My Top 10 Boardgames Published in 2018

I started compiling those lists in 2016, and I think I'll keep doing it—they're a lot of fun.
So here are my picks for the ten best boardgames to come out in 2018.

#10 

CRUSADERS: THY WILL BE DONE (designed by Seth Jaffee, published by Tasty Minstrel Games)
Whereas Stefan Feld's Trajan used a mancala style distribution endpoint to select a player action, Crusaders picks the action from the starting point of the mancala sequence, with the value of that action linked directly to the number of pieces found there.
Players can thus raise troops, venture forth into enemy territory, fight Slavs, Prussians and Saracens, build churches and all kinds of other structures, and ultimately gain more influence than any of their competitors.
Upgrading sections of your mancala wheel is great fun, and variable player powers—together with a random distribution of enemies and bonuses across the board—keep this 60-minute game fresh and packed with action.

#9

WAR CHEST (designed by Trevor Benjamin & David Thompson, published by Alderac Entertainment Group)

I have a soft spot for abstract games, and also rather high standards when it comes to them. That's why I was surprised by how much I loved playing War Chest, a game people keep telling me looks a lot like chess—except for that hexgrid board and those poker chips drawn from drawstring bags.
The chips represent unit types: drawing them from your bag allows you to deploy the chip itself as a unit, spend the chip to move a unit already on the board, attack an annoying opponent, buy a new chip (more stuff jingling in the bag!) or even use a special ability.
It's a delightful bag-builder that just needs a little more variety. Can we get an expansion, please?

#8

PANDEMIC: FALL OF ROME (designed by Matt Leacock & Paolo Mori, published by Z-Man Games)

My relationship with Pandemic is a veritable roller-coaster. I played the base game like a maniac until I got sick of it, fell in love with the legacy version of the system, took another step back, discovered the variations built on the original engine... and now I think it's got its hooks into me for good.
In Fall of Rome, players cooperate to stop barbarian hordes from encroaching on the Roman Empire. Gears taken from Pandemic are clearly recognizable, but they've been rearranged so well (and are complemented by such clever mechanisms) that you have to keep reminding yourself that the overall system did not originate with this game.
I was already charmed by the Rising Tide take on the Pandemic ruleset, but Fall of Rome really swept me off my feet. And now I'll have to investigate and see if there's another variation out there that might be worth looking into.

#7

EUROPE IN TURMOIL (designed by Kris Van Beurden, published by Compass Games)

In a way, it's a shameless ripoff of 1989 (which itself was a reworking of the seminal Twilight Struggle). Nevertheless, it's so well executed—and dripping with so much history—that I had no choice but to include it here.
Europe in Turmoil is a tug of war between an Authoritarian player and a Liberal player, who both struggle to maintain some sort of world balance while advancing their own agendas. Will you be in a better shape than your opponent when the Great War flares up? 'Cause that's more often than not how the game ends, folks.

#6

ENDEAVOR: AGE OF SAIL (designed by Carl de Visser & Jarrat Gray, published by Burnt Island Games)

This is really a second edition of Endeavor, published back in 2009. But where I had strong reservations about the original game, the new incarnation won me over in no time.
Every single wrinkle that used to irk me has been ironed out, which makes exploring the world and expanding your empire all the more inviting. The rules remain stunningly simple, with gorgeous components kept in a clever storage system. A lot of depth for a 90-minute game.

#5

CARPE DIEM (designed by Stefan Feld, published by Ravensburger/alea)

Stefan Feld is a favorite designer of mine, so it's always with great excitement that I tear into a new game of his. And despite its rather bland appearance, Carpe Diem did not disappoint. A very straight-forward ruleset drives what is at its core a simple tile-laying game. Ah, but then comes the scoring phase, where Feld reveals his own special brand of genius and creates a puzzle that turns an almost pastoral activity into a tense, cutthroat competition.

#4

AUZTRALIA (designed by Martin Wallace, published by Stronghold Games)

I had fallen under the charm of A Study in Emerald, a strange combination of themes and mechanisms, based on the equally warped short story by Neil Gaiman. So while the theme for AuZtralia scared off some unsuspecting customers, I was attracted like moth to a flame: a train game set in an alternate 1930s, with Cthulhu and his friends lying in wait. Build and exploit your network, but get ready to defend it: when the Old Ones decide to rise up, who's to tell where and when the destruction will end?

#3

SKIES ABOVE THE REICH (designed by Jeremy White & Mark Aasted, published by GMT Games)

Jerry White is fast becoming an auto-buy for me, and Skies Above the Reich only served to cement his reputation as the master of open-the-box-and-start-playing solo wargames.
This time around, you're invited to climb aboard a Bf109 and do whatever is necessary to prevent a formation of B-17s from reaching the Fatherland—a task much easier described than executed.The game weaves a web of bold maneuvers, daring attacks, engrossing narratives, and a whole lot of cursing when it comes to those pesky tail gunners.
You can read my full review here.

#2

BRASS: BIRMINGHAM (designed by Martin Wallace, Gavin Brown & Matt Tolman, published by Roxley)

First published in 2007, Brass became one of those classic train games against which everything else is sized up. Eleven years later, Roxley put out not one, but TWO games called Brass—Lancashire and Birmingham. While the former is an astounding reskin of the original game, with noble components and charm to spare, the latter is an intriguing variation with a different map, slightly modified rules and a new currency: beer. The package makes for an experience that might just be a notch above the original design.

#1

NEWTON (designed by Simone Luciani & Nestore Mangone, published by Cranio Creations)

I was already a huge fan of Lorenzo Il Magnifico and Grand Austria Hotel, so it was with bated breath that I waited for the designers' next game to drop. Newton appeared quite late in 2018, but it was absolutely worth the wait. Clever, original and tough, the game puts you right in the middle of the scientific revolution, in 17th century Europe. You will travel, research, invent, enlist the help of luminaries—the game literally has players stocking their shelves full of books in order to score bonus points at the end of every turn.
After one play, I was fairly convinced Newton would be my game of the year; further forays confirmed that first impression in short order.

DISAPPOINTMENTS
My three biggest disappointments of 2018 all happened to be wargames.

Great War Commander proposed to bring the Combat Commander system back in time, to that little 1914 misunderstanding. It works for the most part, and the chain-of-command activation of leaders has some merit. But events are way too savage and swingy (never a good combination), and gas attacks are simply broken: there's no escaping it. While that might be historically accurate, it makes for a rotten experience at the game table.
In the end, whenever I played GWC, I only felt like playing Combat Commander instead. A sure sign you'd better get back to your classics.

Fort Sumter should have been right in my wheelhouse: it's a short American Civil War game that borrows heavily from a favorite of mine, 13 Days. But it felt wrong somehow, with a map that might as well have been just a list of locations, and disconnected actions that came off as more abstract than I was prepared to accept in a game of that nature. I had to reluctantly admit this one was not for me.





You'll rarely hear me say this, but Martin Wallace really dropped the ball on this one. I was all over Lincoln: an American Civil War game thought up by my favorite designer? Sign me up! But in the end, despite clever innovations, Lincoln never made it past the finish line. Hindered right out of the gate by an utter and complete mess of a rulebook, the chess match that unfolds on the board quickly becomes more frustrating than challenging. And whether or not you believe the game feels scripted (and I certainly do), it's simply not fun—and that's what games should be, first and foremost.
I really enjoyed the deck management aspect of Lincoln, and I hope Wallace incorporates it in another of his designs at some point. But you won't catch me playing Lincoln again.



STRAGGLERS
Let's conclude with three games that would have made my 2017 list had I given them a shot back then.

After a myriad variations on the Commands & Colors system, you'd think it would start to go stale. Such is not the case with Tricorne, the American Revolution incarnation of the engine Richard Borg first tried on for size with Battle Cry and then made world famous through Memoir '44. Enough rules tweaks and specialized units make Tricorne worth playing, and I'll have a hard time resisting the urge to purchase the first expansion. More blocks!

I've experienced other solo/coop games that got the adrenaline pumping, but the narrative created by This War of Mine grips me like nothing else. Here, you're playing civilians who try to survive the war that's tearing their city apart. Scavenging for food, building barricades to defend your crumbling abode, trying to survive the psychological ravages of war: it sounds a bit like an umpteenth zombie game, until you realize the sheer realism of the whole thing. This War of Mine unfolds like an interactive novel, one where the ending might punch you in the gut like no other game can.

Gaia Project takes everything I love about Terra Mystica and cranks it up to 11. A space exploration theme, progress tracks linked to technological advances, variable board setups, better potential for expansions—I mean, I'll still play Terra Mystica, but only if Gaia Project is not within reach. My only regret is that I didn't start playing it back in 2017.

# # #

A Year of Boardgaming, 2018 Edition

Another year has come and gone, and it's time to look back and reflect on all that time spent in the company of cardboard greatness.

GAMES
I played 142 different titles (up from 128 in 2017), for a total of 439 plays (up from 411).
Translated into grains of sands in the hourglass, this means 443 hours spent pushing cubes and defeating pawns with family and friends, or over 18 full days devoted to boardgaming bliss. It used to be higher than this a few years back, but still, it's nothing to spit at.

Out of those 142 titles, a respectable 67 were new to me (up from 53 the previous year). I'm still devoting time to my old favorites, but I can't completely stay away from the shiny new toys.

Here are the top 10 games I played the most in 2018:

1. Combat Commander: Europe (21 plays)
      A WWII tactical wargame, and my all-time favorite.

2. Great War Commander (21 plays)

A WWI port of the previous title, which fell rather flat for me. After going through all the scenarios, I ended up getting rid of it.

3. Fields of Arle (15 plays)

A stunning and heavy agricultural game, from the designer of Agricola.

4. Warfighter (12 plays)

A solo wargame of special ops set in modern times; I'm playing through the scenarios and having a hell of a fun time.

5. Brass: Lancashire (11 plays)

The new edition of the classic Martin Wallace design, finally with a look to match its brilliance.

6. Lorenzo Il Magnifico (11 plays)

A variable worker-placement game from that bunch of clever Italians.

7. Memoir '44 (12 plays)

A quick and dirty WWII tactical skirmish, perfect over lunch at work.

8. Scythe (10 plays)

A superb game of resource management, territory control and the occasionl slap in the face.

9. 7 Wonders Duel (10 plays)

The two-player version of 7 Wonders, superior to its predecessor in every aspect.

10. Flamme Rouge (10 plays)

A racing delight that puts all of my other cycling games to shame.

PEOPLE

During 2018, I explored the boardgaming world alongside 65 different players, down from 97 in 2017. Am I becoming some sort of cardboard misanthrope?

So here are the top 10 people with whom I played the most in 2018:

1. Suzie D. (121 plays)

2. Jean-Luc S. (120 plays)

3. François P. (102 plays)
4. Gustavo A. (77 plays)

5. Ophélie K.L. (22 plays)

6. Pascal G. (20 plays)

7. Niko S. (19 plays)

8. William L. (16 plays)

9. Jonathan P. (15 plays)

10. Christian B. (12 plays)

Sadly, only one of my three daughters (Ophélie) shows up on the list, despite my best efforts (at least the GF and her son are still there). Speaking of which, the GF was my top boardgaming partner for the second year in a row! I'm a very lucky man.

New colleagues are also making an appearance on the end-of-the-year roster, and by the looks of it, they're probably here to stay. The future will certainly tell.

LOCATIONS

While I had played boardgames in 22 different places throughout 2017, I only managed to grace 13 spots with my playful presence in 2018. Not sure this is a good trend.
I'm playing more at home (65%, up from 61% in 2017), about the same as last year in my workplace (12%), and a good 10% in the humble abode of my long-time friend Jean-Luc. The rest pales in comparison.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

My h-index has been 10 for three years in a row—I can't seem to escape that rut.
(In this context, my h-index is the number (h) of games, which I've played a number (h) of times.) In other words, for three years in a row, there are 10 games I played 10 times each. I haven't been able to play 11 games 11 times each since 2014.

At least it makes it possible for me to complete my 10x10 challenge, which is one of the recent obsessions shared by serious boardgamers: play 10 games 10 times within the same year. The intent here is to ward off what people call the cult of the new, where players are only interested in the fresh releases and move on to greener pastures after giving each game just a few tries—sometimes not even venturing beyond a single play.
The voluntary 10x10 challenge forces participants to truly explore a part of their collection, often revealing hidden depths that would otherwise never have surfaced.
For 2019, I've set up a regular 10x10, but also another one populated solely with games by German designer Stefan Feld (my second favorite designer, just behind Martin Wallace). I know full well I'll never complete it—that's not usually how a year of boardgaming turns out—but I'm curious nonetheless to see how far I get.

My favorite game, Combat Commander, currently stands at 414 plays, and I'm still excited about the next time I'll break it out. I wouldn't mind taking the rumored Vietnam version of the system out for a spin, but I doubt any other incarnation will dethrone the original in my meeple-shaped heart.

I had launched 2018 with Age of Industry, a favorite of mine I fear I might never play again now that the new (and better) editions of  Brass are finally available; and I ended the year on a light note with Micro Robots. As of this writing, I already have 19 plays under my belt for 2019.
Insanity never rests.

So what am I looking forward to in the coming year?
Two new games in the Commands & Colors series are supposed to see the light of day: Medieval and Samurai Battles. Despite my spending over 500 plays immersed in several C&C titles, I'm always looking forward to the next one.
There's also the new design by the Italian crew, Barrage; a new WWII tactical system called The Last Hundred Yards; the upcoming Vital Lacerda game, On Mars; the card-crafting Edge of Darkness; the Meteo expansion for Flamme Rouge; two new titles from Stefan Feld, Forum Trajanum and Revolution of 1828...

It's going to be a fun ride.

# # #

Wargame review — Skies Above the Reich

Defend Germany and Most Likely Die Trying

Designers: Jerry White & Mark Aasted

Player count: 1 (possible with 2)

Publisher: GMT Games

Between 1942 and 1945, the Allies launched flight after flight of bombers to conduct a relentless assault on Germany. Military objectives soon gave way to industrial targets, and eventually civilian ones, as the intent shifted from hindering production to destroying sapping the morale of an entire nation.

However, the Germans would not go down without a fight. They developed and refined attack techniques that allowed them, for a time, to break what the Allies called the “combat box”—a formation of bombers where each plane provided maximum coverage to its airborne neighbors.

GMT’s Skies Above the Reich recreates the entire air war from the point of view of those tasked with defending Germany, from 1942 all the way to 1945, when push seriously came to shove, before everything eventually collapsed.

Right on the heels of two other bombing-themed titles—Enemy Coast Ahead and The Doolittle Raid—designer Jerry White joined forces with Mark Aasted to revisit a postcard game they had put together for Against the Odds magazine back in 2010. The solo experience they came up with is a spectacular self-propelled machine that’s as addictive as it is exciting.

Each campaign of Skies Above the Reich involves at least one season (for a short game) and up to a whole lot of seasons for the full campaign. Victory is determined differently in each case, but your objective always remains the same: to prevent as many bombers as possible from reaching the Fatherland.

In turn, each season is broken down into individual missions. Setting up a mission involves a series of die rolls to determine several variables: which of the game’s four maps will serve as the aerial arena; budget available for aircraft and armament; the type of escort that will attempt to thwart the player’s best efforts to bring down the bombers; whether some of those bombers start the mission with preexisting damage (essentially from scenes that have happened “off-screen”); the position of the sun; how long the mission will last (and when escorts will show up or fly away); even the presence of contrails—which German pilots can use to camouflage their approach...

Each turn, German fighters move through a series of boxes around the board in an attempt to reach the perfect position from which to launch an attack. Naturally, escorts—from the ever-present Spitfire of the early war to the terrifying P-51 Mustang of the later years—are also moving about at that time. At best, they ensure that no German fighters can reach certain positions; at worst, they engage a whole stack of fighters in a time-consuming dogfight that will allow the formation of bombers to get away unscathed. Whether those embattled planes will live to fight another day remains to be seen.

Then an attack is launched, ideally from different positions and varying altitudes. The flip of a card determines whether the fighter inflicts any damage on a bomber (which might be enough to blow it to smithereens, or just bring it a little closer to its demise) and whether the fighter itself gets hit by the neighboring gunners.

It’s important to understand that the game board is a static depiction of a network of bombers flying in formation; the result becomes a sort of terrain that fighters must navigate. The interlocking fields of fire that emerge from the gunners “having each other’s backs” mean that some areas of the board will be highly hazardous, while others (in front of the first bomber, for instance, or behind the very last one) will present less of a threat. Serious thought must be put into your angle of attack, but also into where your aircraft might end up if it flies in too fast and overshoots its target.

Right in the middle of the combat box is not where you want to be.

Your fighter is not out of the woods once the brunt of the attack has been carried out: enemy gunners get to take one last shot at it (another flip of a card) before the metal predator breaks away to lick its wounds and prepare to lunge anew.

This aerial ballet goes on until either the mission has run its course, no German fighters remain in play, or all bombers have been destroyed or scattered out of their formations. (Fat chance.) VPs are tallied and the campaign assessed if this happened to be the last mission on the menu. If not, a new mission is set up so as to reflect your last performance: lose too many aircraft, and you’ll have a reduced roster and a bunch of green pilots to contend with.

As aficionados will expect, Skies Above the Reich comes replete with mechanical subtleties and agonizing choices.

• Combat is handled through three different decks of attack cards: Nose, Oblique and Tail. Tail offensives tend to yield more satisfactory results, but rest assured the six of a bomber is more often than not the 12 of another—no one’s going to make it easy for you.
• Each attacking fighter needs to be set in one of two modes: Determined makes your plane (potentially) more lethal, but also more vulnerable, while Evasive risks producing less reliable results, but might prolong the longevity of the aircraft. On top of that, fighters need to know what maneuvers they’ll perform right after the attack: dive, climb, roll—and in what direction? This will not only influence the retaliation capacity of defending gunners, but also the position around the board into which the fighter will end up after exiting the tangled web of bombers. Assuming it survives, of course.
• When it comes to near target missions, flak plays a major role, both in helping taking out bombers and accidentally whittling down your own forces.

The list goes on, providing a slew of decision points without feeling cumbersome. Chrome reaches just the right level.

WAR PRODUCTION

The box cover does a wonderful job of selling the game, as artist Antonis Karidis sets the stage with dramatic flair. That’s what a wargame cover should feel like: epic and exciting, but also serious and dripping with History.

The deep box opens on a 60-page rulebook (hold your horses), 15 pages of advanced and two-player rules, a Situation Manual (aka the setup bible), a veritable squadron of players aids printed on card stock, two double-sided, mounted boards (with a delightful twist: historical quotes printed right on them!), a couple of smaller maps, multiple card decks, tokens galore, a pad of log sheets, a pair of 10-sided dice, and blocks for the German fighters.

Did I say blocks? Yes indeed: they make the fighter stickers affixed to them easier to follow on the map and provide a genuine tactile pleasure. And what’s better than blocks? Why, more blocks! Those blue contraptions serve to indicate altitude on the board—none for low, one for level, and two for high.

I also enjoy fishing out those thick damage counters out of cups a whole lot more than referencing die rolls on a combat results table. Pure bliss.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Jerry White is known for his programmed learning curves, and his two previous titles were so well executed in that regard that the rulebook became superfluous. This is no exaggeration: a newcomer could pick up the game, set it up, and get going with confidence holding nothing more than the player aids. In other words, the game taught itself—an incredible feat in a paper-based world, especially considering the complexity of the design involved.

Things are not so transparent within the entrails of Skies Above the Reich. Don’t get me wrong: the player aids still do the heavy lifting. But some of the work is left up to the player this time around. That’s because there’s a density to the decision making that, while not immediately apparent, cannot be escaped. As a result, player aids cannot hold the breadth of rules necessary to keep the engine running. So instead of explaining an entire mechanic, a specific bullet-point on the player aid might offer a one-line summary and a page number. But it’s all very well done and completely painless—the designers weren’t about to leave us hanging.

Crack open any number of typical wargame rulebooks, and every page is a two- or three-column affair, newspaper-style. That’s the way things are usually done. Not here: the layout is open and generous, so much so that when I first laid eyes on a random page, my immediate assumption was that I was looking at an extended (an extremely extended, at 60 pages) example of play. If you read it in one gulp, one concept flows into another like a charm—so you can imagine what happens when a player aid sends you on an errand to page 38 in order to look up collision results.

It’s a breeze.

Is the rulebook perfect? Close, but not quite. Some ancillary ideas are vaguely addressed or not at all. For instance, where do fighters and escorts go when they “exit the game?” Given the abundance of mechanisms designed to provide players with a sense of destiny when it comes to aircraft and pilots, one could be forgiven for expecting a definitive outcome in this particular case. (They just leave the game and nothing further happens to them.) Another example: escorts already on the board move to adjacent spaces occupied by fighters, and then other escorts might leave their designated stations and join the fight on the board; yet that sequence of actions is reversed in the rules. Wargame rulebooks do this all the time, but White’s writing is so consistently sequential that I can’t be the only one who had escorts departing stations and then immediately moving to adjacent spaces during my first mission. (Fear not, I stumbled upon the one line that sets the sequence straight in the rules shortly thereafter.)

When you get down to brass tacks, Skies Above the Reich remains one of the rare wargames players can tear open and dive right into. Just don’t throw out the rulebook like you might have with Enemy Coast Ahead. You’ll still need it.

A smattering of player aids

FUN FACTOR

Whereas I immediately loved White’s two previous designs, I had my doubts about this new opus. It offered the same procedural experience I had come to enjoy—indeed to expect—but this time something was amiss. I felt I could do more… and yet the game seemed to yield less. My flight plan was a little muddled.

In Skies Above the Reich, the action matrix is wider and somewhat shallower at the same time. This means that while the design space remains more or less the same, the resulting experience is different from what you might have lived through with Enemy Coast Ahead or The Doolittle Raid. Instead of a long and narrow narrative where you pull a lever here and throw a switch there, you get a shorter, wider story with more decision points coming at you all at once.

Because of that curtailed storyline (and despite the wider design matrix), players might initially feel like the game is more repetitive than what White has accustomed them to. To that I say: keep playing. The depth will eventually bubble up to the surface (ha!) and you’ll be happy you stuck around.

PARTING SHOTS

Interested in a more difficult challenge? Itching for more icing on your air combat cake? Skies Above the Reich’s got you covered. The entire bomber formation may change direction (which alters the position of the sun); the combat box might shrink (as bombers fall out of formation); squadron erosion could take its toll on your roster after each mission (as if the game weren’t already tough enough); you can play the game with a friend as a two-player cooperative endeavor; you can even tack on an entirely new module that allows your fighters to hunt down bombers edged out of their combat box, in an attempt to finish them off for good. Hell, you can even partake of optional rules within optional rules!

I suggest you forego these options for your first handful of sorties: even with just the standard settings turned on, the game is HARD. While the “story arc” has you going through the advances that benefited both sides during the war as technologies evolved from one year to the next, it also makes you feel the very real pain of the pilots of the Reich, when dwindling resources and evaporating manpower made defending the skies an increasingly desperate proposition.

As always, White (and now Aasted) is obsessed with the narrative—in a good way. Hence the numerous fate boxes used to decide the destiny of fallen pilots, depending on what wiped them out: engine trouble, fuel leak, damaged cockpit, etc. A dead pilot may be replaced with a fresh recruit, but that new element incurs a green penalty (one of mine would immediately leave the battle when hit, for instance).

From those systems emerges a simple, yet engrossing story: if you play several missions in a row with the same roster, you’ll become attached to some of your pilots and get genuinely worried when you’re about to roll on that damn fuselage table. (“I sure hope Neumann survived that fire!”)

By the way, after bitching and moaning in my reviews of both Enemy Coast Ahead and The Doolittle Raid, my prayers have been answered: the game sports an index! It’s camouflaged on the back cover of the advanced rulebook, but it’s there. Make good use of it.

In the end, I laughed, I cried, I cursed at the game and I kissed the dice for services rendered—sometimes all within the same turn. I can’t ask for much more from a wargame.

# # #

A Year of Boardgaming, 2017 Edition

Another year has come to a close and, as always, I like to look back (not while driving) and stare my boardgaming activity in the eyes.

GAMES
I played 128 different titles (down from 148 in 2016), for a total of 411 plays (down from 489).
Taking into account the play time of each individual game, this translates to 397 hours of poring over cardboard maps with family, friends, and the occasional random stranger. That's almost 17 full days of boardgaming fun—and while it might seem like a lot, it used to be a full month per year about a decade ago. I must be slowing down in my old age (currently 44).

Of those 128 titles I played last year, 53 were new to me, down from 75 in 2016, which itself was down from a whopping 105 in 2015. This means I'm playing my "old" games more and more, and that's a good thing.

So here are the top 10 games I played the most in 2017:

1. Fuji Flush (26 plays)
      A quick trick-taking game that's a riot with any crowd.

2. Combat Commander: Europe (22 plays)

A WWII tactical wargame, and my favorite boardgame ever, bar none.

3. Great Western Trail (20 plays)

An amazing cattle-herding deck-builder, and my favorite game of 2016.

4. Scythe (16 plays)

A thrilling hybrid game I originally disliked. Go figure.

5. Santorini(14 plays)

A tense and beautiful abstract game about building towers.

6. C&C Napoleonics (13 plays)

A fun simulation of the Napoleonic Wars, which I only play with the GF.

7. Clank! (12 plays)

A fun dungeon crawler now superseded by Clank in Space.

8. Memoir '44 (11 plays)

A simple WWII tactical romp. Lots of fun.

9. Flamme Rouge (11 plays)

A deceptively simple cycling game that'll get your heart pounding.

10. First Class (10 plays)

A train-building card game that happens between Paris and Constantinople.

PEOPLE

Last year, I sampled the best the boardgaming world had to offer in the company of 97 different players, up from 66 in 2016—which means I'm meeting new gamers!

So here are the top 10 people with whom I played the most in 2017:

1. Suzie D. (127 games)

2. Jean-Luc S. (119 games)

3. François P. (84 games)

4. William L. (40 games)

5. Gustavo A. (38 games)

6. Maxime M. (36 games)

7. Ophélie K.L. (25 games)

8. Héloïse K.L. (16 games)

9. Jonathan P. (13 games)

10. Philippe M. (11 games)

Once again, two of my daughters (Héloïse and Ophélie), as well as the GF and her son William all show up on the list. Only Béatrice is missing (she comes in at #18), but given that she no longer lives in the family home, it's not surprising. Although it is heartbreaking.
A special shout-out to Maxime, the first of my new colleagues to make it to the Top 10! Well done. :)

LOCATIONS

A new high this year: I managed to grab a game in 22 different places!
61% of my gaming is done in the safety of my own home, followed by 10% in the workplace. My closest (geographically) gaming buddy, Jean-Luc, only received 8% of my boardgaming activity in his humble abode, which tells me that I should get out more.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

I played more wargames in 2017 than I did in 2016; that was something I wanted to do. Among them was my favorite game, Combat Commander, which I have played at least 20 times (sometimes over 50!) each year since its publication in 2006. To date, I have played it exactly 370 times, and I can't see myself slowing down. If anything, that count will rise sharply with this year's release of the new entry in the Combat Commander family, Great War Commander.
And yet, wargames keep piling on faster than I can dust them off. Hearts and Minds is one such casualty, but new fodder has now joined it: Wild Blue Yonder, Holland '44, Pendragon, Pericles...

I kickstarted 2017 with a game of Royal Turf in the company of my parents, and I topped the year playing Welcome to Centerville with my lovely Suzie. I can't ask for much more.

So what's next? As I'm writing this (January 2nd), I already have three games under my belt, including an exciting go at Age of Industry. Things bode well indeed.

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My Top 10 Boardgames Published in 2017

I compiled a similar list last year, and I thought it would be fun to do it again.
So here are my picks for the ten best boardgames to come out in 2017.

#10 

GLOOMHAVEN (designed by Isaac Childres, published by Cephalofair Games)
The boardgame horizon has been filled with a horde of dungeon crawlers of late, but Gloomhaven stands head and shoulders above everything else I've played.
On paper, the concept shouldn't work: a legacy monster that spews about 100 crisscrossing scenarios, with endless card decks and a flood of tiny components. And yet, the whole thing is mesmerising. Gloomhaven is more aptly described as an experience than just a game; it is in fact much closer to a roleplaying game sans game master than anything else.
My character is about halfway through her life cycle, and I'm really curious to find out what the future has in store for her.

#9

CLANK! IN! SPACE! (designed by Paul Dennen published by Dire Wolf Digital and Renegade Game Studios)

Speaking of dungeon crawlers—I had quite enjoyed playing Clank! back in 2016. It was fast, fun, and a deck-builder on top of everything (oh, how I love those). But enough little things prevented it from shining as a truly great game (and making my 2016 Top 10).
But behold! 2017 brought forth a star-spanning descendant that fixes most of what felt lacking. Variable board? Check. More satisfying progress through the dungeon/space ship? Check. More exciting conclusion? Check. Better openness for expansions? CHECK.
Now to find a way to trade in my copy of Clank...

#8

878: Vikings—Invasions of England (designed by Beau Beckett, Dave Kimmel and Jeph Stahl, published by Academy Games)

Another sequel! I have sung the praises of all three titles in the Birth of America series, and it was with great enthusiasm that I tackled the first entry into Academy Games' new family: Birth of Europe. I was not disappointed. 878 feels fresh yet familiar, and is another great light, four-player wargame.
The game even sports miniatures instead of the ubiquitous wooden cubes, and I've got to admit that it adds to the overall charm of the engagement.

#7

13 MINUTES: THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS (designed by Asger Harding Granerud and Daniel Skjold Pedersen, published by Jolly Roger Games and Ultra PRO)

13 Minutes's big brother 13 Days made my Top 10 list last year, when I was surprised that the Twilight Struggle cold war experience could be distilled into a 45-minute, white-knuckler of a game. But those crazy designers one-upped themselves and further compressed the paranoia to a mere 13 minutes. Seriously.
Each opponents only gets to play FIVE cards, and every single one is pure agony. You win if you control more battlefields at the end of the match, but then only if you haven't triggered thermonuclear war by then. What more do you want in a 13-minute game?

#6

NEMO'S WAR, 2nd edition (designed by Chris Taylor, published by Victory Point Games)

I'm cheating a bit here, as the original Nemo's War was first released in 2009. But hey, it's my list.
The 2017 second edition is a feast for the eyes, with gameplay to match. It's an underwater solo adventure where you command the famous Nautilus and explore the seas, engage the occasional vessel in pursuit, uncover elusive treasures, and generally try to stay alive.
Driven by story cards (divided into three acts, no less), Nemo's War creates a narrative that never feels the same twice. 

#5

WELCOME TO CENTERVILLE (designed by Chad Jensen, published by GMT Games)

I rarely enjoy dice games—not for long, anyway. They start to feel hollow and pointless too fast for me. But once in a blue moon, one of them falls into my lap and completely seduces me.
Welcome to Welcome to Centerville.
Roll the bones to erect buildings in four different sectors, run for municipal offices (yes, plural!), acquire sumptuous villas along the riverside, embrace vocations by the dozens, and screw your opponents. All in about an hour.

#4

FIELDS OF DESPAIR (designed by Kurt Lewis Keckley, published by GMT Games)

The first world war was a pretty static affair, and so games that attempt to model that great clash on a strategic scale rarely come to be described as exciting. Against all odds, Fields of Despair turns out to be exactly that.
Deploying fog-of-war blocks on a massive scale, the game also proposes tech tracks, aircraft reconnaissance and dogfighting, artillery barrage galore, as well as four short scenarios plus the campaign game. Did I mention the map was absolutely gorgeous?
I've never seen a WWI game like this, and I'm relishing every step I take towards the campaign scenario.

#3

AZUL (designed by Michael Kiesling, published by Plan B Games)

Abstract games occupy a special place in my heart for a variety of reasons (a story for another time). But it's not every year that one of them stops me in my tracks.
Azul is a simple affair, where players draft beautiful Portuguese-style tiles and then arrange them on their "walls" to score as many points as they can with the patterns they create. It's one of those games that's eye catching and easy enough to get non-gamers to the table, while remaining engaging enough to please the veterans. It can accommodate from two to four players and scales amazingly well.
Play the basic version as a learning game, and then flip the boards to tackle the "advanced version," which is really how the game should be played.

#2

THE DOOLITTLE RAID (designed by Jeremy White, published by GMT Games)

At the end of 2014, I reviewed the original Enemy Coast Ahead and gave the game high marks. White had seriously raised the bar for narrative solo wargaming, and I thought ECA would keep the trophy for a few years. Well, it did—until White himself gave us volume II, The Doolittle Raid, and cleared his own bar with room to spare.
Plan 1942's Doolittle raid on Tokyo, train your people, load your B-25s onto your carrier, sail through the Pacific (avoiding Japanese attacks and the whims of Mother Nature), fly all the way to Tokyo (if you can make it), drop your payload and high tail it out of there—only to have to figure out where to land... It's all edge-of-your-seat boardgaming, with a detailed debriefing that tells a complex and compelling story.
Best of all, White made it possible to play all of this without laying eyes on a single page of rules! 

You can read my full review here.

#1

LISBOA (designed by Vital Lacerda, published by Eagle Games)

The man behind The Gallerist strikes again, this time bringing players back to 1755 and right into the heart of Portugal, after Lisbon was devastated by an earthquake, a tsunami and a fire that raged for three days. (I am not making this up.) Your job is to rebuild Lisbon as a thriving metropolis, all the while negotiating the treacherous politics that can carry you to the heights of success or sink you to the very bottom of failure. Cards drive the entire procedure, and while you'll want to do everything a card promises, you only get to pick one option in each case. Sweet brain cramps.
Lisboa is a beautiful, heavy game where all the gears are gilded with gold. It shines.

So there you are! My 10 favorite games from 2017.


STRAGGLERS: I would be remiss if I didn't mention three great games published in 2016, but which I didn't get to try until 2017. Otherwise, they might have made it on last year's list.

Scythe is an odd case: I did play it a few times in 2016, and dismissed it as something unremarkable. Then I got an opportunity to play it again (in 2017) and I completely changed my mind. I have now played this hybrid farming/war/exploration/resource management jewel 22 times and I can't wait to play it again.







Reminiscent of its Russian Railroads roots, First Class was an instant classic with my group. It plays with the elegance of a Paris-Constantinople passenger, feels fresh every time (thanks to interchangeable modules) and ends in a flash. It's also a train game, and I do love me a train game.





I really enjoy cycling games, but Flamme Rouge seemed like it had nothing new to offer. I mean, with three pages of rules, how good could it really be? Turns out I was very wrong. The game is a nail-biting fight to the finish, with a system so simple you wonder why no one came up with it before. Flamme Rouge is pure cycling in a box, and I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming Peloton expansion.



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Wargame review — The Doolittle Raid

Backward is the New Forward

Designer: Jeremy White

Player count: 1

Publisher: GMT Games

PARTING SHOTS

This second entry into the Enemy Coast Ahead series (there’s going to be more, right?) seriously raises the bar when it comes to narrative solo wargaming. The 19-page debriefing manual alone tells a completely different story each time you reach the end of the campaign game—and that’s not taking into account every little detail that’ll pepper your way to that yoke-gripping conclusion.

Naturally, the detailed research baked into the game mechanics means that you’ll learn a boatload of historical facts about that incredible endeavor every time you climb into that B-25 cockpit for another spin. (And keep an eye out for those historical green boxes scattered throughout the rulebook.)

I do lament the lack of an index—and that was also true of the original Enemy Coast Ahead. It will not always be a problem, but once in a while you’ll find yourself cursing under your breath when, in the thick of things, with bullets flying every which way, you try to remember the consequences of switching from high to low altitude…

Still, you can rely on the astounding player aids. Not only do they painlessly teach you the game, but they also vaporize the solo gamer’s main headache: coming back to a solo game after letting it stew on its shelf for an extended period of time. Will you remember how to play that thing? In the case of The Doolittle Raid, it doesn’t matter. All you need to do is just sit down and start playing.

So what’s left to say?  That Operation Chariot would make a great volume III?

(Pretty please…)

FUN FACTOR

The Doolittle Raid is an absolute blast (pun intended).

Don’t be fooled by the early scenarios: they are intentionally facile to ease players into the system and make it possible for them to assimilate basic game mechanics without feeling overwhelmed by chaotic happenstances erupting left and right. After all, you’re just performing the Attack segment, which happens at the very end of the raid. So everything is set up just right for you to enjoy the ride. (By the way, unless you want to take in an extra dose of historical goodness, don’t bother with all of the Attack scenarios: just one or two of them will be enough for you to grok what’s going on.)

However, once you back up and start with the Flight segment, your performance there will affect the subsequent Attack segment: suddenly, you’re not in that perfect, hypothetical shape when you reach Tokyo. Not so easy now, is it?

Then you back up one more step, to play the Naval segment that will bring your bombers into takeoff range—if your aircraft carrier makes it that far. Of course, by then not all of your planes might be fit to fly anymore, which will affect your Flight segment, which will then generate consequences for your Attack segment…

Eventually you’ll tackle the complete, campaign game, moving through Planning, Naval, Flight and Attack segments, even tacking on a Denouement segment at the end to cap the adventure. Only then will you start to fully grasp the repercussions of even the earliest of your decisions, as they cascade out of your control down the game structure.

It is a thing a beauty.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

We are indeed talking about a 64-page rulebook, here. At first glance, not the faint of heart. But the amazing thing is that you don’t need to read a single page of it.

Just like its sister game, The Doolittle Raid is presented with programmed instructions in a reverse sequence of connected segments (or modules, if you wish). This means that you start by learning the rules to the last chunk of the game: the Attack segment.

“A-ha! So there’s rules reading involved!!” Well, no, not really. Because the Attack segment is summarized in a glorious player aid folder that contains everything you need to get underway. Right now. So you open the box, punch out the components, set up scenario 1 and get going, performing whatever the player aid tells you to do.

I am not using hyperbole to make a cute point—this is exactly how your first game will unfold.

Of course, you can sit down in your favorite armchair, armed with a nice single malt, and plow through the rulebook from cover to cover. But you don’t need to. Know that the book will be there, like a trusty wingman, for when something doesn’t quite make sense to you and you need confirmation.

Other than that, keep your eyes on the target.

Once you’ve learned how to play the Attack segment, the scenario book takes you one step back to the Flight segment, i.e. getting your planes to where they need to attack. Again, the relevant player aid folder takes you through the entire procedure with nary a page of rules to read.

So you fly your way to Japan, trying to make it there in one piece. Then the end of the Flight segment connects to the start of the Attack segment—but you already know how to play that, don’t you?

When you’re comfortable with the Flight and Attack segments, the game takes you back one step earlier, to the Naval segment. This involves navigating treacherous waters with your task force until you bring your carrier far enough into the Pacific for your B-25s to take off. You guessed it—there’s a handy Naval segment player aid folder to guide you, so that you need not touch the rulebook.

And what happens once the aircraft take to the skies? The Naval segment blends seamlessly into the now-familiar Flight segment, which will culminate in the by-now-quite-comfortable Attack segment.

Finally, when you’ve paid your dues and then some, the game takes you back one last step, to the Planning segment. There you are tasked with making the most crucial decisions of the entire game, from negotiating with foreign powers (where do you want your planes to land once they’ve released their ordnance?) to making actual modifications on your aircraft (heavier and better equipped, or lighter but more vulnerable?), setting secrecy levels (provide more information to the troops, enhancing their readiness, but at the price of a heightened security risk…), organizing training, managing transportation, and so on. Again, a jewel of a player aid folder guides you through the entire process and makes sure you don’t forget a single rivet on those B-25s.

And then? You embark on the Naval segment, segue right into the Flight segment, follow up with the Attack segment—and top everything with a Denouement segment that evaluates your entire performance and provides an array of results that mesh together to form an enthralling narrative.

Congratulations! You’ve just played the campaign game, enjoyed one of the best rides of your wargaming life, and can’t wait to just experience it all over again.

Now, while the Attack segment might appear as if its provides few decision points, the more you step back, the more you come to understand how each of your selections blooms into consequences you’ll have to deal with later on. By the time you reach the Planning segment and can envision the entire breadth of the campaign, it becomes absolutely clear (if somehow you still had doubts) that you’re not spending time on some half-baked, harebrained contraption.

WAR PRODUCTION

With a box almost too small to hold all of its gaming goodness, The Doolittle Raid hides behind a cool cover—courtesy of the US Navy Department of Defense!

So you’re armed with a 64-page rulebook (which you don’t have to read, it bears repeating), a 40-page scenario book, a 20-page debriefing manual, and enough player aids to cover a fair-sized table. If you still have some surface left, deploy the immense map sheet and plug whatever hole might remain with the three smaller attack maps.

Errata here was kept to a minimum, and while I ran into a few nomenclature woes (for instance, page 44 calls “Reaction Value” what the map labels “Anti-Sub Value”), there’s really nothing to prevent you from accomplishing your mission.

Oh, and don’t forget your opaque containers: you’ll need ten of them to house the multitude of chits you’ll need to pull as your aircraft make their long, dangerous way to Japan. (To be fair, you’re not expected to use all of them at once, although I did have to resort to seven simultaneous mugs on more than one occasion.)

The components are the usual GMT high quality, and all illustrations (including the main map!) are provided by the designer himself. Talk about a one-man army.

Five six-sided dice round out the package. Will you need them all? Yes. Ooooh yes.

Have fun running out of fuel over Tokyo.

INTRODUCTION

Three quarters of a century after the fact, most people know about the infamous air attack on Japan that brought World War II to an end. But there was another raid on Tokyo, earlier in the war, which did not leave quite the same mark on the public’s psyche. It was the Doolittle Raid.

And now it’s your turn to make it all the way to the Empire of the Sun—and survive to tell the tale.

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