Topic of the Week: Your Worst Game

[Marx]

So the worst game I still own is Risk, no question. But that’s only because I found out I have a copy and I haven’t bothered to toss it in the trash yet. Having discovered it in a corner somewhere, it’s destined for the bin.

Newspeak is the lowest rated game I own aside from Risk, but I haven’t played it yet. The few reviews on BGG seem positive, but it’s probably KS-promo-stuff. I’ll give it a shot.

Robotech Force of Arms… well, I love Macross/Robotech, but yeah, this one should probably be culled.

The game I hate that seems to be loved the most would be Twilight Struggle, and I get it. Great game for people who are not me. I’m just not patient/thoughtful enough to be good at it, and I find the pacing too slow to be enjoyable if I’m losing (which I am). Plus the theme is too grim for somebody who’s family was from South America and fled the USA’s early wave of Imperialist efforts.

[COMaestro]

Worst game that I am keeping is probably Munchkin Cthulhu and/or Star Munchkin. I mean, they are the same game, but I think the cultist mechanism is kind of silly, and we have a custom level up card for Star Munchkin that we used to announce that my wife was pregnant, so that’s why they stay. Still have a number of other sets, but they are on the sell pile.

Also on the sell pile is Zombies!!!, a roll and move where you discover new tiles of a city, revealing zombies and items as you try to get to the bottom of the deck where the helicopter resides so you can escape. Takes too long for what it is.

Another keeper that is probably a contender for worst game is Quest for the Magic Ring, another roll and move, based on Lord of the Rings. We played it in my high school gaming club and somehow it always felt epic. Got it as a gift years ago and it has never been played.

Last contender would be Batman: Gotham City Stories. It is not necessarily a “bad” game, but it is two really large boxes containing (to be fair, pretty cool) minis, an overly complex set of rules, some unclear maps (as you need to refer to the back of the scenario book for the height levels), and scenarios that are so…I don’t know whether to call them imbalanced or tightly balanced, that if the players make a wrong choice in heroes or gear they have virtually no chance of winning against the villain player. I am really glad I did not go all-in on this KS, as that would have been two more big boxes of minis and scenarios with the same problems. I keep it because I feel there is a decent enough game inside, if I can find people willing to put the time and energy into learning it and replaying the scenarios enough to optimize them. That or find new scenarios that aren’t so delicately balanced.

[RogerBW]

I remember Zombies!!!. One of the problems was that with the expansions it got even longer, and even without them it felt very luck-based.

Death over the Kingdom looks utterly gorgeous (which was why I picked it up at Essen), but as a game it’s a bit basic. Might give that another go.

Not my picture:

[malkav11]

I don’t think Zombicide is a particularly great game (any of them, probably, but I only played the first edition w/ expansion stuff) but it was certainly head and shoulders over stuff like Zombies!! and Last Night on Earth for me. Ugh.

Of course, I’m not obsessed with zombie fiction the way some folks seem to be, so I kind of want more than just “this has zombies in”.

[Acacia]

If we go by Geek Rating, it’s The Hobbit Lego Game: There and Back Again. Someone decided it would be fun to meld memory matching with roll and move. Like, you have to roll and move to a tile before you can check it and try to match it.

I’ve kept it because I like:

• Legos
• Hobbits
• My Sister, who gifted it to me

And wondered if one day kids would play it. With my 3yo already exploring Carcassonne, I think it’s time has come.

With that gone, it bumps us up into party game territory: Charty Party (which we adore) takes the lowest rating crown joined by Taboo a bit up.

Then we have kids fare (Gubs), nostalgia (Axis & Allies, Nuns on the Run), “just want to play it once” (Unstable Unicorns, Mascarade), and “rated badly because you all didn’t take the time to grok it” (Tindahan, Trick of the Rails)

That’s BGG. The ones I have but kind of groan if someone asks to play:
Pandemic: Co-ops never hit for me until Burgle Bros and Spirit Island. I don’t like the feel of a system arbitrarily pooping on you. But I still have hopes that one day I and someone else will sit down and play a series of games, solve the puzzle, and experience that magic that others have talked about.

Parks and Space Base: Other people like these. I like playing. I’d rather play these with someone who wants to play them than play nothing at all. Parks is pretty, too, and I may have just had some bad sessions (though I’d rather play Architects or Waterdeep in this category). Space Base they say the expansions make a better card pool. Worth the effort?

Games I disrespect as games:

Monikers: I don’t like the cards. I think we can do better with pen and paper. Why do I keep it? In case someone else finds the cards, and their descriptions, more accessible? Maybe.

Viscounts of the West Kingdom: I’m really just mad at the manual. And this is similar but worse to Great Western Trail. But it looks neat and I need the complete trilogy on my shelf. If Paladins ever goes, this goes with it. Also I low down like it even as I note its inferiority. I want to play it right now.

Lord of the Rings: I’ve heard this is the first co-op, another Knizia innovation. This is a terrible game. But an evocative experience. It makes me feel like I’m in the books, so it stays for that purpose.

Whitehall Mystery: I despise Jack the Ripper and everyone’s obsession with the awful things around that. But it’s good mechanically. We make up a crime if we play - we’re robbing all the muffins from three bakeries before skipping town. Please, no more Cthulhu, no more Jack the Ripper. Is that too much to ask?

Button Shy: Liberation, Seasons of Rice, Food Chain Island, Spaceshipped… just they take up no space and have no market value, so there’s no reason to keep or cull. Here they are.

(and for some reason Viscounts just got bumped back to the top of my solo list…)

[pillbox]

The game in my collection with the worst BGG rating is Candy Land, but let’s just say that actually belongs to my kids.

After that, it’s The Hiawathas, an 18xx game where you draw the track. It has 5 BGG ratings: 2, 2, 3, 4, 6. It came as part of the first edition of TraXX Mainline Magazine – a project I backed once and will never do so again (for a couple of reasons)

Honorable Mention to Friends Wheel of Mayhem Game, a game that my partner got because she loves the show Friends. We tried to play it once but the actual game doesn’t actually work. There’s a poorly planned rubberbanding mechanism that, more often than not, just resets your progress – we gave up after 45 minutes

---

The lowest ranked game in my collection, excluding Candy Land, Game of Life, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Battleship, Guess Who?, and Mad Gab, is Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot – a game that my partner has owned and loved for longer than I’ve known her. Playing it is (slightly) better than staring at a blank wall in a dark room – but then I went and made things worse by buying her expansions for it. We have 10 of them, which was a complete set at the time. Playing with all of the expansions combined can be itneresting, but it also makes it a longer setup, a more complicated experience, and much, much longer in playtime.

Okay, but that game belongs to my partner. What about from my collection? I think, then, it would be We Didn’t Playtest This At All a game I received as a gift before I was actually in the hobby. I recall playing it; it was random nonsense, but it was more fun than Cards Against Humanity, which was the predominant sit-down-around-a-table activity at the time with a few of my friend groups. Basically Fluxx, but worse and less structured.

Okay, but what about the lowest rank game that I bought for myself? GPS! One of the small-square box games from Allplay (known as BoardGameTables.com at the time). I pledge for it as part of their Kickstarter campaign for the set of 3 small boxes. I haven’t played any of them at this point and GPS really got ragged on and, not that Mountain Goats and Sequoia are mind-altering, but was definitely the least popular of the trio.

[pillbox]

@Acacia

Viscounts of the West Kingdom

Viscounts is my favorite of the West Kingdom to solo (well, probably; I never actually bothered soloing Architects… for… reasons). Paladins was the one that left me cold.

@Acacia

we’re robbing all the muffins from three bakeries before skipping town.

Let’s get started on the print-and-play files, because that seems a promising retheme.

[Acacia]

Reading about all these kickstarters is giving me a “The Producers” vibe.

Why don’t we run a massive kickstarter, go out of business, and run with the money?

[pillbox]

@Acacia

Why don’t we run a massive kickstarter, go out of business, and run with the money?

Because of all these damned scruples.

[gmwhite999]

@malkav11

I don’t think Zombicide is a particularly great game (any of them, probably, but I only played the first edition w/ expansion stuff) but it was certainly head and shoulders over stuff like Zombies!! and Last Night on Earth for me. Ugh.

Previewing my thoughts before the inevitable zombie game discussion, Last Night on Earth works far better for me than Zombicide, even with its “roll-and-move” problem, and is very easy to solo as being a zombie player really doesn’t take brains.

[Acacia]

@mistercrayon

I don’t think I dislike space base

It’s an odd duck. I’ve had fabulous games and mundane games. I think a) it takes about an hour but only has 30-40 minutes of fun. Lightspeed variant may solve this?

And Space-biff nailed my thoughts exactly. Really neat game but not enough variety in the card pool (plus no way to shift a stagnant market) which leads to same-y games which are just big money engines.

My best games have the crazy cards where you are swapping ship slots, shifting numbers, activating powers, etc. Those only materialize 40% of the time?

Hence the wondering if the expansion card pools make it into the game we want it to be.

[RogerBW]

@pillbox

Because of all these damned scruples.

I’ll keep hold of those for you, for only a modest management fee.

[malkav11]

I know some folks here like Flying Frog’s style but I really don’t. Have not enjoyed any of their games. I am only even lightly tempted by Shadows of Brimstone and that game’s immense sprawl, expense and mini assembly vastly exceeds my level of interest. And coop > one vs many for me every time.

Of course really I would rather play something like Dawn of the Zeds or, jury still out, Carnival Zombie 2nd edition.

[Simfers]

I own Killer Bunnies and the ten expansions you mentioned. I’d managed to forget it. It’s actually the first non-classic board game I ever bought, before I got into the hobby and met Maryse, who has never played it (she speaks no English and the game is in English and at least 95% of its appeal is the pop-culture references and puns).

With some friends, we once played with all ten expansions, years and years ago. ONCE. It took 6 hours. Never ever again.

[yashima]

I like Space Base just fine.
because anyone can grok it and it has far better variety and less exploits than Machi Koro. and you have a basic engine to start with that covers all the slots.

It‘s a game I pull out when I just really want to play a game and the other side are not gamers. They are enjoying themselves and I get to try and build a fun engine. The pool is a bit samey. The expansions make this a little better. There is some fun stuff in there. And yes the real fun happens when you get to the big level 3 cards. With 2 people the lightning variant is really helpful in speeding up the proceedings.

My partner likes dice (as mentioned in this thread) and he enjoys the simplicity of the game. And it is one I can always convince him to play. And for that I enjoy it. I don‘t mind it. It is still far beyond the likes of games the non-gamers in the family would normally play.

I will not pull out Space Base when the others at the table can play Terraforming Mars as well.

[Brattyjedi]

The game I own with the lowest Geek rating on BGG is Oregon Trail the Card Game. It was a present. It’s a pure dumb luck card game. It has player elimination so someone could be out and just watching for awhile. At least it’s co-op so everyone technically wins or loses together, even if eliminated, not one person getting very lucky or unlucky.

I own multiple versions of Munchkin, some of which have never been played. I went through a phase where I kind of liked it and I’m a sucker for the bad wordplay of the cards. I don’t 100% hate it even now but haven’t played in years and am unlikely to pull it out.

I also own multiple copies of Monopoly. Some of these are themed ones that others got me as presents because they knew I liked the theme and games (e. g. Star Wars and Indiana Jones). A lot of my copies are regular versions that I’ve used teaching (there’s a US History lesson plan around “Stratified Monopoly” to talk about baked in inequality from centuries of racism, sexism, etc. and the importance of inherited wealth).

I own way too many social deduction games. Took me too long into the hobby to figure out that I wasn’t having trouble finding the right social deduction game for me but that social deduction was a mechanic that I just don’t like as the focus of a game (frequently love it when it’s with something else).