Shivers of Anticipation: 10 Games I'm Looking out for in 2019

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Being new here, I’m going risk being uncouth and say I’m keeping my eye on Sleeping Gods. I’ve never owned or played a Laukat game and yet his output tends to capture my imagination, though not my wallet yet. This is based purely on cover art, mind you, but I’m eagerly waiting to see more

I don't have anywhere close to the tenure of a lot of folks here, but as far as I can tell there's no real sense of "couthness".

I'm excited for Sabotage because Fowers has yet to make a bad game. Mediocre occasionally, but never bad. That's why I held off on backing until the thing's actually out. If it realizes its potential I'm going to love it.

Yeah, but I have to ask the prerequisite question for any translation of Johnathan Strange into a new medium: will it include footnotes?

GorillaGrody wrote: Yeah, but I have to ask the prerequisite question for any translation of Johnathan Strange into a new medium: will it include footnotes?

If there's a footnotes mechanic, it's a day-one instabuy from me.

Now I want a game made entirely of footnotes!

There was a recent update on imperial struggle on GMT's blog. It looks interesting, if it's a failure it might be an interesting one.

I'm wait and see on Gandhi. I don't know how well COIN will fit the situation and I *really* worry about the potential for poor research and weird perspective on the process of Indian decolonization

Gary Sax wrote: I'm wait and see on Gandhi. I don't know how well COIN will fit the situation and I *really* worry about the potential for poor research and weird perspective on the process of Indian decolonization

Reaaaaaaalllyyyy good point...

Gary Sax wrote: I'm wait and see on Gandhi. I don't know how well COIN will fit the situation and I *really* worry about the potential for poor research and weird perspective on the process of Indian decolonization

Well yeah, but isn't that part of the interest here? Sure there's a big risk they could completely screw that up and it will be awful, but I'm desperate to see this just so I can find out. Because if they nail it, it has the potential to transform the tired conversations we keep having about the abuse of neo-colonial themes in gaming.

Several of these are also high on my radar, but I must admit I'm even less optimistic about them than I am about Gandhi.

Imperial Struggle sounds great but I suspect the weight of expectation on it will be too much: how on earth do you follow up on the voodoo that went into the greatest game of all time? And the designers' output since has been nothing to get hugely excited about.

I'm also a colossal fan of the Strange & Norrell book but I can't see how any of the magic that permeated the story will translate into a game. Quite the opposite in fact: what made it great is too literary and ephemeral to reduce to cards and dice. And like Twilight Struggle, the output of the team involved has been sketchy since War of the Ring.

I guess my reaction is that I own Labyrinth, which is a really good game but has a lot of poor history/perspective in it. There's an argument out there that Labyrinth is similar to Twilight Struggle, in that it represents "the world according to George W Bush and the foreign policy elite at the time." There's some merit to that but it means some extremely cringe-worthy shit in there. Saddam Hussein card moving terrorist funding to 9 indeed. The expansion is in many ways worse on that front in ways I've outlined elsewhere but, again, makes the actual play of the game much better.

So I agree with you that it's very exciting that someone is trying it! Which is why I thought about P500ing it. But I don't need another Labyrinth on my shelf, especially because I'm iffy on COIN in the first place for being overly incremental. At least Labyrinth has what I consider legitimately good gameplay divorced from any problems I have with the perspective.

My list is very different than yours, but always enjoy your thoughtful articles Andrew.

RolandHemisphere wrote: Now I want a game made entirely of footnotes!

Isn't that A Study in Emerald?

Labyrinth is not part of the COIN series btw and plays entirely differently.

I wish there were a Laukat design that I really liked, because his art and world building are excellent, or at least they appeal to me, which is why I keep trying and hoping.

jpat wrote: I wish there were a Laukat design that I really liked, because his art and world building are excellent, or at least they appeal to me, which is why I keep trying and hoping.

I love Laukat's art (I even have a framed print of his hanging on my bedroom wall) ... but I agree with you about his designs. I've played a bunch of them, and there's always some element that frustrates me, or keeps me from really loving the game the way I love his art. He tends to sand off the really sharp edges of his game, to make losing less punishing, or to make conflict less interesting. Just as an example, if you lose a fight in Empire of the Void II, you don't lose your ships. Your ships simply retreat to your nearest controlled planet. It dumbs down the risk/reward calculation because there essentially is no risk. If you win, great. If you lose, fuck it, no harm dome.

What I've discovered though, is that Laukat's games are GREAT for playing with my 9-year-old who does not take losing well. We can play through a scenario in Near and Far, and have a great time. When we add up the points at the end, it almost doesn't matter because we got to roam around a weird, fantasy world with bird-people and talk to ancient broken robots. Who gives a shit about victory points?? In that regard, I'm very excited for Sleeping Gods, which I think will be another great game to play with my son.