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Actualol Newsletter - March 2022
🕑 Added 2022-03-31 18:46:43 +0000 UTCBonjour bon jouers!
The sun is shining, we’re enjoying some brief Fool’s Spring here in London, before the inevitable Second Winter. (It literally just started snowing as I posted this!)
I hope you enjoyed my Best Board Games of the Year video. In this newsletter, I’ll share the near misses that were good, but not quite good enough to make the list. If you’re looking for my takes on the popular games that didn’t make the cut - see January’s newsletter.
Thank you to all the new patrons that have come on board in the last month. It’s thanks to your support that I was able to take the time to make this last video as funny and informative as possible.
Actual Life
My first Airecon was a delight. I got a little over-excited on the Thursday night, seeing friends for the first time in two years, that I was rather worse for wear on Friday. Thankfully, Airecon is much more chilled than UK Games Expo or Essen.
I got to meet Paula Deming from Things Get Dicey, and Monique and Naveen from Before You Play for the first time - and they were all super nice.
The weird phenomenon of being a solo content creator is that I literally have no colleagues. So it’s really helpful and cathartic to chat with people like Matthew Jude and Rodney Smith, about being making videos and all that comes with it.
I didn’t get as many games played as I would have liked, but that’s a pretty unavoidable con regret. I had some fun games of Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, Mafia De Cuba, and Get On Board - the Let’s Make A Bus Route reprint.
And it was really nice to meet the patrons that came and said hello, like Graeme and Esther. I hope to see some more of you at UK Games Expo in June!
Games of the Year Near Misses
When I was compiling my Best Games of 2021, these were the ones that came closest to making it onto the list, but didn’t quite make it, here’s why:
Mind MGMT was the one that got away. I didn’t get it in time to be able to play it enough before finishing the video. It seems like a really clever take on hidden movement games but my true feelings will have to wait for another time, after I’ve played it more.
I had a lot of fun with Camel Up: Off Season. It is a standalone game that has nothing in common with Camel Up apart from a vague middle-eastern setting. I don’t particularly mind that, but it annoyed some of the people I played with - putting them off the game before we’d started.
You’re collecting goods from markets and then storing them on your four camels. Each camel can only hold so many goods - and if you ever overload it, you break its back and lose all the goods it was carrying. It’s a really good threat - because meanwhile the set collection is encouraging to push your luck and collect more stuff, because you’ll get way more money.
This creates some funny surprises, because when you take from a market stall there are face down cards which could be the final straw. So it can be crucial to win the blind bid and pick your market first. Sadly, it’s a luck fest for everyone else who pick in clockwise order - which is a shame.
I really like the core game but as a full package, it’s fussy. The box is too big, the tiny plastic coins are annoying to handle. It’s a table hog and there’s a few too many rules to make it the perfect family game. Which is frustrating, because I want the basic game in my collection, but I don’t want this version of it.
Mechanically, Unfathomable is a great evolution of Battlestar Galactica. The problem I encountered is that maybe I don’t love Battlestar Galactica anymore.
It is still long, it hasn’t changed that, so it’s not so much a streamlining as a tidy up. And it doesn’t fix a crucial flaw - that you can go half the game without any traitor. And when that happens it’s so obvious that the threat of a traitor - the point of the game - is missing.
Plus the crisis cards are so swingy that they can make the game really easy or really hard, regardless of what the traitors do - which makes everyone feel like they have no control over the game.
BSG and Unfathomable rely on the players to get so caught up in the drama that they ignore how fragile the game is. Sometimes the game system will deliver an epic experience, a miracle so good that you forgive your God for not showing up lately. But a lot of the time, it will be a disappointment - which is hard to justify when it steals 2-3 hours of your game night.
If you still love BSG - stick with it. I don’t think the improvements are worth the switch. I still have BSG on my shelf, with all the expansions. And it will stay there for now, because I’m not ready to confront the hard truth that we might not be compatible anymore.
Fairy Tale Inn is a neat two player game that takes Connect Four and turns it into a solid, modern abstract game. You can find out more about it in my review from last year. As a design, I think it deserves a space in my best games of 2021, but I got rid of it because of its stupidly big box and lack of content - so it felt wrong recommending it.
Dune: House Secrets is a narrative game set in the Dune universe that is based on Detective: A Modern Crime Game. And to my surprise, the writing is really good. It tells a story that takes place after the events of the latest Dune film but isn’t dependent on it. It operates in its own mini-universe on Arrakis, exploring the political and criminal intrigue in a particular town. It reminds me of the Game of Thrones: A Telltale Game Series in that it has the feel of the original IP, but largely does its own thing with only brief cameos from recognisable characters.
The Detective ancestry is misleading - because even though you are uncovering crimes, there is nothing to solve. You follow leads and read cards, but there are no questions to answer at the end of each chapter, or points to receive. It surprised me that I didn’t mind that. I’ve really enjoyed experiencing this story in a non-linear way. Because we’re still revealing a mystery and coming up with theories. I haven’t needed a game mechanism to tell me I’m doing it right. But the voters of BGG do. It is currently the lowest rated game I have ever enjoyed, at 5.33/10.
Comments of it being a “cash-in” are unfair - it is clear that the writer has put a lot of love into the story. Sure, the box is a bit thin on content, and there are some comically bad “videos” on the website which are literally a wall of text. But it hasn’t ruined my experience. If you love the Dune universe and go in knowing its weaknesses, you might like this one too.
Suspects is the latest crime-solving game series. This one stands out because it doesn’t rely on an app. Each case is a deck of big cards - each of them a lead to follow.
You play, co-operatively, as a young female sleuth living in a time before mobile phones ruined murder mysteries. The cases have an Agatha Christie feel to them, which is a nice change.
On the whole, the three mysteries are engaging and well written. It’s HARD to write an intriguing whodunnit with enough threads to keep you guessing - and we were just as invested in talking it through as we would be with Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective.
However, I’m not in love with the game system. It awards you points for how few cards you looked at - encouraging you to skip over evidence to get a good score. But some cards contain such vital information that if you miss them, you have almost no hope of solving the case. And how are you supposed to know which cards to read and which to ignore?
As with SH:CD, I would urge anyone to ignore the points system, because it is encouraging you to PLAY THE GAME LESS. If you like these sorts of games and if you’ve played all of the other obvious ones, then by all means get Suspects. It is good, it’s just not the best.
New Arrivals
- Decorum
- Bureau of Investigation
- Mind MGMT
Games I’ve been enjoying lately
- Phantom Ink
- Get on Board
- Oliver Twist
Song of the Month - Anything But Me - MUNA
Video of the Month - Conan and Jordan plan their trip to Italy
Now Watching - Vigil (BBC)
Until April!
Actually yours,
Jon
