Why Not Heavy Board Games

Let’s start out by looking at why I don’t generally buy heavier board games. And it comes down, mainly to one thing. They are harder to get to the table. Even the in the case of campaign games, that are heavier, which I do buy, they are harder to get to the table.

Generally there are a few more things, pieces, to the game. And so that is potentially going to make it harder to get to the table. But most of what makes it harder is that the games are more complex. That means that teaching the game is going to take longer with new players. And with the group I play with, often, it means I have a more limited target audience. Generally, for any gamer and game group, the more complex a game is the more you will limit who you can play with.

Side tangent, that isn’t a bad thing. If you really only love heavy games of whatever variety it is that you like, and you only want to play thoughts, cultivate a group to play with. Just know that the group is going to be smaller than if you play lighter games.

Why Lighter Games

So, I already answered this question, some. But lighter games get to the table easier. I can pull out these one off games to play without much effort and teach them really quickly. And generally they aren’t going to be as long, either. That means that you can get in a few games during a night.

I actually did something similar to the Brother’s Murph. I maybe didn’t get rid of light games, but I stopped buying a lot of them because I wanted to play heavier games. But I realized that those slightly heavier games, games that my wife might not be as interested in, things like that, just aren’t as useful to have in my collection.

The question for this is, is it better to have a lighter game that you like and play 10 times a year or a heavy game that you like and play 1 time a year?

And with that question, how well do you remember the rules? I shouldn’t say that heavier games only get played that little, but for a lot of people they do. See the side tangent up above. But often times the less often you play a game, the harder it is to remember how to play that game. That is another reason I like lighter games, even if I play it less often, the rules are simpler so I forget fewer of them.

Why Heavy Campaign Games

But then, on the flip side, I play and buy heavy, big, long, campaign games a lot. And I love my campaign games, but that flies in the face of why I buy lighter games, doesn’t it? And why I avoid heavier games with the longer rules teach and more set-up and pieces and side cases to keep track of. So a campaign game probably is not something I would buy.

But there is a difference for me with a campaign game versus a one off heavy game. The main one is that when I play a heavier campaign game, I play it a bunch. With my campaign game group, it’s every other week. For Malts and Meeples, it is weekly. So, it takes care of one of the issues, namely, heaving to relearn the rules.

Now, even with Tainted Grail, which we have played 30 or so different sessions of, we need to look stuff up every once in a while. But at this point it is rare that we do that, and the core game play, we don’t need to refresh anything on that. So that makes the whole process much faster to get through with the game. There is still a fair amount of set-up, but we don’t need a refresher.

That is very different than a game I play less recently. For example, I know and like games like Blood Rage and Lords of Hellas a ton. But because I play them less often, it is way more work to get them back to the table. And that is for me as the person who owns them. I could still, after not playing Gloomhaven for a while, sit down and teach Gloomhaven easily to people because I was steeped in it for so long.

Final Thoughts on Board Games

There isn’t a right way to buy games or to play games. I always go back to a quote from The RPG Academy. “If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right”. Now there is more to that about breaking rules that makes more sense for RPG’s. But the concept is the same. If you and everyone at the table are having a good time, doesn’t matter if you play a heavy game, a light game, a trick taking game, a campaign game. The point is to have fun.

And really, the most important thing is to know your group. Would I love to play a few heavier games more often, most certainly. I’d love to get Atlantis Rising back to the table soon, but it’s a bit more of a teach. Or Blood Rage or Lords of Hellas, both would be a blast to play again, but also more work to play again. I tend to keep those heavier games off to the side. And I know with my monthly game group, I need to keep it lighter.

So know your game group, Cultivate it to what you want, and maybe keep some games that aren’t quite as heavy on your shelf, if you have a game night like I do.

How do you find yourself buying games? Has it shifted over time?

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The advice in this article, hopefully, will help people be able to decide what to buy in a more responsible manner but also decide what to keep. As when I cull games, I often consider what group I’ll be playing it with as well as other factors.

The Premise

I talk about this from time to time about how I have multiple board game groups. I play with a game night group. There are times I just play with one or two people. I play with a board game club group and a campaign group. And, I play board games solo. Plus, I often play games with my family as well. So I play games with six different groups, counting solo.

Not every game I own works with every group. I wouldn’t pull out Gloomhaven and try and make that work at a board game night. First off, 8 people can’t play Gloomhaven at once, at least not well. You’d be sharing duties on a character or house ruling everything. On the flip side, I can’t play Codenames Pictures with myself. But, both games are in my collection, because they work for groups I play with.

What Are Your Groups?

So when buying, or selling, a board game, I think it’s useful to think about first what your groups are. Do you play games mainly solo and with a significant other, except for holidays? Do you have a regular gaming group? Or is playing at parties and get together how you mainly game?

By defining the group(s) that you play with, you can start to define what types of games that you might want to get or keep. Now, there is something to be said for groups growing and dynamics changing over time, but that doesn’t mean buy everything and wait for that to happen so you can play those games. Most games will be available to some extent for a long time, whether it’s new or cycling through used. So start by defining your groups.

Let me demonstrate:

• Board Game Night Group – party games, bigger group games, sometimes light to medium games if we split into groups to game
• One or Two People Group – generally games that can be played a few times in a night, a chance to pull more off of the shelf that I don’t normally
• Board Game Club Group – big thematic games, generally not campaigns but heavier ones that don’t get played during game nights, also longer games
• Campaign Group – campaign games that’ll be played over multiple sessions
• Family Group – light games, card games, and party games
• Solo Group (aka me) – campaign/thematic games, and smaller games with solo modes

Using That Information

Once you define your groups, you can start using it to decide what games to buy. You can see some things, light games on the list twice, campaign games and thematic games show up, group games and party games show up. So when I go out do I look for those types of games in particular?

Well, kind of. I won’t ignore any game when I am searching because what groups I game with isn’t everything. But when I look at a game, let’s say I were to pick up Gloomhaven off the shelf knowing nothing about it. I’d look at it and see that it is a big campaign game. So I’d ask myself, will my campaign group get to this any time soon, will I get to it solo anytime, should I put this giant box down while I think about this? And it might be that my campaign group and I won’t get to it for two years, and I still might pick it up.

Or, let’s give another example, Isle of Cats. That game is fairly light, but not light enough for family gaming. But the theme is a lot of fun So I picked that one up because I love cats, I can maybe play it with the board game club or the board game night groups, but for sure can with the small group when those happen. But that’s only one of my groups, so is the value there for me? Well, because I love cats and because I can get it played once in a while, yes.

Not Using That Information

There also are times where I don’t use that information. Tannhauser which I picked up recently is a great example. That is a complex game that is going to take some work to get to the table. I don’t know that I have a great group for that right now, or I have one person who would probably want to sit down and learn it with me. But it’s a game that I really want to play, so I grabbed it when I could.

The question to ask yourself then is, am I willing to put the work into finding a group? Do I want to try and track people down to play this game. That is going to require work on my behalf and am I willing to do it. There are going to be some games, like if I can find Battlestar Galactica at the right time and right price. I probably have a few people who I can play it with, but to get a group together will be effort.

Really, what I would be doing is creating a new gaming group. It would be a group that I could add to the list. Those people who like one day epic games. Some overlap maybe with the Board Game Club Group, but not fully. And everyone likely has a grail game that they want to get. And those games, especially, I don’t think need to fit into a group.

Right or Wrong

So I bring this up that this isn’t a hard and fast rule. Some of this question came up because the person who was asking has a game that they love but they don’t have a group for. It might not be the right time for a game, so get it and keep it if you want. And it also might not be the right time to try and make a new group for gaming that would play it.

But, for a lot of gamers who really like to buy games and try new games. I think it can be a useful exercise to think about your groups. I said use it for buying, but I’ve used it for selling as well. Cosmic Encounter just this week is one that I sold not because I didn’t like the game, I do, but because I don’t have a group. So when looking at your shelf, consider the groups you have.

I’m actually going to do an exercise, as I go through and organize my board games again soon, and put in my notes on Board Game Geek what group the games are for. That is more for me, so if I find one that doesn’t have a group and I’m not that excited about, it can be one to sell.

Do you consider who you play with when you buy board games or sell them?

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Theming a board game night can be a lot of fun. It gives people a good idea of what games might be played. It helps focus in a collection which games come off of the shelf. I know that I have enough board games where it is tricky sometimes to get them to the table, but if I theme the night, then I play games I might not get to otherwise. What I want to talk about is how to pick a theme, but before that, I think we should talk about how to pick games.

Picking the Games for Board Game Night

Now, you might just want to pick games that go with the theme ,and keeping things on brand for the theme is important. But it is easy to end up with a lot of the same types of games, if you pick something like fantasy, you could end up with four big games ready to go. A game night should provide some more diversity in what is played and that’s less because some people don’t like big games, but more because people will come in late. I am working on coming up with a methodology of what works well.

I think that starting out with a party or lighter/faster game is good to do. People will show up throughout that game, they can either sit down and chat with you while you play or hop into the game if it’s a party game as the points don’t matter. Then have some medium or heavier games to go after people have arrived. This can often have you splitting into a couple of groups, get a heavier game and a medium weight game going. Then as the games wrap up, you go back to lighter games again and pick ones that can end whenever or can be played multiple times pretty quickly as people will slowly drop out for the night. I’ve found that this strategy works well and the games played generally will give everyone something that they like, for those party game players or those heavier gamers.

Picking a Theme

Keep The Theme General

So, with that in mind, it makes a collection clearer for what themes might work. You’ll be able to see what games you have that fit a given theme. And when I say pick a theme, I mean give yourself a broad category. For examples, instead of 18XX go with games with trains. Instead of Lord of the Rings go with fantasy, instead of chickens go with animals. Give yourself enough to work with and a wider breath of games to pick from. It will also make the game night more inviting, because you might have three games about chickens, but if I hate chickens, I might not come, but add in animals of any sort, I would come for games about cats. That’s a silly example but helps make the point. A broader theme is more interesting because someone who doesn’t like fantasy except Lord of the Rings can still come to game night. I always try and say what games I’m looking at as well when inviting people.

Vary The Themes

And vary the theme as well. If you flip back and forth from sci-fi to fantasy and back with maybe a horror thrown in there, it’ll limit what games you can do. It’s fine to stretch a little bit to fit some of your favorite games into categories, but by theming you can also encourage other people to bring games as well.

Stretch The Themes

Now, I am a strong proponent of stretching the theme as well. You do want to play your favorite games, so make themes that they can get into, maybe just barely. It’s a food themed game night, what games have food in them even if they aren’t about food. If you love Agricola, you can make that work. Ice Cool is about flicking penguins who want fish. Or if you’re doing a theme about a school or learning, Ice Cool works for that, or about animals, Ice Cool again works. You can get games into a theme to give yourself more options to play, if you really try.

Theme To The Season

Finally, pick themes that go with the season. At the holidays, make it about party games, if you do it on a weekend evening like I do, that means around Christmas and New Years that people might have other parties as well. Make your game night something easy to drop into. Or in October go with horror games. In July, go with games about food or fireworks or about the United States of America. That’ll help you get variety in your themes as well.

Themed Game Set Examples

Food

• Sushi Go/Sushi Go party – This is a nice starting game, it plays fast and offers time to chat. It’s also enough that groups can continue playing if they want.
• Homebrewer, Foodies, and Heaven and Ale – This is the second wave of games that I’d use in my collection. They are bigger games with more going on, but Homebrewer and Foodies are pretty light weight and easy for someone who might not know the game quite as well to teach. The people who want to play a heavier game, Heaven and Ale covers that crowd.
• Point Salad and Ice Cool – Point Salad is a great wrap up the night game. It plays a decently large group, it plays fast. So a good one for the Homebrewers or Foodies players to play while Heaven and Ale players finish up their game. And Ice Cool plays a big number and is silly fun.

Horror/Halloween

• Zombie Dice – It’s a very simply push your luck dice game about zombies. Sure it’s not actually scary, but it has a horror related theme which is really what you’re going for more than something too scary.
• Dead of Winter, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Marrying Mr Darcy (with Zombie expansion) and Deranged – There are some lighter and some longer games in here, but it gives you a variety of options. And three of them handle a larger group of players.
• Deception: Murder in Hong Kong – Sure it’s not really a horror game but it’s about a murder which has a Halloween feel to it. And it’s a nice bigger group game where the games don’t last too long, people can leave between them and it can wrap down the game night.

Sci-Fi

• King of Tokyo – So this could fall into the next category of games, but the games of King of Tokyo are fast and the Cyber Bunny is definitely sci-fi. Plus since the game is simple, chatting with people who arrive while you’re playing is easy.
• Xenoshyft: Onslaught, Alien Artifacts, Clank! In! Space!, Cry Havoc – All of these are bigger games, though some of them are more complex and drier to play. They give a good variety from area control, a 4x-ish card game, two deck builders, but one cooperative and one not.
• Not Alone or Lazer Ryderz – Now, Not Alone is for if you still have a larger group. But you could do Lazer Ryderz in teams as well which is just becasically the bike game from Tron. A some good goofy fun with that game. Not Alone gives you more of a game but still plays a big play count.

Those are just three examples of what you could do. And that is how I’d build it from my collection. I also like it when people bring games that gives even more variety as to what to play.

Have you themed a game night? What’s your favorite theme?

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In The Mind, you are playing through levels trying to, as a group, play down your cards in numerical order. In the first level, you each have one card, so it shouldn’t be that hard. The next round two, and so on and so forth. But there’s a twist to the game, you are playing down these cards in order without communicating, and you have a limited number of times that you can mess up. The good thing is that by beating levels you can gain more lives or you can gain ninja throwing stars (it makes no thematic sense). These throwing stars allow you to all discard your lowest card without having to play it, that gives you an idea of what everyone’s next lowest card is to get the game moving again if everyone is afraid to play. Then you try and make to the highest level where you can unlock a secret new way to play the game.

If you read yesterdays article on game versus activity, you would have seen that I used The Mind as my primary example (check it out here). And, I don’t think it’ll surprise anyone that I consider The Mind to be more of an activity than a game. There technically is a point where you can win, if you beat all the levels for your player count. But to do that, there isn’t really skill, unless you are all able to count silently at the same speed, and then the skill really doesn’t come from the game. In the Mind you really are just waiting around until you feel like you’ve waited long enough, then wait a little bit more and then play the card in hopes that you’ve waited long enough. They pitch it as this quasi mystical connection that you can get by all being in sync and playing cards, but that doesn’t make it a game, it makes it an activity that has been gamified.

Now, with all that said, it doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It can be a fun activity/game. However, compared to a lot of other games, I think that this one is quite group dependent. If people aren’t able to sit still through this game and just enjoy the experience of the guessing aspect, the game is going to fall flat. And for people who play quite a number of games, the concept of this game can be hard to wrap your head around. All you’re doing is trying to guess when to play a card, there are no tells really and the game says no communication, but does that mean if I have a 2 and a 99 in round two and I play the 2, can I then lean back in my chair to show that I don’t have a card coming up for a while or is that communication, that’s something that the rules don’t tell you, so if you want to know the rules, you’re going to have to guess for that. However, if people can get into the silly nature of trying to guess and just have a good time and silently cheer when you can play numbers at lightning speed in order because you have the 46, 47, and 49 between the group, that’s fun. But even then, it’s more muted than it should be, because the game doesn’t allow for communication.

And then there are the ninja throwing stars. That could have been anything, I guess the idea of a rabbit with ninja throwing stars (yeah, I forgot to mention the rabbit), is silly. But the game itself when played isn’t that silly. Why not go with a carrot instead of a throwing star? Or, if the idea of a throwing star is that you cut off the bottom cards or throw away the bottom cards, it seems like there’s a better option or maybe a ninja instead of the rabbit ninja. This is clearly an abstract idea that you could do with any set of cards that increase in numbers. But the theming off it is odd, but in the end, I guess doesn’t matter. Again, though, for people who play more thematic games, the weird theming could throw them off versus just being a more simple completely abstract with no theme game.

Overall, for me, The Mind is a miss more than a hit when it’s made it to the table and for my playing experience. This idea of being connected and feeling when you can play cards seems to be the excuse people give for playing the game when it’s just hoping you’ve waited long enough before playing your next number. And the fact that the mind is supposed to hit that kind of filler and light style of game that can often border on party style game, it just doesn’t work for that. There are plenty of other simple and silly games where when you have that moment that you want to cheer about, you can actually cheer about it and it causes the excitement around the game to grow. Eventually with The Mind, I feel like I’m just forcing myself to play more as are the people I’ve played with, not because we’re having fun, but because we want to get over whatever hump we’ve been getting stuck on. Would I play The Mind again, sure, if people wanted to, but I’m not going to pull it out myself and I’m not going to play it 5-6 times in a row, maybe 3.

Overall Grade: C-
Gamer Grade: F
Casual Grade: C

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Starting with the most popular

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

Then moving to the classic

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

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

And now to one that’s more a favorite

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

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

The another genre that was popular and still is going strong

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

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

That takes us to one of the last overarching genres

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

Gloomhaven takes us into another genre of game as well

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

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

I probably should define this category next

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

Back to more coop games for a second

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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