2014 - Best Year In Quite Awhile

2014 is shaping up to be an astounding year for new games. I typically have a very hard time picking a top 10 or even 5 for a year, because not enough truly excellent games are released. This year is looking fantastic, however.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf
Thunder Alley
Kaosball
Dead of Winter
Lost Legacy
Splendor
Marvel Dice Masters
Spurs: A Tale In The Old West
D-Day At Tarawa
Conflict of Heroes: Guadalcanal
Conflict of Heroes: Solo Expansion
Dark Moon
Space Cadets Dice Duel: Die Fighter
Space Cadets: Away Missions
Sail To India
King of New York
Wok-Star
Fief
Sheriff Of Nottingham
The Battle of Five Armies
X-Wing Huge Ships
Claustrophobia De Sanguinas
Fire in the Lake
Five Tribes
Sons Of Anarchy: Men of Mayhem
Imperial Settlers
Robinson Crusoe: Voyage of the Beagle
Level 7 Invasion
Student Bodies
The Battle At Kemble's Cascade
Pandemic: Contagion
Tragedy Looper
Rogue Agent
Impulse

I almost put Myth on there but don't want to ruffle the feathers.

I can't wait to get Fief.

One Night Werewolf I wasn't a fan of. Just didn't seem like there was a whole lot of deduction that could be accomplished in a single round. Seemed random after each game.

Chapel wrote: I can't wait to get Fief.

One Night Werewolf I wasn't a fan of. Just didn't seem like there was a whole lot of deduction that could be accomplished in a single round. Seemed random after each game.

Did you play One Night Ultimate Werewolf or just One Night Werewolf? They're actually quite different in terms of what roles are available (there's 6+ more roles in Ultimate).

Also, forgot to mention Rogue Agent on the list.

#1 for me will likely be One Night Ultimate Werewolf, by miles. I was introduced to it earlier this month and I've now played somewhere between 50-70 games of it, all at 4-6 players. It's so much fun.

Certainly you did not mean to leave off the 3Q Through the Desert reprint

I must be paying much less attention to new and upcoming releases recently, because I've thought that 2014 has seemed pretty blah. The only game I've bought this year (apart from a few expansions) has been Duel of Ages II. (Granted, I've hardly played games at all this year, so maybe I'm just a lot less interested in the hobby in general than I have been in prior years.)

The only one that's really caught my attention on the horizon has been SeaFall, but I'm assuming at this point that'll be a 2015 release.

bfkiller wrote: I must be paying much less attention to new and upcoming releases recently, because I've thought that 2014 has seemed pretty blah. The only game I've bought this year (apart from a few expansions) has been Duel of Ages II. (Granted, I've hardly played games at all this year, so maybe I'm just a lot less interested in the hobby in general than I have been in prior years.)

The only one that's really caught my attention on the horizon has been SeaFall, but I'm assuming at this point that'll be a 2015 release.

Well, most of the games listed haven't been released yet.

Bull Nakano wrote: #1 for me will likely be One Night Ultimate Werewolf, by miles. I was introduced to it earlier this month and I've now played somewhere between 50-70 games of it, all at 4-6 players. It's so much fun.

I agree. I've played about 60 games of it with all different groups, and it's my number 1 2014 release at the moment.

Edit - Also added Impulse to the list.

Of the games I've played

One Night Ultimate Werewolf - Great game
Dead of Winter - Very fun and want to play more
Splendor - it's best attribute is it's inoffensiveness, totally mediocre
Dice Masters - Boring
Spurs - Good, but not great, would play again, might pickup cheap
Sail to India - Very fun

I'm interested in playing Thunder Alley, Lost Legacy, Dark Moon, Nottingham, Sons of Anarchy, and Kemble's Cascade. I'm kind of wary of Five Armies, the pedigree is there but it's 10 years after WotR, I'm hoping but cautiously.

Absent from the list for me is

Alien Uprising
Baseball Highlights 2045
Cash n Guns 2nd ed.
Chimera
Diamonds
Doomtown Reloaded
Evolution
Mystery Rummy: Escape from Alcatraz

Hey, you One Night Ultimate Werewolf lovers: I was all set to love it, I love that kind of game, and the concept and rules sounded interesting. But we played five games in a row the other night, and it fell almost completely flat. Our problem was that there wasn't enough to go on (and we're all fans of normal Werewolf, even, where there's very little to go on).

Let me give more specifics: we were 5 players. We played just the basic setup, with Seer, Robber, and Troublemaker (first we tried One Night non-Ultimate Werewolf, with just Seer and Robber, but that was completely bogus). Maybe we were unlucky, but pretty often, there were three non-villager roles in the center (a werewolf and then two of Seer/Robber/Troublemaker), which left us INCREDIBLY little information. We tried lying, of course, claiming "I'm the Troublemaker and I swapped you two", but in the one case a wolf actually got pegged as one of those two, the wolf recognized the lie, didn't crack and just maintained that she was a villager. In the other cases, though, two villagers were picked with the troublemaker claim, and there wasn't even potential for gaining information. Unless the Robber swapped with a werewolf, which never happened, he was just a glorified Seer, able to exonerate one other player; even worse, CLAIMING that you're the Robber also didn't gain you anything, as all you could really claim was "that person is innocent", which doesn't help. Similarly, the Seer was pretty unhelpful unless lucky enough to see a werewolf, and claiming the Seer was also unhelpful, as the player the fake Seer saw would either a) agree that he was indeed a villager or b) deny that he's a werewolf, duh.

So W T F are we missing? It seemed to us like things would ONLY get interesting if there was two of Seer/Robber/Troublemaker in the game (i.e. not in the middle), AND then if there were some overlap between the players/cards they saw/swapped. OR if a Werewolf was fool enough to believe a player claiming to be the Troublemaker, in which case the game just becomes "can a player claim that he's a Troublemaker, make it believable, and randomly pick a werewolf out of his two picks?"

Oh, we also had comical difficulty with the logistics. It was very difficult to pick up cards without anyone hearing, even with the ambient noise from the ONUW app. We had to bring in a towel to put the cards on to make it softer, and we had to all cover our ears the whole time.

Well, I looked through all the stuff listed. Seems like a lot of re-iterations and expansion material, but to not seem like a complete Debbie Downer, thank you for putting Student Bodies, The Battle at Kemble's Cascade, Tragedy Looper, Alien Uprising, and Evolution on my radar. Those look like they could have potential.

Oh, and I'll be buying the Robinson Crusoe expansion the second it's available. That's the 2014 release I'm most anticipating.

Werewolf is Duck Duck Goose for nerds.

I'm breaking this off into a new thread dragonstout, as I could ramble and don't want to clog this up.

Michael Barnes wrote: Werewolf is Duck Duck Goose for nerds.

That's indeed what it would look like if you had your nose stuck in Mexica or Hoity Toity.

For the initiated, it's deeper than most 45 minute games in only 5 minutes.

see other thread