Category: Board and Paper Gaming (Page 11 of 11)

There’s something about a top 100 list that makes you want to say ‘bullshit’ and make your own.  For me, the list were the various top 100 lists that Dice Tower put out, which had many entries that made me want to write nasty things in the YouTube comments (because that always works).  But then I remember, hey, I have a blog.  Maybe I should use it.

So I’ll roll out the list over the weekend.  I figured it was a good enough reason to get me to think about games and to do some writing about game design.  Because I decided that one of the things I wanted to do was include at least one reason that I, as a digital game designer, like the design of the pile of cardboard in front of me.

Other notes:

• I’ve played most, but not all, of these games at least twice.  The older ones have a lot of plays, but the newer ones have fewer because I have a toddler, which limited my board game playing time (and not coincidentally, also turned a room of my house into the Horrific World of Choking Hazards.
• I made no effort to weed out the ones that are out of print.  I think that includes at least 2 in my top 20.
• I made an effort to list at least one interesting mechanic or other reason I love a game.  In many cases, it’s not the first game that has implemented that mechanic, but usually it’s the best example I’ve seen of it.
• No, I haven’t played everything.  Yes, there are whole classifications of games I’m not a big fan of.  Doing research for this little project HAS added to my ‘I gotta go play that’ list, though.
• Images, when visible, is stolen shamelessly from somewhere.
• This list is as of right this second.  Been working on this in the background for a month, and even last night, 2 games fell off the list and one fell 40 places.  I’m sure if I made this list again in February, it’d shift again.

Anyway, do enjoy one game designer’s desperate excuse to dive back into his collection, and fall back in love with some games he hasn’t played in quite some time.

The list: 

100. Colony

99. Hostage Negotiator

98. Las Vegas

97.  Dragon Rampage

96. Red November

95. Tsuro

94. The Gallerist

93. A Game of Thrones: The Board Game

92. Prime Time

91. Valeria Card Kingdoms

90. Android Infiltration

89. Nothing Personal

88. Majesty: For the Realm

87. Saint Petersburg

86. Catan

85. Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords

84. Twilight Imperium

83. Bora Bora

82. Kill Doctor Lucky

81. Cosmic Encounter

80. Argent the Consortium

79. Hey, That’s My Fish!

78. Defenders of the Realm

77. Dead of Winter

76. Twilight of the Gods

75. SET

74. Battlestar Galactica

73. Citadels

72. Courtiers

71. San Juan

70. Evo

69. Carcassonne: the City

68. Suburbia

67. Tiny Epic Galaxies

66. Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age

65. Fury of Dracula

64. Pandemic

63. Codenames

62. Ghost Stories

61. Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game

60. Imperial Settlers

59. Anachrony

58. Fortune and Glory: the Cliffhanger Game

57. Elder Sign

56. Tokaido

55. Imperial 2030

54. Kanban: Automotive Revolution

53. Guillotine

52. Aeon’s End

51. Roll for the Galaxy

50. Cards Against Humanity

49. Puerto Rico

48. Yamatai

47. Castles of Mad King Ludwig

46. Java

45. Bang! The Dice Game

44. Dominion

43. Blueprints

42. Firefly: the Game

41. Transatlantic

40. Sheriff of Nottingham

39. Dominant Species

38. Star Realms

37. Shadows Over Camelot

36. Castles of Burgundy

35. Arkham Horror: The Card Game

34. King of Tokyo

33. Azul

32. Caverna: the Cave Farmers

31. Mombasa

30. Blokus

29. 7 Wonders

28. Millennium Blades

27. Lords of Waterdeep

26: Raiders of the North Sea

25. Stockpile

24. Tyrants of the Underdark

23. Scythe

22. Porta Nigra

21. Fields of Arle

20. Yedo

18. Forbidden Desert

18. Eclipse

17. Merlin

16. Yokohama

15. Alien Frontiers

14. Tzolk’in the Mayan Calendar

13. 1960: The Making of the President

12. Sagrada

11. Star Wars: Rebellion

10. Francis Drake

9. Mission: Red Planet

8. Kingsburg

7. Power Grid

6. Chaos in the Old World

5. Terraforming Mars

4. Trajan

3. Pandemic Legacy: Season One

2. Clank!

1. Magic The Gathering

And that’s all she wrote!  If you have complaints, feel free to put them in the comments here!

My favorite game of all time, bar none, is Magic the Gathering, the collectible card game.  For those who care about the details, I tend to be a card collector, but prefer to stick to the Standard format, which is a more constrained format that roughly limits the player to using cards from the last two years (the format creates a rolling obsolescence that players eagerly look forward to and crave – a neat trick on the part of the game designers because it simply creates a gold-plated monetization model while still keeping the game balanceable.

Anyway, there have been three stories that have been fascinating from the MTG world in the last 6 months.

1) The tale of the guy who won a $5000 magic tournament while shrooming.  Go ahead, see if you can guess which guy in the top 8 photo is currently hallucinating.

I stared at the trippy art in my beautiful deck and felt destiny course through me with the might of a million memories. I knew I would win the tournament. I also knew I’d gotten this feeling dozens of times before and I’d invariably lost, at some point, with all the dull brutality of probability….Ah, how sweet it is to win when you’re anyone. But how much sweeter when you’re a massive and incorrigible troll!

2) The guy who coded a neural network to create new magic cards.  Can a computer replace a designer?  These results imply ‘not yet’, but there’s clearly a world to explore here.

Slidshocking Krow
U
Creature – Dragon
Tromple, Mointainspalk
4/2

For anyone familiar with Magic—and I’ve already outed myself here—it will be immediately clear that this is a ridiculous card, in every sense. It’s tremendously overpowered, and its abilities aren’t quite right (the AI meant to emulate Trample and Mountainwalk, two abilities that creatures in the game actually do commonly have). But other than the misspelling, all the other details are technically sound; it could be a card in the game. It doesn’t break any rules.

3) If you’re going to cheat, don’t do it on camera.  I meant to cover this when it happened, but to be honest, there was another, more fully engaging but less interesting scandal in the games industry at the time.  In THIS scandal, experienced player Trevor Humphries was caught manipulating the top of his opponent deck.  It is fairly standard in MTG to have cards that require your opponent to shuffle your deck – for example, if you play a card that requires you to search your deck for a certain card, your opponent gets a free shuffle of your deck to prevent YOU cheating.  However, Humphries figured out how to take that shuffle and in almost every instance, drop a land on top of his opponent’s deck (effectively ensuring that his opponent’s next draw was not hugely impactful to the game state).  I should note that the videos showing this in action are pretty deeply fascinating, once you know what’s going on.

What’s really amusing here was the temper tantrum on the way out, once he recieved a 4 year ban from competitive play.  He seems to have no level of internalization how deeply he’s run afoul of the integrity of the sport.

“ENTIRE COLLECTION FOR SALE, on a FOUR year sabbatical. I guess I’m just as bad as all the nasty criminals of the world. Yeah, the rapists, murderers, felons, etc, I’m so bad I forgot I was the only one who knew how to sin. All you underground dojo KEYBOARD cage fighters won. Yea I messed up, I gave in to temptation. I AM HUMAN. I didn’t threaten your personal life, your woman’s or let’s play the game of (do) we publicly punish Trevor. A FOUR YEAR SENTECE ITS A FREAKING CARD GAME, yea all the media fire you guys really got your justice, F@&#*$ clowns.”

I’ve been sitting on this link for a while: Jeff Freeman’s written a nice synopsis of the state of the Tabletop industry, with clear allusions to what it means to those of us making video games. The part I liked: Continue reading