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Top Games of 2014

I could do this for last year as well, probably, but this is the first year that I've really been into gaming and actually played enough games to have an amount that I actually like!!! So what games have I played that came out in 2014 and what did I think of them? It's time to count 'em down.

It's an overlord vs. team-style game (a la Descent) from Japan where the team is a group of time-travelers assigned to prevent Bad Stuff from happening to characters in four different locations throughout a city. The machinations of said Bad Stuff are carried out by the overlord player, who tries to manipulate the characters' moods and movements. Every day, the players play their own cards on the same characters to try to nudge their fates in different directions. If the team succeeds in preventing everyone from dying through a single loop, they win. If not, they get thrown back to the first day and have to try again. If they don't succeed before their allotted number of loops runs out, the overlord wins. One of the big interesting factors of this game, aside from the morbidness and time travel aspects, is that there are only very specific times that the team can communicate with each other - usually only between loops. Can everyone remember what they wanted to say and everything that happened when and communicate clearly what their plans for the next loop are? The high customizability of the scenarios is also interesting. The Mastermind's book provides all of the basic information and suggested assignments of roles to characters, but there's nothing stopping a well-versed player from going completely off-script and engaging in a real chess match with a team. Chess isn't terribly inappropriate here either, because the overlord is always having to set his plans in motion a few turns in advance and trying to not have the players be able to suss them out.

The gameplay itself is simple - the mastermind plays cards, the heroes play cards, all cards are revealed and resolved, character roles/abilities trigger, move on to the next day. Reset the loop if necessary. Repeat. The resources the game provides gives the team at least somewhat of an edge - like seeing opponents' cards in a game of clue, the way things happen or don't happen allow you to logically eliminate roles and scenarios and hone in on who you need to stop from being where and when. Really, this is like Clue if the murder hadn't happened yet and someone was playing as the murderer knowing the cards in the envelope. It's an interesting game that also provides a tool for players to get creative with. Its uniqueness, innovative design, and replayability earn it a spot at #5 on my list.

4) King of New York King of Tokyo was fun and light monster-on-monster action, and King of New York adds the only thing that King of Tokyo was missing - landscape destruction!!! The thematic experience is now complete. The less-useful sides of the original dice are now taken up by more interesting choices - the Destruction face that lets you crush buildings and military units to gain points, energy, or health, and the Ouch face, where those same military units shoot back at you, providing more opportunities for you to be hurt while not occupying Manhattan.

King of New York gives you just enough to do and another way to gain points and health, keeping everyone in the game just long enough to maximize the fun and not overstay its welcome. I'd definitely buy this over the original if you don't own it yet.

3) Star Realms There are Star Realms TOURNAMENTS already! That's how accessible and wildly popular this 2014 release is. Oh yeah, and it's fun, too.

I've grown sick of CCGs. Having been through Pokemon and YuGiOh and Digimon and Magic, I now wonder how much better my time and money could have been spent on more replayable board games. This is why I've come to love deckbuilders - I scratch the same itch, but without spending hundreds of dollars on a bunch of cards I'll never use. My deckbuilder of choice is Thunderstone Advance (played as the co-op variant whose rules are found in the Root of Corruption expansion). Sure, new sets come out about twice a year, but nothing ever goes out-of-date or -rotation or any garbage like that. Still, if only there was a small one that provided enough variation from game to game that could just fill that role in my gaming without all the setup and randomizing and fit in a single deckbox... OH WAIT. That's Star Realms.

The genius of Star Realms is its portability and thus simplicity. Players have their own starting decks of 10 cards and a single deck of other starships and space stations occupies the middle of the table, with a row of 5 cards set out available for the players to buy. That's it. Like every other deckbuilder, you get actions and purchases. Unlike every other deckbuilder (but like a few), you get to launch attacks at your opponents until one of you runs out of "Authority" (life) points, giving Star Realms the same competitive feel of perennial juggernaut Magic: the Gathering. That's not to say this game is groundbreaking in any way, I just think this is the perfect option for someone looking to fill a CCG-sized void in their life without spending CCG money. It's a solid iteration of the formula, no frills attached, and I think that makes it a good staple for absolutely anyone's game library.

2) Evolution GUYS, THIS WAS A KICKSTARTED GAME! AND IT ARRIVED ON-TIME! I like pointing that out particularly because it still seems like such an anomaly. I hope that becomes less of an issue as soon as possible, but alas.

That excitement aside, what you have in Evolution is a fairly family-weight game with an educational edge that also provides players with interesting choices and a mostly-open sandbox. Once again - a game that's mostly nothing but a deck of cards. The crux of Evolution is keeping as many species as possible and giving your species abilities that give them the advantage over other species (and players) when it comes to eating or being eaten. The points at the end of the game are given for number of species, number of traits played on those species, and the bulk for the amount of food your species have eaten over the course of the game. The first and second are mitigated largely by carnivores, species given the "Carnivore" trait that allows them to eat vulnerable species (not protected by horns, defensive herding, a hard shell, a bigger body size, etc), and the third is limited by how high the population of your species are (for every point in population, you must consume one food). Limiters are placed on the available food by food cards selected by each player every round (Trait cards have a food number on them, and each player chooses one card from their hand to place in the middle to control how much food is available later in the round).

The game plays relatively quickly - it ends when the deck runs out and each player gets 3 cards plus 1 card for every species you have, and people get to 3 and 4 species pretty fast - and the rules are mostly simple and straightforward. Errata in the rulebook clears up any misunderstandings that couldn't be put onto the cards themselves. I've played this four or five times, and I can't say I've ever pursued the same "strategy" twice. It's very much a game that you as a player have to adapt to just as your species do, and the quick thinking and quick gameplay make this a deeply satisfying long (an hour or so) filler.

1) Shadowrun: Crossfire I feel like I've not played much in the way of Tabletop RPGs over the years. I've had the third edition BESM core rulebook for a long time now, but never played it. I've been in a few 3-session D&D campaigns (before the group or the DM fizles), an Exalted campaign or two over the course of a summer, a stilted World of Darkness campaign (boy, do I miss Mage!) and about a year of Shadowrun. As far as sheer worldbuilding and imagination and versatility goes, combined with experience, I have to give the edge to Shadowrun. The world of Shadowrun is rich. Everything goes, and everyone knows it. Magic has reawakened in a Blade Runner cyberpunk world, and with it came a resurgence of mutations that transformed some ordinary humans into different fantasy races. You can find Orcs outfitted with cybernetic modifications swinging a samurai sword, your oh-so-typical elf mages, introverted humans using their wheel-mounted iPads communicating with their team mid-job while lounging safely (or not-so-safely) in the confines of the abandoned warehouse they squat in.

Catalyst Game Labs has chosen in 2014 to take this world, this game, this system, and implement it as a multi-session deckbuilding game. Pathfinder has done something similar, sure, but how well does Shadowrun's card game port relate to the original experience? In short, incredibly. Shadowrun is tough, and a game where death is hardly ever permanent. To this end, in the beginning stages, the game is REALLY tough. You will lose, until luck swings in your favor enough times to let you take the reins of your own fate as a team. Yes, I said "as a team." Crossfire is a cooperative deckbuilder that suits 1-4 players, and the thematic tie isn't hard to see. Need to do some sidework away from the rest of the team? Run on your own. Someone else running with another team for today? Run with two or three. Got a full team? Then get to work and get it done! If you had to boil the types of jobs in the RPG down to their core, any of them exciting enough to pull the whole team together for can fit into one category - infiltration. The game represents this with two different (beatable) missions: Crossfire (an infiltration gone bad) and Extraction (where you have to rescue and protect a captive Client). The Decker/hacker gets to work disabling security measures and extracting information, the Street Samurai handles any strongarms in the way, the Face negotiates the way past suits, and the Mage, well, slings some lightning bolts around. Of course, no run ever goes smoothly. Crossfire has two different types of ways to make things go wrong: Obstacles (which come in "Normal" and "Hard" difficulties) and Crossfire Events (that shape the rules and conditions for a round of turns). New ones come out frequently, based on the type of job your team has decided to take on. As any normal deckbuilder, every player has a starting deck of cards (7 here), and a (Black) market of cards available for purchase. One simple but crucial difference here is that the cards you purchase are immediately available in your hand, unlike other deckbuilders like Star Realms, Thunderstone, and Dominion. You have to communicate with your team to make sure no one else wants one of the cards out there, and plan your buys based on what they might also have in their hands or what obstacles everyone is facing. There's a lot of strategy, and while it may be easy to "Alpha game" beginning players, no one can truly predict what the team will find around the next corner, and any Alpha will soon find themselves humbled by the obstacles and Crossfire deck. Giving this game true potential as a weekly gaming event are the character upgrades. Completed missions give the team members Karma points (experience) that can be spent on upgrades to their characters. Some allow you to gain additional health (my wife made me take this upgrade because my fragile elf was dying too quickly and she [or her tough-skinned and big-boned orc - see the roleplaying potential here?] was growing impatient with failing mission after mission) and others allow you to manipulate your starting deck, starting money, or grant you other bonuses and abilities for use during the run. The level of immersion is up to the individual or the group, but the breadth of that scale is impressive for a game that's just a few decks of cards and a pack of stickers. The difficulty of the missions and the thin line between success and failure, the rewards reaped by acheiving that team victory, and its thematic link to the Shadowrun experience are all what tie in to Crossfire's replayability, and why it's my top board game of 2014.

#shadowrun: crossfire

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