Number Seven on the Meeple Like Us Ten Top Best Board Games 2018 Edition!
The eights, nines and tens are on the edge of our list of best board games even if they don’t know it. At least you sevens can take a calming breath – you’re on the ledge just before the edge and that gives you at least a four minute warning before the emptiness of the void takes you. Hear that cold wind howl? That’s the sound of your own obsolescence as reflected at you from the chasm of irrelevance that surrounds you.
Wow, we’ve been taking a pretty bleak stance here on our top ten – not at all appropriate for a feature we publish at Christmas time.
Here, I’ll put on some festive music. Enjoy it… while you can.
Michael Picks: Concordia (Down from #3)
| Game Details | |
|---|---|
| Name | Concordia (2013) |
| Accessibility Report | Meeple Like Us |
| Complexity | Medium [2.99] |
| BGG Rank | 23 [8.10] |
| Player Count | 2-5 |
| Buy it! | Amazon Link |
Ooo, this one has undergone a fair slide. It’s still in a strong position – being the #7 best game I’ve ever played becomes increasingly impressive the more time goes by. My affection for Concordia though may have waned a little as I dally with more obviously enticing titles. The frisson isn’t quite what it was. It has become a game I am comfortable with rather than one for which I hunger. I remarked in 2017 that it didn’t have a very exciting theme and wouldn’t win any awards for its aesthetics. That’s as true as it ever was and the problem there is that other games just make more of an effort. They slip into my shelves wearing the board-game equivalent of lingerie. Concordia wanders in wearing fuzzy slippers and a ratty dressing gown. The wrapping doesn’t change how much of a good time I’m going to have, but it does have an impact on the anticipation. I haven’t yet tried its Salsa expansion, but I’m hoping that might well spice things up for 2019.
Wait, salt isn’t actually a spice is it?
That doesn’t bode well for the future.
Pauline: I never thought Concordia would be so supplanted in your affections. It’s the first game that you really ever fell in love with outside of Scrabble.
Michael: My affections are fickle. Who knows what will take my fancy from day to day?
Pauline: From the sounds of it, some weird fantasies about games in lingerie?
Michael: You should see the stockings that Imperial Settlers wore to try and keep its place on the list. You should hear the things it offered to do.
Pauline: I think I need to install a nanny cam in your study. Something not quite right is clearly happening in there when you close the door.
Pauline Picks: Innovation (Down from #6)
| Game Details | |
|---|---|
| Name | Innovation (2010) |
| Accessibility Report | Meeple Like Us |
| Complexity | Medium [2.76] |
| BGG Rank | 374 [7.30] |
| Player Count (recommended) | 2-4 (2-3) |
| Buy it! | Amazon Link |
I think you get an awful lot of game in a very small box with Innovation. It’s amazing how tightly packed it is, and how many interesting decisions it puts in your way. Unlike Michael, I haven’t played a lot of civilization games but when I did I always went for the most obvious and convenient win. I don’t have the same fixed mindset of ‘science at all costs’. He works away building the intellectual bedrock of a society run by philosopher kings, and that rarely works in his favour. I’m happy to win Innovation in the most thuggish way the game will permit. Michael is the textbook nerd, and I spend my time repeatedly kicking over his sandcastles until he literally goes nuclear. The only reason it’s dropped down in this list is that it’s a bit more serious, and a bit more aggressive, than a lot of my favourites. I’ve come to realise over the past few years that the fun isn’t in proving how much smarter I am than Michael, but rather in making sure everyone else around the table has the most fun they possibly can. Innovation isn’t really that kind of game.
Michael: Wait, do you think you’re smarter than me just because you constantly beat me at games?
Pauline: No, of course not.
Michael: Good.
Pauline: Not when I can think it because I’m better with money, have more common sense, can drive out of a simple industrial estate in less than twenty minutes and without the help of Google Maps…
Michael: Wait…
Pauline: … am capable of wearing matching socks, can remember more than six names at a time, can use a washing machine without flooding the kitchen or shrinking my dresses…
Michael: Okay, but as long as it’s not because of our win ratio because I’m due a hot streak any day now.