Top 5 Board Game Pet Peeves

5. Standees

What, you don’t want grey minis in your game? Standees are better than minis because you get color, let’s go through the hierarchy here.

• Painted Minis
• Acrylic Standees
• Unpainted Minis
• Meeples
• Belly Button Lint
• Pawns
• Standees

I’m talking about those cheap cardboard standees that get jammed into a plastic stand. To store them, you probably need to take them out. Then after you’ve played the game five times the bases are ruins on the cardboard so you need to start putting them in sideways. Then you try figure out if you can play the game with Monopoly pieces, realized you got rid of your copy, and just go straight to belly button lint.

But seriously, they suck, it shows off your artwork in a bad way that looks weird because the the machine can’t cut too closely just in case it’s off slightly. So you got a bulky bit of some color around the outside edge. And yes, they do start to breakdown pretty quickly over time. So stop putting standees in your game.

What, they are the cheapest option, tells me your game is cheap. Why do I want to buy a cheap game that a company won’t put the effort into the pieces. I got no faith that you’ll put the effort into making a good game. And don’t worry, standees aren’t the only thing that tells me your game might not be good. Skip ahead to #1 and see that one as well.

4. Enough Room For Card Sleeves

Yes, I’m going to catch heat for this one. And I’m saying this a bit tongue in cheek. I don’t mind if you put room for sleeves into your box and into your storage solution. In fact, if you want to do that for the sleevers because you’re a deck building game and the cards are the game and get handled a lot, do it. But understand that not everyone sleeves.

So how do you work that balance, give me foam. You aren’t shipping the game sleeved. So all your cards are in one little part of the box. Then if you don’t sleeve the cards are rattle around in the box. That space in the box when you ship it is open, so give me foam in that space. I can cut it down to size, or better yet you’ve planned it out well and it’s about the right amount with just a little wiggle room for the cards.

If you sleeve, you throw it away. If you don’t, you keep it in. It’s the best of both worlds. And while my next one is about not wasting space, this is not a waste of space to account for that.

3. Valley of the Shadow of Death

I’m coming after you with this one Fantasy Flight Games. I love a lot of your games, but your inserts suck. So much so that I generally throw them away. And I get it, this is one I overlap with and I new the reason for this before watching the Quackalope video, you do this to make the game look bigger.

Why does a game need to look bigger? Multiple reasons. Firstly, a larger box means you can maybe sell it for me. You might still sell it cheaply, but a Ticket to Ride size box says $40, even if you don’t get as many components. Also, it stands out on a shelf. When it is a in a bigger box you won’t be as apt to gloss over it.

But make good use of that space if you need to have the larger size. Give me a workable insert, not just some cardboard padding out the side. A spot for the five minis in the game to go and the dice. A well for the tokens once I’ve punched them out. A nice spot for the card. Not some random valley in the middle of the box created by cheap cardboard.

2. No Player Aids

I can’t remember which game this came up in recently for me. I opened it up, I started looking at it, and all I could think was, why isn’t there a player aid. Planet Unknown possibly. And Planet Unknown is a pretty simple game. But it would not be hard to put out a turn order for it. And then the game has 5-10 symbols in it. That’s not a big card, give players a player aid, it won’t take up that much more space on the table.

And your player aid doesn’t need to be the greatest detail. But if you use a symbol and I need to flip to back of the rulebook to look at find that symbol, or heaven forbid in the rulebook, then get a page number and flip to that in the rulebook to get the details, that is player aid thing. And really, if your turns take more than three steps or you have more than three options on a turn, give me a player aid.

Finally, give me enough for the player count. (I remembered the game, Tiny Turbo Cars) But back on topic, if a game plays four players, four player aids. No two player aids. Yes, it might make the production a bit trickier, maybe an extra sheet per game for the cards. If that’s an issue, add more to the player aids. But with Tiny Turbo Cars and Planet Unknown, I might go see if there are player aids on Board Game Geek. That’s not the communities job to make them.

1. NSFW Expansion

If you create one of these for your game it tells me one thing in particular. You don’t have a game. Your goal is to get as close to Cards Against Humanity or whatever party game and make a million dollars. Which, let me just put this out there, you won’t. Cards Against Humanity did and more because it was the first. You are the millionth, you get $1.

But really what it tells me is that you don’t have a good design for a game. The selling point of your game isn’t the game, it’s that you have a not safe for work expansion. It’s that your game is edgy and maybe your base version you can play with grandma, but when you want to get a little edgy and spicy, let’s insult people groups we don’t like. Or make sex jokes because we’re in college. Or make fart jokes because we’re four years old.

Final Thoughts

This is a bit tongue in cheek throughout. Each of them is something that I want to see improved upon, and each of them has exceptions to the rule. Some of them are more annoying than others but easier to overlook than others because it doesn’t inform me as much about how much effort was put into the game.

At the same time, I see a ton of game companies out there creating amazing games that skip or miss all of my pet peeves. So if they can do it, why can’t more. And really, if they can do it as a retail company, it means you’re being cheap.

Yes, there is a desire to keep board games at a good price point. Yes, it can make your game more expensive or cut into your profit margin. But if you can create an experience that doesn’t have frustrations, that will grow the hobby more. A good experience is better for your bottom line and will get your more sales than you game being cheap on a shelf.

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So which is better for a board game a standee or minis?

What Are The Different Options?

So, before we dive into maybe why one might be better or not, let’s talk about the different options. I am putting this as standees versus minis, but there are more options as well. There are the flat tokens that you could use, pawns, meeples, standees, acrylic standees, and minis and probably some things I’m not considering that can represent these different items on the board.

Each of them has some benefits and negatives to it. Those will come through as we talk about the different reasons you might want one. And I’m not going to talk about tokens, pawns, or meeples. They work well for some games, especially for tokens when you want a lot of information available to the players without it being on cards next to the game board.

What Are Their Purpose in the Board Games?

It’s probably the most obvious question to ask when thinking about standees or minis. How much do you use them in the game? The more you use them, the better it might be as a mini. If I manipulate it a lot or handle it a lot for whatever reason, it might be a bit trickier to deal with it as a standee if I’m rubbing off the color on it.

Now, that is a printing issue potentially as well. You can print nicer standees that will last longer. But their shelf life for color is going to be shorter than a mini. Granted, they do have color. But when I consider this debate, I like to think about how it is going to be used.

Do You Paint?

Another very important thing to consider is if you paint minis or not. Painting is a hobby that I keep on wanting to dabble into. But for a lot of gamers, painting the minis is almost as much of the hobby as playing the game. It is something that Henry Cavill even talked about on the Graham Norton show, you can see his quote here. But it is very much the case where painting is a lot of work.

So, if you do paint and you do like that side of the hobby, it likely will sway you towards the minis. If you don’t paint, now you need to decide, do you like the color of the standees? Or would you prefer the 3D nature of the minis even though they are going to be grey on the board?

Which Adds More to Immersion?

Really, this is probably the biggest deciding factor for me. Yes, there is a functionality element as well. But a lot of the time I am considering what it does to the immersion in the game. Often times, especially if there is 3D terrain, even if out of cardboard, it might feel odd or break immersion to mix mediums or mix types from 2D to 3D or vice-a-versa.

I think that the theme of the game really makes a difference from what I can tell. For example, standard fantasy, I generally am more interested in minis, at least for some things. Gloomhaven, the mixed medium doesn’t break immersion but I like the minis and I don’t care that I don’t have them painted. Same with Tainted Grail because the world is darker so it doesn’t feel out of place.

On the flip side, if something uses bright and vibrant colors, if I don’t play a character matching that, on the board, it can feel like the immersion breaks. It feel like my piece is not as good as the rest of the world. So a standee might be better there.

So Should Board Games have Minis or Standees?

Obviously, I just made my argument that it depends on the game. I do think that both are a lot of fun, and really good minis can make a game way more amazing. Instead of talking about which is better, both are good, let’s talk about some games that I think work better with minis or better with standees.

Marvel United (and X-Men)

This is one that you might think it wouldn’t matter if it were minis or not. But I think minis are fairly important for Marvel United. A standee or token could work, but you’d lose so much of the art and the dynamic poses that the miniatures bring to the game. The game is so light that it’d feel wrong if it were just little standees. And I think it’d be harder to find the heroes that you want if they were standees as well.

Super Fantasy Brawl

Another one that would be considerably worse with standees. Another lighter game that is probably bigger than it needs to be because of the minis, but the minis make it feel more like you are battling. Without the minis the game would feel very small and very simple. It would still offer the fun choices and good light skirmish game play, but it wouldn’t make for as epic a fight.

Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor

This is one where I’m glad that it has standees in it. The reason being is that you need a lot of standees on spaces on the board. If you build up troops in one area, you still want to be able to see that area. There is text on them, so until you know the game well, you’re going to want to see everything. Plus, this has not acrylic standees, but nicer standees.

Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1

This is one where I don’t think I’ll mind the mixed mediums of standees and minis, but because of the anime artwork, I might prefer minis. The game is vibrant because of that artwork, and my grey minis, unless I get better at painting and focus more on that hobby, is going to be a bit boring compared to what the rest of the game offers. Even the tiles in the game are crazy and awesome offering spot gloss on areas where there is water or other things that should shine.

Epic Seven Arise

This is one that I might have backed if I would get only standees. While the minis are very dynamic, it is again that anime art style. You put the characters in their dynamic poses on acrylic standees and the game would pop more on the table. But again, this falls into the category, for me, of being more interesting as standees because I don’t paint. And it would be more vibrant if I didn’t have to paint them.

Those are just some examples that I can think of. Obviously, I don’t even own one of them. But do you have a game you prefer with minis or a game without? And which do you prefer, a mini or a standees? If you were to really get down to it, I think I prefer acrylic standees, at least for a lot of games.

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Numbers

A’s – B’s – C’s – D’s – E and F’s – G and H’s – I, J and K’s

L’s

Lazer Ryderz

We’re starting off with a light and silly one, this one is basically light bikes from Tron the board game, with all of the 80’s gloriousness. In fact, the box even looks like a VHS tape collection (though slightly too large for one). This game has you basically creating light trails, trying to knock other people out, but more so trying to get to objectives before everyone else does to claim them as points. It’s a bunch of silly madness but works well, and it’s one of those board games that gets you up and has you moving around the table as you try and strategize. Now, not all games need to do that, but I like simple games that do for a nice bit of filler.

Status: Played

Legacy of Dragonholt

This is an RPG as much as it is a board game, but Fantasy Flight created what is basically a simple RPG in a box. Oddly enough, not the only one that will be on this part of the list, that kind of has that choose your own adventure feel. This one caught my eye because of how simple it is to play, you aren’t rolling dice, you’re basically just making decisions, and if you have skills, you can use them to open up other paths that might have been closed off if you didn’t have them. The game tells an entertaining story from what I’ve gotten through, and I think there is plenty to explore, I really need to just sit down and knock this one out.

Status: Played

Legends of Andor (Journey to the North Expansion)

Legends of Andor caught my attention a while back as a simple fantasy adventure game. Now, it isn’t extremely simple, the game has good challenge to it, but it is a lot of fun to play. Legends of Andor is very much a puzzle game as compared to a normal fantasy dungeon crawl-esque game, you want to kill off all of the monsters, but here if you do that, it progresses the story too fast and you’ll end up losing. So it’s a balancing mechanic of keeping monsters out of areas that they can do damage, while also completing objectives but not rushing the story along too fast. I like it for a game that feels like it has a lot of traditional board game mechanics, but gives it a bit of a different feel with the puzzle like twist.

Status: Played

Letter Jam

Another GenCon game that I got to try there, I couldn’t pick it up because it was sold out. Let me say that the first experience I had with the game was questionable, this is a cooperative word game, and I don’t think that all the players knew it was cooperative because the gal giving a demo did a very bad job demoing the game. But I’ve gotten to play it since then, including a second demo of it at GenCon and that one was much better, and I have enjoyed the game every time that I’ve played this. This game borrows from Hanabi where your cards are facing away from you, but in this one, it’s a word game, you are trying to figure out what word you might have, but everything is all mixed up in front of you and only one letter of yours is up at a time. People are giving clues that use letters that they can see (so not their own), plus any additional letters that there might be or a wild letter so that people can narrow down what their letters are and figure them out before the end of the game so they can unscramble their word. Overall, a really fun and clever game, it also plays up to six which is awesome.

Status: Played

Lift Off! Get me of this Planet!

This was the first game that I ever backed on Kickstarter. Lift Off! is a cute little game with a million little meeples whom you are trying to get your color of meeple off the planet before it explodes and before your opponent does. To do this you have to prepare you launch sites by getting fuel, gear, etc. to them, and get meeples there ready to launch and wait for the right time of the day (or night) to launch. It makes a really interesting timing puzzle as you look to maximize how quickly you can get off the planet by what you can actually launch, and sometimes a spaceship, for example, might need a lot to launch so you’ll have to leave room on the ship for your opponent so that they can help you get it launched, while others, like a slingshot, might need basically nothing. It’s a fun family weight game or just a bit heavier that looks really cute and plays well.

Status: Played

The Lord of the Rings (Sauron Expansion)

This is an older Fantasy Flight game that they just reprinted with a fancy anniversary edition, and I think the older edition looks better. This game has you playing through the Lord of the Rings trilogy and it’s kind of a puzzle and push your luck game as you try and advance down the boards, playing through the major moments of Lord of the Rings, but you need to do the right combination of cards, and you need to keep your characters away from Sauron as well. This game is a bit like The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game, not in game play, but in how it handles the theme, where if you know the source material, that knowledge brings the theme more than the game play does. The Sauron expansion allows someone to play as Sauron against the group as well, which is a fun edition.

Status: Played

Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth

Another Lord of the Rings game, this one, while it has Lord of the Rings characters like Gimli and Aragorn, isn’t about the trilogy. Instead, you are playing through a campaign that comes before the trilogy as Bilbo is also a character you can play. The game is app assisted which allows it to do a lot of the house keeping for the monsters in the game. This feels like it’s based off of Mansions of Madness, and I know it uses the same base programming for the app as Mansions of Madness, but it gives you more exploration as well as then tactical combat. The game really plays in two types of scenarios, that exploration and then combat, which is fun, as you get something for all types of players. It also moves away from dice chucking like Mansions of Madness to a card system which works well.

Status: Played

Lords of Hellas (Dark Ages Expansion)

Another big and epic game, this one from Awaken Realms, it is an interesting game in that it does so many things in it. There is a drafting piece to the game, happens when you build temples, there is area control, there is fighting monsters, or fighting other players for control of the areas, you can build temples and statues, unlock new powers and go on quests. This game has a lot going on but really plays in a pretty straight forward way. I like all of what you can do because it feels like what you’re doing and what you can focus on is different than everyone else. I also like that it has four win conditions, controlling two regions and all of their sub regions on the map, controlling a number of temples, killing three monsters, or controlling a statue after it’s been built. This game is also really well balanced, we had a five player game and all of us were in a couple of turns of winning when the game ended and all of us had switched what our goal was for winning by the end as well. Really love the game.

Status: Played

The Lost Expedition (The Fountain of Youth & Other Adventures Expansion)

The Lost Expedition is one of my go to filler plus games. It feels like it’s just a bit more because it takes just a bit longer than some games, but definitely is straight forward enough to be considered a filler and it’s cooperative. You are creating paths in this game for your adventuring group to go down, during the day everyone plays down two cards (generally) and they go in numerical order, and you work together to traverse that path. In the evening, you go for another hike, this time it’s playing down the rest of the cards in your hand, but they don’t go in numerical order, but the order that you play them in. This creates some interesting game play, and for people who feel like there is an alpha gamer problem in cooperative game, The Lost Expedition counters that by not allowing that much sharing of information or really any during the card playing phase, and that’s the part that really sets up what you’re going to do.

Status: Played

Loup Garou

This is another choose your own adventure style game, more so than Legacy of Dragonholt. It has you playing through a graphic novel basically. Van Ryder games has put out a lot of them which have been quite popular. I grabbed this one at GenCon and I still need to get it played, but I like the concept and I’m very curious to try it to see if this is maybe something that I’d want to get more of. They really have about one play through per book per person, but it should be something you can then pass off to another person to play as well.

Status: To Be Played

Love Letter

Another early to my collection game because of seeing it Wil Wheaton’s Table Top, though, I think this was played on the first International Table Top Day if I remember correctly. This game is a little micro game where you are trying to get a Love Letter to the princess and you are doing that by trying to have the highest value card left in your hand when all is said and done, as long as it’s not the princess. But you can also knock other players out of the round, and if you do that, that can also cause you to win the round. It’s played over a series of rounds, but even playing up to 4 wins in a two player game, that goes extremely fast. It’s a nice tiny little game that has had a lot of versions of it put out.

Status: Played

I impressed myself there, out of all the games that start with the letter L that I own, I’ve only not played one of them. Granted, with another one I haven’t played my copy, Lazer Ryderz, but I want to once I can have more people over again. There is really such a wide variety of games in here, and I am going to go through at the end and do my favorite game for each letter, though for some that might be obvious.

What’s your favorite game that starts with the letter L? What game starting with L should I add to my collection?

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Draftosaurus is a game that the best way I can describe it is half way between Sushi Go! and a roll and write game. In Draftosaurus, you are building a dino park. To do this, you are grabbing 6 dino meeples (dineeples or deeples) as is everyone else. Then whomever is the first player rolls the die, this determines where you can place the dino meeple. It might be in the forest or the desert or on the restroom side or gift shop side of your dino park or in an empty pen or a pen without a T-Rex. But, if you’re the person who rolled the dice, you can place your dino where ever you want. You pass your dinos to the left and repeat the process with a new person being the first player. You do this until all 6 dino meeples have been drafted, and then you do it for another 6 dino meeples. Then you count up your score, which is based off of the pens. Some of the pens want pairs of dinos, you get points in other pens for having more different dinos or more dinos of the same type. And there are more ways to score on the board, plus the board is two sides which has even more ways to score.

This game is small and a lot of fun. The real star of the game is the dino meeples, they look amazing, and the T-Rex looks different than the Stegosaurus which looks different than any of the others. Just playing around with those is fun, though, this game which is light and easy enough to teach kids, the dino meeples are supposed to be hidden in your hand, so they are somewhat small, but with six of them, it might be harder for a younger kid to be able to hold them all. The game also says it is for 8+ because of the size of the meeples, I think that younger kids could play it, but the dino meeples are a choking hazard, so don’t let them use it unsupervised, if they like to stick things in their mouth.

Draftosaurus also plays extremely fast. You’d drafting a total of 12 dino meeples and then adding up a score. And because you’re drafting at the same time, it’s only twelve times of drafting no matter how many people you have. They say on the box that the game takes 15 minutes, and I think that is on the longer end of how fast the game should go. Maybe if you have a really tough decision it’ll make a pick take a little bit longer, but generally you pick, reveal and place, and pass, and you can do that in 30-45 seconds. That means that when you do play Draftosaurus, you can play again, and in fact, the rule book suggests that you play the summer side and then the winter side to get an overall score to determine who can build the best park.

Let’s talk a little bit about the scoring. I wish that this game came with score sheets. The scoring isn’t complex, but you’re having to hold multiple numbers in your head, adding them together, and if you get distracted, like I can, then you have to start over again. Or if someone asks a question about scoring when you’re doing your scoring. With a score pad and a pencil, you’d be able to make the scoring go a whole lot faster, and it would make the game a little bit easier. Then, even a younger kid would be able to do the scoring, holding the numbers in your head, keeping track of which pens of yours you’ve scored, that could be a bit much. I might actually spend time designing a score sheet if there isn’t one already on Board Game Geek, that I can print off an laminate in order to make scoring easier and I think scoring a pen at a time makes it more exciting at the end. That’s a minor quibble to how the game works and one that I can adjust myself. The actual ways that the pens score is interesting and it doesn’t feel like there is really an overpowered method for scoring and you have to adjust depending on what dino meeples you are getting.

Overall, this is a really good game. It’s a good fast filler and has a lot of replayability. The choices are good enough for a gamer, but it is definitely for that mind clearing filler that can be played with kids, played with family, or played at a game night. I do think that the game works best over two players, I played at two players the first time, but it isn’t bad at two players either, it’s just better at more. I haven’t played the two sides back to back, but I think that would even be the best, around 20 minutes, get a quick filler in and it mitigates a bit of the luck from scoring, just because it is so random. But you really need to pay some attention to stuff being passed and be ready to pivot when you need to.

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

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Most of these games are going to be pretty simple and easy to play with a range of ages and are often called introductory games. While, if you are a seasoned gamer, these might be a little bit lighter than you’d want to play all the time, but it’s a good compromise with family who might only want to play very light games or “classic” games like Uno and Monopoly.

Carcassonne – This game can actually be a bit more challenging for new players when it comes to placing out their meeples. When do they do it, where should they do it, how do farmers even work? But the tile playing piece is something that is very easy for people to pick up on and fun for people to do. It’s a fun game for that tile laying aspect, and once they have down the basics of the scoring, and scoring at least towns and monasteries are easy to understand, Carcassonne is a good game for the whole family.

Castle Panic – This game skews a little bit younger, but maybe you have a younger sibling or niece of nephew who you want to get into gaming or a grand child. Whatever the relationship might be, Castle Panic is a fun game. It’s simple as to how it works, it’s cooperative, so you can all plan out things together and that makes it easier to teach as well. Definitely, once they start to get the idea of the game hang back and let them take the lead, but this tower defense card game is a lot of fun, and easy for younger kids to pick up. There is also My First Castle Panic for even younger kids.

Century: Golem Edition – I picked this one over the normal version, Century: Spice Road, because the gems in this game are cooler than cubes in Spice Road. It’s a pretty simple game of collecting gems, getting cards, using those cards to get other types of gems, and turning in gems for golems. This game has a bit more going on to it, but the turns are very fast, and since you can only do one action per turn, it makes it easier for people to figure it out as they go along. The table appeal is great for this game as well.

Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger – Now, this one is completely different and might be too silly for some people in your family. But in Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger, you are going through chapters of this story, making choices and rolling dice once in a while to see if you can complete a challenge. This is really a story telling game, and it would be an easy one to play just sitting around a living room without needing a table. This game is light, easy and cooperative.

Dice Throne Season 1 – This game is just silly in a very different way than Choose Your Own Adventure. This one is also about the opposite of a cooperative game as you’re having different contestants fight against each other in a dice chucking game. But it is also familiar because it’s yahtzee style rolling, just with more added onto it. It would be a fun one to face off different characters against each other and see who can do the best. The games also play fast, so you could do a small tournament if you wanted and had the right group. The art in the game is also fun, and the dice are great. I’d recommend the first season of the game though, as the second season has more complicated characters.

Draftosaurous – Draftosaurous is a game that I’ve only played once, but it was a ton of fun when I did. In it, you are drafting dinosaur and scoring them in different ways. The ways are simple and you can easily explain them as often as you want in your game without slowing down the game. Plus, the dinosaurs are meeples, which look amazing. So it has a cute factor going for it as well. The game also plays very quickly, so you might end up playing a few in a row. But the game isn’t so simple that people will get board with it fast.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle – People will be drawn to games with an intellectual property (IP) that they recognize. And Harry Potter is a very popular IP that most people are at least familiar with, even if they haven’t seen all the movies or read all the books. This is a deck building game, so it has a little bit to teach with deck building if people aren’t familiar with it, but the first few games, which have bad guys from the first few books, keep the game simple so that people can understand it. Eventually you get more complex things, but by then, people should be familiar with deck building enough that more won’t complicate it for them. It’s a good fun game, and has a little bit more than some other games.

ICECOOL – This one, if you’ve followed my top 100 and my thoughts on the game, shouldn’t be a surprise to you. Icecool is a great family game that anyone can play. Even younger kids can play with only possibly needing to make the rules simpler just for scoring, and go with more of a tournament rule style. This game is just about flicking penguins around and having a silly good time. If you want to play it on a table, you can, if you want to play it on the floor you can. Adults might find it a bit too simple, but it is meant to be silly fun more than a strategic match.

Just One – Yes, it showed up on the stocking stuffer list, but it works well here also. It’s a cooperative party game, and instead of just pulling out the old ones at your parents or grandparents place, Just One offers something new. The game play is easy and the components are nice. The concept of the game is also easy to teach. This game should work well in most settings and with a wide age range, from Grandma and Grandpa to your 10 year old cousin.

Lost Expedition – Another cooperative game, but I really think that for family weight games, cooperative games are great. They are good introductory level and for people who might not like conflict in games, they work well. Lost Expedition is all about going and trying to find the lost city of Z. However, there are plenty of challenges you have to get through each morning and evening as you hike. If you don’t ration out your resources, you might die before they get there, but with some clever path construction, you can rush to the end before you run out of resources. The game is quite easy to explain and the artwork is nice. This game also helps keep alpha players from running the table.

Machi Koro – I’m not going to suggest any Machi Koro in particular, but if you think people will like the game, I recommend the legacy version. For me, that game seemed to play faster than the base game and being able to make the game unique to the person who is getting it, that’s something that is cool and most games don’t do. This is a tableau building game, but you can more easily explain it that you are trying to build up the best town by getting buildings and building monuments. Turns are pretty fast in Machi Koro, especially when people start to become familiar with the cards. And the cards are pretty simple, so it shouldn’t take too long. While not my favorite game, it’s a good one that is easy to teach to a lot of different levels of players.

Pandemic – I’m sure you expected this one to be on the list, but it’s a good and straightforward cooperative game. It’s also one that even if people aren’t gamers, they might have seen before. It’s also challenging enough that the person you give it to won’t get bored with it or beat it too often right away. And when they start to, there are expansions that can be added to change up the game to make it more challenging. This game of player powers and curing diseases also has a theme that people will be able to understand quickly, even if the game is fairly abstract.

Potion Explosion – The toy factor to this game is high with all the marbles in it, but the game itself is pretty simple. You are collecting marbles to complete potions to help you get more marbles. The game play is simple just pulling out a marble, if like colored marbles hit, you get those marbles, and it can cascade onward. These marbles you then use to complete potions, and the potions give you more things that you can do to get more marbles. But the game is really about pulling out those marbles and letting them hit and getting a whole bunch of marbles when they keep on doing that. Turns are pretty fast, and the concept is easy to grasp, especially with so many app games doing something similar.

Sagrada – A game about making stained glass windows, this looks great on the table with translucent dice that actually help make it look like stained glass. Another drafting game, this one you are taking dice that match specific colors or numbers to try and fill in your stained glass windows. The scoring for the game is pretty simple, and while there are some powers that are a bit tricky, there are plenty of simple ones you can start with, and I often choose those for the first game. The concepts are simple, like numbers and colors can’t go next to each other orthogonally (in rows and columns), and you have to place the die you drafted next to another one, diagonally or orthogonally. Definitely one that most people will pick up on fast.

Second Chance – Another one from the stocking stuffer list, but this is my roll and write (or flip and write as the case might be) for the list. Second Chance just works well because of the Tetris like shapes and people understand trying to fill in an area as much as possible. It is pretty solitaire as what other people are doing won’t affect you, but the game is pretty when it’s completed and a fast game to play. Generally I don’t see people only playing a single game of it, you at least play two, one for each side of your sheet before being done.

Small World – Another classic modern game, Small World is an area control game where you get points for all the areas that you have and other scoring, such as what type of area you are in. It’s a silly game that can be a bit mean, but the nice thing about how this game can be mean is that if you are almost kicked off the board, you can go into decline, get a new race next turn and go onto the board. That’s the only tricky part about the game, in my opinion, knowing when to go into decline and understanding that it is your whole turn. The combinations of races and powers are what then make the game stand out, because who doesn’t want flying halflings or maybe seafaring dwarves. You never know what combination you might get or want.

Sushi Go Party! – Now, this is a bit more complex than just normal Sushi Go, but because of that complexity, if offers variability which will keep it coming to the table longer. In the game you are drafting different types of foods to create the best meal and scoring points over three rounds. Depending on what type of food it is, it’ll score you points in various ways. Maybe you want three sashimi to get 10 points, but will get three of them, whereas tofu scores you points for two of them, but if you get a third, you don’t get any points, because you don’t want to fill up on tofu. The game can take a little bit to get into, but if you play a pretty basic set-up to start, people will catch on fast.

Ticket to Ride – The Train Game, as a lot of people call it, is a classic family weight game where you’re trying to complete various routes. This game has a little bit of strategy in it, mainly in picking your routes to help create the longest route, but beyond that, it’s collecting sets of cards and building your train routes. What works well in this game is that the rules are simple and you only do one thing on your turn. This helps people not be bogged down by all the options available. While this game doesn’t have a ton of variety in the base box, there are other maps you can get for it that’ll change up how the game works once you’ve played through the base game enough. But this one is a good one to add to parents or grand parents collection and play once or twice a year around the holidays.

Wits & Wagers – Final game on the list, and other party game. This one is my favorite trivia style party game, because you don’t need to be great at trivia. You just have to know, who in the group, might know the answer or be closest to the answer, without going over. All the questions have answers that are numbers, so you put down your answer and then bet on what answer you think is right. If you are correct, you get your money back plus some, depending on how close to the middle it was, so you can bet on your answer, if you think you are right, or you can go with the person who you think might know more about it than you do. It’s a fun and sometimes funny game that is good for a whole family and because of how it works, can play with younger kids.

Now, there are so many more family games out there. I left some off the list that I like, simply because I had something similar on the list. Dice Throne could have easily been left off the list for King of Tokyo that has a similar mechanic, but I also wanted to provide some different options as well. Hopefully you can play some of these with family or friends over the holidays, and maybe give them to them as a gift so that they can introduce them to their friends and grow the board gaming hobby.

What are some of your favorites from my list? Is there a game that you’ve found works well as a gift?

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What’s going on in the world in this game of Pandemic Legacy? We had some surprises come when we played last time. How will that affect our game going forward?

Pandemic Legacy is a game where you are trying to cure diseases on a changing board that is unique to your game play. In the end, your game is going to look different than any other copy of the game. You can find more information about this game on Board Game Geek.

As for my beer yesterday, I drank Into It from Modist Brewing out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a Raspberry and Lime Lager. An interesting taste up front, but it ends up just finishing like a lager, which was kind of disappointing.

Bottoms up!