Imagine that your friendly local game store has a sale and you see a great deal on a game by one of your favorite designers. You know nothing about the game besides the designer’s name and that it’s a decent price. You are in a hurry, no time to research, buy it now or miss out.
Which designer’s game would you most likely purchase blindly based only on their name?
@donio I think my best hit rate is with Cole Wehrle, but I’ve sat and thought about this for a bit and I think I run into the issue that I generally only bat about 50% on any designer that does more than a couple games. There always seems to be something that they do that makes me go “no, you sort of missed on this one…”
For example:
- I enjoy Roads & Boats, Indonesia, and The Great Zimbabwe, but Antiquity/FCM/Bus all fell flat to me after a play or two.
- I adore Root/Pamir/JC1 but An Infamous Traffic was not good, and Oath was not worth keeping (and I skipped JC2 after playtesting).
- Glass Road/Ora & Labora/Bohnanza/Patchwork I like a lot, but I got rid of Caverna, Agricola, and I’m still deciding on the new Canal game.
- Twilight Struggle/1989/1960 I adore, and a bunch of other Matthews games I got rid of.
-- Glory to Rome, Innovation, and Mottainai are respectable, but The Bird and some others just sort of miss the mark I’m after.
- John Bohrer is on a 30% hit rate and I think I still have like 3 or 4 of his Winsome games.
There are some designers who I don’t bother with at all anymore, because their style just doesn’t mesh with me at all, and that’s great cause there are other people who like those, but if we’re talking about “who is your go-to” then that’s tougher to say.
My list looks similar. Splotter is at the top. I did preorder Horseless Carriage back before we had much info about it and don’t regret it. John Bohrer would be up there as well, but though various connections I’ve played enough Winsomes to know they aren’t an instant buy. (Iberian Railways, Italian Railroads, and 1836)
Tangent, but I’m very split on 1836. The opening is incredible, but once you get past the first stock round all the interesting decisions have been made.