18(-ish) Games We Played in 2018
By: Dan Brown
Tags: 2018, Gaming, Year In Review, Board Games

This was a year when it was both hard to justify hobbies and essential to cling to them. Every day, the news brought word of some American atrocity, perpetrated by our government or by those who felt empowered by its actions.

We voted, we marched, we donated, we made our voices heard. But to resist, and to persist, we need to take care of ourselves. Not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for the opportunities my family and I have to take a moment for ourselves in my favorite hobby.

I hope you got to enjoy a game or two. Perhaps next year, we’ll get to play one together.

For now, please enjoy our reviews, including commentary from HB (age 12) and EE (age 7).

Great Western Trail

This year I thought a lot about Westerns, but that’s a tale for another blog. And so I was attracted to Western-themed games. Great Western Trail has elements of worker placement and deck-building, and is a really thinky Euro-style game, where you accumulate points over the course of several turns. You play a cattle wrangler, and you need to get your flock? pack? (I don’t know anything about cows) to Kansas City and aboard the train. The board starts with a limited number of stops along the trail, but you can build more stops that let you take different actions, including hiring workers, trading with Indians, dealing with natural obstacles, and of course buying more cows. It offers multiple strategies for earning points.

EE: First time meh. Second time awesome.

HB: No comment. [He only played half a game.]

Western Legends

Continuing the Western theme… This is a “sandbox” game, which means there is not a prescribed path to follow. There are many ways to earn points, and you can choose whether you’re going to be lawful or lawless. The history of the Old West is integrated into the game: Players assume the role of an actual historical figure and while the majority are white men, the set includes Bass Reeves (black US Marshall), Bloody Knife (Sioux Scout), and several women including Mary Fields (black postal carrier), and Annie Oakley. As players complete goals they read out actual events from the time period. That said, like most Western-themed games, this glosses over the problematic aspects of this period in American History.

EE: It was not the best game I’ve ever done. I didn’t like the gambling. The gambling wasn’t good. It was very competitive. Very competitive.

HB: This is a great board game. I like the fact that it’s sort of open-ended.

Five-Minute Dungeon

You have a hand of cards with different symbols. As you turn over “doors” in the dungeon, you and your companions must match the symbols. Once you do, turn over the next door until you get to the boss battle. The trick? Get it all done in 5 minutes. This fast-playing co-op was a hit with my nephew, and comes out pretty regularly at home for a good filler.

EE: This game is really fun, quick, and it was a good created game. How the people created it.

Queen Domino

Build landscapes with dominos you bid on. Some dominos give you towers.

EE: Loved it, and it’s good to get crowns because I won that way. [Confirmed: EE won this game.]

HB: This tile-laying game is a nice spin on standard dominoes. And the added elements such as knights make this game really fun.

Civilization: A New Dawn

Like all the entries in the Civilization series, you fight for territory which gives you resources. Resources let you improve your civilization’s technology, which in turn lets you wage war against the other civilizations. I really liked the action mechanic, a set of five cards arranged in a row. Choose that action, and the card goes back to the beginning of the row, the other cards sliding to the right. The card’s position in the row enabled different levels of the ability. I admit I was not a great sport when the 7yo attacked me with nuclear weapons.

EE: I don’t remember this game. I forgot it.

HB: I really liked this engine-building game.

Scythe: Rise of Fenris

The third and final expansion to Scythe introduces multiple upgrades and enhancements in the form of a campaign. With each episode of the campaign, you unlock new elements, like special factions, infrastructure modifications, and mech modifications. As with everything from Stonemeier games, the components are high quality and the game play immersive.

EE: Love this and the campaign is awesome. We also got the encounters expansion, which is my favorite. You can do stuff that can totally change the game, twist the game around.

HB: This new expansion for Scythe adds many new elements. It’s not just one expansion, such as a cooperative mode. The campaign is really well though-out and fun.

Charterstone

Speaking of Stonemeier, they entered the fray of “legacy” style games. In this worker placement game, each player controls a different charter within a town. Placing workers gives you resources, which lets you build new buildings. In legacy games, the board and components change each session, with new spaces, new cards, and new rules. As your charter grows, you get new kinds of workers, assume new personas, and introduce new items into the market. The kids and I really enjoyed the arc of this game, and it felt like every session let us discover something new.

EE: Ah Charterstone! Really good game. I like it because it’s a fun, not-too-competitive game.

HB: This is the first legacy game that I’ve played, and it’s a great introductory legacy game.

Feast for Odin

This massive worker-placement game is from Uwe Rosenberg, the mastermind behind Agricola. Send your vikings to do various chores like trading, hunting, or exploring in boats. As you accumulate wealth, you fill in a grid, which ultimately determines your final score. I’d like to play this again before rendering final judgement, but I find Agricola more accessible and easier to ramp up new players.

EE: Oh really fun! Food tokens are great.

HB: Oh gosh. I like the way the different goods in this game allow you to minimize the points you lose at the end.

Unearth

In this lightweight strategy game, you roll dice which represent people delving into ruins, represented by cards. Match the total number on the card, and you claim the ruin for yourself. Delvers also let you collect stones, which when arranged in predetermined patterns, offer another way to get points. There’s good balance between randomness (rolling the dice) and player choice (where to assign the dice) and the illustrations are beautiful.

EE: I like it. It’s good to get good cards that give you a lot of points. Or cards that are related to your achievement.

HB: I kind of like the dice, how there are two strategies. There are dice and the discovery cards. I really like the art in this game.

Caverna: Cave vs. Cave

One trend from the last couple years is to release two-player versions of popular larger games. The second Uwe Rosenberg game on this list, Cave vs. Cave is the two-player version of Caverna, a game where you play a dwarven farmer building a community in a cave. (The premises in Uwe’s games are a little… hmmm.) Pick an action to excavate or generate resources or build a room in the cave. A new action opens up each turn. The rooms you build generate points. Because of the variety of rooms, the game is highly re-playable.

EE: Fun, two-player game. I like the ending gold points.

HB: This is a cute little game for two players. My brother and I have played it a lot when we want a quick board game to play.

Legacy of Dragonholt

Back in my day, Choose Your Own Adventure books were a slim 120 pages. Not so today. To call Legacy of Dragonholt a choose-your-own-adventure is like calling It’s A Wonderful Life a Christmas movie. That may be what it is, but it’s so much more. This feels like a full-blown tabletop role-playing game, like Dungeons and Dragons. You read passages from a book, then choose how you and your teammates act. Some actions are off limits if you don’t have the right skills. Others get triggered automatically if you’ve performed other actions, or if some time has passed. Yes, you keep track of key story points and time, too. The bookkeeping is straightforward, and the story is compelling. The game comes with a number of props that include clues and hidden messages. The kids and I loved playing this over our summer vacation.

EE: Oh! Like this game it’s a good role-playing game. Because you don’t need a DM. I played a cat, I think.

HB: This is an interesting game. Your equipment doesn’t really matter. It’s more of a story-telling game than a role-playing game. The story paths really vary and they’ve been put together very well.

Azul

This game is so beautiful it’s no wonder it’s all over Instagram. Grab some tiles and line them up on your board to complete the pattern. You earn points for placing tiles adjacent to each other, and then get bonus points for completing rows or columns, or getting all five of the same color. Azul is easy to learn and teach, and yet requires some pretty subtle strategy. This is definitely one of my favorite games of the year.

EE: I like this game because the art in this game is fantastic. And because you have your own point scorer.

HB: I like the way you have to think strategically about which tiles to pick, whether you’re going to sacrifice points.

Castles of Burgundy: Roll & Write Edition

Another trend: transforming games into “roll and write” versions. Roll and write games involve rolling a bunch of dice, then marking up a sheet based on what you rolled. Think Yahtzee but far more nuanced. Castles of Burgundy is a popular board game by Stefan Feld, who makes meaty Euro-style games. In this roll-and-write version, two dice give you colors (representing a regions) and two dice give you numbers. Rules govern which regions you can mark, and filling a region generates resources, which you can use to manipulate the dice. Completing regions gives you points, which you accumulate over three rounds. There isn’t any player interaction in this game, but it’s a perfect light travel game.

EE: I like this game because you can play it any where, even in the car. And it’s so little that you can bring it any where.

HB: I like this game because it’s similar to its predecessor, but it’s so different because you use dice and your board is a piece of paper.

Kokoro

Another “roll and write” game, but instead of rolling dice you draw cards. The cards tell you what kind of path you can draw in your garden. Connect the right pavilions and you gain points, though you must score more points than you did in the round before or your points count for nothing.

EE: I like the mermaid. I mean the princess. I like the princess.

HB: This one’s good. It uses a different medium than other games.

Magic Maze

In Magic Maze there are four characters you’re helping to escape from a shopping mall. Each player has a different responsibility in moving the characters around the maze. For example, one player can move the characters north/south and another can move them east/west and another can move them up and down escalators. You have to work together to help all the characters escape, all within a time limit, and without talking to each other. The maze grows randomly, as one player is responsible for “exploring.” That is, adding a new tile when a character reaches the edge of the board. With 24 different tiles and 17 scenarios, the game is different every time you play.

EE: Oh yea, that one. I like this game because it’s so short and you can’t talk.

HB: I like it because the different classes have different powers, but you also get powers based on different tiles.

Fox in the Forest

Fox in the Forest is a trick-taking card game for two players. Odd-numbered cards have a unique ability like changing how tricks are won. It plays fast and is easy to learn.

EE: I beat grandma. This game is fun because there are tricks in this game and each trick gives you a certain amount of points. Which is very good. If you win too many tricks, you have less points.

HB: I barely played this one.

Marrying Mr. Darcy

Living with a Jane Austen fan, I’m always on the look out for games about our favorite Regency era characters. Marrying Mr. Darcy embodies Austen’s stories perfectly, as you attempt to cultivate positive attributes to attract the best suitors. You win if you marry well. The game has very little strategy and some random elements, which means it’s only enjoyable if you’re familiar with the stories and the characters.

Special guest quote from Sarah (my wife)…

SH: It definitely invokes the Jane Austen feel. It depends on who you’re playing with. If they’re too competitive, it’s not as fun.

Dungeons & Dragons

Though we’ve been playing role-playing games for years, this is the first year we got into D&D in earnest. We played a few sessions as a family. Our friends James and Becky took me and HB to a local game store for a session with some gamers from the community. HB was the only kid at the table, and he held his own! And HB started a regular group of his own with six other 12–13 year-olds. There isn’t anything to say about this game that hasn’t already been said. And yet, I was happy to try D&D at a community event, playing with people I’d never met. I was happy to introduce Sarah and my mother-in-law to the game. And I was especially happy to see my kid design his own adventure, run a table, and deal with the challenges of being a DM.

EE: This game is fun because it’s not like Dungeon World where you roll 2d6. Instead you roll a d20.

HB: Some people in the family may not appreciate the world’s first role-playing game — ahem Daddy — I’ve been playing it with many different people. And I feel like once you get a hang of the rules, I like the mechanics this has which some other role-playing games don’t. I especially like the level of detail in the characters.

Dusk City Outlaws

Role-playing games are entering a golden era, where there are games of all shapes and sizes now, to suit various themes, play styles, and settings. Dusk City Outlaws was designed to play like an RPG but have the set-up of a regular board game. I tried it with my kids RPG group as a break between campaigns. Though I liked the concept and the theme (heists in a fantasy world) and appreciate the depth of the setting, I was disappointed by the instructions.

HB: Oh that was fun. I like the character creation in this, which involved picking a family and a career. And the world was really planned out very well.

EE: I agree with Harry.

Coriolis

Speaking of role-playing games, my kids group (consisting of five 12-year-olds, my 7-year-old, and another dad) started playing Coriolis, having wrapped up our Dungeon World campaign. I first learned about Coriolis from Daniel Kwan on the podcast Back Story, hosted by Alex Roberts. The setting is described as “1001 Arabian Nights” in space. Our first couple sessions have been rewarding, and I look forward to continuing our adventures.

EE: I like that you have a spaceship and there are many sub-classes.

HB: Similar to Dusk City Outlaws, the world in this is really planned out. It’s also a nuance setting… That’s not what I mean. It’s a new system, which I find very satisfying. I like rolling a large pool of dice.

Lonesome World

Finally, 2018 was also momentous because I publicly released a game I designed, a role-playing game called Lonesome World. It’s a two-player game, for one game-runner and one player, set in late 19th century America. I released it over the summer and have been running play tests with family, friends, and others for the last several months. I’m proud of where it’s going, though it far from done. (If you’re interested in trying it out, let me know!)

HB: I really appreciate that my dad has been considering how to make this game not racist, and been reading about cultures from the West.