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2011 has been a very interesting year for everyone at F:AT. Here's a recap of the top stories from 2011. 1. F:AT has surprised even the founding members who felt the site wouldn't last 4 weeks let alone 4 years. The membership has steadily grown as people have found their way to F:AT to enjoyed a more personal and entertaining gaming community. The main component of F:AT, the front page article remains a Hallmark of the site but because the number of feature writers has increased, F:AT now adds a new front page article on Saturdays and Sundays. When F:AT started 95% of the articles were about boardgames. Today, the site is still about boardgames but it's also about movies, TV, video games, books, comics and AT culture in general. In a survey taken this year at F:AT when asked what type of gamer do you consider yourself, it was surprising the balanced mix of gamer types (Euro, AT, Wargamers, etc.).
2. The most overused mechanism from 2000-2005 was the Auction, from 2005 - 2010 it was Worker placement. Now it looks like 2010 - 2015 will be creating a deck on the fly. Agricola started this movement with the variable decks in 2008. Then Dominion came out with creating a deck on the fly. Now over the last 3 years we've seen 5 Dominion expansions and countless Dominion clones.
3. Cracked LCD 2011 Award for best game goes to Kevin Wilson's new game. In Barnes stellar review of the new game he mentions the influence of the innovated breakthrough game Android. Android was a game released in 2008 to very mixed reviews and initially slow sales. However, over the last 4 years it has grown into a true F:AT classic.
4. With the success of the cross media games of the last 5 years like Lord of the Rings, StarCraft, Battlestar Galactica and World of Warcraft, 2011 saw a record number boardgames with with license from movies, TV and video games.
5. There is exciting news coming in 2012. Tim Burton will start filming Arkham Horror the movie staring Johnny Dep. Also, coming soon will be Twilight Imperium on the SF channel. J. Michael Straczyski and producers from the SF channel decided to create a new series based on the Twilight Imperium universe. Let's just hope they have a bigger budget than Babylon 5.
6. The F:AT scandal of the year. Derk and Uba were photoed coming out of a swank New York club arm in arm. In the photo, Uba was clearly wearing a yellow duck hat. Uba claimed the photo must have been photo shopped but I'm not so sure.
7. It was no surprise that Mr. Skeletor was banned from BGG for the 20th time this year. However, 2011 was record for him. He officially got banned 6 times, and one time he got banned while serving a current banning.
8. Rumors are also spreading around BGG that Clearclaw is really an 14 year old home Schooler living on a farm in Iowa. He's been posting on BGG ever since he was 6 years old. His "mom" posted on BGG telling everyone the truth about his identity.
9. The BGG cruise has been successful over the last 2 years until the mishaps last year. The first mishap was that BGG cruise ships was booked on the same cruise ship with the Dykes on Bikes and Gay Rides groups. I won't recap strangeness that developed. But to top that off the ship hit rough seas on day 3 and there is nothing worse that tri-colored sea sickness mixed with meeple chunks.10. The global recession has taken it's toll on the board game community. Over the last couple of years there has been a number of small to midsized game companies that have gone under or sold out. The benefit of the global recession has been an upswing in the number of new first time independent game designers and publishers. Many of the new game designers were people who were laid off during the recession that finally had the time to finish the game they had been working on for years.
11. The Mad Gamer hooked up with Borat to bring a film crew into the Gathering of Friends. The crew filmed a few funny segments of Borat getting into the gaming room than trying to play Agricola. But perhaps the weirdest segment was when Borat decided to break into the gamers bedrooms for a pantie raid. The problem was that he couldn't find a change of cloths in any of the gamers rooms only boxes of board games.12. Congradulation to Ken B., the newest F:AT member to get a paying gig writting for a video game site. I guess we'll have to link to his Friday post.
Anyone else recall any other top stories from 2011?
