Why, You 'Cheeky Monkey'—A Double Take Review

We know how much you all love to hear the thoughts we both have on games, so here we go with another Double-Take Review! This week's lucky contestant is Reiner Knizia's Cheeky Monkey, from Eagle and Gryphon Games.

Components—

• 1 very adorable and VERY soft plush monkey (who is a double leg amputee and has had his abdominal cavity hollowed out in some sort of freak accident). This acts as the bag, from which you'll be drawing chips.
• 52 white plastic poker chip tokens
• 1 sheet of animal stickers, which you'll place on those poker chips.
• 7 bonus tiles, which are large cardboard disks with animals (and the number of bonus VPs they're worth) on one side, and facts about the animal and its habitat on the other.

Gameplay—Players simply take turns pulling tokens out of the abdominal cavity of the plush monkey, and placing the tokens in front of them. If a player draws a token that matches the top animal of any player's stack, they get to capture that token as well and place it in front of them. If they draw a duplicate to one they've already pulled that turn, they lose everything they've gained that turn. If they decide to stop after drawing any number of tokens, they keep those tokens and place them in a single stack in any order they choose. Then play continues to the next player.

Going Cheeky—If a player draws a Monkey token, they can choose to "go cheeky" and take the topmost token of any player's stack—exchanging the Monkey token for the chosen one.

The game is over when the last token has been drawn and stacked. The tokens are sorted by type, and each bonus token is awarded to the player with the most tokens of that type. Each regular token is worth 1 point, and the bonus tokens are worth their face value. The scores are totaled up and the highest score wins.

The rules have several scaled-down variations to help younger players learn and play the game—such as using no bonus tokens, or not being able to go cheeky. This is a nice way to get younger kids into the game, and then gradually introduce a new rule or two in subsequent games. (And there will be subsequent games...)

Jeremiah—When the package containing this game arrived and I pulled it out, my boys immediately wanted to play! The monkey "container" is cute and soft and looks great sitting on the shelf in my nerd room.

Firestone—That's exactly what happened here, too. "Dad! Dad! What is that? It's a GAME?! Can we play?"

Jeremiah—The downside of the components is the stickers! I was totally okay with having to put the animal stickers on the tokens; the problem was they didn't come off of the paper cleanly or easily. So it took forever trying to peel the perfect circle of paper off of the back of the stickers.

Firestone—I have never felt as uncoordinated as when I tried getting those stickers off the sheet. It was like Andre the Giant trying to thread a needle while wearing mittens... But once I got the stickers off, they went on great, and I haven't had any problems with them peeling.

Jeremiah—The game is pretty fun and has lots of teachable moments for younger kids. My youngest often gets very upset when someone takes his favorite animal from the top of his stack (which is often whatever animal is on the top of his stack!). So there are lots of "being gracious" and "good sport" talks that happen around that aspect of the game. Despite that, my boys both LOVE the game and think it's really fun.

Firestone—My teachable moments involve learning when to press your luck, and when not to. "Son, you have all but one of the animals already on this turn. The chances of you drawing an elephant are slim..." He, of course, draws an elephant and I realize they haven't learned A THING!

Jeremiah—The length of the game makes it the perfect kids filler game. Or the "we don't have time to setup/play anything else right now" game, but they're not getting cheated out of playing a great game. It just happens to be shorter, for those nights when bedtime is eminent.

Firestone—We (try to) have Family Game Night every Monday, but sometimes the evening gets away from us and we realize it's nearly bedtime. Cheeky Monkey is the perfect length for a quick game—though if the kids are really pressing their luck, sometimes the game can get "stuck" for a little while.

This game gets a solid 7 from me—a great game that the kids love to play. The monkey bag gets a perfect 10, though. Overproduced, unnecessary, and completely wonderful.

Jeremiah - It may be hard to think that a game this simple has even simpler rules, but those scaled down rules made it super easy to teach my 4-year old the game. I told them when we started that there were other rules and when we finished the first game they immediately wanted to know the rest of the rules. When I explained the "Going Cheeky" rule, they both grinned ear-to-ear and my 4-year old exclaimed, "If I get a monkey, I'm going to go cheeky!"

I'm giving it a bump up to a 7.5—my boys really like this one...a lot. It's totally a kids game that will never see the light of day with my gaming friends. And in the category of inexplicably disfigured but amazingly cute and cuddly plush animal containers, it scores an 11!

We'd like to thank Gryphon Games for providing a review copy of Cheeky Monkey, and you for reading! We would LOVE it if you liked us on FaceBook, and followed us on Twitter!

Odin's Ravens 2nd Edition—Bonus Kickstarter Weekly

Today we have a bonus Kickstarter campaign—it's only got 15 days to go, so we thought we'd slip it in ASAP. It's for a 2nd edition of the classic 2-player racing game Odin's Ravens. For years this was a part of the Kosmos line of great 2-player games, but it's been out of print for a while now. Works Ltd. has acquired the rights and they're printing a new version—with some fairly significant rules changes from the original. Maybe the biggest change is that rather than racing three times, you're doing one race—down one side of the cards, and back up the other side. This eliminates keeping track of points race over race, and it looks like there will be no Magic Way at all now. I (Firestone) was never a huge fan of the Magic Way anyway (seemed kinda clunky and wonky), so that's one thing that seems to be an improvement.

Over on Boardgamegeek, there's some "controversy" regarding the graphic choices Works Ltd. has made for this edition. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments, and in the meantime, check out the campaign on Kickstarter. You can watch a brief overview of the rules in the video below. Thanks for reading!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PVjrp02Yk2I]

More Descent Coming From Fantasy Flight Games

The "when-do-they-sleep?" game company Fantasy Flight announced a new expansion for their hit dungeon crawler Descent: Journeys in the Dark. Labyrinth Of Ruin is "set in a previously unexplored region of Terrinoth, Labyrinth of Ruin takes players on a riveting journey to the broken remains of a forgotten city. Throughout the many quests included in this expansion, heroes will enlist the aid of unique allies in their mission to stop the evil overlord." The game includes 19 quests, designed to be played as a campaign, but you can play them as standalone quests, too. There are also new heroes, monsters, and an Overlord deck—plus new Travel Event cards, Condition cards, Shop Item cards, and two green power dice.

Wizard's Brew—Kickstarter Weekly

This week's featured game is actually a reboot of an older one: Das Amulett, an out-of-print 2001 game from designers Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weissblum. It was on the short list for Spiel des Jahres that year, but lost out to Carcassonne. Gryphon and Eagle Games have launched a Kickstarter for Wizard's Brew, a new version of Das Amulett, with a few small differences and improvements. They passed their $10,000 goal just this morning, so it will be funded in 18 days—and this will be a limited edition that will include a small expansion and promos only available through the Kickstarter campaign. Some of the stretch goals include component upgrades and even more expansion spell cards. The game looks to combine resource management, auctions, and player interaction into a meaty filler that plays in around an hour. Check out the campaign for yourself, and as always, thanks for reading!

Anybody Want a Peanut? An Interview with Game Salute's Dan Yarrington

A few weeks ago, out of nowhere, Game Salute announced that they had secured the game license to the cult classic The Princess Bride. Well, this got us all kinds of giddy, so we immediately fired an email off to Dan Yarrington, President and CEO of Game Salute and the mastermind behind the project. He graciously agreed to sit down and answer a few of questions. Or maybe he was standing—we don't really know. Dan, thanks so much for taking some time to share with us. Before we talk about The Princess Bride game (which is so exciting!), can you share with our readers a little bit of the Game Salute story?

Game Salute started back in 2009 with the mission of “Providing tools and services to make the games industry a better place,” and we continue with that goal today. We’ve expanded quite a bit over the years and we now work with over 60 independent game studios to bring awesome tabletop games to market and support the industry as a whole. We’ve grown from just me back in the beginning to 18 employees and a ton of great Ambassadors, hundreds of Select Stores, and over 100 titles.

It’s safe to say that The Princess Bride is probably one of the most quoted and beloved movies of a generation. Tell us about the process of securing the licensing for the game, and how excited were you to close the deal?

I’m a HUGE fan of Princess Bride—yes, one of those annoying fans who can quote the entire movie from memory—so it was one of the first licenses we looked at picking up, and I’m happy to announce it’s the first licensed property that we’re bringing to market. We approached the fine folks in charge of the license and explained our vision for the game series and they loved it. We’re aiming to produce a series of games in the light- to medium-weight range that matches the fun and flavor of the movie. We’re super excited to be working on this classic license and dedicated to doing it justice with these games.

The Princess Bride will be a Storybuilding game. Can you tell us exactly what a Storybuilding game is?

The concept of the Storybuilding Game™ is that each mini or micro game is a part of the overall play experience. You can customize your gaming experience by selecting game “scenes” by length of play, complexity, style of play, and recommended ages. Then you shuffle those scenes up, deal out a number based on how long you’d like to play, and then play, gaining points from each scene you win. It’s sort of a choose-your-own-adventure style of play so that gaming groups and families can play the games they want.

It sounds like The Princess Bride will be a vast gameplay experience, covering many different genres of games, and the different themes of the movie itself. Will the initial board game be a core game and then be followed by expansions, or will everything be packed into one huge box?

The core Princess Bride The Board Game box will include several scenes so you can play those right out of the box. Additional releases will all be standalone scenes that you can either combine with previous releases or play by themselves. Prepare to Die! is a good example of a standalone game that you can drop into the overall board game experience.

What are your five favorite games—and what do you like about them?

Wow, that’s a tough one. I’d be here all day if I go into that one—seriously—just listen to any podcast I’m on. ;) The favorite parts of games for me are quick, fun, innovative games. I have a tendency toward co-operative games and I like games with adventurous themes. I also enjoy smooth, elegant, less-thematic games, but I’d always rather build a game from the ground-up based on theme.

Game Salute through Springboard has had great success with funding titles through Kickstarter; will a Princess Bride campaign be showing up over on Kickstarter soon?

Given the nature of the project, and the scope of Springboard as a system that goes beyond any one crowd-funding platform, we will have some sort of Springboard campaign for the game. This will provide a great opportunity for fans to help build the Princess Bride game line into something bigger than just one title. The success of the line is directly dependent on the fans, so we really want to give them an opportunity to interact.

What advice would you give an aspiring designer who is considering launching a campaign on Kickstarter?

Plan, plan, and then plan. Set aside a budget so that you can spend the money to make your campaign optimally successful. Don’t try to do it on your own.

Gaming has obviously become a business for you. How do you keep it fun at the same time?

I work with games! :) Seriously, I play games pretty regularly and I still love them, but I also love the game of business, so that’s a separate element of fun (and challenge) each day. The official announcement about the Princess Bride Board game said it will hit shelves in 2013. How soon can we expect to see it in our favorite local game store?

We’ll have advanced preview copies of the initial releases at conventions this summer and then the first products should be out in the fall in time for Christmas.

There was also mention that Game Salute has secured licensing for accessories; does that mean we’ll see a plush R.O.U.S? or 6 fingered gloves? Or is it strictly a gaming accessory license?

We just focus on tabletop games, so mostly gaming accessories. Many of these will be based on requests from individual fans, so if you have something you’d like to request, contact us on Twitter @GameSalute or email me at Dan@GameSalute.com.

As if the Princess Bride announcement wasn’t big enough, are there any other awesome projects from Game Salute that we can be on the lookout for in 2013?

We have a lot of exciting titles and programs we’re launching this year, so stay tuned to GameSalute.com, our Facebook page, and our Twitter feed for all the latest and greatest from Game Salute :)

And now for the questions that only require a single word or phrase as a response!

Favorite Princess Bride character?

Fezzik

Favorite Indiana Jones film?

Last Crusade

Professor X or Magneto?

Professor X

Least favorite berry?

Boysen

Favorite season?

Autumn

Favorite Firefly character?

Mal

Kerflip!—A Double-Take Review

One of our favorite things in the world happened a few weeks ago. We were sent two, count them TWO, copies of a game (one for each of us) to review. And better yet, it turns out it was a pretty fun one. Kerflip! dares to walk into the realm of games dominated by the likes of Scrabble (the old cardboard-and-wood version of Words with Friends) and Boggle. That's like someone trying to make a trading and expansion game that's better than Settlers... Okay, maybe it's not that daring a course of action. Anyway, the rules and gameplay of Kerflip! are pretty simple, and as follows.

The game comes with a bunch of letter tiles in a bag, a small deck of bonus cards, a nifty playing board, and one hourglass timer. The tiles have two sides, one that is orange, and another that is white.

There are no "player turns"; everyone plays a round at the same time. And a round looks like this.

Depending on how many players are in the game (2-4), players remove—without looking—a certain amount of letter tiles from the bag, and on the count of three drop them on the board. Once dropped, players quickly flip the orange tiles over to the white side and then shout out a word that the letters make. Being quick here is a big advantage, as you'll see in a minute. If someone is taking way too long to blurt out a word, any player can flip the timer over and put the pressure on them. If they don't say something, then they pay the ultimate penalty: not scoring anything that round.

Once players have all shouted, or at least spoken a word (shouting isn't always required) each player in shouting order arranges the tiles to spell their word, and then scores it. Once it has been used, it is flipped from white to orange. Then the next player spells their word, scores it, and flips any white tiles to orange. (Orange tiles don't get flipped again.) And so on.

It's important to be so quick because when you score a word, you get 10 points for using tiles that are still white-side-up. Once they've been flipped to the orange side they are only worth 5 points. Also printed on the white side of specific tiles is a number. If you are the first to use that letter, you will be handed a number of bonus cards equal to the number on that tile—these cards range in value from 0 to 20 points. Once that tile is flipped the number goes away and subsequent users of that letter do not receive the bonus cards. These bonus cards, which aren't allowed to be seen (even by the recipient), give extra points for final scoring.

Once everyone has spelled, scored, and flipped their letters, the board is cleared by simply brushing used tiles to pits on either side of the board next to where the bonus cards are held, where they drop below the playing surface. Play continues in these rounds until any player can no longer pull their allotted amount of tiles to begin a round.

There is also one super awesome tile that gives your either 25 or 50 points for being the first person to shout a word on the round that it is thrown on the board. You get the amount of points that is shown when it drops. (One side is worth 25, the other 50; it's that simple.)

After the game ends, players add their points to the bonuses on the cards they gathered during the game and whomever has the most points wins. Once you're done, you lift the board (which stays inside the bottom half of the box) up and shake all the tiles into the unseen collection cup, which then pours them neatly back into the bag.

Jeremiah—Games like this SHOULD be fun, light-hearted, party game experiences. And for the most part they are—although I have some friends you just don't want to play word games with. You will be destroyed. But I will proceed as if I was not going to play with "those people."

Firestone—I stopped playing word games a long time ago—especially play-by-email ones like Words With Friends. "Hmmm...Steve can barely keep his shoes tied, but somehow he knows the word 'fuliginous.' I smell a cheater..." This is one I'll definitely play, though; the speed factor levels the playing field a bit.

Jeremiah—I thought the components were thought out, and well done. It's the small things, like the tiles actually flip without turning the letters upside down so you don't have to flip and spin to be able to read them. And let's be honest: The board/cleanup mechanism is pretty ingenious! The worst part about games that have tiles is cleaning up the tiles. Well done!

Firestone—Yeah, this gains a full point for thinking through the pain-in-the-butt aspect of tile games: cleaning up. They just said, "What if we made it not awful?" and then made it super easy.

Jeremiah—There's so much FLIPPING. The down side to this game is that I felt like we did more housekeeping than actual playing. Counting tiles without looking, dropping, flipping, shouting, spelling, flipping, flipping again, flipping some more, score keeping, handing out cards, sweeping away tiles. Thankfully, there's a fun game in the midst of all that busy work.

Firestone—To be fair, Jeremiah, the word flip is right there in the title... ;) I didn't mind the flipping so much. The "gamer" in me isn't too fond of the bonus cards, since they are of varying points, but I totally understand why they help in a casual game like this—especially if you're playing with people of varying abilities.

Jeremiah—Like I said earlier, I really thought the components were well done. I did however think the timer was a bit too much. We have much more effective means and steeper penalties to get someone's butt in gear (which may or may not include the threat of dismemberment—just sayin'...). On one occasion I didn't even remove the timer from the box.

Firestone—We haven't used the timer at all. I prefer tasers...

Jeremiah—It's an awesome casual family game. It literally will take about 5 minutes to learn and/or teach everyone, from the veteran gamer, to folks who are just realizing there's a game called "Risk."

Firestone—It's not the sort of game I'm going to play with my regular game group. But this is perfect for my wife and I to play with our oldest—who's 8. He's already a terrific reader, but this helps him work on speed and spelling and accuracy. He just wants to play round after round after round of it. And if that's not a great endorsement, I don't know what is.

Final Thoughts and Rating:

Jeremiah—Overall I've enjoyed the times I've played the game. It's a really quick filler and it can be fun to watch folks get flustered trying to make words with letters that haven't been used already. My overall rating is 7.5. My mad-scientist-like-components rating is a perfect 10!

Firestone—Anything that creatively challenges my kids gets a good score from me. And the fact that he asks to get creatively challenged in this way is even better. This is a solid 8 from me—with a Thanks-For-Thinking-Through-Common-Problems rating of 10.

We'd like to thank Creative Foundry Games for providing a review copy of Kerflip! and you for reading.

Fantasy Flight Announces a Steampunk Reboot of Borderlands!

Late Friday afternoon, Fantasy Flight announced their sequel to the classic game Borderlands is finally ready to go. Apparently the old game combines the heavy negotiation of Diplomacy with a resource market that inspired Settlers Of Catan. The new game is called Gearworld: The Borderlands, and it's got the speampunkiest cover you've ever seen.

From the announcement: "Fantasy Flight Games is excited to announce Gearworld: The Borderlands, a game of negotiation, conquest, and construction for two to four players! Players compete to gain the favor of the Sky People for their tribe of scavengers in a post apocalyptic landscape. Based on the classic board game Borderlands designed by Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge and Peter Olotka, Gearworld: The Borderlands has streamlined the original rules and re-imagined the game’s setting while retaining its predecessor’s spirit and core mechanics.

The scavenging tribes of the Borderlands have mined the land for generations, are adept at extracting scrap from ruins, and have managed to raise horses in the wastes. Each resource is essential to building your tribe’s strength and, eventually, the skyworks. Resource Tokens represent sites where these valuable raw materials can be produced. Controlling as many of these areas as possible is one step to survival in the Borderlands, but it is only the first.

There are many ways to gain the materials you need, and you may have to rely on your competition to get all the resources you require. Trading among the tribes is certainly not unheard of, and players can negotiate for resources to gain an edge. Take care to not be too generous with your exchanges, however, as your opponents will also stand to profit.

If diplomacy isn’t your tribe’s strong suit, then you can always take what you want by brute force. Battling an enemy is a game of numbers, and if you can overwhelm your opponent with weapons, steamboats, horses, or ships, you can take what you need. If you’re too aggressive, you may make some enemies in the Borderlands, and your opponents can team up against your tribe. Combine your strength to take down a tribe that is close to building all of its skyworks, or reinforce a weaker neighbor to cause problems for an aggressive rival. Forge and break alliances to get ahead in both battles and bartering. In the end, all that matters is the survival of your tribe.

While building the skyworks is the end goal, each tribe must use its resources wisely in order to reinforce its strength and enhance its ability to transport goods. Combining resources into weapons, bridges, ships, and riverboats while conserving enough to build skyworks is the delicate balancing act that each tribe must undertake.

In order to build any developments, including the skyworks, all of the materials required for its construction must be in the same space, so the effective transportation of resources is essential to your success. Each tribe must produce, trade, or steal the materials they need to build new developments and protect what is theirs, but all the resources in the Borderlands will do them no good if they’re spread all over the map.

Ships, steamboats, and horses are used to strategically transport goods around the Borderlands, and can also add to your strength in battle. Bridges are a quick and inexpensive way to connect the islands of Claw, Ironside, and Locke to the main landmass of Haestus, potentially opening up new avenues for resources. Invest in developing Weapons to reinforce your military might; they’ll be extremely valuable when your tribe comes under attack. Take care when building, though. Skyworks are expensive to create and you don’t want to spread your already meager resources too thin.

Acquire resources by conquering your fellow scavengers, carefully defending your own lands, and the clever use of trade and diplomacy to gain an edge."

They're saying it'll be out in the 2nd quarter of this year. I (Firestone) never had a chance to play this game, so I'm looking forward to trying it out. Check back for more updates. Thanks so much for reading, and make sure you "Like" us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

What You Missed...

It's been a busy week for us here at TOG! Here's a quick look at what you missed—or what you may want to take a look at again! We took a quick look at some news about the newest Kingdom Builder Expansion.

Z-Man Games also released information regarding reprints of Carcassonne, and the new edition of Pandemic.

Firestone reviewed the new and very cool board/gear game Tzolk'in.

And don't forget the news about a new Quarriors expsansion!

We're still getting warmed up! Thursday we unveiled our awards for the Best Games of 2012!

And today's Kickstarter Weekly featured Dragon Whisperer, a very cool trick-taking card game.

Believe it or not, we've got another week's worth of excitement coming on Monday that is just as awesome as this week! So check back in, tell your friends about us, and as always...don't forget to like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter!

Thanks so much for reading and have a great weekend!

Dragon Whisperer—Kickstarter Weekly

Thanks to our Top 10 Games of 2012 post yesterday, we bumped the Kickstarter Weekly to today. This one is Dragon Whisperer, a game from Albino Dragon Games and the famous designer Richard Borg—whose credits include Memoir '44, Liar's Dice, and RoboRally. This is a fantasy themed trick-taking game for 3-6 players. I checked out the rules, and it looks interesting: It seems to follow fairly standard trick-taking rules, but depending on the numbered card you play, you'll get to take different, extra actions and benefits. It launched Wednesday, and they've already hit their goal! The campaign is no-frills: 25 bucks gets you the game. My (Firestone) game group really likes trick-taking games, so I'm definitely looking forward to trying this one. Head on over to their Kickstarter page and check out the campaign for yourself!

The Best Board Games of 2012!

Thanks for joining us for Post #200 here at Theology Of Games. In the Better Late Than Never category: Here they are—our picks for the best games of 2012! Now, realize that even though we both have a board game group that meets weekly, there are some games we just didn't get a chance to play. So games such as Mage Wars and Snowdonia and Myrmes just didn't get played. They might have made the list, and I'm sure we'll play those at some point. You'll just have to wait for the review. :) We also went off of the release dates as seen on each game's page on Boardgamegeek. There are a number of games I was sure came out this year, but I was surprised to see they were actually released earlier (Mage Knight, King of Tokyo, Kaispeicher). So without further ado... 10. Mice & Mystics—It's essentially a dungeon crawler. You go through rooms, you fight swarms of baddies, you have weapons and armor and special powers, you roll dice, and you're following a loose sort of plot. My group is eight missions into the campaign and we're having great fun. One big reason it doesn't rate higher is that once I've played through the campaign, I'll likely never play the base game again. (Or at least until the expansion comes out.)

9. Lords Of Waterdeep—This is a worker placement game with a thick veneer of fantasy to it. There's a fair bit of mess-with-your-neighbor-ness to it, but I was okay with it.

8. Smash Up—A card-battling, shuffle-building game, featuring different factions that you can combine to smash up one of several bases on the table. Light rules, cool cards, and fun faction combos. Check out our review here.

7. Plato 3000—This was a surprisingly fun little filler! It's basically rummy with special powers—if you can snag a copy, you should do so! You can read the review here.

6. Gauntlet Of Fools—This is another filler that grabbed our attention. You grab your hapless hero and head into the dungeon, where you'll almost certainly die. Sounds fun, right?! Well it really, really is. Read our detailed thoughts on it here.

5. Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game—The minis are way cool. The gameplay is fast and fun. AND IT'S STAR WARS! This is the kind of game I expect to sink a ton of cash into, but the looks on my kids' faces when we play makes it worth it. Here's our review of this terrific game.

4. Android: Netrunner—The first of two LCGs on the list is a remake of the classic CCG from the 90s. This reboot is excellent. The key is the asymmetrical play—with one playing the powerful corporation and the other playing the plucky, tricky hacker. This has so much potential for interesting expansions...I can hear my wallet screaming now... Here's our review.

3. Star Wars Card Game—This is the start of something really great; the base set is already climbing to the top of our lists, and they haven't yet expanded it for 4 players. With the unique Edge Battle mechanic, paired up with some pretty awesome card artwork, the sky is the limit for this LCG. We're really looking forward to what Fantasy Flight has in store. In the meantime, check out Jeremiah's review.

2. Tzolk'in—I can't remember the last time I was this enamored with a game. Rather than gush over it here, I'll just point you to my review.

1. The Resistance: Avalon—What can we say about this game that we haven't already? The Resistance is one of our favorite titles of all time, and Avalon adds just enough variance and depth to keep us coming back for more back-stabbing, lying, skulduggery and intrigue. The new/optional roles have increased re-playability even more. Read our review here; then go get the game. Now. What are you waiting for?!

So what did you think were the best games of last year? Let us know in the comments, and make sure you "Like" us on Facebook. And over on Twitter too!