Olympos

So I just played my 2nd game of Olympos tonight, the new Greek myth/civ-building game by Philippe Keyaerts, and while I really enjoyed my first game, I think this one sealed it: This is one of the best games I've played this year.

Make no mistake, it's not for everyone, particularly those who think that a game that uses civ-building as its theme needs to be an actual civ-building game, or those prone to AP. It uses the same (as far as I can tell) time-as-a-resource turn mechanic as Thebes, which is pretty awesome, as it enables you to be a complete dick not just on the map but in the turn order as well. The combat seems weird and almost too easy at first (if you move in to another player's spot, you automatically win) but once you see how quickly it eats up time, you realize that its actually quite interesting and by far better than the combat in Small World. Not fighting each other is not an option. Eventually, there's not going to be enough out there for you to do what you want to do and the only way to get it is to take it by force. And really, that's what I love here, this is one of those too-rare Euro games where it's pretty much all player interaction and it's done in a satisfyingly asshole fashion.

I'll likely be playing this quite a bit more now, and I'm going to want to play it with Matt Loter (knowing how much he loves games of dickery, I think he'll really like this), so I'm sure I'll be talking about it on the FATcast at some point. Bottom line though is that I think I've got another contender for my GOTY 2011.

Yes, it's really damn good. Kind of weird that it's sort of under the radar...I'll likely review it sometime soon.

+1. So far this is my game of the year as well...So far.

I am so frustrated -- haven't gotten enough people together in recent weeks to give this a shot. Looks great though.

This is on my short list of games I'd like to try. To me it looks like crap but enough people here whose opinions I value like it, so it's worth a shot.

-Will