Gamethyme's Game of the Year

It's weird to me - even though I'm not an attendee anymore, my personal calendar still revolves around GenCon. Which brings me back to today.

Today is the Wednesday before GenCon, which means that today is the day I pick my personal Game of the Year.  For those of you who haven't followed me over the years, this is for the best new-to-me game that I have played since the previous GenCon.

And it's always a challenge.  This year, I've been focusing on re-playing old favorites more than pushing into new games. That said, there were still a handful of eligible games.  But this was a tough decision.

Here are the three runners-up, with a tiny bit of discussion about them:

Fist of Dragonstones: Tavern Edition - I sometimes thought I was the only fan of the original Fist of Dragonstones. It was disappointing, as it was a really fun auction game that saw a lot of play in the early days of Game Night. So I was both floored and ecstatic when Stronghold Games announced that this was coming. I pre-ordered from the FLGS as soon as it had a listing, and then ... I waited.  It was worth the wait.

It's not the deepest game, and there are still a few rules details that could do with some clarity, but this is a faster-playing better-balanced version of the game than the original.

Magic Maze - Cooperative games have lately become My Jam.  Okay, not just lately. But I especially love it when a cooperative game directly impacts how I communicate with other players. Magic Maze doesn't allow players to speak. Each player has one command they can use to move pawns on the board, and everyone has to work together to move the pawns to specific locations. The game is scenario-based, but the replay value of each scenario is crazy-high because of the random deck.

And playing with three players is a vastly different experience than playing with four or five or up to eight.

Again: not the deepest game out there, but definitely worth checking out. I really loved it, and I thought the expansion was also money well-spent.

51st State, Master Set - This is the second game on the list that is a new edition of an older game that I really enjoyed. The original was very much a multiplayer solitaire game (at least until the expansions started to roll out). The art was decent, but the gameplay was a lot of fun for me. Once I puzzled out the (awkwardly-translated) rules.

I became aware of the new Master Set version when I read the back of a box of Imperial Settlers, which uses the same basic gameplay engine. The Master Set has better (clearer) rules than the original version, and it includes direct player interaction right out of the gate. And it includes two small expansions (and there are a couple of other expansions available, too, if you play them to death).

These have all been fun to play this year, but the real winner for me?

Root - I've joined the band, here. Above, I mentioned that cooperative games are my jam? So are asymmetric games. And asymmetric games are hard to do entertainingly. Root both feels balanced and is fun.

The base game has four factions - the cats, who are in power; the birds, who want to return to power; the woodland creatures, who are tired of the cats and the birds oppressing them; and the vagabond who just wants to bum around living his life.  All four factions have different ways of scoring points and they do different things on their turns.  The cats are trying to build an economic engine that supports their armies and lets them crush the opposition. The birds have a rigid hierarchy which tightly restricts what they can do on their turn (and telegraphs some of their planning for their opponents).  The woodland creatures go around drumming up sympathy. When the other factions step on them, they get more powerful. Eventually, the woodland creatures are allowed to act.  The vagabond - seriously - just wanders around doing their own thing.

The expansion adds a different economic faction (albeit one without its own army) and more Vagabond options (including a second Vagabond in play).

In a full game, players can craft and trade and march and recruit and battle one another. But - again - each faction has its own spin on each of those options.

The art is evocative and cute, but not irritating. The components are good quality (wooden units, decent cardstock for the tokens, etc). And the way players interact in the game means that - while there is downtime in larger games, you'll want to pay attention because what they do will impact your turn.

It's light enough that you can play it in an evening, but - again - there's enough going on to entertain many hardcore gamers (but, of course, not all of them).

And that is why Root is my game of the year this year.

Different Preparations, Different Results

As I'm sure I've mentioned dozens of times, here, I live in the greater Seattle area. While we're famous for our small local coffee brand, we also have a number of (very good) tea shops in the area.  One of those shops is Friday Afternoon Tea.

If you go to their website, you'll see that they have dozens of blends. Different varieties of tea leaf, different additives and other flavorings, and so much more. Friday also does custom blends. A few years ago, my wife purchased a custom blend for me as a gift.  We wound up with a tea called "Pie Dreams."  It's white tea with peach, cinnamon, allspice, raw sugar, and a bit of vanilla.

You won't find "Pie Dreams" on their website, though, because it's a custom blend.  But if you contact her to order it, I think she'll be able to sell it to you. It's a bit like a secret menu at a fast food place.

But that's all beside the point.

Much like coffee, there are a number of ways to brew tea, each of which subtly influences the flavor. And there are things you can do post-brewing, too, that also change the flavor.

With Pie Dreams, when you make it in a more traditional way (hot water + tea blend, steep for a few minutes, etc.), you wind up with a tea that is sweet, and, at the same time, it's a bit warming. It's a very pleasant tea to drink. And it seriously tastes like you're drinking a peach pie.  It's very weird, but really good.

When you brew it hot and then ice it, the peach steps forward a bit more strongly. I often put sugar in my iced tea. I often put too much sugar in my iced tea, actually. But adding sugar to Pie Dreams actively hurts the flavor.

When you cold-brew it, the peach takes a big step back. It's there, but it provides a mellowing flavor against the spices that unfold. It's a more delicate flavor overall, and it's less sweet (but still very very good).

This is what an RPG session is like. Every single group is a custom blend of GM and players and characters and system and setting and ...

As a GM, how I prepare for a game makes the biggest change to the game itself.  I can spend my time figuring out every notable NPC (or group) and what they're doing, or I can roughly sketch some details out for myself.  I can let the players wander all over the countryside (even though the adventure is right over there), or I can force them to ride the railroad as it were. And, depending on what I have prepared, I can let my players steer - throw up a few signs to guide them now and again, mind you, but let them be players.

None of these options are bad. Even railroads aren't a bad thing (despite their negative reputation).

They're just different ways of brewing that tea.

And by "tea," I mean "fun."

Which is the point, right?

Rediscovering The Classics

Steph's birthday was just a few moths ago, and I always struggle with What To Get Her. Because she's super-important to me, and a bad gift shows that I have not put thought into it.

She'll tell you that she'll love whatever I get her, but I've noticed that some gifts get used and some get shelved.

Her all-time favorite game is El Grande. It's a good game. It won a ton of awards in the mid-Nineties and is still a Top 100 game on the BoardGameGeek Rankings. Our copy was a bit long in the tooth, and has seen a lot of love, so I figured replacing it would be a decent gift.  Then Tabletop Gaming Deals on Twitter shared that the Big Box edition (which includes all the expansions) was cheaper than the core game alone (it still is).  So I bit.  And it was a good decision.

I've gotten to play the core game a couple of times since, and it reminded me of how much I love this game.  It's area control with drafting. Two things I'm terrible at.  But I'm ... okay at El Grande. And it's one of those games that I honestly don't mind losing at, because the gameplay is so much fun.

Then, a few days later, I was looking for something to play on Board Game Arena (which - again - is amazing), and I decided to play Can't Stop. Because it's easy to teach, light, fast, and fun.

But these two outcomes have me digging back into (recent) classics, looking for more fun things that I haven't played.  Carcassonne, for example, is a ton of fun in moderation. As long as you are not using more than the base game and maybe one or two expansions.  Catan is ... hit-or-miss. It depends on who you're playing with. Ticket To Ride is fun, but it gets super-repetitive super-fast.

So what twentieth-century games should I be looking into? What games are fun and good and short enough to be played in an evening with a mix of hardcore and casual gamers? What recent classics need more play than they get?