with the most points is crowned the winner.

What Doesn’t Work

This is a really simple game. I think for a lot of people it is going to feel a bit to simple. Even the gamer-y type elements like the bonus scoring, that is pretty simple in what it is doing. Though, I might play with a kid without them, everyone else is going to understand them really quickly, even if they aren’t gamers. This is going to mean that it won’t work for a lot of people who want a bit more meat on a game. But I plan on talking about it as a positive as well for the game.

What Works

The game is simple to play and get to the table. In fact, it’s simple to teach as well, and that is going to make a good game for a lot of situations. I like a game that has fun elements to it, like stacking up your pyramid while still giving you a few fun choices to make. And Yaxha does that by knowing what it wants to be as a game without adding in too much to it.

I think Yaxha also makes a smart choice with how you get your cubes. That element of deciding do I go for a group I really want but someone else might really want or try for my second best option is good. It’s a simple decision but one that adds a little bit to the game. You might wonder how. I sometimes decide to go for one my opponent will get just so I can get a lower number. Yes, I might miss out on my second best option, but I control my choice for the future.

The game is also good with the scoring and the placement rules. They are simple, and I want that in a game like this. If it were to be much more, it would feel overly complicated for how simple the game is. But I still need to make a choice every now and again about how I place things. And knowing when to start the second layer and how to hopefully not lose out on playing cubes is good in the game. It isn’t a standout element, but one that works.

Who Is Yaxha For?

Yaxha is a great game for the holidays. I talk about holiday games fairly often where on Nerdologists.com. But what is a holiday game? It’s one that is easy to teach and play with basically anyone. It is great for those times when you don’t want to play a party game. So you play something like Yaxha because everyone is able to learn it. Now it is limited to four players, but for that smaller holiday gathering, it is one that works well.

It isn’t going to be for the people who want to play a really heavy or involved game. But those are for when you want to game. Yaxha is for when you want something to do but also want some time to chat around the table.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Yaxha

I think that Yaxha is a fun game. Is it a game that I want to own, maybe. Is it a game that I’ll play all the time, that is unlikely. But it really does have a nice niche for a game. And it is a game with a small footprint. I talk about it as a game where you play it at the holidays with that smaller group and chat. IT is also one you could take to a brewery or coffee shop and play as well as you have a chat. And that is the type of game I like to own a few of so I don’t get board with the ones that I own.

That said, it is simple. And I know that it is not going to be a game for a bunch of people because of that simplicity. But I think without the scoring objective cards it is one that I’d enjoy and my kid could play. So know what you are getting into with Yaxha. And I say try it on BGA if you can because it’s that good sort of game that is just fun to play around with. But it might just be that, try it a couple of times and move on.

Grades

My Grade: B-
Gamer Grade: D+
Casual Grade: B+
Strategy (out of 10): 4
Luck (out of 10): 4
Plan or Adapt: Adapt

I’ve added in something else to maybe help clarify my thoughts a bit more. This is the plan or adapt. I’ll put this disclaimer down to clarify. But is the game, Yaxha, one that you plan from the start and come up with a whole strategy, no. This is a game that you adapt to what is happening and the cubes you get.

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Clever Hoch Drei

I went all the way to ordering this from Europe because it’s only out from Schmidt, not from Stronghold games yet. I really like this series of roll and write games. They are easy enough to learn but have a fair amount of complexity as you try and figure out the puzzle. All three games in the series play in a pretty similar fashion, rolling the dice three times, keeping one die to use from each roll, getting rid of the lower dice, but they also do some really interesting things how they change up scoring. Clever Hoch Drei I feel like changes up the scoring the most, but is not the hardest to play, that’d go to Doppelt So Clever. But soon I’ll have the whole collection, when it shows up from Europe.

Metro X

Another roll and write/flip and and write style game. This one is about completing bus routes or subway routes to score points. What I like about this one, in theory, is how the card play works. You pick one of I believe two options as to where you are filling in spots along the routes. Some of the routes are longer and give you more points, others intersect with more other routes and will help you fill in those faster. But when you reach an intersection you are going to stop at it, if it’s already been filled, so you might be pushing to get a long section filled, but if there is a break in that line because it’s already filled in, you’ll be wasting it on that section. You can also play it solo which is a bonus as well.

Ohanami

This is one that I’ve had my eyes on for a while every time I go into All Systems Go, my friendly local game store. I ended up picking it up online with the money on the card, but it is a simple game that looks like it should be a good one for a lot of different people. First off the game, while fairly simple looking, looks very pretty on the table. The game is a pretty simple drafting game. You have cards from 1 to 120, I believe, and you have a hand of them, you pick two, and then everyone plays their two in up to three different columns in front of them. The only rule is when adding them to a row it either goes above the top card because the card you picked was higher, or below the bottom card in a column because it was lower. Then after cards have been drafted and the hand is done, you score points based off of how many you have of various colors, then you repeat it again until a certain number of rounds, and the game ends. Super simple, but maximizing points is interesting and drafting is generally always fun.

Coup

A game of deduction and bluffing, so kind of social deduction. I like this one because it isn’t as purely social deduction, it is more bluffing. You could be doing precisely what the roles in front of you say you should be doing, or you might be lying to everyone. So you can play it honestly, but it probably won’t help you win all the time. Or you can lie and hope not to get caught. I liked Coup well enough when I played it, and it was cheap enough that it made sense to pick up. It is also a good game for early on in game nights because it plays up to six and it plays fast, so while waiting for more people to show up, or for those people who maybe don’t want to play a bigger game. I think having some games like that in your collection is always a good thing.

So those are the most recent ones that I’ve picked up. Which one looks like the most interesting to you?

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Heaven and Ale

This is a game that normally wouldn’t be the type of game that I gravitate towards. It’s a Rondel (I’ll explain) and more of a puzzle euro game all about getting your timing right, but the theme is beer. And I like beer, and I play games while drinking beer, so beer making while drinking beer seems right to me. So what’s a rondel. a rondel is basically an action path that you can go on that is circular. Depending on the game, you can go as far ahead as you want, but most of them limit how far you can go. When you go ahead, that means that you can’t go back, so say I can skip over two actions, that means, if I can move ahead three and there are ten spaces, it’d take several rounds before I could get back to one of those actions that I’ve skipped, 3 or 4. So you have to think how much it’s worth moving head and how much it makes sense to hold back. It’s a different direction than my normal theme forward games, but I like the puzzle aspect that it brings to it.

Papillon

A game about butterflies, because I only have Mariposas so I clearly need more games about butterflies, but this one is very different. In this one you are drafting rows of flower plots, and placing it so you have matching sides together. You then are trying to create large areas to score as well as set it up so that you can get butterflies, and place them on beautiful looking 3D flowers for an area control aspect of the game. This game has an amazing look on the table, and I think the complexity of the game is right for a large variety of gamers. The theme is also very friendlier than a lot, people will like butterflies more so than sci-fi or fantasy. Now obviously butterflies won’t be a theme that draws everyone in, but it won’t push them away as well.

Boomerang

Have I said recently that I like roll and writes, in fact, there’ll be a bonus roll and write at the end. But Boomerang is one that I had heard about a while ago and just don’t know a ton about. This one is a bit more a flip and write than a roll and write, but you have a bunch of different cards you use to fill in things on your board. The game looks pretty simple, pretty fast, and like it should hit the table. It is also different because compared to a roll and write, or flip and write, this game has card drafting in it. Card drafting, or drafting in general, is a great mechanic. I like that I now have several games that are flip and write, some that are unique rolling and writing and others more classic rolling and writing, plus games that have big boards, flicking, and now I’ll have a drafting and writing game as well.

Foodies

Another game that I’ve had my eye on for a long time. Foodies looks like a fun fast engine building game that is going to be on a weight similar to something like Homebrewers, where there is a bit more going on than the likes of Splendor, but easy enough to learn. In Foodies you are buying foods to build up your menu, and you place them into a grid, then you’re rolling dice and depending on what is rolled you can activate different spots and get different things, like money, or victory points, whatever it might be. What I like about this one is that it keeps you engaged even not on your turn. If someone else is rolling, you still get to activate on your menu board what was rolled. And the dice adds in some variability, but they didn’t want you to get nothing for an empty spot, so you might get a coin if it’s rolled as compared to more if you have a menu item there. The art is nice and the theme is great for this one.

Xenoshyft: Onslaught – Game Night Kit #1

Don’t ask me what’s in this, but it was $4 and more content for Xenoshyft: Onslaught, a game that I really like. I’ve almost pulled the trigger on this several times, but I was debaging if I needed a mini expansion, turns out when it’s $4 I do. It basically adds in a few new equipment cards and things like that to add even more variety to the game and a way to set-up some special things. I think it’ll be a fun edition to a game that I really need to get to the table again.

Finally, the bonus one.

This one came because I had some games to sell, in fact, we’re going to have a new post also coming today called Point of Sale which is what I am selling back to my FLGS because I don’t need it on my shelf anymore, and why.

Twice as Clever!

I’ve recently been on a kick playing the Ganz Schon Clever app a lot, and I’ve actually gotten in five games of Ganz Schon Clever as well. But Twice as Clever! is the follow up to Ganz Schon Clever and there’s actually a third out now as well. While Ganz Schon Clever is fun and simple, Twice as Clever adds in a whole lot more challenge to the game while keeping the mechanics very similar. The new additions are a lot of fun and create a really good time playing in the app. I need to get this one to the table soon as well.

Which is your favorite of these games that I ordered?

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So what is drafting, probably the easiest way to look at it is what is common in the rest of our culture. We have the NFL draft and NBA draft’s that are televised, people draft teams for Survivor or Fantasy Football. When you are drafting you are selecting one thing out of a pool of many things and that one thing is yours and no one else can have it. Game do something similar either with dice, actions, cards, whatever it might be.

There are primarily two types of drafts, the first being, I have a selection of things to pick from, you have a selection, we both pick, we both do our thing, and then we pass selections and repeat until they are all gone. This is how Sushi Go Party! works. You have a hand of cards, you pick one card putting it face down, once everyone has picked, you put them face up at the same time, pass your hand of card and repeat. Once all the cards have been drafted, you score, shuffle the cards back up, and repeat, passing the other direction this time, and then you do that once more back the original direction. It’s very common to draft in rounds like this where it goes one way and then another.

The other type of drafting is from an open pool. This is how something like fantasy football works, items are just removed from a general pool. In board games, this is how Sagrada and Roll Player work. You grab a certain number of dice, generally number of players plus one or twice the number of players, so that no one gets stuck with a single item to pick. You roll the dice, that’s the pool to draft from, then one person picks, and so on and so forth until all of the dice, except for one, are picked. Or if you do twice the number of players for the dice, you start selecting down one way and once everyone has gotten a die, the last person to pick a die gets the first pick of it going backwards, so last to first to select their second die.

The big difference between the two is open information and hidden information. With the general pool of things, the information is open, you and everyone else know what is available. But either way can bring up another item that is a part of drafting, which is hate drafting. Hate drafting is the idea that you take something that might not be the best for you, but would have been really good for the next person picking from the pool. It’s a balancing act of taking something that will still potentially help you, but might potentially give your opponent more points. Now, good game balance should generally make it worth it for you, except maybe late game, to take what you need versus what would block someone else. And while hate drafting is certainly a viable move, most of the time as a complete strategy it won’t help you win.

So let’s look at some games that use drafting:

Intro/Gateway Game

Draftosaurous – I really like this little drafting game that is somewhere between a roll and write game and a drafting game. In it you are drafting dinosaur meeples and placing them on your board to either creates sets or get as many of a type as you can and then passing your fist full of dinomeeples to the next player and getting a new set from another player. So the main thing is drafting and you are just putting the dinomeeples down depending on what was rolled on a die and how it’ll help you with scoring. The roll and write aspect comes from the die roll that tells you were to place stuff, but also that the scoring is very similar to a lot of roll and write games as is the board. It’s a super fast and very fun little game.

Medium Weight

Sagrada – This is just a beautiful game where you are trying to make the best stained glass window possible. In it you are drafting translucent dice and putting them, based off of various color and number restrictions on your board. The trick comes that you can’t have the same number adjacent to each other, or the same colors, so you have to consider where you are placing dice. Now, this would get really hard at the end, but they give you tools that allow you to manipulate the dice, which adds to the complexity of the game. This game just looks great on the table and has a lot of replayability with all of the tools, the different scoring cards, and just how the dice roll.

Heavy Weight

Roll Player – Now, I don’t think that Roll Player is a ton heavier than Sagrada, and I could have picked some other games, like Blood Rage that have drafting as a part of the game and a whole lot more going on as well. But Roll Player is my choice because drafting is the biggest part of it. In this game you are building an RPG character by picking dice out of a pool and placing them in for one of your six stats, strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. You’re also getting to manipulate those dice or already played dice by which score you put them into. Beyond that you are buying skills and traits and getting equipment, all of which can help you score more points. Along with that, based off of your class, you need your stats to be at a certain level, based off of your background, you need certain dice to be in certain place, and based off of your alignment, you can use traits to manipulate it and get it close as possible. The main mechanic of the game, draft a die, place it, and do what it says to do in that stat is very simple, but there’s a lot to keep track of.

Overall, I really like drafting games. Now, I only have one in my three suggestions where that has you pick at the same time, which makes a lot of drafting games very scalable, but there are a lot of out there like that such as Sushi Go Party!, 7 Wonders, and even Blood Rage. What are some drafting games that you like? Does drafting seem like an interesting mechanic to you?

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In Point Salad you are going to take turns either drafting vegetables to make your salad or taking cards that are going to tell you how to score. The trick is that you need to take the best scoring cards for you, but when you take a card for scoring, you only take a single card, but if you take vegetables, you take two on the turn. So can you figure what is the best scoring option for you and draft cards so that you can out score your opponents. The game is really that simple, once all the cards have been drafted, then each person scores their salad based off of the scoring cards that they have. The person with the most points wins.

There are a few things that I really enjoy about this game. The first being that the play is really simple. You’re either taking two vegetables or you’re taking a card that is going to allow you to score. People who have played games like Ticket to Ride will have some idea as to how this works because you can either take two normal train cars or a wild train car. So it’s a common concept which is good, because how the scoring works is a bit more unique.

The thing about scoring cards is that it’s the base side of the vegetable cards. So if you don’t take a scoring card from the top of the stack, there’s a chance that it’ll flip down and become a vegetable before you can take it on your next turn. It’s a really nice way to give interesting decisions. In fact, sometimes you have to make the tough decision to take a vegetable instead of a scoring card causing that scoring card to turn into a vegetable. But, even with that decision point, it’s not that hard to make it and turns still move by pretty quickly. For me, this is a really clever way to do the scoring, because everyone is going to have different scoring so you might not overlap on what vegetables that you want, but everyone might want different vegetables.

Another thing is that when you are drafting cards, you put them on the table in front of you creating a tableau. That means that I can see what the person to my left is wanting, and the person to my right can see what I want. Maybe on a turn there’s only one vegetable that I want and no scoring that I want. I can then draft that one vegetable and possibly draft something that the person to my left might want. Now, that’s not always the best strategy, but you can get an idea of what people might want. In fact, the better reason to draft a card might be that taking a certain vegetable will cause a scoring card the person to your left might want to turn into a vegetable, and once it’s a vegetable, it can’t be used for scoring again. So if there are three tomatoes and I want to take two of them, I might take the ones that will get rid of scoring that the person to the left of me wants. So it’s a simple, subtle little thing that can add more into the game. But it’s not a massive part of the game being mean to people, because if you do that, you won’t score as well.

I do have one negative about the game. The cards a little bit flimsy, thankfully the game is cheap so you can play it a couple dozen times and replace it if you want. The other solution would be to get card sleeves, which I might, but because you need to see both sides of the cards, that means that the sleeves have to be clear, which you can find, but those sleeves are often a bit flimsier as well. The box is also about twice as big as it needs to be, but I don’t mind that, because I have space for it. But if space is at a premium for your gaming collection, I could see it being annoying.

Finally, let’s talk about the name. Probably something that I could have lead off with, I’ve been talking about how you are drafting vegetables, and it’s all vegetables that you’d live in a salad, so you get points for your vegetables and they are a salad vegetables, hence point salad. While that is true, point salad is something that is used in board gaming. In board gaming it describes a game that you can get points in a ton of different ways. So point, and how does salad fit in, think about a buffet. At a buffet, you can make a salad and you have 20 different toppings, 8 different dressings, and a few different types of lettuce. So like you can get points in a ton of ways, you can make your salad at a buffet in a ton of different ways. So the name, Point Salad, plays off of this idea of basically everything you do gives you points. And while it doesn’t score you as many points as some point salad games do, if you draft well, basically every card should give you some points.

So, is this a good game? I definitely have more positive things about it then negative. For me, Point Salad is a great filler game, even with a higher player count, the game plays quite fast, and you can play a two player game in 15 minutes. I like the tongue in cheek nature of the game as well with the naming and the vegetables. I also like this game for newer gamers because it’s introduces tableau building and drafting, two things that show up in a lot of games. I think for a gaming group of very seasoned gamers who like heavy games, this won’t be a hit, but for most groups it’ll be good fun.

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

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This list is basically the opposite of yesterday’s list which was focused on small games that are going to have a small footprint, small box, and generally a smaller price. Epic board games are going to generally be in a larger box and they are going to pack a lot into the game, so whether it’s in a fantasy world or a sci-fi setting, the game is going to feel big and epic. Also, stocking stuffers are going to be more apt to be games for a newer gamer, these, you are going to want to know the person likes board games.

Aeon’s End: War Eternal – This game actually doesn’t have a ton of pieces to it or a giant board at least. It’s a deck building game, but the game feels epic as you face off against an giant monster who is trying to destroy the town of Gravehold. You take on the roll of a breach mage who is casting spells to deal damage or out last the plans of the giant monster. To do this, you are building up a deck of cards, so it’s a pretty standard deck builder that way, but, in a twist, you never shuffle your deck, so if you are clever, you can pull off some interesting combos.

Betrayal at House on the Hill – This game is different from the first in that it has a sprawling footprint. You’re building out this massive haunted house, and eventually, there will be a twist when the haunt happens and someone is going to be a traitor. This game is a really thematic game that leans into the horror theme. The best way to describe it would be that you are playing through the movie Cabin in the Woods, if Cabin in the Woods was a mansion instead of a cabin. You never know what the haunt is going to be, because an omen card in a certain room is going to take you to a specific haunt. The game is a bit swingy in that someone can, with a bit of luck be very strong or the haunts can be a bit unbalanced, but it’s very thematic.

Blood Rage – With a name like that, how could it not be epic? In this game, you are taking your tribe of Viking warriors through combat and area control in order to get the most glory. However, beware where Ragnorak is happening, because that can knock your troops off the board. Blood Rage is, at it’s heart, a card drafting game where the cards you pick at the beginning of the age determine your strategy for that age. But it feels like it plays out on the table in a massive way, with big epic conflicts, monsters on the board, and the strategies are all based around different deities from Norse Mythology. The game looks cool on the table and the minis help give it it’s epic feel.

Cry Havoc – In what turns out to be a bit of a euro-style area control game, you really get to play through a giant cinematic game of different factions warring over the crystals. Humans are able to attack from different areas in support. The mechs can build up stronger technology and call in satellite support. The pilgrims are a peaceful alien race that just cares about growing as many crystals as possible. And the trogs are everywhere on the planet, because it’s their home world, and they’re trying to fight everyone off. In this game you’re getting points for crystals in the few rounds that you are playing and scoring. But it has a tricky bit of combat and interesting card play to be able to get to other areas, fight your battles, or in the case of the pilgrims, set-up your fortified areas. It looks cool and feels a bit like Avatar.

Dead of Winter – Dead of Winter is a survival zombie game where you are in charge of a group of survivors. You need to go out and find food, deal with zombies, get medicine to heal people, deal with crisis that are happening and complete a main objective. There is a ton to do in this game, plus, beyond that, you have your own goal you need to complete and there might be a traitor in your midst. All of that is great and epic feeling as you try and figure out who the traitor might be, but there are also crossroads cards which offer you tough decisions if the right conditions are met that makes this game feel even more epic.

Gloomhaven – This is, in my opinion, the ultimate big epic board game. It’s a massive box, massive footprint on the table, a ton of characters to play. Now, it comes with a large price tag, but the number of hours worth of play, it’s worth the price. Gloomhaven has a nice story to it, but it shines in the scenarios where you have to work with your teammates in your card play to get it really ticking, because the monsters hit back and they hit back hard. It’s a lot of strategy and it’s just fun to play, plus unlocking new characters keeps the game feeling fresh. It’s like a video game RPG, but on a board.

Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition – The only Lovecraftian game on this list, I considered Arkham Horror LCG, and while it does have a great story, it doesn’t feel quite as epic. Mansions of Madness though is an epic horror game in a box. You are using an app to drive the story and provide ambiance for the game. But that doesn’t take away from the board game piece, it just enhances it and can cause the game to be set-up differently each time you play a scenario. And there are tons of scenarios out there and expansions. You take on the role of an investigator who has been called in for something odd happening, but can you stop it in time or before you become too injured or insane to carry on?

Pandemic Legacy Season 1/Season 2 – I’m lumping both of them together, but both are pretty epic stories. As a Legacy game, it means that you have a limited number of plays through the story, but the story is good, and you feel like you get your value from them. You are playing what is basically Pandemic, a game where you are a member of the CDC going out to deal with diseases. The basic game is fairly epic, but when you add in an evolving story, it becomes more epic and challenging as you have to adapt to the strategies that the changes in the game is leading your towards. It’s fun to play through, even twice, like I’ve done, because there is a good story with it and a lot of story and interesting decisions.

Root – These are cute woodland creatures, they won’t be epic, will they? Yes, they will in this asymmetric game where players take on the roles of different factions of woodland creatures. Maybe you are the vagabond who is getting new items to be able to do more things or planning out your long term strategy as the Eyrie who need their orders to be carried out in a certain way and things will go poorly if they aren’t. Or maybe you are the Woodland Alliance who don’t start with much, but need to create a strong position on the board. And then there is the Marquise de Cat and his cat troops who are trying to keep control on the areas and expand their power. It’s big, it’s epic, and everyone feels really unique in the game.

Skulk Hollow – By far the smallest game on the list and only a two player game, it still feels epic. You have the foxen heroes who all of a sudden have to deal with a guardian. The guardian of the realm probably isn’t a bad guy, but with the foxen folk there now, they seem like one. One player plays as the guardian and the other as foxen folk, each with their own goals. The foxen folk always want to take down the guardian, but the guardian might be trying to get certain tokens out or maybe kill the leader of the foxen folk, or just kill as many foxen folk as they can. The game plays fast, but it packs a punch for what it does.

Star Wars: Rebellion – The original trilogy in a box, it’s going to be epic. Again a two player game where one person is the empire trying to find that darn rebel base. The other player, as the rebels is trying to complete missions in order to subvert the empires evil plans. It’s a good cat and mouse game with all the big players that you’d expect from a Star Wars game. It’s been close basically every time I’ve played it and while the rebels can be a bit trickier to play and this is a longer game, it is engaging the whole time and not too hard. The asymmetry is pretty limited and that makes teaching the game easier than the previous two ones, even with the different character goals.

Sword and Sorcery – Another big dungeon crawl with a lot of characters, Sword and Sorcery takes you on a tighter story than Gloomhaven does, but in what is more of a dice chucking game. The story is cool, and the monsters, while limited, offer a good variety of challenges. What makes this game especially unique is the death mechanic, where if you die, you aren’t out of the game, you have limited things you can do, but you can also respawn as long as you have enough soul gems. There are a ton of characters to play, and while the story is quite linear, I do feel like it’s a game that I could play through again with different characters and the game would feel different.

T.I.M.E. Stories – This game is basically time cops as you try and police the time stream, going to Earth in different eras as well as to completely different worlds. It’s an interesting game because you run through different stories, which are expansions for the game. T.I.M.E. Stories, for everything, is the most expensive game on the list, but it’s worth checking out. The story in the base game is interesting, and it only starts to show you the plug and play nature of the system. Each story, also, has it’s own epic feel, and you get to run through the story, making better decisions each time or maybe finally going down that rabbit trail that you probably shouldn’t have gone down.

Village Attacks – Maybe, as compared to the rest of the games, you want to play the bad guys. In Village Attacks, you and a team of other monsters has to deal with pesky villagers who are coming to your lair with their pitchforks and torches. You need to protect yourself, because that’s very rude of them to attack you. Can you survive the onslaught of monsters coming? It’s a fun cooperative game and very challenging as there are so many villagers. I had a blast playing it at GenCon, and I’m super excited to get my kickstarter copy. If you want to get this game, you need to check out the possibility of a late pledge from the kickstarter.

XenoShyft: Onslaught – Sometimes you just want to squish some bugs. XenoShyft is basically Starship Troopers where you have to defend this mining facility from all sorts of waves of bugs. This is another deck building game, and it’s a tough deck building game, but you always feel like you’re getting better and have a chance. The cool and unique part of the game is the fact that you can play your cards to help other people, because sometimes you might have a lot of weapons that you can’t use, but someone else might need them, so you have to balance it out to make sure that there isn’t a weak link. This is a tough game to win, but a ton of fun.

There are so many epic games out there. If you want a longer game that you can play a lot, there are a lot of good options out there. I’d recommend starting with some of the smaller ones on the list, XenoShyft: Onslaught, Pandemic Legacy, or Aeon’s End. But if they already like epic games, and you want to splurge, Gloomhaven is a game that you can’t go wrong with. Yes, it won’t be for everyone, but it is a massive epic game and unless you want a ton of dice rolling, which Gloomhaven doesn’t offer.

Is there an epic game out there that you really love? Or is there one that is really epic that you want to get?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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5. Gloom
Not Gloomhaven, Gloom is a silly little card game where you are telling a story about the horrible things that are happening to your characters. And then you are trying to kill them off so you get the fewest (or most negative) points possible. While I like this game with lower player counts, the higher player counts mean that you get to tell a silly story as a group. The more people you have to play good cards on, the funnier it is as you really do all tie your stories together as you play and create this crazy shared world with your miserable little families.

4. Hanabi
This game does play well at two players, but I like it at the higher player count as it keeps you from getting in as much of a rut with one person burning a card to give a clue, the next person using that clue to tell the other player what to burn to get another clue and so on and so forth, if there aren’t better clues to give. It also means that each player has more information with the higher player count because you can see more hands of cards. This is sometimes stressful because you hope one of the other players will give a clue that you want them to give.

3. T.I.M.E. Stories
With four players in T.I.M.E. Stories you might get less time to complete the scenario, but I feel like it gives you the right breathe of characters. You get the characters who are strong at fighting, but also the ones who have the social skills. It also gives you another brain in the mix to help figure out the puzzles and find the clues that are at the various locations, maybe hidden on the image that you are seeing. Now, I think that T.I.M.E. Stories is still a lot of fun with any player count, but with four players you can really get the whole experience of the game and be able to use your time more efficiently.

2. Blood Rage
This epic Viking area control, card drafting, variable player power game is the most fun at four. You get more epic battles with the higher player counts and you really have to decide when to make your move going after a resource. They do a solid job of adjusting the board size for lower player counts, but to have that more open game is really enjoyable. And when you have a lot of players fighting over Yggdrasil, it’s a fun time. You also get to play with all the cards in the drafting round for the age. That means that you get to see a great variety of cards and can tailor your strategy around what you can see. The game doesn’t seem to take much longer with four players either, which is nice.

1. Pandemic Legacy
Now, I know some people will like this with fewer players and generally they are considered easier with fewer players. For that reason I actually like it at the higher player count. It adds to the stress of the game as you try and complete everything, and you can’t rely on a single character leading the way. In the first season, playing with the Dispatcher and Medic would be playing on easy mode as you’d be able to keep the diseases pretty well under wraps. But with more players, you don’t get those two important characters making moves as often. This is also true for Pandemic in general that the higher player count I find more fun, unless you’re picking odd characters. Otherwise the game can be a bit too easy.

Now, there are so many games that are great with four players, and I want to toss out a couple of games that haven’t made the list yet. Smallworld and Five Tribes. Neither of these are going to make of the lists, because I like them with any player count. Five Tribes does change it’s feel with different player counts, but it works well. And Smallworld has different maps for each player count which makes the game work very well.

What are some games that you really like at four players? Are there some games that shouldn’t be played at four players?

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5. Roll Player
Do you just like making an over powered D&D character? That’s the feeling that you get in Roll Player as you are drafting dice to make the ideal stats for your character. You are also trying to line up certain colored dice in certain spots, depending on what card you’ve gotten. It’s a fun game as you try and equip and build your character, and there is a Monsters expansion that I’ve heard adds more to the game. The reason I have it this low on my list is because I haven’t playing with that expansion, and once you’ve built your character, the game just ends, so it feels like it’s a little bit lacking in terms of being a full game. It is still a lot of fun to roll up your character though.

4. 7 Wonders
This is very similar to a game that is further down on the list, actually sitting at #2. But 7 Wonders has a heavier theme to it, though, like most pure drafting games the theme is fairly pasted on. You are leading your ancient civilization through three ages as you try and build up your ancient wonder. Except, you don’t actually need to, to win the game. Instead you might focus in on building up other players that give you victory points or getting the strongest military or winning with a combination of science cards. It has some interesting mechanics as well where you can purchase resources that you might need to build something, but only from the people to your left or right, so there is some strategy with that as well.

3. Sagrada
Another dice drafting game on the list. I really like this game for the look on the table. In the game you’re drafting translucent dice to create a stained glass window. There are rules where you can place dice, sometimes you must use a certain color and other times a certain number. That part of the game adds in the strategy, also the fact you can’t have the same number next to another orthogonally or the same with the colors. The game goes fast, and when you are done you have a nice looking window in front of you. The game is very much a puzzle game, but not one that is too tricky.

2. Sushi Go! Party
This one is on the list as my favorite pure drafting game. The theme is fun, building out your meal and the scoring mechanics are pretty straight forward, though there are a few specials that I would consider to be more advanced. The artwork also makes it an easy sell as it leans into the cute anthropomorphized food items. The game also plays extremely fast and is easy for new players to pick up. I prefer the Party version to the regular version because you’re able to create a variety of set-ups so that the game doesn’t play the same every time.

1. Blood Rage
Hey, it’s on back to back lists. But Blood Rage does a really good job with the drafting in the game. That’s what really sets apart the strategies for people in the game. Do you load up on cards for battle, on quests to complete, do you spend your points playing monsters? It is a very big part of the strategy and depending on what cards you see, you might have to adjust your strategy on the fly as you draft cards at the beginning of each age. It’s also where a lot of the theme comes into the game, because Loki cards do really feel like Loki, same with Odin, Thor, and other players in Norse mythology.

I don’t have any honorable mentions this time. Board Game Geek has a lot of games that I wouldn’t call card drafting or drafting games on their list, such as Dominion, where you do get to choose what cards you add to your deck, but it is a deck builder, and I already did a post on that a few days ago.

So this is going to be a short post, what are some drafting games that you like? Are there any on my list that you want to play?

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