Time for a proper update!
First, Anomia
Simple but neat concept. On their turn, players flip a card off the main stack and put it in front of them, if the symbol matches a card on someone else's stack, those matching players have to say/name something related to what it says on the other person's card (examples above), with the fastest person winning and claiming that card (and keeping it to the side); most claimed cards wins.The fun comes when a card disappears and a new match happens because of it, so you could end up with a quick succession of people yelling words or getting frustrated when their brain just completely locks up. Sometimes you'll get 'wild cards' that form matches between different symbols, which gives you even more to look out for.
The only potential problems I've found is that some of the deciders purely come down to card-flipping and revealing. Because time is so crucial, players are bound to be at a disadvantage with the card flipper's hands in the way of certain symbols from their perspective (probably better to play on a carpeted floor than a table, really). Or you might have 'bad-sport' players keeping their own cards closer to them. Also, speaking from an embarrassing experience, always, always make the winner fetch your card; don't be polite. Still, it's a party game so it's fun either way.
Dread Curse
A push-your-luck game that bears an uncanny thematic resemblance to the Pirates of the Caribbean film (the good one). Each round players draw and steal coins, except a couple are cursed Black Spots and will lose you the game if you're left holding them. Within that, you have different roles with different draw and steal rules, as well as 'cheats' so there's an element of bidding and timing for getting certain ones (e.g. Captain is great earlier on because he draws and steals more coins, but won't be so useful later if the Black Spots are around, you'll want roles that let you check what you're stealing or allow you to pass a coin to another player). And a further wrinkle is that you get 'Pirate's Code' coins, and can purchase more from Jacques the monkey, which can be used for their 'take that' abilities or kept for their coin value.
I liked it, and could see it being even more fun with 6-8 players. Won the first game comfortably despite holding both Black Spots at one point (even foregoing a chance to give one to the monkey, because I wanted to steal off him next) thanks to someone stealing one and getting to pass another. Main mistake the other players made was probably letting me be captain for two rounds near the beginning, but it was a first game, so that stuff comes with experience.
Hot Rod Creeps
A customisable racing game with some really neat Rat Fink-style artwork. You can build your own track how you see fit. Fortunately, the rulebook also provides examples for short, medium and long courses, as well as guidelines and tips.
Each player will pick a team, and all have unique characteristics thanks to their cards and abilities within their deck, referred to as your 'gas tank' for reasons I shall explain. On their turn, a player has a few options: they can draw 4 cards from their deck, they can play a card from their hand, they can flip a card from the top of their deck (i.e. blindly play a card) or they can flip a card from the 'Nitro' (provided they have at least one card in their hand). Each card has a move value and many will have extra abilities, though some will only activate if the card is played from the player's hand (labelled 'Hand Only') or if flipped off the top of the deck (Flip Only).
The tactical side of things come in when you have to consider corners or what spaces you might land on. Go too fast round corners and you'll take damage, which causes you to discard cards and potentially burn more off your tank. At the same time, players will have cards that move you a space, damage you, etc. or get upgrades from the Pit Stop that grant special abilities. And because you only have 20 cards in your deck, you have to be careful you don't run completely dry and are forced to go back to the previous Pit Stop (the only places you can 'refuel').
I was worried that it would be too much like an overelaborate Munchkin, and though that element does come in right towards the end of the race, there's a lot more decision-making and tactical play going on even before that. I enjoyed my first game, despite being screwed over royally by the other players. At one point, I pulled ahead by jumping the Flaming Ring of Fire and shark tank and drafting ahead of the other players because they were all lined up (if you ever land on the same space as another player, you 'draft' forward until their is a free one) only for them to use a card that sent me back the same way, onto the shark tank (damage, lose upgrades!) and then onto the Flaming Ring of Fire (more hurt!). You can probably guess I didn't win that one... Still enjoyed it though!
Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game
The actual components are soooo good.
This was the big one, the game my friend had been excited about for months, a game that topped the BoardGameGeek hotness for a while and completely sold out in a few hours at GenCon.
People familiar with video games would probably look at the zombie theme and think, "Really? Pretty sick of that by now." Exept this is not a mindless killathon; this is far closer to The Walking Dead in tone and approach. The zombies are ever-present, providing the clear danger only exacerbated by the wintry climate, but this is a game about player interaction, a heavy dose of emergent story-telling/roleplay and a fair amount of luck (or mitigation, thereof).
See, this is not a fully co-operative game, but it is not a fully competitive one either. Allow me to explain...
At the start of the game, players will be dealt a secret objective that has two parts; both of which need to be completed to win. A 'standard' one will always require that the main objective be completed (the game comes with 10 various scenarios) but will have an additional part that represents a frame of mind/personal demon. It might be that they are a Junkie, who wants to keep all the medicine to themselves, a Masochist who wants to see their survivors get hurt, or perhaps they want particular items to build a Zombie-Killing Robot (yes, really). The unique objectives tend to sit at odds with completing the main objective (people are going to get hurt and need medicine that the junkie might be withholding, the masochist might take life-threatening risks, or the robot requires weapons and parts that might be useful elsewhere) so players have to strike a delicate balance between helping the group and pursuing their own selfish agenda.
But sitting even more at odds with those objectives are those of a Betrayer. For them to win, the group's morale must drop to 0 (ends the game) while they have their own unique objective completed which could be something dastardly, or just to have more followers than everyone else (for building a cult)
When shuffling and dealing out the secret objectives, a Betrayer one is mixed in as well. If I recall correctly, it's two 'regular' objective cards per player, but replace one of those with a Betrayal card; which means there might not be a Betrayer in there at all. Because players still need to play selfishly to win, it can be tricky to detect a traitor in your midst or someone pursuing their own goal. And chances are, players will want to try and detect the betrayer and vote to exile them (kicking them from the colony and giving them a new special 'exiled' objective) without accusing the wrong person.
Gameplay itself proceeds in rounds. A crisis for the round is revealed, which will require players to contribute a certain number of cards (scales to number of players) of a certain type (fuel, medicine, etc.) to avoid suffering the negative consequences. This will force players out of the colony (their home) and into the surrounding areas (library, grocery store, police station, etc.) in order to search for supplies if not already doing so for their secret objectives. On top of that, anyone at the colony will need feeding at the end of each round (people outside scavenge for themselves), making food another requirement. So, already, players have an overarching main objective as well as round-to-round problems to overcome before they even get to the chaos of their turns. Also bearing in mind that a betrayer could pick the perfect moment to play the wrong type of card into a crisis (since all are put in face-down and shuffled before revealing) and cause it to fail.
After being dealt a pick of four, players choose two survivors to start with. All of them are somewhat fleshed-out, unique characters with varying special abilities related to their former profession/role, plus influence, search and attack values. The player has 'action dice' equal to the number of survivors they control plus one, which are rolled at the start of each round and will govern what actions a player can perform. If survivors need die values of 4+ for searching, they won't be any good if you roll 1s, 2s and 3s; though all is not lost as some cards allow you to reroll or you can eat some of the colony's food to raise your own die value (and earn the suspicion of other players).
The big threat comes that whenever you move or attack a zombie, you roll the exposure die. This is a d12 where 6 sides are blank, 3 sides are wounds (takes 3 to kill a survivor), 2 are frostbite (counts as a wound and generates a new one each new turn for that player) and one side... well, one side is marked with a tooth. That means zombie bite aka. instant death, with the added risk that if you share or moved to a location with other survivors, you might spread the infection and cause a massive chain of death. In a chain of 3 or more, a player can choose to die and stop the spread or roll the exposure die again: a blank means they're safe, but anything else means they die and the spread continues.
So, yes, unless you have special weapons for attacking, or spend a fuel when you move, there is a 1/12 chance that your survivor will die ("They don't call it a die for nothing!") and take others with them. It creates a great deal of tension and some horrifying moments when everything goes tits up. And as a 'regular' player, your big focus comes down to morale, since you can't let that reach zero. Morale can be raised by contributing extra cards for a crisis or via certain unique events (both rare occurences) but it takes a hit whenever someone dies, there's not enough food at the colony and usually when a crisis fails. It will usually start around 5-6, so there's not a great deal of room for error.
Finally, and there are other minor details I'm missing, the 'Crossroads' mechanic is a really cool feature. On a player's turn, the person to their right will draw a Crossroads card and check the trigger condition text on the top. It could be something as simple as 'If a survivor the player controls is at the colony...' or something more specific like 'If the active player moves without spending a fuel...' or even 'If a male and female survivor share the same non-colony location...' or regarding one survivor in particular. If the condition is met, gameplay is stopped and a bit of story/flavour text is read out, which then results in a choice for the active player or the group as a whole. Usually, it'll be take a risk/do nothing, but sometimes it's where something really bad has happened and the choice is between suffering the clear penalty or risking things so success means it's avoided (or lessened) and failure will make things much, much worse.
I had a game go completely wrong because one of my survivors, a former truck driver, suffered a heart attack, and trying to save him would have put two more lives at risk. It led to a ruined turn after he died and then a bad exposure die roll wiped out three more survivors (now known as 'the turn from hell').
I've really enjoyed the games I've played so far, even though I've won none of them. It's definitely more about theme, role-playing and storytelling over strategic and tactical gameplay (not to say the mechanics aren't solid enough to support that to a certain extent), simply because the big element of luck will drastically alter outcomes, so it takes a particular group and mindset to really get the most from the game.
So, as I suspected might happen, Firefly Online got pushed back to next year (but for unexpected great reasons). Like last year on the PXOD site picks, my GOTY so far is likely to be of the tabletop variety. At the moment there's: - Dead of Winter - Heroes Wanted - A Study In Emerald (2013 release though) Dead of Winter is a really solid game. Lots of elements of roleplaying but backed up by easy-to-grasp and solid mechanics. Heroes Wanted is a very smart hex-combat game involving hand management instead of dice rolls, and with a great z-list superhero theme. Best part might be combining separate halves to create the heroes and the villain which determines passive abilities, character type and superpower.