It's been four and a half months since I've started this blog and looking back at all of the posts, there hasn't been an awful lot of negativity in them, has there? So I thought, it might be finally time to follow in the footsteps of the great Bob Chipman and publish an article that's true to the blogs name and at the same time helps me get a few things off my chest. Here come a few unpopular opinions.
Oh, and if you're the type who's easily offended by stuff some random guy on the internet screams at no one in particular, feel free to preface each and every one of my points with "In my humble opinion" postface it with "but then again, I'm incredibly stupid" in your mind. That'd be great.
Also notice that even though I might say a few harsh words about some games, that doesn't mean that I think less of the people liking them. Unless I say so.
![]()
- Pachisi isn't all that bad. Sure, I'd never clamor to play it, but it's a inoffensive pass-time and in direct contrast to a lot of other games, I can kind of see why people still play it. (Wow, we're starting out strong, aren't we?)
- Most of Knizia's games really suck. Sure, he's done some pretty good ones, but they are nothing compared to the garbage he shovels out on a regular basis. And I'm not really sure that those successes are all too flattering for the good doctor, because as a smart person once said, everybody can craft a masterpiece by sheer accident.
- NichtLustig: Fäkalini is better than roughly half of the BGG top 100.
- Same goes for Bullets and Teeth.
- Eye-rolling irony is a poor substitute for real humor, SiegeStorm.
- Marc Uwe Kling is a poor substitute for real humor, Game of Quotes: Verrückte Zitate.
- Everybody who still likes Fluxx after playing one game of it deserves it.
- CMON have yet to release a game that's worth struggling through their usual rulebook-fare.
- What's the point of copying a very popular game and making it less fun, Xibalba?
- Bushido: Der Weg des Kriegers might be the worst real game ever made.
![]()
- On second thought, perhaps it's Siena.
- If you love Resident Evil Deck Building Game so much, why don't you marry it, Draconis Invasion?
- Martin Wallace, please stop designing trite nonsense like The Arrival, we know that you can do better.
- Everybody who still likes Munchkin after playing two games of it deserves it.
- Lemming Mafia is a cool game. It's like Camel Up but quick and snappy and fun and looks good on the table.
- Uncharted: The Board Game is way better a game than the video game franchise deserves.
- Sheep & Thief is a better drafting-game than 7 Wonders.
- Epic PVP: Fantasy isn't all that bad.
- Martians: A Story of Civilization really IS that bad.
- Two games into Heroes of Land, Air & Sea, I think I should just get rid of it, because it's really not worth the hassle.
![]()
- Age of Mythology: The Boardgame has one of the coolest mechanisms ever. That alone makes it almost worthwhile.
- Cards Against Humanity is fun. For a while.
- Cave Evil should be number 2 here on the Geek. Period. Shut up, M.
- Fortress America hasn't aged well and nobody needs to play it in this day and age.
- The Witcher Adventure Game sucks.
- Midgard might be better than Blood Rage. But that's not saying a lot.
- Nefarious might be Donald X. Vaccarino's best game.
- Senji is better than Shogun. MUCH better.
- Bios: Megafauna is an incredible work of art. Sadly, it's not that good a game.
- Clockwork Wars is awesome. If you don't own it, you're part of the problem!
![]()
- Best Treehouse Ever is a better drafting-game than 7 Wonders.
- Has Michael Schacht ever designed something really good? I don't mean "inoffensive, pleasant and absolutely playable", but... good.
- The second and third editions of Habitats are lesser games for not including ceramic animal pawns.
- Tannhäuser isn't that good.
- Xenon Profiteer is one of the coolest games you've never heard of.
- Invasion from Outer Space: The Martian Game isn't half as good as Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game. And that's with the Jojo-bonus factored in.
- On second thought, Greed might be Donald X. Vaccarino's best game.
- Also Greed is a better drafting-game than 7 Wonders.
- Nightfall isn't good enough.
- Capital is a better drafting-game than 7 Wonders. But not by much.
![]()
- Everybody who thinks that Conquest of Planet Earth: The Space Alien Game should be predominantly played as a cooperative game should think again.
- Also cooperative games are usually a colossal waste of time, especially but not limited to: Conquest of Planet Earth: The Space Alien Game, Castle Panic, Red November, The Game, Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island, Mice and Mystics, Space Alert, Hanabi and Pandemic. There. I said it.
- Yunnan would be a pretty neat game, if it had a bit less disdain for the people playing it.
- La Granja: No Siesta is too long for what it is.
- Kolejka is pretty bad. Shame about the great theme.
- Arena: Roma II is Stefan Feld's best game. That's not saying much. But it's good.
- Android is a trainwreck of a game and I hate nobody more for that then myself, because I wanted to love it.
- Relax, people, A Study in Emerald (second edition) is fine. It's... fine.
- Duel of Ages II did absolutely nothing for me. And it's ugly as sin.
- Junta is horrible. Stop asking me to play it, S. (That's S. number three, if you're keeping track...)
![]()
- New Angeles kind of sucks and isn't worth the time-investment.
- TransAmerica REALLY sucks and isn't worth the time-investment. Without the mini-expansion, I'd hardly call it a game.
- Doomtown: Reloaded is the best game ever made. Yes, even better than Cave Evil.
- Doom: The Boardgame kind of sucks.
- Fairy Tale is a better drafting-game than 7 Wonders.
- Shadow Hunters is what BANG! should have been. Coincidentally, BANG! sucks.
- Linko! is best as a two-player game.
- Level 7 [Omega Protocol] is okay.
- Smash Up isn't. People have to stop pretending that it is.
- Mr. Jack Pocket is better than all the other Mr. Jack-games.
![]()
- Wiz-War (eighth edition) is better than Adrenaline.
- Princes of the Renaissance sucks.
- Ca$h 'n Guns (Second Edition) isn't as good as the foam-guns would lead you to believe.
- BANG! The Dice Game is better than BANG!. It's still not good, though.
- Yedo doesn't hold a candle to Lords of Waterdeep.
- Shakespeare is okay.
- Betrayal at House on the Hill is good. Like, really good. If you have problems with the tomes, you're the problem.
- People need to get over Chess. Yes, it's a ginormous cultural achievement and it has aged gracefully, but in game-terms, it has long been surpassed.
- Fury of Dracula (second edition) sucks (hahaha).
- Spyfall has a cool concept. Sadly, I've never seen it unlock its potential. Every time I've played it has been plain bad.
![]()
- Camel Up is a stupid game. It's like Lemming Mafia but slow, dull and ugly.
- The Battle of Five Armies is better than War of the Ring (First Edition).
- Coup holds up.
- Sushi Go! is a better drafting-game than 7 Wonders.
- Nexus Ops should be everybody's favorite classical dudes on a map game.
- Shadows over Camelot isn't that good.
- A Game of Thrones (first edition) isn't either.
- Madeira sucks.
- Firefly: The Game is okay.
- Descent: Journeys in the Dark is but a small improvement over Doom: The Boardgame.
![]()
- Kingsburg is really boring. The expansion doesn't help with that, either.
- A Few Acres of Snow isn't broken.
- King of Tokyo is nothing special.
- Endeavor is a great conglomeration of mechanisms. It's a perfect example how (the lack of) a theme can kill a potentially good game.
- Mission: Red Planet (Second Edition) is really mediocre.
- The Resistance doesn't work.
- Deception: Murder in Hong Kong doesn't work either.
- Above and Below is hardly a game.
- Glory to Rome left me cold.
- Carcassonne is a maddeningly clever game. Real shame that it is so boring.
![]()
- Cyclades: Titans completely ruins the awesome Cyclades. If you think otherwise, you're wrong.
- Inis doesn't matter.
- Viticulture is fine.
- Captain Sonar is fun. Once per month or so.
- Move over, Chaos in the Old World, there's more than enough better games out there now.
- Arcadia Quest is okay.
- Forbidden Stars is okay.
- Kemet is okay.
- Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game is fun most of the time, but far too long for me to risk getting into one of those games that aren't fun.
- Roll for the Galaxy is better than Race for the Galaxy.
![]()
- El Grande is obsolete.
- Dominant Species has always been obsolete.
- Twilight Imperium (Third Edition) is a terrible game. Bog-standard mechanisms, horribly unthematic victory conditions, boring AF gameplay... The only thing it can make a boast of is its overlong playing-time and if people like it for that, they deserve it.
- Codenames is a neat idea, but hardly fun.
- 7 Wonders isn't very good. Did that come across? IT ISN'T VERY GOOD!
- Android: Netrunner isn't as good as Doomtown: Reloaded, but then again, what is?
- A Feast for Odin is boring.
- Food Chain Magnate didn't set my world on fire, either.
- Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization would be better with a map-board.
- Blood Rage is a real mystery to me, as in I can't fathom why it is so incredibly overhyped. It's okay, it's fine, it's perfectly playable. But it does absolutely nothing noteworthy. Even if I dislike a game, I can usually see why people might like it. With Blood Rage, I am completely clueless as to how people can proclaim it as their favorite game.
![]()
- Agricola is okay.
- Puerto Rico is okay.
- The Castles of Burgundy is... *sigh* okay.
- Terra Mystica is incredibly boring.
- Star Wars: Rebellion's combat-system is so incredibly bad that I don't really want to play the game again.
- Terraforming Mars is good. No, really, it's good.
- And finally, games with destructable components are fine. Nothing is made to last forever, nothing will hold your interest for eternity, if you get twenty plays out of that box you just bought and the fact that you destroying some of the components enhances the gameplay in ways that would otherwise be impossible, that's cool. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 nevertheless probably sucks. I don't know, haven't played it, but it's a coop.
So there you have it. I'm gonna take a seat behind this bulletproof wall and await what's coming. See you around.
Oh, and if you're the type who's easily offended by stuff some random guy on the internet screams at no one in particular, feel free to preface each and every one of my points with "In my humble opinion" postface it with "but then again, I'm incredibly stupid" in your mind. That'd be great.
Also notice that even though I might say a few harsh words about some games, that doesn't mean that I think less of the people liking them. Unless I say so.
- Pachisi isn't all that bad. Sure, I'd never clamor to play it, but it's a inoffensive pass-time and in direct contrast to a lot of other games, I can kind of see why people still play it. (Wow, we're starting out strong, aren't we?)
- Most of Knizia's games really suck. Sure, he's done some pretty good ones, but they are nothing compared to the garbage he shovels out on a regular basis. And I'm not really sure that those successes are all too flattering for the good doctor, because as a smart person once said, everybody can craft a masterpiece by sheer accident.
- NichtLustig: Fäkalini is better than roughly half of the BGG top 100.
- Same goes for Bullets and Teeth.
- Eye-rolling irony is a poor substitute for real humor, SiegeStorm.
- Marc Uwe Kling is a poor substitute for real humor, Game of Quotes: Verrückte Zitate.
- Everybody who still likes Fluxx after playing one game of it deserves it.
- CMON have yet to release a game that's worth struggling through their usual rulebook-fare.
- What's the point of copying a very popular game and making it less fun, Xibalba?
- Bushido: Der Weg des Kriegers might be the worst real game ever made.
- On second thought, perhaps it's Siena.
- If you love Resident Evil Deck Building Game so much, why don't you marry it, Draconis Invasion?
- Martin Wallace, please stop designing trite nonsense like The Arrival, we know that you can do better.
- Everybody who still likes Munchkin after playing two games of it deserves it.
- Lemming Mafia is a cool game. It's like Camel Up but quick and snappy and fun and looks good on the table.
- Uncharted: The Board Game is way better a game than the video game franchise deserves.
- Sheep & Thief is a better drafting-game than 7 Wonders.
- Epic PVP: Fantasy isn't all that bad.
- Martians: A Story of Civilization really IS that bad.
- Two games into Heroes of Land, Air & Sea, I think I should just get rid of it, because it's really not worth the hassle.
- Age of Mythology: The Boardgame has one of the coolest mechanisms ever. That alone makes it almost worthwhile.
- Cards Against Humanity is fun. For a while.
- Cave Evil should be number 2 here on the Geek. Period. Shut up, M.
- Fortress America hasn't aged well and nobody needs to play it in this day and age.
- The Witcher Adventure Game sucks.
- Midgard might be better than Blood Rage. But that's not saying a lot.
- Nefarious might be Donald X. Vaccarino's best game.
- Senji is better than Shogun. MUCH better.
- Bios: Megafauna is an incredible work of art. Sadly, it's not that good a game.
- Clockwork Wars is awesome. If you don't own it, you're part of the problem!
- Best Treehouse Ever is a better drafting-game than 7 Wonders.
- Has Michael Schacht ever designed something really good? I don't mean "inoffensive, pleasant and absolutely playable", but... good.
- The second and third editions of Habitats are lesser games for not including ceramic animal pawns.
- Tannhäuser isn't that good.
- Xenon Profiteer is one of the coolest games you've never heard of.
- Invasion from Outer Space: The Martian Game isn't half as good as Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game. And that's with the Jojo-bonus factored in.
- On second thought, Greed might be Donald X. Vaccarino's best game.
- Also Greed is a better drafting-game than 7 Wonders.
- Nightfall isn't good enough.
- Capital is a better drafting-game than 7 Wonders. But not by much.
- Everybody who thinks that Conquest of Planet Earth: The Space Alien Game should be predominantly played as a cooperative game should think again.
- Also cooperative games are usually a colossal waste of time, especially but not limited to: Conquest of Planet Earth: The Space Alien Game, Castle Panic, Red November, The Game, Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island, Mice and Mystics, Space Alert, Hanabi and Pandemic. There. I said it.
- Yunnan would be a pretty neat game, if it had a bit less disdain for the people playing it.
- La Granja: No Siesta is too long for what it is.
- Kolejka is pretty bad. Shame about the great theme.
- Arena: Roma II is Stefan Feld's best game. That's not saying much. But it's good.
- Android is a trainwreck of a game and I hate nobody more for that then myself, because I wanted to love it.
- Relax, people, A Study in Emerald (second edition) is fine. It's... fine.
- Duel of Ages II did absolutely nothing for me. And it's ugly as sin.
- Junta is horrible. Stop asking me to play it, S. (That's S. number three, if you're keeping track...)
- New Angeles kind of sucks and isn't worth the time-investment.
- TransAmerica REALLY sucks and isn't worth the time-investment. Without the mini-expansion, I'd hardly call it a game.
- Doomtown: Reloaded is the best game ever made. Yes, even better than Cave Evil.
- Doom: The Boardgame kind of sucks.
- Fairy Tale is a better drafting-game than 7 Wonders.
- Shadow Hunters is what BANG! should have been. Coincidentally, BANG! sucks.
- Linko! is best as a two-player game.
- Level 7 [Omega Protocol] is okay.
- Smash Up isn't. People have to stop pretending that it is.
- Mr. Jack Pocket is better than all the other Mr. Jack-games.
- Wiz-War (eighth edition) is better than Adrenaline.
- Princes of the Renaissance sucks.
- Ca$h 'n Guns (Second Edition) isn't as good as the foam-guns would lead you to believe.
- BANG! The Dice Game is better than BANG!. It's still not good, though.
- Yedo doesn't hold a candle to Lords of Waterdeep.
- Shakespeare is okay.
- Betrayal at House on the Hill is good. Like, really good. If you have problems with the tomes, you're the problem.
- People need to get over Chess. Yes, it's a ginormous cultural achievement and it has aged gracefully, but in game-terms, it has long been surpassed.
- Fury of Dracula (second edition) sucks (hahaha).
- Spyfall has a cool concept. Sadly, I've never seen it unlock its potential. Every time I've played it has been plain bad.
- Camel Up is a stupid game. It's like Lemming Mafia but slow, dull and ugly.
- The Battle of Five Armies is better than War of the Ring (First Edition).
- Coup holds up.
- Sushi Go! is a better drafting-game than 7 Wonders.
- Nexus Ops should be everybody's favorite classical dudes on a map game.
- Shadows over Camelot isn't that good.
- A Game of Thrones (first edition) isn't either.
- Madeira sucks.
- Firefly: The Game is okay.
- Descent: Journeys in the Dark is but a small improvement over Doom: The Boardgame.
- Kingsburg is really boring. The expansion doesn't help with that, either.
- A Few Acres of Snow isn't broken.
- King of Tokyo is nothing special.
- Endeavor is a great conglomeration of mechanisms. It's a perfect example how (the lack of) a theme can kill a potentially good game.
- Mission: Red Planet (Second Edition) is really mediocre.
- The Resistance doesn't work.
- Deception: Murder in Hong Kong doesn't work either.
- Above and Below is hardly a game.
- Glory to Rome left me cold.
- Carcassonne is a maddeningly clever game. Real shame that it is so boring.
- Cyclades: Titans completely ruins the awesome Cyclades. If you think otherwise, you're wrong.
- Inis doesn't matter.
- Viticulture is fine.
- Captain Sonar is fun. Once per month or so.
- Move over, Chaos in the Old World, there's more than enough better games out there now.
- Arcadia Quest is okay.
- Forbidden Stars is okay.
- Kemet is okay.
- Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game is fun most of the time, but far too long for me to risk getting into one of those games that aren't fun.
- Roll for the Galaxy is better than Race for the Galaxy.
- El Grande is obsolete.
- Dominant Species has always been obsolete.
- Twilight Imperium (Third Edition) is a terrible game. Bog-standard mechanisms, horribly unthematic victory conditions, boring AF gameplay... The only thing it can make a boast of is its overlong playing-time and if people like it for that, they deserve it.
- Codenames is a neat idea, but hardly fun.
- 7 Wonders isn't very good. Did that come across? IT ISN'T VERY GOOD!
- Android: Netrunner isn't as good as Doomtown: Reloaded, but then again, what is?
- A Feast for Odin is boring.
- Food Chain Magnate didn't set my world on fire, either.
- Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization would be better with a map-board.
- Blood Rage is a real mystery to me, as in I can't fathom why it is so incredibly overhyped. It's okay, it's fine, it's perfectly playable. But it does absolutely nothing noteworthy. Even if I dislike a game, I can usually see why people might like it. With Blood Rage, I am completely clueless as to how people can proclaim it as their favorite game.
- Agricola is okay.
- Puerto Rico is okay.
- The Castles of Burgundy is... *sigh* okay.
- Terra Mystica is incredibly boring.
- Star Wars: Rebellion's combat-system is so incredibly bad that I don't really want to play the game again.
- Terraforming Mars is good. No, really, it's good.
- And finally, games with destructable components are fine. Nothing is made to last forever, nothing will hold your interest for eternity, if you get twenty plays out of that box you just bought and the fact that you destroying some of the components enhances the gameplay in ways that would otherwise be impossible, that's cool. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 nevertheless probably sucks. I don't know, haven't played it, but it's a coop.
So there you have it. I'm gonna take a seat behind this bulletproof wall and await what's coming. See you around.