Best of 2011...

As always, I definitely did not play even a tenth of the multitude of games that those lucky people over at Opinionated Gamers get to play so my choices are totally coloured by that.  As well, due to living in Canada, many a game that I finally played this year may have been a 2010 release.  Deal with it.  Maybe just consider these the favourites of the games that were new to me this year. 

So without further ado...

Best New Game of 2011 - Mammut, by Kristian Amundsen Ostby (Queen)

My favourite game this year earns its status for playing so completely and wonderfully different than any game I own.  In Mammut, players are cavemen determining how to share the spoils of a hunt.  The hunt is composed of 31 tiles, of varying values and importance, and each player in turn can take as many of them as they want from the spoils in the middle or all the tiles from one other player.  The key is that if you take the tiles away from someone else, you have to return at least one back to the center (they were being "too greedy!").  This back and forth of stealing and returning continues until everyone has tiles.  The round then ends and a scoring occurs similar to Knizia's classic Ra.  4 or 5 rounds and the game is finished.

This game is brilliant, loaded with strategy, and helluva lot of "take that" nastiness.  No other family game this year has made me think so differently about how to play well.  For more details, see my full review here.  Or just go out and buy the damn game.  It's wicked, tense, strategic fun.

Second Place Favourite - Asara, by Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer (Ravensburger)

This one may come as a surprise to you (it sure did to me).  It also may be from 2010 but I don't care.  When I first read the rules to this, it seemed like there wasn't a single original mechanic.  And maybe there isn't.  But after playing it I found the game so well-balanced, so interesting, and so easy to explain, it's worth every second.  On paper, it's just a worker-placement game about building the tallest towers in five different colours.  But it's gorgeously produced and the worker-placement is cleverly handled with cards where players must follow suit to take certain actions after others.  It's an extremely fun family strategy game that is super-tense right through to the finish.  Kramer invented Princes of Florence, one of my all-time greats, and his masterful touch is quite evident here, although Asara is a slightly more relaxed affair.  But only slightly.  A very, very pleasant surprise.

Runners-up -

Airlines Europe, by Alan R. Moon - It's a quicker, slicker version of Moon's Union Pacific/Airlines system and the tension in the game sneaks up on you.  Imagine Acquire meets Ticket To Ride and you're starting to get the idea.  But you gotta play it with the flight ban rules which can be found here.  It adds some nastiness and clogs the board up quite nicely.

Fauna, by Friedemann Friese - Definitely my favourite party game this year and it was republished in English this year by FoxMind Games.  This is a trivia game about animals - where they live, what they weigh, how tall they are - where you can win points by still being close to the answer and not exactly on it.  Sounds dry but it's actually shockingly fun.

Black Friday, also by Friedemann Friese - Once you get past the god-awful ruleset and make sense of how to play, you'll find yourself immersed in one of the cleverest stock market simulations ever put to board.  It's tense and strategic but still chaotic and a bit number-crunchy.  Maybe not for everyone but my math friends and I love it.

Mord Im Arosa, by Alessandro Zucchini - I love this game of dropping cubes in a tower and listening to which floor they fall to.  It's simple, hilarious, and nasty.  This is the most enjoyable game I've played all year and also one of the cleverest.

Water Lily, by Dominique Ehrhard - This little race game was brought to my attention at Origins this past year and I'm glad we picked it up.  It's a very simple race game that's made quite tricky by the memory element of the scoring.  Excellent, suspenseful, and so quick.  It's also one of the nicest productions I've seen in years where the box becomes the board.  Just lovely.

(Aside:  I haven't played my copy of A Few Acres of Snow yet but it may jump on this list pretty quickly.  Deck-building, Canadian history, and Martin Wallace - sounds like an amazing combo.)

You tell me: Best (so far) of 2011....

We're almost halfway through the year and I sure haven't played that many of the 2011 releases (So far this year I seem to be buying older games that came out before 2010.)  But of the few I own or have played, here are my favourites:

Runner-ups:

Alien Frontiers - Okay, so this has been out for over a year.  But for awhile it was impossible to grab a copy of this tremendously fun dice-fest.  It can be a little long with beginners, but games are always close and there is always room for clever and nasty manouevres.  And it's got the nicest production values I've seen of any game in the last 5 years!

Airlines Europe - I've mentioned this game many times but the Alan Moon re-do of Union Pacific/Airlines is tighter on turns, simpler to understand, and the shortest in the series by far.  It's subtle and challenging and just fantastic.





My favourite so far:

Mord Im Arosa - This rather silly game of dropping cubes in the top of a tower and listening to where they fall is one of the cleverest, most orginal games to come out in years.  There's tons of interaction and a real risk and reward balance to the game.  But who cares about any of that...  It's just the most fun I've had all year.  A game for anyone and everyone.

What have been your favourite new ones this year?

First Play: Mord Im Arosa...

Back for a day now and headed to the UW games night for the evening.  7 Wonders definitely got played.  A lot.  As well, I also participated in a 4-player game of Innovation.  I'm still not sure what I think of it.  I do know now that it needs to be played fast.  VERY fast.  Every 3 or 4-player game I've played so far has clocked in at about 90 minutes which is way too long but there has always been someone new to the game.  That and the math group tends to overanalyze their choices.  Just sayin'.  But I still wanna play it again and I guess that is a good sign.

The winner of the night for me, though, is a cute little dexterity-ish game about murders in a hotel.  In Mord Im Arosa, players place cubes in a hotel (tower) and try to listen to what level they drop to.  They then take turns revealing levels and trying to guess which opponents' cubes will be revealed there.  That's a bit of an oversimplification but the game really is pretty simple.  And silly.  But, boy, did the 6 of us "serious gamers" enjoy it!  It's quite nasty as you try and guess your opponent's pieces to cause them to gain unwanted points and by the end we were all very quiet listening to each cube fall and trying to locate exactly where they landed. 

A blast, an absolute blast, and a reminder to me that not every game I play has to be deep or elegantly designed or streamlined or loaded with different strategies.  It just has to be fun.  And that's really why we keep moving cubes and rolling dice and playing cards and counting scores, right?  Because it's supposed to be fun.  And this lovely game delivers that in spades.