Kart-astrophic Explosions

 In Which Our Hero Rambles On

This has been a really weird year for me so far. I've sold some games that I've owned for several decades (The Lord of the Rings, Risk: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Edition, and Monopoly: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Edition I had owned since they originally came out after the movies did in 2001-2003) which was both a melancholy and cathartic thing to do. I had been gifted the original trilogy and the Hobbit books for my birthday in 2000 by my father and I read the heck out of the books. I spent hours immersed in Tolkien's fantasy world and when the movies were announced, I went full on Lord of the Rings obsession. I watched the movies in the theaters, read the books again and again in preparation for each new movie coming out, and each time they were released on DVD, I had my dad buy the extended versions for me so I could watch the movies again. I went through movie posters, had a Lord of the Rings/i] email address, used variations of LOTR characters for passwords... the whole nine yards. I couldn't get enough of LOTR.

John Howe killed it with this illustration

I was even more excited when I found out that there were tie in versions of the movie with some of the games that I already knew how to play, only with [i]Lord of the Rings theming. I immediately went out and bought the Monopoly, Risk, and Trivial Pursuit trilogy editions with money that I had saved up and proudly showed them to my family. I also found a copy of the Lord of the Rings board game which was a cooperative version of the stories where each player chose a hobbit (Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin and even Fatty Bolger) to go through the story of LOTR with. I was in nerd heaven.

I cannot say how many times I pulled out Risk or Trivial Pursuit to play with my family. It got to the point where I was unstoppable in Trivial Pursuit because I had not only watched the movies multiple times over, but also had watched all of the bonus content to see how the movie was made and knew everything there was about the movies. In short, I played the games so many times and was so good at them that my family had developed a strategy for playing with me: eliminate me immediately, or refuse to play with me. My plays of Trivial Pursuit became less and less frequent, I hated playing Risk because I was the first one taken out, and I never got the cooperative Lord of the Rings game to the table because it was far too complicated for anyone else wanting to learn to play.

Time passed and after several decades (ouch) the games continued to sit on my "shelf of shame." I had thought several times to pull them out and play them for old times passed, but just never really had any desire to play another game of Risk or Monopoly. I attempted to play The Lord of the Rings with several friends a few times, even attempting to play double fisted, but never really got a good play out of the game. It was with a heavy heart that I decided to sell my games this year despite all the nostalgia they held.

After I managed to sell Risk, Monopoly and Lord of the Rings, I felt both relived and saddened at the loss of what felt like were some old friends. I knew that they were only taking up space on my shelves and selling them would open opportunities for more games, but memories that are associated with items are often the most difficult reason to get rid of our things. There is a hole now where they once sat and despite holding onto Trivial Pursuit: The Lord of the Rings Movie Trilogy Collector's Edition, I can't help but feel a sense of loss of these things. It's good to get rid of games that I no longer play, but it definitely hurts to do so. And that's not a bad thing.

Flipping the Dungeon Kart

With that wave of nostalgia and melancholy to start off this post, I thought I would transition to more happy items, especially since Wednesdays I discuss games that I'm excited about. First and foremost, we have Dungeon Kart, Kickstarted and published by Brotherwise Games. If that name sounds familiar to you, it's because they've also published the Boss Monster: The Dungeon Building Card Game and Overboss: A Boss Monster Adventure games, which have seen some moderate success (Overboss currently sits ranked 1506 on the BGG rankings and Boss Monster sits at 2437). Both games have seen some relative success and lean heavily into their video-gamey aspect while being close enough to their source material while also being legally distinct.

The kickstarter must have hit me at just the right time, but when they announced Dungeon Kart, I was really excited about the idea of playing "Mario Kart" on my tabletop with my wife. Actually, now that I think about it, we had been playing a bunch of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at the time of the campaign, so that probably spurred on my backing of the game. They had a fairly successful kickstarter for the game, and like the ones before it, I backed the "Gold Tier" selection of the game, mainly because it included additional course layouts for the game to be played on.

I love the idea of making my own courses.

Since then, the fervor for the game has died down in my mind because we are awaiting final delivery of the game to backers. They had several opportunities to add on some of their other games during the pledge manager portion of the Kickstarter, but lacking any money, and having learned from mistakes of buying things unplayed, I chose to wait on buying additional games. Tentatively the game is still on track for their August release, but with Kickstarter, anything can happen, especially with production delays, so I'm holding onto that August date loosely.

As I've had some time to think about the game since we're now in the lull before the game officially gets made and shipped to backers, its definitely been interesting comparing it to other racing games. While Dungeon Kart leans more into the arcade-style racing (especially with powers and powerups), it still falls into the "racing" subcategory of board games. I will be curious how it will play once I get my copy of it and look forward to comparing it to games like Heat and Thunder Road. I have a feeling that it will have a distinct look and feel to it, especially with the arcade nature of the game, but will feel close enough to other games that it will be familiar.

The one thing that really sets the game out for me is the possibility of designing my own courses. Due to the game having hexes for stretches of road tiles, the courses can be as long or as short as the players prefer. Want a shorter course, add fewer tiles to your course. Want a long, winding course that will take an hour and a half to play through, add in a bunch of tiles. There's even the possibility of playing a circut race with several laps, or playing a sprint from one end of the race to the other. The possibilities are endless and I'm beyond excited.

These Games are Not Alone

I'm being watched...

I don't want to have this post drag on too long, so I'll add a few more games to the end of this post to just touch on things that are coming down the pike. I recently discovered a copy of Not Alone at a local game shop that recently opened. Having been informed that the game had been difficult to find by a friend of mine, I was greatly excited to find a copy to potentially add to my collection. I would best describe the game as an asymmetric mix of Battleship and Coup where one player plays the sentient planet attempting to assimilate the other players who play as astronauts who have crash landed on said planet. The game adds in some hand management and various location cards with powers as well as player powers and planet powers to really throw a wrench in each player's plans. Towards the end of the game it becomes more of a psychological experiment (at least for me) due to the astronaut track advancing as long as no one loses all their willpower cubes. It was a really fun play and I would like to play with my regular group to see what they think of it.

I also hope to get a copy of Apiary and might have a copy by the time that this post goes live. After reading several reviews about the game and noting that it pairs both engine-building with worker placement, I think that it would be right up Sarah's alley to play and I'm hoping that I can snag a copy of it. The limited worker placement count is really intriguing to me and I look forward to trying it if and when I can get my hands on a copy of the game. Plus I know that Sarah loves to play games that are both worker-placement (she loves Everdell) and engine builders (Splendor is one of her favorite games to play if she's in the mood) so I'm hoping that this will be a nice mix of both for her to play with me.

Thinking in Finality

With all that being said, I do appreciate each and every one of your comments and thumbs on these blog posts. It means a ton to me and I again hope to promote some positive discussion and interaction here on BGG with this blog. I suspect that this Friday's post will be about my plays of Steam Time and Magic Maze so keep an eye on this space for some further breakdowns of my plays and thoughts on mechanics in the games.

What are your thoughts on the racing genre of board games in general? Have there been enough games that have been published within that genre that we should now start subdividing them (i.e. "realistic mechanics", "arcade racing", etc.)? What games have you gotten rid of that haven't been played for a long time? Are there any games that you'll hold onto for nostalgia reasons despite not playing them anymore?

Have a great rest of your week everyone and keep on playing those games!

*originally posted 21/2/2024 on BoardGameGeek*