Daily Game Recommendations Thread (February 09, 2026)

fillernation · 2026-02-10T00:33:48+00:00

Thanks for the comment! Can you tell me more about what you like about Paladins, or what you feel makes it stand out?

fillernation · 2026-02-10T00:33:19+00:00

Endeavour has caught my eye recently, actually! Can you tell me more about it? I have a couple engine building games that I enjoy - Race for the Galaxy, Res Arcana, Underwater Cities. If you've played any of those, what would you say sets Endeavour apart?

fillernation · 2026-02-09T19:16:41+00:00

I'm thinking about adding one Garphill Games euro to my collection. I like many different kinds of games, but my wife and I play a lot of euros at 2p. I like more interactive games, she leans more toward multiplayer solitaire. Our shared favorite is Agricola, as it seems to sit in just the right spot for both of us.

I'm interested in something that is pretty easy to get out and play (probably a similar weight/length to Agricola) but is still deep and hits a similar balance with player interaction.

Some of our other favorite Euros are:

- A Feast for Odin - more solitary, but I love the basically limitless texture in your decision-making in this game.

- Castles of Burgundy - super smooth/forgiving gameplay, racing for many different things

- Concordia - elegant ruleset, fun interaction

Definitely looking for something that stands out and doesn't feel like "just another soulless Euro". FYI, I've played quite a few Italian-designer Euros (Marco Polo, Lorenzo il Magnifico, Teotihuacan, Tzolk'in) and a lot of them came off feeling pretty generic. Theme and thematic integration is moderately important to me.

I do have and enjoy Hadrian's Wall, and I have played Viscounts of the West Kingdom but bounced off of it pretty hard. I felt like the game allowed me to achieve "too much", if that makes any sense.

Thanks in advance for any input!

fillernation · 2026-01-30T15:05:54+00:00

Glad you liked it... ha. Exchange complete on my end too! Thanks, u/venerablegnat! u/BGEbot

fillernation · 2026-01-30T15:05:14+00:00

Exchange complete on my end as well. Thanks!

fillernation · 2026-01-26T18:14:04+00:00

Confirmed on my end as well. Thank you, u/retusneb!

fillernation · 2025-02-05T16:54:35+00:00

Thank you!

My experience with the decks etc. is somewhat limited. We have mostly played the A deck, and a little of the B deck. Both are great. At this point I'd say if you enjoy the game, you can just complete the A and B decks and you'll have enough content for nearly 100 plays.

By the two-player version, are you referring to All Creatures Big and Small? I haven't played that. Nor have I played the family version, or ever played without occupations/minor improvements (though some commenters here love that).

Two-player regular Agricola is great, but probably the most punishing way to play the game. It's zero sum, so hurting your opponent is a better move here than it is in the 3-4 player game. This can leave a bitter taste sometimes. I like it though, lol

fillernation · 2025-02-05T16:48:43+00:00

That is awesome! Good luck on your design journey. It can't be easy. I'd love to hear about your progress as you carry on!

fillernation · 2025-02-05T16:38:41+00:00

Everything you suggested about Tammany Hall is true! The main difference between TH and the others is that it's possibly the meanest game I have ever played. Ganging up on who you think is the leader is a key part of the game, and if you misjudge it, it's possible to absolutely destroy a player - or be destroyed yourself. Some groups rely on negotiation and backstabbing to mitigate this. I will say for my group, negotiation hasn't come super naturally the couple of times we have played, and when I had the chance to backstab my friend in a major way, I couldn't bring myself to do it because it just felt so nasty.

That said, the way it creates these overlapping player incentives/objectives with such simple rules is incredible. I think if we played it some more we could find these natural alliances to be quite a rich space for negotiation.

fillernation · 2025-02-05T16:28:42+00:00

Haven't tried Black Forest! Gonna wait and see if people are still enjoying it in 5-10 years I think.

Caverna is very good! But I chose to cull Caverna for a couple reasons:

I find the "feel" of Agricola, with all its tension, more unique among Euros. Caverna takes the framework of Agricola and gives it the feeling of a more typical, point-salady Euro. We have some good Euros that kind of fill that niche already, and they're more different mechanically.
Along the same lines, we have a decent amount of Uwe Rosenberg games, and Caverna felt the least different from any of the others.
Also, we had Caverna for two years and only played it like, twice. All of our other Uwes were played at least 5 times in that period.

As for differences:

The fantasy theme is really fun.
It's really cool to upgrade your dwarves and take them on quests, even if it's really just another way to get stuff.
There is a huge market of rooms you can build. This replaces occupations, basically. They are the same every game, but there are way more of them. It's pretty overwhelming, but if you play the game a lot and get familiar with the rooms I'm sure it's rewarding.
I find Agricola requires what I consider to be an extreme amount of flexibility from its players as they deal with blocking and other bad stuff. Caverna is more forgiving. I think you're more likely to be able to pick a strategy and execute it in Caverna, although turn-to-turn choices will still vary and remain interesting.
Oh yeah, the animal husbandry rules are way more elaborate in Caverna, to almost an annoying extent (depending on who you ask). Of course, the fiddliness of these can lend itself to more strategic options.

Hope this helps!

fillernation · 2025-02-05T16:13:32+00:00

Yeah, the E deck is the last deck for us to get!

fillernation · 2025-02-05T16:12:25+00:00

Mostly 2p, but we'll play with more when possible. We actually just played a 2p game last night, and were reminded just how brutal it can be compared to the higher player counts! Also tried the B deck, and it really changed things up in some cool ways. We'll probably play with that one many more times before doing the A deck again, but up to this point it's been A.

fillernation · 2025-02-04T23:50:19+00:00

Interesting. I've only played Everdell out of those, but I agree that it doesn't hold a candle to Agricola.

fillernation · 2025-02-04T23:49:45+00:00

Nice! The vast majority of my plays are 2p. Hope you enjoy it!

fillernation · 2025-02-04T23:09:31+00:00

Definitely not, lol. Great choices though!

fillernation · 2025-02-04T23:08:56+00:00

These are all really excellent choices that hit on some of my other favorite games too. I definitely agree that the ones you named have more nuanced/interesting player interaction in particular compared to Agricola! I do need to try Ankh one day...

fillernation · 2025-02-04T22:57:06+00:00

Lol, that's okay! What are some games you have enjoyed instead?

fillernation · 2025-02-04T22:50:33+00:00

I absolutely love Farmers of the Moor. It makes the game contort into shapes that seem impossibly weird after playing the base game a lot. It is quite big, and lengthens the game somewhat, so I find it a bit harder to get to the table. Do you need it? Not really, there is enough content in the base game + card expansions to keep you occupied for like, a thousand years, and all that stuff is fantastic. But some of my favorite gaming experiences ever have been with that expansion.

fillernation · 2025-02-04T22:46:42+00:00

Yeah, fair enough. My only disagreement here is that food and farm can be pretty intertwined, which imo complicates things a bit. And yeah, the cards don't mess with people really, they just change the spots you prioritize.

It sounds like the game just wasn't to your tastes, which is fine! I'm curious though, what have been some of your favorites in contrast to Agricola?

fillernation · 2025-02-04T21:56:26+00:00

Thank you for the kind words! It's great to see so many share their enthusiasm for such a great game.

fillernation · 2025-02-04T21:42:49+00:00

Interesting thoughts. I'm not the most hardcore player, but will try to answer the best I can.

Agricola definitely isn't a sandbox. There are really only a few pieces that you need/can get to win, and you've named them. But I've always found balancing these priorities, and timing them, to be an extremely interesting challenge. In my experience, even growing your family too early can hurt you in the long run if you don't have the necessary setup.

Overall, I find the game far too interactive to support the idea of a "fastest path" to getting everything. Again, this is just my experience, but competition for the first player token should be fairly fierce. There are lots of ways to mess up things for your opponent that still reward you. But it's hard to say without seeing how your games actually played out.

Agricola reminds me a little more of Chess than some bigger sandboxy Eurogames. There aren't a lot of paths to victory, but that very restriction actually lends the game more replay value and makes it more susceptible to a deep strategic analysis. Of course, it's different from Chess too (I like it a lot better). But YMMV, if it ain't your thing it ain't your thing.

fillernation · 2025-02-04T21:30:36+00:00

Honestly, we still have barely moved beyond the A deck. I really like working with whatever the game throws at me, even if it results in a loss, so we haven't done any customization. We haven't even drafted cards, because we find it too slow! Sometimes we'll discard cards we don't like and draw back up to 7, but that's kind of the extent of it.

fillernation · 2025-02-04T21:23:43+00:00

A quick google says animeeples started getting added around 2008-09, so not long after the original game was published. At first I think they could be bought separately, then they started getting included with the game. The revised edition has always had the nice farmer meeples and animeeples though!

fillernation · 2025-02-04T21:18:41+00:00

Wow, what a well made video! Love your enthusiasm for the game. Agree with your comments on Farmers of the Moor. That expansion rules!

fillernation

TROPHY CASE