By the Numbers: Final-ish Game Plans for 2024; and 100 posts!

   

  

This post marks my one hundredth submission to A Fast Game is a Good Game, two weeks into the blog's second year. I’ve talked about why I started A Fast Game and how its direction and purpose has changed over time several times before, and in a previous post I sketched out some ideas I had for my gaming program for this year. Well, a month-and-a-half in to 2024 and I haven’t locked down every detail, but I’ve got some things to share, and I thought that would be a good way to mark my hundredth post.

6x6 now 5x3

If you’ve been reading from the start you’ll know that I initially started A Fast Game as a way to track my progress at my self-imposed 6x6 challenge, i.e., playing six designated games six times each, against a face-to-face human adversary. That turned out to be a lot tougher than I first thought it would – mostly due to the difficulties scheduling, so I’m adjusting my expectations. 

This year I’ve been working on picking five games to play three times each. I’m still going to try to finish the outstanding 6x6 games (as a manner of penance for my overreach – I had seventeen unplayed sessions at the beginning of the year, and that’s now down to fourteen), but looking back over the year, I’ve come to the conclusion that three runs at a game is a pretty solid position from which to critique it. While I understand why it happens, I really hate it when people review games after a single play-through. I don’t think it’s fair to the game or to the audience. Six games is great, four or five is swell, but I think three is the minimum number to begin to get a solid feel for a game. To wit, I present the titles I’ve so far settled on for the 5x3 challenge:

 - Brothers at War,1862 (Compass Games, 2022 (see the unboxing here))

 - Dawn’s Early Light: the War of 1812 (Compass Games, 2020)

 - Napoléon 1807 (Shakos, 2020)

These three are firm choices. I did a solo run-through of Brothers at War and was really impressed. I’m looking forward to playing it against an opponent. I spent some time with Dawn’s Early Light last year (and wrote positively about it here). I think that is a strong candidate for my favourite CDG. And after my experience with Napoléon 1806 (Shakos, 2017), I was keen to see how the system will play out over a bigger play area and multiple scenarios with differing strategic goals.

C&C: Ancients - both fast and good.

For the last two slots, I’m tossing up between Undaunted: Battle of Britain (Osprey Games, 2023), No Retreat!: the Polish & French Fronts (GMT Games, 2018), Fate of the Reiters (Hexasim, 2019), Dunkirk: France 1940 (Worthington Publishing, 2018), Old School Tactical, Vol. 2 (Flying Pig Games, 2017) and a Columbia Games block game, maybe Athens and Sparta (Columbia, 2007). If I can’t choose and I’m feeling game, I may stretch to a 6x3.

Solitaire Play and Review Challenge

I mentioned this in my previous goals post. In the past couple of years, I’ve built a decent collection of solitaire or solo-friendly games. I’ve managed to play quite a few, but certainly not all of them (probably about half), and most of them have gone unreviewed (well, five of the twelve reviews I posted last year were solitaire games, but I feel like I could have done more). I said in my last By the Numbers post that I was going to aim for twelve solitaire games, wither new or revisiting (I’ve recently had a hankering to get Skyhawk (Legion Games, 2022) to the table again). I’m going to wind that target back to eight, but I’ll concentrate on new games, or at least, games I haven’t played yet. This will also be open to games with a dedicated solitaire mode (like Atlantic Chase (GMT, 2021) and Pacific Tide (Compass Games, 2019).

My most recent acquisition.

I haven’t settled on all the solo games I’ll try to get played through the year, but I’m planning on starting with titles I already own. The first couple off the rank will probably be:

 - Skies Above Britain (GMT Games, 2023)

 - Redver’s Reverse: The Battle of Colenso, 1899 (Legion Wargames, 2016)

 - Midway Solitaire (Decision Games, 2017)

 - Beneath the Med: Regia Marina at Sea1940-1943 (GMT Games, 2020)

Redver’s Reverse, set during the Anglo-Boer War, only arrived this week; I’ll post an unboxing in the next week or so. I’m currently reading though the rules, and it looks promising, if a little daunting. Technically, I have played Beneath the Med before; I ordered it through GMT’s P500 program and played it when it arrived, but it’s been a while and I’d like to run through it again to get reacquainted before reviewing it.

I’ll aim to play all these at least three times, and review each of them here at A Fast Game. This should help toward my third goal for the year.

Twenty considered, generally positive game reviews in 2024

My first year of A Fast Game saw me post a total of game reviews. The reviews I post are the most popular features on the blog, read by an order of magnitude more folks than anything else here. Not to blow my own horn, but I feel like I’ve gotten better at writing my reviews. And it can be tough, but they are the most rewarding posts to put together. I think I can put twenty reviews up this year (I’ve already posted one in January for Napoléon 1806, so only nineteen to go). Eight solitaire game reviews, five or six for the 5x3 challenge and three more for my outstanding 6x6 games will get me most of the way there.

1944: D-Day to the Rhine (Worthington Publishing).

At this point, I’d just like to reiterate for anyone who’s joined us recently that you’ll only see positive reviews here. I don’t think I’ve come across too many games over the years that I absolutely didn’t like or that I couldn’t find any redeeming factors in, but if I do through the course of writing about games, I won’t review it. This is partly because whatever I don’t like, somebody is going to think it’s the best thing since the last really good thing, then they’re going to start spamming me with vitriol and I don’t need that. I used to write music reviews back when the internet was still shiny, so I know of which I speak. Mostly, though, it takes time an effort to write a review, good or bad. If I’m putting that much effort into a piece of work, I want to promote something I think is worthwhile.

Extra Credit Goals

At the beginning of the year and the first flush of enthusiasm over new beginnings and such, I had a list of things I hoped to achieve in the coming twelve months. With just ten and a half of those months left, I’m trying to be a little more sober-minded about what I can accomplish. So, there are a couple of things I’d like to do, but I won’t castigate myself if I don’t get there. Part of the reason I didn’t complete my 6x6 challenge last year is the multifarious ways life outside of gaming would trample on plans and curtail the best intentions.

Fire and Stone (Capstone Games).

I already written up a wish-list of extra-curricular accomplishments I’d like to make happen this year, so I won’t reiterate it here. The most realistic might be learning Fields of Fire, Vol. 2 (GMT Games, 2019), as that would tick off another solitaire game, but if I don’t get tick any of them off this year, I’ll still be cramming in a lot of gaming goodness.

So, if you’ve been following A Fast Game for the duration, thank you, and I hope you’ll stick around. If you’re a newcomer, please don’t feel like you have to go back and read everything, but browse the index and see if there’s anything of interest (some of the reviews are quite good, and if there’s a particular game you’re interested in, you might find some of the AARs interesting). Here’s to a game-rich 2024 and a diverting blog going forward.