What have you recommended this season?

Boardgames
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How many of you are „bombarded“ by questions like „Hey I need a present for 20-30 euro for XYZ, can you give me a few ideas?“ in December? Working in a game store surely makes @Marx top of this list but I am sure quite a few of us are the game recommenders in their circles…

So what games have you all recommended this season?

Just curious …

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So, the first one this year was a friend asking for the son of other friends.
I recommended 3 games based on cheap online offers for 20€ (because that was the budget)

  • Brazil Imperial
  • Atiwa
  • Ora et Labora
    Kid needs some big games :slight_smile: and I happen to know he likes Rosenberg games like Arler Erde.

Next up was „Hey I am invited to a bday party tomorrow and I have no budget because I am a student btw they like Machi Koro“

  • Space Base (might not be available)
  • Cascadia (which was bought)
  • Harmonies
  • Just One,
  • So Kleever
  • That‘s Not A Hat Popculture
  • Mischwald
  • Die Crew 1+ 2
  • The Gang

Next was a colleague who loves Cascadia and I just told her to go buy Harmonies.

And then my cousin looking for games for my other cousin :wink: Cousin loves Spirit Island and Leaving Earth. But budget is limited and player number is most likely 2 people:

  • Harmonies (before I knew who it was for)
  • Sky Team
  • Lord of the Rings Duel
  • Res Arcana Duel or straight Res Arcana
  • Beacon Patrol
  • Pink Dorf

I always offer that they could send me an image of whatever store they end up in. I am also one bday present shy for my Spirit Island playing friend… :slight_smile:

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Customer: “So, what are your favourite games right now?”
Me: “You know that thing where you drink a lot of coffee? I mean, a LOT a lot of coffee, and you never want to drink another Tim Hortons or Starbucks ever again because they’re just too boring and you start drinking coffee that was pooped out of a cat? Yeah, that’s me with board games. The kinds of games I really love are the super weird ones that I don’t recommend to anyone. So instead, tell me a few games you really like, and I’ll give you some other games that you’ll probably enjoy!”

Games I WOULD recommend, if we could get more in stock:

  1. Sky Team. Spiel winner, funny, co-op, 2-player only, funny, stressful, and gosh is it ever funny. I’m realizing in recent years how hard “funny” is to nail as a game… Sky Team does it with style.
  2. Dorfromantik As above, but last year’s Spiel winner, and a lot more laid back and less funny. Just a calm, peaceful, beautiful way to spend a few hours.
  3. Carcassonne There are very few games I think everyone should own a copy of (at some point, at least). This is one of the two. Good across the entire player count, and strategies that allow you to either be laid back or very aggressive or anywhere in between. Not a perfect game, no such thing exists, but gosh its good.
  4. Sea Salt & Paper Just a neat little ladder-climbing game (I think that’s the term… games like Gin Rummy) with great artwork that works a treat with 2 and is okay with more.
  5. El Dorado There is no such thing as a bad deck-builder. If you like the genre, the worst deck-builder of all time (Dominion) is still pretty dang good. But it’s expensive, and ugly, and there are just cleaner, brighter, prettier versions of that available (or would be available if we weren’t enormously sold out). El Dorado, Clank!, or Star Realms are all good, but El Dorado is more variable in its length (make the map shorter for a shorter game, longer for a longer game) and cheaper with some really clever mechanics.

Games I recommend that ARE in stock:

  1. HEAT Just a great racing game. I really like Flamme Rouge (which is sold out) for smaller groups (specifically 2 or 3 players), but HEAT with 5-6 is spectacular. I admit I love racing games, so keep that in mind, but gosh it’s good.
  2. Dorfromantik Sakura Have I played it? No. But it seems to be a very thin coat of paint and a few new mechanics over a solid base, so I don’t hesitate to recommend it to the people I would usually recommend vanilla Dorf to.
  3. RA… gods, Ra is so good. It was always good, but it used to be good and ugly, and now it is good and beautiful. Great game. Only downside is if you don’t like auction games, I doubt it will change your mind. But otherwise, yeah, top-tier game.
  4. The Holy Trinity of Splendor, Sagrada, and Azul. Most of the customers that come into the store are looking for what they call “a new game,” but what they mean is “We have played Sequence and Catan for decades, and we want something different.” Not “new,” just new-to-them. And these three are my go-to recommendations. Splendor is lighter and faster, Sagrada is more strategic, and Azul has more player interaction and meanness (I like Summer Pavilion a tiny bit more than the original, and those are both miles better than the too-fiddly Stained Glass and Queen’s Garden, neither of which are bad but I don’t think I’ll ever need to play either ever again). Good welter-weight games.
  5. The trilogy of “Shockingly Beautiful, Perfectly Okay” Games: Wingspan, Parks, and Everdell. Wingspan is, in my opinion, the weakest of the three; really hard to tell how you are doing, and almost no way to interact with other players. Parks and Everdell are both more elegant in their rules, but also more strategic, as pretty, and with way more player interaction without taking hours to play.

For kids?

  1. Rhino Hero is really good. “Just like Uno, if Uno was well designed and fun.”
  2. Outfoxed. “You ever play Clue? You ever wish it was good?”
  3. Rhino Hero Super Battle “A better game than Rhino Hero… but is it 3x better? Because it is 3x more expensive… so it’s good, but I wish it was a bit cheaper.”
  4. Animal Upon Animal, just a simple little stacking game, but well-designed and fun.
  5. Sushi Go bright, colourful, easy enough for a 6-year-old to grok, but clever enough that the better player will win more often, but not always.

Secret Santa/White Elephant/Office Gift Exchanges/Under $25CAD

  1. Kingdomino is quick, with enough strategy to keep the game interesting, but really gosh-darn fast. Plus, another Spiel winner. Solid choice.
  2. The Crew A fully co-op version of Euchre, with a gentle tutorial system and a slowly, gradually increasing difficulty curve. The sequel is a bit better, but only a bit.
  3. Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza A slightly worse version of Anomia, but still pretty dang good. Silly, fast, word-slapping game. One of my friends insists that his family wear oven mitts on one hand when they play.
  4. Anomia Is it $4 better than Taco Cat? Probably. It is really good, and silly, and loud, and just a great little game.
  5. Scout Gosh what a great small box game. Stupid story, but fantastic, clever shedding game that is among the best small-box games I’ve ever played.

Customer: “I’m looking for a card game.”
Me: “I don’t know what a card game is. Is poker a card game? It uses chips. Some people consider Monopoly a card game because it uses cards. Where’s the line? Do you just mean a small, simple game?”
Customer: “Yes!”
Me: “Okay! I recommend…”

  1. Cat in the Box Euchre, but with none of the cards having a suit. Instead, you declare the suit when you play the card… which creates opportunities to screw other players by making them declare a suit they’ve said they no longer have. Super smart, great components.
  2. No Thanks! So good, so simple, and it looks really boring, which I know sounds like a “bad thing,” but honestly a lot of people refuse to play games that look too fun because they think they’ll be complicated. Try not to collect cards, but if you have to collect cards that are in a run, but you only have a limited number of chips you can use to pass, but you take all the chips other players have used to pass when you take a card. Super good.
  3. Take 5/6 Nimmt I don’t know why the English title is badly translated, but whatever. Simultaneous play card game about trying not to play the 6th card in any of the 4 lines of cards. Quick, funny, sorta-strategic, doesn’t overstay its welcome.
  4. Wizard Fine, fine. I can only be a hipster about games for so long. Wizard is good. It’s Bet Euchre but with different numbers of cards every round and some weird wild cards. Real good.
  5. Bohnanza Yes, the expansions are racist. Yes, the artwork is awful. Yes, you should still get the base game if you’ve never played it before. Funny, fast, tonnes of player interaction.
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I wonder if boardgame recommends could be done based on favourite film scenes.

Ah you like Oceans 11 because they pull of this seemingly impossible task as a team: try Wilmots Warehouse

You like it when everything goes to pot in pulp fiction: try that’s not a hat. (Okay this is a bad one).

But this kind of recommendation where the emotional states are evoked rather than the mechanics.

I think though…it’s an impossible job really. Only a trained eye can see why Azul: Basic will appeal and Azul Queen will not (or vice versa) and it requires knowing a person very well.

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Well, of the 4 people I gave recs to recently in 3 cases I knew what to base my recommendation on. The one I don’t know is the „they like Machi Koro“ I had been talking to the gift giver about games for a bit and got the impression the giftee was among her group of gamers… as you can see I stick with classics and popular games except for the first but I know most about him :laughing:

I don’t find it too difficult giving recommendations and I may have sold a couple of games at FLGS to strangers :innocent:

edit: I would definitely always recommend base Azul first unless I have definitive clues that someone loves Hexes, AP-prone thinky games and intends to play with 2 people max… then maybe then I‘d rec Hex Azul

Sounds like a great idea but I know I could NOT match such scenes up with emotions in games like that. I would totally recommend Bad Company or Caper Europe or something to the Oceans fan.

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I like the reccs here. I’ll 2nd the Gang becuase, assuming ppl know their Poker, the Gang is intuitive to play. Even board gamers in oir club who are idiots at Poker had a good time due to the cooperative nature of it.

This makes it better than The Crew because I thought the Crew definitely needs more skill and not really what i consider a “family game”. Unless everyone plays trick takers, just like (checks notes) everyone in Germany, becuase they all know skat.

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Carcassonne, Wizard, 6 nimmt and Bohnanza are so common here, I cannot really recommend them. But yeah great mostly card games.

The budget is often very limited when people ask me. So a lot of the bigger ones can‘t make it on my list. El Dorado is a very good call that is not immediately on my radar and usually available here.

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I usually get asked about games for children under 10. I struggle, given my understanding 10 year old can play (and win) games such as Race for the Galaxy and 7 Wonders Duel.

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For kids under 10:

I lack the human capacity to throw a game. I can’t do it. If my 9-year-old nephew beats me, it is because he has earned that victory. As a result, the games I usually play with my nephlings are those where they can legit beat me, or where victory isn’t an individual goal:

Games I play with my younger family:

  • Rhino Hero (dexterity), Rhino Hero Super Battle (dexterity), Go Cuckoo (dexterity), Turbo Kidz (weird racing sorta-dexterity in teams), MonsDRAWsity (drawing/party), Illusion (colour/pattern recognition), Forbidden Island (co-op), Bunny Bunny Moose Moose (party), Escape Curse of the Temple (co-op), Team 3 (co-op-ish? Dexterity-ish?)

If you are a better person than I am and are able to play down to the level of whomever you are playing with, then I recommend almost any lighter Euro.

Games I recommend to people who are better people than I:

  • El Dorado, Carcassonne, Azul, Splendor, Kingdomino, Sushi Go, Ticket to Ride, The Crew…
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I have played Cascadia with 5 and 7 year olds.
Carcassonne is a favorite among most kids I know … even if they make their own rules.

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I am kind of the gaming hub of my friends, and the one most into gaming, so really no one ever asks my opinion on a game recommendation. So, none this season, or pretty much any season. :slight_smile:

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Yes. Poker is a card game.

Or money. And only for scoring; they’re not part of the game.

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I was being kind of silly with the film thing. I overheard someone recommend flip 7 if they liked blackjack and it made me think - why should a recommendation of a game require liking or knowing the intricacies of another game? This is surely prone to some flaw?

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For children:

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I’ve mostly made recommendations to non-gamers or light gamers looking for something easy. Point Salad has been the big winner of the small box card games, party games, and other lighter games Ive been suggesting.

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Is scoring not part of the game? Can you play without the chips/money and still have fundamentally the same game? Is the board in Candyland not also fundamentally just scoring (in this case how close you are to winning)? By that logic, isn’t Terraforming Mars a card game because the board is just for scoring as well?

The idea is to try and get the customers to realize that the designation of Card Game is quite arbitrary (as is “board game” or “not a card game,” both of which I get pretty frequently). Everyone thinks it’s obvious, but the best you can usually do is say “This one game I consider a card game, and other games like it.”

Is Scout a card game? The chips are just scoring, and the one token to show if you can still “Scout & Show” is just an aid. What about Skull? Doesn’t use cards, although it could if you wanted to play with cards (or packages of sugar, or napkins, or business cards…). Biblios? The dice are just to track the value of the cards, but the dice sit on a board… which is tiny… is it small enough that it still counts? Lost Cities has a board, Jaipur has tokens, Bandido uses the cards as a board, so does Saboteur…

Etc… etc…

I don’t think saying “card game” means anything unless you give specific qualifiers, and those qualifiers are usually the important information, not the percentage of the game that is “Card” versus “Not card.” Like, if you want a simple, elegant game you can mostly ignore and win or lose by luck almost exclusively, then Sequence, Crib, or Rummikub are what you’re looking for. But if you want something small and highly portable, than those three are not what you’re looking for.

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The chips are definitely part of the game - because the betting is the real game.

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Poker is an auction game where the cards are used as the final resolution mechanism (if needed).

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Every game is an auction game if you squint enough, Pillbox

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And every game is a push your luck game. And every non-solo game is a social deduction game. And…

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