This is the second part of a four-part (or maybe
five-part!) series on favorite games. If
you missed it, my wife, Em, guest-blogged for the first time on my site listing
her favorite five games. I quite enjoyed
this post and to be honest what quite pleasantly surprised by her list. I knew her top game, but other than that I
was very interested to see what she chose.
Check that post out at the following link:
That was the first post in the series. This post will focus on my honorable
mentions, and the next couple of posts will be my top 10 games! Lastly, I may do a fifth post that would
focus on some games that I expect will crack the list either soon or closely in
the future. Understand, this is the first
time that I (and my wife as well!) have made a favorite games list. We have now been seriously into the hobby for
about a year and it has been great! That
being said, understand that my list may still be very fluid as there are so
very many games that I want to play and haven’t yet. With that caveat out of the way, here are the
honorable mentions that just missed my top 10 list.
#5 – Samurai Spirit (Funforge)
Samurai Spirit is a beautiful little co-operative game by
the fantastic Antoine Bauza. To be
honest, I was a little worried when I first heard about this game that it would
just be a re-skin of Bauza’s other fantastic co-op, Ghost Stories. That being said, after getting and playing
this game, it is nothing like Ghost Stories.
As a matter of fact, I think (at least for myself) that Samurai Spirit
has more tactical and strategic decisions than Ghost Stories. Because of this reason, I place it just ever
so slightly ahead of Ghost Stories on my personal list. This isn’t taking anything away from Ghost
Stories; it is just saying how much I love Samurai Spirit as a total
package. Other high points of this game
include the size of the game (much smaller shelf space and super portable!), the beautiful artwork, and the fact that it
plays anywhere from 1-7 players!
#4 – Zombicide (Cool Mini Or Not)
The next game on the honorable mentions list is Zombicide
by Raphael Guiton, Jean-Baptiste Lullien, and Nicolas Raoult. This game is just pure Ameri-trash (or
Ameri-thrash) fun! Cool Mini Or Not really
hit a sweet spot with this game. Cool
Mini Or Not funded this game on Kickstarter a couple years ago and now have two
other large box expansions (these are also stand-alone game) that have made
millions of dollars on Kickstarter. The
expansions are Zombicide Season 2: Prison Outbreak (the one I have) and
Zombicide Season 3: Rue Morgue. Along
with the large box expansions they have a couple of small box expansions in
Zombicide: Toxic City Mall and Zombicide: Angry Neighbors. Each of these adds different types of zombies
and a few different mechanics. Then,
because this isn’t enough, they have multiple sets of zombies and
Kickstarter-exclusive survivors that you can add into the mix. All of this just makes for a super fun
package that I pull out when I just want to roll some dice and kill some
mindless drones of zombie attackers!
#3 – Quarriors! (WizKids Games)
Quarriors is the next game to slide its way onto my
honorable mentions list. It was
developed by the fantastic Eric Lang and Mike Elliott and effectively created a
deck-building game that doesn’t use cards.
Quarriors is the first game to take the ideas of a deck-building game
(using your weak cards to buy and use better cards) and create a dice-building
game. Now, instead of cards, you use custom
dice to roll the currency of the game (called quiddity), and then use that
currency to buy bigger and better creature dice. This game is just fun! My wife and l love to play this game and have
just introduced a friend to it. Needless
to say, he loved it as well! We would
love to get some of the expansions (Quarriors! Quarmageddon, Quarriors! Quest
of the Qladiator, and Quarriors! Quartifacts to name some of them) to add to
the number of creatures and custom die!
The newer Dice Masters’ games (which we have yet to try) are based off
of the ideas that Quarriors was created on.
#2 – Takenoko (Bombyx/Asmodee)
Takenoko is a lighter game by Antoine Bauza and is the
second game to be on this list. This
game has some tile-placement, some set-collection, and some slight area control
that are all shoved together into a game with absolutely beautiful
artwork. This was one of the first games
that I used to really get my wife into the hobby and it is now on her top 5 list! Basically, you take two actions during your
turn in order to grow brightly colored bamboo (beautiful wooden pieces that
connect together) with a little gardener miniature, eat the bamboo with a cute
little panda miniature, and/or spread out the gardens with tiles-placement. While doing these actions you collect and
score cards with set-collection. This is
just a fun game that we use to get new players into the hobby! I can’t wait till my daughter is old enough
to play games because Takenoko will be one of the first we use to get her into
the hobby. Also, as a random aside, we
will be getting a new expansion for this game around Gen Con 2015 that includes
a female panda and little panda baby chits.
#1 – Carcassonne (Z-Man Games)
Finally, the game that just missed my top 10 is Carcassonne. This is a tile-placement, area control and
worker-placement game by Klaus-Jurgen Wrede that is now considered a modern
classic. Em and I got this game while we
were on our anniversary trip this past year and it has become a favorite of
both of us! It is the number 2 game on
Em’s top 5 list, just getting edged out by the fantastic tableau-building game,
Seasons. This game has you taking small
tiles and creating a country landscape and scoring points as you finish
specific areas. I would also like to
make a note that I love the artwork on the older edition of this game over the
newer edition of the game. I love the
sparse artwork of the original and personally think that the new edition’s art
is too busy. Again, this is just
personal preference, but I do think that this should be noted for those looking
to buy this game. This is a
light-weight, gateway game that is fun for heavier gamers as well. We break this game out to people who have
never played and they all seem to really like it as well! Again, on a side note, this game has tons of
great expansions including (but not limited to) Inns & Cathedrals, Traders
& Builders, The Princess & the Dragon, The Tower, Abbey & Mayor,
Hills & Sheep, and more. I love
this game, and it is one I could see jumping higher with more plays and
expansions!
There you have it.
These are the games that just missed my top 10. In no way does this make these games bad, as
a matter of fact, I love them all! What
it does mean is that I have 10 games that I love more. Stay tuned for my next couple posts as I
reveal my favorite 10 games. Until next
time, game on!
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