# What is the worst board game you have ever played? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [January 4, 2018, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868 "2018-01-04T20:40:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![merrick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/58956e/32.png) [@merrick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/merrick)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2018, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/21 "2018-01-05T19:22:32Z")
**Left Hand of Dorkness** , I feel your pain. Being stuck for hours in a dead-lost position with no way to do anything is horrible. The trouble is that “give everyone a chance at the end” often translates as “make the first 90% of the game pointless”. That’s why these days I prefer Euro-type multiplayer games - you may be 50 points behind the second-last player, but dammit, at least you can score some points and fell like you’ve achieved something. **Allecher** , I share your dislike for _Battlestar Galactica_. It’s long, slow and the traitor can’t do much to sabotage the team without giving himself away, so he gets to hide, and hide, and hide… In my experience (my old group loved it, and brought it out way too often), about 65% of the time the humans co-op to victory and the traitor can do nothing, 25% of the time the humans lose _to the game system_ and the traitor is irrelevant and the other 10% the traitor actually gets the chance for a good backstab - which means that the other 4-5 people at the table get to play for 3 hours and then get slapped with what one game-designer described as “the unfair instant-death scenario.” Plus, it has the pernicious rule that a player may only find out he’s a traitor half-way through the game - leading to everyone stalling until they can be sure what side they’re on. But the one game on my flat-out-will-not-play list is _Betrayal at the House on the Hill_, I can see how some people like it in a sort of visual-novel way - just accept you have no agency and go with the flow. As a _game_ well, imagine a _Snakes and Ladders_ variant where every turn, instead of just throwing the dice, you throw three dice in different colours and cross-reference the results in a hundred-page rulebook to tell you where to move… ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2018, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/22 "2018-01-05T19:25:30Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > The main problem with Candyland is that it takes too long to play a full game. Ideally, they’d make it last less than ninety seconds, and then I wouldn’t hate it so much. I solved that problem with the Firebug by drawing a few extra shortcuts on the board. (There’s one or two - can’t recall - built into the regulation game. We played with four or five of them, total.) Sped things up enormously, because it tilted the balance between things that move you forward and things that move you back, much more towards going forward. Made the game a lot more tolerable, because even though the winner was still predetermined, at least it took only a short time - probably less than 10 minutes per game, on the average. ---
**Author:** ![BobArrgh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobarrgh/32/2881_2.png) [@BobArrgh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobArrgh)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2018, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/23 "2018-01-05T19:28:10Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > … (snip) … As a non-parent, I played a game once called Shogun. … (snip) Is this the game that was based on James Clavell’s book, “Shogun”? If so, I came into the thread specifically to mention it and several of the other games that were based on his books. I think I was given Shogun, Tai Pan, and King Rat, but it was way back in the 1980s. I remember [del]playing[/del] trying to play all of them, but it was an exercise in frustration from the get-go. I couldn’t tell you which one of them was the worst, though, but they are each up there in my book. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2018, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/24 "2018-01-05T19:50:18Z")
Certainly the feeblest board game I have ever played, is one discovered (in UK, my country) a few years ago: a “retro” re-issuing of a game devised and marketed in the mid-1930s, called _Coronation Scot_, in tribute to the real-life introduction at that time, with much fanfare, of the then fastest-ever express train service – bearing that title – to run between London and Glasgow. Premise of the game, is for up to four players to race each other from London to Glasgow along the principal main-line rail route between those two cities --that being, in the nature of railways, an utterly unrealistic thing. Said rail route set out on the board in a sort of elongated S-shape, with four parallel tracks for the up-to-four players; with 78 intermediate stations, of various degrees of size and importance. Players throw the dice and advance their respective pieces, the appropriate number of stations’-worth. A dozen or so of the stations feature instructions saying “go forward to” or “go back to”, X station. Something of a “period” curiosity; but, especially to me as a railway enthusiast, to the nth degree “lame” and lacking in realism. My brother and I, having played this game, set about trying to devise an adaptation of it which would be more gutsy and exciting, and closer to how railways are in the real world; but we didn’t get all that far with the project. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2018, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/25 "2018-01-05T20:00:31Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > Candy land is less a game and more of an activity. The game is set once the shuffle is done. Kind of like War. Yeah Candyland and Chutes and Ladders are activities with the trappings of a game. Games require decisions that effect the outcome and both of these have none of that. ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2018, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/26 "2018-01-05T20:47:38Z")
> [@merrick](#): > > But the one game on my flat-out-will-not-play list is _Betrayal at the House on the Hill_, I can see how some people like it in a sort of visual-novel way - just accept you have no agency and go with the flow. As a _game_ well, imagine a _Snakes and Ladders_ variant where every turn, instead of just throwing the dice, you throw three dice in different colours and cross-reference the results in a hundred-page rulebook to tell you where to move… Interesting, the family and I love this game. All turns are free-agency, up until the betrayal mechanic sets in, then the rules for that particular haunt scenario determine what your future strategy will be, but (generally) you are still actually playing your strategy out on the fly and adapting to changes. Not sure about the rulebook part you mentioned- everything is straightforward until you have to read your scenario, which then might throw a monkey wrench, but generally it is all fairly intuitive. Oh, and no dice in the game at all, just movement based on character speed. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2018, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/27 "2018-01-05T20:52:51Z")
> [@merrick](#): > > **Left Hand of Dorkness** , I feel your pain. Being stuck for hours in a dead-lost position with no way to do anything is horrible. The trouble is that “give everyone a chance at the end” often translates as “make the first 90% of the game pointless”. That’s why these days I prefer Euro-type multiplayer games - you may be 50 points behind the second-last player, but dammit, at least you can score some points and fell like you’ve achieved something. I can think of three different solutions to this problem: 1. I’ve seen some folks whip from behind to win Settlers of Catan, due to some clever use of resources and cards to earn a bunch of points quickly. Their final turn is predicated on careful planning in early turns. 2. In a game like Castles of Mad King Ludwig, each player has secret victory conditions. Build lots of circle rooms! Build lots of incomplete rooms! Build lots of tiny rooms! You play the game carefully, building toward your secret conditions, and even if you look behind on the track, you can still win once the secret conditions are revealed at game’s end. 3. In Smallworld, it’s simpler: your points are hidden. Sure, a careful player can keep mental track of how many points every other player has, but it’s such a good drinking game that who has time for that? I’m sure there are other solutions, and a lot of times there are combinations of these (Catan’s cards contain secret victory points, for example). But in all these cases, careful play throughout the game can allow a player who looks like they’re in last place to zoom ahead in the end. > [@BobArrgh](#): > > Is this the game that was based on James Clavell’s book, “Shogun”? If so, I came into the thread specifically to mention it and several of the other games that were based on his books. I think I was given Shogun, Tai Pan, and King Rat, but it was way back in the 1980s. I remember [del]playing[/del] trying to play all of them, but it was an exercise in frustration from the get-go. I’m pretty sure it’s not; Boardgamegeek says [it’s a 2006 game based on a game published in 2002](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20551/shogun). ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2018, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/28 "2018-01-05T21:00:18Z")
> [@Kron](#): > > Interesting, the family and I love this game. All turns are free-agency, up until the betrayal mechanic sets in, then the rules for that particular haunt scenario determine what your future strategy will be, but (generally) you are still actually playing your strategy out on the fly and adapting to changes. > > Not sure about the rulebook part you mentioned- everything is straightforward until you have to read your scenario, which then might throw a monkey wrench, but generally it is all fairly intuitive. Oh, and no dice in the game at all, just movement based on character speed. I also love the game but it’s definitely not for anyone who want’s a “fair” experience. I get why it can be maddening for some people since you will often end up in no-win situations. There is dice to start the haunt (and possibly in battle?) ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2018, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/29 "2018-01-05T21:39:04Z")
> [@Happy\_Lendervedder](#): > > Chutes and Ladders. There is nothing worse than having a 3 year old be like 8 spots from winning, and land on a chute that sends her back to the beginning of the game. When my kids were the age where they liked Candyland and Chutes&Ladders, my work-around involved subtly cheating to make sure they’d win and I’d lose, all in a timely manner. Pretty sure I’ve never told them, absolutely certain I never will. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2018, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/30 "2018-01-05T22:24:40Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > [Machi Koro](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143884/machi-koro)is a badly made game, though it has a nice idea. However, you only need the low level cards in it to be able to win the game. It is so fundamentally flawed, it should really be repaired and re-issued. > > I strongly recommend against it unless they have fixed it. That is the one I dislike for the “irretrievably behind” factor even though it isn’t a very long game. If your opponent has all the numbers covered and you don’t then at most you will stay even for awhile before eventually falling even more behind and losing. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2018, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/31 "2018-01-05T22:31:58Z")
> [@merrick](#): > > **Allecher** , I share your dislike for _Battlestar Galactica_. It’s long, slow and the traitor can’t do much to sabotage the team without giving himself away, so he gets to hide, and hide, and hide… In my experience (my old group loved it, and brought it out way too often), about 65% of the time the humans co-op to victory and the traitor can do nothing, 25% of the time the humans lose _to the game system_ and the traitor is irrelevant and the other 10% the traitor actually gets the chance for a good backstab - which means that the other 4-5 people at the table get to play for 3 hours and then get slapped with what one game-designer described as “the unfair instant-death scenario.” I like it better than straight-up Mafia because it isn’t entirely about whoever has the highest charisma. The one time I played I won as the Cylon in a mixture between the two – I was able to make us fail several tasks by playing low cards rather than negative cards and thus keep my status in doubt. But we needed luck as well because they successfully jailed one of the traitors whom I thought was _not_ a traitor. (Although I continued to vote either low negative or low positive when the question of release came about.) I came one turn away from hyperspacing us at the most inopportune moment but they figured me out right before that. We won anyway due to a little bad luck on their part. That said, I still don’t especially like it because it’s a Mafia game. But it’s better than Werewolf. ---
**Author:** ![merrick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/58956e/32.png) [@merrick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/merrick)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/32 "2018-01-06T00:17:53Z")
**krondys** I _may_ be maligning the game, but I’m sure I remember that every time you go into a new room (or in my case usually _try_ to go into a new room) you get a random event of the “throw a dice to see if you get loot/throw a dice to see if something bad happens” type. And you can’t play any sort of strategy because the first part of the game is completely random - yes, you can choose whether to go into this random unknown room and have that random event or go into that random unknown room and have that other random event - and it’s irrelevant anyway because you have no idea what will actually turn out to be useful when the betrayal finally happens. Then after about an hour of random blundering around, the plot kicks in and one player is randomly chosen to win or lose. **Ludovic** - I suspect that’s how it’s _meant_ to be played. But the group I was with had come up with the strategy of “before every task, hold a 5-minute discussion to decide whether we need to pass it. If yes, everyone throws in enough cards to make sure the task cannot fail even with a traitor playing negatives. If no, no-one plays any cards at all”. So the opportunities for sabotage are limited to trying to suggest bad plans, while trying to avoid suspicion of Deviation from the Collective. (Incidentally, it wasn’t a case of the most charismatic person playing everyone’s turns for them, they just did everything by collective decision). ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/33 "2018-01-06T00:43:30Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Back in the mid-eighties a group of us attempted to play the infamous _The Campaign For North Africa_. I say “attempted” because I don’t think anyone has ever played this thing to the end. > > 1. It takes 8 to 10 people to play supposedly. We had 12. > 2. The minimum playing time for those that are proficient in the game is 60,000 minutes(over 40 days!)…and _nobody_ is proficient in this game, so it’ll theoretically take half again as much time… > 3. It’s best you take the insane instruction/history book and make copies of it for everybody, because you can’t get through two moves in a row before getting into a fight about what is or is not allowed. Not that the book is likely to clear things up. > > My group went three days straight playing this black hole of a game before giving up, and we are still not sure if we even set the board up right when we started. Great review [here](https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/09/the-notorious-board-game-that-takes-1500-hours-to-complete/), am kind of jealous you got to play such a beast. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/34 "2018-01-06T00:48:37Z")
Hmm, I like that version of Shogun, though my play was with similarly experienced players. You can get bad luck from the cube tower though, and strategy is tough and if you lose a lot of territories not sure you can catch up and I can see that being unsatisfactory. Brian ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/35 "2018-01-06T01:11:54Z")
> [@lisiate](#): > > Great review [here](https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/09/the-notorious-board-game-that-takes-1500-hours-to-complete/), am kind of jealous you got to play such a beast. I wasn’t exaggerating, was I? I deliberately didn’t mention the “macaroni” rule because someone would have reported me for trolling. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/36 "2018-01-06T01:16:27Z")
[This](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30464/game-about-united-nations) was easily the most boring. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/37 "2018-01-06T01:44:05Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > [Machi Koro](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143884/machi-koro)is a badly made game, though it has a nice idea. However, you only need the low level cards in it to be able to win the game. It is so fundamentally flawed, it should really be repaired and re-issued. > > I strongly recommend against it unless they have fixed it. Did you just play the original version or did you play it with the expansions? Because the first expansion really improved the game. The big fix was they changed the card set-up. Instead of having all cards available, there’s now a random set-up. You always have a choice of ten cards to buy but the cards are always changing. So you can no longer just follow a simple strategy like buy a radio tower, then buy a cheese factory, and then buy ranches on every turn after that. You have to build a plan around what cards are available on the table and the probabilities of when cards might appear. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/38 "2018-01-06T01:52:50Z")
> [@Allecher](#): > > The special place in my heart for bad games is reserved for Battlestar Galactica. It is not a well balanced game and includes a hidden traitor mechanic that is so complex it requires the player to continuously read the rule book, which make it hard to hide your status as traitor. I’m not a huge fan of hidden role games and traitor mechanics. But if you like that kind of thing, you can see how somebody would enjoy Battlestar Galactica. The most interesting twist is that the players don’t know what team they’re on until halfway through the game. So in the first half of the game you have to play in a way that keeps your options open. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/39 "2018-01-06T01:57:57Z")
> [@N9IWP](#): > > Hmm, I like that version of Shogun, though my play was with similarly experienced players. You can get bad luck from the cube tower though, and strategy is tough and if you lose a lot of territories not sure you can catch up and I can see that being unsatisfactory. > > Brian I’m in the middle on the tower. I don’t hate it but I can see why some people do. I feel the main problem Shogun has is its pacing. You have spend ten or twenty intense minutes planning out your moves. And then you sit back and essentially follow the script set by those planned moves for twenty or thirty minutes. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868/40 "2018-01-06T02:02:50Z")
The game that holds a special place in the black depths of my heart is _Ticket to Ride._ I know that it’s one of the most popular games of all time, but to me it is the perfect storm of everything awful about Euro-style games. You sit there and make lines while other people make lines. Some of their lines might interfere with some of your lines, but for the most part don’t worry about it and make your lines. At the end of the game, everyone looks to see who had the best lines. And don’t forget about the expansions, which give you way more potential lines to make. Aaaaghhhnnggnh. > [@merrick](#): > > **Allecher** , I share your dislike for _Battlestar Galactica_. It’s long, slow and the traitor can’t do much to sabotage the team without giving himself away, so he gets to hide, and hide, and hide… In my experience (my old group loved it, and brought it out way too often), about 65% of the time the humans co-op to victory and the traitor can do nothing, 25% of the time the humans lose _to the game system_ and the traitor is irrelevant and the other 10% the traitor actually gets the chance for a good backstab - which means that the other 4-5 people at the table get to play for 3 hours and then get slapped with what one game-designer described as “the unfair instant-death scenario.” BSG’s biggest problem (at least in the base game) is that it’s not balanced unless you’ve got exactly five players - two Cylons and three humans. And I agree that the cards can go badly for one side or the other and really screw with the pacing. **And** you can count on new players always drawing a Cylon card and immediately giving themselves away by mistake. Still, it’s given my group some of its best “oh holy shit!” moments across many years of boardgaming. > [@](#): > > Plus, it has the pernicious rule that a player may only find out he’s a traitor half-way through the game - leading to everyone stalling until they can be sure what side they’re on. Definitely problematic. I always gave new players a talk about not doing that - BSG falls entirely apart if all the humans aren’t playing to win during the first half. Everyone is secretly hoping they’ll be the Cylon, but everyone has to play to win from the very beginning. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-board-game-you-have-ever-played/805868.md?page=3)