What have you played this year?

[danisthirty]

Yo dudes.

With 2022 drawing to a close now I thought it might be interesting to see what games besides Carcassonne everyone has been playing this year. I'm especially interested to know what games (old and new) you've played for the first time and have enjoyed playing, and how you discovered them?

For me, Board Game Arena has been central to my discovery of new games as there's always so much to choose from that some of them are bound to stick! Thanks to some of my BGA friends who invited me to play with them, I've discovered four of my new favourite games: Cubirds (2018), Draftosaurus (2019), Happy City (2021),  and Next Station: London (2022). They're all very different games, and while nothing will ever steal the position of "top game" from Carcassonne, it's good to have a bit of variety every now and then.

More recently (within the last month or two) I've discovered a number of great 2-player games too. I have a long history of playing Bandido (2016) on BGA with @Halfling but since reaching more than 500 games between us we've both been keen to branch out a bit this year. Tranquility (2020) - and to a lesser extent Tranquility: The Ascent (2022) - was the first such game that we came to settle on as a strictly 2-player game, but we've since discovered Dragonheart (2010) and Lost Cities (1999) which are pretty much permanently on the go now as well.

How about you? What have you enjoyed playing (besides Carcassonne) this year?

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=6204.0

[Willem]

I've managed to play several games other than Carcassonne this year, and some left a great impression!

Quacks of Quidlenburg was introduced to me during a meetup with @danisthirty , @Decar , @Rich_The_Fish and @unclewill earlier in the year, and that one really stuck with me. Within days after we played it, i ordered my own copy and have introduced it to some of my friends in our local gaming group

On BGA, i've tried several games, although i'm not as active with them. Draftosaurus was quite fun, Next Station: London was so good we even played it at Essen, and I liked the couple of games of Just One that we had.
For Next Station: London, it really helped to play that one in real life. Although the lines were less clear, the rules were a lot clearer to me. I commented on many games with @Halfling that i actually had no idea about the scoring, and now i do!

I played a few more games at Essen, although non really stuck with me. I liked the idea of MicroMacro though; that might be one i could see myself picking up one day

And of coruse there is Radlands, which i was introduced to by UncleWill! It is a great 2-player strategy game, which sees regular play between myself and my partner. Both Decar and I picked up a copy of the Super Deluxe version at Essen, although i'm not sure if he's played it yet
But i'm glad to have found this game, as it's definitely one to recommend!

[oldbonz]

this year 2022 I played recent and old games, here are some of them
-Agricola
-Alhambra with various extensions
-The stone age with its swaps and charms extension
-Ilos
- Raiders of the North Sea with expansions
-Cavern tavern
-Rise to nobility
-Jamaica and extension
-Architects of the West Kingdom
-Five tribes with expansions
-Rajas of Ganges
-Scythian Raiders
and others that I forgot, and of course some parts of Carcassonne

[Halfling]

Chromino
Color Pop
Copenhagen
Cubirds
Downforce
Draftosaurus
Dragonheart
Fairy Trails
For Sale
Fruit Picking
Get the MacGuffin
Gomoku
Hypnosia
Just One
Llama
Lost Cities
Next Station London
Patchwork
Railroad Ink
Rainbow
Reflection
Shifting Stones
Squadro
Sushi Go Party
Ticket to Ride
Tucano
Tranquillity
Tranquility ascent

All on BGA and with varying levels of success. Almost 30 new games played this year.

[Meepledrone]

Besides Carcassonne, I've been playing:
- Fluxx
- Dobble
- Take 6!

It may not count, but at Essen we tried:
- Dorf Romantyk
- Hiroba
- Next Station London
- Overbooked
- Village Rails

[danisthirty]

Ah yes, a couple of oversights on my part in my original post. These three are definitely worth a mention even if I've only played them once:

Quacks of Quidlenburg was introduced to me during a meetup with @danisthirty , @Decar , @Rich_The_Fish and @unclewill earlier in the year...

- Dorf Romantyk
- Village Rails

[oldbonz]

Ah yes, a couple of oversights on my part in my original post. These three are definitely worth a mention even if I've only played them once:

Quacks of Quidlenburg was introduced to me during a meetup with @danisthirty , @Decar , @Rich_The_Fish and @unclewill earlier in the year...

- Dorf Romantyk
- Village Rails


Charlatan de Bellecastel in French and with its extension even better

[Scott]

My wife and I have played a few games of "Marrying Mr. Darcy", sometimes just the two of us and sometimes with more friends. My wife is a big Jane Austen fan and heard about this game in one of her Jane Austen fan groups on Facebook. Over the past three years I have been educated on the material by watching the mini-series and movie adaptations so that I can properly understand the references and in-jokes. "Marrying Mr. Darcy" strikes a very good balance between managing your own cards versus interfering with your opponents' cards.

I played a game of Good Cop, Bad Cop on BoardGameArena while it was in public beta. I was invited as a former Kickstarter backer. I've never actually played the physical game, so it was nice to get a feel for it. It played very slowly on BGA because every player gets to decide whether they want to take an action on every other player's turn, so I would not recommend playing that in anything other than real-time. Other than that, it was a fun twist on the standard Mafia party game.

I played ten solo games of Orient Express (Jumbo edition) and one solo game of the Just Games edition. The Jumbo edition has a nicer game board and is more narrative, but also more difficult to solve the cases. The Just Games edition is more straightforward to solve, but takes longer to get the find all the clues. I bought them to study the mechanics of how they worked, and unfortunately they're more constructed so there isn't much in the way of replayability. I was also curious to see whether cases for one edition could be adapted for the other, and it's certainly possible but more work than I expected.

My love of board games is starting to become known amongst the people that I am meeting in the area where we live now, so hopefully 2023 will lead to some board game nights at our house, because I have a lot of games that I never get a chance to play.

[Meepledrone]

My wife and I have played a few games of "Marrying Mr. Darcy", sometimes just the two of us and sometimes with more friends. My wife is a big Jane Austen fan and heard about this game in one of her Jane Austen fan groups on Facebook. Over the past three years I have been educated on the material by watching the mini-series and movie adaptations so that I can properly understand the references and in-jokes. "Marrying Mr. Darcy" strikes a very good balance between managing your own cards versus interfering with your opponents' cards.

Holy Meeples! I backed this game on KS back in the day! And got the Undead Expansion too.