Games of the Year 2012!

As another season ends, so does the calendar year, and what better a time could there be to revisit our favourite games and make loads of lists?

In mitigation, I was actually going to have a nap having finished a job, but an email communique is looking like extending through til tea-time, so I'll keep myself awake thinking about meeples...

Here are my top ten of 2012. They're not necessarily published this year, I've just played them for the first time, and enjoyed them.


10: Castles of Burgundy

I'm sure Joe will be taken aback that Castles of Burgundy only makes number ten (beating out Airlines Europe and Ys) but let's be clear, we have played A LOT of new games this year. Castles has got a delightful rolling mechanic and it's a joy to play - it's just a little long, and a little dry. I'm sure when I play it again I'll really enjoy it, it just doesn't have that pick-it-up factor.


9: The Resistance

(Edit) I did have Taj Mahal in here, but subsequently realised it didn't meet the 'first played in 2012' criteria. Instead in its place is The Resistance, the best fun you can have being totally confused, sneakily clandestine or just carelessly transparent.


8. Arkadia

It's not everyone's cup of tea, to be sure, but I have a real soft spot for this one. As well as managing resources you're also trying to read an ever-evolving puzzle on the board - spotting your own best moves, and hopefully hampering everyone else's. A gem.



7. Hab and Gut

This is a quirky little number, and despite it's very straightforward gameplay it makes the list because of the speed of play, the opportunity for manipulation and the canny mechanic of the 'shared knowledge' - each player knowing only so much about where the market is going, and having to anticipate/guess the rest.



6. Wallenstein/Shogun

Essentially the same game, so I've listed them together. It's a bit of a love-hate relationship with these two - they dominate an evening, and, if you get in a bad position at the start (with 5 players at least) that's three plus hours you spend on the back foot, as Adam found to his cost this week. But the mechanics are great, the tower adds some randomness, and every now and then it's nice to go full-on combat!


5. Africana

Mmmm, only played it twice, and latterly last night, so perhaps the fresh memory does the other games a disservice. But it's a very fast moving, lovely looking game, with various strands of strategy to follow or mix up together. With no score track it's nigh-on impossible to tell who's won until the count-up at the end, and I like that.


4. Downfall of Pompeii

What is this rarely-seen curio doing at number 4? Well, it's great for the following reasons: it's two games in one, there's planning but also luck (a lot of luck), it looks great and there's a big plastic volcano you can throw your opponents into.


3. Lords of Waterdeep

Into the top three and it was very hard to choose the order. What I love about Waterdeep, apart from the artwork and the colours and the mechanics - is the silly missions (Massage the Orb of the Thunderelves etc) and the fact it scales so well - great with anything from 2 to 5 players.


2. Biblios

What can one say about Biblios that hasn't been said? Nothing.


1. Macao

Okay, there are more interesting games out there - even on this post - from almost every gaming perspective you can think of. Aside from Macao's dice-rolling aspect - which is great - there's nothing to mark it out from heaps of other games in terms of theme or its other mechanics. But for me it blends those different things together really well, and whenever I open the doors of the games cupboard the spine of this box seems to shine brighter than the rest... to me, the replayability of a game is its real distinguishing mark, and (like Tinner's Trail) I'm always happy to play this.