Appropriately, Race for the Galaxy follows Puerto Rico on this year's list.  RftG is essentially PR, the card game...  in SPACE!  What's not to love?

( Race for the Galaxy )

And here I bet you'd thought I'd stopped posting forever.

Not quite yet.  We've got a job to finish.  I'd just gotten to my top 10 games (as of last April, anyway) when I got distracted.  Let's do this.

Number 10 is...  Puerto Rico!  The first "hard-core" Euro I ever played squeaks its way back into my top 10 after over-play burnout knocked it out ( Read more... )

Caylus!  Long a fixture of my top 10, it has recently suffered from a lack of opponents and a lot of competition from newer games.  Ali’s point-blank refusal to play it also doesn’t help its position much, nor has my most dedicated opponent moving to New York.

( Caylus )

Finally, a new game makes the list!  Space Hulk, the classic “recreate the movie Aliens in the Warhammer 40,000 universe” game from Games Workshop (“GW”), was re-released in 2009 in a super-deluxe limited edition, 20 years after its original release.  Despite my serious reservations about GW’s corporate policies, I absolutely cannot deny that Space ( Read more... )

Bounding up 8 spots (largely on the strength of its expansion), Pandemic has switched places with Arkham Horror as my favorite co-op board game.

( Pandemic )

Creeping up 2 slots, it's my favorite auction game: Ra!  Best part of the game? The push-your-luck element, with all the other players chanting "Ra, Ra, Ra" and pounding on the table.

( Ratings, etc. )

Reminder to self for packing next year. Number of games taken to beach week: 43. Number of games played: 9.

So last night I started packing for the beach.  Packed thus far: 30 board games and nothing else ( Read more... )

So I listen to way too many podcasts about boardgames.  And of late, several of them have been of the opinion that the ipad is the Next Big Thing - a portable game board that can store your whole collection.  I don't believe a word of it.  One big point of boardgames is their unplugged, tactile nature.  I don't want a boardgame whose battery runs ( Read more... )

A largish drop for Railroad Tycoon after playing Steam: Rails to Riches, which is essentially the same game, with better mechanics but less theme and worse components.  Too bad I care more about mechanics than theme/components.

( Ratings and Things )