Monday, December 31, 2018

Top 11 games of 2018

We chose our top 10 based on number of hours played, with a minimum of 5 plays per game throughout the year. This year we had a tie for fifth place and a three-way tie for eighth place, creating the need for a top 11. Besides, one more game won't hurt anyone...

The big surprise this year is how few games from last year's top 10 made the list, the biggest shocker being not only that X-Wing did not make it into the top 10, but we didn't play a single game of it in 2018. I chalk this up to us spending a lot more time playing other miniatures games, and also a lack of interest in the recently released X-Wing Second Edition.


11 (tie). Covert

5 plays, 12.5 hours (average play time 2.5 hours per game)

A lavish game that's relatively simple yet very engaging. I love the cold war spy genre, and Covert evokes that nicely with it's European setting and cards representing spy gadgets like miniature cameras and briefcase tape recorders.

Read the full review.


10 (tie). Doctor Who: Time of the Daleks

5 plays, 12.5 hours (average play time 2.5 hours per game)

2018 was the year we finally got some decent Doctor Who tabletop games. This one manages to capture the feel of Doctor Who quite well but it does seem a little incomplete, an issue that will hopefully be remedied by the long-delayed expansions that will hopefully see the light of day soon.

Read the full review.


9 (tie). Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game

5 plays, 12.5 hours (average play time 2.5 hours per game)

At the behest of a friend who wanted to try it, we got this old gem out and actually spent a fair amount of time playing it this year. I still maintain that it is one of the most well-designed trading card games ever published.

Read the full review.


8. 7TV

5 plays, 13.5 hours (average play time 2.75 hours per game)

We've built up a fairly large collection of miniatures and terrain for this great skirmish game based on British "spy-fi" television of the 1970s such as The Avengers, The Prisoner and Life on Mars. The rules do a good job of providing a framework that allows us to immerse ourselves in the setting, which to me is the whole reason to play games like this.

Read the full review.


7. Yamataï

5 plays, 14 hours (average play time 2.75 hours per game)

I'd be rich if I could bottle and sell whatever it is that makes Jérémie Fleury's artwork so appealing. Thankfully, with Yamataï it's backed up by a very interesting exploration and resource management game.

Read the full review.


6 (tie). Clank! In! Space!

6 plays, 14 hours (average play time 2.5 hours per game)

I'm a big fan of deck-building games, but the can tend to get a bit repetitive. This one innovates by adding a board with a movement mechanic, as players attempt to rob an evil despot's space ship before anyone notices.

Read the full review.


5 (tie). Cthulhu Wars

6 plays, 14 hours (average play time 2.5 hours per game)

Cthulhu Wars is one of only two returning games from last year's top 10 list. Apart from the exceptional miniatures, it really is a compelling Risk-style strategy game.

Read the full review.


4. Doctor Who: Exterminate!

6 plays, 16.75 hours (average play time 2.75 hours per game)

We were a little lukewarm on this skirmish game when we originally picked it up in 2017, but the growing range of miniatures has rekindled our interest, especially since we can use the same tabletop terrain we've been assembling for 7TV.

Read the full review.


3. Dinosaur Island

9 plays, 23 hours (average play time 2.5 hours per game)

This was one of my most anticipated games for this year, and I wasn't disappointed. It's a great engine-building game, and the recent expansion makes the game more interesting without making it more complicated.

Read the full review.


2. Conan

19 plays, 27.5 hours (average play time 1.5 hours per game)

The only other returning game from last year's top 10, Conan dropped one spot but still saw plenty of play in 2018. Part of this was due to an 8-week campaign that I talked one of my roleplaying groups into, but the ability to play this game as an ongoing series is part of what makes it such a great game.

Read the full review.



 1. Mythic Battles: Pantheon

21 plays, 37.5 hours (average play time 1.75 hours per game)

Apart from the great miniatures, gorgeous artwork, and well-designed rules, the nicest thing I can say about this game is that every time we finish a game we want to play again.

Read the full review.


Honorable Mention


Western Legends

5 plays, 11.5 hours (average play time 2.25 hours per game)

A great open world adventure game set in the wild west. The fact that we played this game four times in the first month we got it tells me that it probably would have placed in the top 10 if we'd had it earlier in the year.

Read the full review.


Most anticipated game of 2019


Core Space

This game looks simply amazing. A board game/skirmish hybrid similar to Mythic Battles: Pantheon or Conan, with an intriguing semi-cooperative element that puts players in competition with each other for resources, but both at threat from an invading horde of killer robots. And rather than just a flat, printed board, it comes with Battle Systems 3D terrain.
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Gods and monsters


In some ways I feel like the publishers of Mythic Battles: Pantheon took advantage of me. The game's Kickstarter campaign launched soon after they had delivered their phenomenal Conan board game, so I was flush with excitement over how great Conan was, and regret that I had only backed the core game and a few small expansions. That, combined with some compelling playthrough videos on Beasts of War and the infectious enthusiasm of their PR man Leo, made diving into this game a no-brainer.

It's a great example of an emerging category of hybrid games combining elements of adventure board games and tactical skirmishers. At its core, MB:P is a battle between two or more players' assembled forces of gods, heroes and monsters from Greek mythology, using movement around a battlefield to gain advantage and dice to score hits on opposing miniatures. However, it borrows two important board game elements to keep things interesting.

One is the use of a printed board to enable area-based movement, eliminating the need for fiddly tape measures. The game comes with several beautifully illustrated boards depicting different environments, with movement spaces clearly marked. Each space includes a symbol identifying what type of terrain it is and how many miniatures can occupy the space. The symbol also doubles as a simple line-of-sight indicator, making it easy to tell whether opposing miniatures can shoot at each other.


The other board game element MB:P uses is "activation cards" to determine when miniatures can move and attack, and this is where I think this game really shines. At the start of the game players assemble a deck of cards based on the characters they have included in their army, plus some "Art of War" cards that enable different special effects. In order to move a particular miniature, the player must first play that miniature's card from their hand. This forces players to think on their feet, formulating their tactics based on the cards they have available, rather than using the same strategy over and over again.

The default game involves collecting tokens called Omphalos from the board, which add a strategy card to the player's deck once collected. This makes even a basic game more interesting than your standard "rush to the middle and fight" skirmish, since collecting a majority of Omphalos is one of the main ways to win the game. Additionally, the rule book details a wide array of scenario-based games that give different objectives and victory conditions, as well as several multi-game campaigns where the result of one game affects the next.


It's a great rules system, and it's coupled with some gorgeous visual elements. The artwork on the cards and boards is stunning, and the miniatures are just amazing. They're plastic, but they hold an incredible amount of detail, and they are an absolute joy to paint. The manufacturing even involved a method using different types of plastic, with spears and swords made out of a harder material so that they stay straight. Any miniature painter who's had to straighten out a curvy spear on a plastic model will know what I'm talking about.

The only thing I can think of to complain about is that the sheer amount of content can be overwhelming, with close to 200 miniatures and over 80 scenarios to play with. All in all, that's probably not a bad problem to have.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) This game has the surprisingly rare combination of great miniatures coupled with a simple but compelling rules system.
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Tuesday, December 11, 2018

It's about time...


Doctor Who: Time of the Daleks is essentially a re-themed Elder Sign, but I think I'm okay with that. Thematically, Elder Sign is a game about tweedy academics solving problems intellectually rather than with brute force, and that is absolutely what a Doctor Who game should be about.

Like Elder Sign, the core gameplay in Time of the Daleks involves rolling dice and matching their symbols in order to complete tasks. Each player plays as a particular Doctor, with assistants and gadgets that allow him to manipulate the roll of the dice in order to get the right combination of symbols. Each successfully completed task moves that player closer to winning the game.

Also like Elder Sign, there is a villain at work, essentially trying to outrace the players and prevent them from winning. In this case it's the Daleks, and their presence is felt in the game in several ways. Failing at a task will generally move the Dalek saucer forward on the scoring track, and of course they win if they beat all the players to the end. Additionally, any failure will also result in a Dalek figure being placed on the board, where they reduce the number of dice the players get to roll. Too many Daleks on the board will also lose the game for the players.

There are a few ways in which Time of the Daleks differs from Elder Sign (enough to keep Reiner Knizia's lawyers at bay, anyway). The dice-rolling tasks that players must accomplish are determined by a combination of two different tiles on the board: a location and a dilemma (usually a villain from the TV series' long history). This makes for a great deal of mix-and-match variety, as Silurians may threaten the planet Karn in one game, and the Time Meddler in another.

Combine that with a randomly shuffled deck of companions, and the game can tell a multitude of what if stories as Leela teams up with Sarah Jane Smith and the 11th Doctor to stop the Cybermen from invading Clara's apartment, or the First Doctor and Nardole foil the Master's Trap at the Bank of Karabraxos.


Another way in which it differs from Elder Sign is that it is only partially co-operative. Players are in competition with each other to get to the end of the score track first, but they all lose if the Daleks get there first. If a player is having a tough time solving a dilemma, he can ask one of the other players for help, which they may be inclined to do if it will slow down the Daleks. Additionally, the assisting player shares in the reward for completing the dilemma. It reminds me a lot of the multi-Doctor stories where they fight and bicker but end up cooperating for the greater good.

If you read the online chatter about this game, the main complaint about it seems to be that the announced expansions for the game have not yet materialized, a year after the game's release. Part of this frustration no doubt comes from the fact that the game was originally intended to feature six Doctors rather than four, and was scaled back in order to get the asking price down. The game's coverage of the world of Doctor Who does feel a little thin here and there -- clearly there is room for a lot more content.

Nevertheless, it's a solidly designed game with some beautifully designed components (The Expanse Board Game could learn a lesson here). Most importantly, it feels like Doctor Who, which is something no other board game in the show's 55 year history has quite managed to do.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A good game that could be a great one. It captures the feel of Doctor Who, but not quite the depth.
Check out my OnTableTop.com project blog about painting the miniatures that come with this game.
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Thursday, December 6, 2018

Building a better dinosaur


Dinosaur Island is almost exactly the game I wanted it to be. I really like engine-building games, where the goal is to use the game's options to build up a point-generating mechanism. This game lets you do just that, offering meaningful and thematic choices in the process: do I focus on tons of different dinosaurs, or do I balance them with other attractions like carnival rides and snack shops? Do I play it slow and safe with plenty of security, or do I allow the occasional dinosaur to escape its pen and eat a visitor or two, hoping to mitigate the damage later?

The game structure is complex but not complicated; I find that we rarely need to consult the rules while playing, which to me is a sign of a well-designed game. Each turn is broken up into four phases: in the first, dice are rolled to determine which DNA strands are available for the turn, then players go through a few rounds of worker placement, deciding whether to research new DNA, increase DNA storage so more can be stockpiled, or grab dinosaur "recipes" in order to create animals for their parks.

Next comes a buying phase, where players spend their cash on equipment upgrades, staff specialists, and secondary park attractions such as restaurants and gift shops. After that is the game's main worker placement phase, where players clone new dinosaurs, build larger habitats for them, increase security, and gather investment capital.


Finally comes the park phase, which is a delicate balancing act of attracting visitors and making sure they all have something to do in the park. Each dinosaur has an excitement value, which determines how many visitors line up outside your park. You gain income from all these visitors, but you only get points for the ones that find something to do in the park, whether it is actually looking at a live dinosaur, or thrilling to carnival rides with amusing names like "Jurassic Whirled."

Some dinosaurs (generally the large, carnivorous ones) are more exciting than others, so if you have a lot of these you will find yourself with more visitors than you have space (which is why you need thrill-rides and gift shops). Additionally, the visitors are drawn randomly out of a bag, which contains a number of "hooligans" who don't pay admission and take up valuable space in your park. And if you don't have enough security, dinosaurs will escape and eat your paying customers, which loses you points.

Event cards provide different global game effects, and the conditions that end the game are drawn randomly as well, so no two games are much alike. Even frequent players are forced to try out different strategies depending on what the global effects and end conditions are, and what resources are available from turn to turn,

You may notice that at the beginning of this review I stated "almost exactly the game I wanted it to be." My only quibble with Dinosaur Island (and it is a minor quibble at that) is the obnoxious graphic design. It's intended to evoke the early 1990s when Jurassic Park was first released, but I find all the pink and yellow just a little bit off-putting. Not enough to stop me from enjoying the game though.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) A terrific game with a lot of meaningful decisions to make, and a ton of replay value. And I guess the graphics aren't that bad...

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