Board Game Friday: The WORST 20 Games for 2024!

Happy Friday, everyone.  This week has been a rough week for yours truly, among other issues is the fact that I've been sick all week (including missing two full days of work).  Luckily, I'm starting to feel a bit better today so let's get to our featured post.

Like last year, I decided I wanted to do another Top 50 Games of the Year series of posts which I plan to begin in earnest next Friday (and then continuing each Friday until the end of the year).  While that will be a lot of fun, today I'm going to flip things on their heads a bit and do the WORST games that I've played in the past two years.  

Here's the bottom of my spreadsheet of ranked games:

As you can see, I had 134 games to rank in total and the big loser of the bunch is Aggravation.  Aggravation is one of those classic "big box retailer" games from my childhood where you basically roll a die and move that amount around the board.  As you go, you can stomp on other people to send them back to the beginning (fun?) or get stomped on by someone else and then you have to start all over (definitely not fun).  It can be a never-ending game that's almost entirely driven by luck.  

Kingdomino Origins takes all of the fun things about Kingdomino and then adds in all sorts of terrible things to make the game longer, more complicated, and way less fun.  Green Team Wins is a party game that my entire group found to be unfun on almost every level.  Ticket to Ride:  Marklin along with Ticket to Ride:  Rails & Sails are both fine games but too long for what they are.  With (seemingly) hundreds of Ticket to Ride versions to choose from, I don't know why anyone would ever pick either of those two games to play.  The Quest Kids is a good game for little kids but my son is now older and he outgrew the game.  The expansion that adds in boss bottles only makes the game worse, for what that's worth to you.  Disney Villainous is a game where you try to get through your deck of cards to find a specific card or two while simultaneously trying to screw with your opponent who is basically doing the exact same thing but with a different character.  Good components, nicely illustrated, but boring game.  Half Truth isn't half bad (*rim shot*) but it requires you know a lot of pop culture trivia which isn't my jam.  My Shelfie was one of those games where I was happy to play it once or twice but felt no reason or desire to ever return to it, very vanilla experience.  

Dragonrealm is another solid kids game that doesn't offer a ton once you no longer need to play with a child.  It's much better than most kids games, but that's about it.  The Resistance is a classic bluffing/deduction game that simply doesn't hit for me, it's entirely too group-dependent to be any fun.  Wandering Towers is a fun memory-based game but I have a terrible memory so this isn't a game I would choose to play (and have since traded away my copy).  Pokemon Battle Academy was super useful in terms of teaching my son and I how to play Pokemon (my son is Pokemon-obsessed like many kids his age).  That said, once you've learned how to play Pokemon you no longer need Battle Academy.  Spot It! is a silly little game that I use in my Graph Theory course, it's fine but not one I choose to play otherwise.  Dungeons & Dragons: Adventure Begins is a great introductory activity with classic D&D trappings.  If you go in expecting a good game, you'll undoubtedly be disappointed.  

Anomia is a quirky party game about trying to quickly come up with answers off of the top of your head.  I actually liked this one but it didn't go over well with most of the people I played with and therefore it's unlike to get to the table much.  Queendomino takes everything good about Kingdomino and then adds just a bit more to it.  It's WAY better than Kingdomino Origins but there's something so simple and pure about Kingdomino that I think gets lost when more layers get added on to it.  Ticket to Ride: Berlin is a small board version of Ticket to Ride (much like New York or London).  I like this game a lot but my main complaint is the two types of trains were too easy to confuse while playing, the designs of the pieces were too similar for my eyes!  Rhino Hero: Super Battle is a fun card-stacking game that for some reason my son never liked (despite him loving to build things normally).  I can easily see a world where this is a Top 50 game but it can't be if the people you play with don't also get into the silliness of it.  And finally, Dorfromantik: The Board Game is a relaxing, (sort of) campaign game where you don't really win or lose.  I think that might the game's biggest problem though is that there isn't any sense of intrigue and thus neither my wife nor son felt any desire to continue playing it after we did the first scenario or two.

Phew!  That's a lot of games - and while they are my bottom 20 games that I've played in the past two years, they aren't all ranked so low because they are bad games.  A big part of board gaming is also the people you play with (and how they get on with a specific game or genre).  

Come back next Friday when I'll begin my countdown of the BEST board games of 2024 - expect way more positivity in that series of posts!