Coming of Age – Looking back at ’18

Another year has been and gone.

All-in-all, it was another strong year, over 700 plays of games clocked up, across a variety of titles old and new. As I generally do in early January, I just want to take a bit of a look back at some of the highlights of the past year.

The Titans

The most popular games of2018 were familiar titles, albeit with a fresh twist: Zombicide accounted for the most hours, but with the new Green Horde taking over from Black Plague as the main element. Likewise Arkham Horror LCG had the most game sessions and was the only title to get anywhere near 3 figures (94 at the final count), but there was a lot of new content released – the final part of the Path to Carcosa Cycle, the whole of the Forgotten Age, Return to Night of the Zealot, Labyrinths of Lunacy, and Guardians of the Abyss – all-in-all, the vast majority of what got played. It’s also worth mentioning that these 2 titles, my literal “A-to-Z” of gaming, were also the only games to be played in every single month of 2018, a feat that no title managed last year.

Lord of the Rings fell just short of becoming the only game to have been played 50 times in each of the 4 years I’ve been tracking my plays – although it’s not quite such a nice round number, 46-per-year for 4 years is still a solid amount of longevity. There was a fairly long period were this had fallen out of favour early in the year, but I returned to it in the summer, and have been enjoying it again, largely thanks to having given up on “standard” difficulty for the most part, and focusing my energy on “Easy” mode.

Beyond the big 3, Elder Sign hit the table in 10 months out of 12, with Marvel Legendary, Mansions of Madness, and Eldritch Horror each reappearing in 9 different months.

 

Spreading Out

Despite these big-hitters, 2018 was an even broader year than those which preceded it, with less-and-less time spent on the top few most-played games, relative to everything else.

There were a few big new games for 2018: The City of Kings was a brand-new release in March which made it to 14 games, 20+ hours. Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle had been available in the USA for a while, but it only made it to the UK in 2018 – over 20 sessions, 18 or so hours. I also clocked up nearly 20 hours playing Arkham Horror 2^nd Edition – most definitely not a new game, but new to me.

Whilst they didn’t manage quite the breakthrough of those big titles, I also picked up several other new games – World of SMOG: Rise of Moloch, Star Wars Imperial Assault, Village Attacks, and Spirit Island all made a few waves, and I’ll be interested to see whether any of them manage to establish themselves as real favourites in 2019.

 

Kicks

It was another busy year for Kickstarter, both arrivals and new pledges.

Zombicide Green Horde was a massive hit, and worth every penny. I also took delivery of The 9^th World which has been a bit of a slow burner, but has established itself as one of my go-to solo options.

Somewhat less impressively, in November 2018, I finally received the expansions for Apocrypha, bringing the whole debacle to an anticlimactic end, a mere 30 months later than promised!!

So far, the most questionable Kickstarter for 2018 was Folklore the Affliction – our first game of this was really hampered by following the game’s advice to just dive in to the tutorial without reading the full rulebook – LOTS of time spent fumbling for rules, I don’t think my wife really enjoyed that session, and it really robbed the game of any momentum. We have revisited it on a few occasions, but have yet to really figure out the sweet-spot. It’s currently sitting at a rather hideous cost just under £20 per hour!!! (Just under £10 if you measure per-player), so I’m really hoping for some improvement here soon.

In terms of new games, I’ve back the expansions for The City of Kings, a re-print of 7^th Continent, Cthulhu Death May Die, The Everrain, and Tainted Grail. I missed out on Zombicide Invader, and have a $1 pledge for Sword & Sorcery: Ancient Chronicles that I haven’t made my mind up on.

 

All-in-all I played over 100 different games in 2018, the first time I’ve broken 3 figures (92 and 90 for the previous 2 years), and 70 of those were played at least twice. As always, there were a few lemons, but most of the games I played this year were enjoyable, even if they weren’t the sorts of things that would get enough play in my house to be worth keeping around.

 

Top Ten

Statistically speaking, my top ten games of 2018 were as follows: Zombicide, Arkham LCG, LotR LCG, Pandemic Legacy, Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle, Marvel Legendary, Dragonfire, Massive Darkness, Mansions of Madness, The City of Kings, Elder Sign – the more observant amongst you might have spotted that there are actually 11 games on that list, but the last 3 are tied.

Last year, I did a little mosaic-graphic-thing and (clearly having forgotten how much of a faff it was) I decided to create another one this year – I added the other 4 games to have been played at least 10 times this year: Gloomhaven, Kingdomino, Escape the Dark Castle, and Scrabble, along with Eldritch Horror and Arkham Horror – low session-counts, but big numbers of hours (20+).

Overall, I think that picture feels like a reasonable reflection overall of the year in gaming – there are some that could do with being a little bigger or smaller, if relative size were a factor, but generally speaking, there’s nothing which leaps out at me as a major feature of 2018 which isn’t up there.

 

Numbers

Overall, 2018 presents a fairly familiar pattern – about 1/3 of all gaming was Fantasy Themed, about ¼ was Cthulhu-related, and Zombies were down on about 13%. The only other categories of note were Historical (just over 5%) and Medical (mostly Pandemic) which dominated the first month or so of the year, but faded out as the year wore on.

Financially, I spent less in 2018 than in either of the 2 previous years, but I also sold a lot less than last year, so my net spend was up a bit. I’m hoping to start 2019 with a big(ish) clear-out, to hopefully start the New Year on a positive note. That said, as mentioned in the December round-up, my main source of free games is no more, so I’ll need to keep a careful watch on spending in 2019 to keep the figures sensible. I suspect that the main impact will just be far fewer newer games this year, but increased cost is definitely still a risk.

 

Where it comes from?

Beyond genres and mechanics, I’ve also been taking a look at the origins of the games I spent most time playing – new acquisitions, old favourites, expanded titles and the like. Through this lens, I was interested to note that over a quarter of this year’s gaming was on Games I paid money to expand, an impressive figure when you consider that there were only 7 of them! – Arkham LCG, LotR LCG, Zombicide Black Plague, Massive Darkness, Eldritch Horror, L5R, and Dice Masters.

 There’s a definite mix here, between games that got a very small add-on (Eldritch had some dice, Massive Darkness a deck of crossover cards), games with only organised-play fees (Dice Masters, L5R), and games where the collection was significantly expanded (the LCGs – LotR and Arkham).

The next-biggest category was New Free Games – either reviews, or things I picked up with store credit. This was a much broader category, around 25 games, with the big headliners being Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle, Arkham Horror 3^rd Edition, Village Attacks, Kingdomino, and Escape the Dark Castle. Overall, this was 18% of gaming.

Around 13% of this year’s gaming was on Free games from previous years (i.e. things I reviewed or got with store credit): Pandemic Legacy Season 2 and Dragonfire were the big ones in this category, plus lots of things that only got played a few times.

Games that were expanded in 2018 for free (Legendary, Mansions of Madness, Elder Sign, Shadows of Brimstone) and New Kickstarters (mostly Green Horde, but also The 9^th World and Folklore) each accounted for about 10.5%

I’m not sure that money has been spent on this in my lifetime!

The remaining categories were much smaller – around 8% of time on Games bought previously and not added to in 2018 (lots of these, Pandemic Legacy S1 and Scrabble being the most notable).

 

About 6% of my gaming was New Games I Bought: The City of Kings, Arkham Horror 2^nd Edition, Star Wars Imperial Assault, Days of Ire – technically, there was a bit of trading and/or store credit involved in some of these, but all of them involved shelling out some actual cash on the game at some point in the year, so this is where I’m grouping them.

Beyond that, we get into the odds-and-ends: Old Kickstarters, things Expanded with Kickstarter, RPGs, and things I didn’t own.

 

I expect next year to look very different: for one thing, “New Free” will be a long way down, if it still exists at all, and likewise for “Expanded Free,” both due to review work probably no-longer being a thing. On the other hand, I’m hoping to be more involved in an ongoing Dungeons and Dragons campaign at the FLGS, and starting up my own D&D Group (where I’ll will be DM-ing for a few unfortunate souls), so I’m expecting RPGS to be a noticeably larger chunk, by time, if not by session.

The 2 obvious options are for spending to go up, leading to a year like 2016, where 73% of gaming was filled by games I’d spent money on that year, or for the “Old” group to go up to a point where it accounts for more than ¼ of my time. Only time will tell!

 

Un-Played

2018 did reach its end with a few games that I own still completely un-played – there was 1 brand-new arrival in Crisis at Steamfall, along with 7 older titles, including 3 repeat offenders.

Several of the un-played pile are games that I’ve tried unsuccessfully to sell: AYA, B-Sieged, Runewars Miniatures. Others are games which are more highly valued in theory than in practice, like Firefly (which my wife is very attached to, but rarely ever plays) or Shadows Over Camelot, which holds many fun memories from years gone by, but is less suited to the low player-count world that comes with everyone having children. This is definitely an area of the collection that needs slimming down, and I’ll probably do a general clear-out fairly early in the New Year.

 

Looking Forward: 2019

I expect 2019 to be a lot more static than 2019, but I’m still expecting some significant new arrivals.

Legends Untold, 7^th Continent, Cthulhu: Death May Die, The Everrain and Tainted Grail should all be arriving.

The rather-delayed expansions for Gloom of Kilforth will hopefully kick this back onto the table, and there should also be more The City of Kings content any day now.

I’ll keep picking up new content for my 2 LCGs – Arkham and Lord of the Rings, and will be keeping a close eye on the rest of FFG’s Arkham range – no doubt Mansions of Madness and Arkham Horror (3^rd ed) will both have interesting shiny new-ness.

Beyond that, I don’t really know what else is yet to come – CMON’s Trudvang is on my radar, as is Arydia: The Paths We Dare to Tread (originally slated for a 2018 KS, but pushed back).

The more observant among you may have noticed no mention of a 10×10 (or similar challenge) for 2019 – I’ll explain more about that in another article over the next few days…

As previously mentioned, I’m hoping to give more time to D&D in 2019, but otherwise I don’t imagine any major changes. Whatever happens though, this will be the place to keep up-to-date. I hope you all have a good 2019!

 

December – Now is the Winter of our… reasonable satisfaction

‘Tis (‘twas?) the season – a few crackers and possibly some Turkeys, a seasonally enormous amount of Scrabble and Mah Jong, and a Christmas-y end to the year.

Headliners

Arkham Horror 3^rd Edition got a good amount of table-time as we started to get to grips with the latest Arkham Files title – scenario 1 continues to defy us, but #2 has now been beaten. Next up: scenarios 3&4. I also finished off a Forgotten Age play-through in Arkham LCG, and got set up for a mop-up campaign on some less/un-played scenarios.

We’ve been playing an intermittent campaign of Hogwarts Battle with my mother-in-law, and we finally defeated Years 6 & 7 in December (after a couple of slow starts got us brutally slaughtered in our early attempts).

Dominion also came out of hibernation, which is always pleasing, and we tried our hand at the newest Pandemic iteration: Fall of Rome. Village Attacks kept ticking along nicely, although it’s still not quite as good as Zombicide Black Plague, where we started a new campaign. New-wise, we also tried the expansion for Escape the Dark Castle.

 

There’s Nowt so Queer as Folk

This metal coin which replaces the first player token is the only KS-exclusive. It’s nice, but hardly a must-have…

Going into December, Folklore: The Affliction was in real danger of becoming 2018’s white elephant game – a 3-figure kickstarter, it had only been played twice, and things weren’t looking much better when I dragged it back out on the second Sunday of the month, only for us to suffer TPK before we’d even finished the first chapter.

 

Folklore is one of the growing legion of games that promise an RPG in a box. However, what very few of them seem to have managed so far is to provide that rich narrative and character development without an RPG level of book-keeping.

…although it IS double-sided

The general consensus from the internet was that this game simply isn’t balanced for 2 characters, and that it would work much better with 3 or 4. To have a decent chance at the game, it seemed like you needed to manage 2 characters at once. There are definitely games where we have controlled multiple characters successfully, but was this one where it would work?

 

We managed a single 2-player, 4-character game in December: only 1 of the 4 characters died facing the first big boss, which was a 75% improvement on our previous run, but it definitely still feels like further tweaks are needed.

 

Numbers

Numbers-wise, December didn’t look great – I shelled out for another Kickstarter, which I hadn’t previously planned on, but really liked the look of. Tainted Grail comes from the people who brought you the psychological trauma of This War of Mine, but I’m hoping that the shift from the real to the Fantasy will make it less harrowing as we get into some deeply narrative game-play. Buoyed by the success of their earlier projects, this finished funding just after Christmas, now the 3^rd-biggest Board Game Kickstarter ever!

My £/hour rate for Kickstarter is a few pence better than it was at the end of last month (currently £6.16). As I’ve mentioned before, whilst this is a fair way short of my £5/hour target, the numbers are always going to be worse in a category where I don’t have a significant chunk of the games in hand.

For gaming more generally, Folklore has now been around long enough to start being counted as a shortfaller, which makes the costs tab look fairly horrific. That said, beneath the tidal wave of Folklore being added to the sheet, there were plenty of positive currents, with Apocrypha, Days of Ire, The 9^th World, and Gloomhaven all hitting the table in December. Hopefully we won’t be too far into the new year before things start to look a bit brighter.

 

New News: No “New”s?

All my old reviews are still there, they just won’t be publishing anything new once we clear the current backlog.

One slightly sad note for December, was the announcement that the Games Quest Blog will be going on an indefinite hiatus – it’s a rickety old site (both the blog, and the main sales section) that’s been limping along ever since they got hit by a massive DOS attack in early autumn, and the powers-that-be seem to have decided that it’s no longer earning its keep.

 

Obviously this is a big disappointment on a personal level – I’ve picked up a lot of stuff in the coming-up-to-3-years that I’ve been blogging for them, and whilst there have been a couple of turkeys in there, I’ve also been fortunate enough to get hold of some real crackers: it’s crazy now to think that without the blog, I might well never have played Zombicide, Aeon’s End, Mansions of Madness, Dragonfire, or Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective.

Holding On, Legendary X-Files, and Heroes of Terrinoth are the first casualties, and from January onwards, I can’t expect anything from the weekly new-release sheet. Obviously, I hope that this turns out to be only temporary and, even if it doesn’t, I think my game collection is in a much better place than 3 years ago, so if I am back to only getting games the old-fashioned way (y’know, with money), then I should have plenty to keep me occupied, even with the limited funds that sending a toddler to nursery tend to leave.

 

What got played?

Thematically, December was pretty Fantasy-Heavy (around 1/3 of gaming), followed by all things Cthulhu at just over ¼. Historical, Zombies and Magic made up the rest. Within Fantasy, the Gothic Horror of Village Attacks and Folklore was the dominant theme, but there was plenty of diversity.

Mechanically, December was mostly just about trying to survive, although there were still plenty of mysteries to solve, and quests to complete.

 

Next

December is, of course, the final month of the year, so rather than start talking too much about January, I’ll be posting the full 2018 run-down in the next few days, together with a few peeks forward into 2019.

No Fools Here: April’s Games

April was a pretty good month for gaming all-told.

I spent part of the Easter weekend away at a show, leading to some new games getting played, made another impulse purchase, and got some much-needed run-outs for a few titles that had been gathering dust.

Zombicide remains one of the biggest occupiers of my dining table. We got a bit further through the Green Horde core box in April, although we also died quite a lot – Although the extra damage from Orcs is nasty, it’s been the double-activations that come from running out of Runners that keep doing for us. Those extra 4 runners that come with the second wave suddenly look like they’ll make a much bigger difference than anticipated. We also had a few Black Plague games with friends, after a slight lull in recent months whilst the attention was focused on Green Horde.

The City of Kings was March’s unexpected buy, and early impressions from April were really good – there were definitely some things that took a while to get my head around (1^st play-through, I think I got at least half of the rules wrong), but the overall feel is great, and it feels thematically similar to a lot of old favourites, whilst definitely offering something completely new.

Escape the Dark Castle was a game I hadn’t planned on buying, but picked up on a bit of a whim, following a nail-biting session with the designer of the game. It’s been played a few times since I got back home with it, and it’s definitely fun, although the length/weight are making me start to doubt whether it was really worth the £49 price tag for base game + expansion. Fortunately, it was done with store credit rather than actual money, so not too big a worry.

 

10 of 10

As I mentioned back in March, 4 of the 10 on the Hardcore list are now all wrapped-up, meaning that I’m only looking at 6 specific title for any further progress on this. (14 sessions altogether for Zombicide, Arkham and Elder Sign, none of them impacting the 10×10 total).

The big mover for April was Gloomhaven, which got dusted off after too long sitting idle. It turned out that we needed to refresh our memories on a remarkable number of rules, but I really enjoyed our plays of this, getting 4 games in in 2 days (on each occasion we cleared the scenario at the second attempt), and coming back out for another session a week later. I also had single games of Mansions of Madness, Massive Darkness and Marvel Legacy. Currently sitting at 71/100 for the overall challenge, things are definitely moving in the right direction.

For the non-hardcore version of the challenge, Dragonfire was the 6^th game of the year to reach 10 plays. Currently I’m at an H-Index of 7 – Arkham LCG, Zombicide, Pandemic Legacy, Hogwarts Battle, Elder Sign, Dragonfire and Marvel Legendary. With 7 more games on 5 or 6 plays, I’m hoping it won’t be too long before this number goes up again. (Of course, if I’d stuck with my original plan of counting Seasons 1 and 2 of Pandemic Legacy as 2 separate games, and Zombicide Black Plague and Zombicide Green Horde as 2 separate games, then I’d be nearly there…)

 

In Review

There were a few review titles that made it to the table in April for the first time. Definite mention needed for Rising Sun – this game looks absolutely fantastic, and I was very tempted to back it on Kickstarter for the miniatures alone, although I eventually decided not to, as I knew it would be a hard game to get played. It’s a 3-player minimum 2-3 hour epic, which involves making and breaking alliances, and battles aplenty. We’re not especially big on (what I now learn are called) “Dudes on a Map” games in our house, and I doubt that I’ll be getting my wife to play this any time soon, but I think this is a really good game, with loads going on, and many layers of subtleties to the gameplay – definitely one which rewards repeat plays. My currently dilemma is “Keep and Paint” or “Sell it now, rather than letting it gather dust.”

Like many Geeks, I am a die-hard Firefly fan, but have always struggled to find a Firefly game that really hit the spot – Firefly the Board Game is too long, and not especially interactive, whilst Firefly Legendary is painfully ugly, and feels a bit clunky. Would Firefly Adventures: Browncoats and Brigands finally be the game we were looking for? As someone who typically picks up a new game or two to review every month, I like to think that I’m fairly good at grasping how new games work, but the first time I got this out to run-through, I couldn’t even figure out what I was supposed to be doing – the rulebook is some way beyond incoherent, and the scenario set-up/objectives tended to be unclear and contradictory: Further investigation needed, but optimism fading fast. Beyond that, I still have the latest Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective box sitting un-played, and Dungeon Alliance is still only at the components-punched-and-bagged stage.

 

What got played?

Not all that surprisingly, Fantasy was the maintstay of April – well over a third of sessions, and 32% of time. Zombies (25% time, 20% sessions) and Lovecraft (16% time, 13% sessions) were the other big chunks, with nothing else making it into double figures. As tends to be the way, that reflected mechanically, with Completing the Quest and plain-old Survival” our key concerns.

 

Money

The overall Kickstarter landscape is definitely moving in the right direction: There was table-time for Green Horde and Gloomhaven, along with some early pre-order prices for Green Horde, which suggest (as expected) that backing this will be another win money-wise. Kickstarter is never likely to match the standards of games I have in hand, simply because there’s always such a lag between spending the money and being able to play the games, but the current £/Hour rate has dropped below £7, which seems reasonable all things considered. Admittedly, that figure will rise again very quickly if I back any of the number of other project looming into view (see below)

Also been having fun painting these – if I factored in painting time, it’d definitely be classed as good value

For shortfalls more generally, Shadows of Brimstone and Gloomhaven both managed a good few hours of play, bringing the deficits as low as they have been all year. As something brand new, I haven’t started counting The City of Kings yet, but it’s making good progress and will hopefully be nothing worse than a short blip on the Shortfall track.

I spent less than £10 on games in April, which is always nice, but didn’t sell anything either – I’m working up to a moderate-sized cull at some point in the near future, which includes a few ex-review games that are big enough and in good-enough condition to hopefully raise more than a few pennies.

 

Kicks

There were quite a few Kickstarter projects that caught my eye in April.

I had a bit to say here about the Zombicide: Invader Kickstarter, but so much ended up happening (and there are bound to be further twists in the last 48 hours) that I’ve decided to leave this for my next Kickstarter round-up: for now I’ll just say that this is a campaign that’s definitely caught my eye, and which had more than its share of surprises.

A campaign that I’ve been more convinced by from day 1, was The City of Kings. It’s a bit of a mish-mash, being simultaneously a re-print of the existing game, offering new expansions / upgrades for the retail edition (which is what I have), and a brand-new game set in the same universe.

Even though I’ve only just started to scratch the surface of this game, I’m really keen to get the mechanical add-ons, and for only £10, having miniatures to paint for the heroes is very tempting. Beyond that, it gets complicated with fancy offerings like plastic “anti-knock” trays (there’s a lot of info in this game to try to recover if you do accidentally clobber the character sheet mid-session) and box organisers (again, lots of bits, although they don’t take up that much space unless you upgrade to wooden resources), all of which push the price for an already sizeable game sky-high. Lastly, the gorgeous art/lore book would add nothing to game-play, but kept looking at me in a beguiling fashion. In a departure from my usual behaviour, I backed this for £1 on day one: it allowed me to get involved with the comments and, with no financial stretch-goals on offer during the campaign, there was no urgency to make a decision before the pledge manager.

The pledge manager for Folklore will be closing soon, so I need to make a final decision and take the plunge. I think that enough other things have caught my interest that I’ve ruled out an all-in pledge for minis and the like (although the ghosts are so pretty…), but I’m still tempted by the base game and possibly the main expansion.

Ultimately, I think that early May will be when I need to finally commit on these games. For now though, there’s plenty to keep me occupied.

 

Final Thoughts

All-in-all, April was pretty good – The City of Kings was a highlight in the “new” column, but it was also good to see Gloomhaven finally making its mark and old favourites continuing to tick along. Mansions of Madness will hopefully be getting a new expansion soon, so that ought to see some table-time in May. Beyond that, check back in a month!