21T. Piece Of Cake
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37371/piece-o-cake
Everyone knows the cake rules: one person cuts,the other chooses. In this way, one makes the slices as equal as possible so that one does not end up with the short end. But this rule does not apply to "...aber bitte mit Sahne (...but please, with whipped cream)." Here a person can cleverly offer larger pieces to the others and still get the most in the end.
5 cakes with 11 slices of different varieties are divided. Each variety awards a different amount of points. One can immediately eat slices to guarantee a number of points, or collect them in the hope of scoring bonus points for having the most of that variety at the end of the game. Only skilled dividers with an eye on their opponents’ pieces can score the most points and win the game.
There is so much deep thinking actually placed in this short filler game about pieces of yummy pie! The longest I've seen people AP is at this game! You have to devide the pie just right to not only try and get what you need, but prevent others from getting their piece of the pie. It makes me want to eat pie for some reason.
20T. T'Zolk'in: The Mayan Calendar
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/126163/tzolk-mayan-calendar
Tzolkin: The Mayan Calendar presents a new game mechanism: dynamic worker placement. Players representing different Mayan tribes place their workers on giant connected gears, and as the gears rotate they take the workers to different action spots.
During a turn, players can either (a) place one or more workers on the lowest visible spot of the gears or (b) pick up one or more workers. When placing workers, they must pay corn, which is used as a currency in the game. When they pick up a worker, they perform certain actions depending on the position of the worker. Actions located "later" on the gears are more valuable, so it's wise to let the time work for you – but players cannot skip their turn; if they have all their workers on the gears, they have to pick some up.
The game ends after one full revolution of the central Tzolkin gear. There are many paths to victory. Pleasing the gods by placing crystal skulls in deep caves or building many temples are just two of those many paths...
The gear mechanic is this game is really cool. But the game is much more than a cool mechanic and cool board. It's a worker placement where you have to time things just right. The game is really tight in terms of resources and how much time you have to do something. There are many different ways to get victory points, which is a thing I like. The feeding your workers thing I not a huge fan of in games but it doesn't bother me that much as it does in Agricola.
20T. Glass Road
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143693/glass-road
Glass Road is a game that commemorates the 700-year-old tradition of glass-making in the Bavarian Forest. (Today the Glass Road is a route through the Bavarian Forest that takes visitors to many of the old glass houses and museums of that region.) You must skillfully manage your glass and brick production in order to build the right structures that help you to keep your business flowing. Cut the forest to keep the fires burning in the ovens, and spread and remove ponds, pits and groves to supply yourself with the items you need. Fifteen specialists are there at your side to carry out your orders...
The game consists of four building periods. Each player has an identical set of fifteen specialist cards, and each specialist comes with two abilities. At the beginning of each building period, each player needs to choose a hand of five specialists. If he then plays a specialist that no other player has remaining in his hand, he may use both abilities of that card; if two or more players play the same specialist, each of them may use only one of the two abilities. Exploiting the abilities of the specialists lets you collect resources, lay out new landscape tiles (e.g., ponds and pits), and build a variety of buildings. There are three types of buildings:
- Processing buildings
- Immediate buildings with a one-time effect
- Buildings that provide bonus points at the end of the game for various accomplishments
A sign of a good game is if it plays in a good amount of time for what it is. As in, you get good value for your time. A game could be good, but if takes 4 hours when it only needed 2 hours to be a good game something is off. Glass Road is a semi deep game that plays in 1-1.5 hours. You get a highly strategic game without taking 4 hours. There are many different strategies to go with. The mechanic where you have to balance the resources is brilliant. If you build this resource it could cause you to have less of another resource. So there is a lot of thinking and timing involved. Plus you have to take into consideration what your oppoents do as if you do the card at the right time when neither of them have played it you can play both parts of the card. But you also want to play similar cards as them as you can get extra actions as well. Just a well made game.
19. Dominion ( all Dominions)
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36218/dominion
In Dominion, each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards. In the center of the table is a selection of other cards the players can "buy" as they can afford them. Through their selection of cards to buy, and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck on the fly, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by game end.
Dominion is not a CCG, but the play of the game is similar to the construction and play of a CCG deck. The game comes with 500 cards. You select 10 of the 25 Kingdom card types to include in any given play—leading to immense variety.
There is a reason why after hundreds of deck builders coming out, Dominion is still on top. It is a very well made deck building game. The expansions only make the game better and more interesting for the most part. It's a decent gateway game as long as you teach how the process works. It's a game where you can create some crazy engines. It can get annoying when people do an engine that allows them to play their whole deck and their turn takes like 5 minutes. "Ok dude. Can you hurry it up? We know you are going through your whole deck. You have 3 coins. It's the same thing as before"
18. No Thanks
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12942/no-thanks
No Thanks! is a card game designed to be as simple as it is engaging.
The rules are simple. Each turn, players have two options:
- play one of their chips to avoid picking up the current face-up card
- pick up the face-up card (along with any chips that have already been played on that card) and turn over the next card
However, the choices aren't so easy as players compete to have the lowest score at the end of the game. The deck of cards is numbered from 3 to 35, with each card counting for a number of points equal to its face value. Runs of two or more cards only count as the lowest value in the run - but nine cards are removed from the deck before starting, so be careful looking for connectors. Each chip is worth -1 point, but they can be even more valuable by allowing you to avoid drawing that unwanted card.
The first versions of the game supported up to five players, but a 2011 edition supports up to seven.
Another simple, fun card game makes my list. It is a filler game about pressing your luck and balancing when to take cards. If you take to long to get a card you may be left without chips and regularly get stuck forced to take cards. You also have to know how long to "milk" a card. Milking is when you place your chip on a card you need but know no one else wants. I used to tell people to maybe try and milk when I teach them but now I like to see if they come up with that themselves.
17. Times Up
Based on the popular game Time's Up!, Time's Up: Title Recall challenges players to guess the titles of books, films, songs, and more. Players try to get other players to guess the same set of titles over three rounds. In each round, one member of a team tries to get his teammates to guess as many titles as possible in 30 seconds. In round 1, almost any kind of clue is allowed. In round 2 no more than one word can be used in each clue (but unlimited sounds and gestures are permitted.) In round 3, no words are allowed at all.
Times Up takes a lot from other party games like Charades, Taboo, etc. But putting them all together and with the same clues each round makes those games way better. Times Up is pretty much always a good time, even if the people you are playing with aren't great at pop culture, it still works. This is a perfect game to break out at a Thanksgiving.
16. Bruges
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/136888/bruges
Bruges in the 15th century – culture and commerce flourish and make the Belgian Hanseatic city into one of the wealthiest cities in Europe.
In Bruges (a.k.a. Brugge or Brügge depending on the country in which you live), players assume the role of merchants who must maintain their relationships with those in power in the city while competing against one another for influence, power and status. Dramatic events cast their shadows over the city, with players needing to worry about threats to their prosperity from more than just their opponents...
The game includes 165 character cards, with each card having one of five colors. On a turn, a player chooses one of his cards and performs an action, with six different actions being available: Take workers, take money, mitigate a threat, build a canal, build a house or hire the character depicted on the card. In principle, every card can be used for every action – but the color of the card determines in which areas the actions can be used or the strength of the chosen action, e.g., blue cards provide blue workers and red cards help mitigate red threats. All of the action is geared toward the gathering of prestige, with the most prestigious merchant winning in the end.
It's a Feld.
15. Five Tribes
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/157354/five-tribes
Lead the Tribes and Take Control of Naqala
Crossing into the Land of 1001 Nights, your caravan arrives at the fabled Sultanate of Naqala. The old sultan just died and control of Naqala is up for grabs! The oracles foretold of strangers who would maneuver the Five Tribes to gain influence over the legendary city-state. Will you fulfill the prophecy? Invoke the old Djinns and move the Tribes into position at the right time, and the Sultanate may become yours!
Designed by Bruno Cathala, Five Tribes builds on a long tradition of German-style games that feature wooden meeples. Here, in a unique twist on the now-standard “worker placement” genre, the game begins with the meeples already in place – and players must cleverly maneuver them over the villages, markets, oases, and sacred places tiles that make up Naqala. How, when, and where you dis-place these Five Tribes of Assassins, Elders, Builders, Merchants, and Viziers determine your victory or failure.
As befitting a Days of Wonder game, the rules are straightforward and easy to learn. But… devising a winning strategy will take a more calculated approach than our standard fare. You need to carefully consider what moves can score you well and put your opponents at a disadvantage. You need to weigh many different pathways to victory, including the summoning of powerful Djinns that may help your cause as you attempt to control this legendary Sultanate.
Five Tribes is for 2 to 4 players, ages 13 and older and takes approximately 40-80 minutes to play.
Maybe it's this high because it is new hotness and I'm still chopping at the bit to play it again but this is a really good game. It's a worker "displacement game" which is interesting. It has a similar mechanic to Trajan where the last place you place a meeple is your action. So you have to plan out your moves to do many things. Not only to do the action you want but also to possibly score camels and not set someone else up for a great play. The bidding mechanic of points is also interesting as you have to weigh how much points is a move worth. There is a lot to think about in this game. Many different ways to go, I like exploring different strategies.
14. Mondo
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/91523/mondo
In Mondo, players compete against each other while also racing against the clock. Each player has a small world board with empty spaces on it, and all players simultaneously pick tiles depicting different animals and environments from the middle of the table and place them on their world board, trying to create complete areas of the same environment. A new tile must be placed next to an already placed tile, but the environmental borders don't have to match. (These errors will earn negative points when the board is scored.)
When the timer runs out, players score bonus points for each animal and each completed environment and score negative points for volcanic tiles, empty fields on the world board and mismatched tiles (for example, a tile with a forest border connecting with a tile with a water border).
Mondo includes three degrees of difficulty, in addition to additional goals and ways to achieve (and lose) bonus points, as well as rules for solo play.
One of the very few games I have never won a game of (Istanbul, Caylus, Macao and Among the Stars are the only others, but all of those I've only played 1-3 times). I'm not that great at it, I always have at least -10 in wrong edges every round. But I always have a good time playing this game. It is my favorite of the tile placement genre.
13. Splendor
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148228/splendor
Splendor is a fast-paced and addictive game of chip-collecting and card development. Players are merchants of the Renaissance trying to buy gem mines, means of transportation, shops — all in order to acquire the most prestige points. If you're wealthy enough, you might even receive a visit from a noble at some point, which of course will further increase your prestige.
On your turn, you may (1) collect chips (gems), or (2) buy and build a card, or (3) reserve one card. If you collect chips, you take either three different kinds of chips or two chips of the same kind. If you buy a card, you pay its price in chips and add it to your playing area. To reserve a card — in order to make sure you get it, or, why not, your opponents don't get it — you place it in front of you face down for later building; this costs you a round, but you also get gold in the form of a joker chip, which you can use as any gem.
All of the cards you buy increase your wealth as they give you a permanent gem bonus for later buys; some of the cards also give you prestige points. In order to win the game, you must reach 15 prestige points before your opponents do.
Again, maybe it is high because it is the new hotness, but I think this will stand the test of time. It's nice and short, easy to teach and has a lot of strategy. Helpful tip from Seany G: Don't Consentrate on the nobles. Look at what the dominant colors are in the top row and aim for those 4-5 point cards. Concentrate on those colors on that card. The chips are nice too.
12. Amerigo
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/137408/amerigo
In Amerigo, the players help Amerigo Vespucci on his journey to discover new land. The players explore the islands of South America, secure trading routes, and build settlements.
The actions available to players are determined through the use of a specialized cube tower, which has appeared in the Queen titles Im Zeichen des Kreuzes and Wallenstein. At the start of the game, this tower is seeded with action cubes, which come in seven colors, with each color matching a particular type of action. During the game players will drop additional action cubes into the tower – but some of these cubes might get stuck in the floors of the tower while other cubes already in the tower are knocked free. Thus, players need to play both tactically – taking advantage of the actions currently available in the best way possible – and strategically – using their knowledge of which actions do what to play well over the course of the game.
The game board is composed of nine, twelve or sixteen tiles, depending on the number of players. Players sail their ships through the landscape created for this game, landing on islands to plan and build settlements, which then supply resources and allow the player to earn victory points. Players might want to invest in cannons to protect themselves from pirates roaming the waters or acquire progress tokens to gain special advantages.
Feld. Point Salad. Om nom nom. Point Salad. Cool ass cube tower!
11. Bora Bora
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/127060/bora-bora
Stake your fortunes in the mysterious island world of Bora Bora. Journey across islands, building huts where the resilient men and women of your tribes can settle, discovering fishing grounds and collecting shells. Send priests to the temples, and gather offerings to curry favor with the gods.
In Bora Bora, players use dice to perform a variety of actions using careful insight and tactical planning. The heart of the game is its action resolution system in which 5-7 actions are available each round, the exact number depending on the number of players. Each player rolls three dice at the start of the round, then they take turns placing one die at a time on one action. Place a high number on an action, and you'll generally get a better version of that action: more places to build, more choices of people to take, better positioning on the temple track, and so on. Place a low number and you'll get a worse action – but you'll possibly block other players from taking the action at all as in order to take an action you must place a die on it with a lower number than any die already on the action.
Three task tiles on a player's individual game board provide some direction as to what he might want to do, while god tiles allow for special actions and rule-breaking, as gods are wont to do. The player who best watches how the game develops and uses the most effective strategy will prevail.
Bora Bora is another great Feld game. The dice mechanic is very interesting in that big number rolls get you more but can get blocked out and small number rolls can block others out. Lot of interesting timing in this game. Again, it's another point salad which is my favorite kind of salad, even more than a Chinese Chicken Salad.
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