It’s the grand finale of the event of events that is the BGB Top 50 Games of All-time! These are our ten absolute favourite games, and, fittingly, it’s a bumper episode with more than one surprise. Joining us in the peanut gallery this week, it’s none other than the manic imp of Shut Up & Sit Down himself, the absolute mad genius that is Tom Brewster. Buckle in, it’s going to get weird.
We often talk about the burden of rules, and how in some of our favourite games, they just get out of the way. But when is that burden worthwhile; what makes the price of a heavy rules overhead worth paying? Before we maximize our returns, we talk about Crash Octopus, Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition, Imperium: Classics, and Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile.
There are two good ways to create engagement in a board game: One is to let the player feel like they’re achieving something constantly, the other is to keep them feeling like any wrong move could tank their game. We’re dubbing this the “thriving to barely surviving” spectrum, but first, we need to figure out where some of our favourite games fit on it. Before we surthrive, we talk about Carnegie, Divvy Dice, and Underwater Cities.
It’s the big one! We’ve come at last to the grand finale of the Board Game Barrage Top 50 Games of All Time … Top. Ten. Baby. These are our absolute favourite games, forty (thirty?) all together, that we’d just about never turn down a game of. If you’ve made it all the way here, thanks for joining us on this ride, it’s been wild.
We return to our much loved feature from 2018, all about our favourite mechanics. This week, a mere two years later: auctions! We look at the good and bad sides of auction mechanics, and discuss our favourite games that feature them. Before we inflate the bid, we talk about Fleet: The Dice Game, Iwari, and Modern Art.
Monique from Before You Play is with us to get heavy. We’re discussing the allure of heavy games, and who better to talk us through them than a Vital Lacerda fan who loves to not just play them, but teach them? We dig into why we enjoy the occasional heavy game, and why you should too! Before we play, we talk about DURIAN, Animal Kingdoms, and Brass: Birmingham.
It’s award season when we say it is, so we’re looking back at the Golden Geek Awards, The Dice Tower Awards, and the Spiel des Jahres nominees. We offer our thoughts on their picks, and how wrong they are. I mean, Wingspan winning “Best Four-Wheel Drive SUV” just seems a bit much. We also talk about Battlestar Galactica, Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, Paladins of the West Kingdom, and The Boss.
Once loved board games will often circle back into the limelight with reprints, but we’re also starting to see a lot more get remasters and remakes too. We take a look at this trend, and discuss some re-imaginings our favourite board games, whether it’s a full on new version, or just a new coat of paint. Before we re-re-re-repeat, we talk about Cities: Skylines, Colorful, and Maharaja.
Here it is, the episode you’ve all been waiting for, the grand finale, the culmination of five weeks of episodes. These are our top ten favourite board games of all-time, games that we absolutely adore, and would happily play at a moment’s notice. Heck, we’d even play the games on each others’ lists … on, you know, birthdays and special occasions. That’s how good they are.
This week we’re talking about hidden trackable information. That is, information about the game state that could be remembered or recorded, but the game design (usually) assumes that players haven’t. Is it okay to memorize or divulge this information? Before we take notes, we also talk about Papà Paolo, Oceanos, and Pax Pamir (Second Edition).