Since I've managed to acquire a massive backlog of games to blog about, some of the games mentioned here won't have links or blogs yet. They'll be added as and when possible.
​
At the start of 2021, I wondered whether my gaming would pick up in '21? The answer is a resounding yes! The breakdown is below.

Number of different games played: 78.
Of which were new (To me.): 46.
Total number of gaming sessions: 333.

2020's numbers.
Total number of different games played: 29. 
Of which were new (To me.): 13.
Total number of gaming sessions: 49.

Why have the numbers have significantly increased? Put simply, it's due to Board Game Arena: Around May 2021, we reconnected with an old friend who had moved abroad and we started playing games on BGA and playing games digitally is really quick! There's no unpacking and packing, or setup and clean up, there's even no need to tally scores, it's all done automatically. As a result, it's easily possible to play 4 or 5 games in a 3-4 hour window and this includes playing a game several times! Hence the six fold increase in game sessions.

Which games were played the most?

1. Love Letter: 42 (+1) sessions
2. The Crew: Mission Deep Sea: 25 sessions.
3. Codex Naturalis: 16 sessions.
4. Railroad Ink: 12 sessions.
5. Forbidden Island, Happy City, Potion Explosion & Martian Dice all came in at 10 sessions.

Love Letter is the clear winner at 43, I've included a +1 because of a session of Love Letter: Batman that we played, which is 95% identical to the original.
Love Letter is a fairly quick game to complete and we probably play 2 or 3 games per session on BGA, so I don't doubt we've played it over a 100 times in 2021; not bad for a game that only consists of 16 cards.
Over 2021, Love Letter became more of a ritual than a game, the calculating, the guessing and double-bluffing, twists of luck and reversal of fortune, along with the banter and bragging made it our mainstay over BGA.

Enough of boring numbers; it's time to now talk about the highly coveted and still world-beating 3 Spellcaster and a Dwarf 2021 game awards!
These are not necessarily new games, but they are games I first encountered in 2021. 

Game of the year: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea.
What a game! It blends analytical, cooperative gameplay and whist-like trick-taking to pack so much longevity and replay value into a 40 card deck, a 96 card task deck and some tokens; it's almost mind boggling.
Even after the final level has been completed it remains re-playable.
We only started playing The Crew: Mission Deep Sea in late October and by the year's end had played 25 sessions.
​It was an instant hit.

Disappointment of the year: New Frontiers.
I find it hard to believe that I'm saying this about a game that shares DNA with the singular Race for the Galaxy, but I found New Frontiers just frustrating to play.
It takes the core concepts of Race for the Galaxy and turns them into a board game, also adding 2 currencies (Money & colonists.) to the mix, this serves to add complexity to the game, yet somehow New Frontiers seems quicker to play and makes for a less satisfactory experience? So quick in fact, that often the game ended before I managed to do anything interesting.
It's not bad because it's based on a great game, just.... disappointing.

Surprise of the year: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea.
I'm going have to give it to The Crew: Mission Deep Sea for the reasons above. 
​
Honourable mention: Railroad Ink.
This roll-and-write, dice-rolling and route-building game is accessible, easy to learn and a pleasure to play. It throws a healthy dose of luck into the game, but because of the way the game plays, this luck affects all players equally, so if a player doesn't score well, they've only got their planning and themselves to blame.

12th November 2021

It's a Friday night and we're round Simon's for some impromptu evening gaming.

“I beg your pardon,” said the Mole, pulling himself together with an effort. “You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me."

Well, Everdell is new to me, mixing various game mechanics and lush anthropomorphic artwork.

What's in a game?
Everdell is a game that has a big footprint and a lot components.

• Game board: Everdell's board is a curious circular shape and the central area is called the 'meadow'. Around the meadow with numerous spots to place the game's resources. There also various worker locations dotted across the maps, including some blank worker spaces that will be populated with randomly determined worker locations during the game setup. There also some location for 'events'. More on events later.
  Most of the worker locations earn players some combination of the game's resources and/or cards. E.G., 2 twigs and a card or 1 resin and a card.
• Tree: The game comes with a tree made of gameboard that can be constructed, placed on the board and used to hold various components.
• Basic event tiles: These score point when acquired.
• Resources: Everdell uses 4 main types of resources, berries, twigs, resin and pebbles. These are represented by shaped 3d plastic tokens.
• Meeples: Each player has up to 6 workers they can use, these wooden tokens are shaped in the style of different type of anthropomorphic animals.
• Cards: Broadly speaking, the game uses several different types of cards.
  Critter & construction cards: These are the core of the game and as the name suggests, come in 2 types. In the top left corner is the requirement or cost to play them, just below is the card type and at the bottom of each card it displays what benefit it confers such as victory points and more. There is a wide variety of different benefits available, this may even include extra places to put workers and sometimes these are modified by other cards.
  Special event cards: These cards are a variation on the event tiles above and as such will score when player's meet their requirements.
  Forest cards: These are used on the board to provide randomly generated worker spots in each game.
• Victory point tokens: Standard card tokens.

No doubt about, Everdell has fantastic production values.
The components are well made and the attention to detail for the most part is excellent. In particular, the resources look great as do the individualised meeples. We didn't use the tree but it's a nice touch
Even if the anthropomorphised artwork is not to your taste, it's hard to fault the quality of the artwork and rich, warm colour palettes used throughout on the board and all the cards.
​Iconography is where the game could be improved though. Sometimes, the text used on the critter and construction cards is perhaps a little too small as are the symbols and sometimes, to maintain the game's aesthetic, you'll encounter a small around of tiny writing surrounded by a lot of unused space. Having said that, it's a quibble, not a gamebreaker and doesn't really detract from the game's quality

How's it play?
Setup

• Meadow: Shuffle the critter & construction cards into a face-down deck, then draw and place 8 of them face-up into the meadow on the board.
• Forest cards: Shuffle the forest cards and deal out the allotted amount as per player count face-up on to the blank spots on the board. This means that some of the worker spots are randomly generated each game.
• Events:
  Event tiles: Put out the basic event tiles on to their allotted spaces on the board.
  Special event cards: Shuffle these cards and deal 4 face-up on to their allotted spaces.
• Cards: Determine the starting player; then each player should draw cards from the deck, starting with the 1st player who gets 5, then 2nd gets 6 and thus forth.
• Meeples: Each player takes only 2 meeples in their colour, the remaining 4 will be acquired before the game's 3 later turns. 

Now we're pretty much ready to go.

On to play
The objective in Everdell is to construct the best city, that is the city that scores the most victory points. Players achieve this by playing critters and constructions into their tableau.
​When somebody becomes the active player, they can perform 1 action from a choice of 3 and then player progresses to the player to the left. Players continue performing actions until they have to or choose to stop; in which case the season has ended for them. Everdell is played over 4 seasons.

• Place worker: The active player may place a worker on a available spot. This will allow them to gain a mix of resources, cards or victory points depending on which spot it is.
  Some spots only allow for the placement of a single worker but some allow multiple players to make use of them. Furthermore, some cards that may get played have spots to place workers and acquire whatever benefits the card confers. This means a player may end up placing a worker in another player's tableau!
• Play card: The active player can play a card as their action, cards provide lots of actions or abilities which can be performed, too many to list here.
  Broadly speaking, cards come in two categories; critters and constructions which can also be common or unique. Cards also have a type such as Tan Traveller or Green Production which affect what function the card performs.
  For example Tan Traveller cards have a once-only benefit, but Green Production cards produce something whenever a production phase is triggered.
  Playing a card requires spending the relevant resources, having said that, the game has some synergy between cards and some critters can be played for free if the linked construction is already in the player's tableau.
  Players can play card types in sets to acquire event tiles/cards; e.g. the Grand Tour event can be earned if the player puts 3 destination cards into their tableau.  
• Prepare for Season: Players can continue taking actions until they run out of workers and cards that can be played, when this happens, the player must prepare for the next season.
  This involves taking back their workers plus an additional worker or two from the supply, players may be able to re-activate production cards in their tableau or take cards from the meadow, all depending on the season.

When all players have prepared for season, then the current season is over and play moves to the next one.

Endgame
When the 4th season is completed, then the game is over.
Victory points can be scored from a variety or sources, including cards, tokens and events.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
It's obvious that a lot of thought and care has gone into the game's presentation and charm. It's one of the best looking games I've seen in a while and I always appreciate the extra effort committed to a game.

Hmmm, what else to say about Everdell; for the most part, it's initially a pretty solid, straightforward game, although it feels a like a bit of a slow burner.
While the game's cards provide players with a variety of approaches choices and plays to make. Having said that, the game's action-economy is actually quite tight, almost too harsh. E.g, in the 1st season, players will only have 2 workers to gain resources in order to play cards, it means players will have to pay close attention to optimising their plays and actions. card synergy can make a big difference.
It gave me the feeling that players will need to know what they're doing from their first action in order to play Everdell competitively.

Additionally, in comparison to other tableau building games, it feels like the tableau in Everdell provides much more limited benefits that lacks the satisfaction putting together a good tableau.
​At best, production cards are reactivated once every other season - or round - but because players have multiple actions in a single season, it means a lengthy gap before those reactivations. This is something players will need to consider when playing cards.
All of this makes the choices in Everdell important - which is the sign of a good game.

Ultimately though, I just found it a little unexciting and unengaging and while it wouldn't be my first choice, I'd have no qualms about playing Everdell again.

12th November 2021

Friday gaming on Board Game Arena has come to a conclusion. The final game of the day was Love Letter, read my blog about it here.

12th November 2021

The next game for Friday gaming on Board Game Arena was Pandemic. Read my blog about it here.

12th November 2021

The next game on Board Game Arena for Friday gaming was Via Magica.
Read my thoughts on it here.

12th November 2021

Friday gaming continued with Cloud City on Board Game Arena. Read my blog about it here.

12th November 2021

Friday afternoon is here and it's time for some gaming on Board Game Arena.

The first game of the afternoon was The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. Read my blog about it here.

9th November 2021

The final game of Tuesday night gaming with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns was The Crew: Mission Deep Sea.
Ready my blog about it here.

9th November 2021

Tuesday gaming at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club continues with Jump Drive.
read my blog about it here.

9th November 2021

It's time for Tuesday night gaming! I'm at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.
The first game of the night was High Society, read my blog about it here.