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2024 is over and my blogging backlog has not decreased. 2024 was a big in terms of playing board games - more games were played if my counting is correct. 2024 Number of different games played: 178. Of which were new (To me.): 78. Total number of gaming sessions: 704. Compared to '23 2023 Number of different games played: 158. Of which were new (To me.): 77. Total number of gaming sessions: 577. The number of games played were up by 20 which is nearly 2 a month. New games to me were 78 which interestingly is almost identical to '23. Sessions though, is up by nearly 130! This is quite a lot, it means nearly 5 extra game sessions occurred every week! How did that happen? The top 5 games I played in 2024 were:
50 sessions of Tranquility, nearly once a week! It's easy to understand why; Tranquility is a pleasant, slightly undemanding cooperative experience that we frequently play as a palate cleanser after something more high-intensity. We tend to win Tranquility when we play it but occasionally, it throws a curve ball! Just one remains popular with us, it's joined by Splendor and somewhat surprisingly (Considering it's disliked by 'someone' we play it with!) by Railroad Ink. The list is rounded off by Can't Stop, Roll'n Bump & Sushi Go!, all perennial favourites that are played as fillers or enders. OK, now on to what's really important - The 'industry defining' 'prestigious' 3 Spellcasters and a Dwarf annual gaming awards.
Game of the year: Daybreak Sometimes a game comes along that immediately announces its quality and in this instance it's Daybreak, a game about saving the environment. From the packaging and components, to mechanics and theme and even small details like putting QR codes on cards to provide extra info, Daybreak is something noteworthy. More than that; it's presentation highlights some of the stark obstacles we will all face in the future. Disappointment of the year: Horrified: Greek Monsters The excellent formula that powers the original Horrified just doesn't quite work in this iteration. I've played 4 different versions of Horrified and this is easily thematically the weakest. I never felt I was battling against the monsters of Greek mythology. It felt like what it seems to be; a reskin with slightly different monster mechanics. Surprise of the year: Sky Team I'm always a bit wary of 2-player only games, they often seem to resort to direct competition with your opponent. I'm happy to say that with regards to Sky Team, I'm wrong. Sky Team is cooperative dice-placement game where the 2 players take the asymmetrical roles of pilot and co-pilot. It has fantastic presentation with mechanics that fit it's theme. Honourable mention: Things in Rings Things in Rings is a wacky kind of party game about deductive logic and trying to discover the hidden phrases on 3 cards. It's a brilliant lightweight game, however, for me it's a semantic nightmare that drives me crazy and is unlike anything else I've played. it means I have to get a copy.
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My backlog of games to blog about has not lessened over 2023 - which is not a good thing! This was also a big year for playing games. Breakdown follows as: 2023 Number of different games played: 158. Of which were new (To me.): 77. Total number of gaming sessions: 577. 2022 Number of different games played: 139. Of which were new (To me.): 68. Total number of gaming sessions: 541. All the numbers are slightly up on '22, looks like I'm hitting peak playing! Most played games of 2023
Anyway - enough of that, I know the real reason you're here; for the influential, industry defining 3 Spellcaster & A Dwarf annual game awards!
Game of the year: Heat: Pedal to the Metal It wasn't a hard choice, when thinking about game of the year, this always immediately came to mind. This 50's/60's themed F1 game manages to provide players with some tricky decisions and risks to take using an elegant implementation of hand management mechanics. I'm a big fan of a certain other F1 game that's been around in some form or other for years and it seems blasphemous to think it but Heat: Pedal to the Metal is as good as Formula De/Formula D! There, I've said it! Disappointment of the year: Sushi Go!: Spin Some for Dim Sum It's not that this game is bad per se, it's just that it does not deliver any particularly new gameplay or as good a experience as its previous 2 iterations. Hard to believe, but it's just a bit meh considering the pedigree it originates from. It doesn't help that it's central premise (Or gimmick if you're less kind!) also makes the game a bit fiddly to setup, teardown and sometimes play. Surprise of the year: Bandido There's a heavy dose of luck that can apply to Bandido and I'm not sure if ultimately it's a good game or not. Even so, Bandido distils a cooperative gameplay experience into a single deck of strangely oblong cards in a package so small it easily fits in a pocket. With rules so simple and intuitive that anyone can immediately grasp play. I play games with people who have varying levels experience in table top gaming and this has been a big hit with a couple of them, which is why we've played it so much in 2023. Honourable mention: Joraku Deluxe Set in Feudal Japan, Joraku is typically what you'd expect it to be; a game amount warring factions vying for influence and control. However, all of this is achieved with abstract, almost minimalist trick taking rules and delivered in a fantastic looking package. My massive backlog of games to talk about didn't lessen in 2022, only got worse. 2022 was a big year for playing games, bigger than 2021, which I thought was big enough! Below is the breakdown of games I played in '22 versus '21. 2022 Number of different games played: 139. Of which were new (To me.): 68. Total number of gaming sessions: 541. 2021 Number of different games played: 78. Of which were new (To me.): 46. Total number of gaming sessions: 333. Why have the numbers gone up so much? Two factors, 2022 saw the end of lockdowns and a full year of playing on Board Game Arena where not only could 5 or 6 games be easily played in an evening, some games could be played multiple times per session. Most played games:
Lucky Numbers, with it's simple, unpredictable, luck based and strategy mechanics replaced Lover Letter as our regular 'finisher' on Sunday nights. Now on to the industry-defining, glittering, 3 Spellcasters & a Dwarf annual game awards.
These are for games I first played in 2022, not necessarily games that were published in 2022. Game of the year: Cascadia Cascadia is a tile-placement game with fairly simple rules but a wealth of options, strategies and approaches to scoring points. Players have to manage and optimise multiple scoring vectors that use tiles and tokens but rarely do they get to draft both the tiles and tokens they need, forcing them into meaningful, compromising decisions. What more could you want? Disappointment of the year: Terminator: Dark Fate The Card Game This co-operative deck-builder had some interesting ideas but also seemed broken, so much so that we struggled to make any headway into the game. It felt like the game needed more playtesting and balancing. Surprise of the year: Akropolis Another tile-laying game! This time one with actual figurative multiple levels of gameplay! Simple rules, lots of decision and a quick playtime make this game a cracking package. Honourable mention: Parks For a long stretch of 2022 I thought that this worker-placement, resource-management game was going to be the game of the year until Cascadia came along. With limited workers spaces along the hiking trail, players are faced with trying to anticipate their opponents actions while also prioritising their own and gather the resources to buy point scoring cards. Parks also has some of the best components and artwork I've seen in a game for a while. 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?
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. So.... that was 2020. Interesting times.... Time to see how Covid-19 has affected my board game playing in 2020. Total number of different games played: 29. Of which were new (To me.): 13. Total number of gaming sessions: 49. Game sessions played does not mean the number of times a game was played, short games might have been played several times in single session. Unsurprisingly, the numbers are well down on 2019. In 2019 I played 77 different games over 171 sessions, about 3 times as much. The difference would be even starker if it didn't include Gloomhaven: Jaws of The Lion which was played for 10 sessions/scenarios of the campaign were played. The 5 most played games of 2020 were.
Hopefully, it will pick up some time in '21. Now it's time for the highly prestigious, world-beating 3 Spellcasters and a Dwarf 2020 game awards!
These are not necessarily for new games, but for games I first played in 2020. Game of the year: Pan Am. I only got to play Pan Am once but it was enough to convince me of the game's quality. A game with an interesting theme of basically selling out to Pan Am. It's balance of depth, rules complexity and interesting use of several differing game mechanics led to some rock solid gameplay. Well made components, art and production qualities complete the package Surprise of the year: Skulls of Sedlec. 18 cards is all it takes to play Skulls of Sedlec, a game that cleverly uses game mechanics to match its theme of er.... digging up graves!. Easy to learn and quick to play with some interesting decisions. It packs a lot into a game that's one third of a deck of cards and delivered in a little wallet. So we've said our goodbyes to 2019. I've played lots of games and written plenty of blogs. So below is summary of my gaming according to my quick calculations. Number of different games played: 77. Total number of gaming sessions: 171. Games I played the most in 2019:
So Port Royal came top and a worthy game it is too. I'm not sure if Machi Koro Legacy should count? We did play it 10 times, but that's only once through the 'legacy mode', well there it is. I've also decided to keep separate from standard Machi Koro. Because I'm obviously very important, my opinion is equally important. So without further ado... My game of the year: Wingspan. A game that has some depth but is also accessible with a reasonable play length and interesting subject matter. It doesn't hurt that it has high quality production values and component. When all are combined, it makes Wingspan a great experience. My worst game of the year: Hit Z Road. This game is equal parts fantastic production values and fantastically broken auction mechanics, so bad that it kills the game stone dead in my opinion. My initial urge is to say. "Did anyone play test this?". But I know they. Which means that the awful auctions must be there for some confounding reason. I just can't fathom why? Surprise of the year: Heckmeck/Pickomino. When this little game came along, I was instantly impressed. A push your luck dice game that frequently gives players tricky decisions to make. It proved popular with pretty much everyone I play games with. That I only bought the game in late October and it made it into my top 5 is proof. Big fun in a small package. RPGsThese are the RPGs I played/ran in 2019. Different RPGs: 7. RPG Sessions: 51. 50 Fathoms/Savage Worlds: 17 Sessions. Oubilette/Black Hack: 11. Cthulhu Hack: 5 Sessions. WFRP (Ran): 8. Surrendered Lands/D&D (Ran): 6. Agon d6: 4. Isis & the Seven Serpents/Fate: 1. So that was my 2019 in gaming.
Let's see what 2020 holds? |
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