Author Archives: Dan Thurot
Best Week 2015, Consternated!
On occasion I grow frustrated with the state of our hobby. Specifically, with the critical side of it. About a month back, maybe two, somebody was upset over one of my reviews. It was for a game I had found interesting and thought-provoking, though certainly not “fun” in the traditional sense of the word, the sort of thing I was glad to have played a few times but never intended to return to. As I conversed with this critic of critics across a handful of emails, we finally got to the bottom of his complaint.
“You never said if it was FUN,” he wrote. “A game should be fun, period. If you can’t tell me if it was fun, you should not write a review.”
Absurd. Just as I can read a book for many reasons, or listen to a piece of music for many reasons, or watch a film for many reasons, so too can I play a game for many reasons. I can play a game because it’s fun, absolutely! But I can also play a game because it educates me in some way, or brings people closer together, or provides an experience that sparks my imagination, or shows off something innovative. I can play a game because it makes me sad. And to me, that is fun.
That’s what today is about. What follows are ten of 2015’s best games that I probably wouldn’t describe by simply slapping the adjective “fun” over the top. Instead, I found them interesting, or innovative, or enjoyable with some provisos.
Best Week 2015, Rebaked!
Sometimes, things take a couple tries before they hit their stride. Best Week, for instance, which was originally a passing flight of fancy but has morphed into one of the most-anticipated and best-read internet series of all time. No, you can’t see the numbers on that. They’re confidential for reasons of national security.
On occasion, even good board games need a second chance. Which is why our First Day of Best Week 2015 is celebrating the year’s best rehashes, the titles that were better the second time around, and the games that morphed into something entirely new — and better.
Lords of Waterdice
All too often, worker placement games cast their players as glorified clerks, a few tall steps removed from the action. Take Lords of Waterdeep, for instance. Despite being a reasonably solid game, its main attraction — that static resources were replaced with heroes and scoring was accomplished by completing quests — was something of a ruse. A purple cube might have represented a wizard, but it never behaved like anything more lifelike than a block of wood splashed with indigo dye. A quest might have claimed you were undertaking a dangerous venture, but as long as you showed up with the right team, success was guaranteed.
There are plenty of recent worker placement games that sidestep this problem. And now Champions of Midgard can be considered one of them.
Shoot the Moongha
With a title like Moongha Invaders: Mad Scientists and Atomic Monsters Attack the Earth!, you know what you’re going to get. At least in general. You won’t be managing any trains, that’s for certain.
There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills
There are five resources in Gold West, and every turn shoves about a dozen ways to use them in your face. And yet, Gold West is also one of the year’s simplest, most streamlined titles.
Don’t believe me? I’ll prove it by the most unlikely method possible: by running you through the rules.
Motel 666
The Bloody Inn is about as soothing as it gets. Set in a quaint village in 1831 Ardèche, it’s about operating a pleasant little countryside inn, providing room and board for passing travelers. Eventually, you might add new annexes for your guests’ comfort and edification or have comical run-ins with passing law enforcement officers.
Then you single out your wealthiest guests, murder them, stuff their lifeless bodies beneath the annexes you’ve built, steal all their money, and launder it until you’re filthy rich.
Okay, so that took an unexpectedly grim turn. I suppose the “bloody” in the title should have been a tip-off.
A Great Game about The Great Game
In the second quarter of the 19th century, the crown jewel of the British Empire was unexpectedly placed under threat when the Russian Empire began a period of aggressive expansion into Central Asia. India had been the linchpin of the British Empire’s interests abroad for nearly a hundred and fifty years, so the prospect of a Russian frontier bypassing the khanates and the Afghan emirate that had previously stood as a buffer zone between the British Raj and the Russian Empire sparked a flurry of activity. Spies, armies, diplomats, and traders poured into the region. Just like that, the tribal leaders of Afghanistan found themselves squeezed between two desperate empires.
Welcome to what came to be known as The Great Game.
A Study in Emaciation
What made the original version of A Study in Emerald one of my favorite games of 2014 was the constant feeling that absolutely anything might happen. As a loyalist (or anarchist) trying to sustain (or smash) the regime of alien overlords that had settled in quite nicely by the time Sherlock Holmes appeared on the scene, you’d be going about your business when everything went suddenly and irreversibly off the rails. Perhaps a zombie horde began spreading across Europe, or some vampires seduced your best agent into their coven. Meanwhile, a mi-go concealed a crucial assassination target’s brain on Pluto, Cthulhu consumed London for brunch, and Otto von Bismarck marched the entire Prussian army into Madrid. And the game was only half finished.
Martin Wallace’s new take on A Study in Emerald is less interested in star-crossed anarchic madness and more in being easy to get along with. Gone are the original game’s excesses, flights of fancy, and more outlandish occurrences. In fact, all sorts of things have been stripped out, right down to basic concepts like the dangers of traveling across occupied Europe or the individual appearance of various historical figures. In their place is something that will undoubtedly strike fans of the original as somewhat withered.
Paradoxically, it’s also the better game in a lot of ways.
Steal My Heart
Your crew stands motionless, not daring to move, to breathe. The tumbler ticks beneath your fingertips, your heart pounding so loudly in your ears that you can hardly hear the dropping of the pins. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Your crew has circumvented the guards, crawled through service ducts, hacked the security system to bypass lasers and heat sensors. At long last, you deciphered the combination to the safe, pieced together from memos and computer logs throughout the bank offices.
The final pin slides into place. The door, a solid foot of clockwork steel and reinforced concrete suspended by hinges thicker than your demolition man’s biceps, swings outward with a whine. Your crew cranes their necks to get a peek inside.
Within, something begins to bark. Loudly and repeatedly. Down the hall, you can hear footsteps, coming fast.
“This is what the customer sent us to retrieve?” Rook says, bafflement evident in his voice. “A damn chihuahua?”
Going Golden
The entire span of human civilization is a lot to compress into three or four hours, let alone a trim 90 minutes. And yet that’s precisely what The Golden Ages aims to accomplish, cheerfully charting mankind’s ascent from mudbrick ziggurats to skyscrapers to star ladders. Better yet, in an age when a game’s briskness is often valued over its cleverness, all too often leaving the possibility of deep gameplay experiences stranded along the side of the road in its haste to arrive at its destination, The Golden Ages manages to be something even more valuable than fast: compelling.
SPACE-BIFF! 