2012: The Year Gaming Spun Its Wheels In Place

I used to prescribe to the big "best of" hoopla that comes around at the end of every year. I lost a whole lot of interest in it last year, scrambling to fit in as many hot games as I could just so that I could report in on them on my podcast. It sort if made playing games feel like work, and made doing the podcast feel even more so. For a time I was dead set on having that "year in review" episode being my last since it really spoiled two things I enjoyed doing. Plus, I initially named Eclipse to be my Game of the Year and not Mage Knight, so there was that little bit of embarassment.  Now those "best of" lists are making their way out again, but it's not so much that I don't have a podcast looming over my head that has me not caring about them. It's the fact that so few new games really clicked with me in 2012.

The first game to come out this year that I did like was Fantasy Flight's Star Wars:  X-Wing miniatures game.  Now there's a whole lot that I'm very much done with when it comes to minis games.  With the exception of being expensive, X-Wing does away with all of those things.  It's clean, fast, accessible, fun, and knocks the Star Wars dogfight theme out of the park.  And the pre-painted ships?  Fucking gorgeous.  I'm trying to think of another pre-painted miniatures game that looks as good, but I'm drawing a blank.  I hope FFG can keep this thing going.  I am ready for new ships with a bit more variety, and I'd really love to see scenario book sort of like what they did for Tide of Iron.  Just writing about this game makes me think to myself, "Holy shit, I want to play X-Wing."

As much as I love X-Wing, it was a game that seemed to come literally out of nowhere that really won me over this year.  That game is Mage Wars.  Take a board game, CCG, and miniatures game, put them together, and you're likely to come out with a disaster.  Yet Bryan and Benjamin Pope (first game, by the way, no Kickstarter) somehow pulled it off.  Customizable card games tend to fall in this rut where your most important decisions go into building your deck and then the actual game almost plays itself.  Yup, talking about Magic here.  That's not the case in Mage Wars.  You have full access to your deck, there is no random draw, but you're only allowed to take two cards in every turn.  Once you get familiar with the game, there will be turns where that decision seems easy to make, but even then, it never stops feeling important.  There might be a few balance issues (such as the Wizard's drain power strategy and the Heal card), but I'm still really surprised with how well playtested and developed the game is.  Like X-Wing, I want more, but you'd be hard pressed to find another game of this nature out there with this much variety and depth in just the one box.  If I were to name a Game of the Year 2012, this be the one.

Oddly enough, 2012 was an outstanding year for reprints.  Wiz-War, Rex, and Merchant of Venus are all really great.  My early impressions of Netrunner and Descent are that they're really good, too.  So I guess you'd could also call 2012 the year that FFG regained some ground.

I didn't play any of the flavor-of-the-week Euro games (that includes Tzolk'in:  The Mayan Calander, the game pictured above, though I am half way interested), and I sure as hell didn't play any Kickstarter vaporware.  I do really like Lords of Waterdeep and Legendary, the new Marvel deckbuilder, though I don't think either game is "best in class" material.  The sad truth is that as much as I like them, none of my top games of the year really gave me that same feeling I did when I first played stuff like Chaos in the Old World, Battlestar Galactica, or Mage Knight, each of which are top games from previous years.  It's no wonder, really.  Let's be honest:  My favorite games of 2012 consisted of a Wings of War variant, what happens when Summoner Wars grows up, Agricola-light, and the Ascension killer.  Oh, and the handful of reprints.  I'm glad I have them, but there certainly was a lack of fresh ideas in gaming this year.

Now, who's coming over to play X-Wing?  I've got to teach some Rebel scum why you shouldn't mess with Empire and this fucker isn't going to play itself.