by Jake Di Toro
I've been a gamer for most of my life in one fashion or another. Part of being a gamer is making games out of plenty of situations as well as playing actual games. I'm a big fan of statistics and rankings as well. I follow the Top 50 lists by [user=LordT][/user] every month, but I came to realize that I don't pay enough attention to the game s on that list.So at the beginning of June I decided to rectify that somewhat... and beyond. My gaming goal right now is to play and rate every game on the BGG top 100 games. I'm aware that this will be a moving target, but I'm OK with that. I only get to play games once or twice a month anyway at this point, so I'll only get to get through them so fast, and if the bottom part of the list jiggle around a bit, such is life.
So, what did I get to play since I made this decision:
Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar (Current Rank 17): I've been a big fan of worker placement for a long time. I enjoyed Caylus from the get go, and give most WP games a try when I can. This one goes in the "Play it Again" pile. I did horrible in my initial outing, but I think it had to do with two factors. I tried a strategy of starting with no corn at all, I thought the two starting tiles I chose would work well together even with this lack. My second problem was that I could never get anywhere on the Deity tracks, and we had one player who dominated them. I think my only successful maneuver was getting both farms that provided 1 corn for all your workers. I ended the game last out of 4, but was eager to try it another time. Rating: 8
The Resistance: Avalon (Current Rank 97): This wasn't completely new to me, but had only played it the first time less than a month ago.Large party games like this are a weird one for me. I can be very vocal in public, but these always bring out my introvert. I appreciate the intrigue possible with the game, but always seem to foul it up. that being said in this case I managed to pull off the win for the Minions. It was interesting because we had some meta game conversation about roles and attitudes in between two sessions, and I managed to use that exact conversation to my advantge by playing against it. Rating: 7
On the not new side of things, lets look at a geme in the top 100 that I've played before:
Agricola (Current Rank 2): Guess why I'm starting here. This is the highest ranked game I've played. This use to be quite a favorite of mine, but has waned as time has gone on. I was so intrigued by this game that I did the "P500" from ZMan, the first time I've ever done something like that. I've since traded it away and have not played it since. It's not for lack of availability either, this hits the table at Game Days at least every other month if not more. I doubt I will ever seek the game out again, but if I was in a limited play group and that was the prevailing desire I would still play, and hopefully enjoy, it again.
So that's it for this installment, current count 69/100 games played.