I couldn't play that with my kids, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. The game was brilliantly designed in that the well-structured board meant that managing income and quantities of each resource was never ever tedious (unlike the wargames of my youth). Every card was a new exploration of the interaction of the rules, a new twist. It was a lot to take in first turn, but I have to say: this was the most fun I've had playing in a long time. Add that to a board and shoebox of cards each with its own elaborate rules. You have tokens to track quantity and income of each resource, and there are a half-dozen resources. The textbook example of an overengineered game. Simpler than Catan's tedious set-up process and annoying edge-case rules.Īnd, for an over-engineered game, I played Terraforming Mars recently. These games are incredibly simple and can be explained in a few minutes. Second would be Speicherstadt (two separate sets of tokens - 1 set that represent's the players Agents that you use to bid on contracts, shipments, and properties, and second is a set of color-coded tokens that arrive on shipments that you use to fulfill contracts). First would be Splendor (engine-building game with 5 different colors of tokens that you use to buy properties). I can think of two of my family's favourite games that break your rule, and my players are only seven years old. (Sorry, eurogames, I know this hurts your feelings.) > In my opinion, any game that needs more than one type of "counter" token is probably overengineered. 90 minutes is definitely in the medium (and maybe medium to heavy) camp. To your last comment, I've played games that have a typical playing time of 4+ hours. It just seems a bit too abstract (eg by playing bananas you may get to move armies around. Mombasa (by the same designer) never really grabbed me. There are a couple of "medium-to-heavy" but it can get much heavier than this.Īs an aside, of the group Great Western Trail is my current favourite. It starts to become much easier to absorb the complexity of these games.įor example, I've played probably half the games on this list and I would say that none of them are "heavy". A natural consequence for this is that people develop an appetite for complexity. So-called "gateway games" 9eg Catan) were probably a huge factor in this. So what's really happened in the last 20+ years is that group (3) has grown quite a lot. While this can still be social, this group tends to be more focused on the play and will try and optimize strategy. This group will favour lighter games and may not tend to play optimally or think too deeply about strategy.ģ. There is a strong social aspect in any boardgaming but for some it's clearly a priority. It includes coop type games that I tend to describe as "group vs deck" games.Ģ. This group tends like to like games with a significant luck element. Boardgamers tend to fall into one of three camps:ġ. I respect the creators very much, but I think diminishing returns are going to be kicking in if they haven't done so already.Īs someone who has been playing these kinds of games for 25+ years I have to disagree.Ĭomplex games always existed. There really is no place for another 12 games an year, even 12 good games, unless they are of the "dead simple" social / party game variety. The group sometimes gets together separately for more complex games (Food Chain Magnate, Eclipse). To get away from this, I have a very small subset of games I run in rotation at my place (7 Wonders, Power Grid, Pandemic the Cure, Race/Roll for the Galaxy, Catan). Then you only get to play again 2 weeks later (in a best case scenario) and someone brings one of his games and the process begins again. In most cases, I tell them "Let's play a few rounds and restart the game when you get used to it" because explaining everything is a futile gesture. I don't get who will be picking up all of these new games.Įvery bg is a whole new set of rules to explain, and often, to people who are relatively unfamiliar with many other games. I don't find the new stream of games to be all that compelling. I couldn't ask for more especially when compared to the alternative (only knowing people at work, having a narrow circle of friends, etc.) I am also glad my kids get to see their parents with friends. I run a gaming club out of my apartment I have gone from knowing very few people to having a constant stream of new people coming into my family's life. Boardgaming has vastly increased my social circle and my life quality in a part of the world that is renown for the number of social shut-ins.
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