It has been one hell of a year.

Only a couple of hours are left before we say goodbye to 2024 and welcome 2025, hoping it’s at least a tiny bit better. And while there’s still some time left, I thought I could take a quick look at 2024. Even if I wanted to attempt a timeline, I’d fail miserably so I’ll just talk about stuff as they come to mind.

RPGaDay

RPGaDay has been a staple for the website. Since I started doing it in 2016, I’ve only skipped it twice. I even managed to do it this year, with all my workload. You can check them all in the tags below. Some of the posts are good.

• 2016
• 2017
• 2018
• 2020
• 2022
• 2023
• 2024

Work

Speaking of work, let’s get a bit personal. I’ve been a PhD candidate for the past year and a half. I’ve also been working at a university lab that is adjacent to my PhD ‘s subject. The amount of work is gargantuan (especially compared to the compensation), forcing all the researchers to usually work 10 hours a day, which leaves me less time for other things. But at least I’m doing something I like and I’m also slowly getting to balance things a bit better.

The AI stuff

AI has become too big of a thing to ignore. It has positive and negative effects, like every piece of technology. It’s just that the negatives are more prevalent since corporations try to exploit any new piece of tech they can get their hands on. Here on the blog, we had our opinion on AI but hadn’t made it public. At some point, I thought it was important to put it on “paper”. You can find our take on AI below.

Our Take on AI

More players and more games

This year, I had the opportunity to introduce the game to new people. I ran a couple of one-shots and they seemed to enjoy the game so I decided to run the Sunless Citadel. Since I haven’t run a campaign in a while, I’m taking the opportunity to log this for both my entertainment and improvement. We played session 3 last Saturday and I need to arrange session 4 soon, hopefully this week. I am expecting I will need 2 more sessions to finish the Sunless Citadel, making it 5 sessions long. I am not in a hurry, though, and neither are my players. If you are interested in running the Sunless Citadel and not making the same mistakes as I did, you can check it out below.

The Portal is Yawning – Sunless Citadel Session 1

I like Magic: The Gathering

I’ve been playing since 2008, with my first, and favourite, set being Shards of Alara. I’ve tried multiple formats but when I found out about Commander, everything clicked. I still play other formats. At least, I want to. But some decisions from WotC make it hard. For example, the decision to have no Pioneer in RCQs basically ended all interest in it in my area. But Commander is eternal (pun intended). And since MtG fuels my collection addiction, I decided to give in and start the Commander 32 Deck Challenge. I just started so I have only set the rules for it. But I’ve been doing some studying and researching for expect part 2 soon.

Dude, where’s my mana: The Commander 32 Deck Challenge

Books make me happy

Giving in to my collecting urges, I got a lot of books this year. And I didn’t realise I got a lot of books until I started thinking about it now. To be honest, I think I’m missing a couple of them, but it’s fine. (You will find some affiliate links below)

When it comes to D&D books this year, I basically got what was left of the 2014 edition and what was released of the 2024 edition, meaning I got the following,

• Quests from the Infinite Staircase
• Vecna: Eve of Ruin
• The Book of Many Things
• Player’s Handbook (2024)
• Dungeon Master’s Guide (2024)
• Dungeon Master’s Screen (2024)

Before even the release schedule and books were announced for the 2024 edition, I had decided to at least get the core rulebooks before deciding what to do. So far, there are a lot of good things being said about this edition but we’ll see. You can expect some commentary on the new books as soon as we can.

During the summer, there was a nice sale on the Free League’s website and I couldn’t control myself. So I grabbed the Tales from the Loop Core Rulebook, Death in Space, and the Dragonbane Core Set. I also got one more thing but it belongs to a different category.

Finally, the stuff from the Tales of the Valiant Kickstarter arrived, adding the Player’s Guide and the Monster Vault to the haul. Anastasios backed the Kickstarter for me as a slow-fuse birthday gift. I have given them a few quick looks but I want to take a better one because I have things to say about them.

Boardgames are cool

I have played board games in the past. But the last couple of years have been a blast. The local game store in my city hosts a board game night and a board game day every week. He has even invited me to play at his home since we’re friends at this point (being a customer since he opened the store has its perks). So I have played more board games than I own. I have even started my own collection that is getting larger relatively fast.

I have also started tracking our game sessions (and our RPG ones but very recently) more carefully since the start of the year, so I know what we’ve played and when. And let me tell you, this year was a blast.

I am going to say only one sentence for each of them because this is getting already long. We have a lot to say about them (just like the RPG books mentioned above) so stay tuned.

• Flamecraft – Cutest dragons ever.
• Heat – I can do university-level math. I will never manage to take a turn correctly. Good game though.
• Sushi Go! – Fast draft game. Fun.
• Exploding Kittens – I have the original version. Apart from being fast and fun, the cards are so funny.
• Cascadia – I got this for Christmas. We have played twice so far. I like it a lot.
• Carta Impera Victoria – I got this randomly a couple of years ago, I think. Reminds me a little bit of 7 Wonders.
• Everdell – Cutest forest animals ever.
• Splendor – Fast, easy to learn, with game components whose quality surprised me.
• Warrior Knights – This out-of-print bad boy is so good and I’m lucky the local game store owner has a copy and plays with us. I could call it Mage Knight lite but it’s not enough.
• Mage Knight – Heroes of Might and Magic in board game form, with zero discount in mechanics.

I asked Nicole and Anastasios for their favourites. Nicole’s all-time favourite is Flamecraft and I can’t blame her. I play this just for the cute dragons. However, Nicole’s 2024 favourite is Everdell. The setup is so good and it has cute animals as well. Can’t go wrong with this one either.

Anastasios’ favourite is Splendor. He was instantly enamoured by it and whenever we go to the local game store, we sneak a game or two in between board games.

As for my favourite, I didn’t even need to think for one moment. Mage Knight takes 2024, hands down. And I could even debate that it’s my current best of all time. I like games that don’t require a ton of thinking. This one does require a ton of thinking. But it’s so so good. I need to buy this one.

Expeditious Reviews

We write quite a few reviews here. And we’ve been doing well the last couple of months. But apart from the written reviews we have a thing called Expeditious Reviews. These are less-than-a-minute-long video reviews of the cool stuff we’ve reviewed on the website. You can find them on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Also, dropping a follow on your platform of choice would be a nice New Year’s gift.

Best wishes

I could probably go on but I’d run out of 2024. So I will stop here. But before I go, I want to say a huge thank you to every last one of you who has been reading what we have to say. I hope you stay for 2025 as well. I promise we have some cool stuff planned. And I also want to wish everyone to have a great 2025 and may it be better than 2024.

And until next time, have fun!

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