February 15, 2023

Boardgames of 2022

Tags: Games, Board Games

I have started tracking the boardgames I play during the year. In 2022 I played 11 different titles for a total of 34 games. That doesn’t seem like much to me (but there were also 6 games of my prototypes). Here is the list:

Game Plays
7 Wonders: Duel 10
Terraforming Mars: AE 9
Sprawlopolis 4
Watergate 2
Star Realms: Frontiers 2
Heaven & Ale 2
High Frontier (Space Diamonds version) 2
Ticket To Ride: Europe 1
X-Wing 1
Pandemic 1
Trails of Tucana 1

And now some short reviews of the games I own and have played at least 3 times:

  • 7 Wonders Duel: this is a 2-player only version of the also excellent deckbuilder 7 Wonders. The goal is to build an ancient civilisation by selecting cards from layouts of escalating power. Some of the cards are hidden until they can be chosen other are visible from the start. There are lots of ways to acculumate points and many strategies. You have to adapt to the situation and your opponent. This is an excellent game and so much fun. I’ll be playing much more.
  • Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition: the 2-player version of Terraforming Mars, an engine building game where the players vie to contribute the most towards making Mars human habitable. The back of the box says it plays in under an hour but I never taken less than 90 minutes. So far there is little interaction with the opponent, but the depth of tactics and huge number of possibilities keeps me interested. A good game I’ll keep playing for now, but will it keep me interested when it is more familiar?
  • Sprawlopolis: 18 card city builder. Quick and challenging, you lay the cards down like tiles to plan out a city, while trying to satisfy 3 randomly generated scoring rules. Can be played solo. Everyone I have played this with loves it, and deservedly so. Great to carry around as time-filler between other things (as were all the plays this year).

FYI: 3 plays is the review minimum because that excludes Watergate. I like the asymmetric gameplay of that Watergate, but am worried one side may have an winning advantage - I need more plays before giving a fair review.