Wednesday, June 02, 2010

The May Game Update - a Month of Surprises

I played 33 games in May of 20 different titles.

In a surprise resurgence last year's top game reappeared in May and had the top number of plays with 5.

Dominion is still one of those games that I will not refuse and it makes a welcome return to the leader board. Interestingly the game that has been in the lead for 2010 Hive only got played twice in May...this means an interesting race could be on for Most Played Game of the Year.

No other games really stood out this month in terms of quantity played but a few unexpected games made the list.

Uruk: Wiege der Zivilisation is a civilization game that plays in about 60 minutes. I generally don't enjoy these that much, but this one captured my attention, maybe because I don't feel like I have to invest a large portion of my life to play it.

Having said that I also played Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization again this month. A game that generally takes about 4 hours to play, again not my usual style of game, but remarkably enjoyable.

And rounding out the list of games that I didn't expect to like is Tinner's Trail by Martin Wallace. Martin's games have a reputation for complexity, fiddly rules and a long playing time. The only other game that I remember playing is Brass. I've played one game of that with the board and then we switched to playing online as the computer took care of a lot of the confusing management of the game.

Tinner's Trail surprised me because all the elements combined in a very logical way that created a very elegant game about mining Tin and Copper in Cornwall. The game plays in about an hour and doesn't feel like it outstays its welcome in any way.

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