The results of The Dice Tower Gaming Awards for 2018 have just been announced. The Game of the Year is Root! This gives it a clean sweep of the two major American-based gaming awards (earlier this year, the Golden Geeks also selected Root).
Root was chosen from a pool of 10 nominated games. Here are the other nominated titles, in alphabetical order:
Architects of the West Kingdom
Brass: Birmingham
Chronicles of Crime
Everdell
Rising Sun
Teotihuacan
The Mind
Underwater Cities
Western Legends
The voters also chose winners in 13 gaming categories. Interestingly, Root did not win any of the major categories, such as Best Strategy Game or Best Family Game, which is unusual. Teotihuacan beat it out for Best Strategy Game. Here are the category winners:
Strategy Game – Teotihuacan
Family Game – Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kar
Party Game – Just One
Co-op Game – Chronicles of Crime
Two-Player Game – KeyForge: Call of the Archons
Game Theming – Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game
Most Innovative – Chronicles of Crime
Game Artwork – Everdell
Production – Rising Sun
Expansion – Scythe: The Rise of Fenris
New Designer – Wolfgang Warsch (The Quacks of Quedlinburg)
Reprint – Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kar
Small Publisher – Leder Games (Root)
Congratulations to Cole Wehrle and Leder Games for winning with Root, along with all the other nominated and winning designers and publishers!
We recently had our 13th annual Contrail weekend, which consists of a dozen or so gaming buddies heading up to lodge at Wiseman’s Ferry. It’s called a resort, but that would be massively overstating the case. It’s simple but does the job for us – 10 double bedrooms, some bathrooms, a big common area – and it’s game all day and night. It sits on the edge of the bush, and the kangaroos come down all day to feed on the wide grass expanse we view from our verandah. One is often tempted to quote “Ahh, how’s the serenity.” And then it’s back to the game table …
Not sure how they have time to play games when their national team is at the top of the table in the Cricket World cup…Continue reading →
So, if we go by Sturgeon’s Law that 90% of everything is crap, what are the 10% in your game collection that you think aren’t crap? Yes, I realize that this is a bad usage of Sturgeon’s Law. In truth, you are curating a collection as you go, you are trying to find the 10% before it ever enters your collection. If we used Sturgeon’s Law all the way down, we’d be left with nothing. Maybe using another method would have been better, the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle leaps to mind, but Sturgeon gave me a more solid, and honestly a more striking number, so I went with that. Plus, I get to say the word crap.
As an exercise I am going to whittle my collection down to that magical 10%, which right now would be 45.9 games. Over the last eight years or so, my collection has ballooned to upwards of 650 titles, not counting expansions. Over the past year or so, I have been doing a better job of curating and weeding out games that won’t see enough table time to warrant keeping them around. It’s not that we lack the space, we’re fortunate to have plenty of that, it’s just that some games don’t work out the way that you think they should, and you end up shelving them for the rest of eternity, and I am striving to be a gamer, not a collector.
I have a lot of games. A lot of games that are on my shelves, or on my table being played, that I have told myself that I want to review at some point. For one reason or another, this doesn’t always happen. My goal here on The Opinionated Gamers is that I want to get about one review out per week, but I’d like to write about more games. So I’m taking a page out of Patrick Brennan’s playbook, and we’re going to start writing about games in threes, in snapshot form. This should be a good way for readers to get to know me and my gaming tastes a bit better, and also another way for me to talk about games that I maybe don’t really want to dedicate two thousand words to. Welcome to Three Games.
The simple way to do this would be for me to just write about three Carcassonne expansions, or even Pitchcar expansions. Those are the only expansions that I can think of that I truly will use just about every time that I play a game. Most of the time, the base game suits me just fine. But that wouldn’t be fun for the Three Games series now would it, especially after reviewing Kingdomino Age of Giants so glowingly last week. So here we go, three expansions that we enjoy. For what it’s worth, PitchCar is good with all expansions, and Carcassonne is best with Inns and Cathedrals and then sometimes with Traders & Builders.
Honga the hungry tiger wants your time and attention. However, you have a job to do to take care of your village. Do you spend precious actions to placate Hongar or do you ignore the tiger and hope to accomplish your goals before Honga eats you out of house and home. Honga is one of those games where tactics trump strategy, forcing you to focus on making the best of what you’re given. Use your round action cards (with 4 orientations that can be placed in 4 locations) to accumulate resources and score points. Honga is a relatively fast playing game for gamers looking for a lightweight, short-ish game focused more on turn to turn tactics rather than long-term strategy.
The mechanics of Honga focus around placing a circular card onto the game board to determine one’s actions for the round. Each card is divided into four sections and has four (or five) total paw prints in two or three different sections. In addition, action cards are placed in one of four four locations on the board. Thus, each turn presents a player with a choice of 16 possible actions. Players gain points primarily by two ways: collecting and selling resources, and advancing a marker up the temple track. Gameplay ends when one or more players have reached a set victory point value (depending on players) at the end of a round.
Jefe: We have many beautiful piñatas for your birthday celebration, each one filled with little surprises!
El Guapo: How many piñatas?
Jefe: Many piñatas, many!
El Guapo: Jefe, would you say I have a plethora of piñatas?
Jefe: A what?
El Guapo: A plethora.
Jefe: Oh yes, El Guapo. You have a plethora.
El Guapo: Jefe, what is a plethora?
Jefe: Why, El Guapo?
El Guapo: Well, you just told me that I had a plethora, and I would just like to know if you know what it means to have a plethora. I would not like to think that someone would tell someone else he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has no idea what it means to have a plethora.
Jefe: El Guapo, I know that I, Jefe, do not have your superior intellect and education, but could it be that once again, you are angry at something else, and are looking to take it out on me?
¡Three Amigos!
What follows is a collection of my thoughts about a plethora of games that other Opinionated Gamers have reviewed over the last year (or so). In some cases, I hadn’t played the game when the review was published; in others, I was just too busy/lazy (take your pick) to write up my thoughts at the time.
Hopefully, I have many beautiful reviews for you to enjoy, each one filled with little surprises.
Catan Histories: Rise of the Inkas (3 plays)
I have two complaints:
While the plastic “pathway to Machu Picchu” roads are look very nice, they are a pain to pick up once you have them placed. In a normal game of Catan, this wouldn’t be a big deal. In this particular version, where you lose your road network twice during the game (as your old tribe ages out and a new tribe moves in), it’s a pain.
Other than that, this is a really great twist on standard Catan that manages to cure many of the complaints that my eldest son (who is NOT a Catan fan) and ½ of my regular gaming group (also NOT Catan fans) had about Die Siedler von Catan.
There are more resources to trade… and more ways to trade them, which makes it more difficult to get resource “stuck”.
Until near the end of the game, it’s much more difficult to get hemmed in with no alternatives, thanks to the old tribe/new tribe dynamics.
Warfare cards (aka “Knights”) not only help you get rid of the Robber – they also expand your hand limit for taxation.
It runs about 90-120 minutes with 4 players… 75-90 with 3 players. It’s officially a 13 point game, but the points you get at the beginning and at each transition make it a 9 point game. (For comparison, vanilla Catan is an 8 point game once you figure in your first two settlements.)
We’ve played all the way through the deck and then started again (with a slightly different group)… and I’m pleased to say it’s my #2 game out of the four Fast Forward entries:
Fear
Fortune
Fortress
Flee
By the way, I don’t count Fine Sand as a Fast Forward game – it’s a Fable game. With that said, it’s my least favorite of Friedemann’s experiments with designing card games that develop as you keep playing them.
Fortune has a bit more math than Fear… but at its heart, it’s a similar “how do maximize my hand?” kind of game. The twists are fun – which is pretty much a requirement for the Fast Forward series – and it plays quickly and cleanly.
This is one of the more delightfully dark themes I’ve had the privilege to enjoy – where each player is a witch attempting to have various fairy tale creatures over for dinner. Literally.
Gingerbread House is chock full of opportunities for clever tactical play and has well-made/designed components. It’s received a positive reaction with pretty much every one I’ve played it with… because it’s a light Euro in the super-filler category that is family & gamer-friendly.
With non-gamers, the basic goals are just fine – but if the folks you’re playing with have any experience with board games, the “advanced” goals add another layer to the game that is an extra helping of fun.
The big chunky house tiles are a plus as well – not only do they make it easy to figure out whether or not you’ve finished a level, they’re just fun to play with. And don’t discount “fun to play with” as an important part of the gaming experience – that’s one of the things Gamelyn Games has figured out with the creation of Itemeeples. Love or hate the games, it’s just cool to give your ‘dudes’ tiny plastic weapons. (For the record, I like many of the Tiny Epic games… we’re really enjoying Tiny Epic Mechs right now.)
Monster Lands is a sloppy, messy wonderful hulk of a game… and Dale was absolutely correct in assuming in his review – https://opinionatedgamers.com/2019/05/23/dale-yu-review-of-monster-lands/ – that I would be a big fan. There’s dice placement – but less dice-rolling than you’d think – and some tricky decisions to be had on how much you’re willing to risk in your quest for reputation and glory.
My first play was with four new players – subsequent plays have been 2 and 3 player games. The rules are a bit much the first time through… but the clear/colorful iconography works well (and there’s a nice “card catalog” at the back of the rulebook when you’re confused.
Game length directly correlates to the number of players… and this is one of those games you should avoid like the plague if you have AP-prone players in your group. That said, the folks I’ve played with have been quick to play and not obsessed with min-maxing, so we’ve had a wonderful time, even when things go wrong. Our average playing time is about 30 minutes per player so far.
There are rules in the expansion for shortening the game by one round… which I’d recommend, particularly when you have players who don’t enjoy long(er) games.
I think we’ve become a little too cautious… I want to play again (soon!) and see if taking more chances with “cheap” heroes is a viable strategy.
Neom (11 plays)
My initial rules read of Neom (prior to seeing the game) made me think it would be an interesting but difficult to play 7 Wonders knock-off. I’m happy to say that the first day I taught/played (a few weeks after Essen 2018), I was proven wrong… and ended up playing it 3 times in one day. As soon as it became easily available in the U.S., I jumped on a copy… and it’s now in regular rotation here at Chez Jackson.
I’m a huge fan of both 7 Wonders and Suburbia – enough so that I own every expansion for both games and plunked down a C note in order to get the Collector’s Edition of Suburbia this fall. So, when a game can easily be described as combining some of the best bits from both of those games, I’m in.
And that’s the way I introduce Neom to gamers – the drafting is similar to 7 Wonders and the tile-laying feels like Suburbia. But the misses some of the innovations that make Neom more than just another chip off the old blocks:
Using a “bomb” draft item (Flood, Fire, Crime Wave) in each era that hurts others but denies you a turn
The initial “seeding” draft of cornerstone tiles – they do more to set strategy than the similar Leaders expansion in 7 Wonders
The simplified resource system – including the creation of trade routes and the ability to buy resources from someone farther away at a slightly higher cost
Most important is the reality after 11 games that there are multiple ways to win:
Focus on your cornerstone tiles
Build a suburb (lots of residences)
Be the resource king (and the $ that go with it)
Build a balanced city
Also nice – it plays well with 2 players (using a similar system to Fields of Green), balances nicely with 3-5 players, and even has a decent solo mode.
Here’s my two cents: I think the biggest issue with this otherwise really enjoyable Firefly-ish game is the chance that some or all of the purchase/contract areas can stagnate. We haven’t seen an issue with that yet in our games… but the problem is inherent in the design as published.
There’s some online debate about how to fix this… so I’ll take a shot at it as well.
Each player may wipe one of the following areas when landing on the appropriate rondel space:
Ship upgrades
Cargo holds
Side jobs
The cost to wipe is 1 credit (orange) the first time; 1 hand (action) the second time; and 1 credit/1 hand for each subsequent time.
Thematically, the first time you buy the seller/buyer a drink. The second time, he’s not that easily swayed and you have to help out in some way. From then on, he expects you to grease his palm and accomplish a dirty deed done dirt cheap.
Contracts cannot be wiped.
I personally love the high-quality production of Scorpius Freighter – and the interesting gameplay. (The great theme is a bonus.) It’s a pick-up-and-deliver game without a map; it’s a rondel game that doesn’t make me want to run screaming from the table. Note: your mileage may vary.
Patrick Brennan: Game Snapshots –2019 (Part 12)
We recently had our 13th annual Contrail weekend, which consists of a dozen or so gaming buddies heading up to lodge at Wiseman’s Ferry. It’s called a resort, but that would be massively overstating the case. It’s simple but does the job for us – 10 double bedrooms, some bathrooms, a big common area – and it’s game all day and night. It sits on the edge of the bush, and the kangaroos come down all day to feed on the wide grass expanse we view from our verandah. One is often tempted to quote “Ahh, how’s the serenity.” And then it’s back to the game table …
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