Lizard Wrangling: Tiny Epic Dinosaurs Review

I haven't run into most of those weird corner cases that others seem to encounter. Maybe my brain is just wired in the "right" way for Gamelyn rulebooks. Most to least on my end would probably be:

Kingdoms
Western
Mechs
Quest
Dinosaurs
Tactics
Dungeons
Zombies
Defenders
Galaxies
Pirates
Vikings
Crimes

Some of that is recency, as Pirates, Vikings, and Crimes are among the most recent. But Pirates and Vikings were also less than many of the rest of the line to me, whereas Dungeons was a runaway hit. It just takes longer than many of the others. Still think Western is the best, but Mechs, Kingdoms, and Quest aren't far behind. Dinosaurs has risen considerably from my initial assessment and it's something my GF really enjoys, too. I agree that Tactics has its mechanical issues. I really like the concept of the game, but how it functions (more difficult to reach the scoring areas from the two bottom starting positions than it is from the two top ones, for example) is occasionally lacking.

Oh I forgot I played Pirates and Quest. I must have blocked them from my memory — both struck me as weirdly and needlessly anti thematic with their core rules.

I should check out Dungeons.

I thought Pirates was lacking for one of my main arguments about the TE line: They're not just X game, but smaller. As Josh noted upthread, TE Dinosaurs isn't just a smaller version of Dinosaur Island. It's its own game. Pirates, OTOH, really struck me as a smaller version of Merchants & Marauders, including the fact that it's far easier to win just being a merchant and schlepping stuff from one market to the next, rather than trying to actually attack other players or, in the case of TEP, even merchant ships. The risk of failure is just too high most of the time and the ease of gaining gold just by playing PU&D is way too tempting. We've had better luck adding the expansion in with the greater powers of the undead crewmembers, which can make going on offense much more palatable.

I LOVE Quest, though. It's not what you'd normally expect from a fantasy adventure game, as it's all angles and routes and push-your-luck risks in a quite mechanical fashion. But that's what fascinates me about it. It isn't quite as deep as Western is in terms of the multiplicity of victory routes you can consider in the latter. It does attempt that, with the choices between quests, goblins, and dungeons, but it doesn't quite come off with the same elegance. But it's just weird enough for me to have been interested in playing it more than that initial experience might convey. It's definitely first in line of the series of those that might benefit from an expansion to smooth over some of its rough edges, but I still think it's worth the time.