A place to get recommendations for your next game.
List 2-3 of your favourite games or choose some game mechanics, and hopefully someone else can recommend a game that follows the same style.
Just recently bought Twilight Inscription (single player games) and I love it. Favorite type of game is deck builder. Favorite game of all time is Cosmic Encounters.
Three game recommendations from me:
Yamataï gets too little of love. It’s a game with a beautiful table presence and with interesting mashup of mechanics that are really on the lighter spectrum.
Mechanics:
- Action Drafting
- Contracts
- Increase Value of Unchosen Resources
- Modular Board
- Network and Route Building
Architects of the West Kingdom is my favorite game for a long time and even without the Age of Artisans expansion.
Mechanics:
- Contracts
- Open Drafting -Solo / Solitaire Game
- Variable Player Powers
- Worker Placement
Radlands is currently my favorite two-player card game. It plays smoothly, has a vibrant color palette and although I would appreciate the game mat I enjoy the game on the clean table as well. I like the action queue mechanic in the form of ongoing events, back-and-forth dynamics and energy (water) management.
Mechanics:
- Action Points
- Action Queue
- Hand Management
- Take That
- Variable Player Powers
Update: I got Radlands and Mottainai yesterday, based on the recommendations and information here. Thank you
Radlands is fucking brilliant. Just make sure you give the first player reduced water!
I search out and try games that have received high praise, like Inis and Innovation.
I can not fault either of them, they are very well put together with so much interplay in a small format.
Which other games have this denseness of quality?
If you like Innovation and want another awesome sense card game from the same designer, check out Mottainai.
Inis is pretty much in a category of its own, but another great area control game with interesting card play is Brian Boru.
I’ve never heard of Brian Boru before and it looks like exactly one of the genres I like, Celtic with quality gameplay. Thanks for this recommendation. (c:
Yes, thank you! I was looking at buying Mottainai this morning.
I’ve only played 1 it time on yucata.de and was not sure of the mechanics at the start of play… and then not sure of the mechanics at the end of play, but the theme is beautiful and it also gets high praise.
Yeah, it’s totally brain-bending for just being a deck of 54 cards!
My all time favorite board game is Lord’s of Waterdeep, a strategy game for 2 to 5 players.
Another favorite is Forbidden Island which is a coop and has a few sequels as well.
One we have similar to Forbidden Island is Burgle Bros which is a coop, heist, dodge the security guard through 3 floors, get to the chopper scenario.
Is good fun and needs strong cooperation to secure a win.
Ark Nova, a Feast for Odin, and Barrage. All are more complex games but each one has meaty choices, tons of decision space and variability, and are just pure fun the whole time.
Haven’t heard of Barrage before and it looks fantastic(and high scoring on BGG, 8.2). From the same designer as Barrage(Simone Luciani) are Newton and Lorenzo il Magnifico which I admire. His Grand Austria Hotel I find to also have an excellent and challenging decision space, which is always enjoyable to work through, even though I am really bad at winning in GAH.
I’ve been looking out for a year to play Ark Nova or Feast for Odin at our local game club meetups, both have appealing themes and reportedly solid gameplay.
Barrage is really fun and really intense. Tons of interaction out in the mountains, trying to get your network out before others. I am terrible at it but still enjoy it every time. Ark Nova and Feat for Odin are my top 2 favorite games right now. Just pure joy to play them every time.
I play a lot of 2 player games with my SO.
We love: Horrified Endeavor: Age of Sail Talisman (just bought the Harry Potter version but haven’t played it yet) Cascadia Ticket to Ride Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle National Parks
I couldn’t pick just 2-3 :/
Cascadia is part of a trio of tile-placement games from publisher Flatout Games. You may like the other ones also.
The other two are Calico(cats and quilts) and Verdant(make the nicest houseplant arrangements).
We play Calico at home at 2P and it is a great positional puzzler with a cute theme. Can be very satisfying when placing your last 2 tiles and completing 3 different scoring conditions. More often though the draw bag will give you an unwanted hex to mess up part of your perfect quilt symmetry. Fun either way, and still plays well at 4P.
Game of life
