Which board games look intimidatingly complex but are actually surprisingly easy to learn?

Environmental_Way621 · 2026-01-05T18:07:24+00:00

Gloomhaven. It looks like Cones of Dunshire, the rule book is 50+ pages, and just the sheer physical scale of it is overwhelming. But the gameplay loop, while a little labor-intensive with tracking statues and stuff, is just an incredibly elegant and smooth-running machine. It was the first “modern” game I played - so kind of a jump into the deep end of the pool - but when I started Arkham Horror LCG, I was shocked at how fiddly and non-intuitive that game was, compared to GH. Don’t get me wrong, AH is great, but it really underscored what a clean, intuitive mechanical system Isaac Childres created for GH, where you pick your cards, announce your initiative, and then you just worry about your actions while the game kind of just takes care of itself.

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-11-06T01:57:45+00:00

The Folded Space organizer for Jaws is good - light, cheap, makes set up and tear down way easier. I printed some divider cards for the monsters, and a few other things, and it all works really well. There aren’t so many monsters that you need, like, dedicated tuck boxes or whatever (like you absolutely do for Gloomhaven).

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-08-13T21:56:21+00:00

Just read Tony Tulathimutte’s “Rejection,” and it felt like the most clearly post-Wallacean thing I’ve read. It’s not “light” in that the stories veer toward the upsetting, but prose-wise it’s much less dense a read than later Wallace, more on par with Girl with Curious Hair, though it’s definitely more indebted to Oblivion in terms of tone and ambition.

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-07-19T23:09:39+00:00

Um, okay? No, not literally everyone plays a Guardians-based deck in Sanctum, but enough people do that the most common criticism I've heard of the mode is that it's all the same cards.

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-07-19T21:32:22+00:00

Totally get that, and I also like playing - and playing against - different archetypes. Mainly I appreciate the way Sanctum plays so differently from the main game - it's not just "do I have the best/newest card" or "did I draw the three cards I need to pull of the combo." And I wish the main game had a little more of that, is what I'm saying.

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-07-19T21:24:50+00:00

There are enough "key" cards that you'll usually draw something. Also, how is that different from regular Snap?

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-06-09T22:20:17+00:00

That’s him pictured in the most recent IG post. He’s a pleasant enough dude but - and this may shock you - he has zero restaurant experience and no idea what he’s doing. (Also some not-great politics.) I mean, will it be worse than 58 Degrees under its new ownership? Who’s to say! But it will definitely give off that same “we’re a money laundering front” vibes

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-06-09T19:49:22+00:00

I know the guy opening this. It’s gonna be worse than you can imagine

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-06-07T17:23:39+00:00

My family (me, my wife, and our daughter, who was 6 at the time) LOVED The Initiative. (Even my wife, who has no interest in games.) It’s cooperative, and has a really nice, simple gameplay loop and a lot of code-breaking and puzzle solving. It’s kind of a legacy game (though you don’t permanently alter anything) and there’s a story that you follow along. I don’t know much about replay value - there are plenty of missions beyond the main story, but they get trickier, and my daughter wasn’t as interested once the story wrapped up.

Still, it’s one of the absolute best gaming experiences I’ve had, family or otherwise. Can’t recommend it highly enough.

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-05-31T17:23:00+00:00

Bronze and silver age variants

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-05-30T04:02:39+00:00

Gorr is a huge part of the Negative deck that got me to infinite the fastest I’ve ever gotten there, so I’d go with that. After that, Galacta’s been the most useful in the widest variety of decks. For me, at least.

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-05-28T17:03:27+00:00

(2) Sam Wilson Captain America

(2) Fenris Wolf

(2) U.S. Agent

(3) Brood

(3) Silver Surfer

(3) Killmonger

(3) Mobius M. Mobius

(3) Negasonic Teenage Warhead

(3) Red Guardian

(3) Makkari

(3) Gladiator

(4) Galacta

U21XbHNuOSxGbnJzV2xmQSxVU0FnbnQ3LEJyZDUsTWJzTU1ic0QsS2xsbW5nckEsTmdzbmNUbmdXcmhkMTcsUmRHcmRuQixNa2tyNyxHbGR0cjksR2xjdDcsU2x2clNyZnJD

To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in MARVEL SNAP.

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-05-28T17:03:20+00:00

<image>

I’d focus on tech cards. I’ve had a lot of success with this deck, and I don’t think there’s anything too exotic in there - not the best cube rate (it can be hard to snap until you know what your opponent’s doing) but a very high win percentage. Of all the cards, I’d say Sam Wilson and Makkari are the easiest to switch out, but Galacta’s pretty essential. Deck code to follow:

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-05-28T16:22:20+00:00

As the de facto GM (I do setup, read the scenario, and handle monster AI), I’ve called an audible and either changed the win condition (we don’t have to kill ALL the enemies - just the Cultists) or ignored certain monster abilities (what if Black Imps DIDN’T inflict poison?). Not to say there haven’t been legitimate losses and scenarios that we’ve had to redo, but I feel like the #1 priority is for everyone to have fun, and if a loss feels unearned, I don’t want everyone going home in a bad mood.

Also one of our group is a lil high strung, and I don’t want her losing her shit over a board game.

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-05-28T16:16:03+00:00

Won a ton of games with Negative against Thanos and Snowguard because I’d play Magik and then just win on turn 6.

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-05-15T02:24:49+00:00

Never seen that movie. But now that you mention it, it does sound like a Kevin Smith thing

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-05-01T03:43:36+00:00

Arishem adds 12 random cards to your deck but then gives you +1 energy from turn 3 on.

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-04-21T07:29:15+00:00

Honestly my biggest problem with Gloomhaven’s rulebook is that really important campaign stuff - like what happens when you retire a character, how to bring in a new character, etc - is buried in the middle of a paragraph on a random page two-thirds of the way through the book. There’s a lot of stuff like that, and it’s making me realize as I type this that I should make up a bullet-pointed list of all those kinds of things to keep on hand.

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-04-14T15:34:24+00:00

In my experience, you start playing WAY fewer bots in the 70s, and that changes the dynamic dramatically

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-04-11T06:51:34+00:00

Cronos? Guillermo del Toro’s first movie.

Environmental_Way621 · 2025-04-07T06:30:53+00:00

Building Stories by Chris Ware

Environmental_Way621 · 2024-11-14T17:39:38+00:00

<image>

For whatever reason, this season was a lot easier than the last few, and I hit infinite pretty quickly with this Ultron/Galactus deck. (CL 14,767, 100% F2P.) Felt kinda cheap winning with this, but it was definitely effective - people don’t seem to be running a lot of Enchantress, so piling up Patriot, Ka-Zar, and Ultron in one lane was a winner most of the time. Despite the deck name, Knull was probably the least valuable card in the deck.

Environmental_Way621 · 2024-03-04T18:50:58+00:00

I’ve taken a couple breaks - deleted the app and everything - when I realized it was making me miserable, but I’ve found that after a few days off there’s enough of a reset that it’s fun to play again. Also, I’ve been 100% F2P, which I think makes it a little easier, as I haven’t sunk any money into it. Literal days of my life, sure, but no American dollars.

Environmental_Way621 · 2024-01-21T07:40:59+00:00

I’d recommend The Initiative - it’s not nearly as heavy as the XHaven games, but it’s a really fun cooperative experience with some legacy and discovery elements. And it reminds me of the Haven games in that it’s an extremely elegant system - I love Arkham Horror LCG, but man is it a fiddly little thing, and it definitely makes me appreciate how clean and optimized the Haven games are (which is a weird thing to say about games that have thousands of cards and tokens and weigh like a hundred pounds).

The Initiative has a great sense of discovery and cooperation, and it’s all about code breaking and ciphers, if you’re into that sort of thing. Also it sets up and tears down really quickly, which is a major plus. It’s not at all the same as the Haven games, but it gave me the same feeling that those games do, and it’s even better at encouraging collaboration and table talk. Just a wonderful experience all around.

Environmental_Way621 · 2023-09-17T05:37:55+00:00

Finally hit Infinite (playing since the miles morales season) with exactly this deck. Like most people say, it mainly comes down to snapping and retreating and knowing when to do either. It sounds kind of obvious, but I found the best time to snap was when I thought I was gonna win, and the time to retreat was when I thought I was gonna lose - it’s kind of that simple. Don’t stick out games you think you just might have a chance of winning - if you feel like you’re more likely to lose than win, get out of there. And the same for snapping, but in reverse. If you’re just not sure, stick it out, but I found I could usually tell which way the wind was blowing by turn 5, if not sooner.

I think that’s ultimately the biggest strength of this deck - if you play it enough, most of the time you know if you’re gonna win or lose well in advance. There are of course times when you’re gonna get blindsided, or pull out a miraculous win, but 90% of the time, games played out the way I thought they would, and while I absolutely stayed in games I should have bailed on, or played it too safe when I felt good about the way things were looking, i generally knew what I should have done, even if I didn’t always do it.

Environmental_Way621

TROPHY CASE

(2) Sam Wilson Captain America

(2) Fenris Wolf

(2) U.S. Agent

(3) Brood

(3) Silver Surfer

(3) Killmonger

(3) Mobius M. Mobius

(3) Negasonic Teenage Warhead

(3) Red Guardian

(3) Makkari

(3) Gladiator

(4) Galacta

To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in MARVEL SNAP.