2011 - A Retrospective

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nicely done Egg, I much prefer this kind of retrospective, and wish more people would put the effort into it.

I get why Feld is popular, I quite enjoyed some of his stuff too but I find it harder to understand the lasting appeal, they are very repetitive and low on interaction. Contrast Burgundy to Troyes, which in some ways has some Point salad elements, but the way the Dice can be bought and used against other players adds a level of interaction that raises it way beyond any Feld, and the use of a subset of activity cards makes the development of games very different each time, in a much sharper and clearer way than the randomness in the Feld stuff. I Think the only game on my shelf from 2011 is Fighting Formations and I only got that because it looked pretty cool with the order matrix and seemed to have some Combat Commander feel under it, but I have not yet played it - the bigger scenarios scare me quite a bit.

Good work on Wallace too! yeah, that was quite the drama haha. Nerd Rage!

Eclipse is one of the most terrible things I've ever played on the ipad. I know a F2F game would be different but based on the app and the rules, and Reading around a bit, I feel like I couldnt be less interested in that shit.

Great article, Egg/Michael!

Martin Wallace also didn't do himself any favors with that dumb Doctor Who card game he put his name on in 2012.

As for Quarriors, I don't think people expected it to be a highly strategic and thinky game; I certainly wasn't hoping or that. I was just hoping for something that felt like it needed me at the table for a reason other than the fact that dice can't roll themselves. I think the record will show I have zero problems with dice games, but random draws on top of random rolls, along with outcomes that are determined solely by other players' random rolls of random draws kept me waiting for something to happen in the game. If Quarriors got better with expansions I'll give it a try; I couldn't care less about superheroes.

As someone who has on and off contributed to this site via articles and podcasts, Egg, you're doing our lord Crom's work, my friend. Outstanding article, not just as an assement of a banner year for gaming, but also as something that might put things in general into perspective. I'd love to see more stuff like this.

Folks, if you didn't believe it before, this is it right here: A newcomer has entered the arena.

Nice article!

Risk Legacy is a fantastic game that has "died away" for I think three reasons:
1) It's Risk and BGG will never pay it much attention.
2) The best parts of the game are spoilers and no one has figured out how to talk about them. It's not like a movie - revealing the packets and what happens as a result is fantastic and would not nearly be as fun if the packets were known ahead of time. The stuff that happens in this game is crazy and outlandish and wonderful.
3) You really need a core group to play it at least 10 times. It took our group a year and a half to accomplish this. It can be hard to commit to that kind of thing.

Also I agree about Mage Knight and I think it's done more than any other game to usher in the solitaire boardgaming "phenomenon". It's complicated and thorny enough that playing it solo is almost preferred for many people.

iguanaDitty wrote: 3) You really need a core group to play it at least 10 times. It took our group a year and a half to accomplish this. It can be hard to commit to that kind of thing.

Theres so much interesting in just this one line.

Why is it so hard? Friends get together and do stuff all the time, its not that hard, my wife meets her friends several times a week, they do the same shit they enjoy, why is it so hard for, or so common that so many people that are so into boardgames that they spend inordinate amounts of time and Money on them (on websites, forums, communities, and then buying the stuff) but so many people seem to really struggle with any kind of ability to get together.

In my case, the two local Groups I've been in so far are just Classic "I wouldnt hang out with those guys in any universe" situations, just socially odd, unpleasant people to spend time with, not my idea of fun. Theres a couple of Groups of nice people locally but both of them play, and in one case, I exaggerate not one bit, a new game EVERY. SINGLE. PLAY. No I actually mean that. So I gave up on them, even though they are great to hang out with. I dont see the appeal at all in only experiencing those shit "learn the rules, OK thats how it works" "plays" of a game and I find it so pointless in trying 143 different area Control games instead of why dont we just play El Grande every time for a few weeks so we get some kind of continuity and uncover some of the depths. Sure, we can try Tammany Hall after that, but why a different one each time. They are not different enough, no matter how many "twists" they put on the idea. Its just utterly pointless, I have a hard time fathoming that kind of interest out.

So that leaves me with one last Group, 2 guys I really like, thank fuck they like similar games and also like to "get into" a few games properly, but fuck trying to organise just a weekly get together around jobs, family, living what in USA terms is a comically small distance apart (check out the map, Malmö, Lund, Södra Sandby), you would Think we were all working for the government and lived in San Diego, Acapulco and Buffalo with the struggle just to get together only once a fucking week!

But I see all the time posts like the one you made, people who struggle to play a game ten times, what the fuck?!

just to be clear I'm not criticising you igD, I'm saying isnt it mental?


Yes, this is the kind of comment that is a cue for Chapel to come in and spout off how he just plays with his friends 17 Days a week and gets through his 14000 games no bother, whats the problem

Legomancer wrote: Great article, Egg/Michael!

Martin Wallace also didn't do himself any favors with that dumb Doctor Who card game he put his name on in 2012.

As for Quarriors, I don't think people expected it to be a highly strategic and thinky game; I certainly wasn't hoping or that. I was just hoping for something that felt like it needed me at the table for a reason other than the fact that dice can't roll themselves. I think the record will show I have zero problems with dice games, but random draws on top of random rolls, along with outcomes that are determined solely by other players' random rolls of random draws kept me waiting for something to happen in the game. If Quarriors got better with expansions I'll give it a try; I couldn't care less about superheroes.

I had no clue he even made a Doctor Who card game...he seems to make some odd choices.

As for Quarriors I think "highly strategic" was probably the wrong phrase to use in the article. I just seem to remember people wanting it to be a bit more than it was. It was a game of few actual choices and barely more than a simple time waster (at least with the as written rules from the base game). I think because it looked really good and the buzz out of Gen Con was so high people were just expecting it to be something really special. When it turned out to be just a touch above a filler game I think the backlash began. I know the "buy two" and "cull what you score" variant rules improved the game a bit, but probably not enough to sway most people. I can't say what many of the expansions added. I only tried one and it had some locking the dice rule that didn't seem to add all that much.

Great, great article. Among the best things I have EVER read on this site. Thanks and please feel encouraged to do more.

The bit about Yomi reminded me that I can be counted among the Sirlin haters. I got Puzzle Strike only to have him "rebalance" the game by releasing a set of new chips to replace some of the "broken" ones. Ok, fine.... fooled me once.... as I threw another twenty something dollars into the game to make it right. Then six months later he does the same shit again... telling you you need to purchase a second"fix" for the game. Fuck you David Sirlin. He is dead to me.

Dang, wish you had written this before we just math traded. I coulda woulda shoulda unloaded that Puzzle Strike for something decent.

What bothers me about the Wallace thing after A Few Acres of Snow blew up was that he tried to fix it and failed. Also, the Halifax Hammer strategy hinges on a particular mechanic which is in pretty much every deck building game and a core strategy of base game Dominion. I know he wasn't an experienced player with Deck builders (I believe it says as much in the AFAoS rulebook designer notes) but I don't think it was properly playtested by experienced deck builder players.

After his attempt to fix it failed, he made some off-handed comments about how a two player wargame can never be properly balanced which really lowered my opinion of him unfortunately. It seemed like he was frustrated with his failure to balance and tried to deflect.

Mythotopia is pretty bad.

Eclipse is the best game of 2011 in my opinion. It's still perhaps the single most highly regarded game across my entire group. It remains in my top 10 ever since its release. I remember playing it on New Year's Eve right after it came out and it blowing my mind. We've returned again and again and it's the heaviest game that I've played the most, if that makes any sense.

2011 was a year of hype followed by backlash. I still would love to get a regular group together to play a Risk: Legacy campaign.

charlest wrote: What bothers me about the Wallace thing after A Few Acres of Snow blew up was that he tried to fix it and failed. Also, the Halifax Hammer strategy hinges on a particular mechanic which is in pretty much every deck building game and a core strategy of base game Dominion. I know he wasn't an experienced player with Deck builders (I believe it says as much in the AFAoS rulebook designer notes) but I don't think it was properly playtested by experienced deck builder players.

After his attempt to fix it failed, he made some off-handed comments about how a two player wargame can never be properly balanced which really lowered my opinion of him unfortunately. It seemed like he was frustrated with his failure to balance and tried to deflect.

Mythotopia is pretty bad.

Eclipse is the best game of 2011 in my opinion. It's still perhaps the single most highly regarded game across my entire group. It remains in my top 10 ever since its release. I remember playing it on New Year's Eve right after it came out and it blowing my mind. We've returned again and again and it's the heaviest game that I've played the most, if that makes any sense.

Yeah I was trying to remember his response to the AFAoS situation and I knew he was kind of stand-offish about the whole thing. Probably not the best tact to take with something relatively small like a boardgame community. The dude could have certainly handled that whole situation better and not come out looking like an ass.

I've never been enamored with Eclipse for whatever reason. I like it. It's fine. If I never played it again I'd probably be OK. I'm probably in the minority though. People seem to really love it.

Re: Wallace - I don't feel he's fallen, he just hasn't grown proportionally to the rest of the industry in the past five years. He has this solid core of groupies that seem to appreciate the quirkiness of his designs and the drama that apparently follows him wherever he goes. And more and more I feel drawn to him as well, quirks and all. His games don't have that feel that they were ran through the polishing and sterilization process many times over, I kind of appreciate that they do come out a little less than perfect...At least that's my take on Moongha and Emerald (I'll admit I haven't played much Wallace).

2011 was really kind of the last year before Kickstarter completely blew up...Alien Frontiers was still seen as kind of a fluke, not a floodgate opener.

Godzilla Kaiju Wars...wow. I had almost erased that from memory. That is one of the worst games released in the 21st century. It's unbelievably bad...and it's a RICHARD BERG game. Who the FUCK gets Richard Berg on board to do a licensed Godzilla game? Oh, Toy Vault I guess. And it's pretty damn clear from playing it that RICHARD BERG had zero interest in the subject matter...and didn't even really understand it to begin with.

Martin Wallace...how timely. I've been digging into A Study in Emerald. How that man gets away with designing such janky, awkward and confusing games is amazing. He is given a leeway that no other designer in the business gets. With that said, I think some of his games are pretty great and he's actually less risk-averse than a lot of other popular designers. He also does the Knizia thing where he iterates ideas. ASiE is the culmination of a couple of ideas from a few crap games finally coming together to make something good.

All that said, I played AFAoS a few times and I never did figure how to do the Halifax Hammer or whatever. I also didn't really like it. Count it among the crap games that eventually wound up making something good with ASiE.

Yomi is still an awesome design...but yeah, Mage Knight was definitely the best and most significant release of 2011. And it is definitely Vlaada's best game, by quite a margin.