My Year in Games: 2012

Starting near the end of April 2011, I began to track every game I play (give or take a few, I'm sure) on Board Game Geek. And starting in January of 2012, I gave an overview of the games I played in the previous year, namely my "nickels and dimes" (games played 5+ and 10+ times, respectively).

It's time to continue that tradition. Here's my list of nickels and dimes from 2012, along with some commentary and a comparison to my list from 2011.

The Fellowship: What Can Men Do Against Such Reckless Hate?

In my last post, I detailed how I orchestrated my first victory over the spiders of Mirkwood. My spirits were flying pretty high. I beat the first scenario a few more times in order to get a feel for the game a bit more before upping the ante and beginning my Journey Down the Anduin.

Nothing will dampen your spirits like trolls.

News Bits: 10/22/2012

Last week was Essen. This week is the news. Check it out!

Essen, Essen, and More Essen
You must be hungry, because the big buzz on the Internet (at least in our small niche of it...) this past week was Essen. I, unfortunately, didn't get to go, but there are lots of great people who did. Check out the links below for some of their coverage. The biggest surprise for me from Essen? Escape: The Curse of the Temple topped the Geekbuzz list on Board Game Geek for the entire fair. Hands down. No real competition. Really...? My guess would have been Tzolk'in (which took the second spot).

The Fellowship: Caught in a Web

My fearless band

In my last post, I described my first five attempts at the Passage through Mirkwood scenario in the Lord of the Rings LCG. I'll provide the tl;dr summary of that last post: FAILURE.

After my first five failures, I tried deck-building using tactics as the backbone of a tactics/lore deck. I will briefly describe the result: MORE FAILURE.

But I was not cowed.

The Fellowship: One Does Not Simply Walk into...Mirkwood?

So here we are. Three posts in, and I'm finally going to embark on my first quest.

The rulebook suggests beginning with the scenario "Passage through Mirkwood," which it states is a difficulty 1 (of 10) scenario. I looked briefly through the encounter deck to get a sense of what I might be up against, saw lots of spiders, and the sphere that screamed out to me was "tactics."

Tactics, for those of you not in the know, is the sphere that focuses on physical strength. It's also the sphere wherein I recognize all three heroes included in the base game (Gimli, Legolas, and Thalin). I looked at their stats, was impressed with their attack values, and rushed to fight Ungoliant's spawn. What can go wrong? I thought.

Everything. That's what can go wrong.

The Fellowship: An Unexpected Journey

I wrote a long post about CCGs (customizable card games) for my personal blog, which you're welcome to read if so inclined. The basic gist of it: My name's Lenny, and I'm addicted to CCGs.

Hi, Lenny.

Actually, that's not entirely true. I used to be addicted. When 100% of my money was discretionary income, 100% of it was spent on trading card games. Overpower, Redemption, and then the Star Wars CCG were the biggest monetary sinkholes, but I also dabbled in just about every other CCG that was released, even the lesser-known ones. When Magic: The Gathering was in its heyday, there were many, many copycats.

Because of my former addiction, I've tried hard over the years to steer clear of overly mercenary collectible card games. When I discovered Dominion, I found what I imagined was the Platonic ideal for all those CCG shadows on the cave wall: no random collecting, no trading, simple enough rules that anyone can jump in and play.