The 2012 Good Gift Games guide appears in The Morning News today. Here are the ten games featured:

Also: the Good Gift Games Greatest Hits.

My Other favorite Games of the Year

The Good Gift Games guide focuses on games that are “easy to learn and teach, fun and engrossing to play, and that can be completed in 90 minutes or less”. I like games that meet these criteria, of course, but also enjoy the meatier stuff. Here are five of my favorite mid- to advanced-strategy games of last year or so.

Mage Knight Board Game (Wizkids, 1-4 players, 2-4 hours): I’m a huge fan of Vlaada Chvátil, and Mage Knight Board Game checks in at #11 on the Boardgame Geek top 50, so this was a no-brainer, I thought. Wrong! Figuring out the game requires like three or four brains, minimum. Like Through The Ages (also by Chvátil, and my current favorite game), Mage Knight is of Byzantine complexity, and yet everything fits together astonishingly well. And because each turn of the game feels like a tactical puzzle (not unlike the combat aspect of Dungeon Lords), the game work very well as solitaire. (In fact, many contend that it is the best solitaire game ever, an assessment I currently agree with). [Boardgame Geek | Amazon | Funagain ]

Photo by Eric Kouris.

Eminent Domain (Tasty Minstrel Games, 2-4 players, 45 minutes): I really wanted to put this on the main G4 list, but it fails the “must be fun on the first play” criterion, at least for non-gamers. But anyone who can make sense of the description “Dominion meets Race for the Galaxy” is in the target audience for this one. Yes it’s another deck-builder, but one that plays quickly and cleanly, and offers an experience similar to many more complicated card games without all of the overhead. This, along with Kingdom Builder, was one of the surprise hits of PAX 2012, for me. [Boardgame Geek | Amazon | Funagain ]

Eclipse (Asmodee, 2-6 players, 2-3 hours minutes): I’ve only played this once, and it was of the most boring experiences of my life. But! But I was bored because, not knowing what to do, I adopted the most conservative strategy possible, and the game punished me for my timidity. That’s a feature, not a bug, in a game such as Eclipse; as in other 4X games, such as Civilization, the goal is to explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate … not hide away in your corner of the galaxy and hope to go unnoticed, as was my plan. Eclipse presses a lot of my buttons — technology tracks, diplomacy, and light wargame elements — and so, even with only one play under my belt, I can already predict with confidence that it will become on of my favorites of 2012. [Boardgame Geek | Amazon | Funagain ]

The starships in both Eminent Domain and Eclipse (they use the same ones, for some reason). Photo by Mikko Saari.

The Castles of Burgundy (Ravensburger, 2-4 players, 60 minutes): I first played this at a friend’s house and, midway through the game, I pulled out my phone to order a copy for myself via Amazon. The game is similar to Troyes in that it uses dice, but has many, many systems to mitigate the effect of fluky rolls. The Castles of Burgundy looks more daunting than it really is; the core system is fairly simple, and the game is well suitable for mid-weight gamers. [Boardgame Geek | Amazon | Funagain ]

Ora & Labora (Z-Man games, 1-4 players, 2 hours): The latest from Uwe Rosenberg, and my favorite of his “worker placement trilogy” (which also includes Agricola and Le Havre). Ora & Labora struck me as more thematic than the others, almost to the point of feeling like a light civilization game rather than the straight resource-management, number-crunching, please-don’t-let-my-family-starve affairs for which Rosenberg has become known. [Boardgame Geek | Amazon | Funagain ]

Other Opinions

Don’t trust the yeti? Here are the highlights of some other “2012 best game of the year” lists.

German Game of the Year:

• Winner, Overall: Kingdom Builder
• Winner, Advanced Strategy: Village
• Winner, Children’s Game: Schnappt Hubi!

Deutscher Spiele Preis (the “other” German Game of the Year award):

• First Place: Village
• Second Place: Trajan
• Third Place: Hawaii

International Gamers Awards:

• General: Trajan
• Two-Players: Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small

GAMES Magazine Awards:

• Game of the Year: Trajan (I guess I gotta play this game …)
• Family Game: Takenoko
• Strategy Game: Zong Shi
• Advanced Strategy Game: Village
• Abstract Strategy Game: Matter
• Card Game: Decket
• Party Game: Pluckin’ Pairs
• Word Game: Kerflip!

Where to Buy

I dunno about your hometown, but board game stores have recently been cropping up in Seattle like toadstools after a rain. Plug “games” into Google Maps and see what you get.

As for online, Amazon now carries just about everything I recommend. Funagain Games is one of the oldest board game retailers and remains one of the best. Others that I’d recommend include:

• Boards and Bits
• Fairplay Games
• Games Surplus
• Thought Hammer
• Time Well Spent

Need additional info, or want a more specific recommendation? Don’t hesitate to drop me a line.