Any games you can’t seem to win no matter how many times you play?
Is this motivating or demotivating for you?
Reverse, any you win nearly any time? And likewise, feature or bug?
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I found out after many years that Eldritch Horror is very hard to beat if playing 2-player / 2-handed solo or fewer, and easier with 4. Some of the main enemies are statistically harder than others too, and the win rates are not high.
Which makes me feel better because it’s exactly the type of game I’m usually good at, but I can lose E.H. a lot.
Other than that my big losses are in social traitor games where I usually beat the odds 8-1 to be the traitor every time.
I have an extremely high win streak in Santorini, but that’s usually about the other players rather than the structure of the game.
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Ghost Stories of course, famously hard to beat; I have, but not reliably.
A solo or coop game can’t win, really: if I find it far too easy on the first few plays, I won’t be interested in coming back, and if I find it far too difficult, ditto. (And someone else will feel the same way, but with a different ideal degree of difficulty.) The way round it in terms of appeal to me, at least, is to make it clear that there are lots of approaches that I could take, rather than just saying that you need a six in hand to pass this and if you don’t have one too bad.
When playing Pandemic Legacy S1 we found that once we could see the initial infection sites we could pretty reliably tell whether we were going to succeed or fail in this game, which took some of the fun out of it. (But with Flash Point Fire Rescue, still a favourite, I’ve seen quite reasonable initial fires brew up out of control, and really challenging-looking starts be dealt with handily.)
The first few times I played Parade I reliably won, but this turned out not to last.
Playing online can be strange for this. I found Lemminge on yucata.de, and so I played mostly against people who are really enthusiastic about the game and play it a lot. And I lost a lot. But when I play against “normal gamers” I do rather better. Similarly with Rallyman GT, most of my games of which have been against the BRDC group on BGA, most of whom are better than I am—so I think of myself as a not great player, but when I teach it I just race ahead.
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I’m not sure about a literal “can’t” win, but I find that many solitaire/puzzle games are of the “you’ll probably win, but the activity is the reason for playing” variety.
Some games rank your success, so even if you nearly always ‘win’, sometimes you’ll win better than other times (e.g. losing at solo Regicide is my least-likely outcome, but the maximum ‘gold’ victory is the next least-likely, so there’s always something challenging to aim for). I like that, and have occasionally adopted a similar ranking system for other games.
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Wanted to add that I really like “games that you always finish but the goal is to get more points”, eg: Dorfromantik. Not a turn-off at all, would play lots of these.
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Robinson Crusoe.
Until I won a game it seemed impossible. Now it just seems almost impossible.
I’ve never minded the absurd difficulty (for me at least) though, it just adds to the fun.
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I don’t remember winning a game of Tzolkin 
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I owned Attika for 14 years before I won a game. Remains my only victory. Still love it though. I get so distracted by building up a neat city and getting chains of free stuff often that I miss any chance of a victory. I do also wonder if I mainly played it with a group who targeted me particularly.
This group was who I played City of Horror with and never got near winning. Always voted out first every time regardless. Consequently I really dislike City of Horror. Maybe I should just have disliked that group. Although I did play it with a different group a bit and that was just buddies sticking together so I was out first again no recourse every time. So maybe I should have disliked both those groups rather than City of Horror
I used to be very good at Confrontation, the Rackahm Wargame that is about to be revived by one of the european bg companies. Maybe Monolith? Unless that was the one that went. I played tons with the Attika and City of Horror group before we branched in to board games. I think the targeting of me was due to my win rate in Confrontation which was easily the best. Could have been as much as 80%. Which is outrageous for a group of 6 regular players. I played 12 of the 15 factions and had a hit rate with all of them over 50%. Possibly this really let me develop underlying structural knowledge rather than being faction specific in my knowledge. Lions of Alahan were one of my 100% win rate faction. Unsurprisingly the other’s didn’t like facing them but I always found it interesting they’d point to them as the worst faction to face off against as I found then to be tough to use and would need to focus most on. They really required coordination as they were not great individually and had no backstops like other factions.
Also went to tournaments and as a complete unknown did really well. I was particularly impressed by 4th in the largest ever Uk as it was with a substandard list as my objective was to play nice so I could get on with people there.
Cthulhu Wars I have a really strong hit rate on. I think of the 40+ games I’ve lost around 5. Love the game but also there’s something that suits me about potentials, risk management and threat range that fit with my competitive mini wargames background I think. It’s also a feels game more than a hard calculation game which I enjoy mote for my hobby so that probably helps too.
@RogerBW hits on good points about context of skills in a setting. While I’ve played many a game of Cthulhu Wars with different groups I would still probably lose against the hardcore enthusiasts. I am definitely a better 18xx player for all the games @lalunaverde kicked my head in at so I don’t mind playing people better than me
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A Feast for Odin
I have hit a hard skill ceiling with this game. Played it a ton on BGA and irl. Have moved on because I got no better, whatever I seemed to try.
My wife is a lot better than me at most games, so I really could put everything here and I’d not be too far wrong!
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Oh, good one. Just reminded me of Friday, also ridiculously impossible. Have won it once by randomly getting the easiest ships at the end.
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While Maryse usually beats me at most games (she will vehemently deny this but she does, I have an abysmal record), one sticks out: Space Base. Outside of the teaching game, where I managed to squeak out a win, I haven’t managed to win a single one.
What makes this notable is that the game is in English, and Maryse doesn’t speak a word of it. So she doesn’t even know what the ships do, she just grabs the ones with numbers or the simplest ones, and she STILL destroys me. I’ve had a good showing when I manage to get past 20 points.
Baffling. Also hilarious.
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Definitely Robinson Crusoe. I think out of 5 or 6 plays, we maybe one once and probably fudged a couple things to make that happen.
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Lots of thoughts despite initially thinking: I don’t play so many competitive games and I can’t think of a single one that I’ve never won.
Cooperative
Everyone already talked about losing Ghost Stories. I have no proof but I think we once won twice in a row. But that was a fluke.
We solved the Isle of Dr Necreaux at some point. Before that, it was really hard and then suddenly that flipped and we never played again.
7th Continent–we noped out of that one because it’s just too difficult and there is a lot of work involved in losing and too little actual gameplay that would make losing “fun enough”.
Solos
I tend to play a lot of solos. I usually play until I can win, except for my 2010 (or so) attempts at winning Agricola solo. I gave up. But I had not played a lot of solos at the time. I specifically backed the super-big-everything version to rectify that failure. (And I really enjoy the Rosenberg style of solos)
I have recently been playing a lot of Terraforming Mars solos (on the app). And I am on a really awful win/loss ratio right now. But while it can be frustrating, I keep playing it over and over because I just enjoy the whole process and the challenge so much and I want to explore it all.
I will play challenge modes of Cascadia 10 or more times in a row to beat them. It’s just so exciting to try a new approach and see if that one works. I have yet to give up on one.
I can’t think of anything I have had trouble beating to the point of never winning at all. Losing is fine but it does need to be reasonably easy to start over after a loss. I think I had a few games on my table where I had this huge game with lots of setup and losing that is so much more frustrating than trying Cascadia #14 again (also see 7th Continent)
Competitive
I tend to win more than I lose. Except chess–and now I don’t play chess. But chess is an entirely different discussion and why I don’t like it.
I think with really good games it does not matter so much that I lose because the process of playing the game is enjoyable in itself. Yes, I strive to win, but even when that is elusive I can celebrate my super-moves, and my grand strategies.
However, I will not claim that I will come back forever if I can see no chance of winning.
What really makes me into a sore loser is when I don’t get to participate. When I am blocked out of moves or miss turns. This doesn’t happen a lot. But it is one of the main reasons games will not see the table again, if one or more players feel like they were only watching for most of a game.
Mischwald seems to be my nemesis in this regard. At least in a setting with more than 2 players. I will still play because surely next time the butterfly strategy will finally work out for me. (Spoiler: no it won’t)
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Cube Rails, I can’t seem to fully get the calculations of my position and others.
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I have a feeling you know this already but it’s always nice to put this in writing anyway. The shared incentives in Cube Rails is within the stock-holding. Player A and B have a share each in Red Company means they are allied against everyone else. A move to expand the railway of Red and thus increasing the company’s value will put A and B further ahead in relative to Player C, D, and E.
This is different to 18xx where companies there pretty much behave as proxy to their players. So, Player A who owns 60% of the Blue Company means that Blue is pretty much Player A. Unless you have an arrangement like A owns 60% while B owns 40%. The shared incentives there is how companies help one another when they are expanding this rail network that can be communally used by everyone.
But assuming it’s Chicago Express, then, yeah, which company to expand or develop will help you and someone else. Auctioning a share hurts more than helps the shareholders of that company. I have sabotaged companies in Chicago Express before when I see that my partner is leading - yes, despite the fact that it hurts me too as a shareholder of the company I just sabotaged. If your main opponent is your partner, then it make sense.
Auctioning of shares in Chicago Express is gauging (heh) its future value and how many rounds you think there still is. Irish Gauge is more forgiving where the share has an inherent value when you’re scoring at the end of the game.
The shared incentives in Cube Rails is much more blatant in Ride the Rails where there are no auctions (thus, no value eval except when choosing one free share every round). The game then puts player positioning at the forefront.
I love how you are incentivised to make your passenger travel as far as possible, but then you end up helping other people by using rails that you don’t have shares on! But if they are in a worse position compare to everyone else, then maybe, a cheeky trip down on the purple (t)rain… purple (t)rain, might be worth it.
I still have’t played enough South African Railroads to say more about it.
And Gulf Mobile and Ohio is just a different kind of brain melt.
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I play ROLL FOR THE GALAXY every night on my iPad before I go to bed.
I only win once in a blue moon but the rate of success seems to be increasing.
And that’s against a computer.
Against my intermittent Monday night group I have only ever won once and that was by a tiebreaker.
I’m not sure why this is my regular habit but it’s probably too late to change it now.
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Yeah, I get it.
I just can’t math it to make my damn move in a reasonable time compared to my peers
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Talking of apps, the old Eldritch Horror app had a final level that you had literally something like 0.01% chance of completing, because not only did the dice roller cheat through the entire game but that level in particular required just unbelievable luck.
If you did it and saved a hostage on the first try then you unlocked the best character in the game, which made repeat tries more possible, but I’d put a LOT of time into the app and when I reinstalled on a new phone and had to try again I was getting nowhere near it.
(Then they didn’t update the app and it’s now unplayable on Android systems).
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I struggle mightily with any game that requires more than a few moves of forethought. I enjoy Brass Birmingham and tend to do well-ish, but I almost never win because I don’t think enough moves ahead. Same problem with most miniature combat games… I love them for their theme and sense of immersion, but tend to be too short-sighted to actually do well.
I once tried for an entire year to join the WarMachine Team Canada, and after getting my teeth kicked in at something like 40 tournaments… I just gave up. I was never going to be consistently good enough to be a part of the team. Now, Southern Ontario had a famously strong WM community (not as strong as the Aussies, but nobody was), but still. I just couldn’t get the game to “click” with my reactive-style of play.
Other than that, I don’t usually keep track of my wins/losses. I stumble into my fair share of victories, even for really brainy games due to a knack for capitalizing on other player’s mistakes, but that only gets me so far.
I am very bad at the Star Realms app. I play a LOT of it, but I lose way more often than I win.
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Of course this works if the activity is engaging every time, but I remembered that I’ve moved a few games along for the specific reasons that they were too easy to win without the other aspects being enjoyable enough to keep me coming back regardless.
- The Dead Eye (where I won my first game despite some initial failed runs, won my second game with no failures at all, and concluded that I’d established an unbeatable strategy and had no interesting decisions left to make.)
- Lost Kingdoms: Pangea in Pieces (this one had so much potential, but the collection of solo constraints were bad – they were too easy to achieve, and most of them eliminated the need to engage with the game’s most interesting feature. I wasn’t motivated to try to come up with alternatives because the set-up was fiddly as well, so I culled it.)
- The Maiden in the Forest (this micro card game puzzle must be virtually impossible to lose unless you make the tactical error of painting yourself into a corner – which is easily avoided. I played more games of this than I expected, but once I moved on to another game I realised I wasn’t going to go back.)
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