I’ll play brave and throw a guess: my game of the year this year will be San Juan. So far I’ve played 30 games of it (plus dozens of games with Jim’s San Juan, which is fun now the AI is harder to beat), which is a lot! Most of the play is in BSW, where the game just whizzes by in six minutes or so, particularly as a two-player game. It’s a big candidate for a 10 rating, too — it’s just always so much fun.
I also think there’s really a lot of skill involved. Yesterday I played a guy who had played over 1200 games at BSW. He beat me 5-2 in our seven matches. Most of the time he had just the cards he needed and played them a lot faster than I did. He definitely knew what he was doing. It took me really good play to beat him. His victory percentage was 49%, though, which isn’t that good if he has played mostly two-player… But perhaps he has a history of multiplayer games and has later moved to two-player games.
One response to “My game of the year”
Yup, San Juan is one of the few elite 10’s on my list. My game group played it so many times (always as the closer) that it go very stressful, we were all so skilled in it and competitive.
And nothing packs more strategy and action into such a short amount of time. We need more games like this — fast paced, sense of progress, long-term strategy, gazillion of ways to win….love it.