Or games which use weird terminology from some game you’re not playing without ever explaining.
I once scoured a manual repeatedly (and in vain) trying to find what the hell they meant by “tapping” a card.
It turned out it was terminology from “Magic: The Gathering” which obviously each and every one of their customers was intimately familiar with?!? The manual never defined the term. I was really unhappy once I discovered what they’d done there.
I on the other hand get annoyed when games have me “exhaust” cards by “turning them on the side” instead of just saying “tap the card”
Or when a game goes to some lengths to invent a new mechanism to track used cards for the same thing that I already know how to do… (Looking at you Imperium:Classics)
Isn’t this because MtG trademarked “tapping” at one point?
Ashes has exhaustion tokens, but that’s necessary, as you can add more exhaustion using other card effects. So just tapping wouldn’t be enough.
They what?! That’s as bad as software patents…
US patent 5662332 “Trading card game method of play”, filed 1997-09-02 and therefore expired 2017-09-02, so that’s now in the public domain. (“Tapping” is a very small part of it.) Two defences I’m aware of, a 2003 suit against The Pokémon Company and 2014 vs Cryptozoic Entertainment; both ended in settlements so it was never challenged in court. These days thanks to Alice vs CLS Bank (2014) patents on abstract ideas are rather more restricted; the patent would probably be granted, because USPTO’s policy is to grant basically everything, but it might well fail if actually tested.
(I’m not a lawyer, I just play one at work and on the Internet.)
I agree that base Cyclades is the best. My unpopular opinion though is that Hades is the better expansion over Titans. Titans turned a very unique Cyclades into a generic troops on a map. While Hades ramped the weirdness of Cyclades into 11.
EDIT: thanks @COMaestro
Also, I thought about this thread when I saw this video.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLXH6HHd/
Perhaps foolhardy, but an attempt to reconcile experiences (in three parts).
Race comes from an older age when you could expect more people to push through a learning hump and find that clarity. With each passing year, the pressure for a first-play impression has grown, and that contributes to games like Roll and TFMars that combine icons and text, all the way to Wingspan which scraps icons entirely.
However, the transition comes with a cost. Brains translate pictures faster than words. So, while text reduces friction on a first play, on a relative basis, it increases it on all future plays. The combined approach still increases friction, because there is a search algorithm the brain has to go through to parse, separate, and focus on the relevant information before then translating that information to semantic memes (not the internet word).
All to say, Race’s approach is old. Those who are “in” tend to love it because it is so meaningful and frictionless. But let’s not forget the effort that went into learning the declensions and conjugations that Lehmann threw at us.
It is nearly as maddening as learning Spanish. You trust us that there is a method behind the madness, and we’ll trust you that there is madness obscuring the method 
You’ve got Titans twice here, but I think I know what you’re saying.
Patent issues aside, I think it depends on the theme.
If the card is some resource that you are accessing, “tap” makes sense.
If the card is a creature or a special ability that requires rest before using again, “exhaust” makes sense.
The On The Edge TCG used “crank” which is a bit ridiculous, except in reference the physical motion. Then again, the setting is a bit ridiculous, so maybe it works.
Playing Flesh & Blood TCG I’ve learnt so much about MTG, because a subsection of players speak ONLY in MTG language. Right down to referring to individual cards in MTG because they’re vaguely similar to a card in FaB. Drives me up the wall!! I get it, this is their second game that they don’t quite as well, but calling a deck a library is pure laziness!
(And because many card gamers also speak in internet language, it becomes even more confusing. Are those seemingly random 3 words a magic card or an internet meme? I have no idea! I never want to hear the word poggers ever again)
I am surprised quite how pervasive MTG is though. Had no idea Mill, Tutor, scry and Timewalk were originally from magic
I don’t think I have any crazily unpopular opinions.
If disliking Eldritch horror counts, I’m on that bandwagon. Its not a game, it’s a choose your own adventure book that forces you to roll a dice every 2 sentences to see if you can read some more. The game doesn’t give you enough actions per turn to have any sort of agency, and failing often means waiting for your turn to come around and trying again, which is the antithesis of playing a game. And even the dice rolling is completely unimaginative. Roll X or higher to succeed, or else you lose… Great stuff.
(Conversely, I was very impressed with how the Arkham LCG subverted the Arkham template. Card play means you’re always actively playing and exerting agency whilst also restricting what you can do and ultimately, you’re equally helpless. Its a true magic trick to pull that off. In fact, the biggest weakness of the LCG is that if you find a crazy card combo, the game suddenly loses all its magic and although there are difficulty settings it’s often difficult to find that perfect difficulty level for a given group.)
roll for the galaxy is more fun than race. Something about playing cards instinctively means i need to think and take it seriously in an effort to win, while rolling dice is silly and light hearted. It completely changes the mood of the game and I just enjoy seeing how the games play out. Is race a better game? Maybe, but i get so much more enjoyment with roll.
Oh, and I really enjoy expansions. See so many people against expansions these days. I just wanna say I really enjoy how they can change a game. Depending on the expansion i may not play every game with them, but i enjoy them regardless. Of course some are bad… Suburbia 5*, but I’m generally pleased with them and want to give them done positive feedback. I love the variety, the way they can make an accessible game crunchier, or provide a step up in more complex games that not everyone may want. They all provide options, and that’s to be commended.
I have some friends who insist on playing just the base game. But guess what? I teach them with the expansions and don’t tell them. They have a great time, everything goes fine. No one notices.
I knew people who tried it when it first came out (I did a bit myself), but most of us got out pretty quickly when they started what was clearly going to be an expansion treadmill. The impression I get is that people who play it seriously don’t play much else, so e.g. at the boardgame café I hope to go to again one day they have their own dedicated night and I’ll never meet them.
Yeah TCGs are a weird deal. In many ways they’re the ones keeping game stores alive, so stores have to maintain a foot in, but the culture is so insular. As someone who wants to play the game and meet people around the country without accepting that culture, it can be difficult.
FaB is an interesting case in that it originally attracted a lot of Netrunner, Keyforge and Lot5R players - generally older players in the 27-35 age range who had lost their game and had just played LCGs but felt like they could now justify the cost of a TCG. Then with MTG offering not much in the way of big events, the MTG players started coming in. It changed the feel for the game a bit for sure. Maybe not as much as I had expected. And now MTG has started big events again (some speculate in direct response to FaB since MTG has been so online focused the last few years), and so now all the talk has gone to wondering whether there will be an exodus of MTG players or not. That’s probably more of an American thing, but I digress.
At events there’s almost a secret coded language in recognising who the different types of player are. There are all the MTG categorisations of Timmy’s Spikes and Johnny’s, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near that simple. I often reach out to other players are events and it’s surprising how often I get a response about meeting people on a similar wavelength or avoiding the people who take it all too seriously. I don’t even know how to phrase it. It’s not even “us Vs them” tribal mentality, more that people play games for all sorts of reasons, and people who play for similar reasons naturally end up finding each other? Like mini sub-cultures within cultures? As a whole, the community have been great and actively fight against the stereotypes, though it does surface in individuals from time to time.
It is INSANITY to me how seriously some people take the game. To the point where I had to take some time off the game because people getting upset about the meta was starting to wind me up. I started thinking “why do I even care this much about the game?!”, so stopped outright and did some other things. A detox is sometimes needed to remind myself it’s just a game and life is everything outside of that. The call to lifestyle games is alluring for sure. It is such a weird mix of social dynamics and gambling fallacies. People get hung up on the money involved in TCGs, but that’s not even the main aspect - players accept the costs and it soon seamlessly blends into the monthly budget. Its everything else around it. In boardgame terms, it’s like a never ending legacy game that gets people more and more invested in the stakes. Players are locked in a permanent Oct/Nov of Pandemic Legacy - hyped on the changes they’ve seen, a bit bitter about what’s gone badly, excitedly talking about the possibilities of the next month. But it NEVER ends!
I’ve tried saying to people: “if you feel this pissed off now, what makes you think the changes next season will make things any different? It’ll just be the same with different classes stronger!” But that doesn’t go down well…
I find the whole deal fascinating to be a part of. I don’t want to be cynically analysing the situation as some outside spectator, but it’s difficult not to sometimes. I’m enjoying it for now, just being a part of a larger community that all know each other and riding the wave is a nice experience - I guess it’s like an ARG game in that sense of discovery and resolution as a group. I expect one day I’ll grow weary though!
During lunch today I found out that at least in this house my opinion is quite unpopular: story comes very very very far behind gameplay. I am not playing Gloomhaven for the story. I like the cardplay.
I do enjoy when I can tell a story after the game–possibly what is meant when people talk about emergent stories.
But I do not want to play a game where the numbered reading bits seem to be more important than the actual game.
The lunch conversation–which was mostly about the same issue with computer games–culminated with my partner staring at me “But then if you dislike story so much how did you play so much World of Warcraft?” To which I replied: “By skipping the quest texts and installing an addon which told me where to go on the minimap”.
PS: I also had an addon that auto-skipped the quest-text.
What I mean by “a game that generates stories” is something like Firefly or Sentinels of the Multiverse where you’re getting all sorts of narratively unlikely combinations of elements (“what if Kaylee signed on with a bunch of bounty hunters”) and you can, if you like, build stories out of that.
Many people like Above and Below, but I found “Above” was standard too-few-resources Euro and “Below” was “here’s an interesting situation, now choose one of these very simple options, also you can’t choose the interesting ones because you don’t have the resources”. Possibly I was just very bad at it.
Emergent stories as opposed to prescribed
Hey everyone 
. Long time lurker, first time poster.
I agree with what other have said above about Terraforming Mars.
On the lighter side I feel like Diamant is a game I’ve never enjoyed as much as a lot of other people. I think there’s just not enough game there for me, almost feels a bit like it’s on rails especially early on in a round. From what I’ve read this might be because the people I’ve played it with haven’t been interested in any bluffing, I did try and introduce a bit of posturing one game and they didn’t understand why I was doing it.
I did really enjoy my time with Welcome to, but when a friend found what seems to be a dominant strat I immediately lost any interest in playing again. Whereas I get the impression that it’s still enjoyable for a lot of people years down the line.
Welcome! We don’t bite. (Unless you’re into that.)
For me the thing about Diamant is it’s almost entirely about pushing my luck and anything else I do is in service to that. If I’m in a luck-pushing mood I love it. If not it leaves me cold. But I’ve never had much luck bluffing…
Diamant is much better than the other light PYL games. If you don’t like PYL you’re well out of luck though.
The best moments is where a couple of people have built up a hoard and lose it all on the card flip. The shared moment is great.
Personally I prefer Celestia. I enjoy the tension building up as everyone leaves the boat one at a time and then watching the cards get played probably from different positions. Counter intuitively splitting peoples decision to that players turn makes it a more shared process for me.
I only played Diamant 3 times but was unfussed on it where as I’d still play Celestia now.
