Actualol Newsletter - February 2020 (Patreon)

Greetings gamers!

This month I’m sharing my favourite board games of last year, numbers 20 to 11. Hopefully, you’ve already seen my Top 5 party games video. 

It’s been a disappointingly quiet month for the channel, as I was away at the start and ever since I’ve been religiously writing my Best Board Games of 2019 video which will be ready soon. Last year I started a new tradition to throw jokes into it and I enjoyed how it turned out so I’m continuing it this year. I can’t wait to share it with you, it should be a good one.

It’s always an interesting time looking back at the previous year’s releases. I’ve been replaying all of them to consolidate my thoughts on them in my mind, but even in February it feels too recent to make such a definitive list. 

My natural instinct is to compare it to previous years. I remember thinking last year that 2018 had been a weak year for games (that I enjoy), but now I look back I see a really strong Top 10 with some great games in it. Right now, it feels like 2019 wasn’t as strong as 2018, with one big exception to be revealed soon.

Actual Life

At the start of the month we went on our honeymoon to New Orleans, which was wonderful. 

We really enjoyed being able to see such incredible live jazz music every night and in such intimate venues. 

Having only ever visited LA, NYC and Las Vegas before, it was a nice change of pace to see a different side of the US. 

One thing we’d forgotten about was the American custom for bartenders free pouring spirits. A gin and tonic in the UK is a very different thing from a gin and tonic in the US! And I thought we were famous for our drinking!

Last weekend, I had a gaming evening with my four oldest school friends. I’ve played many games with each of them over the years, but we realised that we’ve not all four of us played a proper board game since our teenage days of playing Catan, half a lifetime ago. 

I felt an immense pressure to pick the right games - what if we had a bad time? In the end I opted for Lords of Vegas, which was just the right level of competitiveness and negotiation.  I wanted to get us all at each other’s throats but in a nice way, and this was just the ticket.

We followed that up with three games of Eye My Favourite Things, which is the ultimate game to play with old friends. And the following morning we enjoyed a game of PARKS. Fingers crossed it won’t be another 18 years before we make it happen again.

Best Games of 2019 - Numbers 20 to 11

In preparation for my Best Games of 2019 video, here are the ten games that almost made the list. I’ve played 165 games that were released last year, so these are still in my Top 12%.

20. Ninja Academy is a light, silly dexterity game that delivers a lot of fun for a small box. You’re competing to be the best ninja and the game is made up of a series of challenges. Some are head to head between two players, others involve all five of you.

The challenges include balancing a meeple on the back of your hand whilst trying to use that hand to knock off the meeples on the backs of other players’ hands, throwing meeples into the box from a distance, and various stacking challenges, racing to beat your opponent.

To keep the two player challenges interesting for everyone, the other players bet on who they think will win and score a point if they’re right. It’s a really entertaining game, that’s great for some end of the night silliness. And it stands apart from other dexterity games by offering something quite different. 

19. Robin of Locksley is a two-player game from Uwe Rosenberg. The board is a grid of coloured tiles. You each have a pawn which you move around the grid to pick up tiles and collect them. Your pawn can only move in an L-shaped fashion, like a knight in chess.

You’re trying to complete missions, presented by the track running outside the grid. Simple things such as “own a blue tile”, or “have three sets of tiles”. Once you’ve completed a mission you move along the track. You’re racing to get around the track twice. 

It means you can really plan ahead and try to complete multiple missions in one turn, which feels really satisfying. I hope to talk about it further in a video.

18. Babylonia is a thinky tile-laying game from Reiner Knizia. It has a similar feel to his games Through The Desert, Blue Lagoon and Samurai.

You are placing down tiles, trying to connect up as many symbols as possible to a city in a connected line. Because when it scores, you score points for every matching symbol connected to it, no matter how far away.

It’s wickedly competitive, and a huge part of success is in blocking your rivals from making big pathways across the board. In typical Knizia style it’s quick, simple but with lots of depth. See my video for more info.

17. Pandemic: Rapid Response is a real-time co-operative game set in the Pandemic universe. The premise is that you’re all aboard a plane delivering aid to cities in need.

You’re playing against a timer, but the interesting twist is that you still take turns. The longer you take, the more you hold your team back. But it’s great for co-operation because your teammates can give you advice on what to do, while you’re rolling your dice trying to get the symbols you need.

It’s a lean design that brings something new to real-time co-op games. Find out more in my Best Games of August 2019 video.

16. Point Salad is a brilliant filler card game. The deck is made up of vegetables, which you collect by drafting two cards from the centre each turn.

Or, you can take a point scoring card, which will give you points for having certain vegetables. Every card has a unique point scoring objective on the back, so there’s a lot of variety in the game. 

It’s a really easy game to pick up, but with enough thinkiness to give it longevity. See my Hottest Games at Essen video to learn more about it. 

15. Sherlock Files: Elementary Entries is a co-operative crime-solving game. It contains three cases, that are simply a deck of cards.

Each card contains a fragment of the information you need to solve the case. On your turn you have to decide whether a card in your hand is relevant and share it with the group, or discard it. 

The cases are all well written, and require some clever deduction that goes beyond what you learn from the cards. To find out more, see my Best Games of January 2020 video.

14. Detective Stories: Case 1 – The Fire in Adlerstein is a singular crime-solving mystery. You’ve been left the case files of a man who has been framed for arson and is trying to prove his innocence. It’s your job to identify the suspects and pore over the evidence to determine the real culprit.

I like that the evidence is presented as it would be in a real case - a folder of documents, from prescriptions to newspaper articles. And a few objects that aren’t pieces of paper. You’re not guided by the game on how to approach it - it’s up to you to work through what you’ve been left and work out how it fits into the bigger picture.

It has a different feel to other crime-solving games because you’re working through eliminating suspects as you find their alibis. It’s only one case, but it was a really fun two-hour experience, and I’d be keen to play other scenarios in this style.

13. Q.E. is a quirky auction game where you can bid any amount of money you want. You each represent a global superpower (or the UK!), bidding on companies. The auctioneer for that round writes the opening bid on their whiteboard, and every other player writes a secret bid on theirs and passes it to them. You can write whatever number you want on your board, there is no limit to how big you can make it.

The winner is revealed, but not how much they paid. So you will never know how much is being spent, except when you’re the auctioneer. The secrecy and fear of missing out means that bids can sky rocket.

The crucial twist is that at the end of the game the player who spent the most money on their winning bids is eliminated. So you can bid whatever you want, but you have to hope that someone else is along for your reckless ride. 

You get points for owning sets of industries and investing in your own country’s businesses, plus there’s a nice bonus for spending the least amount of money. 

It’s a fun, unique game that feels like you’re part of a psychological experiment. I’ll review it in a future video.

12. Overbooked is a puzzle game about seating passengers on an aeroplane. It has the satisfying challenge of a Tetris style game, as each turn you take a card which represents a formation of passengers you have to fit into your seating layout.

The passengers come in different colours, representing children, lovebirds and a rugby team. They each score points in a different way, so there’s lots to consider when deciding which card to pick and where to seat them. 

Find out more about it in my Best Games of August  2019 video.

11. Magic Maze on Mars is a sequel to the brilliant Magic Maze. In this one, instead of controlling a direction you are in charge of two colours. Only you can produce those colour resources, and transport things across those colour transport lines. 

It makes for a game that scales better than before, because there are six colours to share amongst the players. And it’s a little easier for a newbie to pick up.

The game feels similar to play - it retains all the fun and excitement of Magic Maze. And introduces new problems in its later scenarios, like trash which clogs up your infrastructure which you have to constantly move out of the way.

Overall, I think it’s an improvement on the original. And I’ll be reviewing it fully in an upcoming  video.

Games I’ve been enjoying lately:

- The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

- Q.E.

Games that have just arrived:

- Spycon (successor to Spyfall)

- Cutterland

Song of the month - Dave - Black (Live at the Brits) 

Video of the month - Evolution of the Friends theme song 1920-1990s 

Currently watching on TV - A.P. Bio, Ladhood 

Now that the retrospection about 2019 is coming to end, I'm looking forward to turning my attention to this year, and having a chance to play some older titles in the quieter period before GenCon and Essen releases.

Actually yours,

Jon