HAPPY NEW YEAR!

What was your most disappointing game from 2021?

What 2022 game release are you most looking forward to?

Any gaming related resolutions?


Happy New Year Everybody! Stay Safe!

My most disappointing game from 2021 was Rogue Dungeon. It screams lack of editorial input. The board is superfluous and doesn't even have places for all the decks. I got halfway through learning the math for combat then put the game away and won't go back to it. I'd probably push through if games like Mini Rogue didn't exist but they do.

2022 release I'm looking forward to Rallyman Dirt. It's my only outstanding KS game.

Most disappointing 2021 game for me would likely be Destinies. Such a strong first impression and then a striking nosedive.

Core Space: First Born, Nemesis: Lockdown, and Vagrantsong are the games I'm most looking forward to at the moment. Maybe Rallyman: Dirt and ISS Vanguard as well. Many, apparently and I can't choose just one.

My biggest disappointment is that Phantom Division didn't get campaign-ready in 2021. I'm most looking forward to it happening in 2022, although who the hell knows? It's completely out of my hands.

I'm actually really looking forward to Witcher: Old World. I think it's going to be a lot of fun, and my girlfriend loves adventure games.

I was disappointed by Sleeping Gods because of unavailability, but even if I had gotten ahold of it, I might have been disappointed by the combat system.

I am really looking forward to the Sinister Motives expansion for Marvel Champions. It will follow the usual campaign box format, with two new hero decks and five scenarios connected by a storyline. It's all Spider-man themed, and features a scenario with the Sinister Six.

Though I am assuming that the pandemic will subside by summer, or at least transition to an endemic like the flu, my only gaming resolution is to play more Magic Realm. I am currently re-reading The Book of Learning, and plan to setup some of the more complex examples and try to work them out on my own and then check my work against the Book.

Thanks for this, Mad Dog.

Best game that I played most last year but actually came out this year: Oath

Best new to me game of this year: Arkham Horror LCG. I bought virtually the entire corpus of cards, I'm on 100+ plays in ~8 months

Most anticipated game 2022: John Company 2nd edition

I'm with Charlie in being very excited about games and gaming. It was a great year for games for me. This hobby provided me a not insubstantial percentage of the enjoyment I experienced in 2021. I get why people are discouraged about our hobby because it feels like we're in the middle of a sea of people being grifted all around us and it feels bad, but a lot of the games have been great if you find the well designed ones and play them a bunch of times.

I forgot about John Company 2nd. In my typical Kickstarter fashion, I just delete and ignore updates and try not to think about the game.

That would actually be at the top of my list next to Core Space: FB.

Most disappointing: Bios: Megafanua (1st ed.), and even now I'm still coming around on it. Maybe Near and Far.

Most excited about: Spire's End: Hildegard's Story

Gaming resolutions: Pending. (Plenty of painting goals, though.)

Can’t say I have any real disappointments beside not playing a greater variety of my solo games. I’d look at Imperium: Legends or Gloomhaven and just default to Arkham Horror because I don’t need to learn the rules or strategy.

Related, my gaming resolution is to play more Arkham fan creations because there is some good stuff out there. Also looking forward to playing more games with my oldest boys. Bedtimes got shuffled around, so we have some time together when the one year old is guaranteed to be asleep and not grabbing everything.

The new game based on Alien was a dismal failure in my house. After the pump it got here it was quite an unpleasant surprise.

I have no clue what is coming out in 2022, because I find that part of the hobby to be the equivalent of drinking from a firehose. I think Where Humans Don’t Belong is due to go up for funding in 2022, so I’ll throw in with it for this coming year.

Good luck to all of you in the new year. Stay healthy and happy.

Biggest disappointment: Fort. Mostly due to high expectations. After being initially nonplussed by Root, then really digging it, I was ready to become a Leder Games fan. Fort made this not happen. It's not bad, just a forgettable use of a great theme and great art.

Milder disappointments: Happy City, Arboretum, Flip City, Luchador, the expansions for It's a Wonderful World, Ride the Rails. Not bad, ranging from just okay to mildly fun, but "just okay to mildly fun" doesn't cut it these days.

Board game shelf toads still unplayed in 2021: Expansion maps for Tiny Epic Tactics, Donner Dinner Party, some expansions for Western Legends, some expansions for Root, the England map for Railways of the World, Sons of Anarchy, Catan: Searfarers.

RPG shelf toads still unplayed in 2021: some Alien adventures (Hope's Last Day, Destroyer of Worlds, Colonial Marine campaign), Band of Blades, Best Left Buried, Forbidden Lands (all of it, sigh), No Thank You Evil, Kingdoms, Mythender, Shinobigami, Slayers, Sunken.Twilight 2000 4e.

Dropbox shelf toads still unplayed in 2021, i.e. things I only have in PDF: probably several gigabytes and I'm not going to look.

Most looking forward to in 2022: Sub Terra II: Inferno's edge (for board games), The One Ring 2e (for RPGs).

Good things shall happen to you all, stay safe and well!

Thanks to this site I had no gaming disappointments this year. I bought Tavarua, Thousand year old Vampire and Oath, and those are freaking awesome.

I’m so happy to see someone else talking about Tavarua, it’s one of my favourites but is very niche and difficult to get people to try it.

No big disappointments, the worst game was Subtext, a drawing party game with a complex messy scoring system, but my expectations weren’t particularly high.

Plenty of stuff to look forward to in 2022: John Company 2ed, ISS Vanguard, Eleven, Ark Nova, no doubt more that will come up along the way.

Gaming resolutions are a continuation from previous years - buy less, sell more, be open to trying stuff I would normally pass over, get together with others whether virtually or in person.

Happy New Year to everyone!

One of my cats has been my primary opponent these days. She and I have gone through a lot of Commands and Colors Ancients scenarios together in 2021. She wins most of the time.

I don’t know how well I’ll stick to this, but I think I will largely limit myself to purchasing expansions to games instead of buying any new ones in 2022. I may slip up here and there.

It’s difficult for me to not buy things because my friend owns my flgs and I like to purchase stuff to help keep him in business. His store has been around for over forty years and every year he says will be the last, but he keeps going and I want to keep giving him motivation to. At this point it’s there for him to stay in touch with people and have something to do with his time. After going there for the last 25 years, I think I will not only miss him terribly but will feel genuinely lost without his shop to go to on Saturdays to hang out and exchange banter with other customers. I haven’t been doing much of that since covid but it’s one of the few places I do still go to occasionally.

Betty White passing feels so symbolically significant.

I hope the coming year will be wonderful for all of you. I look forward to reading your posts, appreciating that you haven’t run me out of town yet, and seeing what the future holds for this hobby.

Due to the extensive COVID national lockdown/restrictions in the UK (Nov 2020 to mid-May 2021 before we could meet up in people's homes) and the previous lockdown in 2020 gaming in 2021 was always going to be in catch-up mode - and I still have games bought in 2019 and planned for 2020 that still have not been played - so I played very few new games, even though I bought a few.

My Best new game to me, and nearly new for 2020, was Tainted Grail. This is a stupendous game - a remarkable story written with a very good game system layered over top, I am continually telling the other two guys to stop exploring every location and trying to follow every story arc (they're bloody rpgers) as I want to play it again and not know everything ... although there are still two 50+ hour campaigns left to do when we finish this one I may have forgotten a lot of it when I do get to restart it.

My most disappointing game was (also) Destinies. This was a game that was hyped and did seem to have a great promise with an app providing a hidden story for a board game, in the end (for our group) it was just too damn simple and many times during it the board and components felt superfluous. I think we had the same experience as Charlie, the opening scenario seemed new and interesting/exciting but then nothing changed in the following scenarios and, if anything, they seemed lesser - it felt more like a family level or introductory gaming experience (nothing wrong with that) and not what we were expecting. I had the core kickstarter (3 campaigns) and we finished the first one (only to see the end and with very little interest in what happened) and then I immediately traded it away.

Other good experiences of games new to me were Disney Villainous and Zombicide: Black Plague.

And games I'm looking forward to in 2022, basically all of my delayed kickstarters, include Aeon Trespass: Odyssey, Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood, Etherfields, Machina Arcana and a few others.

As for 2022 well I will be starting it off in a new job after joining 'The Great Resignation Wave', people who looked at their work and life balance during the last devastating nearly 2 years of our lives and deciding that it wasn't what we really wanted or needed. Nothing major on my part, I was just going through the motions and had managers who didn't really care about our team so took a severance package and moved on to a new challenge.

My best thoughts for all people on the site and your family and friends, it is going to be another tough year (hopefully the last one) no matter how positive we want to be but we will get though together and helping each other.