Good evening, you are listening to Three Moves ahead, and I'm your host, Rob Zakeney,

rested and refreshed from an entirely accidental hiatus.

I apologize for the break in service, and I hope we make it up to you this year,

but sometimes things happen for a reason.

Reasons like you simply cannot do one more goddamn thing during the holidays,

or you will end up checked into a sanitarium.

So if we were gone for a couple

weeks, trust me, I was recuperating in front of a roaring fire and petting soothing Labradors

for the duration of my break. So if you wonder where your show was these last couple

weeks, it was in recuperation phase for a better 2013.

But anyway, speaking of sanitariums,

I've reassembled some of our recurring guests from 2012

to talk about their favorite games from last year,

trends they noticed, and what hopes they bring with them into the new year.

So first, we welcome our former 3MA intern, Soren Johnson.

Soren, welcome back to the show. Well, it's not honored to be back. We also welcome back our friend Dave Herron, game designer at XMG. Always a pleasure. Thank you. And finally, we welcome designer John Schaefer, fresh from visiting Troy in Canada. Yes, it's good to be here. Thanks, guys. I was super jealous looking at your photos and badly wished I could have been up there

just, you know, visiting Troy in Canada. Yes, it's good to be here. Thanks, guys. I was super jealous looking

at your photos and badly wished I could have been up there just playing board games and

talking strategy. But I guess that's kind of the day job too. Yep, yeah, well, you'll have your

turn here in a couple weeks, so. Yeah, absolutely. So, John, I figure we'd start with you because

before the show, you mentioned that you had an obvious pick,

and then, shockingly, an even more obvious pick for your standout games of 2012.

...