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Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2019

Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2019

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Happy 2020, folks! Hope you all have recovered from the hectic holiday season! I know I have! I took one of the longest work breaks for a while as I traveled to Tennessee and Los Angeles to visit family, and then spent a few days at home recovering from all of that. Last year was a year of personal and professional milestones, as well as experiencing joyful memories of seeing friends and loved ones happy and healthy. And, of course, playing lots of board games with all those people! 

Without further ado, here are my top 10 board games that I played for the first time in 2019. 

10. Gandhi: The Decolonization of British India, 1917 – 1947

Gandhi is Volume IX from GMT’s COIN series, which stands for Counter Insurgency. I do love my COINs, and this one especially stands out. Gandhi takes us to India for a detailed look at the final decades of the British Raj. This is the first COIN to include nonviolent factions, which offer a unique perspective to these types of wargames. 

Gandhi is the latest COIN game from GMT Games.

The are four factions: the British Raj, the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League and the Revolutionaries. The Congress and the Muslim League are the two nonviolent factions, and like most other COINs, factions somewhat work together until they don’t in order to meet their win condition. The map is beautifully done, and the game allows wargamers to study this historic period of European imperialism. 

9. Gugong

I did a review on Gugong on Episode 58 of The Five By. It is one of those games that caught me by surprise early in 2019 by having a little bit of everything. It has hand management, set collection and worker placement, and plays 1-5 people. In Gugong, the emperor is working hard to ban corruption within the country, and the highest officials of the Forbidden City would pretend to uphold that ban on corruption by accepting gifts from petitioners instead, and returning a gift of a seemingly lower value. Players do this by playing a card from their hand to activate a location on the board. 

I love using cards to activate locations in Gugong. It makes you to manage your hand well.

Players in Gugong also have to manage their supply of workers with the general supply, which replenishes at a different rate each round. The components are great, and the game scales for all players, with its two-sided board and solo variant. The game also comes with all sort of meeple shapes for various locations on the board.  

8. Just One 

Just One is my party game of the year. It’s so simple to jump into, it’s co-op, and it plays up to seven people! You never quite know if word games will be a hit with various gaming groups (I’m looking at you, Codenames), but Just One has never failed me. In Just One, the group is trying to get the active player to guess the clue on the card by writing a single word associated with it. Before the active player opens their eyes, the group reveals their word, and if there are duplicate copies of a clue showing, they are eliminated from being shown to the active player. The active player then opens their eyes to see the remaining clues and tries to guess the word. 

Can you guess the clue in our Just One game? If you guessed pole, you’re correct!

I particularly enjoy when the group starts finding their groove after a few clues, and the game evolves into a metagame because people start assuming what everyone else will write based on their personalities. And everyone totally loves having their own dry-erase marker and nameplate to write answers on. 

7. Escape Plan

We’ve all watched countless heist films. A group of skilled individuals lay out a plan, execute said plan and grab the loot. And then what’s the saying? The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Well, then shoot, Plan B. Hide the loot and lay low — for now. But now the time is up, and we’ve all got to grab our hidden loot and get out of the city.

Your mission is to escape the police in three days!

Welcome to Escape Plan, designed by one of my absolute favorite game designers Vital Lacerda. Escape Plan picks up right this moment of the heist narrative: players have three days to evade the cops, get their money and get the heck out of the town. This is by far Lacerda’s lightest game, but it’s still just as tense as his other games — and you never, ever have enough actions to do what you want to do. Just remember: don’t get caught. 

6. Abomination

Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein is a worker placement game that’s strategic and fun, and, surprisingly, oozes with a unique theme that even a sometimes curmudgeonly eurogamer like me can appreciate. In Abomination, scientists are working in Paris to “collect” muscles, organs, blood and bone, and the occasional animal part when really, really needed it. And I say “collect,” because what you’re really doing is raiding hospitals, morgues, cemeteries and other suspicious Parisian locations for the freshest cadaver parts required to create your very own monster! 

Just collecting some body parts in the lovely city of Paris!

The game is great for horror fans and heavier gamers alike but even though the box says 60-120 minutes, I cannot imagine ever getting through a game in under two hours. The 12 rounds take a while — even though there are events or cards that can move the round marker meeple forward — and there are a lot of difficult decisions to make, with decomposition of body parts creeping up on you.

5. The Quacks of Quedlinburg

Quack, quack! And not the bird variety. In The Quacks of Quedlinburg, quack doctors are conjuring up potions by blindly pulling ingredients from their potion bag and adding them to their cauldron. If you don’t bust during a round, you gain VPs as well as the option to purchase new ingredients to throw back into your bag and play a new round. 

We are all quack doctors drawing ingredients from a bag to make potions!

This push-your-luck game is super fun and super addicting, and, surely, you won’t bust when you have a 1 in 10 chance of drawing the one ingredient that will cause your cauldron to spill over. But of course, you manage to pull out that exact piece EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I love this game so much that I even purchased the cloth bags and plastic bits for it via the BGG Store even though I rarely deluxify my games. This game is just delightful. 

4. Wingspan

We can’t talk about last year without adding Wingspan to this list. This game for me — and what is represents — is peak 2019 inspiration. Seeing a female gamer design her own game based on her own interests with a well-known publisher hit the large stage, take flight and soar — pun intended — is exactly what the board game industry needs more of. 

Wingspan is just so lovely to play and look at it. The giant blue bird is something I added to my game though as a first-player token.

Representation 100% matters, and I’m always beaming with pride when I show this game to casual gamers and explain Wingspan’s backstory. The game has enabled me to invite even more casual games to take the next step up in strategy games because of its presentation, subject matter and play style. I’d love to see more success stories like this. Plus, OMG the eggs! 

3. Watergate

Watergate, a historical subject that’s near and dear to my heart, is one of my favorite games of 2019 and I believe the best 2-player of the year. In this day and age, there is something so supremely satisfying about stopping Nixon. But what I particularly love about this game is that you and your opponent can play a game and then switch sides and play another game immediately — and it still hasn’t taken up your entire evening. 

Watergate is my favorte 2P game of 2019.

Watergate fits in a small box and can easily be set up and taken down. I love seeing all the historical figures brought together in this tug-of-war game that is easy to get into. The rulebook and the text on the cards are well done, and there’s even a lot of supplemental information about the presidential scandal in the back of the rulebook.

2. Dead Man’s Cabal

Skulls, skulls and more skulls! While Dead Man’s Cabal comes with a giant sack of bones, it’s the clever and unique game play that makes this game one of my favorites of the year. Players are working to collect and perform ritual cards that score VPs by collecting required skulls at various locations in the game. 

Look at all these awesome skuls!

During a player’s turn, they take a private action and everyone else can take a public action based on skulls in play. Also, you can only activate locations on the board based on what skulls you have in your supply. It’s this midweight interconnected puzzle of skull collection in a 60-minute game that scratches my Vital Lacerda itch. The game has fantastic components, and did I mention it comes with a bag of plastic skulls? What else do you need?

1. Pax Pamir

And now we’ve hit No. 1. Pax Pamir was absolute love at first play at Consimworld. Oh. My. Goodness. Look at those gorgeous components. I’ve played other games in the Pax realm, Pax Porfiriana and Pax Renaissance, and while I enjoyed both of them a lot, the game ALWAYS seemed to take so much longer to explain than the actual game itself. 

I can’t say enough good things about Pax Pamir. And look at how gorgeous that is!

But that’s not the case with this second edition of Pax Pamir. The added map and individual player dials make this game much, much easier to visualize which faction is dominating. During the game, players are buying cards to expand their tableaus. These cards allow them to take actions to strengthen their factions and armies. Players score points when a dominance check occurs. The game comes with so many cards, which keeps each game fresh every time. Pax Pamir (second edition) is my game of the year, and my only regret is not securing a copy for myself. It is, sadly, sold out. Someone hook a lady up!

And that’s my top games of 2019. What are some of your favorites that came out last year? And what are you looking forward to playing in 2020?
Consimworld 2019: Wargames in Arizona

Consimworld 2019: Wargames in Arizona

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Do you like wargames, whether COINs or the hex-and-counter variety? Well, you need to come down to Consimworld! This 8-day wargaming convention happens every year in Tempe, Arizona, literally in my very own backyard. I love attending this convention every year it allows me to play some games that normally wouldn’t come out at other conventions, plus I get to hang out with some of the wargaming legends!

Look at all that cardboard, plexiglass and chits! Gaming is officially underway.

Consimworld was June 22-29. Sorry for the delay of this post; it’s been a whirlwind few weeks. Consimworld is located at Tempe Mission Palms, and the location is so convenient. You don’t need a car as the hotel provides a shuttle to the airport, or you can take the light rail to it. The best part too is that there are plenty of food options in walking distance. (I’m giving a lot of other conventions the side-eye here.)

I arrived on Day 1 and learned to play Maria with my buddy Dan flew into town from Milwaukee. This 3P game is so freakin’ awesome!  It’s set during the War of the Austrian Succession. One player is Austria, the second player is France and Bavaria, and the third plays as Prussia and the Pragmatic Army. Each army has their own set of cards, and armies battle each other based on the suit of the location they’re fighting from. You have to manage your card hand, as well as ensuring your troops are still within range from their supply line. I really want to get a copy of this game!

Maria is such a great game! It’s a 3P wargame, where battles are resolved based on the suited cards your hand and which suitted terrain you’re sitting on.

Dan then showed me his game that’s he’s working on. It’s an Age of Sails wargame that plays in about 2-3 hours set during the Battle of Virginia Capes, a crucial naval battle during the American Revolutionary War. One player plays as the French, and the other as the British, and they move and position their boats along a checkered board (in accordance with the wind direction), and they take turns battling each other. You then both secretly decide which order your ships will fire, and you roll dice to fire upon your enemy.

Dan always has the fanciest prototypes! Here are the ships battling each other out at sea.

Hit points are marked on individual boat cards and designated to an area on your boat based on your opponent’s directive, which makes for interesting player decisions of how to allocate damage. If your boat can no longer move, then it’s removed from the game. The French are trying to last 12 rounds — which killing British ships shortens the game — while the British are trying to move up a track by destroying French ships. The game was tense and super fun, and I liked being able to allocate where on my enemy’s boat they should mark the damage. (It’s like a wargame roll-and-write!) I’m crossing my fingers that it gets picked up by a publisher.

Dan created these ship cards that you mark you hit points on with a dry-erase pen. If your ship can no longer move, it’s out of the game.

Next up was Fire in the Lake. The last time I played Fire in the Lake was at last year’s Consimworld. Man, I was so rusty! And the last few times I had played as the NVA (because I like red), but this time, I played as the VC for the first time, and it took me a bit to start terrorizing and spreading out my VC guerrillas. This game lasted way late into the night, and we had to call it. It looked like the Americans were winning.

Fire in the Lake has the most vibrant board and is one of my favorite COIN games.

Day 2 began early by cracking open Gandhi. Fire in the Lake ended so late on Saturday night that it was a quick turnaround for a 9 a.m. game of Gandhi, one I had briefly looked over the rulebook, but luckily another player read the rulebook as well, and we all decided it was going to be a learning game that morning.

Gandhi is the latest COIN game from GMT Games.

I had been excited to see how a nonviolent factions play out for a COIN, and was equally surprised to see that two of the factions do not have any currency. The British Raj’s actions are tied to the Restraint track, and the Revolutionaries’ actions costs resources. I played as the British and particularly liked being able to affect how much my actions cost. I plan to write more about this after a few more games under my belt. All I can say is this: Gandhi is a great COIN and seems more accessible than the other ones. Here’s me playing Gandhi:

I then played the first of many games of Pax Pamir (second edition) this convention. Oh. My. Goodness. Love at first play! I’ve played Pax Porfiriana and Pax Renaissance before, and while I enjoyed both of them a lot, the game ALWAYS seemed to take so much longer to explain than the actual game itself. And especially with Pax Porfiriana, it was difficult to visualize and keep track of who is dominating what.

Look at these amazing components! Pax Pamir is really well done.

That’s not the case with this second edition of Pax Pamir. The added map and individual player dials make this game much, much easier to see which faction is dominating. The components are gorgeous, and each game I’ve played of this has been different. There are just so many cards, and I ended up playing this game two more times during the course of the convention. I played it as a 3P and as a 5P. I think Pax Pamir plays best at 4P, even though I did end up winning my 5P game.

I absolutely cannot get enough of Pax Pamir! I wish I owned a copy of this game.

Saturday night ended with another awesome game of Battlestar Galactica. This is the second year in a row I’ve played with Dan, Mike, Harold and Jordan. We even got Kurt into the mix! These guys are always so much fun! I became a cylon sympathizer during sleeper, and despite two cylons and me as the sympathizer, we still lost to those awful humans. The worst!

These guys are so much fun! I look forward to avenging my loss next year!

I took a day off on Day 3 since it was a Monday. I played a quick game of Sekigahara, and by quick it was about 2 hours. The game continued through all seven weeks and came down to victory points. I love this game so much!

My favorite part of Sekigahara is the hidden info of which armies are going toward you.

I then played my other two games of Pax Pamir at the various player counts. I then got a chance to play Rococo. It’s a shame that this game isn’t more widely available! It’s a deckbuilder about making dresses. Players collect materials at various locations on the board, and ultimately, it’s an area control game in regards to where you display your dresses and coats. The game plays out over seven rounds. 

Making dresses in Rococo can be cut-throat!

In the middle of Rococo was the welcome ceremony. John Kranz took time to welcome everyone and give expo updates. Altogether, over 350 people had signed up, with more than 60 newcomers. Very cool! He also highlighted those who came from afar — some as far as the Philippines and Bahrain! That’s super neat to see people travel for all the wargames!

Everyone’s all gathered! John Kranz likes to give updates about the convention, and there’s a giant raffle at the end of this meeting as well!

One slide featured a nice tribute to my buddy Tom Wells. I miss gaming with him; there was never a dull moment gaming with him.

I finished Monday night with another tense game of Maria! My buddy Mark and I did better this time, but Dan still beat us. (It’s one of his favorite games, after all.)

Dan and Mark are too much fun! Dan and I are heading to SD Historical Con in November. I’m looking forward to that!

The rest of the week I worked during the day but I stopped by afterwards to get in a game or two. On Tuesday night, I got a chance to play a prototype of Barrage. What a clever eurogame with very specific spatial and timing quality to it! You are all companies trying to harness the power of water to get electricity. You have to build dams, conductors and power factories on this hill so that you can capture that energy as water flows down.

There’s an intricate network of how things need to be powered, and when you spend resources to build your buildings, they’re locked up on this wheel on your personal board, and they can only become available to you again when you build more buildings, which you probably won’t be able to do since your resources are tied up in this wheel! What a dilemma! You can, however, spend actions on this main board to move that wheel along. The main board is where the majority of the worker placement happens.

Stuff rolls downhill! Here are are trying to harness the power of water, and hoping someone’s dam doesn’t get in your damn way.

Each player has a team of engineers, and you can allocate however many you want to an action spot when it’s your turn. Players take turns placing their engineers until they’re have no more workers and must pass. So you need to manage your pool of engineers with the actions you want to do, while also trying to complete objectives during each round. Lastly, the last piece of the puzzle is that water isn’t always available each round. It will flow according to the cards drawn, and if someone else’s dam blocks water flow to your buildings, well, that’s a damn shame.

On Wednesday, I fangirled sooooooo hard. I got a chance to sit in as the awesome Mark Herman taught one of his games, Pericles: The Peloponnesian War to John Butterfield, Nick Karp and Bruce. They all go way back to Victory Games, and it was like being among the wargaming legends.

Here’s me being chill, even though I’m fangirling so hard inside.

Mark taught one round of Pericles, and I jumped into a second round, (holding my own I might add!) and pushing the Demogogues forward. It was great hanging out with them and hearing about old industry stories.  Also, achievement unlocked below: my dinosaur dress got into a C3i report!

The last night I attended Consimworld, I played Root twice, first with Kurt and Jordan, and then we picked up a fourth player for our second game. Kurt LOVES, LOVES Root (and if you want to be highly entertained, next time you see Kurt at a convention, ask him about COIN games.) 

Our first game of Root that evening. I won as the cats!

And just like that, an entire week of wargaming ended. I always have such a great time at Consimworld, and I always feel included among all the gamers here. That said, I’d love to see more younger folks here, especially more women and people of color. If you’re interested in these types of games, please let me know and maybe we can schedule something special for next year. I’d love a chance to teach some of these heavy games! Save the date: next year’s convention will be June 6-13, 2020. You’ll find me in the back with some giant tweezers pushing some cardboard chits.

Thanks for having me, Consimworld! Can’t wait until next year’s con!