Diving into BoardGameGeek
jvanelteren.github.io
Diving into BoardGameGeek
1–10 of 105 posts
Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek
#2> Are heavy games really 'better' than 'light' games?
To serious board game players, yes, more complex games are "better" because the simple games tend to have dozens of games with almost identical feel. If the game is complex there can be more variety.
> But I don't have time to play games that are very complex and take many hours!
And the authors personal biases heavily stilt things.
Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek
#3> I was a bit shaken by Eat Poop You Cat, but it seems a nice game you can play with pen and paper.
This looks like a marvelous game that requires no purchase and no special equipment. Why would it shake anyone except for a ridiculous name?
Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek
#4> Are heavy games really 'better' than 'light' games? To serious board game players, yes, more complex games are "better" because the simple games tend to have dozens of games with almost identical feel. If the game is complex there can be more variety. > But I don't have time to play games that are very complex and take many hours! And the authors personal biases heavily stilt things.
Is that really true? Go is a game where the simplest rule sets only have 7 or so rules.
Well, the complexity is 3.94 on that site:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/188/go
But it's complex because of strategic considerations, not because it is difficult to learn the rules.
Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek
#5The fact that "pandemic" is at the top means that either we have a coincidence where the best game happens to be closely related to events of the past two years, or ratings merely reflect current fashion rather than game quality.
This is further reinforced by the fact that pandemic didn't top best selling games lists until 2020-2021.
Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek
#6I look at Boardgamegeek almost ever time I make a purchase of a game and to get ideas. To see what other peoples think, their reviews about the game and game play, strategy vs luck element, type of game etc
It's similar to imdb for movies, its a place full of opinions. I take everything with pinch of salt, but it's the best review site around
Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek
#7The fact that "pandemic" is at the top means that either we have a coincidence where the best game happens to be closely related to events of the past two years, or ratings merely reflect current fashion rather than game quality. This is further reinforced by the fact that pandemic didn't top best selling games lists until 2020-2021.
I seem to recall Pandemic being very highly rated and popular before the pandemic, but I bet it hasn't hurt it's popularity!
Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek
#8> Are heavy games really 'better' than 'light' games? To serious board game players, yes, more complex games are "better" because the simple games tend to have dozens of games with almost identical feel. If the game is complex there can be more variety. > But I don't have time to play games that are very complex and take many hours! And the authors personal biases heavily stilt things.
I've found bgg's weight to be pretty uncorrelated with whether the game actually survives when players make a sincere effort to win. An illustrative sample of games sorted by weight might be Splendor, Wingspan, Res Arcana, Roll for the Galaxy, Race for the Galaxy, Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, A Feast for Odin, and Through the Ages. Of these, the middle games Res Arcana and Roll for the Galaxy completely collapse under the slightest effort to take them seriously, and Wingspan does less than great (you can just tear your ravens in half though, if you want to make things a bit better). Race, Splendor, and Conquest hold up quite well. I don't know enough about the final 2 games to tell whether they'll still be recognizable after 1,000 plays, but it seems like even if a huge part of the options in those games turn out to be unplayably bad the remainder of the options might still contain some interesting choices.
Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek
#9The fact that "pandemic" is at the top means that either we have a coincidence where the best game happens to be closely related to events of the past two years, or ratings merely reflect current fashion rather than game quality. This is further reinforced by the fact that pandemic didn't top best selling games lists until 2020-2021.
> The fact that "pandemic" is at the top means that either we have a coincidence where the best game happens to be closely related to events of the past two years, or ratings merely reflect current fashion rather than game quality.
It's a coincidence. Pandemic Legacy (not to be confused with regular Pandemic) went straight to the top of the ratings when it was released (knocking off Twilight Struggle which had been there for years).
Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek
#10The fact that "pandemic" is at the top means that either we have a coincidence where the best game happens to be closely related to events of the past two years, or ratings merely reflect current fashion rather than game quality. This is further reinforced by the fact that pandemic didn't top best selling games lists until 2020-2021.
I am pretty sure Pandemic Legacy, an RPGish version of Pandemic, was at the top of the list a few years ago.