We're still playing a ton, but the end of the year saw us tabling a lot of "oldies."
Like Age of Steam. The new maps from the altest Kickstarter have all been great and I really like the production quality Eagle Gryphon continues to commit to this title. The acrylic tiles and the 3rd party train tokens continue to get a lot of use. Here's the Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico map, with the spotted cow cubes which the designer used to paint by hand back when he shopped it around to conventions 20 years ago or so(!), as well as trusty Rust Belt, which we used to ease some new players into AoS.
Also Catan 3D, which is apparently discontinued (?), which doesn't bode well for being able to complete the set with a first party 5&6th player expansion. /sadpanda
Scythe made another appearance. We haven't played Scythe since finishing Rise of Fenris. Still a great game and it takes me back to when I started this hobby.
And, of course, Castle of Burgundy. This game might be a personal top 5 all time game. This has me looking forward to Awaken Realms fullfilling Puerto Rico SE. It PR is half as good as this...
Speaking of Awaken Realms, we also played Great Wall again. Got to use all the 3D printed terrain pieces - as if the game needed more bling. Something about seeing elaborate buildings on the board just really do it for me.
See what I mean. The best game I own to introduce people to modern board games continues to slay. STILL haven't played Foundations fo Rome with the latest expansions, but we're waiting until everyone at the table has played the game before adding them, which hasn't happened as there's always someone who's playing for the first time. I will eventually reach the point where I've taught everyone in the central Texas area how to play this game and at that point I'll add them all!
Another modern classic, Return to Dark Tower, is a similarly great game to play with normies for the simple mechanics, if not for the difficulty. I think I'm finally over 50% win/loss with this game. lol
Along the same vein, Isle of Cats is never a bad option. We played with all the expansions and it all played seamlessly. Pictured here though is us playing just the base game (with some KS promos) to re-familiarize ourselves with the game. I forgot to take a pic of the board during the session with all the expansions, unfortunately.
But the game we play the most is still Oathsworn. We're at Chapter 17, so not much left before we're done. The kids are talking about putting the last chapters off to prolong the experience, they don't want the game to end - that's how much they dig it. The story remains exceptional. We've started many campaigns, like Gloomhaven and Frosthaven, Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon, and Etherfields, for instance, but this one is one we can't help but continue.
Spoilers for those who practice:
I did get to play some games for the first time, too. Like Frostpunk. It asks you to do a lot but once you play a round you see how everything just meshes so the gameplay is quite intuitive. I pre-ordered all of Dying Light from Glass Cannon purely on spec from how much we enjoyed Frostpunk.
Also played Primal: The Awakening, finally. It's a fantastic boss battler with a campaign (or 7) that, though does not seem as well written or integrated as Oathsworn, has gameplay that's good enough to make up for it.
Excelsior