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.