My Top 50 Games (as of Jan. 1 2014) Part 4 20-11

Welcome back to my top 50 games list as of the start of 2014.  Part 4 has a few more surprises.
5 games make their debut in the 20's.


#20 Flash Point: Fire Rescue  Up 6

Flash Point is one of the simpler co-op games, but I really enjoy it.  The theme flows throughout the game.  There's always a certain amount of tension since fire can spark up anywhere on the map.  I have most/all the expansions, so I have plenty of ways to play this game.  It hasn't been right for every group, but it's a game I can teach to just about anyone and they have a basic understanding of how to play based on real life ideas.

#19 Legendary: A Marvel Deckbuilding Game  New

Legendary makes its debut on this list because it has a neat twist on the co-op game.  Everyone wins or loses the game together, but there is essentially an MVP on the winning side.  Now technically, someone wins more, but I've played it as an MVP situation.  I enjoy the variety of superheroes in the game, and how each seems to do something unique.  The game rewards cooperation, but it also allows players to make their own decisions which is important in any co-op game.

#18 Hanabi  New


Hanabi makes my list because it is unlike any game I've ever played.  This is a puzzle game where everyone has a lot of knowledge, but no one has perfect knowledge.  Discussion is very limited, every clue matters, and players have to pay attention to everything, both spoken and unspoken.  A perfect game is obtainable, but it's really challenging.


#17 Alhambra  New


Alhambra is an older game, but I find it refreshing and challenging even today.  It just missed the cut last year, coming in at #48.  I was able to play it several times in 2013, which is why it moved up drastically.  I have the big box, which means I have over 20 modules which means I have a lot of replayability in the box.  Alhambra is one of the few games that my entire family will ask to play.  That alone makes it worth rating highly.

#16 Love Letter  New


Love Letter is truly a minimalist game.  It has 16 cards, and 13 cube tokens.  Even though the components are low, the game packs a punch.  Love Letter is played over several rounds, with the winner of each round getting a token, and the overall winner being the player to get a certain number of tokens first.  The game has a good combination of luck and strategy.  Sometimes there is nothing you can do, but most of the time, you're going to have some chance to win a round.


#15 Escape: The Curse of the Temple  New

Escape is the most tense 10 minutes of gaming you can play.  It's a realtime co-op dicefest.  Players have to work together to get gems, and then get out of the temple before time runs out.  If even one player is left in the temple at the end, everyone loses the game.


#14 Shadows Over Camelot Down 6


Shadows drops because of its length.  I did get to play it 3 times in 2013, but each time I realized that the game takes too long for what it is.  If I could get Shadows down to an hour, it would be even higher on this list.

#13 Battlestar Galactica  Down 7

BSG probably wins my award for game I wish I played more but can't/don't.  The game is so hard to teach to new people.  It really is something you have to go through once in order to understand how to play, and even then the game is complicated.  There are a lot of moving parts, and often it's too much for multiple new players to understand.  As such, this game sits on my shelf looking sad.

#12 Star Trek Fleet Captains  Down 5


Such a good game that I don't get to play.  It's hard to have a situation where I have 1 or 2 other people who want to play a long game.  Fleet Captains isn't the longest game, but it is a deep game with an immersive theme.  I love Star Trek, as you'll see in my Top 10, and Fleet Captains feels like Star Trek to me, but this game has a lot going

#11 Dominion Down 7

Dominion trends down for the second year in a row.  Here's my issue with Dominion right now: the game is big, it isn't easy to get new players into the game because experienced players will typically win the game running away.  I have enough Dominion cards to play almost forever without ever playing the exact same game.  I still enjoy the game, especially with people who know what they're doing, but I have a hard time holding myself back when I play with new gamers.

Fleet Captains Customization

When I first played Star Trek Fleet Captains, I was impressed with the gameplay, but I felt it needed more.  My cousin was thinking the same thing because he said something to the effect of "wouldn't it be awesome to have a wood board for the game."  So I took that and ran with it.  I started thinking of how to make things work, and I decided that a wood was easier to work with than plastic.  I didn't want to do an edge or a barrier like Catan, I wanted a board.  My first instinct was to take a board and drill/cut hexagons into the board, but hexagons are hard to work with, and I didn't have any tool to do that job.

So with help from a friend and her dad who works with wood a fair bit, we came up with a fairly elegant solution.  We decided to lay out a triangular grid to make hexagons, and then use pieces of wood as a boarder.  As you can see on the left, it's not 100% perfect, but the hexagons work well.  On the right, you can see how the tiles fit on the board, there's plenty of room to get a finger in to flip or remove them.  The main board works for the two player game, while the sideboards are for a 4 player game.  I added the blue and red paint on top to mark the command posts so players don't have to fiddle with the layout as much.  It also makes for faster set-up.

As the board work was going on, I took a few days to paint some of the miniatures.  For comparison, unpainted ones are on the left.  I won't claim that my painting skills are perfect, or even all that good, but I'm fairly pleased with how things turned out.  I can give more details for how I did everything, but I'll just give a basic rundown here.  I used simple Acrylic paints that you can find in any hobby store.  The key is using the same brand of paints on any given ship.  For the Federation ships, I started with a grey base coat, simply painting the whole ship.  I let that dry, then depending on look, I added a grey-black or grey-white mix to get a shade I liked better.  Then I added detail work, such as blue on the nacelles, some red for impulse engines, and some deflector work as well as running lights and phaser lines where I thought it would look good.  For the Klingon ships, I had 3 different shades of green, so I decided to divide the fleet in three shades.  This works since some houses in the empire would have their own paint scheme.  I then added some touches of red for torpedo launches and some phaser arrays, but nothing over-the-top there.  The whole painting project took me 3 days, which was 1-4 hours  each day.

If I had it to do over, I probably could have had it done in 6 hours total including dry time.  I also had a few snafus with two figures coming off their bases, so that took some time to glue and then overnight set-up which slowed me down.
Another part of the customization was finding these little craft storage boxes to organize all the tokens and bits that come with the game.  I went with Blue for the federation, and Pinkish for the Klingons.  If/when the Romulans come along, they get green, but for now it helps divvy up the storage and makes things easier to find.

Here's the takeaway for this whole project.

• It's a lot of hard work, but a great reward.
• Painting Miniatures to a reasonable level isn't all that hard if you take the time, have patience, and work carefully.
• Touch-ups are necessary
• Woodworking gets expensive, but is also easy to work with.
• Friends and parents make things a lot easier

Here's what I had to purchase to make this whole thing happen

• Acrylic Paints
• Black, Blue, Grey, White, Red, Orange, Green x3(but you can get away with 1)
• Paintbrushes
• Sandpaper
• Wood Glue
• Wooden Dowels (~20 feet worth)
• Wood Boards (x2)
• Pack of Craft Storage Boxes
• Black Spraypaint for the board
• Wooden Disks for the feet
• Piece of Felt for the feet
• 2 dice which work well for the game - blue and black for the feds, green and red for the klingons.

Other things I used that some people might not have available

• Tool to cut the wooden dowels
• Power/Table saw to cut the boards
• Measuring tape
• Yardstick
• Protractors

All in all, it ran me about $60 and three weekends of work, so it's not a simple project, but I think it's well worth it.  I hope you'll agree with me that it is as well.

I owe a huge thanks to Rose, who helped me figure out the hexagon grid, and who helped cut the dowels, sand them, and glue them to the board.  Also thanks to my dad who helped me cut the boards to the right size.

I've learned a lot about woodworking, and I doubt this will be my last attempt.

I've also learned a fair bit about miniatures painting, so if you like my style, let me know and I might be willing to do some work for you.

If you are a registered member on Boardgamegeek, please give my work a thumbs up on this article http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/137425/item/2052536#item2052536
It's a contest to show-off good work in customizing games.
If you aren't a member on BGG, you should be.

Top 42 Part 6 (7-4)

Woo! Top 7. It's been a fun ride so far and I think it will be even better next year since we'll get comparisons to this year.

#7 Star Trek Fleet Captains

I never thought that two plays would make a game jump this high on my list.  Maybe it's a desire for wanting great games, maybe I'm colored by the newness of the game, but I can see myself playing this a lot for a long time.  The Star Trek theme is incorporated wonderfully. Everything from the ships to the encounter cards and the locations are directly out of Star Trek.  There's a lot of room for expansions, both in the federation fleet as well as other races from the show.  This game is perfect for Star Trek fans.  I can't speak to it's enjoyability if you don't know Trek, but the game mechanics seem to be solid.  There are many paths to victory for each side from scientific achievements to military conquest.  The game plays fairly quickly once you understand the rules, which does take awhile, but gameplay seems to speed up as it progresses, and the endgame seems to hit just as things are getting interesting.  I've only played with the recommended point count, but there's always the ability to undertake a longer game.

#6 Eminent Domain

I recently reviewed Eminent Domain, so the details are there so I'll make this quick.  I enjoy playing Eminent Domain, and I think with an expansion it could move into my top 5.  I love the diverse strategies possible in Em-Do, and the way a player has the follow or dissent option on other player's turns is brilliant.  It's quick to play and fairly different every time you play.  It's one game I want to play more as a 2 player for the longer strategies, but it's fun as a 3 or 4 player game.  Plus having friends start this whole "I'm going to warfare your (fill in the blank) has become an iconic phrase between us, and it's good fun to have those inside jokes.  TMG did an amazing job with the entire Kickstarter campaign, and it is a game I probably would have paid more, but I'm glad I got a bargain.   As a final note, it's really cool to see your name in print, even if it is only at the Silver Supporter level.

#5 Battlestar Galactica
Here's another one I've reviewed, so I'll keep it short again.  This is an amazing game with the right group of people.  The theme is once again dripping through the game.  I often feel like the series is happening as we play, watching the cylon fleet jump in by surprise and change the flow of things is great fun.  Watching morale drop is frightening for the players.  I wish there was a way to not know how many cylons were possible, since once they're known the tension tends to evaporate.  Still, there's a lot of fun here.  It would be higher if the the playtime was a bit shorter, and if I played more in real life instead of only forum games these days.

#4 7 Wonders

I was tempted to put this at #7 just for the pun, but 7 Wonders has moved up a lot in the last few months.  It's not the easiest game to learn, but the effort is worth it.  We're still at the point where we have to look up symbols, especially on the leaders, but it's getting easier.  I'm planning on a full review soon, but that's going to take a new camera, so I won't go into tons of specifics here.  I enjoy that the interaction in the game is only with your immediate neighbors.  It makes the game scale from 3 to 7 players withe ease, and you can almost ignore the strategies of your non-neighbors.  I think my favorite wonder to play is Babylon, though that probably has to do with the fact that I built a model of them in 6th grade, plus I always like to take the science route. The great thing is the lack of a completely dominant strategy.  If one person seems to be running away with things, others can always throw out the cards they need, or use them as wonder build markers.  The gameplay is pretty quick, the variety is excellent, and the huge player range is rather nice to have.  For all those reasons, 7 Wonders comes in at #4.

Star Trek Fleet Captains

I got a new game on Wednesday January 18th.  I debated getting fleet captains since I first heard about it, but was turned off by the price.  I paid $80 at my local game store, MSRP is $99.95 meaning $100, and the cheapest online price I could find was $65.

So why get it at my local game store?
1, it was there, meaning I could open it today and play it this weekend rather than sometime next week.
2, good to support the local store when I can.
3, I had a $20 gift card, so it was like paying $60, making it the cheapest option to me.

Now, I've yet to play it, so I won't talk about the gameplay or do an official review, so my first video will have to suffice.

Come back later for a full review, which will come after I play it.