Let’s get to the games:

Marvel United – 5 Plays

Marvel United only got played one evening. But we played it a lot because the game is so fast to play. It’s great to pull out whatever hero you want, whatever villain you want and just get going on the game. And it was fun to play around with other villains and heroes. The different villains in particular really change up the game.

But one really nice thing that I’ve found about this game is that I can get it to the table in a minute. Finding a villain figure and their cards, and then heroes and their cards is so fast, and there’s so little set-up for the game. It is extremely accessible and I’m excited to get it back to the table, though, thus far in November, I haven’t.

Werewords – 4 Plays

Werewords is a word based social deduction game. It’s basically playing twenty questions, but you can ask more, with someone being a traitor, or werewolf. I wrote up my thoughts on the game here. For me it was an okay game. I actually want to sell it, either to a friend or my FLGS (friendly local game store) because I don’t see pulling it off the shelf more.

Yes, it has more interesting going on than a game like Secret Hitler, The Resistance, and One Night Ultimate Werewolf. But it is still kind of a guessing game based off of no real information, in the end. And for me, that doesn’t work all that well. I want something with more meat to it, like Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, if I’m going to play a social deduction game.

Hanamikoji – 3 Plays

There is a new version of Hanamikoji on Kickstarter right now that I’m backing. It seems to add in some level of area control, more so than the base game has. And there are mini expansion for base Hanamikoji, which I’m tempted to get as well.

This is an abstract game about winning the favor of Geisha. The game plays so fast and only at two players that it’s one I need to break out more often. It’s a good filler to either end an evening or start and evening. And I have even brought it into work because it’s a nice lunch break game.

Tainted Grail – 2 Plays

Less plays of Tainted Grail than normal. We finished up Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon campaign, so we took a week off to just play other gamers. That is where five plays of Marvel United came from and some plays of other games as well. But we’re back to playing Tainted Grail, this time playing the Last Knight campaign.

This one we’re doing in story mode again, and honestly, I think this one needs to be played in story mode. I’ll write about it as a whole later after we get a few more plays of the game with what the new stuff is. And, the new stuff in the game is interesting. It is extremely challenging but again the writing is good and the story is good.

The Night Cage – 2 Plays

Of course had to play The Night Cage around Halloween. This is a cooperative game where you are going through a labyrinth but you can’t see much. Only the spots around you and as you lose site of spots they drop off the map and it twists and changes.

This game is fairly abstract, but it does create a good sense of tension. You carry candles which illuminate the board around you. That can go out and then you are moving around blind. But also all the tiles sit in a candle holder so as you remove tiles it looks as though the candle is burning down. The tension of it burning down works really well.

Dice Throne – 2 Plays

Dice Throne got a couple plays in. One king of the hill and one two player. The more I play King of the Hill style the more I enjoy it that way. I know I talk about Dice Throne quite often but mainly in the two player context. In King of the Hill, you get a benefit, an extra card, for attacking the player with the most health. It’s a nice twist and a good way to keep players from ganging up on a single player and knocking them out.

Hats – 2 Plays

Another game that hadn’t hit the table in a long time. Hats is an abstract game that I prefer at two players. It can play more, but with more players it becomes way more chaotic. With two players you can plan and push for things to go your way. The game play is a lot of fun for it, and it’s one that is tricky to wrap your head around. Especially the idea of the cards you play down influence what scores but aren’t the cards that you score.

Cross Clues – 2 Plays

This party game only had been played on Zoom before. Playing Cross Clues in person is a lot of fun. You are trying to come up with a one word clue to get people to guess the intersection of two words. It could be something like cat and taco, what word would link those two.

When playing with a big group, you only get one coordinate card. That means that sometimes you are stuck without giving a clue for a while. But the game moves quickly enough that you never feel like you are holding up the game. And sometimes you need something else, another clue to be given, before you can give one as well. It’s a newer party game, but one I highly recommend.

Clank! In! Space! – 1 Play

I busted out Clank! In! Space! again, this time with an expansion. And I have to say, the expansion we played with is fun. The black cubes that you pull now matter in the expansion. Basically it is a mission that can happen which makes your life harder as the game goes on. So, a game where you can already die and have zero points at the end of it becomes even tougher. But it is still a good game with that expansion and it’s a nice twist.

Tiny Towns – 1 Play

First game, not of Tiny Towns, but of Tiny Towns with more than two players. Two player Tiny Towns sometimes ends up with one player controlling everything. With three players, it makes the game more random but in a good way. Players diversify what they do more in a three player game which is good. It means that there are more things you can get stuck on, but also more interesting decisions to make. I still need to play with expansions.

Letter Jam – 1 Play

Another game that sat on the shelf for a long time. I love Letter Jam. It’s a cooperative word game that uses some of the mechanics of Hanabi. You can’t see your cards. But everyone else can. And you give clues that are words putting a marker in front of each letter that makes up the word. So if you did FROM, and my letter was the M, I’d see the word FRO* and need to figure out my letter.

The number of clues is limited. So you need to be smart about how you give them. And everyone needs to figure out their letters and words, so one person can’t give all the clues. The game works really well and doesn’t require a massive vocabulary or knowledge of how to game the game like a lot of word games do.

Calico – 1 Play

I played Calico with my wife and parents, and we played it in the simple version. That means that instead of having quilt blocks that determine any scoring, you only score buttons and cats. To me, it made the game too simple. But it is a solid way to learn the game. The basic concept of matching colors and patterns isn’t that hard to get. But adding in the scoring from quilt tiles adds a lot to think about.

Zombie Dice – 1 Play

Zombie Dice makes a great filler for a Halloween game night. Well, it was the October game night, but I did horror themed. That is why it came off the shelf. Zombie Dice is a basic push your luck dice game. And if things go poorly. people push too far, it can take way too long. But it is fun to pull of the shelf. And it is an easy game to teach and play. It is even easy to have people join part way through the game. I don’t own expansions for it, and I’m not sure I’d want to.

Yearly Gaming Stats

So, in October I added in 27 more plays. Slightly less than a play a day, but I was over that threshold already, so I am still on target. Currently, I am 98% of the way to completing the challenge, so a chance that even this month I finish it and then everything else is a bonus.

Now, because we are mid month, I do have plays on the list from November. But Orchard is still my most played game, up to 90 plays. And for all 356 plays that I have, there are 71 different games that I’ve played. Hitting 100 different games played would be great, but I doubt it will happen.

I have enjoyed this challenge a lot. I think that next year I will try it again, but also might put a focus on playing games in my collection that I haven’t played before. There are lots of games that need to get played on my shelf. Some are getting played, but I have 31 Kickstarters coming in and I’m sure more games than that, so a lot to get to the table.

Which of these games would you like to get played from my October plays?

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Playing Werewords

List most social deduction games, in this game you have two teams. There are the villagers and the werewolves. The game plays out with one person being the mayor, they can also be a werewolf, and they pick a word from an app. Then you basically play 20 questions with the mayor answering yes and no questions and handing out tokens fo

There are two other roles to know in the game. The first is that the werewolf sees there word as well. So they are trying to deflect people away from the right answer. And there is the Seer who is trying to nudge people in the right direction. If the word is guessed the werewolf gets one guess as to who the seer is, if they get it right they win. On the flip side, if the group doesn’t guess the word, they get a chance to guess who the werewolf is to win.

What Didn’t Work?

Let me start off by saying, the top probably told you it didn’t work great for me. And I’ll say, that’s because it ran into the number social deduction problem for me. Playing a fast paced 20 questions, well, I’ll get to that, but let’s talk about the social deduction aspect.

My issue with most social deduction games is that you don’t really have anything to go on. You have a few pieces of information, and while this one does a better job it doesn’t help that much. At the end, you tend to have a lot of people with wrong guesses. So it seems like there might be strategy with good number of guesses out there, does the Werewolf hang back or the Seer, but really you tend to have everyone asking a fair number of questions and getting a fair number wrong.

Then you need to try and remember who asked good questions, again, that seems like strategy but at the start people either ask seemingly bad questions or actually asking bad questions. So as the villagers/seer you don’t feel like you have enough information to guess after a minute of discussing or as the werewolf unless the seer gets everything right the information is still very limited.

What Worked?

The speed of the game is good. As much as I knock it for my normal social deduction problems, this game gives you a very short game time. Four minutes to guess and do you 20 questions and a minute for guessing who the werewolf is, or thirty seconds for guessing the seer. Comparing this to Secret Hitler, this game plays way faster with basically as much information going around, which I like. And it’s similar time frame to One Night Ultimate Werewolf with more meaningful information.

I also like the 20 questions aspect of it. It’s fun to do speed 20 questions. And I think that it’s pretty entertaining to do that. is it enough for a game, kind of. I like it, and I think it worked. Kind of like My Farm Shop, I do wonder a little bit about the complexity of the game, or the interesting moments in the game. Are there enough of them that will keep me coming back to 20 questions?

Who Is Werewords For?

This game is definitely for people who love social deduction games. It is a very different version than you get with stuff like One Night Ultimate Werewolf. I think that people who like that type of game will like the speed and fun of this game. The 20 question is a nice twist on it.

If you don’t like social deduction games, I don’t think will change your mind. Werewords is better for me than something like Secret Hitler or Donner Dinner Party and One Night Ultimate Werewolf. But it still feels like what it is at it’s core. A game which has you guessing on who is who. The amount of lack of information stands out.

Final Thoughts

I am still at a place where only Deception: Murder in Hong Kong stands out to me as a social deduction game that I love. Werewords won’t be cracking into my Top 100, though, I do like it better than a lot. Is it going to stay in my collection? I really do not know. It might for a little bit. Why, because I like it better than most. And it’s a genre of game that works well in big groups. Still, I like Deception so much better, will I play Werewords then?

My Grade: C
Gamer Grade: C
Casual Grade: A

Draftosaurus: Marina
Draftosaurus: Aerial Show

You can see my full thoughts on it here, but let’s talk a little bit about how it works here. Draftosaurus has you drafting dinosaurs from a handful of meeples. You then place them into pends to score points in certain ways. Some might need as many dinosaurs of the same type as possible. Others want you playing down pairs of dinosaurs or unique dinosaurs into the pen. You are only limited in where to place the dinosaur you pick by area of the map that the dice is rolled for. Unless, you roll the die, then you can place it anywhere.

Draftosaurus is a really fun drafting game. I like that it’s not card drafting. That is extremely common in board games like Sushi Go Party! and Seven Wonders. Draftosaurus gives it more of a tactile feel because the dinosaur meeples are great. The Aerial Show and Marina add on small boards and new dinosaurs that you can play with. it creates more spots to place dinos and just more variety to the game. I like that Draftosaurus already has a double sided board but more things will be lots of fun.

Werewords

This is a social deduction style of game. I don’t love most social deduction games. They basically turn into people talking until the group decides on person is lying based off of little to no information. At least for games like The Resistance and One Night Ultimate Werewolf. However, I really love Deception: Murder in Hong Kong because it has more things going on and gives you something to work off of.

Werewords is a word guessing game, basically 20 questions, and the goal is to come up with the word, but one person can be asking bad or misleading questions if they are the werewolf. I forget all the details of how the werewolf can win, I think by keeping people off track with questions for a certain amount of time. And the rest can win by guessing the word or figuring out who the werewolf is.

You can only ask yes or no questions and the person who is “it” gives out tokens for the answer, So you can see who has asked more questions that lead down the right path maybe or the wrong path to help figure out the werewolf. Granted, it is possible that the person answering the questions is the werewolf, in which case they can lie in their answers. But make it too obvious they are doing that, the rest of the people guess they are the werewolf.

This just feels like more of a game than a lot of social deduction games, so I’m excited to give it a try coming up here soon. And I want to see if it scratches that same game and social deduction that I get from Deception: Murder in Hong Kong as well.

Which of these two looks the most interesting to you?

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In Silver you have a village of five cards in front of you. These cards are face down and at the start of a round, there are four, you look at two of them. Then you take turns either taking cards from the discard pile to put into your village – face up, drawing a card to put into your village from the draw pile – face down, drawing a card and playing it for its special power, or calling for a vote. You call for a vote when you think your village has the fewest points left in it. Each villager has a point total, and while you don’t want to get a 12 in your village, using it to steal a good card from someone else and giving them a high value card always works out nicely. There’s one trick for calling for a vote, though, and that’s that your village has to have fewer than five cards. To get rid of cards, you can trade in two cards of the same number when playing a card from the discard or that you drew into your village. When the vote happens, whomever calls for the vote, if they have the fewest points, they get zero points for the round, everyone else gets what is one their cards, but if they don’t have the fewest points, they get ten plus their total while everyone else just scores the total points on their cards. After four rounds, the person with the fewest points wins.

There are some things that I really like about this game, but I didn’t love it the first time that I played it, which was at GenCon. The concept of the game is quite simple, and I hadn’t picked up on the amount of depth that you might need for the game. Knowing what cards are strong when is interesting, and knowing to just discard a card sometimes and do nothing with it, because it isn’t worth the risk. There’s more depth to it than you’d initially think. That said, just the base box with the base set of cards, that is enjoyable, but for long term replayability, I think that you need some of the stand alone expansions. Silver Bullet and Silver Coin I haven’t actually played yet, but from what I know of them, they mainly add more villagers that you can play with.

In Silver there are villagers numbered from 0 to 13. A 0 is just a normal villager, no special power, unless both are face up in villages, at which point you just score. But other numbers have powers. A 13 is a doppelganger of any other number when trading in two for one (or even three for one or four for one if you can set it up). A 2 face up in your village allows you to peak at one of your cards each turn so you can figure out all the numbers that you have. A 7 lets you look at two of your cards once, if you discard it after drawing it. And every number has something that it allows you to do. However, in the base game there is only one set of cards from 0 to 13. 12 is an exception to that, but you pick which set of the 12’s you want to play with. Silver Coin and Silver Bullet give you more sets of cards of various numbers. That means that you choose which set of 1’s, etc. you play with and you can create your own combinations. This is very much like having Sushi Go and then getting Sushi Go Party! which gives you more possibilities, this just creates them as stand alone expansions so you don’t have to buy everything.

But even with that said, I do like Silver a lot. I think that while the expansions would make it more playable over time, just the base game is nice because it’s easy to teach and it plays quickly. Once you have a concept of what you can do on your turn, you just need to learn the cards, and as the teacher, I don’t need to teach all of them. I can just show you what a few symbols mean and you can learn as you go. Now, learning as you go can sometimes suck because that probably means you’ll lose the first game, and in Silver, that’s no exception, except for the fact that the games are short. Maybe a four player game would take 60 minutes, which isn’t that short, but a two player game, even the first one with me teaching someone, maybe took twenty minutes, and after that, probably could play a game with two players in fifteen minutes. And I think with four, maybe 45. So as a two player game, it can really fly, with more, it does add more time, but the more comfortable people get with the game, the faster it goes. And even if the person is picking stuff up in the first round to figure out the game, rounds two through four will go much faster. Plus, as I’ve said, it’s so simple to teach, it’s easy to get to the table.

Overall, I think this is a good family weight, almost party game. Yes, it can only play up to four, but it’s one of those games that I’d use as a filler between bigger heavier games, and that people can really get into because of the simplicity of the game. If you’re looking for something with longer term strategy, I do think you’ll need the expansions, but for a good game to pull off the shelf with your more casual gaming friends, I really like Silver as a new game to do that. And I do now, after teaching it once, think I could teach it in five minutes to new gamers.

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

Have you had a chance to play Silver, is it a game that you like?

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For a lot of people, that’s what it is still in gaming. Even if they’ve progressed away from Monopoly and into games like Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, and Carcassonne, the difference between you and me is that I’m blue and you’re red. Otherwise everything we do is the same. And that’s a-okay in a ton of a games. There isn’t a need for your character to be slightly different than mine, but in some games, it makes the game a whole lot better.

Back in 1949, there was an attempt to make “unique” characters when Clue came out. Professor Plum, Mrs. White, Mr. Green, and the rest of the cast allowed you to pick your favorite based off of more than just color of the pawn you were using. Now, they gave you some art, but it really wasn’t a unique character at that point. You were really just picking a color still. But in some ways that was the start of having unique characters. It gave some foundation that could be built off off later.

Now, we see two prominent ways that unique characters are done in board games. There are more ways beyond that, but there are two major ways. The first is the special power route. Your character has something specific they can do that no one else can. The other way is the asymmetric route. Definitely the harder of the two to pull off, because what you do in the game is always different than what I do in the game.

The first type, is the special power or action that only you can take. A great example of this is Pandemic. In this game you have a base set of actions, treat disease, move, trade cards, etc. that everyone in the game can do. But each character has their own special action that they can take or improvement upon one of the other actions. For example, all characters can treat a disease by taking a cube off of the city they are in, but the medic can take all of the disease cubes off of the city they are in. The dispatcher, on the other hand, can move people on their turn, versus just having to move yourself. The rules still apply the same way for how they can move other people’s pawns.

You can start to see from Pandemic how having unique powers can make the game different each time in different ways. In fact, unique powers are a really good way to keep a game replay-able over a long period of time.

There are games that keep the base action for you, but allow either for changing your unique power or setting up your own unique powers. Two examples jump into my head quickly. The first being Smallworld. Since the races and powers are randomly shuffled, you might end up with flying wizards one time, and wealthy wizards another time. In this case, the game, like in Pandemic, dictates what your unique power is.

There are games, however, that allow you to determine how unique you want your character to be. This is the other example, Blood Rage (also Seafall does this), where you can spend action points that upgrade your clan. A pair of warriors can be made to be worth more in battle for you, or you can gain points when your warriors die in battle and go to Valhalla. Maybe your clan leader is now worth more points, or you can move your ship in a certain way. Maybe you have access to monsters now. Based on how you draft cards, you can shape your own player board to be unique. This type of game is interesting because at the start of the game, your clan is the same as everyone else’s clans. But as the game progresses, the clans play more and more differently depending on your cards, and which ones you choose to use. In Seafall, had the game been good, it was similar where you started out with the same base at the start of the first game, but you could buy upgrades that left from game to game, but you could also put in permanent upgrades as well, so the more you played the more unique you were.

Now, that has been the simpler type of player powers to talk about. The more difficult is the asymmetric player powers. The reason that this is tougher is because even if there is the same base to the game, everyone plays with that differently.

A great example of this is Root. In Root everyone has some pretty similar actions, but how they go about doing all of them is completely different. While you all might be moving troops and trying to control areas, the cats, to gain more troops have to build up various buildings, where as the birds are trying to create an order or cards that they play. The woodland creatures are just trying to get onto the board by using cards in yet another way, and the Vagabond is doing something else different with their actions.

This type of game is very interesting, and Cry Havoc is another example. There is one fairly big downside to a completely asymmetrical game. The time spent teaching the game the first time you play it is pretty to extremely high. In Root, for example, you have to explain a fair amount about each character, even though some of the base actions might be the same. In Vast, this problem is made even larger by the base actions being a greater variety. Cry Havoc is probably the easiest of them to teach, because the base actions for everyone are the same, just the buildings, objectives, and special powers mean that how you play the game as each faction is different.

You can see how this has all moved on from Clue where you had a name for your character, but that was about it that made you unique from just being a different colored pawn.

There are a few more ways that games try and add differences. The other most common, though what you can do might not change, is the hidden traitor role in a game like One Night Ultimate Werewolf or Resistance. These games, what everyone does is basically the same, some expansions provide more variability to the game, but in the base, you can hide your actions because you are doing the same thing as everyone else.

This has then been expanded upon with games like Dead of Winter and Shadows Over Camelot. Shadows Over Camelot gives the bad guy more that they can do, if there is even a traitor in the game. In Dead of Winter, each player has a hidden objective. So while you have the exact same set of powers, you are trying for a slightly unique state of the game when it ends, mainly what you have in your hand at the end of the game. For me, these games can be a bit more hit or miss, because depending on if there is a traitor or not, it can greatly hinge the game on various things, and it can at times force you to look like the traitor to actually win the game. If there was some balancing mechanic for it, it would make the game better, but potential hidden traitor and hidden objectives is very hard to pull off well in a game.

That’s a lot variable player powers and the range that can run. Personally, I’d be interested in seeing a reworking of Clue so that Professor Plum can do something different and better than Colonel Mustard, but that’s already been done in some of those investigation games, like Fury of Dracula.

What are some of your favorite variable player power games? Are there some where certain combinations are too broken to play with so you’ve banned them at your table?

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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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The other one is too many rules and or roles. While it’s fun to have one group of players doing one thing and another working on yet another thing, that can be challenging. Some of it can be a challenge just to play, but more so, there is a fair amount of time setting up the rules before the game. People lose track of what they are doing, rules are explained multiple times or a rule can even mean different things for different people. The point of playing a larger group game, most of the time, is to start off the game night with something simple and getting people into the game playing mindset. If a game is overly complex, it’s going to be harder to teach to that large of a group. To get that type of game to the table, start with a smaller group and add one or two people at a time.  Now, there are exceptions to this rule, which I’ll give an example of as a larger group that people can play.

To move away form pitfalls or things that could be difficult in larger group games, what are some categories or types of non-party games that people play with a larger group? There are times where party games are good, but what games can you branch out with?

The first category is actually just a game itself, but it’s been themed and reskinned so many times, I think it’s one that you can qualify now as it’s own category. That is Fluxx. Any theme you can imagine has been put on this, I have the Lovecraftian one, but there is environmental fluxx and there is space fluxx. Whatever theme works best in your group, you can probably find it in Fluxx. To explain how fluxx works, you are trying to match cards you’ve played to the objective, however, the rules of the game are in a constant state of flux as people play new rule cards or change the objective of the game to keep someone from winning or to get themselves closer to winning. It’s draw a card, play a card sort of game as the base though. It’s okay as game, but it can run long, so I’d lean towards playing this when I know I’m waiting on someone for a little bit.

The second category of games is social deduction games. Most people are familiar with the concept of mafia. It’s a game where some people are citizens or police and others are mafia. The mafia try and kill off the citizens and the police try and get the mafia. That’s the basis for a lot of these games. They are trying to figure out who is some character or role and keep them from winning. There are three games that I would most strongly recommend out of this category of game: Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, Secret Hitler, and Donner Dinner Party. Clearly they are all nice and happy things here.

There are other games like The Resistance, Avalon, or One Night Ultimate Werewolf, that are also social deduction games, but these games are missing one important aspect. These games miss an important aspect that the others have, which is the introduction of imperfect but useful information.Yes, there is very imperfect information in these games, and you can find out more information, but at the end of it, they all fall closer to the mafia basis of the games. This just means that they end up being a little bit simplistic at times.

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong introduces a component of the forensic scientist who is trying to help the investigators find out who committed the murder and who is the accomplice. Each player in front of them has four clues and four weapons. Then the standard thing is done, everyone closes their eyes, except for the game master, the forensic scientist, who asks the murder and accomplice to open their eyes and the murder to select a murder weapon and clue from in front of that player. Then everyone closes their eyes again and everyone opens their eyes. The forensic scientist then, without speaking, selects options from cards that they have to give clues to the investigators to help them narrow down who is the murder and what the weapon and clue were. The investigators eventually end up guessing, and if one of them gets the combo right, we catch the murder. But the murder and accomplice are trying to distract people but not too obviously.

Secret Hitler and Donner Dinner Party work on similar mechanics. The imperfect information combo. In Secret Hitler, the two people who are it, chancellor and president and that changes each round. Each player has a role, and the fascists are either trying to get Hitler to be chancellor or to complete so many objectives. These objectives,  however, are completed each round, but could be good for the players or could be bad for the players who aren’t fascists. But what works well with this game is that the president draws three bills and then has to pass two on to the chancellor who then selects a bill. So you have some information, but it’s possible to draw three fascist agendas, in which case, you’re stuck with what you pass. In a similar way, the Donner Dinner Party has you hunting for food. Each player, minus the current camp leader, gets to draw too food cards and pick one to play. Poison is bad as it poisons the whole food supply, squirrels are good, because you can feed two people with squirrels. But it’s possible that you can be a settler who just happened to draw two poison cards so you have to screw over the group. Add in to that the played food cards are shuffled up means that no one really knows who played what, but let the accusations fly.

Turns out that there is going to be a part three to this, because while I’ve gotten to some games here, there are still even more games to go. These have all fit into a certain category, minus Fluxx which is it’s own category, but what are some other games that can work well, that’s what I’ll come back with next time.

What is your favorite social deduction type of game?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

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