Year-End Wrapup

2008 is over, and here's a quick overview of how it went for me:

Total Recorded Plays: 351
Remember that if I play Game + Expansion, I'll record it as one play of the game and .1 plays of the expansion.

Five Most Played Games:
Mr. Jack (22)
No Thanks! (20)
Werewolves of Miller's Hollow (18)
Ca$h 'n Gun$ (16)
Neuroshima Hex (15)

Surprise Of The Year:
For me, it was Mah Jongg. I was given a set as a gift from a friend who lived in China, and made an effort to learn to play. I had expected it to be a rummy-style game, and was pleasantly surprised to be wrong. It had 14 plays in 2008.

Unsurprise Of The Year
Neuroshima Hex. I ordered this one from Portal Publishing before Essen 2007. I did not, unfortunately, get a chance to play it until this year. And I liked it.

News Of The Year
The death of WizKids. After a long series of shelf-eating flops and the loss of a lawsuit to Wizards of the Coast, WizKids was shut down by Topps earlier this year. If you don't already own Oshi or Tsuro, you'd better hurry.

Personal Discovery Of The Year
Online gaming. I'd visited GameTableOnline before, and had not been impressed. When they started putting games on FaceBook, I figured I'd give them another shot - and I'm glad I did. Five years ago, I'd visited BrettspielWelt, and had rapidly become frustrated - it was poorly translated and difficult to navigate. Not anymore!

Significant improvement on both fronts means I'll be playing more and more online to supplement my face-to-face games.

Looking Forward To Next Year
For 2009, I'll be tracking games played online, provided I'm playing human players and not AI players. This means that you can expect to see more Neuroshima Hex plays, as well as a few plays of Uno, Carcassonne, and The Settlers of Catan.

I managed to (mostly) maintain my posting schedule this year. I hope to maintain a similar schedule for 2009.

There are a lot of games coming I look forward to playing this year, and several games I picked up in 2008 that I need to share.

What's Coming?

I never know for sure what's going to make it into print in English and what isn't, but here's what I've seen in English that I feel safe discussing:

Sharur: Evolutions didn't make the cut. I first saw this one more than five years ago and, while I enjoyed it, my group had a lukewarm to cool response. This response appears to have been fairly typical.

Rattlesnake City didn't make the cut (although the English rules are available on the publisher's website). I'm not sure if Asmodee was going to publish in English or just distribute. Either way, the game was ... okay. I'm a bit of a game snob, so take that with whatever amount of salt you feel you need.

Renaissance has disappeared from Asmodee's website. This means that it may not make the cut, which disappoints me. I very much enjoy the game. I may have to dig it out tonight, in fact.

Asmodee US is showing Ca$h'n Gun$: Yakuzas as a new release, so it may be available already. This adds throwing stars and knives to the game, as well as including the card for the shotgun (but not the shotgun itself).

Serge Laget and Bruno Cathala have teamed up once again to bring us Senji. I've seen the translation on this, and it looks like a lot of fun. Asmodee US is claiming a summer release, so I expect this will be a GenCon launch - I have been wrong before, of course. Either way, it's a solid game with multiple paths to victory. There's some preview information up on the Asmodee US website.

Death Wears White (A "How To Host A Mystery" type of game) is reportedly enroute.

Don't give up on Hell Dorado. It's coming. I'm craving this one after having run demos for it at GenCon a few years ago.

Three Hero: Immortal King games are enroute. The Infernal Forge, The Lair of the Lich, and The Den of Dementia (Don't hold me to those translations as the final English titles). All three are non-collectable two-player card games. You can mix and match components - One player has a party of adventurers, the other is the dungeon the adventurers are exploring. The game is a great deal of fun, and I can't wait to play it with my English-speaking friends.

The new edition of Formula De is still in progress. I don't have much to say on this other than that I've liked the tweaks I've seen so far.

Of course, I'm craving Dungeon Twister: Fire and Water. Most people find this to be the most difficult of the expansions released for the game. I understand their argument. I really like the expansion, and will be playing it more soon (I'm hosting a DT tournament on the 27th). I hope to have a "Multiple Use" post up at about the same time people start looking for strategy advice.

There's only one other game I've seen the English for - I don't want to be the one to spill the beans on this one, however, so I'll let it slide for now.

My Gaming Year In Review

This year started for me with all-night gaming. On December 31, 2006 at around 8pm, I got together with some friends and we started to play games.

I made a few comical resolutions for 2007, and one serious one:

I would keep up with my games played. And I've managed (ask my wife how odd I've gotten about keeping track).

400+ plays this year - and I'm mildly surprised at which games I've played the most.

Ca$h'n Gun$ is in first with 28 plays, followed by Mr. Jack with 25 plays.

Dungeon Twister is in third with 23 plays. If you include the expansions, I've played DT 38 times this year.

The surprising thing for me is that I am constantly telling people that I don't play very many two-player games. But Mr. Jack and DT are both right there at the top of the list. I had only two plays with the 3/4 Player expansion for DT, so it was clearly two-player for the other 36 games.

My top five includes three two-player games.

My Top Five Played Games, BTW, are:
1. Ca$h'n Gun$
2. Mr. Jack
3. Dungeon Twister
4. No Thanks!
5. GIPF

These are all games I enjoy - and these five games make up almost a quarter of the games I played this year. If you include the DT Expansions, they're just over a quarter of my games played.

By number of plays, that is - if you compare time spent playing, I suspect you'd see a difference.

A couple of games didn't hit my Top Ten Plays that deserve special call-outs - I'll try to do those later this year.

I'm tweaking my tracking next year, too. I started late this year, after seeing the suggestion online:
If I play an expansion that doesn't stand alone (Vexation, for example), I'll record 1 play for the main game and .1 for the expansion. For games like DT, however, the expansions stand alone and will be posted as a full play of the expansion. This should give me a better idea of what I play next year.

I won't be posting again until late next week at the soonest. Have a safe and fun New Year celebration.

Asmodee

I saw a blurb on Asmodee's Website about Wicked Witches way, and there's a note about Ca$h'n Gun$.

I think that this means I can discuss these games.

It's always a bit nerve-wracking for me, writing about games I've seen and/or worked on before they're out.

It goes a little like this:

I work with Asmodee on their English translations - they send me their first-draft English rules, and ask me to make it more natural. I don't speak (or read) French yet (I'm working on it - very slowly), but I know English.

Usually the rules they send me require a few minor tweaks here and there. Sometimes, the necessary changes are more extensive. Either way, I make any changes I see necessary before sending it back. I can also make suggestions or ask questions for clarification. In exchange, I get copies of the games and occasional editor credit.

I'm totally cool with that. It probably makes me one of the most under-paid editors in history, but I'm not doing this for the money. I do this because I love games.

I've also been to GenCon and Origins twice each (a 20-year dream for me).

Here's my concern: I'm never sure I am allowed to discuss what I've seen.

I didn't sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, but I also don't want to violate their trust. I very much like the Asmodee team, and don't want to jeopardize our friendship. Or our working relationship.

So, until I see word on their site (or a leak on the 'Geek) about a game, I'll tend to stay mum. I may say, "I've seen the English rules for X," or, "I'm in the middle of editing X," but that's about as far as I'll go unless I have specific permission to say otherwise.

There's another reason for this, as well: Not all the games I've seen have made the cut, and I don't want to raise your hopes. Sharur: Evolutions, for example. It's a great game, but it'll appeal to a narrow enough spectrum of gamers that printing it in English would probably lose money.

Apparently, they agree with me: It's a business. It's a business that they love, but it's still a business.