2021 was a whirlwind of a year. The year began with a newborn in the household, we in BC were under heavy lockdown (in this case, heavy lockdown means no visitors) which continued until June!! My game group had been playing games via Tabletop Simulator since late March 2020 which gave us access to a ton of games that we wouldn’t have been able to play otherwise. Thankfully, come the summer we were allowed to gather again and we’ve been playing in person ever since, even including a Cabin-Con retreat!
This list will include several games that were not released in 2021, and that’s okay. This list is to showcase the best games that were new to me this year! While I am often a victim of wanting to play the newest games as they release, I do enjoy going back and finding the gems that I initially missed.
In 2021 I managed to get in 257 plays of 110 different games, 45 of which were new to me. Before I get to my top 10 games I want to mention that the ‘honorable mentions’ list is really strong. Q.E., Dinosaur Tea Party, Fantasy Realms, Forgotten Waters, Underwater Cities, The Isle of Cats, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Sheriff of Nottingham, Gods Love Dinosaurs, Under Falling Skies, and Lost Cities: Rivals. Most of these games are ones that I could classify as good, but I need to play more. Also, most of the games on the honorable mentions list were played digitally, which I’m sure influences how much joy I feel when thinking about them again. You’ll likely find some of these games hitting my Top 100 list the next time I put it together!
#10 – Regicide
Regicide by Paul Abrahams, Luke Badger, and Andy Richdale was the biggest surprise to me this summer. I heard that there was an intriguing and challenging cooperative game using a standard deck of 52 cards. If you have a deck of cards, you can play this game right now!
I’ll admit that while it’s billed as a cooperative game, I’ve mostly played it solo. Regicide also has a significant amount of luck involved to win, so it’s not uncommon to get a bad card flip and find yourself just hosed. I’ll also admit that I haven’t been able to beat Regicide yet… I’ve gotten to the final boss, but fell just short due to an aforementioned poor card flip.
While you can play Regicide with any generic deck of 52 cards, Badgers from Mars has released a specific deck with some thematic artwork that looks fantastic.
#9 – Project L
Project L is spatial relation Splendor. I love the polyomino puzzles, the engine building, the colourful acrylic pieces, and the striking minimalistic visual design. I won’t reiterate all of my thoughts and feelings about Project L here as I’ve already written about it in depth, but I will mention that Project L continues to hit my table with groups both new and well versed in the board game hobby.
#8 – The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine
I played a lot of trick taking games with my family as a kid, mostly games Phase 10 and our own variation called Sticks, but I really didn’t expect to love 2019’s The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine by designer Thomas Sing as much as I did.
Introduced to me at the end of a very long day during Cabin-con 2021, the whole group fell for this game hard. We played ~20 games back to back to back, just constantly going back for more. I’m kicking myself for not playing The Crew earlier; Otter kept bringing it to game night week after week and it just kept not hitting the table.
#7 – Cascadia
Cascadia by Randy Flynn is the Flatout Games darling child of the year. I’ve heard so many people talk so positively about this nature themed tile laying/ drafting game, and for good reason! Cascadia is a fun, light, attractive puzzle. Players draft ecosystem tiles and animal tokens and try to arrange them in perfect ways to earn the most points.
Cascadia is often compared to Flatout Games previous Kickstarter project Calico. While I prefer the latter, a lot of people report enjoying the easier, less restrictive puzzle of Cascadia.
#6 – Beyond the Sun
Beyond the Sun is a phenomenal game made even more impressive when taking into account that this is Dennis K. Chan’s first design. Beyond the Sun creates an analog experience for everyone’s favourite aspect of Civilization, tech trees. The big main board has several columns indicating the ‘level’ of each technology with lines going from left to right indicating each technology’s prerequisites. What makes this game interesting for repeat plays is that each level of technologies has a whole deck to choose from.
I’ve only played Beyond the Sun once, but I’m very excited to explore this game even more. I’m even looking forward to an expansion that offers some more asynchronous player powers, and am eagerly excited to see what else Dennis K. Chan has in store for us board gamers.
#5 – MicroMacro: Crime City
MicroMacro: Crime City by Johannes Sich is another game that I covered in depth this year. I played the demo and really loved the ‘Where’s Waldo?’ style gameplay mixed with a feeling of time passing. Being able to trace a criminal’s steps backwards through the city, or follow someone fleeing from an event like a bank robbery brought such joy to my wife and me.
I love that as you’re following the threads of one case you can start to notice other things going on in the periphery, things that you can make a mental note of something that you’ll probably need to come back to in a later case, but it’s not too obvious as to whats going on that you feel like you’ve accidently solved another crime just by stumbling upon a vital clue.
In my review I wrote that I didn’t plan on keeping the first game around, as it’s kind of a one and done game. I did recently pick up the follow-up game, MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House but haven’t had a chance to break it out yet. From what I read, we can expect two more MicroMacro: Crime City games in the near future, and some cases that will span all the maps. We’ll see if those work well, and just how fun it will be to try and manage 4 different maps spanning the entirety of my living room floor, especially now that my newborn has leveled up to toddler.
#4 – Calico
Calico by Kevin Russ came to Kickstarter in October 2019, and delivered partway through 2020. I didn’t really learn about it until early 2021. My wife and I were in a game store perusing their selection when Calico caught my eye and wouldn’t let go. I loved the charming, cozy kitten on the cover and I had heard from a friend that it was quite the puzzle. They weren’t wrong, I found my head in my hands for most of the playtime as I compromised and was forced to slowly give up some of the points I was hoping to achieve, unable to fulfill all (or any!) of the scoring objectives!
Most of my plays of Calico were solo when I posted my review in June. Since then I’ve introduced a lot of people to the world of Calico and found nothing but praise. The aesthetic is cute and charming, the puzzle is satisfying, and the replayability is excellent. I love that Flatout Games includes scenarios in the back of the rulebook, allowing experienced players to add on some additional challenges. I absolutely love Calico and look forward to playing it every time.
#3 – My City
I don’t recall much fanfare around Reiner Knizia’s tile laying legacy game My City when it released in 2020. I first experienced My City during Cabin-con 2021, after a brutal, grueling game of Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile by Cole Wehrle, and a very late night of unboxing and playing Anachrony by Dávid Turczi, Richard Amann, and Viktor Peter. My City was exactly the game we needed; light, easy to learn and play, fast, and very little rules overhead. We played 6 games back to back, and then another 6 games the next day. Most of the group at Cabin-con agreed that My City was ‘the game of the con’, meaning it was the overall favourite experience
My City takes only 15 minutes to play, and plays a lot like Rüdiger Dorn’s Karuba (which I talked about breifly here). Each player begins with an identical set of polyomino tiles. Each turn a card is flipped up and all players must place the tile depicted on the card on their board. You can (almost) always choose to pass instead of placing the tile, at the cost of a single point. After all players are ‘out’, the scores are counted and the highest score wins.
We took to this game famously. Since Cabin-con it’s been often requested, more as a game to finish off the night, rather than make it the objective of the evening. We all liked it so much that when Black Friday rolled around and Boardgamebliss.com had it available for $20, we all bought our own copies, eager to introduce our families to this game during the holiday season. While I haven’t finished the legacy campaign yet, and haven’t played the ‘eternal’ game (without the legacy components), I can wholeheartedly recommend My City, especially at the lower price point compared to most other legacy style games.
#2 – Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated
I used to own the original Clank! a long time ago, but traded it during a local math trade as it just wasn’t getting any plays in my group. It was light and easy to play but we found ourselves favouring other deck-builders such as Paperback by Tim Fowers or Super Motherload by Gavan Brown and Matt Tolman. Because my main game group tends to prefer playing a large variety of games, the push-pull tension of Clank! just didn’t resonate with us. No one wanted to be the person to snag the cheapest, easiest artifact and escape the dungeon, even if that was the best choice. We just didn’t want to ‘waste’ a play by getting in and getting out as fast as possible.
So colour me surpised when Otter found a copy of Clank! Legcay: Acquisitions Incorporated for sale, used. It was fully unplayed and in mint condition, so we bought it. I had my misgivings before diving in, but I found my misgivings to be totally unfounded. I had an absolutely blast making my way through Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated. We played 4 games back to back during Cabin-Con 2021, and another game shortly after.
Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated sprinkles narrative and discovery throughout it’s playtime, tasking players to reach certain spaces to access the next part of the story. It tickles my need for discovery just right. While the underlying game is still ‘just’ Clank!, I’m hopelessly excited for each new game. I immediately beeline to the next story section, eager to place stickers all over the board. Sometimes it pays off and I do very well in points, other times not so much! I have a blast every time and cannot wait to complete this adventure
#1 – Bullet❤️
I really didn’t know what to expect from Bullet♥︎ by Joshua Van Laningham and Level 99 games. No one I knew or trusted turned me on to the game. All I knew was that I liked Level 99 Games’ previous projects and that I enjoy the anime aesthetic.
What I found was an engaging action-packed, push-your-luck puzzle game, full of tense decisions. Now, I love real time games and I love puzzles so it’s absolutely no surprise that Bullet♥︎ appeals to me in the way that it did. Most of my time with Bullet♥︎ comes from the solo Boss Battle mode. I wrote about Bullet♥︎extensively here so I won’t rehash my thoughts too much. All I will say is that I continue to love Bullet♥︎ and I expect that if I can find a group to play this with more often, Bullet♥︎ will quickly climb up my list of top 100 games.
Thanks for reading my list of top games that were new to me in 2021. Let me know in the comments which games were new to you in 2021 and which ones you’re looking forward playing the most!
In November 2021 my gaming group (Bear, Otter, and Bigfoot) and I rented a cabin and spent a weekend playing board games all day and night. Here’s how it went, and at the end I’ll let you know what I loved and what I would change for next time.
Prelude
A little background about our group; we meet every Wednesday around 6:30PM at one of our homes (the person hosting rotates evenly) and play games until around 9PM or 10PM. The four of us are each avid gamers, so our lists of games that we want to play grows faster than we can play them.
On some level I have always looked at the big conventions with envy; booking off three whole days to just play board games sounds like a dream. We have gone to a couple local conventions to meet others and play new games, but we have found that we always gravitate towards just playing with each other. We have known each other for almost 7 years now, we all love a lot of the same games, and we know that we can trust each other to be appropriately invested in the game. We avoid the uncomfortable situation of having a player who does not respect the hobby. For instance, at one of the local conventions a fifth player asked to join our table, and then he was on his phone through the whole rules explanation and had to be told it was his turn every time. Each time his turn came up he’d ask ‘alright, what happened?’ and ‘How do I play? Can I do this?’, making it obvious he did not listen to the rules, or even bother to engage with us at the table.
We talked as a group about going to a large convention, but eventually decided that there wasn’t much point in going to a whole big convention, paying the entrance fee, renting a hotel room and travelling only to play games with each other the whole time. We decided we would prefer to rent a cabin locally instead. Thus the idea of Cabin-Con was born.
Leading up to Cabin-Con we created a Google Sheet to curate our game selections for the weekend. We each listed the top three games we wanted to play over the weekend. Bigfoot had received his all-in Kickstarter pledges of Anachrony and Oath during Covid and was eager to have those hit the table. I purchased a ‘used’ copy of Clank Legacy from someone locally (they had bought the game, took the shrink off and punched the tokens, but their game group never got around to playing it), so I wanted to add that to the experience. Bear was particularly eager to play Eclipse, as we had played it a couple weeks ago and he wanted another chance to become the supreme leader. We all included many other lighter games that we owned and each had a chance to mark which ones we wanted to veto, or lift up as a priority.
The master play list became:
Clank Legacy
Food Chain Magnate
My City
A Feast for Odin
Oath
Anachrony
Eclipse
Thursday
Originally check-in was listed for 5pm, but the cabin owner allowed us to check in early, around 2:00pm. We arrived, unpacked the coolers of food and drink, and assembled the game library.
By 3pm we were unpacked and ready to begin. We started the weekend with a round of Arboretum by Dan Cassar, which is always a hit. We learned and played Lost Cities: Rivals by Reiner Knizia, and we each really enjoyed it! It was interesting how our first few auctions sold 2 or 3 cards for 6 dollars, while subsequent auctions were giving away 8 cards for 4 dollars! I look forward to breaking this out again to see how the auctions change on repeat plays and with experienced players.
Cartographers by Jordy Adan came up next, which was my very first time playing in person. I really love Cartographers, to the point where I’m likely going to buy my own copy so I can play with my family when I visit them for the holidays.
With three 30 minute games under our belt we unboxed A Feast for Odin and learned the rules (Our group usually learns new games by putting it on the table and I read over the rulebook, speaking out loud the important parts with each of us clarifying what we find ambiguous. It’s a system that seems to work well for us). With A Feast for Odin set up and learned, we paused for dinner, provided by Bear (who pre-made a bunch of meals and froze them, so only a re-heat was necessary).
I had only played A Feast For Odin by Uwe Rosenberg once in 2017. My vague recollections helped keep me with the pack. I focused on breeding sheep and shearing them to cover the negative point spaces on my board, but found it quite difficult to keep up with the rest of the group. In addition, none of the occupations I pulled were particularly helpful until the end of the game, making my resource engine stall early. The final scores were 58 (me) 64 (Otter and Bigfoot) and a massive 104 point victory for Bear.
I made a note to myself to spend some more time with A Feast for Odin in the future, as it’s quite the intriguing puzzle! It also helps that I really enjoy a lot of Uwe Rosenberg’s games, although my favourite remains Agricola.
Originally we planned to have a fire each night, as the cabin had an outdoor firepit. Unfortunately, it rained heavily all weekend. We consoled ourselves with a game of Citadels by Bruno Faidutti, which felt unnecessarily back-stabby in my opinion. That said that, it was the only game I won on Thursday, so I’m sure that says something about me.
Friday
Friday morning began slowly with a cup of coffee and a walk on the beach while I waited for the rest of the group to get out of bed (one of the joys of having a child under one year old is that I can’t sleep in anymore). By 10:30am a breakfast of bacon and eggs had been consumed by all and we began the first full day by breaking out Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated by Andy Clautice and Paul Dennen.
We had played the original Clank! only a handful of times before we decided that it ultimately wasn’t for us. The tension of delving deep into the dungeon and trying to get out in time wasn’t terribly satisfying for us, as none of us were willing to be the person who grabs the cheapest, easiest treasure and gets out quickly. We also found that we prefer other deck builders like Hardback by Tim Fowers and Jeff Back, and Super Motherload by Gavan Brown and Matt Tolman. Nevertheless we were compelled to buy the game for the Legacy aspect alone.
We played 4 games back to back where it became clear that my goal wasn’t to win each game, but to hit as many story encounters as possible. Clank! Legacy satisfied my desire for discovery with every story that got read and every sticker that got placed on the board (which was a lot). I had somewhat hoped to playthrough the entire box during the weekend, but I bowed to the will of the group and packed it away after four rounds. I’ll be pushing them to play it again during our Wednesday night game sessions until we finish the entire campaign.
The rain had cleared up by this point so we chopped some wood, made a fire, and ate dinner outside. After dinner we just chatted while sipping whiskey. We’ve known each other for so long, but so rarely do we ever just sit around to talk. When we gather, we know that each other person is just as eager to play a board game so it becomes our default activity very quickly.
At 7:30PM we cracked open the Anachrony Infinity Box. The game was still in shrink wrap so we got to work on punching, sorting, and learning the rules for this massive game. Around 10:30PM as we took our first turns I saw the same fear in their eyes that would take the heart of me. A low-level despair had set in the group around the second half of the rule teach; 2+ hours is a long time to prepare to play a board game. Thankfully the first few rounds of Anachrony flow quickly and we all caught a second wind and carried through to the end, getting to bed closer to 2am.
I really enjoyed the theme and production of Anachrony. I recognize that having the thick, heavy mechs to hold your workers is entirely unnecessary, but now that I played with these toys, I’d have a hard time playing without them. They serve very little function other than to turn this 2D board game into a 3D spectacle, but I found joy in that spectacle. If there was one word to describe Anachrony, it would be “cool”.
Now that I know how to play Anachrony, I looked over some of the expansions (side note, expansion rule books are SO MUCH EASIER to read when you already know how to play the base game) and am very excited to return to this world soon to explore the modules and expansions included in the Infinity Box. From what I hear, the Fractures of Time expansion is more or less a requirement going forward.
Saturday
The plan for Saturday was to play two or three games of Oath, then My City and perhaps Brass in the evening. Inspired by Friday night’s pain of having to un-shrink wrap and punch the pieces before playing, Bear, Bigfoot, and Otter all got to work preparing Oath and My City while I made pancakes.
Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile is not the first game designed by Cole Wehrle that we’ve played. Bear is a huge fan of Root, and Bigfoot really enjoys Pax Pamir. I found it incredibly difficult to conceptualize the mechanics of Oath, even using the ‘first turn guide’. The rules questions came fast and furiously, which made me very thankful for The Law of Oath, which made it really easy to find most of the answers. We plodded through Oath with Bear as the Chancellor who took the Cursed Cauldron early and found a card that let him ignore all skulls on his attacks. From then on fighting him became an exercise in futility as we’d clash against him, push him out of a zone, and then he’d throw himself against us, his skulls not affecting his army, and his cauldron instantly regenerating his army. He was a force that couldn’t be reckoned with.
If Anachrony has a word to describe my experience (Cool), then the word I would use to describe Oath is ‘frustrating’. During the game I felt powerless. I had all my relics taken from me and my army slaughtered. I had no resources and felt like I was an ant fighting against a God. It was not a fun experience for me, and it took nearly a full 5 hours to play. Most of that play time I attribute to players taking agonizingly long turns, but I still do not feel compelled to return to this experience. I really appreciate what Cole Wehrle was trying to achieve with the living game aspect, and it’s entirely likely that I got some rules wrong, but direct conflict games generally aren’t my bag already, and even if I was on the winning side of this war, I don’t want anyone at my table to feel like they’ve just spent 5 hours at a game and had all their progress ripped away from them.
I may return to Oath, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up in the ‘for sale’ pile before I do.
After Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile my brain felt swollen. To decompress, we opened My City by Reiner Knizia. Little did we know, this would be voted as game of the con! My City is a polyomino tile laying legacy game. Played over 24 episodes, broken into 12 chapters My City eases players into the game by starting with an incredibly basic game, and slowly adds more pieces and mechanics over time. After each game the board is cleared of all pieces, the winners get to fill in some circles marking their achievement, and some stickers are placed on the board, with more helpful stickers being distributed to those with the worst score.
We played the first two chapters in one sitting (6 episodes) before packing it away. To mill the remaining time to dinner, we played The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine by Thomas Sing. The Crew is a cooperative trick taking game that like My City, eases players into the complexity over the course of several games. The Crew has a logbook of 50 mission it tasks players to complete, beginning with just getting a single card to a specific player. As we completed missions and moved through the story things began to get more complicated, ensuring players won tricks containing specific cards in specific order, and even one game dictating that one player could not win any tricks at all.
After dinner we were compelled to return to The Crew, and ended up playing 21 games when all was said and done (only 12 successes though). The Crew is a dead simple game and one that I will introduce to my family as I know they’ll love it.
Once we exhausted ourselves on The Crew, we switched to an older favourite, Vikings by Michael Kiesling. We followed that up with the fascinating bidding game Q. E. by Gavin Birnbaum where players can bid anything to win, but the player who spends the most money is eliminated. In this particular game, the first bid began at $150, and bids quickly swelled up to $7,000 and beyond.
At this point Bear called it a night. The rest of us played another crowd pleaser, Azul, also by Michael Kiesling. This one ended with a sour taste in my mouth as on the last round Bigfoot drafted the final tile I needed to complete a colour and row. He couldn’t even use that tile, it went directly into his negative points pile! The betrayal! The audacity! In the end it wouldn’t have even mattered, his score eclipsed mine by nearly 20.
Finally for the day was Project L by Michal Mikeš, Jan Soukal and Adam Spanel. You can read more about my thoughts of Project L here, as my opinion still hasn’t changed. It’s a satisfying engine building puzzle that charms most people who get their hands on the fun little pieces.
Sunday
Sunday morning was full of wind and rain. Another breakfast of eggs and sausage while cleaning the cabin. With coffee brewed, bellies full and the cabin clean, we had 2 hours to spare before check-out. We played another 6 episodes of My City while discussing what highs and lows we experienced over the weekend.
Conclusion
This was our first time participating in an extended gaming marathon. The most we had done in the past was ‘game days’, gathering at someone’s home in the mid morning and staying into the evening. I really enjoyed gathering together at a cabin, as that level of separation left us each dedicated to the weekend. We weren’t thinking about the chores around the house that we weren’t getting done, or any major interruptions, nor did anyone have to drive to go home, leaving each person to drink as much or as little as they wanted with no repercussions.
I really love food, which shows in that I wasn’t willing to skip breakfasts, or even skimp on them. I enjoyed having a full breakfast each morning. Bear and I are both ex-cooks and were more than happy to prepare all the food while Otter and Bigfoot did the vast majority of the dishes. I don’t know how much they valued the home cooked meal, or if we could have just ordered pizza every night, but the food brought me joy. There was also no end to snacks; charcuterie, chips, candy, chocolates, muffins, you name it. We feasted like kings.
While the temptation for me was to use Cabin-Con to play as much of a legacy game as possible, or dedicate several hours to experiencing grandiose games, I concede that the most fun experiences were the parts where we played multiple games (most of which we already knew how to play) in quick succession.
Next time, I would demand that all games coming to Cabin-Con at the VERY LEAST need to be unshrinkwrapped and punched. I would probably even prioritize learning how to play the games ahead of time, even if only to ease the mental load of learning so many games in such a short amount of time.
This is not gonna happen next year
I recognize that I’m particularly blessed to have a game group that’s comfortable enough to dedicate an entire weekend to go to a cabin and play board games, and that we all have partners who respect our hobbies to let us disappear for days (this is especially true for the two of us that have children who are under a year old).
I look forward to doing Cabin-Con again, and I appreciate that it reminded me that sometimes the most fun isn’t always found in the biggest experiences, but the four 30 minute games that are tried and true. I’ll do my best to remember that from now on.
I suffer from deep personal dilemmas when it comes to Kickstarter. I am constantly aware of all the projects flowing in and out of the platform, trying to tease the hard-earned money from my wallet. At the same time, I’m constantly paralyzed with fear, either of missing out on the next best game that is difficult to get after the product ships, or spending much more on a game that I could get for less after it hits retail shelves. Let me tell you about two games that recently caught my eye when they launched on Kickstarter. For both projects I chose not to pledge my support.
Burgle Bros. 2 by Tim Fowers is the follow up game to one of my favourite cooperative games of all time, Burgle Bros. When I saw the Kickstarter for Burgle Bros. 2 I decided to pass on it because I already owned the first one. The initial reviews talked about how the game ‘fixed’ some annoyances of the first one (particularly about the guard movement) that I never found to be onerous. The Kickstarter campaign failed to offer me a compelling reason to add this this shiny new version to my collection when I already owned the tried and true original.
Cut to today – the Kickstarter is being fulfilled and some of my favourite reviewers are lauding the game. According to the reviews, the production is novel and exciting, the game flows smoothly, and the campaign setting is exciting. Deep within my heart, I found myself lusting after this product. I loved the first game and desperately wanted to experience Burgle Bros 2 at the same time as the others in the board game community.I did not account for the social aspect of experiencing a new game at the same time as everyone else when I chose to pass on the Burgle Bros 2 Kickstarter. If I wanted to buy the game now, it would cost $60, plus $6 shipping. Had I backed the Kickstarter I would have only paid $50 +shipping, and I would have the game in my hands now! I pledged to myself to not miss out on another Kickstarter.
Bullet♥︎ was another Kickstarter project that I was terribly tempted to get in on. While I’m not the biggest fan of shoot-em up games (SHUMPS), I am a degenerate anime fan, and I really enjoy Level 99’s whimsy. Ultimately I passed on Bullet♥︎, knowing that the majority of my gaming partners do not find the anime aesthetic appealing.
Reviews on Bullet♥︎ started trickling into my media feed, and I found myself playing the (highly scripted) Tabletop Simulator version after having my interest renewed. I loved the puzzle the game provided. Additionally, the variability of all the different heroines and the promise of multiple game modes caused me to salivate. Again, the desire to have this game in my hands right now rose dramatically, and I found myself wandering over to their Kickstarter page to find all the things I missed out on.
Imagine my surprise when I found that the base game of Bullet♥︎ was $50 on Kickstarter, while the pre-orders have it listed for $35. The Kickstarter had no stretch goals, and no exclusives to speak of, which then begs the question, where is the value in Kickstarting this project? Is it just to have the game first? To be riding the first wave of discussion when the community at large gets their hands on it? I made a pledge to myself to remain strong and not back Kickstarters. After all, the majority of games come to retail eventually, and I can make the distributors pay for the shipping.
These two experiences with Kickstarter perfectly illustrate my ambivalence. If I choose to back, then I regret spending my money (not to mention having to explain to my wife where that board game came from and of course it’s always been there). If I pass, I have the bitter taste of regret in my mouth for months.
Turns out Kickstarter is a push your luck game, and I am what the experts call a coward risk-averse investor
