Annoying Elements in Boardgames

Under the present circumstances, I have been doing an unusual amount of solitaire play. In the process, I have started noticing that certain elements of certain games can be downright annoying. I think this is more common in solitaire/co-op games, where the basic concept is to beat the game itself instead of a human opponent, often requiring the game to harass the player(s) with obstacles in place of strategic opposition. But two-player and multi-player conflict games can also present annoyances.

What are some game elements that annoy you?

One classic example usually found in older games is Lose A Turn. What could be more annoying then literally being prevented from playing the game for a turn? In truth, I lived with Lose A Turn long enough that it doesn't bother me much. In one game of Arkham Horror 2nd, we had a player doing an encounter at the retirement home for mariners in Kingsport, and he drew 3 consecutive Lose a Turn cards. Each was described as a situation where the character was enduring a long, boring story told by a retiree. The first time was annoying, but we were all laughing by the third time.

But there are elements of Arkham Horror 2nd that do annoy me, even though it's my favorite game. I dislike the rumors, because they tend to be thematically unrelated to the threat at hand, and require an annoying sacrifice whether you try to prevent or else resolve to endure the outcome. I also dislike mythos cards that generate a temporary bonus to one character stat that is offset by a penalty to another stat. They are hard to remember and just lacking in fun.

Silver Tower has a similar problem, with those familiars that periodically materialize and create a temporary inconvenience. It might be better if the game offered a more visible means of presenting the penalty, because it's currently too easy for characters to overlook the penalty and that makes an easy game a little too easy.

A really annoying mechanic found in various games is the card or event that lets you search through an entire deck of cards. It's a hassle if you are looking for one specific named card. It's annoying for everybody if you get to choose one card from the whole deck, especially when a new player gets that opportunity and needs a lot of coaching from experienced players.

What particular mechanics or other aspects do you find annoying in games?

Dumpster diving for cards just grinds a game to a halt.

Lose a Turn is the biggest offender.

Search the deck for a card is a nightmare.

I was also never a fan of that old miniature game combat bit where you would roll to hit, they roll armor, then roll damage, etc. I found it cumbersome.

Msample wrote: Dumpster diving for cards just grinds a game to a halt.

I have a complete copy of FFG's version of Wiz-War. In their attempt to bring the game to a wider audience, they included a lot of defensive cards that are frustrating and annoying and generally what makes a quick game into a longer-than-it-should-be game. I've removed almost all of them. The expansions were much better for that, but the final one introduced an even worse offender: The "find a creature" card. I don't even remember what it's called because I took it out after our first play where two different players drew it and spent forever going through the towering deck looking for a creature card and, also, requiring the deck to be shuffled, which takes some time. Creatures are a rarity. They will stay that way.

Auction games that use a "blind bid, everyone pays" mechanism. The absolute best bid is $1 more than the next highest bidder (or $0). The absolute worst bid is $1 less than the highest bidder.

Note the very narrow margin between best and worst and the fact that any intrinsic "value" the item has has no bearing on this.

Cancel cards. It's why I hate Take That games.

I don't like the games with hidden information that is trackable. Perfect example is scoring in Small World.

I also dislike pure coops where you can't reveal information to the other players. Where you have to give big hints as to what you want to do on your turn and not be able to say explicitly. It just feels like a bad artifact of the game.

For me the biggest one is meaningless calculation. As in, you are given a bunch of tiles with disguised equations on them and you have to find which combination gets you a 5% higher score or whatever. I hate it. Truly hate it. It's such a complete waste of time and it's invariably less fun than solving actual equations. This is why I dislike games like Roll Player and Le Havre.

This kind of calculation also kills any impact your decisions have since all tiles are meant to be equal and only change a bit situationally. There's very little difference between playing well and just playing ok, the floor is too high.

I also dislike games that allow you to perform actions in the middle of another action. For example, in Pandemic you could do the first half of a card, then play another card and then finish doing the rest of the card. Most of the time iit doens't matter, but it opens the game to a lot of potential abuse, is not intuitive and can be avoided altogether with better editing.

Worker placement.

Advanced Civilization forcing me to lie, to pass calamities. Hated it.

Unthematic elements really irk me, e.g. Western Legends when you rob somebody, you get half his money. Half!? Some robber! That game had a lot of other problems, too, amounting basically to child-proofing and rubber-cornering the whole game so nobody gets hurt. I'm surprised they kept the win-by-points mechanism. I mean, losing hurts! :'(

Sagrilarus wrote: Worker placement.

LOL, all of it? or certain kinds? or certain implementations?
I mean, it's a rather varied mechanism now.

I was about to say that I have no problem with anything mentioned in these posts, virtually all are thematic in some way and is about you being challenged in the game ... then this came up

Sagrilarus wrote: Worker placement.

Most things I don't like are just part of the game genre itself, and most if not all would be in those devil's spawn euro games.

christopherwood wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: Worker placement.

LOL, all of it? or certain kinds? or certain implementations?
I mean, it's a rather varied mechanism now.

I've been forced to look very hard for years. To date, Kolejka is the only game where I enjoy the concept, largely because it's a parody of itself and because its absurdity (i.e., the absurdity of eastern-bloc communism) is part of the package.

Sagrilarus wrote: To date, Kolejka is the only game where I enjoy the concept, largely because it's a parody of itself and because its absurdity (i.e., the absurdity of eastern-bloc communism) is part of the package.

For you it's absurdity, for me it was life

Turek wrote: For you it's absurdity, for me it was life

“It's surprising how often those two coincide.”
—Captain Jack Sparrow