Blog Archives
New Year, Old Year: 2022 Revisited
The wheel has turned once more. Continuing with our sporadic tradition of revisiting previous Best Weeks in order to assess my ever-changing feelings about the year’s best board games, not to mention the mutable nature of artistic taste, today we are plumbing the dark ages of 2022. Wow, what a throwback. What did I like back then? Has any of it held up? Did they even make board games that long ago? Let’s find out together.
New Year, Old Year: 2021 Revisited
The wheel has turned again. And again. Although this installment of New Year, Old Year is a full year late, I’ve already explained my growing reservations with this recurring retrospective, so there’s no reason to belabor the point. Instead, here we are, on the precipice of revisiting the titles I considered the best of 2021. What did I get right? What did I get wrong? The answers may surprise you.
Or they may not. Who can tell. Not me. Either way, we’re doing things a little differently now. Rather than dividing everything into binary right/wrong categories, it seems more helpful to look back on each title in turn. Because sometimes I got things right and wrong at the same time. Nuance, y’all.
New Year, Old Year: 2020 Revisited
Nothing to see here — I’m only four months late to our February tradition. But you know what’s almost as good as February? March.
For those who might not know what’s going on, this is our chance to reexamine my top picks with the benefit of hindsight. How did my Best Week 2020 selections hold up? Let’s take a look.
New Year, Old Year: 2019 Revisited
As has become a February tradition around these parts, it’s time to rewind a whole year and a month to Best Week 2019. But this is no warmhearted jaunt down memory lane. Oh no. This is an interrogation. This is when we take a look at the titles I proclaimed the best of the year and discuss whether I was right, wrong, or somewhere in between.
New Year, Old Year: 2018 Revisited
February traditions are important. Much like the lesser-known Presidents’ Day (the third Monday) and the Hallmark Greeting Card Company Annual Earnings Holiday (the 14th), the Space-Biff! Retrospective is our chance to revisit nominations of years past and see how they held up. It’s also a chance to see me cop to the mistakes I made along the way! Surely you’re here for the first reason.
You Can Kill Your Own Units for Magic
You can kill your own units for magic.
That’s something I always tell people when I teach them how to play Summoner Wars. Over the past decade, I’ve taught Plaid Hat’s inaugural game to perhaps forty people. In person, that is. Online, the number gets fuzzier. Whether through my match reports, faction discussions, or that one rudimentary strategy guide, whenever somebody mentions they began reading Space-Biff! through Summoner Wars, it warms my heart. Maybe that’s because there aren’t many games I’ve felt such a need to talk about. Which is why, after introducing the phases, the way units move and attack, and the clever magic system, I always share three pieces of advice — because, as this game’s advocate, there’s nothing I’d want less than to stomp a newcomer. One, you should try to block the spaces around my walls. Two, keep in mind that units also cost the magic you aren’t gaining by discarding them. And three, you can kill your own units for magic.
Ten years later, with even its would-be successor dead and gone, I want to talk about Summoner Wars one last time.
New Year, Old Year: 2016 Revisited
Accountability. It’s the ability to be honest that, yes, I just used the same intro line as last year. Because introductions are difficult.
Today we’re revisiting my selections for Best Week 2016, the forty games that stood head and shoulders above the rest by my reckoning, and discussing whether they’ve held up over the intervening year. Basically, this is my reality check. Speaking only for myself, these are the games that stuck around, as well as the ones that disappeared from my table. Or worse, my memory.
This is going to be a long one. So if you’d rather skip straight to a particular list, you can take a look at the best overlooked, adorable, iterative, educational, and unique games of yesteryesteryear.
New Year, Old Year: 2015 Revisited
Accountability. It’s a word. It means many things, though perhaps some things more than others. For instance, perhaps most people don’t consider the adjective that means you’re a really good financial worker to be one of the word’s primary definitions. To me, it means being honest. Frank. Open. Which is why I want to revisit my Best Week 2015 picks and talk about how they held up. Which games do I still play a lot, which have disappeared to the Basement of Forgetting, and which ones truly deserve to be called the best?
Since this is going to be a long-winded bit of self-reflection, feel free to skip to whichever retrospective you like. We’ve got the best rebaked games, consternating games, overlooked games, surprising games, and everything else of 2015.
SPACE-BIFF! 