On new games received, and games yet to come

Happy Holidays one and all, whatever those holidays may be.

I will also specifically say Merry Christmas!  Not because because I am Catholic or Christian (though I do claim both identities), but because I have been a very good capitalist consumer this year, driving the global economy.  I have also been the beneficiary of a lot of other good capitalist consumers this holiday season.

I came to the realization a long time ago that, in many parts of the world, the Christmas holiday is joyfully celebrated for a myriad of reasons, many of them having nothing whatsoever to do with religion.  Whatever the Christian community may like to think, they no longer have sole ownership of the Christmas holiday.  While they may still claim origin and history (historians and scholars feel free to scoff at this, I certainly do) they cannot any longer claim ownership or control in modern global society. Society in general needs to realize and accept openly that Christmas is a secular holiday that has had religious influences and is celebrated differently by different groups.

On to more important things, like games and the aforementioned capitalist consumption.

Due to spending and gifts this year, the Koester Game inventory passed a significant milestone.  There are now 500 items in the inventory.  There have been a number of threads on BoardGameGeek talking about New Year resolutions for cutting back or culling excessive game collections.

Naturally I, along with most of the respondents, scoff at this.  We are gamers, not hoarders.  Embrace the obsession.

Some of the games received recently:

Tiny Epic Galaxies: Deluxe Edition - A Kickstarter that was long in coming and highly awaited.  The other two games in the series (Tiny Epic Kingdoms and Tiny Epic Defenders) are both awesome games and I fully expect this one to be the best yet.  Who doesn't like space games?

Musée - Art themed organization game with a dash of player interaction and bluffing.  Seems initially like a cross between Rack-o (classic that I enjoy) and that stupid briefcase money game on TV.  I don't mean to sound disparaging at all.  This looks like it will be a lot of fun, and the game itself looks fantastic.  It is classical art after all.

Minecraft Card Game? - The question mark here is not a typo or a measure of my level of doubt as to the games veracity.  That is actually the published name of the game.  Wife and son played it tonight as I was updating the inventory and it actually looks pretty fun.  Not complicated, mind you, but enjoyable.  You are doing exactly what you do in the real game, collect resources, build stuff.  The real unfortunate thing is that this means that I will only be able to keep the real Minecraft game out of the house for so much longer.  My son is getting old enough now that he does actually understand what the game is supposed to do and show some genuine interest.  Maybe I can steer him in the direction of real creative building and construction, as opposed to the cheat codes god mode zombie kill-fest that I see most kids using the platform to accomplish.

Crazy Cats - Fun little Haba game for young kids.  If you have small children and you want to get em into board games, go into your local game store and find the section of shelf loaded with all yellow boxes.  Pick two or three and get started.  You will not be disappointed.

Star Patrol: Carrier Commander - This was another Kickstarter.  The game did not look all that interesting, but it was a whole three bucks shipped worldwide.  I was more curious to see what he could actually pull off for three bucks a game.

Karnivore Koala -  I mentioned this Kickstarter in an earlier post.  I need to get it to more meetups and  with more people.  While it is good fun with two players, I expect it will be a riot with five.  To refresh memories, you play tribes of backstabbing, murderous koalas trying to hunt down a dinner of mutant critters.

Wombat Rescue - Is anyone seeing a theme here?  Technically this has not arrived yet.  It is sitting at the Oregon Postal way-station (read in-laws house).  This looks to be another cute one to play with groups and/or kids.  Oddly enough, I believe neither of these games were produced by Aussie designers.

Geoengineering 101 - This was a Kickstarter that I backed, albeit at a low level.  The project looked a little weak, but the concept behind the game was interesting enough back at a low level to get the pdf files for the game.  I finally got around to producing my copy.  The idea behind the game is that climate change is real and the effects are disastrous and happening now.  Players are engineers and world leaders planning mitigation steps.  Sometimes they help, often they have unforeseen consequences.  Eventually everyone loses.  The "winner" is the player that loses the least.

My final entry is for a game that I Kickstarted much earlier in the year, Evolution (with the Flight expansion).  I play this game frequently and it has become quite popular at the local meetup group.  Players in this game are developing species, assigning traits, with the goal of food consumption and survival.  An opportunity came up recently to apply to join a group a play testers for the next expansion, Climate.  I quickly applied and was accepted.  In the new expansion, there is the addition  a changing climate mechanic and new traits to offer protection and advantage in a changing climate.  I have play tested this expansion four times now and I can say it makes the flavor of the game VERY different.  It also makes each game far more variable from one to the next.  My initial thoughts is that it will greatly enhance replayability for those that like Evolution.  I will be very curious to see how this develops over the next few months.  I will also likely be writing a post at some point with more detail on the expansion and my thoughts.