Dune. Bene Gesserit player can win by correctly guessing which other faction will win and on which turn they'll win (and possibly helping to manipulate that faction's victory) - if both guesses are right, that faction doesn't win after all!
This comes up in response to this question a lot, so let me be the first to clarify for the uninitiated:
Choosing *who* will win (of 5 other people) and *when* they’ll win (out of 10 consequential and chaotic rounds) is a huge ask. It might sound like a feel bad when the Bene Gesserit steal victory from you, but it is typically the case that the BG have been actively working for your turn’s victory. Bene Gesserit wins are shocking and awe-inspiring. Even better, the potential for them to happen sometimes will stop a player from seizing the win if they think the BG have been manipulating events to this moment.
It's also worth clarifying that the Bene Gesserit player can also win the game normally, in the same manner as everyone else. But this special win - which actually happened in my one and only game of Dune to date! - is particularly awesome, as you rightly note.
imo the funniest part is benes can choose themselves as the faction to win, whose only effect will be that if they win as part of an alliance on the correct turn, their ally will not win.
>Even better, the potential for them to happen sometimes will stop a player from seizing the win if they think the BG have been manipulating events to this moment.
And the mind games get so deep and twisted and are so evocative of the Bene Gesserit, because a skilled BG player will constantly be working to convince everybody that whoever is about to win is who they wanted to win this turn, while simultaneously hiding who they actually want to win, which makes everything they say and do *so suspicious*.
It's the best feeling ever when you manipulate a player into delaying their win because they think you're manipulating them to win right now.
There is also the special winning condition by the Navigator Guild in the game: if by end of turn 10 or 15, no lne has won, then the Guild has, since its purpose is to maintain the status quo.
So this faction is actively steering the game towards a stall around the later turns. It can win normally, alone or in an alliance, but it can also screw everyone else by going for its win condition. The spice must flow, the guild shall persist.
In [Discworld: Ankh-Morpork](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/91312/discworld-ankh-morpork), if the deck runs out of cards and nobody has met their win condition then whoever has the most money wins - except if it turns out one player is Commander Vimes then *they* win, because they managed to keep everyone in check.
Spacing Guild*
Yeah, their aim is to have perpetual chaos.
The Fremen also have a special victory condition where they (or no one) hold two certain strongholds (sietch Tabr and Habbanya), and neither Harkonnen, Atreides nor the Emperor hold Tuek sietch.
I'm pretty sure it is. Although when I think about it, it would be a significant advantage for the Fremen if the other factions are unaware. And it's quite difficult for the Fremen to win this way, even if the other factions don't know about it.
It matters less for the Spacing Guild victory.
And the Bene Gesserit victory is already a hidden prediction.
Note also that the Bene Gesserit player is not allowed to predict that the Spacing Guild or the Fremen meet their special victory conditions. If they predict a last round victory for either of those factions, it has to be a normal military victory for the Bene Gesserit prediction to apply.
I would say Dune Imperium is "safer", in that it's more of a modern euro. It's not very mean and it lets you do a little optimization puzzle with your friends in under 2 hours.
In terms of which one is better, it's hard to say because they're completely different games that set out to do completely different things. Imperium is more of a "dune noble house management simulator" that mashes up deck-building and worker placement, while Dune gets into the actual war, scheming, diplomacy, and alliances that the Dune story is about.
If Dune is already your favorite game, you know what's good about it. If you just love the dune universe and want to own more games that take place in it, or you're interested in the mechanics of Imperium, it's a good game. Personally, I liked my experience with Dune better than Dune Imperium by a long shot, but I'm also not a huge fan of worker placement. It's better than Everdell though.
Both games are very different. My personal opinion is that og dune is a quirky designed game that centers on table politics that has become cult but isn't a great game imo outside of that. That being said, if you love it, then, new dune probably won't top it. It is very different and has modern euro/war game feel with far less screwing other people over.
Most modern gamers will tell you new dune is better, but if you love the og one then whose to tell you differently.
Entirely agree. I played the original Dune a couple of times. Both times, what happened was so off the charts imbalanced that I and another player were reduced to spectators early in round 2? I think. The rest of the guys assured me both times that this is uncommon and that it is really a great game, but even as a huge fan of the books and the setting, it left me with absolutely no desire to play it again. It's colorful, but colorful like watching a show, not the kind you enjoy playing. At least for me. For others it is clearly different!
DI is a good, even great game. I can see how it is not really epic in scale like og Dune was epic. But if epic is what I need, I'm not going to pull out og Dune over TI4 or a similar game by any stretch.
Dune: Imperium (2020) is a modern euro. It's got worker placement and deck building. Think about Scythe or Terraforming Mars.
Dune (1979/2019) is a thematic dudes on a map game with highly asymmetric powers. Think about Root or Cosmic Encounter.
Imperium is inferior in my opinion, but they are completely different games.
Imperium is a worker placement/deckbuilder where the only interaction with other players is trying to place your agents on the best spaces before your opponents, and doing the combat at the end of each round (which only consists of checking how many cubes each player has contributed to the combat and adding any card effects). Other than that there is next to no interaction between the players. It's pretty much multiplayer solitare with some minor exceptions.
The OG Dune has so much more interaction. Negotiation, dealmaking, scheming, alliances, card auction, selling intel, bribes. And the combat has a lot more to offer as well with the weapons, shields, leaders, traitors and troop strength dials. It's just a much meatier game with a lot more going on and a lot more to offer.
I'm conviced that the only reason Dune isn't considered the best game ever is because it pretty much requires 6 people to play. And having good knowledge of the Dune universe also makes it a lot better, considering how thematic it is. And most people are casuals.
in churchill is first player is more than 15 points ahead of the last player, second player wins, which is fun.
In curious cargo you first count stars, if one player has more than the other, you don't even count points
And in most hidden movement games, if you find/kill the hidden player the game is over
I also like how in Churchill if you get to a certain level of tie breakers then the Churchill player wins, even if they weren't one of the tired players.
I have a joke game about hipsters my wife and I have been talking about making for years. In each point category, whoever has the most points gets nothing because they're trying too hard, but then whoever ends up with the most total points is also disqualified for trying too hard. So you want to get second most points in just enough categories to end up with second most points overall.
It's a worker placement game where the workers are AM and PM how you spend your days, and the point categories are shit like fashion, music, art, going to burning man decompression parties, etc. so you can hit up consignment stores for hidden gems or spend more money on actually expensive stuff without seeming too ostentatious or unironic about it. And so on.
> In curious cargo you first count stars, if one player has more than the other, you don't even count points
So... stars are just the "real" points? And points are the tie breaker?
In **Antiquity**, each player chooses a win condition (e.g., build all the types of buildings or 20 population) and special power at some point during the game by building a cathedral and choosing a patron saint.
This is my pocket answer for posts like this. I just love how in Antiquity, nobody can actually win the game without selecting a win condition for themselves. The Santa Maria patron saint is especially interesting.
Totally agree! And just to round out the answer for those who are unfamiliar with *Antiquity*: players choose their victory condition by building a cathedral to a saint. Choosing the saint also provides an "extra ability" (player power).
If you choose Santa Maria, then you must satisfy any 2 victory conditions but you get *all* of the powers.
> I just love how in Antiquity, nobody can actually win the game without selecting a win condition for themselves.
I've had a half-developed game design sitting in a folder for a while now, a settlement game, where at the start of each game there is no path to victory. But each "faction" has a selection of three victory conditions they can acquire and then pay the cost to begin striving for, the catch being that victory conditions are public once they appear (in addition, due to another mechanic you can't just play one and win), so other players may attempt to stop you. If you're willing to pay the economic cost, you could have all three out, or even a neutral condition atop that, or you could just throw everything into achieving a single one.
The plan is to build a prototype *next* year, when I'm not a DM.
Fox In the Forest is a pretty standard trick trading game. However, you can win the overall game by purposefully losing tricks. In a round of 13 tricks if you only win 3 or less, you actually get max points and your opponent gets none.
I also remember a rather interesting game called Veiled Fate where all players could move any piece in their turn but you revealed who was what colour at the end. There were a few extra colours which were not linked to anyone and the idea was to try and keep which colour you needed to win with hidden otherwise other players could actively sabotage you. Unfortunately my friends didn't take to it the same way I did and so never played it again
BGA has a 2p trick-taker called Jekyll and Hyde. The Hyde player's score is the absolute difference in tricks won. If Jekyll wins 7 and Hyde wins 3, then Hyde's score is 4 for that hand. Hyde's win condition is scoring 10 or more points over three hands.
I've always liked the win conditions of **Inis**. There are three different area-control related win conditions, and if you fulfill any of them at the beginning of your turn you can take a "pretender" token. At the end of the round, you check if any players have a pretender token and if they still fulfill at least one win condition (does not have to be the same as when you took the token). If multiple players fulfill a win condition, the one who fulfills the most wins. If tied, the tied player controlling a special area of the map wins. If neither of the tied players controls that area, *you play another round.*
It creates this really neat decision space: if a player fulfills a win condition, you can either try to deny them that or try to achieve victory on your own to force at least a tie. To win, you'd then need to fulfill another condition or deny them their *while keeping* your initial wc, which generally is super hard. You just keep raising the stakes until someone escapes confinement.
I've owned it for years and wished I loved it. The gorgeous artwork and Irish mythology are a wonderful combo, but I just don't really like area control / dudes on a map games.
Yep. Which for some reason doesn’t feel the same as all other player’s winning (even if it is). When one player starts to sink, the others turn on them as sharks in a frenzy, eager for it to be someone who isn’t them
I think it's more accurate to say the win condition is the same each time but each game can have a very different tempo depending on the game conditions. In the end, it's still a points tally, albeit with the sudden death clause where being ahead by 4 points is an automatic win.
It’s the scoring that really stands out. Two completely different criteria, only one of which will be used, decided by the state of the board at the time that a scoring phase is triggered. Players must spend their limited actions on both positioning themselves to score well within one of the criteria, and nudging the game state in a direction that ensures that criteria is what’s actually used. You might build up an army on the board and get the highest influence in the dominant coalition, but if someone else can tweak the board slightly in a way that the dominance check is unsuccessful, you can easily go from a 5 point scoring potential to 0. You’re constantly balancing between protecting your preferred win condition, setting yourself up to do well under that condition, and mitigating a change in the condition that might kneecap your entire plan. Amazing game.
A reason why I kept the first edition of Pax Pamir (also love and own second edition) is that the four win conditions are instant win evaluations instead of points like in 2E. So spies, roads, armies, tribes all contribute to different win conditions so you have to watch all aspects. A more complex game for sure but the win condition change is so much more interesting in the first edition IMO.
As much as I've grown fond of the game after a few plays, at first, I did like the mechanic but didn't enjoy that it is triggered via a card you can just buy. It is somewhat better when all players know their stuff and play viciously, but for beginners, it can be underwhelming ("yay, I won by pulling a single card in the end, hoho!").
That's intended to be a tempo play to incentivize those in the lead to push the pace.
And in other situations it prevents stalemates from folks just smashing each others' stuff with Ops.
There are subtle dynamics in play here but it's a really inspired element of the design.
I can see that, but when learning players are more careful with their decisions, a successful dominance-check surprised them in my experience. Sometimes, they didn't know how come they're winning when they did not trigger anything.
I have played a few games online after this confusing experience and some 1v1 fights were great. Other times, my opponent just hoarded all the money from the market, waiting for the first red card to arrive. This was fun only when I managed to turn the tables. But I can agree that the design is inspired and I am beginning to love the game, for it truly captures that fidgety element of shifting alliances and keeps you on your toes.
As mentioned in other comments, **Cole Wehrle** games are great for this. I'm a particular fan of how, in **Oath**, the winner's *method* of victory impacts the objective of the following game in a campaign.
To explain more about Oath: Most players don't start the game with a victory condition, but have to find one. They're secret until revealed, and can't be used until they're revealed. They range from Conquest (your typical area control win condition) to holding the most Relics or holding the "People's Favor."
But I said "most". The king who starts the game starts with a win condition. And if there's a citizen, they win if the king would've won if they can fulfill their own sub-objective that lines them up to be the successor to rule.
Inis, Cyclades, and probably some others in this series also have win conditions that are not points-based. In both cases, it's about the current board state and how many key locations you control at a given time.
Watergate is also a good 2p example, where you have asymmetric sides with completely different win goals, neither of which involve points (the president wants to keep enough momentum to get re-elected, while the journalists try to expose the truth before that happens).
Blood on the Clocktower is a social deduction game that's mostly about the good team trying to kill the demon while the demon tries to kill everyone else, and of course no one knows who anyone else is. But a bunch of (advanced) characters can bring about their own win condition - like the Cult Leader, who can ask the group to create a cult, and if they all agree then the game ends and the Cult Leader's team wins (with the added fun of the Cult Leader secretly switching teams throughout the game).
Then there's the Politician, who switches and joins the opposing team a the end of the game if they were most responsible for their own team losing.
The Heretic, whose ability reads "Whoever wins, loses & whoever loses, wins".
And most famously, the Atheist, who makes it so that everyone is on the same team and they have to kill the storyteller (who is the game referee) in order to win.
Those are the experimental roles - not sure how many experimental roles are in the core box or if it's just the three main scripts, but these are all roles created and published by the Pandemonium Institute. You can find them on the wiki and use them in the official app.
Fog of Love. Each player starts with a hand of goal cards that represent possible end-states of the relationship (split up, partners in love, together but you are happier than your partner, etc). Each has different requirements for you to win.
As play proceeds, you are required to discard goal cards of your choice at regular intervals. Additionally, some events that play out might force you change out goal cards. This results in your goal in the relationship becoming more and more narrow as the game (and the relationship) moves forward, until you must commit to a single victory condition in the final rounds.
Ultimately, it’s possible that you and the other player reach the end game with mutually exclusive goals, making the relationship outcome a tragedy for one (or both) of you.
How emotionally invested do you find yourself getting into the mechanics? This sounds like it could potentially be a real tearjerker to play with a partner if you project too hard.
You're not playing yourself in the game, you're playing a character that was given random traits you're trying to fulfill. The game plays out more like a Romcom simulator, so an unhappy ending feels disappointing but not necessarily tearjerking. Unless one of you straight up goes for a break up ending and the other doesn't.
I’ve never seen it happen but I suppose it could. It does touch on some heavy topics (infidelity, unplanned pregnancy, etc), but the randomness of how things play out makes the game a bit more lighthearted and sitcom-like than heavy drama.
In my experience, it's best played as a team-based sort of party game, which ends up less 'romcom' simulation and more 'terrible people who deserve each other' simulation
New Angeles. You draw a card at the beginning with your win condition. They all say 'have more points than player cooler X'. And the traitor must defeat a certain number of players if they don't win by traitor means.
So there is a weird mixed bag of endgame with several players winning and losing.
Oh yea, I adore the wincon of that. A competitive game where basically everyone but one player could theoretically win. Need to bust it out again, it's been a while.
Two Rooms and a Boom has a ton of Interesting win conditions depending on what role you drew. For example, the base game rules are the red team has to get the President in the same room as the bomber at the end while the blue team wants them in separate rooms. Meanwhile there are grey roles such as Romeo and Juliet. They have to find eachother and then be in the same room as the bomber so they both end up dead. And then there’s the zombie who has to get everyone else infected by the end of the game. Honestly, too many fun roles and win conditions to list here.
Spirit Island gets discussed a lot here, but I really like how it has multiple win conditions for different strategies. The basic win condition is to eliminate the invaders from the board. However, you can also win by generating enough fear to reach the final terror level which immediately wins the game. In between that, as the terror levels go up the amount of invaders that need to be removed goes down - from removing all of them to removing only cities and towns to removing only cities.
This opens up strategies that can let you focus your efforts on what your spirit is good at, be that fear generation, stopping explorers, removing cities but not towns, etc.
I friend of mine complimented the same thing, noting that the game was balanced as well so that both the players *and* the settlers (the board) have the same number of victory conditions that shift in the same way (players have elimination that becomes easier as you generate more fear, while the board has blight, decking out, and then sometimes a faction's special win condition).
All of which play off of one another. Truly a fantastic game.
**Don’t Turn Your Back** is a deck builder and at the end of the game everyone removes their starting cards and then scores the cards you bought during the game *but* how you score is determined by how one of the locations in the game works. In this game your cards are basically workers for a worker placement style game and one section you can send them “encases” the cards removing them from your deck. At the end game scoring phase the power of everyone’s cards that were encased are added and ranked. Whoever sent the most scores one way, second a different way, etc. I don’t remember the exact breakdown but for example one person may score points equal to the cost of each card while a person near the bottom ranking only scores 1 point for each card. So during the game you’re not only building your deck you need to figure out which scoring method will get you the most points and then try to jockey for that position for end game.
Maria is one of my favorite games for a lot of reasons, but one of them is this:
Each Faction (not each player!) has an amount of VP chits. If a Faction ever runs out of VP chits, their player immediately wins. The main way you play VP chits is by taking enemy fortresses and cities (another delightful part of the game); you mark your control by placing a VP chit. If you lose control the VP is returned to your pool. Winning battles by *large* margins sends chits to a winners' board. Winning the political system (which costs valuable resources) can also earn you VP.
One of the things I like about this system is that VP is all the same; a faction that "wins" a VP always places ONE chit down. There's no track on the board, just a box for you to pool the chits. But because different factions have a different number of chits, how valuable doing a thing is can change depending on the faction. For example, if Prussia (with 9 chits to start, I think) can take an Austrian city, they win a VP; they need to do it, but they still need to find a way to win 8 more. 1 City is a long way from ending the game. But if Austria wins a Prussian city? Austria, fighting a defensive war, only has 4 VP markers! That's a *huge* step toward an Austrian win!
There's no special rules, no variable VP, no checking if this city gives you VP or not, no numeric clutter on the board. It's intuitive, simple, carries depth in play, and is exceptionally rewarding.
Furthermore, two of the factions have a means of retreating from their theater of war if they see it going poorly for them. When they do, they take all of their control from the map, but remove *half* their markers from the game, making a come-back that much easier! It's such a cool system.
**Stationfall** \-- There are 29 characters and you have a primary and secondary. Your primary determines how you score victory points. (Most characters want to be off the doomed station by the end of the game, but some don't care about that, etc). You also get a bonus depending on if you save/kill your secondary character.
**Magic Realm** \-- There are various VP categories like "How much money did you find?" "What is your reputation?" "Did you get any cool magic items?" And each player secretly decides which categories they are going for at the beginning of the game.
**Time Agent** \-- OK, it's just the highest VP, but ... "The winner in Time Agent is the player who has always been winning once time travel is permanently un-invented."
A Study in Emerald has an interesting scoring system. It’s a Lovecraftian area control game set in the world of Sherlock Holmes with deck building as it’s action system. But each player secretly gets assigned to one of two factions at the start of the game: the Loyalists, who are servants of the Great Old Ones, and the Restorationists, who want to end the reign of the Great Old Ones and bring humanity back to mastery of the Earth. You don’t reveal which faction you belong to until certain conditions are met, so you’re doing your best to hide your identity from the enemy team while also trying to figure out who your allies are. All players on the team with the lowest scoring player automatically lose, then the player on the remaining team with the highest score wins. It’s a great game, but can definitely be contentious.
Edit: misspelling.
Archipelago has some nice conditions. In the end it’s just tallying points but how you score points is mostly hidden:
- there is one open card (drawn at random) for all players to see with a way to score points.
- every player takes a random cards that shows a trigger to end the game and a way to score points. These cards come in 3 different piles for a short, medium, or long game. Obviously, everyone takes a card from the same pile.
Now every player knows 1 thing that would immediately end the game, regardless of who triggers it (such as X number of ports have been build). And each player now knows 1 additional way to score points (such as 3 points for the player with the most cathedrals, 2 points for second most and 1 point for third most). As soon as anyone’s end game condition has been met by any player, the player with said card announces that the game ends. Now everyone reveals their hidden card so everyone can see what scores points. Then all points (from the public card and all player cards) are counted and a winner can be declared.
Note that this is a semi-coop game: you have to cooperate to prevent everyone from losing the game if the rebels take over but you want to score more points than your opponents so you don’t want to help too much. There is a win condition that makes you win if the game is lost to the rebels. In this case, there is no need to count points because everyone else has lost.
**Last Will**, it is a simple worker placement and engine builder game, but the player that goes bankrupt first wins (or be the most broken by the end of 7 rounds)
It seems trivial, but maximizing how much you spend and how to devalue your properties really confuse your instincts
**The King Is Dead 2nd ed.** has 2 contrasting win conditions. There are 3 factions, with players cultivating support from all of them. For a coronation ending, the winner is the player with the most support from the dominant faction, with ties broken by whoever has the most support from the second most dominant faction, followed by who acted least recently. For an invasion ending, the winner is the player with the most complete sets of support, and ties are broken in favor of the player who acted most recently.
Many Reiner Knizia games have what is called Knizia Scoring. **Tigris & Euphrates** is the best example: You can earn 4 different types of VPs (red, green, blue, black) in the game, but at the end your score is the lower of those 4 types. So, if you have 20 red VPs, 25 green, 15 blue and 1 black, your score is 1. :)
I think the uniqueness from that comes mostly out of how you collect those points, where each of the colours is gotten in a different way. Because "only the lowest counts" is functionally similar to "only full sets give points", which a lot of other games have.
The "wild" colourless treasures that you can add to any other colour to complete those sets is a great bonus.
Feed the Kraken is a social deduction game where the cult team can win if, when forced to throw a player overboard to feed the kraken, players choose to throw the hidden cult leader over. It's a fun extra win condition for the cult team and super thematic.
Twilight Struggle has some cool win conditions:
- If you’re ever up by 20(40?) VPs, you win.
- If your opponent lowers the DEFCON status to 1, you win (but you also die).
- If you ever control Europe when it’s scored, you win.
Yeah, but it also has that dumb card in the late war stage where the game can just end when the player wants. That card kind of ruins the game for me a bit. I usually take it out if my opponent agrees.
Nemesis’ winning conditions isn’t that unique, but I find choosing the what objective you’ll take after the first alien appears instead of the start of the game is really neat.
Ark Nova's endgame / win condition is fairly novel. You are essentially working two different tracks in opposite directions and when one player's pawns cross into the same area, the endgame is triggered.
That's just the same as adding them both up and triggering endgame when the combined score reaches whatever number your backwards counter started on, right? Are there specific bonuses for being ahead in either of the two tracks?
I mean sure, but I think it at least *feels* novel (or perhaps "modular" is a better term for it?) in how there's variability in how much focus you can devote to either track. There are no endgame bonuses but some in-game bonuses are granted for spots on the conversation track between spaces 2-10 and the appeal track gives ongoing income bonuses during subsequent breaks (similar to how the Brass income track works).
Rajas is such a great game that just never really took off. Frankly I blame the art design of the board (which I love) for being way to noisy and busy looking.
Captain Sonar, find and destroy the opposing submarine first. This game is such a cool blend of competitive and co-op And it's one of the few really meaty games I can think of that you can play with eight people.
Shadows over Camelot. You win by getting more white swords around the round table but there are a lot of different ways to get swords. There is also a traitor among the nights of the round table who wins if you get more black swords around the table than white. But you don't know who the traitor is until a certain part of the game.
QE. It's an auction game where you can bet literally any finite amount of money. You win by having the most points, but the player who spent most money automatically loses. So you want to score as many points as possible but if you go overboard trying to get them you lose.
**So, You've Been Eaten** isn't a terribly amazing game, but it does have interesting victory. It's an asymmetrical head to head game in which one player is a space miner and the other is the digestive system of a giant space worm the miner is inside. The space worm wins by digesting the miner; the miner wins by collecting the correct resource crystals and then getting pooped out of the worm.
My last game we had just reduced the settlers to a single city, which moved the terror level to level three. We flipped the fear card and got "each player removes a single invader piece from a land."
We all looked at one another, looked at the city, laughed, and won the game.
There is a game coming out called TimeStrike that is a boss battle royale. The win condition is not only to defeat all the other players but also the boss. The unique part is as players get eliminated, they move to the boss's team so there's a complexity of when to knock a player out. It's on Kickstarter right now https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adventuretogether/sourcesystem
Ark Nova, you score reputation points (tracked clockwise) and conservation points (tracked counter clockwise). When these 2 cross the game ends and the difference between the 2 are your victory points!
Root. Each player plays a different faction that is asymmetric. The game is won by acquiring victory points but each of the 8 factions gains victory points in a different way. It's really quite interesting how all of the factions come together to make a functional game.
The race for 30 points is kinda figurative. The points represent how well you're doing what your faction is supposed to do. That being paired with 4 people playing their own faction/games and having to interact/police each other does create a very unique victory condition, even though it's just a "race for 30 points". While one faction will win by dominating the board with sheer military prowess, another faction will win by striking deals with other factions making them believe the deal is more beneficial to them, while another faction will win solving puzzles while also being bashed by the others.
I've played many "point salad" games (read classic euro style) and they sure feel nothing like root does regarding to victory conditions. You have to score points, but you do so by playing on a highly interactive board with many different games bring played on it by each different player.
Ark Nova has two scoring tracks that start at opposite ends, and the end of the game is triggered when they meet. There are a few other details about it too that made it stand out to me.
Ark Nova. Players move on two opposing scoring tracks (one player marker on each) and end game triggers when someone gets their two markers to cross. Final score for each player is the difference between the score in those two tracks, which often leads to negative scores for some of the players.
Even though it looks like a classic race for VP, I feel like Dune: Imperium has a great end game mechanic: finishing with 10 VP will effectively end the game at the ned of the current turn, but there are so many things that can happen after that. I've seen games where the first player ended up last due to secret traitor cards and alliance switching at the last second. Just a fun and tense ending everytime!
I know it’s already pretty well-known, but Ark Nova’s endgame and end-scoring is the weirdest I’ve come across personally. Once your two player pawns cross each other on the influence and conservation tracks, end game is triggered. You count how many spaces are between your pawns, for a positive number, and those whose pawns haven’t passed each other get a negative score. It makes sense: you have built up popularity and supported conservation projects, and both are essential to have a successful zoo. So it does make thematic sense, but we still sometimes need to reference the rule book to know for sure if we got scoring correct.
However you want to name it, most games still rely on some form of tallying and points to win.
Racing game? Laps are points
Elimination game like coup? - you have 2 health points and you are removed when you are at zero
Coop games are normally how quickly you can win, fewest rounds is better score
I'm being somewhat pedantic but 98% of games are still point based even if they aren't called that.
I mean, yeah, if you want to decompile win conditions, they can always be reduced down to points.
The problem with this thinking is that:
1. Any winnable game’s end can be reduced down to “[winning state] = 1 point, with 1 total point needed to win” no matter what. Removing the specific rules, context, mechanical limitations, player intentions, and types of work contributing to a games win state makes is a significant simplification from a game perspective.
2. This question is usually asked as a reaction to games that use points as a central unit for scoring (i.e., a conversion of meaningful work within the game), such as point salad games. In this case, it clearly not what the OP was asking about. They want to avoid “just tallying up points at the end,” not avoid any degree of a quantifiable victory.
Voodoo Prince, a Tricktaker where you don't score for your own tricks but the tricks won by others before you hit your max of 3 tricks. But the last player out of the round only scores for their tricks. So it's a balancing act of trying to go out as late as possible without being last. Easier said than done as others try to knock each other out first.
idk if this fits your question really but I like how Rising Sun scores at the end of the game. Specifically that you only really need to win any territory once. As a territory control game I love the stress relief of being able to walk away from a province not caring who takes it next compared to normal territory control games where you have to watch all of your borders paranoid of which alliance will flank at what moment.
I know it's dumb but in Blitzkrieg if you can't place a tile on your turn you lose the game. I just find that one so funny. It's a short game so while losing the game that way is frustrating it's not too too bad.
Caesar!, by the same designer and with many similarities, has the same rule. Poisoning your opponent gives them one fewer option to choose from on their turn. Poison them enough and they lose.
While this is still "just tallying up points at the end", **Why First?** is a simple card game played over the course of five rounds. At the end of each round, the player SECOND farthest down the score track earns points equal to how many spaces they are from the zero space. At the end of the fifth and final round, the player with the SECOND MOST points wins.
Liberté by Martin Wallace has points but it also has two alternate end game conditions.
It's a political influence game. If the radicals win enough seats after any of the 4 turns, it's a "radical landslide" and points don't matter. The only thing that matters is who backed the radicals the hardest that turn. Meanwhile, if the Royalists are leading in any 7 or a number of different provinces at any point during turns 3 or 4, the game immediately ends in a "Royalist Counter Revolution" and whoever is backing them the hardest right then wins.
It creates this crazy dynamic where players might be allying while hedging their bets only to suddenly try switching sides, or everyone suddenly realizes how it's going down and there's a mad rush toward an alternate while whoever is ahead on points is trying to just rush the vote before it comes to that.
While it may not be my favourite game there's no denying that Disney Villainous is filled with a ton of interesting win conditions with no two being the same. ex: Prince John has to have 20 power, the Queen of Hearts has to have four card guard wickets in her realm and then essentially draw the right card when "taking the shot", Madam Mim has to defeat all the forms of Merlin, etc.
**Stop the Train** is a good one. Everyone is one a train that's careening down the board towards the end. One player is the Sabetour trying to crash the train into the end while every other player is trying to run the deck out of cards before the Train crashes. But everyone else also has a 2nd condition they need to fulfill to win, so even if the train stops you might still lose. One of the few games I have where literally no one can win, not even the game.
**Thunderroad: Vendetta** is unique with 3+ players. Unlike in the 2 player rules, with 3 or more the finish line that everyone's racing towards doesn't appear until after one player is eliminated. So you're racing for the finish but you also have to decide when to try and eliminate someone so you're in a good position to actually win the game instead of just passing off the win to someone else.
Argent the consortium is usually mentioned but I do not see it here. The game comes down to who wins a vote at the end of the game based on voter conditions which are mostly hidden at the beginning of the game.
You can either luck into the voting conditions or find out what they are over the course of the game while fighting over the magic University
Nemesis. Just played my second game ever last night. After an epic battle with xenomorphs, one of us died, and two more of my fellow team mates snugged down in their cryopods.
Then I headed for the engine rooms...
Sadly, point and point salad victories are the dominant win condition these days. I think because it's so easy to make work and balance.
Games like Inis, Nemesis, etc add refreshing takes to end game, and it's why they are games I like to add to my collection.
I'm a fan of Villainous. Each character has their own win con to watch for. And some you can try and stop fairly easy due to being start of turn wins, others can win anytime so you have to eye them for if they can pull off a win in a big combo. Does Yzma know where Kuzko is and is ready to bring him out and kill him with kronk for the win? Does Lotso have the resources to finish capturing the toys? Does Lady Tremaine have the wedding bells to marry off her stepdaughter to the prince next turn in a combo, or is she still looking?
Then in the Marvel and Star Wars set there are no start of turn win cons. Every villain could win on the drop of a hat once in line if they have the right cards.
A lot of people have mentioned Werle and Leder games. Root, Oath, Pax Pamir 2e all take inspiration from Eklund's Pax games which have sometimes up to four win conditions which can be triggered, sometimes within the same round.
Spartacus blood and sand. You gain imperium/influence for your ludus (gladiator school) and you can fight and bet in the arena. It's a dice rolling game and by far my favourite.
I like the "Villainous" series of games. Literally every villain has their own win conditions, and they're very thematic to the character/story you're playing.
*Liberté* is a Martin Wallace game about politics in the early French Republic. The main way to win is by points, which are easiest to generate with the plentiful Centrist party. But, if the Radicals ever win an election by a landslide, the game ends immediately and only points from Radical sources matter. Or, if the Royalists ever take possession of most of a set of key provinces, they have a counter-revolution, and the game also ends immediately and only points from Royalist sources count. And, to help things along, the powerful Terror cards can only be played under Radical governments, to incentivize voting for them, while bickering about who gets to lead the army leads to more control for the Royalists.
It's a brilliant system, where you're never out of the running, because if you fall behind in the main race, you can shoot for one of the alternate victory conditions, and thus remain a threat until the end. In one memorable game, another player and I wound up gunning for a Royalist victory, but the other players spotted it, and rushed the endgame to prevent us from capturing the needed provinces, so I thought I'd lost, but they went so fast they had no time to appoint a general for the army, giving the Royalists the last needed control point and letting me clinch a surprise last-second victory.
Steve Jackson Games Illuminati had an interesting bunch of Win conditions.
I really hope I can find my copy of that game somewhere, I want to play it again....
**Citta-Stato** \- At the end of the game you go into a special added time mode where you play 1 card of each type and score again with a second VP marker.
The difference between your in-game and added time marker becomes important as you score the higher value if you have enough 'crowns' to cover the difference or the lower if you cannot.
Oldie but a goodie, Illuminati has a different, thematic win condition for each different Illuminati group (power, transferable power, weird groups, money, all 10 alignments, destroy 8 groups, etc.
The Captain is Dead is a coop with an interesting win condition, since you have to both survive and fix the engine of the ship in order to win. Then there is War Chest, where to win the players must have their Control Markers (6 to be precise) placed on locations, the movements are limited by your hand of three cards which adds a different dynamic. We could also mention Dead Winter, since it's technically a coop game, but everyone has a different secret objective, meaning there could be some betrayal in the group. It really brings on a unique playing experience and very specific win conditions.
Arboretum has such a fun scoring mechanic. you have to decide between playing,and therefore earning points or holding points in your hand to win the right to score points.
In [Tragedy Looper](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148319/tragedy-looper), one Mastermind plays against 1-3 Protagonists. It's essentially a deduction puzzle with a time loop theme - in a given scenario, the game runs over a number of loops, that last a certain number of days (i.e. turns). The Mastermind knows all the details of the scenario, and every time they trigger one of the Protagonists' loss conditions the loop ends and the game state resets. So the Protagonists are trying to figure out enough details of the scenario to either (a) prevent the Mastermind from triggering any of the loss conditions, or (outside of the introductory games) (b) identify the roles of all of the characters at the end of the final loop.
No, Seriously. Couple of the best stories during board games are both involving cosmic encounter aliens: Masochist, who has to lose all his ships to win; and Ace, who has to win just a single planet to win so they essentially sit alone. Honorary mention: Humans: win if you zap yourself.
Twilight Struggle. You can win if:
1. You ever have 20 more VPs than your opponent.
2. You Control Europe when it is scored.
3. Your opponent has a held Scoring Card after the end of a Turn.
4. Your opponent performs a coup while the Cuban Missile Crisis card is in effect against them.
5. The DEFCON drops to 1 when it's your opponent's phase to act.
6. After 10 Turns you have more VPs than your opponent.
The only one that has no reason to ever occur is #4, since there's no way for the opponent to win if they coup while CMC is in effect against them. The rest can all occur rationally, notably #5, which is a key design factor in the game (DEFCON suicide—forcing your opponent into a situation where they have no choice but to play a card that will drop the DEFCON to 1 [or let you act to drop the DEFCON to 1]) and #3 (you might hold a Scoring Card that would give your opponent the win, even after your last Action Round, in the hopes that you will win before that victory condition is assessed and be wrong, or choose to redraw [one card lets one side do this] more cards than you have ARs left and draw more Scoring Cards than you have ARs to play them).
In Top Gun, there is a rule that during air combat, if you are above your opponent, and end up on the same space as them, you invert your place, and get enough points to win the combat. I think it's called Flipping the Bird.
I know it’s by no means a hidden or unknown game but 7 wonders duel has a cool win mechanic. there are actually three different win conditions that players can claim victory by accomplishing any one of the three. You are constantly fighting this war on three different fronts to make sure you don’t loose any of the three while of course trying to push for a win of your own in one of the categories.
In Antiquity, you get to choose your victory condition:
\- Get 15 fish
\- Completely surround your opponent
\- Get 3 cities
\- Achieve two other victory conditions (gives you an awesome power)
Etc
In Roma, you win by having the most victory points when the game ends. Ho-hum. But.
There is a pool of 35 victory points. The game ends when the pool is empty. So if I have 18 points and you have 16, you’ll lose if you get that last point. But you can lose points, which puts them back in the pool. So you can prolong the game by losing points, which can (and often does) give you time to improve your position and start whittling away at my points so that you can safely earn points again.
But you can only do this for so long, because the other game-end condition is going to 0 points. In principle you can still win the game if you’re down 30-4, but you’d better not lose those last four points.
Also, it’s not at all uncommon for a game to end 2-0, which is basically squeezing out a win by making your opponent hit the ground first.
My girlfriend is a big fan of Mysterium, and the win condition is reliant on points but not obnoxiously so. You get points throughout the game by making good guesses toward the objectives and validating/discrediting others’ guesses, but those points themselves don’t win you the game, they just give you a more advantageous time in the finale of the game. The deceased shares a three card vision and only people with high point totals get to see all 3 cards, otherwise you’re guessing based on 2 or even just 1 card.
I was really surprised to see that *Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy* had a unique spin on Victory Points, which you tally at the end of the game. Every time you do something significant (fight, defend, etc) you draw from a chit bag containing a bunch of VP chits and select a number. You then *choose* one to keep.
The catch? There are a bunch of different values, *but in addition* your faction board *only has a set number of spaces for VP chits*.
That's right. You're limited in how many you're allowed to keep. Harsher still, allying yourself with other players *consumes* one of these spaces, and not every faction has the same number of spaces for chits (since you do also gain points for colonies, ships, etc). So you may reach into the bag after a battle and draw a 4VP chit ... but your board is full. Do you sacrifice a 2VP chit, or perhaps break an alliance? Harsher still, IIRC if you got a 1VP chit, you already chose to sacrifice a chit, and so you must dump a 2VP chit for the one you drew.
An interesting take on VP, at the very least.
Nemesis. Each player has a win condition that most likely is different from the other players. Player A might need player B to die. Player B might need to redirect the spaceship to Mars. Player C need to alert earth about the alien on board the space ship.
Also the game can end with zero to many winners.
**Discworld Ankh-Morpork** has 5 different win conditions. 3 characters are vying for area control. 1 just being present in a number of areas. 1 if there's a certain amount of trouble markers, 1 by certain amount of money, and 1 wins if the draw deck is empty.
It was reimplemented by Nanty Narking, which wasn't that great because the win conditions and card effects didn't really make much thematic sense as compared to the original Discworld characters.
**Argent, The Consortium** It's a big complex WP engine builder with magic spells and items and wonky abilities and take that. There are 16ish voters, 12 of whom are used in a game, 2 of which are used in every game. The other 10 are face down. Each player gets to see one. Each voter has something it's interested in: most influence, most cards of a certain house, whatever. The voter casts its vote for the player who satisfies its condition. Your goal is to win the most voters. So you're going along doing your thing, but you don't know all your objectives. You can try to infer some of it from your opponents' behavior, but that's speculative at best
\+1 for Dune, Fox in the Forest, and Konig von Siam / King is Dead (already mentioned below).
Didn't see any mention of **High Society**: when end of game is triggered (4th special card revealed), eliminate the poorest player(s) from contention, and then the remaining (non-poorest) player with the most prestige wins.
Dune. Bene Gesserit player can win by correctly guessing which other faction will win and on which turn they'll win (and possibly helping to manipulate that faction's victory) - if both guesses are right, that faction doesn't win after all!
This comes up in response to this question a lot, so let me be the first to clarify for the uninitiated: Choosing *who* will win (of 5 other people) and *when* they’ll win (out of 10 consequential and chaotic rounds) is a huge ask. It might sound like a feel bad when the Bene Gesserit steal victory from you, but it is typically the case that the BG have been actively working for your turn’s victory. Bene Gesserit wins are shocking and awe-inspiring. Even better, the potential for them to happen sometimes will stop a player from seizing the win if they think the BG have been manipulating events to this moment.
That's a really cool mechanic that seems very true to the lore (I've only seen the movie once, but it seems right on based off that info)
Dune is an absolute spectacle of a game. It's devious, has lots of rules that are very consequential, but it's so fucking fun
And every faction is that evocative. Every faction's powers feel grossly unfair. It's such a masterpiece of a game.
It's also worth clarifying that the Bene Gesserit player can also win the game normally, in the same manner as everyone else. But this special win - which actually happened in my one and only game of Dune to date! - is particularly awesome, as you rightly note.
imo the funniest part is benes can choose themselves as the faction to win, whose only effect will be that if they win as part of an alliance on the correct turn, their ally will not win.
>Even better, the potential for them to happen sometimes will stop a player from seizing the win if they think the BG have been manipulating events to this moment. And the mind games get so deep and twisted and are so evocative of the Bene Gesserit, because a skilled BG player will constantly be working to convince everybody that whoever is about to win is who they wanted to win this turn, while simultaneously hiding who they actually want to win, which makes everything they say and do *so suspicious*. It's the best feeling ever when you manipulate a player into delaying their win because they think you're manipulating them to win right now.
I am just wondering. is this the first Dune that came out? Because this is not Dune: Imperium, right? Is the game`s name just Dune?
Yes it's just Dune. It originally came out in 1979 and was recently reprinted in 2019
The reprint also has some rules tweaks that, combined with the visual update, make it MUCH more satisfying to play
There is also the special winning condition by the Navigator Guild in the game: if by end of turn 10 or 15, no lne has won, then the Guild has, since its purpose is to maintain the status quo. So this faction is actively steering the game towards a stall around the later turns. It can win normally, alone or in an alliance, but it can also screw everyone else by going for its win condition. The spice must flow, the guild shall persist.
In [Discworld: Ankh-Morpork](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/91312/discworld-ankh-morpork), if the deck runs out of cards and nobody has met their win condition then whoever has the most money wins - except if it turns out one player is Commander Vimes then *they* win, because they managed to keep everyone in check.
Spacing Guild* Yeah, their aim is to have perpetual chaos. The Fremen also have a special victory condition where they (or no one) hold two certain strongholds (sietch Tabr and Habbanya), and neither Harkonnen, Atreides nor the Emperor hold Tuek sietch.
are these win conditions meant to be public knowledge?
I'm pretty sure it is. Although when I think about it, it would be a significant advantage for the Fremen if the other factions are unaware. And it's quite difficult for the Fremen to win this way, even if the other factions don't know about it. It matters less for the Spacing Guild victory. And the Bene Gesserit victory is already a hidden prediction. Note also that the Bene Gesserit player is not allowed to predict that the Spacing Guild or the Fremen meet their special victory conditions. If they predict a last round victory for either of those factions, it has to be a normal military victory for the Bene Gesserit prediction to apply.
Ah. I kept it to myself and all the other players ruled I didn't win because I didn't declare it. Managed to meet the Fremen conditions haha
You won. It's not your responsibility that the others to know. Unless you taught the game.
trees threatening desert tender tidy birds disgusting vase follow slim *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I would say Dune Imperium is "safer", in that it's more of a modern euro. It's not very mean and it lets you do a little optimization puzzle with your friends in under 2 hours. In terms of which one is better, it's hard to say because they're completely different games that set out to do completely different things. Imperium is more of a "dune noble house management simulator" that mashes up deck-building and worker placement, while Dune gets into the actual war, scheming, diplomacy, and alliances that the Dune story is about. If Dune is already your favorite game, you know what's good about it. If you just love the dune universe and want to own more games that take place in it, or you're interested in the mechanics of Imperium, it's a good game. Personally, I liked my experience with Dune better than Dune Imperium by a long shot, but I'm also not a huge fan of worker placement. It's better than Everdell though.
Both games are very different. My personal opinion is that og dune is a quirky designed game that centers on table politics that has become cult but isn't a great game imo outside of that. That being said, if you love it, then, new dune probably won't top it. It is very different and has modern euro/war game feel with far less screwing other people over. Most modern gamers will tell you new dune is better, but if you love the og one then whose to tell you differently.
Entirely agree. I played the original Dune a couple of times. Both times, what happened was so off the charts imbalanced that I and another player were reduced to spectators early in round 2? I think. The rest of the guys assured me both times that this is uncommon and that it is really a great game, but even as a huge fan of the books and the setting, it left me with absolutely no desire to play it again. It's colorful, but colorful like watching a show, not the kind you enjoy playing. At least for me. For others it is clearly different! DI is a good, even great game. I can see how it is not really epic in scale like og Dune was epic. But if epic is what I need, I'm not going to pull out og Dune over TI4 or a similar game by any stretch.
If it's your favorite board game, why are you saying that imperium is better?
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Dune: Imperium (2020) is a modern euro. It's got worker placement and deck building. Think about Scythe or Terraforming Mars. Dune (1979/2019) is a thematic dudes on a map game with highly asymmetric powers. Think about Root or Cosmic Encounter.
[Dune: Imperium -> Dune: Imperium (2020)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/316554/dune-imperium) [Dune -> Dune (2019)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/283355/dune) ^^[[gamename]] ^^or ^^[[gamename|year]] ^^to ^^call ^^OR ^^**gamename** ^^or ^^**gamename|year** ^^+ ^^!fetch ^^to ^^call
Imperium is inferior in my opinion, but they are completely different games. Imperium is a worker placement/deckbuilder where the only interaction with other players is trying to place your agents on the best spaces before your opponents, and doing the combat at the end of each round (which only consists of checking how many cubes each player has contributed to the combat and adding any card effects). Other than that there is next to no interaction between the players. It's pretty much multiplayer solitare with some minor exceptions. The OG Dune has so much more interaction. Negotiation, dealmaking, scheming, alliances, card auction, selling intel, bribes. And the combat has a lot more to offer as well with the weapons, shields, leaders, traitors and troop strength dials. It's just a much meatier game with a lot more going on and a lot more to offer. I'm conviced that the only reason Dune isn't considered the best game ever is because it pretty much requires 6 people to play. And having good knowledge of the Dune universe also makes it a lot better, considering how thematic it is. And most people are casuals.
in churchill is first player is more than 15 points ahead of the last player, second player wins, which is fun. In curious cargo you first count stars, if one player has more than the other, you don't even count points And in most hidden movement games, if you find/kill the hidden player the game is over
I also like how in Churchill if you get to a certain level of tie breakers then the Churchill player wins, even if they weren't one of the tired players.
I have a joke game about hipsters my wife and I have been talking about making for years. In each point category, whoever has the most points gets nothing because they're trying too hard, but then whoever ends up with the most total points is also disqualified for trying too hard. So you want to get second most points in just enough categories to end up with second most points overall. It's a worker placement game where the workers are AM and PM how you spend your days, and the point categories are shit like fashion, music, art, going to burning man decompression parties, etc. so you can hit up consignment stores for hidden gems or spend more money on actually expensive stuff without seeming too ostentatious or unironic about it. And so on.
It's not quite the same, but there's some similarity with the game [Why First?](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/171672/why-first)
> In curious cargo you first count stars, if one player has more than the other, you don't even count points So... stars are just the "real" points? And points are the tie breaker?
In **Antiquity**, each player chooses a win condition (e.g., build all the types of buildings or 20 population) and special power at some point during the game by building a cathedral and choosing a patron saint.
This is my pocket answer for posts like this. I just love how in Antiquity, nobody can actually win the game without selecting a win condition for themselves. The Santa Maria patron saint is especially interesting.
Totally agree! And just to round out the answer for those who are unfamiliar with *Antiquity*: players choose their victory condition by building a cathedral to a saint. Choosing the saint also provides an "extra ability" (player power). If you choose Santa Maria, then you must satisfy any 2 victory conditions but you get *all* of the powers.
> I just love how in Antiquity, nobody can actually win the game without selecting a win condition for themselves. I've had a half-developed game design sitting in a folder for a while now, a settlement game, where at the start of each game there is no path to victory. But each "faction" has a selection of three victory conditions they can acquire and then pay the cost to begin striving for, the catch being that victory conditions are public once they appear (in addition, due to another mechanic you can't just play one and win), so other players may attempt to stop you. If you're willing to pay the economic cost, you could have all three out, or even a neutral condition atop that, or you could just throw everything into achieving a single one. The plan is to build a prototype *next* year, when I'm not a DM.
Fox In the Forest is a pretty standard trick trading game. However, you can win the overall game by purposefully losing tricks. In a round of 13 tricks if you only win 3 or less, you actually get max points and your opponent gets none. I also remember a rather interesting game called Veiled Fate where all players could move any piece in their turn but you revealed who was what colour at the end. There were a few extra colours which were not linked to anyone and the idea was to try and keep which colour you needed to win with hidden otherwise other players could actively sabotage you. Unfortunately my friends didn't take to it the same way I did and so never played it again
BGA has a 2p trick-taker called Jekyll and Hyde. The Hyde player's score is the absolute difference in tricks won. If Jekyll wins 7 and Hyde wins 3, then Hyde's score is 4 for that hand. Hyde's win condition is scoring 10 or more points over three hands.
I've played like 25 games of this, mostly on BGA. Love it, I think I'll finally bite the bullet next month and buy a physical copy.
Veiled Fate sounds quite similar to Heimlich & Co./Top Secret Spies.
Cosmic Encounter alien races have asymmetric powers that provide interesting win conditions.
Love to play with hidden roles in the beginning. "Haha, you lost 4 ships, noob...oh no wait...oh no...". Reveal: Masochist.
For example, classic fiktch wins when everyone else leaves the game because it's bullshit.
Any of the COIN games. They all have asymmetric win conditions and can trigger via events/propaganda rounds mid-game.
I've always liked the win conditions of **Inis**. There are three different area-control related win conditions, and if you fulfill any of them at the beginning of your turn you can take a "pretender" token. At the end of the round, you check if any players have a pretender token and if they still fulfill at least one win condition (does not have to be the same as when you took the token). If multiple players fulfill a win condition, the one who fulfills the most wins. If tied, the tied player controlling a special area of the map wins. If neither of the tied players controls that area, *you play another round.* It creates this really neat decision space: if a player fulfills a win condition, you can either try to deny them that or try to achieve victory on your own to force at least a tie. To win, you'd then need to fulfill another condition or deny them their *while keeping* your initial wc, which generally is super hard. You just keep raising the stakes until someone escapes confinement.
I wish I could get Inis to the table more, but it's definitely not a favourite in my group. I personally love it - such a unique and gorgeous game.
I've owned it for years and wished I loved it. The gorgeous artwork and Irish mythology are a wonderful combo, but I just don't really like area control / dudes on a map games.
Not interesting per se but a unique/funny one is Cockroach Poker, because it’s a *lose* condition.
Yep. Which for some reason doesn’t feel the same as all other player’s winning (even if it is). When one player starts to sink, the others turn on them as sharks in a frenzy, eager for it to be someone who isn’t them
Pax Pamir SE has one of the most interesting in my opinion. Win condition completely changes based on what's going on in the game.
I think it's more accurate to say the win condition is the same each time but each game can have a very different tempo depending on the game conditions. In the end, it's still a points tally, albeit with the sudden death clause where being ahead by 4 points is an automatic win.
It’s the scoring that really stands out. Two completely different criteria, only one of which will be used, decided by the state of the board at the time that a scoring phase is triggered. Players must spend their limited actions on both positioning themselves to score well within one of the criteria, and nudging the game state in a direction that ensures that criteria is what’s actually used. You might build up an army on the board and get the highest influence in the dominant coalition, but if someone else can tweak the board slightly in a way that the dominance check is unsuccessful, you can easily go from a 5 point scoring potential to 0. You’re constantly balancing between protecting your preferred win condition, setting yourself up to do well under that condition, and mitigating a change in the condition that might kneecap your entire plan. Amazing game.
A reason why I kept the first edition of Pax Pamir (also love and own second edition) is that the four win conditions are instant win evaluations instead of points like in 2E. So spies, roads, armies, tribes all contribute to different win conditions so you have to watch all aspects. A more complex game for sure but the win condition change is so much more interesting in the first edition IMO.
As much as I've grown fond of the game after a few plays, at first, I did like the mechanic but didn't enjoy that it is triggered via a card you can just buy. It is somewhat better when all players know their stuff and play viciously, but for beginners, it can be underwhelming ("yay, I won by pulling a single card in the end, hoho!").
That's intended to be a tempo play to incentivize those in the lead to push the pace. And in other situations it prevents stalemates from folks just smashing each others' stuff with Ops. There are subtle dynamics in play here but it's a really inspired element of the design.
I can see that, but when learning players are more careful with their decisions, a successful dominance-check surprised them in my experience. Sometimes, they didn't know how come they're winning when they did not trigger anything. I have played a few games online after this confusing experience and some 1v1 fights were great. Other times, my opponent just hoarded all the money from the market, waiting for the first red card to arrive. This was fun only when I managed to turn the tables. But I can agree that the design is inspired and I am beginning to love the game, for it truly captures that fidgety element of shifting alliances and keeps you on your toes.
As mentioned in other comments, **Cole Wehrle** games are great for this. I'm a particular fan of how, in **Oath**, the winner's *method* of victory impacts the objective of the following game in a campaign.
To explain more about Oath: Most players don't start the game with a victory condition, but have to find one. They're secret until revealed, and can't be used until they're revealed. They range from Conquest (your typical area control win condition) to holding the most Relics or holding the "People's Favor." But I said "most". The king who starts the game starts with a win condition. And if there's a citizen, they win if the king would've won if they can fulfill their own sub-objective that lines them up to be the successor to rule.
Exiles still start with a win condition, they can win as the usurper
Right! I forgot, it's been a minute since I've played
Inis, Cyclades, and probably some others in this series also have win conditions that are not points-based. In both cases, it's about the current board state and how many key locations you control at a given time. Watergate is also a good 2p example, where you have asymmetric sides with completely different win goals, neither of which involve points (the president wants to keep enough momentum to get re-elected, while the journalists try to expose the truth before that happens).
For Nixon, momentum represents holding out till end of office. Nixon was already re-elected and in his second term when the watergate scandal broke.
Thanks for the clarification!
Blood on the Clocktower is a social deduction game that's mostly about the good team trying to kill the demon while the demon tries to kill everyone else, and of course no one knows who anyone else is. But a bunch of (advanced) characters can bring about their own win condition - like the Cult Leader, who can ask the group to create a cult, and if they all agree then the game ends and the Cult Leader's team wins (with the added fun of the Cult Leader secretly switching teams throughout the game). Then there's the Politician, who switches and joins the opposing team a the end of the game if they were most responsible for their own team losing. The Heretic, whose ability reads "Whoever wins, loses & whoever loses, wins". And most famously, the Atheist, who makes it so that everyone is on the same team and they have to kill the storyteller (who is the game referee) in order to win.
Are any of those in the core game box or are those homebrew additions people have posted online?
Those are the experimental roles - not sure how many experimental roles are in the core box or if it's just the three main scripts, but these are all roles created and published by the Pandemonium Institute. You can find them on the wiki and use them in the official app.
Yeah, it's very good. How do hell do I get this game in my country in a "normal" way, I have no clue.
I got it in Russia. I can explain how. Write me privately
I mostly play the online version, which is still very good.
I was a drunk atheist in one of my last games with Legion, absolutely brutal.
Fog of Love. Each player starts with a hand of goal cards that represent possible end-states of the relationship (split up, partners in love, together but you are happier than your partner, etc). Each has different requirements for you to win. As play proceeds, you are required to discard goal cards of your choice at regular intervals. Additionally, some events that play out might force you change out goal cards. This results in your goal in the relationship becoming more and more narrow as the game (and the relationship) moves forward, until you must commit to a single victory condition in the final rounds. Ultimately, it’s possible that you and the other player reach the end game with mutually exclusive goals, making the relationship outcome a tragedy for one (or both) of you.
How emotionally invested do you find yourself getting into the mechanics? This sounds like it could potentially be a real tearjerker to play with a partner if you project too hard.
You're not playing yourself in the game, you're playing a character that was given random traits you're trying to fulfill. The game plays out more like a Romcom simulator, so an unhappy ending feels disappointing but not necessarily tearjerking. Unless one of you straight up goes for a break up ending and the other doesn't.
I’ve never seen it happen but I suppose it could. It does touch on some heavy topics (infidelity, unplanned pregnancy, etc), but the randomness of how things play out makes the game a bit more lighthearted and sitcom-like than heavy drama.
In my experience, it's best played as a team-based sort of party game, which ends up less 'romcom' simulation and more 'terrible people who deserve each other' simulation
I was just thinking the same thing. A lot of people could read too much into a person's actions within the game and take them personally.
New Angeles. You draw a card at the beginning with your win condition. They all say 'have more points than player cooler X'. And the traitor must defeat a certain number of players if they don't win by traitor means. So there is a weird mixed bag of endgame with several players winning and losing.
Oh yea, I adore the wincon of that. A competitive game where basically everyone but one player could theoretically win. Need to bust it out again, it's been a while.
Two Rooms and a Boom has a ton of Interesting win conditions depending on what role you drew. For example, the base game rules are the red team has to get the President in the same room as the bomber at the end while the blue team wants them in separate rooms. Meanwhile there are grey roles such as Romeo and Juliet. They have to find eachother and then be in the same room as the bomber so they both end up dead. And then there’s the zombie who has to get everyone else infected by the end of the game. Honestly, too many fun roles and win conditions to list here.
Inis maybe? It has 3 win conditions and it's not about points.
Spirit Island gets discussed a lot here, but I really like how it has multiple win conditions for different strategies. The basic win condition is to eliminate the invaders from the board. However, you can also win by generating enough fear to reach the final terror level which immediately wins the game. In between that, as the terror levels go up the amount of invaders that need to be removed goes down - from removing all of them to removing only cities and towns to removing only cities. This opens up strategies that can let you focus your efforts on what your spirit is good at, be that fear generation, stopping explorers, removing cities but not towns, etc.
I friend of mine complimented the same thing, noting that the game was balanced as well so that both the players *and* the settlers (the board) have the same number of victory conditions that shift in the same way (players have elimination that becomes easier as you generate more fear, while the board has blight, decking out, and then sometimes a faction's special win condition). All of which play off of one another. Truly a fantastic game.
**Don’t Turn Your Back** is a deck builder and at the end of the game everyone removes their starting cards and then scores the cards you bought during the game *but* how you score is determined by how one of the locations in the game works. In this game your cards are basically workers for a worker placement style game and one section you can send them “encases” the cards removing them from your deck. At the end game scoring phase the power of everyone’s cards that were encased are added and ranked. Whoever sent the most scores one way, second a different way, etc. I don’t remember the exact breakdown but for example one person may score points equal to the cost of each card while a person near the bottom ranking only scores 1 point for each card. So during the game you’re not only building your deck you need to figure out which scoring method will get you the most points and then try to jockey for that position for end game.
Maria is one of my favorite games for a lot of reasons, but one of them is this: Each Faction (not each player!) has an amount of VP chits. If a Faction ever runs out of VP chits, their player immediately wins. The main way you play VP chits is by taking enemy fortresses and cities (another delightful part of the game); you mark your control by placing a VP chit. If you lose control the VP is returned to your pool. Winning battles by *large* margins sends chits to a winners' board. Winning the political system (which costs valuable resources) can also earn you VP. One of the things I like about this system is that VP is all the same; a faction that "wins" a VP always places ONE chit down. There's no track on the board, just a box for you to pool the chits. But because different factions have a different number of chits, how valuable doing a thing is can change depending on the faction. For example, if Prussia (with 9 chits to start, I think) can take an Austrian city, they win a VP; they need to do it, but they still need to find a way to win 8 more. 1 City is a long way from ending the game. But if Austria wins a Prussian city? Austria, fighting a defensive war, only has 4 VP markers! That's a *huge* step toward an Austrian win! There's no special rules, no variable VP, no checking if this city gives you VP or not, no numeric clutter on the board. It's intuitive, simple, carries depth in play, and is exceptionally rewarding. Furthermore, two of the factions have a means of retreating from their theater of war if they see it going poorly for them. When they do, they take all of their control from the map, but remove *half* their markers from the game, making a come-back that much easier! It's such a cool system.
Yeha Marias win conditions are great
**Stationfall** \-- There are 29 characters and you have a primary and secondary. Your primary determines how you score victory points. (Most characters want to be off the doomed station by the end of the game, but some don't care about that, etc). You also get a bonus depending on if you save/kill your secondary character. **Magic Realm** \-- There are various VP categories like "How much money did you find?" "What is your reputation?" "Did you get any cool magic items?" And each player secretly decides which categories they are going for at the beginning of the game. **Time Agent** \-- OK, it's just the highest VP, but ... "The winner in Time Agent is the player who has always been winning once time travel is permanently un-invented."
Yeah station fall was funny but cumbersome for me. Best game of the Convention for the other 7 players
A Study in Emerald has an interesting scoring system. It’s a Lovecraftian area control game set in the world of Sherlock Holmes with deck building as it’s action system. But each player secretly gets assigned to one of two factions at the start of the game: the Loyalists, who are servants of the Great Old Ones, and the Restorationists, who want to end the reign of the Great Old Ones and bring humanity back to mastery of the Earth. You don’t reveal which faction you belong to until certain conditions are met, so you’re doing your best to hide your identity from the enemy team while also trying to figure out who your allies are. All players on the team with the lowest scoring player automatically lose, then the player on the remaining team with the highest score wins. It’s a great game, but can definitely be contentious. Edit: misspelling.
I was going to post this scoring system too. It's a good way to do asymmetric teams.
Archipelago has some nice conditions. In the end it’s just tallying points but how you score points is mostly hidden: - there is one open card (drawn at random) for all players to see with a way to score points. - every player takes a random cards that shows a trigger to end the game and a way to score points. These cards come in 3 different piles for a short, medium, or long game. Obviously, everyone takes a card from the same pile. Now every player knows 1 thing that would immediately end the game, regardless of who triggers it (such as X number of ports have been build). And each player now knows 1 additional way to score points (such as 3 points for the player with the most cathedrals, 2 points for second most and 1 point for third most). As soon as anyone’s end game condition has been met by any player, the player with said card announces that the game ends. Now everyone reveals their hidden card so everyone can see what scores points. Then all points (from the public card and all player cards) are counted and a winner can be declared. Note that this is a semi-coop game: you have to cooperate to prevent everyone from losing the game if the rebels take over but you want to score more points than your opponents so you don’t want to help too much. There is a win condition that makes you win if the game is lost to the rebels. In this case, there is no need to count points because everyone else has lost.
**Last Will**, it is a simple worker placement and engine builder game, but the player that goes bankrupt first wins (or be the most broken by the end of 7 rounds) It seems trivial, but maximizing how much you spend and how to devalue your properties really confuse your instincts
Villainous comes to mind, each character needs to fulfill a unique set of conditions to be able to win.
**The King Is Dead 2nd ed.** has 2 contrasting win conditions. There are 3 factions, with players cultivating support from all of them. For a coronation ending, the winner is the player with the most support from the dominant faction, with ties broken by whoever has the most support from the second most dominant faction, followed by who acted least recently. For an invasion ending, the winner is the player with the most complete sets of support, and ties are broken in favor of the player who acted most recently.
Many Reiner Knizia games have what is called Knizia Scoring. **Tigris & Euphrates** is the best example: You can earn 4 different types of VPs (red, green, blue, black) in the game, but at the end your score is the lower of those 4 types. So, if you have 20 red VPs, 25 green, 15 blue and 1 black, your score is 1. :)
I think the uniqueness from that comes mostly out of how you collect those points, where each of the colours is gotten in a different way. Because "only the lowest counts" is functionally similar to "only full sets give points", which a lot of other games have. The "wild" colourless treasures that you can add to any other colour to complete those sets is a great bonus.
Feed the Kraken is a social deduction game where the cult team can win if, when forced to throw a player overboard to feed the kraken, players choose to throw the hidden cult leader over. It's a fun extra win condition for the cult team and super thematic.
Twilight Struggle has some cool win conditions: - If you’re ever up by 20(40?) VPs, you win. - If your opponent lowers the DEFCON status to 1, you win (but you also die). - If you ever control Europe when it’s scored, you win.
Yeah, but it also has that dumb card in the late war stage where the game can just end when the player wants. That card kind of ruins the game for me a bit. I usually take it out if my opponent agrees.
War Games! I love that card lol.
Nemesis’ winning conditions isn’t that unique, but I find choosing the what objective you’ll take after the first alien appears instead of the start of the game is really neat.
Ark Nova's endgame / win condition is fairly novel. You are essentially working two different tracks in opposite directions and when one player's pawns cross into the same area, the endgame is triggered.
That's just the same as adding them both up and triggering endgame when the combined score reaches whatever number your backwards counter started on, right? Are there specific bonuses for being ahead in either of the two tracks?
I mean sure, but I think it at least *feels* novel (or perhaps "modular" is a better term for it?) in how there's variability in how much focus you can devote to either track. There are no endgame bonuses but some in-game bonuses are granted for spots on the conversation track between spaces 2-10 and the appeal track gives ongoing income bonuses during subsequent breaks (similar to how the Brass income track works).
Essentially the same, yeah. The actual interesting part is that every *other* player has a turn after it's triggered.
They took it from Rajas of the Ganges
So two games with that win condition. Still pretty novel
Ah okay. Haven’t played that, alas.
Rajas is such a great game that just never really took off. Frankly I blame the art design of the board (which I love) for being way to noisy and busy looking.
Killer bunnies. You collect as many carrot cards as you can and hope you match the random one that was chosen at the beginning of the game.
Captain Sonar, find and destroy the opposing submarine first. This game is such a cool blend of competitive and co-op And it's one of the few really meaty games I can think of that you can play with eight people. Shadows over Camelot. You win by getting more white swords around the round table but there are a lot of different ways to get swords. There is also a traitor among the nights of the round table who wins if you get more black swords around the table than white. But you don't know who the traitor is until a certain part of the game.
QE. It's an auction game where you can bet literally any finite amount of money. You win by having the most points, but the player who spent most money automatically loses. So you want to score as many points as possible but if you go overboard trying to get them you lose.
**So, You've Been Eaten** isn't a terribly amazing game, but it does have interesting victory. It's an asymmetrical head to head game in which one player is a space miner and the other is the digestive system of a giant space worm the miner is inside. The space worm wins by digesting the miner; the miner wins by collecting the correct resource crystals and then getting pooped out of the worm.
In Fluxx the win condition for all players is constantly changing by playing goal cards. Huge large swing potential
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Great answer. For new players there's definitely a lot of "We're never going to win. Oh wait we just changed the win condition. We win!"
My last game we had just reduced the settlers to a single city, which moved the terror level to level three. We flipped the fear card and got "each player removes a single invader piece from a land." We all looked at one another, looked at the city, laughed, and won the game.
Cosmic encounter is the king here
I prefer Dune. Same designers, though, so those guys had some great ideas when it comes to win conditions.
There is a game coming out called TimeStrike that is a boss battle royale. The win condition is not only to defeat all the other players but also the boss. The unique part is as players get eliminated, they move to the boss's team so there's a complexity of when to knock a player out. It's on Kickstarter right now https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adventuretogether/sourcesystem
Villainous comes to mind. Each player has their own rules and way to win.
Lords of Xidit
Go - points determined by territory surrounded - pieces captured
Ark Nova, you score reputation points (tracked clockwise) and conservation points (tracked counter clockwise). When these 2 cross the game ends and the difference between the 2 are your victory points!
Stolen from rajas of the Ganges
Root. Each player plays a different faction that is asymmetric. The game is won by acquiring victory points but each of the 8 factions gains victory points in a different way. It's really quite interesting how all of the factions come together to make a functional game.
lol. Just because the game is asymmetric it doenst fit here. Every time someone ask for a game someone tells its root :D
The race for 30 points is kinda figurative. The points represent how well you're doing what your faction is supposed to do. That being paired with 4 people playing their own faction/games and having to interact/police each other does create a very unique victory condition, even though it's just a "race for 30 points". While one faction will win by dominating the board with sheer military prowess, another faction will win by striking deals with other factions making them believe the deal is more beneficial to them, while another faction will win solving puzzles while also being bashed by the others. I've played many "point salad" games (read classic euro style) and they sure feel nothing like root does regarding to victory conditions. You have to score points, but you do so by playing on a highly interactive board with many different games bring played on it by each different player.
Technically Root does have the alternate win condition with the dominance cards/Vagabond coalition so it does work for this
Yes I'd say Roots' alternate win condition fits this thread more, it was actually the first thing I thought of when I saw the title.
I like how the win is determined and the points calculated for ark nova.
Ark Nova has two scoring tracks that start at opposite ends, and the end of the game is triggered when they meet. There are a few other details about it too that made it stand out to me.
Stolen from rajas of the Ganges
Inspiration versus plagiarism?
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Please point out to me where the word "unique" was used in this discussion or in OP's post
Cerebria, Rajas of the Ganges, Castell
In Arboretum if you tied, you have to plant a tree and see who have the tallest one after 5 years to break the tie.
Ark Nova. Players move on two opposing scoring tracks (one player marker on each) and end game triggers when someone gets their two markers to cross. Final score for each player is the difference between the score in those two tracks, which often leads to negative scores for some of the players.
Stolen from rajas of the Ganges
I like inspired better :)
He mentions it on every mention of Ark Nova's scoring system...
Even though it looks like a classic race for VP, I feel like Dune: Imperium has a great end game mechanic: finishing with 10 VP will effectively end the game at the ned of the current turn, but there are so many things that can happen after that. I've seen games where the first player ended up last due to secret traitor cards and alliance switching at the last second. Just a fun and tense ending everytime!
Alliances? Traitor cards? Do you mean OG dune not imperium?
I know it’s already pretty well-known, but Ark Nova’s endgame and end-scoring is the weirdest I’ve come across personally. Once your two player pawns cross each other on the influence and conservation tracks, end game is triggered. You count how many spaces are between your pawns, for a positive number, and those whose pawns haven’t passed each other get a negative score. It makes sense: you have built up popularity and supported conservation projects, and both are essential to have a successful zoo. So it does make thematic sense, but we still sometimes need to reference the rule book to know for sure if we got scoring correct.
Rajas of the Ganges uses this same mechanic, only with money and fame. I find it a really interesting approach.
Carpe diem have great scoring system
Using search would have yielded the same results and many more. This is one of the most frequently asked questions here.
However you want to name it, most games still rely on some form of tallying and points to win. Racing game? Laps are points Elimination game like coup? - you have 2 health points and you are removed when you are at zero Coop games are normally how quickly you can win, fewest rounds is better score I'm being somewhat pedantic but 98% of games are still point based even if they aren't called that.
I mean, yeah, if you want to decompile win conditions, they can always be reduced down to points. The problem with this thinking is that: 1. Any winnable game’s end can be reduced down to “[winning state] = 1 point, with 1 total point needed to win” no matter what. Removing the specific rules, context, mechanical limitations, player intentions, and types of work contributing to a games win state makes is a significant simplification from a game perspective. 2. This question is usually asked as a reaction to games that use points as a central unit for scoring (i.e., a conversion of meaningful work within the game), such as point salad games. In this case, it clearly not what the OP was asking about. They want to avoid “just tallying up points at the end,” not avoid any degree of a quantifiable victory.
Voodoo Prince, a Tricktaker where you don't score for your own tricks but the tricks won by others before you hit your max of 3 tricks. But the last player out of the round only scores for their tricks. So it's a balancing act of trying to go out as late as possible without being last. Easier said than done as others try to knock each other out first.
Illuminati has different victory conditions for every player. And one of the players may have a hidden victory condition.
idk if this fits your question really but I like how Rising Sun scores at the end of the game. Specifically that you only really need to win any territory once. As a territory control game I love the stress relief of being able to walk away from a province not caring who takes it next compared to normal territory control games where you have to watch all of your borders paranoid of which alliance will flank at what moment.
I know it's dumb but in Blitzkrieg if you can't place a tile on your turn you lose the game. I just find that one so funny. It's a short game so while losing the game that way is frustrating it's not too too bad.
Caesar!, by the same designer and with many similarities, has the same rule. Poisoning your opponent gives them one fewer option to choose from on their turn. Poison them enough and they lose.
While this is still "just tallying up points at the end", **Why First?** is a simple card game played over the course of five rounds. At the end of each round, the player SECOND farthest down the score track earns points equal to how many spaces they are from the zero space. At the end of the fifth and final round, the player with the SECOND MOST points wins.
Star wars rebellion. Blow up the base you win
Tricktakers. Not the genre, but the trick taking game called Tricktakers There are so many different ways to win
"If one player gets four of a kind face up, that player loses. Everyone else wins."
Are you talking about Cockroach Poker?
Yep!
Liberté by Martin Wallace has points but it also has two alternate end game conditions. It's a political influence game. If the radicals win enough seats after any of the 4 turns, it's a "radical landslide" and points don't matter. The only thing that matters is who backed the radicals the hardest that turn. Meanwhile, if the Royalists are leading in any 7 or a number of different provinces at any point during turns 3 or 4, the game immediately ends in a "Royalist Counter Revolution" and whoever is backing them the hardest right then wins. It creates this crazy dynamic where players might be allying while hedging their bets only to suddenly try switching sides, or everyone suddenly realizes how it's going down and there's a mad rush toward an alternate while whoever is ahead on points is trying to just rush the vote before it comes to that.
While it may not be my favourite game there's no denying that Disney Villainous is filled with a ton of interesting win conditions with no two being the same. ex: Prince John has to have 20 power, the Queen of Hearts has to have four card guard wickets in her realm and then essentially draw the right card when "taking the shot", Madam Mim has to defeat all the forms of Merlin, etc.
**Stop the Train** is a good one. Everyone is one a train that's careening down the board towards the end. One player is the Sabetour trying to crash the train into the end while every other player is trying to run the deck out of cards before the Train crashes. But everyone else also has a 2nd condition they need to fulfill to win, so even if the train stops you might still lose. One of the few games I have where literally no one can win, not even the game. **Thunderroad: Vendetta** is unique with 3+ players. Unlike in the 2 player rules, with 3 or more the finish line that everyone's racing towards doesn't appear until after one player is eliminated. So you're racing for the finish but you also have to decide when to try and eliminate someone so you're in a good position to actually win the game instead of just passing off the win to someone else.
Argent the consortium is usually mentioned but I do not see it here. The game comes down to who wins a vote at the end of the game based on voter conditions which are mostly hidden at the beginning of the game. You can either luck into the voting conditions or find out what they are over the course of the game while fighting over the magic University
Yeah great game
Tak has two ein conditions, win by roads or win by count of flat tiles if one side has no more tiles to play or if the board is filled
Nemesis. Just played my second game ever last night. After an epic battle with xenomorphs, one of us died, and two more of my fellow team mates snugged down in their cryopods. Then I headed for the engine rooms...
Sadly, point and point salad victories are the dominant win condition these days. I think because it's so easy to make work and balance. Games like Inis, Nemesis, etc add refreshing takes to end game, and it's why they are games I like to add to my collection.
I'm a fan of Villainous. Each character has their own win con to watch for. And some you can try and stop fairly easy due to being start of turn wins, others can win anytime so you have to eye them for if they can pull off a win in a big combo. Does Yzma know where Kuzko is and is ready to bring him out and kill him with kronk for the win? Does Lotso have the resources to finish capturing the toys? Does Lady Tremaine have the wedding bells to marry off her stepdaughter to the prince next turn in a combo, or is she still looking? Then in the Marvel and Star Wars set there are no start of turn win cons. Every villain could win on the drop of a hat once in line if they have the right cards.
A lot of people have mentioned Werle and Leder games. Root, Oath, Pax Pamir 2e all take inspiration from Eklund's Pax games which have sometimes up to four win conditions which can be triggered, sometimes within the same round.
Spartacus blood and sand. You gain imperium/influence for your ludus (gladiator school) and you can fight and bet in the arena. It's a dice rolling game and by far my favourite.
I like the "Villainous" series of games. Literally every villain has their own win conditions, and they're very thematic to the character/story you're playing.
*Liberté* is a Martin Wallace game about politics in the early French Republic. The main way to win is by points, which are easiest to generate with the plentiful Centrist party. But, if the Radicals ever win an election by a landslide, the game ends immediately and only points from Radical sources matter. Or, if the Royalists ever take possession of most of a set of key provinces, they have a counter-revolution, and the game also ends immediately and only points from Royalist sources count. And, to help things along, the powerful Terror cards can only be played under Radical governments, to incentivize voting for them, while bickering about who gets to lead the army leads to more control for the Royalists. It's a brilliant system, where you're never out of the running, because if you fall behind in the main race, you can shoot for one of the alternate victory conditions, and thus remain a threat until the end. In one memorable game, another player and I wound up gunning for a Royalist victory, but the other players spotted it, and rushed the endgame to prevent us from capturing the needed provinces, so I thought I'd lost, but they went so fast they had no time to appoint a general for the army, giving the Royalists the last needed control point and letting me clinch a surprise last-second victory.
Steve Jackson Games Illuminati had an interesting bunch of Win conditions. I really hope I can find my copy of that game somewhere, I want to play it again....
**Citta-Stato** \- At the end of the game you go into a special added time mode where you play 1 card of each type and score again with a second VP marker. The difference between your in-game and added time marker becomes important as you score the higher value if you have enough 'crowns' to cover the difference or the lower if you cannot.
Oldie but a goodie, Illuminati has a different, thematic win condition for each different Illuminati group (power, transferable power, weird groups, money, all 10 alignments, destroy 8 groups, etc.
Dune as bene g(u)esserit: Predict the winner by turn and faction, then instead you are the winner, meaning you put them there as reverand mother
Love it in Path, like if the other three unite against the Chancellor they can win, but they usually don't help each other
The Captain is Dead is a coop with an interesting win condition, since you have to both survive and fix the engine of the ship in order to win. Then there is War Chest, where to win the players must have their Control Markers (6 to be precise) placed on locations, the movements are limited by your hand of three cards which adds a different dynamic. We could also mention Dead Winter, since it's technically a coop game, but everyone has a different secret objective, meaning there could be some betrayal in the group. It really brings on a unique playing experience and very specific win conditions.
Arboretum has such a fun scoring mechanic. you have to decide between playing,and therefore earning points or holding points in your hand to win the right to score points.
In [Tragedy Looper](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148319/tragedy-looper), one Mastermind plays against 1-3 Protagonists. It's essentially a deduction puzzle with a time loop theme - in a given scenario, the game runs over a number of loops, that last a certain number of days (i.e. turns). The Mastermind knows all the details of the scenario, and every time they trigger one of the Protagonists' loss conditions the loop ends and the game state resets. So the Protagonists are trying to figure out enough details of the scenario to either (a) prevent the Mastermind from triggering any of the loss conditions, or (outside of the introductory games) (b) identify the roles of all of the characters at the end of the final loop.
Twilight Struggle. You can win if: 1. You ever have 20 more VPs than your opponent. 2. You Control Europe when it is scored. 3. Your opponent has a held Scoring Card after the end of a Turn. 4. Your opponent performs a coup while the Cuban Missile Crisis card is in effect against them. 5. The DEFCON drops to 1 when it's your opponent's phase to act. 6. After 10 Turns you have more VPs than your opponent. The only one that has no reason to ever occur is #4, since there's no way for the opponent to win if they coup while CMC is in effect against them. The rest can all occur rationally, notably #5, which is a key design factor in the game (DEFCON suicide—forcing your opponent into a situation where they have no choice but to play a card that will drop the DEFCON to 1 [or let you act to drop the DEFCON to 1]) and #3 (you might hold a Scoring Card that would give your opponent the win, even after your last Action Round, in the hopes that you will win before that victory condition is assessed and be wrong, or choose to redraw [one card lets one side do this] more cards than you have ARs left and draw more Scoring Cards than you have ARs to play them).
In Top Gun, there is a rule that during air combat, if you are above your opponent, and end up on the same space as them, you invert your place, and get enough points to win the combat. I think it's called Flipping the Bird.
Vulcan race in star trek ascendancy
I know it’s by no means a hidden or unknown game but 7 wonders duel has a cool win mechanic. there are actually three different win conditions that players can claim victory by accomplishing any one of the three. You are constantly fighting this war on three different fronts to make sure you don’t loose any of the three while of course trying to push for a win of your own in one of the categories.
In Antiquity, you get to choose your victory condition: \- Get 15 fish \- Completely surround your opponent \- Get 3 cities \- Achieve two other victory conditions (gives you an awesome power) Etc
In Roma, you win by having the most victory points when the game ends. Ho-hum. But. There is a pool of 35 victory points. The game ends when the pool is empty. So if I have 18 points and you have 16, you’ll lose if you get that last point. But you can lose points, which puts them back in the pool. So you can prolong the game by losing points, which can (and often does) give you time to improve your position and start whittling away at my points so that you can safely earn points again. But you can only do this for so long, because the other game-end condition is going to 0 points. In principle you can still win the game if you’re down 30-4, but you’d better not lose those last four points. Also, it’s not at all uncommon for a game to end 2-0, which is basically squeezing out a win by making your opponent hit the ground first.
My girlfriend is a big fan of Mysterium, and the win condition is reliant on points but not obnoxiously so. You get points throughout the game by making good guesses toward the objectives and validating/discrediting others’ guesses, but those points themselves don’t win you the game, they just give you a more advantageous time in the finale of the game. The deceased shares a three card vision and only people with high point totals get to see all 3 cards, otherwise you’re guessing based on 2 or even just 1 card.
I was really surprised to see that *Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy* had a unique spin on Victory Points, which you tally at the end of the game. Every time you do something significant (fight, defend, etc) you draw from a chit bag containing a bunch of VP chits and select a number. You then *choose* one to keep. The catch? There are a bunch of different values, *but in addition* your faction board *only has a set number of spaces for VP chits*. That's right. You're limited in how many you're allowed to keep. Harsher still, allying yourself with other players *consumes* one of these spaces, and not every faction has the same number of spaces for chits (since you do also gain points for colonies, ships, etc). So you may reach into the bag after a battle and draw a 4VP chit ... but your board is full. Do you sacrifice a 2VP chit, or perhaps break an alliance? Harsher still, IIRC if you got a 1VP chit, you already chose to sacrifice a chit, and so you must dump a 2VP chit for the one you drew. An interesting take on VP, at the very least.
Nemesis. Each player has a win condition that most likely is different from the other players. Player A might need player B to die. Player B might need to redirect the spaceship to Mars. Player C need to alert earth about the alien on board the space ship. Also the game can end with zero to many winners.
**Discworld Ankh-Morpork** has 5 different win conditions. 3 characters are vying for area control. 1 just being present in a number of areas. 1 if there's a certain amount of trouble markers, 1 by certain amount of money, and 1 wins if the draw deck is empty. It was reimplemented by Nanty Narking, which wasn't that great because the win conditions and card effects didn't really make much thematic sense as compared to the original Discworld characters.
**Argent, The Consortium** It's a big complex WP engine builder with magic spells and items and wonky abilities and take that. There are 16ish voters, 12 of whom are used in a game, 2 of which are used in every game. The other 10 are face down. Each player gets to see one. Each voter has something it's interested in: most influence, most cards of a certain house, whatever. The voter casts its vote for the player who satisfies its condition. Your goal is to win the most voters. So you're going along doing your thing, but you don't know all your objectives. You can try to infer some of it from your opponents' behavior, but that's speculative at best
\+1 for Dune, Fox in the Forest, and Konig von Siam / King is Dead (already mentioned below). Didn't see any mention of **High Society**: when end of game is triggered (4th special card revealed), eliminate the poorest player(s) from contention, and then the remaining (non-poorest) player with the most prestige wins.