This year's board games

Last year's new board games were Troyes (which we played once and appear to have forgotten about ever since), the Firefly game (which is fun, even though Pellinor always wins it, due to being more willing to engage in risky crime) and Mage Night. I really like Mage Night, which we play in its co-operative mode, but the downside is that it takes us a whole day to get through it. Even the shortened version of the co-operative game takes us about 5 hours, including set-up, trips to make tea, and much, much dithering and debate. This Christmas, therefore, our games buying focused on shorter co-operative games.

( Pandemic )

( Mistfall )

We also got the Blue Sun expansion for the Firefly game, which adds more jobs, more equipment, more Reavers... and more map. It turns it from a very large board to a ridiculously ENORMOUS board. Add to that all the many decks of jobs, equipment and crew, the piles of money and the many piles of tokens that you need to keep within reach of all the players, and you virtually need to build an extension just to play it. We resorted to little tapas pots of contraband and fugitives strewn in empty sectors of space, constantly moving around the avoid the Reavers.