BGG user Martin G does a monthly list - New to you a year ago (date) --> Has it stood the test of time? This month's list can be found at here. A year ago in August, I tried a handful of new games and have not really played any since for a variety of reasons. I'm going to cover all of them and my thoughts about their longevity.
Two things, I like comics and I like deck building (except for Dominion, which I hate). My son likes both as well and I had purchased the original DC Comics Deck-Building Game for him the previous year for Christmas. Regular readers probably already understand - I love Legendary: Marvel, so I didn't really need another superhero game, but my son likes DC a little better and Ascension (which the DC game is a lot like) is good enough, so I got him this. For his birthday, one thing he got from me was this little expansion to the game. In this variant, you are trying to put together enough attack to knock down the other guy three times. It was an interesting twist to the game, but we haven't played since last year. Again, the game itself is fine, but tends to get lost in the shuffle of other games. I'd rather play Legendary. My son prefers something like Epic where we draft decks and then fight. So this sits on the shelf. Would I play it if he asked? Heck yeah, but not because I was jonesing to play this game.
First, I don't own this game, a buddy does and I haven't had a chance to play it since he showed it to us. Second, another deck building game! I think, generally speaking, I like AEG's deck building games. This one was a fine game, though my love (Alyson) and I were schooled by my buddy that taught us the game (which I think would be the case in most deck builders where one person understands the cards/flow and the others don't). Mystic Vale differs from most other deck builders in that you are building the cards themselves. The cards are translucent (think Gloom) and fit in large sleeves that let you create the combos on the resulting cards. It was an interesting next step/evolution in the genre. Alyson and I both liked the game, but at the same time, I've been looking to reduce my collection a lot rather than acquire new games that would sit around and not get played. While I'm sure Alyson would have played this with me on occasion, my kids wouldn't have been interested, so I didn't seek it out. I think of all the games I played for the first time this month last year, this is the one that stands out the most as one I still have interest in.
I am a fan of dexterity games. Pitchcar and Crokinole are at the top of the list and when I saw FeU! for the first time, I knew it would be a game I'd love. My daughter got to play it before I did and she fell in love with it, so I traded for it. And then it sat on the shelf for months before I finally got it setup last year. I didn't love it and I'm not sure why. I think because it is so dang fiddly. Pitchcar can be a bear to setup and put away, but the gameplay itself is dead simple and yet requires a great deal of skill. FeU! certainly requires skill and patience to not want to flick all the set piece off the table. It felt like I was chasing the little bullets after EVERY shot (and unlike the errant disks of Pitchcar, the bullets roll and roll and roll). I don't know, the game just didn't flow for me. I ended up selling my copy off despite my daughter's disappointment, but nobody ever wanted to play it anyway.
I had played (and I own) the original game. This is really just MORE of the same (literally). There is nothing wrong with Sushi Go! - it is a perfectly good card drafting game that is on the lighter side. A couple years ago, this SG! was really the hotness. But the appeal of the game is what keeps it from having legs - play it enough and you've seen all there is to see. Having a bigger (though not dramatically so) set of cards didn't make the game all that new. Yeah, a little more variety, but again the game is what it is - a filler that plays a fair number of people. Good for a crowd looking for a lighter game or as a filler at game nights.
I kickstarted this little card game without knowing a whole lot about it. When I got it, this is what I found - a clever little game where each turn you figure out how to chain the cards you have in a way that lets you best collect material you need to win the game. You could call it an engine game, except you don't keep the engine, you get new cards each hand, so the engine is always different. So really, it is kind of a puzzle game. There is no game level strategy, you just combo each hand as best you can. Which makes this game interesting for about 15 minutes and then you were just doing the same thing. Now really, the game is only about 30 minutes unless someone is super slow, so it isn't like you are bored forever, but it just didn't hold my interest long enough. I'm still interested in the actual board game where I'm sure you actually do create the engine, but I didn't care all that much about the diet (i.e. card version) of that game.
And that's it - a whole lot of stuff that I felt was pretty mediocre. Oh well, they can't all be the greatest game ever.
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