Christopher Rush

Hello, friends.  Here we are again: another Christmas, another New Year.  For some of you, 2017 was rough, and for that I am sorry.  For some of you, 2017 was a smashing good time, and for that I am happy for you.  Ours was pretty good — can’t really complain about it, certainly not with all the natural disasters and social unrest and political turmoil that made life difficult for so many people this year.  My wife got her Master’s degree, we have made significant improvements to our house, our kids stayed fairly healthy, we tried throughout the year to intentionally make good memories as a family, and that will continue to be an intentional plan going into 2018.  I hope you can spend a significant amount of time in 2018 similarly doing enjoyable things with people you love (for God’s glory, of course).

I think I’ve mentioned in the past as I get older I tend to go through the years in patterns: springtime seems to be my main wargaming season; videogames tend to come in the summer and Christmas break, when I actually have time to stay up and play them without work responsibilities; summer is also the time I tend to read the things I want to read for the same reason; autumn seems to be the time I return to Genesis and Rush albums for no reason I can intuit; and Christmastime is also the time of year I remember how much I enjoy Jethro Tull.  I suspect that has become a yearly thing because for several years there my sister-in-law and her husband got me a new-to-me Jethro Tull album for Christmas, so the band began to have a Christmastime connection with me.

When you get to the back page of this issue, you’ll notice we are going to begin a new series of album analyses on Tull’s folk rock trilogy, beginning with Songs from the Wood, if the Lord tarries.  I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves here, but in case you are wondering what that has to do with Christmas, if it’s been some time since you’ve heard the album, the first side ends with the song of the title in this very article, “Ring Out, Solstice Bells,” a great song about the beginning of winter and the festivals and good spirits and celebrations of life that occur at this time.  And since I’m sort of running out of ideas for Christmas-themed articles here, well, that seemed about as good as any for a title and a transition into a new series and a new year.  I thought about using the George Harrison line “ring out the old, ring in the new” already discussed in this issue, but I didn’t want to seem that desperate.

For the last few Christmas issues, as you may recall, we have included some shopping tips for games, and while I hope you enjoyed our recent recipe recalls from several issues ago (our first ever reprints), I don’t really want to recap the same game recommendations here.  Aside from the fact a fair number of the games we have recommended in the last couple of years have gone out of print and thus are rather difficult and/or expensive to track down, I’m not really a fan of straight repetition for its own sake.  Instead, here is a smattering of games I have acquired recently, games I have either played a bit lately or am looking forward to getting to the table as soon as I can.  Feel free to also use this list as an updated buying guide.

I have wanted to get my hands on Eminent Domain for a couple of years now (not to sound greedy or anything).  It has a lot of things going for it that I enjoy: it’s a deckbuilding game, it’s got a space theme (and you know I’m a fan of that), it’s small, and thanks to the expansion, which I also picked up at the same time, it has a lot of setup variability and replay value because it has more content in the game than you will see on any given play, so each playing experience is different (so they say).  I’m not a huge fan of the publishing company, Tasty Minstrel Games, but more so for niggling frustrations I’ve had with them than deep-seated and painful heartaches or anything like that, so for me to be eager and willing enough to get their game myself (instead of putting it on a Christmas list, say), tells you how much I’m looking forward to playing this one.

When 2017 began, I had two basic gaming goals: get a copy of Great Western Trail and get a Vital Lacerda game, a Portuguese designer of very thinking-heavy games.  Halfway through the year, I finally got ahold of GWT for my birthday, which made it even more special.  My wife and I played it a couple of times, and I got to play it a few more times with different alumni during summer gaming days, so for many reasons this game has become a personal favorite.  Like Eminent Domain, Great Western Trail has a few different gaming mechanisms involved, but it makes it all work together very well.  Much of the game is deckbuilding, in which your deck of cards is the herd you are driving from your ranch to Kansas City.  Additionally, you can control regions of the trail by adding buildings and thus making the trail longer, potentially.  You can also hire workers to make your trail-driving team more effective in different ways, either in acquiring better cattle, transporting them further and more lucratively, or improving your ability to make the trail itself more ideal to you and more difficult for the other players.  Like many top-notch games of today, it has variety in set-up and a multitude of gaming paths toward victory, making each game a new, rewarding experience.

As you many recall, I’m not a fan of horror in any way.  Edgar Allan Poe is pretty much my literary limit, and only in small, rare doses.  True, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is my third-favorite movie of all time, but that’s not “real” horror, anyway.  Arkham Horror is based on the H.P. Lovecraft world of scariness, which I will likely never read, but now that it is public domain, every  second game that comes out has some sort of Cthulhu topping.  The games from Fantasy Flight Game, though, stand out positively.  I’ve played the board game version of Arkham Horror, and that was good, though, like most people, for time and space reasons (so to speak), it has been replaced by the wider Eldritch Horror.  I am interested in getting the dice game version of this world, Elder Sign (I had the chance to get it this past summer but let it slip by in favor of a more family-friendly game because I’m swell like that), even though it may be rather similar to the others in the series.  Arkham Horror The Card Game is a bit different from them in that it is a card game, in the sense you are a character doing the investigation of the dark forces trying to break into our world.  Eldritch Horror certainly has a lot of decks of cards, but it does not have the same feel, since none of those cards are “yours,” and that personal element in the card game generates a different feel in the game, which I enjoy.  It is also one of the newfangled “living card games,” which is secret code for “endless money hole.”  The base game pictured above gets you four investigators, a slew of cards (equipment, abilities, weaknesses), and three missions connected by a story.  After that, you can buy new stories, new expansions, all with new cards, ways to upgrade your character, different kinds of adventures, making the world/experience grow and continue … but, yes, you have to buy them.  But, you’ve got them, and then you can play them again and again, perhaps as different characters, even after the “secrets” of the stories are over.  It’s fine.

Remember a few moments ago when I said I wanted to get a Vital Lacerda game in 2017?  Quest: completed.  Thanks to the semi-annual sale at Noble Knight Games, and some gut-wrenching trade-ins I made days before it, I was able to get a brand new copy of The Gallerist, an intriguing game about making the best art gallery in town.  I haven’t been able to get it to the table yet, but I’m hoping my wife and I will find some time during the upcoming break to get it to the table and play.  I suspect she will win.  Though, getting it to the table may be a bit difficult, considering what is quickly becoming one of my favorite games of all-time…

Gloomhaven is a huge game: hundreds of components, dozens of characters, dozens of missions: you may think it’s your typical fantasy dungeon crawl, but it is much more than that.  It allows different paths of adventure, your characters have different life quests, different abilities, different battle goals, all of which add up to a sprawling, unique gaming adventure.  It takes a lot of table space, takes a decent amount of time to set up and take down, but once you get into this fun world, you will not want to take it down anyway.  It is a permanent campaign game with stickers and choices, but that all adds to the enjoyment of the experience.  It may be difficult to get for a while, since it was a Kickstarter game, but it should be out sometime in 2018, and it is worth it.  I’m really enjoying it; it will stay on my table for a long time to come.

Whew.  Another year has flown by.  On behalf of all of us here at Redeeming Pandora, especially Theodore Aloysius, the Polar Bear of Christmas, and Stringfellow Bartholomew, the Penguin of Presents, our special guest editors for this issue, we thank you for joining us on another wild ride.  Here’s hoping 2018 is a year of joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, faith, hope, and love for you and yours!  See you next time, friends!