David Fair: One Is the Loneliest Number Part Five & Six

David Fair: One Is the Loneliest Number Part Five: I Don’t Know Where We Went Wrong & Part Six: Too Long, Too New, Two Player

Every year, a lot of gamers talk about their “Five and Dime List�. I usually find the first couple of them interesting, especially if the writer has taken time to add a little commentary to the list. After a while though, you just scan them looking for pithy commentary. I thought it would be an interesting change of pace to examine the 151 games that I played only once each during 2005. These 151 games fall into several different categories, and over the next few articles, I will examine each of them.

Prior articles in the series can be found here: http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgamenews/C75/

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Part Five: I Don’t Know Where We Went Wrong (25 Games)

have no idea why I didn’t play these games more in 2005. I like them, my gamer friends like them, but for some unknown reason, they didn’t even hit the table twice while gaming last year. Since I don’t really know what it is that has kept these games off the table, other than a lack of time to play everything we like as often as we like, I am just doing them as a simple list with no real comments.

Atlantis/Survive, Attila, Bucket King, Das Amulett, Doge, Dragonland, Dschunke, Finstere Flure, Goldland, Heroscape, Manhattan, Merchants of Amsterdam, Piratenbilliards, Pueblo, Senator, Sky Runner, Spiel der Turme, Station Master, Tikal, Titan - The Arena, Top Secret Spies, Vino, Viva Pamplona, Vom Kap bis Kairo

Looking over that list, I find no game I have any real complaints with, but nothing there that really excites me about playing it again. It is indicative of the number of great games I now have access to that the mediocre are not getting more plays.

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Part Six: Too Long, Too New, Two Player (30 Games)

These games fall into one of three categories: Too Long for much regular play, Too new to have gotten much play in ’05, or Two Player. I don’t get as many opportunities for two player games as I would like, so many Two Player games get few plays.

The Too New: Ark, Byzantium, Café International Card Game, Elasund, Freya’s Folly, Hazienda, Himalaya, Keythedral, Lucca Citta, Mesopotamia, Neuland, Palatinus, Pitchcar Mini, Vegas Showdown, Wits & Wagers. Most of these (especially Wits & Wagers) have gone on to getting far more plays in 2006, with the exceptions of Lucca Citta and Mesopotamia. Not much game in either of them, I am afraid.

The Two Player: Blue Moon, Jambo, Polarity, Punct. Polarity is the only that sees any play at all these days. I usually play it solo.

The Too Long: Citadels, Das Zepter von Zavonder, Die Macher, Goa, Java, McMulti, Siena, Traders of Genoa, Victory & Honor, Wallenstein, Wooden Ships & Iron Men. Citadels and McMulti are the only games here I don’t really care for. Then there are the games that are good, but just longer than they should be for the fun you get from them (Goa, Siena, Victory & Honor). Some others are just too long to play in a normal gaming session (Die Macher, Das Zepter) or have much shorter counterparts that come to the table first (Chinatown instead of Traders of Genoa and Tikal instead of Java). Wooden Ships & Iron Men we play once a year in a regular get-together.

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This closes out the Series That Took Far Too Long to Complete, And Thereby Lost Everyone’s Interest. I’ll get back to more regular ramblings soon, including my promised update on the design process I went through in making my variant map for Age of Steam.

© 2006 David Fair

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Comments:

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I played three-player Die Macher at Unity Games XI in August, and we finished in just over two hours. The game played great with only three of us, and the “short” playing time might even get the game to the table during a normal game session as long as the other two people already know the rules. Posted by W. Eric Martin on Sep 18, 2006 at 06:42 AM | #

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