I think the best house-rule to avoid the awkward position of no one starting in Tokyo in King of Tokyo (Zee's #10 pick) is to have the last player start in Tokyo. It gets rid of the problem trying to avoid claws in your first turn and it gives the last player something to do while waiting for everyone else to do their turns (do they want to get out of Tokyo or not). I even give them the point for starting in Tokyo.
I will have to try this next time we play. I might also try having the first player start in Tokyo but without the point and see how it plays out; probably will speed up the game if the first player rolls a bunch of paws.
It's weird, in the rules I've got (french edition) there is actually something like that. It's not "the first one who do claws enter in Tokyo" but "phase 3 of your turn (after 1-Rolling and 2-Resoling dices), if there is no-one in Tokyo, you enter Tokyo. That means the first player has to enter Tokyo at end of his turn, but that also mean he can do things on that turn : win points, win energy (maybe even buy a card with those) and of course win a point because he enters Tokyo. Is it that my rule book is different than yours ?
@@matthieucassabois2149 The issue is that if you roll any claws in the first turn, they're useless, because you don't enter Tokyo until after you've resolved your dice.
Zee’s #10 was changed in the 2nd edition of King of Tokyo. The first player enters Tokyo at the end of their turn regardless of what they have rolled. The first player’s claws still won’t resolve, however there’s no more turtling to avoid entering Tokyo.
I think they enter Tokyo after you roll (there by making claws useless) is to avoid a situation where the first player does 6 damage to all players right before everyone else has a turn. That would really suck to start the game with over half your health gone. The only other way to do this would be to put the last player in Tokyo from the start, and if someone rolls claws and hurts them, they can leave Tokyo, but if they start their first turn in Tokyo, they get 2 points
I always volunteer to go into Tokyo when I bring this game out because everyone always forgets how to play it at my get togethers so its easier for everyone to get the game going
I agree that the last player starting in Tokyo definitely simplifies the beginning of the game, but I think I’d rather attempt to roll something beneficial turn one and then enter Tokyo instead of being an asset-less target from the very beginning. They’re similar situations, but I think the 2nd edition rules as written feel more fun - I get to have more agency and I get to potentially acquire more stuff. The likelihood of remaining in Tokyo round one without any evolutions or power cards is basically zero. I appreciate when designers consider fun. With that said, I’d prefer either option to the “first claw enters Tokyo” rule from the first edition.
My house rule is Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle...The Hogwarts deck is MASSIVE (even without expansions). What can happen is the 6 cards you choose from are all too expensive, so all the players pass on their buy action every turn, the game grinds to a halt and you can't deckbuild in a deckbuilding game! We have 2 Hogwarts decks, one deck with cards that cost 1-4 and a second deck with cards that cost 5+. 4/6 spots you can buy cards from are from the cheap deck (and replenish from that deck as you buy cards), 2/6 spots are from the expensive deck. This doesn't make the game easier, it makes an occasionally broken game into a GAME.
Yeah, that can be an issue in most deckbuilders with a randomised market. I've tried (in the Cryptozoic ones and Star Realms) that you draw the lineup, but redraw anything that's cost 6+. Works quite well.
Ours was a little more extreme of a fix. The active player can choose to skip their purchase and dump all six cards. You have to dump all six, but everyone else gets a new six to pick from and it almost always gives the next player good choices.
Love it. Mine would be a lot of IP games. Dark Souls, Firefly Adventures, Founders of Gloomhaven, Time of the Daleks... I don’t love the games, but I get a chance to play (character I love)
Thief's Market. Excellent last diminisher drafting(which is a MUCH more proper way to scale I-cut-you-choose to many players, than the singleplayer AP-burdening way done by Skyward and many others). However the unintuitive symbols made the game too confusing. Not only do they require multiple trips to the rulebook, the rulebook's explanations aren't even clear
Really appreciate you guys sharing your house rules and fixes for these problematic games. I like a lot of the games on this list and also tend to do house rules, getting more ideas for them is fun
On Gloomhaven JOTL my wife and I had burned out because of how much angst we had around the communication, but i hadn't figured out that was the issue until Mike said it just now. We are immediately house ruling that and i think it will make the game so much better.
Every time the subject of "semi"co-op hate comes up on this channel it really makes me wish New Angeles had gotten more exposure when it was new. Greedy corporations trying to get one over on each other, while also working together to keep the city from falling into chaos. Maybe I'm just a sucker for the Netrunner/cyberpunk setting, but I just love that game.
New angeles works because more than one person can win, you just need more points than your direct rival, not most point in total, so more players tend to work towards the common goal. another one where semi coop works well is archipelago, because scoring is hidden (and there might be a traitor, so even if you are losing it makes no sense to incite a revolt, as that could just cause someone else to won anyway)
@@coyotemoon722 It's a good game but sadly the faction balance is severly lacking. Basically HB tends to get way more points because their power is always needed wheras Jinteki and NBN might get very few chances to deal with the threat they're specialized for.
Have you ever done a Top 10 Games You Would Not Play Without An Expansion? I could find a top 10 best expansions in 2012, but that was as close as I could find (I may be blind, mind you, at my age, but.... :-)
When my family plays Lords of Waterdeep we don't like that only one player per round can go to Builders Hall -- we understand that it's meant to be a limit and incentivize people going to Castle Waterdeep but we find the game to be much more interesting when more buildings can be obtained each round, so we have a house rule that Builders Hall has 3 slots, one corresponding to each building on sale. We find that there's still some incentive to go first in the round since some buildings are more advantageous to own than others, and also allows the options on the board to expand more considerably each round. There might be reasons why this was limited in the official rules but we find it more fun this way.
@Zee RE: King of Tokyo, second edition fixed the claw to enter Tokyo rule. If Tokyo is empty on your turn, you go into Tokyo. So basically the first player will enter Tokyo on their turn.
When I was starting out in the hobby with my copy of pandemic, I definitely alpha gamed. I look back and I'm like "I don't think this was actually fun for anyone else". I've gotten much better now 😅
Suppose I said "The Crew" should be played with open hands. After all, it's cooperative, we should all want to win the game, so stop with this nonsensical limited communication. I'd imagine people would disagree, and likely recognize the game would quickly devolve into a bridge-like newspaper puzzle that the fastest thinker at the table would solve round after round after round. That is what Pandemic is with open hands. Put player agency above winning - keep your cards hidden.
@@Tenebyss Fair point. I was commenting more generally about cooperative game communication, but that part in Pandemic allowing you to say what's in your hand really adds fuel to the alpha gamer.
@@brutusthecat6044 My wife and I played Hanabi (two-player) three times and found it very frustrating. We could never learn enough about our hand of cards and always had turns where we had to play/discard blind. Those turns weren't fun. Maybe it was just a few bad shuffles. We did run out the deck once for a score of 14, but realized that the perfect score of 25 was never gonna happen. I would honestly suspect cheating for anyone claiming to have scored 25 (breaking the communication rules by revealing more than allowed).
@Mike - Yes, the monster "dice loss" is an essential part of the dice economy. Losing your dice to the monster fight has been the most contentious mechanics in the game. Glad to hear that the game is still on the positive side for you. Either way, thanks for mentioning us!
"I One-der if I can help." 😁 In Carcassonne, I play with each player having 2 tiles and drawing one after playing one. This way there's always a choice between 2 tiles to play except the last round. I worry 3 tiles draw may slow it down too much. I will definitelyimplement the Takenoko variant of not eating the last bamboo stalk. I also like the variant rule of each set of objective gives you extra points which encourages some balance.
My most annoying rule, nectar in wingspan Oceania. As it is a wild resource it becomes the only resource and makes the game too simple, removing the difficult in feeding birds to play them. I have house ruled that only 3 of the nectar dice are used and 2 base game dice are used.
I also play with this house rule but it does make nectar more valuable since less will be available throughout the game. I'm debating on just getting rid of nectar completely and the cards that require them.
Super happy to hear I'm not the only one who thinks nectar is just way too powerful. It took my top game and made me barely want to play it. I am thinking about making the bonuses reversed, least used gets the points instead of bonus for using the most.
Reversing the nectar bonus is interesting. My only concern is it will make the nectar birds very weak as playing them will give you minus points. That said there aren't many nectar birds, and I will also try this house rule next play
Great list! Neom is great indeed. The designer posted a no disaster variant, as well as a "timed disaster hitting everyone" variant that we use... So no one drafts it, but everyone still needs to build knowing they'll come, which keeps the fire and police station tiles valuable.
Here's mine, and I house rule it into something that really elevates the game IMO. Tsuro. The rule is if your dragon pawn collides with another, you are both out of the game. I think that destroys a great opportunity for player interaction, so instead we have the assassination rule. If you place a tile that brings you into contact with an opponent, your opponent is eliminated - not you. And (because if you were to follow the opponents path it would just take you to the edge of the board and kill you anyway) from there you may pick any other available path on that tile to follow on your next turn. Play continues as normal from there.
Agree with Mike. Pandemic open hands should be the only way. Gloomhaven same way. Limited communication is the worst mechanism. It is almost always solved via meta-communication, which is not fun.
In Dominion, the supply of provinces are evenly divisible by the number of players at all player counts, the first player advantage mostly comes from attack cards, or getting a free 'dead turn' in an otherwise close game. (the 'last player wins ties' is meant to mitigate this). I'm a bit surprised anyone finds the game ending condition annoying. Planning and timing the end of the game has always felt like... "the game" to me. Taking the second to last province is a statement of intent. If you're concerned about a small first player advantage for a single game of Dominion, I can't imagine an equal-turns variant doing anything but generating a significant last-mover advantage instead, so it's not really solving any kind of balance problem. Beyond all that - it's just fun to have some anxiety about that dwindling pile of provinces!
I'm not at the part where they talk about dominion yet, but province taking to me always felt like a 'grab it when you can' thing. There was never any timing or planning around when you would take them, cause you only have so many opportunities to get them, and if you choose to give up one of your chances to grab them then you'll probably lose cause someone else will grab them before you get another chance.
But at least either player could end up being that last mover. The way it stands, the first player will almost always be the last mover, and that's precisely what's unbalanced.
One of the most entertaining episodes while plenty of gaming information that helps rationalizing the enjoyment factor on some of these games. Bad rules/mechanics are game killers.
I know this came out two years ago, but Mike really missed the mark with wingspan. The feeder re-roll rule is essential. Otherwise it can get plugged up forever with rats and fish or stuff nobody wants. 😎
Honestly ankh merge rule is one of the best components. The common theme for people who dont like it are people who dont like giving losing players a second chance or those who dont like working with their friends
I think Castles of Caladale has the same problem that Zee's number 1. Rearranging the whole castle to fit in one tile can take forever. And there is always some way if you think long enough. Great video guys, it was a lot of fun!
The mandatory quests in LoW can help balance with 3+ players. But in a 2 player game, there’s really no choice and it drags each other down. I totally agree with taking them out, especially with 2. Good call!!
I feel the same way about World's Fair 1893 that Tom does about Dominion - everyone should get the same number of turns. I feel like there is a slight first player advantage in that game. I think the starting variations (of where you put your supporters) are supposed to compensate for that, but I'm not convinced that it's balanced. - - I agree with Tom about the Carcassonne tile draw too. We always draw two tiles and let the player choose which one they want to play so there's more decision-making in the game. - - Never thought about the Sherrif of Nottingham discard pile thing, but now that you bring it up, I totally agree! - - Great video!
For me it's Zombicide where one rule stipulates that you have to add in zombies if there is an even amount of noise between two players; basically if it's tied. So if a zombie had the same line of sight on both players as well as both players having the same amount of noise, you'd double the amount of zombies so that there would be the same number going for each player. This should have been done using a die to decide between which player the zombie(s) would head toward, but they opted this nonsensical rule instead.
We have always played KoT with each person rolling the dies. The one with the most smashes starts in Tokyo. Just makes sense. We like the power cards, but few get into play... so we give double energy cubes per energy die roll. Works for us.
King of Tokyo: Dark Edition - House rule we use for first person to get into Tokyo, they do get to attack, but because its the first entrance into Tokyo, we remove 1 claw from their roll as a "destroy the military" penalty. There are also ways to force Tokyo to empty in Dark Edition, meaning you can use this rule again at other points to explain why you do less damage, but still can want high-claw rolls entering Tokyo
13:50 - Zee must have had a different Via Magica rule book than I did because mine clearly said in case of ties, the first player or the person who shouted that is closest to the left of the first player goes first on clearing the cards; no silly numbers needed. What I actually miss from Rise of Augustus is the cards that attack your opponents when you clear them (removes tokens from spaces they have covered, so they have to get them covered again).
The "fix" for Takenoko, that says you can't eat the last bamboo shoot isn't balanced, because an upgrade can't be added to a plot that has bamboo... so if you don't place the plot such that it is NOT irrigated (since if it is, it automatically grows), you can never place an upgrade on it. Not only is this problematic for accomplishing some goals, it makes "taking an upgrade" an almost wasted action.
oh, and in Via Magica, you shout "Incantatum"... which I very much agree can be an awful rule in many groups. All players equal, it does make it feel like bingo, which can be fun. It is very fiddly and annoying on the BGA rendition, especially turn-based.
Here's the reason for Dominion's end condition. There are two ways for the game to end: (1) province deck is emptied, (2) three piles are emptied. In (1), giving the additional turns to even them out is unlikely to make a difference, as you won't be able to buy a province. In (2), the game has likely been quite long (at least 30 cards have to be gained to get to this point) to reach this end condition, giving ample time to balance things out. If you haven't caught up by this point, it's unlikely one additional turn will help you. I believe this makes enough reason not to have to keep track of the first player. It's more exciting if the game could end suddenly at any moment. The REAL rule that Dominion messed up is shuffling starting decks. The fact that some people luck into a 5/2 start while others get 4/3 is a needless imbalance. We house rule it so that everyone can stack their deck on the first shuffle, which makes it fairer. Plus, it makes an interesting choice to start the game.
100% Agree with Zee on the Carcassonne rule. Draw at the start of your turn, it helps everyone focus on the game instead of sitting there doing your own thing. We play that when you draw a tile you put it down on the table so everyone can see then there is a lot of interaction with everyone making suggestions trying to influence the game in their favour, or for new players it makes it easier to just point out the options for them.
I do like they added some characters that use those points to deal damage in Legendary, which I liked because we also don't use that rule, but it gave the points a reason for us, assuming they play that character. Love the list.
We like Carcassonne! In this game we have a houserule to compensate for the luck factor of the hidden draw: Each player gets ONE monastery, so firstly each player has the chance to get these 9 points at least once - and secondly and most importantly, *you always have 2 parts in your hand from which you can can choose!* Once you have placed the monastery, you have always another tile in your hand because you always draw a new one.
I always play Carcassonne by the actual rules, the "slowing" of the game is not really a thing as the board changes on each turn anyway. also, I play the 2 discard pile in Sheriff of Nottingham with my niece and nephew who are 7 and 9 and it doesn't confuse them so at no time would I have thought that it was a confusing rule that would need to be changed. they actually like getting the extra choices.
I didn't know this until the other day when I read it on a Facebook group, but apparently in Memoir 44 mountains can't see over hills because they are different terrain levels. Surely every mountain would be taller than a hill but that rule does exist. Great vid 👍
Gloomhaven has a rule written in the rulebook for open communication if you only crank up the trap and monsters by one level, which you also use for solo.
I understand the hate for the Shadows Over Camelot rule but A) its fun to roleplay and B) it helps the traitor hide/solves alpha gaming a bit (the traitor is at a disadvantage in this game). If it was open communication I think it would be impossible to hide as the traitor, and if there was zero communication I think it would be too hard to make progress - but I haven't tried either way so I can't say for sure.
I totally agree! If you were playing without the traitor, then I would understand the open communication. But the traitor adds a social deduction aspect, so you gotta have that ambiguity.
@@amchasteenable yeah, I'd like to know if people who complain about this have ever just gotten rid of that rule and allowed open information, and how much harder it was for the traitor.
I don't see how you could change Dominion so everyone has the same number of turns. The game ends when a stack of victory cards is gone, so what good would it do to let others play after that? There are no more victory cards they can draw anyway. It would just be a dummy round, because it wouldn't change anything.
Mice and Mystics - Rule I hate (that ruined the game for me): When enemy make rolls, there is a 1 in 6 chance per die rolled to add a cheese to the Cheese Wheel. The cheese wheel can make the game end quicker. So regardless of your strategy, if a bunch of enemies roll cheese during their action, the game can suddenly become impossible to win because you're out of time.
I think the Gloomhaven rule exists to prevent alpha gaming. Last night my gf played a card to go earlier then me which resulted in me not being able to use my top action. If I had perfect information I would have told her not to. However we have more fun not micromanaging what each of us does. Is it harder and weird? Yes, but it improves our experience a lot.
I play Gloomhaven at 3 and I kind of like the limited communication rule just because it makes things feel a bit more thematic to me and removes some table captain problems slightly, but I can understand why it would bother someone else.
Yeah it's an issue in co-op games and a forced rule that always seems weird. But as you said it's to keep one person from solo playing with everyone else watching. Zee hates the Dead of Winter personal goals cards being private but it is one of the few co-ops where it works thematically (especially the junkie hoarding medicine) and prevents table captains.
This is my favourite top 10 yet! As someone who enjoys game design/casually designing games I found this an interesting look at game design errors and/or pitfalls to avoid putting in games.
I just rebased the MoM minis with smaller translucent bases and I keep the tokens by the side of the board. Best of both worlds; get the presence of the minis on the board (the minis in the base game are a bit rough to be sure as they reused the same sculpts from v1 but the expansion ones are as good as normal FFG quality) and having the tokens to the side means they can be referred to easier than if they were on the board.
This is a great video. Great, unique topic that can bring older or less talked-about games to the forefront. Such funny banter, too. I was laughing half of the video. Dominion is my all-time fave, so I love any time it gets mentioned (usually by Tom. Keep reppin', Tom!). In the early days of playing Dominion, I thought the same thing about the equal turns thing. But I've tried it the other way, and it absolutely breaks the game and the way it feels, especially in two-player games. The way the rules are set are the best way to play. Something that is done in other games (even Donald X. did it in Temporum) is giving something to Player 2, a little more to Player 3, etc. I don't know how they could implement something like that in Dominion without changing it too much, but I'd rather see something like that than giving equal turns. I played Takenoko for the first time recently, and I hated that irrigation rule, too, Mike. It's frustrating to remember it, not to mention remembering that you can't put certain things on some of the tiles based on the symbols. Ugh. Still, a great game. Also, Zee is awesome (they all are, of course). The Mansions (I hate minis in general, so I appreciated it) and Witch of Salem convos were hilarious.
yep, my buddies and I have been playing Jaws of the Lion and I purposely upped the difficulty by 1 after 10 scenarios because we devolved from giving ideas of how fast we are going to go, and then just started being super specific with what we were gonna do
Love the game Abyss. Also like abyss conspiracy. However, both have 1 location that says search the entire stack and pick one. This just takes too long and is awful when a first time player gets this. I remove this location from both versions.
Legendary semi-coop is the game that instantly came to mind, it’s my favorite solo game but it has a couple of odd rules. - Playing fully cooperative is definitely the way to go. - Another bit from Legendary I didn’t like is how Villains has all different keyword terminology for the same concepts (e.g. you recruit “allies” from the “lair” in Villains and recruit “heroes” from the “HQ” in the base game. But mechanically they’re completely identical.) - Letting villains escape often has no negative consequence, and even is strategically useful since you get to pick the card that is KO’d when it happens. I always house rule that when a villain escapes they KO a random card that costs 6 or less. It feels more thematic and raises the stakes slightly on enemies escaping. It’s also tweaks the difficulty up just a touch which I don’t mind either.
We house ruled that if Villain escapes they KO the most expensive card and in case of the tie, the "older" one. On one hand it's way more punishing since you'd be losing the best, most fun cards most of the time. But also gives another layer where if you're stuck with few really expensive cards early game when no one can afford them, you can chose to sacrifice them on purpose to "unclog" the HQ.
I think I'd put Andor on my list for moving the time track every time you engage in combat. I know the time track is meant to add the tension to keep things really tight/puzzly, but it makes the prospect of combat, evening winning, feel like a drag in an otherwise fantastic game.
I knew Ankh would be on here! I am playing it in a couple weeks, and we're going to try to use the merge rule. I think approached with the right attitude, we'll appreciate it, but we'll see. Maybe we'll hate it
Loot rule in Gloomhaven. It doesn't make sense that can't pick up loot, chests, coins after combat is over. Most of the time it probably makes sense to allow that (unless the scenario is about quick in/quick out).
We houseruled it that we make a judgement call at the very end of the scenario as to whether we'd be fleeing or if we'd be able to wander around picking up treasure. Yes, it means there's more money in the game, but it still felt like we never had enough anyway.
I am glad I am not the only one. I know this is supposed to be part of the puzzle, but I cannot stand the way loot is handled. I have a house rule that all loot (not treasure chests) are picked in the final room of the dungeon at the end. Other loot that was not picked up in other rooms is not collected.
Our house rule is: we count how many movement points it would require to get out, and we set aside that many cards then with whatever remains we can use the movements to collect loot.. otherwise we are "too exhausted to spend another minute in there!" lol..
Totally agree with Lords of Waterdeep mandatory quests. Especially when you don't even want to play them, but you have them and you want to play any intrigue card. But we hate removing all cards that reference them. So our house rule is if you draw any card dealing with mandatory quests, you have the option to discard it and draw a different card. That way you can still play them if you need/want to (e.g., runaway leader, etc.).
LOL. I do remember my first time playing Legendary with my gaming group. We played once, and we are all like "what? so we win together but we don't win together?", literally the next 3 games we ended up playing fully cooperatively not caring about that idiotic rule. BAM, game fixed.
Zee, good comment on King of Tokyo but this has been addressed in the new edition, p5 of rules: (my rules are in French so this is a loose translation) 'At the start of the game, since there are no monsters in Tokyo City, the first player MUST place his monster there.' First player is determined by rolling dice and getting the most claws. Pretty simple fix and these are all official rules.
@@MichaelNerman It does. You roll to determine the first player BEFORE the game actually starts. Then, the first player goes to Tokyo City. If he/she then rolls tons of claws, then all other monsters are wounded as usual.
@@noloatmo6682 No, the rules say, "No Monster starts the game in Tokyo. The first player must enter Tokyo City during this step." This is described during step 3 of the turn, after dice are resolved in step 2.
Theres a marker for the activr player in Wildlands. If the active player is interupted, and then the player who interupted gets interupted, after the actions of the second interupter, it goes back to being the active player'a turn. It doesnt cycle back through. Also, if you get in a rythm, its easy to do the interrupt without affecting the flow of the game.
Tiny Epic Pirates, whoever buries 3 treasures wins (and there is tirbreaker criteria). But there's so much more to the game than just burying treasure, it feels like the most boring win condition. So I came up with a VP scoring variant that essentially rewards being the best pirate, not just the richest one.
As someone else said in comments, Gloomhaven's rulebook state that if you play 2 characters alone you are meant to increase difficulty by 1. The whole thing of the communication aspect is meant to simulate the chaos of battle plus how well your characters (and yourselves) know each other; and I must say we respected the rule but didn't think it would play like that, but it did: in the beginning we were pretty sloppy, sometimes moving an enemy away from one another... by game 10 or something, just from the board state we were more ofter than not comboing avenger-style without the need to say much, because we know what everyone else could do
In Takenoko we have a house rule where if you “roll” rain on the dice we also have the option where you can put a channel in and irrigate a plot of land. It makes sense and opens up the plot objectives more.
This is the funniest Top 10 from Dice Tower I've seen. I've never laughed so much. It would be interesting to have an episode that lists your houserules.
I totally agree with Zee about playing pandemic with hidden hands. There will always be someone who knows pandemic more, is louder, etc. Especially since it’s a popular entry game; new people don’t really understand the issue with alpha gaming yet. I’ve checked-out of several pandemic games when playing open handed because there’s just no point in playing. It’s suuuuch a boring experience when that happens, for everyone involved. I actually prefer playing with the rule that you can’t tell people the cards you have, but you can point out things that need to be dealt with. Whether someone uses their cards to deal with that issue is up to them.
Wingspan...I think it's fine on the bird feeder. It's really simple - you always have a choice of which die to take. If there is no choice, you reroll....It has never felt clunky to me personally. Not disagreeing that this should be on THEIR list because different things bug different people (which is why Mike said this would be a controversial list to begin with). It's just something I never considered being clunky myself because it makes so much sense from a game mechanic that it needs to reroll to give a choice. I guess if you view games thematically instead of just "as a game", I can see it.
@@LeviCByers That's a great point. From a game design perspective, they clear the birds because its a bad experience if everyone is always drawing off the top because nobody wants those available while they don't clear the food because it is the only way to get food and you can always do 2-for-1, so any food helps while not any bird does (at least not in the same sense...you can "cycle" birds if you have the right abilities). But yeah, it definitely does seem inconsistent and while there is no game design reason for rerolling the dice at the beginning of each round, there is no reason you couldn't either. I've played at least one game with a new player who did reroll the dice because it felt like the natural thing to do when you were swapping the birds and we ended up having to remember what was there previously, so I could get behind that as an "annoying rule" :D.
But…teal is a shade of blue. You could also say that teal is a shade of green, but then someone could follow that up by saying green itself is a shade of blue. In Japanese (and perhaps other languages), the colors of water, vegetation, and sky are all called by the same word, commonly translated as blue. Modifiers can be added to it if you want to be specific (just like in English with words like "sea-green" or "sky-blue"), but they're all called blue. I do agree with consideration for colorblindness though. A bit of time spent in development can make a game so much easier and more enjoyable for people. =]
The communication issue on Gloomhaven is thematic when I think about it. In Gloomhaven, you are a party of mercenaries that are constantly changing members/characters so in a sense, you don't know each other at the start of your partnership. You are in the party for your own personal goals and you don't know the other characters yet. As time goes by, and you see your abilities and capabilities, you get to know your fellow party members. And THAT is where you get to the point that you know your other party members' initiative value. It's because you already spent enough time together in the party that you got to know each other.
In Takenoko, I never had trouble figuring out which tiles were irrigated, or things like that. Winning with the plot deck was always way too easy for me.
The reroll rule in Wingspan is there because it's necessary to give each player a minimum of choice when taking food. And it's not that hard to remember and check.
Love playing Everdell, but hate the card that takes a spot in opponents cities. So much to manage with resources.... clogging a spot is just mean and unfun. So we remove that card before we play. Let everyone do the best they can, without straight up sabotage. As little forest animals puzzling out what to build in your 15 spots, a take that card just makes it less fun.
I just can't get into Gloomhaven, as much as I want to and as awesome of a concept as it is, because of "burning" cards; I get that it's a resource management mechanic, and maybe I just don't understand it as well as I'd like to think I do, but it always feels to me like there's no way to actually complete a scenario with as many cards as you're expected to burn
wrt Ankh: Gods of Egypt. Clearly the Merge appeared to have been a challenge for the CMON Development team as well. Just read Update #57 of the campaign on Kickstarter and you’ll understand the considerations they had to go through, to keep this aspect of the game as originally intended/designed by Eric Lang. To that extend Kudos to the CMON design team for their resilience in picking up the challenge. Anyway, looking fwd receiving my copy of the game and giving it my consideration after playing it. A’nekh djet!
The reason you don't want Dominion to go on for a full round after "ending" is because it shifts the balance between three-pile and province ending too much. If first player ends by buying the last province, he'll usually be fine against opponents taking another turn. But if first player ends through three-pile while ahead a few points, he would always lose to 2nd player getting another turn and buying some VP. So the first player is unable to use one of the avenues of ending the game. Rushing provinces becomes the only viable win condition for P1 (if there isn't some insane VP point victory engine to be had with Goons, Chariot Race, King's Court Bishop Fortress etc.). The game overall becomes much more big money-centric and loses some of it's nuance.
Rushing an end with three piles is a major strategy. The game would be worse off without it, but it would still exist if you finished the current round of players
Tiny rule change: In the game Blueprints, the player before you is supposed to draw your next die. Bad idea--you dislike the die, you dislike that player. Just draw the die yourself.
I think Black Angel is one of the best games ever, but the end game scoring ruins the game completely. My groups liked the game engine, the play, everything. But the end game scoring is so messed up, we never play the game anymore.
Tales of the Arabian Nights. The day/evening/night tokens are only activated when the deck runs out, only the deck hardly runs out during a game so you're left with not seeing two thirds of the game (evening and night phases). There have been some house-rules for this to get to the evening and night phases quicker, but there really needs to be an official variant.
25:30 The rule of "no perfect info" in gloom is mostly to help game flow and avoid alpha gamers from basically telling everyone else what to do It's just a really amazing thing to point out to make everyone play the game more relaxed. It works. Claiming perfect numbers and info make the "planning" drag on a whole lot more, not so much harder or easier, but it make game length potentially a big mess of trying to min/max every round
Along the lines of the Castle Panic superior murderer rule is the scoring mechanism in LotR: The Dice Building Game where the winner with the highest Glory wins. To keep a Glory advantage, a player has to occasionally screw over everybody else by not stopping corruption, which could lead to everyone losing.
My Mandatory Quest fix: You don’t have to finish it *before* your other quests, but if you don’t finish it, you *lose* 2 points at the end of the game.
The reason for having uneven turns for dominion is to "help" determine tie breakers. If two players tie in points, then who ever had less turns would win. For example, Player 1 and player 2 ties for the win. If player 1 started the game and ended the game, then player 1 lost because they had to take an additional turn to tie for points. If player one starts, but player two ends the game, then the game ends with both players winning because player two gained enough points to tie with player one by taking the same amount of turns.
I love Neom and think it’s extremely underrated. It’s replaced 7wonders in our house. As far as the disaster tiles go we disliked them at first but realized that after repeat plays you know they’re coming thus everyone can prepare for them in multiple ways; either by having enough money, building tiles that give you immediate effects you don’t mind sacrificing or building the tiles that protect in the event of a disaster. I wouldn’t play the game without them.
I think the best house-rule to avoid the awkward position of no one starting in Tokyo in King of Tokyo (Zee's #10 pick) is to have the last player start in Tokyo. It gets rid of the problem trying to avoid claws in your first turn and it gives the last player something to do while waiting for everyone else to do their turns (do they want to get out of Tokyo or not). I even give them the point for starting in Tokyo.
I will have to try this next time we play. I might also try having the first player start in Tokyo but without the point and see how it plays out; probably will speed up the game if the first player rolls a bunch of paws.
Good house rule.
That does sound worth trying.
It's weird, in the rules I've got (french edition) there is actually something like that.
It's not "the first one who do claws enter in Tokyo" but "phase 3 of your turn (after 1-Rolling and 2-Resoling dices), if there is no-one in Tokyo, you enter Tokyo.
That means the first player has to enter Tokyo at end of his turn, but that also mean he can do things on that turn : win points, win energy (maybe even buy a card with those) and of course win a point because he enters Tokyo.
Is it that my rule book is different than yours ?
@@matthieucassabois2149 The issue is that if you roll any claws in the first turn, they're useless, because you don't enter Tokyo until after you've resolved your dice.
Zee’s #10 was changed in the 2nd edition of King of Tokyo. The first player enters Tokyo at the end of their turn regardless of what they have rolled.
The first player’s claws still won’t resolve, however there’s no more turtling to avoid entering Tokyo.
that still doesn't solve the "wasting claws" problem though
I think they enter Tokyo after you roll (there by making claws useless) is to avoid a situation where the first player does 6 damage to all players right before everyone else has a turn. That would really suck to start the game with over half your health gone. The only other way to do this would be to put the last player in Tokyo from the start, and if someone rolls claws and hurts them, they can leave Tokyo, but if they start their first turn in Tokyo, they get 2 points
I always volunteer to go into Tokyo when I bring this game out because everyone always forgets how to play it at my get togethers so its easier for everyone to get the game going
Make the last player start in Tokyo and begin with 1 point. It fixes all of these complaints.
I agree that the last player starting in Tokyo definitely simplifies the beginning of the game, but I think I’d rather attempt to roll something beneficial turn one and then enter Tokyo instead of being an asset-less target from the very beginning. They’re similar situations, but I think the 2nd edition rules as written feel more fun - I get to have more agency and I get to potentially acquire more stuff. The likelihood of remaining in Tokyo round one without any evolutions or power cards is basically zero. I appreciate when designers consider fun.
With that said, I’d prefer either option to the “first claw enters Tokyo” rule from the first edition.
My house rule is Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle...The Hogwarts deck is MASSIVE (even without expansions). What can happen is the 6 cards you choose from are all too expensive, so all the players pass on their buy action every turn, the game grinds to a halt and you can't deckbuild in a deckbuilding game!
We have 2 Hogwarts decks, one deck with cards that cost 1-4 and a second deck with cards that cost 5+. 4/6 spots you can buy cards from are from the cheap deck (and replenish from that deck as you buy cards), 2/6 spots are from the expensive deck. This doesn't make the game easier, it makes an occasionally broken game into a GAME.
Yeah, that can be an issue in most deckbuilders with a randomised market. I've tried (in the Cryptozoic ones and Star Realms) that you draw the lineup, but redraw anything that's cost 6+. Works quite well.
My wife and I will split the deck into types (two decks of items since there are so many more of them), but you're idea is kind of interesting, too.
Yeah, you have to house rule this in some way. Lots of ways work, but it's crazy that this never came up in testing.
After 1 pass by everyone you get to burn/discard a card. The burn/discard continues until someone decides to pickup a card.
Ours was a little more extreme of a fix. The active player can choose to skip their purchase and dump all six cards. You have to dump all six, but everyone else gets a new six to pick from and it almost always gives the next player good choices.
The comedy and chemistry in this top ten is great! This is why I watch the Dice Tower 👏
Next list: terrible games with one really cool idea.
Overlap with "
Top 10 Games We Wanted to Like - But Didn't!" ?
Love it. Mine would be a lot of IP games. Dark Souls, Firefly Adventures, Founders of Gloomhaven, Time of the Daleks... I don’t love the games, but I get a chance to play (character I love)
Planet! It is such a good idea it was just hard to do right and they failed but I won't get rid of the game cause it is so cool
@@michaelhastriter3299 I am curious as to what you don’t like about Planet. We are loving it, and anyone we play with enjoys it…
Thief's Market. Excellent last diminisher drafting(which is a MUCH more proper way to scale I-cut-you-choose to many players, than the singleplayer AP-burdening way done by Skyward and many others). However the unintuitive symbols made the game too confusing. Not only do they require multiple trips to the rulebook, the rulebook's explanations aren't even clear
Really appreciate you guys sharing your house rules and fixes for these problematic games. I like a lot of the games on this list and also tend to do house rules, getting more ideas for them is fun
On Gloomhaven JOTL my wife and I had burned out because of how much angst we had around the communication, but i hadn't figured out that was the issue until Mike said it just now. We are immediately house ruling that and i think it will make the game so much better.
To me, the point of the game is to have fun.
No point playing with a stupid rule in place if you lose the fun.
Every time the subject of "semi"co-op hate comes up on this channel it really makes me wish New Angeles had gotten more exposure when it was new. Greedy corporations trying to get one over on each other, while also working together to keep the city from falling into chaos.
Maybe I'm just a sucker for the Netrunner/cyberpunk setting, but I just love that game.
I think it's also that it works far better than most semi-co-ops mechanically
I prefer competitive games with reluctant cooperation(e.g. Dixit, Catan) to coop with individual VPs
New angeles works because more than one person can win, you just need more points than your direct rival, not most point in total, so more players tend to work towards the common goal. another one where semi coop works well is archipelago, because scoring is hidden (and there might be a traitor, so even if you are losing it makes no sense to incite a revolt, as that could just cause someone else to won anyway)
@@coyotemoon722 It's a good game but sadly the faction balance is severly lacking. Basically HB tends to get way more points because their power is always needed wheras Jinteki and NBN might get very few chances to deal with the threat they're specialized for.
Have you ever done a Top 10 Games You Would Not Play Without An Expansion? I could find a top 10 best expansions in 2012, but that was as close as I could find (I may be blind, mind you, at my age, but.... :-)
Maybe top 10 essential expansions?
When my family plays Lords of Waterdeep we don't like that only one player per round can go to Builders Hall -- we understand that it's meant to be a limit and incentivize people going to Castle Waterdeep but we find the game to be much more interesting when more buildings can be obtained each round, so we have a house rule that Builders Hall has 3 slots, one corresponding to each building on sale. We find that there's still some incentive to go first in the round since some buildings are more advantageous to own than others, and also allows the options on the board to expand more considerably each round. There might be reasons why this was limited in the official rules but we find it more fun this way.
@Zee RE: King of Tokyo, second edition fixed the claw to enter Tokyo rule. If Tokyo is empty on your turn, you go into Tokyo. So basically the first player will enter Tokyo on their turn.
Thank youu I was about to comment on this because nowhere in the rulebook I can find what Zee stated 😅
When I was starting out in the hobby with my copy of pandemic, I definitely alpha gamed. I look back and I'm like "I don't think this was actually fun for anyone else". I've gotten much better now 😅
Suppose I said "The Crew" should be played with open hands. After all, it's cooperative, we should all want to win the game, so stop with this nonsensical limited communication. I'd imagine people would disagree, and likely recognize the game would quickly devolve into a bridge-like newspaper puzzle that the fastest thinker at the table would solve round after round after round. That is what Pandemic is with open hands.
Put player agency above winning - keep your cards hidden.
@@bryanstarke1313 the difference is the pandemic rule book says you can tell other people what is in your hand
@@bryanstarke1313 For me The Crew sits in the same head space as Hanabi, so the limited communication just fits.
@@Tenebyss Fair point. I was commenting more generally about cooperative game communication, but that part in Pandemic allowing you to say what's in your hand really adds fuel to the alpha gamer.
@@brutusthecat6044 My wife and I played Hanabi (two-player) three times and found it very frustrating. We could never learn enough about our hand of cards and always had turns where we had to play/discard blind. Those turns weren't fun. Maybe it was just a few bad shuffles. We did run out the deck once for a score of 14, but realized that the perfect score of 25 was never gonna happen. I would honestly suspect cheating for anyone claiming to have scored 25 (breaking the communication rules by revealing more than allowed).
Kudos for whoever made the transition animations, very well done! :)
@Mike - Yes, the monster "dice loss" is an essential part of the dice economy. Losing your dice to the monster fight has been the most contentious mechanics in the game. Glad to hear that the game is still on the positive side for you. Either way, thanks for mentioning us!
"I One-der if I can help." 😁
In Carcassonne, I play with each player having 2 tiles and drawing one after playing one. This way there's always a choice between 2 tiles to play except the last round. I worry 3 tiles draw may slow it down too much.
I will definitelyimplement the Takenoko variant of not eating the last bamboo stalk. I also like the variant rule of each set of objective gives you extra points which encourages some balance.
Thuan, we use the same house rule. In fact, in a 2 player game, each player has 3 tiles from which to choose.
My most annoying rule, nectar in wingspan Oceania.
As it is a wild resource it becomes the only resource and makes the game too simple, removing the difficult in feeding birds to play them.
I have house ruled that only 3 of the nectar dice are used and 2 base game dice are used.
I also play with this house rule but it does make nectar more valuable since less will be available throughout the game. I'm debating on just getting rid of nectar completely and the cards that require them.
Super happy to hear I'm not the only one who thinks nectar is just way too powerful. It took my top game and made me barely want to play it. I am thinking about making the bonuses reversed, least used gets the points instead of bonus for using the most.
That’s a fantastic idea! I’m trying that next play, I’ve been using 2 nectar dice and that feels right but reversing the award is a neat twist.
@@johncarson2514 I like that idea. Presumably you would use all the dice with nectar. Gonna give it a try next time.
Reversing the nectar bonus is interesting. My only concern is it will make the nectar birds very weak as playing them will give you minus points.
That said there aren't many nectar birds, and I will also try this house rule next play
Great list! Neom is great indeed. The designer posted a no disaster variant, as well as a "timed disaster hitting everyone" variant that we use... So no one drafts it, but everyone still needs to build knowing they'll come, which keeps the fire and police station tiles valuable.
Here's mine, and I house rule it into something that really elevates the game IMO. Tsuro.
The rule is if your dragon pawn collides with another, you are both out of the game. I think that destroys a great opportunity for player interaction, so instead we have the assassination rule. If you place a tile that brings you into contact with an opponent, your opponent is eliminated - not you. And (because if you were to follow the opponents path it would just take you to the edge of the board and kill you anyway) from there you may pick any other available path on that tile to follow on your next turn. Play continues as normal from there.
interesting idea
Agree with Mike. Pandemic open hands should be the only way. Gloomhaven same way. Limited communication is the worst mechanism. It is almost always solved via meta-communication, which is not fun.
This was a really good top 10!
In Dominion, the supply of provinces are evenly divisible by the number of players at all player counts, the first player advantage mostly comes from attack cards, or getting a free 'dead turn' in an otherwise close game. (the 'last player wins ties' is meant to mitigate this). I'm a bit surprised anyone finds the game ending condition annoying. Planning and timing the end of the game has always felt like... "the game" to me. Taking the second to last province is a statement of intent.
If you're concerned about a small first player advantage for a single game of Dominion, I can't imagine an equal-turns variant doing anything but generating a significant last-mover advantage instead, so it's not really solving any kind of balance problem.
Beyond all that - it's just fun to have some anxiety about that dwindling pile of provinces!
I'm not at the part where they talk about dominion yet, but province taking to me always felt like a 'grab it when you can' thing. There was never any timing or planning around when you would take them, cause you only have so many opportunities to get them, and if you choose to give up one of your chances to grab them then you'll probably lose cause someone else will grab them before you get another chance.
But at least either player could end up being that last mover. The way it stands, the first player will almost always be the last mover, and that's precisely what's unbalanced.
One of the most entertaining episodes while plenty of gaming information that helps rationalizing the enjoyment factor on some of these games. Bad rules/mechanics are game killers.
My house rule for Marvel Legendary: the person with the highest points decides which hero gets a ticker tape parade for saving the day.
When Playing Marvel Villains, I do whatever it takes to get the most points. It makes more thematic sense. For Heroes, you're the MVP.
I know this came out two years ago, but Mike really missed the mark with wingspan. The feeder re-roll rule is essential. Otherwise it can get plugged up forever with rats and fish or stuff nobody wants. 😎
Honestly ankh merge rule is one of the best components. The common theme for people who dont like it are people who dont like giving losing players a second chance or those who dont like working with their friends
Exactly. Well said.
I think Castles of Caladale has the same problem that Zee's number 1. Rearranging the whole castle to fit in one tile can take forever. And there is always some way if you think long enough. Great video guys, it was a lot of fun!
I looove farmers in Carcassonne. Connecting fields and outsmarting another farmer player is the most fun in Carcassonne for me :)
The mandatory quests in LoW can help balance with 3+ players. But in a 2 player game, there’s really no choice and it drags each other down. I totally agree with taking them out, especially with 2. Good call!!
I feel the same way about World's Fair 1893 that Tom does about Dominion - everyone should get the same number of turns. I feel like there is a slight first player advantage in that game. I think the starting variations (of where you put your supporters) are supposed to compensate for that, but I'm not convinced that it's balanced. - - I agree with Tom about the Carcassonne tile draw too. We always draw two tiles and let the player choose which one they want to play so there's more decision-making in the game. - - Never thought about the Sherrif of Nottingham discard pile thing, but now that you bring it up, I totally agree! - - Great video!
I like this one, because from a design perspective, it makes you think about individual rules and whether they should exist.
For me it's Zombicide where one rule stipulates that you have to add in zombies if there is an even amount of noise between two players; basically if it's tied. So if a zombie had the same line of sight on both players as well as both players having the same amount of noise, you'd double the amount of zombies so that there would be the same number going for each player. This should have been done using a die to decide between which player the zombie(s) would head toward, but they opted this nonsensical rule instead.
Do the "Top 10 games that are fun even though you know you are losing"!
That would be their top 10 games of all time. Because the best games are games where you have fun despite losing.
I think the gloomhaven communication rule is there to stop 1 player from being able to be "the general"
"Very clever but not a lot of fun", well put Mike, to me this actually sums up the latest Lang designs (including Blood Rage) :p
We have always played KoT with each person rolling the dies. The one with the most smashes starts in Tokyo. Just makes sense. We like the power cards, but few get into play... so we give double energy cubes per energy die roll. Works for us.
King of Tokyo: Dark Edition - House rule we use for first person to get into Tokyo, they do get to attack, but because its the first entrance into Tokyo, we remove 1 claw from their roll as a "destroy the military" penalty. There are also ways to force Tokyo to empty in Dark Edition, meaning you can use this rule again at other points to explain why you do less damage, but still can want high-claw rolls entering Tokyo
13:50 - Zee must have had a different Via Magica rule book than I did because mine clearly said in case of ties, the first player or the person who shouted that is closest to the left of the first player goes first on clearing the cards; no silly numbers needed. What I actually miss from Rise of Augustus is the cards that attack your opponents when you clear them (removes tokens from spaces they have covered, so they have to get them covered again).
The "fix" for Takenoko, that says you can't eat the last bamboo shoot isn't balanced, because an upgrade can't be added to a plot that has bamboo... so if you don't place the plot such that it is NOT irrigated (since if it is, it automatically grows), you can never place an upgrade on it. Not only is this problematic for accomplishing some goals, it makes "taking an upgrade" an almost wasted action.
oh, and in Via Magica, you shout "Incantatum"... which I very much agree can be an awful rule in many groups. All players equal, it does make it feel like bingo, which can be fun. It is very fiddly and annoying on the BGA rendition, especially turn-based.
Here's the reason for Dominion's end condition. There are two ways for the game to end: (1) province deck is emptied, (2) three piles are emptied.
In (1), giving the additional turns to even them out is unlikely to make a difference, as you won't be able to buy a province. In (2), the game has likely been quite long (at least 30 cards have to be gained to get to this point) to reach this end condition, giving ample time to balance things out. If you haven't caught up by this point, it's unlikely one additional turn will help you.
I believe this makes enough reason not to have to keep track of the first player. It's more exciting if the game could end suddenly at any moment.
The REAL rule that Dominion messed up is shuffling starting decks. The fact that some people luck into a 5/2 start while others get 4/3 is a needless imbalance. We house rule it so that everyone can stack their deck on the first shuffle, which makes it fairer. Plus, it makes an interesting choice to start the game.
100% Agree with Zee on the Carcassonne rule. Draw at the start of your turn, it helps everyone focus on the game instead of sitting there doing your own thing. We play that when you draw a tile you put it down on the table so everyone can see then there is a lot of interaction with everyone making suggestions trying to influence the game in their favour, or for new players it makes it easier to just point out the options for them.
I do like they added some characters that use those points to deal damage in Legendary, which I liked because we also don't use that rule, but it gave the points a reason for us, assuming they play that character. Love the list.
We like Carcassonne! In this game we have a houserule to compensate for the luck factor of the hidden draw: Each player gets ONE monastery, so firstly each player has the chance to get these 9 points at least once - and secondly and most importantly, *you always have 2 parts in your hand from which you can can choose!*
Once you have placed the monastery, you have always another tile in your hand because you always draw a new one.
‘I’m hoarding all the cans of food’
Zee is still mad about Dead of Winter
I always play Carcassonne by the actual rules, the "slowing" of the game is not really a thing as the board changes on each turn anyway.
also, I play the 2 discard pile in Sheriff of Nottingham with my niece and nephew who are 7 and 9 and it doesn't confuse them so at no time would I have thought that it was a confusing rule that would need to be changed. they actually like getting the extra choices.
I didn't know this until the other day when I read it on a Facebook group, but apparently in Memoir 44 mountains can't see over hills because they are different terrain levels. Surely every mountain would be taller than a hill but that rule does exist. Great vid 👍
Sounds reasonable to me. Your troops are not on top of a mountain, they are in the mountainous area, in valleys and passes.
Gloomhaven has a rule written in the rulebook for open communication if you only crank up the trap and monsters by one level, which you also use for solo.
Does Roy get credit for those awesome intro sequences? I'm always laughing out loud!
I understand the hate for the Shadows Over Camelot rule but A) its fun to roleplay and B) it helps the traitor hide/solves alpha gaming a bit (the traitor is at a disadvantage in this game). If it was open communication I think it would be impossible to hide as the traitor, and if there was zero communication I think it would be too hard to make progress - but I haven't tried either way so I can't say for sure.
I totally agree! If you were playing without the traitor, then I would understand the open communication. But the traitor adds a social deduction aspect, so you gotta have that ambiguity.
@@amchasteenable yeah, I'd like to know if people who complain about this have ever just gotten rid of that rule and allowed open information, and how much harder it was for the traitor.
In other videos about shadows, they also said they hate the secret traiter and make it full cooperative
I don't see how you could change Dominion so everyone has the same number of turns. The game ends when a stack of victory cards is gone, so what good would it do to let others play after that? There are no more victory cards they can draw anyway. It would just be a dummy round, because it wouldn't change anything.
Mice and Mystics - Rule I hate (that ruined the game for me): When enemy make rolls, there is a 1 in 6 chance per die rolled to add a cheese to the Cheese Wheel. The cheese wheel can make the game end quicker. So regardless of your strategy, if a bunch of enemies roll cheese during their action, the game can suddenly become impossible to win because you're out of time.
I think the Gloomhaven rule exists to prevent alpha gaming. Last night my gf played a card to go earlier then me which resulted in me not being able to use my top action. If I had perfect information I would have told her not to. However we have more fun not micromanaging what each of us does. Is it harder and weird? Yes, but it improves our experience a lot.
And it prevents AP, imagine the whole party trying to look around the board and build the perfect turn each turn
I play Gloomhaven at 3 and I kind of like the limited communication rule just because it makes things feel a bit more thematic to me and removes some table captain problems slightly, but I can understand why it would bother someone else.
Yeah it's an issue in co-op games and a forced rule that always seems weird. But as you said it's to keep one person from solo playing with everyone else watching. Zee hates the Dead of Winter personal goals cards being private but it is one of the few co-ops where it works thematically (especially the junkie hoarding medicine) and prevents table captains.
We play with 2 players and I agree. I think the game would be too easy then as well.
Re-basing Mansions of Madness' minis to clear bases is a must.
This is my favourite top 10 yet! As someone who enjoys game design/casually designing games I found this an interesting look at game design errors and/or pitfalls to avoid putting in games.
I just rebased the MoM minis with smaller translucent bases and I keep the tokens by the side of the board. Best of both worlds; get the presence of the minis on the board (the minis in the base game are a bit rough to be sure as they reused the same sculpts from v1 but the expansion ones are as good as normal FFG quality) and having the tokens to the side means they can be referred to easier than if they were on the board.
It doesn't fix the face that they're unwieldy, obstruct view and are outrageously too big for mose spaces.
@@DeltathRiylaan with the exception of the Star Spawn, which are rarely used anyway, it does. They now take up no more space that the investigators.
what a fun list ;) I had such a great time watching this ;))
Mandatory quests in Lords of Waterdeep - you can play with a rule where every player can only be given one per game
I don't like Waterdeep. The game is lost by the player who receives the most mandatory quests.
This is a great video. Great, unique topic that can bring older or less talked-about games to the forefront. Such funny banter, too. I was laughing half of the video.
Dominion is my all-time fave, so I love any time it gets mentioned (usually by Tom. Keep reppin', Tom!). In the early days of playing Dominion, I thought the same thing about the equal turns thing. But I've tried it the other way, and it absolutely breaks the game and the way it feels, especially in two-player games. The way the rules are set are the best way to play. Something that is done in other games (even Donald X. did it in Temporum) is giving something to Player 2, a little more to Player 3, etc. I don't know how they could implement something like that in Dominion without changing it too much, but I'd rather see something like that than giving equal turns.
I played Takenoko for the first time recently, and I hated that irrigation rule, too, Mike. It's frustrating to remember it, not to mention remembering that you can't put certain things on some of the tiles based on the symbols. Ugh. Still, a great game.
Also, Zee is awesome (they all are, of course). The Mansions (I hate minis in general, so I appreciated it) and Witch of Salem convos were hilarious.
24:37 When playing solo gloomhaven you're supposed to increase the difficulty because knowing the exact initiative of both characters helps.
yep, my buddies and I have been playing Jaws of the Lion and I purposely upped the difficulty by 1 after 10 scenarios because we devolved from giving ideas of how fast we are going to go, and then just started being super specific with what we were gonna do
Love the game Abyss. Also like abyss conspiracy. However, both have 1 location that says search the entire stack and pick one. This just takes too long and is awful when a first time player gets this. I remove this location from both versions.
Legendary semi-coop is the game that instantly came to mind, it’s my favorite solo game but it has a couple of odd rules.
- Playing fully cooperative is definitely the way to go.
- Another bit from Legendary I didn’t like is how Villains has all different keyword terminology for the same concepts (e.g. you recruit “allies” from the “lair” in Villains and recruit “heroes” from the “HQ” in the base game. But mechanically they’re completely identical.)
- Letting villains escape often has no negative consequence, and even is strategically useful since you get to pick the card that is KO’d when it happens. I always house rule that when a villain escapes they KO a random card that costs 6 or less. It feels more thematic and raises the stakes slightly on enemies escaping. It’s also tweaks the difficulty up just a touch which I don’t mind either.
We house ruled that if Villain escapes they KO the most expensive card and in case of the tie, the "older" one. On one hand it's way more punishing since you'd be losing the best, most fun cards most of the time. But also gives another layer where if you're stuck with few really expensive cards early game when no one can afford them, you can chose to sacrifice them on purpose to "unclog" the HQ.
I felt like such a dork nodding away to the in-depth discussion/debate about Takenoko :-D
I think I'd put Andor on my list for moving the time track every time you engage in combat. I know the time track is meant to add the tension to keep things really tight/puzzly, but it makes the prospect of combat, evening winning, feel like a drag in an otherwise fantastic game.
I knew Ankh would be on here! I am playing it in a couple weeks, and we're going to try to use the merge rule. I think approached with the right attitude, we'll appreciate it, but we'll see. Maybe we'll hate it
This was probably my favorite of all the top 10's you all have ever done.
The first claw should put you in Tokyo and the remainder should do damage when nobody is in Tokyo IMO.
That's how I play it!
Loot rule in Gloomhaven. It doesn't make sense that can't pick up loot, chests, coins after combat is over. Most of the time it probably makes sense to allow that (unless the scenario is about quick in/quick out).
We houseruled it that we make a judgement call at the very end of the scenario as to whether we'd be fleeing or if we'd be able to wander around picking up treasure. Yes, it means there's more money in the game, but it still felt like we never had enough anyway.
Jlerpy that’s pretty much the house rule we had 😀
I am glad I am not the only one. I know this is supposed to be part of the puzzle, but I cannot stand the way loot is handled. I have a house rule that all loot (not treasure chests) are picked in the final room of the dungeon at the end. Other loot that was not picked up in other rooms is not collected.
Our house rule is: we count how many movement points it would require to get out, and we set aside that many cards then with whatever remains we can use the movements to collect loot.. otherwise we are "too exhausted to spend another minute in there!" lol..
Totally agree with Lords of Waterdeep mandatory quests. Especially when you don't even want to play them, but you have them and you want to play any intrigue card. But we hate removing all cards that reference them. So our house rule is if you draw any card dealing with mandatory quests, you have the option to discard it and draw a different card. That way you can still play them if you need/want to (e.g., runaway leader, etc.).
LOL. I do remember my first time playing Legendary with my gaming group. We played once, and we are all like "what? so we win together but we don't win together?", literally the next 3 games we ended up playing fully cooperatively not caring about that idiotic rule. BAM, game fixed.
Zee, good comment on King of Tokyo but this has been addressed in the new edition, p5 of rules: (my rules are in French so this is a loose translation) 'At the start of the game, since there are no monsters in Tokyo City, the first player MUST place his monster there.' First player is determined by rolling dice and getting the most claws. Pretty simple fix and these are all official rules.
His comment confused me as well because my rules are the same, just in english 👍
@@williamdobson1680 I guess the 1st edition sold so many copies that most people have that one at home and assume that this hasn't been fixed.
That doesn't entirely solve Zee's concern, as claws are still useless on the first turn.
@@MichaelNerman It does. You roll to determine the first player BEFORE the game actually starts. Then, the first player goes to Tokyo City. If he/she then rolls tons of claws, then all other monsters are wounded as usual.
@@noloatmo6682 No, the rules say, "No Monster starts the game in Tokyo. The first player must enter Tokyo City during this step." This is described during step 3 of the turn, after dice are resolved in step 2.
Theres a marker for the activr player in Wildlands. If the active player is interupted, and then the player who interupted gets interupted, after the actions of the second interupter, it goes back to being the active player'a turn. It doesnt cycle back through. Also, if you get in a rythm, its easy to do the interrupt without affecting the flow of the game.
Tiny Epic Pirates, whoever buries 3 treasures wins (and there is tirbreaker criteria). But there's so much more to the game than just burying treasure, it feels like the most boring win condition. So I came up with a VP scoring variant that essentially rewards being the best pirate, not just the richest one.
@Zee I sold all of my minis in Mansions in bulk and kept all the cardboard chits. Saved so much room.
As someone else said in comments, Gloomhaven's rulebook state that if you play 2 characters alone you are meant to increase difficulty by 1. The whole thing of the communication aspect is meant to simulate the chaos of battle plus how well your characters (and yourselves) know each other; and I must say we respected the rule but didn't think it would play like that, but it did: in the beginning we were pretty sloppy, sometimes moving an enemy away from one another... by game 10 or something, just from the board state we were more ofter than not comboing avenger-style without the need to say much, because we know what everyone else could do
In Takenoko we have a house rule where if you “roll” rain on the dice we also have the option where you can put a channel in and irrigate a plot of land. It makes sense and opens up the plot objectives more.
This is the funniest Top 10 from Dice Tower I've seen. I've never laughed so much.
It would be interesting to have an episode that lists your houserules.
I totally agree with Zee about playing pandemic with hidden hands. There will always be someone who knows pandemic more, is louder, etc. Especially since it’s a popular entry game; new people don’t really understand the issue with alpha gaming yet. I’ve checked-out of several pandemic games when playing open handed because there’s just no point in playing. It’s suuuuch a boring experience when that happens, for everyone involved. I actually prefer playing with the rule that you can’t tell people the cards you have, but you can point out things that need to be dealt with. Whether someone uses their cards to deal with that issue is up to them.
Wingspan...I think it's fine on the bird feeder. It's really simple - you always have a choice of which die to take. If there is no choice, you reroll....It has never felt clunky to me personally. Not disagreeing that this should be on THEIR list because different things bug different people (which is why Mike said this would be a controversial list to begin with). It's just something I never considered being clunky myself because it makes so much sense from a game mechanic that it needs to reroll to give a choice. I guess if you view games thematically instead of just "as a game", I can see it.
Yeah I don't have a problem... except when I need those 3 rat dice and someone rerolls and no rats.
I actually thought the Wingspan one would be: at the end of the round you reset the bird tray but not the dice. That always felt oddly inconsistent.
@@LeviCByers That's a great point. From a game design perspective, they clear the birds because its a bad experience if everyone is always drawing off the top because nobody wants those available while they don't clear the food because it is the only way to get food and you can always do 2-for-1, so any food helps while not any bird does (at least not in the same sense...you can "cycle" birds if you have the right abilities). But yeah, it definitely does seem inconsistent and while there is no game design reason for rerolling the dice at the beginning of each round, there is no reason you couldn't either.
I've played at least one game with a new player who did reroll the dice because it felt like the natural thing to do when you were swapping the birds and we ended up having to remember what was there previously, so I could get behind that as an "annoying rule" :D.
"We are all blue!" Tom says wearing teal.
And this, developers, is why we need colourblind consideration in board games ;)
But…teal is a shade of blue. You could also say that teal is a shade of green, but then someone could follow that up by saying green itself is a shade of blue. In Japanese (and perhaps other languages), the colors of water, vegetation, and sky are all called by the same word, commonly translated as blue. Modifiers can be added to it if you want to be specific (just like in English with words like "sea-green" or "sky-blue"), but they're all called blue.
I do agree with consideration for colorblindness though. A bit of time spent in development can make a game so much easier and more enjoyable for people. =]
The communication issue on Gloomhaven is thematic when I think about it. In Gloomhaven, you are a party of mercenaries that are constantly changing members/characters so in a sense, you don't know each other at the start of your partnership. You are in the party for your own personal goals and you don't know the other characters yet. As time goes by, and you see your abilities and capabilities, you get to know your fellow party members. And THAT is where you get to the point that you know your other party members' initiative value. It's because you already spent enough time together in the party that you got to know each other.
I don’t think I ever read that rule for castle panic! Honest I must have blocked it from my mind. 😂
In Takenoko, I never had trouble figuring out which tiles were irrigated, or things like that. Winning with the plot deck was always way too easy for me.
Zee, my group hates those miniatures from Mansions just as much. We do the same thing you do. The minis are also so insanely huge. They're the worst.
The reroll rule in Wingspan is there because it's necessary to give each player a minimum of choice when taking food. And it's not that hard to remember and check.
The wingspan food die rule is one of my favorite rules in the game!
I don't know. It took our group over five dozen plays to wrap our heads around that rule.
Joking. XD
Love playing Everdell, but hate the card that takes a spot in opponents cities. So much to manage with resources.... clogging a spot is just mean and unfun. So we remove that card before we play. Let everyone do the best they can, without straight up sabotage. As little forest animals puzzling out what to build in your 15 spots, a take that card just makes it less fun.
"I am a self-balancing mechanism in Gloomhaven." - Mike Dilisio
I just can't get into Gloomhaven, as much as I want to and as awesome of a concept as it is, because of "burning" cards; I get that it's a resource management mechanic, and maybe I just don't understand it as well as I'd like to think I do, but it always feels to me like there's no way to actually complete a scenario with as many cards as you're expected to burn
wrt Ankh: Gods of Egypt.
Clearly the Merge appeared to have been a challenge for the CMON Development team as well. Just read Update #57 of the campaign on Kickstarter and you’ll understand the considerations they had to go through, to keep this aspect of the game as originally intended/designed by Eric Lang.
To that extend Kudos to the CMON design team for their resilience in picking up the challenge.
Anyway, looking fwd receiving my copy of the game and giving it my consideration after playing it.
A’nekh djet!
The reason you don't want Dominion to go on for a full round after "ending" is because it shifts the balance between three-pile and province ending too much.
If first player ends by buying the last province, he'll usually be fine against opponents taking another turn.
But if first player ends through three-pile while ahead a few points, he would always lose to 2nd player getting another turn and buying some VP.
So the first player is unable to use one of the avenues of ending the game. Rushing provinces becomes the only viable win condition for P1 (if there isn't some insane VP point victory engine to be had with Goons, Chariot Race, King's Court Bishop Fortress etc.). The game overall becomes much more big money-centric and loses some of it's nuance.
Rushing an end with three piles is a major strategy. The game would be worse off without it, but it would still exist if you finished the current round of players
Tiny rule change: In the game Blueprints, the player before you is supposed to draw your next die. Bad idea--you dislike the die, you dislike that player. Just draw the die yourself.
Dominion's end ruling is only used for determining tiebreakers. Even so, sometimes, ties still happen.
I think Black Angel is one of the best games ever, but the end game scoring ruins the game completely. My groups liked the game engine, the play, everything. But the end game scoring is so messed up, we never play the game anymore.
Tales of the Arabian Nights. The day/evening/night tokens are only activated when the deck runs out, only the deck hardly runs out during a game so you're left with not seeing two thirds of the game (evening and night phases).
There have been some house-rules for this to get to the evening and night phases quicker, but there really needs to be an official variant.
25:30
The rule of "no perfect info" in gloom is mostly to help game flow and avoid alpha gamers from basically telling everyone else what to do
It's just a really amazing thing to point out to make everyone play the game more relaxed. It works.
Claiming perfect numbers and info make the "planning" drag on a whole lot more, not so much harder or easier, but it make game length potentially a big mess of trying to min/max every round
Don't play with alpha gamers. It is as simple as that.
@@grantofat6438 it's not the same. Leaving hidden info endorse own thinking
Along the lines of the Castle Panic superior murderer rule is the scoring mechanism in LotR: The Dice Building Game where the winner with the highest Glory wins. To keep a Glory advantage, a player has to occasionally screw over everybody else by not stopping corruption, which could lead to everyone losing.
My Mandatory Quest fix: You don’t have to finish it *before* your other quests, but if you don’t finish it, you *lose* 2 points at the end of the game.
Ah, TTR style, I like it.
I love Wingspan, but I don’t like how the dice feeder does not reset at the beginning of each round yet the card display does
I actually think the card display doesn't reset as well, it may be a house rule, in which case you can reset both
@@GuilleVDC In the rulebook, you replace all the card display but there is nothing mentioned about the bird feeder to be rerolled as well.
I thought this was the oddity they would mention for Wingspan!
The reason for having uneven turns for dominion is to "help" determine tie breakers. If two players tie in points, then who ever had less turns would win. For example, Player 1 and player 2 ties for the win. If player 1 started the game and ended the game, then player 1 lost because they had to take an additional turn to tie for points. If player one starts, but player two ends the game, then the game ends with both players winning because player two gained enough points to tie with player one by taking the same amount of turns.
I love Neom and think it’s extremely underrated. It’s replaced 7wonders in our house. As far as the disaster tiles go we disliked them at first but realized that after repeat plays you know they’re coming thus everyone can prepare for them in multiple ways; either by having enough money, building tiles that give you immediate effects you don’t mind sacrificing or building the tiles that protect in the event of a disaster. I wouldn’t play the game without them.