What are your favorite games?

While there are plenty of shorter, lighter games that I really enjoy, I'm always more intrigued and excited to play the more involved, complex games. And while I do enjoy medium to heavy euros, I'm always more drawn to games with stronger thematic ties to their mechanics, which are not often present in euro games.

My top 5 games right now are Empires of the Void II, Underwater Cities, Teotihuacan, Islebound, and Brass: Lancashire.

I tend to design more complex games as well - I really want to create something that feels like you're building something intricate with all your hard-thought strategies.

LoL well, we do have the same first name! Which 2 games in that list have you not played yet?

The 2 Red Raven games are 4x style, although Islebound is kind of a hybrid of light 4x and euro - it's like a combo of EotV2 and Above and Below. Teotihuacan is a thematic point salad game, Brass is economic, Underwater Cities is my favorite worker placement.

1) Stockpile Super simple and the most intuitive and elegant game I know.

2) Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done This game looks great, plays fast, and has amazing art and production value. It's a winning combination of modular rondel action management, tech tree development, and area control. It focuses on what the Templar Knights did in total, not just combat...in fact, there is no combat (just determinstic crusade action). Looks awesome with both plastic and wooden minis. You won't be disappointed.

3) Fool's Gold Cool combination of bidding, worker placement, speculation, and push your luck. The artwork is great; looks great on the table. Interesting dice mechanic, and "overwintering" mechanic. Need to work a diversification strategy because you still need luck to strike it rich. Tight scoring as your "highest hand" gets dumped as the "fool's gold".

4) Founding Fathers Historical game about the making of The Constitution. Deep card play with multi-use cards representing the delegates to the Constitutional Convention with historically thematic powers.

5) Campaign Trail Massive game with multi-use cards (among my favorite mechanics) and an innovative "control ruler" to facilitate the shifting power of each party. The gameplay provides comprehensive coverage of the election process, including "dirty politics." Fun and funny, and very competitive--the way elections should be. It's a long game, but the time will fly by.

6) Ancient Terrible Things Love the simple, familiar Yahtzee dice rolling push-your-luck gameplay, with multiple resources and cards to manage to liven things up and mitigate the luck of the dice. Colorful and creative artwork with a dark, comical look and a Lovecraftian pulp theme.

7) 1775: Rebellion Wonderfully implemented Revolutionary War themed area control game. The team gameplay is best, and the random turn order and dice rolling combat keeps tension and strategy at their highest. Another game I enjoy seeing on the table as it looks great despite being primarily a bunch of cubes.

8) The Artemis Project This game has an intriguing theme--colonizing Europa, frozen moon of Jupiter. The gameplay is divided into a few rounds of "underwater projects" and then a few rounds of "surface projects" to reflect the two main environments of Eurpoa. It's got cool, innovative "sci fi flavor" as you roll dice for worker placement and resource management gameplay. The components are great, and the color choices and artwork make this game look like no other.

There are more, but hopefully this gives you a sense of what I like.

My top 5 favorites are

1. Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation; Deluxe version

This two player Knizia classic is just the epitome of trying to get into your opponent's head. And the deluxe edition adds even more replayability. I've played this over 50 times.

2. Agricola
I love playing with all the different decks, and especially designing my own cards and playing them on play-agricola.com. I've played close to 100 times face-to-face and over 2000 times online (BTJ or PA)

3. Werewolf
Any version, any player count is fine. I've played a ton online and a ton in real life. Best social deduction game (I've played almost all of them)

4. Biblios
Great little card game with incredible choices. I think I've played almost 50 times. I never turn down a game of Biblios.

5. Kamisado
Best two-player combinatorial abstract. I love Chess, I enjoy most of the GIPF project games, and I've played many others, but nothing tops Kamisado for me. I haven't gotten many plays in real life (because I've played so much online, it's hard to find competition). I find the mechanics of the game to be so clever, the absolute definition of elegance combined with simplicity.