PAXU and HNY (Dec 2021 newsletter) (Patreon)

Happy New Year, everyone! Man, I don't know about you, but 2021 felt both vanishingly quick and neverending all at the same time. The final stretch of it was especially busy for me, but now that I'm past it I'm breathing a sigh of relief and looking back on a lovely (if exhausting) month. The biggest event of course was Pax Unplugged! I got to see a bunch of friends that I hadn't seen since the last Pax, and most importantly, with the event being fully masked and vaccine mandated, I actually felt a lot more comfortable sitting around a table playing games with people. One of which, seen above, was Nidavellir, an excellent set collection game about fielding an army of color coordinated dwarves. Every round you bid to have first pick on three lineups of dwarves, and there's some really interesting auction mechanics involved there. Definitely recommend checking it out.

Maybe the game I was most excited to try out was Return to Dark Tower. I've missed several chances to demo this game over the years, so I finally sat myself down and played a few rounds of it. We didn't finish the game, but we definitely got a good look. And while I can't say for sure that it's a great game, I certainly enjoyed myself. There's a lot of go here to collect these tokens, then go there to spend them, but the missions seem to have a lot of narrative variety, and the characters are pretty diverse as well. The tower itself is entirely ridiculous, but I'm sure that's going to be the big draw for a lot of people, and it was exciting to drop skulls into it and not know where they would land.

I had heard a lot about Fantastic Factories for the past couple years, and so I was excited to try this one out. I love engine builders, and while the mechanics on display here are interesting and it certainly has a cutesy charm to it, I actually found this game to be rather sterile. There was just so little player interaction in the game that when it was over I didn't really feel anything momentous had ever happened. If you've played it and really enjoy it (like so many of my friends do), I'd love to hear what you like best about it, because for me it was a resounding 'meh.'

Now, a game that definitely was not 'meh' for me is Blitzkrieg! I got to play Caesar! at Gen Con and wanted to try this one out as well, but didn't get the chance. Now that I've played both, I find that I like Blitzkrieg! better, even though I think Caesar! is a better design. The tug of war in Blitz is just so much more apparent, and I like the gachapon feel of drawing the special tiles. But that's just me. If you're at all interested in either, give them a try if you have the chance. Of course, none of these games held a candle to the next game. Game of the con. Game of the century, maybe.

BAMBOLEO! Ok, I'm being a little facetious, but this was honestly one of the best times I had playing a game. If you've never seen this game, it's kind of an old one, and it's extremely silly. You balance this yellow pizza covered in the most dangerous toppings on top of that black support, which has a cork ball at the top of it. As you might expect, this is nearly impossible. And then you're supposed to pick up those shapes one at a time. It took us several tries to even get this game started, but once we had the hang of it, it was incredibly tense. I mean, Nick's expression tells you everything you need to know.

On top of playing games, I also had a lot of meetings with publishers about upcoming stuff. The most exciting to me was this one: Jurassic World: The Legacy of Isla Nublar. I went into this meeting with no expectations. All I knew was Jurassic World legacy game, and figured that it could swing wildly in any direction. And I gotta say, this game looks pretty decent. Obviously I couldn't learn too much about it, but what I did see, I was very pleasantly surprised by. And I really dig the art style they went with. This might be a game to keep an eye out for.

In between PAX and visiting family, I managed to finish up the Dune: Imperium videos, which went up yesterday. I don't know how much of an audience those'll reach, considering there's a link to Rodney's video inside the manual, but I'm proud of them regardless. Plus I managed to teach the game in half the time, so hopefully that'll count for something. Going forward I've got a lot more on my plate, but I'll save those announcements for later. Instead I'll end it with this snowy landscape taken from my parent's place up in the boonies of Northern California.

Thank you all for being here and supporting the channel. 2021 was a wild ride in so many ways, but I wouldn't be here if not for all of you. I'm looking forward to finding out what 2022 has in store.