Space Race Space Race Space Race
It never stops. That seems to be the central theme of SpaceCorp, and not only because a single play can easily consume three or four hours. We span an ocean, only to seek a river passage across the continent on the far side. We meet our neighbors, then decide that we should probably also meet theirs. We pen Here be dragons on the fringes of our maps, but never for long. If SpaceCorp didn’t have an ending in mind — a self-aware arbitrary ending that could be considered little more than an intermission — it might go on forever.
This Featherbrained Game Is For the Birds
I’ll say this right up front: there aren’t many games as pleasant as Wingspan.
It isn’t just the setting, though the idea that you’re establishing a bird sanctuary is certainly pleasant. Nor is it only the gently expressive artwork of Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas, and Beth Sobel. Nor the components, though that birdfeeder has elicited a chuckle of delight from nearly everyone I’ve introduced it to.
Rather, that pleasantness rests on the tenor of Elizabeth Hargrave’s design, from the birds themselves to the way the rounds are structured. This is good stuff. I can’t wait to show you.
Best Week 2018: The Index!
Best Week is over. But that doesn’t mean we are! Down below you’ll find the full index of the whole thing. Five days, five games apiece, twenty-five titles in total, all the best. Click any of the images below to be launched via internet magic to the selected list. Thanks for reading, and see you in 2019!
Best Week 2018: The Hybrid!
It’s with the faintest hint of sadness that we arrive at the fifth and final day of Best Week 2018. Fortunately the sadness is fleeting, because I’ve compiled the five best hybrid games of the year. What’s a hybrid, you ask? Good question. These are the titles that take familiar systems and ideas and transform them into mutated monstrosities, some lurching and some sleek, some elegant and some trashy. Their sole commonality is that they’re all worthy of a look.
Take my hand. We’re almost there.
Best Week 2018: The Hilarious!
It isn’t exactly rare that I’ll laugh while playing a game. But that’s usually because Geoff made a mistake, not at the game itself.
Which is why today is about the year’s five most hilarious games. These are the titles that will likely prompt a smile, extract a bellyful of laughter, or provide an amusing anecdote that nobody will understand when you try to tell it at a family dinner. They’re silly, they’re amusing, they’re not about clowns.
Best Week 2018: The Messenger!
Every so often, I’ll play a game that lends a new perspective. Not necessarily anything transformative, but a greater appreciation for a moment in history, or a certain cultural function, or an abiding curiosity about how injection molding works. What can I say — I’m easily astonished.
For today’s Best Week entry, we’re talking about the year’s best message games. These are the titles that had something to say and said it with clarity, style, and hopefully a really cool map.
Best Week 2018: The Pure!
When I say purity, what does it conjure? Morality, perhaps? The state of your heart? The criteria for entrance into the cult operating beneath your local import shop?
Today isn’t about those things. Rather, it’s about the five best games of 2018 that did one thing and one thing only. These are the games that didn’t need a dozen event decks or special edge cases or unexpected dexterity elements. They’re games, dammit, and that’s all they want to be, with all the cruft pruned away. In other words, purity.
Best Week 2018: The Revitalized!
At long last, it’s here! The Space-Biff! Best Week! is widely recognized by no fewer than eight people as the finest end-of-year list in existence. Five days, five games apiece. All the best.
Today is about revitalization. These are the games that were forged anew — remakes, definitive editions, new seasons, fresh takes on classics. More than the recipients of a fresh coat of paint, today’s victors are ones that perhaps I appreciated, but have been crafted into something better than ever.
Undertaking: Era of Canvas
The problem with colonialism in board games is that it’s such a good fit. Exploration! Discovery! Conflict! The race between nations! Filling up the world with your chosen color! Heaps of resource tokens and/or cards! Negotiation and trade! Eventually somebody glances longingly at a railroad! No wonder you can hardly enter a game store without tripping over a dozen of the things. European colonialism is basically the Original 4X Game.
Which is why I skipped out on Endeavor the first time around. “Looks like more cardboard colonialism,” I shrugged. Not because cardboard colonialism offends me. But because it’s generally so dull and so carefully purged of anything that might offend. When I use the term “whitewashed,” I mean it in two senses.
Well, mea maxima culpa, because not only is Endeavor a fantastic game about colonialism, it’s a fantastic game about colonialism. And this year’s Age of Sail remolds the original in some exciting new ways.
The Compromises of This Guilty Land
In October of last year, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly mentioned in an interview on Fox News that “the lack of the ability to compromise led to the Civil War.” Perhaps he was thinking of Henry Clay’s Missouri Compromise of 1820, Compromise Tariff of 1833, and Compromise of 1850. Because, hey, they all had the word compromise in them, and likely postponed the war for years! After all, according to Senator Henry S. Foote, had there been another Great Compromiser like Clay in 1860, the Civil War might have been averted.
Except we’re talking about the same Henry S. Foote who served in the Confederate Congress, which promoted a treasonous war to preserve the enslavement of nearly four million people — a practice that violated human bodies and freedom, abused the rights of citizens and states alike, and turned to violence the instant the tide of public opinion shifted against them. The nation was torn asunder despite decades of compromise. Because that word has dual meanings. Too many compromises and you begin to compromise yourself.
Such is the thesis of Tom Russell’s This Guilty Land, stated without reservation or hesitance: slavery was morally poisonous, any compromise that allowed it to continue was unsustainable, and the American Civil War was inevitable.
SPACE-BIFF! 