Five Games that don't suck, and you'll all agree with me eventually

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Codenames doesn't suck. Dominant Species is a lot of faff welded onto an area control game. I'll never know if the other three suck or not.

Codenames is not my jam, found it boring.

I'll say Puerto Rico and just let the vitriol wash over me

Never seen a game that was both highly predictable yet simultaneously so punishing of any mistake.

As for the 5 you listed, I've only played DS and CN, maybe Junta (is that the one that came with dictator glasses?) DS is difficult and open-ended to the point where calculating the spillover effects of changing resources becomes too difficult, leading to sub-optimal decisions. If you had a digital version that could calculate them for you and let you chose I think a lot of "choice" would disappear.

Codenames can be played many ways and can rely heavily on specific partners shared knowledge. The endless options are definitely the charm of the game ("how in the hell is 'blue 3' supposed to mean bridge, car, and stadium but not river or Neptune?").

Not sure that I understand this article, having not seen the discussion thread that inspired it. All board games have limited choices in comparison with tabletop role-playing games.

Needs a rewrite. I don't even know why you listed Dominant Species as a game that doesn't suck and then you go ahead and tell us why it sucks.

Yeah, it's rough taken out of context. So I blogged it instead of articled it.

I like the map half of Dominant Species. The worker placement half is a complete dirge.

One of the replies --

The only reason that worker placement sucks is that it makes weak designs publishable.

That may be profound, but I'm not sure yet. Need to think about it for a bit.

Sagrilarus wrote: One of the replies --

The only reason that worker placement sucks is that it makes weak designs publishable.

That may be profound, but I'm not sure yet. Need to think about it for a bit.

It's true of any trendy mechanic. How many deckbuilding games came and went? Now we're in the era of asymmetric DOAMs and giant overproduced miniatures.