Chris Ranks the Knizia Boardgames
Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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I don't think too many people would argue with me when I say that Reiner Knizia is the most prolific and successful game designer of the past 10-15 years. Still, some of his games are better or more successful than others.
There are some minor apparent inconsistancies between this list and my "top 20" list (for example, Tigris & Euphrates makes 3 on this list, while Lord of the Rings checks in at 4 - but the latter makes my Top 20 while Tigris & Euphrates does not). This is not entirely unreasonable (really!); it's just how the games get sliced. My Top 20 tends to take exceptional games from broad categories, and Lord of the Rings is an exceptional game in a category all its own.
Originally, I embarked on the grandiose (and probably questionable) task of ranking *all* the Knizia games, but GeekLists only go to 25, so instead you get one for boardgames and one (later) for card games. This was not perfect; Exxtra, for example, probably belongs with the card games in scope & concept. But this is OK. I think I dropped only one game from the database, Members Only, but no great loss - just replace Flinke Pinke with Members Only in my review of that game, and it's probably close enough.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Why does Modern Art always top my list of great games? A combination of things, I think. Firstly, it's a fairly sophisticated game that remains remarkably intuitive. Everyone can easily grasp the concept of buying and selling art and the psychology of the different auctions, so even though Modern Art has a non-trivial number of rules, it is much more accessible than other auction games like Ra which are hard to intuit and thus hard for the "non-gamer" to grasp. I've had a great deal of success playing Modern Art with just about anyone for this reason; people grasp the fundamental concept easily enough to get into the game much more easily than any other game of its depth, and then get sucked in further by the facinating dynamics. Secondly, Modern Art is very much about the players. The players as a group will have a tolerance for risk and profit margins that set the tone for the game, as to whether the buyers or sellers have more power, and you have to play the game to the competition - not to succeed at some wierd, abstract scoring mechansim. To me, this extremely high level of interesting player interaction is the main thing that makes a game great.
Now, everything does come with a price. The price in this case is that a player who either is completely lost or malicious can break the game by either shovelling large amounts of money to one player or behaving irrationally. This has never been an issue for me, though.
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2.
Board Game: Ra
[Average Rating:7.60 Overall Rank:48]
Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Of the more analytical of Knizia's auction-based games, to me Ra stands head and shoulders above the rest for a number of reasons. The key hurdle auction games have to cross is how to make the items up for auction hard to evaluate precisely (thus making the auctions interesting) without making their value completely random. One way to do this is via the Medici route, which makes the lot comparatively easy to evaluate but of different worths to different players; this route alone though is not entirely satisfactory as it leaves players feeling forced to play the spoiler. Ra approaches it from a few directions.
Firstly, the currency you bid - the Suns - are of abstract value themselves, so whether or not a lot is worth bidding your '6' is a far more difficult question than simply "is it worth X points?". Secondly it builds on Medici's "different values to different players" concept, but by making the scoring a little more involved and finer-grained, and by throwing in the disasters the lots are more subtle. And, of course, since a bit of currency is included in each auction whose value is at best unclear, this makes an easy evaluation even harder. Finally, the random end-of-round adds a well-executed element of risk to all the bidding; you can wait for a better lot, but you risk getting less (or nothing!) if the object of your desire does not emerge (Medici also has risk in that it is possible to not get enough cards, but the risk in Ra is much more finely-balanced and is an element of every bid, instead of the occasinal showing in Medici).
The great thing about Ra is that there is even more subtelty than what I've gone into here, and all in all, it's hard to imagine a better or more well-balanced pure auction game (it should be mentioned that pure auction games like Ra, Medici, Raj, Magellan, etc., are not that common - most games with significant auctions have other elements also, as in Amun-Re). But, Knizia has amazed me before, so perhaps Ra is just a precursor to the Last Great Auction Game to Come.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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E&T (or T&E) is probably Knizia's top "pure gamers'" game. This is not one to try to teach to a group of people who have played mainly Monopoly and cards. It's a highly tactical, abstract tile-laying game that, of all of his top games, is probably the hardest to intuitively grasp. Auction games are inherently pretty comprehensible, and whether it's surrounding territory or applying influence or the thematic Lord of the Rings, most of his other games have an intuitive level. Not so E&T. Other than the getting points in a balanced configuration, it's not clear before several plays what's going on here, and new players will often get sucked into the trap of thinking this is an empire-building game, which it's not - it's hard to describe it as anything more than a point-scoring game.
Nontheless, this game scores big because of the depths of both the strategy and tactics involved here. Despite being a fairly chaotic game (you have little control over or ability to predict what tiles you will draw), players will visualise where they want to be 5, 10 turns down the line, strategising about building monuments, conflicts they can win, acquiring treasures, etc. The tactics used to secure these ends - disaster tiles, leader conflicts, tile cycling - are all interesting and engaging.
There are some downsides to this game. The tile distribution can be frustrating, and a lack of Red or an excess of Blue will hose you now matter how sophisticated your strategy, and it will be immensely frustrating. When playing with inexperienced players, they can add a huge random element as the inter-kingdom conflicts are momentous and can be hard to grasp - a poor choice here can result in effectively throwing the game, which is not good. Still, I don't feel these problems are enough to degrade the game in my opinion.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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I've said a lot about Lord of the Rings elsewhere on this board and I have a review on my website: http://homepage.mac.com/c_farrell/Reviews/lotr.html. So I won't go into it any more here; suffice to say that this is a great game, and Modern Art and Ra place ahead of it only because Lord of the Rings is a bit on the complex side. It's worth noting, though, that I originally felt that Lord of the Rings might fall short in replay value, and in that I was dead wrong. I have 50+ playing recorded on my high score sheet, the large majority with just the basic set. Friends and Foes and Sauron are both great expansions, although they do push the complexity up to a slightly uncomfortable level (although the complexity delta isn't too bad if you've already internalised Lord of the Rings).
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Knizia has a great quote in his interview on the FunAgain web site, in which he says somthing to the effect of, Durch die Wuste is like life - you have so many things you can do, and choosing to do one means not doing another. While I can't say that Durch die Wuste has helped my approach to life any, it is this constant tension of having so much to do, and yet only two actions that makes the game so appealing. Many games have this element, but nobody has quite mastered the balance of execution so well as Knizia. Like the best of Knizia too, this has a significant human element - what your priorities must be is driven by what you think your fellow-players' priorities are. What is his tolerance for risk? What is her current strategy and how is it panning out? This is the edge that sets the wonderfully subtle Knizia titles apart from the interesting but fundamentally dry games like Princes of Florence or Tikal.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Another good game, but one that seems to me to occupy an uncomfortable middle ground. Gamers who like meatier games are going to prefer the stuff like Tigris & Euphrates, Taj Majhal, or Amun-Re; but Rheinlander still has enough complexity and is vaguley fiddly enough to put off the more casual gamers who may prefer Modern Art, Quo Vadis, or Flinke Pinke. I still think Rheinlander is successful in what it does, trying to be a kingdom building & merging game with hints of Stephenson's Rocket, Acquire, and even Tigris & Euphrates - but make the game more accessible & faster-playing. I actually think this is an under-rated game, as it hardly got much play even when it was new and this is certainly a game worthy of being played. I just think the age-old balancing act between complexity & playability in this case found a slightly uncomfortable spot. People have complained about the colors, but I think they're just fine (if unusual), and I have several color-blind friends so the effort is appreciated.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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The great thing about seeing Knizia attack a new genre of games is seeing how he chooses to deal with the problems inherent in the system (see also Clash of the Gladiators below). For "pure" negotation games, it's a question of how to make the game interesting without falling into the pits of endless "leader-bashing" (Vinci is a prime example, but too many games to count fall into this category) or being a game more of personalities (Diplomacy, Europa 2038 ... and again too many to count). What Knizia has done is to create a game that is a blend of the free-form negotiation games and the more constrained "deal-making" games like Bohnanza or Chinatown. Quo Vadis is a much more open-ended game than these games, giving it more the feel of a negotiation game, but the key elements of the hidden laurels and the dual victory conditions (you both want to climb over the backs of your opponents in getting to the Senate, but you need to do it subtly because if you are too blatant in your ambition, you'll get to the Senate only to lose on laurels). It's these sort of tensions, not just their existance but how well-balanced they are, that set Knizia apart.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Taj Mahal *looks* like an auction game, but it isn't; it's somthing else, almost but not quite a bluffing game, a chunk of resource and risk management, and an element of auction of course. What distinguishes Taj Mahal from many Knizia games (although this trait is common in Alea games) is that it requires significant strategic vision to play. Really right away on turn one you need to look at the board and judge how the various point-scoring avenues look, which will influence which competitions to duck and which to fight. You have to guess when runs of adjacent provinces or commodities are coming up in sequence, so you'll have to be prepared for long, gruelling fights; you have to judge where you'll be needing to take breaks. However, mixed in with this, you have to remain flexible. As with all games that have an auction element, you have to be able to judge when a certain class of resources (commodities, castles, leaders) is being under-priced by the market, and be willing to shift strategies if possible to take advantage of it. Sometimes, the cost of shifting strategies will be more disruptive than the gains; but the players who can achieve the balance of strategic vision with tactical flexibility will do the best. Very few games achieve such a marvellous balance between the tactical and the strategic (the only other one that comes to mind is Alea's Traders of Genoa).
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9.
Board Game: Amun-Re
[Average Rating:7.45 Overall Rank:97]
Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Amun-Re is the most recent entry to the stable of Knizia boargames, and it proves again that he can always find new ways to look at the things he does so well. In this case, we have a game with auctions again - but unlike in Ra or Modern Art, the stuff being auctioned has no direct, inherent worth in terms of VPs. Like Medici or Modern Art, you are bidding in currency, but unlike those games, the currency is not the measure of victory - in this case you have to build pyramids. Now, it is true that money builds pyramids directly, but the cost is heavily time-based; due to the vagaries of the harvest and the geometrically increasing costs for building things all at once, a pyramid tomorrow may cost more (or less) in real terms then a pyramid today. This means that the balance of value between cash, real estate (on which to install farmers or pyramids), pyramids (for victory points), and farmers (for future income) is constantly fluctuating subtly. At the end of the day, this is more of an economic, cash-management game than a pure auction game, and like all Knizia games, one that gets a lot of value and subtelty out of a few fairly straightforward systems.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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What I like about Royal Turf is the economy of the game and the fact that it's a game that's essentially all about risk management. Do you want to bet on the riskier, but faster horses, or the slow and steady ones? How do you want to "manage" your portfolio of horses, some risky and some less so? This is especially interesting in that unlike the real thing, the horses are not really "independant" per se, but in some cases for one horse to do well will necessarily preclude another. Finally, of course, you have to mesh your strategy with that of the other players, and if you're playing with the face-down bids (which I like at any number), there is also the element of bluff. This is a lot of subtle detail to package into a small game which is really quite simple. And, it's also great (ideal, really) at 6.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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OK, so Merchants of Amsterdam is a gimmick game (the timer). This is a game that scores for me for essentially two reasons: firstly, you've got the tension fun factor of watching the clock tick down (rather loudly). Secondly, it's an auction game where you are never really clear how much you overbid by; it's sort of an "in the fist" auction without ever getting to see what the other player's bids were. "In the fist" auctions are already the tensest, most uncertain auctions (why do you think they sell houses that way?), the dutch auctions in this game ratchet the tension up even further.
The only drawback to this game is that given the added pressure, most people will *always* pay too much for goods, to the point that in that case the best strategy is usually not to buy anything at all. The point of pain seems to be around 170 - if things are routinely going for more than 170, you may be better off sitting out until the prices drop.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Stripped right down, Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation is essentially just Stratego with special powers and funky movement rules. Perhaps, but it still has the classic Knizia trademark of being remarkably well-executed. The movement restrictions make the game very tactically interesting, instead of being a game of more or less pure bluff like Stratego or the lesser Columbia titles. The supplemental cards, especially the special power cards, add a nice tactical dimension also. Plus, it's a game you can play in only 15 minutes or so, but it packs a lot of detail into that 15 minutes. Not a truly exceptional game by Knizia's standards, but a very good, well-executed one.
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13.
Board Game: Samurai
[Average Rating:7.49 Overall Rank:76]
Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Samurai is a game I do quite like, but it's also the first one on this list that his what I consider some minor problems. Firstly, it's a very defensive game - a major part of the game is to prevent the player on your left from winning. If anyone should fail in this duty, which is easy enough to do, it's not good. Secondly, and related to this, is that late in the game there can occsionally be a "parity" issue - once a lot of places have only two spaces open, player 1 will be forced to "set up" player 2. Player 2 then claims a piece, and player 3 will then be forced to "set up" player 4. This can continue in a frustrating cycle, and it's not good for players 1 & 3.
This is still not a really serious complaint, though, since this Samurai still depends heavily on good play. People complain about the final scoring meaning that a player who did not intuitively play "the best" can win, but what is good play if not playing for the final scoring? I think the clever final scoring leads to very subtle play, and is the difference between a very good game and an average game. Another great feature of this game is that it's one of the best 3-player games going.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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I seem to be in the minority here, but I quite like Clash of the Gladiators. It's unique; it's simple; it's short; it's fun. And it works; unlike most of these "last one standing" games, it actually forces people to do somthing and avoids the usual problems of "he who gets ganged up upon first loses". In this game it may actually be best to be attacked early and often, since combat = points. There is also a fair amount of tactics in picking your gladiators and picking your matchups; although with all the dice rolling, the game is of course comparatively light for a big-box Knizia game. For me, this is a nice variation - a game with all the good stuff from Knizia designs, but one that still has a high "fun factor".
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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When I sat down to actually do these ratings, I was surprised at how low a few games ended up; this would be one of them. Again, this is a game I quite like (and one of the few I'm actually really good at), but somehow it doesn't get very high up the rankings; it's somehow missing that little extra somthing. Part of it is almost certainly its similarity in overall feel to Acquire, without that game's sparse elegance. The "fewer actions than options" tension is not quite as successful here as in Through the Desert. And the scoring is truly opaque, to the point that it takes 2-3 games just to get comfortable with how the game plays. Stephenson's Rocket still has a lot of the good stuff that is typical in Knizia games, and one I still would play almost anytime and isn't in any danger of being purged from my collection, but these obstacles mean it doesn't come off the shelf much.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Drachenland is the first game on this list that is explicitly more of a "family-type" game than the rest. Based just on looking at the scoring system, you'd call it sort of a "Tigris & Euphrates lite", although it lacks that game's depth of player interaction. It's a pretty pure mix of time management and some light tactical planning, as you try to figure out how to use your action tiles to maximal benefit. Not a truly great game, but one with a lot of difficult trade-offs as the game progresses, and one that's pretty simple and much more accessible to the more casual gamer than the heavy stuff that dominates the top of my list.
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17.
Board Game: Medici
[Average Rating:7.18 Overall Rank:225]
Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Medici is a game that will probably surprise a lot of people that I rate it so low. Now, don't get me wrong, #16 on a list of Knizia's best board games is still a pretty decent showing. Medici, though, simply lacks some of the edge of the better, later games like Ra, Taj Mahal, or Amun-Re. The worth of the goods is pretty straightforward, and there really isn't anything else going on. The only real tension is over how much to bid on a lot that you really don't want, but feel the need to deny to another player too cheaply. This is really not really a satisfying tension. A good game, but not one with the same level of replayability as the better Knizia games. One thing that should be mentioned is that unlike most Knizia games, this works well with 6.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Flinke Pinke (better know in America as Quandry), along with the upcoming Tutanchamun and Exxtra (and a few games that I've not included like Members Only due to a shortage of space), fall into a category for me of "well-executed minimalist" games. In many ways Flinke Pinke is more similar to his small-box card games, a pure game, a simple concept, single-system game without any added chrome or extra detail. As such it succeeds very well (better to my mind than any similar games), but it just doesn't grab me. It's a contemplative game, without much fun factor, and yet with a significant enough random and/or chaos element ot make it frustrating.
Now, I should say, Quandry has grown on me somewhat. When I first played it, I didn't care for it much at all. There didn't seem to be anything there, and when compared with the vaguely similar Titan: the Arena, the latter was just a lot more fun (you at least get to hose people in an entertaining way). Quandry is now a game I can play and enjoy with the right crowd - it's a very solid, accessible game - but for the "serious" gamer, it's going to end up pretty far down the list. For me, too, when playing with the more casual gamers I like more flavorful games, like Drachenland above (who can argue with all the pretty colors!) or Adel Verphflictet.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Like Flinke Pinke above, this is a pretty minimalist game, this time of set collection. Another game I like in the right spot, this one is good as filler or as a holding action when you have 6 and are expecting a few more. It's engaging, has interesting choices, but the tension is not that high and it is very abstract. When a game succeeds as remarkably as Knizia's better games, the fundamental abstractness is not a big deal. But when the game itself is just OK or pretty good, for me a theme or some kind of fun player interaction (like Merchants of Amsterdam) makes the difference between a game succeeding on some level and being dull. Now, in fairness it should be said that when this game was released in 1993, this kind of set collection game hadn't been done to death yet so I probably would have been more enamored of it then than now. It still has a niche (being short, simple, and fast, yet still modestly challenging, and being good with 6), but isn't somthing I have the urge to break out when given free choice.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Traumfabrik is not a bad game, but it has one seriously major problem - it's far too similar to Ra for its own good. Ra is obviously a great game, so what's the problem? Well, many of the changes made just don't quite work. The contract bidding isn't as effective as the Suns. The tension of whether or not you're going to "run out of tiles" is gone. There is less uncertainty about how the values of everything will eventually pan out, which lowers the nice level of risk that Ra has. Now, Traumfabrik does make up for this with a nicely-done theme, and perhaps my rating has somthing to do with the fact that Traumfabrik's theme just doesn't really speak to me; and when evaluated purely as a game, Traumfabrik is just a shadow of Ra.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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The concept of New Games in Old Rome is kind of neat, and will appeal to some amateur game designers, but really the games in here are somewhat minimalistic and not that great. Many of the games are clearly prototypes for later, more fully-developed games which you would play by preference. You do get a *lot* of games for your investment, and if you're torn between these and a boxful of James Ernst games, the choice would be pretty obvious. Otherwise, probably one to pass on these days.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Another minimalist game, this one has overtones of Can't Stop, although without the elegance of that classic. How much of a risk do you want to take? Big risks mean big payoffs, small risks result in steady progress. A nice feature of Exxtra over Can't Stop is that the player interaction is much more direct, you may be in a position where you feel compelled to bid low to take out another player's bid, even though it will result in a smaller payoff for you. This is a game that I find fundamentally clever, but for one significant failing - it's a bit too long. At 30 minutes or less, this would be a solid game, but it gets a bit repetitive for me and doesn't quite hold its own through the whole game. If it weren't for that, it actually seems to be better than Can't Stop in some ways, but as it is Can't Stop's more moderate length, less repetitive nature (the odds and strategy change as columns get closed), and better excitement level make it an easy choice over this.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Now we're getting down to the games that, in my opinion, kind of suck. Auf Heller (recently re-released by Fantasy Flight as Kingdoms) seems to lack the fine polish of his later big-box stuff, with too much intellectual work for no satisfying payoff. It seems to suffer from the "Iron Horse" syndrome, with a lot of intellectual energy expended on placing tiles and tokens, and yet the work is largely undone by the randomness of the tile draws.
This game has a core of fans, so I fully expect to get bashed below for my opinion  , but there you have it.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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This game is awfully fiddly for a very low payoff. A game I wanted to like, but explaining all the torturous little rules is exhausting for a game that has a fundamental lack of any control. I have to very respectfully disagree with Knizia (in his interview on the FunAgain web site) on this one, I don't think Africa makes even a decent family game (I wouldn't introduce it to my family); there are just too many fiddly details that are a pain to keep straight. Perhaps their tolerance for such things is different in Germany, a fact that I shouldn't underestimate. Anyway, the underlying concept is actually pretty nice, the manipulation of many small probabilities over the course of a longer game, but the system is just not clean enough for what it accomplishes.
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25.
Board Game: Vegas
[Average Rating:4.82 Overall Rank:7156]
Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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This is one of Knizia's least efforts in my opinion, tedious and dull. The main complaint is simply that the early game is too unimportant, with early groundwork laboriously built up blown away in very little time. Usually in Knizia games you aren't just hoping for the right die roll ... but here you are. I found this game utterly dreadful and never want to have to sit down with it again.
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