Barnes Best 2019 - The Best Games of the Year

I suppose it is time to drag out the ol’...

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This is an excellent list. Only three games that I haven’t played (Vast, Ancient Civs, WarCry) and one of them I own and am just waiting for the chance to get it to the table (Vast). So I guess I did pretty good this year?

I’m sure that any list I would come up with would be 90% overlap.

LOL about financing 1st edition D&D modules. I haven't played in over 30 years, but still out of nostalgia like to read the bootleg PDFs out there of those old modules. The artwork alone brings back memories and is far better than anything I see on newer stuff when I thumb through it. Same for the old Middle Earth Role Playing system.

Oh you should look at the Goodman Dungeon Crawl Classics stuff...I love just reading their modules- the writing is solid and the illustrations are Otus quality. And they go FULL ON appendix N and beyond. Laser skulls, ghost fish, hairless tigers that attack with vomit, robots...really fun stuff.

Goodman also does a few deluxe reprints of classic modules with 5E conversion and the original in the book.

goodman-games.com/store/product-category...ntures-reincarnated/

Just to follow up on this and another thread: I did end up making that trade for Vast: Crystal Caverns and have gotten the chance to try it. It was definitely worth the trade (got all the expansions with it, too, plus some really nice silkscreened bags for each role; don't know if those were a KS thing or a BGHQ thing.) In an odd way, I found it much easier to both grasp and teach than I did Root, not least because the roles seem to have better explanations and more obvious procedures than the Root factions.

Anyway, I'm certainly interested in Manor and you mentioned that it's an "improvement" on Caverns. How so?

Great list despite saying you're out of the game.

Ha ha, I am pretty surly. At this point though, I can’t and don’t really want to keep up with the Theels and Thurots...they play everything. I ain’t got time for that. I’ve enjoyed -playing games- much more over the past couple of years by bowing out of the race to cover everything and have an opinion on everything.

You should play Nemesis. It is better than Lifeform. Just like I think that Lords of Hellas is better than Kemet. (Same designer, and a serious talent.)

The big differences are that Lifeform is a dead-perfect game of the movie Alien, while Nemesis is definitely Aliens. Lifeform is probably better solo--as you get the sense of isolation from the first movie. Nemesis wants a larger crowd so that the paranoia and not-quite-coop sets in. (But Nemesis still works if you play full the full co-op option.)

You also get to do more on your turn in Nemesis, and the randomness of the setup and events means that the games play very differently. Lifeform is a lot more constrained in terms of what can happen. Nemesis can easily break out into half of the ship on fire, burning out the monsters, but endangering the ship and the rest of the crew struggling to control the fire and break through to the fire suppression station, while trying to make the Pilot explain EXACTLY why he needs to go examine the #3 engine, while the Engineer slips to a control chamber to lock the outer door to the #3 Engine Room.

...and the stock answer about what do do with the Queen wandering about is "I don't want to think about that right now."

Honestly, Nemesis is better.

I've played both (Nemesis twice and Lifeform four times) and still can't decide. The tension to me is much higher in Lifeform but Nemesis' semi-coop story generator is extremely interesting. I wish Nemesis was a good half hour shorter but I never felt that way with Lifeform. You also get weird situations with Nemesis where someone feels they can't accomplish their objective but they can totally fuck over the ship and this risks derailing the game. The ship can also just blow up a few turns in, or you could get Eclosion early in the game and just die, having to watch for 2 hours.

I have both and I’m on the side of Lifeform without question. I want the extra tension that it provides in a game that’s supposed to be mimicking the first Alien, not the weird halfway point between the first and second movies. Nemesis might be prettier and cleaner, but it sure as hell isn’t Alien, and there are *plenty* of games that are trying to be Aliens. I’m glad I own both and plan on keeping them, but Lifeform is 100% worth the extra work.