(Update) Field of Glory: The Card Game Back on for Essen

Update: just got word from Martin Wallace that the issues had been resolved and the game would be available at Essen.  I'm guessing we will never know what was going on, but it's good to know the game is on its way.

In weird and depressing news, since I was interested in the game, Treefrog just posted this on their web page:  

Slitherine, the licensees of Field of Glory: the Card Game have requested that we remove all mention of the product from our website and destroy the recently printed copies. Consequently, this game will not be available for sale, either at Essen or from our website. We have also removed all mention of the product from this website.

I'll note that the game has also been removed from the Boardgamegeek database.  I've got requests in to both Treefrog and Slitherine for comment.  I'll update this post when I learn more.  

Update: Marco from Slitherine sent me this email this morning:  

Hi Danny, thanks for pinging me.

The situation is fluid right now, so it’s a ‘no comment’ for the moment.

I’ll keep you posted on that.

By "fluid," can we hope that there is a way the project could still be saved?  Hopefully, we will get a better idea when we here from Treefrog.

The Best and Worst of the “BEST BOARD GAMES OF THE CENTURY” (2002-2009)

Well, that title is a bit confusing. In case you don't recognize it, the “best game of the century (of the year)” is a take on Dan Patrick's bit about how ESPN and the rest of the mainstream sports media hypes at least one college football match up every year as the “game of the century.” We are guilty of that on the board game front also. Since I started writing about the hobby in 1994, we have gone through just about one collectively-endorsed “best game of all time” every year, judging by the hype on rec.boardgames, spielfrieks, and, eventually, Boardgamegeek and /r/boardgames. I thought I'd take a look back at some of those games. As time passes, other games distinguish themselves as the actual best game of a given year, so it can be a bit hard to recall which game had the hype in a given year. Still, I'm pretty sure that the list here reflects the zeitgeist of the years in question.

• (2002) Puerto Rico by Andreas Seyfarth. The hype surrounding this game was enormous. It  was the first game that really rocked the hobby game world in the way that Settlers of Catan did in 1995 (though I guess it is unfair to skip 2000's Carcassonne). Puerto Rico didn't see that kind of mainstream success, but it was a huge hit with euro gamers and was the perfect game to accompany the rise of Boardgamegeek.com which was initially just a new, better home for the guys who hung out on Spielfrieks. I had as many as a dozen gamers tell me Puerto Rico was the best game they had ever played before I even had a chance to buy it. Does the game still live up to that original hype? I'd say, yes. With repeated play, the game becomes a bit programmed, and there is a huge problem if you follow an idiot less-experienced player in turn-order, but until you have played it to saturation, it is a deep, rewarding game with multiple paths to victory and some really synergistic mechanisms. We have put the game away for a while, but I'm to the point now that I'm ready to dive into it again over the next year. You don't have to take my word for it. Eleven years after its release, the game still sits at #4 on Boardgamegeek's board game rankings. My favorite game from 2002, however, remains Age of Steam by Martin Wallace which only doesn't make this list because the Puerto Rico hype was bigger and louder.

• (2003) New England by Moon and Weissblum. Wait, maybe it was Santiago by Hely and Pelek. Or, was it Merkle's Attika? In actuality, Age of Steam probably occupied the minds of more gamers during 2003, but I'm trying to stick to release dates. That said, I thought New England was boring and dry the one time I played it. I still plan on picking it up at some point to give it more of a fair shake, but the fact that it is ranked #939 on BGG at this point doesn't suggest it has aged well. Santiago and Attika are both good, but never grabbed me. It may be a bit of a cheat, but my favorite game of 2003 was Sid Sackson's I'm the Boss. It is the first English language edition of an older design, but, hey, it is my list.

• (2004) Ticket to Ride by Alan Moon. Finally, a game to challenge Settlers of Catan for mainstream success while also capturing the Internet mindspace. Is it as good as it is successful? Sure. I've played around one hundred games of it over the years. I'd play it again whenever anyone asked. I don't feel the need to own it (still really hoping to stumble on it at a thrift store or to get it in a lopsided trade), but it really is a great gateway game and a great beer-and-pretzel game for gamers. My favorite game for 2004—Power Grid by Friedemann Friese. Geeks agree with me here. Power Grid is #7 game on BGG while Ticket to Ride sits at a respectable #80.

• (2005) Caylus by William Attia. This was the year Shadows over Camelot boosted the cooperative game movement and Railroad Tycoon gave us a glossy, mainstream version of the cruel Age of Steam, but Caylus had all the hype and it deserved it. It may be a tad bit on the dry side, but if you like thinky games with tons of moving parts and lots of paths to victory, this is the game for you. It is my personal favorite game of that year, also. The geeks at BGG.com still rank it at #13 all-time. If you haven't played it, you should remedy that as soon as possible.

• (2006) ??? This is the one year that seemed not to produce a singularly hyped game. Battlelore was hugely successful, but it was a two-player miniatures-based war game, so it wasn't for everyone. Twilight Struggle was clearly the best game, but as it has been pointed out to me on the Geek, the hype for that one came a couple of years later. It is also not a multi-player game, which dampens the overall hype considerably. Thurn and Taxis won most of the Game of the Year awards that year, but I could never get into that one and the hype seemed pretty subdued. Blue Moon City had a lot of fans, and Yspahan continued Ystari games run of very good games, but neither of them were the “it” game for that year. I guess my favorite game from that year was Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, but I don't even own that one any more, nor do I still think highly of it. Let's just call it a odd year and move on to a game that exemplifies the list:

• (2007) Agricola by Uwe Rosenberg. Please remain standing as I heap praise upon a game that is already rotten with it. Rosenberg had a huge, well-respected hit with the card game Bohnanza, but Agricola still felt like it came out of nowhere. Euro game themes are often dry and boring, but farming seemed like a strange theme for the new hotness, and it wasn't even cute bean farming. It was subsistence farming and sometimes you couldn’t feed your family. Fun. But, it was fun. After a successful German release and a series of write-ups and podcast mentions coming out of Alan Moon's Gathering of Friends, it seemed everyone was dying to get a copy of this game. I didn't want to bother with pasting up a German copy, so the wait for this one to come out in English was brutal. It was actually 2008 before it became widely available in English, so the game could fit this list in either year. Certainly, this was the most talked about game from Essen 2007 through the release of the next game on the list.

• (2008) Dominion by Donald X. Vaccarino. There is not a chance anyone read through this list who isn't already familiar with Dominion. It is surprising to me that this is the first game on this list that was truly innovative, but, regardless, it certainly was. All of the other games were built on mechanisms found in other successful games. Dominion created a whole new genre of games with its core mechanism—dynamic deck building. I still remember going to Gen Con in 2009 and seeing dozens of games of this going constantly for the entire four days. It got hot quickly and stayed hot until, what, yesterday. Conversely, the game lost its appeal for me pretty quickly as multiple plays revealed ridiculously broken combos and led to a “if-you-don't-play-these-cards-this-way-you-will-lose” dynamic, but, heck it took people playing thousands of games to get there (I blame BSW, where it was possible to play five to ten games an hour). Though I enjoyed it, Dominion wasn't my favorite game of the year. Uwe Rosenberg's follow-up to Agricola, Le Havre took that honor.

• (2009) Hansa Teutonica by Andreas Steding. Hansa Teutonica's theme is so dry horny skeletons use it for lubricant. Wait, that doesn't make any sense. Let's go with Hansa Teutonica's theme is really dry. I actually bought the game based on the hype then left it in shrink because the theme was so boring. That was a mistake. When I got around to playing it, I found the game reminded me of some of my favorite German games from the early days of the hobby, especially Web of Power and San Marco. Hansa Teutonica isn't an area-control game like those two, but is has a similar feel and you claim routes and post representatives to offices. I've been told Endeavor would be a better game here by some of my fellow geeks, but I certainly remember Hansa Teutonica getting a bigger share of the hype. Plus, it was my favorite game of the year and I still haven't played Endeavor because it fits in exactly the same gaming spot as ten other games I love.  

The Cult of the New can bite me:7 Games you should play instead of the new hotness

A recent post on Reddit's board game subreddit got me thinking about how often my personal taste conflicts with the average ratings on Boardgamegeek.com. I've been playing hobby games with a few of the core members of my group for over thirty years. Being grey beards, we tend to be resistant to “the cult of the new” and the “best-game-of-all-time-of-the-year” trends that drive ratings so powerfully on BGG. We like what we like, and we don't feel bad about liking it. At some point I'm going to write an article challenging the accepted truism that game design has evolved and new hobby games are objectively better than early hobby games, but that time isn't now. What I thought I would do is discuss a bunch of games that are outside the BGG top 1000 that I think are under-appreciated. Hopefully, it will introduce you guys to some games that you hadn't stumbled across before. If you do know the games, it will at least give you more information to decide how to process my reviews of new games in the future. I thought I'd start with "fillers" or games that can be taught and played in less than an hour.  Here we go.  

Dragon's Gold (BGG #1017): This Bruno Faidutti design has seen heavy play in our group since it was release in 2001. It was the first D&D-lite card game that I ever played, and I think it is vastly superior to the much more popular Munchkin. In Dragon's Gold, each player controls a party of four adventurers who are all trying to slay the same line up of dragons. When a dragon is slain, players with heroes involved in the battle must negotiate to split up the treasure while a timer ticks away. The forced negotiation and tension from the timer makes for a lot of fun.

Cloud 9 (1999, #1100). I've always been a fan of the push-your-luck genre, and Cloud 9 is one of the best. Players are passengers on a hot air balloon. A player rolls dice that show colors that must be matched out of the player's hand. Players then have to opportunity to jump from the balloon if they think the player might not be able to match the colors or risk crashing and stay in as the balloon moves to the next (higher-scoring) spot on the board. It is admittedly super-simple, but it is easy to teach and I don't think I've ever taught it to a table that didn't like it. The feeling generated when all of the other players jump and I am able to guide the balloon to a top score is one of my favorite gaming moments. By the way, I own the excellent Out of the Box Publishing version of the game, but if anyone wants to trade me a copy of the F.X. Schmid original, feel free to check out my trade list at BGG (tolendante).

Nuclear War (1966, #1521). Users of the Geek think there are 1500 games that are more fun than Nuclear War. There are members of my group who would say there aren't ten. I don't rate it quite that highly because of the insane randomness you get when you mix random card draw with programmed instruction. I've had too many games where I just couldn't get rockets to deliver payloads with or payloads big enough to fill larger rockets. The game definitely has a mind of its own some games, but, when it gets going, no game provides more laughs along with its dark political commentary. The rule that allows defeated nations to launch all their remaining munitions at another country (which often ends with all players losing the game), is funny and satisfying every time it happens. My motto for the game is “the only thing better than winning Nuclear War is watching everyone lose it.”

Cheapass Games Two-fer. While scrolling through the ratings, I noticed a bunch of Cheapass Games that I enjoy, but just two I felt the need to write about on their own. In general, I think James Ernest is underrated on the Geek as a game designer.  Here are two of his best:  Light Speed (2003, #1395) is a great real-time spaceship combat game co-designed by Ernest and the legendary Tom Jolly. The only knock on the game is it takes longer to score than it does to play, but since six minutes will be enough time to do both, I don't imagine it should be much of an issue. The Big Idea (2000, #1600) is a great party game that we have only recently replaced with the glossier and less fiddly Snake Oil from Out of the Box. The economics engine in The Big Idea makes it a little too gamerly for a party game, but the potential products are more hilarious ad irreverent than those in the Snake Oil box.

Filthy Rich (1998, #1700). I've written about this Richard Garfield design before. Played in a three-ring binder, this advertising game is a great combination of luck and strategy. I almost can understand the low ratings on this one because about one of every four games we have played of this goes off the rails because of too many taxation rolls. If someone got that experience in his or her first game, I doubt they would bother to play it again. That would be a terrible loss though because the novelty of placing billboards into the binder in a way that maximizes their exposure while it obscures the ads of your opponents is interesting and unique.

Africa (2001, #2261). This isn't the biggest difference between what I rate a game and what the Geek users do (that would be one of my former top 10 games, Borderlands, which I rate a 10 and the Geek rates less than 6), but it is the game whose low rating surprises me the most. Maybe it is simply the fact that designer Reiner Knizia has fallen out of favor with the Geeks because of his failure to continue to make “gamer” games. The Geeks are a fickle, entitled, and petty lot (and I say that with much love). One only has to be aware of the Great Games Workshop Downvoting Conspiracy to know that. Otherwise, I have no idea what there is to dislike about this exploration and set collection game. Both the exploration and the set collection are at their most pure and uncluttered. The game looks beautiful when set up, and, at forty-five minutes, it is the perfect opener to a night of hobby gaming.

I will stop there for now. There are dozens of other games I could mention here, but I will save them for a follow up. If there is a point to this exercise, it is this: there are games you may really love that are outside the hobby gaming mainstream. Often these games can be found very cheaply, making the bang-for-buck ratio very appealing. Next time I will focus on meaty "gamer" games.  Let me know in the comments what games your group loves that are currently out-of-favor on the Geek and elsewhere.   

Japan's Legendary Director Hayao Miyazaki to Retire

Sad new of sorts coming from the Venice film festival.  The Associated Press is reporting that Hayao Miyazaki, director of brilliant films like Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle is retiring after the release of his newest film, the controversial The Wind Rises.  Miyazaki has had a brilliant career and had an enormous influence on this generation's animators, so while it will be sad to see him go, he has earned a relaxing retirement.  Read the full story here. 

Film Review: The World's End

The World’s End (2013) Dir. Edgar Wright

I expected the end to the Cornetto trilogy to be triumphant and uplifting.  After all, between the second and third film, the director, Edgar Wright, made Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a film that is probably my favorite of the last decade and one that never fails to make me smile throughout.  The World’s End has moments that feature that same irreverently joyous filmmaking; however, it is, for lack of a better description, more of a grown-up.  The characters, played by Wright’s usual suspects, haven’t had easy lives, and they carry the physical and emotional scars to prove it.  The film is better for the presence of these realistic, well-rounded characters, but there is enough emotional pain in the film to prevent it from being one I will throw on the television when I’m in need of an escape in years to come.

Like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, the first two films tied together loosely by the casting of Pegg and Frost and the passing reference to a delicious treat, The World’s End, is Wright’s take on a popular genre, this time the body-snatching alien sci-fi movie.  As he did with the zombie movie and cop movie, Wright handles the genre conventions well.  The robotic blanks are genuinely creepy and the basic body-snatching conceit is as effective here as it is in the classics of the genre (though the films nod to The Thing by way of Jaws doesn’t really have the tension of Carpenter’s classic because we are pretty sure neither of the two leads will turn out to be a replica).

But it isn’t the genre tropes that really hit home.  At its heart, the film is about lives of unfulfilled promise.  Pegg is perfect as Gary, a sad case who is hell bent on completing a pub crawl with his high school mates that they couldn’t quite pull off back in their day.  We see Gary in what we suppose is rehab at the beginning of the film, so each drink he downs on the quest darkens the mood of the film.  By the time Gary and the rest of the crew have revealed the pain and loss that has befallen them since high school (failed marriages, lack of growth, unrequited love), the film needs a triumphant and redemptive finale to lighten the mood.  It doesn’t offer us one. 

Instead, our heroes get a hollow victory, at best.  It certainly isn’t uncommon for genre films to end on the note that The World’s End does, but I found myself wishing that the nihilism had been turned down a bit. 

None of the above should be taken as a flaw with the film.  In the end, I think it is one of Wright’s best.  What I wonder is will it have the longevity of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, which ended on warmer (if not chipper) notes.  Regardless, I recommend anyone who is a fan of Wright and company to rush out and see the film. 

****/5

--Danny Webb