David Fair: One Is the Loneliest Number, Part Four: Voted Off the Island

Every year, a lot of gamers talk about their “Five and Dime List�. I usually find the first couple of them interesting, especially if the writer has taken time to add a little commentary to the list. After a while though, you just scan them looking for pithy commentary. I thought it would be an interesting change of pace to examine the 151 games that I played only once each during 2005. These 151 games fall into several different categories, and over the next few articles, I will examine each of them.

Prior articles in the series can be found here: http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgamenews/C75/

This article was a long time in coming. I hurt my right hand several weeks ago, after getting this about half done, and typing became a painful chore. I spend about 80% of my workday at a keyboard, so typing as a leisure activity became even less appealing. I am finally able to use my right hand again, so here goes.

Part Four: Voted Off the Island (36 Games)

These are the games that I played once last year, didn’t like, and didn’t play again. This is the fun list, the list that is going to get me in trouble; the one where nasty comments get made and I get to let loose my destructive, sarcastic and mean inner demons to vilify the games that wasted my time.

$Greed: This is a silly little dice game. In fact, it isn’t anything more than a repackaging of the public domain game “One Thousand�, with some custom dice. Playing once was more than enough.

Anachronism: This one wasn’t really all that bad. It is a semi-collectable game (like HeroScape and unlike the box of chocolates, you do know what you are gonna get) where historical figures face off on a battlefield. It has issues though, in that there is this arbitrary grid where characters can attack and defend, and so it fails thematically as the players instead maneuver to get in prime position rather than just attacking like Attila the Hun. It is also 2-player only. Collectable, poor theme, 2-player only; Three strikes, yer out!

Angkor: We played this at Essen last year. It is a tile laying game where you have the choice of improving your own position, or weakening the position of one of your opponents (letting the others go unmolested). The bits are nice, and the theme is good, but the way gameplay progresses makes it disappointing at best, and a complete waste of time at worst.

Anno 1503: Dry. No wait, Saharan, multiplayer solitaire game with a loose Endecker feel. The game takes way too long, and just plain dull, with nothing to do on your opponents turn but try to figure out if there is some way you could use the tiles to prop open your eyelids. Play Elasund instead.
Atlantic Storm: A lot of people really like this game. I am not one of them. I can’t figure out what the draw is. Almost every element in this game is done better by other games that take less time or offer more fun. Still avoiding this, and I will avoid he reprint, too.

Bang! Dodge City & Bang! High Noon: My wife teaches boardgames to kids at a summer camp every year (although we just found that, due to lackluster pre-registration, the camp may be cut this year). Bang! Is the number one hit there. Some kids play it all day for 3-4 days on end. I’m not kidding. Anyway, it is now impossible for anyone in my family (I help out at the camp when possible, and my kids attend) to see a Bang! deck and not run screaming from the room. So these two expansions got played once early last year, but won’t get played again by us.

Beowulf: This game isn’t bad, it just isn’t good. It doesn’t immerse you in the theme, it doesn’t have an exciting buildup of tension, and there isn’t any player interaction. It can be OK, but why waste an hour on an OK game when you can play something good instead.

Betrayal at House on the Hill: I will play this every year, on or about Halloween, but I will leave it on the shelf from Nov-Sep. The game is most fun if you are the Betrayer, and a whole lot less fun for everyone else. Thematically a success, and with great components, just not a theme I want to play that much. And did I mention the errata? I feel like they ought to send me a new set of books rather than make me print them over myself. Appalling.

Camelot Legends: A collectable card game without the collectability, in essence. The theme was OK and the production values are top-notch, but the game itself is quite lackluster. Not overtly bad, but just not good.

Candamir: Go read the entry for Anno 1503, but give it a loose Settlers feel instead of a loose Entdecker feel and you have Candamir. Again, play Elasund instead.

Chez Grunt: Same game, different jokes. We played to celebrate a friends departure from military service. That happens about as often as I want to play the Chez Whatever games, so it all works out.

Clash of the Gladiators: A dicefest with a theme of gladiatorial combat. Lasts way too long. There was a theme here, but a stiff wind tore through it like a tornado through a barn.

Cosmic Wimpout: Another dicefest. This one is a way to pass time while waiting for your food in slow restaurant. Napkin is included.

Dos Rios: This game is probably my favorite of all the ones on this list. I like it the most or hate it the least, depending on your perspective. I need to try it again, but there are always options that are so much more appealing.

Dragonriders: A racing game with a decent movement mechanism and a nice theme, but that is destroyed by the un-usability of the physical components. In a game where precise placement matters, don’t make the pieces so damn big, unstable and unwieldy.

Giganten: This isn’t bad, and has really great bits. It does have one big problem though. The game is almost entirely won or lost during the crucial phase known as “deciding who will go first�. The advantage the players early in the turn order have over those late in the turn order is larger than the great state of Texas, and all the oil reserves therein.

Hispaniola: This is supposed to be a trick-taking game with a board and a pirate theme. It fails on all of those levels except that it does actually have a board. Avoid at all costs.

I’m the Boss!: My group doesn’t shy away from negotiation games, and Chinatown is probably our favorite. This one does little for me, and will always take a back seat to Traders, Rette Sich Wer Kann and Intrigue. Might be Sackson’s worst game published.

Indonesia: A nice 2-hour long economic engine game (you spend the first turns building the engine, and then spend turns trying to make it payoff) with beautiful, if less than functional, bits that is stretched out so that it takes 4 hours instead of 2.

Killer Bunnies: Played once, mostly to be polite to the person who brought it to my game night. Can I get that night back please? Surely having played this once is penance for any earthly sins I have committed.

King’s Court: A buddy of mine saw this going on eBay for almost $100 and realized he had a shrink wrapped copy he bought at a yard sale for less than a buck. He brought it over and we tried it out. It’s Uno with a medieval royalty theme. He put it on ebay the next day, and made a very nice profit. Why on earth do people pay more than $1 for an Uno clone?

La Strada: Not as bad as I had heard. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it isn’t good, but it isn’t the end of peace and light and happiness that some have made it out to be. Bits are nice. I’ll bet Mr. Wallace could give us some alternate rule for use with those bits and we would have a much better game here.

Liar’s Dice: I cannot fathom why this game is so popular. Ugh.

Mad Monks & Relics: Long, esoteric, punishes people at random and has poor production values.

Mister Bill, Moby Pick: We tried these out so that my wife would have experience playing them and could teach them at the boardgame Summer Camp she runs. They seem like they will be ok for kids, but the adults found little in the game to keep our interest. In contrast, the game Farfalia, in the same line, is quite good for kids and adults alike.

Old Town: I like puzzles and logic problems (even though I am no Wei-Hwa), but this was a mistake. I wanted to like the game, but no one playing enjoyed it.

Pirates of the Spanish Main: Cute ships, rotten game.

Shadows of the Emperor: I should have known this game would be disappointing when the guy who volunteered to teach it didn’t actually want to play it. The theme is not bad, but the mechanics are weak, the components are visually unappealing, and the gameplay is dull. Takes way too long to play.

Street Illegal: A race game where relative position is all that matters. And by relative position, I mean, “getting to start the game in the front�. Go read the entry for Giganten again. As bad as Giganten is at favoring the player who moves first, this is worse. The player who starts in the back has virtually no chance to win, and even less chance to enjoy the game.

Sushi Express: The absolute worst game I played at Essen last year. It might be better by playing with fewer players, but the time spent finding that out is better spent playing something else.
Wordwild: A speed game of making words and matching them a theme card. Manages to mix several of my least favorite mechanisms into one game. A shame, as the designer is friend, and I really wanted to like it.

Yahtzee: You know this game, do I really need to explain why, with all the options we have now, this only got one play last year? I didn’t think so.

Ys: A lot of people like this game of half-blind bidding and try to convince me that I should like it more than a game that is all blind bidding. There is some logic there, as I would rather have only one leg broken than have both in casts, but really, I’d rather just keep my bones intact, and play a better game.

Coming Soon:
Part Five: I Don’t Know Where We Went Wrong
Part Six: Too Long, Too New, Two Player

© 2006 David Fair

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