2011 - A Retrospective

I actually enjoyed Castles of Burgundy the two times I played it.

I got lucky and got into Yomi after the one time it was ever patched, four years after its initial release. I definitely would have a dreadful case of release fatigue if I had bought V1 and then paid $10 to patch my 10 V1 characters to V2!

VonTush wrote:

I don't think any of us could have predicted just how big this idea would eventually become in 2015.

Reading this made me remember a conversation...Hell coming up on two years ago at this point:
fortressat.com/forum/19-trash-culture-ca...type?start=30#171214

Yeah...it looks like Pandemic: Legacy may have been that "defining moment" I was looking for.

Sevej wrote: I actually enjoyed Castles of Burgundy the two times I played it.

yeah we liked it the first half dozen or so times, but you soon start to see the repetitiveness and lack of soul in whats going on, as in most of Felds games

I Think thats why he is so popular, first of all this style of game just taps into the gamer "oo, thats clever and a bit fun" figuring/puzzling stuff out gene, and most of the people who are into this kind of stuff will never play it more than a handful of times to question it
I'm amazed by people who play this, say 10 times and not start to see and feel the lack of any sense of feeling that would hold long term interest, but then again I used to feel like that about people who smoked Marlboro Lights and Silk Cut for decades, I mean chain smoke the fuckers, how can you chain smoke 40+ a day but still be stuck puffing on stuff thats got about 1 nanogram of anything in it.

Always fun to read your work, Mike. Good stuff.

I'm still in the camp that Prophecy is a better game than Mage Knight, but it's probably the world's smallest camp. I tried to hard to play MK, but the barriers to entry were just too much for me.

Eclipse and Mage Knight were both great. I haven't played either in a while, but I think both hold up. I think A Few Acres of Snow was more interesting than good, but I generally like Wallace's designs. A Study in Emerald (1st Ed.) is definitely a top ten game for me. It's telling that even a reprint is incapable of capturing what that game does so well

Thanks Pete! I happen to really like Prophecy as well. Problem is that nobody else does lol. I would love to see Vlaada go back and make a 2.0 of that game with new artwork and better support. That ain't gonna happen though.

Jeff - I'm really glad someone decided to talk about Blood Bowl TM. Man that game is SO GOOD. It's funny because as much as I love it I've never purchased any of the expansions either. There was quite a bit of content in the base game though. Still I keep telling myself that I'm gonna pick them up for more teams. I'm actually really surprised that FFG has kept this game in print. I can't imagine that it does all that well for them.

Von Tush - can we start calling you "The Prophet" Von Tush?

More on Wallace - As I said in the article I'm still intrigued by the guys designs. I'm really interested in that space game Onward to Venus. I also want to try out A Study in Emerald at some point. Apparently, he is working on a zombie game for Space Cowboys/Asmodee. Discworld: Ankh-Morpork was another Wallace game from 2011. That one I really enjoyed.

Also, I agree with Von Tush and Barnes...Wallace certainly marches to the beat of a entirely different and unique drum. He doesn't seem interested in conforming or making his stuff refined. I agree that is what makes him interesting and still worth keeping tabs on as a designer.