Yeah, Ogre was one of the first hobby games I ever played... I'll still happily play it. And I still have the original printing in the little ziplock baggie. lol Also, I got WAAAAAAYYYY into Car Wars back in the 80s... to the tune of owning it all! I even subscribed to get the Audoduel Quarterly magazine for a large part of its run. It's not a game for everyone, as half the game is sitting alone and crunching numbers to build your car... to some, that would be a long nightmare, but I found building the cars to be half the fun. :-) It is sort of the reason I like Magic so much... brewing the decks before you even play is where a huge part of the fun is for me. :-)
@@KabukiKid You were a hardcore Car Wars fan. I used to buy and read the old Space Gamer magazine and pass it around to my friends. I had traded my small Car Wars game with my best friend in exchange for another game. It was great fun playing. When my son was young in the early 90s, I had bought him the kid game Thunder Road which was similar to the old Car Wars game.
@@KabukiKid Thanks for the info. I didn't know that a new version was coming out. I'll have to check it out. My son and nephews really enjoyed playing it.
Steve Jackson is one of the most well known names of my childhood. I did enjoy Car Wars a lot, but the GURPS system was a massive part of my circle of friends.
Illuminati was really one of the main games that got me into the hobby as well. And it was one of the first board games I ended up buying with my own money that was not some kind of miniatures game or a CCG.
Awful Green Things … is my favorite. I’ve had 2 prior printings - including one that required cutting out the little chits. I’m happy to have a later version with much more current production qualities. It’s a fun 1 v 1 game with enough exploration to remember different games and outcomes. Thanks for doing the list! It reminds me to get this one back to the table.
Yeah, hard to beat old-school Car Wars. :-) Composite Armor is still broken, though. ;-) lol That's an old house-rule we always played with... NO COMPOSITE ARMOR!
I've got to say that I've had more fun with Zombie Dice than I ever thought I would. Certainly a game of luck, but with the expansions it has been a blast! Would be somewhere in my top 5 Steve Jackson games.
Munchkin got me into the hobby. I was watching Felicia Day's The Guild and got introduced to Wil Wheaton's Tabletop through that, saw the video for Munchkin and loved the idea so much I immediately ordered a copy on Amazon, it was my first tabletop game since playing D&D with my friends or MTG years earlier. I ended up buying almost every version so I could mix them, but now it's gotten ridiculous with the amount of flavours. I also haven't played it recently because I rarely get enough interested player to the table. My favourite Steve Jackson Games would be Zombie Dice, Mars Attacks the Dice Game, Chez Geek and Nanuk.
I've actually never played a single Munchkin game. My first Steve Jackson game was Melee, about 1982/83. It came in a bag, yes you had to cut out the counters and it cost something like $3. There were other hex-based combat games I played (Avalon Hill games) but Melee had really easy rules, fun, and portable.
The Melee book, and its companion Magic book, were the basis for what eventually became the Man to Man Rules, which became G.U.R.P.S. (Generic Universal Role Playing System), an RPG that I had a ton of books for and played Fantasy campaigns in the 90s... fun!
The goblin creatures, if I remember, were tough in the Melee game. Great fun playing it after work during the eighties. We also played some old Avalon Hill games. There was also a Wizard game that was good.
Thanks for the list Tom! Appreciate the comments as well, cool to see so many different opinions and personal favorites. Obviously working there I'm pretty biased but my top 3 would be: Revolution! Car Wars Sixth Edition Zombie Dice Glad to see stuff like Nanuk, Awful Green Things, and some of our more hidden gems getting shine.
Fond memories of sailing the oceans back in the day with OGRE and Car Wars stowed in my locker.. A lot of gaming in a little space got us through some long deployments 💙
I was thinking the same thing about Illuminati! Discovered it a few years ago with my friends and it became an instant classic with us. If you can get a group of friends who enjoy nothing more than forming fake alliances with each other, secret meetings, and constantly trying to stab each other in the back then that is the game for you. We also all loved the needless complexity of some of the mechanics and how the game was printed with the tiny megabucks made it nearly impossible to keep track of anything
Car Wars 6E is lightweight when compared to original Car Wars, where building the car was a pretty involved process. The new process is quite streamlined, actually. And yeah... Illuminati was a fun one. :-) I still have my little pocketbox version, as well as the Deluxe one.
I have a love/hate relationship with Illuminati. It was one of the very first designer board games I bought or played due to it s links with Discordianism (my Principia Discordia is actually printed by Steve Jackson Games, and has an ad for the game in it). It's really amusing, has some excellent mechanics and ideas overall, but unfortunately suffers from the same sort of end-game problems as Munchkin or similar games of "they'll win, so everyone stop them, but then everyone's eventually just out of stuff and someone just wins without issue eventually" so it takes forever for someone to actually win with the vanilla rules. There are variants in the rules to mitigate that slightly, but there's a reason it hasn't hit my table in probably 10 years. I do really want to play it again, though. Maybe we can house-rule that ending somehow...
With an aggressive Cthulhu player the game gets an end condition that can actually be reached, and that tends to make it not drag quite as badly. But yeah, sadly the end-game really hurts what is otherwise a pretty good game.
The only Steve Jackson game I've ever owned or played was Car Wars, looking at BGG I think it was Mini Car Wars from 1987, might be in my cellar somewhere yet. 6th edition looks pretty sweet! I've always been intrested in Aweful Green Things From Outer Space since hearing Tom speak about it from time to time, I'd be intrested in a new version of that with better production values and plastic figs or meeples.
If you want Awful Green Things From Outer Space, hunt down the 8th edition... which may even be the current printing, I'm honestly not sure. It is still cardboard chits with the fun Tom Wham art, but the quality is better than it has ever been for this game; the chits are nice and thick... a real board and not just a paper mat like it used to be. heh It really is a fun little game... despite it dating back to the 70s, it is quite good and one I will still happily play. :-)
Oh, I've read the rulebook, know how it plays, played the CCG actually. It's fine, but it hasn't aged well and it's not something I'm really interested in right now.
@@ArnieHorta Wow. Sorry that you don't like the game. I love it! (Admittedly it's been a while) We would play with the hidden Illuminati variant so you weren't sure who everybody is in the first few turns. Things get really tense as you're trying to figure out everyone's motives. Great stuff!
It has some amazing mechanics, but is also DEEPLY flawed. At low player counts, the asymmetry will far too often result in an unstoppable run-away victory. At higher player counts, games tend to end only when everyone is too exhausted to stop whoever is the current leader. I've literally had games end because people just said 'screw this, let him win'. It has very fun mechanics, but needs a rework to deal with those problems.
It's funny... when I was a teen (so long ago) I played a lot of SJG games (car wars, orge, gurps, etc) but now I start out skeptical if it has their name on the box. It feels like gaming has moved forward but SJG is still in the late 80's / early 90's.
When I was a kid my Dad brought home two Steve Jackson games (both by Tom Wham) 1) Awful Green Things from Outer Space 2) Snit's Revenge Both of these games will always hold a special place for me.
Loved Car Wars and Illuminati, but also really enjoyed Raid on Iran and the live action game Killer (hunting friends with bananas as pistols, cucumbers as rifles and alarm clocks for bombs).
Proteus was a super interesting brain-burner varient on chess. dice (No Rolling) have different chess pieces on each side. On your turn you can move a die (according to the chess piece showing) and rotate a die up OR down one level (changing it to a new piece). You do not try to capture a king, but instead get points based on what level your opponents die was when you captured it. Fantastic, very thinky game!
Port Royal, hands down, is great game, and my second favorite Alexander Pfister game behind Oh My Goods. Oddly my wife and I aren’t tremendous fans of his big board games (maracaibo, great western trail etc.)
Munchkin was THE game to play when I was in university. You'd see it played everyday on campus. I enjoyed it at the time and eventually moved on from the game after around 10 plays.
Hi Tom and all, I am spreading my thoughts about UA-camRS within the board game industry, this is a copy I am using hopefully to get the word out. There are many awards in the board game industry, but I have not seen any for UA-camRS such as yourself and many many others. The many hours weeks, months and years put into this industry deserves an award of some description for all board game UA-camRS because without them where would the industry be today? The gaming industry needs you all.
Illuminati would work better as a computer game because there are so many things to keep track of regarding what cards apply bonuses to which other cards etc.
My favourite is Port Royal as well. I bought my copy when I lived in the UK, which let me get two of the expansions, one of which (Unterwegs!) I would consider exceptional, and the other of which I didn’t like. I don’t like the subtle changes they made in the Steve Jackson version; the card distribution means you essentially have to use expeditions (or as the Steve Jackson version calls them, “Missions”) in order to win, whereas with the Pegasus version, it’s a bit more balanced and you have a few more options for winning. But that’s hair-splitting. It still is a great game and I would recommend that people play whatever version they can get their hands on.
Bought Munchkin long ago, played a couple times, then it sat forever before I sold it. On the other hand, Revolution is one that we have played dozens of times, and I am getting ready to research and try to dig up the expansions you mentioned as I only have the base game.
Ogre used to be a Metagaming game that Steve designed apparently and got the rights too after that company went banlrupt, I still own some of their early microgames! Ogre is great and a nice introduction to wargaming and easy to learn. This game is still solid and enjoyable in its own right. I love Awful Green Things From Outer Space and own the old 2nd edition TSR version and a couple more modern versions too. Tom Wham is my favorite designer of all time. They got Snit's too, I have the old version of Snit's Revenge as well, very fun and the comics in both games are great. Never played much Car Wars but it's got a ton of stuff. I haven't played in years, but GURPS is pretty cool too. I do still have some source books for it.
Lots of 80s memories playing Car Wars with highschool friends. Burned up plenty of study halls designing cars. My wife is unbeatable at Zombie Dice. It is her go to revenge game if I beat her at something else. We also like SPANC as a coffee shop game for two. It is silly and luck driven but we always have fun bringing it to the table. Meow🐱!
Revolution (along with Ideology and Wealth of Nations) is a game that I heard when I was early in the hobby, and I wanted to have those games. Unfortunately I never did, so I'm glad it's gonna get reprinted so I could try it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that The Awful Green Things from Outer Space was originally published in a magazine (with cut-out pieces, etc.). Back in the '80s, when I had a friend who liked chess, I used to play the hell out of Knightmare Chess.. Great game variant. I liked how it could SOMEWHAT equalize the table between people who may have known Chess better than others. I USED to love Illuminati. I played a lot of it, also back in the 1980s. I loved the mechanics. But it DEFINITELY is a flawed game because if you had too many players, the game would last forever, or too few players, and you'd usually have a run-away winner. Quite often, games would end from exhaustion rather, when players simply decided to not try too hard to stop a player from winning. My actual favorite Steve Jackson game was Hacker. It may have had a lot to do with the fact that I was a programmer (actually did a little hacking as part of my job, and also had to deal with potential hackers and attempted hacks). But I know the game is incredibly dated by the changes in technology. I'd love to see a re-imagining of that game. Being an older IT guy, I'd even play the old version again. I know they aren't from Steve Jackson Games, but I was a fan of some of Steve Jackson's game designs back when they were published by Metagaming Concepts. For the time, they were really fun and great for a teenager on a tight budget (they were microgames in those zip-lock bags that Tom described). Between me and friends, we owned almost every single game that Metagaming published.
No correction needed! Here's a funny story; Steve Jackson got me thinking about MetaGaming and then The Space Gamer magazine (which I absolutely loved). So, I went through an old box (very old) of magazines and lo and behold here's a copy of TSG #26, Jan/Feb 1980. Steve Jackson reviews The Awful Green Things from Outer Space by Tom Wham. Not only does Jackson give an good overview of the game, he suggests some minor changes. I wonder if he implemented those game changes when he published TAGTFOS? The entire game was published by TSR in their The Dragon magazine #28 Aug 1979. A simple search for The Dragon #28 (annarchive.com) will give you a PDF of the magazine if you're interested. Also of note in TSG #26 was a review of the "brand new" game by Avalon Hill...Dune. Just by the review, there was a lot of excitement for this game. And you can get your own copy direct from AH for $15 + $1 postage. Wow, things have certainly changed....not necessarily for the better. Anyway, hope that was some fun info for ya!👍
@@tempestfury8324 LOL! I was actually REALLY anal about my D&D stuff (even as a kid), so I pretty much never cut out the games they printed. I did photocopy a couple of them and clipped the photocopied counters. lol I did never do this with Awful Green Things, though... I ended up playing a friend's copy... and that was the first time I played it. Only until maybe 10 years ago or so, I finally got my own proper copy of it. Yeah, I owned that copy in The Dragon, but I never wanted to clip it out. lol I guess that was for the best, since those old Dragon Magazines are valuable now. :-)
I think Port Royal is a nice entertaining game. What made it elevate to a game I love was the first expansion. It blends so well and I found a deep love for the game once I add those extra cards and the contracts mechanism. I have never tried any of the other expansions for the game, but the contracts is kind of essential for me.
I actually forgot Port Royal was an SJ printing. Because it's not an SJ "original" I'm not 100% sure it should count but it's definitely a great game. Personally I hated "Rock Paper Scissors the Board Game" aka Revolution, but I know it saw some popularity.
- Awful Green Things from Outer Space is my favorite due to the theme and nostalgia (50s and 60s scifi), variability in item effects, and humor. Unfortunately, it's only for 2 players so I might try to find a way to expand it at some time in the future. - I like the theme and humor in Illuminati. - Munchkin, with its humor, was silly fun for time with friends and family -- a welcome alternative to games like hearts, spades, etc. - Ogre was interesting ( I had the original "ziploc" version) but I never got much into it since my preference was for something more expansive. Still, it has that early scifi feel so I might try it again at some point. - The Fantasy Trip is an interesting RPG/board game hybrid but with so many other things demanding my attention I gave way the KS version I had with some regret.
Wheaton and Munchkin brought me in, and I had a lot of fun with it for a short while. 200 some odd different games later, and I'm certainly not a fan of the "everyone throw all your Take-That at Player A who will win right now if you don't, but then nobody has any Take-That left to keep Player B from winning on the next turn" gameplay mechanism. Plus, it made my sister-in-law cry when we did that to her...
I always respected GURPS, but it just wasn't for me. It's a VERY solid system, though. An RPG that Steve Jackson did put out that I used to love was TOON... that game was a riot. I always liked the rule that when you laughed in real life during the game, your character was "boggled" and you were basically out of commission for a minute or so. :-) Really fun stuff... and good with younger kids too. Definitely required a good and creative GM.... then again, what RPG doesn't? ;-)
Steve Jackson Games were huge in the 90s. Board and card games back then were pretty weak compared with now. I mean Catan was a huge deal when it came out. We were playing Advanced Civilization, Diplomacy and Illuminati. We didn't know any better. I still have fond memories of Illuminati, but it doesn't hold up. It's not balanced and it can be a real slog to finish a game.
Tom is usually pretty on target, but seriously? What!? No Illuminati? Car Wars should be top 3. How about Star Trader? Ninja Burger? Zombie Dice? And if you're gonna pick a Mars Attacks! game (btw, based on a set of trading cards, not the movie), let's go with The Card Game.
Remember playing Munchkin quite bit back in the day. It does overstay its welcome though and often bogs down to a state where almost no one can win... I also remember playing a card game called Illuminati, not sure if it was a Steve Jackson game, but the theme and the tongue in cheek flavor of the game sure fits the bill... The games were ok, but couldn't hold up with todays standards at all. And they sure have a lot of take that in them... Which is not one of my favorite mechanics.
Castellan was one of the first games I played when I got back in the hobby. And I played it with everyone. Good game. Would be my favorite. If ya’ll like Munchkin then fine, but to me it’s the worst gaming experience I ever had.
Munchkin is the only game that has resulted in arguments period, but also every time I've played it. The game is garbage. Tried it when I was just getting into the hobby.
Steve Jackson Games helped me get into the hobby, so I generally hold no snobbery towards anyone's favorite game.
Same
Yeah, Ogre was one of the first hobby games I ever played... I'll still happily play it. And I still have the original printing in the little ziplock baggie. lol Also, I got WAAAAAAYYYY into Car Wars back in the 80s... to the tune of owning it all! I even subscribed to get the Audoduel Quarterly magazine for a large part of its run. It's not a game for everyone, as half the game is sitting alone and crunching numbers to build your car... to some, that would be a long nightmare, but I found building the cars to be half the fun. :-) It is sort of the reason I like Magic so much... brewing the decks before you even play is where a huge part of the fun is for me. :-)
@@KabukiKid You were a hardcore Car Wars fan. I used to buy and read the old Space Gamer magazine and pass it around to my friends. I had traded my small Car Wars game with my best friend in exchange for another game. It was great fun playing. When my son was young in the early 90s, I had bought him the kid game Thunder Road which was similar to the old Car Wars game.
@@GR-pv5jx Ah... I also know Thunder Road. :-) Are you getting the new version coming from Restoration Games?
@@KabukiKid Thanks for the info. I didn't know that a new version was coming out. I'll have to check it out. My son and nephews really enjoyed playing it.
Steve Jackson is one of the most well known names of my childhood. I did enjoy Car Wars a lot, but the GURPS system was a massive part of my circle of friends.
Illuminati got me started in the hobby nearly thirty years ago. I appreciate SJG is one of the few publishers to have humor in their games.
Illuminati was really one of the main games that got me into the hobby as well. And it was one of the first board games I ended up buying with my own money that was not some kind of miniatures game or a CCG.
Awful Green Things … is my favorite. I’ve had 2 prior printings - including one that required cutting out the little chits. I’m happy to have a later version with much more current production qualities. It’s a fun 1 v 1 game with enough exploration to remember different games and outcomes. Thanks for doing the list! It reminds me to get this one back to the table.
Played Car Wars as a kid and it's still my favorite.
Yeah, hard to beat old-school Car Wars. :-) Composite Armor is still broken, though. ;-) lol That's an old house-rule we always played with... NO COMPOSITE ARMOR!
I've got to say that I've had more fun with Zombie Dice than I ever thought I would. Certainly a game of luck, but with the expansions it has been a blast! Would be somewhere in my top 5 Steve Jackson games.
I got more family members into gaming from playing ZOMBIE DICE.
With the expansions it’s actually pretty fun.
Yeah, the Zombie Dice expansions are quite good. I also added little plastic brains to my copy to use to keep score. :-)
Try Martian Dice too, has a different push-your-luck element to it
@@TorIverWilhelmsen True... Martian Dice is fun too. I do prefer Zombie Dice, but they are both fun games.
You are missing one of my favorite games from Steve Jackson games: The Stars Are Right. Such a fun puzzle game that should get more love than it does.
I was going to mention that one. I picked that up after watching Tom's review of it way back in the day.
Two of my favorites are other chess variants that they did…Tile Chess and Proteus.
Munchkin got me into the hobby. I was watching Felicia Day's The Guild and got introduced to Wil Wheaton's Tabletop through that, saw the video for Munchkin and loved the idea so much I immediately ordered a copy on Amazon, it was my first tabletop game since playing D&D with my friends or MTG years earlier. I ended up buying almost every version so I could mix them, but now it's gotten ridiculous with the amount of flavours. I also haven't played it recently because I rarely get enough interested player to the table. My favourite Steve Jackson Games would be Zombie Dice, Mars Attacks the Dice Game, Chez Geek and Nanuk.
I've actually never played a single Munchkin game. My first Steve Jackson game was Melee, about 1982/83. It came in a bag, yes you had to cut out the counters and it cost something like $3. There were other hex-based combat games I played (Avalon Hill games) but Melee had really easy rules, fun, and portable.
I loved playing "Melee"! It was one of my favorites! Ah, the memories. ; )
The Melee book, and its companion Magic book, were the basis for what eventually became the Man to Man Rules, which became G.U.R.P.S. (Generic Universal Role Playing System), an RPG that I had a ton of books for and played Fantasy campaigns in the 90s... fun!
The goblin creatures, if I remember, were tough in the Melee game. Great fun playing it after work during the eighties. We also played some old Avalon Hill games. There was also a Wizard game that was good.
Thanks for the list Tom! Appreciate the comments as well, cool to see so many different opinions and personal favorites.
Obviously working there I'm pretty biased but my top 3 would be:
Revolution!
Car Wars Sixth Edition
Zombie Dice
Glad to see stuff like Nanuk, Awful Green Things, and some of our more hidden gems getting shine.
Fond memories of sailing the oceans back in the day with OGRE and Car Wars stowed in my locker..
A lot of gaming in a little space got us through some long deployments 💙
I can't believe Illuminati didn't make the list. Car Wars 6th Ed is great, but it is a long game. Nothing lightweight about it.
I can believe it. These are Tom's picks.
I was thinking the same thing about Illuminati! Discovered it a few years ago with my friends and it became an instant classic with us. If you can get a group of friends who enjoy nothing more than forming fake alliances with each other, secret meetings, and constantly trying to stab each other in the back then that is the game for you. We also all loved the needless complexity of some of the mechanics and how the game was printed with the tiny megabucks made it nearly impossible to keep track of anything
Car Wars 6E is lightweight when compared to original Car Wars, where building the car was a pretty involved process. The new process is quite streamlined, actually. And yeah... Illuminati was a fun one. :-) I still have my little pocketbox version, as well as the Deluxe one.
I have a love/hate relationship with Illuminati. It was one of the very first designer board games I bought or played due to it s links with Discordianism (my Principia Discordia is actually printed by Steve Jackson Games, and has an ad for the game in it).
It's really amusing, has some excellent mechanics and ideas overall, but unfortunately suffers from the same sort of end-game problems as Munchkin or similar games of "they'll win, so everyone stop them, but then everyone's eventually just out of stuff and someone just wins without issue eventually" so it takes forever for someone to actually win with the vanilla rules. There are variants in the rules to mitigate that slightly, but there's a reason it hasn't hit my table in probably 10 years. I do really want to play it again, though. Maybe we can house-rule that ending somehow...
With an aggressive Cthulhu player the game gets an end condition that can actually be reached, and that tends to make it not drag quite as badly. But yeah, sadly the end-game really hurts what is otherwise a pretty good game.
Illuminati and Wabbit Wampage are the games that got me started years ago. I can't remember the last time I've played a Steve Jackson game.
Chez geek is my #1, love that theme, humor and art
The only Steve Jackson game I've ever owned or played was Car Wars, looking at BGG I think it was Mini Car Wars from 1987, might be in my cellar somewhere yet. 6th edition looks pretty sweet!
I've always been intrested in Aweful Green Things From Outer Space since hearing Tom speak about it from time to time, I'd be intrested in a new version of that with better production values and plastic figs or meeples.
If you want Awful Green Things From Outer Space, hunt down the 8th edition... which may even be the current printing, I'm honestly not sure. It is still cardboard chits with the fun Tom Wham art, but the quality is better than it has ever been for this game; the chits are nice and thick... a real board and not just a paper mat like it used to be. heh It really is a fun little game... despite it dating back to the 70s, it is quite good and one I will still happily play. :-)
Illuminati would be a good candidate for a catch up video Tom. It was a pretty important game for the hobby.
Oh, I've read the rulebook, know how it plays, played the CCG actually. It's fine, but it hasn't aged well and it's not something I'm really interested in right now.
I agree with Tom here that Illuminati isn’t that great…takes too long. I think that INWO is a better game.
@@ArnieHorta Wow. Sorry that you don't like the game. I love it! (Admittedly it's been a while) We would play with the hidden Illuminati variant so you weren't sure who everybody is in the first few turns. Things get really tense as you're trying to figure out everyone's motives. Great stuff!
@@WebMonkey741 I don’t really dislike it…it just runs WAY too long for what it is. INWO fixed that a bit…
Illuminati is my favorite game and Car Wars is in my top ten.
Shame on you, Tom! Illuminati is far too good not to be in your top 10!
It has some amazing mechanics, but is also DEEPLY flawed. At low player counts, the asymmetry will far too often result in an unstoppable run-away victory. At higher player counts, games tend to end only when everyone is too exhausted to stop whoever is the current leader. I've literally had games end because people just said 'screw this, let him win'. It has very fun mechanics, but needs a rework to deal with those problems.
My wife and I hosted Munchkin CCG tournaments at LGS back in 2018. It was a ton of fun. They had three expansions, and I still enjoy it.
It's funny... when I was a teen (so long ago) I played a lot of SJG games (car wars, orge, gurps, etc) but now I start out skeptical if it has their name on the box. It feels like gaming has moved forward but SJG is still in the late 80's / early 90's.
My favorite is the Flip & Write, Deadly Doodles. It’s very easy to bring to the table with non-gamers and can be played solo as well.
Hacker and Hacker II are among my favorite SJGs...
When I was a kid my Dad brought home two Steve Jackson games (both by Tom Wham)
1) Awful Green Things from Outer Space
2) Snit's Revenge
Both of these games will always hold a special place for me.
Loved Car Wars and Illuminati, but also really enjoyed Raid on Iran and the live action game Killer (hunting friends with bananas as pistols, cucumbers as rifles and alarm clocks for bombs).
Knightmare Chess is so much fun
Proteus was a super interesting brain-burner varient on chess. dice (No Rolling) have different chess pieces on each side. On your turn you can move a die (according to the chess piece showing) and rotate a die up OR down one level (changing it to a new piece). You do not try to capture a king, but instead get points based on what level your opponents die was when you captured it. Fantastic, very thinky game!
How did Illuminati not make this list? It must be a conspiracy...
Tom is controlled by the flat earthers.
FNORD!
@@KabukiKid Ah, you can see the FNORD, but can you see the
@@TorIverWilhelmsen Your post made me smile. :-D
Port Royal, hands down, is great game, and my second favorite Alexander Pfister game behind Oh My Goods. Oddly my wife and I aren’t tremendous fans of his big board games (maracaibo, great western trail etc.)
Tough list there's so many good ones on here. Ignore the haters.
Illuminati is one of my favorite 5 player games
Munchkin was THE game to play when I was in university. You'd see it played everyday on campus. I enjoyed it at the time and eventually moved on from the game after around 10 plays.
Hi Tom and all, I am spreading my thoughts about UA-camRS within the board game industry, this is a copy I am using hopefully to get the word out.
There are many awards in the board game industry, but I have not seen any for UA-camRS such as yourself and many many others.
The many hours weeks, months and years put into this industry deserves an award of some description for all board game UA-camRS because
without them where would the industry be today?
The gaming industry needs you all.
No Illuminati? I only ever played it once and didn’t really learn the ins and outs of it but I think it’s supposedly a classic
Illuminati would work better as a computer game because there are so many things to keep track of regarding what cards apply bonuses to which other cards etc.
Love Marvel Munchkin. Helped me get my friends into board gaming and every time we play it’s three or four games of Marvel Munchkin.
Port Royal Big Box should be coming out any day now I think
Nanuk is the only Steve Jackson game I think I own and I wonder how many other folks can say the same. My guess is 4.
My favourite is Port Royal as well. I bought my copy when I lived in the UK, which let me get two of the expansions, one of which (Unterwegs!) I would consider exceptional, and the other of which I didn’t like.
I don’t like the subtle changes they made in the Steve Jackson version; the card distribution means you essentially have to use expeditions (or as the Steve Jackson version calls them, “Missions”) in order to win, whereas with the Pegasus version, it’s a bit more balanced and you have a few more options for winning. But that’s hair-splitting. It still is a great game and I would recommend that people play whatever version they can get their hands on.
Bought Munchkin long ago, played a couple times, then it sat forever before I sold it. On the other hand, Revolution is one that we have played dozens of times, and I am getting ready to research and try to dig up the expansions you mentioned as I only have the base game.
Ogre used to be a Metagaming game that Steve designed apparently and got the rights too after that company went banlrupt, I still own some of their early microgames! Ogre is great and a nice introduction to wargaming and easy to learn. This game is still solid and enjoyable in its own right.
I love Awful Green Things From Outer Space and own the old 2nd edition TSR version and a couple more modern versions too. Tom Wham is my favorite designer of all time. They got Snit's too, I have the old version of Snit's Revenge as well, very fun and the comics in both games are great.
Never played much Car Wars but it's got a ton of stuff.
I haven't played in years, but GURPS is pretty cool too. I do still have some source books for it.
Lots of 80s memories playing Car Wars with highschool friends. Burned up plenty of study halls designing cars. My wife is unbeatable at Zombie Dice. It is her go to revenge game if I beat her at something else. We also like SPANC as a coffee shop game for two. It is silly and luck driven but we always have fun bringing it to the table. Meow🐱!
Revolution (along with Ideology and Wealth of Nations) is a game that I heard when I was early in the hobby, and I wanted to have those games. Unfortunately I never did, so I'm glad it's gonna get reprinted so I could try it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that The Awful Green Things from Outer Space was originally published in a magazine (with cut-out pieces, etc.).
Back in the '80s, when I had a friend who liked chess, I used to play the hell out of Knightmare Chess.. Great game variant. I liked how it could SOMEWHAT equalize the table between people who may have known Chess better than others.
I USED to love Illuminati. I played a lot of it, also back in the 1980s. I loved the mechanics. But it DEFINITELY is a flawed game because if you had too many players, the game would last forever, or too few players, and you'd usually have a run-away winner. Quite often, games would end from exhaustion rather, when players simply decided to not try too hard to stop a player from winning.
My actual favorite Steve Jackson game was Hacker. It may have had a lot to do with the fact that I was a programmer (actually did a little hacking as part of my job, and also had to deal with potential hackers and attempted hacks). But I know the game is incredibly dated by the changes in technology. I'd love to see a re-imagining of that game. Being an older IT guy, I'd even play the old version again.
I know they aren't from Steve Jackson Games, but I was a fan of some of Steve Jackson's game designs back when they were published by Metagaming Concepts. For the time, they were really fun and great for a teenager on a tight budget (they were microgames in those zip-lock bags that Tom described). Between me and friends, we owned almost every single game that Metagaming published.
No correction needed! Here's a funny story; Steve Jackson got me thinking about MetaGaming and then The Space Gamer magazine (which I absolutely loved). So, I went through an old box (very old) of magazines and lo and behold here's a copy of TSG #26, Jan/Feb 1980. Steve Jackson reviews The Awful Green Things from Outer Space by Tom Wham. Not only does Jackson give an good overview of the game, he suggests some minor changes. I wonder if he implemented those game changes when he published TAGTFOS?
The entire game was published by TSR in their The Dragon magazine #28 Aug 1979. A simple search for The Dragon #28 (annarchive.com) will give you a PDF of the magazine if you're interested.
Also of note in TSG #26 was a review of the "brand new" game by Avalon Hill...Dune. Just by the review, there was a lot of excitement for this game. And you can get your own copy direct from AH for $15 + $1 postage.
Wow, things have certainly changed....not necessarily for the better. Anyway, hope that was some fun info for ya!👍
I think it was also originally published by TSR.
@@tempestfury8324 I have that issue of The Dragon! :-)
@@KabukiKid : That's pretty awesome! Get to cutting out those game pieces!😲 🤣
@@tempestfury8324 LOL! I was actually REALLY anal about my D&D stuff (even as a kid), so I pretty much never cut out the games they printed. I did photocopy a couple of them and clipped the photocopied counters. lol I did never do this with Awful Green Things, though... I ended up playing a friend's copy... and that was the first time I played it. Only until maybe 10 years ago or so, I finally got my own proper copy of it. Yeah, I owned that copy in The Dragon, but I never wanted to clip it out. lol I guess that was for the best, since those old Dragon Magazines are valuable now. :-)
The only game I would’ve added to this list is Deadly Doodles
I think Port Royal is a nice entertaining game. What made it elevate to a game I love was the first expansion. It blends so well and I found a deep love for the game once I add those extra cards and the contracts mechanism. I have never tried any of the other expansions for the game, but the contracts is kind of essential for me.
Patiently waiting (and waiting) for my pre-order of Port Royale Big Box to arrive!
We do like Munchkin, my 6 year old loves it. I'm going to look into a few of these others though.
Revolution is such a great game. One of my wife's favorites and directly competitive games are not usually her thing.
How was there not a single mention of Gurps? Even if it’s not the right category, surely it has to be mentioned
Because his lists are about board games so why would he mention it?
I actually forgot Port Royal was an SJ printing. Because it's not an SJ "original" I'm not 100% sure it should count but it's definitely a great game. Personally I hated "Rock Paper Scissors the Board Game" aka Revolution, but I know it saw some popularity.
Munchkin Marvel was one of the first games that got me into the hobby
Fantasy Trip, Am I the only one who remembers or owns it? Hands down the #1.
My fav, is actually munckin cthultu, with all of the expansions, its an actual game with all of it. still silly, but quite enjoyable
- Awful Green Things from Outer Space is my favorite due to the theme and nostalgia (50s and 60s scifi), variability in item effects, and humor. Unfortunately, it's only for 2 players so I might try to find a way to expand it at some time in the future.
- I like the theme and humor in Illuminati.
- Munchkin, with its humor, was silly fun for time with friends and family -- a welcome alternative to games like hearts, spades, etc.
- Ogre was interesting ( I had the original "ziploc" version) but I never got much into it since my preference was for something more expansive. Still, it has that early scifi feel so I might try it again at some point.
- The Fantasy Trip is an interesting RPG/board game hybrid but with so many other things demanding my attention I gave way the KS version I had with some regret.
Illuminati… best theming ever, little long but still great innovative design :)
Thks Tom
Wheaton and Munchkin brought me in, and I had a lot of fun with it for a short while. 200 some odd different games later, and I'm certainly not a fan of the "everyone throw all your Take-That at Player A who will win right now if you don't, but then nobody has any Take-That left to keep Player B from winning on the next turn" gameplay mechanism. Plus, it made my sister-in-law cry when we did that to her...
Melee/Wizard/TheFantasyTrip
We always enjoyed Revolution! Can be both funny and frustrating.
Only played Munchkin (its ok) and Zombie Dice(really enjoyed this one for a bit, may look into re-buying it
ZOMBIE DICE!!! HORDE EDITION!!! BRAAAAINSSSS!!!
GURPS.
I always respected GURPS, but it just wasn't for me. It's a VERY solid system, though. An RPG that Steve Jackson did put out that I used to love was TOON... that game was a riot. I always liked the rule that when you laughed in real life during the game, your character was "boggled" and you were basically out of commission for a minute or so. :-) Really fun stuff... and good with younger kids too. Definitely required a good and creative GM.... then again, what RPG doesn't? ;-)
Ah, Eidetic Memory the RPG. I love some of the sourcebooks, but the system itself... meh.
One Steve Jackson game that no one really mentions, I love and don't really get to play anymore: Illuminati
The game is SO MUCH fun to me
Is this the guy that made the Illuminati Card Game?
I'm surprised no love for X-Bugs
X-bugs. Great game for kids, even funnier for adults. A pity it seems to be out of print forever.
Air Eaters Strike Back
Car Wars all the way.
Yeah... a personal favorite of mine, as well.
No INWO??
Steve Jackson Games were huge in the 90s. Board and card games back then were pretty weak compared with now. I mean Catan was a huge deal when it came out. We were playing Advanced Civilization, Diplomacy and Illuminati. We didn't know any better. I still have fond memories of Illuminati, but it doesn't hold up. It's not balanced and it can be a real slog to finish a game.
Tom is usually pretty on target, but seriously? What!? No Illuminati? Car Wars should be top 3. How about Star Trader? Ninja Burger? Zombie Dice? And if you're gonna pick a Mars Attacks! game (btw, based on a set of trading cards, not the movie), let's go with The Card Game.
SJG's role playing games have always been better, GURPS and In Nomine are superior [IMHO] but Illuminate (both versions) were fun
Remember playing Munchkin quite bit back in the day. It does overstay its welcome though and often bogs down to a state where almost no one can win... I also remember playing a card game called Illuminati, not sure if it was a Steve Jackson game, but the theme and the tongue in cheek flavor of the game sure fits the bill... The games were ok, but couldn't hold up with todays standards at all. And they sure have a lot of take that in them... Which is not one of my favorite mechanics.
I have such fond memories of SJG from my youth... Shame it appears that's gone the way of the dodo with their modern practices.
Illuminati is wild fun
Castellan was one of the first games I played when I got back in the hobby. And I played it with everyone. Good game. Would be my favorite.
If ya’ll like Munchkin then fine, but to me it’s the worst gaming experience I ever had.
Illuminati was fun
Illuminati!
Munchkin is the only game that has resulted in arguments period, but also every time I've played it. The game is garbage. Tried it when I was just getting into the hobby.