The Opinionated Gamers

Enough with the chit-chat, let’s cut to the chase. In consideration of the fifty six 2010 games I’ve played to date, the envelopes please …

MOST TIME SPENT PLAYING

Washington’s War – It has the same feel as its father, We The People, but there’s plenty of upgrade tweaks to add interest. Enough to warrant some enjoyable plays exploring it anyway. The British still have overwhelming troops but it’s hard to move them. The Americans find it hard to keep troops on the board but easier to move. Between these two strategy bookends, the game is an area majority battle in each of the 13 states – placing your markers down either directly through card play or by judicious use of armed forces, taking advantage of the point-to-point geography to secure off areas and to isolate and kill off opponent markers. The game can have key swings, usually more as a result of good / unfortunate hands than an unlucky combat. Like We The People, there’s a touch too much chrome to make it an “easy” pick up and play if it’s languished on the shelf for a bit, but there’s a lot of good decision angst and it’s a good length for what it offers. An 8. Continue reading →

While my esteemed colleagues here at the Opinionated Gamers have found much to love in the joys of the classic 2 hour + Euro, I want to extol the virtues of the mash-up game… those wonderful & odd moments where a designer/publisher has shoved chocolate into my gaming peanut butter & made “two great tastes that taste great together.” (I’ll also say some nice things about some other games that don’t make me want to reference candies and/or ancient TV ad campaigns.) Continue reading →

Luke’s Top 10 of 2010

So, I thought it was a great year. Lots of good games, and several great games for me. I even discovered a few older games this year that I really like. I feel like my game tastes have become a little more varied, but my absolute favorites still tend towards heavier euro games. I inconveniently had four 9’s and five 8’s, so I picked a couple good 7’s as a cop-out to round out my list.
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I thought I’d take a slightly different approach to my “Best Of…” List and rather than count down my Top 10 games of the year, I thought it would be interesting to hand out a few awards in a number of categories that I came up with this week when I started to take a look back at the past year in boardgaming.

Best Race Game (Road): Rallyman

This may, in fact, be my favorite race game of all-time now.  The game is incredibly well balanced, and the way that the game forces you to press-your-luck against the dice when you need to make up time is simply brilliant.  Like many race games, there is a possible down-time issue here, but it is what it is.  I have just heard that there is a dirt track expansion that is available online – so that will add to the possible variety of tracks for this great game.

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