As i play lots of new games during the year (not necessary released in 2016, just the games i have first time played this year), i thought it would be interesting to make a list of such games and rank them.
10. Smash Up – i’ve seen a number of reviews of this game and its expansions, also saw others playing it live. It’s concept looked interesting. Granted, i have only tried a few decks on Steam, so maybe overall impression would be different after trying more decks. But after playing it, it become clear that it’s not so good. Many cards in your hand are just useless trash and situation with bases is chaotic and ever changing.
9. Automobiles – another game with an interesting mechanism. I’ve played a number of various deck building games, but this was my first bag (or pool) building game. In theory it’s very interesting. But in practice it seemed to chaotic and luck driven. One turn you barely move, next turn you jump half of the track ahead. It’s also annoying to constantly having to check what color does what on the cards as they change in every game and it is not so easy to remember them all.
8. Las Vegas – very simple, maybe even overly simple, game. You jusy roll the dice and select what money spot to put them on. I suspect it should be more fun playing it live. But it is also a nice time filler playing online.
7. The Witcher Adventure Game – again, played it only on PC against AI. but i think it is enough to see that this is not an Adventure at all and more a “collect x of this tokens to turn into points” type of game. It still has some of the Witcher flavor and is an ok game, but can become repetitive and boring very fast.
6. The Voyages of Marco Polo – this game gives me the most headache to rate it. By all means it should be fighting to take a spot in my Top 10 of all time. It is a great euro game with an interesting dice allocating mechanism and variable players powers. And i love contracts fulfilling part of it. BUT. The travelling part throws me off. It is just too complicated and time consuming and takes too much time off the main part of collecting resources and fulfilling the contacts. You can’t do both, so you have to choose which one to do or just not do travelling at all. And the game is over too quickly to manage to travel even for one of your tickets. So, i love one part of this game and hate the other one. Maybe i will have to play it live to see how exactly other players manage those parts to make it a pleasant game. Read More