Day Two! Seeking Thrills!

This is the day that has suffered the most over the intervening years. The title that has best borne the weight is TEN, which I couldn’t have seen coming. This past year has seen some contenders gunning for that press-your-luck throne, including a refreshed Knizia and that flippy one, but neither of them hold a candle to TEN’s streamlined considerations.

Second place goes to The Guild of Merchant Explorers, a solid x-and-write that still somehow eludes a station in my pantheon of greats. It stood on the cusp, about to drink the ambrosia and achieve immortality, only to shrink back at the final moment. I had hoped to see new maps and new ideas keep the system alive, but apart from a microexpansion also released in 2022, nothing ever materialized. YET. I hold out hope.

Despite its awful title, Imperium: The Contention is the game I wish I had played more. The cardboard adaptation of Slay the Spire put Gary Dworetsky on the map, but with Imperium as his scalpel he had already carved his name into my left ventricle. Alas, it is the critic’s burden to only return to so many games, and this one’s emphasis on deck construction prevented me from finding the time. Hopefully we’ll see more from Dworetsky in the future, maybe even a cause to revisit this system. I would definitely be down for another look.

As for the others, I can produce more discernible complaints. Clank! Catacombs is quite good, but its approach to deck-building isn’t my favorite — an odd thing to say, as a huge appreciator of Paul Dennen’s other attempt to hybridize deck-building with a board in Dune: Imperium. Maybe it’s because I’m a stealth-game snob, but I always wish it felt better to foot-pad through these dungeons. Wonderland’s War, meanwhile, is simply too long for what it provides. It’s a delight at half the duration. Beyond that, it feels a little too much like I’ve also been absconded to Wonderland.

Are you checking off each title to see which will receive the final blow? It’s true, GoCaine has lingered at the back of the line. Go plus drug trafficking was always a strange combination. Perhaps this should have been on the gimmick list. It’s still a clever little thing, offering some devious interplay between players. Also, it was amusing the way this tiny indie game became a topic of debate between myself and a designer with an excess of opinion but scant sense. But how will players know that drug cartels are bad? I dunno. It says so in the rulebook. Maybe the board should have featured some blood spatters.

Anyway, nifty game, not quite enough meat on its bones to weather the winds of time. Next up, something lighter — games about trauma!