In 2016, I kept a record of what media I consumed, with a short record of my thoughts about some of them (one or two sentences only).
This is every boardgame I played.
This is part six of my 2016 retrospective. The other parts:
- games I made
- books I read
- podcasts I listened to
- films/TV I watched
- videogames I played
- boardgames I played
January (Melbourne)
Hive (2 players)
I really enjoy teaching this game to people. So many satisfying “ah but you didn’t realise THIS” moments.
Welcome To The Dungeon (3 players)
Good choice to fill a small amount of time.
Splendor (2 players)
Close game! Narrowly managed to win despite feeling I was lagging behind the whole game.
Pandemic Legacy session 2 (4 players)
Almost failed the second half of January before realising we were missing most of the red cards. February was easily dealt with through A) extremely lucky infection locations & B) rules lawyering.
The Resistance (6 players)
Playing with Shang Lun is interesting because he plays well but I’ve started to recognise his spy behaviours.
Codenames (7-10 players)
Last time I played, teams seemed to stay ahead once they had a lead. This didn’t happen this time, we had two very close matches.
Witness (4 players)
Different to what I was expecting: it was a surprise to not have any context for the whispered information. Pretty satisfying to remember everything and then understand its relevance.
Murder of Crows (4-5 players)
One or two clever pieces of design here, but ultimately inelegant and not very fun.
Jenga (7 players)
Definitely improved by having badly written challenges on the blocks.
Wordslap (beta) (6 players)
I was very bad at this game.
Pandemic Legacy session 3 (4 players)
March & April weren’t too challenging. May was a hard-fought slog but we won in the end.
Hanabi (4 players)
Playing with someone forgetful is very amusing. Scored 19.
The Resistance (9, 7, 6 players)
I’m reminded that this is generally more interesting for the spies than for everyone else. Merlin is a really tough role, and I think maybe on balance his presence makes it easier for the spies?
Turtle Wushu (4-5,2 players)
Possibly the best entertainment/bag space ratio of any game I own.
Pandemic Legacy session 4 (4 players)
June didn’t add any awful new rules, but we still lost the first game before winning in the second half of the month. I feel like our world is in a better state than you’d expect.
Hanabi (2 players)
First time I’ve tried this with two players, but it holds up pretty well. Scored 20.
Mafia de Cuba (10, 12, 6 players)
Every single game (of around six) ended with a cop getting accused, which seems kinda broken. It’s surprisingly slow to play, also.
Greater Good (beta) (6 players)
Hard to get a feel for it from just one game. We all got killed.
Slap 45 (6 players)
This was okay, but I think I’ve played better reaction games.
Telling a story one syllable at a time (9 players)
A nice twist on telling a story one word at a time, which results in something totally incomprehensible. I wonder if restricting it to only 2+ syllable words would work.
Anecdote game (8 players)
This was really entertaining.
Nomic (7 players)
We made it to Planet V several days late, but at least we could pay back our Vollar loan and still bribe them to overlook our tardiness. Rhyming was good, numbers and questions were bad.
Pandemic Legacy session 5 (4 players)
July was close, August was pretty manageable. I kinda wish we were losing more often, it’s balanced so it gets easier when you lose but it doesn’t get much harder when you win.
February (Melbourne)
Ummageddon (beta) (6, 5 players)
Apparently it works much better with ¾ players, so I can’t really judge it from this experience.
Stop (5-7 players)
More fun to watch than to play, but still pretty fun to watch. Think it could be improved with rule tweaks.
Listelanser (2 players)
It’s funny how easy it is to completely lose your opponent. Video footage
Temple of elemental evil (3 players)
This felt really empty compared to regular D&D. (I’ve not played anything like D&D in over 15 years, but I still feel confident in that assertion.)
Pandemic Legacy session 6 (4 players)
Okay, September kicked our asses. This month’s twist really hurt!
Pandemic Legacy session 7 (4 players)
An unsatisfying victory in October. We won with no outbreaks, but despite being on top of the situation we failed to find patient zero.
Hive (2 players)
Got overconfident because I was teaching the game, then annoyingly it got dragged out into a draw.
Pandemic Legacy session 8 (4 players)
Misread the rules, but I’m kinda happy we did because it meant we got to find patient zero for ourselves. More and more cities are collapsing, but we’ve got a strong vaccination program going so I’m optimistic about our chances in December.
Pandemic Legacy session 9 (4 players)
Not as many curveballs as I was hoping for! Some bad luck meant we got close to losing at the end, but it wasn’t really tense since it was clear that if we’d lost we would easily have won in the second half of the month.
Poison and Wine (beta) (5 players)
Fun concept, went down well.
T.I.M.E Stories (Asylum scenario) (4 players)
I’m really glad I got to play this, it’s fascinating and pretty unique. A shame only one scenario is included.
Project Dreamscape (3 players)
Fairly light and accessible, but still has some strategy. I won with a pretty devastating final turn (which led to my score of 17 vs 7 & 4), but I think it’s pretty plausible other great combos were possible previously and just went unnoticed.
Escape: The Curse of the Temple (5 players)
I’d been hearing good things about this game for ages, and it lives up to the promised amount of hecticness. I got left in the temple, I’d just made it to the exit tile when time ran out.
Panic on Wall Street (11 players)
Played as an investor this time: my main success was keeping a tiny bid on losing stocks hoping they’d go up, which no one wanted to outbid me on. I thought I was winning by a large margin but actually I barely scraped the victory by only $5000 (the smallest unit of money).
Codenames (5 players)
It feels really satisfying to pull off a comeback (and this is kinda encouraged because the more clues you fail, the more you have queued up to try again later.
Funemployed (8 players)
Cogz (6 players)
Some really ugly graphic design, the gameplay was okay but not great. We decided afterwards that this is probably better with fewer players: with 6, the board has changed massively by the time it gets back to you.
School of Fish (10 players)
Everyone has to mimic the person in front, but “person in front” is defined by which way you’re currently facing. Maybe not best played on the way to get food, but entertaining for a short while.
One Night Ultimate Werewolf (7-8 players)
I like this game a lot, it’s quick and reliably tense.
One Night Ultimate Werewolf (making up five new roles to accompany Wolf & Seer) (4 players)
About as broken as you’d expect, but did lead to…
One Night Ultimate Werewolf (with Satanist: turns the player on your right into a wolf) (4-5 players)
Really fun variant! Possibly not totally balanced, but not obviously one-sided either.
Epic Card Game (4 players)
Horrible name aside, this feels like a simplified version of Magic: The Gathering. 4 players probably isn’t the best introduction to it though.
Once Upon A Time (5 players)
It isn’t great how some players can spend a really long time without getting a turn. Possibly the best way to fix that is by adding more triggers for ending someone’s go.
The Witches (3 players)
Accessible and easy to pick up, but very light on strategy. If you’re really into Discworld you’ll probably appreciate all the references a lot.
March (San Francisco)
Liars dice (5 players)
Solid bluffing game.
Patchwork (2 players)
Played this several times and still didn’t have a handle on strategy
Tribune (3 players)
Lots of different rules and things that [thought left unfinished]
Liars poker (2 players)
Cuttle (2 players)
Hive (2 players)
Played an experienced player and still won 3 out of 3 games! And taught a newbie who picked it up quickly.
Castles of burghundy (4 players)
Pandemic (3 players)
Not as good as Pandemic: Legacy, but still pretty good.
April (New York)
RPG stand-in (Dungeon Crawl Classics) (4 players)
Fell through a roof, seduced a dude, got skewered with arrows and almost died. A successful couple of days in this thief’s life.
Bananagrams (4 players)
I rememeber not particularly having fun last time I played this a long time ago, but this time it worked well. I won, which maybe has something to do with that.
Mr Game (4 players)
Best played with people who like to break systems and explore edge cases.
Ticket to Ride: Europe (5 players)
This is inoffensive and suitable for almost any group, but still manages to be a solid game and interestingly competitive.
Lost Cities (2 players)
This plays really fast
Tzolk'in (2 players)
I got utterly schooled.
RPG stand-in (Dungeon Crawl Classics) (5 players)
Made a character become a wizard and spent a lot of time trying to solve problems by growing spider legs. Eventually magicked my hair into a massive prehensile limb which I sent into the dungeon to collapse a vital support column while safely standing outside the entrance.
May (Toronto)
Patchwork (2 players)
Lanterns (4 players)
Lost legacy (4 players)
Similar to Love Letter (and by same designer) but slightly more interesting.
Isle of trains (4 players)
pretty awkward how you get more options midturn
The grizzled (4 players)
It’s interesting how this is not really trying to be fun.
7 wonders (4 players)
Splendor (3 players)
June (Toronto, Montreal)
Myre (2 players)
Spit (2 players)
Scrabble (2 players)
Puzzled Pint (theme: breweries)
One night werewolf (10 players)
The hat game (12 players)
Montgolfiere (6 players)
Incan gold (7, 5 players)
Libertalia (5 players)
July (Montreal)
Puzzled Pint (theme: secret societies)
Haru Ichiban (2 players)
Hive (2 players)
August (London)
Chairs (2-3 players)
Pandemic (3 players)
The Other Hat Trick (3 players)
Shape Up (3 players)
Seemed broken in a few ways, one of which being that the last player seems to always have an advantage
Dancing Eggs (3 players)
Utterly ridiculous.
Qwordie
Galaxy trucker (3 players)
September (Coventry, London)
Time stories under the mask (5 players)
Cyclades (2 players)
Skull (4 players)
Codenames (5 players)
Tash kalar (2 players)
Zombie fluxx
Splendor
Roll for the galaxy (3 players)
October (London, Oxford, Nottingham)
Geschenk (6,7 players)
For sale (6 players)
Codenames (7 players)
Hanabi (5 players)
Junk Art (6 players, towns played: hometown, Philadelphia, Paris, Montreal)
Catacombs (6 players)
Improv D&D (5 players)
November (London)
Sticheln (6 players)
Dead last (8,12 players)
Mascarade (6 players)
Broom service (3 players)
Double (7 players)
December (Coventry, London, Bristol, Dublin)
Ora & Labora (3 players)
Conan (5 players)
Taboo (5 players)
Libertalia (5 players)
Codenames (3,4 players)
Rights (4 players)
Escape room in a box (5 players)
Turtle wushu flip contest (2 players)
Arboretum (4 players)
Codenames (6 players)
Concept (4 players)
Roll for the Galaxy + Ambition expansion (5 players)