For me, Terraforming Mars. I love the theme. The complexity is just the right amount without being overwhelming. And engine building is fun. There are also tons of different paths to take.
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Dune Imperium. Worker placement, (minor) deck building, and PvP combat — mashing the three together shouldn’t work this well together but it does.
I really like that the core loop of the game is easy enough to pick up. Makes it easier to introduce new people to the game. Design is oozing with theme and text/iconography is really clear (looking at you, Race for the Galaxy). Plus the expansions are all great! After two years of playing, it’s definitely one of my all-time favourites.
Chess - easy to learn, impossible to master!
Excellent take! Also if you haven’t you should look into Shogi, Xiangqi, and Weiqi/Go/Baduk. Shogi and Xiangqi are chess variants, or more accurately are derived from the same ancestor game. Shogi has pieces being able to be dropped back on the board when captured by the enemy. Xiangqi has some really interesting piece restrictions with a river in the middle of the board and some pieces unable to cross. Weiqi/Go/Baduk is its own game and is insane, it has only a few rules but the way it works leads to insanely complicated games. A good Weiqi set looks amazing as well.
I’m learning Go already, great game, unfortunately it 's hard to find players for a OTB session
Yeah that’s the main issue I have too, as well as my general inability to play well.
I spend my time repeating this, thank you !
It is the perfect representation of :
Easy to learn, the rules are taught in 5 min, you can learn chess at 4yo
Very difficult to master
Infinite replayability (another proof that there is no need of a 1000 cards in a kickstarter game to maintain replayability).
Everytime I found 1 new game, I rate it following these 3 points.
Scythe.
Artstyle and world building are phenomenal. The setting with big robots and steampunk are just my thing.
The gameplay is easy enough to pick it up fast, yet complex enough for deep strategies.
It has some twists i really like, first of all the ressource management, and that you are always able to steal other players ressources. I like the combat mechanics, being super simple, but with a mix of known and unknown variables super exciting.
Asynchronous abilities are a standard right now, i think, but Scythe does it really well: pretty small rule-changes in the race abilities make for a very different play style. Pretty big changes in the mech-abilities complement that play-style really well.
Probably The Crew or Race for the Galaxy. Neither are big games, but that helps rather than hinders. Everyone is always up for a go in between or before other games, and often they become the main event once everyone gets into them.
Power Grid, accessible plenty of player interaction with loads of maps to mix it up
Race for the Galaxy, engine building without the fuss
6Nimmt wide ranging player count, plays pretty well at all of them and includes plenty of hilarious moments
Innovation is such a wonderful experience everytime. The combination plays, and ebb and flow of the icon supremecy needed to enact certain cards is such a subtle requirement that can destroy some carefully constructed plans.
Carl Chudyk is the master of Multi-Use Cards, and I consider this to be his opus. (Yes, above Glory to Rome)
Usually play at 2 without expansions. Early days for us.
Concur. it’s a better game than GtR (which is enjoyable in its own right, but it’s the “world’s greatest prototype” and Innovation is a production game…)
Tokaido. I never play the game and think that the game is missing anything or could be done better. I know there are expansions for it but have no desire to add anything to the game experience.
The Castles of Burgundy
Perhaps a predictable response, at least based on it’s rating/ranking on BGG, but if you haven’t played it I’d recommend you do so at your earliest convenience. Sure, the theme is a bit stale, but I’d play it anytime someone offered. The gameplay is so tight that it just never isn’t fun. I’ve not tried any of the expansions, but I have very little drive to do so. How can they improve on perfection?
For me or if the modern board games it’s Root. I love the interplay with all the factions with totally different goals to achieve the same end. The room for truces and take that moments, and genuinely gripping moments.
It is something of a marmite game and the learning curve can be of putting. But the people who like it tends to love it!
I love Root so much. But it’s so difficult getting new players up to speed so it didn’t get my #1 spot.
Cosmic Encounter is my perfect game. Endless replayability.
Azul is my perfect family game. Runner up: Alhambra
Quacksalber von Quedlinburg is my newest “Do you know this game? No? Let’s play a round”-game.
I’ve got two contentious ones (for different reasons), but I stand by them. They hold 2 of my 3 top all-time "played’ positions despite having gotten them recently in life (the third is Dominion, which misses this list by just a few centimeters)
Game 1? Spirit Island. I think it’s the best cooperative survival strategy ever made. The “almost” in its perfection is the need to ease a new player in, but my experience is that literally anyone can “click” with a low-complexity spirit and run with it indefinitely. And then the game has room to grow in every direction. Complexity? More/different spirits. Difficulty? The base difficulty leads you to nearly 100% win rate, but adding events or adversaries give a slow (but real) increase up to the highest difficulties that approach a 0% win rate even at the highest level of play. Why is this contentious? It’s popular and new, and everyone (including me) is hesitant to pick a game like that as a GOAT.
Now the opposite side of the coin, possibly edging out Spirit Island slightly… Kingdom Death: Monster. Let’s get the “not quite perfect” out of the way fast - the price is absolutely oppressive, and buying my used copy was as much of a risk as an investment. Knowing the current expansion list is over a grand and there’s another expansion set sitting in the store at $1250, that’s a hard pill to swallow if you need to own everything about a game! But you talked theme in Terraforming Mars - KD:M is the king of theme. It’s a brutalist masterpiece that has no hesitation turning a mistake into a “time to start from scratch” campaign-wipe at the 30 or 40 hour mark. Its mechanics are reasonable enough for any gamer to pick up, but its playstyle is simple enough that even a non-gamer can become fully immersed as long as they have someone running the rules in the background for them.
The only real negative points that Spirit Island gets from me is that it can be a bit anticlimactic. This is true for a lot of coop games, but it seems like we always know about 2-3 turns in advance that we’re gonna win. Then you’re just kinda going through the motions. The events expansion helps a bit here but doesn’t solve it entirely.
It’s still definitely my favorite coop for sure.
The only real negative points that Spirit Island gets from me is that it can be a bit anticlimactic
I’ve heard this before, but it’s never happened for me above the base difficult for a couple reasons.
First, as you say there’s usually more events than you can prepare for, and having them cascade a few turns in a row can help the invaders catch up. Further, at your own highest difficulties you often do not know you’re going to win more than 1 turn in advance. Very often there’s “I got this unless Wetlands comes up, then I just might be screwed”. Yes, the flip-side of “I win unless ____ comes up. If that happens, I immediately lose”, but I don’t think there’s a way to reconcile perfect predictability with unpredictability without some negatives showing up.
That, and nothing is quite so badass as being able to drop a surprise major and expedite that “easy win” by a turn or two. I love when I get just that right major and clear a dozen invaders at once. Like I had this recent solo ocean game where as I was falling behind I managed to drop Draw Towards a Consuming Void and double-playing it let me drown 8 invaders (and kill others) to full-clear the board and land myself a dozen (useless) energy as well as finishing the fear deck at the same time as the board. That was glorious!
I mean, I get that some games at low difficulties with minors-only spirits can turn into a dull steamroll, but I just don’t feel that like others do.
… however, all your complaints are not present in Kingdom Death: Monster :)
That’s totally fair. I’ve only really played up to about level 4 or 5 of some adversaries. The “we’re gonna win for sure in a few turns” happens less on higher difficulty, but it did still happen. The events deck helps by being another unpredictable element that can hurt your plans.
For sure. Though I’ll be honest, I actually prefer lower difficulty games because I like a casual stomp :) I’ve only beaten one level 6 adversary, but half the reason is that I prefer level 3 or less adversaries even when I play the spirit I’ve beaten level 6 adversaries with. Hell, I’ll even play base difficulty a lot when I just want to knock around with other spirits.
Half of the “perfection” for me is that Spirit Island gives you the game you want to play when you want to play it, as long as it’s a cooperative game with spirits murdering civilized invaders :).
I love the idea and theme of KDM, but I don’t like that it punishes you just for the sake of it. It’s not hard just unfair. If you don’t mind that, it’s a great game but I’m glad I tried it before buying
I wouldn’t say that’s entirely true if you understand the game enough (at least the base game). It punishes survivors for the sake of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s punishing the player, or the player’s chance to achieve victory. The examples of fully prepared survivors doing the right things against the monster and still losing are surprisingly far and few betwee. Except when you expect to lose and hedge for that (certain middle-game boss fights). Remember, there’s dying rewards that are sometimes more valuable than the corpses that created them.
I mean, there’s two settlement events that were downright unfair. The bad one was patched. The other “just sucks” and isn’t game breaking. What you’re saying is not entirely off-base… I just daresay it’s a little off-base.
But also similarly, the game punishes monsters for the sake of it, too. The two you fight most often can (and rarely do) die from your first attack (not always ideal, admittedly). As one of my favorite streamers has pointed out, a key strategic point in KDM is that unless you believe in woo-woo dice, the pendulum swings both ways on chance and if you outplay the monster with a prepared party you WILL win within an expected number of casualties… And while that might mean your favorite survivor loses an arm suddenly (or worse), it also is “enough” to tier up your survivors for a victory. I’ve never seen a seasoned KDM player struggle in the final phases of the game.
Well, I did not finish the campaign, just tried the first missions and have not followed the patches after that. As you said, it has its very rewarding moments too, but I love campaign games and inmerse myself in the stories and I just felt like I was losing people, sanity or limbs in every event because of dice, without a chance to mitigate it. At the end of the game I was not happy or relaxed, I guess the atmosphere of despair is very well done XD. The battles can be swingy too, but strategy can mitigate some of it. So not really and issue with the game itself but with how it makes me feel, if that makes sense.
Well, yeah. The atmosphere of dispair is intentional. And it is entirely reasonable to get a full settlement wipe in the first attempt because resources have a snowball effect and regularly losing to monsters (or just wasting resources) will lead to you being underprepared for later on. After a certain point, you are forced to choose level 3 hunts, and are frankly dead-without-knowing-it if you aren’t ready for those (though, I can’t imagine surviving the “game over” fight prior to that if you’re not ready for level 3 hunts)
If you think of it as the settlement being your main character, however, it’s a lot less terrible. But still brutal because yes, sanity and body parts go flying in a heartbeat. And there’s at least one or two “if _____ all 4 survivors immediately die” ultra-rare moments that are pretty terrible (but usually salvageable)
Oldie but goodie: Ra. Good decisions but doesn’t drag on too long, works at lots of different player skill and seriousness levels. Has worked better than Catan or Carcassonne for me to introduce people to hobby games. Also chanting while someone bangs the Ra meeple never gets old. (I have the early 2000s Uberplay edition with the big blue wood Ra.)
Can’t pick a single one but here are a few that I feel represent a local maximum in their space:
- Mottainai: for efficiency, both in components and rules. You get so much game in a 54 deck of cards and a simple ruleset. Runner up: Regicide for doing so much with a standard deck of cards.
- Azul: for the skill floor to skill ceiling breadth. Very beginner friendly, a safe bet for pretty much any group. But at the same time high level 2-player Azul gameplay is extremely thinky and cutthroat.
- Patchwork: for the way the gameplay elements fit together into a whole. It’s not even my favorite polyomino game but something about the way the tile laying, drafting and scoring all comes together feels perfect and I wouldn’t change a thing about it.
I also wanted to add Kingdom Builder because something about it feels close to perfect but not sure what exactly.
I love Framework. It’s easy to explain but has a good amount of strategy.
The whole family is great. I still like Nova Luna the most because of the time-track based drafting and the aesthetics but I will happily play any of them.
Terraforming Mars is probably also my no. 1 pick.
But Frosthaven is a close second. It just has it all: puzzly gameplay, tight mechanics, unlockable content, entertaining story elements, crafting and building, character progression. The thing is, I feel like for a game to fill the “perfect game” criteria for me, I have to be able to always play it with any group. Frosthaven just isn’t that kind of game, because it’s a campaign.
Terraforming Mars on the other hand, as long as your group is 5 people or smaller, you can always play it.
