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2010 in Games | Illuminating Games
https://illuminatinggames.wordpress.com/2010-in-games
Chris' thought, essays, and rants on the world of gaming. I haven’t done a whole lot of blogging this year, but I can at least give you a year in review. Chris’ Game of the Year High Frontier. Chris’ Wargame of the Year Battle Above the Clouds. It was a great year for wargames, with no fewer than three game-of-the-year-worthy games (this, Normandy ‘44, and Bataan! On to the rest …. Race for the Galaxy: The Brink of War. This is a light 2-player game in the card-playing/risk management mold of Lost Cities...
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2009 in Games | Illuminating Games
https://illuminatinggames.wordpress.com/2009-in-review
Chris' thought, essays, and rants on the world of gaming. Since I never did a 2008 Year in Review, a couple of those games have snuck in. Game of the Year: Thunderstone. The Year of Great Expansions. It seemed like there were a lot of great expansions out this year: Dominion had Dominion: Intrigue. Pandemic had On The Brink. Race for the Galaxy had Rebel vs. Imperium. Keltis had Neue Wege, Neue Ziele, alea had their Treasure Chest, Galaxy Trucker had the Big Expansion. All of the above? Like Agricola and...
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Droids, Midichlorians, and Orcs: Dealing with problematic canon | Illuminating Games
https://illuminatinggames.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/droids-midichlorians-and-orcs-dealing-with-problematic-canon
Chris' thought, essays, and rants on the world of gaming. Droids, Midichlorians, and Orcs: Dealing with problematic canon. March 17, 2015. I ran into this in my Star Wars: Age of Rebellion game. I had a player who had chosen a droid PC with Droid Rights as her motivation. This is cool because it’s a theme the movies raise but don’t explore: droids obviously have some degree of sentience, but are treated as property, which seems wrong. And what possible narrative purpose could it serve to do so? Then thro...
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2003 in Games | Illuminating Games
https://illuminatinggames.wordpress.com/best-and-worst-of-2003
Chris' thought, essays, and rants on the world of gaming. So here you go … my picks for the best and worst in games for 2003. As usual, you can add comments througout if you wish. 10 – Attika. 9 – Eiszeit. 8211; Another game that is not quite there as a whole, but is still successful in a lot of ways. Presents the players with lots of interesting choices, and the game has more subtlety than it appears on first inspection. The only real flaw is that it’s a bit too long for a comparatively co...8211; A nea...
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Star Wars: Age of Rebellion – A Deep Dive on Dice Probabilities | Illuminating Games
https://illuminatinggames.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/star-wars-age-of-rebellion-a-deep-dive-on-dice-probabilities
Chris' thought, essays, and rants on the world of gaming. Star Wars: Age of Rebellion A Deep Dive on Dice Probabilities. September 19, 2014. A little while ago, I gave Star Wars: Edge of the Empire a reasonably positive review. The dice in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, image courtesy FFG. Click for product page. It didn’t feel like it. The dice pool is extremely flexible and it can generate a huge range of probability curves. So I focused on a just few questions: how common are critical successes? IR...
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2006 in Games | Illuminating Games
https://illuminatinggames.wordpress.com/2006-in-games
Chris' thought, essays, and rants on the world of gaming. In the middle ground, the area of the disposable game that you play a few times and enjoy and then sell or trade away, 2006 was a good year. There were quite a few games worth playing. Top “German-style” Games. Chris’ top picks for 2006. 5 Khet: Eye of Horus. Usually I don’t put expansions on this list, but I’ll make an exception here. Deflexion made last year’s list. 2 Um Krone ind Kragen (To Court the King): Honestly, Um Krone und Kragen is not ...
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Star Wars: Edge of the Empire | Illuminating Games
https://illuminatinggames.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/star-wars-edge-of-the-empire
Chris' thought, essays, and rants on the world of gaming. Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. September 10, 2013. Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. Star Wars presents significant obstacles to being adapted as a roleplaying game. I wrote a piece on GUMSHOE a couple years ago. These are the core questions that a Star Wars RPG has to wrestle with and find answers to in 2013: what, exactly, is Star Wars? And can we get everyone at the table to more or less agree on an answer? The section on GMing the game is also fr...
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2004 in Games | Illuminating Games
https://illuminatinggames.wordpress.com/2004-in-review
Chris' thought, essays, and rants on the world of gaming. And the obligatory “worst of the year” section is at the end. On with the lists …. Special Mention –. Shadow of the Emperor. 8211; Another wonderful Knizia game that causes you to ask “how can this possibly work? Choke of the Year Award –. For its serious problems with mid-game power plants that are too expensive and the ridiculous end-of-game resource exhaustion problem;. Best Bang for the Buck –. Best Theme of the Year –. Best Remake –. Was an a...
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Chris Farrell | Illuminating Games
https://illuminatinggames.wordpress.com/author/cfarrell317
Chris' thought, essays, and rants on the world of gaming. Author Archives: Chris Farrell. May 13, 2016. So, I haven’t been blogging much of late. A factor is certainly that for the past few years, there just hasn’t been much going on in my traditional bailiwick of what I think of as classical hobbyist boardgames to inspire me to write. If you want to know my best gaming experience of recent times, that’s the Dracula Dossier. By a long shot. Mechanically subtle or flashy it’s a simple module, designed ele...
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