Top 10 Board Games that Deserve a Second Shot

10. Bottom of the 9th

Bottom of the 9th is one of a few board games on the list that are Gen Con games. So what does that mean, it means that I got to demo those board games at Gen Con. And that is not always the best spot to do it. This one is lucky feeling. And I think that is going to be one of the common reasons why it is lower.

But I didn’t play a full game at Gen Con. So is there more fun interaction, I suspect there could be. Even if not in the game, Bottom of the 9th is probably a decently fun time with the right person that you are facing off against. It can become a game of just trying to get into that players head. And that, I think, could make the game more fun.

9. Lucidity: Six-Sided Nightmares

This one I think just didn’t work for me because it’s maybe not best at two players. And it isn’t going to be the only one of the board games on the list like that. But this is a push your luck dice game as you try and traverse nightmares. And you might even get turned into a monster.

That is something that I love the sound of. However, like I said, this is a push your luck dice game where generally bad things just happen. And you find that any control you have is very limited. For me that is the biggest letdown in the game. But I do think with more than two players, it is going to balance a bit more. One player still might run away with it, but it won’t feel as lopsided.

8. A Fake Artist Goes to New York

This one I already feel like I should rank higher. And for that reason it is lower on the list. To me, this is a pretty enjoyable hidden role game. However, I don’t love hidden role board games, unless there is more to go on than just social deduction. And A Fake Artist Goes to New York does give you a bit more of that.

Plus this is a fast game and easy to play. It is way less set-up than other hidden role games. It’s just drawing a picture and adding to it each time, but there is one person who doesn’t know what is being drawn. If you figure out who they are, the players who know what the image is get points. If not, the fake artist gets points. And it’s relatively easy to figure out who it is, but if that person can guess what the drawing is, well, they get points that way too.

7. Arkham Horror: Final Hour

This one I suspect is not a great game. But again, it is one of those Gen Con demo board games on the list. And we got to see how some of it works, but not spend enough time with the game. That’s the downside of a game that kind of fizzles immediately, it isn’t back at Gen Con.

In this game you want to interrupt a ritual. And to do that you need to figure out what the ritual is all while dealing with cultists. The game, I think, has a bit of mastermind feel to it, or simple deduction maybe (it’s been a while) where you figure out symbols that are part of the ritual or not. And then you need to correctly guess all of them. But at the same time you need to avoid being overrun by cultists which adds to the game. I like Lovecraftian games though, generally, so I want to try this one again.

6. Sword Art Online Board Game: Sword of Fellows

I only played this game a couple of times solo. And it is one that is actually still in my collection. It never left because I like the IP so much and it’s pretty unlikely we’ll get a ton more games in this IP. Though, Japanime Games did just crowdfund a new skirmish Sword Art Online game. I am interested to see that one, and probably pick it up, at some point in time.

But this one is a die rolling game. And I think that there are some interesting elements to it. Mainly, you face off against three bosses in the game, one after the other. As you go you level up your character and unlock new abilities. That is pretty simple and normal, but it brings in from the anime the “switch” mechanism. If you get a perfect hit, aka use up all your dice, you switch with the next person. And that person just jumps straight into their attack. The bad guy doesn’t get to deal damage to you. That is a fun thematic twist from an otherwise Yahtzee style game.

5. Fallout

Now, I own Fallout Shelter, and that’s not the one I’m talking about. Though, I need to play Fallout Shelter still. But I’ve only heard generally good things about that one. This one I’m talking about is the big Fallout board game where you are exploring the world, seeing story, maybe allying yourself with factions, and upgrading.

The issue I saw with this game is that it could get out of balance pretty quickly and there is just too much luck when it comes to pushing the end game. I went for one way of scoring, based off of my character, and things just didn’t line-up for that. What I’ve heard is that the expansion improves the game. I’m not sure it is going to be one of those board games on this list where I start to love it if I play it again, but I’d be interested to try again with the expansion.

4. Celestia

Celestia is another convention board game. Though this one isn’t a Gen Con game. I learned and played this one at AcadeCon which is mainly an RPG convention. My wife and I had downtime between games and we decided to give it a try.

This is one of the games on the list where I know that I played it wrong. I think we rolled too many dice at the lower levels. So we never really progressed up as we went. And Celestia being a push your luck game, I think two players is probably not the right number. In fact on Board Game Geek, they recommend 3-6 players and really say it’s best at 5-6 players. So I want to try it again at a game night and see if it’s better. This is one that I might pick-up to see if it works for me.

3. Smash Up

I did enjoy this game. But it is a game that fell off some for me. I think that I should try it again. Because, I suspect that I’d still find enjoyment in the game. Or maybe more enjoyment now that I haven’t played the game in a while.

Smash Up is one of those board games with a great concept. You take two factions, you mix them together and then you battle for area control. But, I think that the game works at three. Mainly because three factions can battle over the locations. And then the number of locations as well. The game just feels too lopsided at times with two. One player might just get their combo or dinosaurs and bears to work perfectly while the other players wizard robots never get going. But at four, it’s a bit too much randomness.

2. SeaFall

This one might be shocking on the list. But I think with the right group of three players, none of whom have analysis paralysis tendencies at all, the game could be fun. I thought that there were some good ideas in SeaFall, and some fairly easy things to fix that could have made the game better.

But the biggest thing is that the game at five players is just way to long. Especially when I played it, there were a couple of people who loved to think heavily through their turns. So even though they had four turns before theirs, their turns would be as long as the three players who didn’t have analysis paralysis. So I think the game could be fun with three for me. Though, even I’ll admit, it is going to need to be the right three.

Side note, I’d love to see a second edition of this come out. And in the second edition the story be fixed, and game length, so that the story, being redone is more of a narrative progression. I think faster game length (so fewer points to win), progressing story, and balancing winning and losing combats would by relatively easy fixes to the game.

1. Nidavellir

The final game on the list is a bit of a cheat. But I came to realize as I played Nidavellir on BGA (Board Game Arena) for the first time in a couple of years why it maybe didn’t work for me. I think that there are some strategies in two players that makes Nidavellir not that fun. But at three players or more, I think it works well.

Nidavellir is a blind bidding game where you recruit dwarves into your group. Each type of dwarf is going to score a different way. Generally the more you have the more you score. But some of them the numbers on them matter as well. You also gain bonus dwarves as you fill in complete sets of dwarves. And these bonus ones often give you some really nice extra scoring or abilities. But one of the abilities is kind of broken in two players if you get it. So that just makes the game less fun.

It’s like I’ve said with some other board games. At two players it is prone to a run away leader issue. But at more players there is more of a balancing act that needs to be done. And I don’t find that with more than three, which sometimes can become too random, Nidavellir becomes too random. I think it still works well.

Final Thoughts

What are some games that you ranked poorly in the past that you think you should revisit. Now, know that my list is not all the games that I’ve ranked that low. And I think that there are some that I rank low that people would be shocked about. For example, I really dislike Concept and Dominion. Neither of them made the list for me to revisit them.

Let me know which ones would make your Top 5 or even just a couple you think you should revisit?

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Ranking My Horror Games

16: Lucidity: Six-Sided Nightmares

This one I think suffered for me for several reasons. The biggest reason that it’s my bottom one is that it doesn’t evoke a horror theme. It’s a push your luck die game with dark artwork and that’s really about what it is. I was hoping that it’d be something that gave more theme. Between the lack of a horror and a below average rulebook, the game play wasn’t interesting enough to make me like the game.

15: Arkham Horror: Final Hour

There are a lot of different Arkham Files games put out from Fantasy Flight games. This is the only one that I don’t like. Not because it doesn’t give you some horror feeling, it can do that. The monsters or cultists come out and you feel that they are rushing around the board. But the game play is just uninspired. The story of the game is limited but just ends up with a pretty random guess at the end. The whole of the game just feels too random.

14: Arkham Horror 2nd Edition

Arkham Horror 2nd Edition is a fantastic game, except for one thing which made it leave my collection. The game is just too long. I am fine with a long game, but that means it won’t get played often and Arkham Horror 2nd Edition is a very long game. But it tells a story as you take investigators around and try and defeat monsters, close portals to other realms and manage your sanity. Great massive game that it low because of how big it is.

13: Dead of Winter

Dead of Winter, not that long ago, would have been much higher on my list. I again like Dead of Winter, but there is no such thing as a fast game of Dead of Winter. They give you short games and that is still a couple of hours. But it’s a zombie game where you are dealing with zombies, but also dealing with the other players and trying to figure out if someone is a traitor. And the Crossroads cards that give you tough decisions are great.

12: Zombie Dice

It has a horror theme, though that doesn’t come through. You are zombies who are out to eat brains. But in reality, this is a little push your luck game to see if you can get to the number of brains needed first. It’s basically like a Farkle or something like that, but with zombies, runners, and shotgun blasts. I play it regularly, or at least a few times a year, during game nights while waiting for people to show up.

11: Deranged

Deranged was one of the highlights of GenCon 2019. Deranged has you trying to escape a cursed town, but the only way to do that is defeat monsters and solve your own curses. And you hope that no one becomes deranged when it becomes night time. Someone will, but you hope that it won’t be you. It’s a good game where it feels like you’re only doing your own thing, until you become deranged. I really like how you use the cards in the game.

10: Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Another Arkham Horror game, this time the living card game. And I really enjoy this game, I just need to figure out a way to play it more often. There is some set-up to the game with the cards you need to pull out. But the amount of storytelling that it can do just with cards is great. Sometimes the location cards might be a house, or a town, or whatever the story needs. And the different monsters and decks you combine makes a great experience.

9: Village Attacks

I never know where to place Village Attacks. I really like this game. However, I am still waiting on a Kickstarter from 2019, with limited communication, to get my copy. I want at least there to be more updates. I know the company, it is not their fulltime job and they had another game as well, but tell me more.

Anyways, enough about that part of it, Village Attacks is a tower defense game. But instead of being the good guys, you are the monsters in your castle overlooking the village, and the hordes coming are the villagers. You just want a nice peaceful evening, and here they come with torches and pitchforks to ruin that. The game has dark horror artwork, but feels much lighter as you play it.

8: Not Alone

One versus all works pretty well for horror. Or sometimes games with hidden traitors. Not Alone is a horror game where the all have crashed onto a planet and they are waiting for a rescue ship to come pick them up. But the planet is out to kill them, and that is what the one is doing. The crew of the ship can discuss what they want to do, but the planet can always here them. The horror theme isn’t too strong, but as the planet and the monsters on the planet player, it’s always fun to try and guess where the crew is going and ruin their fun.

7: Apocrypha Adventure Card Game

To just set the stage for this game, it has a card called a basket full of razor blades and the picture is a basket full of apples. It plays into that dark stuff a lot, but also is a very fun game with a very bad rulebook. This is the same system as the Patherfinder Adventure Card Game. But instead of it being epic fantasy, this is a dark world where you are “saints” who can see the horrible things happening actually in the world. So it’s a deck building, card management sort of game.

6: Unfathomable

Another Arkham Files game, though this one is different. It reimplements the Battlestar Galactica game from Fantasy Flight with the Arkham theme. You are sailing across the ocean and Dagon, deep ones, and others are attacking you. Plus, some of you might be cultists who don’t want the ship to actually make it there. Really fun game, takes what makes BSG good with all the expansions and puts it into a single game.

5: The Night Cage

The Night Cage is an abstract game, but one that plays with horror well. Firstly, the theme is amazing for an abstract, you are all crawling through tunnels, unable to pass each other, looking for keys and then a portal to escape. But there are monsters that pop-up. And as you build out the labyrinth, it all shifts around you, so as you lose sight of what you’ve explored, it will be different coming back. And all the while, tiles are getting reduced as a melting candle, until they run out and your candles start to go dark.

4: Final Girl

If you are going to do a horror theme, why not make the different scenarios called Feature Films? That’s what Final Girl from Van Ryder Games does. In this you play as the final girl, the last survivor in a horror movie trying to rescue the innocent bystanders, find weapons, and take out the serial killer. All the while, the killer is stalking you and the bystanders. Really fun game, and a good system that allows them to play around with theme so much.

3: Spire’s End

Spire’s End is a solo or two player story driven game. I played it on Malts and Meeples, which you can see below. But this game plays through a deck of cards, and you fight monsters, try and find keys and explore through this deck. As you go, you flip out cards or discard them, never being able to go back in the story. It’s a really cool system with even better artwork. And the storytelling in the game is good, and I’ve played a few times now, and there is still more story to explore.

2: Betrayal at House on the Hill

Not my number one, but only because of how random the game can be. Now, that randomness makes for some amazing moments, it also makes for some haunts that aren’t so great. In Betrayal you are exploring a mansion, building it out as you go. You find items, uncover omens, and eventually a haunt will happen. Then one person in the group will be betray you and the game changes up. I rarely have had a bad game of it, but it can go wrong. Just very thematic for a horror game.

1: Mansions of Madness

My top game with a horror theme is Mansions of Madness. Another in the Fantasy Flight Arkham Files line-up of games. This one is app assisted which is nice, because it can tell more story than some of the others. Though Arkham Horror: The Card Game does a good job without an app. But it takes care of a lout of the housekeeping for you with the game. And it can pop up monsters in more surprising locations and ways to really fill out what is happening.

I really like that sometimes you might be in a mansion, solving puzzles, and fighting cultists. Other times you are in a town and there are monsters coming out of the deep and once you know enough your goal is to get away. And if I play the same scenario twice, well, the app is going to change up some things.

Final Thoughts

I need more horror games, what are some really good ones. On my shelf I have Nemesis that I need to play since it is supposed to be Aliens the board game. And that sounds like a great game to play. I don’t need horror with blood and gore, though, I don’t mind that. But I want horror where it feels creepy, different, and like a good horror film.

I think that the only ones on my shelf to be played are Deep Madness, Nemesis, and The Faceless. So I know there are more out there that I really need to get to.

What is your favorite horror themed board game?

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Deranged – This game from HobbyWorld out of Russia is still in demo/beta phase, but the quality of the production seems like it’s very close to done. And it was one of the games on my radar from before the con. I liked this idea that you were having to get rid of curses to escape this town. But you also had another secret objective. But there’s a chance that you’re going to end up becoming “deranged”. Basically, there’s a chance that you’re going to turn into the monsters that you’re trying to avoid in the town, and the only way to save yourself is to kill a human. The game play was a lot of fun, and the game plays quite quickly. It was one of the highlight demos from the con.

Homebrewers – I brew my own beer, or I have in the past, and I have never been that interested in the theme of brewing beer in a board game before. But I saw this one on the table, and it looked simpler than some of the other ones, so I decided to demo it. It was a lot of fun. The game is basically an engine builder, where you try and balance brewing four different types of beers, but you can make them better by adding ingredients to the beer that will gain you more money or cause your beers to score better at the summer beer festival and Oktoberfest. So you’re trying to build up this engine that is going to make your brewing as efficient as possible. The game also plays really fast, which was something that I was worried about with a lot of engine building games.

Bottom of the 9th – Not a new game, but an interesting little baseball game. Instead of having to play 9 innings, this game basically just puts you in the pressure situation of dealing with pushing a run or two across to win the game in the bottom of the 9th inning. The game plays fast, and offers some luck, but also some decision. I’m not sure that the game is for me, simply because I don’t have someone whom I’d play it with all that often. But the concept of the game was interesting, and it seemed to work well for what it was supposed to do.

God of War – One of the bigger games at the con, this was one that we actually tested out fairly late and we waited in time to get demoed. God of War is based on the video game(s) and you take on different characters as they fight against the hive of dark elves. The game offers some interesting choices for deck building, and has something I like, which is that you add cards you get to the top of your deck, so you aren’t waiting for them to randomly show up. The demo game, was, unfortunately a bit easy, which was intentional, but that meant that while you got a feel for the game, it was hard to tell how challenging the actual game would be. I liked the theme, and I liked how it played, but I’ll be curious to see as reviews come out, how hard the game actually is.

Final Hour – If games of Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror are too long, Final Hour focuses down on that last battle with the cultists as all you’re trying to do is figure out what the ritual is, before time runs out. This game is supposed to play in two hours, and I can see it playing in even less than that once you know what you’re doing. It’s really a puzzle game as you try and figure out what two symbols are missing from the board, but with a couple of interesting mechanics in it. You get a random, I believe, action that you’re going to take, and you have two different parts, move/attack or move/search, but you don’t know which one you’ll take for sure. Because the first two people in “initiative” get to move/attack and last two move/search. But you might not have the low number card you want to go faster and attack, so you’re move/search hurts the team. The game seemed like it would have some nice pressure to it. Not sure if there’s room in my Lovecraft collection for the game, though.

Dreams of Tomorrow – Not all demos are good, unfortunately. This one is hard to know what I actually think about it. There were two factors that made it hard to really demo this game. The first was that the person who got us into the demo was way to aggressive about it. We almost felt trapped into doing it, and then the person who was running the demo was clearly done running demos of the game. The concept was interesting, you’re trying to create a series of dreams to give you points but really to send back in time to stop the world from being destroyed. But while the rondel mechanic (taking actions in a circle so that you can’t get to some actions right when you want to) was interesting, the game itself was more of an abstract puzzle with a few little twists to it. I don’t think, even with a good demo I would have loved this game, but the demo definitely made it worse.

Letter Jam – So, this is a game that I was excited for going into the convention. And because of that, we actually ended up demoing it twice. The reason for that is that the first person we demoed with was clearly done with running demos, either for the day, but it seemed like for the con, on day one, and one of the people was not that interested in actually playing it. Letter Jam is a cooperative game, and the person who I was there with, didn’t realize that until half way through. But the concept for the game, a Hanabi/Mastermind style word game, is interesting, so we decided to try it again a couple of days later. We actually avoided getting into the first demo to get into because it was the same person doing the demo as the first time, but the group we had for the second time and the person running the game, which isn’t something that’s needed for the game, did a great job, and it was so much more fun. At that point it was sold out though, otherwise I would have probably come home with it.

Zona – Another game that I really wanted to see on the table. This game is very interesting as you fight monsters and search for secrets to be the first to get into the vault around Chernobyl. So it’s an alternate world with monsters and magic, but a ton of fun. You have dice that you rolled for combat, but there are ways to mitigate them. The game was also interesting, because the people demoing it were only taught the rules, since the rule book was still in Polish and cards had just gotten translated into English. The aesthetic and game play, though, were a lot of fun, from what we got for it, and I want to see a more finished version of the game, but if it plays like it did, I think it’s a game that I’d want to get.

Now, I know that there are so many more games that we demoed at the convention. There was a wrestling game, Just One (for the fun of it), Iron Forest to see the prototype, and more. Like I said, we could have just done demos the whole time and it would have been a blast.

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