My husband also strongly dislikes roll and writes for similar reasons, so it’s not just you!
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Thank you: I will look into it, although I fear it’s another game where the setup/teardown time may make it cumbersome.
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Game types I don’t generally get along with:
- social deduction
- negotiation
- bluffing
- auction / bidding (as a sub-component)
- roll and write
- engine building
- card-based asymmetry
I don’t sell many games, but I sold the only social deduction and negotiation games in my collection.
I have some bluffing games, but I’m always dubious about them. Mostly I’ve hung onto them because the boxes are small.
For auctions I enjoy the likes of High Society where the entire game is nothing but auctions, and consequently they can’t ruin anything else. Throw auctions into a game with other systems though, and it’s a different story.
I have one roll and write game, which is Railroad Ink, and it’s only a small dinky box so I haven’t sold it, but it convinced me that the genre wasn’t really for me.
I can enjoy some engine-building games, but playing Splendor a few times cemented for me that it’s not a game component that I enjoy on its own (and so games which are almost purely engine-building are the worst).
I do have a number of asymmetric games; but anything where the rules might change for each player in accordance with text printed on cards that only that player can (easily) read is a real turn-off for me. If I would need to move around the table to understand what other players can do then I’ve mentally tapped out before the game has started (because I’m not going to actually do that, and I’m not likely to remember it all even if I do). I really enjoy the likes of Memoir '44 because the asymmetry has nothing to do with special rules and everything to do with the map layout and the initial units/positions for each player (which I can comprehend from anywhere around the table). Degrees of asymmetry is a spectrum, so there are certainly exceptions, but generally the harder it is for me to understand what players can do, the less invested I am going to be in the game. (Co-operative games are a big exception to this – if we’re all trying to achieve the same thing then I’m not worried if I don’t have a full understanding of each player’s abilities – if they surprise me with what they can do, it’s generally a nice surprise :).
All of the above goes up in the air for solo games, I think.
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Not so alone. I own 1 roll and write, OctoDice. It’s old and doesn’t behave like a modern roll and write. It has a yahtzee like push your luck element and a euro engine/bonus builder element. Consequently I’ve never got in to any of the modern ones. Tried Ganz Schon Clever but it’s one strategy got old really quickly. Tested a few others and found them boring.
Drafting, the only games I have with the mechanic are Seasons, 1824 and 1846 and none are particularly drafting focussed. I’m really not keen on pure drafting games. That being said I’d rather have more 18xx I can play with an opening draft over the waterfall auction. Maybe that will fade with time and experience in the group.
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Dont like roll and writes. Found that there are no exceptions in this genre.
Forks, Seasons, 1846 I believe are the only drafting games I have
I thought drafting is bad in 18xx 
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This is a mechanism that I don’t care for. In particular, I’m less likely to be the person who memorizes card distributions. When games offer huge decks of cards with tons of variety, I’m going to enjoy that as an experience, like a goldfish swimming through a maze. But I’ve played against people who internalize the rarity of each aspect and pre-plan out card combos; it’s in those cases that I try to avoid card-based asymmetry because me and my opponent(s) will be playing different games, albeit with the same components.
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The solution is just to play the game enough to be playing the same game. Everyone gets there the same way - no-one I know has ever been able to memorise a deck in any meaningful way by any means other than playing a lot, and the concern that there’s an innate significant difference in ability to memorise also seems misdirected in my experience.
Of course, I say this as someone who likes card games. In contrast to Phil, I much prefer games where players draw from the same deck over games where each player starts with their own deck.
(I had a bunch more I wanted to write, but I have run out of time to do so.)
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