New Year Gaming Resolutions!

Happy New Year everyone!

As we welcome 2025 it’s time to add the latest chapter of the ZATU tradition of New Year Gaming Resolutions. Some of our top bloggers consider what they may resolve to do in 2025 and possibly reflect on how they did against their last year’s ones. It is going to be the Year of the Snake but I hope you roll more 6’s than snake-eyes! This year is a day shorter than last year so best get cracking!

Dan Street-Phillips

I have contributed to this feature for the last two years and the biggest thing I have realised is just how fast these years go by! One of my biggest resolutions was to buy less and play more which continues to be the challenge. I have definitely bought less this year than last year, maybe not by much but it is an achievement! There are always new and exciting games but what I have started doing more is really questioning whether I want to own the game or just want to play it. Of course usually you don’t know the answer to this until you have played it so I have strived to wait and try something before buying it or buying second hand games to save the bank account. Zatu has a great Outlet section where you can get games at reduced prices because of superficial box damage. This is a great way to try new things cheaper. Then if you love the game, nothing stops you buying a shiny new version to put in pride of place!

The other resolution was to play more solo games and stop nagging my husband to play with me all the time. Well this has been great fun. There are so many fantastic solo games out there, Final girl being my current favourite.

Looking ahead into 2025 my main challenge is to curate my collection a little more as we are moving to a slightly smaller flat and so we no longer have the luxury of a games room. This has led to me buying more small box games. A loophole in the ‘stop buying loads of games’ as these games are a lot cheaper and take up so much less space. My best finds so far (some old, some new) are Bohnanza, My City Roll and Build and Heckmeck Am Bratwurmeck, the last being a mad little game about eating worms? (pictured) Move over shelf hogging Nemesis and hello 2025, the year of the small box!

Steven Gibney

New Year Resolution: Going Big!

Last year, my New Year’s resolution was to focus on playing expansions to the games I already own. I have to admit that I failed spectacularly. Instead of diving into those expansions, I found myself playing a lot more medium-sized games. It wasn’t exactly what I’d planned, but I can’t complain—it was great fun discovering what has turned out to be some of my favourite games of the year. This included Spots, a great dice rolling push-your luck game, and Cosmic Encounter a sci-fi battle game which I played late into New Year’s Eve.

Looking ahead to this year, I want to take things in a different direction. My goal is to step up and tackle some of the larger games in my collection. For instance, I’ve owned Scythe for over a year now and have only played it once. It’s a game I was excited to get into, but somehow, I have kept it sitting on the shelf, waiting for the right moment.

On top of that, I’ve had my eye on a couple of other big names, particularly Brass: Birmingham and Terraforming Mars. Both games will require longer sessions that demand a bit more time and focus, so I’m aiming to carve out more dedicated game nights specifically for these larger, more involved experiences.

It’s a resolution I’m excited to tackle, and hopefully, by this time next year, I’ll have a few more larger titles under my belt.

FavouriteFoe

On 1 January 2024 I resolved to play more of the games we love. To push this lofty aspiration towards its successful conclusion, I recruited the 10 x 10 challenge (i.e. play 10 favourite games 10 times each) as a way to stop mission-drift. It wasn’t the core of our resolution, more of an adjunct or tool to help achieve it.

But (even though everything is basically a hammer), sometimes you have to cast tools aside. Get in there and get your hands dirty. And we literally did that. We have been renovating an old stone farmhouse and working crazy hours, and so the 10 x 10 element was quickly forgotten. In truth, getting 100 plays of anything (let alone our top 10) seemed impossible. But it did make me realise something. Whilst we still love the games I mentioned a year ago (Five Tribes, The White Castle, Battle Line and more), what makes our gaming souls really sing develops over time.

And do you know what? There’s no limit on love! Why restrict ourselves to ten existing titles when there are games (old and new) which we have played and instantly fallen for? Explorers of Navoria, Dragon Keepers, Furnace, Faraway, Carpe Diem, Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth to name but a few. These have made it to our table this year and they have left such an impression that I can’t see them ever leaving our collection.

And so, not to win on a technicality, but I think we have achieved what we promised we would do on 1 January 2024. In the limited time we have had to play games, we have focussed on the ones that have made our eyes light up and our fingers tingle. We played games we love in 2024.

Ross Coulbeck

As of me typing this it’s January 1st and I’m sitting here looking at the hobby resolutions I made last year. They were all very positive and I had a good plan…yeah that didn’t exactly work out. Not in a bad way, it was still a good hobby year but entirely different to what I had planned. Won some MCP models which are very cool. Then I had my first trip to Airecon (there is now one literally where I live, yay), which was great and I got excited about several games which I then of course had to buy. I did manage to paint a decent amount of models, so that went to plan, but otherwise I just rolled with the changes. Anyway, let’s think about the new year…

I’d still like to focus up a bit this year. I have plenty of board games to play so I likely won’t be buying more of those, but of course a few will sneak in I’m sure (I intend to go to Airecon again after all). I’d like to fully understand a few games I own but haven’t played or haven’t played much, so I can just pick them out for game night. Especially Imperium (not Twilight Imperium) and Marvel Champions.

On the miniatures side of things I got a little sidetracked with Age of Sigmar last year, which was fun, but I’d like to get back into the 40k zone. So to start with I’ll be reading some new 40k books and of course working my way through painting models. But what I’m really excited about is my first big kitbashing project. I’m using the Skaven models I acquired last year to convert various 40k models and create a Cheesestealer Cult army. Plus I can make some Kill Teams along the way. They’ll never suspect a thing!

Panto Pete Bartlam

Well here we are again. Another New Year full of hope and good intentions and how did I do against last year’s? Well first off daughter Alessandra is now Mrs. Knibbs having successfully married Lewis last April. The wedding was a huge success but our visit was drastically curtailed by my wife Jacqueline being in hospital both before and after. She had another hip operation in August and my caring role took on a new dimension as I became trained in administering antibiotics! Her next op is in Feb and this will take the major part of my attention.

Notwithstanding all the above I did play and write about a lot of good games. Of the ones mentioned last time Tindaya didn’t really grab me, Stomp the Plank was short and OK, Great Western Trail was loooong and great and The Quest for El Dorado was brilliant and just right.

The U3A Board Games group goes from strength to strength and I am putting on extra meetings to cater for the hard-core gamers and the extra numbers. We played Camel Up, TTR Europe 15th Edition, Heat, Wingspan, Libertalia, Sushi Go Party and surprise hit Quacks of Quedlinberg. Nearly all new to the group and this year I want to replay some of our favourites although I do want to introduce Brass Birmingham and Western Legends to them. This week it’ll be new addition Big Boss.

I’ve also got a new opponent, Ken, to play more combat games with. We’ve done Achtung Panzer! a Bolt Action Variant and are working our way through the Undaunted series from Ken’s Christmas present Normandy up to my (as yet Unbought) Callisto.

In a different vein I supplied the Games Quiz for ZATU’s Eastercon and wrote and presented another one for the August Bank Holiday bash, hope you enjoyed them. I’ll be looking to do some more this year. I also got my 100 blogs badge of honour.

I did complete my 24,000 pieces of jigsaw but had to resort to doing half of a 2,000 piece before Christmas to complete it! No target this year.

My shelf of shame now stands at 20 – mostly different from last year’s – but I have just bought FrostHaven so that’s 3 month’s gone!

So that’s it from all of us, whatever you’re doing Happy New Year’s gaming everyone!

P.S. Hannah Blacknell didn’t contribute this time but she did produce a beautiful bouncing baby in 2024! Now that’s a real Victory Point.