Author Archives: Dan Thurot
No Franks!
I can’t tell whether Empire’s End, the latest game by John Clair, is trying to invoke the end of the Roman Empire, the Bronze Age Collapse, or a theoretical crumbling of the fleet from Space Base. Given the skinny cards, perhaps it’s the latter. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that this game’s genesis arose from the former.
Which isn’t to say they’re especially alike. Space Base was an engine-builder with dice. Empire’s End is an engine-builder that occasionally explodes in your face due to No Thanks!-style auctions.
Little Gerties All the Way Down
It seems the Crossroads Series has settled into a groove. It’s certainly been a journey. From the selfish besieged colonists of Dead of Winter to the, uh, whatever they were in Gen7, to the lovable pirates of Forgotten Waters, these games have never sat still for long.
Freelancers, designed by Donald Shults but drawing upon Plaid Hat’s wide-ranging stable of talent, is the first time the series has felt like a repeat. Set in an Adventure Time-styled landscape that doesn’t seem to know the apocalypse has already happened, players embody a team of do-gooders who don’t seem capable of doing much good. And it’s such a riotous good time that it gets away with being a very bad game indeed.
The Better Part of Valor
The Battle of Hegra Fortress saw 250 Norwegian volunteers holding off a Wehrmacht battalion for the better part of a month. It was a comparatively minor engagement in the grand scheme of the Second World War, but the unexpected success of the defenders against overwhelming numbers, artillery and air bombardments, and the weather itself became a symbolic victory for Norway.
Petter Schanke Olsen’s version of the battle, Halls of Hegra, turns to modern mechanisms and systems to immortalize the battle. The result is exceptional craftsmanship, a depictin of warfare that goes far beyond the customary in its portrayal of courage under fire.
Skipping School
Not many board games make me tired. Sankoré is the rare exception. As a follow-up to Merv: Heart of the Silk Road, it has certainly shed the reservation I felt at the time, that it was a boilerplate nu-Euro with a wonderful action selection system.
This time, Fabio Lopiano, working alongside Mandela Fernandez-Grandon, has crafted a nu-Euro that does everything at once. Too many things at once. After I prepped for its requisite second and third plays, a setup I clocked at twenty-two minutes, everybody filed in and groaned. It’s not a good sign when people are weary before a session has even started.
The Ministry for the Here and Now
Before we can create a better future, we must imagine a better future.
That was my mantra as I discovered Daybreak, the recent board game co-designed by Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace. I first played it only days after finishing Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. Both of these artifacts, board game and novel, are about confronting climate change through some combination of hard work, human ingenuity, and international cooperation. Early reports on the board game were mixed. It seemed Daybreak didn’t capture the same highs as Leacock’s previous cooperative titles — a tall order given his authorship of Pandemic. More importantly, it seemed that Daybreak may have tipped the scale from hopeful to sanguine. One critic went so far as to declare it “blindly optimistic.”
I’m of multiple minds on all counts. Daybreak isn’t Leacock’s finest plaything; with apologies to his many Pandemic and Forbidden Island/Desert/Sky/Jungle fans, that would be Era: Medieval Age. What it is, rather, is his most conceptual and most clear-headed design, a board game with a thesis, a tone, an intended takeaway. As prognostics go, I suspect it may well prove too optimistic — but for a different reason than some others have concluded. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Best Week 2023! The Index!
I suspect we enjoy end-of-year lists because they ease our underlying certainty that everything will eventually be swept away by time and the sea. Anyway! 2023 was a much better year for board games than some will admit. Or perhaps my affection arises from this being the first year that my nine-year-old pretty much earned her own category. Regardless of the reason, below you will find links to every day of Best Week 2023, and from there to reviews of the year’s finest board games, puzzles, and diversions.
Here’s to another. And another. And countless more beyond.
Best Week 2023! War By Other Means!
“Wargame” has always been a wonky category, and as more board games experiment with systems and modes of expression, it only grows flimsier. To wit, today we’re looking at the best titles of 2023 that blur the boundaries of the genre, whether by covering war-adjacent topics or by using card-driven mechanisms traditionally at home in conflict sims. These are the year’s best board games about war… by other means.
Best Week 2023! Puzzle Time!
According to some folks, a puzzle is a game with only one solution. Fortunately for those of us who don’t take such an essentialist approach, dwelling in a deterministic universe means that everything has only one solution. Hence, every game is a puzzle!
Okay, maybe not. Today we’re applying a broader touch. These are my favorite games of 2023 that are all about combinations and solutions; games that feel like puzzles even if they don’t meet certain thresholds. These are the best puzzles and puzzle-alikes of the year.
Best Week 2023! Tricksy!
2023 is the year I learned to love trick-taking games, a process chronicled in my series This Trick-Taking Life. As you can probably imagine, there were a number of contenders for today’s list. Quite a few favorites were left out, including some that were simply too old to qualify. What follows is therefore an imperfect cross-section of a genre that may as well have all been new to me this year, but one that yet reflects my newfound affection for one of our hobby’s oldest genres.
Best Week 2023! Making Memories!
Not every game is meant to be replayed endlessly. Some are valuable for the experience they provide in the moment, generating memories that stick around long after everything has been stuffed back into the box. Which is why this second day of Best Week 2023 is all about the year’s best board games that provided exceptional impressions rather than demanding session after session.
SPACE-BIFF! 