This is inspired by @JamesReid860's post where he asked which publisher you'd choose if you could only play their games for the rest of your life.

I'm curious, which designer would you choose if you could only play his/her games for the rest of your life and why? (What is the variation like across his/her games in terms of complexity level? Only gateways? Only heavy weight games? What is the spread like in genre/theme/mechanics explored?)

I managed to carve out some time this afternoon to play a quick single player game of Scythe versus the Automa. Here are a few of my thoughts about the experience: 

(+) - The overall feel of the experience was similar to playing against real opponents. I was impressed by the variety of actions included in the automa deck. I really like the “scheme shift” that ramped up the difficulty about halfway through the game. 

(+) - The automa was easy to run. Once you learn how to read the cards the game flowed very quickly. There are not a lot of finicky things to do each turn.

(+) - Scythe is a blast to play. You build up your player board but you never feel totally secure as you watch enemies march towards you. Your engine, although carefully constructed, can fall apart in an instant if your opponents take a hex. 

(+) - Production values are simply off the charts. The wooden Meeples, the plastic minis, the card quality, the boards, and even the money bits are amazing. 

(-) - The iconography can be a bit much at first. Most games have this learning curve, so Scythe is not alone in this, but it’s almost like you need to learn a new language with each game you play. 

(-) Although the blending of many different mechanisms in Scythe is one of its greatest strengths, it can also be a weakness too. Sometimes I find myself yearning for more engine building options. Or more combat choices. If the game focused more on one of these areas would it lose some of its greatness? Again perhaps my forthcoming expansion plays will address this.

(-) - Combat is not the most rewarding endeavor. Even if you win you don’t really feel like you’ve won. I’ve heard that the expansion fixes this but I’ve yet to play it. This initial play was to prepare myself for the campaign. 

Overall:

Scythe is an amazing multiplayer experience and my first solo play was almost as amazing. The automa cards are easy to use and make for a decent opponent. I give this game a very solid 90%. 

Which would you choose?
EDIT: No loopholes 

Curious what ya'll bought over the sales around Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday and the weeks that surrounded it.

I kept my purchases very small because I have other things going on, but, I did buy.... 7 Ronin and Porta Nigra.

I almost bought Champions of Midgard. I haven't played it, but it seemed like a good game at a great price. But, I just didn't think that my group would like it and it doesn't support solo play.

This is for your favorite game you played this year. I’m figuring most of us haven’t played enough games that were released in 2019 to make a judgement on your favorite game from this year. So... let’s talk about your favorite game you played this year!

We're getting close to be half way through December and we've gotten 21 supporters for the support drive so far. If you're a supporter, share why you supported in this thread to encourage others to do so too.

As promised, here are the top 50 most visited game pages on BGA in 2019! It took a lot longer than I thought to prepare this but I hope it's interesting to some of you! :)

It's late so I don't have much brain power left, but here are some of my thoughts:

• Stonemaier Games still remains the powerhouse with three of their games in the top 5
• Uhh... I had never heard of Muffin Time until now--have I been living in a cave? (Kickstarter ended with around $1.4M?)
• Catan is still going strong
• Codenames barely made the cut! Honestly expected it to have placed higher
• Good to see some of my favorite games at the top (Root, Viticulture)

What are your thoughts on the results?

• When in dark mode, there are several visual issues with copy pasting in the comment/post description section. Backspacing on the beginning of a line that has something pasting in gets highlighted in white. Sometimes, I've seen text coming in black. I can't think of all of the different combinations at the moment that makes it bug out, but I made a long forum post recently and it was just filled with scattered portions of text coming in highlighted, in black font, etc. Again nothing big, but it dampens the user experience.
• Another complaint related to dark mode--there are buttons that essentially disappear/impossible to see because the button color blends in with the background (e.g. the button that you can click on to bring in the option to add the game to one of your lists).
• After the font color switch, there are some areas where the text doesn't get highlighted when you hover over it (e.g. the "topics" and the flairs area on the left of the forum)
• I would've complained about the doubling up of notifications that occur (e.g. when you receive a reply to your comment in a forum post that you're subscribed to AND that person has @'d you) but I believe Trent already resolved this issue so that we don't bombard Jamey with a bunch of notifications.
• I use the article post feature quite often, and it can get really REALLY buggy for inserted images and captions, where clicking on an inserted image will sometimes make it jump around to different spots in the page or make it disappear--have you run into these issues yet @indigopotter?
• In the "List" page, you can see the preview of a game that you're trying to add to one of your lists (owned, wishlist, etc). The preview image comes in way too big.
• This is more of a wish/question for everyone--I wish we had a more "practical" set of game recommendations based on certain parameters instead of just the "Mechanics" options on the top bar. To explain what I mean--when I go around the different communities, the same questions tend to get thrown around when people are looking for recommendations. Not that it's a bad thing, and I actually enjoy seeing people's recommendations and their personal take/experience with those games, but I'd personally like to see something along the lines of "Date Night," "College Party," "Office Lunch Time with Co-Workers," etc. Of course, setting the parameters for these types of topics would require a lot of generalization, but I feel like it would be more fun to go through the games that come up. Maybe it'd be more appropriate to create a forum topic for each of these? I honestly don't know, but just sharing my own experience where I feel like I'm visiting our game pages way less often these days.

I have been amused at how much less traffic there is on the forums on the weekends. I am curious what y'all have planned for this weekend? 

I have had an extremely stressful week combined with sickness. Today I am supposed to be helping at a large social event. Tomorrow morning I preach. I am really hoping to do some playing on Sunday afternoon. It will probably be a solo game or two. We will see. But, I feel like I need to unwind somehow.

Inspired by a conversation with @Marshwiggle92

What are some games you find easy to bring to a restaurant or coffee shop to play?

I've mentioned to a few of you (namely @Marshwiggle92) that I will share some metrics/milestones behind BGA that everyone might find interesting. Without further ado, here they are (will start out with some milestones and then present some metrics on content side of things):

BGA's busiest day was January 9, 2019

• 17,000 views in one day!
• This was when Trent first introduced BGA on Reddit's boardgames subreddit:
  https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/ae8h3c/introducing_board_game_atlas/

BGA's forum was added and introduced on January 31, 2019

• This was one of the most requested features after Trent's intro post about BGA
• https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/altfwo/introducing_the_board_game_atlas_forum/

We hosted a Hackathon on May 10-11

• Sponsored by IELLO and judged by 17 content creators/industry professionals
• https://www.boardgameatlas.com/forum/Weyboyy1HM/the-bga-hacks-winners-are
• Our API is open for commercial/non-commercial use and is used by over 340 apps today

We're growing fast

• Monthly active users (number of unique users who visited BGA in the past month) grew 4x since April--jumped from 4K to 16K MAU today--and this isn't even counting our users on Board Game Prices after the acquisition
• YouTube: Started out with 110 subscribers in September 22 (carried over from Trent's 5 Color Combo/before BGA days) to 492 subscribers today--Trent's been doing great work trying out reviews, news, unboxings, and interviews!--by the way, what's your favorite among these formats? 

Lastly, here's my favorite section saved for last. Content performance:

Most Viewed Article

Board Game Wingspan's Artist Spent 20 Hours Straight on the Barn Owl Card (second most viewed was my interview of Jamey Stegmaier with 3,442 Views)

• 7,150 Views
• 448 Likes and 59 Shares on Facebook
• https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/cr8gi4/wingspans_artist_spent_20_hours_straight_on_the/

Most Liked/Shared Article (I was going to put these separately but Mihajlo is at the top for both of these categories. Second most shared was my interview with the Wingspan artists)

Top Board Game Illustrator Mihajlo Dimitrievski on Style (Raiders of the North Sea)

• 831 Views
• 781 Likes and 155 Shares on Facebook
• Mihajlo aka The Mico ("co" is pronounced with a "ch" sound) has a fun and supportive following! Below are their reactions on The Mico's personal facebook page and on his professional one
• https://www.facebook.com/mihajlod/posts/10156676855703845
• https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=3216407091702656&id=198918470118215
  

Most Viewed Video

South Park Parodies Dice Tower's Board Game Breakfast

• 3,842 Views
• 55 Thumbs Up, 9 Thumbs Down

Most Liked Video

Hasbro Trolling By Releasing Monopoly: Longest Game Ever

• 3,345 Views
• 150 Thumbs Up, 8 Thumbs Down

Longest Video :)

I'm Playing All 100 Sheets of Welcome To In One Sitting...

[Part 2] I'm Playing All 100 Sheets of Welcome To In One Sitting...

• 1,615 Views
• 73 Thumbs Up, 2 Thumbs Down
• 23 Hours and 12 Minutes Total

• Trent has produced 60 videos since September 26 (that's 78 days)
• That means an average of 0.77 video a day (ok I'm going too crazy with numbers now). More like 5-6 videos a week
• Can you guess which format got the most love? If you don't want to guess see the stats below
• Unboxing - 5 Videos
• Interview - 3 Videos
• Podcast - 4 Videos (the ones with me and Trent)
• Marathon/Stunt - 2 Videos
• Review - 24 Videos
• News - 22 Videos

Finally played with Tuscany last night. As soon as @trentellingsen started explaining the different aspects of the new board, my head started spinning its wheels thinking about the new possibilities haha. I love how non-linear the strategy options are now and the new mechanics around the sleep/wake-up cycle is such a game changer.

Couple of thoughts below:

1. The wake-up time bonuses and the mechanics of retrieving your workers at the end of the year: Love it. Feels like each wake-up time comes with enough incentive that makes up for the later turn. I also like that you get a bonus as each season comes around so that you can bank on getting a good plant or visitor card so that you're not completely reliant on using your workers to do certain actions in a season. There are additional incentives to consider waking up later too--an opponent who uses all of their workers earlier than you will essentially "head home" at the end of winter and open up all of the spaces that their workers had occupied, so it's not just a simple matter of saving up your grande worker for carrying out crucial actions in the later seasons (a grande worker is able to carry out actions in an area that's already fully occupied by others' workers).
2. The star placement on the map: I didn't get an explanation on how the stars and the map concept fits in thematically with the rest of the game, so it felt out of place in comparison to the overall highly thematic nature of the game. The double star placement action space in Spring with the bonus feels like one of the best options to get a head start in the first year. I also like how it serves as a mini game of area control to get end of the game victory points.
3. Luck: My goodness, I just don't have a good relationship with the red grapes. In all of my past games of Viticulture (including this one), I always end up getting zero red grape cards until around the 3rd or 4th year or so. Tuscany has a spot where you can use your workers to trade for resources so I relied on that to get red grapes in my 3rd year in return for sacrificing victory points. Even without Tuscany though, while it can make things super difficult, I still like that the randomness is thematically appropriate.
4. The general trend with Viticulture EE (at least in my group) has been that toward the last few years, players are done building their engine and does very little during the spring and summer seasons so that they can make full use of their workers for harvesting and making wine/fulfilling orders during fall/winter. Tuscany seems to balance things out a bit where it adds just the right amount of options so that each season has significance as the years pass. 

If you're wondering, I'm the orange in the picture and Trent is the yellow (purple is Trent's wife and green is a new friend of ours). I knew he was trying to finish the game so I tried to maximize VP's and was able to make a great run in the last year starting from 10 and finishing at 23 (I was the last to finish so you can see all other workers have gone home). Overall, now I can say from experience that Tuscany really is a must :)

Hey! We're the team behind the Manacrest Kickstarter project, a physical & digital trading card game. You may have seen our promoted KS on BGA!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/timelapsegames/manacrest

If anyone has any questions about our project, game design, Kickstarter marketing, etc - we'd love to share what we know! 

Myself (Nick) and the lead designer (Micah) will be tackling questions throughout the evening/tomorrow!

Congrats @Skurvy5 for the win! Bonus points for an awesome picture.

We might need to make him a crown if he manages to snag another win in the future :)

I’m way more excited than I have any right to be but I now have a Kallax to hopefully store all the games!! Expect before and after pictures at some point once it’s built.

In The interview with Jamey Stegmaier they touched on apps. Which ones do you play and why? To get more gaming in? To perfect strategy? To learn rules? Just for fun? 

Do you like games that have a tutorial mission or mode? Do you find them helpful? Do you not like them? Which ones have you seen that have one?