It’s too early for me to really consider the games of 2011 – among other things, there are many I haven’t played yet, and many I haven’t played enough – but that doesn’t preclude giving a “where things look right now” perspective. So, picking right now, and knowing the list is likely to change, what are my ten favorite 2011 releases?
Thanks to everyone for reading the Opinionated Gamers in 2011!
We’re not quite a year old – but I think that we’ve started a good thing here, and we have big plans to continue writing about games in 2012!
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
London Olympic Stadium holds 80,000 people. This blog was viewed about 420,000 times in 2011. If it were competing at London Olympic Stadium, it would take about 5 sold-out events for that many people to see it.
Designer: Justin De WittOnce upon a time, in a clearing in the midst of the monster-filled forest, there sat a castle with the less-than-tourist-ready name of Castle Panic. Of course, the nearby monsters were not happy one bit about the human interlopers & their big stone monstrosity that was messing with their property values & sight lines… so they decided to take care of the problem without resorting to real capital “E” evil. (In other words, lawyers.)
The monster population was more of a do-it-yourself kind of group – Bob Villa in reverse – and so they pelted the walls with giant boulders and sent goblins, orcs & trolls to assault the defenders.
Sadly, though, the human invaders proved to be difficult to eradicate. Every time they managed to knock most of the castle into ruins, they just built it back & dared the monsters to give it another try.
Just a few weeks ago, the monsters decided to get serious. They recruited a plethora of new creatures to their cause, as well as absconding with a trebuchet & the technology to make flaming boulders. Finally, by sacrificing their previous goblin army as dragon snacks, they managed to attract some really big brutes to fight on their side.
At the same time, though, the humans ramped up their defense system by building the local wizard a tower of his own & recruiting him to cast spells on the advancing horde.
The battle lines are set. The forest is teeming with beasties. The wizard’s tower hums with potential power. The game is on. Continue reading
Rumble in the House
Publisher: Flatlined Games
Designer: Ken Rush
Players: 3-6
Duration: 20 minutes
Age: 5+ (the box says 8+)
by Andrea “Liga” Ligabue (endless play)
Premise
I’m always intrigued when a new author or publisher enters the market. So it was really a lovely surprise to receive a free copy from Flatlined Games of their Rumble in the House, the first title from Ken Rush. German designer and American publisher for an American game winking at Euro Games fans.
Rumble in the House is a light party game, a so called “filler”, whose best qualities are of course speed and dynamism and not depth and strategy … but is not a trivial game!
My Best of 2011
Well 2011 is almost over so I thought I’d contribute my version of the Best of 2011. I remembered to record at least 321 different games played this past year (I don’t record my online games just F2F games). So without further ado here we go!
Best new “how to make your opponents unhappy game” – Vanuatu, this game rocks in making a player’s turn miserable either by the game or your opponents forcing you to do a null action but you feel, oh so smug, when a turn works perfectly. One of the most challenging Euros to come out recently.
Best use of dice this year – The Castles of Burgundy (also game most likely to force me to buy some reading glasses), one of the few games where you actually don’t want to roll doubles too often.
As the end of the year approaches, it’s a good time to look back at the past year in gaming. 2011 got off to a disappointing start with a slew of underwhelming Nurnberg releases that I discussed back in June. Fortunately, the year recovered nicely during the summer 
and fall from the earlier depths of Artus, Strasbourg, and Pergamon. 2011 was helped out nicely by the belated yet very welcome release of the Master Set for Summoner Wars, along with a nice Essen crop in October, featuring great Czech, Polish, and French designs to complement the German staples. And of course 2011 has been capped off by the 2nd edition of War of the Ring finally being released, which should help get this masterpiece into many more hands and onto many more tables. While it’s too early to pick a game of the year since there are still new releases to be tried and many to be played at least a few more times, I’ll handicap some early favorites along with a brief look through the games that saw the table most frequently.
