What Do My Ratings Mean

The baseline that we should get started with is looking at what the numbers means. Obviously a 10 is the best and a 1 is the worst. However, it is more nuanced than that. I do use the half point scale as well. So right now I have everything from 10’s to 1’s, but no 0.5’s in there.

A 10 is a game that is as close as perfect for me as you can get. And I say for me, some board games are objectively good and some are objectively bad, but when rating games, so much as to do with taste. So a 10 is a game that is as close to perfect for me as you can get.

A 9 is a game that I love, and I’d always want to play it. 8 is a great game for me and I’d likely not say no to playin that game. 7, I like and I’d play, but I won’t seek it out. 6 is a decent game but I probably am not that interested in playing it often. 5 is okay and I’d play it if people want to. 4, I’ll try and recommend another game to play. 3, I don’t want to play it. 2, I actively don’t like the game. 1, I wouldn’t play that game again ever.

The Breakdown

10’s –

I have 12 games that I rate a 10. That is 4% of the games that I’ve played and rated. I’m sure that I’ve missed a few games, but likely not tens. There is also a wide variety of games in there, I have a massive dungeon crawler with Gloomhaven and then I also have a dexterity game with Ice Cool. But 67% of the games really immerse you in the story and world of the game, which I think will be a trend for these high spots.

9.5’s –

21 fall into the 9.5 category, this 7% of the game that I’ve played. We again stick with a lot of story with games like TIME Stories and Arkham Horror: The Card Game. We also get some lighter games like Sushi Go Party and The Lost Expedition and our first party game with Just One in this category.

9’s –

38 games fall into the 9’s, all the way up at 13%. I wonder if this might be one of the higher percentile groups out there. This is where we start to hit a lot of roll and writes with games like Clever Hoch Drei, Doppelt so Clever, and more. We also get a lot of games that aren’t as story driven anymore. More games like Letter Jam and Super Fantasy Brawl that give you more of a classic board game experience. We also get A Gentle Rain in this section.

8.5’s –

16 out of 283 are rated as 8.5’s. That is about 6% of my rated games. The trend holds pretty steady from the 9’s with a lot more of the classic board game experience. Another party game with Wits & Wagers makes the list. And we have a new game that I just played recently a few times with Merchant’s Cove.

8’s –

We likely have it the big number here, 50 games that are 8’s, which is 18% of my collection. So as you add up the percentages, keep in mind I am rounding up or down so it might not equal 100% in the end. But I feel like in the 8’s we get a number of games that are in that lighter category, more filler games. Things like Skull and Fruit Picking are easier to play and teach than a lot games earlier.

7.5’s –

At 20 games in the 7.5’s, we are at 7% of the collection again. While other sections have had games that were previously owned, with the 7’5’s, I definitely noticed a few more. Machi Koro, Winter Tale, Krosmaster: Arena and at least one more were in my collection and have left. It’s not because they are bad games, but I have other games that do it better. And with Krosmaster: Arena, I got rid of that before Super Fantasy Brawl, but I just didn’t have anyone to play it with.

7’s –

Sitting at 12% with 34 games out of 283, we again see a number of previously owned games. But we also see games that I grew up playing. Set, Dutch Blitz, and Scrabble all make it into this category as well as the party game Scattergories. I obviously have some level of nostalgia with these games, but at the same time, I’d still play them again right now.

6.5’s –

13 games in this number, for 5%. I think this is where we’ll start to see the numbers dropping off in terms of number of games rated in the area. It is also a lot of games that I don’t own but have played in this area. I guess that means that I buy games that I like a lot. Donner Dinner Party and Flapjacks and Sasquatches are two that I’d definitely play again, but I have games that I like better that do something similar, especially with Donner Dinner Party.

6’s –

A tick up here with 24 games which is 8%. Most of the time the whole numbers seem to have more than a half numbers ,I guess. I own a few games in this section, though some of that is nostalgia, or with a game like Splendor, it’s because I know other people who like it a lot. I probably won’t ever pull Splendor off the shelf to play myself, but I know my wife likes it, so I won’t remove it from the collection.

5.5’s –

5 games make up the 5.5’s which is just barely 2%. We are reaching the social deduction game area, I feel in the 5.5’s, and 5’s. Where I would play them again, but I won’t seek them out. They tend to be the very simple social deduction games like Secret Hitler, While that game does have a little double blind fun going on with it, the theme doesn’t interest me, and it’s just a fine game.

5’s –

Down in the 5’s we have 21 games at a whopping 7% again. Again more social deduction games like The Resistance and One Night Ultimate Vampire. These two really do what I don’t like about a lot of social deduction games, they don’t give you anything go on right away or in general much to go on at all. We also have all of Red Dragon Inn, a fun game but often is played with too many people. I think 4 is about my max for that game, maybe 5.

4.5’s –

1 out of 283 which is 0% for those keeping track at home. And it’s Seafall. I feel like it’s fair that Seafall falls into this spot by itself. It is a game that I want to like more, it is a game I can see the potential of it. It just ends up being a flop. The story doesn’t play out as it should, it is a just a bit too random, and the games are way too long. And the more you play the longer the games get. Yet, it’s just on that cusp of I’d play it again without an AP players.

4’s –

9 games or 3% of what I’ve played. This is where we get into a lot more of a mass market or mass market adjacent games. Not that there haven’t been some before, but we have stuff like Guesstures, Forbidden Island and Dominion. Yes, I have Dominion as a 4. It is a game that I’d play if you twisted my arm, but it is also a game that if you know the game extremely well you will win, and it’s not interesting enough for me to know it that well.

3’s –

You might be wondering where my 3.5’s are, the answer is there were none. Instead we have 10 3’s. That is 4% of what I’ve played. Again a lot of mass market games, and a lot of games I grew up with. This goes back to growing as a gamer, stuff like Malarky and Pit had their place getting me into the hobby, but I don’t need to go back to them.

2’s –

3 games or 1%. Monopoly falls into this group. It isn’t the worst of the worst, but it is very bad. Another super popular or at least well sold game, Exploding Kittens lands here as well.

1’s –

Finally, I have 5 1’s, or 2%. I really don’t like these games, and most people won’t like most of them. The two that will probably surprise people are Cards Against Humanity and Concept. Cards Against Humanity at one point in time I would have rated higher, but now I consider it a worse version of Apples to Apples because the jokes are created for you and often not funny. Concept is one that I know a lot of people like. It just didn’t work for me. It has this group feel to the game, but ends up just being boring.

Alright, there we have it, all the games in my collection rated. What do you think should be rated better? Or what do you think that I should rate lower?

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

Winter Tales is a fun, simple, storytelling game that isn’t really all that much of a game. You are split into two teams, one team is controlling some winter characters who are trying to keep the world forever winter but never Christmas, and the other side is trying to bring around spring. You are playing with different fairy tale characters ranging from the Tin Man and Mad Hatter to Alice and Snow White. These characters are placed on specific seasons, so you get to pick who you want from your team. The general idea after that is that you are trying to play your cards telling a story where you are searching for a lost artifact or spreading around propaganda or whatever your quest might be. These cards have fun little sketches on them that you get to interpret however you want, they look like a bunch of stick figures standing in a circle, are they a cult of winter or is it a spring dance to welcome in the new season? Or there’s a shadow in the window that is watching you or is it a banner cheering you on as you go to try and find your lost love? If you succeed or not comes down to if there are more winter cards played or more spring cards played when the story wraps up. This means that the actual mechanics of the game are pretty simple for the most part. But that’s not the real point of the game, the real point of the game is to get creative juices flowing and to tell an epic story of two sides battling against each other.

Now, that sounds super simple, and you can play it that way, but the more you play it, I think there would be a subtle strategy that comes out. This is because there are some things that you can do to stop other characters from joining in on a story. If you are on the winter side you can spend your cards to battle a character who is moving past you, if you win, they stop moving and can’t join the story. Or if you are a member of the spring rebels, you can  set traps to keep the winter characters from being able to make it to join into the story. There are also special abilities that each character has, so do you play your character that can only draw 3 cards but can move two spaces for free or do you draw that extra card so you can have the other person join in on a story later? Finally, there are even more special abilities than that, abilities that might be at a certain location, we didn’t play with these as they are optional to the game, but they can certainly add complexity to the game.

So, if it’s just a storytelling game, is it better than Once Upon a Time or Gloom? I’m not sure about Gloom. Gloom has a great mechanic and idea where you are trying to kill of your characters, but it’s definitely better than Once Upon a Time. Winter Tales has a lot more theme to it, and you have the gritty fairy tales gone wrong feel to it that really allows you to jump into what is going on. The theming is just done so well and the artwork while simple at times on some of the cards is beautiful on the board and on the characters that you play. And even the simple artwork on your story cards really helps lead you into a story without forcing you to go in an exact direction. What keeps it from being better than Gloom is that like Once Upon a Time you can run into the situation of how long can you go telling your story between playing cards? They say in the rules that a card should be played every couple of sentences, but it’s more of a suggestion. Games that are storytelling games where you have to play cards as you are telling the story should have a hard and fast rule of every two sentences, and one per run-on sentence to keep it moving. This would add an additional challenge to the game.

Would I recommend it? Yes, I think that I would. It offers a lot of replayability, and while I might lean towards Gloom over this game, this game without an expansions allows you to play more people,  up to seven. It means that you can pull it out at a larger game night and get everyone involved in the storytelling. It plays smoothly, the rules are easy to follow, and they give cheat sheets for every player on how turn order goes, how battles and traps work, and how the storytelling phases go. Overall I nicely designed game that is fun but is a storytelling game, so that will be my last caveat that if you are playing it with people who can’t tell a story, even with prompts, then it’s going to fall flat.

Overall Score: B

Casual Score: B+

Gamer Score: C- (because it’s not a complex game with a ton of strategy to it)

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

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.