The Worst Game That You Love

I love the setting of Android because I'm an old school Gibson/Sterling fan. I also love the story behind the creation of the game: Kevin Smith driving to Gen Con with someone and tossing around the idea of something more story than game. The problem is, it stayed that way: the story is better than the game.

I think the worst game in my collection is either still Grand Master (simplistic, draw dependent) or Cold War: CIA vs KGB. I've tried to get the latter to the table three times and each time we've given up halfway through the rulebook. It's always come out when we've already been playing something else and others have left and we're down to two, so maybe it's the mental fatigue that makes it seem awful, but I've been able to pull out something like Shadows over Kyoto in each of those moments and we've played two or three games of it. CIA vs KGB just seems like it has WAY too much going on for a two-person card game. Which reminds me, next time I'm in that situation, I'm pulling out Blue Moon, which is so good it shouldn't even be mentioned in a thread about "worst games".

barrowdown wrote:

SaMoKo wrote: Hansa Teutonica, which distills everything I hate about dry Euros into one awful package. I’ll get rid of it soon, I’m starting to get trade offers.

Hansa Teutonica is an awesome game. Super fluid, lots of paths to victory, and lots of potential to screw everyone else over. It of course is married to a boring theme, but is otherwise fantastic. It's definitely one of my favorite pure Euros.

If you enjoy it, all the power to ya. This is one of the rare games where I’d rather watch a baseball game with some beers and skip game night. Something about it made me want to pull my eyes out before navigating through another VP engine labyrinth

I've had Android on my shelf ever since it came out and I have yet to play it. I've read the rules several times, hoping that I could get someone to actually try it with me. But the thing is that it's so dense. Just explaining the rules will take at least half an hour, and that's a lot of time for something that might not be that good. But I still keep hoping. I know it's probably not a very good *game*, but I keep hoping it will be a great *experience*.

mads b. wrote: I've had Android on my shelf ever since it came out and I have yet to play it. I've read the rules several times, hoping that I could get someone to actually try it with me. But the thing is that it's so dense. Just explaining the rules will take at least half an hour, and that's a lot of time for something that might not be that good. But I still keep hoping. I know it's probably not a very good *game*, but I keep hoping it will be a great *experience*.

The rulebook may be intimidating, but the rules are not hard. Your character has so many action points to spend each turn, and each action is summarized nicely on the time card that the acting players tracks his remaining action points on. When you resolve evidence, you choose to put it on a suspect or spend it on placing a conspiracy puzzle piece. Then you move that evidence to some other board section. Your main sources of VP are proving one suspect guilty, keeping another suspect from being found guilty, scoring points off the conspiracy puzzle, or getting favorable outcomes to your personal life subplots.

It is the actual gameplay of Android that is dense and difficult, because you have so many choices and the movement system is unusually flexible compared to most games.

I played Android twice with different groups. It had a lot of good ideas that somehow didn't make a good game. I would however be first in line for a streamlined 2nd Edition.

Yeah, it's a shame that none of the other non-Netrunner Android universe games have generated much buzz for the universe (or been that great tbh), because a revamped 2nd edition would really butter my bread. I wouldn't even mind if the game was significantly different. I remember playing the new Mansions of Madness and thinking how cool it would be to apply that tech and design ethos to a murder mystery game...

The worst game I own is probably Son of York by GMT. It's a card/combat game where you have units that are placed in three zones; left, right, and center and also a theoretical 4th zone, the flank, that isn't in the play area. Anyway, I found this game to be a huge drag and it's a shame because I met and played a different game with the designer and he's really a nice dude. But boy is this game a dog.

Why do I still have it? Can't be bothered to try and sell it.

The worst game that I love?

I'd have to say Bolide which isn't a bad game at all. It is just suffers from the same problem as Formula De, which is that there is at least one person or sometimes more who just do not have the ability to play it at the tempo it requires. Fast! Play it from the gut! Man, some folks find that hard. So they end up tediously analyzing every permutation of possible moves. The game sloooowwws down and becomes a drag.

But boy do I like Bolide and it's vector movement.

Android is fantastic you dorks.

Worst game I own, well, I'm assuming this is worst by my definition, so it's Through The Ages, which I own as it was a very generous gift, just the wrong one, as I abhor a spreadsheet, but it must stay for diplomacy's sake.

Worst I love, Batman Fluxx, probably. Good times with the kids teaching them to suck it up.

Board Game: PUERTO RICO.

I 100% agree with the usual criticisms: Yes, with enough experience, the whole game starts feeling scripted. Yes, the person to the left of the new player will almost always win. Yes, the person in the 1st corn seat has a stupid advantage. And yes, the colonialism and whitewashing of the fact that you're a slave master. Yet, I love the engine, I love building it up, I love the little rule-breaking powers the building give you, I love hosing people with the Captain role even though that is passive-aggressive weak sauce compared to any AT game. I have the 10th anniversary edition and on a dollars-per-hour-of-play metric, it's one of the best purchases I ever made in the hobby.


Roleplaying Game: BLADE OF THE IRON THRONE.

This is a successor game to the indie darling The Riddle of Steel. TROS is an amazing game but quickly went out of print forever (the creator went off to war and sold the rights to a community member, who quickly absconded with a bunch of preorder money and hasn't been involved with the community or the hobby for 15+ years; the few times someone has tracked him down he has refused to even discuss selling the rights). Also TROS had a bunch of mechanical issues, most notably the "naked dwarf" problem where a PC with high Toughness is equivalent to wearing plate armor. So when the people behind Blade (who'd been unofficially working on a 2nd ed. of TROS) announced that they were going to make an entirely new game, and it was also going to be a sword and sorcery game instead of the generic high fantasy setting of TROS, I was over the moon.

I did a bunch of playtesting, and drummed up hype for their Kickstarter. I also designed the reference cards for the combat system, and edited the expansion, "Realms of the Perisphere," which moves the game into John Carter, sword & planet stuff. Unfortunately the game is a confusing mess. It is almost impossible to learn or reference rules, due to the main writer having an idiosyncratic writing style which he thinks is amazing, and sees any suggestion to change as a personal attack. It is almost exactly like if you made an audio recording of someone giving a lecture on how to play D&D, then transcribed the lecture and printed it. It's a complicated game where the rules are almost impossible to find, and when you do find them, they're unclear. Sigh.


Video Game: CLASH ROYALE.

Pay to win garbage, yet the core idea -- deckbuilding tower defense/MOBA -- is so strong and well-executed that it almost carries it. There are balanced modes of play (where all cards are set to the same level) that are some of the most fun competitive gaming I've ever enjoyed. It's like Street Fighter was back in the day. The fact that they can evoke that feeling on a mobile screen is simply amazing. But, in order to access the balanced modes, you have to grind through dozens of games of sheer misery. You lose over and over again to people that are allegedly close to your skill, which means in practice that they are not very good but have spent more money on the game, so their troops have more HP and do more damage. And yet, when the game is fair, it soars.

There is some hope though. The success of Fortnite has demonstrated that a game can be free to play, competitive and fair, and still make a ton of money through cosmetics. The CR team has started to add cosmetic purchases into the game, and increase the amount of gold available to upgrade cards. Unfortunately they have to do it slowly or they will tick off people who have already dropped thousands of dollars on the game. Personally I think if you support a wretched, abusive, and evil business model, then you deserve whatever you get, but oh well.

This is easy. Five Fingered Severance.

Why is it bad? It’s half baked in a lot of ways and the rules are really finicky.

Why Do I Love It? Because with a few house rules it becomes an epic game of fuckery and petty crime. And it’s awesome.