Why is your favourite game, your favourite game?

Yes Talisman was one of our early favourites too and we started playing it at about the same time we started playing D&D - the red box “Basic” set when about 10 or 11.

There were “Good Games” around that time too: Scotland Yard and Survive (now called Escape from Atlantis) were 80s childhood favourites, plus I was already playing some of my Dad’s games from the 60s - Exploration I remember particularly fondly, plus Avalon Hill titles Gettysburg and Blitzkrieg.

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When people ask ‘what is your favourite game?’ I struggle as I have a top clutch that is my favourite depending on who I am with.

That said:

Brass: Lancashire is a fabulous interactive cutthroat design. The interaction usually results in net positive on both sides so it’s about edging the positives more towards you.

Codenames as I can teach this by just playing.

Carcassonne has a special place as it’s the great survivor from my first batch of games.

Ra is everything I want in an auction game (apart from the theme)

Quantum is a fantastic tight game. Doesn’t need anything adding or taking away.

Power Grid is my go to game for next steps and will play anytime.

El Grande, best with a full 5 but you don’t need any other area control game (unless you play with three).

I’ve just realised I’ve done a top 7 games in my collection

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I’ve enjoyed playing Onitama and in my teens played a great deal of Car Wars and Ogre, but I’m not sure I have a favourite boardgame. Tina loves them, but I struggle with the rules and competitive aspects. I think that’s why the open nature of RPGs attracted me so strongly.

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There are so many things on here that I’ve never played. I don’t know the Lovecraft stuff outside of gaming so thematically it doesn’t do much for me, but I can appreciate why games in that style are so well loved.

Aeon’s End sounds very interesting. Power Grid is something I fancy having a go at (although I bounced hard off Pipeline - I don’t think they’re too similar, but they’re linked in my head!). I really want to try Ra. We got Modern Art at Xmas and while I don’t think it’s a great game we always have a great time playing it.

I’ve got quite a lot of game that I want to play at 3,4 or 5 but circumstances mean it’s mainly my wife and I. I really like Age of Steam. Brass Birmingham seems like it should be great, but 5 plays in I’m still on the fence.

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I’ve been wanting to answer this since I saw the thread… love all your games and reasons for loving them :slight_smile:

There are certain aspects that are probably common to all games I really enjoy. So in order of importance these are what make my favorite games my favorites

  1. Puzzles/Combos: I can spend hours upon hours on a nice logical puzzle (Einstein puzzles are the
    best). And: never underestimate what years of playing MtG do to someone’s taste in games…
  2. Character/Tableau/Campaign development: even though I started “late” by now I’ve been a pen&paper roleplayer for 20+ years and anything that gives me that same feeling of change and advancement is great (also see next item)
  3. Unique player powers / asymmetry / multiple victory conditions: I like it when each player can choose a unique path to try and win, when everyone gets to have their own strategy or when there are alternate victory conditions (I know for most of you these things aren’t all going to be the same thing)
  4. Design/Material: a good game that also feels and looks good is a great game (1)
  5. Hex fields. As a forever Civilization (the computer game) player, hexes are like candy… and games where I can land-grab them are very tasty indeed.

My favorites have evolved over the years there is probably no “forever favorite” that I have. My boardgaming-as-a-hobby phase began with Terra Mystica some 10 years ago and so I have a lot of nostalgia for this game and it still hits a lot of the right buttons. I’d say in recent incarnations Root and Pax Pamir 2 scratch similar itches but I haven’t played either of the newer games enough to put them in fat print (yet).

Spirit Island is the master of combo and it has evolving player boards and unique powers and it’s just so yummy. Usually I buy expansions because I am a completionist, but in this case I am eagerly awaiting Jagged Earth because I’ve played the base game + 1 expansion so much I need new stuff!

Gloomhaven has it all. I got to it late last year around the same time after first watching SUSD reviews and the review actually helped along my buying decision. The big box and the fact it was #1 on BGG(2) made me avoid it for a long time. I don’t remember exactly what made me reconsider but I am glad I did. It also clicked with my partner for some of the same and some entirely different reasons and that is what makes it our most played game of the past 10 years!

The Crew it’s rather new but it has clicked with everyone around me and it’s got the puzzle aspect but distributed to everyone and also has this familiarity because I grew up with the German favorite trick taking game called “Skat” and it’s just that but backwards and coop and… what’s not to love. We’ve been playing this on TTS lately and I am just happy such an easy to learn game can have such depth that it can keep us occupied for so long. (3)

I could name more names and the actual games will change again… but these are the four want to name right now.

(1) you can argue with me that in my actual favorites this doesn’t seem to play a huge role, and your’re correct, none of these is famous for having the best artwork or luxurious materials. I know. What clicks is personal :wink:
(2) BBG’s top lists “merit” a discussion of their own
(3) I’ve noticed and it’s neither a surprise nor an accident that 3 out of 4 of my favorite games are coop games

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We love The Crew. It seems perfect for lockdown for some reason. It can get very tense. I like to ‘throw’ a hand on purpose early on to try to defuse people getting angry with each other for messing up. We’re stuck on a horrendous task at the moment.

Have the app of Terra Mystica but never played irl. I would love to try it, or Gaia Project.

Also, it sounds like you should try Aeon’s End. Aeon’s End: what is it like and why should I care?

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Is there an RPG which is your favourite? I know so little about any of the systems.

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I have the app :slight_smile: I’ve been thinking about buying one of the games. When any of the games become available at one of my game-buying-destinations I’ll be sure to consider it.

That’s like a truckload of cans of worms you’re trying to open up here :wink: Also, not only that but it’s possibly a truckload of the types of worms that throw grenades at each other…

PS: forcing myself not to launch immediately into a loooong post about all my favorite RPGs

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Why bother to resist? :wink:

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A great place to do so!

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Ah, so many! But on a typical day I should probably say that it’s this one:

Forgotten_Futures,_role-playing_game

Simple rules, imaginative settings and a seemingly inexhaustible wealth of fiction and articles, free to access on the Internet. We keep returning to it and somehow it never disappoints.

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I love Quantum. It’s in my top 10 and is one of my most-played games.

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War Chest is my #1 for some pretty simple reasons. It plays two and four, my preferred counts. It plays in 30-60, which is a perfect length for weeknight one-offs and a weekend best of 3. Games are immediately tense and never let up; Unless you’re really not paying attention, it’s always a close game.

Less generically, the individual mechanics are heavily interwoven making for a wide and satisfying decision space. You get the satisfaction and strategic appeal of bag building, and your chips represent not only your military strength on the board, but your action pool as well. I love multi-use components and the turn-by-turn challenges they present as you agonize over what you’re willing to lose in order to do what you want.

Units are varied and plentiful (especially with Nobility included), and interact with one another in countless interesting ways, making for a ton of army configurations to explore and exploit. With familiarity, things get spicy as players draft units as much for themselves as to deny their opponent a particularly nasty unit combination. Where the bag handles strategy, the board is all about tactics, and if you’ve been mindful of the former, you’ll be able to pull off some really nasty (and often sneaky) tricks on the latter.

Critically, the bags keep information from ever being perfect, and add a slight “luck of the draw” element. You always know what you’ll be capable of, but not always when. This eliminates the usual “problem” with chess and other chess-likes, where the skill wall hits and an otherworldly level of practice and memorization is required to play at a higher level. You can play well, but you can never play perfect. It’s perfect.

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I need to try this one. I kind of regret not grabbing it when my FLGS was clearing out a bunch of copies awhile back.

It’s interesting they had enough copies to need to clear out! It got pretty good buzz at and around release, but it’s not like it set the world on fire—it is an abstract strategy game, after all. I know my local shop always keeps one copy in stock along with The Duke and they seem to sell slowly but consistently.

In any event, I strongly recommend hunting down a copy if you can find a good price. Plenty to chew on in the base game too, by the way. Mentioning the expansion earlier wasn’t intended to imply it was needed for unit variety.

I also failed to mention one of its other strong points: it is first and foremost an area control game! Very rarely do games grind down to battles of attrition, and when they do it’s usually because of some hotly contested point neither of us could quit on. Every game has dramatic moments and turning points.

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They’re a more typical FLGS; as in they make most of their cash of of MtG and Comics. I don’t think they move a large quantity of games, and they just likely needed the space.

Maybe they brought in a number of copies due to early interest, and it never planned out for them? Unfortunately, they also sell it MSRP, which doesn’t help.

Anyways, I’ll keep my eyes open for a copy.

I have a top 2 that I can’t really choose between, Burano and Indonesia. Maybe it’s because I like games named after places in the real world :man_shrugging:t3:

Burano is very euro and very Feldian. Some of what I really like about this efficiency is how each turn throws up a new state to be navigated. It’s really tactical turn to turn and the strategies aren’t specialisations. The game is deep with a high skill ceiling. The market of special abilities are impressively balanced and are quite smart about skewing players incentives while having a cost in tempo to acquire them. On top of all that it’s action selection mechanism around the wooden cubes is novel, fun, tactile and really well integrated in to the game and it’s setting.

Indonesia is a brutal game. The opacity of the game is a delight. Everything you do sends a ripple through the game state and all future actions of all players. The merger mechanic is phenomenal and the generosity of development for all players keeps everything evolving. Not without it’s flaws, the laborious operating round for one, the positives utterly out weigh them for me and I’d love to play this more often.

I think opacity and changing game states are the common thread to both those games. May well explain my interest in 18xx games :thinking:

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That’s a tough question! 7 Wonders Duel often finds its way to the table, so it would have to be in there. It’s a very satisfying game when you and can be infuriating if you lose. But when either me or my girlfriend loses we want to play again straight away.

Flash Point would be top for co-op games. The mechanics work so well with the theme and it’s genuinely gripping at times. I do like pandemic, but the theme can get lost behind the puzzle of swapping cards, and moving from space to space.

Out of a new batch of games I’ve bought recently, I’d have to put Taverns of Tiefenthal up there at the moment, it’s getting a lot of play time. I wasn’t sure based on the SUSD review, but I’m glad I took a punt on it. I love the theme, the combination of deck building and dice drafting is great, and you often see some great plays that leave you either smug with your own move or impressed with the other player. It doesn’t have the head-to-head competitiveness of something like 7 Wonders Duel which makes it less cutthroat in the way it plays.

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Roll for the Galaxy has my heart. I adore it so. :blush: The tableau building, the different starting planets, the gambling on phase selection, the build your own dice Orb.

I love nearly everything about it… except the trading and shipping strategy. That is SO boring and sometimes you’re railroaded into it. I hate it when it’s clear you have to rinse and repeat the same actions without any risk for the rest of the game to be competitive. I would ignore it and do something else, but it’s one of two ways to score any points so that’s not really an option. But I tolerate having to do that excessively in maybe 1 in 5 games for the rest of everything I love.

Brass is definitely top 3 too. It’s tight, intuitive, has a simple but effective market economy. It works together really smoothly. Maybe Great Western Trail or Dogs of War in there too

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Birmingham or Lancashire? Not played the latter. I like BB after 5 plays, but don’t love it.

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