Here are theirs:

But what board games would I pick?

Frosthaven

Now, this game isn’t out yet. But it also is the follow-up to a game that I already love. So this one is a bit of a cheat, but I’ve already beaten Gloomhaven. It was the first game I thought of because of the fact that this is going to be another game that takes 200 hours to play and even when I’m done with those 200 hours, I’ll probably still have other things I haven’t seen in the game. I for sure won’t have played all the side scenarios or solo character scenarios yet.

Plus, Frosthaven builds upon Gloomhaven in that it adds in city building. City building is not something that I knew I wanted in Gloomhaven, there is a lot going on. And you do increase the prosperity of the town and you keep track of that. But being able to build up your town, upgrading buildings, I am sure that when you’re done with 200 hours of the main campaign there will still be more that you haven’t found yet.

Now, I could go with other Kickstarter games on this list. But I don’t want to do that, because I also have other games on my shelf that need to get played or that I’d add to the list.

Dice Throne Seasons 1 & 2

Yup, Dice Throne Season 2 is technically an expansion. At least, that’s what I’m going with, so it counts for the list. If not, then We’ll go with Season 2 and bring in Season 1 Pyromancer duel box. But I love Dice Throne, this is a game that I’ve probably played 30 times already and there are still lots of combinations that I haven’t played.

Plus, this one is also a game that I can play with a lot of people. Frosthaven is a complex game, Dice Throne, I can probably teach it to most people. But it is also a game that isn’t too light. So that means that I won’t, for a long time, get bored of playing it. And even with 10 characters, say that’s all I’m allowed in these made-up rules, repeating a character I play every ten games, yeah, I won’t get bored.

Lords of Hellas with Dark Ages Expansion

Another bit of cheat game here. The Dark Ages Expansion is the Kickstarter expansion, but I do own it. It takes all the expansions and puts them into a single box, which means that there is more content for the game. But this is my list, so my rules, and Lords of Hellas is on the list. Lords of Hellas is an area control, statue building, monster fighting game, and it’s a lot of fun.

Plus, this game has one important thing to it, variability. Whomever you pick for your leader, that is going to determine what you go after, at least at the start. They give you a special power. And then as temples are built, you draft more special powers. You could play this hundreds of times and never get the same combination. Plus it’s a longer game, but not a campaign game. Though, likely we’ll see more campaign on the list.

Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1 & 2

This one is a tough one to put on the list. I own Act 1. Act 2 gives more story, and I have yet to play it. What makes it hard is the fact there is an act 3. So now I have limited myself by the rules of one expansion to missing out on the end of the story. With that said, it seems like act 1 is a great story anyways because people have beat it now and might want more but aren’t complaining about a cliff hanger.

This is a big dungeon crawl style game, box size is similar to Gloomhaven in terms of volume. But this game has more story to it. So while it doesn’t have the characters that Gloomhaven does, it does have a lot to play through. Assuming that this takes 100 hours maybe 200 with two acts, and Gloomhaven took my group 3+ years to get through, between Frosthaven and Middara I now have 6 or 7 years of campaign games on my list.

Root and Riverfolk Expansion

This is another game that gets onto the list because it’s bigger and longer and because each faction plays differently. So with Root there are four different factions in the base box, I believe the Riverfolk adds in two more. So while you need potentially four people to play the game, Root is going to be one that feels different as you play with the different combinations.

Each factions being asymmetrical to the others also means that each faction will feel unique when you play them. And it gives me something to master as well. Once I’m really comfortable playing the Eyrie I can move onto playing as the Marquise d’ Cat and then the Vagabond. Each of those plays differently and will take time to master. So a lot of game play and a lot of learning for this game.

Village Attacks and Grim Dynasty Expansion

So, this is a game that is also in that waiting on the Kickstarter category, and I only have the base game coming. But I have played this game, so its not kind of cheating like Frosthaven was. This is a tower defense game where you are playing the bad guys. There are a few reasons why this one would make the list.

Firstly, the bad guys who are in the tower, there are several different ones, add in the second big Kickstarter, now there are a lot of them. So variability as to what characters you play as. Plus, like Lords of Hellas, you get to add more abilities as the game goes. It might not be as variable but it is close. And this is scenario based, so I can play a scenario one time and then the same character and a new scenario and the game changes, slightly.

Other Board Games Considered

So, I think those are the four. On the Tablenauts list, they had Sagrada which would be another really good one, and I did steal Root from them, though I think I’d have landed on that as well. Sagrada makes sense because your window, the dice, the powers, scoring, all of those things are variable. And it’s one that you can teach everyone.

I also considered Western Legends, it’s a sandbox game where you could decide to just gamble the whole time to get points, go out adventuring or become a bad guy. Since it is so sandbox, it means that it’ll have solid replay value. But the game doesn’t force variability on you like Lords of Hellas or even Sagrada, so didn’t make the list.

Reichbusters was another one I considered ,it has a campaign, and you can play it as a one off. I could have just gone with campaign games though, and I didn’t want to do that, because I like to play one off games as well. And I think that Middara and Frosthaven are just better campaign options.

And no roll and writes on the list. As much as I love ones like Cartographers, Sonora, or Ganz Schon Clever, they tend to change less. And even Welcome To… and taking a map that is different, the game play changes somewhat but not completely.

And Kingdom Death Monster, I didn’t pick that one because I’d never buy that one. Yes, it is a massive game and a campaign game, but I don’t want to put the monsters together. And the whole thing costs so much. Maybe if I played it, I’d be saying differently, but I haven’t.

What six games (with one expansion per game) would you pick? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter.

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Dice Throne Season 1 and Adventures

So, the whole story of why I am selling Adventures is in the Point of Order article. Basically, I got painted minis and a second copy of Dice Throne Adventures in a sale, so I am selling that one. I can still play with my own copy. Probably the more interesting is Dice Throne Season 1. That game is one that I love, so why am I selling it. Well, because my version was the original version of the game. For a lot of people, not an issue, for me not much of an issue either. But for a lot of people, they’d upgrade it to the big box version, I went the opposite direction. I have all of Season 2 in the duel boxes, think boxes with two characters in them. Then I got the Ninja vs Treant duel box. I wanted to get the duel boxes for the original six characters. Mainly, they’d fit on my shelf nicer, and it makes them easier to transport around. So it’s less I’m getting rid of the game, more that my version is changing.

Sword & Sorcery

Now, I was stoked for this game. I picked up the base game and then an expansion, plus character packs. Now I am selling it. Am I said that I’m getting rid of it, no, because I had my fun with it. My hope was that it’d be like Gloomhaven. A massive campaign that I’d want to keep around and play again. Sword & Sorcery fell short of that. The story lacked for me. The game play, while fun, repeated too much. You roll dice, see if you hit, the bad guys go, repeat the process. You find weapons, you level up and get new skills, and you repeat. While Dice Throne has you chucking dice like this does, the characters in Dice Throne feel more unique. In Sword & Sorcery, the characters were fun but everything lacked feeling so different. And the actions you could take, outside of combat, were too basic or possibly not common enough. We reached a point where we had a few actions, but couldn’t do anything with all of them, so there was waste every turn.

All of that is pretty negative. But I still like the game. It is or was in my Top 100, I think it’ll drop out. The game play works, it plays pretty fast, and you can get through the story quickly. It’s not like Gloomhaven where the story lasts for weeks and weeks and it took me three years to get through it. Sword & Sorcery, it took 3 months to get through it. That is nice to have a shorter story game. But, because the story is simpler and shorter, and the game play is simpler, I don’t see myself going back to the game. again.

So I am selling all of that. The store credit will help with getting more Marvel Champions characters and expansions as they are released, or it might help get more Deep Madness expansions as well. We’ll see when it all comes through. So really with all of this, I’m going down one game, and it’s a game that I’ve had my fun with it, now it’s time for someone else to have fun with it.

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In February, I played 8 different games, but with those 8 games, there were 21 different plays. So that would put my down by 7 plays for the month, plus I believe 1 in January, so down by 8 total. I’ve made up some ground so far in March, I think I’m only 5 behind now after a board game night where we played 5 different games, and a few games during the week as well.

So let’s look at the games that got played in February:

Deadly Doodles – 5 Plays

Deadly Doodles 2 – 3 Plays

I’m talking about these top two together because technically Deadly Doodles 2 is an expansion to Deadly Doodles. This is a dungeon crawling roll and write game. I like it because it’s simple, though the expansion adds in a lot more options on how to play it. You go into a dungeon, find weapons that you need to fight monsters and get treasure. At the end of the game you get points for the number of treasures you’ve made a path on top of, and the monsters you’ve killed and weapons you’ve found. You lose points if you don’t have the matching weapon. The game is quite light and that’s not a major knock against it, it’s nice because I can knock out a lot of games fast when playing solo. And it gives and really works with a theme as you play it. Sure it won’t be the most thematic, but it’ll be more thematic for some people than a lot of roll and write games.

Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition – 3 Plays

Another roll and write game, this one is about building out train and road connections on a map. As compared to Deadly Doodles, this one is much more abstracted, but I’m not going to give that a knock against it. This one is a much tougher puzzle than Deadly Doodles as well, the connections and just how you are trying to get the biggest network possible, it makes it a real brain burner. I need to bust out some of the mini expansions in the box as well and give those a try. That’ll be some gaming from at home that I do coming up in March here.

Metro X – 3 Plays

And my third/fourth most played game is a roll and write as well. Metro X is one that I played in January, and I really like it. I realized I was playing it a bit wrong in January, and how I played it this month, it’s definitely more challenging. I like trying to complete routes, it’s an easy to understand concept, especially with Ticket to Ride being a game that a lot of people have played. However, this adds in a great challenge as routes overlap and that can limit how much you can fill in on a given route. It’s definitely a puzzle and has some luck but is a lot of fun. I think how colorful it is, is a good selling point on the table.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon – 2 Plays

So, we restarted Tainted Grail after deciding that we wanted to move to story mode. I wish that the “how to play” scenario was something that multiple people could have played, it maybe would have helped us know our difficulty level. But It’s been a blast playing through it again. We knocked out the first chapter already, and we are going a different way than before. And we even looked at a card that I hadn’t seen before. I love this game so much and the writing in it is so much better than writing in a game that I’ve seen before.

Potion Explosion – 2 Plays

Potion Explosion is a game that I’d bee playing on an app a ton. When I picked it up last month, I knew I wanted to get it to the table quickly. It has been a blast to play my game of it just because you can see the toy factor when it comes to how the game plays on the app, but in person it is so much better. Potion Explosion plays so simply but still offers some strategy and the table presence. I need to break out the expansion next and see how the different professors and added marbles work in the game as well.

Dice Throne Season 1: Treant vs Ninja – 2 Plays

One of my top games of all time, and I was able to get an expansion for it with the Treant vs the Ninja to the table from the Dice Throne Adventures Kickstarter. These were the only two characters that I didn’t have, and I’m really glad I have them now. I got to play once as the Ninja and once as the Treant, both times the Ninja won. But I really like how the Treant has so many interesting choices with it’s sapplings and how you grow them. Do you try to get a lot of them and use them for rolls or smaller abilities, or do you go for the big one which can do extra damage? The games were close, and I feel like I can see how the Treant will be powerful, there is just more to manage. I’ve taken the Ninja up against other characters on Table Top Simulator with the official module, but I want to see the Treant go up against more and see how well I can do with that.

Truffle Shuffle

I blame me getting this game on GloryHoundd and DrGloryHogg’s playthrough of the game. However, I am glad that I did. I got it as well as some actual truffles for Kristen for Valentine’s Day. The truffles were for her, this was for both of us, but we both liked the game. It’s a simple drafting game where you are taking truffles from a massive display and creating power hands. There are a few fun power cards in there as well, which changes things up. You trade in poker hands for coins and the person with the most coins at the end of the game wins. You draft over three rounds, each round you draft from a giant display of truffles until they are gone. There is a good twist on it where you can only put down one poker hand per turn to get coins, so you want to save up for the ones that give a lot of coins but that might mean you end up holding a smaller hand at the end of a round that you need to discard. There is a good push your luck aspect, and all the truffles look extremely tasty.

Which Was the Best?

So, my favorite out of all of these games is easily Dice Throne, I love that game. However, I don’t want to say for sure that it was the best play. I have played Dice Throne a lot before. I really liked playing Truffle Shuffle because Kristen doesn’t love all games, so finding a good one that we both like was a lot of fun. And playing Potion Explosion with the real marbles was just a blast, there is such good toy factor.

What is your favorite out of the games that I’ve played? Are there any of the February games that you want to try?

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Pros

• Aesthetic
• Quick Game Play
• Price
• Quality of Components
• Pedigree of company
• Theme

Cons

• Two player only
• Collectible Card Game feel

The Page

Roxley knows what they are doing when it comes to Kickstarter, I have Dice Throne Season One, all the duel boxes for season 2, the Treant and Ninja for Season 1, and Dice Throne Adventure from them. Their quality of game is not something that I’m remotely concerned about, and they have my interest every time that they create a Kickstarter.

The art on the page and in the game is just amazing. Manny Trembley, who did Dice Throne as well, is one of my favorite board game artists. He and Damien Mammoliti did an amazing job on the page and on the game creating artwork that really evokes this Mad Max or Warriors almost setting.

And Roxley always does a good job of highlighting their quality as well. The Synth cards are really cool and I want to know what they feel like. Beyond that, having seen their other games, I know that the tokens will be good quality and that box seems really nice. I even like the playmats a lot, though that’s mainly for the artwork versus because I think that the game needs them.

The Game

So, like I said, when Roxley makes something, I’m going to be interested. And I am interested in Radlands because I like how quick the game plays. I’ve watched two playthroughs over on GloryHoundd’s YouTube channel and it plays really quickly both of the times, and the games play out differently through multiple plays.

I put it in a con, but I like that it’s two player, kind of. If it were more than two player the game would take a lot longer to play because there would be more bases to destroy, players would be trying to slow down whomever was in the lead, and things would just kind of pass around and people would have more time to build up defenses and such.

I’m less thrilled with the CCG feel of the game. Now, thankfully it’s not a collectible card game. Everything you need to play the game is in that one box, and while I’m sure they can expand, I wouldn’t imagine that they’d ever consider doing something like Magic: The Gathering. However, the comparison is there a little bit as to how the game plays, and for me, that’s a hard sell. I can tell that the game is balanced and interesting to play from what I have seen in playthroughs, but is it one that I’d play a lot?

Back or Brick

But that was getting into the area to answer to my question down here, is it a Back or a Brick? For me, unfortunately, this game is a Brick. Not because I don’t think it’s a good game, I’m guessing I’d love the game. However, as a two player game that can feel a bit like a CGG, I don’t know when I’d played it, or who I’d play it with. The game would probably hold resale value, but I don’t want to get a game to then just sell it in a couple of years after it’s been sitting on my shelf looking pretty and maybe getting played a couple of times. I highly recommend this game for most people, but I’m not sure I have space for it on my shelf.

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

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When I am creating this list, I’m not just looking at games where it is mainly rolling dice, I’m looking at games where rolling those dice is a very important part of the game. So it’s not just going to be a bunch of roll and write games or older games, but a variety of games that rely on dice. I would guess that some people won’t consider the games to use the dice enough, but for me, it’s one of the major mechanics in the game, which is enough to get it onto the list.

10 – Sword and Sorcery
A good ameritrash game to take the #10 spot on the list, Sword and Sorcery has some story to it, but it’s all about crawling through the “dungeon” to advance the story, running across different monsters, fighting them and then going back and doing it all again. When you fight monsters, it’s about chucking dice. If you can gang up on them, you get get some automatic hits, or if you have the right items, you get more automatic hits, or if you aim, and maybe with all of that and a good roll you’ll be able to take a monster down in one hit. This game is about making you feel like a hero fighting through the dungeon and it might be a little bit easy. That said, the dice rolling is fun, especially with the extra symbols on the dice, not just hits or misses, because if you get the right combo, maybe you can boost your damage some more or ignore their armor. Of course, after your turn, you have to roll for the enemies and they might just hit you back hard and take you down as well. It’s a good straight forward dice chucking dungeon crawling game.

9 – Dead of Winter
I like the idea of games where the number of the dice matter, and not just in a simple comparison of does my number beat your number, if so, I win, like Risk. Dead of Winter gives you a lot to do with those dice. You can kill zombies, if you rolled high enough, you can search locations, if you rolled high enough, or you can barricade or do other things spending dice to keep the small group of survivors alive another day. There is no dice mitigation in this game, so that means that what you roll you get. Now, there are always things you can use the dice for, but it might not be what you really want. And while the dice roll is a random thing, it is one of the things that makes everyone look a little bit like a traitor, nothing that they can do about it, but it feels like a bad roll is somehow more likely to make a traitor. And that’s what Dead of Winter is about, it’s about fighting zombies, but it’s more about can you trust your fellow survivors, so are they out to get you?

8 – Village Attacks
Sometimes you just want to be a monster, and Village Attacks, you’re able to do that. You and your team of monsters are just resting in your castle most likely at the top of a cliff that somehow manages to keep the village below it in constant shadow when those pesky villagers decide to ruin your evening by attacking your castle with their pitchforks and torches. Can you fend them off? That’s what you use the dice for, they give you the ability to move, attack ranged, attack close and do other things, such as defend against the damage that might be coming your way. There’s less dice mitigation in this one, so you better hope that you roll well. But if you do roll three of the same symbol you are always able to reroll that until you don’t have it anymore. The theme is just fun, and while the game is a bit dark, I’ve found that it plays sillier because of the theme and the idea of these monsters just wanting some peace and quiet but the villagers keep bugging them.

7 – Homebrewers
I love beer, so Homebrewers might be higher on my list than some, but it’s a fun small engine building game where the engine that you’re building is the beers that you are creating. You do that by getting ingredient cards and adding them to your different brews. But the dice play a major part in that, the dice you get have to clean up the mess you’ve made while brewing, get you ingredients, add in ingredients, get you grain for brewing, and brew your beer, so your one roll is very important. However, there’s good dice mitigation just in case you rolled almost all of a single symbol. You can trade dice with other players. Maybe I have two brew and no grain and you have no brew and two grain, we could swap a grain and a brew so that both of us are able to brew. But maybe I think you’re in the lead and you brewing will help you more than just doing a simple trade would help me, so instead, you can spend a dollar and change the face of a die. The game plays fast and feels almost like a filler type engine building game, but it’s a ton of fun and who wouldn’t want to drink a bacon nutmeg ale?

6 – Criss Cross
Smallest game on the list and only roll and write on the list. This game is very simple and very dice driven, you are putting down pairs of dice like they’re dominoes onto your sheet, as is everyone else. And you’re trying to get symbols next to each other so that you can score points in both rows and columns. It might seem like there’s an optimal solution that everyone would gravitate towards form the dice rolls, but you are free to put the pair of dice down on on your grid where ever you want, and you get to pick what symbol you want to put in a starting corner, since there are an odd number of squares. So the strategy for the game and plan for it diverges based off of whether or not you can match symbols next to each other at the start. Overall, the game is simple, it plays fast, but it’s a good little filler dice game that I like a lot.

5 – Sagrada
Most of the games on the list, you’re rolling the dice and using them to resolve something. in Sagrada, you’re rolling the dice, then drafting dice, an using them to create a stained glass window. That by itself sounds like a lot of fun, but you have rules as to where you can an can’t place dice. You can’t have the same number or same color orthogonally adjacent to each other (left – right and up – down). Plus at the start of the game, you get to pick a stained glass window that you’re going to make. That is going to mean that you need certain colors in certain spots or certain numbers. So that locks in what you can pick even more so. Can you grab the right dice or get them to come out of the bag so that you can complete your stained glass window?

4 – Dice Throne Season 1/2
While this isn’t a pure dice game, it is one of the games that most heavily uses the dice. You’re rolling them every round, Yahtzee style, in order to hit your opponent and take down their health faster than they can take down yours. What’s interesting about it is that straights or four of a kind, that can mean a different sort of attack for each character. The Pyromancer might set someone on fire so that they are going to take more damage over time. The Shadow Thief might steal the CP (combat points) from another player and deal more damage because of that. And if you’re really lucky or can manipulate a roll so that you end up with all sixes, you can pull of a great ultimate attack. Then, assuming the damage can be defended against, the defending player rolls a single defense roll which might block damage, hit back for a little bit, or do something else, depending on the character. The game shines because of the cards, in some ways, though, because you can improve your attack or defense by playing down upgrade cards. So if you get a great combat upgrade, you might be able to swing for more or open up more options for what you can do on combat. It’s a really fun game and plays fast.

3 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
Mansions of Madness is one of those games where you use the dice to check everything. If you need to see if you know the lore of something and won’t be going more insane, look at your lore skill, grab that many dice and roll them. If you need to fight off a monster from the depths of the oceans, it’ll tell you look at your strength and roll that many dice. The only thing that you don’t use dice for is puzzles, as those are handled by the app or something so simple that anyone could do it. But Mansions of Madness uses the dice well and like a lot of the games in the Arkham line from Fantasy Flight, there are ways to mitigate the dice with rerolls, or you can spend clue tokens to turn clue rolls into successes. I think this is a good example of having just enough mitigation in the dice that it doesn’t feel so lucky, but you’re always hoping for that perfect roll and as you get later in the game and need better rolls with less resources, often, it adds to the pressure.

2 – T.I.M.E. Stories
For what is basically a complicate Choose Your Own Adventure with a bit of escape room thrown in, you get an interesting game with a lot of dice rolling. Some might argue it’s too much dice rolling as you test your skills to see if you can get enough agility to slip a key off the cooks belt or to fight off a crazed monster down in the tunnels. You never know what you’re going to run across that you’ll need to make a roll for. Now, the rolling, like I said, is not some people’s favorite piece to the game, it can be random and it can be quite swingy. So you might make it through a couple of tough encounters with ease and then an easy encounter might just wipe you out and cause you to restart a run. But for me, that’s some of the fun of the game, in the game you aren’t be swapped into the best vessels from that era or location, so you aren’t going to always be the perfect team. Plus there’s the time die which gives some variability to how much time you’re counting down and that can also cause you to have to go on another run. A controversial pick, but one that I enjoy.

1 – Betrayal At House on the Hill
So remember, when I do these Top 10’s, it’s going to include a lot of my favorite games, but dice rolling in Betrayal at House on the Hill tends to be somewhat important. I don’t think that it uses it best out of all the games on the list, but it’s my favorite. In it you’re using dice for combat, but more importantly for the haunt. The haunt is when the game shifts from being cooperative and turns into a fight for survival as one character becomes the betrayer and has their own winning objectives compared to the other players. This roll is known as the haunt roll and you’re trying to roll more than a certain number to keep it from happening. So a poor roll early in the game could cause the haunt to come on faster. While this can be an issue for some, I like that fact that ti’s not as standard a feel as a horror movie because you never know when the haunt is going to happen or if you’ll be prepared to win.

There are a whole lot more games where dice can play a big roll. I actually left Star Wars: Rebellion off the list, because I think that the expansion changes up combat some so that it’s not as luck and dice driven, but it does have a lot of dice in there as well. And you can see that even though some of my favorite games use dice, not all of them is it the highlight of the game. T.I.M.E. Stories is on the list because I don’t mind the dice, but I’m there for the story, whereas other games use the dice really well, like Dice Throne or Mansions of Madness where it’s so key to what you’re doing.

Let me know in the comments below what some of your favorite dice driven games (or at least games where the dice are very important) are. Are there any that you think I need to checkout? Looking at my shelf, I need to get Formula D to the table which has a lot of dice to roll as you race.

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But let’s get to the list.

10 – Skull
This one is purely push your luck, but done in a very clever way, almost trick taking style, probably qualifies for that as well on Board Game Geek. In Skull everyone is playing down tiles, face down, that can either have a rose or a skull on them. You want to flip only roses, so at some point in time someone will say that they are comfortable flipping a number of the tiles over. The trick is that they have to start with their tiles, so are you bluffing that you don’t have a skull in your stack hoping to get other people to bid or are you confident that you don’t have one in your stack of tiles, but now you might need to flip from other people’s stacks and where might they have placed the skull. So players go around increasing the bid higher or dropping out of bidding until there’s someone who won the bid, and they have to flip that many tiles, starting with all of their own that they’ve played down. It’s well done mainly because it’s fast, I’ve had it draw out only once at the end when everyone was so close to winning, but created a good challenge in the game.

9 – Risk Legacy
Any game of Risk is going to be push your luck because you are rolling dice and trying to beat your enemy down. Now, just by pure number of pieces in your army you might able to win just because of the law of averages, but the attrition might be really high. Also, because it’s dice with no die mitigation you might be able to take a tiny army in and bust up someone’s plan to hold a continent. There are a lot of risks that you can take in Risk, and while those are a bit mitigated in Risk Legacy because you are looking for victory points and in the game there are more ways than just conquest to get those victory points, conquest and the dice combat is a big part of it. The fact it’s not just only push your luck helps out the game a lot.

8 – Codenames: Pictures
Both the clue giver and the people guessing can push their luck some. You can give a clue that might only match one thing and make it really obvious as the clue giver, but then you might end up being beaten out by someone who is a bit riskier. As guessers you can always guess beyond what you’ve been given clues for, this is strategic at times when you know you made a mistake on the previous one, so you can guess further, but you could also just guess blindly if you are too far behind and you need to catch-up. There’s big risk to it, so it’s a push your luck only if you really think that you need to catch up.

7 – Tsuro
Odd choice for push your luck, but I think that there is a piece of that in the game in two areas. The first is a little bit odd because leaving your pawns fate in another players hands is a bit push your luck. You don’t know if they’re going to send you off the board, but you want to play the odds that to keep themselves alive, they’ll have to keep you alive, so it’s a non-traditional push your luck, but still kind of one. The other is when you are trying to avoid other pawns so you go into your corner, you might not be able to get out with the tiles that you have, but if you get the right tile you’re going to be able to escape your corner.

6 – Ticket to Ride
Now, Ticket to Ride is more of a set collection game with a light push your luck element to it. In Ticket to Ride you are trying to connect train routes by completing segments of track based off of color. There are two ways you can push your luck, one is if there aren’t colors that are flipped up that you need or at least ideal colors, you can draw that from the top. So you could maybe find a route further around but it would take longer based off of the colors, or draw from the top and hope you get lucky. The other way is after you’ve completed routes, you can draw more but have to keep one, so late in a game if you’re worried you’re behind, but you have a solid network of trains but not that many cars, you can push your luck drawing more route tickets hoping you can get one you can complete.

5 – King of Tokyo
A dice game that’s all about getting those exact symbols you need. If you’re in Tokyo, do you push your luck to hold it after everyone has been punching you for the few points and the ability to punch them all back? Is it going to be worth the risk to your monster’s health? Probably the purest push your luck game on the list, this one gives you some cards, but those are mainly new abilities or more points to put you closer to winning. It isn’t going to help you manipulate the dice, so you’re always going to be rolling and hoping that you can get attacks, healing, energy, or points when you need them. It’s a lighter game, but certainly one that is a lot of fun.

4 – Dead of Winter
I think of Dead of Winter as more of a survival game, but it really has a strong push your luck element. Every time that you go somewhere, you’re rolling a die hoping no to get bitten and turned into a zombie or get frostbite and potentially end up dying. But you need to move otherwise the main base will be overrun by zombies. So you go out exploring, and you push your luck there as well by making noise. So you can dig further through the deck in hopes of finding what you need but making more noise while looking longer means that you might have more zombies come, so you risk it and make a location not that usable for searching in the future to just find that one thing that you need?

3 – Dice Throne Season 1/2
Dice rolling games, as you can probably tell at this point, are good for pushing your luck, especially games where you can roll the dice, keep a few, roll some more and hope that you end up with what you need. Dice Throne, in my opinion, does that the best, in this game where heroes face off in a tournament. Or done in a one on one battle in a one off. You each have your own abilities and cards to manipulate the dice, but you’re still pushing your luck. Getting five dice to roll to six is the best outcome possible, but it could mean that you don’t end up with anything if you fail, so do you push for that ultimate ability to play it safer?

2 – Clank! In! Space!
One of the more pure push your luck games, Clank! In! Space! still gives you some good choices to make because you decide which routes you take, you are still building a deck, but it’s mainly a game where you are pushing your luck to get as far into the spaceship of Lord Eradikus that you dare and then grabbing a treasure and running for it, but the further you get in, the better the treasures are going to be. But he’s always out there and might take you out before you can escape. Plus, the bag building mechanic of who Eradikus hits is also push your luck, because you could get good cards that give you clank, which is how he finds you, or you might want to take it a bit slower and safer, but that could end up causing it to take longer and leaving you in the same place or without as good a treasure.

1 – Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon
This one I wasn’t thinking about, but it showed up on Board Game Geek as push your luck, and there is some of that in combat where you know you might get hit, but if you hold out for a turn and draw the right card, you’ll be able to take out the enemy, and there are some explorations as well that you push your luck. This is more of a grandiose adventure survival game than it is a push your luck game, but there are aspects of it that make sense for the mechanic, and it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite games. It’s definitely a hard game, but overall, really rewarding when you start to figure things out.

So barely keeping it in my top 100 with the games here, and probably Skull would be pushed just outside now as I’ve gotten more games to the table. But all really enjoyable games, and something so push your luck as Skull works for me because it’s fast. Push Your Luck is almost like a take that mechanic to me because you can just end up losing because of a bad guess for pushing your luck, and it feels too random. I like some randomness in my games, but something that you can lose just because of a small thing is too much.

What are some of your favorite push your luck games? Are there any games that you think use push your luck well as a mechanic in the larger game?

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Let’s start by talking about some Kickstarters that I will have coming in. I’m counting reprints/second editions with this, so the first one is:

Middara – This game rivals Gloomhaven in terms of size and is bigger in terms of story. There has been so much put into it, and the first kickstarter took forever to fulfill. However, I’m just backing what came out in that Kickstarter so I expect to get mine next year, and projected date places it the middle of next year. In Middara, you are in an anime-esque world and fighting through a massive story with lots of different dungeons and interactions. You make decisions that might change up things in the future, and you upgrade your characters with interesting skills and weapons. This game looks amazing, when I’ll play it, who knows, but I’m excited for it.

Village Attacks – Another reprint, I played it at GenCon last year, got a scenario and a few bits for it, found out that it was impossible to find, but then they kickstarted an expansion for it, which I backed so I could use my GenCon scenario. In this game, it’s tower defense, but you’re the bad guys who are keeping those pesky villagers with their torches and pitchforks from running you at of your house. It’s fully cooperative which I like, and the theme is just a lot of fun. I’m excited for this one to get it back to the table and properly deal with those villagers again. The scenarios are a lot of fun, and depending on what villagers come out when, the game will feel different playing the same scenario.

Dice Throne Adventures – I’ve talked about how much I like Dice Throne. This Yahtzee/King of Tokyo style game where you are fighting a character against another character. You’re part of a massive tournament that the evil emperor has set-up that isn’t at all like Mortal Kombat or anything like that. But in Dice Throne Adventures, you are fighting your way through the evil emperors lands, leveling up your characters, and playing cooperative against the game with whatever characters you want from Season One or Two of Dice Throne. It sounds like a campaign dungeon crawl, and while it does have some of that feel, it’s shorter in terms of campaign so you can get through it and play again without the time commitment like you need for bigger dungeon crawls.

Shadows of Kilforth – I blame Rolling Solo Youtube Channel for getting me into this game, the original, Gloom of Killforth is a one shot adventure game where you are in a world where things are going poorly and you as an adventurer are leveling up, exploring locations, fighting monsters, hoping to get strong enough to be able to take down whatever monster is blighting the land. The original game had a fantasy feel, and while this maintains the fantasy, it also has an eastern feel to it as well, which is cool. This game is also a smaller footprint game as you’re not setting up massive dungeons and needing a million tiles to play it.

Those are ones that I’ve kickstarted already that I’m really excited for. There are two that I know I want to kickstart in 2020, so let’s talk about those.

Frosthaven – Sequel to my #1 game of all time, no brainer I want this. I expect to get it sometime in 2021, but it kickstarts in March of 2020, so I’ll have paid for it then. It builds off of Gloomhaven and the Forgotten Circle expansion to tell you a whole new story set in the same world. But unlike in Gloomhaven where you start out of a set city, in Frosthaven, it adds in some city building and you have to worry about defending the town as well as going out on adventures. The out of the box characters seem a bit more challenging but also seem amazing to play. I’m curious to see how this game differs from Gloomhaven, but I hope it keeps a ton of the same feel.

ISS-Vanguard – A story game from Awaken Realms, sign me up. I have Tainted Grail that I’m dying to play (I’m going to try and play it over my time off around Christmas), but ISS-Vanguard is supposed to be more of an open world sort of game (or open worlds since you’re in space). You can go to different planets in different orders and experience the story that way. The art work that came in the Tainted Grail surprise box is amazing and I really love the style. I’m going to be curious to see how an open world game with a story comes together, but I like the idea of a non-fantasy big story exploration game.

Roll Player Adventure – Now, I don’t like the base game, but I got to play an early prototype of this at GenCon, and this is very different than a game where you’re rolling up your character like Roll Player is. In this, it’s a campaign game, but as compared to some games with campaigns, like from Awaken Realms or Gloomhaven, it isn’t nearly as heavy. The story is a little bit sillier, but the mechanics are fun. Can you manipulate the dice to be able to get through all the story and encounters that you run across. The mechanics were cool, and the game at GenCon, even in an early form, was a ton of fun. Helped that I might have been a power hungry sorcerer.

And, finally, and these aren’t last or least, but there are a few games that are coming out in other ways that I’m definitely interested in. Might just be normal publisher, but also might be kickstarter, I haven’t researched enough.

Deranged – Wait, you’re saying, it doesn’t say 2020, but for it coming to the US, it’s coming in 2020. I played this at GenCon and it was amazing. The game play was smart and simple, the world building of the game was really cool. While it’s not story driven, there is a lot going on, and the card play is really really fun in the game. I like the light horror theming as you’re trying to avoid monsters, get rid of your curses and not become deranged. But it’s very possible that you will or that you’ll die, and then you’ll need to get rid of more curses. It seems like a cooperative game where you’re trying to escape this town with no curses, but it’s competitive, and only one person can escape, so if someone gets too close, time to get kill them and give them another curse. Can someone win in all that fighting, who knows.

Time of Legends: Destinies – I almost kickstarted this game, then I decided I wanted Oathsworn instead. But this one seems really interesting. Each character has secrets that they are trying to solve as well as solve the story that is happening in this game that is set in the same world as Time of Legends: Joan of Arc. But in this one they combined with Lucky Duck games that did Chronicles of Crime, so there’s app integration. And there is a scenario builder that people can use to create more, since out of the box it seemed to come only with a few. For me, I really want to try this one next year, and hopefully if I can make it to GenCon it’ll be there for demoing.

Pandemic Legacy Season 3 – Some of my best gaming experiences have been playing through the first two season. I’m so excited for the 3rd season and last season. I don’t know anything about the game, I just know that I want it and I’m going to be ready to play it the second that I get it. No official release date yet for it, but it sounds like it should be a 2020 release and I’m guessing first half of 2020. That’s about it that I know about it, but it’s an instant buy for me.

There’s so many games coming out and with my proclivity for campaign games, I need to get cracking on the ones that I already have. I need to figure out a more consistent time to play them on Malts and Meeples, but we’ll talk about that in a future article about New Years Nerdsolutions.

What games are you looking forward to, is there a game coming out or to kickstarter that you just need to play?

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5. Dice Throne Season 1
It’s a bit low on the list because I haven’t played it with four players or with six players. And it probably is solid with those counts as well, but the game is a ton of fun when it is just two players. You face off in a dice battle against the other player being able to pick what sort of character you want to play. If you want to go for a longer more controlled game, the Monk might be a great choice, if you want to just do damage, the Pyromancer is who you want. The game is simple to explain and the actions you do make a lot of sense. It’s probably going to be a two player game that you could play with anyone, regular board gamer or not.

4. Akham Horror LCG
This one is low on the list, because I really like it as a solo game. It means I have zero downtime and the game moves around really quickly. But it is fun two player as well, and can go up to four players, but not out of the base box. It’s a good action management game where you always feel like you have more that you want to do. You might end up having to fight a monster when you wanted to be searching for clues. You might end have needing to deal with a situation that arises that causes you to lose a weapon or something else like that. Arkham Horror tells a nice and tight story and you feel like you get an investigation in each time you sit down and play the game.

3. Onitama
There are a lot of potential abstract strategy games that could go on here. Chess could have even made the list, but I think that Onitama might replace chess for a lot of people. It’s a great strategy game where each player has two actions and there is one action in the middle. When you use one of your movement action cards on your turn, you put that one into the middle and take the one that was there. So not only do you have to think about how you’re setting up your pieces to capture someone else’s pieces, but you have to think about what you are giving them for an action. The game has an interesting addition to the normal chess style, capture the king, you can also win by making it to a certain space. Another game that is quite fast and it has a very nice app.

2. Hanamikoji
This works very well with two players because it’s a fast game with some interesting decisions. There’s no way to play it with more players, but that’s fine. You are trying to win the favor of some geishas, but when you are playing cards fairly often your opponent can pick some of the cards you play prior to you playing them. There’s also enough hidden information in the game that if you are a good card counter, it’s not going to work. It’s also easy to teach because there are so few options. It is a game that I generally want to reset and play once I’m done with it.

1. Star Wars Rebellion
Rebellion is one of the games that I mentioned at the top of the post where technically you can play with four players, the two players per side with them splitting up heroes. However, it’s really a two player game, because you can’t fully strategize when you have it split between two people. And depending on the actions that one person takes, it might be the case that the other player is much more involved on the rebel or empire side, while one person just does missions for their turn. Star Wars Rebellion is a really fun game, with two players, as it’s cat and mouse with the empire trying to find the rebels and the missions and building up of forces that you do. It’s the whole epic saga in a box.

There are a ton of games that are good with two players. Some of them require a bit more thinking and some of them are fast and easy. I should have actually started with my top 5 solo games, but more people are going to play two player games than they are solo games.

What are some of your favorite two player games? Do you like them to have more theme or do you really like abstract two player games?

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