Pleasant surprises?

Started by Silent Disapproval Robot, July 29, 2016, 05:00:08 PM

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Silent Disapproval Robot

I recently got back into boardgaming after a 20 year hiatus.  My background was strictly wargames so I was a bit leery of the new, lighter Euro style games when I got back into gaming as I tended to dislike the fluffier games when I was younger.  I ended up playing more than a few as old skool wargamers are as rare as unicorns these days (smelly, dishevelled, opinionaded unicorns...).  My first couple experiences bore out my fears as I found myself disliking the games I played for being either too simplistic (Dixit,  Takenoko, Ticket to Ride) or too abstracted and lacking in theme (Catan, Mysterium) to be enjoyable. 

Despite my initial impressions, I've since come around and I've found that as long as the game has enough depth and the theme still stands out over the more gamey Euro conventions, they can be a lot of fun.

I got to play a game called Ora & Labora this week and I had an absolute blast playing it.  Tonnes of fun and it looks like a massive number of choices for the player to make.  I ended up ordering a copy yesterday.  I was surprised I enjoyed it so much as I'd played two other games by the same designer and didn't really care for either of them very much (Patchwork and Bean Trader).

I also really liked Shipyard when I played it a last year and bought a copy of that as well.


Any titles you were reluctant to try but ended up enjoying?




Nefaro

#1
I had also mostly been a wargamer, decades ago, and started doing a wider range after returning to the hobby.  But part of that disparity is probably due to a lack of good boardgames back in the day.


I was very reluctant in picking up one of my favorite solitaire games, Darkest Night.  Watched a couple video play throughs and kept thinking that it looked too simple, and that there was other similar stuff out there that I could find.  But I bit the bullet & jumped on the Necromancer bundle of the original version (with first two expansions) and have been surprised how engaging it has been, with relatively little in the way of rules. 

Now I gush about it regularly.  Still haven't tried it co-op, because I have many other multi-player games that need playing and not enough group gaming available to get it done.



Was even more iffy about Dungeon Fighter, but I had found it cheap or on sale somewhere. 

You know... that co-op dungeon crawler-ish game with the board shaped like an archery target & forces goofy restrictions on you when making rolls.  Such as "Roll the die off your nose" or "..from the hand looped under your leg".  Played it with some family and, of course, the kids got a real kick out of it.  While I wasn't completely blown away, I certainly enjoyed it with the youngsters.  Despite initially expecting it to kinda suck.  Probably not for a group completely consisting of old gaming hands, but more for a range of ages/experience beer & pretzel environment.



I'll give honorable mentions to Claustrophobia and Polis: Fight For The Hegemony.  Both 1v1 games I didn't expect to overly enjoy, but turned out to be pretty good.