I was happy to see a number of actual 2017 games hit the table this winter. Quite a few of them were, surprisingly, card games instead of full board games. As usual this is a list of games that are new to me, and and as usual this listing ranks them by how much I personally like them, as a medium-weight eurogamer.
The Great
The Dresden Files Co-op Card Game (2017). I’ve actually been playing this one for over a year through numerous prototypes, the designer is a friend, and I love the Dresden Files novels, so caveat reader. But with all that said, I honestly love this game.
DFCO is a cooperative game where you have a case laid out for you as an array of problems: cases to solve, foes to fight, obstacles to overcome, and advantages to take. You have to figure out how to work through the cards that have been laid out, in order to defeat enough foes and solve enough cases to win the game. The co-op play comes through the facts that you’re jointly working on this puzzle and that you’re using a joint pool of resources to take your actions. This design is really unique among co-op games, and gives it much of its original feeling.