Category Archives: Board Game
Best Week 2014, Staff Mutiny!
![Wait, what's going on? Wee Aquinas, is that— [muffled scuffling]](https://spacebiff.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/0-best-week-occupied.jpg "Wait, what's going on? Wee Aquinas, is that— [muffled scuffling]")
Ah. Hello. You were probably expecting Dan, weren’t you? I can tell by the facial tics projected through your webcam that you’re a little surprised by this turn of events — after all, hasn’t Best Week 2014 come to an end?
No. It has not. Because we’re in charge now. And this only ends when we say it ends.
Don’t worry, Dan will be fine. Brain damage on par with a night of heavy drinking, or maybe drowning for a few minutes. So let’s just call this a guest submission. Because we, the undersigned, are not content with Dan’s tyrannical “Top Thirty” list, or whatever he’s calling his puppet regime these days. We merely aim to correct his errors with the actual top games we played this year.
Best Week 2014, Day Five!
At long last, here we are. The top six games of the Space-Biff! year, sort of sorted into a coherent list of preference.
Appropriately, every single one of them contains zombies.
Okay, that was a big damn lie. Only some of them contain zombies.
Best Week 2014, Day Four!
“Why thirty?” someone asked me long ago, on Monday. “Why a top thirty, and not a twenty-five? Or a ten? Or a fifty?”
And honestly? It’s because I think thirty is one of the most underrepresented numbers among our generation. Anyone can do a top ten, or a top twenty-five, or a top fifty. But a top thirty?
Only on Space-Biff! Literally.
Best Week 2014, Day Three!
Fun (And Informative) Best Week 2014 Fact: One particular publisher has been highlighted every day of Best Week so far, and will be highlighted again today. Can you spot which one it is? Five space pennies for the victor, and off with the heads of the losers.
Yes, all of them. Off with all their heads.
Good luck, gladiator. If you won’t do it for your country, do it for your head.
Best Week 2014, Day Two!
Another day, another gaggle of six of the best games we played this year. It’s Best Week 2014, and today we’re playing mancala, flicking some monsters, and programing the weeks to come.
Best Week 2014, Day One!
Over a hundred games enter. Thirty games leave.
You know what that means: it’s Best Week 2014, and we’ve got five straight days of the year’s best games! Provided “the year’s best games” is strictly interpreted as “the games Dan Thurot and his gang of pals played and reviewed in 2014, whether they came out this year or not.” But what else could it mean anyway?
Welcome to Day One, also known as The Dog Day Legacy of the Dystopian Shmup in Boomtown Space. As you were, cadets.
Geralt Was Never This Unsexy
It was announced back in January that The Witcher would soon be transformed into cardboard form courtesy of an alliance between Fantasy Flight Games and Ignacy Trzewiczek, famed designer of Imperial Settlers, 51st State, Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island, and The Convoy. For fans of The Witcher, it was quite a bit like when Geralt of Rivia teamed up with Siegfried of Denesle to take down the rogue Grand Master of the Order of the Flaming Rose.
For the uninitiated, that was a pretty cool moment. Best bromance ever, at least until Geralt teamed up with Vernon Roche in the sequel. Sniffle.
And no, I’m not crying about the bromances. I’m man enough to admit these are tears — but this time, the thing bringing water to my eyes is the fact that The Witcher Adventure Game simply doesn’t live up to its legacy.
Uno Was Drunk, Fluxx Looked Great
The other day someone asked how I’d describe Red7, from designers Chris Cieslik and Carl Chudyk. That’s an easy one: imagine Uno and Fluxx got plastered and had a one night stand, and their illegitimate love child grew up surprisingly well-adjusted and clever, but never forgot its roots even as it transcended them.
That’s Red7. Yes, I’m basically a genius at similes.
Medina Musings
Every so often I come across a game that fills me with more a feeling of respect than love, or even of enjoyment. It’s like that one time I met myself from the future, after I’d sacrificed countless human and alien lives to end the Hydrangine Wars — don’t worry about it, you’ll find out about those soon enough — and I found my usual narcissism replaced with something a touch more distant, more like the relationship I might have with a teacher. Okay, bad comparison, and perhaps too much information. The point is, now and then I’ll play a game that I don’t have much desire to play ever again, but I still can’t help but like it, in its own way.
Medina is possibly this year’s most glowing example of that conundrum.
The Ancients Had No Turnips
“It looks like City of Iron,” one of my friends said upon first judging The Ancient World by its cover.
Not that there would be anything wrong with that, but The Ancient World, the latest Kickstarter success from Ryan Laukat, has very little in common with his previous game City of Iron. Let me persuade you.
SPACE-BIFF! 