“In the game of life nothing is less important than the score at half time.”
-Anonymous

Here we are at the end of another calendar year.  Nay!  And end to an entire decade, the first of the 21st century.  And so, naturally, here we are with a year-end best-of thingie. You may be thinking that since I’ve only written one Board to Death prior to this one, we may be jumping the gun a bit with a best-of column.  Well, too bad.  My column, my rules.

So.  Two Thousand and Nine.  On a personal note, this year kind of sucked for me.  Well, a big part of it sucked.  About mid way through March to early September.  Like, really sucked.  Losing one’s career, wife and house all in the space of 90 days can really put things in perspective.  Suddenly that traffic ticket doesn’t seem that big a deal.  Almost anything bad that could happen to me this year, did.   I guess I should count my blessings that 2009 didn’t see my having to deal with a zombie apocalypse too.

The point here is, in times of strife, one’s hobbies and passions take on greater meaning.  And thankfully this year saw a number of stellar releases in the board game field that helped to keep my thoughts away from the soul crushing oblivion of having my wife leave me.  On occasion, I found myself more concerned with the gleeful genocide of a race of Flying Halflings.  See?  And you thought this column was going to be all doom and gloom.

Without further ado, I present, in no particular order, the Best Board Games of 2009, as selected by his holiness, High Priest Gaming Man. 

Me.

TALES OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS

One part board game, and two parts the coolest “Choose Your Own Adventure” book ever made, this beautifully produced board game brings out the storyteller in everyone.  With “character creation,” different levels of skill mastery, and lasting injuries and statuses (crippled and insane, anyone?) Arabian Nights can scratch that RPG itch when you don’t have the time or inclination for GM screens and polyhedral dice.  The game is dripping with theme and really provides the players with a sense of wonder and discovery.  It needs to be played with the right group, but when it is, it really sings.  And here’s a bit of unsolicited strategy: when you find the blind beggar, don’t try to rob him.

SMALL WORLD

Commando Trolls!  Seafaring Ratmen!  Spirit Dwarfs!  Dragon Master Amazons!  The aforementioned Flying Halfling genocide!  Winner of many year end awards, including Games Magazine’s Game of the Year and Bruno Faidutti’s Game of the Year.  In fact, in all probability, one reason it wasn’t nominated for the Spiel de Jahres (the de facto “Best Picture Oscar” of board games) is that German law prevents the sale of war games.  (Didn’t know that one did ya?  Look it up, it’s pretty interesting.  Although admittedly, the idea of German kids playing a light-hearted game about wiping out entire races of people is… odd.  Halflings or no Halflings.)    At any rate, random combinations of special powers and fantasy races mean that no game will ever be the same.  The game even includes four (four!) versions of the board so that no matter how many people are playing (2-5) it’s always just too small for everyone to cohabitate comfortably.    Already available are two small $10 expansions and one expansion available for free online.  In short:  The best game of the year.

CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD

A glance at the components, with all the brightly colored daemon figures, spinning dials and piles of cards could lead you to believe that this game is firmly in what’s called the “Ameritrash” category of games, which is to say that it’s all about the pretty pieces, and less about hard strategy.  But you’d be wrong.  At its heart, CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD is almost a textbook example of an area-control Eurogame, but with some crazy American bells and whistles thrown in.  As Fantasy Flight Games’ first all-original board game making use of their extensive licensing agreement with Games Workshop, CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD manages to feel very familiar and very fresh.  Each of the four Chaos powers has a very distinct play style, and each of them even has differing methods to gain victory points.  What works for Khorne will most certainly not work for Slaanesh.  Don’t let the bling fool you, this is a strategy game of the highest caliber.

KACHINA

The standout title from the relatively new publisher Bucephalus Games.  A straightforward tile laying game which belies some brain-burning depth, KACHINA is one of those great little games that will fit in any bag or backpack and can be played with a bare minimum of space.  Numbered tiles are laid in rows and columns and whenever you lay one down that has the highest number in that row or column, you score.  But each of the eight different tiles also has a rule twisting ability that interacts with the others in some surprising ways.  It’s a nasty little thing.  Sure, the theme is pasted on, but the bold colors and lines of artist Andy Hopp make KACHINA look different from most things out there.  And my inner folklore and mythology nerd is more than happy to play a game about Hopi Kachina spirits.

AD ASTRA

For the first game in their new “Design Series” Nexus chose to highlight designers Serge Laget (SHADOWS OVER CAMELOT) and Bruno Faidutti (target of my gamery man-crush.) And with good reason.  There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before.  It’s a space exploration and resource management game.  In fact, most of the mechanics you’ve seen before.  AD ASTRA will feel familiar to anyone who’s played GALACTIC EMPEROR or STARFARERS OF CATAN.  The difference is one of elegance.  It’s simply a tighter system, with everything you’ve come to expect from Faidutti in the way of out-guessing and out-maneuvering how your opponent is thinking.  It also plays in about half the time as other games of its ilk.  Somebody somewhere should also get a design award for the bold decision to make this game a board game without a board.  Any other year (without SMALL WORLD to contend with) this would have been tops for me.

DESCENT:
Sea of Blood expansion

Never, I mean, never, have I seen an expansion to any board game so completely redefine what that board game was capable of.  DESCENT in its purest form is probably the best hack-and-slash dungeon crawl board game ever made.  The Road to Legend expansion provided a campaign system which was completely innovative and suddenly made comparisons to ADVANCED HEROQUEST (the previous dungeon crawl champion) moot.  Sea of Blood, on the other hand, is an alternative campaign system, and while providing many of the same mechanics as in Road to Legend, it also lifts the adventure out of the realm of Terrinoth and its dungeons and sets sail out upon the waters of Terrue Albes.   If you had asked me a year ago if DESCENT could give an experience that could provide things like ship-to-ship combat (complete with cannons and swinging ropes)… or ghost ships… or hidden dungeons on lost islands… or shark filled waters… I would have called you crazy.  This was the WTF?…holy crap!  moment of the year for me.

LOOKING AHEAD…
So 2010 is upon us.  What’s in store this year for the board game loving masses?  While I’m sure there will be plenty of titles that we’ll be talking about a year from now that haven’t even been announced yet, there are a few that have caught my attention.

RUNEWARS

Just on the horizon is this gigantic game from Fantasy Flight.  Set in the same Terrinoth universe as their DESCENT and RUNEBOUND games, RUNEWARS fills the heretofore unfilled niche of epic, sprawling empire-building fantasy games.  To be sure, the idea’s been done in space.  A lot.  But there are very few games of this sort out there that scratch the fantasy itch.  Fans of the other Terrinoth games will see a few familiar faces, and I’m looking forward to seeing the crazy modular hex board with 3D plastic mountains.  Not only that, but RUNEWARS is in fact a radical redesign of the now classic BATTLEMIST, and Terrinoth has been creatively ret-conned to include the storylines of both that game and it’s shared-universe partner, DISKWARS.  This should be on shelves near the end of January.

TALES AND LEGENDS OF SMALL WORLD
I know next to nothing about this expansion for Small World, other than it won a “special prize” in Days of Wonder’s Small World Design Contest and it will be published sometime in 2010 as the first boxed expansion for the game.  Yes, please.

BETRAYAL AT HOUSE ON THE HILL (2ND Edition)
File this in the “I’ll-believe-in-when-I-see-it” folder.  But according a post on BoardGameGeek from designer Bruce Glassco, Avalon Hill (ie. Hasbro) will be producing a second edition of this game, scheduled to hit shelves sometime in Fall 2010.  In addition to a bunch of new haunts and improved components, they are also cleaning up and clarifying all the wacky, open-to-interpretation rules that so plagued the original release.  If you’re unfamiliar with BETRAYAL, know that it’s the best haunted house game you’ve never played.  There’s a reason copies frequently sell on Ebay for prices in excess of $100.  A brilliant, if flawed game in its original incarnation, BETRAYAL AT HOUSE ON THE HILL might just get the second edition it deserves.

CYCLADES

Honor the Gods, raise armies, patronize philosophers, hire creatures, direct fleets, and build cities among the Cyclades islands near a mythological Greece.  Holy pretty pieces is this game gorgeous.  With lavish production values, including amazing artwork, a very unusual board design and some of the best plastic bits this side of a War of the Ring box, CYCLADES might be my most anticipated game of the coming year.  A special limited pre-release edition was made available at Essen a few months ago, and the regular release version should be available stateside in the coming weeks.

High Priest Gaming Man Paul Alexander Butler organizes Board Game Night every Tuesday at Games and Stuff.  Yeah verily, and much wisdom was bestowed upon the flock.