So it’s July of 2019. Why am I coming out with an article listing my favorite 2018 titles at this late date?
Well, first of all, it takes a while to try enough games from a calendar year to make such a list be accurate. The ever increasing number of interesting games released each year, combined with the reduced amount of gaming I’m able to get in these days, means that I’m well into the next year before I have a good feel for what my favorites truly are. Still, I was getting ready to write this article during April when a mishap led to a torn tendon in my knee. That made it hard to get to my computer and life basically got put on hold. Then, last month, came the Meeples Choice Awards, which I run every year, and I was devoting my time to that. So this is coming out later than I’d planned, but hopefully most of you will still find it of interest.
Here are my top 12 games from last year, my Dirty Dozen, if you will. Overall, I found 2018 very much to my liking. I discovered five games that I’d categorize as “great”, which is quite a healthy total, particularly given the lower number of games that I was able to sample, when compared to other years. Each of these games are ones that I’d happily play and suggest. Here’s hoping to an equally good crop of titles during 2019!
For each game, I’ve provided a brief description, my reasons for liking them, and my OG rating for each one. They’re given in order of preference, beginning with my Game of the Year:
1. Blackout: Hong Kong – Alexander Pfister and eggertspiele continue to be an unbeatable combination. You’re tasked with doing the best job of restoring Hong Kong, following a catastrophic power failure. Every turn, you allocate three of your cards to gather resources or carry out actions. Then, you try to meet objectives on cards you acquired earlier (to allow you to put those cards in your hand or gain their abilities) and scout unrestored areas of the city (which yields resources and points). There are a lot of different paths to victory and we continue to discover new ones. Playing cards to different slots seems a lot like Pfister’s earlier Mombasa, but I find the decisions harder here and a good deal of enjoyable planning is required to get it right. On the downside, the production isn’t up to eggert’s usual standards and the game occasionally runs long. Still, it never drags and downtime isn’t an issue; with experience, we’ve been able to get this down to 2 hours, which is perfect for a game of this weight. In a strong year, this is unquestionably the highlight and I’m always ready to play it again. Rating: I love it! Continue reading →
The Opinionated Gamers (Try To) Predict the Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres – 2019 Edition Final Guesses
For the past few years, our group of gamers has taken their best guess at trying to read the minds of the Spiel des Jahres jury members. The nominations for the Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres were announced back in May, and we made our predictions shortly beforehand. The winners will be announced on Monday, and you can usually watch the ceremony over on BGG or other places.
As has become our habit, we’ve done our predictions in two parts. This is the second of those parts, where once the lists are out, we do a second round of voting, limited only to the actual nominees. (In the first round, we tried to guess the nominees.)
This year, we used a similar system to what we’ve used the past three years. Each OG writer was invited to rank all three games in each category, with their top pick (what they see as most likely) getting 3 points, second pick getting 2, and final pick getting 1. Vote totals are shown below.
If you’d like to see the official information on and criteria for the award, please check out the Jury’s website.
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