2015 was the year when I started focusing on playing more often the games I loved, and stopped chasing after trying all the hot new games.

Towards the end of 2014 it dawned on me that most new board games I was playing were ranging from bad to just OK, and only a selected few made it into the good or very good category. So why was I spending so much time and energy playing new games? It’s not like I had played the old ones too much and was done with them. As a matter of fact, I was frustrated with how little I was playing them, and how, if I only play a game once every six months or a year, I’m basically starting over from scratch. So I was always playing games at a very superficial level, without being able to get deeper into them. Not to mention it’s a pleasure to pull out a game and not have to worry about reading or explaining the rules!

2015 was the year of depth for me.

Of course depth comes at the cost of breath, so when it comes time to make a best-of list for 2015, I don’t have nearly as many different games to draw on as other years. Because of that, I’ll limit my list to just 3 games.

Honorable mention: Magic: The Gathering

Magic: the Gathering and I go a long way back. I’ve played Magic on and off for over 20 years and it’s irrevocably intertwined with a lot of the different stages of my life. It has also strongly influenced me as a game designer.

But why list Magic as one of the best games of this year? Because I started playing seriously it again and it’s an amazing game, in every way better than it was in 1995. Standard competitive play is constantly evolving and adapting, and booster draft is very balanced, fun, and skill-intensive. Wizards of the Coast did an amazing job with the Khans of Tarkir, Fate Reforged, Dragons of Tarkir, and Origins sets, and even though Battle for Zendikar was a big let down, I have my hopes up for Shadows Over Innistrad.

3. The Gallerist

Even though I’m moving away from complex games, one of my favorite games of 2015 was The Gallerist by Vital Lacerda. Kanban, by the same author, snuck in my top games of all time list that I created last year, and I like the Gallerist better. The theme is quite unique, the mechanics fresh and different, and you’re hardly ever locked out of a particular action, which is something I find very frustrating in games. The game feels like a giant puzzle with lots of gears where you need to figure out how to make the most money before the end.

To top it off, my wife Amy had a painting accepted in the abstract paintings category, so it’s really cool to play a game with a piece of her art in it.

2. Grand Austria Hotel

I love it when a neat theme meets good design into a very cohesive game. That’s exactly what happened in Grand Austria Hotel, and somehow, it manages to go beyond the usual resource-conversion-to-points-engine to something fairly unique and interesting. Two warnings with this game though: 1) It can be a bit brain-burning towards the end with all the bonus actions, and 2) I would avoid playing this at full player count. There’s a fair amount of downtime, and the board state would probably change too much between turns. It worked great at two players and I suspect it would be good with three as well.

1. Pandemic Legacy

(Spoiler free) And the #1 game for 2015 is… Pandemic Legacy! But… this is not the glowing review you may be expecting of the game that rocketed up the BGG rankings and was the first game to displace the Twilight Struggle from the top spot in many years.

I love Pandemic and I love the Pandemic expansions. My wife and I play it frequently and it’s always a fun experience, teetering between success and world collapse. We can play it over and over. None of this should be a surprise since Pandemic was #6 of my all-time games list from last year.

How about Pandemic Legacy? Frankly, if I have to choose, I’ll pick regular Pandemic. Pandemic Legacy is a nice little distraction. It’s a sequence of games where the rules keep changing a bit, sometimes half way through a game. If I didn’t already know and love Pandemic, I might even find it annoying. We’re only about half way through the campaign, but I feel that nothing we do has a meaningful impact in the overall storyline. Things are going to happen independently of what you do, and you’re just going to reveal the next card in the legacy deck.

Still, is Pandemic Legacy fun? Yes, but because it’s Pandemic. It’s good enough to take the #1 spot for 2015 for me. But plain Pandemic is better and it’s the place you should start if you haven’t already.

How about you? Any interesting picks for you top board games of 2015?

This list was inspired by Casualgod’s 3rd Annual Top 20 Games of All Time. David and I have a lot of overlapping tastes, so if you like what you see here, make sure you check out his list as well.

20. Arkham Horror

I make no claims this is a good game. However, this game is an amazing experience. The cooperative aspect is very important, and it’s definitely a game that you get better the more you play.

Our first few games were way too long (3-4 hours), but once we got the rules down, now we can knock a game out in 2 hours or less.

The expansions add a lot of much-welcome variety. My favorite way of playing with them is to focus on each expansion, by just using about half the cards from the base game, and the rest from the expansion. That way each expansion shines to the maximum, with a lot of encounters being directly relevant to the theme of the game. Mixing them all just dilutes the experience and makes it a worse game than just plain base game.

19. Keyflower

The rating for Keyflower could change quite a bit (up or down) simply because I haven’t played it enough. My plays of it have been great, and I’m looking forward to playing it a lot more.

The mix of bidding on tiles and using them at the same time is brilliant. Knowing some of the winter tiles ahead of times let’s you plan more strategically for the end of game scoring. At least for the first few plays, this is probably best with 3 players, otherwise it’s too many villages to keep track of.

18. Kanban: Automotive Revolution

This is the only entry in this list for a 2014 game, and it wasn’t even part of the original list when I first put it together. However, a couple more plays quickly shot this up the ranks. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this higher up in next year’s list.

Kanban is a complex game, and on the surface like the kind of games I’ve been getting away from recently. I don’t like games that are complex for complexity sake (like Madeira), but Kanban pulls it all together and makes it work very well.

There are a lot of things going on on the board, but each department is quite simple. The complexity comes in how to put together all the actions in the most efficient way. I’m four plays into this game and still learning new games.

Also, each play is quite different given the meeting goals and end of game bonus. Variability between games is a theme that will appear over and over in this list.

17. Notre Dame

One of my favorite Feld games (Castles of Burgundy barely missed the list). It plays in about an hour, the card drafting adds a nice limitation on your actions and keeps you very interested in what your neighbors are doing.

The extra cards in the mini-expansion make the game much better since it’s more varied from game to game.

16. The Palaces of Carrara

I have to admit that my first play of this was underwhelming, but repeated plays quickly turned it around, and eventually pushed it all the way to #16.

Variability in this game is huge and no two games are alike. You have to re-evaluate everything depending on the scoring cards that come up for each game. Sometimes you build wide, sometimes you go tall, sometimes you focus on some buildings, or cities, or… The resource market is very simple and interesting, and the bits are great too.

Word of advice: Ignore the basic game. Sure, play with the basic goals once, but with the rest of the advanced rules (not moving the wheel, upgrading buildings, 8-point buildings, etc). I didn’t and I almost missed out on this gem of a game.

15. In the Year of the Dragon

This is my other Feld on the top 20, and not surprisingly, it’s from the same period as Notre Dame. It’s still pretty focused, and quite different than most other games: You see all the disasters ahead of time, it’s a matter of planning around them, maximizing scoring opportunities, and fighting everybody else who is trying to do the same thing. Deliciously tight and it plays great with 5 (and also great at lower player counts).

14. Race for the Galaxy

Yet another game that is hugely variable from play to play. Here you have some control (through Exploring) but ultimately it comes down to what you find and how you use it.

This is one of the rare games that has simultaneous action selection that I actually like, probably because other people’s choices can only benefit you, and never negate your whole turn (unless you tried to get really cute).

I haven’t even started playing with the expansions, or with any of the alternate lines. Looking forward to many more plays of this.

13. Santiago

Santiago was a total surprise. Yes, I had read very good comments from my Geekbuddies, but I really wasn’t expecting it would be that good.

Santiago embodies everything I’m looking for in games these days: - Strong player interaction (you’re competing but still need to rely on other people) - Short playtimes - Simple ruleset

The result is an amazing game that some people describe as vicious, but I choose to think as self-interested. You’re in it to win, and other players will have to make it worth your while if they want you to do something in particular. It’s great that the game can be won through smart bidding, being a hard negotiator as the Overseer, or just by saving up lots of money and being opportunistic.

12. The Great Zimbabwe

This is a very unique race game (the same way that Race for the Galaxy is a race) where you can change the ending line in exchange for some advantages. It features the kind of player interaction I like, where you’re competing with people, but at the same time using each other’s resources in a positive way.

Each game is very different depending on the map layout and which gods come out. The only downside is how suddenly the ending can arrive, and how it can be spotted a turn or two in advance and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it.

My favorite player count for this is probably 3 or 4.

11. Troyes

I never made a top-20 list last year, but I think this would have ended up much higher on last year’s edition. Unfortunately I only played it twice on 2014, so I’m not surprised it slid down a bit. Maybe next year it’ll go back up.

I love dice as inputs, coupled with dice-manipulation mechanics, and this game is all about that.

Extremely varied gameplay is again present here: Only a few cards come up in each game, that those completely determine how the game is played (along with the event cards). No two games are alike, although that sometimes can be a bad thing (I introduced a friend to this game and we ended up with punishing events and cards that didn’t combine very well with each other).

I was a bit disappointed with the expansion, so those of you looking for it, I’d say skip it and save all that money.

10. Ra

By now this list has quite a few games with bidding mechanisms (and there will be more further down). Ra is the purest of them all in that it’s only about bidding.

It’s another one of those games with a very simple ruleset that I love (with a slightly complicated end-game scoring, but it’s easy enough with the player mats).

The thing that makes Ra stand out is that the bidding is very “chunky”. You have four tiles and you can bid one of them. That’s all. Sure, it makes valuing things easier than Medici, but that’s not a bad thing.

9. Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

It’s not surprisingly that an LCG is very variable, but I’m always amazed at how completely different each scenario makes this game feel. And by that I don’t mean that one scenario is more combat heavy and another one more questing heavy. It’s that the new rules and events for each scenario change the game completely, and at the same time make it so extremely thematic. For example, in Journey Down the Anduin, at one point you get on a boat and you’re not attacked by the enemies in the engaging area, but you draw an extra card during the encounter phase (because you’re traveling so quickly).

I haven’t tried this solo yet (which I hear is brutally hard), but it’s great fun with two players. Some scenarios are extremely hard though (I’m looking at you, The Hobbit!), and most of them encourage you to tweak your decks in different ways.

8. Glen More

I love the jump-ahead mechanic in this game. There’s always a great tension between getting something before other people, and still getting the other tiles you want along the way. The end-of-game penalty for having larger towns makes it even more interesting.

The tile-laying part of the game is very interesting too, because you have some restrictions (roads and river) and only the tiles next to a tile you lay down are activated, so you need to plan very carefully.

All in all, it combines short play time, and extremely meaningful and difficult decisions. Oh and it plays great with two as well.

7. Hansa Teutonica

For the longest time I kept reading about Hansa Teutonica as the poster child of boring, dry euros, as well as having a reputation for being extremely aggressive.

I don’t mind my euros dry, but I typically don’t like them aggressive. However, it turns out this was love at first sight for me. From the first play, I enjoyed every minute of this game. I didn’t see the play as aggressive, but more of a blocking play that you get a benefit when someone moves you out of the way.

Unlike many other games in this list, this doesn’t have much (any?) variability from game to game, but because there are so many ways to approach it, it can still feel quite different.

I’m looking forward to many more plays and trying some of the expansion maps as well.

6. Pandemic

My highest-rated cooperative game. There may be some nostalgia in here, but I would pick this one above all other coops.

Cooperative games have strong random elements, and sometimes things are stacked in such a way that no matter what you do, you will fail. That’s the nature of the game. Pandemic has that problem as well, but play time is short enough that it doesn’t matter. You pick up the cards and do it again.

I love that the infection is driven by a deck of cards because you have a lot of information about what is likely to come up soon (since the discard pile is shuffled and put on top after every epidemic). That’s something that was sorely missing from Pandemic The Cure (the dice version of Pandemic).

Finally, in case things start feeling too samey, the expansions add a lot of variability (I didn’t like my first play of In The Lab, but I suspect it has a very steep learning curve).

5. Kingdom Builder

This game is the definition of variability from game to game. The rules themselves are just a couple of mechanics on how to put settlements on the board, and the scoring is mostly down to the cards that are drawn at the beginning of each game.

This was another one of those games that the first play felt a bit underwhelming. I thought the game was playing me, rather than me the game. It wasn’t until the second game that I realized it was about positioning myself to accomplish what I want to do, rather than trying to select different terrain cards. It’s also really interesting how you have very different goals early in the game (minimize terrain adjacencies so you can move to other places on the board), than you do late in the game (touch as many terrain types as possible so you can put your pieces anywhere you want).

Yes, you can get some ridiculously broken power/scoring combos, but again, games are quick. Have a laugh and play it again.

4. Homesteaders

Short, tense, and every decision is extremely meaningful. There are only 10 rounds to the whole game, and you won’t even get a building in each round. You can go hugely in debt, and yet (hopefully) everything kind of comes together at the end.

It certainly fits with me liking bidding games, but it might initially stand out as a game with very little apparent variability from game to game. Rahdo even dismissed it because it didn’t vary enough. Let me tell you something: This game is so tight, that minor changes will throw off your long-term plans in no time. I recently started a game where I had decided I was going to go for the Church and in-game points, but the way the bidding tiles came out, and the way Amy was bidding against me, I was forced to change plans and go for a resource/dudes strategy. So much for lack of variability!

It plays fantastic with any player count. The only downside is that a lot of buildings are available right from the start, so it’s a bit overwhelming for new players. Well worth a small time investment to learn this fantastic game though.

3. Age of Steam

I’ve tried a lot of train/route-building games, and Age of Steam comes out clearly on top (I need to play more Steam to decide between the two though).`

The auctions for player order/bonus are extremely interesting an unforgiving. The roles themselves are very well thought out so even if you don’t get first place, you can still snatch first build or first move.

The route building and delivery aspect are always very fun and satisfying, the only downside is the randomness of where new goods appear on the board (yes, you see where they’ll appear, but you don’t know when, which makes all the difference in the world). Players can also find themselves in a downward spiral that takes them out of the game completely, but that’s part of the experience of the game (although I agree that a 2-3 hour game where you’re out of contention for half of it is not very fun, experience or no experience, so don’t let that happen).

Finally, the variety of maps for Age of Steam out there make this game infinitely replayable. It’s not jut a different distribution of mountains and rivers, it’s that most maps radically change a few rules and transform the experience into something completely different.

2. Dominion

Speaking of variability, here’s Donald X’s other hugely variable game. Dominion was the first deck builder. I’ve played a bunch since then, and I keep coming back to this one: it plays quickly, works great with any player count (but best with just 2 or 3), and it’s always completely different.

Just like Troyes, some games are going to be more amazing than others depending on the combinations that come up, but it’s always really fun looking at that new set of cards and figuring out a path to victory.

1. Brass and Age of Industry

I’m giving my #1 game of all time award to both Age of Industry and Brass. It might feel like I’m cheating, but I really consider Brass as a particular Age of Industry map with some funky rules thrown in. The fact is, both games feel very similar (with card drawing being the main difference).

I might give Brass the edge as a best game, but Age of Industry wins because of the different maps available and the different experiences it provides. I go back and forth between which one I like better, but I have them both rated as 10 (my only two 10 ratings on BGG).

They have the exact kind of player interaction that I love, where players are jockeying for position, using each other resources, and yet trying to out-do each other. I love that player order is determined by how much you spend in a turn, which gives you very interesting control over your turn.

I also consider Brass to be game that can be best played online: each turn is fairly long and meaty, and there are at most 16 turns in a 4-player game (most likely you’ll have a couple of them back to back, so more like 14). As opposed to games that are 100+ turns long, and in each turn you’re just clicking OK to something. I’m always up for a game of Brass online, so if anyone is interested, let me know me and let’s play.

This list first appeared on BGG

I try to log every board game play, so I can see that I logged 674 different plays during the course of the year, and 246 of those were games new to me. I didn’t invent a time-expanding machine, so the time for that has come straight from TV, movies, and video games. After realizing that we were spending just about every evening playing board games, my wife an I cancelled our Netflix subscription and never looked back. I also only played a handful of PC and iOS games during the whole year.

Another good portion of those games were due to going to local game days, and to two board game conventions: Origins and BGGCon.

Having played that many games, I figured it would be interesting to write a best-of list for the year. For this one, I wanted to focus exclusive on games that came out on 2013. I played 43 games that came out on 2013, and of those, these are my favorites.

5. Nations

I absolutely love Civilization and Civ-like games. Unfortunately, for the most part, those work best on a computer due to the long play time, and the large amount of parts, pieces, and interconnecting systems. I’ve tried playing some board game versions (Through the Ages, Clash of Cultures) and while they weren’t bad, I would probably rather play the computer version of Civilization.

Nations is finally the first civilization board game that works really well for me. It has a reasonable play time (under 2 hours for 4 players), interesting player interaction without direct conflict, and a great power curve. One of the key things design aspects that allows this game to work so well is that they did away with the map (just like Through the Ages), so players can focus exclusively on advancing their civilization rather than exploring the map.

4. Bora Bora

It’s no secret that I like a lot of Stefan Feld games. I particularly like some of his earlier games (In The Year of the Dragon, Notre Dame), but I also like some of his recent ones (Castles of Burgundy). Some critics dismiss a lot of his designs as “point salads”, but I do like my veggies! Seriously, there are badly done point salads, where the things you do have little significance beyond getting you some points (Trajan fell in that category for me), and well-done points salads like Bora Bora, where you’re showered with points, but you’re also opening up new paths and possibilities with each new action. Bora Bora hits all the right buttons for me: interweaving of effects on the board, different strategies, and the sense of building something. It’s a tad long with 4 players, but it plays great with 2 or 3.

3. Spyrium

While Bora Bora is a game that hits you with its colorful game board, fancy player boards, and loads of chits, Spyrium stands in stark contrast and it manages to do with very few components: A deck of cards, a few tokens, and a minimal (almost unnecessary) central board. Spyrium is a amazing piece of design because it manages to have a very rich and deep gameplay with minimalistic components.

In spite of having so few components, Spyrium has a huge amount of variability between games. Apart from the variations from the actions other players take, there’s the order in which cards will come up, the order of events for each round, and even the tokens that go on the cards themselves (which is an extra layer of variability for those cards since it changes their cost or effect).

The key mechanic of adding or removing workers for money or the card is very innovative and fresh. It’s also a game that plays well, but very differently, at different player counts. So playing with 4 people after learning the game with 2 will cause you to re-learn everything you thought you knew about it.

2. Prosperity

Prosperity was co-designed by Reiner Knizia and Sebastian Bleasdale. While Dr. Knizia is the big name there, I’m a particular fan of Bleasdale’s earlier design, Keyflower. In spite of that, I was afraid this game was going to be a too-abstract tile-laying game not to my tastes.

Boy was I wrong! Prosperity was my surprise game of the show at BGG Con (and I played a lot of games at the con). It hits the perfect level of abstractness that you feel you’re in charge of a city, but without degenerating in a sea of details that bog the game down. It manages to hit that magical middle-weight game category, that packs a lot of very interesting decisions in a playing time of an hour or less.

1. Bruxelles 1893

Unlike other simpler games, Bruxelles 1893 presents the player with a myriad of choices. It falls a bit in the camp of a Feldian point-salad game, but where each action and choice is very interconnected to the rest of the actions and the state in the board. You want to do action A, but if you do action B before, then A will be a lot more efficient. But of course, if you do C, then B will be even more powerful. Those kind of tough choices elevate this game to the top of my 2014 games.

Bruxelles 1893 is by new designer Etienne Espreman, but with some involvement by Sébastien Dujardin, who designed my favorite board game, Troyes.

Maybe even more interesting than looking at the list itself, is to look at what those games have in common. I have fairly varied tastes in games, but all the games in this list have some strong common elements:

• Tough, interesting choices
• Themes that appeal to me (no generic fantasy or zombies)
• They play well with 2 players
• Some player interaction, but no direct player confrontation and screwage
• Play times under 2 hours

Some of my other favorite games for this year that didn’t quite make it in the top 5 were:

• Freedom: The Underground Railroad: A cooperative game (a weakness of mine) with a very strong history theme.
• Nauticus: By wonder duo Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer. I wasn’t impressed with their other 2013 release, Coal Baron, but Nauticus is a perfect middle-weight game with possibilities for clever play.
• Coup: Technically this is a 2012 release, but it became much more widely available in 2013. It’s an amazing, quick, social game of bluffing and deduction. . The love child of Resistance and Love Letter.
• La Boca: A unique spacial game that forces players to collaborate to build something they can only see from their side. You really have to experience to understand it.
• CV: A quirky dice-rolling game with delightful art where you build the life of your character. It’s mostly luck-driven, but it ends up with very memorable stories.

I didn’t play every board game released on 2013 (or even close), so take my list with a grain of salt. As a reference, these are the other games I played that didn’t make the cut: Amerigo, Bang! The Dice Game, Blueprints, Bremerhaven, Bruges, Canterbury, Caverna: The Cave Farmers, Cinque Terre, Coal Baron, Concordia, Cornish Smuggler, Francis Drake, Island Fortress, Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy, Letnisko, Lewis & Clark, The Lord of the Rings Dice Building Game, The Lost Dutchman, Lost Legends, Mount Everest, Náufragos, NOIR: Deductive Mystery Game, Plunder, Quantum, Quarantine, Rialto, Rococo, Russian Railroads, Shadows over the Empire, Stone & Relic, Sushi Go!, Time ’n’ Space, Via Appia, Viticulture.

We don’t talk much about the role of luck in video games, probably because it’s hidden away under the black box of the computer simulation, but just like with board games, it can have have a large impact in the type of experience the video game provides.

Thinking about luck in these terms was crucial for the game I’m working on (still unannounced!). We made some crucial decisions thinking about how luck was part of the game and kind what kind of experience it created for the player. I’m hoping this post helps people with similar design challenges.

This post should apply to any kind of game in general (board or video games). Next time, I’ll be focusing especially on luck in video games using this as a launching point for a deeper look. Also, I’m limiting the definition of luck to random effects built into the game system itself, and not due just to player interaction.

No-Luck Games

In games with no luck, players rely completely on their skill to win. In that way, they’re closer to sports. Games become an intense, straight competition, pitting players’ brains against each other. Right there it shows how luck (or in this case, the absence of luck) creates a very specific feel to a game.

Good examples of games without any luck are classics such as Chess or Go. There are also plenty of modern board games with no luck, like Puerto Rico, Caylus (they both have a minimal amount of luck in the initial tile order), or Hive.

It’s interesting that a lot of abstract games tend to have no luck, and the more thematic a game gets, the more they seem to rely on luck.

Are You Feeling Lucky?

Having some amount of luck in a game can be very beneficial for most kinds of board games. It accomplishes many things:

1. Keeps things varied from game to game
2. Keeps players feeling they have a chance to win even if they’re not currently ahead
3. Removes pressure from winning players (“If someone beats me, it’s because they had a lucky streak”)
4. Makes players who didn’t win feel they stand a chance next time they play (“next time I’ll catch a break and I can win!”)

Points 2, 3, and 4 all encourage more people to play the game and feel they’re competitive at it, even if they didn’t win (and even if they’re not really competitive). One of the best examples of this is poker: Everybody feels they can do great at poker, if only they get good cards. In reality, this is not true in the long term, but poker introduces plenty of luck that it really is true in the short term.

A consequence of all those points is that having some amount of luck allows players of different skills to participate in the same game and enjoy it equally. For games that rely on having multiple people looking to play it, it can be a big factor.

Types of luck

For games that choose to add some luck element, there’s a whole range of amounts and types of lucks they can use for different effects. Unfortunately, it’s also possible to mix the wrong type of luck with a given game feature and create a frustrating experience instead of an enjoyable one.

• Post-action luck. This is luck introduced after the player has made a decision and executed an action. It can be in the form of flipping a coin to see if you unlock a chest, or rolling a dice to see if your armies invade a territory.
• Pre-action luck. Pre-action luck consists of the random events that happen before the player performs an action. The player is able to take them into account and make a decision based on them.
• Hidden information. Hidden information is the third kind of luck. I was a bit hesitant to include it as its own category first, but it seemed different enough from the other two to warrant being listed on its own. Hidden information refers to things that are known only to some players and will affect other players or the game scoring.

Post-action luck

OK, I’m going to say it: I’m not a fan of post-action luck. The player has already made its action and the outcome is random (even if it’s based on a probability curve the player is aware of, like rolling 3 six-sided dice). Since it doesn’t add to the choices the player has, it’s mostly uninteresting. This is the kind of luck that can add a bit of spice to an otherwise boring game, it doesn’t do much to make the game more interesting.

When used incorrectly, this kind of luck is extremely frustrating. The player can feel they chose the “best” action, but they rolled double 1s and their move backfired on them. Sure, there was some tension knowing that could happen, but was it really fun? Maybe the first time or two, but probably not long term.

While I typically really don’t like this kind of luck in my games, there are some situations in which even I will add it can add some interest to the game.

The first case is when the player can choose to perform one action or another, being aware of the different probability curves for both actions. For example, you can roll a single die and deal that damage to an enemy, or you can roll two dice, but if you roll two 1s, your character gets hit instead. In a situation like that, even though it’s still post-action luck, the player was presented with a meaningful decision ahead of time and had to weight the risks and rewards of both options.

The second case where post-action luck can work is when the action is repeated many times over the course of a game. That way, the outcome of each individual action in themselves is not game-breaking, and all the actions will eventually add up to the average over the course of the game. Luck in this case introduces a bit of noise and slight excitement without affecting things much.

This is a good situation to combine with the ability for players to slowly change their probability curves over the course of the game. That way, they can increase their chances of success for an action as the game progresses, presenting the player with a way to feel more powerful. This is often used in RPGs and video games.

Having some kind of post-action luck that affects the outcome of an action can also give players hope that they can do something, even if those chances are small. Otherwise, without any luck involved, they would see the situation is hopeless and lose interest in the game. At the same time, having that luck element makes predicting every possible outcome nearly impossible, so it encourages players to make a decision without spending a long time figuring out an ideal outcome.

Finally, another situation where post-action luck isn’t always a bad thing is in very short games. I love King of Tokyo even though it’s a complete dice fest with lots of post-action luck. Even if you get some really bad dice rolls, a game maybe only lasts 10-15 minutes, so it didn’t feel like a complete waste of time. On the other hand, losing a 4-hour game to a dice roll can be extremely infuriating.

The dark side of post-action luck is the human addition to random rewards, which is the reason why gambling or slot machines are so popular. Games can exploit that human quirk to their advantage and hook players in a game that would otherwise not be very interesting or fun.

A very meta post-action luck is buying “booster packs” of collectable card games (like Magic The Gathering). Purchasing the cards is the action, and the luck happens when you open it and see which random cards were in the pack. As most ex-Magic The Gathering players can attest, this can be extremely addictive.

Pre-action luck

This type of luck can add just as much randomness as post-action luck, but creates a very different feel for the game. Since the random event happens before the player action, even if you didn’t get the ideal outcome you were hoping for, you can choose to do the best action given your situation.

To illustrate the difference, consider power-ups in a first-person shooter. You open the door to one room and there’s a mysterious gift package power-up. You have no idea what it is, you pick it up and… it turns out it was health. Maybe that’s great because you were low in health. Or maybe you were maxed out and it was useless. That’s post-action luck.

Alternatively, imagine you open that door and you see 3 power-ups side by side. You see what they’re going to give you (health, ammo, or a new weapon). As soon as you take one, the others go away. Maybe neither one of them is exactly the ideal, but you can make a decision and pick the best one for your situation. That’s pre-action luck.

In board games, Stefan Feld is the master of pre-action luck. A lot of his games involve some kind of luck mechanism that limits your actions. For example, in The Castles of Burgundy or Bora Bora, you roll dice, and the numbers on those dice determine which actions you can take.

Without going that far, just about any games that involves drawing cards from a deck and having a “hand” of cards uses pre-action luck. The cards you’re dealt are the pre-action luck, and then you have to do the best you can with those cards.

An extreme type of pre-action luck is initial game layout. That happens only a single time during the game, and before players make any actions, so it has the potential to affect the full course of the game. Even players who are adamantly opposed to luck in games, are often willing to accept game setup randomness because it can be fully taken into account during the game without any surprises.

Pre-action luck isn’t as common in games as post-action luck, but it could be used just about anywhere that post-action luck is used. Consider the classic situation of a character attack some monsters and rolling a set of dice that determine whether he hits and how much damage it does. We could change that into pre-action luck by having players roll the dice (either all at once or separately), and having the dice restrict the options of what they can do. For example, low rolls on one dice could indicate that they can only do an attack close to the ground, while high rolls means they can attack flying enemies. Then the player can choose which of those actions to take, or maybe he can instead take a defensive stance or run away.

The main downside of pre-action luck is that it can extend every player action. The more it’s used, and the more possible choices it presents to the player, the longer the game might take, so it’s best to save it for times where the decisions really matter. If not, either post-action luck or no luck at all, might be better choices.

Hidden information

The most common example in board games is hidden end of game bonuses. For example, in Shipyard players get a set of goals that will score them points at the end of the game. There are two reasons for these goals: By giving each player different goals, it encourages players to focus on different aspects of the game instead of fighting over the same set of “optimal” actions. It also encourages players to pay attention to what other players are doing, and potentially try to anticipate or even block other players from getting too far ahead in their goals.

An even more interesting case is the game Troyes (one of my favorites!). Not only does each player get a set of end-of-game goals to get extra points, but all players, not just the player holding them, will be scored based on those goals. That makes paying attention to other players and trying to guess what they’re doing even more important.

At the extreme end of hidden information there are games like Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, in which each player gets a hidden winning condition. Players go about doing their actions until someone announces at the beginning of their turn that they have won the game, and they reveal their hidden victory condition card.

The higher the importance of the hidden information, the more casual and random the game becomes (and so, the shorter the game should be ideally).

I started writing this thinking it would be a quick entry about luck in games, but now it’s grown into something pretty large, and I didn’t even get a chance to touch on luck in video games. I’ll look into that next time.

Related reading These are a couple of great writeups/presentations on the same topic:

• Types of Luck by Antti Karjalainen
• Luck, Skill, and Hidden Information by Robert Gutschera

I’ve always loved board games, but being an only child, it was always challenging to find people to play with. My dad was often willing to play, and I would often pull out some of my favorites when friends came over. But it never felt like I could get enough.

It was no big surprise then, that as soon as I saw games on a computer I fell in love heads over heels. My first thought was “Wow! I can play games with the computer without having to depend on other people being here”. Imagine that! It didn’t matter that the games were uniformly horrible, hardly responsive, chunky, and monochrome. It was nirvana for me.

My second thought after seeing a video game was “I want to make those!” And that’s what I’ve been doing pretty much constantly since that day almost 30 years ago.

During that time board games took a back seat. My love was still there, but I was too busy with video games to consider them as serious entertainment. At times I’m sure I even thought that video games were a step up from board games; the next logical step in evolution.

That phase of my life lasted until grad school. That’s when a good friend of mine introduced me to this new little game that had just come out a couple of years before called Magic The Gathering. You’d think that grad school wouldn’t be the best time to get hooked on a game like that, and you’d be right. It was an amazing ride for several years (from Fallen Empires until Exodus for those of you keeping track). I realized how much I loved the physical and social aspect of board and card games, and how it was mostly missing from video games. At the time I was playing a lot of Warcraft and Quake 1 online, but the experience was nothing like playing Magic across the table from another person.

After my Magic phase, I tried some of the flourishing “euro” games that were just coming out at the time, but I was mostly absorbed back in video games again. Steam and iOS were taking up all my gaming time for a few years.

Then, last year, everything changed. Miguel came to visit with a car trunk full of board games. Literally! Not only did I have an absolute blast playing board games all week, but so did Amy, my wife. We were instantly hooked. Now all my gaming time is dedicated to board games, and I have hardly touched some kind of video game in the last year.

Why I Love Board Games

My love of board games comes from many different reasons.

Physical aspect. I love the convenience of digital distribution of books, music, and video games. But at the same time, I’m tired of manipulating pixels on the screen for all my activities (both work and entrainment). Touch screens are a small step in the right direction, but they still feel very artificial. When it comes down to it, nothing beats the feel of some wood pieces as you move them around the table. There are already too many screens and digital bits in my life.

Social aspect. Video games are mostly solitary experiences. Even multiplayer games, you’re usually not facing the people you play with, unless it’s with one of my favorite patterns: local multiplayer games, which are not extremely popular (and it’s hard to have the right people to play with around). On the other hand, most board games are inherently social. Not only I get to spend lots of extra time with my wife and friends, but I also get to meet lots of new people at conventions and game days.

Variety of experiences. I didn’t quite realize what a huge variety of experiences board games offer. Just a few games off the top of my head that offer a huge range of different experiences: Pandemic, Castles of Burgundy, Escape, Puerto Rico, Mr. Jack, Arkham Horror, or Dixit. And that’s only games in my collection, which is limited to my own tastes and doesn’t include war games or much Ameritrash. Video games probably offer an even wider range of experiences because a computer can be so versatile, but the board game landscape feels more varied and healthy. That might be due to video games being mass market, while board games are still trying to get there. I suspect that’s a topic for a future post.

Learning new games. I love learning new games. You could even say I’m addicted to it. I love to see how things fit together, how the game plays out, and trying to figure out a good strategy. Generally, I’m much happier playing 20 new games 5 times than playing a single game 100 times. With video games, since the game is the running the simulation, not me, there’s a lot less to learn. There’s also something about tutorials that are an absolute chore and I dread learning a game through them.

Replaying games. At the same time, I love replaying games I already know how to play. This is something that often doesn’t happen with video games. A lot of them are intended to make more progress every time you play, culminating in some climax at the end, after 10-20 hours of play. After that, you can play it again, but I usually move on to some other game. One recent notable exception is one of my all-time favorite games: The Binding of Isaac, which forces you to replay it over and over.

They’re for me. I feel I’m squarely in the target audience for a good portion of board games being released. I’m eagerly anticipating releases later on this year, and I can’t wait to read about the new Essen announcements. Most video games, on the other hand, with a few notable exceptions, leave me completely cold appealing mostly to adolescent power fantasies. A quick glance at the top sellers on the App Store or even most console titles, and it’s clear that I don’t belong there.

Fun New World

I love the experience of taking a field I didn’t know much about, and diving right in. I’ve been fully immersing myself in the world of board games. Every day I play one or more board games, and I go to a full-day gaming events once or twice a month. Sometimes it feels like drinking from the proverbial firehose. I’m constantly learning about new gameplay mechanics, the art of finely balancing a game, game evolution and trends, or even the works of specific designers and how they changed over time.

During a period like this, I tend to grow creatively a huge amount. Being exposed to something new causes all sorts of new associations result in a constant stream of new ideas. Some of them are related directly to board games, but a lot of them spill over into video games and even other parts of my life.

So what’s next for me? I’m not giving up making video games any time soon, don’t worry. I love making games in any format, and my goal is to continue making a living making games for different platforms. Board games are like another platform, but one with some strong challenges and constraints.

Of the video games I’m working on, one of them has very heavy board game influences in its design. I have no doubt that it would be completely different had I not rediscovered board games recently. We’re hoping to announce the game and talk more about it soon.

In addition to that, I’m, of course, dabbling on the side with board game ideas. Unfortunately there’s virtually no money in physical board games, so it’s just purely a hobby, but it’s a really fun one. And who knows, I might be able to make a digital version of one of those board games if I end up with a good design.

In the meanwhile, I expect to write quite a bit here about board games, and especially of the cross over between board and video games and what we can learn from each of them to make better games. You can also find me regularly on BGG.