Spiel: Boardgaming in the UK

In December, I managed 28 plays of 25 different titles, ten of which were new to me. The new titles were Blockers: The Card Game, CO2, Le Havre: The Inland Port, The Hobbit: The Card Game, Indigo, P.I, Palaces of Carrara, Pluckin Pairs, Roll to the South Pole and Seven Dragons.

I added seven games to the collection, five of which were Christmas presents, and my unplayed games list is only down to 23. My vote for Game of the Month for December is the excellent Palaces of Carrara by Kramer & Kiesling, an elegant design and a very easy choice for my Six Picks list of the best games of 2012.

2012 saw me play 239 games of 154 different titles (interestingly, just two fewer than the 156 different titles played in 2011 and three fewer than the 157 played in both 2010 and 2009). I find it pretty remarkable how close these numbers are – is my brain only capable of absorbing around 150 rulesets over the course of a year? The total plays at 239 is up quite a bit compared with 200 in 2011, 208 in 2010 and 229 in 2009). My full list of games played is here.

My most played game was Vegas which saw 7 plays. This is a very enjoyable dice game with lots of ooh and ahh moments and it plays very quickly so is ideal for an end of evening filler. Friday and Timeline: Inventions both racked up six plays each but last year’s most played game, Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, didn’t get a single play in 2012.

Only three other games reached 5 plays and, of the 154 titles, 111 of them were played just once. My unplayed game list started 2012 at 16, dropped all the way to 4 or 5 but is now sitting at 23.

2012 seemed to produce several good games but not a single stand out game. My six picks for the year were Africana, Lords of Waterdeep, Love Letter, Palaces of Carrara, Santiago de Cuba and Vegas. As with last year, I’ve also done a six picks of solo and two-player games featuring Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, City Square Off, Equilibrion, Friday, Morels and Targi (with Le Havre: The Inland Port just a shade behind). All in all, a pretty good year. Let’s hope 2013 is just as good.

Well, not the identity of my Secret Santa – that is still very much a secret and I have to thank his alter-ego, Sven, for his playful taunts. However, Christmas day has now come and gone and I eagerly tore open the wrapping paper of my three parcels to reveal the following great choices of game.

Thanks ever so much, Secret Santa. I shall really enjoy playing these in the near future.

Chris and I tried Uwe Rosenberg’s new two-player Le Havre game. The Inland Port combines the purchasing and activating buildings elements of Le Havre with the timing wheel of Ora & Labora and it works very well. It’s a very thinky and dry game and I reckon Guy would enjoy it very much. Our game took us just over an hour and I would expect the time to come down with familiarity but I’m not sure we’d ever get it down to the claimed thirty minutes. Certainly a lot more time to play than Agricola: All Creatures Big & Small. A very good game that has just edged out Equilibrion on my Six Picks for Solo / Two-player games of 2012.

We had a do at our house yesterday with Jan’s sister and family and party games were requested and dutifully delivered by yours truly. We managed to fit in Telestrations, Timeline: Inventions, Pluckin’ Pairs, Say Anything, Tumblin’ Dice, Cash ‘n’ Guns and Riff Raff.

It was the first time I’d tried Pluckin’ Pairs and it worked pretty well. Eleven picture cards are laid out and then everyone has 90 seconds to write down five pairs with one picture left over. You then compare answers and you score a point for every player who gave the same pair as you unless everyone chose that same pair. Very simple with some interesting conversations about why people had chosen the pairs they had.

It’s getting towards the end of the year and my thoughts are turning to my annual six picks for the best games of 2012. It will be interesting to see how this year’s choices compare with previous years as I sense my most enjoyable games have been even more at the lighter end of the scale than usual (accepting that I have always had a preference for tight rules and elegant mechanisms). However, there are one or two more substantial games that have impressed me – can you work out what they are?

Hopefully, some of the Shrewsbury Boardgames Club will also give me their six picks for 2012 so we should get an interesting comparison going: Mark G’s choices of anything involving conflict; Nige’s selections of anything that’s “not fun”; Guy’s quickest games of the year and Andrew’s picks of games in which he manages not to throw away an insurmountable lead, to name just a few.

Any of our players who wants to give me their picks can do so either by email or handing me a scrappy bit of paper next Friday (21st). If you want to give me some narrative backing up your choices, all the better – otherwise I might just pour scorn on your inappropriate choices. I’ll then publish any submissions I get over the festive period.

In November, I only managed 12 plays of 9 different titles, six of which were new to me. The new titles were Tzolk’in, Get Bit, Gauntlet of Fools, Merchant of Venus (2nd Edition), Timeline: Inventions and Morels.

I only added two games to the collection, both brought back during my trip to Toronto, and my unplayed games list is only down to 26. There was no outstanding game I played this month but the one that gets my vote for Game of the Month for November is Morels, a two-player set-collection card game which I can see playing several times as it’s in the same mould as Jaipur.

As usual, I am taking part in the Boardgamegeek Secret Santa and my santa, through his friendly elf, Sven, has been taunting me over the last couple of weeks or so. At the weekend, I received a parcel from Boardgameguru and imagine my surprise when I saw what was inside:

The message on the card simply read “From your USA Secret Santa”. Well, whoever you are, thank you so much for your generosity. I will be really excited when I break open the wrapping paper on 25th December.

I’ve been in Toronto the last couple of days and my hotel is fifty yards away from the two best game shops in the city. I wasn’t planning on buying anything but the new Merchants of Venus was only $56 so I gave in to temptation.

And just so it wasn’t lonely on my trip back, I also picked up Timelines: Inventions for Christmas trivia gaming.

This month I managed 23 plays of 17 titles, 14 of which were new to me. The new games were Libertalia, Escape: Curse of the Temple, Rune Age, Doctor Who: The Card Game, Smash Up, Lady Alice, Love Letter, AttrAction, Drecksau, Rondo, Spellbound, Suburbia, Hanabi and Hooyah: Navy Seals Card Game.

As it was Essen month, I added 33 new games to the collection and my unplayed list has rocketed up to 30. As for game of the month, I’m going for the smallest game of all, Love Letter, which is just made up of 16 cards. That’s it. However, the game play is really smooth and it is a great game to play with Jan (not only for the reason that she keeps beating me). Just the thing when you’ve got just 15-20 minutes to spare and limited space. Easily playable on a train or aeroplane table.