So, after some deliberation over what to blog about next, I decided to start a series about board games that pack a lot of punch for their price point. I'll do an in-depth review and a recommendation. Not sure how often these will come out, but the first one begins with my Number 3 game of all time, The Castles of Burgundy. Designed by: Stefan Feld Art by: Julian Delval and Herald Lieske Released: 2011 from alea and Ravensburger Primary mechanisms: Dice rolling, Dice activation, Tile placement MSRP: $45 Components Review: This is not a pretty game. But don't let that stop you. The aesthetics, I suppose, could work for some people, but to me it's irrelevant as the mechanisms are superb. The art is a bit drab, and the wooden bits are functional, but there's nothing special, here. I'll say that, once you learn the symbols, the graphic design is pretty solid. Theme Review: It's super dry...Building up an estate in Medieval France to be the most prosperous. Yawn. But, again, that might work for some. For me, it's just meh. Weight Review: This game is firmly a middle-weight game. It's a bit more complicated than your standard gateway game, and there are a BUNCH of bits, but it's not overly complicated to the point of being hard to teach, but each turn has quality decision points on each dice roll. I have to say that this might be, if I'm being so bold, the quintessential middle-weight euro game. Mechanisms Review: Each turn, you roll two or three dice depending on player order. One of the goods on display goes into one of the six depots, depending on the roll of the "neutral" white die. The other two dice in your player color are then used to do one of the following: select tiles from one of the six depots to place in your storage area; place a tile from your storage area onto your player board; sell goods from your player board; or gain workers (which can be used to manipulate die results later on). It's really that simple at its core. Each tile has its own special ability, but the iconography is pretty straightforward, and the decision points are simply delicious as you choose how to most efficiently chain tile placement actions to gain extra actions throughout the game.
Re-playability and Price Review: Considering how many tiles come with this game, I can't imagine that this game would ever play the same twice. We've gotten it to the table dozens of times, and it's fresh every time we play it. I've played it solo, a TON at two, and some at both three and four players, and everyone I've ever taught it to adores this game and wants to own it. In terms of value, if I had $100 to spend on a game collection for the rest of my life, I'd EASILY spend nearly half of that on this game alone. $45 is worth every single penny. As it happens, this is the only game in my collection that I've ever upgraded components for or bought an expansion for. Overall rating: 9.5/10 So, that's the first in the series. The Castles of Burgundy, everyone. Credit: All images come from Boardgamegeek
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We've made it. Down to the Top Five of my favorite games of all time. Obviously none of these lists have been objective in any way, and I tend to disagree with BGG on rankings quite a bit, but I also have some things in common, so it's a wash in that regard. These are games that will literally never leave my collection, no matter what. So, without further ado, let's kick off the final installment of the series...for now, until I do an update at some point in the future. Oh, I suppose there's a little more ado...if you haven't looked at the previous posts, please do so: 5. Everdell BGG Rank: 28 Designed by: James A. Wilson Released: 2018 by Starling Games What can I say about Everdell that I didn't already say here? I suppose what I really love about this game -- other than the gorgeous components and presentation -- is that it always feels like a challenge. When you start with two workers, you think there's no way I'll ever be able to play 15 cards into my tableau, no way. But somehow, if you do it right, you're almost always sitting on a mountain of resources in the last round and playing out huge combos of critters and buildings to fill all those slots. It's simply superb, and we've played just the base box dozens of times; I can't speak to the expansions, but this is a game I'm not sure needs much added to it. It is, for my money, one of the best worker-placement games on the market. It comes in so highly for me because my partner and I both adore this game, so it naturally gets a bit of a bump, much like Wingspan. 4. A Feast for Odin BGG Rank: 22 Designed by: Uwe Rosenberg Released: 2016 by Feuerland Spiele and Z-Man Games Wow, Uwe Rosenberg does it again, landing on my list for a third time. This game is an experience, that's for sure. Strap in for a good 2+ hours for this one, but it's worth every single second, and I've played it at multiple player counts. Fair warning, there's a lot going on in this game, but imagine combining Agricola-style worker-placement and feeding your people (though I'll admit it's a little less punishing) with The Isle of Cats-style tile-laying while all being thematically grounded in the lives of Vikings. This game doesn't hit the table for me all that often because of the fact that it does take quite a bit of time, but every time it does, it's an absolute blast. I gotta say that this game is my favorite of Uwe Rosenberg's, and while intimidating, with a good teacher, you can get a lot of fun out of this one for years. 3. The Castles of Burgundy BGG Rank: 15 Designed by: Stefan Feld Released: 2011 from alea and Ravensburger Well, Stefan Feld has done it again, landing two games in my Top 10, and with good reason. This game is all about dice activation on a personal player board and laying tiles to activate bonuses. Each round, you'll roll exactly two dice and have exactly two actions -- kind of, unless you find clever ways to string together the bonuses for more actions -- as you compete to build the most prosperous estate in Burgundy. The replay value on this game is insane, as the tiles will always be different. We love this game so much that it's the only game I've ever bought an expansion for (solo variant) and upgraded components (nice drawstring bags for the tiles). It hits the table A LOT, and everyone I've ever taught it to has immediately wanted to own this game as well. It's the perfect mid-weight euro as far as I'm concerned, and nothing really compares in that price range for me (MSRP $45). While it's not a looker in terms of art and components, it's mechanically brilliant, and I don't see it losing this spot for a very long time. 2. Lisboa BGG Rank: 63 Designed by: Vital Lacerda Released: 2017 from Eagle-Gryphon Games Lacerda does it again as well. Obviously my triumvirate of favorite designers are: Vital Lacerda, Uwe Rosenberg, and Stefan Feld. This game, though...this game. It's probably the most thematic euro game I've ever played, as every single action is deeply grounded in theme, which is befitting of a Lacerda design, and this one is close to the designer's heart (Lacerda is Portuguese). You take on the role of Portuguese business persons trying to rebuild the city of Lisboa after the devastating earthquake of 1755, which was then followed by a massive tsunami and days of fires. You accomplish this buy adding cards to your portfolio; trading with the nobles; selling goods at sea; visiting the Master Builder, The Prime Minister, and the King; and rebuilding the downtown with the rubble of the old city. I'm not going to lie, it's a very complex game, but it's truly an experience, much like A Feast for Odin. At its core, you play one card and draw one card, but the cascading of actions in the decision tree is the real draw for me on this one. Mechanically, this game is a masterpiece, and thematically, it's a massive home run. 1. The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
BGG Rank: Designed by: Nate French Released: 2011 by Fantasy Flight Games Well, here we are, and this is a runaway victory for me. I've spent countless hours on this game building decks and playing against scenarios at one, two, three, and four players. I've played every single quest in the game and own all the officially released content, apart from Nightmare Decks, which aren't essential, in my opinion. I mean, what more can I say other than it's my most played and most well loved game of all time? In this game you take on the role of a group of heroes adventuring through Middle-earth by contributing willpower over the forces of evil, mitigating the threat of the Enemy, defeating evil creatures and orcs, traveling to distant lands. Each turn consists of extremely tough (but rewarding) decisions and tension as the encounter deck throws the might of Sauron against you. Mechanically, the game is relatively complex if you're not used to these types of card games, but it truly evokes the world of Tolkien's masterpiece in a way that no other game does, in my opinion, except maybe The War of the Ring, but that's decidedly not my type of game at this point in my gaming life. While this game has officially gone on hiatus in terms of producing new content, I still adore it and return to it with some regularity to play through my favorite scenarios or to reenact the Saga Campaign, which is the game's representation of the key moments throughout The Lord of the Rings (absolutely my preferred fandom of choice, despite some of the problematic nature of Tolkien's writing, but that's for another blog, I think). Credit: All images come from Boardgamegeek Think it's about that time to dive into the Top 10 of all time...for me, in August of 2021. Obviously this is subject to change, but it'll take quite a bit to unseat these behemoths. I should also note that the criteria are as follows: 1) How much do I like the game's presentation, mechanisms, and overall package?; 2) How much does my partner like it?; 3) Would I play this game over any other at any given moment?; and 4) How does it work solo? (this is a bit of an arbitrary one that I've thrown in as the list goes on, as about 50% of my gaming is by myself) With that in mind, let's get to the first half of the Top 10. If you missed any of the others, here they are: 10. Carpe Diem BGG Rank: 351 Designed by: Stefan Feld Released: 2018 by Alea Well, BGG and I disagree on this one quite a bit, as the discrepancy in our rankings is just crazy (351!), by orders of magnitude. I'll preface this a bit by saying that this is in my partner's Top Five games of all time; she adores this game (and usually beats me at it). This is a tile-laying game at its core, but you're restricted by the configuration of your city district's initial setup, which is always random. There's a bit of luck in that regard, but I find the movement around the star-shaped board to pick up tiles super satisfying and crunchy, but not too much of a brain burn. As far as mid-weight euros go, this is a must-have. I can't say enough good things about Carpe Diem. It's affordable, infinitely replayable, and just tons of fun every time it hits the table. Pro tip, though, don't use the Victory Point cards that come with the game...keep track with pen and paper; it'll save you so much time. 9. Paladins of the West Kingdom BGG Rank: 70 Designed by: Shem Phillips and S J Macdonald Released: 2019 from Garphill Games and Renegade Game Studios Sound familiar? Well, it's the second in the trilogy of West Kingdom Games from designers Shem Phillips and S J Macdonald, so it's the sequel to Architects of the West Kingdom, which appeared earlier in this series. Fair warning, it's a massive step up in complexity from its predecessor, but it's so rewarding. In Architects, you're trying to build the kingdom, and in Paladins, you're trying to defend the kingdom from invaders by either converting warring factions to your side or defeating them in battle. There are a TON of different ways to place your different workers in this game, and you have to solve the efficiency puzzle on your player board -- which is, incidentally, larger than the main game board -- to chain actions to gain more workers to do more actions. Not gonna lie, it's a lot of head-in-hands-type thinking, but it's an experience like no other. The solo mode is fantastic, and I think this game plays best at two players, which is most of my gaming life anyway, so this game just fit perfectly into my Top 10 of all time...Paladins. It's great. 8. The Gallerist BGG Rank: 59 Designed by: Vital Lacerda Released: 2015 from Eagle-Gryphon Games So, how do you make the world of high art into a board game? You enlist the help of designer Vital Lacerda. I've already gone on record saying that he's my favorite board game designer, and this one is a stunner. I love art, and I love board games, so this one was sorta tailor-made for me. To be fair, it's very complex, as all his games are. But I can't stop gushing about The Gallerist. You take on the role of a gallery owner trying to attract celebrities, collectors, and investors to your shows, but before you can exhibit art, you must discover and commission artists of varying degrees of fame and promote them through various forms of media to drive the price of their work up before you sell it to someone else. There's a lot of interconnected mechanisms in this game, but the rulebook is superb, and you get to take actions on your opponents' turns. Simply brilliant. I absolutely love this game and would play it anytime. I'm honestly surprised it didn't crack the Top Five. 7. The Isle of Cats BGG Rank: 96 Designed by: Frank West Released: 2019 from The City of Games I've also written about this one before here. The Isle of Cats is easily in my partner's Top Five of all time, and it ranks very highly on my list as well because it's simply fantastic. You take on the role of ship captains returning to The Isle of Cats to rescue cats onto your ship before the dreaded Lord Vesh arrives (it's not clear what'll happen when he gets there...). The theme is cute, and the components are gorgeous, but the combination of polyomino tile placement combined with card drafting makes this game roll. Think of playing Tetris with adorable cat tiles on your personal player board. There's a really great solo mode included, and there's a family variant, so the base box alone can accommodate pretty much any gamer, and the sheer number of cards and tiles included make this game play out differently each time it hits the table. 6. Wingspan
BGG Rank: 21 Designed by: Elizabeth Hargrave Released: 2019 from Stonemaier Games Yet another Stonemaier game makes it onto the list. Not sure what else there is to say about Wingspan that hasn't already been said, both here and other places...It's just a fantastic game, and it comes in at number 6 on my list (probably number 1 or 2 on my partner's list, which definitely contributes to its high ranking). Engine-building combined with beautiful art and cute, wooden eggs. A real sense of escalation as you have fewer and fewer actions to take each round while accumulating bonuses along the way, filling up your tableau with amazing bird powers. What's there not to like? Credit: All images come from Boardgamegeek. Inching closer to the Top 10. Let's get to it. But, in case you missed any of the previous posts, check them out here: 15. Hallertau BGG Rank: 406 Designed by: Uwe Rosenberg Released: 2020 by Lookout Games So, designer Uwe Rosenberg hits the list again, this time checking in with back-to-back listings (Agricola was #16) and yet another farming simulation. However, unlike Agricola, this game has no feeding your people and is a LOT more wide open in terms of gaining resources. The card play in this one is super satisfying, as there's SO MUCH to do, and each card in your hand offers you miniature goals to achieve throughout the course of the game as you try and build up your community center in the hops-growing region of Hallertau in Bavaria, Germany. What's really brilliant about this game is that it actually simulates crop rotation -- when you leave a field fallow for a turn / harvest season, it becomes more fertile for the next turn and will produce a higher yield. This game is so wide open and allows players near infinite opportunities to gather resources. Plus, it scales well at every single player count, including solo. Absolutely love Hallertau. 14. The Magnificent BGG Rank: 824 Designed by: Eilif Svensson and Kristian Amundsen Østby Released: 2019 from Aporta Games The Magnificent is a bit of a Frankenstein's monster of mechanisms, but they all come together in a smooth-playing game driven by dice drafting and dice activation at its core. While there's a bit of tile laying as well, this game really is all about the dice. I'll be honest, the theme is really cool in that you're supposed to be running a mystical circus with magnificent performers putting on shows, and you're supposed to be attracting the most guests with tickets (points) at the end of the game...but the theme is barely present in this game. It's really all driven by the mechanisms, but that's alright with me. You only play three rounds, and you only draft four dice each round, so you really only take twelve actions over the course of a game, but the chaining of scoring opportunities and being able to pay for your dice is really where the economy of actions comes into play. This game is imminently satisfying in both solo and multiplayer. Can't say enough good things about The Magnificent, and the only real knock is that the theme, while cool in concept, isn't super strong in terms of being evoked by the gameplay. 13. Rajas of the Ganges BGG Rank: 150 Designed by: Inka Brand and Markus Brand Released: 2017 from HUCH! Well, Rajas of the Ganges, much like The Magnificent, is a dice activation game, but it's combined with worker placement, and that combo is just superb. The board is two-sided, one for two players and one for three or four players, and so the game scales well in that regard. It takes place in 16th century India, and you are taking on the role of Indian nobility trying to generate wealth and fame, which brings me to what makes this game so special: you are constantly weighing two end-game scoring conditions and moving along both tracks (wealth and fame) simultaneously in an effort to get your pieces to intersect on the tracks first, thereby triggering the end of the game. It's a brilliant race game with beautiful components and solid, solid euro mechanisms that just make this one pure fun every time it hits the table. This one is easily in my partner's Top 10, but she actually doesn't care for the scoring condition. The only knock I have on this game is that there's no official solo mode, which would've made this one land in my top 10 EASILY. 12. CO2: Second Chance BGG Rank: 699 Designed by: Vital Lacerda Released: 2018 from Giochix.it and Stronghold Games Vital Lacerda is my favorite designer, and here's a little spoiler: this isn't his only entry on this list of Top 25. I wrote a bit about CO2: Second Chance here, so I won't go too much more in depth about it. The theme is incredible -- trying to curb worldwide carbon emissions while building sustainable energy power plants on earth in six of the seven continents (no Antarctica in this one). What makes this game stand out, apart from the theme, is that you can play this game fully cooperatively, solo, and competitively. The catch in the competitive game, though, is that you HAVE to work together to a certain extent because there is a global loss condition. There's a central market system that's really dynamic that deals with Carbon Emission Permits, which help you build the infrastructure for new projects. Every single action -- proposing a project, building infrastructure, and finishing a plant, is wonderfully grounded in theme, and you're also presenting your research findings at global summits. There's A LOT going on in this game, but it's really challenging and imminently satisfying to actually win in co-op or solo. The competitive game has a really nice ebb and flow to it as well. One of Lacerda's best, in my opinion, despite its lower ranking according to BGG. 11. Scythe
BGG Rank: 14 Designed by: Jamey Stegmaier Released: 2016 from Stonemaier Games Well, Scythe is a bit of an outlier in my list, because it has elements of a dudes-on-a-map game with tactical combat between players -- something I generally tend to avoid in games. Set in an alternate, steam-punky 1920s Europe, Scythe is a masterclass in design. At its core, it's an action -selection race game to get six stars out on the map. There are no set number of rounds or phases within those rounds; it's just players taking turns taking a principal action and a bonus action if they can afford it...simple, right? But there's a TON going on in Scythe when it comes to resource management and troop/worker movement. Each player will also start the game in different positions on different tracks with access to different resources and abilities, so no two games of Scythe will play the same, even with just the base box, which is all I own (I'm sure I'll blog about my aversion to expansions someday). It might sound like there's a lot of variance, but there's very little luck involved in Scythe, and I really enjoy that. While it's one of the newest games to enter my collection -- got it at a deep discount online -- it's climbed up the rankings very quickly, even with just solo play in mind, as the automa system is wonderful. Can't wait to play this at higher player counts. There yall have it: 15-11. Credit: All images come from Boardgamegeek. |
Or, the writing gamer...An infrequent review of my collection of hobby board games, coverage of the board game hobby at-large, lists, purchasing advice, and maybe some writing updates here and there. Archives
September 2022
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