Rab's top ten games

If you can't watch the video:
Greatest of All Time: Cosmic Encounter
1. Spartacus: A Game of Blood and Treachery
2. Space Hulk
3. Talisman
4. Mall of Horror / City of Horror
5. Ascending Empires
6. Chaos in the Old World
7. Cyclades
8. Mage Knight: the Board Game
9. Magical Athlete
10. Tales of the Arabian Nights

Who is Rab and why should I care what his top ten is?

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.

Ya know, for all the times I see Space Hulk on lists of "The Best Games of Ever", I never NEVER see anybody playing it. Don't get me wrong, I have played it once and thought it pretty good and maybe I'd like it a ton if I got to play it more often. But I don't see it at conventions. I don't read about it "What are you Playing". I don't hear my friends talk about it other than in passing. I suspect it's a game people put on a list because they think other people think it should be on the list.

Good to see Ascending Empires on there which I think is probably one of the best game put out in the last five years or so.

It's on the lists because it is a fantastic game and deserves to be there.
But yeah, it doesn't get played as much as it should.

This might be one where the overproduction is a bit of a hindrance. I'd never take it up to a convention. But I'd also never take The Queen's Gambit up to a convention. If something were to happen to either of those games because of a stranger I'd be highly annoyed. So I guess those are ones I'd rather play in a controlled environment and for me those situations come up rarely.

He's the guy who used to do Downtime Town. He also used to write for Rock Paper Shotgun. I think he's a solid writer, and I think it's a pretty solid list too.

Space Hulk is a cool game that I basically never play, because of what a pain it is to set up.

No Samurai? No El Grande?

no ERP game on his list???

A few years ago I asked about El Grande here and several posters yawned or pointed to CitOW as the better choice today (both of which I have long since pplayed). No one was in El Grande's corner then. I played em and found I could live without them both.

Robert Florence is the guys name.

Everybody's top 10 list is wrong, mine included.

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

Every single one of those 11 games was released or re-released in the last six years; 7 out of those 11 are brand-new in the last six years. Especially if you look at the complete list of 51 games: mostly Ameritrash, but with a really bizarre selection of recent Euros that make it look like "these are the only non-boring Euros I've ever played" (Colosseum? Rattus? Pret-a-Porter?).

On that entire list of 51 games, there are four, I think, that didn't have post-2005 releases (Blood Bowl, Warhammer Quest, Break the Safe, Thunder Road).

He writes a bunch of opinion articles that are dumbed-down/"entertainment"-infused copycats of one-month-earlier Barnes articles.

My cat really enjoys watching videos featuring animals, especially birds, squirrels and chipmunks, but he is generally bored by videos featuring humans. And yet, while I watched Rab's top ten games video this morning, my cat was mesmerized. He found Rab's animated hand gestures, facial expressions and overall manner of speaking to be quite interesting. But not in a prey sort of way, because my cat will frequently swat at the computer screen when he sees animals moving around, generally right at the head. Not once did my cat try to swat Rab's head.

As for the list, it was a pretty decent list of good AmeriTrash games, aside from being different from my own top ten list. I did play and enjoy both Chaos in the Old World and Spartacus just last weekend. I know if I ever played boardgames with Rab, we could easily agree on something to play.

I was being mean. Obviously, based on the fact that I can say the above things, I've read a bunch of his articles; that's because I think he generally has decent taste in games, which is something I'd honestly say about just about anyone who put Cosmic Encounter as their #1 game and included Magic in their top 20. He just hugely seems lacking perspective and insight, and is one of many popular reviewers who's cropped up in the last few years with a retrograde "Ameritrash rules, Euros/German games drool, FFG=Ameritrash" attitude; refreshing in 2008, not so much in 2014. Frequently they've also got the "enthusiasm & lewd humor compensates for substance" reviewing style.

Do y'all remember Barnes' "10 games everyone must own" from a few years back? I really think anyone who wants to be taken even a bit seriously reviewing games should have played all 10 of those, AND should understand what makes them work for many people, even if he dislikes the game himself. I've never gotten the impression that Rab's played Acquire or is even aware of who Sid Sackson is, for example, and that's a little like a film reviewer not knowing John Ford. Which is actually probably true of a lot of film reviewers, here in the age of blogs.

Yeah, there is definitely something of a generational divide that has occurred somewhere around 2008, 2009...you've got these guys coming around now that are writing about games and just like what Andy says, they're flying this flag of "off color" game reviewing and this whole misappropriated notion of what Ameritrash is or isn't...and just like Andy says, that shit was starting to get old a couple of years ago. My bottom line has always been that a good game=a good game, regardless of silly internet dogma.

But I'm also older and come from way back. I was playing board games _when_ Settlers hit. I'm not going back to play Settlers after five years of being indoctrinated into the FFG house design style and declaring that Settlers is "overrated". Frankly, if you've not played- and appreciate (not necessarily enjoyed)- Settlers, you have no business writing about games. Likewise Acquire. Likewise Cosmic. A big part of effective criticism is simply appreciating what works and doesn't work in a game, regardless of subjective taste.

But there is this bunch of reviewers and pundits that I've seen around, I see a lot of swagger and big talk but very litte actual criticism beyond the "rox/sux" paradigm. The problem is that shit is crowd-pleasing and gets readership, so calling someone a "cuntbag" for designing a game poorly or saying THIS FUCKING RULES is offered instead of richer opinions. The game may fucking rule, but be articulate about it.

Another factor in all of this is the whole video review thing. Fuck video reviews. I do not give a shit about watching some guy review a game. Don't care if it's Tom Vasel or Rab Florence. My reviewing heroes never did video reviews, apart from Ebert...I guess you could call At the Movies video reviews. But he also never stammered or put on stupid skits or wore funny costumes to disguise the lack of substance in his opinions. Didn't have to.

Back to the list in discussion, everybody's list is different, whatever...but I do think it is very telling that you don't see Civilization, Acquire, El Grande, Modern Art, Titan or other titles on there, more "long tail" games that have some years of availability behind them. Anything "old" he has on there is a reprint. Including Cosmic.

Mall of Horror? I mean, come on...

Michael Barnes wrote: Another factor in all of this is the whole video review thing. Fuck video reviews. I do not give a shit about watching some guy review a game. Don't care if it's Tom Vasel or Rab Florence. My reviewing heroes never did video reviews, apart from Ebert...I guess you could call At the Movies video reviews. But he also never stammered or put on stupid skits or wore funny costumes to disguise the lack of substance in his opinions. Didn't have to.

I'm luddite enough that I don't even understand the appeal of podcasts, much less video reviews, but anyway YES YES and even more YES to the above. I know some folks here are big fans of Shut Up and Sit Down, and Matt Thrower even contributes there on occasion, but I lump them in as the same kind of thing as Rab...how much time in each of their video reviews is used up by "funny" skits? I mean, one of the things I already hate most about videos/podcasts is that they inevitably take more time for me to process than a written version of the same thing; and then you're going to waste MORE of my time with skits? And whatever percentage of time is taken up by skits in the video: it appears that an even GREATER percentage of their time MAKING the video is taken up by coming up with the skit. I mentioned that Matt Thrower has written for them on occasion: these are easily Thrower's weakest writing, primarily because it's written as a dialogue between Matt and someone else, where the someone else is mainly just providing jokes, and Matt is reduced to sound-bytes.

Oh yeah, and they also looooooooove City of Horror, and don't seem to evince a lot of awareness of pre-2005 games, except for randomly dissing Settlers and Knizia every so often.

But of course, this whole "the state of game reviews sucks" thing has been discussed ad infinitum here. And it's not like I'm really contributing by doing my own game reviews.

I like SUSD and Florence's video reviews for their enthusiasm. It's a nice break from reviews that are just rules regurgitations. I wish DowntimeTown our whatever it was called was still around. There's entertainment value there. For solid opinions I usually gravitate towards written reviews though. I also tend to put more stock in the discussions around here than other websites.

It seems that written reviews tend to produce better discussions, maybe because most commenters had to put more thought investment into reading a piece.

As far as the list here, it's fine. He writes for Rock Paper Shotgun, and I'd bet a lot of his readers aren't connoisseurs, for lack of a better term of the top of my head. I've never doubted that Florence knows his audience.

Edit: connoisseur is the wrong term. I'm 3 scotch deep and don't have a better one.