I’ve been looking forward to the release of a handful of board games (not that I’ll have time to play any of them half as much as I want to.)

Duel in the Dark - A 2-player strategy game in which one player is the RAF trying to bomb targets in Germany and the other player is the Luftwaffe trying to make sure those targets don’t get bombed. Did I mention that it takes place during WW2? I suppose it wouldn’t make much sense otherwise.

Last Night on Earth - A multiplayer co-op Zombie survival game. The co-op part is optional as it appears that players may choose to play as survivors or zombies. I’m looking forward to running this game with teams; perhaps 3 players as zombies and 3 as humans. I’m hoping that the rules allow for antagonism between the human players so it’s possible to do 2 players as good humans, 2 as evil humans and 2 as zombies.

I also want to play Memoir ‘44. Aside from really liking the title, the thing that interests me in this game is that its creator emphasizes its simplicity from a rules standpoint. Good wargames with simple rules are not at all common. This one is actually currently available.

For some reason I meet with resistance when I try to introduce a casual gamer to certain games. This is not a recent observation; I’ve been at it ever since high school. I would want to play a complicated, multi-session Battletech game but we always ended up playing Monopoly or Risk.

Overall, games like Settlers of Catan are generally well received but whenever a game has a soldier or a dragon or a spaceship or an alien on the box people assume that its gameplay will take a back seat to its theme and subject matter.