Aaron says this about himself...
"Aaron Fuegi has played games since he was a kid, early on mostly
with his brother.  Early memorable games we played (some of which were
very small print runs that few will have heard of) include National
Liberation Front, a war game about the battle of Leyte, and early
Dungeons and Dragons.  Later we moved into the Steve Jackson Games
"pocket box" series of games including Ogre/GEV, Illuminati, and Car
Wars.  These games are probably what led me to my first Origins around
1980 and later my first GenCon.

During college, I got introduced to Cosmic Encounter (Mayfair edition)
and also played a bunch of computer games and RPGs.  In graduate
school, I kind of took a break from games other than the occasional
poker and Cosmic game, and skipped the Magic craze even though a bunch
of friends came back from Gen Con '93 playing it like crazy.

I got back into gaming more seriously after moving to Boston in late
'94, first joining a group that played Cosmic Encounter with a homemade
set of 300 powers twice a week.  I also learned Settlers in '95 and a
bunch of older Avalon Hill titles including Titan, which I started
playing every week with a very strong group of players at MIT's
Strategic Games Society.  Although never really a fan of Settlers, it
did partly lead me into the rest of the German games including the
wonderful Eüphrat & Tigris.  Other games which I've
played a ton of over the years include Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage,
Wizard, Mü, and now my current and long obsession with Tichu.

I am probably best known for the "Internet Top 100 Games List", which I
started back in 1998 to try to make sense of what games, particularly
German games, people thought the most of and hopefully give people new
to the hobby a way of finding the cream of the crop and avoiding
spending a lot on games which they aren't likely to enjoy.

Tom:  Aaron, you seem to be a pretty big fan of Cosmic Encounter.  How
do you think the game has aged over the last two decades?

Aaron: Well, given that I used to play the game some 100 times a year
and now only play once or twice, I guess it really has aged for me,
unfortunately.  I also have something of an internal conflict over how
to play the game.  The Avalon Hill version doesn't have nearly enough
there for me to find the game very interesting but our home-made set of
300 powers and additional flares, edicts, lucre, moons, etc. - probably
goes too far the other way.  The great thing about the game is that
every time you play it is very different, and so it never gets boring,
in addition to a great theme and wonderful artwork. However, while I
like the interesting interactions of the huge number of elements we
play with, it leads to a lot of rule problems, as we are not sure how
Power X interacts with Flare Y, especially in combination with Power Z.
Trying to deal with these issues could sometimes bring games to a halt
for a long time as we tried to hash it out, and it just got crazy.
Going back to a complete Eon set with all the expansions might have
been a good thing to do to reduce the complexity somewhat.

As for the whole debate over editions, I think both the Eon and Mayfair
sets were very well done and both make for a very good game, with me
slightly preferring the Eon rules. I think Hasbro Avalon Hill made a
huge mistake and told them before they released the game that I thought
so, by making their edition only support 4 players, have no flares and
for some reason changing all the terminology (Edicts -> Artifacts and
such) of the game.  Supporting only 4 players seemed a particularly bad
mistake in a game which really doesn't play well with less than 4 and
plays very well with 5 and 6, possibly better
than with 4.  Four players is also the number you get the greatest
competition with other games at, so not supporting the rarer 5 and 6
seemed crazy to me.  I think in this day and age, the Mayfair release
was pretty perfect - provide a complete game in the main edition and
then put the more complex expansions (moons, lucre, etc...) in one
significant expansion.

Tom:  Are there any modern games that, in your opinion, give the
randomness and diversity of Cosmic Encounter?

Aaron: It took me a bit to think of it; but Duel of Ages, which I
believe you really like as well, is the only modern board game I play
that I can think of.  As with the original Cosmic, it has a ton of
characters (the equivalent here of Cosmic powers) and expansions and
each game really does feel very different. This is a game, which I
expected to not like at all when it first came out, but really enjoy
playing and will happily set aside a Saturday for.

Interestingly, this is one of a few games I really like (the other
which immediately comes to mind is Star Wars: Queen's Gambit) where I
find that, although the outcome is often determined greatly by luck,
there is quite a bit of skill in the game.  That skill may only let you
win 60% of the time while at Chess you would win 100% of the time, but
I find that doesn't bother me.  I just want there to be lots of
interesting decisions to make throughout, and both of these games have
that.

Tom:  Always great to meet another Duel of Ages fan!  You mention chess
- are there any pure abstract games that you enjoy?

Aaron: I think Chess is the only pure abstract I have ever played any
reasonable amount at, and that was years ago although I'm still very
happy to play the occasional game. However, I love card games, which
are of course pretty abstract.

Tom:  There are a LOT of card games published each year, many times
slight variations on a trick-taking or rummy theme.  Are there any card
games that particularly stand out to you?

Aaron: The three card games that I have played the most, each for me
better than the last, are Wizard, Mu and Tichu.  I particularly like
the partnership aspects of Mu and Tichu, and each has a ton of depth to
it; so that players still have room for improvement 50 or 100 games in.
 Tichu has for the last several years been my very favorite game,
playing well over 500 games in the last five years and appealing to a
very large number of people.  I have been at game nights where there
were twelve people, and all twelve were playing three Tichu games, with
hundreds of other games to choose from.

Tichu was released in 1991 but it took till 1999 for me to have even
heard the name of the game, and still it seemed nobody was playing it
in the US till 2000 and later.  Once I discovered it in 2000 and
realized how good it was, I found this to be a real shame and have
tried to do what I can to make it more accessible here.  I think
originally one of the reasons for nobody playing it here was that,
unfortunately, the original rules translation on the Game Cabinet was
pretty poor and vague, so I took it upon myself to update that
translation and try to clarify all the ambiguities.  I later, at Peter
Sarrett's request, wrote up a strategy guide for the game that appeared
in The Game Report.  For anyone interested, the updated rules, strategy
guide and some other useful things (like an English cheat-sheet card)
on the game are up on my website at
http://www.lasthomelyhouse.com/Games/Tichu/

On the subject of card games, another excellent card-game series is the
Mystery Rummy (including Wyatt Earp) series by designer Mike
Fitzgerald. Other favorite card games for me are 6 Nimmt!, For Sale,
and the classics of Skat, Spades and Bridge.

Tom:  Many of these games are mentioned on your "Internet Top 100 Games
List".  Can you tell us how such a thing came into being?

Aaron: I started the list in 1998, based on Tristrom Cooke's "Internet
Top 100 SF/Fantasy List" for science fiction and fantasy books, which I
had found to be an excellent guide for me to finding SF books that I
hadn't read and would enjoy.  This was and has continued for me to be
the primary goal of the list - give people a recommendation/buying
guide to finding the best games out there without having to play and
possibly suffer through a lot of poor games.  The name, format, and
ranking system (which later changed) were all based on Tristrom's list.
 In the games world, Brian Bankler had previously done a one-time
compilation of a similar list, but I preferred Tristrom's methodology
and wanted the list to be ongoing (generated weekly), even though it
was of course more work for me.  At the time, there was no other list
ranking games based on player ratings.

Two people who also greatly helped the list along at the beginning were
Joe Huber and Rick Heli, both of whom already had rating lists; so
sending them to me was a pretty easy thing but immediately caused the
number of games on the list to jump to over 1000 by the 10th edition.
Rick also sent me a ton of updates and corrections for the
Publisher/Designer/Year info, which wasn't nearly as easy to come by
then as it is now, with the primary source being Luding for German
games and various different places for American games, no huge one-stop
shop as BGG is now.  Oh, regarding the possible confusion of the "100"
in the name.  I generate both an edition with only the top 100 and a
full edition (currently approaching 5000 games).  The Top 100 is
regularly posted on
the Rec.Games.Board newsgroup but both editions are always available on
my website at http://www.lasthomelyhouse.com/Top100/

Tom:  Do you think that Boardgamegeek has replaced your list, or rather
- what purpose does your list serve today?

Aaron: This issue came up recently on the Yahoo spielfrieks discussion
group, and I am going to quote a post by Wei-Hwa Huang who wrote:
       "For me, personally, I find the Top 100 list more useful than
the BGG
       list.  The reasons are selfish -- the Top 100 List matches my
personal
       ratings more closely than the BGG List.  This is especially
       interesting as I don't vote for the Top 100 list, but my BGG
ratings
       are counted as part of the average.  :)"

Now, Boardgamegeek certainly has far more people submitting ratings and
people accessing it (and that's good cause I couldn't handle that
number of rating submissions with the way I do the list).  However,
while I've seriously considered discontinuing the list, my impressions
agree with Wei-Hwa, that my list is 'better' at matching my feel for
what people I know playing these games think are the best games out
there.  There are some games in the BGG top 100 that I've never even
heard of.  If the lists matched more closely, I would almost certainly
discontinue mine and save myself the work.

Tom:  Do you think that it's possible that some games become stale over
time, starting with a high ranking from people's initial impressions,
and then after future playings becoming more boring? Many of these
people won't bother to go back and change their rating - how do you
combat this problem on your list?

Aaron: Other people seem more worried about this than I am.  I haven't
seen much evidence of this idea having much effect.  First off, a fair
number of people do update their ratings pretty regularly (and
generally they are the people with more ratings submitted so have a
larger per capita effect on the list).  Also, it seems to me that if it
happens, it probably affects all games, at least after some time has
passed, about equally except those games which came out before the list
came into existence so could never benefit from the "its new so it must
be good" ratings effect that some people seem to have.  This effect (at
least as it impacts a game's ranking) is combatted also by the Score
calculation penalizing games with few ratings, which will usually
include really new games.

I did at one point have someone suggest sending an annual email to all
the people who had submitted ratings with their current ratings and
suggesting they might want to update them.  This was a pretty good idea
and wouldn't be that hard to do and some people might actually even
really appreciate it. I never got around to doing it but would do so if
I really thought this was a significant issue.

Tom:  How often do people update their ratings at your site?

Aaron: It varies incredibly.  Some do it every couple of months and
some never do it.

Tom:  Has the amount of people contributing to the list increased or
decreased over the past couple of years?

Aaron: I don't track this, so this is purely a guess; but I think the
number of new contributors has decreased a bit.

Tom:  As you've been monitoring the list over the past several years,
are there any interesting things you have noted?

Aaron: Well, here's a couple of things.  The only three games ever to
be at the top of the list are Settlers, E&T and Puerto Rico.  At the
bottom of the list, since I changed the method of calculating score at
edition 73, the only games that have been at the bottom are War and
Tic-Tac-Toe (with one exception due to what was a bug - a Knizia game
even). I personally don't think Tic-Tac-Toe deserves this, but the
voters have spoken.

Tom:  Because of the way numbers work, is it even possible for Puerto
Rico to ever be dethroned?

Aaron: I'm not sure what you mean about the numbers, but sure.  I think
Puerto Rico isn't going to be pushed out by an existing game on the
list, based on its current lead, but see no reason why a new game
couldn't come along and displace it.

Tom:  What games are your personal favorites?

Aaron: My top 10 games (and list ranking as of writing this) are Tichu
(#47), Titan (#265), Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage (#55), Euphrat &
Tigris (#2), Crokinole (#95), Showmanager (#56), Time's Up/Celebrities
(#70), Black Vienna (#343), Cosmic  Encounter (#73), and Aquarium Derby
(prototype of #778, which I prefer to the released game).

Tom:  What do you think is the best use of your list?  Is it best used
as a purchasing tool?

Aaron: Yes, although more generally, as a guide to what games to check
out, preferrably to try before buying; but if that is not an option, a
purchasing guide.  I think it is also a pretty interesting reference
for what is the best (rated) game in a particular series or by a
particular designer or whatever.

However individuals find it to be useful is the best use, though.  The
above is just my expectation and understanding of the most common use
people make of it.

Tom:  How do you spend most of your gaming time?  What games are you
currently playing a lot of?

Aaron: Well, I play Tichu far more than anything else, more than 100
games a year.  I also play a bunch of Titan every year, although not as
often as I used to, due to the dispersal of the main players more than
any other reason.  Other games I play a bunch every year are Crokinole,
Liar's Dice and Poker.  Including more recent stuff whose staying power
isn't so clear, I have been playing a bunch of San Juan (which I
actually significantly prefer to Puerto Rico), St Petersburg, Goa, and
Attika.

The last few months I have also gotten really into the MMORPG computer
game World of Warcraft, which is really fun but incredibly addicting
and an amazing time leech.

Tom:  Do you enjoy board games more than computer games, or do they
combat for your time?  What do you think the computer game market has
had on board games as a whole?

Aaron: As a general thing, I much prefer board games, which are a
lifelong interest. With computer games, what happens is that I usually
get really into one game for a period of a month or three, but then
reach a point where I grow tired of it and basically don't play it
anymore.  The company Blizzard's series of games, in particular, really
appeal to me, and I play almost no others and never play more than one
computer game at a time, excepting quick fillers like FreeCell and
such.

I think the single biggest advantage of computer games is that you can
play them absolutely any time you want, not having to worry about
getting other players together and now, with online games, you can
still play with many other players.  The graphical immersion and
long-term experience, particularly with MMORPG games in building
characters over a long period, I also find very appealing and a
powerful draw into keeping playing the game, much as with RPGs which I
no longer play but miss some aspects of.  One other special aspect of
World of Warcraft, for me, has also been that I have been playing the
game a lot with my brother, who lives in New Mexico while I live in
Boston.  It is really nice to be able to play and chat with him about
the game, when we
only get to see each other face to face a few times a year.

Still, overall, I much prefer board and card games and playing in the
same room with the other players.

Tom:  Do you ever worry that people are tending to disect games too
much, rather than just play them for enjoyment?  Are the statistics on
the interent, getting in the way of "fun"?

Aaron: Well, I hope not.  I am a naturally analytical person so I find
some of the 'dissection' kind of fun in its own way, although certainly
it can go too far, and everyone has a different tolerance level.
Hopefully, people can just stop reading stuff that goes beyond what
they are interested in.  I get the feeling that people get more annoyed
with the in-depth analysis of particular games than with more general
statistics such as my list.

Tom:  Are there any upcoming games that you are looking forward to?

Aaron: I don't follow the upcoming releases as much as I used to, and
never did follow them nearly as much as some so there may very well be
things of real interest to me that aren't on my radar.  Having said
that, just when you asked this question, I read your list of the
upcoming Fantasy Flight games and am looking forward to the War of the
Ring expansion and to the World of Warcraft game.  However, for me the
gameplay is so much the most important issue for games and is basically
impossible to judge without having played the game myself or having had
friends with similar opinions play it and recommend it, which makes it
hard to really anticipate games.  The above two I really like the
themes of, but for all I know I won't like the games at all,
particularly the WoW one.

More generally, designers whose work I particularly look forward to
include the heavier Knizia games, Dirk Henn games and Doris & Frank
games.

Tom:  What are your thoughts on the future of board games, and how the
internet will play a role?

Aaron: I think the future is very bright.  German style game companies
continue to release a large number of very good games every year.  The
American style companies seem to be getting much stronger in the last
few years and releasing, as usual, a lot of very strongly themed games,
some with good gameplay and some not of course.  The Internet continues
to be a very powerful tool for connecting gamers together and letting
people find out tons of information of all sorts on the games.  Both
BGG and  BrettSpielWelt continue to be amazing resources for
information and online play.

Tom:  Aaron, we appreciate your efforts on the internet, and the time
you took to do this interview.  Any final words for our readers?

Aaron: I'd just like to thank you for doing this interview series,
which I've been really enjoying and reading all of them.  I feel that
I've been getting a lot of insight into the people in our little gaming
world from this series.  I'm also honored to be included.

Tom Vasel
April, 2005
"Real men play board games."