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The Death of the Mid-Weight Euro (from BGG)
I'm highlighting it here because it very much echoes what I've been feeling about euros for a few years now.
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All kidding aside...I still think mid-weight Euro games are coming out just as frequently as before...the problem is that most people don't seem to go nuts for them. They will get good to middling reviews and have a niche group of fans, but they never catch fire like Terraforming Mars, Terra Mystica, Agricola etc... Medium weight Euros are equivalent to a breezy, well made, feel good, summer film. Not flashy and bombastic enough to please the AT crowd, and not snoody or award winning enough for hardcore Euro lovers to take notice.
Stuff like Abyss, Via Nebula, Hit Z Road and Last Will have shown that these games are alive and well. It's just that the tastemakers in the industry have chosen to toss them into the "merely good" category. I think the last medium weight Euro that really made a splash was Bruno Cathala's Five Tribes. It was beautiful game that was simple to play, offered lots of choice, and was generally well received. Still, you don't hear much about it anymore despite it getting a couple of expansions.
It's interesting to see FFG's Euro Line become Wind Rider Games as they are single handily putting out all of the classic mid weight Euros in new beautiful editions. Ra, T&E, Samurai, and Citadels....damn you can't go wrong as a primer for a person just getting into Euro games. I'd point people to those titles over the typical hotness found over at BGG any day of the week.
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- Colorcrayons
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Gorechosen was the best AT game in recent memory. Which is kinda sad, really. Silver tower is good, but as a person who doesn't appreciate co-ops, it loses me a bit.
So I think there is a dearth in a variety of games, considering how many are produced at an exponential rate lately. Mid euros are seen as a minor component to a full game, instead of the entire game itself. Variety suffers as less chances are taken.
AT doesn't even stand a chance when eurosnobs dictate how the latest feldian point enema are compared to a game that has a slight tweak and is carried around on a palanquin then set on the Dias of "#1rank" on bgg.
Pandemic legacy.... God damn. If that isn't the punch line to a ridiculous joke.
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I suspect that the real complaint is that there are way too many mediocre games being released nowadays that it becomes impossible for a casual observer to find the wheat from the chaff, especially if you don't want to rely on tastemakers and hive minds. It's a situation where you're just going to get drowned in recommendations for games you don't like. I sympathize too; one should be able to enjoy playing games without embedding oneself in "the hobby".
In any case, if it's a problem, maybe I just don't feel it's *my* problem. Hybrid games are in fashion too, so it doesn't really matter to me if other people have their Feasts for Odin, I'll be playing Argent and Scythe and Inis at my table and having a great time.
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At some point it gets curmudgeonly to the point of parody, but as a general rule if a game isn't offering anything new other than a coat of paint, what's the point?
I played Ra last weekend and it ruled.
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- Matt Thrower
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Take Splendor, for example, which the OP singled out as a "lightweight" game. Y'all know I have a soft spot for Splendor and I've played it quite a bit with a wide variety of opponents. My daughter, for instance, could play it from the age of nine. So in that sense, it's certainly a "light" game, suitable for family play. On the other hand I don't think I've ever seen a neophyte player beat an experienced one. There's too much strategy and too little randomness to allow it to happen. Giving weaker players a chance is a critical part of family game design. So in that sense it's certainly not "light".
So here's my take: mediumweight Euros haven't disappeared, they've become disguised. Designers have got so good now at pulling the maximum amount of strategy out of the minimum of rules that it's increasingly hard to tell the difference between light and medium games, at least at first glance. Repeat play, however, will still tell you which is which.
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- SuperflyPete
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I think that's a key difference between games like Takenoko and games like Dominant Species. If new rules don't bother you, or you actually like learning new rules, then heavyweight games might be your thing.
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FWIW, I love powers, cards, variable player powers, etc. I try to chill the fuck out about it, though, because I know it's because I like learning new rules and being surprised.
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A lot of gamers aren't good at teaching rules, or they buy too many games to get really good at teaching any of them... I had a time where I sat through a 40 minute lecture to play a 60-minute kids' game. I really enjoy teaching games, but I also like games that can get people playing within minutes even if they have a lot of breadth. Summoner Wars, Dominion, Revolution!, Nexus Ops, Settlers of Catan, all of those social deduction games, etc. I can play heavier games, but I find a lot off them dull even when I know them. I'm playing my annual game of Advanced Civilization this weekend! The rules are remarkably simple for something that long, and it's mostly about diplomacy and trading, which I like.
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Once you start adding mechanics and tweaks you probably slide out of medium and into heavy-weight on my scale. Reason being that if I have to explain how different systems and subsystems interact then the game has already lost that intuitive appeal and starts wandering into mechanical interaction territory. This is when things get puzzley and more opaque. This is when things become frustrating to learn. AT games can be guilty of this also.
Additionally we've gotten to a point where the obviousness of how a mechanic works is being taken for granted. There seems to be a design nod-and-wink that things like area control and auctions and worker placement are the simple and easy-to-learn. That is definitely not the case when I'm trying to teach a game to non-regular gamers. Recently it took a full playthrough before a new group of players I was teaching really fully grasped Beowulf: The Legend. Not because the game is difficult or opaque or that I'm a bad teacher, but because there are several different auction types and that's pretty intimidating for non-gamers. On my scale Beowulf: The Legend is about the heaviest a medium-weight Euro should be. BGG's complexity scale ranks it as medium-light.
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- Cranberries
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FPE: Feldian Point Enema
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