Actualol Newsletter - January 2022 (Patreon)

Bonjour mes amis,

Thanks for your patience with the newsletter, it was good to get the 10 Mistakes Most Gamers Make video done. And welcome to all the new patrons! I’m really grateful for your support.

Thanks to all of you, we have reached the goal for the next Top 50 video! So that is on the way!

Make sure to join the new Actualol Discord channel, and come hang out with the other patrons there. It’s the best place to get games going for BGA, and chat about games. You just need to link your discord account to your Patreon account (on Patreon) and it will add you automatically. For more details on how to do that, go here.  

I've been surprised by how many views the 10 Mistakes video has had - 40,000 in 4 days is unheard of for Actualol, and over two thousand new subscribers in that time too! You can expect more videos like that one in the future.

In today’s newsletter, I’m doing a rundown of all the hot games I played this year that won’t be in my Top Games of 2021, and why. I often get asked “but did you play this?” and the answer is often yes, so I wanted to share my thoughts on those games.

Actual Life

This month I went away for a weekend to Rochester, a town with a castle AND a cathedral, which just seems greedy. But we weren’t interested in any of that, as we were holing up in a house to play board games.

We played two three hour games of Vienna Connection, which was the perfect, co-operative experience for the situation, spreading out case files across the living room. 

It takes the system from Detective: A Modern Crime Game, and turns it into a spy game set during The Cold War - and it’s even richer and more immersive than its predecessor. You can 100% expect a video on this one.

Not The Best Games of 2021

I recently procured a bunch of games from 2021 that have been hyped by other reviewers, in the hope of finding some gems for my upcoming games of the year video. But I was mostly disappointed. So here’s a rundown of some hyped games, and why they won’t be appearing on the channel. Some are a LOT worse than others, so I have put them in descending order of quality. The “perfectly fine but not for me” games are at the top.

Brian Boru: The High King of Ireland - An area control game that uses a quirky trick-taking mechanism. Simple to get into but plenty to consider. I liked a lot about this, but I find that Peer Sylvester’s games leave me feeling cold. They are clever, thoughtful and streamlined, but I just can’t find enough fun or excitement in what’s happening to fall in love.

Floriferous - This a pleasant, solid, set collection game. It has interesting decisions, but it’s just a little bit dull. It ends with an anticlimax, and it lacks drama. I want a filler game to have a bit more bite, or excitement. Not a bad game, I just don’t feel drawn to play it again.

Great Plains - A very strong, short two player abstract game. With shades of Through The Desert. I found it hard to look at the board and establish my options and plan ahead. It’s a small qualm, but it’s crucial for a two player abstract to make it run smoothly. And even though this one is very distilled, I’d just rather play other, even simpler abstract games. It’s good, but it didn’t stand out for me.

Furnace - A game of two halves. The first is a fun, innovative, interactive auction. And the second is an entirely personal, engine building puzzle that feels like work, and snowballs into being completely unwieldy by the final round.

Mobile Markets - Like Smartphone Inc, but with engine building. It’s good, but I’d rather play Smartphone Inc, because it’s simpler and I prefer the board to the fussy, table full of cards experience.

Roll Camera - Great theme, and a cute depiction of it. There was a lot of novelty to this game but after more plays it started to fade. It’s hard to pick out a specific flaw, it just didn’t come together in a satisfying way. It didn’t have the addictiveness of the great co-op games. There’s a puzzle there to solve, for sure, but once I’d done it, I wasn’t compelled to do it again.

Witchstone - A Reiner Knizia co-design that doesn’t really feel like his style. The focus is a personal puzzle board that uses a mechanism from his game Ingenious to pick actions. It’s a typical point salad game, with lots of options, lots of room for AP, and no theme. I can see the cleverness in the game, it’s just way too insular and dry for my taste.

The Siege of Runedar - A co-operative tower defence game from Reiner Knizia. It is solidly designed - whilst fighting off enemies you have to also spend time collecting resources to buy new cards to get stronger. The arc of the game is too long, and it doesn’t have as much room for clever play as Pandemic. I wasn’t captured by it, but if you love tower defense it could be worth a look.

Whale Riders - I was really unimpressed by this Reiner Knizia family game. The frustrating storm tiles killed the fun for me, and the luck of drawing the right private goal cards made it feel all a bit pointless.

Destinies - A noble attempt at a narrative driven exploration game. Ultimately I found it repetitive. And your endeavours are so disconnected from the other players that I felt like a child waiting 5 minutes to have my turn on the iPad. Read more on that in June's newsletter. 

Halfway point - I really wouldn’t recommend the games below.

Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition - A beast of a game, that just has too much going to ever feel like you’re in control. For a six hour long game, I want something that has less of me looking at my own board, trying to optimise - and more interacting with the other players, in combat or negotiation.

Riverside - A dreary roll and write that felt like filling in a spreadsheet. Too many fiddly rules for such a light, forgettable experience.

Picture Perfect - I love the cute theme of arranging guests for a photo, but this just isn’t fun. It is a very solitary experience, trying your best to solve a puzzle that can never be perfected to the point that you just sort of give up trying because you’re not getting any positive feedback from it. And the game places way too much demand on your memory.

Red Rising - A lesson in how to take a brilliant game (Fantasy Realms), and ruin it by adding so many pointless bits to it that you dilute what made it fun.

Magnate: The First City - A true child of Kickstarter, with a gratuitous amount of plastic and nearly as many mechanisms, in a box size that screams “love me”. There are some interesting ideas in the game, but you have to complete too much admin each round for it to be worth it.

Dune: A Game of Conquest and Diplomacy - This is the new, vastly trimmed down version of the original game, and it has been gutted. What’s left is pure chaos - you can’t make plans, or negotiate, or predict anything. Luck plays way too big of a role. Really disappointing.

Games I’ve been enjoying lately

- Grasshopper Poker

- Quest

- Stella - Let’s play a game of this together on BGA - the first five people to join this game: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=240398655

Song of the Month - Spit of You - Sam Fender (great video too)

Video of the Month - Foy Vance - It Ain’t Over  (Live from the Highlands)

Now Watching - Ghosts (BBC)

Now Reading - Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Have a great month!

Actually yours,

Jon