Best of 2020, Not from 2020

My favourite anachronistic CONTENT CONSUMED over the past 12 months, regardless of date of manufacture.

Plus some new things. That are mainly revivals or homages of old things, admittedly.

They love being exposed to dangerously unfamiliar climates

You're welcome

Alrightgames: Scrabble

Scrabble

1938 (1988 edition) / Word board game / 2-4 players / UK

*****

I can't remember whether I'd already experienced Scrabble in the build-up to Christmas '92 (or was it '93?), or if I'd just seen an advert, but I remember being excited for its arrival, and it didn't let me down. This is about the only game out there (with the possible exception of Deluxe Pacman on the Amiga) that I'd arrogantly consider myself to be pretty good at, though not to tournament standard. Ch haven't, uh, committed the two-letter words to memory or anything like that, fy!

It's resilient as well, the only one of my childhood games on the shelf to have authentic continuity rather than a retro eBay proxy. Apart from a full letters transplant, which was cheaper than sourcing individual replacements for the eight lost to time. The notepad's getting thin, the board's scribbled on, the letter bag's missing its drawstring and obviously the pencil's gone, but I'll keep this Ship of Thesaurus sailing for as long as I can.

Alrightgames: Sherlock Holmes – The Card Game

Sherlock Holmes: The Card Game

1991 / Mystery card game / 3-8 players / UK

****

Resold

Worth a try for a fiver, I was mainly hoping that its commitment to source authenticity would give me (and maybe my daughter one day – no pressure) incentive to pick up the heaviest book on the shelves every now and then. It's already working.

Forming a coherent mystery narrative from a shuffled deck would be asking a bit much, so it goes for a sequential tropes runaround instead. The groove became comfortingly familiar after a few plays, so I'll stop before I get sick of it, but it's definitely one I'll try to force into my daughter's childhood nostalgia to make up for mine not having it.

Alrightgames: Star Fluxx

Star Fluxx

2011 / Party card game / 2-6 players / USA

***

Resold

The first and only time I played classic Fluxx was when appropriately inebriated during my first hostel stay in Venice, a few days into my liberating digital nomad lifestyle, so naturally it made quite an impression. Not enough for me to get around to buying a set until ten years later, but my subsequent digital hermit lifestyle didn't offer many opportunities for lighthearted icebreakers. Nor does my current sleep-deprived working parent lifestyle, so I've just been playing with myself. And then I played Star Fluxx, etc.

It seems to be basically the same as any other Fluxx set, the main difference from their officially licensed sci-fi themes such as the various 'Trek Fluxxes being that its generic, copyright-evading send-ups of hackneyed genre tropes are actually pretty funny and not as banal as 'Scotty + Transporter = Beam Me Up Scotty' or 'Picard + Bridge = Captain on the Bridge,' which they actually put on the boxes because the sort of people who buy those things have no standards.

And while you're wising up, stop buying '[Franchise] Monopoly' and other desperately tenuous cash-ins that have nothing to do with the thing you like and those shit plastic dolls that are all exactly the same, you corporate cretins. Merry Christmas!

Alrightgames: Star Trek: The Next Generation Customizable Card Game

Star Trek: The Next Generation Customizable Card Game

1994 / Collectible card game / 2 players / USA

***

Resold

I've never actually played this game, and I'm not hugely interested in doing so even if it turns out I have enough cards in my budget Common sets to form workable decks, because playing Ensign Taurik when I need engineering expertise would just draw attention to my lack of commitment. I just wanted to finally fulfil a modest junior Trekkie dream and have a bunch of these to look at now and then for the lowest possible stake.

I did once buy a starter pack of Deep Space Nine cards as a teenager when feeling particularly extravagant, but the early Next Gen sets are where the mythical nostalgia's at. If I'd had the disposable income of the Warhammer kids growing up, I might have considered collecting these to be a viable hobby, but I was already committed to splashing whatever I did manage to scrape together on two-episode Star Trek videocassettes. Twenty years on, one of those commodities has proven a better long-term investment plan than the other.

These cards still do surprisingly well on eBay as if time's stood still, sellers tearing through the ever-dwindling surplus of vintage booster boxes to flog sets and individual rares at competitive prices you wouldn't think were worth the effort of the enterprise.

As for the video market, I recently asked an eBay seller if he'd consider selling me his empty Borg Box video boxset with the unsaleable tapes removed, planning to use it as decorative storage for Star Trek cards and other junk. He agreed, then decided to send me his whole stock, at a loss to himself, because he was desperate to get rid of the things. Now I have to buy enough Star Trek cards to fill them, I suppose.

Resistance is futile

Alrightgames: Not Alone

Not Alone

2016 / Strategy card/board game / 2-7 players / France

**

Resold

I was giddy from the first game session with my brother when I impulse bought this off Amazon based on optimistic reviews alone, fearful that the repetitive deckbuilder I'd ordered from America wouldn't arrive in time for our next one. The confusing setup turned out to be more fun than the gameplay, which wasn't my thing, even as a newcomer to games who's still learning what his things are (outside of repetitive deckbuilders).

Alrightgames: Ascension – Apprentice Edition

Ascension: Apprentice Edition

2013 / Deckbuilding card game / 2 players / USA

****

Resold

I hadn't planned on buying more Ascension when I opted for this budget starter as a sort of tribute to my time spent on the virtual game, and a way to introduce it to anyone unfortunate enough to cross my path. But those coquettish eBay sirens would soon come calling and render it superfluous in the collection.

If you view this as the generous, no-frills introduction to the game that was presumably intended, its folded plastic 'board' and ugly cardboard counters are considerate concessions to budget, and it easily gives you more cards per pound than any canonical set.

But then you make the mistake of looking up one of those proper sets, with their rigid boards and bloody jewels for counters (to really rub it in), and this feels more like a cunning ploy to draw newcomers in and make them upgrade out of shame.

It probably worked. I'll see if I can salvage most of these cards in my proper set when it arrives, unless that upsets the balance. I've given the counters to my toddler as play money. She hoards them like a dragon.

Alrightgames: Cthulhu Realms

Welcome to this new spin-off series in which a 35-year-old parent justifies or regrets his indulgent purchases of repetitive card/board games for himself.

For my family's sake, this had best be short lived, but maybe she'll want to join in when she's old enough. Two stars and under get (r)eBayed.

Cthulhu Realms

2015 / Deckbuilding card game / 2-4 players / USA

*****

If I'd played or been aware of Star Realms first, and not come across its evil spin-off when caught up in a Lovecraft phase, then several years later made it my first non-computer game purchase since primary school, no doubt I'd be less sentimentally attached. But even after logging more days on the spaceship game thanks to its stat-swapping expansions keeping things superficially varied, I much prefer this one.

Seeing the inappropriately jovial cartoon card art in person and playing against my patient brother rather than predictable AI has been a treat, and unlike some other deckbuilders, you don't have to spend more on expansions if you want to play with more people. Which is a good thing, really, since it wasn't popular enough to get any.

Free, pointless ebook: 2001 Books That I've Read

Dave Warburton, 2001 Books That I've Read

2015-20 (collected 2020) / Ebook / 303 pages / UK

**

The updated edition everyone's been waiting for, expanded with another year's worth of lightweight reading with lighter summaries and scraping the barrel to count more childhood books and other retro submissions not considered worth mentioning last time. Same time next year!

Download PDF

(2.17 MB)