Since moving, I haven’t had an established weekly game night and have been hosting monthly get togethers. But a lot of my gaming sessions have been solo gaming. While I do own a good amount of games that have a solo mode, I have also been exploring free solo print and play games and solo variants developed and posted on Board Game Geek. I will do a roundup every now and then at some of the games I have been playing solo and my thoughts on them.

Deity

The game that stood out to me the most this past month is a small solo card game called Deity, designed by Geoff Greer of PastGo Games. In this game, the player is a deity of some sort and uses their powers to influence six different civilizations, controlling food, technology, war, disease, and more. Depending on the access to different resources, the civilizations will build monuments and develop new technologies which drive the entire world through the ages. How does it work you ask? Deity reminds me of Spider Solitaire in all of the good ways. I remember playing games upon games of Spider Solitaire on the some of the earliest home computers powered by Windows. If you haven’t played Spider Solitaire, it is a game where your goal is to move playing cards of different suites in columns from King to Ace in suit to remove them from the game. In suit sequences can be moved together and placed on other columns. When a player runs out of moves (or determines there is no move they would want to take) they deal out one card to the bottom of each column. The goal is to remove all the cards from the game.

In Deity, each civilization is represented by one column of cards and the symbols on the card determine what is encapsulated in the civilization. Like Spider Solitaire, the player can move stacks of cards with chains of the same symbol but they only have a finite number of actions before more cards are added to the stacks. Players are trying to create sequences of symbols in order for the civilizations to build monuments and increase their technology level. Deity is a cool puzzley solo card game with an unforgiving scoring structure.

Snowbirds

What pulled me into this game was the theme. You are playing as a flock of birds migrating to warmer lands for the winter. At its core, Snowbirds is all about hand management. The game ends when your whole flock perishes or if the deck runs out. Now the deck is super important because cards are used for everything – food, endurance, and flight modifiers. But if you use to many cards to ensure your birds are fed and that they will reach their destination, you will not have enough cards for the whole journey. I liked Snowbirds, but it did not impress me enough to make a full version of the game. The game had and still has potential but I think there needs to be more development on the gameplay. If I want a solo hand management experience, I will probably break out Onirim.

Bibliogamo

This is my bust for the month. I loved the idea and the theme of the game. From designer Todd Sanders comes a game all about publishing and selling different types of books. Players are hiring different types of artisans to create the types of books that the Head Librarian will buy to complete their collection. The main mechanism here is hand management and timing to make the most efficient sales to the head librarian. While I loved the theme and general idea of the game, I found the game to be incredibly dry. I felt no theme in my plays, just mechanics. And while I do not always need a theme to be engaged. I felt like I was pushing cubes around the board for 30-40 minutes. I really wanted to like this one because Todd Sanders has designed another solo game I really enjoy. Unfortunately, I will not be keeping this one in my solo collection.

What solo games have you discovered lately?

Well… I am officially a contributor on a podcast! I have been thinking on and off about starting a podcast or trying to be on a podcast, but nothing really surfaced for me. This is due to time, the need for a host or partner, and the lack of equipment and skills in audio recording/editing. But when I was asked to be a contributor of The Board Game Workshop, I thought… now is the time.

My segment is called Including All Meeples and the aim is to talk about inclusion and justice in the board gaming hobby, hopefully from a design perspective. My first segment is an introduction but on future segments, I will be doing deeper dives into specific topics.

Check out the podcast:

Website: http://goo.gl/CqvKYQ

iTunes: http://goo.gl/o9WQ2u

Stitcher: http://goo.gl/TuRjte

Google Play: http://goo.gl/V2iN5s

Playing board games, reading books, and writing on my blog are my hobbies. In essence, if I am not working, I am usually doing one of those three things. They provide me with time to relax, destress, and interact with my friends and family. I have fun in all three of my hobbies. Because of my work and issues I find important, my blogging life has focused a lot on inclusion, equity, and social justice in my hobbies. I see two main pieces here: 1) boosting and supporting marginalized authors, bloggers, content creators, designers, and publishers. 2) Calling out problematic content in both books and board games. Despite the dialogues I aspire to create, despite the resistance and frustration I feel in the face of an industry built on privilege, I still have fun. So why did this all come up?

The past couple of days, Shauna, from Bookstore Babe, thread tweeted and then wrote a >8K book review on THE BLACK WITCH a new book by Laurie Forest. After reading the thread and the review, it was evident the book is terribly harmful in many ways – racist, ableist, homophobic. Like most ‘call outs,’ many people in the book blogging world and on book Twitter jumped to defend the author, while others spread awareness of the harm conveyed in the book. And like many of these ongoing conversation, there were a lot of hate and personal attacks going in both directions. I will not talk about THE BLACK WITCH here. As I understand, the author had the best intentions when writing the book, using it to address problematic issues, but the result did not live up to the intention. I have not read the book and I do not plan to ever. If you want to find out more about the book, please go find the many critical reviews. What I want to talk about is a common refrain I heard in the past week:

Where did all the fun go in this hobby?

I see this common response of exasperation, mostly from folks defending the problematic content in both of the hobbies I am a part of. “This hobby is not fun anymore.” “I just want to play games, not talk about politics.” “I want to read whatever I want to read.” Sounds familiar? Maybe you have heard this in your community. Maybe you have said one of these phrases or something similar. Maybe you have not noticed this phenomenon. Whatever the case may be, as soon as problematic content is addressed usually someone who wants folks to lighten up and let it go comes out of the woodwork – it’s just a game, it’s just a made up story, have fun. For me, I interpret these statements as an attempt to say having fun in the hobby and addressing problematic content are mutually exclusive. Once we start talking about ‘identity politics’ the fun is sucked out of it. Let me be completely honest as someone who holds marginalized identities: there are many times where I cannot have fun because of the power dynamics that exist in the industries and interpersonally in my game groups. Below, I created a Venn Diagram that helped me think through some of these ideas.

The top Venn Diagram is my visual representation of folks saying, “Where did the fun go?” As you probably noticed, in the Fun circle I have listed a variety of oppressions and issues that plague both hobbies. I want to be extremely clear: these oppressions are not a matter of opinion; however we experience oppressive systems differently based on the identities we hold. Under the circle, I ask the question, who is really having fun in this model? In my opinion, it is the folks who do not have to deal with all of that. The folks who do not have to think about racism or sexism or terrible representation or insert other issue. Folkx who hold marginalized identities do not have the privilege of ignoring those issues to have fun. We can’t read a book like THE BLACK WITCH or play a game like WAKA TANKA and say… “That was fun despite the racism!”

I think there is also a stereotype about folkx calling out problematic content. That is all we do. I personally would love a world where I did not have to call anything out. A world where I could just have fun and not worry about racism or other oppression in the hobbies. I don’t think most people do this work because they like arguing or they ‘want to ruin a career’ or they are just doing it to create drama. Most people do this work because these issues personally impact them, tell them they are not valued in the hobby, and cause real harm. Marginalized people want to have fun! It’s a fact! And, despite all the work to call out problematic content, I and many others do have fun. That brings me to the second Venn Diagram on the graphic.

There is an intersection of standing for inclusion in these hobbies and having fun. And as we continue to address problematic content and get better at actually making changes, the intersection grows and grows. Until one day they are the same circle. We cannot have a truly inclusive space of all people until we welcome critical feedback about problematic content. I think a question we need to ask ourselves… Why do I feel like folks addressing problematic content the opposite of fun? I can go on about the different answers I think that apply (apathy, privilege, ignorance). BUT I cannot do the self-awareness piece for you. You may not like the answer to that question. I know I did not and still feel personal resistance when confronting my own biases and socializations when it comes to my privilege. That feeling does not exempt me from taking responsibility to change and it most certainly does not exempt me from responsibility for the harm I caused.

The fun is still there. Trust me. Fun is also a privilege in broader community. Privileged folks are most definitely having fun and will continue to regardless of what happens. Oppressive systems hinder full participation of marginalized folkx in these hobbies. So, why are we calling this stuff out? To prevent harm in a hobby we love and to create an inclusive space where we feel welcomed to have fun.

We are back with my top 25 games as of 2016! This was extremely challenging to put together because of all the fantastic games that exist. So how exactly do I go about creating these lists? I get a list of all the games I have played, rated over a 7 out of 10. I then pick one at random, then go through the rest of the games and decide if I like it better than the first one I selected. I repeated this process a couple of times, then eliminate every game past 35. From there to get the exact numbers, it is simply about asking the question, which game would I rather play? Enough of explaining my process… back to the list!

#15 – Patchwork designed by Uwe Rosenberg 
This two player gem has one of the most unique themes of any game I have played: quilting. Players have an empty 9×9 grid and they are collecting fabric pieces, which are oddly shaped, to put on their board. These pieces cost a combination of the game’s two currencies: time and buttons. Throughout the game, players will get more buttons based on what pieces of cloth are on their board. The player who has the most buttons at the end of the game wins; however, players get -2 buttons for every empty space on their board. A super clever, spatial terms like game with a cool button engine generating mechanic.

#14 – Alien Frontiers designed by Tory Niemann
I played this game one of the first times I went to a board game cafe. The rules were pretty simplistic and the use of dice was revolutionary for me. On a turn, players roll their dice and use them as workers on the board – the value of the dice determines what a player can do and how strong the action is. Players are essentially racing to be the first to colonize an alien planet and do so through resource management and special powers. A super neat game but it can feel similar after many plays, but the expansions throw in enough variation to keep it engaging and compelling. Oh and space, love the theme!

#13 – Dice Masters designed by Mike Elliott and Eric M. Lang
In 2015, I played Dice Masters over 50 times. This year I have played this game dramatically less; however, I still think this is a stellar game. The only collectible game I play (as of now), Dice Masters is a two player game similar the Magic: The Gathering but with dice. The game uses different intellectual properties such as Marvel, DC, Dungeons and Dragons, TMNT, and Yu Gi O. I primarily play with the Marvel and DC sets, but I do own certain cards from the other sets. Players start off with basic dice and over the course of the game, players are building up their dice bag by buying advanced dice. Advanced dice are usually super heroes or special items from the set (e.g., She Hulk or Green Lantern’s Ring). Players attack and defend with these heroes and items until one player loses their 20 life points. I fell out of it mainly because the collectibility aspect but I would love to jump back in with the cards/dice I have.

#12 – Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar designed by Simone Luciani and Daniele Tascini
Mechanically, this is one of my favorite games ever designed by thematically I have many problems with it. This game falls in that hard spot of a problematic favorite and it falls in a #12 because of it. With another theme, this would easily be my #1 or #2 game. So let’s talk about the theme… The theme misappropriates Mayan culture in many regards past the calendar. From the artwork to different actions in the game (collecting crystal skulls, going up in favor in different temples), the theme does not have the best or most authentic representation. I plan to write a longer post about the issues in the game with the theme as a “crit you fav” type thing. I do want to be transparent to my readers that I do own this game and I still think the game has merits as mechanics but not in theme.

Now let’s talk about the gameplay. This is a worker placement game with a twist. All the work placement spots are on wheels which are attached to the center wheel. Players can either place workers or pull workers on a turn, and by pulling a worker, the player gets to take the associated action. Each round the center wheel rotates, in turn rotating the other five wheels. Workers placed on the wheels will move up, landing on different worker placement spots. The longer a worker stays on a wheel, the better (most of the time) the action becomes. This pushes players to think many turns ahead and challenges players to time their moves with all of the wheels. Despite the theme, Tzolk’in is a fantastic and very difficult strategy and resource management game.

#11 – Imperial Settlers designed by Ignacy Trzewiczek
This wonderful card game was built on the mechanics of 51st State, which actually recently was updated with a second edition. Players take on a civilization and uses cards to build buildings, collect resources, attack their opponents, make fast deals, and gain the most victory points. This is an engine building game at it’s finest, as players create combinations of buildings in order to convert what they have into what they need very efficiently. The civilizations that come with the base game are Romans, Barbarians, (ancient) Japanese, and (ancient) Egyptians. One of my only quibbles with the base game is the Barbarian faction… They are not a ‘real’ ancient civilization and the designer could have done a bit better with the theming.

#10 – Automania designed by Kenneth Minde and Kristian Amundsen Østby
Manufacturing cars is a very cool theme and it is very underused. I was excited to hear about Automania, which is a medium strategy game all about building cars and selling them on the US or European Market. This game did not get as much buzz as I think it should. Players will place workers on the edge of a grid of tiles and selects one of the tile in the row or column. That tile will upgrade their personal car factory. Then the player takes the action on the space where their work was placed (make a car, take a contract, etc.). The awesome part of this game is I can build a car on turn number one.

#9 – Deception: Murder in Hong Kong designed by Tobey Ho
This is the only “social deduction” game on my list. While I do like games such as The Resistance and Spyfall, they have dropped considerably in lieu of Deception. In this game, a group of investigators are trying to solve a murder with one player (the forensic scientist) giving the investigators limited clues based on boards the player draws. I really like this social deduction game because you really do not have to persuade anyone of your thought process. You have an individual guess (once per game) and can use it whenever. A nice twist on social deduction and one I will always bring to game night.

#8 – Among the Stars designed by Vangelis Bagiartakis
Among the Stars is a card drafting game where players are trying to construct their very own and best space station! What sets this one a part from other card drafting game is the spatial element of placing space station locations. Each card has scoring potential or placement restrictions based on where it is placed within the system (e.g., close to the main reactor versus at least three spaces away from the main reactor). It is fast, fun, and I really like science fiction themes. It is pretty cool to see how the station is constructed at the end (“You put our defense turrets next to the mess hall?! What were you thinking?!!!”).

#7 – 7 Wonders designed by Antoine Bauza
Funny enough, 7 Wonders ended up as #7 on my top 25 list! Similar to Among the Stars, 7 Wonders is a drafting game; however, players are building their ancient civilization around one of the wonders of the world. I like this one slightly better than Among the Stars because it is a bit more complex in how the cards work with each other and I also have a couple of great expansions to add in the spice up our games. 7 Wonders can also play up to seven players without adding really any time to the game length because everyone plays simultaneously. The one down side is the amount of symbols in the game when it comes to guild cards and certain wonder powers.

#6 – Smash Up designed by Paul Peterson
When I first bought Smash Up, my partner made fun of me because of the ridiculous premise and cover on the box. This is one of my favorite card games of all time! You take two factions (dinosaurs, zombies, aliens, robots, wizards, ninjas, pirates, or tricksters) and shuffles the two decks together. So you can make cool decks like the zombie dinosaurs or the robot wizards! Then, players fight for control over various bases with their minions and action cards. Minions and actions have fun and sometimes chaotic affects. BUT this game is surprisingly tactical. Smash Up looks decently silly and sounds pretty silly, but you will not be disappointed – it is super fun and with all the expansions, it brings the faction count up to 50 which creates endless combinations.

#5 – Innovation designed by Carl Chudyk
I did not think I was going to like Innovation when I first played it. Players are creating a civilization through 10 different ages, creating different inventions to help propel them through the ages and dominate them with their different inventions. This game is really chaotic and really interactive. I do not necessarily like “take-that” style gameplay where players can mess with each other’s inventions; however, in Innovation, I do not mind all the chaos. We recently got the Echoes expansion, which adds a new layer into the game allowing players to have echo effects when they trigger their inventions. A fantastic game in a small deck of cards.

#4 – Brew Crafters designed by Ben Rosset
When I first heard the theme of Brew Crafters, I knew I had to try it. In Brew Crafters, players are running their own breweries, creating new craft beers and selling them for prestige. This is one of those games where players have very limited actions but have so many options on what to do. Rounds are split into two phases -> going to the market to get supplies and then wither brewing beer, researching new technology, or upgrading the brewery. The game components and art looks kind of drab, but I really enjoy this game. I am happy I was able to pick it up when it was reprinted this year.

#3 – Ghost Stories designed by Antoine Bauza
Ghost stories is a brutal cooperative game about defending a small village from an onslaught of ghosts. In this cooperative game, players must move around the town, getting help from the villagers and eliminate ghosts. Then when all seems hopeless… the big bad ghost shows up and reeks havoc! This is the hardest cooperative game I have ever played! But I LOVE it! I think I have won this game once, over ~20 or so plays on ‘normal’ mode. There is a hard mode and a super hard mode, which I do not even know why folks would try those… normal is hard enough! I will be keeping Ghost Stories in my collection forever and I am looking forward to picking up the expansions.

#2 – Robinson Crusoe designed by Ignacy Trzewiczek
Robinson Crusoe is my favorite cooperative game as of now, barely edging out Ghost Stories. In this sweeping story-driven survival game, players are placed on an island in a variety of scenarios with different goals: first and foremost, not dying. This is a worker placement game, with too much to do, with a lot of risk and not enough time. The very cool mechanic in Robinson Crusoe is the event cards that come back later in the game. When doing a task, sometimes an event will happen (mostly negative0 and after the event, they players shuffle the card into the main deck. When then event card comes up again, they players must resolve the lasting affects of the event. A second edition just released, but as a forewarning, this game is definitely an investment, buying the game and learning the rules. But the payoff is fantastic with the thematic gameplay.

#1 – Glass Road designed by Uwe Rosenberg
My number one game is one of Uwe Rosenberg’s less popular game: Glass Road. The reason why this is my favorite game is I think this is the cleanest and one of the hardest resource management exercises in a game. Uwe Rosenberg create these resource wheels where gaining certain resources will impact other resources. This is hard to describe through written word, but getting a handle on how the resource wheels work is the best part of the game. From there, players are using these resources to purchase buildings to put on their own plots of land to score points. The other interesting part of the game is the card play. All players get the same 15 cards and have to pick 5 cards to play each round (4 rounds total) where each player will play 3 out of their 5 cards. Depending on the cards picked, players can collect resources, build buildings, and do other actions. If a player chooses to play a card in your hand, you can follow them in the action, each doing a less powerful version of that action. This creates a neat guessing game of what your opponent needs or wants to do. I will always be up for this game. Any time, any day.

There you have it! My top 25 board and cards games as of the end of 2016. I hope you enjoyed reading through my lists and why I love these games so much! I would love to hear from all of you: What have you been playing this year? What has been your favorite games up to this point?

Goodreads 45 Book Challenge

I have read 10 books out of 45 so far this year. I am 2 books ahead of schedule according to the Goodreads projections. I am halfway through two more books and should be finished with both before March ends. I started the Game of Thrones series, which may have been a mistake but I’ll probably read all of those this year seeing how fast they go and how engaging they are. I hope to write more book reviews but again, I am not finding the time to reflect on my book experience.

10×10 Challenge: Exploring Depth

This challenge is progressing pretty slowly as I rarely play repeated games because of the culture of my gaming groups. This is frustrating and a good thing at the same time. In my gaming groups I can try out a lot of games and play a lot of the new games to see which ones I may want for my collection, but I really really love the games in my collection and it pains me not to get them to the table. I dislike the culture of the new and unreleased but take part of it nonetheless in order to be social with my hobby. Hooray for older games!

100×1 Challege: Exploring Diversity

I am right at the 65ish mark  of the 100×1 Challenge with a little over 30 unique games to go. I have progressed pretty well on this challenge as I did last year and I ended up extending my challenge to 150 last year. With my collection growing, it has been easier to get up to 100 and I am sure I will pass the goal way before 2016 comes to an end.

Other Goals

I haven’t acquired any of the games or books that were on my anticipated list. I have been a bit more active on social media and making connections. I have now over 500 followers on Twitter (yay!) and joined some groups to get pre-released books/games to play and review. Overall a good start to the year but very busy. More to come soon!

For me, balancing for turn order in a board game aptly illustrates social injustices in our systems and institutions and why we need to focus on equity instead of equality. I define equity on my blog as “being fair and impartial; equity does not imply equality” and equality as “the state of being equal.” In certain board games, the designer realizes that player turn order inherently disadvantages players going last or close to last. If the designer chose to keep the starting resources the same for all players, it would be very unlikely for the player going last to win the game (although it might happen on occasion). This would be an equal start. If this were the case, I am sure many game reviewers would come out and criticize the game for being unbalanced. The solution would be an equitable start, distributing resources differently to level the playing field.

The same happens in real life, although it may be more nuanced and definitely harder to combat. Due to systemic oppression, certain groups of people start off with more disadvantages or advantages than other groups of people. Giving people equal resources does not necessarily fix the issues. I recently went to a talk given by Dr. Maura Cullen, one of the founding faculty members of the Social Justice Training Institute. She gave a great and simplistic illustration of equality versus equity, which I want to share with you now:

Equality is like giving everyone a pair of size 8 women’s shoes. Regardless of your shoe size, you got a size 8 women’s shoe. Obviously, the shoe is going to fit some people better more than others and we all will try our best to cope with what we have. Now, let’s imagine that every month we will run a race with those shoes. The race represents how oppression is institutionalized. The winners of the race will have get wealth, access to resources, opportunities in the job market, investments, access to food, the “best” land, etc. Did I choose my shoe size? No… but a system was set up to reward folks with a certain size of foot and disadvantage everyone else. Will the best runners win the race? Arguably, no. More often than not, the people with size 8 women’s feet will finish closer to the top. Yes, some of the best runners will be able to place higher without the correct shoe size; however, this would not be a common occurrence. Oh the other hand, equity would be having everyone gets a pair of shoes in their own size.

Equality is a good goal, don’t get me wrong, AND equality only works if we start on a level playing field. This isn’t about reversing the groups of privilege and oppression (i.e., having the wealthy give all their money so that they are now low socioeconomic status). This is about redistributing some of the wealth and opportunities; this is about changing some of our systems, so that all players whether you go first or last have a chance at winning the game. We pay attention to this very aspect when designing and playing games. Why don’t we pay more attention to it when it comes to our institutions, culture, and systems?