Another year, another sense of amazement that I was able to turn out another twelve months of biweekly content (give or take an E3) for this column. And I’m certainly not going to stop any time soon; due to their recent releases, I haven’t even covered three of the games I’m about to list as my favorites for 2011! READ MORE
Unplugged
One of my non-gaming passions is Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels and other writings. I own over forty of his books (most of which I’ve read multiple times), two animated adaptations, three BBCTV movie adaptations, and even a couple of point-and-click computer games (although I still need to give Discworld Noir a try…). So when I learned of not one, but two Discworld board games coming out this year to say I was thrilled would be a gross understatement. READ MORE
Somewhere in the unlikely Venn diagram overlap of Dominion and Race for the Galaxy rests Seth Jaffee’s Eminent Domain, a Kickstarter-funded project published by Tasty Minstrel Games. In this deck-building game, two to four players are each given a starter deck of nine role cards and one politics card (a one-shot effect that replaces itself with a role card of the player’s choice) and one randomly-dealt start planet tile. READ MORE
One-half expansion and one-half revision, Dixit Odyssey continues the fine quality of Jean-Louis Roubira’s award-winning Dixit gameplay. Like the original Dixit and its expansion, Odyssey contains 84 cards depicting dreamlike images, bringing the complete Dixit arsenal to around 250 cards. Fortunately, Odyssey‘s box insert was specially designed to hold all of these cards, with three divisions meant to contain each release’s stack of cards individually if that’s the way you have them organized. This insert comes at the expense of the idyllic scoreboard of the original, which is a minor loss at best. The new scoreboard is literally more straightforward, just thirty spaces arranged in a row on a simple folding board. READ MORE
The political struggles of 12th-century Japan set the backdrop for Ninjato, a Z-Man Games publication designed by Adam West (no, not that one) and Dan Schnake. Ninjato combines elements of push-your-luck, set collection, and a limited number of actions (and rounds) to provide an engaging strategic experience for two to four players. READ MORE