Year In Review:
2013 Review
Review – 2013
This Year Was… …:
… the 3 year old birthday of Thoughtful Randomness! Originally started as a blog to post the inner workings of my deranged mind, the blog was converted to a full time boardgaming blog in 2010 (with a few movie & food reviews interspersed in between) & hasn’t looked back since. Things kinda took off in mid-late 2011 for some strange reason & the blog has hit 32,000 views, half from the USA, one-fifth from Malaysia (yay!) & the rest from an assortment of places like UK, Canada, Europe & Australia. If you are a regular reader from planet Earth, I would like to take this once in a year opportunity to thank you for taking the time to read about my hobby from my POV, but if you are a regular reader outside of Earth, then send me the contact of your ISP 'cos mine is 'orrible.
The Arecibo message being sent by SETI as a big "Hello" into outer space
Although my writing skills leave much to be desired, strangely I take some pride in maintaining this blog. It is one of the few disciplines I have left in my largely undisciplined life & record keeping is one of my gifts through which its application makes me happy. Though it may not leave much of an impact on anybody, this record is a small confirmation of my existence in this big wide world & surprisingly that gives me enough satisfaction to ensure this blog keeps going.
Right, so none of the above actually relate to the year 2013 which is the subject of today’s review, I just needed to be a little bit soppy & emotional to pander to my melancholic side. 2013 was another incredibly eventful year, on the world front we had a near "Deep Impact" meteor strike in Russia whilst the world sighed in collective relief as the larger asteroid flew past, the Arab Spring continues unabated particularly in Egypt, the Iron Lady of Britain finally rests, the Boston Marathon bombings which hurt & maimed so many, the real(?) retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson, the Special One returns as the Happy One, the (ongoing) hunt for Edward Snowden, the birth of Prince George (third-in-line to the throne), the destruction wrought by Typhoon Haiyan, the tragic loss of Paul Walker & the passing of the father of South Africa.
"He (Mr. Mandela) made us realize, we are our brothers' keeper and that our brothers come in all colors." - Muhammad Ali
On the home front, my country, Malaysia, celebrated its 50th anniversary of the formation of Malaysia as it is today, to commemorate this event we were invaded by foreigners (who were successfully repelled) & we had our general elections to boot, resulting in the usual rumours of money politics, racial tensions, mass protests & pending lawsuits but thank the Almighty, we are still here. Gun crime was seen to be on the rise with a spate of high profile shootings taking place in the space of several weeks, the price of petrol & sugar went up & highway tolls & electricity tariffs are set to go up next year & in my professional circles, 2013 will forever be known as the year GST (VAT) is officially announced to be implemented in 2015. Oh & government structures seem to be awfully defective this year with a number of collapses occurring so plan your journeys accordingly.
2013 was a really busy year for me personally, things at the workplace were increasingly challenging due to new projects & new colleagues to work with, thankfully Padawan Minigeek is doing really well in getting a solid night’s sleep so Daddy & Mommy don’t look like zombified racoons with bags of rings under our eyes so that balances things out a bit. As I mentioned back in a post in July, I was kinda feeling down about not getting enough boardgaming time since my original group sorta went defunct & have started a mini-monthly gathering to play boardgames which is very unoriginally called "McBoardgamers" since we were meeting at McDonald’s & then subsequent renamed to the equally unoriginal "KFCgamers" because, yes, we started meeting at KFC instead. I think the idea to have at least 3 core members with 3 different social groups (youth, young adults & family) has really paid off & in the worst case scenario, three is a crowd whereas two would be lonely company.
As with all years, I present to you the summary of gaming goodness for 2013:
It gets more complicated through the years
Once again, no fives & dimes make the list this year & unfortunately the number of plays has plummeted to just 21 plays in 2013 (2011: 43, 2012: 40) resulting in an average of only 1.75 games a month. It’s no wonder I was suffering from boardgame withdrawal. I am however happy that my boardgames are getting better mileage through KFCgamers which are not recorded above (those are solely plays involving me only). My (Hayen) win ratio for the year is horrible, with me winning only 1 in 3 games (and that’s including the solo-play of Suburbia), yes "winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is" (Vince Lombardi). And because the winners are obviously the ones with the highest scores, it makes more sense to look at the all-time historical winners & highest scores!
Maybe I’m going overboard with this
Amazingly, Mo & I are tied at 29 wins a piece… Although this is somewhat tainted by my Suburbia solo-play & his "breaking of the rules" win in Tash-Kalar & Caverna & of course the other plays that were not recorded due to carelessness, laziness & the author’s creative right of embellishment. Based on the statistics, it appears I have a stranglehold over Agricola whilst Mo has cemented his prowess in Race For The Galaxy & Through The Ages. There are some games with strangely distributed wins such as Hansa Teutonica which has had 4 different winners with 1 win each, Le Havre & Seasons with 3 different winners in the same manner. Glory To Rome remains an open contest with me having 5 wins over Mo’s 4 & Milo is still the undisputed Head Architect of Belfort.
For highest ever scores, I’m pretty proud of my highest score in Hansa Teutonica despite the plethora of winners seeing as I’ve never felt very good at the game. Mo has the highest score in 12 games to my 11 so that’s pretty balanced but Milo still has the highest score in Le Havre & by an incredible margin too, am not sure that high score is going to be beaten anytime soon.
New Games I Bought:
I started with a budget for the year with only a few select game purchases in mind & was waiting for the great season of discounts (which is still on-going at BGC for another 2 weeks, you can check it out here) to pounce on them. And then Essen 2013 came around & all these smashing new games came pouring out with no prior notice whatsoever & BGC were there offering to have games flown back in 3 weeks from the end of Essen & established designers had MULTIPLE games being released! So, yes, things escalated pretty quickly. All that being said, these are the purchases of 2013:
Kings Of Air And Steam - Technically not a 2013 purchase but it arrived this year & it looks gorgeous, will probably try to get it to the table after Suburbia
Suburbia - I’m a big Sim City fan & this hit all the right buttons when the rulebook first came out, one of the first games I bought based on rulebook reading
Airlines Europe - Was on my wishlist of 2012, I thought it was a pretty good gateway game for more than 4 Players although the rules on deck construction is a bit iffy
Innovation - Also on my 2012 wishlist but sadly I don’t think I’ll find anyone to play this with
Euphoria - When I heard about this I was really impressed, the mechanics, theme, artwork & production values are off the charts & the best part is that it is meant to be fast paced & caters to 6 Players
And I was okay up to this point, with enough left over to pick up Mage Knight should it become available, then the Essen madness struck, bringing with it the plague known as "The Cult Of The New":
Caverna - I wasn’t sold on the rulebook at first & only picked this up because Concordia was all snapped up, happiest mistake I’ve ever made
Tash-Kalar - I’ve become a Vlaada fanboy from the Dungeon Lords & Dungeon Petz series but I admit this hasn’t been an instant hit with me, will need to have more plays to come to a verdict
Coal Baron - I’ll admit that Coal Baron was the purchase I needed to put me into the discount zone & there was no safer choice than this
Wants Vs Needs
This brings my collection to a grand total of 38 games & honestly speaking, my wife is right when she says it is becoming a bit too much. Math trades are one way to keep the status quo especially now that some of the older titles are OOP & a little harder to find and then there is the option of just straight up selling them, either option feels like a blow to the guts so I’m actually leaning towards just giving the less loved titles away. There are two mountains to conquer if I head in that direction, the first is overcoming the emotional upheaval of parting with them & the second is to figure out the right people to give them away to, I don’t want the recipient to just sell it on to make a quick buck.
Having said that, I’ve still allocated a little sum of money for boardgame purchases in 2014. I’m putting my 2013 wishlist here in black & white in order to try & keep myself on the straight & narrow. Here’s a few titles I’m interested in to pick up in 2014 & why:
Glass Road - Another game from Uwe Rosenberg which shows how big of a fan I am, I’ve read early reviews & the rulebook which so far have supported a purchase decision
Nations - We can never play Through The Ages with more than 2 Players because even with 2 it takes us 3 hours to finish 1 game. Hopefully Nations solves this problem
Concordia - Totally based on the hype at Essen & the first-hand accounts from people I know who have personally played it
Mage Knight - Mage Knight gets no love again this year but it is a really expensive game that will see minimal play time. Like my copy of Titan, am getting this purely to nurse the fantasy AD&D geek in me
Ah Mage Knight sings to the geek in me
New People I Played Games With This Year:
I've managed to play boardgames with a lot of new people this year through KFCgamers. Whilst it is nice to meet total strangers & get to know them through sharing a boardgaming hobby, this year I got to experience playing boardgames with people I knew as acquaintances & finding out that they are also similarly interested in boardgames or sharing that interest with them. Some of the people I've played with this year are Clement, Matthew, Henry & Esther.
Boardgame evangelism
My regular gaming buddy is still my brother, Mo, and of course Jimmy & Gideon, the other two core members of KFCgamers. Hopefully we can expand this to maybe one more member who is a little bit older in order to spread the invitees out into the 30s and older. In a way, I kinda took over the idea of a regular meet-up for young adults (see last year's review) & stretched it out to include a variety of persons. Whilst I'm not entirely sure where KFCgamers is headed, for the time being it just serves as a meeting place between people who have boardgames & people who want to play boardgames and that's quite alright for now.
Closing Thoughts On 2013:
2013 was supposed to be my hiatus year from boardgaming but it turned out to be a short hiatus of about only half a year. Padawan Minigeek has naturally been a big part of the year. Although not much of her training has anything to do with obtaining geek levels as yet, it is makes me a proud & happy Master Geek to see her learn to say "Hi" & "Bye", "Chut" (a.k.a the Pacifier), "Oh Man" (her Mommy's favourite phrase), "I Know" (her Father's favourite phrase), dancing to music & lately, giving her Mother heart attacks as she tries to jump off the sofa, her chair, her bed etc. She's rolled her first die, stolen her first token & nearly upset my Plano box of Caverna bits the other day (deep breaths) but her favourite thing is still Thomas the Tank Engine. Still, if she doesn't achieve Mastery of Geekdom one day, it won't be for lack of trying.
Didn't have to use this kit since my DEX 20 saved the Caverna bits from being strewn all over the living room
Although a fairly busy year, 2013 has been good to me. If anything, having a busy schedule has made me more efficient in setting aside time to take a time out for my favourite thing & has done the same for my wife. To me, the end of 2013 marks the start of a renewed interest in playing boardgames & the continuation of this blog, well at least until we decide to apprentice another Padawan Minigeek. Hopefully by then, KFCgamers would be fairly independent without me.
Here's to your 2014, in the wise words of Brad Paisley, "Tomorrow, is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one."
This is for the fellow Master Geeks out there
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