They need to expand the bankruptcy rules for me. When my business has no way to make any money for the rest of the game, why do I still have to sit at the table?!?!?
Basically anything engine-building, I start off all right, miss a key step in about round 2 or 3, then I’m an ever-increasing number of steps behind everyone else…
(Apparently this makes me a good game demo person.)
On the other hand, I, apparently, just assume that every game is an “engine-building game”. This leads to embarrassing defeats in games that are actually races. Istanbul being a key game that I absolutely fail at. No, pillbox, the point is not to upgrade your cart! Unsurprisingly, I do the same thing when playing Yokohama.
Even, to some degree, my performance thus far in our PBF of Roads & Boats has shown my tendency to focus on improving my infrastructure is not reigned in – couple that with my under-developed sense of competitiveness, these are just games I don’t do well at.
So, having only 1 gem at the end of a game of Istanbul may be my most embarrassing showing?
Food Chain Magnate broke me. It is the only game I have quit before the end. It was my first (and only play). I could tell that I would lose horribly but would have to sit through another 90-120 minutes of misery. [Misery not because I was losing but the because it would be a painful, mechanical exercise in futility.]
I love the challenge of it. I definitely think being able to back out should be in the game to stop those situations though. If a restaurants pushes its competitors out of business, the restaurants die and changes the market competition. The successful restaurant doesn’t tell the failing restaurant they have to stay open or it might change the market!
My first solo runthroughs of the few Euros I own have been pretty dismal, but did keep me interested enough to persevere to reasonable success, often with the help of a gameplay video or two. In particular my first attempt at Terraforming Mars was abjectly disasterous.
I took some tremendous beatings in some of our teenage gaming sessions of Statis Pro Football: a game where, without most of the luck and cards going your way, a team has little chance against a much stronger opponent. Never stopped us all playing though, in mini leagues and one-off matches, and lead to some unbelievable victories along the way.
This topic equally could apply to pathetic failures for RPG sessions too: one planned multi-session low-level adventure in AD&D I ran had to be restarted almost immediately after it began, when the thief and barbarian in the party decided to try and swindle some tavern farmhands out of some money over a game of cards and got killed in a bar brawl.
Race for the Galaxy, nearly every single time I have played it (3 or 4 times). I am lucky if I get into middle teens scores, while people I am playing with combo into high twenties and thirties.
I’m still not very sure about what cards are good, what strategies to follow, pretty lost.
Oh, and my only game of That’s Pretty Clever, I was low to mid 20s and nearly everybody else way past 50 some into 70s and 90s… I think it is a kind of game that will take me a few plays to see what is a good decision, and how to combine them.
I think I have said this on the old forums, but I did once get negative points at Ticket to Ride.* Have never been allowed to forget that one.
*Those who have had the pleasure of playing me at Twilight Struggle or on BGA will of course have no problem imagining me actually doing this, I am sure.
Galaxy Trucker rather lends itself to spectacular failures, but there’s generally not much to show for it - in this picture, I’ve already lost, but the computer players are still going! (They didn’t make it through the next 6 adventures, though) I think Explosives were in play that round…
There was also a game of 6Nimmt! in which I won with 11 or 12 points, which was a spectacular failure for all 5 of my opponents!
And there was one game of Carcassonne on BGA where I randomly got one of those players, who instead of trying to build anything, just counted tiles and made sure that it was completely impossible for me to do finish anything, and they could then play by themselves. Was too pissed to pay attention to the scores on that one.