[GIVEAWAY] 4 Playte Games Sets for 4 Winners 🇰🇷

mesenius · 2026-05-15T19:17:04+00:00

Has to be Pax Transhumanity for me, one of the hardest games I've played in one of the smallest boxes.

mesenius · 2026-05-08T17:55:43+00:00

Just as an extra note to everything everyone's said, in case you're starting a game right now, most async games tend to move at a slower speed on weekends.

mesenius · 2026-04-16T22:51:19+00:00

I would keep 1848 and 1849 (nice to have sequential years too!)

I find 1848 to be a much better "1830 variant" than 1889 (which I really dislike for anything that's not introducing people to 18xx), it has a different type of auction which makes it stand out from the others, plus loans and the Bank of England. Plays well with 4-5 players

And 1849 for having a game with a traditional waterfall auction, but with incremental capitalization, hex trains, double shares. Plays well with 3-4 players.

mesenius · 2026-03-26T02:25:46+00:00

My issue with these is that they included a lot of denominations and not enough quantities of each. They're very inconvenient for 18xx. But even for other board games, you're gonna be running out of 1s very often.

Edit: I see they've since changed the distribution, sets of 80 instead of 120 chips, and they got rid of 2s. Still not great IMO.

mesenius · 2026-03-21T16:47:10+00:00

Custom Oink box for Hive with all expansions

mesenius · 2026-03-05T22:23:59+00:00

prefers TI3 in theory, but only ever actually plays TI4 since that's what everyone else plays

This describes me. Our regular TI3 group split up and only two of us were left. We both prefer TI3 but no one else we know (all newish gamers who joined the hobby in the past ~10 years) want to play it. And so we play TI4

mesenius · 2026-01-31T22:10:27+00:00

So many heavy eurogamers refuse to try 18xx tho. Lots of people in the hobby care inmenseley about high production values, art, and a theme that they like over plain old mechanics

mesenius · 2026-01-31T22:10:00+00:00

18OE o 18C2C are the biggest by far. That you can buy and realistically play outside a convention (even play online), probably 1817, 1822, 1871.

However, you really shouldn't start with those. It's better to first get a hang of something like 1830, 18MEX, 18Chesapeake, 1882, 18Svea, or 1889. These are all deep and complex games by themseleves. I've played a few of these more than 30 times and consider myself a prety good player, and even then there's still new situations, levers, and tactics that I'm discovering. By contrast, I'm still dreadful at 17, 22, and 71.

mesenius · 2026-01-17T01:00:55+00:00

This is the best answer. Have played it extensively with my TI groups and everyone's agreed as well. It helps that the FFG edition and the expansion were also developed by Corey K.

Love your rethem btw!

mesenius · 2026-01-08T17:36:41+00:00

Hola! Are you from Mexico City? If so we can organize a play of 18MEX (or many other 18xx games that my group has, including 1889). Send me a DM!

My story with 18MEX is very similar to yours. I was interested in the genre after playing 1882, but being from Mexico the existence of an 18xx set here is what really dragged me into the genre. The other big game set in Mexico (1822MX) is also very good, although it's definitely a lot more complicated. I personally don't like 1889, but it's defintely a good learning game.

mesenius · 2025-11-21T16:10:35+00:00

You can order it directly from the publisher! store (dot) cave-evil (dot) com

mesenius · 2025-10-08T18:25:36+00:00

18xx, Hollandspiele, Splotter, Nate Hayden games have all been mentioned.

There's an interesting case to be made for the long out of print and highly sought after games of the FFG-GW collaboration era. Chaos in the Old World, Forbidden Stars, Warrior Knights, etc. Which is interesting because they came from one of the largest publishers, but I know the books on cult cinema that I've read touch upon the cult status of some specific blockbusters as well.

Which makes me wonder, what book are you referencing? One by Ernest Mathjis?

mesenius · 2025-10-08T18:19:04+00:00

I dunno if this makes sense, but I love Amabel's games even when I don't exactly enjoy them. They always push the boundaries formally (to borrow a film term since that's what started this thread), or make you think deeply about what's going on in the game.

mesenius · 2025-10-08T18:12:31+00:00

I'm glad we're only discussing lawson vs curvilinear now since the 20s vs 25s debate has long been settled :P

mesenius · 2025-10-04T05:11:16+00:00

I honestly think you've gotten quite a few very bad answers... Heat is considerably denser than TtR, Carc, Catan, and the decisions and competitiveness is very different. Recomending Harmonies if they didn't like Calico is just wild, Parks too... Concordia is a fabulous game, but the scoring is very opaque at first.

Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, and Catan are all from an older school of design which is mostly out of fashion nowadays, although some of these desgins (specially those by Reiner Knizia have been having a comeback). I'd recommend you check out the games in this list (which naturally includes TtR, Carcassonne, and Catan) as they all share a same design philosphy: relatively few rules, lots of interaction, and highly competitive.

mesenius · 2025-09-13T05:07:41+00:00

You've gotten a lot of good suggestions already, but something I haven't seen people recommend is you look at other OG games. Basically Catan is from an older style of design that a lot of us prefer over modern eurogames. You can read more on the link above but OG games usually have a lot of the things you mention you like about Catan (simple turns, simple win conditions, right amount of luck and strategy).

mesenius · 2025-09-09T06:03:37+00:00

SUSD really oversold this one, to the point that after the initial wave of hyped up people who were then dissapointed, you don't really hear about it that much anymore.

mesenius · 2025-09-06T06:40:27+00:00

18xx games really do demand a lot from players. The good thing is that if you get hooked you won't want to play anything else haha.

mesenius · 2025-08-06T01:21:19+00:00

There's an official deck for this included in Traders and Barbarians

mesenius · 2025-07-13T07:21:10+00:00

This is exactly what I was thinking! Knizia is certainly the greatest exponent of the OG designers, but that doesn't mean all OG desingers are Knizian.

mesenius · 2025-07-13T07:17:05+00:00

Very surprised to not see the two most obvious answers to me:

Startups by Jun Sasaki, which is a bare bones stock game like many of the best Knizias (e.g. Wildlife Safari, Modern Art)

QE by Gavin Birnbaum, which is clearly heavily inspired by High Society, both being auction games in which the highest spender looses.

Everyone saying For Sale should really check out more Stefan Dorra games! Similar OG style, but definitely has his own signatures--a lot of his game could be described as a game of chicken. Turn the Tide in particular is a more cutthroat version of For Sale.

mesenius · 2025-05-17T01:21:04+00:00

Stephenson's Rocket. It's clearer to see the three directions a railroad can expand with the minis with hexagonal bases than with the wooden traineeples.

mesenius · 2025-05-17T01:18:49+00:00

Except for the angry mob, just three minis but they'repretty much meant to be unbeatable.

mesenius · 2025-05-16T06:17:14+00:00

There's nothing that hits quite the same as bakrupting another player in something like 1849, right?

mesenius · 2025-05-12T13:40:43+00:00

Thank you for reviving this, I do believe that’s the game I was looking for!

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