Munchkin. I guess nowadays hating on Munchkin is no longer unpopular, but when I first played it the game had a rabid cult following. I understand that it might be fun to play with alcohol involved and with everyone just looking to have a good time and to laugh at silly things happening, but as a game where all the players are playing with the intention of winning the game isn't enjoyable to me at all.
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Munchkin is a great game, but it's one you can't play with board game or TTRPG people. You need either alcohol or people who aren't used to/don't worship strict board game rules and who aren't afraid to muck about with stupid shit or pile on other players. The sort of person who's favourite game is CAH or "uh....I dunno chess maybe?', not "here's my six hour dissertation on why Jamestown: now with Wheat is the best"
Played so many 3 hour games where everyone just held their stoppers for when someone was going to hit level 10. By the end you're just silently pleading that someone dings so it can be over.
I agree entirely, hate Munchkin with a passion
There are better sober games and there are better drunk activities than Munchkin.
If you're at a point where you're having fun with Munchkin you'd be having fun without it as well...
For me this is Lost ruins of Arnak. The game is a sort of deckbuilder but it never feels like it. It also left us with the impression that you need to min/max from turn 1 and there is only a limited way to victory. Its on our list of games to resell. Do not understand the appeal
@dpunked My gaming group lives by Terraforming Mars. I’ll play it but I just can’t get into it. I strongly prefer Ares Expedition, but they don’t. #firstworldproblems
Hoping to borrow Ares Expedition from a friend soon. Played it once in Essen and wasn't wowed. Gonna be tough beating TFM after that...
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Mage Knight. This game threw me in to an unbridaled rage with how much I loathed it. I couldn't understand why it was rated so highly. So, I went to BGG to see just how so many people could like this awful game.
Turns out everyone plays it cooperatively. Not a soul plays nor recommends the competitive mode; the mode I was playing in.
Probably quite lukewarm at this point, but Gloomhaven. Too much effort to set up and manage, losing often is annoying, losing often with no consequences for losing is even more annoying. It always felt like it would be better as a video game, and guess what? There is one now. It's probably good.
Didn't know that some of these were turned into board games.
Probably Everdell. Just seemed to be very much style over substance. If you were lucky you could get some synergies going but luck is the key word there. The huge deck means there's no guarantee what you need is going to come up in the game at all.
Kind of feels like if you want a nature themed tableau thing Wingspan does it better.
I was kind of mystified by its appeal too, all that tiny text, the pointless tree...
Risk. Just rolling the dice and let the highest one win would be an equally well designed game.
It's a shame that risk Europe is so good and so connected to the name risk.
Axis and Allies. I dunno, maybe I've just lost patience as I get older, but the 2 times I tried playing it with my group we spent so much time going over the rules and setting up the board that we really didn't get it enjoy it much.
Its just a really time consuming game. I've spent 9 hours playing a game we made it 4 rounds in (in fairness with a few new players). I personally like it, but you really do need to have the patience of knowing you are likely spending the day and probably not finishing regardless. A bit like Talisman.
Ark Nova - I just had very bad starting cards and couldn't mitigate it, so I was doomed to be behind the whole game. Seriously with that big number of cards you can just get very unlucky and have no good combo available. It's too much chance in this game, but I might just be more of an Euro game fan...
Its a pity, its my favorite game this year. If you would ask my girlfriend, she would agree with you. So far, while I had kinda meh starting hands I managed to have a tight game. I think that its essentially a 2 player game and more players can really hinder the game flow. As a 2player it is probably one of the deeper ones out there. Rarely is a game best played at 2, unless its a duel game
Stone Age. Worker placement and set collection point salad and not much else.
Yeah. It got recommended to me as an easier Tzolkin. Well, it IS easier but not anywhere near as interesting and every game feels sooo samey.
Yeah. I like worker placement games, but Stone Age seems to think "oh player X goes before you this turn and gets dibs on spot Y so revise your plans" is the most interesting part of worker-placement. Which, no, it isn't. It's an important mechanic, but it feels like that and collect-em-up is basically the whole game in Stone Age.
I can't say I was disappointed, because I liked it at first, but Gloomhaven really became a drag after a year or so of playing. I feel like you really need to be invested in the lore and story to get anything out of it after a while, otherwise it's basically glorified, over-complicated chess. It doesn't help that 90% of scenarios have the same winning condition: "kill all monsters". I feel like there could have been a lot more depth to the actual gameplay, and not just the fluff in-between. What's more, each scenario takes 2-3 hours at best, and to make any real progress you need to set aside at least 6 hours per session, which is crazy. It's basically a job at that point.
Also, in the later stages, when you have a level 3-4 party with unlocked classes, encounters become exhausting, because you need to keep track of a million modifiers and buffs/debuffs, sometimes cancelling out eachother twice. And it's not a Gloomhaven session if you don't keep going back to the BGG forums for rule clarifications. It's a mess of a game, really.
After seeing what the scenarios with different win conditions looked like I am GLAD most were just "kill all monsters".
As for session length we always played just a single scenario (unless we lost the first super quick). It took us a good year maybe one and a half to play through the campaign. IMO the problem is less the session length and just how much of a time hog this game is in general. We're talking 150+ hours dedicated to a single game.
Yeah, I see your point. My group could only meet up once every so often due to differing work schedules and adulthood responsibilities, which I guess contributed heavily to the slow progress and the fact that we wanted to cram as much progress as possible into a single session. We were going on 2 years when I dropped out, and had made it halfway or two thirds into the campaign. The sad thing is that we could've exhausted several other games by that time instead of barely finishing the one.
Despite my rant, I'm not trying to put people off Gloomhaven entirely. It might be the best thing ever for some people. Just know what to expect when getting into it.
I can't blame you. It literally took us pretty much weekly sessions for over a year to reach the final scenario. That's a daunting comittment. I actually low key burned out on the game a few times during that period. But it always pulled me back in again.
For me it would probably be “7th continent”. It just feels a bit undercooked and the rules are vague in a way that’s really frustrating. People really like it on BGG but I don’t get it.
Here's hoping 7th Citadel works through most problems people had with the continent. Was getting ready to buy Continent right when I discovered the Kickstarter for Citadel. Been eagerly waiting ever since.
Yeah. It’s a nice concept, I even think 7th Continent could be nice if they redid the rules. A vague booklet and a half hour long YouTube video is not sufficient, especially since I can’t easily look stuff up in the video. (And let’s be honest I don’t wanna watch YouTube videos when I’m playing a board game either!)
Let’s hope Citadel fixes all that.
@dpunked Ooof, most disappointed I've been with a game has to be Cosmic Encounter; it's primarily rooted in two things.
- I had a terrible first play. I won (no ties even), but it felt vapid and arbitrary.
- The inability to select a target (and thus negotiate accordingly) sort of removed where I was hoping the game would be. Instead it was "oh, I'm targeting Jerry cause the game told me to"
Someone else in the group brought it, so it's not like I was out any skin. The game I did purchase, played a lot of to confirm some suspicions, and then traded away was Terra Mystica:
- It has a declining critical nature of decisions as the game progresses (the three most important decisions you'll make in the game are during setup).
- I found the faction dictated my strategy at an almost claustrophobic level (in particular, digging costs). This came across as a game about "here is what you need to do, can you do it better." Ora & Labora gives you a ton of options each turn and some of those are legitimate but it depends on your goal. TM says "here is your goal and strategy, can you actually do it" which I was less interested in.
I played maybe 7 or 8 games in person and double digits online but haven't played in years...
Not utterly disappointed, but certainly underwhelmed by Wingspan to begin with. Oceania + removing ravens fixed a lot - mostly around difficulty playing birds, overpowered birds, boring endgame egg-laying.
Had a similar thing with Viticulture, it just felt unfinished. Tuscany fixed that too. Turns out I'm a sucker for expansions.