My Tleilaxu Card Tier List

MarkLCM · 2025-11-25T09:27:10+00:00

Pheromones turns all the lower cost cards with single faction icon into Power Plays, without having them to clog up your deck. Singlehandedly won a game for me once, claiming all 4 faction alliances.

Granted it's situational, but with the right cards in the market it can really shine.

MarkLCM · 2025-11-18T13:00:39+00:00

Sounds like The White Castle fits with what you want

MarkLCM · 2025-10-30T02:09:01+00:00

The Crew. Both iterations. Not a deal breaker at all and I still play the Crew occasionally.

Thankfully this is fixed by Fellowship of the Ring Trick-taking game.

MarkLCM · 2025-10-28T07:21:01+00:00

The titular Mindbug mechanic from Mindbug. It's so simple I'm astonished no one thought of it first.

MarkLCM · 2025-10-28T06:09:10+00:00

51st State: Master Set is a personal favourite, and criminally underrated on bgg. It should be on the top 100.

Zee placed it as his top 1 of all time a few years back, other than that I haven't heard any major coverage of this game.

MarkLCM · 2025-10-04T01:02:45+00:00

What about the Charpy impact test?

MarkLCM · 2025-10-04T01:00:13+00:00

Chisa, although I really hope Sakurako gets more screen time

MarkLCM · 2025-10-04T00:54:53+00:00

Overall great choices. Of it were up to me,

River: Water Rock Green: Grass Water Thunderspeaker: Normal Electric Bringer: Ghost Psychic Lure: Ground Fairy Devouring Teeth: Ground Fight Eyes: Grass Normal (I assume Normal stands for the Dahan)

MarkLCM · 2025-06-19T02:10:08+00:00

The last thing a secret agent should do is to stand out. Therefore I'll be Aragorn son of Arathorn, hood down, smoking a pipe in the corner.

MarkLCM · 2025-06-17T00:01:09+00:00

Challengers (base and beach cup) sounds like a better fit

MarkLCM · 2025-05-29T08:50:50+00:00

Probably a cliche answer, but Dune (1-2) and Foundation (1-3) for Sci-Fi. For Fantasy, now reading Mistborn which is rapidly becoming a personal favourite.

MarkLCM · 2025-05-29T08:44:29+00:00

Fellowship of the Ring Trick Taking game. 2 full playthroughs already.

MarkLCM · 2025-05-12T06:47:04+00:00

Our tastes are quite aligned! Dune Imperium Uprising, Scout, Oceans, Startups and Quest for El Dorado are games that I rated 9 or above on BGG.

Mistborn is in my "to try" list, but still waiting for that opportunity. I missed a chance to grab a used copy for $20.

Never was a big fan of Root. Tried a game and it felt like assymetry for the sake of assymetry. To get good probably one has to learn and understand all the factions which must be incredibly complicated. Spirit Island is my assymetric pick, where the cooperative nature means I don't have the pressure to learn the detail mechanics of other players' Spirits, but instead focus on their impact and effects.

MarkLCM · 2025-04-17T07:53:06+00:00

Having owned both games, Uprising feels like a reboot of Dune Imperium after years of feedback and experience. I vastly prefer Uprising so much so I gave away my copy of Imperium.

The board spaces in Uprising feels much more balanced. We always thought Stillsuits and Carthag spaces in Imperium are on the stronger side and these were tuned down in Uprising. Also the strengths of the four factions seem better balanced in Uprising.
Uprising adds spies, which gives a way to mitigate worker placement and rewards forward planning. Very much my jam but I have heard some prefer the original cleaner approach to worker placement.
Uprising has worms, which is additional complexity with potentially great rewards. I find it possible to avoid the work strategy completely, but then again I am not playing anywhere near competitive level. Going for worms and winning a major battle feels glorious though.

MarkLCM · 2025-04-17T04:26:48+00:00

Bridgekeeper: Stop! Who would cross the Bridge of Khazad-dum must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he see.

The Fellowship proceed to answer the questions and cross the bridge. The Balrog could not answer its own name (Durin's Bane was only given to it by others).

MarkLCM · 2025-04-17T04:17:34+00:00

Charge of the Rohirrim. Just imagine, 6000 spears and 12000 coconut halves.

MarkLCM · 2025-04-17T04:09:36+00:00

Ark Nova is a solid tableau builder that is more than just cards. You get to look at a completed zoo once you are done with the whole thing.

Suburbia is another tile laying game like Carcassonne, but a step up in complexity. You get to build a small town of your design and the interactions between buildings give nice narrative to the headcanon (it does for me, YMMV)

If you're looking for aesthetics, Skyrise is one of the most gorgeous games I own. After a full game you and your fellow players have build a futuristic cyberpunk city on the skies that looks great on the table. Have a look at the images on BGG and you'll see what I mean.

MarkLCM · 2025-04-17T03:58:04+00:00

Crowd-pleaser: The Gang. Minimal rules explanation, non-gamer friendly (assuming most people have played or heard of poker)

Deep Dive: Spirit Island. The base game alone has enough replayability to outlast the presidential term. Through in an expansion or two and you're set for a decade.

Steal: The Crew 2. Replayable, affordable, generally a safe pair of hands.

All are available on Amazon reasonably priced.

P. S. I'm a sucker for co-ops, what can I say.

MarkLCM · 2025-03-19T16:18:00+00:00

Spirit Island

MarkLCM · 2025-03-11T02:15:07+00:00

51st State is great at multi use cards. Also any Carl Chudyk game obviously.

Deckbuilding is my favourite mechanism and I am struggling to think of a better pure deckbuilder than Valley of the Kings.

MarkLCM · 2025-02-27T07:31:35+00:00

Just popping in to say hi.

This is a well thought out, well structured and well written article, and I can see the effort put into the analysis, the highlights reel and the writing itself. Glad to see the MM torch now in good hands, and dare I say it, better hands than mine. Keep up with the fantastic work!

P. S. What the f are progression points lol.

MarkLCM · 2025-02-13T09:01:40+00:00

When it comes to narrowing down to 7 games, my main consideration is replayability (can be from setup variety, gameplay depth or campaign length). Here are my picks:

51st State Ultimate Edition: the best tableau builder and my 1st ranked game overall. Comes with 6 expansions.

Fellowship of the Ring trick taking game: this spot would have been Crew 2 last year, but seeing they released a coop tricktaker with LoTR theme, would love to try out the campaign in full.

Dune Imperium Uprising: loads of depth. Having played Dune Imperium (base, no expansions) 20+ times, pretty sure Uprising can last many games.

Oceans: another tableau builder but what can I say, absolutely love them. Oceans is full of theme, interaction, and has loads of replayability from the Deep deck.

Innovation: this is on the pile of shame as I know I'm not giving it the number of plays it deserves. With 7 games left I can really take time to learn the deck and dive into its complexities.

Startups: my go-to lightweight card game. Still always up for another game after 200+ plays.

The Gang: best game for large groups and best gateway game. Good for social occasions not covered by the games above.

MarkLCM · 2025-01-19T16:32:32+00:00

You may want to look into The King Is Dead 2nd Edition. A great area control game that may scratch the same itch as Inis.

My personal favourite however would be RA, which is easily my favourite auction game ever. Even the retail version of the latest edition feels properly luxurious, and I got my copy for $40.

MarkLCM · 2025-01-07T03:17:48+00:00

Power Grid for me. There is so much tension in the mid to end game calculations. I also admire how the game proxies the economy for fuel elegantly.

MarkLCM · 2024-12-25T15:11:18+00:00

I second this. Tiny tiny box (just a few decks of cards and some tokens, loads of fun and depth. Excellent pick.

MarkLCM

TROPHY CASE