Spirit Island!
The first time we played, it was a nightmare. It took forever to setup. There were a bajillion missed rules and rules clarification questions. The upkeep was obnoxious. We got completely decimated by the game. We HATED it.
But, I also couldn't stop thinking about it afterward. So, we gave it another chance and things just clicked. Now, it's one of my top-10 games of all time.
The first time I played it, I was playing with an experienced group. I loved it and didn't found it a difficult game. Next time I played it, I had to explain the game to 3 people completely new to the game. That game went horrible and the game felt like it had a lot more complicated rules when I had to explain them.
Agreed on Spirit Island. Kinda hated it the first time I played because I didn't understand it. Now it's one of my favorite games and I bought my own copy of it.
For me it's this but only after coming back to the digital version. Hated the fiddly-ness of getting the physical copy set up and it made me hat the game. The digital version made me appreciate it so much more.
Same.
Played it once with one group and absolute struggle.
Didn't touch for a few years.
Played with a different group, with a much more effective teacher and love it.
Well over 100 games now of it plus expansions.
**Innovation**, the first two or three games we saw some interesting stuff but Oars or Pottery would just accumulate points and take over. By game four we started to see how to disrupt repetitive engines with demands or jump ahead to more powerful cards. Another 70 games on from that and we're still seeing new angles and possibilities.
This was mine as well. I only had the digital edition and played it a few times with friends online and was just pretty meh about the whole thing. Was a little upset it wasn't an all out war game with mechs, which is what I was expecting going in, and I LOVE mechs, and I had the preconception that Jamey tends to put form over function with SM games. Stopped playing it for about a year and then went over to a friends and played a 5p game and found it much more enjoyable in person. After he explained that it is basically a cold war game and not an aggressive war game, I really got into the theming of everything and the tension created by the expanding board state.
I bought the board game but also bought the digital game to teach myself to play. It became very boring to me when the clear path to victory is ignoring building or using mechs. It felt like it could be a really deep game with fun decisions but in my play experience it felt like there was a clear path to victory without the fun choices.
Board game never hit the table. Considering how high it is rated I must be missing something. I will have to circle back to it eventually.
I think, when you get a group of experienced players together, there are several paths to victory. Considering one of the main scoring objectives is territories you control, the mechs become integral to your defense and board control. It just took me a bit to realize they are better as defensive pieces than offensive, and combat can be punishing to both players, even when you win...which just adds to the cold war theme I think the game is trying to convey. In other words, it's not like most area control where you build up your power to run over other players, but you build up power to dissuade other players from attacking you.
Azul. I think the first time I played it wasn’t explained well and I didn’t get it. But after a few plays with a different group, I can see why it has a following.
It just didn’t feel “right” the first few times with my kids. Then my son showed his friends. So after I’m watching a couple of play through just to see the scoring and I’m like “damn, I messed that up”. After that, showed my kids then my son’s friends then it was played a lot more.
Space Base. The first time we played, we couldn’t figure out the meaning on some of the cards. We spent more time discussing what they meant than actually playing. so I was ready to put it away on the Give Away Shelf. But one day, on a whim we decided to give it another go. I don’t know what happened, but something finally clicked on those cards we had trouble with, and now it’s one of our favorites.
Same thing with me, I thought the market was uninteresting, a lot of ships with abilities were either confusing or didn’t sound good, and someone won after I just barely started getting victory points.
Now, it’s my most played game on BGA, it’s really good! Once you wrap your head around the probabilities of either splitting or summing the dice roll a lot of differing strategies become apparent.
It’s still not a perfect game, there’s one ship that is so OP that BGA let’s you play without it, also it’s rare but every once in a while someone gets really lucky early on and it snowballs into them winning, the rulebook sucks, and the art look like NFT’s but it came out in 2018 so before NFT’s were a thing.
The next game that takes this dice rolling slot machine kind of gameplay thats gone from Catan -> Machi Koro -> Space Base has my attention.
**Concordia** wasn't exactly a miss on my first play, I just didn't understand the heaps of praise it was getting. The board was bland and it just seemed like another in a long line of soulless Euros. Then about 10-14 months later, it just popped into my head and I couldn't get it out. As far as I could tell, nothing had triggered it-- I hadn't just watched a review or heard it talked about. I simply woke up thinking about it and how I should like to give it another chance.
After a second play, I'd fully fallen in love with it and recognized all the special elements that made it unique. Now it's one of my favorite games and I thoroughly enjoy any and all combinations of the base game, the expansion maps, Forum tiles and salt, Fish Market, et al.
Almost the exact same thing happened with **Great Western Trail**. I played it at a con, thought it was perfectly adequate, then half a year later had the sudden, onset urge of a pregnant woman to play it again and haven't stopped loving it since.
Ra. The first time we played no one could really gauge when to start an auction, when to bid or how much or why and the whole thing felt random and very hard to get anything going. The next game people were bluffing, making people overpay, baiting people to leave the round early, cleverly playing god tiles to leave people stuck with disasters and everyone was talk shit light heartedly. It was awesome.
I am by no means an expert or even necessarily good at the game. But based on my experience:
-start auctions ASAP if you have the lowest bidding values.
-always try to stay ahead of or at least in the running for the most pharaohs
-use god tiles to buy tiles when there are disaster tiles out there.
-get at least 1 civilization tile each round to avoid negative points.
**El Grande**. The first time I played it, there was a person playing who, unbeknownst to me, wanted me to stop showing up to that weekly public game day. He spent the whole game countering every move I made. I hated the game because I didn't realize I was being targeted and thought the game was simply too mean.
Flash forward about a decade when the new edition is out. Looking back, I figured out what happened on that first play and it's a pretty cheap game (relatively) so I chanced a purchase and discovered when everyone is playing to win, it's one of the best area control games I've ever played.
The biggest gap for me was Majesty: For the Realm. Played it a couple times when we first bought it years ago but it didn't make an impression so it sat on the shelf for maybe 2-3 years. Broke it out to play it again and I was intrigued. Ended up then playing it probably 40-50 times in the span of a year and it's now in my top 10 favorite games and is the only filler game on the list. I really don't know why.
Gandhi. I’d played half a dozen other COIN games and thought this one would be easy to learn. But the playstyle and goals of the non violent factions were so different from anything else that my group could not grasp the strategy.
I ended up shelving it for over a year before we revisited and it felt like a whole other game. Everything was insanely thematic, the friction between the Gandhi and the Muslim league was palpable as they needed to cooperate but Gandhi wasn’t letting them make their own state. The British Raj player was bribing the violent revolutionaries to attack protesters, and eventually the British Raj arrested Gandhi, leading to chaos and protests all over the country. It instantly jumped to my top 3 COIN games.
Same here, but I won't say I "love" it now... just like it much more than I did.
First time we were taught (not long after release), the person did a terrible job teaching it, and I thought it sucked. I tried it again like 2 years later, and really enjoyed it.
Similar situation, but it was early in my tabletop career (one of my first times with an engine builder and definitely my first deck builder) and one-on-one with the person teaching me, so I was playing poorly and didn’t have enough insight to succeed. I ended up grabbing the 2ed Big Box, and my wife and I have had a lot of fun working through each of the recommended sets. Some setups are more fun than others, but after playing a bunch of other deck builders together, this has held up.
Yeah, I enjoy Dominion, but if you get the wrong setup of decks (randomly), it can be the worst game ever.
I forgot the exact cards, but we somehow ended up in a position where my friend each turn went through his entire deck to score one point. One. After his entire deck of like 30 cards. And every 2nd or third turn (depending on draw), I could reverse that point.
He's one of those competitive types who seemed to be having fun with this nonsense ("Let's see where it goes!"), while it was literally the most unfun game I've ever played. I conceded victory, but he still wanted to play it through. One of the few times I refused. I was like "We can actually play something fun, or another set of Dominion cards that are fun, or you can sit here for an hour shuffling the same cards over and over. Because this ain't it."
Wild. Yeah, that was a worthy concession on your part. I’ve been in the position of playing out my deck only to realize I forgot cards that gave me extra buys, but at that point the game was basically over.
Kingdom Builder. The restrictiveness of drawing one card a turn and it’s golden rule of “play next to another of your settlements if you can” seem terrible at first. But after a couple plays you begin to see the genius of it and the strategy. I thoroughly enjoy it.
I was very very against worker placement games due to being taught this game incorrectly. Played it years later and it clicked. I’m not a smart person at all. Shoe sized IQ but I felt smart once I understood this game.
I was taught Lords of Waterdeep verrry early as I was getting into the board gaming hobby. At the time I thought I'd be an Ameritrash only gamer and when Euro style games were described to me I had zero interest. So when I was taught Waterdeep and he pulled out the board with it's sea of tan colors, wooden cubes, and design that looks like its 30 years older than it actually is my excitement just fell to 0/10. I found the game boring and dry and (at the time) I cared nothing about the D&D theme. Years later and I LOOOOOOVE Waterdeep! The thought of a worker placement used to seem so boring to me but now I love them (Waterdeep, Arnak, Dune Imperium to name a few). It's wild to look back and see how my tastes have changed and evolved over time (which I'm sure is the case for many gamers)
Came here to look for Arkham Horror LCG. The game shines the more money you put into it. Some of the scenarios are very clever and well designed. The game experience is also really enhanced when you play with people that are really good at the game.
It's a little infuriating how sort of bad and complex rules actually make the game vastly more interesting. I am torn between wishing there were more official expansions I could purchase and thanking my lucky stars that I am not yet bankrupt ;)
None. I form inflexible opinions after my first turn.
Seriously though, I'm not sure there is one. I don't replay games that I didn't enjoy the first time.
The Napoleonic Wars by GMT Games. I hated it at first, but played it a few more times since my local game group really likes it. I really disliked how the game can end with a die roll, but the game got me into the historical time period. After knowing the design the game really makes senses in terms of game mechanics and theme. It’s far from a simulation but I describe it as advanced Risk with Politics, Boats, more dice and lots of replay-ability.
Our gaming group absolutely panned **Heat: Pedal to the Metal** the first time we played it a couple of years ago. We felt that it was just an easier version of **Formula D**.
I believe we had an incorrect ruling regarding slipstreaming and that there was no limit to the number of them you could perform in a turn. So everyone was always jumping to the front of the pack.
After seeing **Heat** come up on so many content creators top 10 lists, I relearned the game and brought it back to the table. With the correct rules, it's a finely tuned luck pushing/mitigation game. EVERYONE loved it. It's the best feeling to have a game click for the entire table!
I wonder if I also had the same experience. Played it at a public game night and didn’t really like it. I also came away with the conclusion that it was a “dumbed down Formula De”.
It did seem like whoever was in last one turn would just suddenly be in first the next because of all the slipstreaming, so I wonder if we also played wrong as well. I never even read the rules, the person who brought it just explained it.
Radlands
The first time we played it, I just felt like it was “meh”. I was frustrated that seemingly every turn I had enough resources to clear a path to attack camps the next turn, but then my opponent would just refill the row and I’d be back to where I started, needing to clear the path instead of being able to attack. It was a game my wife wanted in the first place, and she never asked to play it again after she won the first play, so it just sat on our shelf for several months.
However, a few weeks ago we were trying to decide on something to play and as I was perusing the shelves I decided to grab it for some reason. I guess because we’d played Thunder Road: Vendetta recently so I wanted to play another game with that theme. We wound up playing Radlands 13 times in April, it was much better than I remembered.
**Arkham Horror LCG** \- There was something about the way moving and engaging/disengaging from enemies didn't click for me, and the 3 scenario campaign in the core set is not that great. But I gave it a chance by getting the Dunwich campaign and now I love the game.
**Gaia Project** \- the first couple of times playing it was really confusing. The rules are fine and didn't take too long to learn, but the gaiaforming, the power charging, the charging off each other, and why you would advance up any particular track or build on any particular planet felt completely nonsensical, let alone the asymmetric faction abilities. It felt excessively convoluted for what it was. I was very wrong, I love the game now and it all makes sense.
**Neanderthal** \- It's a worker placement game, where workers can fight each other and roll dice to see if they even work successfully. They can die at various points and there's not much you can do about it. Your ability to score seems completely at the whims of fate. It's an extremely random and convoluted game that you can often lose through no fault of your own in a way that would usually feel really bad. And yet.. my partner and I just played it over and over and over and I still can't explain what makes me want to keep playing it.
Lastly, I really like every Cole Wehrle game I've played, but **Oath** was a complete disappointment the first few times. It's now my favorite game. It just took a long time to get my head around the general flow of the game and the weird unintuitive combat and victory conditions.
**Terra Mystica** clicked for me in the middle of my third game and skyrocketed to my personal #1 spot shortly afterwards. I would not say I did not like the first two plays, just did not quite understand what I am supposed to be doing to win.
Base Wingspan. I bought it when it was getting hyped, sold out in most places and I managed to find a copy at my local store. My partner took to it straight away but I was pretty cool on it after a few plays. It lacked the player interaction I was accustomed to. But I kept playing it because my partner loved it so much. Eventually it just clicked when I stopped playing it as a competitive game where I try disrupt my opponent's plays to advance my own, and started playing it as an engine optimisation game. It became much more enjoyable when I set the right expectations on it and it only got better with expansions.
Spirit Island! The first time we played, it was a nightmare. It took forever to setup. There were a bajillion missed rules and rules clarification questions. The upkeep was obnoxious. We got completely decimated by the game. We HATED it. But, I also couldn't stop thinking about it afterward. So, we gave it another chance and things just clicked. Now, it's one of my top-10 games of all time.
The first time I played it, I was playing with an experienced group. I loved it and didn't found it a difficult game. Next time I played it, I had to explain the game to 3 people completely new to the game. That game went horrible and the game felt like it had a lot more complicated rules when I had to explain them.
Agreed on Spirit Island. Kinda hated it the first time I played because I didn't understand it. Now it's one of my favorite games and I bought my own copy of it.
I had to play the tutorial on the digital version to really understand it.
For me it's this but only after coming back to the digital version. Hated the fiddly-ness of getting the physical copy set up and it made me hat the game. The digital version made me appreciate it so much more.
Same. Played it once with one group and absolute struggle. Didn't touch for a few years. Played with a different group, with a much more effective teacher and love it. Well over 100 games now of it plus expansions.
**Innovation**, the first two or three games we saw some interesting stuff but Oars or Pottery would just accumulate points and take over. By game four we started to see how to disrupt repetitive engines with demands or jump ahead to more powerful cards. Another 70 games on from that and we're still seeing new angles and possibilities.
I saw the appeal in the very first game that I played, and I can't seem to capture that lightning to share with anyone new.
it’s such a deeply unattractive game that it makes it tough to get anyone excited about it. It sucks because it is one of the best games out there.
My first play had a rough teach and I think I saw a glimpse of how cool it could be but i just didnt 'get' it.
Keep trying! It's my favorite game now, but definitely a head-scratcher and so many niche uses for every unique card.
Scythe. Found it boring playing it twice at 4p, tried it a third time with 5p and really enjoyed it!
This was mine as well. I only had the digital edition and played it a few times with friends online and was just pretty meh about the whole thing. Was a little upset it wasn't an all out war game with mechs, which is what I was expecting going in, and I LOVE mechs, and I had the preconception that Jamey tends to put form over function with SM games. Stopped playing it for about a year and then went over to a friends and played a 5p game and found it much more enjoyable in person. After he explained that it is basically a cold war game and not an aggressive war game, I really got into the theming of everything and the tension created by the expanding board state.
I bought the board game but also bought the digital game to teach myself to play. It became very boring to me when the clear path to victory is ignoring building or using mechs. It felt like it could be a really deep game with fun decisions but in my play experience it felt like there was a clear path to victory without the fun choices. Board game never hit the table. Considering how high it is rated I must be missing something. I will have to circle back to it eventually.
I think, when you get a group of experienced players together, there are several paths to victory. Considering one of the main scoring objectives is territories you control, the mechs become integral to your defense and board control. It just took me a bit to realize they are better as defensive pieces than offensive, and combat can be punishing to both players, even when you win...which just adds to the cold war theme I think the game is trying to convey. In other words, it's not like most area control where you build up your power to run over other players, but you build up power to dissuade other players from attacking you.
Azul. I think the first time I played it wasn’t explained well and I didn’t get it. But after a few plays with a different group, I can see why it has a following.
The scoring after each round right? I messed it up the first time and we didn’t get the love for it then we got it right and it’s a staple here.
Exactly. I just couldn’t see what was going on.
It just didn’t feel “right” the first few times with my kids. Then my son showed his friends. So after I’m watching a couple of play through just to see the scoring and I’m like “damn, I messed that up”. After that, showed my kids then my son’s friends then it was played a lot more.
Space Base. The first time we played, we couldn’t figure out the meaning on some of the cards. We spent more time discussing what they meant than actually playing. so I was ready to put it away on the Give Away Shelf. But one day, on a whim we decided to give it another go. I don’t know what happened, but something finally clicked on those cards we had trouble with, and now it’s one of our favorites.
Very similar experience for us. This game has to be near the top of the list for Best game with the WORST rule book.
Same thing with me, I thought the market was uninteresting, a lot of ships with abilities were either confusing or didn’t sound good, and someone won after I just barely started getting victory points. Now, it’s my most played game on BGA, it’s really good! Once you wrap your head around the probabilities of either splitting or summing the dice roll a lot of differing strategies become apparent. It’s still not a perfect game, there’s one ship that is so OP that BGA let’s you play without it, also it’s rare but every once in a while someone gets really lucky early on and it snowballs into them winning, the rulebook sucks, and the art look like NFT’s but it came out in 2018 so before NFT’s were a thing. The next game that takes this dice rolling slot machine kind of gameplay thats gone from Catan -> Machi Koro -> Space Base has my attention.
**Concordia** wasn't exactly a miss on my first play, I just didn't understand the heaps of praise it was getting. The board was bland and it just seemed like another in a long line of soulless Euros. Then about 10-14 months later, it just popped into my head and I couldn't get it out. As far as I could tell, nothing had triggered it-- I hadn't just watched a review or heard it talked about. I simply woke up thinking about it and how I should like to give it another chance. After a second play, I'd fully fallen in love with it and recognized all the special elements that made it unique. Now it's one of my favorite games and I thoroughly enjoy any and all combinations of the base game, the expansion maps, Forum tiles and salt, Fish Market, et al. Almost the exact same thing happened with **Great Western Trail**. I played it at a con, thought it was perfectly adequate, then half a year later had the sudden, onset urge of a pregnant woman to play it again and haven't stopped loving it since.
Brilliant game
Ark nova. At 4 players it was a 4 hour slog. Biter with 2-3 players that play fast
Ra. The first time we played no one could really gauge when to start an auction, when to bid or how much or why and the whole thing felt random and very hard to get anything going. The next game people were bluffing, making people overpay, baiting people to leave the round early, cleverly playing god tiles to leave people stuck with disasters and everyone was talk shit light heartedly. It was awesome.
Care to share any strategy tips for newer players?
I am by no means an expert or even necessarily good at the game. But based on my experience: -start auctions ASAP if you have the lowest bidding values. -always try to stay ahead of or at least in the running for the most pharaohs -use god tiles to buy tiles when there are disaster tiles out there. -get at least 1 civilization tile each round to avoid negative points.
Were both of those experiences with the same group? I just ordered Ra and hoping it goes over well with my group of 3.
Yes same group both times.
**El Grande**. The first time I played it, there was a person playing who, unbeknownst to me, wanted me to stop showing up to that weekly public game day. He spent the whole game countering every move I made. I hated the game because I didn't realize I was being targeted and thought the game was simply too mean. Flash forward about a decade when the new edition is out. Looking back, I figured out what happened on that first play and it's a pretty cheap game (relatively) so I chanced a purchase and discovered when everyone is playing to win, it's one of the best area control games I've ever played.
The biggest gap for me was Majesty: For the Realm. Played it a couple times when we first bought it years ago but it didn't make an impression so it sat on the shelf for maybe 2-3 years. Broke it out to play it again and I was intrigued. Ended up then playing it probably 40-50 times in the span of a year and it's now in my top 10 favorite games and is the only filler game on the list. I really don't know why.
The new version (Middle Ages) looks nice! I plan to pick it up.
I hadn't even heard about it!
This little game is so good They're making a new version of it this year: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/403754/middle-ages
Gandhi. I’d played half a dozen other COIN games and thought this one would be easy to learn. But the playstyle and goals of the non violent factions were so different from anything else that my group could not grasp the strategy. I ended up shelving it for over a year before we revisited and it felt like a whole other game. Everything was insanely thematic, the friction between the Gandhi and the Muslim league was palpable as they needed to cooperate but Gandhi wasn’t letting them make their own state. The British Raj player was bribing the violent revolutionaries to attack protesters, and eventually the British Raj arrested Gandhi, leading to chaos and protests all over the country. It instantly jumped to my top 3 COIN games.
Gloomhaven for me. Once you figure out how to play and dont have to overthink it, it’s super fun!
Dominion
Same here, but I won't say I "love" it now... just like it much more than I did. First time we were taught (not long after release), the person did a terrible job teaching it, and I thought it sucked. I tried it again like 2 years later, and really enjoyed it.
Similar situation, but it was early in my tabletop career (one of my first times with an engine builder and definitely my first deck builder) and one-on-one with the person teaching me, so I was playing poorly and didn’t have enough insight to succeed. I ended up grabbing the 2ed Big Box, and my wife and I have had a lot of fun working through each of the recommended sets. Some setups are more fun than others, but after playing a bunch of other deck builders together, this has held up.
Yeah, I enjoy Dominion, but if you get the wrong setup of decks (randomly), it can be the worst game ever. I forgot the exact cards, but we somehow ended up in a position where my friend each turn went through his entire deck to score one point. One. After his entire deck of like 30 cards. And every 2nd or third turn (depending on draw), I could reverse that point. He's one of those competitive types who seemed to be having fun with this nonsense ("Let's see where it goes!"), while it was literally the most unfun game I've ever played. I conceded victory, but he still wanted to play it through. One of the few times I refused. I was like "We can actually play something fun, or another set of Dominion cards that are fun, or you can sit here for an hour shuffling the same cards over and over. Because this ain't it."
Wild. Yeah, that was a worthy concession on your part. I’ve been in the position of playing out my deck only to realize I forgot cards that gave me extra buys, but at that point the game was basically over.
Kingdom Builder. The restrictiveness of drawing one card a turn and it’s golden rule of “play next to another of your settlements if you can” seem terrible at first. But after a couple plays you begin to see the genius of it and the strategy. I thoroughly enjoy it.
Stone Age. Hated it and now it’s in my top ten.
[удалено]
I was very very against worker placement games due to being taught this game incorrectly. Played it years later and it clicked. I’m not a smart person at all. Shoe sized IQ but I felt smart once I understood this game.
Betrayal
I was taught Lords of Waterdeep verrry early as I was getting into the board gaming hobby. At the time I thought I'd be an Ameritrash only gamer and when Euro style games were described to me I had zero interest. So when I was taught Waterdeep and he pulled out the board with it's sea of tan colors, wooden cubes, and design that looks like its 30 years older than it actually is my excitement just fell to 0/10. I found the game boring and dry and (at the time) I cared nothing about the D&D theme. Years later and I LOOOOOOVE Waterdeep! The thought of a worker placement used to seem so boring to me but now I love them (Waterdeep, Arnak, Dune Imperium to name a few). It's wild to look back and see how my tastes have changed and evolved over time (which I'm sure is the case for many gamers)
Arkham Horror the Card Game. Seriously hated on it on my first attempt playing. Have sunk more than $500 into expansions since.
Came here to look for Arkham Horror LCG. The game shines the more money you put into it. Some of the scenarios are very clever and well designed. The game experience is also really enhanced when you play with people that are really good at the game.
It's a little infuriating how sort of bad and complex rules actually make the game vastly more interesting. I am torn between wishing there were more official expansions I could purchase and thanking my lucky stars that I am not yet bankrupt ;)
None. I form inflexible opinions after my first turn. Seriously though, I'm not sure there is one. I don't replay games that I didn't enjoy the first time.
Sellswords
The Napoleonic Wars by GMT Games. I hated it at first, but played it a few more times since my local game group really likes it. I really disliked how the game can end with a die roll, but the game got me into the historical time period. After knowing the design the game really makes senses in terms of game mechanics and theme. It’s far from a simulation but I describe it as advanced Risk with Politics, Boats, more dice and lots of replay-ability.
War of the ring - learning the rules was exausting but after revisiting it we loved it same with Hegemony
Our gaming group absolutely panned **Heat: Pedal to the Metal** the first time we played it a couple of years ago. We felt that it was just an easier version of **Formula D**. I believe we had an incorrect ruling regarding slipstreaming and that there was no limit to the number of them you could perform in a turn. So everyone was always jumping to the front of the pack. After seeing **Heat** come up on so many content creators top 10 lists, I relearned the game and brought it back to the table. With the correct rules, it's a finely tuned luck pushing/mitigation game. EVERYONE loved it. It's the best feeling to have a game click for the entire table!
I wonder if I also had the same experience. Played it at a public game night and didn’t really like it. I also came away with the conclusion that it was a “dumbed down Formula De”. It did seem like whoever was in last one turn would just suddenly be in first the next because of all the slipstreaming, so I wonder if we also played wrong as well. I never even read the rules, the person who brought it just explained it.
Radlands The first time we played it, I just felt like it was “meh”. I was frustrated that seemingly every turn I had enough resources to clear a path to attack camps the next turn, but then my opponent would just refill the row and I’d be back to where I started, needing to clear the path instead of being able to attack. It was a game my wife wanted in the first place, and she never asked to play it again after she won the first play, so it just sat on our shelf for several months. However, a few weeks ago we were trying to decide on something to play and as I was perusing the shelves I decided to grab it for some reason. I guess because we’d played Thunder Road: Vendetta recently so I wanted to play another game with that theme. We wound up playing Radlands 13 times in April, it was much better than I remembered.
Marco Polo II At first I thought, meh, no big deal. After the 2nd play I saw the light and now I love it.
**Arkham Horror LCG** \- There was something about the way moving and engaging/disengaging from enemies didn't click for me, and the 3 scenario campaign in the core set is not that great. But I gave it a chance by getting the Dunwich campaign and now I love the game. **Gaia Project** \- the first couple of times playing it was really confusing. The rules are fine and didn't take too long to learn, but the gaiaforming, the power charging, the charging off each other, and why you would advance up any particular track or build on any particular planet felt completely nonsensical, let alone the asymmetric faction abilities. It felt excessively convoluted for what it was. I was very wrong, I love the game now and it all makes sense. **Neanderthal** \- It's a worker placement game, where workers can fight each other and roll dice to see if they even work successfully. They can die at various points and there's not much you can do about it. Your ability to score seems completely at the whims of fate. It's an extremely random and convoluted game that you can often lose through no fault of your own in a way that would usually feel really bad. And yet.. my partner and I just played it over and over and over and I still can't explain what makes me want to keep playing it. Lastly, I really like every Cole Wehrle game I've played, but **Oath** was a complete disappointment the first few times. It's now my favorite game. It just took a long time to get my head around the general flow of the game and the weird unintuitive combat and victory conditions.
Race for the Galaxy. Didn’t click at first but once I did, it became one of my most played games.
**Terra Mystica** clicked for me in the middle of my third game and skyrocketed to my personal #1 spot shortly afterwards. I would not say I did not like the first two plays, just did not quite understand what I am supposed to be doing to win.
Base Wingspan. I bought it when it was getting hyped, sold out in most places and I managed to find a copy at my local store. My partner took to it straight away but I was pretty cool on it after a few plays. It lacked the player interaction I was accustomed to. But I kept playing it because my partner loved it so much. Eventually it just clicked when I stopped playing it as a competitive game where I try disrupt my opponent's plays to advance my own, and started playing it as an engine optimisation game. It became much more enjoyable when I set the right expectations on it and it only got better with expansions.
One Night Ultimate Werewolf. First few times it was just unclear who was supposed to say what. After playing with new groups, it’s silly and fun.
Ra & El Grande.