Top Boardgames in 2010
Everyone else is writing about their best games of 2010, and when I looked over the list I realised that all the 2010-published games I really enjoyed were expansions. Perhaps it takes too long for games to make it over here; more likely there was just nothing to my tastes this year.
These lists do promote fetishism over the new, and contribute to a culture of unending purchases and ever-expanding collections that pervades the hobby; my indifference is probably not such a bad thing.
Number one on my list is the third and final expansion to the first expansion "arc", Race for the Galaxy: Brink of War. I've played over 2500 games with this expansion (and 4300 without), and this series is one of the few games I know well enough to comment knowledgeably on strategy and design. The expansion added a major new mechanic, a tonne of new and unusual strategies, and lots of special powers far weirder what what has come before.
Number two is Dominion: Prosperity it adds strange new powers and more strategy to a game that's already very strategic (rather than tactical, which I like less). Dominion is a game that gets better the more expansions there are - the potential card combinations, variety and interactions increase exponentially (there are already tens if not hundreds of trillions of possible setups) and this is the best expansion yet.
While the published in 2010 games didn't excite me, I did have some standout newly-played in 2010 games: Homesteaders and Space Alert.
Homesteaders is a minimalist engine-building auction game with lots of resource conversion that plays in about an hour and has lots of different ways to win. Its innovations are very modest (the ability to buy and sell resources and take debt at any time, which give the game an open feel and prevent you from being locked out) but the game itself is extremely polished and strategic (rather than just tactical).
Space Alert is a real-time cooperative game that rewards communication, delegation and organisation; it is extremely innovative, as it breaks the common vulnerability of co-op games to being taken over by a single bossy player.
Funny Friends is farther down my list, but deserves a mention for being a game with an extremely unusual theme: players compete for life experiences that alter attributes such as alcoholism, obesity, drug use, and depression, allow them to make friends, have sex (in game, it's not Naked Twister), and get married to other players and NPCs. The goal of the game is to achieve five life goals such as "Starting a Cult", becoming an "Elvis Impersonator", "Coming Out", being "Happily Single", "Unhappily Single", or being a "Sex Machine". The cards are crazy and illustrated with a wacky humour: the card "alcohol is not enough" sends a player to zero on the alcohol track but increases their drug use; "STD" causes a player and a prior sex partner to become ill. It's a world away from the unimaginative realm of Mediterranean shipping or Renaissance castle-building that fills the hobby.
These lists do promote fetishism over the new, and contribute to a culture of unending purchases and ever-expanding collections that pervades the hobby; my indifference is probably not such a bad thing.
Number one on my list is the third and final expansion to the first expansion "arc", Race for the Galaxy: Brink of War. I've played over 2500 games with this expansion (and 4300 without), and this series is one of the few games I know well enough to comment knowledgeably on strategy and design. The expansion added a major new mechanic, a tonne of new and unusual strategies, and lots of special powers far weirder what what has come before.
Number two is Dominion: Prosperity it adds strange new powers and more strategy to a game that's already very strategic (rather than tactical, which I like less). Dominion is a game that gets better the more expansions there are - the potential card combinations, variety and interactions increase exponentially (there are already tens if not hundreds of trillions of possible setups) and this is the best expansion yet.
While the published in 2010 games didn't excite me, I did have some standout newly-played in 2010 games: Homesteaders and Space Alert.
Homesteaders is a minimalist engine-building auction game with lots of resource conversion that plays in about an hour and has lots of different ways to win. Its innovations are very modest (the ability to buy and sell resources and take debt at any time, which give the game an open feel and prevent you from being locked out) but the game itself is extremely polished and strategic (rather than just tactical).
Space Alert is a real-time cooperative game that rewards communication, delegation and organisation; it is extremely innovative, as it breaks the common vulnerability of co-op games to being taken over by a single bossy player.
Funny Friends is farther down my list, but deserves a mention for being a game with an extremely unusual theme: players compete for life experiences that alter attributes such as alcoholism, obesity, drug use, and depression, allow them to make friends, have sex (in game, it's not Naked Twister), and get married to other players and NPCs. The goal of the game is to achieve five life goals such as "Starting a Cult", becoming an "Elvis Impersonator", "Coming Out", being "Happily Single", "Unhappily Single", or being a "Sex Machine". The cards are crazy and illustrated with a wacky humour: the card "alcohol is not enough" sends a player to zero on the alcohol track but increases their drug use; "STD" causes a player and a prior sex partner to become ill. It's a world away from the unimaginative realm of Mediterranean shipping or Renaissance castle-building that fills the hobby.