2006 Gaming Year in Review (Part 2)

It is with some small satisfaction that I manage to conclude my gaming year in review before more than a month of 2007 slips away ...

GAMES WITH THE KIDS

Star Wars Miniatures got on the table six times, all with Miles, and mostly clustered around our summer trip to Arizona, where the heat kept us inside during the day. I’ve long wanted to have a game I could share with Miles, and the prospect of a collectable game is also attractive in this regard, as it would give us a reason to go to game shops together. This isn’t a bad little game, and Miles likes it well enough, but it’s attritional and heavily dependent on die rolls, and with our limited stock of figures usually comes down to the last two guys trading shots at each other from middle distance. Plus, Miles always wants to stomp me with the AT-ST, which is pretty clearly out of scale with the rest of the game. I acquired a whack of commons in a geekgold trade on BGG late last year, and I bought the Rebel Storm missions book, so sometime this year I’ll set up some scenario play with Miles. But the lad hasn’t asked for the game in a long time; he’d still much rather play video games.

Battleship and Penguin Pile-Up were played three times each, both with Jack. Jack is easily discouraged when learning a game, which means it’s best to play games I can throw his way the first few times, making Battleship an ideal candidate (“Why, yes, Jack, you did hit my battleship again!”). It’s a strange thing with Jack as he’s not a sore loser – once he understands a game, he can win or lose and it’s all the same to him – but if he’s trying to learn and things don’t go his way, he can be poisonously hard on himself. I also had some luck playing Pecking Order with Jack, initially because Jack liked the bird theme, but later because he came to genuinely enjoy the game, grasping the strategies of the tie-breaker, the vision roof, and the bird-eating jaguar. Battleball got a few outings (and I bought a second set to create casualty figures), as did Miles’ favorite Monsters Menace America. And there were desultory one-and-done games like Mission Command: Sea, Jumping Monkeys, that kind of things.

Overall, it was a slightly disappointing year for gaming with the kids. Poor Miles’ brain continues to roll around and around like a marble in a tube. It’s genuinely hard to play games with him as he has a hard time internalizing procedures and staying on track … I have to be his aide-de-camp for every move in addition to playing the game myself, and while I enjoy spending time with Miles over a gameboard, we get to a happier place in a more direct line by playing Guitar Hero II on the Playstation. Jack, however, is growing into a little gamer, and I have hope that I will play even more with him in the year ahead. I just have to bring him along slowly and keep gaming times special, rather than stressful.

ON THE RISE

There were a number of games that I played two or three times in 2006 that I hope will see more table time in 2007. Chief among them was Up Front, which I have played since 1983 … probably pushing a hundred games of this, lifetime, and I added four more in 2006, significant mostly because they were all with an enthusiastic new player at work. We have a quasi-regular Thursday lunch game going and it is my ambition to play through all the scenarios this year. I remain amazed that this game exists at all, it is such a singular design, really a bolt out of nowhere that really hits the sweet spot between game value, narrative, and even a bit of simulation. And I have no idea how the game could have even been conceived, let alone designed, in an era before computers. It’s like the wargame equivalent of ancient astronauts, something that visited us in the dim past and left inexplicable remains.

I also went back to Strat-o-Matic Hockey for the first time in about twenty years. I used to be in several PBM league of this, and the game stressed me out. I could never achieve success with my draft teams, and the nature of a low-scoring game like this is that you always seem on the verge of success, which only leads to greater frustration when you miss three or four quality shots in a row, and then a long blast from the enemy point finds the back of your own net.

I got back into this one because hockey is about the only spectator sport that Miles finds interesting. When the San Diego Gulls folded last year, I bit the bullet and decided to start following the Anaheim Ducks. There was a time when cheering for the “Disney Ducks” would have been unthinkable, but I want to share the game with my son and they’re just an hour up the highway. The prospect was made more palatable by the Ducks proving to have a very good team this year, and I’ve never had a really strong allegiance to any one time (my infatuation with the Canucks was cleansed by the lockout a few years ago).

Anyway, getting back into the NHL as something to share with my boy made me realize that I didn’t know a lot about the league as it is right now, so I bought back into SOM primarily as a means of familiarizing myself with the players. I had an outburst of four games of SOM early in the season (as the beginning of an overly-ambitious replay project that will probably never be completed), and found the game was better than I remembered. With stock teams many of the wilder swings of fortune are erased, and it generates a good narrative. Plus I no longer have the passionate interest in the outcome that turned my PBM games into such a blood pressure cooker. I’d like to get back to this one, at least play a few more games before the Stanley Cup Playoffs come around.

Ingenious was a real surprise for me – I recorded three playings last year, but really my playings were in the dozens. They were just all on-line against robot opponents, rather than “real” games against real folks. I meant to throw this into my big Boulder Games order late last year but forgot (getting the truly awful Marvel Super Heroes instead). I entertain the idea of playing this with Rita and both boys. It’s breezy, colorful, satisfying in a “build a puzzle” kind of way, and has the hidden depths you’d expect of a Knizia. I overlooked it upon release because I generally don’t care for abstracts but I definitely want to get a copy of this. I think it will also serve nicely in the “Ticket to Ride” rotation of games Ulm and I play with our wives.

LIKELY NEVER AGAIN

Ancients got to the table four times, and spawned some remarkably dry session reports for BGG, but it’s been replaced by the vastly superior Commands and Colors: Ancients, and been traded away.

I played a few games of Street Soccer but the ship has sailed on this one – where once I loved it, now it just drives me crazy. I concede that better players can ride out the dice better than I, but too much of the game comes down to rolling a six when you need it. Plenty of theme, though, and hell, I played it a hundred times online so it has to go down as a hall of famer for me, even if I can’t bear to play it anymore.

Eurorails recorded three plays and I don’t even own it – these represented dozens of plays of a computer version of the game, which proved an excellent solo pickup and deliver game. It also verged on OCD for me and I don’t think I’ll be going back there again.

The Vallco Professional Drag Racing game was a weird little indulgence, a Strat-o-Matic style drag racing game from the 1970s that I bought from the author. Part of this was a burst of enthusiasm after going to the drag races with Miles earlier in the year, part of it was a desire to see how such a subject might be gamed (and I continue to tinker with a drag racing game of my own), but mostly it was a distraction while my father was dying. Throwing those dice and sliding plastic cars down the dragstrip required no real thinking or decision making but it did give me an illusion of control, and a way to escape. And it was fun enough that I might go back there again when the replay sports bug bites. Besides, Bob Glidden is damn fast in Pro Stock and I’d like to see if he can win a season championship.

Played Wallenstein three times, and traded it, realizing that I liked it less each time, and the window was closing on its value as trade bait (scored a copy of La Citta for it, which I have yet to play). Complex inputs resulting in chaotic outputs is a pretty rotten play pattern, really. Played End of the Triumverate exactly twice before trading it – it ranks as one of the disappointments of the year, as it just didn’t have as much theme as I was hoping. Jumped through all sorts of hoops to get a copy of Industria and it proved an absolute dog – I traded it off before the glue had dried on my custom components. I can offer no real answer for why I played games like Decathlon or Jutland: Duel of Dreadnoughts, and I played True Colors (twice!) only because there was a gun to my head. Some other games I sampled but won’t miss include Mall of Horror, Three Dragon Ante, Age of Mythology, and Hippodrome (a rare bad game from Gary Graber’s Panzerschrek magazine).

MIDDLE OF THE LINEUP GAMES

There were some decent games that got trotted out a time or two that may or may not return to the table … things like the very decent Battle Line (Knizia), Harry’s Grand Slam Baseball (I have no defense for why I like it), Acquire (all on the computer), the Conan Collectible Card Game (just a bit too long for what it is), Antike (so damn close to being good, but I can’t find a way to beat the marble grinding strategy), Age of Steam (the game liked by the most people that never seems to get played, Power Grid stole a lot of its time this year), Hammer of the Scots (still good after four or five plays), and Titan: The Arena, which I like a bit more than I used to (the Cyclops still goes down like a dog, though). I was pleased to get in a couple co-op games like Lord of the Rings and Shadows Over Camelot (my Arthur fetish is alive and well, I might even play Pendragon again this year). I tried Focus on Warren’s suggestion (he was very kind to give me a copy) but it hasn’t gelled yet. I had the usual experience with filler like Can’t Stop and Kung Fu Fighting. Battle Cry came out a time or two, and maybe I’ll try that again with the kids. I even have an eager opponent in the wings for Star Warriors, but I strangely can’t work up much enthusiasm for playing the game after going mad painting a bunch of miniatures for it. Sometimes this hobby doesn’t bear close examination.

ONE MORE TIME

There were some grail games that got played just once last year, and that I hope I can play again. Freidrich and Europe Engulfed were both very good (and unfortunately very long). Bonaparte at Marengo was short but not nearly the game I hoped it would be … have to play it at least one more time before letting go of it, though. Dune got trotted out at MANCON and didn’t live up to my memories, but it probably deserves another chance without all the drunks.

Ra can’t get any traction, and neither can Samurai, which is strange because I used to like those games a lot. Ditto for Through the Desert (do these Kniza came age poorly, or have I just moved into a different space in my gaming tastes?) Modern Art deserves to have been played more than once. Same with Mississippi Queen. Silverton might be a hit with the guys but I think I need to enlarge the board, and I think it’s always going to be stuck behind something like Age of Steam. Slapshot came out and it was still a hoot, want to do that one again. I still like Union Pacific but Ticket to Ride really is about half the same fun for a quarter of the effort. World in War was promising as an Axis and Allies replacement but it’s time may have passed before I ever knew the game existed – I really needed this one twenty years ago.

ONE AND DONE

Doom: the Boardgame really is a dog, but I painted my pieces so I am stuck with it (plus the kids like to play with the figures). Dungeon Twister was a real disappointment, at least for Tiege and I, but I could be talked into trying it again if I was matched with someone who really wanted to get deeply into the thing. El Grande got it’s semi-annual outing, and no, I still don’t much like it. Oltremare was awkard. Titan will get maybe one more play before it goes to eBay.

AND SO … there it is, a year in games, and a pretty good year, with regular gaming at work, on weekends, and at a couple private min-cons that evoked the glory of GeekEnds past. There’s been good momentum going into the new year, with thirty games played in January, and a couple new titles are getting a lot of play (Runebound, Return of the Heroes, and Factory Fun). I’m enjoying Twilight Struggle, and while Battlelore hasn’t taken off like I expected, I think it may yet be heard from this year. I have some new-to-me games that I want to explore (La Citta, Mare Nostrum), and I’m getting more comfortable with VASSAL so wargaming is more possible than has been the case in a long while. I might even try role playing again this year.

If I can spot any broad trends, I seem to be leaning toward “experience” games with less emphasis on the tight, mechanically pure Euros I’ve enjoyed in the past. I seem more interested in games as social engines and less as competitive experiences. There’s been a good mix of old and new recently. I have a chance for some more local face-to-face wargaming that I need to take advantage of. I do still want to pare the collection down to games that get played, or have a remote chance of being played. Just trying to keep the ball rolling …