Tao’s 2023 Year In Review

Looking at my games played this year …

I didn’t play much Bridge (~60 sessions). The face to face bridge club closed during Covid, and relocated to a space where they can only open weekday mornings, so I only played sectionals (which are now Weds-Saturday), a few special Saturday games and online. I did play a few games when I was between jobs. My Game of the Year pick is easy — Stationfall. After a few months where I couldn’t get it to the table, I played two games last night. Even with a relatively boring character (troubleshooter) I found interesting things to do. (Psychic Rat Kompromat opens up options). I might get to 25 plays by the end of the year (Gaming on New Year’s Eve), which is impressive for a ~90-120m game. Other Dimes — Jump Drive (actually a quarter with the new expansion, but its so short that “dime” feels right), Heat, Scout, Pastiche, Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game, Fantasy Realms. Nickels — Res Arcana, Race for the Galaxy, Horseless Carriage (but I sold my copy) and Space Station Phoenix and 1846. I played ~115 different games (just eyeballing the list for duplicates by expansion only) which is actually quite a bit. Some of it was making a deliberate attempt to re-introduce an old classic games. For example, I played Bacon (a mediocre climbing partnership game with four players), so I made sure to toss Tichu in the bag and played it for the first time in 5-10 years. But a lot of it was just trying random games that were suggested to me and being more likely than in past years to just say yes when I suspected the game was bad. Most new games got a single play and will likely not get another.