State of the Game Room – 2019

A reflection of the past 12 months of gaming. This includes board, card, and role playing.

In reviewing the Game Inventory I keep, I picked up some 259 games and expansions this year not counting dice. The bulk of these are Role Playing. As they tend to have lots of books, there are only a handful of actual RPGs with lots of books. For unique numbers, Board games will exceed everything else.

Role Playing

I’ve enjoyed RPGs since I got exposed to it in 1977 in an Army Recreation Center. I bought the box set of Dungeons and Dragons not long after and started making dungeons. I’ve run or played in numerous RPGs over the years with my main games being Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and Shadowrun. For AD&D, I snagged quite a few other RPGs in order to mine them for ideas for my main game. It wasn’t until I got into Shadowrun, that I really explored other settings with Paranoia being the third most run game for me. Over the past year, I’ve worked on Shadowrun 6th as a playtester and other Shadowrun books as a proofreader. I exposed my group to Conan 2d20 the RPG but we really didn’t get far into it. I think mainly the group (and me) just don’t have to time to read and prepare for RPGs any more. Especially new ones. The team has played Shadowrun in the past. Maybe a return to Shadowrun is in order, possibly sticking with the 20th Anniversary Edition as I’m most familiar with that one but maybe going back to 2nd Edition.

I did pick up several RPG books over the past year. I keep up on Dungeons and Dragons, probably more like a collector than someone who’s going to actually run any D&D games, although I am a fan of the Adventures in Middle-Earth series so perhaps there’s hope. Of course I picked up a few of the Conan 2d20 RPG books since the team was interested. And Genesys, especially Shadow of the Beanstock as it’s a Cyberpunk type setting.

Last Christmas my girlfriend bought me a box of miniatures for Shadowrun so that was quite cool. I also picked up several Shadowrun books and PDFs. The biggest purchase was getting my Star Wars RPGs updated. Turns out my Friendly Local Gaming Store (FLGS) hadn’t been keeping up on the releases. I stumbled on a posting somewhere and checked out Fantasy Flight Games to see what I was missing. And a close friend worked on the new Wrath and Glory Warhammer RPG so I got in on the kickstarter and I have the Collector’s Edition.

The ones in bold are new games that include the core rule book. The rest are expansions or items like miniatures or other non-rulebook accessories.

• Alien – 2
• Conan 2d20 – 16
• Dungeons & Dragons – 15
• Genesys – 6
• Shadowrun – 23
• Star Trek – 1
• Star Wars – 61
• Traveller – 2
• Warhammer (Wrath & Glory) – 8

Card Games

We did play a few card games over the past year. Cards Against Humanity seems to pop up now and then plus others like Clank!, Race for the Galaxy, Love Letter, and Gloom in Space. I also kept up on my Arkham Horror Card Game even though we stopped playing that one last year.

For the Munchkin one below, I’d stumbled upon the Girl Genius on line comic again and one of the cartoons referenced a special Girl Genius Munchkin pack. I’m a huge fan of Phil Foglio’s art so I specially ordered it from my FLGS.

• Arkham Horror – 15
• Cards Against Humanity – 2
• Clank! – 1
• DC Deck Building Game – 1
• Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards – 1
• Exploding Kittens – 1
• Love Letter – 1
• Munchkin – 1

Board Games

I did pick up quite a few board games this year and even played more than normal. The team seems to have more fun with a quick (or even lengthy) board game than spending time to learn and understand RPG rules.

By far, Zombicide had the most items come in this year. The team was interested in Zombicide and Jeanne and I even played a game that didn’t include the team. Zombicide is a several hours long game that can test your patience. Jeanne did an awesome job on our session saving her entire team when I was ready to abandon them and head on out.

A friend at work received two copies of the kickstarter Shadowrun Sprawl Ops, a Shadowrun specific board game. He gifted me with the second copy plus a copy of The 7th Continent. The Sprawl Ops rules weren’t the best and I had to do some research on the ‘net and Board Game Geek to get some clarity on the rules. Once we had it right, the team had quite a bit more fun with the game.

Wingspan was one of the more interesting purchases. My FLGS owner (Jamie) had saved a copy for me during all the hoopla over the distribution of the game. It had received a lot of attention because the game publisher had underestimated the demand for the game and had to make several print runs. The biggest issue was the FLGSs weren’t getting complete orders where Amazon.com was. The games were selling for the normal price and immediately being turned around for 3 and 4 times the cost over on E-Bay. I will say, the game was quite fun and we played it several times over the summer.

I’d picked up Clank! a couple or so years back but the name and that it was a deck building game was a bit of a turn off in general. Jeanne and I enjoyed the DC Deck Building game in the past but we really didn’t much like the Legendary Deck Building game so we were 50/50 on getting Clank!. I did pick up Clank! expansions and Clank! in Space. Jeanne and I played it and it turned out to be fun enough that Jeanne insisted on a second play (she’d lost and she’s very competitive). “Clank!” is simply the sound you’re making to alert the bad guy (Dragon) in the dungeon while you’re hunting through the caverns looking for artifacts. Clank! in Space is a similar game except that you’re on a spaceship stealing artifacts. I snagged Clank! Legacy this past week. There are several Legacy type games where as you play, you destroy cards, add stickers, and generally modify the board game as you complete missions. The games are ultimately playable however the 10 game series does make each person’s game somewhat unique. I look forward to running the team through the game. It might be a bit shorter than Zombicide, although that’s still on the list to be played.

Jeanne and I got married back in June and we had a board game themed wedding reception. I bought copies of Love Letter (of course), Ticket to Ride, and a new one for us, Sagrada. In this case, the box design was a bit of a turn-off. I’d seen it in the FLGS and Jamie recommended it so Jeanne and I snagged a copy so we knew how to play before the wedding. It’s not a bad game, kind of a Sudoku type game. You have a 6 space grid (6 across and 6 down) and roll dice to fill in the grids based on the underlying selected card, rules as defined by a couple of drawn cards, and general rules. It’s certainly a thinking game with less interaction with the rest of the players. We also had a copy of Cards Against Humanity.

Other games we’ve played over the past year: Bunny Kingdom, Gizmos, The Doom That Came To Atlantic City, Concept, Horrified, Isle of Skye, Photosynthesis, and Trains.

I’m not going to list all the board games, just the number of new and expansions.

• Number of New Board Games: 36
• Number of Expansions: 62

Pictures!

I need to get the games in order again and probably pick up another Kallex bookshelf.