Operation: Game Night
Travis Smith, Jared Erickson, and Clay Gable get together to discuss the latest and greatest in board games in this weekly podcast. What's hot, what's hitting the table, featured discussions about board games and the board gaming culture, and the primary mission objective- to play more board games!
Operation: Game Night
OGN Ep 36: Game Recommendations by Player Count
How do you choose the perfect board game for your group size? While many games claim to support various player counts, most have a specific sweet spot where they truly shine. In this intimate, co-host episode, Clay and Travis break down their favorite games for every player count from one to eight players.
For solo gaming, Under Falling Skies and Warps Edge offer engaging, thematic experiences that keep you coming back for more. The duo discusses how two-player gaming has exploded recently with titles like Ironwood, Kelp Shark vs Octopus, and the classics like Schotten Totten creating perfect head-to-head experiences.
The conversation reveals some surprising picks for those tricky middle counts - Small World becomes a strategic masterpiece at three players, while trick-taking games like The Crew find their perfect form with exactly four players around the table. As the player counts increase, Clay and Travis highlight games with simultaneous actions and high player engagement like Modern Art (five players), Battlestar Galactica (six players), and Seven Wonders (appropriately best at seven).
Beyond game recommendations, the hosts discuss a troubling industry development as Final Frontier Games announces they can't fulfill their Kickstarter for Merchants Cove Mastercraft despite the games being manufactured. This leads to a broader conversation about how tariffs and logistics challenges might permanently reshape the board game industry and the types of games being produced.
Whether you're planning a solo gaming session or hosting a large game night, this episode provides the perfect guide to selecting games that will maximize enjoyment at every player count. The next time someone asks "What plays well with exactly five players?" - you'll have the answer ready!
Have a specific game night you need help planning? Reach out to Operation Game Night, and Clay and Travis will curate the perfect selection for your next tabletop gathering!
As always, come interact with us online, let us know if you have any feedback, and leave us a review/comment anywhere you get your favorite podcasts!
https://www.instagram.com/operation_game_night_podcast/
Show your support for the OGN Crew by contributing to the OGN War Chest:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2396881/support
Welcome to the Operation Game Night podcast, episode 36. Today, it's just the two of us. Joining me, as always, is my co-host, Clayton Gable. How you doing, Clay?
Speaker 2:It's good to be back in this intimate setting with you. I was experiencing a lot of FOMO when I watched back you and Jared's two-person episode and I was like you know, I need some one-on-one Travis time here soon, so it's good to be back.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Yeah, today we are talking best at X player games X not the Roman numeral, but X being the variable representing one through eight players. So we're going to go through one to eight players and list off some games that we think are great at those player counts. But first we are going to debrief our week and then we're going to go over the fence and talk about what we've been doing outside of board gaming. So, clayton, tell me what you've been playing this week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, first, part of my debrief here. I just want to get your opinion on a game night I had last night, because I'm pretty fired up about it. So my freshman year roommate at the Academy I don't know if you remember him, fergie, he was yeah. So he was my freshman year roommate, you know, did basic training together, all that. He's been out in Colorado Springs and we just haven't like sunk up at all. He's been out here for like a year. He's like dude, we got to get a game night in before you leave up at all. He's been out here for like a year. He's like dude, we gotta get a game night in before you leave. And so he just got engaged. We have only met his fiancee one time and he came over last night and before he came over I was like what type of games do you guys like looking to play?
Speaker 2:And he said curate me a sampling of 30 minute games. And so I was, I was, was, I was like, oh, heck, yeah, we can do that. So I just want to, I want your opinion on what I landed on and what we played. Okay, how it went. So the first game we played I had this one set up ahead of time because it required the most setup, which still isn't a lot, but it was Baron park, okay. Then we moved into for sale. Then we moved into For Sale, obviously. And following that we played River Valley Glassworks Okay, great. Then Coloretto, also great, yep. And then finished things off with a game of Mountain Goats. Ooh. So five 30-minute game samplings.
Speaker 2:I tried to hit some different genres with the auctioning and for sale. We had some dice rolling for mountain goats, some tile placement in baron park, a little card game with colorado, so so what do you? And river valley glassworks is like a, you know, collecting things type game, yeah. So I wanted to give them a good sampling of some 30 minute games that would be good for any collection. How do you think I did?
Speaker 1:that's pretty good, I uh. Colorado is like more trick-taking, correct?
Speaker 2:no, it's like where there's those hops in the middle of the table oh yeah, you're like you either take a hop for yourself or you play a card to one of them and you're trying to collect different colored chameleons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that one's. That one's pretty good. Uh yeah, yeah, I think that's the only like genre that I think that you really enjoy. That you're missing was trick taking.
Speaker 2:I know, I know I was. I had a couple at the ready in case we went into six different games. But yeah, no trick-taking last night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good lineup, though, and I think that's a pretty fun challenge. Yeah, you know, put together a game night for me with these parameters. I think that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's why we're out here at Operation Game Night. Yeah, maybe that should be our thing, like, let's just have people tell us about the game night they want to host and we, as operation game night, tell them how to curate the perfect game night.
Speaker 1:I like that. So if you're listening to this podcast and you want to host the game night and you are needing to know what games to play, go ahead and hit us up on Instagram or write to us in the comments on this post, on this YouTube, on this podcast, and tell us what type of game night you want to have and we can maybe cover that on our next episode. I like that, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I don't want to brag, but I think it went over really well. They seemed to have a really good time. They were receptive, quick learners of all the games Favorite games from the night I asked Fergie. His favorite was Baron park, okay, and Brianna's was river Valley glass works. And that was also the first time Mary had played river Valley glass works and she really liked that game Really. Yeah, it is a super quick game. Now we're playing on board game arena, so you know, I want to hop on there and give it a try because it's a fun one. Heck, yeah, that's awesome man. Yeah, all right, so that was my aside debrief, okay, and I have another tangent before I actually talk about a game. This happened this week and this is the first time this has happened to me. And this is the first time this has happened to me.
Speaker 2:I backed Merchants Cove Mastercraft three years ago. It has been my longest outstanding Kickstarter. I don't back a ton of Kickstarters, but a few weeks ago I got an update on the Kickstarter saying that the games were in the Fulfillment Center. Quartermaster Logistics they're ready to ship out. Get ready for your shipping notifications next week. The Kickstarter saying that the games were in the fulfillment center. Quartermaster logistics, they're ready to ship out. Get ready for your shipping notifications next week. Instead of the shipping notifications, I got this email basically saying we're not sending you your game. They've shuttered their doors.
Speaker 2:Wow, they cite a lot of reasons in this little backer note, but it seems like maybe CMON said they were going to pay them for a bunch of stuff and never did. They cite the tariffs. Obviously that's affecting the board game industry, but yeah, it's tough to know how to react to it, because obviously you don't want to see a company have to go out of business like this and, yeah, that tough decision. But also it's kind of weird that my game exists and it's sitting somewhere in the united states and they're not going to ship it to me. Like, yeah, I.
Speaker 2:And following the comments, people are fired up. You know there's there's some empathy out there, but there's a lot of people that I guess have been through this before and companies will like, literally like resell your games to make money, yeah, or quartermaster logistics might like they have these games. That final frontier isn't going to pay to ship, even though we already paid for shipping. They're not going to pay to ship them. So quartermaster logistics could just take that inventory and resell it to other people, which that doesn't rub me the right way. I hope. I hope there's some resolution here where they'll give us an option at least quartermaster logistics to pay for our shipping again and get the game, because I was excited about getting this one.
Speaker 2:Um, I really liked merchants code and I was excited about the new one. I really like Merchant's Cove and I was excited about the new stuff. But again, it's. You know, I read this. There's a lot of stuff in here. I feel bad for them as a company. I feel bad for the different backers, but I think this is going to be happening more and more in the coming months. I think I saw on another channel last week that greater than games might be shutting down, which is spirit island like. I mean, can you imagine a company that's made a freaking evergreen like spirit island is gonna have to shut their doors? It it's crazy times.
Speaker 1:You know, I follow a lot of games that I don't actually end up backing, but I follow them or save them just so I can kind of see the updates and get those notifications. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's really annoying. But you know, so many companies are putting out notifications now about, like here's how tariffs are impacting you, and I've found a lot of them are going out and asking their backers for more money, which is crazy. Like you know, it has happened before much to the board game community's chagrin that these companies will go out and say, hey, you know, we thought it was going to cost you this much to ship, but we need a little bit more money. Or, you know, production isn't going as smoothly as we want. We need more money and that's never received.
Speaker 1:Well, but the fact that it's happening so widely across the board, this I'm really curious to know how this shakes up the industry. Like if these tariffs stick around for a long time and there's so much uncertainty with the shipping and the logistics. Like, what does this do to the board game industry at large over the long term? Like if this happens for the next four years. Like do people go away from Kickstarter eventually? Do they just go straight to retail.
Speaker 1:Do you see more like smaller companies trying to sign those contracts with, like the big box stores like target and Walmart and all those big you know those types of companies? Like it's going to be really interesting to see how this shakes out and what that does, to be not only like production and the shipping and the logistics, but to the designs themselves. Do we go like more towards small box? Do we go more towards like mass-produced commercial type stuff it's going to be really interesting. Or do they completely redo their entire supply line and start producing somewhere else? Like it's going to be really interesting. I'm curious to see how it shakes out.
Speaker 2:I've listened to a lot of talk from different content creators and publishers on the matter and it seems like, all in all, it's going to be bad, like I think a lot more companies are going to go out of business. We talked about this when we talked about the hate for Stonemaier for publishing FinSpan, as if these publishers are just rolling in money. Obviously they're not Board game. It takes up a lot of our bandwidth and we think it's this big thing, but it's really. These companies aren't making tons of money and any small hiccup along the road can be a deal breaker for a lot of these companies. So there's a way you can keep supporting, you know, your favorite publisher or your favorite local game store. I think it's going to be tough times ahead until you know know, this tariff situation dies down. So you know, just buckle up, get ready to either pay a lot more for board games or dive into your shelf of opportunity, if you will yeah, perfect opportunity to clear out that shelf of opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, absolutely. Oh yeah, good, good topic like that's.
Speaker 2:That's gonna be super interesting to see yeah, on a lighter note, got to play godfather corleone's empire. I've heard great things about this one, yeah. So this is I mean, when this come out in 2017, designed by by Eric Lang of critical esteem and put out by the aforementioned CIMON, they might be on the naughty list it sounds like after reading that Final Frontier note. But regardless, you know, cimon puts out a nice production. This game's awesome looking. It's got a map of New York City divided up into all these turfs. You have these different families, so each player has their family, and you have all these minis of your family members and your thugs, and so nice production. It comes with these metal suitcases that you use to stash your money in. Great to look at, as always with CMON. But the gameplay was what really interested me, because it's very streamlined. I kept re-watching videos and re-reading the rulebook. I'm like there has to be more to this because, at the end of the day, it's really just a worker placement game. So there's all these businesses in this map of New York City and, on your turn, two of the main actions you can do are you either send one of your thugs out to the shake down the front of a business, so each business has a front and a back and you send a thug out has a square bottom and so you know it goes in the front because the front has a square space for your thug Can't mess it up. You send your thug out, shakes down the front of the business. You get like an illegal good card, like maybe I get a gun or you get money or whatever. Then there's circle spaces and those kind of intersect different TERFs and those are where you can send your family members. You have less family members to start than thugs, but when you send a family member out it shakes down the back of all the businesses that are adjacent to it. So you can get some big time benefits when you send your family member out. But again, it's pretty straightforward what you're doing there. So those are the two main actions Send a thug or family member Also on your turn.
Speaker 2:Why are you collecting these illegal goods? Is to complete jobs for the godfather, all right. So you have these job cards that say like you need three guns to complete this job. Then you get some amount of money and some benefit where you can like gun down someone else's figure and put them in the h River and you know that'll free up space for you to maybe take an action they were blocking. So you got putting your people out completing jobs and then, oh, play an ally card so you can also get these allies that you can use later in the game. And they give you different benefits. They either get you money or, you know, let you take another action with them, but pretty simple stuff. So you know you're generally doing this and then at the end everybody's taking all their actions.
Speaker 2:You look at who has controlled each turf. So if you have the most figures in a turf, you get to place a control marker there and then in future rounds, anytime someone shakes down the front of a business in your turf, you also get the benefit. So it's like an area control aspect there. And then the part that I thought was the most interesting about this game was like all the cards, your allies, your money, your job cards they all have the same back and they all take up your hand and your illegal goods. So you have money, jobs, illegal goods all in your hands and you know at the end of the round you have to discard down to five cards. So you quickly, as you're doing things, are getting a pretty steep hand of cards, especially if you're getting money from completing jobs. At the end of the round, you have to ditch those. So there's these spaces called some of them called like the accounting office where you get to stash money into your suitcase and that's where you can keep it safe. So until you go to one of these actions where you can actually stow away some of the money you get in your suitcase, it's subject to be lost and it's not safe for the end of the game. So that was kind of like a fun balance of like, okay, I'm getting a ton of money, but I need to get to these spaces that let me actually stash it away so I can score it at the end of the game. And that's the basic flow of the game. At the end there's also bonuses given for the person who controlled a certain turf the longest, and bonuses for there's like five different job type types like blue, yellow, green and gray, and if you completed the most jobs in a certain color, you get like five extra dollars. So yeah, that's basically how the game plays.
Speaker 2:I want to hold out my judgment on it because, like the first round, I was like this is awesome.
Speaker 2:You know it was really quick. It's played over four rounds and the first round you have like two thugs and a family member, yeah, and it went really quick and I was like, wow, this game's gonna be like over in like 45 minutes. But then it really started to drag towards the end because you get more family members and you're able to do more things, and at four players I to drag towards the end because you get more family members and you're able to do more things, and at four players I found myself till the end of the fourth round. It was taking I mean, it wasn't like over long, but we were coming up on like two hours and I was just like I was kind of getting bored with the the core gameplay a little bit. Um, so I I don't know. I want to play it again and see how it is, but there's definitely some cool stuff going on here and it's super streamlined, easy to teach, action-wise and obviously a great production. So I'm keen to give it another go.
Speaker 1:How was it received from the rest of the group that you played with?
Speaker 2:The rest of the group really liked it. How was it received from the rest of the group that you played with? The rest of the group really liked it. Carlin was the one who made me watch the Godfather not that long ago and so when I saw this game and got it, we were like we got to play this sometime soon. And we finally got to it, so everybody's pretty excited about it.
Speaker 1:Do you think that it took so long to play through it because it was new and like? Were you constantly going back to the rule book? Or was it just like because you had so many actions to do per turn? That's what really made the the game drag towards the tail end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you just got ended up getting so many of these. You know figures and when you complete, complete jobs, it gives you like new ways to take actions and people's. You know what was like a round was like me taking three worker placement spots in the first round ended up being like you know, a round ended up towards the end of the game. You're taking like five worker placement actions but then you complete a job that lets you get one of your workers back and then you can take more and it it just you know it kept going on. So it definitely wasn't a rules issue. I don't know that I opened up the rule book a single time during the game because yeah, it's, it's streamlined for sure and some neat stuff, but yeah it just it just seemed to really slow down towards the end. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's in school. I've heard good things about this one. I like the thematics. I'm glad that they didn't like over bloat the rules with theme like they could have really injected a lot more theme into this but you would constantly be going back and forth the rule book or like looking to see you know this person is in this family. They could have definitely tried to over-bloat this thing and make it way more complicated, but it's awesome to hear that it's so streamlined, with just simple worker placement and hand management. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I really enjoy everything it was doing. It just seemed to drag those last two rounds, which is why I want to play it again, so I can see if that was doing it. Just, it just seemed to drag those last like two rounds, um, which is why I want to play it again, so I can, you know, see if that was just a. Everybody was excitable that night, you know. We had we had eight people over here and there was a table playing limb next door. The kids were watching a movie, you know. So it was a little chaotic, which could have added to, you know, maybe just the overall things taking a little bit longer than they might have otherwise. Yeah, but yeah, no complaints about the, the mechanisms in here. I thought it all worked together really nicely. Just need to play it a couple more times. Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1:I love it what you've been playing, travis uh, I've been playing a whole bunch of games on board game arena, uh, the first being pixies, which you talked about a couple weeks ago. Yep, I did a tutorial and I've been playing that a couple times. Um, I like it. It's very simple, it's very streamlined. Uh, the scoring I can see how it could be a huge pain in the butt if you're doing that in person. Yeah, to get people's like X's and little swirls and stuff like that. But yeah, on board game arena that's pretty seamless. I find that. It's. I feel like it's too much luck based, almost like you're making the best decision for the moment with the three cars that you're dealt, or however many are left during that round for you to choose from. But I feel like it's so luck-driven. It's all like whatever is left over for you or whatever you're dealt with, those three cards right off the bat. So it's, I don't know. I like it and I'll continue to play, because that's a great phone game for me to play on Board.
Speaker 2:Game Arena. It's really nice on DJ.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's something that I will like seek out and buy a physical copy of anytime soon, but the art, it depart the art is phenomenal.
Speaker 2:I do like yeah, I will say to your luck point, I would. It definitely is lucky and it feels lucky, but there must be a way that you can have skill in this game, because I've played this game, you know, 10 times with the various people and if you look at my board game stats app, there's one person that's won every single one of those games but one, and it's mary. So she's making some type of decisions at a, at a percentage that I am not, because she consistently is. Is winning at this game Interesting? Yeah, I'm not sure what she prioritizes. I find myself very keen on getting those high number cards. If there's a nine, I'm going to take it. I don't know if she focuses on squiggles or what, or forming big areas of the same color I'll have to ask her but she is constantly winning and it makes me feel that there must be some decisions that she's making that are positive. Where I'm not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll have to fire up a game with you guys so I can see what she ends up doing. But I've also been playing a lot of Architects of Amethyst, still really enjoying that one Excuse me, really enjoying that one but I really struggle to continue to draw the project cards. So typically there's only like one type of building that you can draft and put into your city that you're building that will allow you to draw more project cards. Building that will allow you to draw more project cards and that's where I get hung up every single time is I feel like I'm behind the curve on project cards, where my opponent will be, you know they'll be completing six, eight, ten project cards in a round and I've got like my first three that I started with. Maybe I'll get one additional and I'm largely reliant on the individual building scoring and I am still struggling to understand that one. I'm enjoying it. It's very simple and it's easy and I think it's a great concept for a game like tic-tac-toe city building. But I am terrible at that game and I need to figure out the actual strategy. But then the last one that I have been playing a whole lot has been dracula versus van helsing, and this game is a two-player only lane battler where one player plays as dracula, the other player plays as van helsing, and it's a round base kind of trick-taking style game where you are battling over these different districts within a city. One player plays dracula, one is van helsing.
Speaker 1:Dracula always goes first and on your turn, what you're doing is you are either playing a card from your row that is assigned to a different district, or you're drawing from the draw pile and playing that card to the discard. And when you play a card to the discard, whether it's from your hand or from the draw pile, each card has an action associated with it and a suit, and so the suit is the color, basically. But the action that you're taking will allow you to do different things and manipulate the cards or the or the suits in general to gain an advantage in these different districts. So, like on this picture here, the one the little circle means that you get another turn. You basically go twice. The one means that you have to reveal one of your cards to your opponent. The four is you are swapping two cards positions between the districts. The three is that you are revealing an opponent's card, and the eight is basically like a ship, I think, and that's like that ends the round immediately. And so, as you go, you're taking turns and you're manipulating the cards.
Speaker 1:The one that's missing from this, uh, is the trump suits, right? So there's four different suits associated with the different colors. One of the cards will allow you to swap two of the suits, so there's a trump and then there's like a ranking of the other three suits and you can swap these suits around so that you can manipulate which, uh, which suit will be the trump that round, or which outranks the other. And once there's I think, there's seven in the discard pile, you can declare the end of the round instead of taking your turn, and the other person will get one more chance to manipulate their cards, and then the round will end. Or you can discard an eight, which is the highest card value, uh, and that will end the round immediately.
Speaker 1:And then you'll go through the districts left to right and you'll score, and what dracula is trying to do is he's trying to turn four villagers into vampires. So when dracula wins one of the regions, he'll turn one of the villagers into, I don't know, the undead or whatever. And then, if van helsing wins a region, he harms dracula by one health value and I think dracula's got like maybe 12 13 health overall. And so really it's just kind of this back and forth where you're doing it's a lane battler but you are manipulating these cards and choosing which cards to discard and play so that you can manipulate and set your hand up to win as many regions as possible.
Speaker 1:So I I really enjoy this game. I think it's great. I think it's super streamlined. The components are super nice. Even in the base game it even has has the little stands that it comes with so you can put your cards on the different regions. And, yeah, dracula vs Gen Helsing I think I got this in the 25th Century Games reprint, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I really enjoy this game. I think it's great.
Speaker 2:Are those actual cards? Because they kind of look like cardboard-y.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are cardboard I say cards, but like in the actual game they're like pretty thick little cardboard pieces. Oh okay, yeah, they're like actual, like kind of slates, so they're super nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it looks like a small box too. How they fit and all that in there, uh very tightly.
Speaker 1:yeah, like that. It's got one side that's reserved just for those, like I say, card card holders, those like kind of tab, tablet type things that you place your cards on, and then, uh, the board folds up nice and tight, and then all the cards go in one little area, all the chips go in another, and it's it's pretty compact and nice and small.
Speaker 2:Do you mainly play it on board game arena or have you played it much in in person?
Speaker 1:I've played it a couple times in person. Uh it, you know it's, it's so simple. It's not like I'm reliant on any sort of function of board game arena to do the scoring or anything like that. Yeah, um, it's, it's so streamlined and easy. You can play it in person or on board game arena with no confusion between the two, and I just like it because I can have a whole bunch of games going and on each turn it's not like I'm like over analyzing what is going on. I don't have to like come in with fresh eyes and like, oh, what did they do last turn? It's so simple to pick up, look at a situation, make the best decision for that turn and then move on and do something else.
Speaker 2:So yeah, those are the type of games I usually really like. I think you fired this up with me on Board Game Arena and I was learning on the fly and I probably didn't appreciate it like I would if I had actually taking the time to figure out how to play it, because it sounds like everything I would like in a game yeah, I, I think it's super streamlined and it's super easy, simple.
Speaker 1:It's a great travel game. I this one's going to stick around for a while because it's not going to take up any space and it's something you can pick up and play with another person so easily it's. You will hardly ever need a refresher on the rules. You just need to like figure out what the symbols mean, that are so that are associated with the cards, and then away you go. It's, it's really easy. And then, um, down at the bottom, you see that there's like a ship in the harbor, and so after each round, that little ship moves forward one, and once it reaches the end, then the game is over, and if dracula has not won, then van hel Helsing automatically wins. So, yeah, I have. I don't know if I've ever completed all four rounds. I think it's always either Dracula wins or Van Helsing wins way ahead of that.
Speaker 2:I like everything you're saying here. I think I gotta get my myths on a, on a, you know, physical copy so I can actually internalize what's happening, because I just am not great at learning a game for the first time on board game arena.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah well we'll fire this one up with you and we can talk through it.
Speaker 2:Just to go back from last week, though you spoke so highly of that stone spine or spire oh yeah, stone spine architects and you said you actually could learn the game from the tutorial and know what was going on, and so normally, you know, you fire up a game. I don't know, I just start taking turns and hoping that, hoping by some miracle, things click in my brain. But I was like you know what? Travis spoke highly of this tutorial. I'm gonna give it a go and sure enough, it was good. I I feel like I know what I'm doing for the most part. Uh, you know, I'm, I'm excited to keep playing that one yeah, that one's fun.
Speaker 1:I I'm excited to get to the. I don't think we're even through the first round yet. It's been like a week. Yeah, we're getting there. Yeah, like the, the market phase is really interesting in that one because it's all about, like, do I forego the upgrades and go for the end goal or the end game scoring cards, or do I, like, really take the time and upgrade? It helps that those end game scoring cards will be in my favor later. So, yeah, looking forward to finishing that one too yep, hey, awesome.
Speaker 2:We're humming without jared here to distract us. We're like a finely tuned machine. That's right. We are cruising Not quite as exciting, but yeah, that's okay, we miss you, jared.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just a little bit, let's go. Let's move on to the mission objective, which is best at different player counts. So we're going to talk through different games that are best at one through eight players. We're going to go player count by player count all the way through. We'll talk about some good options, things that we considered, and, yeah, we're going to make some recommendations based on player counts. So, clay, how'd you go about making your decisions for this? How'd you go about making your decisions for this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is like one of the things that keeps me up at night is player counts.
Speaker 2:I love, you know games generally say they can play at a wide variety of player counts, but we all know that there's a sweet spot for most games and you know, knowing your audience and knowing how many people are playing a a game, it really makes a difference on what game you decide to pick.
Speaker 2:And here at operation game night that's something we like to really excel at, um, and so I think most games like are tailored for like four players, yeah, and then you know, three players is always just almost usually a better version, a quicker version of a four-player game, and so those are like the easiest player counts to kind of operate at. But you know, once you get outside that three, four wheelhouse, you have to start making some trade-offs and you know finding the right fit for that player count. So, yeah, I just you know I went through each. I was like you know what, if I was playing a game at this player count, what would be my go-to game? To recommend? That I know is gonna be good because it's at this player count. Not just it can play at this player count, but it is good, specifically because it's at this player count yeah yeah, good point.
Speaker 1:I struck. I found myself struggling with the uh like three to five player count, more so than I did at the lower number, higher numbers there. You know there's so many great games that are made specifically for one person, or two people or you. You know the big party games. There's so many to choose from. But that middle range is so hard. Like how do you tailor mechanics versus the amount of players, versus the time it's going to take to learn and play the game? So I'm curious to hear what you came up with.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, travis, what was your as a solo man? What was your one player recommendation?
Speaker 1:Man, so this one. There's a lot of games that have solo modes that I really enjoy and typically when you go on, there's actually a subreddit specifically for solo board gaming and they will always recommend things like Spirit Island. I don't think that that's probably going to be my recommendation. They will always recommend things like spirit Island. Okay, I don't think that that's probably going to be my recommendations. Uh, but for solo player only. You will always see people recommend warps edge, and warps edge is like, uh, you know I who are we talking to? Maybe it was Vic that was talking about this one, or maybe it was Bo, yeah, but Warp Sedge is always recommended. It's super thematic. You're flying a ship around, you're making decisions, you're attacking other ships. This is a one-player-only kind of space battling game that's always really, really fun.
Speaker 1:Another one that I was going to recommend is going to be Under Falling Skies, and that one I have more experience with and that one is also very popular. Uh, basically it's you know, the aliens are dropping down from these different tracks. You are rolling dice and then assign them to different spaces within your base, underneath the earth's surface, to generate power and to attack these bugs and to keep the alien incursion at bay it. It has tough choices to make every time. It's always fun. There's a bunch of different cities that you can play as that have different decisions to make and oh, at Essen they had a giant version of it, like a huge blown-up version. That was really cool. I have a picture of it, nice. That was cool to see. So I'm going to recommend warps, edge and under falling skies for my solo only game.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for those thoughtful recommendations, travis, because one player is easily my least visited player count. But I think I mentioned it last week and there is one solo game that stands out for me that I really enjoyed and that was my City Roll and Build, which is the roll and write version of my City by Rainer Knizia, and I just love this game. I loved my City. And for the roll and build, it was so simple to play by yourself.
Speaker 2:For the roll and build, it was so simple to play by yourself. It's in a tiny box and you just get out two dice and you have a sheet of paper and you roll like eight times and you've done a game. You know, you decide where you're going to draw your little polyominoes and then you know the next game has a slightly different role, and so it just keeps you engaged throughout the course of the 24 different games you play, the course of the 24 different games you play. But I thought it was a really fun solo experience that took no time to set up and almost no time to play, so it was a fun way to just like fill in the gaps of and day. You know, hey, don't got anything going on. Let me bust out a quick, quick episode of my city roll and build so you are not.
Speaker 1:It's it's a roll and write correct, is it? You're not like placing stickers on a board permanently?
Speaker 2:nope. But as, like, the sheets of paper that you write on evolve throughout, oh okay, it's got like this pad of paper and, like the first few episodes, you know, have a different feel to them and as you go through it they add some things to the sheets of paper. So, yeah, they did it in a neat way that still kind of makes you feel the legacy vibe of my city, which was kind of a lighter legacy experience to begin with. But that's that's my solo recommendation. Nice, uh, give me your two-player two-player. So we talk about a lot of two player games At least I do, because I play two player a lot. So I wanted to go with a lighter recommendation and again hitting my, my guy, reiner Canizia, but not lost cities, because that already gets too much airtime.
Speaker 2:Shot and Totten or Battle Line is another great two-player card battling game. But in Shot and Totten and Battle Line you're kind of making these poker-type hands where you're competing for these different stones and on your turn you have to play a card to one of the stones and you're hoping to make three of a kind or a run and whoever has the higher ranked side of that stone gets that stone and you're just competing to win, like the majority of the stones throughout the game, and it has the same tension as Lost Cities where you're just drawing a card and playing a card and sometimes you don't want to play a card because you don't want to. You know, commit to trying to. You know, go for the three eights on this stone because you don't know if you're going to get another eight and they might end up, you know, getting it with something like a one, two, three, one two, three.
Speaker 2:And I just really liked that twist of those like kind of poker type hands in there trying to compete for those stones and then for the heavier fare of a two player game I got to go with. You know, kind of new, still not quite as hot as it was a few months ago, but Ironwood from Mind Clash is just a great asymmetric two-player you're in each other's heads trying to trying to win in like an hour card driven area control awesome game yeah, good recommendations.
Speaker 1:There are so many like much heavier two-player games too, that I would love to get played more, but that's just not the reality around here anymore. It's all very light and quick two-player games. We're kind of digging through our games to travel with us, and the first recommendation from Rachel was Jaipur.
Speaker 2:We love.
Speaker 1:Jaipur. We play Jaipur and Splendor at two players all the time. Jaipur is specifically two players, splendor plays up to four. So, jaipur, you're collecting and trading your different wares to collect coins, then trade in for in-game scoring. It's pretty simple, it's super easy. But I think I would want to recommend there's so many good two-player games and this year, specifically, was just the year of the two-player dual versions. There's Ironwood, there's Kelp Shark vs Octopus, there was Everdell Duo, there was King of Tokyo, duel man. Just so many two-player games came out this year.
Speaker 1:What's that other one? I always forget the name, literally every week. I say that I'm going to talk about this game and it falls out of my head the moment I go to talk about it Dorf, Romantic, dorf, romantic. Duel, azul, duel, azul, duel, azul, duel. Yeah, like this was the year of two players, there's no shortage of great two-player games. Yeah, this year my highlights were Kelp Shark versus Octopus. I wish that I had gotten more games of Ironwood played, and then we've really been enjoying Wild Duo by Markter Five games in one box. They're all super easy to learn, really enjoying those ones.
Speaker 2:And just a shout out to the games that we've never played but are desperate to. I mean, you can't ignore that at two players. There are three super thematic games that are on my bucket list. One is sitting right up there star wars rebellion dying to play that. Another war of the ring and then doom war for arrakis. Those are. Those are three mega two-player games that uh, deserve a shout out.
Speaker 1:Never played them but want to yeah I mean that the one that kills me is the war of the ring too. It's just like it sits there and it glares at me on my shelf every day and I want to play it so bad. So we need to like devote some time like to photo weekend and just play it yeah, for sure okay, three players, three players.
Speaker 1:I really struggled with this one too, because this is like there's so many great two-player games that play well at two players that then, like you add a third person and they get better, and where I landed on this one is actually actually came from a bad experience with a game played at two players. So I played Small World once upon a time with two players and we ended up in this situation where, like on the two player map, there's this like really thin area that goes beneath this lake on the in the core box area that goes beneath this lake on the in the core box, and we just like kept. We ended up in this situation where, like if one player did not attack the other, you had this proclaimed truce and it just didn't work and like the game broke and we just couldn't like fight each other and couldn't make any progress. We just ended up kind of scrapping the game.
Speaker 1:Three player small world is so good. I love small world at three players. I think the map is good for it, I think the interactions are great, I think you have enough space to maneuver and make feel like you're making progress with this without like resetting the map every time, uh, and you know there's tough decisions to make. There's you can get a lot of different factions out there on the board and uh, yeah, I'm gonna go with small world at three players okay, that's a good one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at three players. Yeah, like we said up front, three and four was tough because a lot of games play well at three and four players. Um, yeah, so for a three-player game, that I thought you know what three players is probably the sweet spot. And this is kind of weird because I've never played this game at three players but I played it at two and it was way too hard with two players and I played it with four and it made it kind of long.
Speaker 2:And you know it didn't feel like you were taking your turns very often because, um, they're longer, more involved turns and that's Cthulhu. Death May Die. Oh, good one. I played with you, travis, at two and it felt overwhelming, like we just did not have enough going on for us to even sniff at winning. And then I played it four players and it felt like, hey, you know, like it's my turn only a quarter of the time. And you know these turns are pretty long and people, you know, have a lot of different actions to consider and you know you're trying to work together. So you know how I hate trying to cooperate with people, but if I am going to cooperate with people, I want it to be less people with people, I want it to be less people. So I think at three players, cthulhu, death may die would present the the right amount of cooperativeness, cooperativity and challenge to have a good time with it nice, I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, hit me with your four player okay, so four player again, tough player count.
Speaker 2:Most games are, I feel like, designed with four players in mind as the ideal player count, but when I think of games that I feel like I can only play at four players, even though this isn't true anymore, the, the hobbies, become very accepting of divergent player counts for trick-taking games. But a proper trick-taking game is usually played with four players. So if I have four people together, I am reaching for the crew, or now the lord of the rings, the trick taking game, because although you can play it three, two, four, five, I you know those games were made with four people in mind and it just works so much cleaner with four people and those types of games are the what. What I'm looking for. Another one on, you know, trick taking.
Speaker 2:It's a little lighter, but ahoy is a game I thought of that is best at four players because you know, at four players you get two people that are smugglers and they're kind of competing with each other to deliver goods to the different islands. And then you have the black fin squad and the blue fish, whatever, and they're out there fighting for control of the the different areas. So I think you, that game was obviously designed for four players to work best. You can play it with you know, three players and then you just only have one smuggler, but I think you're missing out on the desired gameplay if you, if you have less than four. So ahoy is my other shout out for a four-player tailored game.
Speaker 1:Nice good one. Uh, the ones that came to mind immediately were like root, western legends, wonderland's war, all the hits that we've talked about forever. But while you were talking, uh, war of the ring, the card game came to mind because it's meant to be played with four players, where you have two that are the alliance they're the good guys and two that are the bad guys, and you're taking turns, playing cards, these different areas, and it's meant to be played at four and you actually have to adjust the rules for two and for the solo mode there's an expansion. So that game is awesome. It's super thematic, it's a great way to like experience those types of thematic battles over these different regions in card format, and I really want to get that played more.
Speaker 1:I got the I don't know sword and fire, fire and ax or whatever it is that allows you to play solo, and I really want to get that played. Uh, while we travel. I think I actually kept that one out and it's going to, uh, maybe go unaccompanied baggage. So I got about a month to play it before it hits the road. So I'm gonna go with war of the ring, the card game sweet.
Speaker 2:What about for for five players?
Speaker 1:Travis man. This is probably the hardest one for me is five players, because at five you now have an odd man out. The games are going to take a little bit longer. The games are no longer tailored for that player account most of the time unless you start like. This is like the weird in between between, like the traditional tabletop game or game and like the party game, right. So my go-to for five players is going to be the trail at house on the hill. I think you can add that fifth player in without adding too much time. You get to the haunts faster. It makes the haunt triggering a little more interesting because you can't split up evenly like half and half, so it's got to be like one versus all um and some cool thematic moments can come out of five player. Game of betrayal at house on the hill, specifically third edition. I really enjoyed that third edition last time we played okay, yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2:I would not have, like, I haven't enough experience with the trail house on the hill to know what the ideal player counts are, but I was not expecting that. Yeah, one of my favorites. One of my favorites. Yeah, what you got. So for me, yeah, like, if you're getting past four players there better be a reason there's five people at the table, other than to just slow things down.
Speaker 2:So I'm thinking of interactive games, like the first one that came to my mind. I have five players. What do I want to play? Everybody's having a good time.
Speaker 2:It's modern art, because every turn, everybody's involved. You're auctioning off paintings Everybody's you know bidding their money. You're auctioning off paintings Everybody's you know bidding their money. You're banging the gavel, and just the more players that are involved in that and it goes up to five the better I feel like. So Modern Art is my first, the first one that comes to my mind when I'm like I got five people, let's play Modern Art. And then another one is Libertalia, winds of Galecrim. Well, I mean either. Libertalia is fine, but that works well at five players, because you're simultaneously selecting your card and then you flip them over and all the cards are interacting with each other when they get to the island. So it doesn't add a lot of time for five players and it adds a lot more chaos and fun about what happens when you reveal those cards. So I think that's another great choice of five players nice yep, what you got for six at six.
Speaker 2:The ideal player count and this is a big one. This is the real deal here. But the ideal player count for Battlestar Galactica is six players. So if I get six players that are down the clown and really want to, you know, dig into a long, deep game of intrigue and calling each other out, battlestar Galactica that's obviously a very specific group of a six player game. So I do have a backup here and that is downforce. Love that, love that racing game. Well, it's more of a betting game, um, but yeah, that's a ton of fun at six players. You know everybody's got their different cars and you know you play a card from your hand and it moves cars doesn't have to be your car, uh. So yeah, it's a lot of fun because every time somebody plays there you never know what they're moving and it all affects you and what you might bet on when you get to the betting spots on the board. And it's just a fun, quicker game you can play with six players. That that has everybody engaged and having a good time, yeah that's great.
Speaker 1:Uh, funny, you mentioned downforce. I was gonna say heat pedal to the metal. Yeah, uh, because that game just plays so quickly and you can get a lot of players to the table. Six is like the perfect amount to, because you're not like having to cook people up most of time, like people can just jump in play. At six the game is like it the turns are crowded, but not like so overly crowded that like you're all trying to I don't know bump into each other and it. It I feel like any more than six. It just gets a little bloated. But yeah, heat is just so streamlined and perfect at six players.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's a good one. Seven.
Speaker 1:Seven is tough. Yeah, it's kind of weird, like you're uneven, you're odd Odd player count and you're at such a large and I don't know if this is your game, but I I was going to say you're, you brief things and rings. That sounds like a perfect game at seven. How many?
Speaker 2:does that play up to Six? Oh man, I don't know why you couldn't play that seven, honestly, but there's really no reason you couldn't Well especially because, like there's one nowhere right, there's one nowhere. And the other people just yeah Other people are just throwing things in the rings. It just says six on a box. So to respect the publisher.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I have a great answer for seven, and seven is not like the typical player count that I have ever seen. If you're going to get a big group together, it's typically eight. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I have. I've got two. Okay, Hit me Seven. One. Seven wonders, seven wonders, Perfect. Yeah, Seven wonders. Plays at seven, Perfect. And you know it scales all the player counts well, because you know you're all picking and passing at the same time. So that would be one I would be keen to play, provide you had enough space on the table to play it. I think that would be great at seven. And no Thanks is another one that plays up to seven and really enjoy that reverse auction game and, just like the more people there are to you know, stick their black sweaty chits on the card saying they don't want it. Just add some more fun. So I always like getting no thanks out when I have a higher player counts. I I probably played it at seven, I played it at time, but that's one that always comes to my mind in those upper post-six player count. Yeah, Two, great recommendations Love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, you want to?
Speaker 2:hit me with your number eight, let's go eight. And these two are fresh on my mind because the same night we played Godfather. Before that we had eight people over and I had to curate a couple games to get the party started and the first one we played was long shot the dice game. Nice, yep and went great, takes up not a ton of space. Everybody just has their one little dry erase board that they do their stuff on. And then you got your little race track in the center and every turn somebody rolls the die and everybody then gets to take an action. So you're always involved, everybody's engaged with the race. They're hooping and hollering because they want, you know, nitro, nelly, to finally get going, and people are moving horses forward and backward and doing the concession stands and yeah it, the rolling right. Nature of it makes it it doesn't even feel like a rolling. I don't know if it's a rolling right, you're definitely rolling right. But most rolling rights you think of you know just heads down doing your own thing. But this one you're very interested in what everybody else is doing with the horses, so it's a fun one and I can't think of anything else.
Speaker 2:Eight players that does what it does. And then on the party game side just got people been talking about it it's called Ito, oh yeah, yeah, and we played that one after and that's essentially a place from up to 10, I think, but it's like wavelength meets the mind Maybe. Uh, you're. You give like a category like popular TV shows. Then you deal everybody a random number and they go from one to a hundred and then everybody like puts their number face down on their color card and gives a clue to try and help you assess where your number is in the line. So it's like popular tv shows.
Speaker 2:You say the office, you know, like people are probably going to think that's pretty high up towards like the 90s, and somebody else says like you know ncis, and then you like you just have these clues and you're trying to arrange the cards then in the right numerical order based on the clues people give. And it was a ton of fun. We played it at four and it was like too easy. Eight might be too hard but it was still fun at eight and I would still play it because you know it's just a good quick game. You can play a few rounds of that. Nobody takes too seriously. Definitely a party game and it got the party started.
Speaker 1:That's great. I love that. Yeah, I'm gonna jump on your horse racing trend and I was gonna say ready set bet, oh, or an eight player, because, especially the way that we did it the last time we played at your house, where you like, pull it up on the app on the screen and you can watch the horses racing, the horses race while you're betting on a big table and you don't have to like roll the dice in between and like slow that down. That is like the perfect way to play. It's like horse race betting in person. You get a big group together. They're cheering on their horse like people go nuts for it. I love.
Speaker 1:That that's like that is a way to get the party started, for a big game night is ready to set that. I love that.
Speaker 2:Dang. We did it, travis. I think we did it One through eight players. Excellent, now you know what to do. Everybody don't, don't ever say you don't know what game to play at a player count and if you're.
Speaker 1:If you need us to procure or curate a game night for you based on your player account and tastes, hit us up and we will help make some recommendations for you right here on the podcast, live and in person. We need a call-in number so that people can call in live. Yep, you want to go over the fence? Let's hit it quick. Let's do it quick. Let's do it quick. What have you been doing outside of board gaming?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know the Sopranos ending was tragic. Quickly blew through White Lotus season. Whatever it is. Three, Three, yeah, it was fine. It's an interesting show, but now we started up on Righteous Gemstones.
Speaker 1:Oh yes.
Speaker 2:And that show just blows me away, like I I don't know if I'm like just more in shock by like the, the banter and writing they put in there. They say some raunchy, ridiculous stuff. Oh yeah, and and it was just like a. It's been a hard pivot from the sopranos to white lotus and now watching righteous gemstones it's like, but it's good, it's entertaining. I'm smiling and laughing and uh, yeah, that's a good show. So that's what we've been watching, having a lot of fun with that yeah, that show was great.
Speaker 1:I each, each season just gets more and more ridiculous and it's so over the top, but I love it, yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you can tell because I am talking in an echo chamber, but all of our stuff moved out this week so we're basically camping in our own house for the next month and a half before we move. Uh, yeah, but uh, last of us, season two started last week, loving that. I am so stoked to see where the season goes. They made some interesting choices. Uh, black Mirror season seven is on right now. Uh, that is never a feel-good show. It's like depressing and like just puts a pit in my stomach. Um, but yeah, just kind of been hanging out. Uh, spending some good time with maybe Gwen for her first Easter and yeah.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Life is good, awesome. Well, I'm glad life's good. I'm glad we're over the fence. I'm glad that Jared was not here so I could spend quality time with you. Me too, I thought you guys bragging about being civil engineers together, just like the odd one out.
Speaker 1:No, no, well, what can we brag about that? He isn't. Combatives instructors, there you go, yeah, we're so, so glad that we're combatives instructors and Jared isn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what a nerd. What a nerd. Yeah, freaking school boy.
Speaker 1:All right, did we do it? Yeah, alright. This has been episode 36 of the Operation Game Night podcast. I have been Travis, he has been Clay. We are out. Outro music.
