Day Two! Making Memories!

Ostensibly, this day’s topic was about games that leave lasting impressions without requiring repeat plays. That’s a nifty idea! I wish I’d thought of it! Or, er, scratch that. I wish I’d remembered doing that!

The biggest flub, thematically, is Guards of Atlantis II. This is an amazing game, don’t get me wrong. But it also insists on repeat plays. I know somebody who has now played it over a hundred times. Unless we’re talking about Summoner Wars, I’m not one for that sort of dedication, but I’ll confess to some jealousy. Just a little. The slightest tinge of green.

The other near-miss would be Virtual Revolution, if only because I had to remind myself what it was about. Dang, though. When these are our misses, surely we can expect the rest of the list to be wall-to-wall bops.

True to form, everything else on this list is worth standing by. The contentious inclusion is The Gods Will Have Blood, because twenty-minute ultra-light historical games about guilt and complicity during the Reign of Terror won’t appeal to many people. But I was aware of that one going in. Funnily enough, one disgruntled reader did pass along a very lovely note to inform me just how much they hated this game. Good. Maybe you’ll think about that the next time you’re operating the guillotine.

Undaunted: Stalingrad and The British Way are similar in that I still think about them often, I still regard them highly, but don’t anticipate giving them another looksie. Maybe that isn’t true for The British Way thanks to its recent expansion, not to mention the sequel, The Guerrilla Generation, which I’m in the middle of writing a series on. But I feel like these games are actually at risk of being over-exposed. I prefer my memories inscribed as they are, these particular representations of wartime conflict standing resolute despite the passage of time. Or maybe I’m just a dork who doesn’t have enough time to revisit things. Probably that.

The winner, both then and now, is Stationfall. What a game. I wish I had more time to play this one. The rules themselves aren’t the problem — it’s the sheer battery of information. But there hasn’t been a game like this before or since, and I really would love to introduce some more people to its slapstick comedy of errors. Maybe that will be one of my goals for the last few months of this year.

Enough of that. Next, all I play anymore is trick-takers.