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| 'Twas fun for a while, Catan, but you've lost your luster. |
Now, I have to give Settlers credit for its success as one of the first "gateway" games to open the floodgates in the US to great European board games back in the late '90s. Since then, though, better gateway games have emerged, and plain Settlers has simply lost its appeal to me. My biggest issue? I'm convinced it's impossible to win without getting lucky. In theory I have no problem with luck or randomness in games. But in Settlers, unless you can pull off a magic move scoring 3 or 4 points in one turn (which itself requires luck), once you get close to winning, people will stop trading with you. Period. Then you have to hope the dice come up with the resources you need. For me that is incredibly frustrating, to have all your carefully laid plans rely on one or two dice rolls, and it renders Settlers obsolete. Note that I have played later variants and enjoyed them more as they introduced mechanics that reduced the randomness problem - my favorite being Settlers in America: Trails to Rails, which incorporates train game elements.
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| Surely this will get D&D nerds to play a board game! |
When LoW came out, it was hailed as a truly great merger of theme and mechanics. A worker placement Euro game set in the world of Dungeons and Dragons? Here, finally, was the game that could bring RPG nerds and board game nerds together - get those DMs to put down their D20s and think about cost/benefit analysis for a change. For me, Lords is a fairly standard worker placement game with a very pasted-on D&D theme. It could be replaced with anything. It's fine, but nothing special. It's certainly not the ideal marriage some claim it to be.
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| Look at all those cards! ... Hope you like shuffling. |
Dominion (17)
Dominion took the gaming world by storm in 2008 when it introduced a new gaming genre, that of "deck building." Magic: The Gathering nerds (which I never really was) who loved to spend hours crafting the best possible decks suddenly had a Euro-style card game completely focused on that mechanic. The problem? That's basically all there was to it. That and shuffling. So much shuffling. I didn't mind Dominion in short bursts, but really failed to grasp some peoples' obsession with it. I hear the expansions make it better, but I'm not a fan of expansions being required to make a base game interesting, and don't feel like learning dozens of new cards just to give Dominion another chance. Fortunately deck-building has since been incorporated as an element in other, better games, rather than composing the near-entirety of the game itself.
| The guy on the right has the perfect reaction to TM. |
As this game recently came out, I think it's currently feeling the effects of being the "new hotness," and it remains to be seen whether its BGG rank stays so high. I really hope not. Yet another in a long line of Euro games that promises to couple a strong theme with solid mechanics. Nope, try again. It is long, overly complex (it takes a real kitchen sink approach to game mechanics), and while the fantasy theme is theoretically interesting, you forget about it five minutes after you start playing. TM also suffers from my chief complaint of heavy Euro games - having to go through about five steps before you accomplish something like scoring one victory point. Ugh. Also, all this excitement is probably going to set you back over $60. Not worth it.
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| I built a fence, and all it cost me was two hours and the starvation of three children. |
Agricola's been out for five years so it's proven that it has true staying power - for reasons that baffle me. It is the shining example of why many people, including me, are turned off by many heavy Euro games. First there's the theme - subsistence farming! Wooo! Haven't you always wanted to pretend you're a serf barely eeking out an existence? Who needs winning World War II, conquering distant planets, or managing business empires when you can worry about having enough grain to bake bread? Speaking of which, I'll give it credit for at least connecting the theme to its most annoying mechanic - constantly having to generate food for your family, which is so demanding it feels like you can't get anything else done. It's not fun, and takes away from the escapism that partially drives people to hobbies like board games. It feels way too much like work, and I just don't get it.
Very good points, agree with them all, and for the reasons listed, I have not purchased or have sold/exchanged my copy. Though I do like Waterdeep more than you give it credit, it is not too heavy and I do get some joy from the story references (grew up reading a lot of the stories). .
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