I had a friend visit, and we got to try out Sorcerer and the Button Shy Walking Dead game, Surrounded.
Sorcerer takes the shuffle-building and essentially lane-based bits of Smash Up, adds the Chaos in the Old World/Cthulhu Wars-style energy system where you can kind of do whatever you want until you run out, uses dice-based combat with numerous re-roll opportunities, puts it all in a setting that feels like Penny Dreadful, and ends up feeling a lot like Jumpstart Magic. I found a lot to like, but our particular game of it suffered the expected problem of a high-variability shufflebuilding game, in that I drew a high proportion of one faction, so had terrific synergy, and added amazing luck with the dice. So it felt horrifically unbalanced in that game, but it also felt like having your opponent be mana-crunched the whole game in your first game of Magic; not a great window into the game. I will say that, where I expected the dice-based combat to merely add a tedious layer of minimal uncertainty for a lot of faffing about, it actually produced some of the most dramatic moments in the game. But, while it seemed like it had a bunch of good parts which came together well, my collection is already overburdened with similar games I like at least as well, so being a big improvement over Smash Up and King of Tokyo didn’t raise it to the level of a game I wish I owned.
The Walking Dead game was terrific, though. Button Shy have some games I really like (e.g. R.O.V.E.), some I admire but don’t really enjoy (e.g. Sprawlopolis), and some which do something neat without being games I ever really want to play. The Walking Dead: Surrounded, like Sprawlopolis, gives you opportunities and problems with every card, but I felt like I started getting a handle on it quicker, and the puzzle of it felt more tractable without being too easy. I will almost certainly pick that up the next time I’m in my FLGS (Millennium Games & Hobbies, which is very large and quite nice, if ever you’re in the Rochester, NY area).
But, while it was great to have that experience, what I’ve actually been playing most recently is Dorfromantik. I initially rejected it in favor of Cascadia, because the aesthetic of quaint little village doesn’t connect with me. Having played something like 16 games in ten days, I can attest that I am now mentally lazy enough that I really like a game that’s very easy to get started with, and that a campaign that feels substantial but not overwhelming is fabulously effective at defusing the problem I so often have with games, where I get a big charge out of seeing how they work, delight in imagining all the fun I could have with them, and then inter them on a shelf. I don’t even think it’s an amazing design—it’s competent, but there aren’t many really clever touches or anything. It’s just good, easy to solo, runs a good duration, and has a campaign.
Next up is Kinfire Delve, which I happened to see at Millennium while shopping for gifts. I love the model of releasing single-session two-character packs for a much bigger campaign game, so people can get a taste. And the presentation is lovely, though I’m baffled that sleeved cards can’t even fit into the very nice box it comes in.
