Well, needless to say the hobby has changed tremendously in these last few weeks. Just a couple of weekends ago I was gaming with friends and lightly talking about the virus, and now some weeks later we are mostly confined to our houses and can’t get out and game together. However, there is an alternative, and I have been exploring digital implementations over these past few days and pairing them with virtual meetings to create the next best thing. I will break these down into categories, talk about each, and then present the options. If you are eager to game and connect there’s lot of great options out there!

Asynchronous Play

There are several websites that have asynchronous games where you can take your turn at your convenience. This gives you plenty of time to learn while you play, and fit in turns in spare moments of your day. These CAN work live although they are a little clunky that way, since they are more designed for long play over a series of hours or days. There is a downside of a player taking too long or being in a different time zone, but the upside is that the games are free and work on anything with a web browser. Definitely some great affordable entertainment!

Yucata.de is the oldest of these sites and has over 100 games to try. Easy to learn favorites of mine are Las Vegas, Machi Koro and The Castles of Burgundy (oddly listed in the T section of the site…)  All the games include instructions and/or how to play videos.

Boiteajeux.net is a French site but has an English option in the top right corner. Similar to Yucata but with fewer games, this site has some really great options as well. My personal favorites are Concordia and Deus.

These are definitely some of easiest options although they are not as flashy as dedicated board game apps. You can’t beat the price either!

Simultaneous Play

Simultaneous play is ideal for the virtual meeting format as everyone is playing at the same time. Games are much more seamless this way and don’t take as long as the asynchronous options above.

Boardgamearena.com is the best option for website based simultaneous play. The site has been getting a spike in traffic lately as more players try to log in, and is sometimes limited to just premium members. However, a premium membership for a month costs just 4 dollars, or 24 dollars for a year. For the price of a small card game this site offers over a hundred board games and has some really great features. Some real easy winners are Carcasonne, Kingdomino, Sushi Go, and Can’t Stop.

Virtual Tabletop

When an app or web implementation just doesn’t give the same feel as a board game, some player prefer a virtual tabletop. Here, there is no game logic or rules being implemented automatically like a video game. Instead, there are just virtual pieces that you you can look at and move around, much like a board game in real life. You move a virtual hand and can click different buttons to shuffle or flip cards, move tiles and roll dice. All book keeping and playing by the rules is up to the players themselves, and the honor system definitely applies! These implementations can be a little slow, as your mouse is never going to be as quick as your hands in real life, but that semi-tactile aspect can be more fun and worth that trade off.

Tabletopia.com has more than 800 games to play in this way, and works in any web browser. It is simply staggering to look at all the options here, as Kickstart campaigns often put up a virtual version of a game to convince players to back the project.  Some amazing games are available here including Wingspan, Scythe or Chess and traditional card games for folks who want something familiar.

Tabletop Simulator on Steam does a similar thing and costs $20. Players can load their own virtual tabletop games or pay for curate downloadable games from the publishers themselves. This is definitely the cadillac of virtual table top and even has the option to use VR to truly be “at” the table.

I am sure everyone is reaching saturation on how much they are hearing about COVID-19. And while I plan to blog about anything else, and all the fun of board games in the near future, I do want to make a small post about how to support local board game business during these strange times. Obviously game night is a no go outside of the groups people have chosen to socially isolate with (family, roommates, etc…) But these stores still deserve your business, and can help make what could be cabin fever into something a bit more sane.

Zombie Planet is still stocking and selling great games. They are offering to ship games to your house if you do not or cannot get out to pick up games yourself. 

Bard and Baker Board Game Cafe is offering great food delivery. Seriously, half the reason I love this place is because of their amazing food, so consider some takeout while you work from home near the Troy area.

They are also offering sanitized board game rentals. Board game rentals are a great low cost way to keep the Cabin Fever away. And heck, if you try before you buy, you’ll know exactly what to order from Zombie Planet.

Lastly Bard and Baker are offering an additional $25 gift card when you purchase a $100 dollar gift card, and offer free shipping as well. Those extra $25 equals 5 free game nights when life gets back to normal!

I realize these are strange times, and it might be a bit odd to be concerned about board games when many people are just worried about their next paycheck. But these small businesses do so much for our community that I want to do anything I can to support them. Please let me know if there are any other local board game businesses that have special programs and I will be sure to add them here!

Behold, my latest acquisition: Glen More II: Chronicles. A large box of cardboard treasures, and a re-implementation of an old favorite. And yet, despite the upgrade to a great game, this box has got me more annoyed than anything. For one thing, it doesn’t fit in a standard Ikea Kallax cube. It has to lay on its side to fit into what has become the defacto board game storage unit. Considering there is nothing inside the box that makes it have to be this tall, like some special large board etc this seems like an oversight or at least an odd choice. It also means it does not fit nicely with any of the other standard box sizes of board games in general.

Why all this whining about a box? Well, first, some context. Take a look at the original Glen More box. Isn’t it adorable? It’s hard to believe so much game used to come in such a little box. Now, granted, the components are… pretty meh. Alea, the publisher of the original game has been trying to revamp their image lately, with new releases of old classics that are upgraded to a bit more modern components. But for most of the storied history of the brand, you were there for the game first, and the pieces were… functional at best. In the 2010s and before, this worked. In the era of kickstarter, miniatures, metal components and, well, cardboard excess, this wouldn’t fly anymore. Even at the time, the tiles were flimsy, and there didn’t seem to be quite enough of the coins or victory point pieces to go around without making change all the time as points increased. I wished that such a great game got a little bit nicer treatment, like Days of Wonder who were the model of good components at the time.

Fast forward to the 2019  Glen More II Kickstarter campaign ,and I would say things went a little far in the other direction. While the kickstarter is not gaudy or overproduced, the box size still has me scratching my head. All of a sudden, this doesn’t fit in a backpack. All of a sudden I have to decide if I am bringing this one game or  2-3 medium games. It seems as though board game publishers in general have decided that their market demographic will just buy more shelves to make room for larger and larger games?

This is not the only case of the box size conundrum, other games have done this too. Endeavor came back into print with a new kickstarter edition, but was double the size of the original. Suburbia release a beautiful deluxe edition with an exclusive expansion but the box is the size of a small suitcase. At some point unless you are expanding your shelving solution you may be making the choice to keep one game vs two or three. And at that point the games value and fun has to really be worth it to justify the space. In the three cases above, all are expanded or collectors edition releases, so clearly appealing to an existing audience of fans, or folks who have heard buzz build up about the game over several years. Even more bold are the kickstarters for brand new unproven games that take up a monumental amount of shelf space. 

Perhaps this is just me shouting in a vacuum. Long ago I set down my own limits based on limited shelf space. This helps in several ways to stem the desire to accumulate  more and more games. But my goal is to have a well played, well kept library of games. And that’s just it. It is a library, intended for frequent use (in an ideal world) vs a collection, or a museum. I could likely own many more games if I had the shelves and the money to commit to them, and neither of those things are impossible to solve. But the time to dedicate to a collection twice as large is a whole different factor, let alone trying to keep even a fraction of those rules in my head. 

One might ask, why is Glen More II: Chronicles three times the size, did they make the pieces three times as big. Is there three times as much game here? Well, the pieces are indeed a bit larger, the tiles take up more real estate than the original and there’s a nice insert to keep it all organized. But most of what takes up space in this box are the Chronicles from the title. These are 9 miniature expansions, meant to give variety to the game. They are organized very nicely but also take up half of the box. I am all for variety and in a way this means if you love the game you already have modular expansions built it. No need to grab that expansion that used to come out a year or two later and would require some tetrising to fit in the box. But even then, a game and it’s expansion box rarely take up this much space.

I admit that I am likely old man board games yelling at kids to get off his lawn at this point, but this is a trend that I am not behind. I am just concerned that there is an ever accelerating components arms race that seems to be distracting from what actually matters; the game itself. That’s not to say that all publishers are guilty of this. Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right and its expansions have lovely art and custom screen printer wooden pieces. But it all fits in a reasonably sized box. The box for their upcoming game Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile also seems to fit regular dimensions. They showed an increasingly rare kind of restraint in just selling one version of the game and its components. No add-on expansions, no major kickstarter exclusives. Similarly Garphill Games keeps knocking it out of the park with their unique takes on worker placement games with the Raiders of the North Sea series and West Kingdom series. All of these are incredibly economical in terms of the depth of the game vs the shelf space it takes up.

The proof will be how Glen More II Chronicles is on the table. And that is a pending judgement. I must admit, it looks beautiful. So here is hoping that it is three times the game of its predecessor. I will report back what I find out!

Today marks the beginning of the dog days of summer, but it is also the start of the U.S’s biggest board game convention, Gen Con. While lots of gaming happens at Gen Con each year, I am personally excited because a lot of publishers release new games at the convention. While I am still trying to keep my collection lean and trim, here are a few games coming out that caught my eye.

Point Salad. This an inside joke in the board game hobby but it has also turned into an intriguing game! Sometimes people describe games where you get a few points here and there for doing lots of different things as “point salads.” The designers of Point Salad from AEG took this literally and made a game about scoring vegetables in lots of different ways. Each card can be a scoring condition OR a vegetable, and players draft cards to create a salad that will score well for them. The tongue and cheek nature of the name and design definitely earns some points as well, and being able to play with up to six players is always a bonus when a larger group wants to all play the same game.

Parks. After the hit of Wingspan I think it is great that more games are expanding to nature themes. Plenty of board games are also avid hikers and this game aims to capture that theme with absolutely gob smacking art of the cards representing the National Parks. There does seems to be some meat on the bones here as well with a central “trail” of cards that you are on which changes each season, and resource management to contend with. The game reminds me of Tokaido, a lighter game about traveling and seeing Japan that also has amazing art. I will definitely be keeping an eye on this one, and it might be a great game to introduce hikers to the hobby of board games; for those rainy days when hiking is not an option!

Las Vegas Royale takes a game I have loved for a long time and gives it a new coat of paint. The original Las Vegas was a perfect family friendly dice game. Each turn players roll dice and have to pick all the dice of one number to place on a corresponding numbered casino. Whoever has the most dice at a casino gets the largest payout of money with second place getting a smaller pot. The genius of the game however is how it handles ties. Players with the same number of dice at any casino BOTH lose and the player with the next most dice wins the pot. It’s the perfect twist that gives the game an extra playful edge as players try to win as many casinos as they can while also not spreading themselves too thin and ending up tied and with nothing. The new edition not only upgrades the components of the original but adds in some new expansion rules and special powers that can be assigned to some of the casinos. Another case of a good game becoming great with a little bit more TLC.

Crown of Emara is finally hitting the U.S. This game had a lot of buzz at the Essen board game fair in Germany but has taken some time to make the jump across the pond. The theme is nothing terribly exciting, something about gathering resources to become King in Medieval Europe. However, I have a soft spot in my heart for games that play in a very interesting way despite the theme. The mechanisms that make this game tick are really fascinating. Each round players select a card from a hand of three, and this card give them a resource as well as triggering another piece to move around in a circular action selection system.  So already there’s kind of a chain reaction effect for each move a player takes, a sort of Rube Goldberg machine. But to add another wrinkle to this there are two action selection circles players can choose from. For a certain kind of gamer, this puzzle of building perfect chain reactions to score points is pure joy. For others, and folks not in the hobby, this can essentially sound like doing homework for fun. Where I fall sometimes depends on what time of the night the game comes out, but I will admit I can definitely enjoy these so called “brain burners” and I am excited for this one to hit the states.

Rail Pass is a game that sounds ridiculously silly, and that has me excited.  It’s nice to take a break from the serious brain burners I mention above for a laugh with friends. The game is a dexterity game about delivering goods to the other players stations using trains. So far, so normal. Except that instead of doing this on an abstract board, you are doing this quite literally by handing off little metal trains to the other players. Each train has “conductor” pegs that drive them and cubes loaded onto the cars that players are penalized for dropping. Before delivering a train you are required to say “Toot toot” and players must have space in their train yard as well as their hands to receive your delivery. There are even landscape features like tunnels and bridges to contend with. If it sounds ridiculous that’s because it is, but there is a real puzzle here as well as different goods need to go to different cities and the players manual dexterity is a real factor in having any success. Games like these remind me of a true toy and play aspect of the board game hobby.

One of these days I will make it out to Gen Con, but for now I am excited for the crop of new games on the horizon. What upcoming games do you have your eye on? Let me know in the comments below.

Occasionally a friend of mine will look at the spine of a board game in my collection and remark “Huh, 1-5 players. You can play this alone.” Indeed, solo board gaming is a growing trend, and more and more hobby games each year have the quizzical player count listed on the side of the box. My initial reaction when I started seeing this was to wonder why anyone would want to play a board game alone. I would laugh at the idea and considered it kind of lame, antisocial and, well, just a bit weird. There were plenty of hobbies you could do by yourself, so why would you seek out what always seemed like a social activity when you were alone.

I would occasionally bump through the rules of a game by myself, move the pieces and kind of play a couple of turns out. This was the extent of my solo gaming for the most part. But as it becomes more and more popular I have looked into it more to try to understand the appeal, and I think I am beginning to get it.

Many modern games are a sort of mental puzzle. They can have a lot of moving parts, but each turn players try to make the best move they can for how they are solving the puzzle of the game. In many cases, these puzzles are rather solitaire even when it is a multiplayer game. In other words, in a game of Wingspan which I talked about in my anticipated games list, each player is building their own field of different birds to accomplish their own strategy. These is some intersection here, maybe my neighbor takes a bird card I wanted, or my vulture card triggers when someone else’s bird hunts… but the analogy here is that we are mostly on our own island, with an occasional ferry back and forth.

Wingspan is also one of these recent games with a solo mode. In fact the solo mode is designed by a different company from the main publisher, Automata Factory who consults with Stonemaier specifically to add these modes to their games. Essentially what they did here is to capture a little bit of that tension from other players, to form an AI sort of opponent that would create interesting wrinkles to the somewhat solitary puzzle the players usually deal with. Most importantly, solo modes in games give the players a score or win condition target that they can measure against. There needs to be some tension to make the puzzle still worth solving. In a game like this where the interaction between the players is not the focus of the game, it does not take a whole lot of modification to recreate this aspect of a multiplayer game.

Most importantly, the puzzle has to be interesting to solve. No one would want to play monopoly by themselves, because a lot of that game relies on the luck of dice rolls vs player decisions, and the fun of the game often comes from watching a friend land on your row of hotels and go broke. So here there is little puzzle and too much player interaction to make it a viable solo experience.

Ok, so there’s a reason people may play these. If the puzzle is challenging, then the game itself creates the opposition that usually exists in the form of other players foiling your plans, or just plain out thinking you. But why would you choose this option over another solo activity like a good Netflix show, or a book. Would you ever choose it over a game with other people?

To the first question, I would say that solo board games present a very different experience vs media like a book or a movie. I have binged Netflix and torn through many novels, but those are enjoyable for being compelling narratives. Solo board games can ask you to stretch your mind in a different way than a passive narrative does. It is just you, the rules, and the luck of the game. Puzzle solving is a cathartic activity, and gives people something they can act on, and complete. Something that they can succeed at. It is a worthwhile puzzle that doesn’t have to do with the various conundrums many of us deal with in daily life, a puzzle that is self contained and does not have the stakes of a work decisions, or the banality of the choice of what to have for dinner. This can be a truly wonderful thing.

There is of course another reason these modes in games are becoming more popular much less tied to the puzzle itself, and that is the accessibility of a solo mode in a board game. People are often excited when they see a new game on Kickstarter, they love the theme, or mechanics or art and they back that game. But what if they don’t have a regular game group that they play with? Or what if the group doesn’t like that particular theme… or they themselves just don’t have the time to meet up with a group. Here the solo mode provides an avenue. A way to own a game, to make sure you can find joy in it, regardless of the circumstances. And so, these Kickstarter games usually try to include such a mode, to increase the reach of the game’s appeal. It is one more way to find a larger audience.

While it is not a way I usually play games, I do not scoff at that player count of one that is emblazoned on so many boxes these days. If a person wants to explore a game and revel in the puzzle that it provides, then this is a great thing that is good for the hobby.

Just a short ramble today, but something that I have been hinting at over my last few posts. As much as I love the hobby, and how much it has grown, I do worry about it reaching an over-saturation point. The number of games released each year has exploded exponentially over the last decade or so, thanks in part to Kickstarter, which makes it so companies can spring out of the woodwork and release a game, and also just from the growth of how many people game in general as the hobby becomes more mainstream. But are there enough gamers out there for all of these new releases to find an audience?

The tricky thing here is that games are pretty permanent. They are not transient, consumable entertainment, meant to be played once (except for in the case of Legacy games, which I’ve talked about before). Instead, once you have a game that you and your group loves, that is likely the only game you will want to play for a while. Anything new would have to be better than the games you already love. For my particular group, Terraforming Mars became THE game of the group. For a year or more, it was pretty much always on the table. In a way, this was a great thing. The group explored all aspects of the game, and tried many different strategies. Much like going on vacation to the same favorite destination, the game became familiar to everyone in the group.

But when you are playing one game all the time, in this case a pretty long one, averaging roughly two hours each play, how much time is there for new games? This is not to say that everyone should have a one game collection or anything. Certainly there are different games for all occasions, moods and groups of people. But at some point, most people reach a point where they have a reasonably wide array of games that they like, and something has to be pretty special to get on their shelves. This point is different for different people, and most folks will reach this point around 10-20 games. People who are a bit more crazy like me reach it somewhere around 120… and I could likely cut half of that and still be more than satisfied with my collection. I have written in the past about making room on my shelves, and this is a regular effort of mine. Combine that with the fact that there more and more long term campaign games that are a commitment as well and often become the exclusive game of a group for a while, and you can see how there’s hardly any room for newer games to take root.

The wealth of choices can be overwhelming, but is ultimately a good thing for consumers. No matter what your preference is, in terms of theme, mechanics, art, anything, there is probably a game out there for you, with hundreds releasing each year. I do wonder if the production side of the hobby is heading for a crash however, all this choice means even some great games are just not going to be successful for publishers, and one too many misses seems like it would make the business side of things precarious to say the last. However, in the meantime, my belated new year’s resolution is to play more of the games I already love, and ideally add less than five games to my collection this year. In addition, I will be making room for each new game, with a strict one in one out policy. Here’s to playing the cream of the crop, it’s a wonderful time to be a gamer!

As the New Year is upon as, and I have already looked back at 2018, why not look forward, to 2019? There are so many games each year, it’s hard to keep up. In fact, while I am anticipating new games in 2019, I am mostly focusing on what I already have. This makes for a bizarre “Most Anticipated Games” list, so let me explain.

Unlike narrative things that are often the subjects of these lists, games are a bit more perennial. A great game continues to be great, and some games that I have played over a hundred times are still intriguing when they hit the table. A movie, Netflix show, book and in some cases even a  video game is more often a one and done experience. So there is more anticipation for the new. There is also the factor that other media does not have a learning curve. As I am in the hobby longer and longer, my patience for teaching and for learning becomes less. When everything was new to me, each new game might present a whole new style of play I had never seen before. But as the years and the games pass by, that aha moment is much more rare. More and more often these days games feel like remixes or new takes on something I already know. I realize that to some extent this sounds incredibly jaded, and that’s not my intent. I am still open to new games, and still find myself catching the hype wave that comes with these new releases. But as I look at my shelves, my resolution this year is simply to play more games that I already know I love.

This is evidenced by my recent purchases as well. More than half of the games I bought or backed on Kickstarter in 2018 were games my friends had that I wanted to have in my collection, or new editions of games I already know I love. While the thrill of discovering a brand new games that could be a favorite is great, playing a game you know you love is a bit less of a gamble. I am sure I will write about plenty of new games in 2019, and I want to stay on top of where the hobby is heading in general. But before I talk about what I am excited about, a toast to the games that will make up the vast majority of what I play this year, the familiar favorites.

Wingspan: Sometimes a game is just too pretty to ignore. That is definitely the case with Wingspan. From the creators of Scythe StoneMeir games, Wingspan catches the eye immediately with beautiful art and design including over 100 unique bird cards. The gameplay looks to be an interesting sort of tableau builder with cards triggering actions that get better the more focused you are in that particular action. This in addition a birdhouse dice tower is enough to gain my attention. The question is, does it do anything new? I am keeping any eye on this one, and it’s coming soon having just started pre-orders this week.

Bios Origins Second Edition: Anyone who follows the blog knows that I am a Phil Eklund fanatic. After tackling the origin of life in the primordial soup, evolution, and colonizing the solar system Eklund is revisiting an earlier game about the beginning of culture. Bios Origins is not your average civilization style game and while it goes from the beginning of human history to modern times it focuses on the development of human brain and ideas. And in a delightful twist you can play a series of three games playing Bios Genesis, Bios Megafauna and Bios Origins to track one species all the way from primordial ooze to a space-faring civilization. That sounds like one heck of a Saturday afternoon! I am sure this game will be brimming with science and can’t wait to dig in.

Crusader Kings: The more I play board games, the more I am attracted back to games with a sort of narrative to how they play. If I can’t recall much from a game other than who won or what strategy was used, that’s not necessarily a success for me, especially for any game lasting longer than an hour. There are 100s of games about Medieval Europe and the crusades, but Crusader Kings borrows from the popular PC game to make it more about the traits and personalities of the royal family than about the battles and economy that most similar games focus on. Crusader Kings is all about politics and the stories that emerge from traits and event cards, and I can’t wait to explore it later this year.

Black Angel: This one came out of nowhere for me. Science fiction space games are a dime a dozen in the hobby, but this one grabbed my attention because coming from the trio of designers who created Troyes back in 2010, and uses a similar dice selection method that made that game one of my favorites. Granted, theme wise this couldn’t be more different. While Troyes was about the politics of a medieval French city, Black Angel is about the AI on a generation ship trying to discover a new earth for humanity. This one is definitely on my watch list and it doesn’t hurt that it looks fantastic from the early renders.

Glen More II: Chronicles: Another sequel/reprint of a favorite of mine. Glen More is a delightful tile playing game that is all about whisky and turn order, two of my favorite things. Players build their own villages and have to line up the river and road tiles. Each player selects tiles from a central tile board, and can pick any tile. The furthest player back is the next to take a turn, so players can select multiple tiles in a row if they hang back behind the crowd, but jumpign ahead for a key tile is often worth it. The new version, due on kickstarter later this year adds modular expansions that can spice up the base game, and also includes a much needed bump in component quality and art. I still wish they had called the sequel Glen Most, missed opportunity for the perfect pun.

Here’s to a great year of new games as well as exploring the classics. Happy New Year!