2022, a year of new games, old favourites and things to come.

As the year fast approaches its end, I wanted to but a blog together that summarises my experiences in 2022. What I am proposing here for your attention is a retrospective, a look back at a complex year with a few highs and lows. I figure that if you live long enough such average years will tend to occur with some disconcerting frequency.

When it comes to board games, this year saw a few good titles become part of my collection. Whenever possible, I have chosen games that add something, an innovative mechanism, some unique artwork or just perhaps a theme I did not have yet included.

Warcraft: Curse of the Lich King – Pandemic System – I have played my fair share of the original Pandemic and won several games with my board gaming group. However, this Warcraft skinning of the game felt a bit simplified and limited. The quests are fixed, so once you play three to four games, I feel there would be a replay issue. On the plus side, this was my first Pandemic game that came with some great miniatures. The use of these minis does improve the gaming experience, especially for long-time Warcraft fans such as me.

Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion – This is the smaller sibling of the monumental Gloomhaven. It also costs a fraction of Gloomhaven. “Jaws of the Lion” comes with four playable characters, minis, character specific decks, several standees, and sports the same dice-less system that has made Gloomhaven so popular. The Scenarios book that comes with the game also doubles as the actual map areas to be explored by the adventurers. Each scenario is just a matter of opening the book to the right page, placing the scenario specific standees and obstacles in their starting locations directly onto the book, and you are good to go. Overall, this game feels more manageable and easier to get to the table, while still offering some of that legacy feel that has made the Gloomhaven system so popular.

Terraforming Mars: Aries Expedition is a scaled down version of Terraforming Mars which plays in a fraction of the time of its bigger sibling. Aries Expedition still has enough of that substance you would expect but translates into a quicker, equally thematic gaming experience. Personally, I found it remarkably interesting that the designers were conscious that not all board game players can, or will, indulge in lengthy gameplay.

Lost Cities is a small two-player game I added to my collection, designed by Rainer Knizia. Though the theme is not particularly strong when it comes right down to it, it still makes the game pleasant and intuitive while also allowing you to keep track of cards played and which cards should go where. I played a few games with my son Neil, and he enjoyed it. As I said earlier, the artwork is gorgeous but what is truly striking is the mechanism that it carries elegantly. Players will contend for points in up to 6 columns or zones, seeking to ramp up their scores sufficiently to come out on top. Paying attention to what your opponent plays is key, as is a well-timed play or discard. Overall, a great little game.

While on holiday in Manchester, earlier this year, I got my hands on three games, one of which an expansion. The First one, Land & Sea reminds me visually of Carcassonne, but play could not be any more different. Players take turns to add hexagonal tiles to a growing tableau, all the while furthering the objective of their faction be it land or sea.

Undaunted: North Africa, is a two-player, World War 2, skirmish style game which uses cards and deck building as part of a combat simulation. Diverse maps can be set up from the campaign-style scenarios booklet. Each mission comes with specific objectives that must be engaged differently by either faction to win.

 

Wingspan: European Birds Expansion is the last game and sole expansion I bought from Manchester and it also happens to be the first published expansion to the game Wingspan. The European birds expansion adds a good few cards to the mix and also introduces a number of bird cards which do not carry any effects on them. There are also more automata cards and some additional objective cards which make point scoring that much more interesting.

Root: A Woodland game of right and might, which many are calling a modern “Risk” contender, is highly asymmetric game which pits four unique factions in a woodland brawl for ultimate dominance. No two factions play the same and this is what makes Root, highly replayable and challenging. One of my goals in 2023 will most definitely be to get to know this title a bit better.

The Crew: The Quest for Planet 9 is a small card game which uses trick-taking as its main focus of play. Furthermore, it successfully manages to turn the mechanism into a cooperative one. It fits into a smallish box but then packs in 50 variations, weaving them all together into a substantial campaign. You most definitely can play a few variations and stop for the day but progressing through the campaign offers an increasingly intricate experience with a gradual ramping up of difficulty.

Imhotep: Builder of Egypt is a game which made it into my collection, just in time for the holidays. Imhotep focuses on build queues; well-times moves and quick thinking to achieve point-scoring objectives. It is a very tactile game and comes with several coloured, wooden blocks serving the purpose of goods to be shipped up and down on river barges. The game's theme is extraordinarily strong and makes for a visually striking experience. It is easy to imagine yourself guiding boats up and down the river Nile, during pharaonic times, to construct magnificent buildings and majestic monuments. I have not had the chance to play this title quite yet, so I will share my experiences as soon as I do.

Now I would like to share with you some other games I upgraded or just played in 2022.

In 2022, I bought a metal coins upgrade for “Lords of Waterdeep”. The coins add an extra layer of tactile authenticity, if possible. They are beautifully crafted, and I bought them from an American online shop called “The Broken Token.” I already had everything in terms of expansions for this title, so this upgrade was the only way to truly bump up the gameplay for this favourite of mine.

This year I got to play Lords of Waterdeep with my gaming group over 2-sessions. While breaking up and following through with the game was not what I had originally intended, it was well worth the wait to finish off. I feel confident that another session or two with this gaming group will allow us all to better appreciate the intricacies of this worker placement classic. Who knows, I might eventually feel that we are good enough to add the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion into the mix.

Carcassonne also made it to the table for a couple of matches which were both challenging and rewarding. I was particularly glad that Neil joined in and played a full game netting a very respectable score in one instance.

One of my other favourites, Wingspan, also made it to the table this year. I must admit that teaching the game to first-time players felt challenging as I could not really focus on my game. Yet it was still an extremely rewarding experience to watch friends play the game for the first time and doing so successfully following the tutorial I delivered. They also enjoyed the overall experience and were particularly captivated by the theme and sleek design of this exceptional modern board game.

2022 also allowed me to test the abridged ruleset for another board game classic, Talisman. Played following the original rules, Talisman can be an authentic time hog. As anyone who knows the game will testify, Talisman is not restricted to a finite number of rounds, so the game will often last for as long as the players continue their back and forth around the board and between regions. The traditional ruleset is also highly confrontational, so players normally contend both with monsters encountered through the event deck, as well as with other players vying to be the first to reach the crown of command. On the contrary, the adapted ruleset I obtained and played, turns the game into a cooperative experience with the board itself as the sole enemy. It also reduces the time necessary to complete the first part of the game, by randomly depositing key sites around the outer region. In this way, players can speed up the levelling of their selected characters and then proceed quicker into the middle and inner regions. Having said that, the adapted game still took the better part of an hour and a half to complete.

As was to be expected, in 2022 digital board game playtime still took the lions’ share. I played lots of Wingspan, Raiders of the North Sea, Ascension (still a favourite), Lords of Waterdeep, Backgammon, Cribbage, Fox in the Forest as well as a few games of Root. I also managed to play my fair share of Hero Realms matches, exclusively versus AI bots, but it was still a lot of fun to get my hands dirty with this fantasy deck builder.

As far as new software games are concerned, I bought two digital adaptations of popular board games in 2022. The first as noted earlier is “Fox in the Forest” and the other “Root.” Root was a necessity just to get down to playing the game right away. However, while the game adaptation is visually appealing, it tends to lessen the importance of card texts and their visibility to the player. Also, the selected factions' basic objectives are not accurately represented, or easily accessible, during play. For these reasons, the digital adaptation fails to offer a viable teaching experience to players. Going forward, I still think that to get better at playing Root, I will need a good dose of live play and more familiarity with the cards and core rules.

As an aside, though not strictly a board game adaptation, I also bought “Dune: Spice Wars.” This game turned out to be a Civilisation-like game, based on the fictional planet Arrakis, with interminable play times. The graphics are brilliant, but it is just that I can no longer put in the hours of play this one demands. Furthermore, game play feels incremental, and actions taken earlier on during a session come together, or fall apart, much later during play. At times, playing this game feels like watching two trains about to collide in slow motion. You know you are heading for disaster, but at some point, you realise that there is nothing you can do about it.

Another digital game of note I purchased in 2022 is the RPG-like “Hand of Fate 2”. This is a follow-up to the original Hand of Fate which I had bought during a Steam Sale some years back. Although this is a sequel, I still found the fighting system to be dodgy, which I felt to be irritating in certain situations, since it brings too much console-style combat to what would otherwise be a tactical D&D clone with cards.

As Monty Python’s John Cleese was fond of saying,” ...and now for something completely different.”

Shipping costs to Malta became something of a nightmare in 2022. This was the reason I ended up giving AliExpress a decent try out. I bought the trick-taking card game “The Crew” from AliExpress and it arrived within an acceptable timeframe, which was encouraging. Overall, delivered product costs through AliExpress are marginally more contained, though I cannot understand how they manage it, when Amazon and eBay are doubling the cost of almost any board game shown in their catalogues. Regardless, any board games from abroad must, at least where I am concerned, come through AliExpress. I cannot seriously consider Amazon or eBay’s offers for the near future. I would like to offer a practical example of just how much shipping is inflating costs when it comes to board games.

 

Having said that, this year I was delighted to discover that an increasing number of local shops are catching up when it comes to stocking modern board games. My copies of Lost Cities, Root and even Imhotep were all purchased locally. Prices in all three cases were very fair and reasonable when compared with online shops. In all three instances, the purchase was sensibly cheaper when you factor in shipping costs. Obviously, these local shops (The Model Shop, Warmongers, Games plus and others) avail themselves of consolidated shipping which brings down the prices of the materials they import. Something I obviously cannot do.

As a further note, this time linked to AliExpress, I would like to point out that it is not that the shipping is lower when compared to shipping costs listed by Amazon or eBay, but that the games themselves are listed with significantly lower prices. The result is that once you slap the shipping cost to the game itself, the overall cost of that boardgame is comparable to what you would expect to pay locally. The only real issue with AliExpress is that they do not specialise in board games, so finding titles to purchase from them can proved tricky or impossible.

As a practical example to my argument, I would like to share a price comparison of purchasing the board game Azul from Amazon and AliExpress. From Amazon the game has a catalogue price of €31.99 and a shipping cost of €34.24, for a total cost of €66.23. From AliExpress Azul has an eye wateringly low price of €12.77 and a slightly steeper shipping cost of €40.67, for a total cost of €53.44. While AliExpress comes with a slightly higher shipping fee, I can still obtain the same identical title (Azul) for €12.79 less than what it would cost me from Amazon.

At the end of the day however, I still feel that currently there are substantial savings to be made by buying through a local agent. Doing so, allows me to purchase more titles than what I would be able to afford should I have to source all my games from abroad. While I am not keeping my hopes up, I have heard encouraging news that shipping costs and related organisation are expected to normalise over the coming months and hopefully that will translate to more acceptable price tags when it comes to purchasing new boardgames directly from abroad.

As 2022 slowly ends, I have some additional games in the pipeline which I am interested in obtaining for my collection. I have nominally booked/pre-ordered the third expansion of Wingspan (Wingspan: Asia) which should arrive by the end of January to mid-February. I have also signalled my interest in obtaining “Splendor Duel” though it will most likely arrive by the second quarter of 2023.

Before signing off on this last blog for 2022, I wanted to spare a few minutes on ComiCon Malta 2022, held at the end of October. The event was indeed very well attended, and I was quite frankly surprised at the crowds I found there. However, the event was not effectively managed. Areas were not properly segregated, and cut-off rooms for specific discussion panels were poorly insulated from the constant brouhaha that epitomised the main hall. I tried attending one D&D panel and all attendees struggled to understand what the speakers were saying. Likewise, areas dedicated to live boardgame play-throughs were not properly segregated from the flow of patrons and they felt crammed in corners as afterthoughts.

The real shame however was the space allocated to some established comic artists who were exhibiting their works on site. The event was about Comic Culture and these artists should have been afforded better focus. One thing I found deplorable was that there was no proper signage highlighting the works of these same artists. I would have expected at least a display of sorts running a PowerPoint or a brief video highlighting their work and achievements. As set up, these professionals were difficult to approach by patrons, who may not recognise them, or even mentally associate them with some of the most iconic comic book creations of the past several decades.

I do sure hope that these shortcomings in Malta ComiCon 2022 will be properly addressed going forward, as there is a strong local community of enthusiastic and avid comic book fans, who would appreciate the effort put into organising such events. Furthermore, I also think it is about time to start considering specific conventions focused on board games, war gaming and roleplaying games. These could take the shape of live play throughs of the latest games, gaming tutorials as well as discussion panels with perhaps a few gaming tournaments thrown in.

That is all for 2022! I am hoping that next year will bring interesting developments when it comes to board gaming, as well as more opportunities for live play. I also hope to be able to meet up more frequently with my gaming groups and to share more experiences around the table. To all those who have read my blogs this year, I wish you all a good year end and may the new year ahead treat you all kindly.

A prosperous New Year 2023 to all.

 

Piatnik 1352

It’s a regular deck, it says 55 cards on the outside box which is a mix of blue and white. On one side the name of the brand “Ferd. Piatnik & Sons VIENNA”. The trade mark, a mounted jockey on a stationery racing horse. At the very bottom of this side of the tuck box “MADE IN AUSTRIA”. Now this isn’t one of the decks I would have handled as a child, the fact that at the bottom of the tuck box you find www.piatnik.com clearly positions this deck as one printed in the modern era of internet but the livery, the designs are the same. On the opposite face of the tuck box, a replica of the card backs, a kind of mesmerizing circular mandala, squared just enough to fit the rectangular bridge-sized cards. For some reason this pattern always reminded me of the stained glass of some ancient cathedral.

More importantly, this deck, this very particular, mundane deck is my first memory of a deck of cards. Simple, regular, reassuring like the embrace of a loved one. In my case the sentiment is tied inexorably to games  of Rummy, “Trent e un” (albeit 31) and Bella Donna played with relatives now long gone. It’s this strong nostalgic aura that permeates this deck and which transports me back to a time when life was forever, joys and pleasures simple and worries few if any.

The deck itself is loaded with meaning for me. The Joker on this deck is simply charming, his smile not threatening in the least. He simply sits there with a deck of cards in his left hand as he shows you, the happenstance bystander, the ace of clubs. His headdress has the crest of a rooster and then two dangling points with golden bells attached. He smiles benevolently as though beckoning you to sit at the table and play his mysterious game. The joker reminds me of Uncle Victor, this is not a pejorative association, on the contrary, the joviality Victor used to bring to the table was most welcome and lightened the mood with relentless laughs all coming from a good place.

Then, for some uncanny reason, the King of spades reminds me so much of my maternal grandfather, somewhat sombre, yet poised and ever alert. He was the product of his times, a man who had lived through the war and served in what were called the Territorials back then. He was a simple man, set in his ways. Right to the later years of life he would still recall stories from his younger days of service and he would recall them over and over in exactly the same way never failing to recall the slightest of details.

In similar fashion the Queen of Diamonds reminds me of my maternal grandmother, a woman whom I loath to forget and who loved me from the moment I was born. A fiery and temperamental woman with a heart of gold, that is how I want to recall her. The Queen of hearts then reminds me of her sister Aunty Betty, a devout and energetic woman, always willing to help and lend a hand. She was there when we needed her. Again she, like my grandmother, grand father and her husband Uncle Carm were survivors. They had seen the ugly side of a war battered Malta back in World War 2 and they had beat the odds, surviving to rebuild from what was left. That generation was indeed a generation of unsung heroes, of men and women who would carry the scars of war etched deep into their collective minds. They were those who raised my parents, who would see times of peace like the rest of us.

These were the same players who would, after a hearty Sunday lunch, help clear up the table and deal out the cards. Often it would be rummy, and given the number of players, two decks would be used. We learnt by watching, observing what the elders did and what seemed to work. I recall my mother as having an uncanny ability when it came to playing Rummy, she always seemed to make the right moves and pick the right discards or make the best draws. Inevitably she was also among those who tended to win the most hands.

On hotter summer days, the roof area which made part of my grandmother’s house, would be set up with adequate shades and a table would be setup out there. Card games there, would often be pleasurable, while also allowing everyone to enjoy a most welcome respite from the summer heat and stuffy indoors. As day would give in to night, lights would be lit, and the games could be allowed to continue until it was time to put the cards away.

Then for some reason unfathomable my memories fall upon uncle Carm (Carmelo), a quiet gentleman in the true sense of the word, as he would spread a copy of this same deck on the kitchen table at my grandmother’s house, and then proceed to reorder them, first by suit and later by rank. As I ponder that action I draw parallels with Tibetan monks, painstakingly building intricate mandalas with coloured sands, only to sweep the floor clean once they are done. In much the same way, the ordered deck of cards would once again be shuffled repeatedly and then dealt out for yet another card game. For uncle Carm, the exercise was more a simple necessity to check that the deck was complete in between games and then prepare that deck for the next in many games played on that same kitchen table. Yet the quiet concentration he poured into the effort held a sense of peace which quite simply went beyond the mundanity of it all. To this day, I do catch myself doing that same exercise, sorting a deck with the excuse of checking that it is whole, but part of me eases out as my mind stretches back in time.

As I type this at my keyboard, I have a copy of that same deck in front of me. I cannot help but thinking that it was this same deck of cards that contributed to my lifelong passion for card and board games. The enjoyment I used to derive from either playing with my relatives or just watching them play, kind of set the theme that would see me pick up other games as I grew up. Not only, but to read into the history of games, their significance and their lasting attractiveness. These are all games that come without batteries, whose rules need to be memorised and which demand an alert mind to fill-in the gaps and build mesmerising worlds of conflict, cooperation, strategy and luck. I hate to use the word luck in the old, superstitious sense, as I have long since abandoned the folly of anthropomorphising what is but a dance of variability and constant change. Yet this four letter word is one of the sweet ingredients that makes any game that much more palatable. Mind you, I do not enjoy games that are purely driven by luck but games that have but a taste mixed in, are among those I love best.

More importantly, these games are games only in so much as the opportunities they offer to socialise and meet those we care about. For indeed, life is ever so fleeting and every card or board game we fail to play with those we love, will inevitably become those we will most regret never having played.