Official Reiner Knizia Fan Club Thread

What are your favorites he designed?

Tigris & Euphrates, Ra, Amun-Re, Medici, Blue Moon, Battle Line, Samurai, Lord of the Rings.

What are your least favorites he designed?

I didn't like Winner's Circle that much when I owned it a dozen years ago. I think I was entering something of a eurosnoot phase at that point, so maybe I'd dig it more now. I played Ra the Dice Game once and didn't understand why we weren't just playing Ra. But there's also a lot of meh in the 3 million games he's designed. Blue Moon City was kind of boring to me too.

Which of his designs have you played the most?

T&E, Ra, Medici, Samurai

What do you think is his most underrated design?

Beowulf the Legend maybe. The other answer is almost all of them. T&E is the only game in the top 100 on BGG. What the fuck. There's probably 20 Knizia games I'd play before 90% of the BGG top 100.

Also, What KNIZIA's have you been PLAYING?

Played some T&E recently. Looking forward to Yellow & Yangtze soon.

Great thread - wasn't aware of Blue Lagoon or Sakura but will try to check those out soon.

What are your favorites he designed?

Tigris & Euphrates, Ra, Taj Mahal, The Quest for El Dorado, Indigo, Pickomino, Excape, Modern Art

What are your least favorites he designed?

Probably Zombiegeddon mainly because of the graphic design - I'd love to pick up the orginal Jäger und Sammler. Oh Tutankhamen wasn't worth trading for.

Which of his designs have you played the most?

Probably Ra and Pickomino. Pickomino is an easy go to game with a bunch of people waiting for another game to start, and people find my dice rolling hilarious. Ra is a favourite of our lunch time group. Taj Mahal is my all time favourite Knizia so I play that when I can.

What do you think is his most underrated design?

I think Indigo's massively under-rated. My wife loves it, everyone I've introduced it to at least likes it and it's a game my young nephews can play. I also have a fondness for Trendy (my edition is Crazy Derby) - a simple, short card game that's a great filler. There's also a case for Municipium which is a clever take on worker placement/area control games.

Also, What KNIZIA's have you been PLAYING?

Played the new edition of Stephenson's Rocket last night, two games of Blue Lagoon last week, Lost Cities: Rivals (which is more than just a variant on Lost Cities itself) and High Society. Not mention Yellow and Yangtze (or Yandy as we call it) which seems to constantly be in play at my local games group. I think he's winning a lot of new fans. Certainly Stephenson's Rocket feels like a timeless design - it's been unfairly overlooked but the Grail Games edition should change that.

I mean, I'm already a fully paid up member of the Kult of Knizia. We had an all day Kniziathon a few years ago that was a huge success and we're hoping to find a window when we can run it again. He truly is a master designer.

ChristopherMD wrote: All this talk about Mr Knizia's games recently shows he really deserves his own thread. His games have always been popular on this site anyways.

What are your favorites he designed?

What are your least favorites he designed?

Which of his designs have you played the most?

What do you think is his most underrated design?

Also, What KNIZIA's have you been PLAYING?

Favourites are Samurai, T&E, LOTR co-op.

Least favorites - maybe Ingenious? I've been choosy. I would have said Beowulf but as I said in that other thread something clicked last time so.

Played the most - Samurai, LOTR, Ivanhoe

Underrated: Ivanhoe gets played a LOT in my house. It's breezy, but my kid is a shark with it. I wouldn't say it's Knizia's most Underrated but it's one of his ones that's great. Colossal Arena is great too.

What have I been playing - all the above plus the odd Lost Cities and Battleline as well as a couple of games of Sakura which is worth checking out.

C'mon people. The quote tag is there for a reason.

I never rated Knizia as a particular favourite of mine until the last explosion of love on this forum, which prompted me to take a step back and reassess it. And yep, although his name doesn't set off the love bells in my head, he's responsible for several of my favourite games.

ChristopherMD wrote: What are your favorites he designed?

I view Knizia as the master of auctions because Modern Art and Ra are so great. The former is a perfect distillation of the concept, mechanically speaking, even wedded to a realistic economic model. The latter is the opposite, an auction modified by a bunch of artificial tweaks that make every decision a delightful agony.

I'm also very fond of the delightful strategic/guessing game/chicken crossbreed that is Battle Line.

ChristopherMD wrote: What are your least favorites he designed?

Samurai. One of the most tedious games it's ever been my misfortune to play. I mean, seriously guys, what's with all the love here? Nothing actually happens during the entire play time.

It's a similar story with Lord of the Rings which, for me, has all the excitement and Tolkienesque narrative of wet sackcloth.

I also loathe The Confrontation which is just a tired reskin of Stratego.

ChristopherMD wrote: Which of his designs have you played the most?

Battle Line. Easy to get to the table, easy to play online.

ChristopherMD wrote: What do you think is his most underrated design?

Qin. Almost no-one seems to have played this, but I really liked it. It's kind of a more approachable version of T&E, which I guess maybe the problem as a lot of folk are going to prefer that game. But while T&E is an admirable design, I found it too much like hard work, whereas Qin is actually fun.

ChristopherMD wrote: Also, What KNIZIA's have you been PLAYING?

Recently, Clickbait, the world's least likely Reiner Knizia design.

MattDP wrote: I also loathe The Confrontation which is just a tired reskin of Stratego.

I love Stratego. I have loved it since I was young. The Confrontation is excellent, and so is Napoleon's Triumph, because they take Stratego and add to it in great ways. I have tried to design my own Stratego-like games, but those three games are so good that I have not come close to anything that hits a note that they do not.

Ultimate Stratego, a 4 player (2 team) version, is really fun. Teammates start on opposite sides. You can win in two different ways - capture both enemy flags, or move your flag to touch your ally's flag (flags can move in 4 player).

"Bluff + positional play" covers almost all of the games that I love the most. Decipher's old Star Wars CCG, Duelyst (an online CCG), the three I mentioned in the first line of this post, etc.

In a way, Stratego is like a CCG in the sense that it combines strategy and tactics in ways that, I fell, most other games do not. You can go all in right away, or you use resources to draw out your opponent while holding some things back while you decide when to push for the win. The Confrontation, especially the deluxe version, makes it even more like a CCG with the special powers. You can choose the 9 that you take into the game. Some of them radically alter the strategies you can pursue (the Witch-King and which version of Frodo you choose, for example). The Confrontation boils down Stratego (which can go a little long) while spicing it up.

To be more on the topic of the original 4 questions:

1. My favorite is The Confrontation.
2. I don't feel like I have played enough of his designs to have something worthy of labeling a least favorite. Probably Lost Cities, but I can only think of it, The Confrontation, T&E, and Loot as games of his that I have played. I am sure there are some others, but I have played a small selection of games a lot, rather than a broad selection of games some.
3 & 4. I think that I have played Loot more than his other games. It is a solid little card that works well for somewhat larger groups. In some ways, it is like Love Letter before Love Letter - you have to manage a small hand of resources well, and when the deck runs out, the high scorer wins. It was a game that I played with people in college a bit when we had game days with non-gamers in attendance. A little luck, a little thinking, some multiplayer deal-making and super-simple rules in a small package made it ideal for those situations.

What are your favorites he designed?

T&E, Medici, Medici: The Card Game, Taj Mahal, Ra: The Dice Game, Winner's Circle, Stephenson's Rocket, Lost Cities, Carcassonne: The Castle


What are your least favorites he designed?

I don't know of any I strongly dislike. There are a bunch I'm okay with but not especially excited. LOTR Confrontation fell completely flat for me because it was a bunch of pieces I had to remember special powers for tied to a theme I don't care about. I played it one or two times and was happy to get rid of it. All others I've played were fine.


Which of his designs have you played the most?

Ingenious, Lost Cities, T&E, Ra: The Dice Game, Quandary, Carcassonne: The Castle, Times Square


What do you think is his most underrated design?

Medici: The Card Game. It's an unfortunate title because (1) I think people are tired of Board Game: The Card Game, (2) it come out when Knizia was mostly just coasting, and (3) it sounds like an old-school dry-ass auction game with cards. But it's actually a dry-ass push your luck game with cards that somehow captures the auction despite not having one at all, it's fun, and it's tense.

Also a shout out to Carcassonne: the Castle, which Carcassonne fans tend to dislike because it's "too different" meaning they can't use the same tired-ass strategies they go-to in every other Carc game.


Also, What KNIZIA's have you been PLAYING?

Ingenious is a common "rain dance" game. Medici: the Card Game is a great filler. Lost Cities is a favorite of my wife (as is Carc: the Castle). T&E is a perennial fave, and I have Yellow and Yangtze coming to me in an order.

What are your favorites he designed?

Ra, Modern Art, Medici, Tigris and Euphrates.

What are your least favorites he designed?

Samurai, Tower of Babel

Which of his designs have you played the most?

Ra and Modern Art

What do you think is his most underrated design?

Medici

What KNIZIA's have you been PLAYING?

I have played Ra in the past 12 months, but other than that: nothing. I have only recent joined a new game group and I have not played a 2-player Knizia that blew me away (Medici vs Strozzi is okay, but I don't own it).

Was thinking about this earlier - it's interesting how there's absolutely no consensus on the "best" and "worst" Knizia titles. I guess it says a lot of good things about the sheer diversity of his designs. He's a machine.

Who's played Blue Lagoon? I was thinking of re-acquiring Through the Desert recently and hear they're similar. Should I hold off to maybe buy BL later (after any hype dies) or just pick up TtD now? Or are they actually really different from each other?

MattDP wrote: Was thinking about this earlier - it's interesting how there's absolutely no consensus on the "best" and "worst" Knizia titles. I guess it says a lot of good things about the sheer diversity of his designs. He's a machine.

Yep, you seem to have shot down two of his more popular games here in your post. I love LotR but Samurai was just an average experience.

But nothing new there, games are just another subjective thing we humans like to love or hate.

I was going to make a similar comment to Matt's- I love that this thread shows that there is a wide range of what is "best" and "worst" among the titles. Even the ones that are generally regarded as top tier are debated by someone else. I think that's really neat, and I don't think there is any other designer _ever_ that can generate this kind of response.

I also really like how the "in between" games for everyone are pretty much totally different, and NO ONE has played all of them!

Blue Lagoon is really good, but I think the comparison to TTD is kind of odd. It doesn't feel or play like TTD, really. It is definitely in the same family as TTD (along with Samurai and T&E), but it is as different among them as the other three are.

Qin is pretty underrated...not sure why it sort of thunked out. I thought it was pretty good.

Nobody's even mentioned Colossal Arena yet. Or Ivanhoe. Or Poison. Or Formula Motor Racing. Clash of the Gladiators, Africa, Whowasit, King Arthur, Clash of the Lightsabers...

ChristopherMD wrote: Who's played Blue Lagoon? I was thinking of re-acquiring Through the Desert recently and hear they're similar. Should I hold off to maybe buy BL later (after any hype dies) or just pick up TtD now? Or are they actually really different from each other?

I just played it last night for the first time. I get the similar to TtD thing. In some ways, it's TtD with more advanced scoring - the game comes with a score pad for a good reason. The big difference, you only place one thing on your turn in BL, but two in TtD!! Ha.I actually think the play only one thing on a turn somehow makes it a little less mean. It's a lot easier to cut off an opponent's camels with you can place two...

Blue Lagoon would be a nice family game. I already own Through the Desert and don't feel a need to own both.

I also played Yellow & Yangtze for the first time. I love T&E, and this is definitely a game I feel the need to also own. Yeah, it doesn't have the large sweeping board changes when a big external conflict goes down but it totally addresses the "waaahhh my tile draw sucks" whiners in T&E. I feel like it has more ways to screw with other players AND adds a little metagame/negotiation with how wars are resolved now. I'll have to see how I feel after a half dozen plays. After one, it feels like it might be an improved T&E. So... it's an 11?!?

ChristopherMD wrote: Who's played Blue Lagoon? I was thinking of re-acquiring Through the Desert recently and hear they're similar. Should I hold off to maybe buy BL later (after any hype dies) or just pick up TtD now? Or are they actually really different from each other?

Through the Desert is like Go, and you're marking out areas of the board and scoring them.

Blue Lagoon, you're connecting islands, trying to create majorities on the islands and pick up resources. You're making paths rather than boundaries (like in TtD.) In a way I thought Blue Lagoon has more similarity with Orongo than TtD. Some of the tactics are similar (blocking other players, making a bee-line for point-scoring resources) but I think they're quite different to each other. Also in Blue Lagoon, you reset the board half way through and play the game again, just with different origin points for your pieces (that you placed in the first round.) So it's kind of like Amun-Re - but a friend of mine compared it to another Knizia title which did a similar thing that I can't remember at the moment.

Blue Lagoon has more ways of scoring than Through the Desert, but is probably a better family game. It depends on who you're going to be mostly playing with - if it's hardcore gamers, I'd recommend Through the Desert, otherwise Blue Lagoon - but I don't think there's much cross-over between the two.

trif wrote: Blue Lagoon, you're connecting islands, trying to create majorities on the islands and pick up resources. You're making paths rather than boundaries (like in TtD.) In a way I thought Blue Lagoon has more similarity with Orongo than TtD. Some of the tactics are similar (blocking other players, making a bee-line for point-scoring resources) but I think they're quite different to each other. Also in Blue Lagoon, you reset the board half way through and play the game again, just with different origin points for your pieces (that you placed in the first round.) So it's kind of like Amun-Re - but a friend of mine compared it to another Knizia title which did a similar thing that I can't remember at the moment.

Probably Jager und Sammler (released in an abomination of artwork edition in the US as Zombiegeddon).

I noticed that Miniature Market had a bunch of Knizia titles on clearance: Circus Flohcati, Prosperity, Municipium, Orongo. So I picked up those along with Yellow & Yangtze and Sakura. The Reinerssance is a full go at my house!