Of course, I can also play that game solo. But I just don’t know if I have it in me to spend a full day putting out all those little pieces and then hoping beyond hope that literally any person I know will be willing to learn its many, many, many rules with me. But I need to admit that I’m not going to play Nemesis, an amazing-looking board game that I Kickstarted something like 100 years ago. I love that comforting sound of dice rolling. What sucks is that I like every other part of the board game experience. Someone will get mad at me about this and, honestly, they are right. That’s not an actual line in the manual I’m too lazy to dig through a board game box that’s larger than the ones I use to move furniture.

‘Remember to put the second deck over the initial deck so the last piece from the regular meeples pool does not cross into the irregular meeples pool before the dice rolls a zero’. If I looked right now, I’m sure every token is explained somewhere in a game manual that unfortunately reads like a VCR repair guide that’s been run through Google Translate eight times. Each one of these pieces have been carefully considered by brilliant designers. Opening Gloomhaven is like lifting the lid of a treasure chest packed with unpunched cardboard sheets and more paperwork than the DMV.Įach one of these items and tokens and sheets is important.

And I’m not even talking about during the game. There are so many parts and pieces that go in so many specific spots. I’m not sure if it’s ever come up - maybe you’ve never seen it yourself! - but most of the cool-looking board games are so complicated you might as well be taking a grad course in Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos Theory.

Real life board games