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The Big Board Gaming Weekend – 2025

Like every year, my gaming crew gathered for a four-day pilgrimage of BBQ, beer, and board games. We call it Hassela Weekend, named after the sleepy little Swedish countryside village where it all goes down. Now in its ninth legendary year, it’s the crown jewel of our gaming calendar and this blog post is the tale of our latest adventure. Enjoy the chronicles!

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

We began our journey into the weekend with a cozy warm-up while waiting for the rest of the party to arrive. Enter a charming little trick-taking game for four players, The Fellowship of the Ring: The Trick-Taking Game. This beautifully crafted card game is built on the bones of The Crew, the cooperative classic that made a splash in the board game world just a few years ago.

The crew was quite a hit, for a simple trick-taking game to break into the top 100 on boardgamegeek is a big deal.

The concept is straightforward: work together to complete card “tricks”, without knowing what cards your companions are holding. But, like a mischievous ring of power, there’s a twist. Each mission has special conditions that determine how those tricks must be completed. Unlike The Crew, though, the challenges here aren’t static; there’s actual strategy in planning your quest.

Players choose story-driven characters tied to specific chapters in the Fellowship’s saga, and those roles shape the rules and order of play for each mission. The characters you pick affect not only the constraints but also your chances of success, making the pre-mission phase feel like preparing for a trek through Moria with the wrong crew.

The difficulty escalates with each completed mission, starting out light-hearted and deceptively manageable, until suddenly, you’re Gandalf deep in the Mines, clutching your forehead, wondering where it all went wrong. What starts as a breezy filler becomes a real mental challenge as the tension builds.

Personally, I loved it. It fills the same niche as The Crew, a quick, cooperative brain-teaser but I’m a sucker for the theme, and I found the mission structure tied to the characters far more compelling than The Crew’s more generic objectives.

So, if The Crew hooked you, and you’ve ever dreamed of traveling with Frodo and friends, this one’s a no-brainer. The artwork is gorgeous, the components are solid, and it’s easy to teach yet sneakily addictive. A perfect first step on our Hassela Weekend.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Vendetta

During our Hassela Weekend, each player gets to pick a handful of games to bring to the table, and with five or six of us in attendance, that means you’ve got two, maybe three slots to make your mark. So when I chose Vampire: The Masquerade – Vendetta from a massive library of games, know that it wasn’t just a pick, it was an endorsement of the highest order.

You see, most of us in this group are old blood when it comes to Vampire: The Masquerade. We know the World of Darkness like it’s etched into our souls and in some cases, quite literally. Let’s just say one of the crew may or may not be walking around with their favorite clan’s sigil tattooed on their arm. The passion is real.

Vendetta may not be the RPG, but it’s the next best thing. For a brief, deliciously dark hour, it captures the political paranoia, the whispered alliances, and the backstabbing brilliance of the setting with unnerving precision. It oozes theme. On paper, it’s a simple game: you’re battling for control over various city locations to gain influence (points). But in practice, it’s a shadow war made up of meticulous card placement and expertly executed card abilities.

There are quite a few vampire-based card games out there. I think Heritage tries to be a bit closer to the RPG with the legacy concept, and while I think it’s an excellent game, at some point you have to ask yourself if you’re going to take it this far, why not just play the RPG?

Nothing in this game is fair, and absolutely nothing is safe. You’re constantly watching your back, guessing what your rivals will do, trying to outplay them with deception and ruthless timing. Each clan is a twisted mirror of power, all potent in their own right, but no two alike. Success hinges on your ability to read the room and strike at just the right moment.

We played it with six players for the first time, which splits the table into pairs of unholy alliances. It changes the vibe a little bit: you still want to win, but now you’re also dancing with a partner, plotting your shared rise to power. It works, but I think I prefer to plot the destruction of my enemies on my own.

I adore this game. But I imagine, its fangs don’t bite quite as deep unless your group knows the lore. So much of the nuance, the tension, the delicious little faction details will fly under the radar if you’re not already initiated. But for us, it’s perfection. Vendetta is one of the best V:tM tabletop games out there next to the RPG, ruthless, stylish, and soaked in blood-soaked atmosphere.

Raise The Goblets

Raise the Goblets is, in a word, gloriously dumb, and I mean that as the highest compliment. This is the kind of game that absolutely belongs in your collection, not because it’s deep or strategic, but because it turns your table into a laughing, backstabbing mess of theatrical absurdity.

Firmly planted in the “silly party game” category, this one’s all about slipping poison into your fellow nobles’ drinks while desperately trying not to sip something fatal yourself. The goal is to stay alive, take someone out, and toast to your own devious brilliance.

Each player gets a character with a special power, and then the chaos begins: goblets are swapped, rotated, passed, and spiked with poison, antidote, or occasionally, some actual wine. The whole thing plays like a medieval dinner party gone horribly wrong, and it’s magnificent. At some point, everyone has to drink what is in front of them, but while you can occasionally sneak a peek on your turn, there is so much manipulation going on that most of the time, you haven’t a clue what’s actually in your cup.

At Hassela, we tend to fill our days with heavy, brain-melting games, so something like Raise the Goblets is essential. It’s our palate cleanser, light, chaotic, and guaranteed to generate a few dramatic “death” scenes and outbursts of laughter.

It’s easy to teach, ridiculously fun, and family-friendly in a “Disney villain banquet” kind of way.

Blood Rage

There are games and then there are symphonies.

Eric Lang’s Blood Rage isn’t just a game; it’s the hammerfall of modern board game design. In over ten years of writing for Gamers Dungeon, it remains the only title I’ve ever awarded a perfect 5 out of 5. A decade of reviews, thousands of hours at the table, and still nothing has dethroned it.

Its appearance at our annual Hassela gaming retreat is never in doubt. Even on the rare years it doesn’t make it to the table, its box sits there like a slumbering god, watching, waiting. Blood Rage isn’t a question of if, it’s when.

You might wonder why the devotion?

Because this game is pure, unflinching execution. There are no dice, no randomness, no fate to plead with. Just you, your strategies, and the brutal elegance of a system that rewards only the sharpest minds. The best player will win. No excuses. No mercy.

That’s what makes Blood Rage so satisfying. It’s chess with axes. A ballet of blood and fire. Every move matters. Every draft is a prophecy. Every battle, a poem written in steel and rage. It is area control refined to the finest and deadliest edge.

The theme is flawless. This game doesn’t just use Viking mythology, it embodies it. Ragnarok isn’t just a backdrop, it’s the ticking heart of the game. The art is ferocious, the miniatures stunning, and the production so good it makes lesser games look like goat herding simulators.

The question I often get asked is whether it’s really that perfect, and the short answer is nothing is perfect-perfect, but this is as close as you are ever going to get.

If I were to be brutally honest and in the spirit of Odin’s wisdom, I must be, I’d say there is one hairline crack in this otherwise indestructible blade: the monsters. They’re mighty, they’re beautiful, but over the years of play, we’ve seen their impact dulled by one simple truth: they still need an open spot on the board to function. And when the smartest play is to deny those spots, even the most fearsome beast becomes a caged wolf.

Whether that is a real flaw or just a wrinkle is debatable. A battle scar on a veteran warrior, perhaps. And maybe, in some poetic way, it makes the game better because even the monsters bow to the gods of positioning and control. I don’t know, my crew theorizes about this, and I think most of us agree that we wish the monsters were just ever so slightly more effective in breaking up some of the uncrackable strategies that we have developed.

Blood Rage is more than essential in my opinion. It’s foundational. If you care about game design, hell, if you even pretend to, this belongs on your shelf. Not just to play, but to study. To admire. To inspire.

Wonderful game, top marks since the first time I played it.

Valor and Villainy: Minions of Mordak

First introduced to our crew last year, Valor and Villainy: Minions of Mordak made a triumphant return to the Hassela Weekend lineup, proving its staying power with a second round of magical mayhem and villainous gloating.

Honestly, I’m not surprised. Our group is a bit of a chimera: part deep-strategy tacticians, part storytelling adventurers. The games that tend to hit hardest are the ones that walk the line between tactical depth and thematic flair. Valor and Villainy fits that bill like a wizard in a bathrobe, funny on the outside, but hiding real power under the hood.

It’s got a delightfully goofy fantasy setting, brought to life with hilarious writing and some top-tier cartoon art. But don’t be fooled, it isn’t all jokes and japes. Underneath the humor is a legitimately tactical engine. Sure, it looks like a lightweight romp, but there’s meat on these monster-slaying bones.

That said, it does lean toward the adventure side. Most of the game is spent planning your turn to bash baddies, grab loot, and prepare for the grand finale: the showdown with Mordak, the all-powerful antagonist controlled by one lucky player. Mordak’s job is simply to wipe the floor with the heroes before they grow too powerful.

Now, we’ve had a few sessions where the villain felt like little more than a magical punching bag, and I started to wonder if the balance was a bit off. But this year’s Mordak player brought the heat, playing smart, conserving resources, and nearly turning the tables. The entire game came down to a single, heart-pounding die roll. The heroes won again… but only just. Mordak can win. We know this now, and I think everyone witnessed just how it’s done. The days of easy take-downs are over.

It’s a fun ride. Not my personal go-to genre, but as with all things at Hassela, it’s about shared experiences and giving everyone a turn at the wheel. And really, this one’s a crowd-pleaser, easy to learn and teach. A perfect family game. Picture a parent as Mordak cackling across the table while the kids band together to save the realm. That’s good gaming right there.

Viticulture

I’m not here to stomp on Viticulture. It’s a genuinely clever, tight, and thoughtfully strategic game. It has that elegant Euro charm: plant your vines, harvest your grapes, make your wine, and hope the tourists show up. But in the context of the Hassela weekend? It just didn’t pour right.

There are two reasons why.

First: Viticulture sings best at 3, maybe 4 players. At 5 or 6 (and yes, we played with 6), the game stretches out like a long, slow summer in Tuscany. What’s usually a crisp, hour-long worker placement game becomes a two-to-two-and-a-half hour grind. And for a game this streamlined and abstract, that extra time doesn’t add richness; it adds fatigue. The decisions don’t get deeper. They just get slower.

Second: Viticulture is one of those games where the magic reveals itself on the second and/or repeated plays. If it’s your first time or your first time in a long while, you’ll likely spend the first half of the game just trying to remember how the wine even gets bottled. The strategy, the timing, the flow, they all click beautifully, but only once you know what you’re doing. For newcomers, it’s a slow realization that dawns just a bit too late to be competitive, leading to a kind of disappointment. If you could just get a do-over, you would do so much better.

And unfortunately, at Hassela we had the perfect storm: a full six-player game with half the table either new or rusty. That meant long pauses, muddled turns, and a general sense of “wait, I fucked that up!” No one hated it, but no one walked away glowing either. It was… fine. Just fine. And for a game with this much potential, that felt like a bit of a letdown. Especially for me, since I too had that rusty feeling, but after the game, it started coming back to me, and I remembered why I bought and brought the game with me in the first place.

I think Viticulture is a great game. Just not for six players. And not for a weekend like Hassela, where table time is precious and first impressions matter. I’d be surprised if it makes the invitation list again next year, but who knows? Maybe one day, with a smaller group and a little more wine knowledge, it’ll get the second chance it deserves.

Oath

Oath was, oddly enough, the highlight of the weekend for me. But not because I had an amazing play experience, far from it. The actual game session was long, confusing, and at times frustrating. What made it stand out was something deeper: a fascination with the game’s design, its mechanics, and its ambition. It felt like standing at the gates of something brilliant, even if I couldn’t quite get inside or even fully understand what I was looking at.

Right from the start, Oath pulled me in like the first chapter of an epic fantasy novel. The visual design is stunning, with that distinctive Kyle Ferrin artwork (of Root and Arcs fame) giving the game a unique sense of place and personality. But it wasn’t just the art, it was the concept that really gripped me.

At its core, Oath is a political war game. One player begins as the ruler—the Chancellor and everyone else is an outsider, a potential usurper. But it’s not as rigid as that sounds. Mid-game, you can choose to join the Chancellor and become a Citizen, aligning your goals with theirs… or even betray them later down the line. You can be exiled. You can rise. You can fall. The system is feudal, chaotic, personal, layered with intrigue and shifting alliances. That alone is compelling.

But Oath goes further: it’s a legacy game, not in the tear-up-cards sense, but in how the outcomes of each game shape the world for the next. The sites, the factions, the ruling powers, they evolve. Over time, you create the history of this fictional land. And that idea, that’s the sort of thing I live for in board games. Concepts like this add a layer of personalization that develop into rivalries that can become almost a sub-game within a game, and I think in a way that is what Oath is going for here.

Cole Wehrle, in my eye’s, is one of the most intriguing designers to come along in quite a while. From Root to Arc and John Company, he is putting out games that are redefining what it means to sit around a table with your friends and play a board game. I think Oath might just be one of the most interesting one in his design history yet.

Unfortunately, our session didn’t quite live up to that promise. It wasn’t bad, it was just… off. The game’s mechanics are surprisingly clean and elegant. Move around the map with your warband. Conquer sites. Play and manipulate cards. Manage your limited supply of resources. Simple enough. But the depth isn’t in the actions, it’s in how those actions interact with each other, and in the timing, the strategy, and the layers of emergent storytelling. And we just weren’t ready for that, or perhaps better to say that we didn’t find it in what amounted to a kind of learning game.

Most of us spent the first half of the game just trying to figure out what the hell we were supposed to do, not because the rules were complicated (they weren’t), but because the game’s nuance is subtle and entirely dependent on understanding your position in the system. It’s not obvious. It doesn’t hold your hand. And if you don’t “get” it early, it’s easy to get lost.

The result was a session that stretched well past five hours for a game that, if everyone knew what they were doing, probably could have been played in two. Six players were too many, especially for a table where most of us were new to the game, and others who had played it had formed negative opinions on previous, but similar learning games, resulting in the game living up to the resulting negative expectations. Four players might have been better. But even then, I think Oath demands a group that’s fully bought in and committed to playing multiple sessions, building a shared history, and exploring the game’s complex social and political possibilities.

And at the Hassela board game event, that just wasn’t the vibe.

What makes this hard is that I genuinely think Oath might be a masterpiece. I really do. But it’s a strange one, difficult to categorize. It’s not exactly a war game. It’s not a pure legacy game. It’s not just a Euro, or an area control, or an RPG-adjacent narrative builder. It’s Oath. And I think that’s the problem, it might just be a little too unique for its own good.

You have to love this kind of game to even want to “get it.” It’s not about rules comprehension, though; it’s about being attracted to this peculiar blend of theme, tension, abstraction, and emergent narrative. You need a group willing to lean into the strangeness and stick around long enough for the game to reveal its depth. At least this is my impression, whether Oath actually has that depth I would hope to find remains to be seen and I’m not sure I’m going to get the opportunity to find out.

Oath will probably end up back on the shelf, gathering dust based on this first playthrough. I don’t think it quite gripped anyone in the same way as it did me. And that’s a shame. Because I want to try again. I want a second run, maybe even a full campaign with the right group. I want to see what this game can become and whether or not the game I’m hoping to find there actually exists. But I don’t know how to get there, or how to convince four to six other people to go there with me.

I’m not sure any of that makes sense, but basically, to me, the game I experienced during this weekend and the game that is in the box, I suspect, are not the same thing. I like to think of myself as being pretty perceptive and in tune with game design, given that I have been playing and writing about games for several decades at this point, and what I can say is that it’s quite rare for me to find something truly unique like Oath.

I think there is something under the hood here, and I’m very curious to explore it further.

Empires: Age of Discovery

Age of Discovery has long been a flagship title at our Hassela weekend, our own trusted galleon in a sea of changing tastes. It’s hit the table many times over the years, usually to triumphant applause. But this time… something felt different.

It wasn’t the game’s fault, per se. The sails are still crisp, the cannons still loaded. But perhaps the winds of modern board gaming have shifted. Worker placement games have evolved dramatically in the past decade, and Age of Discovery, once a towering conquistador of the genre, now feels a bit like an old empire grappling with new revolutions.

That said, Age of Discovery is more than just a worker placement game, and perhaps that is at the heart of the issue. It’s an abstract colonization simulator disguised in a worker placement cloak. The placement of your workers is only the opening maneuver, a careful disembarkation before the real expedition begins. What unfolds after is a tense struggle for land, gold, exploration, and domination. This is a game of empires, and if you fall behind, you will get crushed.

And in true imperial fashion, it’s not always polite.

Age of Discovery has teeth. Actions taken here can leave scars, players jockeying for position, muscling one another off prime territory, blocking moves, stealing opportunities. It’s not the gentle farming of Agricola or the tidy capitalism of Viticulture; it’s a game that evokes the cutthroat nature of colonial expansion, where every decision echoes with ambition and consequence. In a six-player game, 2-3 players are just going to get left behind in the dust, and you might have a couple of people actually competing by the end for the crown and glory. The game lacks comeback mechanics, so it’s not uncommon to see your empire’s impending failure as early as the end of the first age, a quarter into the game. That is a tough pill to swallow.

Personally, I still think it’s one of the best worker placement games ever made. If I drew up a map of the top 10, Age of Discovery would land firmly near the top. But I’ll admit my chart is a bit outdated. I haven’t explored many newer worker placement titles, maybe because I found my favorite harbors long ago and dropped anchor.

Still, Age of Discovery has what I want: thematic depth, strategic brutality, and a sprawling table presence. It feels like the Age of Exploration. You send your settlers across vast oceans, claim the unknown, clash with rivals, and build your legacy one exploited province at a time. Sometimes the endeavor is a failure, and as brutal as it can feel to be defeated, it’s part of the game.

One drawback I do think the game has is that it can feel a bit long, especially at six players and especially if you’re doing poorly. But then again, empire-building isn’t a short-term project.

If you like your Eurogames with salt in the air and the occasional knife in the back, Empires: Age of Discovery is worth charting a course for. Just remember, this is no friendly trading voyage. This is conquest. This is colonization. And in this game, history is written by the victor.

Bang The Dice Game

Just a quick mention, this staple of the Hassela weekend has been played every year since we discovered it. I have no idea if it’s a “good game” by any measure of the definition beyond the simple fact that it’s silly fun. It’s a perfect filler, and it has the charm of combining hidden identity and the chaos of dice into one game. It’s not quite of the same caliber as Love Letter or Coup, but sometimes games weasel their way into a gaming group’s playlist for ineffable reasons.

Make of that what you will.

Red Rising

Once labeled “absent of any endorphins” at last year’s gathering, I was genuinely surprised to see Red Rising return to the table at Hassela. Yet there it was, quiet and unassuming.

Red Rising is a strange creature. On its surface, it seems like a mere diversion; its rules are straightforward, even sparse, but beneath that veneer lies a machination of choices, a lattice of decisions so tight and intricate that you can actually miss it, which is what I think happened last time we tried it.

Every card you place is both a sacrifice and a step toward dominion. You build alliances in your hand while burning them on the table, all in service of progress across shifting tracks that you have to pace carefully. Every move is a compromise.

What makes it so treacherous and perhaps brilliant is that the end looms like a whisper, never certain, always threatening because it’s based on the very tracks that score you points. You don’t know exactly when someone will trigger the final curtain call, and getting caught unprepared before your hand is ready is devastating, yet stalling it for fear of the end is equally bad. It’s a rare thing: a game where the tension builds without spectacle, a slow-burn conspiracy played in plain sight. I would argue that at the very least, we can call Red Rising clever.

And perhaps that’s why it was better this time. We understood the contours a bit more, the rhythm of its strange economy. The crew around the table, fond of card-driven intrigue, seemed to resonate with it more deeply this time around. The verdict is still out, but for now, Red Rising has earned a cautious reprieve.

It’s a quick affair, once the rules and the general strategy of the game are known. Not quite a filler, not quite a feast, but something like a tactical interlude between wars. I’d return to its cold, calculating corridors again, but I’m not sure I’m ready to recommend it. I would put it in the “curiosity” category. I think some tables might like it.

Dead of Winter

I have a rather tumultuous relationship with Dead of Winter. Sometimes it grips me like a survival thriller I can’t put down, tension rising, frost creeping up the edges. Other times, it drags like a limp dick through snow, cold, sluggish, and joyless. And then, just when I think I’m done with it, some spark reignites the flame like an ex-girlfriend who seems less crazy in a bikini.

The truth is, Dead of Winter has a lot going for it. I love the premise, zombie apocalypse survival with narrative tension. I love games with storytelling, and this one clearly has effort behind its writing. The Crossroads system is brilliant, and mechanically, the game is clever. It should be one of my favorites in theory.

But it’s not.

And the reason is simple: I absolutely loathe the win conditions.

At the core of Dead of Winter lies a conflict, not just between the colony and the undead, but between the game’s mechanics and my philosophy as a gamer. Each player receives a personal objective. To win, you must both ensure the colony’s survival and complete your private task. Tasks that, more often than not, directly jeopardize the group’s success.

Now, thematically, I think it’s on point. It captures the desperation and selfishness of a crumbling world. But as a player, as someone who sees games as a battlefield of wits and willpower, I just can’t abide by it.

Because here’s the deal: I don’t play to help someone else win. If I’m going down, I’m dragging the whole colony into the snow with me. And when that moment comes, the moment I sabotage the group to chase my own victory, tempers flare. People see it as not just selfishness in a game environment, but a sort of player selfishness, and get genuinely upset as a result. I don’t just get in-game exiled, but it draws out real-life irritation. And I get it. But I also don’t. Because to me, a game is a war with rules. We all know what we signed up for. I’m here to win.

The problem is Dead of Winter wants it both ways. It wants cooperative tension and personal ambition. It wants trust and treachery. And in that tug-of-war, it often creates a confused, emotionally charged experience. One I’m not always in the mood to navigate. The game leaves me with an odd kind of dread, not from the zombies or starvation, but from the awkward social fallout that’s almost guaranteed to follow when I sabotage our chances chasing my own victory. It’s made worse by the fact that the game is pretty unforgiving; more often than not, if someone pursues their personal victory, they are likely to tank the game.

Add to that the pacing issues; it’s just too damn long. Even in its shorter forms, I often feel like the frost sets in around the third crisis too many. And this time at Hassela, we chose a long, brutal scenario; it really dragged on, we were on like our third hour when we finally lost the game, and we were technically only 50% done. I think had we actually won and finished the game, it would have easily hit the 5-6 hour mark if not longer.

That said… I still can’t fully walk away from it, and the end game result from this weekend’s game is exactly why. It was hands down the best execution of a betrayer that I have seen in this or any other game, ever..period. Despite screwing us in plain sight, one of the players had us all convinced that he “accidentally” put in the wrong card in the crisis deck, a moment of theatre only a true psychopath could have pulled off. It’s brilliant and hilarious stuff like that, that can only happen in games like this and that may be reason enough to play it.

There’s something compelling about the way Dead of Winter wraps theme, story, and survival in such a sharp, splintered package. It’s a game I admire. It’s a game I sometimes enjoy, but it certainly has some glaring flaws that get in the way of the fun.

Lords of Waterdeep

The final game of the weekend was a stone-cold classic: Lords of Waterdeep, played with the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion.

It’s a simple D&D-themed worker placement game, elegant in its clarity, yet layered with just enough interaction and tension to keep everyone leaning forward. It’s clever without being exhausting, competitive without being cutthroat. A perfect wind-down after three intense days of gaming.

By the fourth morning, we were all running on fumes. The last game is always a bit of a solemn occasion. You can feel the end creeping in: the bags are half-packed, the snacks are dwindling, and the sunlight feels more like Monday than Sunday. But Waterdeep has a way of waking you up. Something about the logic of it, the satisfying little cube puzzles, the gentle engine-building rhythm, just gets your brain clicking again.

There’s interaction here, sure. Intrigue cards, blocking key spots, stealing quests. it’s not a passive game. But the stakes feel friendly. It’s the kind of game where even when someone snatches the agent space you desperately needed, you sigh, smile, and adjust. And let’s be honest, that is the real villain of Waterdeep: someone taking the spot you were eyeing for the last three turns.

I’ve always had a soft spot for this one. It knows what it is. No fluff, no filler, just clean mechanics and a clear path to victory. Everyone knows what to do. Everyone has a shot. Games are often close, especially at our table, where we’ve all played it so many times that victory is more about finesse than luck.

I’m not even sure if it’s still in print. It might be one of the last survivors from our early days, a game that predates Hassela, and for some of us, even predates our friendships. An oldie, but a goodie. And the perfect note to end on.

Conclusion

That’s it, that’s Hassela 2025, the 9th year – done. As is always the case, the games are mostly just a distraction, while I love the competition, the whole point is for a crew of friends to get together and spend a few days away from the hustle and bustle of our lives.

All and all I think it was a good list this year, but I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t introduce more new games. Oath was really the only completely new game to me , unless you count the Fellowship of the Ring Trick Taking Game, which was fun but didn’t really feel “new” in the truest sense.

Oath, however, did have me spinning. I love discoveries like that. Hope to see that one hit the table sometime soon.

Hope you enjoyed the article, see you next year, Hassela!

Best of List

Top 10 Lifestyle Boardgames Worth The Effort and Top 5 That Didn’t Make It

There are board games, and then there are BOARD GAMES!—epic, brain-bending experiences that redefine what it means to gather around a table for game night. Once you delve a bit deeper into this hobby with an appetite for depth and challenge, you’ll find yourself discovering games where gameplay often demands much more than the average player might be ready to give.

These aren’t your casual diversions. We’re talking about games that push the boundaries with intricate strategies, meticulously designed simulations, and often marathon-length play sessions. They’re the kind of games that give back as much as they demand.

But let’s face it: not every complex game is worth the time and effort. Many fall short, bogged down by poor design, unnecessary complexity, or a lack of payoff. In this article, we’re diving into the fascinating realm of “lifestyle” games—those games that go beyond entertainment to become a full-blown hobby. These are games so rich, so challenging, and so immersive that simply learning to play them well feels like an achievement in itself.

Let’s explore the best (and maybe a few of the worst) of this exclusive club. Buckle up; it’s going to be a long one!

War Of The Ring

This classic Lord of the Rings boardgame that is part adventure game, part strategic war game is without question one of the most endearing games on this list. If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan looking for a two-player experience, this is the one that immediately pops into my head, but even as it does so, I can’t help but immediately point out the cautionary elements of this game.

It’s a long game and it’s a relatively complex game but this is not why I define it as a lifestyle game. The reality is that in order to get the most out of this game you need to have repeated plays of it, many…. so many repeated plays.

It takes many sessions to understand and come to terms with the subtle strategies of this game, the eben-flow of the asymmetric decks, the unique architecture of the map and the subtle way the gameplay is defined by the unique dice mechanic that may at first feel like a strange randomization in another why’s very thinky game, giving this one a kind of reactionary playstyle.

In short, this is not a game you play to try to win, rather you play the game to see what happens. In almost an RPG-like way, this board game is as much about telling the emergent tale of the entire trilogy of the Middle Earth story as it is a strategic war game. A concept that, for a Lord of the Rings fans, should hopefully spark excitement and anticipation. It’s a game where you get to explore what-if scenarios.

The game has a steep learning curve and the rules are not always intuitive, focused more on trying to bring out the story of the game and the realities of the Middle-earth world than being streamlined. Just explaining the game to a new player and having them come to terms with the nuances is going to take several plays and when you finally have that aha moment, you will find yourself in a permanent loop of “theory-crafting” different approaches, each demanding another session to try out your latest theory.

By the time you have played this game a dozen or so times, you will find yourself no closer to a definitive answer on how to play this game well or how to win at it and so you are drawn to it like a moth to a flame in the never-ending pursuit to figure it out. That is if it sticks the landing for you and I find that with many gamers, it doesn’t and this is why, finding like-minded opponents with a desire to explore the depths of this game becomes an important part of bringing the true nature and experience of this game to the forefront.

If you can find a good partner who loves Lord of the Rings as much as you do, what you have is an almost chess-like experience, a dual with eternal replayability that will have you creating and re-telling stories of “that one time” or describing past theories and gambits and its in this combination of attributes of the game, War of the Rings forms into a forever lifestyle game.

Western Empires

I have a love-hate relationship with this game mainly because it has this intangible quality, born part out of nostalgia for the classic game on which it is based (Advanced Civilization) but also because of its unusual mechanics that you will never see in any other game, creating this sort of abstracted, yet very story driven and personal experience. Simultaneously it’s frustratingly difficult to get to the table simply because of its scope and length of play.

It’s a massive game, playable by 5 to 9 players, but, quite clearly designed for 9 players specifically. A game that takes 12-24 hours to play, this is a massive epic-event game that can be made even bigger, up to 18 players by combining its sister game, Eastern Empires. To say this game is HUGE is an understatement. I say this without hesitation or exaggeration, this IS the single biggest boardgame ever made and I doubt we will ever see anything top it.

I don’t think it’s difficult to understand why I would proclaim this a lifestyle game, it takes enormous effort to get to the table, demanding a lot from its players, but why is it on the list? Especially given that this game also appears on my TOP 5 BOARDGAMES THAT WERE ALMOST GREAT, BUT HAD A FLAW THAT RUINED THEM list?

The answer is quite simple which is that the hard part of this game, unlike so many games on this list is simply getting X amount of players to sit down and play a game for Y amount of hours, in this case, the preferred X is 9 and the likely Y is 12-24 hours. It’s a bit much even for the most dedicated of gaming groups.

Despite its massive size, scope, and length, the mechanics of this game are surprisingly simple, at least in terms of understanding the “how” of playing the game. The beauty of this game is that it’s mostly a game about social interactions and player psychology. At the core of gameplay is trading resources and making high-level decisions, then living with some of the often impossible-to-predict outcomes. Much like real history, the story of the game is viewed in this sort of history concept where the culture you’re playing isn’t “you” or “your culture”, but this abstract engine you’re running in a grand historical concept of the world. You feel that personal ownership of the culture you’re running, as you would with any other civilization-building game, but there is this distance there because there really is only so much you can control strategically. This is a game you can win or lose simply because of bad luck, and that is a hard pill to swallow when you consider its length of play.

This is not a game you will win because you made the best strategic decisions, the best movement or tactical plan to overcome your opponent, or some clever leverage of mechanics. If there is any contributing factor to a victory it will be being the slickest salesman, the best negotiator, the most clever politician. It’s a game of subtle psychology, nuanced gambits, and social illusions, and these efforts make a huge difference but in the end, you might still get stuck with devastating calamities that will decimate all of your effort. As such the game is as much an activity as it is a game.

Yet despite that, a grandiose board it is. Massive and illustrious on the table, this game looks and feels like an event game, which makes this entry a unique lifestyle game to the list because it doesn’t have to be one. This is a game you can plan a big event around once a year and leave it at that, it works great for this purpose.

If however you can muster up the strength and the player count to get together more often, to dig deep into this games strategic layout, you will discover that in fact, while the game is played in the minds of the players, there is a lot to know about the motion and subtle tactics to this game. There is so much to learn and try out and while the game may not appear asymmetric as the only thing that differentiates one player from the other is the starting position on the map, this very small difference has a massive impact and each nation in this game has its own approach to be discovered.

Of all the games on this list, if I had my desires fulfilled this is the one lifestyle game I would choose for myself. A monthly game with a dedicated group to play this massive epic would be my definition of pure joy! As demanding as it is to get to the table, there is no doubt in my mind it’s one of the most timeless and unique gaming experience you can ever hope for.

Twilight Imperium

Over the years I have talked a lot about Twilight Imperium on this blog and it’s not a secret that I’m a fan, but when I talk to members of my group they often speak about this game in a negative light and I think that is because, contrary to what I used to believe about this game, it doesn’t make for a good event game. It is a lifestyle game, arguably almost exclusively so and that perhaps explains why my group maybe doesn’t love it the way I do, as I have, in the past, played this game as a lifestyle game and I know how that experience differs to simply running this as a once in a while event game which is the experience all the members of my group have with this game.

What is the subtle difference? The answer is that the game has an endlessly complex well of depth, not just in the way the rules execute, but in the subtle way the game is balanced between the sociology of the game and the impact of mechanics.

This is not a game you can win by outplaying everyone using mechanics alone, it’s a game where, like chess, you have to get your opponents to make a mistake and when that mistake is made and you leverage it, you make your move. Other (less experienced) players might look on this as a game they lost because someone did something stupid. In an event game, this can feel like king-making as players are unfamiliar with the subtle art of forcing a mistake in this game.

See the game is deep, very deep strategically with tons of unique interactions and hard-to-extrapolate balances hidden within the game’s uniquely asymmetrical elements with so much nuance, I could write a 12-book volume set on the strategies related to the different races in the game alone. This high-level understanding of the game however is not transferable, it’s not something you can teach, it’s the result of having played it countless times over two decades. This is not something I can explain to players even on a high level when teaching them to play so in an event scenario where the game is played as a one-off, players know the rules, but they are dozens of plays away from even realizing that such subtlety exists, let alone knowing what to do with that knowledge.

I don’t think I’m overselling it, I think a Twilight Imperium player will understand how this nuanced realization completely changes your outlook on this game, it’s why there is a such a difference of opinion on this game. You can really see the difference between a Twilight Imperium player that explored the depths of the game reviews this game, versus someone who casually dips their toes in. There is a massive difference in the two experiences.

Twilight Imperium definitely falls into the lifestyle or nothing category and I can always tell when I’m talking to someone who has “tried it once or twice” and someone who has “played it for years like me”. It’s almost like a secret language, a kind of understanding that can’t be learned from reading about the game or studying the rules of the game, watching or theorizing about it, this secret understanding comes only from countless repeated plays.

For science-fiction fans who love civilization-building games (4x games), Twilight Imperium is a revelation, and don’t let any other game marketing convince you otherwise. There are no games that do the same thing or even anything approaching Twilight Imperium. There are no games that come within a million light years of this one, in fact, many games make the claim that they are “lighter” versions of Twilight Imperium or are “shorter” versions of Twilight Imperium. This simply is a false advertisement and what’s egregious about these advertisements is that it’s clear the people making that claim don’t have the faintest clue what Twilight Imperium is or how stupid they sound when they make such claims. There are no alternatives to Twilight Imperium, it is a unique, white-elephant, one-of-a-kind lifestyle game that has no competition in this genre. It’s the ultimate Science-Fiction Civilization Builder in a class of its own.

Empire Of The Sun

Empire of the Sun, much like War of the Rings is an in-depth strategy game with a primary goal of telling (or perhaps better to say re-telling) a story, in this case, the entirety of the war in the Pacific.

The caveat is unlike War of the Rings, Empire of the Sun is a simulation and complex mechanics weigh heavily on the game, in a word, this is the most complex game I have ever played and by a considerable margin. In fact, it took the better part of a year of constant attempts to play it, pouring over rules, watching videos, studying the game and even direct interaction with its designer, Mark Herman before I was certain I was playing the game “mostly” correctly.

That in itself requires a level of commitment to the game that goes far beyond a typical board game night, placing it squarely in the lifestyle game arena.

It is a fantastic game, but it’s made by and for historical war gamers who care about the most finite of details the most accurate of representation and the most researched of content. Every inch of this game is as historically accurate as a historian could make it and the decisions you make in this game are very much the same decisions the generals of the actual war had to make, with outcomes that simulate this war with precision only the most informed historian could fully appreciate.

It is an amazing game with tremendous detail, it takes two very dedicated players, ready to spend hundreds of hours studying the nuances of this game and its many rules and rules exceptions, but it is also hands down one of the most rewarding games I have ever played. This game tells a story like nothing I have ever played before, and it does it with a hex map, some cards, and tokens.

From where I’m standing this is one of the best game designs in all of board gaming, it’s a masterpiece. If you are going to choose something as a lifestyle game, this one will not disappoint, with the caveat of course being that you have to get through a very tough learning curve first and you have an insatiable hunger for historical war gaming.

Paths Of Glory

While we are on the subject of historical war games, like Empire of the Sun, Paths of Glory essentially fits the same niche and in the same way. While arguably the learning curve is a bit simpler on the rules side, it’s no less robust, deep, and dynamic than Empire of the Sun.

There are a couple of things that segregate Empire of the Sun and Paths of Glory. The first is the historical period. World War I and World War II have a completely different set of political and geo-centric problems to solve, most notably World War I isn’t as cut and dry as good guys and bad guys and the war tends to escalate over time with more countries entering the war at different points in Paths of Glory which creates an entirely unique set of circumstances in each game. There are two distinct sides in this two-player game, but the game states can vary wildly from game to game, so it feels like a chess game where you are not even certain what pieces you will have in the course of the game to work with. In a way, it’s less tactical and more strategic with a lot of attrition.

The card play is quite similar between Empire of the Sun and Paths of Glory, there is no question that these games influenced each other, but I think Paths of Glory has a more dynamic system. In part because in Paths of Glory the recruitment of soldiers is part of the resource management, whereas in Emprie of the Sun you have a fixed schedule. This doesn’t make one better than the other, but you do tend to end up with a more dynamic outcome in Paths of Glory, as the flow of the game can be wildly unpredictable at times. Aside from the opening moves, there is very little pre-ordained strategy in the game. Empire of the Sun tends to, regardless of player decision, have certain historical points you will hit, but with Paths of Glory, things can become wildly different depending on player decisions and you will rarely have a historical outcome when the game finishes. You do a lot more historical re-writing in Paths of Glory and some players prefer that.

This debate is neither here nor there, in my eyes, these are both amazing games, and frankly, if you play one, it makes learning the other easier, so for me personally, if you choose a game like Empire of the Sun as a lifestyle game, it’s not a big stretch to include something like Paths of Glory as part of your repriotore just to shake things up now and again.

Terraforming Mars

This might be a rather odd entry into this genre because Terraforming Mars is actually a relatively simple game to understand, it really doesn’t take that long to play, at least compared to other games on this list and it does just fine as a pickup and play game for a board game night.

So, how does this one make it onto the list of a lifestyle game? There are three unique reasons that allow this game to rise from your typical euro game pick-up game and into the realm of lifestyle games.

The first is the unique game states that this game creates, driving a truly dynamic and highly competitive atmosphere at the table with a tremendous amount of nuance and interaction between players that require both short term and long-term planning and execution. Much like a collectible-competitive card game draft, players create their tableau from a combination of card draw (random cards) and spending resources on cards that become available, meaning the game is both pro-active and re-active. This creates a unique set of circumstances each game that never repeats, resulting in a fascinating puzzle for you to solve and requiring new strategic direction each game.

The second thing is that the game, on a competitive level, is incredibly tight. The more you play this game, and the closer you get to that most optimum play level, the more critical of a role each action you take has on the outcome of the game. It’s a very interesting effect in the game that you can really see, but when you first start playing the games victory point difference can be as much as 50+ points, but after a while people start winning this game by 2-3 points. You come to a sort of strategic mastery level of playing this game, but to get to that, you have to go really deep into this games amazing and diverse gameplay. You really have to outthink your opponents on an incredibly high level and build engines based on the unique combination of resources (namely cards) that become available to you. The replayability here is infinite and you are never truly done assessing the games finer details.

Finally and perhaps most importantly the game has a plethora of expansions that completely re-define established elements and this drives the game to ever-increasing complexity and sophistication. The game becomes almost overwhelming robust and this is a good thing for a lifestyle game because one of the key requirements of a good lifestyle game is that there is no end or repetition in what you are doing, each game is a new challenge and just when you think you have it figured out, you add one of the expansions that completely unravels all the theories and forces you to re-think and re-imagine your victory.

To me, Terraforming Mars is a highly competitive and very intelligent game that really deserves to be on this list, its nuanced and it takes time to really fully grasp its high-level strategies and even when you get there, each card draw, each card draft, and each play on the board forces you to redefine your route to victory.

War Room

This Larry Harris-designed masterpiece is my favorite game of all time and while I believe it to be far better suited as an Event Game, I do believe it has the mustard and stamina to also be a lifestyle game.

This World War II monster, designed by the same guy that brought you Axis and Allies, is a simulation of the entire war, designed for up to 6 players. It takes about 10-12 hours to complete a game of War Room so this is definitely not a casual game by definition, but the reality is that the rules are quite simple and it is a team game so personally, I think it works great with both experienced and amateur players.

As a lifestyle game however there is one caveat because while the rules are simple there is considerable depth, especially in the math of the game and the way the asymmetrical and hidden movement works. It’s a game that is part psychology and prediction and part mechanical execution, making it a much more human experience. This is not a game experience an AI will ever replicate because a huge chunk of the experience is trying to outguess and out-think your opponent in a more general rather than mechanical way. What I mean by that is if you could see the movement of your opponent, you would win 100% of the time regardless of which side you’re on. This is not a game that comes down to dice or position, it comes down to predicting what your opponents will do and responding to those actions. Do it right and you WILL win.

As such it’s then also a game about trying to get your opponent to guess wrong and cleverly trapping them into believing you’re going to do one thing, while you do something completely different. Like real war, its all about intelligence and counter-intelligence, the more you know the more successful you will be.

I love this game above all others, it’s not only a fantastic game, but its actually an amazing interactive experience. It’s one of those games where you will spend as much time looking at the board as you will looking into the eyes of your opponent to try to guess what they are thinking.

Love, definitely deserves to be on this list!

Warhammer 40k

I have to admit, it pains me to put this one on this list because frankly, I don’t think it’s that good of a game mechanically. I say that while in the same breath, having to admit that I love playing it, I love building models and painting them and it’s one of the few games in my collection that sit in a display case with pride.

Warhammer 40k is not just a lifestyle game, it is a self-contained lifestyle hobby and while it’s stupidly expensive and there are far better miniature games out there, not to mention far better ways to spend your money, my life would simply feel incomplete without Warhammer 40k on the agenda at certain intervals.

I don’t play it nearly enough, it sort of comes in spurts of enthusiasm, but I do spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about it, planning for games, painting, and fiddling with it. It’s just something that you are drawn to as a gamer and it’s perfect for people who enjoy a solo hobby that is also occasionally a game you can play with someone. A game that is mostly a creative endeavor that doubles as a social activity and to some extent is also an actual game.

This list would be incomplete without Warhammer 40k on it and while there are many other miniature games out there, I find I don’t obsess over them in quite the same way. It is worth saying as well that 10th edition of Warhammer 40k is a much better game than previous editions were and there is a clear move towards a more streamlined and accessible experience with each new edition.

What else can one say, 40k is an addiction for many gamers, myself included and there has to be a reason for it. Tyranids for life!

Star Wars Unlimited

It’s not the only collectible card game that I’m going to put on this list but it certainly is the latest and greatest and to some extent at least, this game is shaping up to be the first real contender to face off against Magic The Gathering. Now, I will say that it’s a long way off before it reaches that goal, after all, Magic: The Gathering is a game that has been in constant development for decades, so the library of cards and, as a result, deck building possibilities is nearly limitless. That said, I think Magic: The Gathering has a lot of core mechanical legacy issues that will never be fixed that Star Wars Unlimited addressed on day one, so in a sense, it’s a CCG that has been greatly influenced and learned from the grandaddy (MTG) of CCG’s, yet maintains that robust, high level addictive replayability that MTG is famous for.

To understand why this game is shaping up to be a lifestyle game and not just another soon-to-be-extinct CCG you have to understand the three core design elements that make this a true competitor to MTG.

The first is mana management (aka card playing resource). Star Wars Unlimited uses a fixed rather than random “mana” for the lack of a better word system, unlike MTG’s “land” system. This means that there is a real competitive consistency to the game, you are going to get mana always and at certain intervals and while there is ramping up cards, there is a kind of control here. You are not going to lose X amount of games simply because you got unlucky and drew too much land or not enough, a problem that has always existed in MTG and essentially makes both deck building and competitive play an often frustrating experience.

The second is set mechanic control. One of the big issues with MTG is that there are countless broken combos that are born from set mechanics that all interact with each other, creating this crazy situation where you can do unlimited damage on round one, or spawn unlimited creatures and all other manner of game-breaking combos.

In Star Wars Unlimited each set introduces two new, self-contained mechanics that don’t really interact with mechanics from other sets so there is this fixed stability in the game and this effectively eliminates game-breaking combos. Not to be confused with cards and effects on a single card that can be too much, this still happens, but at least there aren’t these accidental introductions of broken game mechanics that can and often do ruin CCG fun time.

Finally it is the Star Wars universe, and say what you will about Disney’s trouble with managing the franchise, people still do and probably always will love the Star Wars universe. It’s a franchise that is older and far more known than the MTG universe, and there is a certain attachment and fundamental connection players have to the game. This is a game where each card you draw is clearly tied to some person, thing or moment in the Star Wars universe and there is this “feel good” story element in cards rolling out on the table. It’s also notable that FFG has gone to great lengths to make sure card combos are related narratively, with classics like Han shooting first and power levels like the Emperor and Darth Vader fitting to the thematic cores of the story upon which the game is based.

This is a fabulous game with tremendous replayability, it very quickly became a “standard thing” in my gaming life, and I foresee it having tremendous longevity where my collection will just grow infinitely. Thanks to the game’s great stability and FFG’s attention to detail, at least right now, the game is on a fantastic path with a bright future ahead of it.

Lord of the Rings The Card Game

I’m almost tired of hearing myself talk about this game so I’m going to make it short and sweet. This solo/cooperative living card game by FFG is the single, best card game I have ever played.

It’s very challenging, easy to learn, impossible to master, diverse and dynamic and has been supported by FFG for over a decade, now in its second edition which is exactly the same as 1st edition just repacked. It was so good the first time around, they saw no reason to change it, that, is the sign of a brilliant design, when no one can think of a way to improve it.

This is my favorite lifestyle game. I have been playing it since it was released, and I simply never tire of it.

Games That Don’t Make it but tried

There are a few games that really desperately want to make it into the lifestyle category but there is some flaw/reason that prevents it from succeeding. I mention them here only because they are great games, but this tragic flaw of simultaneously trying to be a lifestyle game, but failing to be one puts them in this odd limbo that results in them missing the table more often than hitting it.

Game Of Thrones: The Board Game

My gaming group and I play this game typically once a year at our big board gaming weekend getaway in the summer ,and frankly, I love this game. It captures the Game of Thrones theme with perfection, its deeply strategic and always tense. It’s got everything you want out of a game fit for a lifestyle spot, but unfortunately, it has one tragic flaw.

When you replay this game a couple of times in a row, clear patterns start to emerge, key plays, strategies and round executions start to repeat. This is a solvable puzzle and while I would argue it has sufficient dynamics to keep a yearly game exciting as everyone essentially forgets everything over that time period, on repeated plays this game really falls apart and you really start to see the design warts. Lord knows there are plenty of them.

I discovered this kind of by accident by playing the digital version on Steam for a couple of weeks back to back. After a few games, it all started to look like the same game over and over again.

Game of Thrones The Board game just lacks the stamina and the diversity and dynamics needed to qualify it as a lifestyle game, there just isn’t so much to discover and unravel here. Once you get the core nuances there are just so many “moves” you must make and reactions just become kind of predictable.

It’s a very long game, however, so it’s not really a good fit for a typical board game night, relegating this one to a once-in-a-long-while event game. I love it,4 but it just doesn’t stick to the landing as a lifestyle game.

Star Wars Armada

I’m a huge fan of Star Wars Armada, I think the concept of capital ship combat in the Star Wars universe is brilliant, and I love the unique movement mechanics and the amazing diversity of ships and upgrades, perfect for those of us who love list building.

Unfortunately, it falters in two main categories that knock it out of contention as a lifestyle game.

First and this one is kind of obvious, a miniature war game that has no hobby element, means that the only thing to do with your minis is keep them on a shelf until you are ready to play. There is no hobby here outside of the game which in general is kind of the main thing about miniature gaming, that personal touch and obsession of building and painting “your” army. Sure you can do some repaints, but there are only so many interesting takes on “grey spaceships”. I will say that there are benefits to this drawback for those of you out there who want to play a miniature game but don’t want to deal with the hobby.

The second issue and far more important is what I call the “default winner” effect. Basically most games of Star Wars Armada assuming a reasonably equal level of understanding and skill level in the game can be called with near-perfect precision based on list building and initial deployment.

This is a very decisive game and the battle outcomes really don’t surprise you, in fact, most of my friends got so good at this that we can look at two lists and tell you who is going to win with 99% accuracy. There just isn’t enough in the mechanics of the game to wildly alter the outcomes and while two players with wildly different skill sets can certainly create surprise outcomes, in our group, everyone was pretty expert at the game so it just became far too predictable.

This one hung out for quite a while until we all made this discovery and we all enjoyed it but these days it doesn’t take more than a match to remind all of us while we no longer play this game with any regularity.

It just lacks sufficient dynamics to be a lifestyle game.

Eclipse: The Second Dawn For the Galaxy

I was really excited for the second edition of this game, it really promised a lot and at first it seemed like it would deliver, but even as it sits near the top of my list, I can tell you hear and now that it’s rise on the list will be as rapid as its climb. In fact, right now, I would say it doesn’t even make the top 20 anymore.

The reason for this sudden shift is the stark realization that the mechanics are just too static and there is virtually no dynamics in the game at all. Initially, you might think with a mixed galaxy, asymmetrical races and dice for resolving combat that there would be plenty of ways games diverge into unique experiences, but the reality is that the mechanics are so tightly wound that in effect, every game of Eclipse is essentially a parallel version of every other game of it played.

Worse yet is most of the activity of the players is mostly irrelevant, the only thing that matters is scoring points and the board state really has minimal impact on that. It’s just like any other standard Euro fair, figure out how to build a good engine and then just let it spin.

This is a fine way to play a game and I love engine-building games, but Eclipse was not supposed to be that. It was supposed to be a faster, more streamlined 4x game that could compete with Twilight Imperium and it was definitely my hope that it could be the next big lifestyle game.

The aesthetic is there, all the pieces are there but the game just doesn’t come together to create a repeatable experience. It’s a bit like playing checkers, after a while you can’t remember one game from the other, sure outcomes differ, its not like the game is unbalanced or anything but its just a very bland game full of routine and default (many choices but one obviously good one) kind of a game.

After 3-4 plays of this gam,e I’m fairly sure it’s going to collect dust on my shelf for a very long time, in fact, I may even cull it from my collection, it was that much of a disappointment in the end.

Mage Knight The Board Game

There are many adventure games out there and over the years, I have found plenty of them I don’t like, but Mage Knight is a unique exception for me and there is very good reason for it. It, unlike most adventure games, doesn’t try to replicate the role-playing experience and actually focuses on bringing quality game mechanics with excellent card management and card play, clever and difficult scenarios designed to actually defeat you and outstanding expansions that lean on the games existing strength, rather then just giving you more of the same. In a word, its a “real” game, rather than what you get with most adventure games, which is a sort of quasi role-playing activity.

This is a massive game, Mage Knight doesn’t really hold your hand and as such is had a considerable learning curve, a long play time and is in a word infinitely replayable; all qualities that fit well with a lifestyle game, there is plenty to explore.

With everything going for it, it still manages to fall short of a lifestyle game. Mainly I think because it’s one of those games that once you learn the nuances of each of the characters, that mastery leads you down a road of automatic moves that are sort of preordained. It’s a bit like figuring out the patterns in Pac Man, once you know them you end up playing the game the exact same way each time you pick it up.

The different scenarios while interesting and fun in their own right, really do not alter the approach you will take. There are just some clear builds you discover and after that the game becomes quite repetitive despite its generally very dynamic game state.

This means there is a kind of cap on the game as a lifestyle game, play it enough times and it runs out of fuel.

Its a fantastic game and I would never suggest that its not, but life style games need this sort of infinitate discovery element where no matter how many times you play it, there is always more to discover, new strategies, approaches and puzzles to solve. This game is just limited in that department, once you discover its patterns and secrets, it goes stale quite quickly.

Through The Ages

This is a bit of a heart breaker for me personally as Through The Ages is without question one of my favorite games of all time, sitting pretty in the number 9 spot on my top 20 list and having been on my best of list since the first time I played it almost years ago.

This is one of the best civilization building games I know, its highly competative, deeply strategic and overwhelming diverse. In many ways it is a great lifestyle game but it has one key caveat that really sort of disqualifies it.

The main issue is that if you play it enough, patterns emerge and those patterns lead you down very specific highly effective playstyles that essentially disqualify all others, really answering the question “What is the best strategy” with a definitive answer.

A good lifestyle game is an unsolvable puzzle, or at least one that you must solve in a unique way each time you play and unfortunately, Through The Ages for all its depth and meaningful gameplay, has tricks and “must do’s” that really kill its lifestyle game potential.

It’s a fantastic game, I play it every chance I get, but the only way your going to beat me is if I explain the core “answers” to you, at which point the game becomes a tight and interesting “lets see what happens” sort of thing, but there is absolutely no way you can beat me at the game otherwise. I’m not going to bore anyone with the answer here, in fact, its kind of a spoiler as it will take you many plays to figure it out, but eventually, if you play it long enough you will unravel the mystery of Through The Ages. At which point it’s a bit like watching Harry Potter, knowing full well how it will end. Still fun, but there aren’t going to be any twist endings.

Hidden Gems

Hidden Gems: The Witcher – Old World

I got a chance to play The Witcher – Old World this last week and I have to say right up front, I was not disappointed.

Adventure board games fall into many different categories, I would say it’s a genre with quite a few different sub-genres, but The Witcher – Old World kind of felt like a new sub-genre was invented and that is perhaps what attracted me to the game.

In a way, Old World is a very strategic game that combines deck building, resource management and time-pressured competition. You have some of the classic things you hope to find in adventure board games via story telling through cards and other things that create a relationship with role-playing games like special abilities, leveling up, finding loot and fighting monsters, but at the heart of the game it’s all about that most optimal move each round. Trying to squeeze as many actions and gain as many benefits as possible each turn because to a certain degree, the game is a race to the finish line, giving the entire experience a more gamist feel, more like a competitive board game than what you might expect from a typical adventure game.

You can’t just sit back and do things when you are ready, the pressure comes from the other players progress and as soon as one player pushes forward, you are left with little choice but to do the same because if you’re not keeping up closely with the leader, you start to fall behind and are essentially in catch up mode.

There is also this harshness to the games monsters that you fight. There aren’t many of them and the adventurers you represent in the game are initially pretty ill-equipped to deal with these monsters. Your goal is to get yourself prepared as quickly as possible and it becomes a game of risk vs. reward. Go in to early and you get crushed, go in to late and someone might beat you to it.

I also really liked the built-in catch-up mechanic that worked very well to counterbalance players who get too far ahead of the pact. Each time you lose a battle, you gain a lot of benefits for the effort, while winning a battle costs your resources and reduces your strength, forcing you to take time to rebuild yourself. This gives the game a nice tight feel and makes taking bigger risks a plausible effort which results in you getting more of those exciting “let’s see what happens” moments.

The quality of the game components are outstanding, the art especially captures The Witcher franchise with perfection, they just nailed it with the presentation of this game.

Altogether, I really enjoyed this one, a big improvement over the last Witcher game I tried called “The Witcher Adventure Game”, which I thought was pretty shit.