Top 10 Games of October 2007 - October 2008
Since some of you are posting about your top 10 albums here shortly, I thought that in a similar vein, I would post my Top 10 games of the last year.
The games year works a little bit differently than the standard year - it begins and ends with Essen in October. As a result, I have decided that this will only reflect games released, and games I played between October 15, 2007 and October 14, 2008.
There are two lists: Top 10 games released in this time period, and Top 10 games that I had not played prior to this time period. The lists are quite different.
Top 10 of 2008
10 - Rails of Europe:
Rails of Europe is an expansion to Railroad Tycoon (being re-released as a “Rails of the World” series, with various different maps). The game is about connecting cities and delivering goods in Europe by rail. It features a pseudo-”stock” mechanism, where stocks are actually quite bad for you. They give you a small amount of money, but reduce both your per-turn income and your points at the end. It is a tighter game than RRT, more difficult to be successful, and requiring a great deal more shares than in RRT. It also lacks much of the route-building fun of RRT. It is more similar to Age of Steam in its style, but much less difficult to play well at.
9 - In the Year of the Dragon:
ItYotD is about a year in China. This is quite a difficult game to play well at, and can take several plays to get right. It is an odd design, where you have different houses with workers in it. These workers enable you to gain more of various goods, which are needed to prevent a whole slew of disasters being thrown your way. These disasters are all known at the beginning of the game, so you can plan for them accordingly You need rice to deal with famine, warriors to fight barbarians, and doctors to fight plagues. Whenever you cannot properly deal with a disaster, you will lose one of these workers permanently. Generally, it's all about disaster management, and there are so many different aspects to balance it can get a bit crazy. I enjoyed this game; although I have not played it since April or so, I would enjoy doing so again.
8 - 1960: The Making of the President
Here, one player is Kennedy, the other is Nixon. You are campaigning in all 50 states to rock the vote. It is a card-driven game, where each player plays cards alternating. These cards carry events (such as race riots, Communism hearings, or Eisenhower's delay of supporting Nixon), which either benefit Nixon or Kennedy directly, or offer a bonus to either. You may ignore these events (useful if they are for the other candidate!), but the other player has a way of activating them, too. I didn't like this game as much as Twilight Struggle, although the time commitment is much less (unless the US loses quickly in TS). It's still a solid, interesting game.
7 - Galaxy Trucker
This is another “disaster”-ridden game, but of a much different sort than ItYotD. You spend the first half under a player-generated time constraint, building the best ships you can, and then fly them through a series of random (but mostly observable in the first half) disasters. Watching other players' ships get destroyed is a large part of the fun here - watching your own ship get destroyed is painful, but fun players tend to have a pained smile on their face while it occurs. Good fun, short-ish time commitment - set-up and rules are a little involved, particularly on first go.
6 - Pandemic
Pandemic is a great, fast, cooperative game about saving the world from disease. The mechanics are simple and yet engaging. It encourages players to discuss what they're doing, and reduces the chances of one player taking full control. This will still happen if the players let it, mind you. Quite a fun one.
5 - TZAAR
This is the last of the Project GIPF series, a series of 6 abstract games for 2 players, all based around hexagonal structures. The game features a more-or-less random setup, at which point you have three types of pieces. There is no difference between the pieces in terms of how they move. On your turn, you must first capture an opponent's piece, simply by moving your piece/tower in a straight line. Your tower must include more pieces than the one you are capturing. The captured piece is removed from the board. As a second move, you may either capture another piece or increase one of your tower's size (this is the only way they are increased, as captured pieces are removed). It is fun, quick, and quite deep. It is my favorite of the Project GIPF series.
4 - Agricola
The big one of the year. It has replace Puerto Rico as #1 on BGG (for whatever that's really worth). A difficult and enjoyable game about farming in the 17th century, you begin with nothing but two farmers and some food. You take occupations and make improvements (via a small hand of cards), and make your farm efficiently generate food which frequently needs to be consumed by your farmers. It can be a frustrating game to play, as someone else can take the wood that you desperately need right out from under your nose, but that's part of the fun of the game. I have some issues with the game, but it is well-deserved to be so recognized by so many people - not too difficult to play, but with a lot of strategic options present.
3 - Brass
This one's a hard one to describe - there is a lot going on. You are building up middle England during the Industrial Revolution. This occurs in two stages - one with canals, and one with railroads. You are creating buildings and connecting them up to ports via canals/rails. Some buildings, when used, create a lot of income, others a great deal of VP. Early game, you are focused on that income, and at one point you switch to wanting just VP (usually the railroad phase is a good trigger). You have a personal network you are expanding as well as being able to use other players' networks to a limited extent. The game is not terribly difficult, but there are a myriad of rules to learn, so the first game can be a little frustrating for people. Solid game, underrated.
2 - Container
One of the oddest designs of the year. You have factories, warehouses, and ships. Your factories produce goods which you sell to other players, who store them in their warehouses until selling them to ships (usually at a higher price), who then sell those goods to an island. Each player blind bids on the goods as they arrive on the island - highest bid gets it, and the bank matches the price given (the only way money is injected into the game!). Each good type is worth a secret, different, amount to each player. One very interesting thing about Container is that on your turn, there is no way to earn money - the auction occurs at the very end of your turn only! While you often receive money while it's not your turn, the cash flows like negative entropy when it is (never increasing). Requires apt players - a silly bidder breaks the system a fair bit.
1 - Wabash Cannonball/Chicago Express
What an astounding game! There are four rail lines starting on the east coast. You do not control one company, you buy stock into them. The lines have 3,4,5, and 6 shares, respectively. They have an income level dependent upon what cities the lines have expanded into. This income is divided by the number of shares currently bought - so one way to screw over your fellow player is to simply bring out another share of something they just paid dearly for. It plays in less than an hour (usually), and is full of so much strategy and manipulation that it can be quite difficult to wrap your mind around what's occurring in the game. Each game plays so incredibly different - it is simply wonderful, all around. It features a great deal of applications of pure n-player game theory (which I have been reading up on a fair bit). It is probably the purest game-theoretically sound board game available, and maintains a high level of excitement and strategy. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's not just my favorite of 2008, it's my favorite game period. I have the “old prototype,” Wabash Cannonball, but Chicago Express will be released in the next week or two (there are no rules changes, just much better looking components).
Top 10 New To Me Games of 2008
But, well...some of these games, while they are the best games that Oct 2007 - Oct 2008 had to offer, they aren't the best games I've learned this year. Here are the 10 best new-to-me games that I've played in the aforementioned time. I won't rehash the ones that have made it onto both lists.
10 - Mr. Jack
Mr. Jack is a 2-player deduction game - Jack the Ripper has disguised himself as one of 8 characters, is trying to either escape or last 8 turns, and it is up to the Inspector to figure out who it is before that happens. Each player takes turns moving the characters around - each turn, Jack either is in the light or in the dark, and tells the Inspector which group they belong to. Choosing which players to move where, both to hide Jack into the majority of suspects and possibly to escape (as Jack), and to keep the suspects from escaping while trying to divide suspects evenly into two. Certainly the best new-to-me two-player game this year.
9 - Agricola
8 - Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization
This is a “civ-lite” game, albeit still relatively complex. It takes after the Sid Meier's Civilization franchise (MUCH better than Sid Meier's Civilization: the Board Game). There is no map. There is a very cool system of making new developments cost a lot to take when first introduced (4 actions), and costing less when not otherwise taken (down to 1 action), similar to that seen in Vinci. I'm a little underwhelmed with the military cards/aspect, as it is quite random. I've only played one game, but the military didn't seem to play *too * large of a role here. I really want to play it again, it does a fair number of things right, even if it's not quite perfect. If you enjoy Civilization games, and have others locally who also do, this is a great choice (but a little pricey). The third edition just came out, purported to be perfect (the second was marred with large errors).
7 - Acquire
Yeah, I hadn't played Acquire until this year. I love it. The random tiles can be a pain, but they're usually manageable. There are newer games that have a similar system which is better, but considering the age of this game, it holds up very well to this day.
6 - Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio
Technically, this didn't get released until Essen 2008, so it will likely be on my list for next year. But someone in Tucson got it early, and we've played it a few times. It's next-to-impossible to get if you don't have it already. Basically, there are 23 different lines, each with two shares. Someone proposes a line, everyone bids on it, and then the line immediately builds using that money. There are different amounts of different colors of cubes, and whatever cube type is most plentiful at the moment gets used for a new line. You get points for building into cities, and connecting to other colors; each share also pays a small pittance on occasion. This is by the same makers as Wabash Cannonball, and while I've only gotten in a small number of plays in so far, is my favorite of the new releases. Preussische Ostbahn is more accessible to the general crowd, but I don't like it nearly as much as I do GM&O.
5 - Brass
4 - 18XX
Yeah, I hadn't played an 18XX game until this year. Made “popular” in the 80s, they're still quite popular among certain crowds. Like many games of the 80s, they can take quite a while to play through (4+ hours - our first game took us 10! (it was a bad one for beginners) The 18XX system is about manipulating stock prices while connecting train routes. There is a phase of share-buying and selling, then each line builds one piece of track (as the game progresses, they build 2,3, and 4 before the next stock round). You can increase the price of stock buy buying it, or decrease it by selling it. There is an element of getting rather screwed by being President of a line, when you are forced to buy a new train - manging that is very important. I would love to play more of this, but it is difficult to find a crowd willing to play it here in Tucson, particularly given the time constraint.
3 - Indonesia
This one is all about Mergers and Acquisitions. You are controlling plantation companies and shipping companies in Indonesia, managing both the logistics of getting your products to the cities as well as merging with the more profitable lines. The logistics can get a bit overwhelming by the end, but the game is a lot of fun.
2 - Container
1 - Wabash Cannonball/Chicago Express
Whew! It's difficult to describe so many games, and try to explain why I enjoy them! I'm happy to provide further details, I just didn't want to make this *too * long...(I know, it's quite long.)
The games year works a little bit differently than the standard year - it begins and ends with Essen in October. As a result, I have decided that this will only reflect games released, and games I played between October 15, 2007 and October 14, 2008.
There are two lists: Top 10 games released in this time period, and Top 10 games that I had not played prior to this time period. The lists are quite different.
Top 10 of 2008
10 - Rails of Europe:
Rails of Europe is an expansion to Railroad Tycoon (being re-released as a “Rails of the World” series, with various different maps). The game is about connecting cities and delivering goods in Europe by rail. It features a pseudo-”stock” mechanism, where stocks are actually quite bad for you. They give you a small amount of money, but reduce both your per-turn income and your points at the end. It is a tighter game than RRT, more difficult to be successful, and requiring a great deal more shares than in RRT. It also lacks much of the route-building fun of RRT. It is more similar to Age of Steam in its style, but much less difficult to play well at.
9 - In the Year of the Dragon:
ItYotD is about a year in China. This is quite a difficult game to play well at, and can take several plays to get right. It is an odd design, where you have different houses with workers in it. These workers enable you to gain more of various goods, which are needed to prevent a whole slew of disasters being thrown your way. These disasters are all known at the beginning of the game, so you can plan for them accordingly You need rice to deal with famine, warriors to fight barbarians, and doctors to fight plagues. Whenever you cannot properly deal with a disaster, you will lose one of these workers permanently. Generally, it's all about disaster management, and there are so many different aspects to balance it can get a bit crazy. I enjoyed this game; although I have not played it since April or so, I would enjoy doing so again.
8 - 1960: The Making of the President
Here, one player is Kennedy, the other is Nixon. You are campaigning in all 50 states to rock the vote. It is a card-driven game, where each player plays cards alternating. These cards carry events (such as race riots, Communism hearings, or Eisenhower's delay of supporting Nixon), which either benefit Nixon or Kennedy directly, or offer a bonus to either. You may ignore these events (useful if they are for the other candidate!), but the other player has a way of activating them, too. I didn't like this game as much as Twilight Struggle, although the time commitment is much less (unless the US loses quickly in TS). It's still a solid, interesting game.
7 - Galaxy Trucker
This is another “disaster”-ridden game, but of a much different sort than ItYotD. You spend the first half under a player-generated time constraint, building the best ships you can, and then fly them through a series of random (but mostly observable in the first half) disasters. Watching other players' ships get destroyed is a large part of the fun here - watching your own ship get destroyed is painful, but fun players tend to have a pained smile on their face while it occurs. Good fun, short-ish time commitment - set-up and rules are a little involved, particularly on first go.
6 - Pandemic
Pandemic is a great, fast, cooperative game about saving the world from disease. The mechanics are simple and yet engaging. It encourages players to discuss what they're doing, and reduces the chances of one player taking full control. This will still happen if the players let it, mind you. Quite a fun one.
5 - TZAAR
This is the last of the Project GIPF series, a series of 6 abstract games for 2 players, all based around hexagonal structures. The game features a more-or-less random setup, at which point you have three types of pieces. There is no difference between the pieces in terms of how they move. On your turn, you must first capture an opponent's piece, simply by moving your piece/tower in a straight line. Your tower must include more pieces than the one you are capturing. The captured piece is removed from the board. As a second move, you may either capture another piece or increase one of your tower's size (this is the only way they are increased, as captured pieces are removed). It is fun, quick, and quite deep. It is my favorite of the Project GIPF series.
4 - Agricola
The big one of the year. It has replace Puerto Rico as #1 on BGG (for whatever that's really worth). A difficult and enjoyable game about farming in the 17th century, you begin with nothing but two farmers and some food. You take occupations and make improvements (via a small hand of cards), and make your farm efficiently generate food which frequently needs to be consumed by your farmers. It can be a frustrating game to play, as someone else can take the wood that you desperately need right out from under your nose, but that's part of the fun of the game. I have some issues with the game, but it is well-deserved to be so recognized by so many people - not too difficult to play, but with a lot of strategic options present.
3 - Brass
This one's a hard one to describe - there is a lot going on. You are building up middle England during the Industrial Revolution. This occurs in two stages - one with canals, and one with railroads. You are creating buildings and connecting them up to ports via canals/rails. Some buildings, when used, create a lot of income, others a great deal of VP. Early game, you are focused on that income, and at one point you switch to wanting just VP (usually the railroad phase is a good trigger). You have a personal network you are expanding as well as being able to use other players' networks to a limited extent. The game is not terribly difficult, but there are a myriad of rules to learn, so the first game can be a little frustrating for people. Solid game, underrated.
2 - Container
One of the oddest designs of the year. You have factories, warehouses, and ships. Your factories produce goods which you sell to other players, who store them in their warehouses until selling them to ships (usually at a higher price), who then sell those goods to an island. Each player blind bids on the goods as they arrive on the island - highest bid gets it, and the bank matches the price given (the only way money is injected into the game!). Each good type is worth a secret, different, amount to each player. One very interesting thing about Container is that on your turn, there is no way to earn money - the auction occurs at the very end of your turn only! While you often receive money while it's not your turn, the cash flows like negative entropy when it is (never increasing). Requires apt players - a silly bidder breaks the system a fair bit.
1 - Wabash Cannonball/Chicago Express
What an astounding game! There are four rail lines starting on the east coast. You do not control one company, you buy stock into them. The lines have 3,4,5, and 6 shares, respectively. They have an income level dependent upon what cities the lines have expanded into. This income is divided by the number of shares currently bought - so one way to screw over your fellow player is to simply bring out another share of something they just paid dearly for. It plays in less than an hour (usually), and is full of so much strategy and manipulation that it can be quite difficult to wrap your mind around what's occurring in the game. Each game plays so incredibly different - it is simply wonderful, all around. It features a great deal of applications of pure n-player game theory (which I have been reading up on a fair bit). It is probably the purest game-theoretically sound board game available, and maintains a high level of excitement and strategy. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's not just my favorite of 2008, it's my favorite game period. I have the “old prototype,” Wabash Cannonball, but Chicago Express will be released in the next week or two (there are no rules changes, just much better looking components).
Top 10 New To Me Games of 2008
But, well...some of these games, while they are the best games that Oct 2007 - Oct 2008 had to offer, they aren't the best games I've learned this year. Here are the 10 best new-to-me games that I've played in the aforementioned time. I won't rehash the ones that have made it onto both lists.
10 - Mr. Jack
Mr. Jack is a 2-player deduction game - Jack the Ripper has disguised himself as one of 8 characters, is trying to either escape or last 8 turns, and it is up to the Inspector to figure out who it is before that happens. Each player takes turns moving the characters around - each turn, Jack either is in the light or in the dark, and tells the Inspector which group they belong to. Choosing which players to move where, both to hide Jack into the majority of suspects and possibly to escape (as Jack), and to keep the suspects from escaping while trying to divide suspects evenly into two. Certainly the best new-to-me two-player game this year.
9 - Agricola
8 - Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization
This is a “civ-lite” game, albeit still relatively complex. It takes after the Sid Meier's Civilization franchise (MUCH better than Sid Meier's Civilization: the Board Game). There is no map. There is a very cool system of making new developments cost a lot to take when first introduced (4 actions), and costing less when not otherwise taken (down to 1 action), similar to that seen in Vinci. I'm a little underwhelmed with the military cards/aspect, as it is quite random. I've only played one game, but the military didn't seem to play *too * large of a role here. I really want to play it again, it does a fair number of things right, even if it's not quite perfect. If you enjoy Civilization games, and have others locally who also do, this is a great choice (but a little pricey). The third edition just came out, purported to be perfect (the second was marred with large errors).
7 - Acquire
Yeah, I hadn't played Acquire until this year. I love it. The random tiles can be a pain, but they're usually manageable. There are newer games that have a similar system which is better, but considering the age of this game, it holds up very well to this day.
6 - Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio
Technically, this didn't get released until Essen 2008, so it will likely be on my list for next year. But someone in Tucson got it early, and we've played it a few times. It's next-to-impossible to get if you don't have it already. Basically, there are 23 different lines, each with two shares. Someone proposes a line, everyone bids on it, and then the line immediately builds using that money. There are different amounts of different colors of cubes, and whatever cube type is most plentiful at the moment gets used for a new line. You get points for building into cities, and connecting to other colors; each share also pays a small pittance on occasion. This is by the same makers as Wabash Cannonball, and while I've only gotten in a small number of plays in so far, is my favorite of the new releases. Preussische Ostbahn is more accessible to the general crowd, but I don't like it nearly as much as I do GM&O.
5 - Brass
4 - 18XX
Yeah, I hadn't played an 18XX game until this year. Made “popular” in the 80s, they're still quite popular among certain crowds. Like many games of the 80s, they can take quite a while to play through (4+ hours - our first game took us 10! (it was a bad one for beginners) The 18XX system is about manipulating stock prices while connecting train routes. There is a phase of share-buying and selling, then each line builds one piece of track (as the game progresses, they build 2,3, and 4 before the next stock round). You can increase the price of stock buy buying it, or decrease it by selling it. There is an element of getting rather screwed by being President of a line, when you are forced to buy a new train - manging that is very important. I would love to play more of this, but it is difficult to find a crowd willing to play it here in Tucson, particularly given the time constraint.
3 - Indonesia
This one is all about Mergers and Acquisitions. You are controlling plantation companies and shipping companies in Indonesia, managing both the logistics of getting your products to the cities as well as merging with the more profitable lines. The logistics can get a bit overwhelming by the end, but the game is a lot of fun.
2 - Container
1 - Wabash Cannonball/Chicago Express
Whew! It's difficult to describe so many games, and try to explain why I enjoy them! I'm happy to provide further details, I just didn't want to make this *too * long...(I know, it's quite long.)