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.

Rambling about single player games

As it gets harder and harder to play games as often as I'd like with people, I find myself more and more attracted to solitaire games.  Especially games that are specifically designed as solitaire games, as opposed to multiplayer games with a solitaire scenario.  At first I was incredibly resistant to the idea of playing a board game alone.  It seemed like it crossed a very shameful line.  Plus, why play a solitaire boardgame when you have video games?

Well, it's been a few months now that I've explored various single player games, mostly the Field Commander series, and the States of Siege series.  And this is what I've learned about the solitaire boardgame experience.

Soviet Dawn Review

In my continued exploration of solo games, I've finally discovered the States of Siege series.  It has a long list of games, covering conflicts of numerous scales and time periods.  I decided to start with the first game in the series, Soviet Dawn.  It may not look like much, but let me assure you, it has it where it counts.

In Soviet Dawn, you are attempting to safeguard the formation of the fledgling Soviet state.  It was published in 2009 by Victory Point Games, and was designed by Darin A. Leviloff.  It's core mechanic revolves around a deck of events with associated action points, similar to what you would find in Twilight Struggle.  It definitely bares closest resemblance to a Card Driven Wargame, just tailored to solitaire design sensibilities.  It's a winning approach to a solitaire game, and at the moment stands as my favorite.

Soviet Dawn Session

So this is my best attempt at a session of Soviet Dawn, a game I've been utterly enthralled by, and plan on having reviewed by Monday.  This is going to be a bit higher level than other sessions I've done.  Partially because the gameplay of Soviet Dawn really isn't conducive to recording every action taken, and every die roll made.  But hopefully I can capture the key decisions that make this game fun.

So my strategy in the beginning is going to be to keep the Eastern Front back.  The worst event you can possibly get, is the Eastern Front rescuing the Czar!  I'm also going to try to improve my Political Level track, and hopefully get the Allied Front to go indecisive before they even become active.  I've been attempting to Reorganize the Red Army aggressively in the beginning, but all in all it feels like a losing strategy.  The only way to succeed is to roll a 6 on a 1d6.  I've wasted dozens of valuable actions attempting it to meager results.  So this game, I'm only going to attempt to Reorganize when I have a bonus to the die roll.

So the game is set up, now lets see how it plays out!