2024: Year of Legacy Games

After our fourth playthrough of Dorfromantik I realized that something was off. When we first played the game it was too easy. I hadn't read the rules closely enough. I missed a constraint in the rulebook. Our next three play-throughs the game still didn't feel right. We couldn't get more than 100 points, it felt too difficult. So I scoured the internet for answers. I found a lot of videos of people playing Dorfromantik online but they were all playing it wrong. They were making the same mistake that I made the first time. Their final scores were way over-powered because of this mistake. It took me a while to find a video of someone who was actually playing the game correctly, but when I did, the game finally clicked into place. Of course! It's all right there in the rulebook. Why didn't I just read it more carefully? Misinterpreting rules and missing rules is one of the toughest aspect of board games. And when this happens it can really throw off the balance of the...

  Dorfromantik in German means "village romanticization" and was first published as a video game. The board game adaption won the coveted "Spiel des Jahres" (Game of the Year) in 2023. The game is cooperative and a legacy game (after all that is why we are here). Cathy and first attempted Dorfromantik on a lazy spring afternoon. We lit some candles and played some relaxing music. The game went well. We quickly achieved all of our goals, but something felt wrong... the game was too easy. I suspected that I had not read the rulebook carefully enough. Sure enough, we were not playing correctly. A few days later we tried again. This time the game was much more difficult. We didn't even score enough points to unlock the first mystery box. Some reviewers of Dorfromantik will complain that it is not a game at all, but a sort of peaceful puzzle. Those reviewers are wrong. The game is full of strategy- enough strategy to keep the heart-pumping and the brain-ticking. And ...

1898: The turn of the century brought forth one final grab for territory, cash, and conquest. Cathy continued with her strategy of pulling and completing as many tickets as possible. Brock continued with his strategy of playing to the story mode and focusing on the unique elements that each chapter presented. Brock utilized the final new element of the game turning over his 3 completed tickets to receive 3 hints to Mama O'Connell's secret location. After triangulating the data, Brock arrested Mama O'Connell and turned her into the authorities for a $40 bounty. He also decided to concentrate on his timetable instead of completing routes. He was able to cross off 2 rows and 4 columns, this gained him another $60. Though Cathy won the final round (1898) by completing several tickets, the campaign was not over. The vaults were emptied and each year was tallied along with the shares, postcards, circus flyer, and timetable. Cathy claimed an advantage on postcard points, but Bro...

Ticket to Ride is (and has always been) a game of risks. Do you keep all your routes? Completing them all could pay off big or it could be disastrous. Picking new routes halfway through the game could pay off big or be disastrous. And, AND... playing it safe could be the wrong move as well. And that's why Ticket to Ride can sometimes be a very stressful game and not-at-all the casual introductory Eurogame it is often purported to be. I knew I couldn't play it safe this round. Cathy had beaten me by too many points last time and I needed to catch up. I did have the advantage of the Caboose card, so I was guaranteed an extra move at the end. I kept my four original tickets. I used the Gambler card on my most valuable route. And I even picked three new tickets (a risky move that proved dangerous). I kept a large supply of engine cards for emergencies. When the "I Found Dead Man's Gulch" card came up, I chose to let Cathy claim the large pot for herself rather than gi...