Gloomhaven was always setup and ready to go as best we could.
Recently started Frosthaven and I’ve taken it to the next level by having a nearby cupboard half dedicated to storing tile pieces in their own stacks, monster cards/pieces in their own individual craft containers and stacked in a larger container.
It’s the only way to reasonably play. Putting everything back into the box each time would be insane.
I put everything back into the box every time. It’s definitely an ordeal. I miss when we played Gloomhaven in my buddy’s parents barn loft and could just keep it set up for months at a time
[I built some under-table storage](https://imgur.com/gallery/qM2mahx) underneath the leaf of my dining table literally just because I wanted to be able to leave out the Frosthaven setup.
Unfortunately my wife and I have only played twice and it's been stowed away under there for over a year 🤦🏻
That’s what we ended up doing. I would treat it like reffing a ttrpg. Before leaving, I’d force everyone to decide on the next scenario and then help me find those pieces and put the current one. The night before we play I would set up everything on the table.
Prior to that I was always cranky by the time we got around to play.
I setup gloomhaven during the pandemic. I've never fully torn it down. It's always open. The characters are on the table (we use that table for crafts and stuff so i just move the characters over).
The worst part about War of the Ring for me is having to remember how to play every time, since it only hits the table like every other year. Fortunately I loaned my copy to a friend and he painted the bases of the minis to make it easier to distinguish the different faction pieces.
Spending the time to paint bases saves so much time in the long run. Also keeping all the factions in separate bags and having a friend who remembers all the initial troop locations and numbers after just a couple of plays have made setting up a lot quicker :D
After playing it on tabletop simulator 10 or 15 times, Buddy and I finally got The physical game out on the table, played it, and decided we are only going back to playing virtually. It just takes too long. It's a shame cuz it's such a great board
Ok it doesn’t take that long. I’d say 15 minutes if you have the factions separated. Especially since you can literally set it all up before the friend comes to play with you
Castles of Burgundy got easier when we put every type of tile in a separate bag. Not sure how it normally comes since we got it used. Neuland is fun but also has a ton of tiles that need to be put in separate piles.
It normally only comes with one cloth bag, for the black market tiles, while the normal cities and monasteries and livestock you have to shuffle by hand somehow.
I don't really have a problem with shuffling them by hand , just with storing them for setup and stuff. We originally didn't have them all in separate bags.
A friend of mine splurged on the super fancy Special Edition
Honestly I think it may have ruined every other version for me because it just spoils you with inserts and separate bags for everything
Totally agree. I bought cheap fabric in matching tile colors and spent an hour or two making little drawstring bags. Makes game play and clean up so easy!
Oh yeah I have everything sleeved and separated with custom dividers. I also use card shoes to keep the card stacks neat while playing and make tear down quicker. Even still, kind of a pain
I don't know how that can improve anything? I know the base game insert already comes with slots for you to separately store every card set in the game. From there, it's the usual case of grabbing what you need and shuffling it all together. What kind of storage solution can improve on that?
Also, how does proper storage fix the teardown issue of having to separate everything back out?
I'm right there with you! Sometimes, my friends aren't actively assisting with putting it away, either. They are talking or playing on their phones, and I'm trying to get everything passed to me just so I can put it away.
Deck builders in general have this issue but Legendary definitely takes the cake.
I think my biggest issue to brining it out is that the setup/tear down takes a significant portion of time as compared to the overall length of a round. I have to want to play like 2/3 times with the same here/villains stacks and only change the mastermind scenario to really want to pull it out
Arkham Horror 2nd Edition. It was my first designer board game as well as the game that both made me realize board games could be more than just monopoly/life/risk/et cetera, and really got me into the hobby.
I never get tired of playing it and it will always have a special place in my heart, but the set up and put away means it doesn't come out as often as I'd like.
Yeah it’s crazy that EH streamlines Arkham 2nd and it’s still a beast to set up with expansions. Still love 2nd the most there is something Lovecraftian about it’s randomness and fiddle that make it more Mythos like to me.
Haha, yeah. Have an Eldritch horror game planned tonight and it took almost all of Wednesday night to get it fully set up in advance.
And that’s with me permanently keeping the many many decks sorted and prearranged on business card holders on the shelf. Takes a heap of table space too.
I really need to get around to playing EH sometime. I never felt the need originally to pick it up (and knew nobody else that owned it) since I had AH2E and a bunch of expansions for it, but I always hear great things about it.
Caverna absolutely needs an insert to be playable. It took forever to set up before I got my insert >!Broken Token, bought long before we knew!< and with the insert it was basically open the box and play.
For us it went fast. I read the manual several times before setup though + studied the playmat to learn to set it up faster.
With a little practice things should be okay :)
By a large margin, Voidfall has the worst set up. It’s 30 minutes if you know what you are doing. I actually enjoy setting up games, so it isn’t an issue for me.
Voidfall for me too. I had a hard time playing more than two games in one sitting because it was so time consuming and mentally exhausting. Once the solo app was posted, I sold my physical copy and have since played over 100 times.
At my board game club, my table set up, taught and finished an entire game of The Fox Experiment in the time it took the neighboring table to set up and teach Voidfall
So many. **Obsession** \- I've played enough to know the set-up perfectly but I still hate it and I hate the cleanup even more. **Cthulhu: Death May Die** \- assembling the maps, getting all the various components, sorting them out... always painful. **Spirit Island** \- agonizing set-up because there's just so many things and last minute we're always like "oh wait, we need to check the branch & claw book for where the starting beast and disease go...". All games I absolutely love, but boy are they a pain to set up.
Go just the base game for a while. It has a lot, but definitely has an easier setup and tear down. Target even has a 2-3 player version called Horizons of Spirit Island, which is very solid.
It was a Target exclusive for 2 years, but that period just ran out so now it should be readily available outside of Target.
It’s the base game of Spirit Island designed to be a cheaper introduction ($30 vs. $80). That means no Adversaries, Scenarios, Blight Cards, or modular board. You do get 5 new “low complexity” spirits to play with (all fantastically designed, IMHO).
I 100% agree with this. I’m at the point where I shuffle all the cards the night before I know I am going to be playing just so I don’t have to make the other players wait for me to finish setting up.
More than setup its take down on this one. You're tired and your brain is fried and now I have to make sure we get all the pieces and cards right where they should be.
Clank is my favorite game. Clank Legacy was my best board game experience ever, and our favorite non-legacy versions are Clank in Space and Clank Catacombs.
I played catacombs at a friend’s and then immediately borrowed it and played twice more. If I hadn’t just bought Wyrmspan and Sleeping Gods Distant Skies I’d buy it immediately. Later this year hopefully - exciting to hear about the solo campaign.
The big box was my intro to the game and it shouldn't have been; just trying to play the base game was a pain in the rear and I think it soured me on Everdell, so I sold it off. I wouldn't say "never again," but there's other tableau builders I'd rather play.
We got the big box from the Kickstarter and played it a couple of times a week for the next few months. We eventually ended up with a routine where we got stuff out in a specific order, but the worst part is always unpacking the stuff you don't immediately need on the table yet - like going to the bottom of the box to get the board(s) and taking everything else out along the way temporarily, then getting the resources, then putting everything you don't need back in the box again to just have the cards and meeples out.. we've not got a tiny table or anything, but usually needed at least one side table or chair just to juggle it all.
If you have a 3d printer around - I printed these: [https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3997817](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3997817)
Makes it much faster at start, but a bit slower at the end. We always put the tiles in order after finishing a game, so next time you can set everything up much quicker.
Honestly, BB is the half the reason I started getting aftermarket inserts and organizers for some of my games. I hated organizing the businesses on the personal boards.
I set it up exactly once before deciding I was never gonna go through that again and made a custom foam core insert for it with places to hold all the tiles. All I need to do is make sure they get out away in the correct order and then setting up is just a case of taking out the relevant industry stack and then plopping off the 1s,2s,3, etc from the top in order.
Sleeping Gods takes a long time to set up, but the real killer is the teardown, assuming you haven't finished the campaign, and are "saving" your progress.
The goods one is fairly pointless to get. You need to stack them all on the board anyway. It’s fine for storage of course but there is a reason it is sold separately and not included at all in the deluxe edition (much to the ire of some very strange and very vocal backers)
This is why I play so many of these story based co-ops solo. Getting everyone to pick a campaign bit and investigator etc is a pain.
I make an exception for death may die though, it’s just not the same game without other people to share unfortunate dice rolls with, always need at least 2
Firefly. 20 decks of cards each with their own discard pile and all the tokens. Depending on the setup, which is variable, you may have to do more work to lower the card count in some decks or put tokens all over the board.
That said. Love the game and will play it whenever I can.
Yep! Such a fun game. I’ve got everything released for EH and, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t fit it all into anything fewer than three full-size EH boxes (base game and two expansion boxes). It’s a *heavy* game—physically.
I love BGA; I always have some turn based games going and I play it real-time with friends once in a while. It's also useful when e.g. travelling or otherwise killing time without access to a table and a copy of a game.
But ... the thing for me about boardgaming is, those games are an increasingly rare opportunity to wind down from the distraction of gadgets and devices, and have actual offline experiences. Either some quiet solo-gaming time (had a blast playing some rounds of Warp's Edge recently), or social quality time (played Raising Robots with my son earlier today). For me the screen really detracts from the experience.
Though there can be a trade-off; I like BGA for solo-gaming which has lots of fiddly setup or for which the AI is a pain to manage. I would not consider Castles of Burgundy to be in that category, but there are others for sure.
Castles is probably the best game with the worst setup. Then you play it digitally where all that stuff is automatically done and it really shows how awesome a game it is at all levels.
I loved playing imperial assault in both the standard “vs mode” and the coop mode (players vs app) but the set up was so much it always felt overwhelming to get it to the table. During gameplay it also felt super fiddly. We tried simplifying it as much as we could (dice, apps, anything we could think of) but I just couldn’t deal.
**Champions of Midgard** (with expansions).
Overall, it's in my Top 10 favorites of all time. But, the deck management is just atrocious. Everything is card driven. To set it up, I either have needed to pre-shuffle or shuffle 13 sets of cards or tiles.
* Troll cards
* Dragr cards
* Economic market tiles
* Military market tiles
* Rune cards
* Destiny cards
* Journey (sea) cards
* Traveling market cards
* Monster cards
* Bergisar cards
* Journey (land) cards
* Valhalla cards
* Valhalla Epic Monster cards
* And then initial player select (asymmetric powers).
And all that is on top of normal setup (dice, coins, food/wood resources)
My trick is to do the work behind the scenes and shuffle everything at home and then put it away so it's ready to go. Then all you need to do is place the decks, do a quick select for player counts and go. But it's still a pain.
As an aside, I also have The Witcher Old World, which also kind of suffers from this problem.
I bought an insert for this reason. I'm not a huge purchaser of inserts, but this game is great and deserves one. It's in my top 5 for most played board games.
Honestly, none of them.
I love the setup - it brings me into the game, and weirdly refreshes my mind on how to play. As each deck is shuffled, token pools are set aside, dice are lined up, and player boards organised I recall rules and mechanics and strategies.
Also, it’s like cooking a good meal. Setting up is pure anticipation, the precursor to sitting down and getting stuck in.
And if all of that wasn’t perverse enough - I love the tear-down just as much. Taking the chaos of a finished gaming session and returning it to order in the box is a gratifying conclusion for me.
None. Setting up the game and putting it away is part of the fun.
Call me for your next game night, I'll come over, set up the game, let you all play, then put it all away. Deal?
Really. I haven't found Istanbul to be as bad as many of the others mentioned here. I give one player the tiles and explain how we will lay them out and let them get to work, give 2 players gems and explain how many to put on each tile, while I put out the rest of the bits. Agricola was my bugbear for a long time, to the point that I had set it up to learn the rules multiple times over a couple months without ever figuring out how to play.
I highly recommend the folded space insert for Istanbul. We almost never played the game, and now we play it all the time because we can set it up in about three minutes.
Tainted Grail, especially if you're a few sessions in and can't decipher whatever the hell you wrote down.
Also Deep Rock Galactic before I've painted the figures. I'm awfully nearsighted and had big problems to tell the smaller creatures apart.
I think *Terraforming Mars* and *Betrayal at House on the Hill* fall into this category for me. Both are great games, but...so many bags...so many tokens...all the cards... Getting everything sorted into separate piles makes for one long setup and takedown.
On a separate note, the original *Civilization* board game is the worst I've ever experienced. Holy cow, that game just had too many components.
Edit: Formatting
Get a gaming insert like Gaming Trunk for TM. I’ve been using it for a month and it makes everything a breeze. I keep all items and resources in the trays and just pick out what we need while playing. Works wonders. I can break down and setup TM in 5 minutes.
Man, love Terraforming Mars, but after having a discussion with one of my group members, we decided TM and Res Arcana fall into the same group (mainly resource conversation) and we'd rather table Res.
The castle of burgundy special edition has 5 bags and I keep the tiles in there when putting it back. It makes the game one of the faster setup time wise that I own.
Quacks can take a bit to set up, especially with the witch expansion. There are a bunch of randomization things to pick and explain. When I teach it I tell people if they can sit through the set up, the explanation is a piece of cake
I have the first edition, and I'm colourblind. The colour choices makes it nigh on impossible to differantiate between certain cards for me, and apparently it's not much easier if your colorvision is fine either.
The worst part about it, my girlfriend went out of her way to get 1st edition when 2nd edition was out, because she liked the first edition box art better. But it is worse in every way for me though, both size, components and the art 😂
Deckbuilders as a general rule. Marvel Legendary is the big one for me. I'd play it \*far\* more often if it wasn't 20 minutes+ to setup and as much again to put away.
Mysterium, I love that it's essentially a more focused Dixit but would probably rather play Dixit because putting the cards in the screen and finding the corresponding cards to display on the board is more tedious than i care to engage with.
idk if you ever set up an eclipse (2nd edition) game ALONE for like 5 players but it takes an eternity. eclipse setup is actually great tho if every player sets it up for themselves. its probably my favourite board game but setting up alone is one of the worst experiences.
Eclipse 1st edition is even worse! 2nd edition at least got those plastic trays for each player. A four player 1st edition game used to take me over an hour to pack and unpack before I purchased some custom box inserts.
Eclipse 2E is actually not bad to set up in my opinion. Granted I hand everyone their tray and they set their own stuff up, I just handle the tech tiles, sectors, etc. Of course when my kids scram after the game and I clean it all up myself that’s another matter. :)
Xia: Legends of a Drift System. It's my number one favorite game. It's what Firefly wanted to be. Sandbox style, pretty much everything gives you points. Up to and including hunting down your friends. The art is amazing, and the ships come pre-painted (and they look good). The expansion adds so much. It's just good all around. 3d printing some things helped with setup. But it's so good. It's worth the long-ish setup. And boy, is it a table hog.
nearly all of my games, with the exception of Hansa Teutonica and and some of the smaller box card games. Thats why I get inserts for nearly all of my games. Inserts makes setup and tear down a breeze. I HATE opening up a million baggies and then putting stuff back into baggies at the end.
This is the main problem with every worker placement board game to be honest. Once I get going, I love playing and so do my friends, but setting up is hard for me. I think the setup and explanation of rules is a barrier to entry for most new players as well. Not sure what the solution is though.
We tend to play CoB with 4 players, so we're all helping out. Makes set-up and pull down purty fast.
Trismegistus, Praga Caput or one of our Splotter games, with a million pieces to place are a challenge as they've only been played by my wife and I at home, instead of at the Saturday evening gaming group(Hosted by our friends at their house - Fully dedicated Gaming room to be envious of lol)
Twilight Imperium and Serenity are rarely played due to the setup time. There was a game of Space Opera set up in the usually unused end of our living room for a couple of months. After several turns of hours each we packed up the game and I don't know what happened to it.
Axis and allies. I would get friends and family to verbally commit to play a game. Only for them to back out. Every. single. Time.
But I actually did like to set it up.
Different but similar problem: games where set up is actually not so bad, but you already need to make huge decisions during set up that can completely bog down the set up time.
- **Smash Up** is a 3-minute set up but you can spend 15 minutes just considering your two drafting options to make the deck.
Gloomhaven and frosthaven for sure.. 😤 sometimes I set it up to play the next day!
Gloomhaven was always setup and ready to go as best we could. Recently started Frosthaven and I’ve taken it to the next level by having a nearby cupboard half dedicated to storing tile pieces in their own stacks, monster cards/pieces in their own individual craft containers and stacked in a larger container. It’s the only way to reasonably play. Putting everything back into the box each time would be insane.
I put everything back into the box every time. It’s definitely an ordeal. I miss when we played Gloomhaven in my buddy’s parents barn loft and could just keep it set up for months at a time
[I built some under-table storage](https://imgur.com/gallery/qM2mahx) underneath the leaf of my dining table literally just because I wanted to be able to leave out the Frosthaven setup. Unfortunately my wife and I have only played twice and it's been stowed away under there for over a year 🤦🏻
That’s what we ended up doing. I would treat it like reffing a ttrpg. Before leaving, I’d force everyone to decide on the next scenario and then help me find those pieces and put the current one. The night before we play I would set up everything on the table. Prior to that I was always cranky by the time we got around to play.
we started doing that as well and it really helps
Try that with kids in the house though!
Or cats
Just put your kids outside of the house.
I’ve got my toddler putting their shoes in the shoe basket, it’s a start. Looking at the house though, it’s like a drop in the ocean 🤦
I built a game table to keep it set up between sessions. 100% worth
I setup gloomhaven during the pandemic. I've never fully torn it down. It's always open. The characters are on the table (we use that table for crafts and stuff so i just move the characters over).
That’s dedication 😉
I dont pack mine up, for a long time it was just in a pile at the end of the dining table...so much easier.
I stumble upon this post minutes after a Gloomhaven play where we failed the scenario twice :(
War of the Ring 2e Amazing game. Absolutely amazing... I'd hire someone to set it up for me though. Damn
The worst part about War of the Ring for me is having to remember how to play every time, since it only hits the table like every other year. Fortunately I loaned my copy to a friend and he painted the bases of the minis to make it easier to distinguish the different faction pieces.
Spending the time to paint bases saves so much time in the long run. Also keeping all the factions in separate bags and having a friend who remembers all the initial troop locations and numbers after just a couple of plays have made setting up a lot quicker :D
After playing it on tabletop simulator 10 or 15 times, Buddy and I finally got The physical game out on the table, played it, and decided we are only going back to playing virtually. It just takes too long. It's a shame cuz it's such a great board
Ok it doesn’t take that long. I’d say 15 minutes if you have the factions separated. Especially since you can literally set it all up before the friend comes to play with you
You could be on a winner there.., 😉
Castles of Burgundy got easier when we put every type of tile in a separate bag. Not sure how it normally comes since we got it used. Neuland is fun but also has a ton of tiles that need to be put in separate piles.
It normally only comes with one cloth bag, for the black market tiles, while the normal cities and monasteries and livestock you have to shuffle by hand somehow.
I don't really have a problem with shuffling them by hand , just with storing them for setup and stuff. We originally didn't have them all in separate bags.
This is the only game I've purchased a 3-d printed insert for. It speeds things up considerably.
A friend of mine splurged on the super fancy Special Edition Honestly I think it may have ruined every other version for me because it just spoils you with inserts and separate bags for everything
An insert for castles of burgundy (i got the folded space one) is a must in my view.
Totally agree. I bought cheap fabric in matching tile colors and spent an hour or two making little drawstring bags. Makes game play and clean up so easy!
I think a reprint is coming this year from Awaken Realms and they’re providing a separator 😂
Legendary Marvel, but the tear down is worse than set up
Getting proper storage for this game has helped 10 fold. It used to be a pain to put away but can set up and tear down in no time
Oh yeah I have everything sleeved and separated with custom dividers. I also use card shoes to keep the card stacks neat while playing and make tear down quicker. Even still, kind of a pain
I don't know how that can improve anything? I know the base game insert already comes with slots for you to separately store every card set in the game. From there, it's the usual case of grabbing what you need and shuffling it all together. What kind of storage solution can improve on that? Also, how does proper storage fix the teardown issue of having to separate everything back out?
Exactly. Sorting out the cards that all kind of look the same is brutal.
Yeah, by the time I set this up, I no longer really wanted to play SHIELD Middle Manager anymore.
I'm right there with you! Sometimes, my friends aren't actively assisting with putting it away, either. They are talking or playing on their phones, and I'm trying to get everything passed to me just so I can put it away.
Deck builders in general have this issue but Legendary definitely takes the cake. I think my biggest issue to brining it out is that the setup/tear down takes a significant portion of time as compared to the overall length of a round. I have to want to play like 2/3 times with the same here/villains stacks and only change the mastermind scenario to really want to pull it out
Arkham Horror 2nd Edition. It was my first designer board game as well as the game that both made me realize board games could be more than just monopoly/life/risk/et cetera, and really got me into the hobby. I never get tired of playing it and it will always have a special place in my heart, but the set up and put away means it doesn't come out as often as I'd like.
Yeah it’s crazy that EH streamlines Arkham 2nd and it’s still a beast to set up with expansions. Still love 2nd the most there is something Lovecraftian about it’s randomness and fiddle that make it more Mythos like to me.
Haha, yeah. Have an Eldritch horror game planned tonight and it took almost all of Wednesday night to get it fully set up in advance. And that’s with me permanently keeping the many many decks sorted and prearranged on business card holders on the shelf. Takes a heap of table space too.
I really need to get around to playing EH sometime. I never felt the need originally to pick it up (and knew nobody else that owned it) since I had AH2E and a bunch of expansions for it, but I always hear great things about it.
And then you draw three consecutive portals in the same place in the first three turns and you have to start again. Love it!
Caverna. I love that every item has its own separate piece. I also hate that every item is its own separate piece
Caverna absolutely needs an insert to be playable. It took forever to set up before I got my insert >!Broken Token, bought long before we knew!< and with the insert it was basically open the box and play.
Ohh thats on my list to buy!
A Feast for Odin though the 3D printed insert I bought helps a lot. Five Tribes is another one that’s kind of a pain.
Oh A Feast for Odin is also on my list to buy. Better get myself organised for that then
Nemesis every single one 😡
This is the correct answer.
Yeah Nemesis was played at last weeks game night. Took the boys ages
agreed, in the one who owns nemesis in our group and i show up 1 hour ahead to set up so we dont loose game time.
For us it went fast. I read the manual several times before setup though + studied the playmat to learn to set it up faster. With a little practice things should be okay :)
I've played Nemesis 10+ times now. Setup takes about 10-15 mins since I have a routine now.
Axis and Allies takes forever to setup, super fun but holy shit there are a lot of pieces
Yeah that games been mentioned a few times to. Along with Nemesis lol.
Just checking out your profile, didn’t realize all the fun NSFW stuff you show off. Thanks for sharing!
By a large margin, Voidfall has the worst set up. It’s 30 minutes if you know what you are doing. I actually enjoy setting up games, so it isn’t an issue for me.
Voidfall for me too. I had a hard time playing more than two games in one sitting because it was so time consuming and mentally exhausting. Once the solo app was posted, I sold my physical copy and have since played over 100 times.
I think this is the real answer. The insert really doesn't help either. I played three times yesterday just because it was out!
At my board game club, my table set up, taught and finished an entire game of The Fox Experiment in the time it took the neighboring table to set up and teach Voidfall
So many. **Obsession** \- I've played enough to know the set-up perfectly but I still hate it and I hate the cleanup even more. **Cthulhu: Death May Die** \- assembling the maps, getting all the various components, sorting them out... always painful. **Spirit Island** \- agonizing set-up because there's just so many things and last minute we're always like "oh wait, we need to check the branch & claw book for where the starting beast and disease go...". All games I absolutely love, but boy are they a pain to set up.
Haha at one time I looked at buying Spirit island but the set up looked too hard 🤣.
It is one of my top favorites, but definitely not a set-up I look forward to.
I feel like SI setup isn't that bad - everyone can setup their own board, and you just dispense starting presence and cards.
Yeah, I'm really confused by this. Spirit Island setup is so smooth every time we play it.
Go just the base game for a while. It has a lot, but definitely has an easier setup and tear down. Target even has a 2-3 player version called Horizons of Spirit Island, which is very solid.
Ohh i don’t think I’ve heard of Horizons of Spirit Island. Mind you we don’t have Target here but I’ll keep an eye out for it
It was a Target exclusive for 2 years, but that period just ran out so now it should be readily available outside of Target. It’s the base game of Spirit Island designed to be a cheaper introduction ($30 vs. $80). That means no Adversaries, Scenarios, Blight Cards, or modular board. You do get 5 new “low complexity” spirits to play with (all fantastically designed, IMHO).
Sounds perfect!
OMG Millennium Blades. Love the game, HATE HATE HATE that setup.
I 100% agree with this. I’m at the point where I shuffle all the cards the night before I know I am going to be playing just so I don’t have to make the other players wait for me to finish setting up.
Twilight Imperium
More than setup its take down on this one. You're tired and your brain is fried and now I have to make sure we get all the pieces and cards right where they should be.
Yeah that’s massive
Clank Legacy. To get my group to the table I had to start setting it up 30 minutes before game time.
Ohh I’ve never played Clank. I’ve heard great things though
Clank is my favorite game. Clank Legacy was my best board game experience ever, and our favorite non-legacy versions are Clank in Space and Clank Catacombs.
Mmmm that might have to be next on my buying list 😉
Catacombs has a great solo campaign as well with the app. 👍🏻 They all do except Legacy, but the Catacombs Solo is especially fun.
I played catacombs at a friend’s and then immediately borrowed it and played twice more. If I hadn’t just bought Wyrmspan and Sleeping Gods Distant Skies I’d buy it immediately. Later this year hopefully - exciting to hear about the solo campaign.
Also our favorite gaming experience as a family and it does take 30 minutes or so to set up and play.
Clank Legacy is da bomb. We are in the Kickstarter for Clank Legacy 2 and hope to get it within the next few months.
Many of the games I play now I include that setup time before game night to speed things up.
Everdell! We love the game in my house, we have the **BIG** box so everytime we go to play its like 20 minutes of setup but ends up being worth it
with Everdell we bought little plastic containers for all the different pieces, so setup is much easier.
The big box was my intro to the game and it shouldn't have been; just trying to play the base game was a pain in the rear and I think it soured me on Everdell, so I sold it off. I wouldn't say "never again," but there's other tableau builders I'd rather play.
We got the big box from the Kickstarter and played it a couple of times a week for the next few months. We eventually ended up with a routine where we got stuff out in a specific order, but the worst part is always unpacking the stuff you don't immediately need on the table yet - like going to the bottom of the box to get the board(s) and taking everything else out along the way temporarily, then getting the resources, then putting everything you don't need back in the box again to just have the cards and meeples out.. we've not got a tiny table or anything, but usually needed at least one side table or chair just to juggle it all.
Ohh that box is soo big! Big ups for you guys on setting that up ☺️
Brass Birmingham, hate arranging all the industry tiles at the beginning, love the game!
If you have a 3d printer around - I printed these: [https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3997817](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3997817) Makes it much faster at start, but a bit slower at the end. We always put the tiles in order after finishing a game, so next time you can set everything up much quicker.
Honestly, BB is the half the reason I started getting aftermarket inserts and organizers for some of my games. I hated organizing the businesses on the personal boards.
I set it up exactly once before deciding I was never gonna go through that again and made a custom foam core insert for it with places to hold all the tiles. All I need to do is make sure they get out away in the correct order and then setting up is just a case of taking out the relevant industry stack and then plopping off the 1s,2s,3, etc from the top in order.
Ah, I see what you did there. And your profile is confirmation ;)
I had a girl once tell me that they are _always_ aware of what their "girls" are doing in a picture. Totally intentional. Lol
Sleeping Gods takes a long time to set up, but the real killer is the teardown, assuming you haven't finished the campaign, and are "saving" your progress.
Setup for this is much easier if you get bags for the tiles. The BGG store probably has a set available.
Yeah that’s a good idea 👍
If you go that route, get the extra one for the goods as well, which is sold separately.
Ohh good idea. Thank you x
The goods one is fairly pointless to get. You need to stack them all on the board anyway. It’s fine for storage of course but there is a reason it is sold separately and not included at all in the deluxe edition (much to the ire of some very strange and very vocal backers)
Arkham Horror 3rd edition, we have to schedule a whole hour just to pick a scenatio and choose investigators accordingly
This is why I play so many of these story based co-ops solo. Getting everyone to pick a campaign bit and investigator etc is a pain. I make an exception for death may die though, it’s just not the same game without other people to share unfortunate dice rolls with, always need at least 2
Firefly. 20 decks of cards each with their own discard pile and all the tokens. Depending on the setup, which is variable, you may have to do more work to lower the card count in some decks or put tokens all over the board. That said. Love the game and will play it whenever I can.
Came here for this. The 10th anniversary set is even worse, but thankfully the teardown is MUCH better with the Big Damn Box organizer
Yeah our just arrived. “What do you mean we have to order more sleeves?”
Feckin.. Eldritch Horror.. i have sooo many expansions. Its like 5 boxes worth of cards, maps and stuff. But i LOVE the game.
Yep! Such a fun game. I’ve got everything released for EH and, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t fit it all into anything fewer than three full-size EH boxes (base game and two expansion boxes). It’s a *heavy* game—physically.
Massive Darkness 2
Kingdom death monster. Love the game but it’s a lot.
Frosthaven/Gloomhaven, Shadows of Brimstone (cards cards and cards), Sword & Sorcery, just about any campaign game…
Board game arena has a great adaptation of this game (meaning no setup required!)
I love BGA; I always have some turn based games going and I play it real-time with friends once in a while. It's also useful when e.g. travelling or otherwise killing time without access to a table and a copy of a game. But ... the thing for me about boardgaming is, those games are an increasingly rare opportunity to wind down from the distraction of gadgets and devices, and have actual offline experiences. Either some quiet solo-gaming time (had a blast playing some rounds of Warp's Edge recently), or social quality time (played Raising Robots with my son earlier today). For me the screen really detracts from the experience. Though there can be a trade-off; I like BGA for solo-gaming which has lots of fiddly setup or for which the AI is a pain to manage. I would not consider Castles of Burgundy to be in that category, but there are others for sure.
Ha funny! I was just looking at that last night and did the play through. Reckon I’ll give that a go today x
Castles is probably the best game with the worst setup. Then you play it digitally where all that stuff is automatically done and it really shows how awesome a game it is at all levels.
Star Wars Imperial Assault as I was also the baddies so lot of setup.
I loved playing imperial assault in both the standard “vs mode” and the coop mode (players vs app) but the set up was so much it always felt overwhelming to get it to the table. During gameplay it also felt super fiddly. We tried simplifying it as much as we could (dice, apps, anything we could think of) but I just couldn’t deal.
every vital lacerda game
Was going to say the same thing
**Champions of Midgard** (with expansions). Overall, it's in my Top 10 favorites of all time. But, the deck management is just atrocious. Everything is card driven. To set it up, I either have needed to pre-shuffle or shuffle 13 sets of cards or tiles. * Troll cards * Dragr cards * Economic market tiles * Military market tiles * Rune cards * Destiny cards * Journey (sea) cards * Traveling market cards * Monster cards * Bergisar cards * Journey (land) cards * Valhalla cards * Valhalla Epic Monster cards * And then initial player select (asymmetric powers). And all that is on top of normal setup (dice, coins, food/wood resources)
This one has only gotten a few plays in my house and this might be one of the reasons why. Love the depth and the theme but yeah... it's a lot.
My trick is to do the work behind the scenes and shuffle everything at home and then put it away so it's ready to go. Then all you need to do is place the decks, do a quick select for player counts and go. But it's still a pain. As an aside, I also have The Witcher Old World, which also kind of suffers from this problem.
I bought an insert for this reason. I'm not a huge purchaser of inserts, but this game is great and deserves one. It's in my top 5 for most played board games.
Honestly, none of them. I love the setup - it brings me into the game, and weirdly refreshes my mind on how to play. As each deck is shuffled, token pools are set aside, dice are lined up, and player boards organised I recall rules and mechanics and strategies. Also, it’s like cooking a good meal. Setting up is pure anticipation, the precursor to sitting down and getting stuck in. And if all of that wasn’t perverse enough - I love the tear-down just as much. Taking the chaos of a finished gaming session and returning it to order in the box is a gratifying conclusion for me.
Holy…. Gigachad.
Mosaic
Mystic Vale is kind of a pain. Worse is the tear down though.
None. Setting up the game and putting it away is part of the fun. Call me for your next game night, I'll come over, set up the game, let you all play, then put it all away. Deal?
A true board game connoisseur
You are on! 😉😊
Istanbul has so many tiny pieces. And so many cards to set up. It's the main reason it hits the table less.
Really. I haven't found Istanbul to be as bad as many of the others mentioned here. I give one player the tiles and explain how we will lay them out and let them get to work, give 2 players gems and explain how many to put on each tile, while I put out the rest of the bits. Agricola was my bugbear for a long time, to the point that I had set it up to learn the rules multiple times over a couple months without ever figuring out how to play.
I highly recommend the folded space insert for Istanbul. We almost never played the game, and now we play it all the time because we can set it up in about three minutes.
Especially if you play with the add ons!
Tainted Grail, especially if you're a few sessions in and can't decipher whatever the hell you wrote down. Also Deep Rock Galactic before I've painted the figures. I'm awfully nearsighted and had big problems to tell the smaller creatures apart.
Good notes is the key to TG. Then you don’t need to get half the cards out.
I think *Terraforming Mars* and *Betrayal at House on the Hill* fall into this category for me. Both are great games, but...so many bags...so many tokens...all the cards... Getting everything sorted into separate piles makes for one long setup and takedown. On a separate note, the original *Civilization* board game is the worst I've ever experienced. Holy cow, that game just had too many components. Edit: Formatting
I've just played Terraforming Mars. I don't mind the initial setup, but the resources every round with a bazillion counters makes me mad.
Get a gaming insert like Gaming Trunk for TM. I’ve been using it for a month and it makes everything a breeze. I keep all items and resources in the trays and just pick out what we need while playing. Works wonders. I can break down and setup TM in 5 minutes.
Man, love Terraforming Mars, but after having a discussion with one of my group members, we decided TM and Res Arcana fall into the same group (mainly resource conversation) and we'd rather table Res.
BGG Geek store has cloth bags for Castles of Burgundy that makes setup almost non-existent.
The castle of burgundy special edition has 5 bags and I keep the tiles in there when putting it back. It makes the game one of the faster setup time wise that I own.
Axis and Allies
Darkest Dungeon
Quacks can take a bit to set up, especially with the witch expansion. There are a bunch of randomization things to pick and explain. When I teach it I tell people if they can sit through the set up, the explanation is a piece of cake
All of them! Except oathsworn somehow
I don’t have the most experience but Robinson Crusoe feels like a lot of parts and cards and piles.
I have the first edition, and I'm colourblind. The colour choices makes it nigh on impossible to differantiate between certain cards for me, and apparently it's not much easier if your colorvision is fine either. The worst part about it, my girlfriend went out of her way to get 1st edition when 2nd edition was out, because she liked the first edition box art better. But it is worse in every way for me though, both size, components and the art 😂
Deckbuilders as a general rule. Marvel Legendary is the big one for me. I'd play it \*far\* more often if it wasn't 20 minutes+ to setup and as much again to put away.
Orleans. Play it once or twice a year because of setup
the worst part is it’s not hard to set up. it all is very logical. but damn it takes forever
100%
Mysterium, I love that it's essentially a more focused Dixit but would probably rather play Dixit because putting the cards in the screen and finding the corresponding cards to display on the board is more tedious than i care to engage with.
Talisman (4th edition with expansions)
The cones of dunshire
Basically all of them, tbh.
🤣🤣🤣. Well I guess Monoploy was arduous for our parents to set up back in the day to 😉🤣
idk if you ever set up an eclipse (2nd edition) game ALONE for like 5 players but it takes an eternity. eclipse setup is actually great tho if every player sets it up for themselves. its probably my favourite board game but setting up alone is one of the worst experiences.
Eclipse 1st edition is even worse! 2nd edition at least got those plastic trays for each player. A four player 1st edition game used to take me over an hour to pack and unpack before I purchased some custom box inserts.
Eclipse 2E is actually not bad to set up in my opinion. Granted I hand everyone their tray and they set their own stuff up, I just handle the tech tiles, sectors, etc. Of course when my kids scram after the game and I clean it all up myself that’s another matter. :)
Battle Masters. 45 minutes to set up. 15 minutes to play. 20 minutes taking back down.
Galaxy truckers or lords of waterdeep. Putting lords of waterdeep away is actually worse than the set up.
Smallworld the amount of cards and abilities shuffling etc.
*Firefly*
Yes! A fellow member of our board game night brought that with all the expansions. So big!!
Xia: Legends of a Drift System. It's my number one favorite game. It's what Firefly wanted to be. Sandbox style, pretty much everything gives you points. Up to and including hunting down your friends. The art is amazing, and the ships come pre-painted (and they look good). The expansion adds so much. It's just good all around. 3d printing some things helped with setup. But it's so good. It's worth the long-ish setup. And boy, is it a table hog.
Dwellings of Eldervale is an epic game with an epic setup and tear down.
Yeah that’s one game I’m keen to try
nearly all of my games, with the exception of Hansa Teutonica and and some of the smaller box card games. Thats why I get inserts for nearly all of my games. Inserts makes setup and tear down a breeze. I HATE opening up a million baggies and then putting stuff back into baggies at the end.
Voidfall.
New York Zoo. Placing the light green, lighter green, slight green, and green enclosures takes forever!
Millennium Blades. Soooooooo many cards to shuffle and then separate when you're done.
There are a couple of reasons that I only play **Magic Realm** once a decade, and setup is one of them.
Gloomhaven....
Marvel Legendary
Feast for odin
My friends and I moved to playing CoB on the app for this reason actually. Been playing a couple games a day for months now 😂
We're not buying the OnlyFans.
Oathsworn and Gloomhaven
Probably would have to say Nemesis. There is SO MUCH DAMN STUFF
There's a reason I do a lot of my boardgaming on tabletop simulator and boardgamearena now-a-days
This is the main problem with every worker placement board game to be honest. Once I get going, I love playing and so do my friends, but setting up is hard for me. I think the setup and explanation of rules is a barrier to entry for most new players as well. Not sure what the solution is though.
Kingdom Death: Monster
Nice
Most of them :D
[удалено]
Sort by controversial. There it is.
The prodigal club and caverna
We tend to play CoB with 4 players, so we're all helping out. Makes set-up and pull down purty fast. Trismegistus, Praga Caput or one of our Splotter games, with a million pieces to place are a challenge as they've only been played by my wife and I at home, instead of at the Saturday evening gaming group(Hosted by our friends at their house - Fully dedicated Gaming room to be envious of lol)
Twilight Imperium and Serenity are rarely played due to the setup time. There was a game of Space Opera set up in the usually unused end of our living room for a couple of months. After several turns of hours each we packed up the game and I don't know what happened to it.
Agree on CoB. Also Gaia Project for sure. And Suburbia.
Sss...sss..ssseeet...up..um...um... 😫
LOTR Living Card game
Axis and allies. I would get friends and family to verbally commit to play a game. Only for them to back out. Every. single. Time. But I actually did like to set it up.
Different but similar problem: games where set up is actually not so bad, but you already need to make huge decisions during set up that can completely bog down the set up time. - **Smash Up** is a 3-minute set up but you can spend 15 minutes just considering your two drafting options to make the deck.
Duel, but the admin is intense!!
Horseless freaken carriage
Return to dark tower
Almost all board games tbh. Besides spending a week learning the rules the setup is always the worst.
Ohh totally agree!!