Best and Worst of 2013

With 2013 coming to a close, it's as good a time as ever to look back over the games I've played, and decide on the ones I loved the most.  These won't necessarily be games that came out in 2013.  Just games that occupied the greatest mindshare over the year.  The games I was most excited about getting to play, or puzzling out new strategies for.

Of course, there are also the games that were most of a let down.  Games I got extremely excited for, that almost immediately flopped.  I've played them once or twice, and they've since sat in a drawer, unlikely to ever emerge again.  Or I was very excited to try them at a convention, and immediately hated them.

Guildhall Review

I first played Guildhall at my FLGS.  It was a game I'd heard about for a while.  I have a friend a few states away who consistently speaks highly of it.  The Dice Tower would sporadically heap praise on it as well.  But the look and feel of the game just didn't grab me.  Plus, I own a lot of card games already.  Seriously, I own a lot of card games.  But my FLGS had a demo copy, and I had an hour to kill one evening, so I figured why not?  I'm glad I did, because Guildhall lives up to all the fond things said of it.

Guildhall was published in 2012 by AEG, and was designed by Hope S. Hwang.  It's primarily a set collection game, except each set has a special ability you can invoke.  There are only 6 sets in the game, and their abilities delicately play off one another.  The first player who completes enough sets to earn 20 points is the winner.  But for more detail, lets get into the rules summary.

A Slew of First Impressions

So this week I got older.  Apparently that entitles me to lots of free things from people.  And as luck would have it, I have a lot of great people in my life who knew just what I wanted.  Board games!  I was even lucky enough to have them around me to try out all the new games.  So to make up for not having a full review of anything, here are a bunch of first impressions.