The Opinionated Gamers often have long and winding conversations. This one started with Stefan Feld’s Civolution, about which different OG members are variously excited or horrified. Civolution definitely seems to be a love it or hate it sort of concept from what I can tell.
After lots of back and forth about the virtues or terrors of Civolution, including questions as to whether Dale would ever agree to sit for such a long game, someone made the point that the worst kind of 2+ hour game is a multiplayer solitaire game with drafting in which no one cares what anyone else is doing, but you cannot plan ahead because the actions you can draft will change before your turn comes around. Another person suggested this sounded a lot like a description of Ark Nova, so a lengthy discussion of Ark Nova ensued.
This eventually morphed into a discussion of drafting, in which Larry and Patrick declared that drafting is essential to use in Terraforming Mars. Melissa and Fraser jumped in to share “The Melissa and Fraser School of Two-Player Terraforming Mars” — which involves always using Prelude, Colonies, and various maps, but never drafting (and only using Venus or Turmoil if they are planning a long game). From this point, many people jumped in to share their preferred recipe for mixing and matching expansions when they play Terraforming Mars… and we were off to the races.
As someone with lots of opinions about the best ways to expand Terraforming Mars (see Expanding Mars: A Guided Tour of the Red Planet and Beyond), I decided to create a handy-dandy chart to capture everyone’s preferences, and we put together this post to share a collective quasi-review of the many ways to experience Terraforming Mars. So how do you terraform?
Half Truth: Second Guess is a stand-alone sequel to their 2020 board game, Half Truth. Each question has six answers — and half of them are wrong! Team up with other trivia enthusiasts and discover the Half Truth of the question. What makes Half Truth special as a trivia game is you don’t need to find every correct answer; you can give 1 to 3 answers. The more you guess, the more points you earn — but giving ANY incorrect answer earns you zero points for the question. Second Guess introduces team play, allowing for up to 12 players. It is a stand alone product, but can be combined with the base Half Truth game for more questions.
Played newest version with review copy provided by publisher; probably 50+ total plays with all versions since 2003
You have 10 Days in the USA. Travel the country by jet, car, and on foot. Plan your trip from start to finish using destination and transportation tiles. With a little luck and clever planning, you just might outwit your fellow travelers.
This is the first installment in the 10 Days in series. There are 50 state tiles, 10 colored airplane tiles, and 6 car tiles. Players all flip tiles one at a time, examine them, and put them in the 10 “days” of their tile tray, in any order. Then in turn, they draw a tile from one of three face-up piles or a face-down pile. The new tile may replace one tile in their tray, with that tile (or the unused drawn tile) discarded onto any of the face-up piles. Alternatively, players may swap any two tiles in their tray. When a player has all their days connected correctly, they win the game.
The winners of the Meeples Choice Awards for the 2023 calendar year have been announced. The voters’ four favorite games from last year are:
NUCLEUM
EARTH
SKY TEAM
THE WHITE CASTLE
The award is set up to honor the top three games in the voting, but this year, for the first time, there was a tie. The other games to finish in the top 10 were Darwin’s Journey, Forest Shuffle, Faraway, Age of Innovation, Great Western Trail: New Zealand, Apiary, and Hooky.
Congratulations to the designers of the winning games: Simone Luciani and David Turczi, Maxime Tardif, Luc Remond, and Israel Cendrero and Sheila Santos (aka Isra C. and Shei S.). The fact that they hail from so many different countries (Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Canada, France, and Spain) has pretty much become the norm. Santos becomes the fourth woman to design an MCA winning game. Congratulations go as well to the games’ publishers: Board&Dice, Inside Up Games, Scorpion Masque, and Devir.
Spiel des Jahres Week at The Opinionated Gamers ends today with our final ranking of the 45 games that have ever won the most impactful award in board gaming. 24 members of the OG voted with each person picking their 3 favorite games, 3 least favorite games, and any number of other SDJ winners that they enjoyed and would like to play again in the future. You’ve heard about our favorites and least favorites this week, but for the finale we developed a scoring system to rank all 45 games.
We awarded 3 points for each favorite game, plus 1 point for each game that was enjoyed, and minus 1 point for each least favorite vote. We broke ties based on how many people had played the game and did not want to play it again (which is short-handed below as a “meh” vote) and further ties based on how many people had tried the game. This resulted in one clear winner, only one game receiving a negative score, and our collective ranking of the SDJ awardees to date as we prepare ourselves to find out in the coming weeks which game will be crowned as the 46th recipient of the Spiel des Jahres.
Spiel des Jahres Week at The Opinionated Gamers takes a detour on this penultimate day of the week to explore and rank the 13 winners of the Kennerspiel des Jahres. The Kennerspiel debuted in 2011 to honor Antoine Bauza and 7 Wonders as the new “connoisseur” or “expert” game of the year. This formalized an occasional practice of honoring more complicated games, like the Special Award for “Complex Game” for Caylus (2005) and Agricola (2008). The Spiel des Jahres jury has indicated that the Kennerspiel award honors games that present more of a challenge and that are meant for a more experienced audience. 22 members of the Opinionated Gamers voted to select our favorite KdJ winner, our least favorite KdJ winner, and any other KdJ winners that we enjoyed and would like to play again.
Most Loved
The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine
Runners Up:
Quacks of Quedlinburg
Istanbul
7 Wonders
The Crew from 2019 emerged victorious in a tight race with 4 votes as the most beloved Kennerspiel winner, followed closely by 3 votes for each of Quacks of Quedlinburg, Istanbul, and 7 Wonders. Challengers netted 2 votes as the best KdJ game, followed by a single vote for each of Exit, Isle of Skye, Legends of Andor, and Village. There were zero votes for Broom Service, Living Forest, Wingspan, or Paleo.
Talia Rosen: Given how much my fellow Opinionated Gamers seem to talk about trick-taking (and climbing) card games, I’m not surprised to see The Crew emerge victorious. And I do love playing The Crew repeatedly with a good group, although I’d always rather play Karl Heinz-Schmiel’s brilliant Was Sticht or Stefan Dorra’s criminally-underrated Njet. That being said, a cooperative trick-taking game is an unsurprising breakout star and an entirely reasonable game to crown as the collective OG favorite among the 13 Kennerspiel winners. Personally, I voted for Village (although I strongly considered voting for Living Forest or Wingspan). I think the worker aging mechanism in Village is very clever and ahead of its time, and I just have a soft spot for Inka and Markus Brand designs (especially the phenomenal La Boca).
James Nathan: One of the trick-taking crew here. Just chiming in to say that I did not vote for The Crew as my most loved – though certainly one I’d happily play anytime. Also, if given the option to vote for Agricola as one of the proto-KdJ winners – I would have! I adore that game. I did, though, vote for Legends of Andor. I think my reputation for playing quirky, lighter, indie card games might not cause you to think I’d be the Andor guy, but I’m an evangelist for this game. For me, it’s at such a sweet spot of mixing logistics puzzle, monster fighting, and whimsy. I cannot imagine the last time I owned another “roll dice and fight monsters” game, but I also think that’s just a veneer here. To overview, Legends of Andor is a cooperative game based on scenarios. Your cohort generally has around 14 turns to beat the current setup, with each round being a letter of the alphabet (beginning on A and ending on N). Certain events are seeded at different letters; when the timer gets to E, reveal this card, and when it gets to H, reveal this here other card. Maybe that E card is 1 of 3 chosen at random. Sometimes that E card is “here’s a bunch of new monsters” but sometimes it is “this farmer wants you to deliver this letter to the forest before turn K”. I love going on these sidequests! But one of the places it shines is that you can’t simply kill all the monsters, as it affects the timing. Each monster you kill knocks 1 turn off of the length of the game – giving you less time to get your letter delivered. So you need to be judicious. Oh, and roll well. Oh, and if you don’t kill some, they’ll overrun the castle. I think the game’s appearance leads you to think it’s 90% battling monsters, but for me it’s 70% logistics puzzle and 30% battling monsters, and I love it so much.
