Rab's top ten games

Ok...So I'm going to pull a theme vs theme argument here...

To me historical perspective is what separates the critic from the reviewer. To be a successful reviewer you can get away with keeping perspective contained within a small window as long as you have some charisma - Or an accent, everyone sounds smarter and more authoritative with an accent. To be a successful critic I think you need to have more of a historical or archivist outlook to be able to discuss trends and evolution - And no accent.

I think this divide being identified is a result from when BGG really changed what the hobby is. Rather than playing games within a local community setting, the community became global. And we've discussed this shift previously. Designers just a few keystrokes away to answer a question. A soapbox showed up for anyone with an opinion to voice it. A lounge formed for rules lawyers and theoretical strategists to gather together and perfect their craft. So virtually everything related to the hobby has changed to account for this shift.

Regarding video reviews, I'll be honest, Tom is the only one that I can tolerate. As far as written reviews, I rarely read any of them.

What I like about Tom's review is that he keeps the game as the focus, not props, not witty writing, just tells you about the game and gives a focused overview. That's all I need because I've been around the block enough experimenting on my own and more often than not an overview of the game, without bogging down in little details, combined with seeing the components will tell me enough to know if I'll like the game or not.

Barnes, you need to tell Rab to get off your lawn.

I don't think time in the hobby matters too much, but I'm only saying that as someone who's been in the hobby a handful of years and feel I have a pretty good understanding of what's what historically.

I just don't think people care about learning the history of what they're critiquing, and how that history has brought about the game they're playing, so much as they care about receiving attention for sharing their opinion or posting an unboxing video.

And, I mean, I don't know. It's their time and energy, the existence isn't the problem, I don't want to discourage people from doing what they want creatively or critically, the problem is the table top community credits it as having more weight than it ought to.

Note to self: no more posts with video reviews, the cool kids don't like them.

Mad Dog wrote: Who is Rab and why should I care what his top ten is?

He's a scottish-ameritracher of the first degree. He made this loving ode to Space Hulk:

vimeo.com/channels/downtimetown

And his lifetime favorite game is Cosmic Encounter. He's like a trashier, Scottish Tom Vasel.

Edit: I someone missed the eighteen other responses to the question. Here is a picture as an apology:

I quite enjoyed it. A lot of passion in there.

Fuck these boring hipsters.

Good to see that the inheritors of good ol' board game snobbery are alive and well on my favourite board game site. I liked it better when you guys railed against the snobs at the other place.

Nah, but thanks for linking the vid. To clarify a few things - I'm not a board game reviewer at all, really. I'm a TV writer who has a weekly gig recommending games I like to an audience of PC gamers. I've been playing board games since I was about 8, but mainly Games Workshop stuff, because I'm from the UK. I tend to focus on stuff that's in print (which usually means recent releases) because my main objective is to get more people playing board games.

My deep deep knowledge of the history of board gaming is probably lacking in a few places (I have played Acquire, I've played Magic Realm, I've never played Diplomacy) but it's not something I sweat about because for fuck's sake jesus christ it's just fucking games. (Of course, if you want to talk VIDEO GAMES, I'm like the world's saddest encyclopaedia.)

The best board game reviewer, by a mile, is Tom Vasel. He's the only one who's even relevant, I think. These videos were a kind of tribute to him, that's all. Just good fun with my wee lassie.

Like I said - I'm on this site every day so nice to see my vid up here regardless.

And Mall of Horror is amazing, so fuck up.

Good to see that the inheritors of good ol' board game snobbery are alive and well on my favourite board game site. I liked it better when you guys railedagainst the snobs at the other place.

!


But the rudder here is being turned just cause El Grande and other titles are out of print. First people were chasing down copies of TrainRaider from Japan, now they should be running around and snapping up copies of ... Insert german family game name here ... before for godssake IT'S TOO LATE!!

Fuck all this hand-wringing about the vanishing heritage of boardgames or the possibility that young boardgame players may not have experienced the vaunted classic Eurogames of the '90s. When it comes right down to it, the actual point of playing a game is to have fun. There are all kinds of games that can deliver fun, and deep knowledge of the history of game design is not a pre-requisite for fun. Leave that to the designers, the collectors and the pedants.

scissors wrote: Good to see that the inheritors of good ol' board game snobbery are alive and well on my favourite board game site. I liked it better when you guys railedagainst the snobs at the other place.

!


But the rudder here is being turned just cause El Grande and other titles are out of print. First people were chasing down copies of TrainRaider from Japan, now they should be running around and snapping up copies of ... Insert german family game name here ... before for godssake IT'S TOO LATE!!

As Barnes explained recently, AT is about being out of vogue with the board game scene.

Michael Barnes wrote: Some dude that films himself for the internet.

Pretty standard stuff, nothing surprising except for Mall of Horror (WTF?!)

It's also a list made by someone with clearly less than 10 years of experience in the hobby.

You don't recognize him, apparently. That's Robert ("Rab") Florence, not some random internet dweeb.

Also, this whole "clearly less than 10 years of experience" bollocks...his list is not that far off from mine and I was playing Dark Tower and Dungeon! back when I was 8 years old. This idea that somehow because someone likes something that you don't, it must somehow be because they don't know better is what makes this whole hobby suck. Elitist, snobby cunts who talk down to people because their tastes differ. "Surely, it must be that they don't know any better" Syndrome.

Oh, now that I've read the entire thread, this last post seems pointless.

OMG, DownTimeTownMan himself is here. (kneeling in praise).

Tom Vasel is the MOST INFLUENTIAL, certainly, but not the best video reviewer. The fact is that I know a great many people that fast-forward to the last minute of his infomercials (myself included, usually) because they're just not all that interesting or engaging. He has never done anything like the best video review ever: Space Hulk ( vimeo.com/channels/downtimetown )

SuperflyTNT wrote: This idea that somehow because someone likes something that you don't, it must somehow be because they don't know better is what makes this whole hobby suck. Elitist, snobby cunts who talk down to people because their tastes differ. "Surely, it must be that they don't know any better" Syndrome.

I don't think that's the case at all. It doesn't have anything to do with liking something different. I took the criticism to mean that for a top games list, it sure seemed to miss a lot of qualified classics. Sure these lists are always personal and subjective, but would you put a lot of weight behind a top ten album list that only contained records from the past 10 years? I doubt it.

If this was a 'top 10 of the past decade' or 'Top 10 of the 00's' then that's cool, but that's not what I think the critics understood this list to be.

It really doesn't matter though, but lists always generate controversy and discussion both ways. Isn't that the point?

Nope. Random internet dweeb. Just like me. And just like you.

I should clarify. "experience" is only important if you want to do something beyond writing crowd-pleasing "dudebro" reviews or if you want your top 50 list to look like something other than a catalog of all the major "Ameritrash" releases of the past ten years. But if you make a statement like this, like Mr. Florence did in 2010 (some five years after this kind of rhetoric was being batted around rebelliously at BGG):

Reiner Knizia is one of the best-known designers of this type of game. His games are often maths-based, and often shite…It often doesn’t matter what a Eurogame is about, though, because very rarely does a Eurogame’s mechanic express a game’s theme well. (Dr Knizia, please stand up.)

If you're going to make this statement, you better damn fucking well have played all ten of these games, if not MORE from one of the most prolific and infuential designers of the past 30 years:

1) Tigris & Euphrates
2) Modern Art
3) Lost Cities
4) Taj Mahal
5) Lord of the Rings
6) Ra
7) Medici
8) Blue Moon
9) Through the Desert
10) Samurai

Can I assume that Mr. Florence has played all of these? Five of these? Or none of these? Is this cute statement that Knizia games are "often shite" something he can support with experience or is it just showboating? I can tell you from direct experience that Rudiger Dorn games are often shite. I've played a bunch of them.

Well, I do have some evidence that he's played LOTR-

The first co-op game I played on my return to the board game hobby was Reiner Knizia’s Lord of The Rings. That’s like being introduced to sex by Mick Jagger’s Mars Bar. I’m not a Lord of the Rings fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I still expected that the game would be a little bit Tolkienish. You know… “Eladrioliel of Olador, son of Olodriladior of the Gelerin, conqueror of Elordiohlordhelpme.” Instead, it’s a weird abstract experience, where you and a group of other bored people work out how to most efficiently use some cards with symbols on them, and work out the best excuse to get out of the room. The only thing Lord of the Ringsy about the game is the artwork that serves as the board’s background. Which essentially means I could roll a die onto one of the Rocky Balboa coasters on my coffee table and call it ROCKY: THE BOARDGAME.

Vaguely offensive (to somebody) comedy comments that completely dismiss the game without actually digging into why it doesn't work thematically. Again, that's fine if you're aiming for a dudebro level of discourse. Not fine if you're actually reviewing or analyzing a game.

As for this comment:

Good to see that the inheritors of good ol' board game snobbery are alive and well on my favourite board game site. I liked it better when you guys railedagainst the snobs at the other place.

Wow, in reflection I really hope that we never, ever go back to 2007 and define ourselves here at F:AT as being a site that rails against another Web site or the attitudes of members at another web site. I think that most of the writers here and most of the members here have moved on from that kind of thinking years ago, thankfully, so that now we can just talk about good games and not worry about what BGG is or isn't doing. I hated when all we did was rail against the snobs at the other site. For most of us, the fun of that wore out before you were even a member at BGG, Rab.