Worst New-To-You Games 2016?

Da Bid Dabid wrote: Sushi Go! - This is barely a game but it was short so it was slightly better than...

Star Trek: Frontiers - I never played Mage Knight and now I never want to. Wow this game is boring. This was one of the worst let downs I've maybe ever had from a game cause I was actually looking forward to it. Funny that the best game I played this year was also a Star Trek game...

Yep, Star Trek Mage Knight and Mage Knight can be great "solo" games, but, the barrier to entry for both of these just might not be worth the investment needed to learn the gaming system.

Jexik wrote:

Rliyen wrote: Lords of Waterdeep Gah, I HATE that game. Spreadsheet in a box. Rolling up 1st ed characters was more fun than playing that shite game.

Yeah, the allure eludes me. The most frequent praise I hear is "I can play it with my (insert here)," not that the game is compelling in any way. Or, "have you played with the expansion?"

I think I played Exploding Kittens in 2015, so I can't jump on that bandwagon.

Lords of Waterdeep is a good family entry-level worker placement game, which means it's boring. I liked the nostalgia of Waterdeep and the artwork, having been an old school D&D player who stomped around Waterdeep, but, the theme/setting is paper-thin and it rubbed away quickly. Sure, its expansion ramps it up (and, did so brilliantly), but, Lords of Waterdeep and its expansion now spend their lives as idle shelf-toads. Anyone want to trade?

Thanks to Gary Sax, Argent: The Consortium replaced all worker placement games in my collection, even though I do hate its artwork since it makes my eyes bleed.

Glad you're enjoying it. How many do you play it with? I guess I should continue in the dedicated thread.

And yes, it's graphics are brutally ugly but at least they don't hurt playability, it's pretty legible IMHO.

Gary Sax wrote: Glad you're enjoying it. How many do you play it with? I guess I should continue in the dedicated thread.

And yes, it's graphics are brutally ugly but at least they don't hurt playability, it's pretty legible IMHO.

2-3

Colorcrayons wrote: I haven't played a bunch of new games this year. Ain't nobody got time fo' dat.

But the worst new to me games were, by far, Star Wars Rebellion and Imperial Assault. Especially the latter.
I am really not the target audience of these things, as I was sitting there the entire time trying to get into the groove and setting, but feeling so rushed that there was nothing to actually enjoy.

Overrated doesn't begin to describe these titles.

FFG needs to take a long, hard stare at their design 'quality' nowadays. Innovation, or at least solid foundation of design is lacking and the gaping holes are just covered up by expensive IP and the companion art. Hasbro and GW are making them look like fools. Hasbro...and GW. Jesus.

I think FFG seem to have got into a groove or rut depending on tastes. Most of their in house games that I have played recently are a direct evolution of an earlier design. As such the games feel like the latest packaging of a thought processes rather than a neat idea or concept for a game. I've played Forbidden Stars, Starwars Rebellion, Imperial Assault, and Arkham Horror the Card Game all this year and all were new to me this year. With all of them , I thought they were OK, but I didn't like them anywhere near as much as FFG titles from a few years back. I would say they are sharper more refined games than Horus Heresy, AGOT, TI etc but for some reason they feel a lot hollower to me, like a song assembled from tried and tested riffs and lyrics. It sounds sharp on first listen but then it feels just like a heartless copy. I can see why FFG do this, they have found a system or mechanism that sells and keeps the critics happy so why not reuse it. The result is unfortunately a collection of mechanics with a theme. The question is whether a game is something more than this reductionist itinerary.

I don't think I had a worst game this year. Nothing I played was truly terrible, quite a lot of it was just OK though.

I guess Splendor was the worst game I played in 2016. I did not find it particularly bad, but I did not play a lot of new games and it was certainly the worst of the lot. It was just a dry middle-of-the-road euro with decent components and art.

If it was in a much smaller box and sold for $20-25 MSRP, I'd probably even own a copy. At $40 MSRP, it's insanely overpriced.

barrowdown wrote: I guess Splendor was the worst game I played in 2016. I did not find it particularly bad, but I did not play a lot of new games and it was certainly the worst of the lot. It was just a dry middle-of-the-road euro with decent components and art.

If it was in a much smaller box and sold for $20-25 MSRP, I'd probably even own a copy. At $40 MSRP, it's insanely overpriced.

I still like Splendor. It's proved one of the most enduring Euros in my gaming circles, mainly because it's got such a great ratio of accessibility and depth plus the occasional opportunity to annoy opponents by stealing things they need under their noses. But yeah. $40 is nuts. In the UK it retails for the local equivalent to $30 which is far more sensible, especially given we have higher VAT.

Also amazed by the hate for Lords of Waterdeep which is the most fuck-you worker placement game I've ever played. I loaned my copy to a friend to take on a family holiday and when he came back, none of them were speaking to each other. He immediately went and bought his own copy.

My own personal entry for this is probably Mysterium. Not that I didn't have some fun with it, I suppose. It just felt like a weakly reheated mash of Dixit with some generic co-operative mechanics. It's not a game the world was screaming out for. The UK board for Ticket to Ride was a worse disappointment but I can't say it's all bad since it came bundled with the much more fun Pennsylvania map.

I've pretty much stopped going to the neighborhood monthly random-Euro days, so I'm pretty much the one who sets whatever game playing agenda there is. That doesn't mean I play as much as I'd like or exactly what I'd like to, but it does mean that I'm not often subjected anymore to being passive-aggressively roped into some hourlong conflict avoidance game. Looking back at my recorded plays, I'm not, in fact, seeing anything that I didn't like.

BTW, I said something pretty similar to what DukeofChutney said about FFG "house style" in one of the frequently threads about a potential, hypothetical Twilight Imperium IV. Even though the rules could benefit from streamlining and maybe the best parts of the expansions collapsed into the main game, I'd worry that FFG would homogenize the game.

MattDP wrote:

Also amazed by the hate for Lords of Waterdeep which is the most fuck-you worker placement game I've ever played. I loaned my copy to a friend to take on a family holiday and when he came back, none of them were speaking to each other. He immediately went and bought his own copy.

Mandatory Quests are pretty brutal. You're right - that's not a passive-aggressive "I steal your stuff" move, it's an "I want YOU to lose the game" move.

MattDP wrote:

barrowdown wrote: I guess Splendor was the worst game I played in 2016. I did not find it particularly bad, but I did not play a lot of new games and it was certainly the worst of the lot. It was just a dry middle-of-the-road euro with decent components and art.

If it was in a much smaller box and sold for $20-25 MSRP, I'd probably even own a copy. At $40 MSRP, it's insanely overpriced.

I still like Splendor. It's proved one of the most enduring Euros in my gaming circles, mainly because it's got such a great ratio of accessibility and depth plus the occasional opportunity to annoy opponents by stealing things they need under their noses. But yeah. $40 is nuts. In the UK it retails for the local equivalent to $30 which is far more sensible, especially given we have higher VAT.

Also amazed by the hate for Lords of Waterdeep which is the most fuck-you worker placement game I've ever played. I loaned my copy to a friend to take on a family holiday and when he came back, none of them were speaking to each other. He immediately went and bought his own copy.

My own personal entry for this is probably Mysterium. Not that I didn't have some fun with it, I suppose. It just felt like a weakly reheated mash of Dixit with some generic co-operative mechanics. It's not a game the world was screaming out for. The UK board for Ticket to Ride was a worse disappointment but I can't say it's all bad since it came bundled with the much more fun Pennsylvania map.

Splendor and LoWaterdeep have excellent iOS implementations. I play both pretty regularly solitaire, LoW not so much recently.

RobertB wrote: MattDP wrote:

Also amazed by the hate for Lords of Waterdeep which is the most fuck-you worker placement game I've ever played. I loaned my copy to a friend to take on a family holiday and when he came back, none of them were speaking to each other. He immediately went and bought his own copy.

Mandatory Quests are pretty brutal. You're right - that's not a passive-aggressive "I steal your stuff" move, it's an "I want YOU to lose the game" move.

But it's a lazy form of player interaction up there with Munchkin.

"Oh, this guy is winning, so I'll just dog pile him. Oh, he wasn't actually gonna win? Oh well. Grats formerly 2nd place guy!"

Here's how I play LoW.

1. Buy buildings.
2. Get lots of guys; looking like you're not doing anything.
3. Complete big quests in the second to last round.
4. Yawn.

It has a decent chance of winning. But I really don't care if I do because there's so little to hold onto here.

Race for the Galaxy and 7 Wonders fired every single 90 minute snooze-fest for me, and I haven't even played those much lately. Light to middle weight Euros are my least favorite genre.

Just play Sons of Anarchy.

charlest wrote: Just play Sons of Anarchy.

Sons of Anarchy fired all the other worker placement games. Or it would, if more people gave it a try.

For the last year, I have been gradually rehabilitating a friend who was utterly brainwashed by BGG into preferring EuroGames. He loves role-playing game, and his one published boardgame is about gangsters. All of his unpublished game designs tend to be thematic and even somewhat AmeriTrash. But in the last year, I got him to try Spartacus, Camp Grizzly, Silver Tower, and even PsychoRaiders, and he liked all of these games. But his favorite new game is now Sons of Anarchy.

If we're talking worker placement, give me Argent or give me death.

san il defanso wrote: If we're talking worker placement, give me Argent or give me death.

Good man.