A long weekend dominated by games

[womzilla]

I have tomorrow off for a stock market holiday, and I'm stretching the weekend out by taking of Monday as a comp day (partial recompense for my 75-hour week at the start of March). I'm going gaming tomorrow evening, and otherwise am planning on spending the vastest part of the weekend attacking my game collection--culling it further and then re-packing and re-arranging it so that it can actually fit in the space allotted it. Fun!

Co-incidentally, I was recently asked to rank my top ten (proprietary) board & card games. Here's my top 25; winnowing it down to 10 was very difficult indeed. I'm sure that on another day I'd have come up with a different 10 and 25, but
I'm pretty sure my top 10 would definitely all be in this list.

Acquire by Sid Sackson
Age of Steam by Martin Wallace
Aladdin's Dragons by Richard Breese
Blokus by Bernard Tavitian
Bohnanza by Uwe Rosenberg
Borderlands by Future Pastimes (Bill Eberle, Peter Olatka, and Jack Kittredge)
Business by Sid Sackson
Can't Stop by Sid Sackson
Cosmic Encounter by Future Pastimes (Bill Eberle, Peter Olatka, and Jack Kittredge)
Dvonn by Kris Burm
El Grande by Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich
Elfenland with Elfengold by Alan R. Moon
Euphrat & Tigris by Reiner Knizia
Klunker by Uwe Rosenberg
Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation by Reiner Knizia
Lost Cities by Reiner Kniza
Medici by Reiner Knizia
Melee/Wizard by Steve Jackson
Mü (from Mü und Mehr) by Frank Nestle and Doris Matthäus
Pampas Railroads by John Bohrer
Puerto Rico by Andreas Seyfarth
Titan by Jason B. McAllister and David A. Trampier
Wallenstein by Dirk Henn
Warhamster Rally by Frank Branham
Wiz War by Tom Jolly

I'm surprised that I had no individual games from several of my favorite designers--Alex Randolph (Twixt, Ghosts!, Sizimizi), Francis Tresham (Civilization and the 18xx series), Klaus Teuber (Settlers of Catan: The Card Game, Adel Verpflichtet), Thomas Lehmann (Magellan, Time Agent, 1846), Al Newman (Dynasties, Babushka, Winds of Plunder), Mike Fitzgerald (the Mystery Rummy series, including Wyatt Earp), Richard Borg (Liar's Dice, Wyatt Earp, the Command and Colors series), Greg Costikyan (Barbarian Kings, Pax Britannica, Web and Starship), or Grant Dalgliesh (Wizard Kings and most of the other Columbia "Block Games" wargame line). Part of that is that many of the games in this secondary list are longer or more fiddly than the games I get to play these days--especially the wargames and the Tresham and Lehmann titles--which makes them less dear to me now.

And, on another day, the list would be different.

Comments

[montoya.livejournal.com]

Have you played the Railroad Tycoon boardgame? I've got Age of Steam sitting on the shelf, but haven't played it yet, because I'm given to understand that it and RT are very similar, and RT looks about a hundred times better. (Yes, I care about aesthetics.)

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Railroad Tycoon is based on Age of Steam.

Martin Wallace has designed about half-a-dozen games (Lancashire/New England Railways; Volldampf; Age of Steam; Railroad Tycoon) using the same basic mechanisms; they cover a fairly wide range of complexity and playing time. RT was an attempt to take Age of Steam and streamline it somewhat. It has a few good ideas, including a better end-of-game mechanism, but it also has a set of absolutely awful random-event cards which, to my mind, completely ruined it but wouldn't be easy to remove. And it took almost as long to explain and play as Age of Steam.

When I played it, I spent the entire time thinking, "This would be so much better if it were Age of Steam".

[montoya.livejournal.com]

By "absolutely awful" you mean "big luck factor"? Because to be honest, the people I play with tend to prefer significant luck elements. And we've definitely had RT games that were decided with a big route card coming up near the end, with someone in position to actually complete it, to no particular consternation...

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I don't mind luck in a game--most of the game on my list have a lot of random elements, and some are intensely chaotic or random--but there has to be a balance. I absolutely hate playing a thought-intensive, mostly strategic game for three hours to see it handed to the player who gets the first pick of cards on the last turn.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

My personal favorite of the lot is Australian Railways, which is similar to Lancashire/New England but improves the system significantly.

Mayfair is doing another streamlined Age of Steam game, which in theory will not have the randomness of Railroad Tycoon (nor the gigantic board which fits on no table I own).