What games have killed other games for you?
What games have survived despite multiple attempts on them by newer, similar, supposedly evolved concepts?
Lastly, any games you want killed but the industry just can’t seem to perfect the model?
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When I was new to modern boardgames I bought and played quite a bit of Pandemic. Then I met Flash Point Fire Rescue, which tickled the same cooperative itch but to my perception just does it better. The limitations on what you can do feel like real limitations, “I can’t get to that guy in time,” rather than artificial ones (just what does having a city card represent anyway?). The whole thing is easier to relate to end envision.
Piepmatz sort of beats Parade, but I played Parade again recently and enjoyed it as a distinct thing. Only problem is that nobody, including me, wants to play both on the same session.
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I’m really interested in this one.
I’ve heard lots of “Caverna exists so I’ll play that instead of XYZ now”.
And I’m fairly sure I have 3 or 4 games that mean I won’t go back to Dominion.
What are people’s “Buy X instead of Y” games?
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Some Survivors:
Agricola: Nothing else does it. La Granja is the closest I’ve found in terms of feel, with a little less stick set across from the carrot. Nusfjord is tangential, but the tight balance is very different from the cardplay of Gric. You never “break through” in Nusfjord to that point where your machine is flying. Caverna is also surprisingly different, with a) no pre-requisite food and b) uncapped resource scoring, the game invites you to solve an entirely different puzzle using the same vocabulary.
Lords of Waterdeep: Architects, Parks, any number of other light-worker-placement-recipe-fulfillment games just can’t replace this. LoW does a couple of things right - quest rewards (that chain into new quests), worker spot expansion (with the owner-sharing bonuses), and a fixed number of rounds (allowing you to really calculate how much you might be able to accomplish, IF everything goes your way…). It’s so simple to articulate that it’s a mystery why every potential Waterdeep killer misses something.
Puerto Rico: I’ve tried to kill it. So many times. A lot of games fix its weaknesses but to this day nothing recaptures its strengths at the same time.
Ethnos: Chain into Archeos into Ethnos 2. They just can’t quite pin down what it needs to be?
Orleans: appears to have survived Altiplano
El Grande: It would be hard to list all the spiritual successors but El Grande still got it
Race for the Galaxy: Lots of quick tableau synergy games have come but they either do less or explode the toolkit. Here it’s the ratio, cards in to tableaus out, that keeps this one on top
Tichu: Haggis, 535, Panda Spin, any number of other climbers. You just can’t add anything to Tichu or take anything away from it.
Flamme Rouge: I’ll go on record that Heat didn’t do it in.
Jaipur: 2009. Fifteen years and we haven’t seen this magic again.
Star Realms: Ascension before it and Shards of Infinity after it. Even Star Wars TDB takes second. Like Tichu it’s about balance, just enough but not too much. And adding or removing anything (generally adding, looking at the competition) spoils the soup.
Bruxelles 1893/97: Narrower in scope, but Federation didn’t kill it.
Patchwork: I still rate this as the best polyomino game I own, despite the glut of contenders in recent years.
Magic: The Gathering: I haven’t played in decades but worth noting that it’s still the industry standard despite years and years of opportunities to evolve the model. Side note: I’m coming to understand how truly bad at this I was.
Fox in the Forest: Still the best 2p Trick Taker. In my minority opinion.
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I have never given much thought to this before. I have heard of people preferring a similar game over another by a lot so they wouldn‘t play the original anymore.
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Actually the first example that comes to mind is recent: I only ever wanted to play Splendor with 2 players. Now that I have Splendor Duel, I will certainly never play Splendor again. Duel is just plain better.
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In a similar vein for a solo play though: Legacy of Yu killed my interest in Paladins of the West Kingdom completely. (Not that I have finished the former but while I have that available, I have no desire to play Paladins solo and I never had any desire to multiplay that in the first place.
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The Crew not sure if it is a survivor or a killer… it killed my desire to play all trick takers that came before. But then came a new wave of trick takers… and it still stands stronger than everything else.
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Cascadia killed a lot of other simple tile laying games for me. Mostly possibly Calico even though I never disliked Calico on the grounds of it being too puzzly. Cascadia is just more fun. Harmonies has been threatening to replace Cascadia as my go-to landscape builder recently.
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The Gang may possibly have killed my desire to try Hanabi again. Similar premise as Hanabi much faster and more organic to get there. Also: poker.
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Spirit Island replaced Terra Mystica for me. Both are map-based and you want to spread across the map. Adjacencies play a certain role. But most importantly: upgrading your unique player board was what made Terra Mystica special to me and Spirit Island is even better at that. Add the „magic like“ combotastic card play and just like that my favorite game had been replaced.
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Planet Unknown finally killed my desire to play any other tetris I mean polyominoes game. Planet Unknown just ticks all the boxes a polyominoes game needs for me. Good tile variety. Random but not too random. Combos. Combos. Unique abilities. Good variability in games. Fun and scalable solo mode. Tracks that work and tiles that want to be placed just so. I think the expansion made it better but not so much that it is a must have (except for the lid)
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Space Base easily replaced Machi Koro. Then came Bad Company but it was unable to dislodge Space Base from the prime spot.
Survivors:
- Even after many trials of various other small city builders and several self-copies Sprawlopolis remains the undefeated champion of tiny games on my shelves (the only two that come even close are Naturopolis and Trailblazers)
- Star Realms—actually just discussed it today. I have played various iterations of small random market deck builders and Star Realms with minimal expansions (I think we only have the first or first two) is forever the best of its kind for us (I wonder how Mistborn will fare, the Star Wars version never made it)
- Terraforming Mars —tried to clone itself twice and while I like the little ones, nothing comes close to the original. No other engine tableau builder feels quite like TM to me. Maybe the app solo killed the physical game a little bit. I played that far more often than it ever saw my table. edit: Ark Nova is very good but it doesn‘t even come close.
- Just One (also Concept, Dixit and Codenames) are MY party games. They are very difficult to dislodge.
- Kakerlakensalat survived a bunch of other silly cockroach games or similar ones like DoDeLiDo (well I think our friends prefer the latter, I don‘t, for silly late night fun it‘s Salad-Time)
- Cryptid after we fell in love with this one I tried so many other deduction style games. This one is by far my favorite and I sold on almost everything else like Planet X or Loot of Lima. Paint the Roses is still here the cooperative thing makes it unique.
- 7 Wonders weirdly for drafting games I have tried a few and I really like Sushi Go but in the end I still prefer 7 Wonders with the first 2 expansions. (I like 7 Wonders Duel even more and conceded that Lotr Duel might be even better) but for a big round of lots of people drafting 7 Wonders is still our goto game.
Interesting. I took me quite a while to come up with these. But there are indeed a few games in both categories. I had almost forgotten especially how Terra Mystica was removed from its top spot by Spirit Island… it‘s almost a little sad. Or it would be if SI wasn‘t just so good and so much easier for solo-ing.
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Funny you should mention that one 
It just gets it right. I refuse to add all the stuff that exists though. Or it becomes too much. I only ever saw the fantasy iteration at SPIEL and for a weird reason never wanted to try it. I think it‘s coop boss battling? And I seem to dislike boss battlers.
Ascension I have played and enjoyed on the app but it feels more fiddly somehow. I did consider the recent anniversary kickstarter for a few moments before not backing it.
Star Wars TDB … I don‘t know. We‘re such fans of the franchise and yet we didn‘t really play that one. I was so excited when I got it but then… not so much on playing it?
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I think the only game I have that I consider to have killed another is Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth has killed 7 Wonders: Duel.
I like the lack of points, so the victory objectives are very clear cut. Every method of victory seems achievable, while military and science victories are very rare in my experience in 7W:D. The random assortment of science tokens can result in rather lackluster options, and even then it feels difficult to get two of the same symbol to even get a token. While LotR has the same mechanic, you also get a once per game ability to take the top token of three different races when you collect the three different symbols, something that is much more achievable. Making resources simply cost 1 gold each makes purchasing cards so much simpler than counting how many of a given resource your opponent owns so you can calculate the final cost for a resource. The military map is more exciting than the simple military track of 7W:D. Landmarks are like a shared pool of Wonders, so no one feels like the other player got lucky in the opening draft.
It’s just better in every way for me.
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Nearly all the games I own are survivors, by definition.
Killers I have trouble thinking of, except in the sense of games that are superior to their imitators, and thereby killed my desire to play subsequent iterations. Games like Dominion, which is better than all its imitators, or Eurogames’ Condottiere, which is better than FFG’s remake, or the original DungeonQuest, which is better than at least FFG’s first attempt at a remake (I’m spotting a pattern here).
EDIT: oh wait, as defined by Acacia, I just listed survivors, didn’t I? Hah, that’ll teach me to read posts, surely? (this time, surely?)
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Huh. I frequently describe Dominion as the worst deck-building game of all time.
Which I am quick to point out doesn’t make it bad. Just every deck-builder since has done some really interesting things with the design space. El Dorado is faster and more variable and way better market. Star Realms is superior with 2 players and is much faster. Clank is deeper and more strategic.
And so on.
But I can see people appreciating the elegance, I suppose.
Anything bolted on to deckbuilding adds another axis of uncertainty and randomness and bloat. Rotating/random markets being the most common and worst “innovation”, imo, and also a nice well-loved exemplifier so I don’t have to exhaustively go through all the others.
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I respect this. Vanilla, well done, is certainly a delicious flavour, and just because something has sprinkles or Dutch chocolate or whatever doesn’t intrinsically make it “better.”
I disagree, of course, but I respect the position.
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Killers
Cthulhu Wars - a lot of TOAM games just made me say: I’d rather play Cthulhu Wars over this. Which is a shame as Troops-on-a-Map is one of my fave genres. (it’s okay Glorantha, you can stay)
Food Chain Magnate, Indonesia, The Great Zimbabwe all killed my desire for most modern Euro games even though those 3 aren’t really in that genre.
Race for the Galaxy remains a top game even after a recently glut of card tableau engine-building games.
And in turn, I found that I would rather play any of Chudyk’s card tableaus: Innovation, Mottainai, Impulse, Glory to Rome (haven’t play Aegean enough) than Race for the Galaxy. Like, I’d rather play Mottainai than RFTG or Jump Drive.
New Frontiers - killed Puerto Rico. Lehmann is right. Left-right binding sucks.
Heat - killed Flamme Rouge
Stephenson’s Rocket, Kingdom Builder, and Bridges of Shangri-La - killed every Knizia tile-layer (except TTD). T&E? What is that?
Pax Renaissance (and Splotters) killed Pax Pamir 2
The Estates killed most of my Knizia auction games. I’m really tired of Knizia’s one-round auctions where the final bid is usually N+1 (really ruins the point of auctions). The Estates handled one round auctions waaaay better.
Age of Innovation killed Terra and Gaia. But I can see why you’d choose either.
This might be premature, but I think Caverna slayed all other Uwe games… (I need more plays)
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Survivors
Dominant Species is one of my oldest games (in terms of owning it) in my shelf. It’s just one of the best area control games out there. CW couldn’t kill it and other games couldn’t. Marines is so bad that I got REALLY sus at SVWAG when they slightly preferred Marines.
Cosmic Encounter - stayed with me still through the years. Hot take: I’ll just play Cosmic than to pick a Cole Werhle game. There! I said it.
Chicago Express - more like a champion than survivor. Chex showed me the wonders of opaque decision-making many years ago which led me to understand the beauty of games like Imperial that I’ve never seen before. This led me to other Cube Rails and 18xx, but despite all that, Chex remains at the top. It didn’t killed them. I still have a lot of Cube Rails and a few 18xx. It remains the champion
In turn, Cube Rails killed most old school German games I have. It fits the same time duration and rules weight, but the decisions are more interesting and opaque.
Seasons - another old game in my collection. I felt that the cards give more kick in them than similar titles like Res Arcana.
Age of Steam is the ultimate survivor against its own kin: Railways of the World (this one is awesome though), Steam, and Steam Power
Despite all the social deductions that came out, the Resistance/Avalon remains the best.
I think Trains is still my fave deckbuilder, but I’m not really into deckbuilders. I’d rather play a Cube Rail than Trains.
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I was strongly considering naming this as well. While I do like a lot of the Deckbuilder Mashups of the Modern Day, there’s something untouched about pure Dominion which works on its own axis. And has never been duplicated.
It certainly survived Thunderstone, Trains, Arctic Scavengers, and Aeon’s End in my efforts to move on.
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I have some pride in urging you to play this when you said “I’m looking for X but I don’t want to go to the effort to try Caverna.” But I’m also sad to see Havre, Arle, and Nusfjord get left behind.
Ooo. Interesting thread. There is also the school that left-right binding gives structure to the game and allows you to build an actual strategy based on what is coming from upstream and what is needed downstream, while constant shifting eliminates the strategic layer from the game.
I think it depends. Puerto Rico requires left-right binding (with experienced players**********) and 7 Wonders would benefit from it. I do appreciate New Frontiers letting you get ahead of that person who would otherwise take your role bonus or snatch the biggest military world from you.
It all depends on what else the game is trying to do.
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Oranienburger Kanal is my candidate to be the Uwe-of-all-Uwe-games 
The spatial puzzle is there and so is the resource conversion wheel and the use of buildings.
I have only played the 2 player iteration of Caverna which is a little too tiny to slay other Uwe games. It just lacks the … weight.
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What do you mean with “opaque” concerning decisions? Opaque to other players? Opaque because you have to play on instinct? Opaque because you have to react more than you plan?
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Here are my killers:
- Nations killed Through The Ages. Though it’s harder to grok how to play, better once you do. And figuring out Nations opened up a whole genre of circular engines to me, including Polis, Pipeline, Key Market, and maybe Carnegie - I love the model where the engine eats itself and you have to find a way to keep it turning without implosion.
- Splendor Duel killed Splendor. Duel is quite good. Otherwise this is an unremarkable feat, as it’s hard to think of a game I avoid more actively than Splendor.
- Isle of Skye killed Castles of Mad King Ludwig and Suburbia. I think I’ve explained elsewhere why these games are on an axis, though they aren’t usually compared.
- Libertalia: WoG killed Glass Road, Citadels, and Libertalia 1e (I’m considering second editions where I had the 1e and it was worth the effort to buy/sell and shuffle the library). Mission: Red Planet is still here though one day maybe one will reign supreme. Frankly, Citadels is still here because the box is small and the market is nonexistant. So I guess it’s on hospice.
- Neom killed 7 Wonders. Key Flow is in the mail and it will get a chance to kick the carcass of 7 Wonders, too. I’d rather play Sushi Go Party as well… contrasted to Tichu and Star Realms which find this perfect balance, I think 7 Wonders is in the Valley of Death where it’s not light enough (Sushi) to be breezy and fun but not concrete enough (Neom, Key Flow) to take ahold of the game. It feels like a roll & write to me where you pick & hope, everything is contingent on what comes next but you have little control or knowledge about what will come. Unless you memorize the deck and study the table, which aren’t “fun” for me.
- Burgle Bros killed Pandemic. And opened up the genre to me (along with Spirit Island).
- Silver killed Cabo. But others I play with still like Cabo, plus Cabo can be played with a 52-card deck, so it’s ghost I guess lingers at my house.
- Mountain Goats finally killed Sequoia
- Indonesia may kill 18xx. It’ll take some time to play this genre enough for me to make that final. I have 1889 and 1846 and both have become question marks.
Let’s see…
- Istanbul and Ethnos ganged up on Blue Moon City and it’s gone. (except no one will buy it…)
- GwT 2e was worth buying even though I had 1e.
- Jaws got lynched by Whitehall Mystery, Mind MGMT, Nuns on the Run, Hunt for the Ring.
- I bought Diamant though I already had Incan Gold. The top down view is much more intuitive for the kiddos and the hazards don’t include a rotting corpse monster that made them not want to play. Solid replacement.
- Memoir 44 not sure…Battlelore and Ancients are clearly the better design. But the wealth of scenarios and simplicity of Memoir 44 keep it around.
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Thats correct
I remember seeing “Sushi Go Party replaces XYZ” takes.
How many games does Nusfjord kill just by being the one you should play instead?
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That raises this “deadlock” category where two similar games have complementary strengths and weaknesses and there’s no clear answer on who should die.
Nusfjord butts up against:
- Agricola, with the cardplay and “must do a bit of everything” mechanics, but in the end it’s too balanced and polished to capture Agricola’s combos, excitement, and engine.
- Lowlands, with the wp-lite angle. But the have very different axes of player interaction and neither is really better.
- Ah, Viticulture. Yes, Nusfjord completely kills Viticulture. V:Buildings = N:Elders, V:Visitors = N:A&B Cards, V:Orders = N:C Cards, V:Grapes & Wine = N:Boats & Fish. Viticulture, with it’s theme and imbalance, does manage to be more exciting and can hold its own for a few sessions, but Nusfjord only gets stronger over time while Viticulture needs to be forgotten before it can be enjoyed again.
- Hallertau? Maybe. I’m deep enough in the genre that these two don’t compete, but from someone who just wants one or two of this type I can see this being a thing.
- London 2e - this is my personal cognitive web. Both are highly balanced, mathematical engine builders with a similar level of interaction. I can see one day choosing just one of these for my cerebral, puzzle box, incremental value, no wild combos but subtle synergy engine building.
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