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Refreshing to not see Feast for Odin at the top

Really have enjoyed a recwnt purchase by him - Merkator and no feeding anyone thankfully

For Agricola, losing one point for not having something in a scoring category and getting 1 point for having one is functionally identical to not having it nets you zero points and the first gets you +2 points (i.e., in either case you get +2 points for your first). When I teach the game I point that out to help reframe the points, because you can absolutely still score highly (50+) even when taking negatives from a category or two. But yeah, just like Caverna, it is often the case that the person who grows their family the most/quickest (without starving wins). But that in and of itself is an optimization puzzle I quite enjoy. Nusfjord is so good. I like that it’s easy to teach (albeit with a couple quirky rules), relatively short, relatively light, and plays well at all counts. Usually the Uwe game I bring to board game nights because it’s often a hit both with experienced Euro/Uwe games and non-experienced ones. I feel it shines at 4p though imo if you have a chance to try it at that count.

Enjoyed the video. I’ve played about a dozen of his games. Favorite: A Feast for Odin. This is just in my Top-10 all time. Have the Norwegian expansion which is nice as well. Least Favorite: Le Harve. I’ve tried to like this one. I give it a 4/10. I recognize people really love it and such but I found it such a chore and in-fun. I even tried doing the digital version, and that made me like it even less. Don’t know what it is. Sorry. I think Agricola, All Creatures Great and Small, Patchwork and Bonanza are all ‘fine’, but I dont love them. Reykholt fell flat for me, but not Le Harve level flat. I have not played Fields of Arle or Caverna, but would give them a try. No body I know owns it, and I’m not about to buy them though. Maybe someday I’ll run into someone that has it.

A Feast for Odin is a great design, but it really feels like I'm roleplaying a viking hoarder, and just couldn't feel very attached to it. "Vikings love their f&$*ing rocks."

I disagree about Nusfjord. Really cool solo game imho. I Consider getting Arle, but without an AI or a mechanism that blocks stuff, I fear that every game quickly will become exactly the same? Or am I wrong? 🤔

Oranienburger Kanal is the best game he’s ever made in my opinion. It’s tight, has loads of decisions but feels really smooth. Has insane replayability and takes some of the best things from other games and introduces an incredible spatial puzzle which feels really unique. It’s a shame no one can buy it currently. Hopefully the reprint will be decent.

Reykholt is hot garbage. 💩

I havent played many of his games. But i do own 2: agricola for tightness and a feast for odin for the opposite. I want to try fields of arle but ita too expensive to just buy on a whim.

Thanks Luke for making this overview. Always love honest opinions.

Fields of Arle is really special, it’s my favourite solo experience and the expansion is so good and almost always include it. I’ll be playing it in my old folks home 50 years down the line that’s for sure, it’s a forever keep♥️

The Worst and the Worst of… Or The Average and the Worst of… Just not a designer to care for.

Atiwa is my go to farming game. Perhaps I will get Caverna some time in the future and if I find it cheap. Until then I will try it on BGA to see if it’s for me.

Hahahahaha! That intro!

Agricola #1 for me. Followed by Feast For Odin and At the Gates of Loyang. By the way Agricola is only good at 4, thats the best combination of spaces/tightness.

Uwe Rosenberg is probably my favorite designer, but I did enjoy watching you comment, whether negatively or positively, about the games and comparing it with my own experiences. A few comments of my own: • Hallertau: My group just got into Hallertau recently after a few years of it collecting dust on my shelf, and we quite like it. We played it today, in fact, and actually discussed doing a variant of our own to handle the card swinginess. We might either draw more cards in the beginning and then discard down to the normal amount afterwards, giving us some agency, or institute a general "draw 2, pick 1" through the rest of the game. I generally do NOT like to do this, especially with a designer whom I respect quite a bit, but I do agree that getting extreme synergy or some key early cards like tool generation is a massive advantage over someone with clearly lesser choices, and it is too long of a game to have that much individual player input randomness. As far as unique mechanics, my group really likes the action space scarcity between rounds as well as the “definitely not feeding” puzzle of the farmhouse moving. • Caverna: I am also in the “Caverna over Agricola” camp for many of the same reasons, so no need to rehash them here. I have actually won the game with only 3 dwarves before myself, so it is not mandatory action to get to the full dwarf count. As far as expansions go, I love the “Forgotten Folk” expansion and try not to play without it, as you can always teach the game to a new player and have them play as the normal Dwarves while others use the new races. I agree that the “Frantic Fiends” expansion is pretty bad, IMO, and I would add that it involves a lot of unneeded and uneven randomness. • Fields of Arle: I do indeed love this game but have played it relatively seldom, because the base game plays only 2, and you can only play up to 3 with the Tea & Trade expansion. It is very crunchy and wide open, and I would suggest it to any Uwe fan to try if they can fit into those player counts. • A Feast for Odin: An amazing game that is likely my group’s favorite Uwe game. The “Norwegians” expansion is one of the best expansions ever made, and I now teach the game with in included. The game has a lot going on and despite my group having played it quite a bit, I bet we could play it another 20 times and still not reach every corner of its strategic possibilities. Yes, it is a tough, long teach but well worth it IMO. • Nusfjord: I like this game but can never get it to the table. It is just too lightweight for my primary gaming group and does not really satisfy that “Uwe” crunchy Euro itch we often have. I do play it with others, and it is fine as a lighter Euro to teach newer board gamers. • Le Havre: An amazing game and a favorite of mine. I do agree that 3 players is the perfect count and 4 and especially 5 are too long for the amount of downtime between turns. I do think you break the game a bit with your loan variant, as you are meant to take loans in a sort of “Brass” fashion despite it feeling odd from a realism standpoint. • Ora et Labora: A fantastic game but maybe somewhat limited life given that it basically has no variance between games. As far as “new” mechanics, it has that resource wheel mechanic he later used in “Glass Road” as well as a somewhat unique personal board building mechanic that cares about adjacency. Great game, but I would try it before you buy it given your other feedback about his games.

Great video! Love this series! I really need to try more of his game! Really want to get Fields of Arle to play with my wife I think it could make her #1 Where I differ most from you is on time of game. I think a long game isn’t bad it. I think it’s when the game feels like it’s dragging is the real issue. Even a lot of down time isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re still having fun

This is one of my zero-hype designers. I don't dislike his games, in fact I have a couple I really enjoy, but I find myself default assuming a game of his is not going to be for me than the other way around. Not fully sure why, maybe it's a trigger response to others getting hyped. I own 1 from your bottom 3 (Hallertau), 1 from your top 3 (Fields of Arle) and 1 of your mentions (Le Havre). I also have one game that is a collab, but hasn't yet semented its position in my collection. With Uwe games I find I'm drawn to his big box games that have more streamlined set-ups, I got burned by Caverna's mass sets of tiles that always had to be sorted and matched to the board (which felt like it took forever to do, and no amount of organizing helped with that). Even though I liked the game, just the time it took to set it up made me want to play it less. With both Hallertau and Le Havre I feel I can get them on the table fairly quickly and get right to it. Fields is a little bit more involved, but not so much it becomes a problem - plus the game feels like a more contained Feast (in a good way).

Luke, have you been selling off your table top covers? concerned.

a lot of these major designers are mathematicians... or is it magicians? one or the other.

putting the 'ewww' in Uwe Rosenberg.

Perhaps do Stefan Feld or Vladimir Suchy? If that tickles your fancy.

Love the video and your assessments. For Nusfjord, two strong likes for me that you didn’t mention: incredible Automa system for solo play and you can’t find a better worker placement game that satisfies this much in 20-30 minutes (I have aFFO, but that is a 2-3 hour commitment). Also, I’ll be very curious where you land with Black Forest. Since Glass Road isn’t in your top Uwe games, and it shares a lot of DNA with BF (like the resource wheel), I’ll be listening for what sets BF apart.

New York Zoo is in my top 20 games. I have a friend for whom it is his favorite.

Another great video. Agree with a lot of your comments. Not played Bohnanza. My top 3- Fields of Arle Atiwa Caverna Worst 3- Patchwork Hallertau Feast for Odin

Has Rosenberg ever made a post on bgg? I think he’s the only designer who absolutely will not participate on that site. Kudos to him. I played almost all his games and sold them all. The only one I half liked was glass Road.

My bottom three Uwe: Bohnanza - hated everything about this game. Prolly because I hate negotiation. Nusfjord - not a bad game but I was bored. Hallertau - not a bad game either but the town hall (or whatever it's called) mechanisms had one strategy and it annoyed me. My top three: Oranienburger Kanal - just pure fun, solo or two player Feast of Odin - the perfect crazy big sandbox-ish euro Fields of Arle - this is good but I feel that once I play more Uwes this will be bumped.

Ora et Labora is in my Rosenberg Top3 so you should definetely get it on the table. But it's a quite heavy one.

Exactly what I was looking for! :D

A Feast for Odin is an absolute masterpiece, in fact THE masterpiece of Uwe among a lot of great games. I dont even need to discuss about that because all BGG figures show that. ;-) The Norwegian expansion is #9 of ALL BGG entries with at least 1,000 voters and sorted by the user rating.

I really like top and flop lists and I somehow enjoyed watching this video, but I dont get why there are lists concerning a specific publisher?! When it's the main mechanism or the theme or the complexity or the game length or the player count that makes sense BUT do you ever sit there and say "today I want to play a Stonemeier game so what are my favorites?" ;-) I hope you get what I mean. I think I dont even know the publisher of about a third of my games because why should I?! It doenst have any influence on the gameplay at all. The only time a publisher is relevant is when you need to know which stand to go at a trade fair. So in the end this is a kind of list that everybody watches but that actually doesnt really help. :-)

We played a lot of Babel back in the day. It was in the 2 player Kosmos small box series.

Had the same experience with Bohnanza.

Fantasy Flight games next!

I understand everything... but putting Atiwa over Hallerrau... man ;). Atiwa has ZERO replay value

I really wasn't expecting that sign off 😂

Hallertau is his best solo game. Uwe's games are often multi-player solitaire but this game is misleading with 1-4 on the cover; I will never play it again with other players. Solo though it shines because swingy cards are just events like in any solo/co-op. This completed by the more satisfying efficiency puzzle (you want to produce just in time instead of turtling) makes it one of the best byos.

I generally don’t like his stuff for solo play because it’s always beat your own score. He really needs to put an automa out there for his games. I consider this such a disservice.

I agree with you on the Caverna/Agricola thing. My favorite is A Feast for Odin, but, Fields of Arles is a great choice.

Le Havre is my favorite Rosenberg. Concerning the loans, players can only take them out if they can't afford to pay interest on their loan or cannot afford to feed at the end of the round; they can't choose to take out a loan as supplemental income. Therefore, people taking out loans tend to have very little money or food. But I'm guessing this would mean they would simply focus their attention on getting other resources and buildings in the mean time.🤔

Another Uwe game if you can slot it in is Reykholt. It's a nice gateway race game where you don't have to feed your village...but you do have to feed the tourists. Looking forward to your other designer/publisher series.

Interesting list Luke. Rare that I disagree with you but I really like Nusfjord and find it better than ATIWA for solo play, I'm looking forward to the 2nd edition coming out with two new expansions. Heard good things about Fields of Arle, must try and get a copy.

The pandemonium aspect card is actually not for Shadows flicker like flame!

Lacerda next, please! (Though I suppose we could go by your top 100 to know his top 3)

I'm really enjoying this series. Based on your past reviews i purchased Fields of Arle last week, with the Tea Expansion. So I am happy to see where it ended up. Also, i was so happy to hear Barcelona comment. That game was so boring and lead to AP for everyone at the table. Such an unfun experience. Good video, thanks.

Gotta disagree on Hallertau. I just love the anytime card plays. It is more of a solo affair, but that doesn't bother me much. I also like the idea of fertile fields to yield better crops. You've got me wanting to try Arle for years now, but I just haven't had the chance yet. I can't wait to try it at some point.

The fallow system in Hallertau is unique but I agree, it’s wrapped up in a subpar card-based worker placement game. Ora et Labora, Fields of Arle, and AFfO are my favorites. Atiwa is nice. I was underwhelmed by Oranienburger Kanal. I felt the game was fine but the cards were difficult to read and you have to keep the appendix handy and constantly remind yourself what you have so you can trigger everything properly. It was a smidge too much work for a solo option, which is how I was mostly playing it.

Uwe is a nice 2nd video on this theme. I enjoy everyones thoughts and Uwe is easily one of the weirdest loved designers as some LOVE x game and others hate it but they LOVE y game etc. Agricola vs Caverna. I hear Oranienburger Kanal is something special

Bohnanza was one of my group's go-to filler games when we needed a short game. Of course our group dynamic must have been a lot different than Luke's as our four person group could knock this out in 20-30 minutes. I do really like playing Caverna with the Forgotten Folk expansion. And I will still play Le Havre if given the chance.

I appreciate your thoughts on things. Definitely looking forward to Black Forest but to me, the old Rosengerg games like Agricola and Le Havre are the best. I love the constraints. Too many modern games make it too easy for you. Thanks!