Another year has passed, and like everyone else, I like to spend a lot of December thinking about the year that’s just passed. This is my version of a “Year in review” that you’ll see many reviewers and media folk engage in. My real problem is that I just don’t play very many games the year they’re released. It’s a byproduct of being a cave dwelling Canadian troglodyte and never going to any of the conventions, the hot new games just don’t show up on my FLGS shelves. And the rate at which I acquire games is pretty suppressed when I’m not at conventions soliciting for review copies to plaster all over social media.

Sidebar, I do get quite annoyed whenever a convention ends and my social media is flooded with media folk posting their hauls and not disclosing which of the games they got for free. It creates an illusion that is detrimental to many people’s mental health, and I wish we as an industry were better.

Getting off that soap box, I’m going to list my top 10 new to be board games that I played in real life this year. I’ll have a separate list for my favourite BGA games next week, so look forward to that!

10 – Argent: The Consortium

Designer: Trey Chambers | Publisher: Level 99 Games | Full Review

Argent: The Consortium is a worker placement game from 2015 that remains interesting and engaging. I acquired solely because of how much I’ve enjoyed Level 99 Games other games, and this design holds up. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t the most interesting, interactive, and clever worker placement game I’ve played in a long time. It’s the kind of game that ruins other worker placement games for you. I did post a full review of Argent last month if you’re interested in reading more about it!

9 – Tragedy Looper

Designer: BakaFire | Publisher: Zman Games

Another old game I picked up from a math trade, Tragedy Looper is a deduction game from 2011. Leaning hard into the anime aesthetic, Tragedy Looper actually really reminds me of Higurashi: When They Cry, which, may or may not be a turn-off for those who have encountered that series before. In Tragedy Looper, the players are tasked with preventing a tragedy from happening, but they don’t know exactly what the tragedy is, or what roles each of the characters are playing. When a loss condition occurs, the game resets, or loops, and players only have a certain number of loops to figure out what exactly is going on, and prevent the mastermind from fulfilling his dark desires.

What kept this game on mine (and many others) shelf of shame for so long, is that it’s a one vs. many type of game. One player needs to play the mastermind, who gets access to all the information right away, and is trying to bait and trick the players into wasting their precious loops as they figure out the details of what’s going on around them. It’s a much less interesting role, as the mastermind, as you sit in your own head and play your cards, then watch the other players discuss and plot for 10 minute rounds.

But the deduction is exciting. Making unexpected moves to throw make the players think someone is a killer when they’re not, playing cards as a feint to try and get the players to waste their turns countering your cards makes for a unique experience. As far as one vs many games go, I’d MUCH rather play another game of Tragedy Looper than something like Beast

8 – Things in Rings

Designer: Peter C. Hayward | Publisher: AllPlay

Q: What does a belt, moose, flamingo, and a guitar all have in common?

Things in Rings is Venn diagram the board game. With 3 rope circles on the table, creating a triple Venn diagram, the mastermind is given 3 cards dictating the rules for each of the circles. Players are dealt a hand of cards, and need to play cards in or out of the diagram depending on the rules they don’t even know. After playing a card, the mastermind either confirms or reject the placement, moving the card to the correct location if necessary. If the player was correct, they continue placing cards, if incorrect, they draw a new one to replenish their hands. The player first to play all their cards is the winner.

Explaining it like that is a pretty boring description, but trust me when I say that Things in Rings is a brilliant little party game. The Dr. Seuss style art by Snow Conrad does a lot to help the whimsy of the game, but placing cards and watching the mastermind give you a thumbs up or down is delightful. Your mind will stretch and bend trying to figure out what sets of cards have in common with each other, until the game comes to an end and the answers are revealed, usually to uproarious laughter. Things in Rings is a delight, and I can’t wait to play it again.

A: They all have holes.

7 – Rebirth

Designer: Reiner Knizia | Publisher: Mighty Boards

Reiner Knizia has had a long and storied career, but one of his latest games, Rebirth was a delightful surprise. Generally when I see Knizia’s name on the box, my brain immediately goes to the brown and beige of Ra and Tigris and Euphrates, but Rebirth is awash in colour. Lush verdant landscapes invite the players to start plonking down their tokens, claiming parcels of land for themselves.

Rebirth is easy to learn and play, yet makes you feel like your decisions matter. Building clusters of your tokens is important, as is getting to the most valuable spaces first. Rebirth was a delightful euro surprise that I’d be happy to introduce to my mom, who loves games, but can’t internalize too many complex rules.

6 – Cockroach Poker

Designer: Jacques Zeimet | Publisher: Drei Magier Spiele | Full Review

I bought Cockroach Poker on a bit of a whim, and kind of fell in love with it. Rife with double think and bluffing, Cockroach Poker excels at building tension and creating exciting moments and opportunities for smack talk.

I get that not everyone likes pure bluffing games, but Cockroach Poker has zero stakes. Every game I’ve played has ended in gut busting laughter, and it’s over pretty quickly. It’s the perfect pub game.

5 – Trio

Designer: Kaya Miyano | Publisher: Happy Camper | Full Review

Originally published as Nana, I’ve described Trio as Go Fish mixed with Memory, but it works so well! Everyone gets a hand of cards, and then more are dealt face down on the table. On your turn you can ask any player to reveal their highest or lowest card, and after they do so, you can ask any player to do the same, or you can flip one of the face down cards. If you reveal a match, you get to do a third action. If all 3 revealed cards are a match, you take them as a trio! Take 3 trios and you win the game!

Another fast and accessible game, Trio is delightful in its simplicity. Also, the elation you feel when you manage to reveal 3 cards of the same number, reminds me a bit of Skull. All the information getting revealed is available to all players, so as the game goes on, presumably people are building mental maps of who has what. Unless you’re me and are just playing based on vibes.

4 – Bomb Busters

Designer: Hisashi Hayashi | Publisher: Pegasus Spiele

While I’m not the most keen on deduction games, Bomb Busters was an explosive surprise this year. A cooperative game in which players are trying to snip all the wires except the bad ones. The trick is you don’t know which wire is which when you’re snipping!

The production on Bomb Busters is delightful, mostly the art by Dominque Ferland. It’s a charming and evokes the same feelings as Minesweeper. It’s the kind of game that once it clicks, you can play it over and over and over until either you finish all 66 missions, or the sun comes up. Whichever happens first.

3 – SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Designer: Tomáš Holek | Publisher: Czech Games Edition

Man, talk about a game rocketing up the BGG top games list. I didn’t realize it until I was making this list, but it’s already reached #27, making it the highest ranked game that came out in 2024.

SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is a complex euro game about searching the galaxy and beyond for alien life forms. Given scant resources in this tight economy, you’re asked to stretch your actions as far as possible to build an engine to propel yourself to victory. There’s a lot going on in SETI, but I think the best thing I can really say about it is that we initially played it at our local board game café, and just as we were counting up the final score, one of our players stood up, walked over to the shelf, and grabbed a copy to buy, right there on the spot.

Since that day, she’s played it over a dozen times and is falling in love with it more and more with every play. If that isn’t a glowing recommendation, then I don’t know what is.

2 – The Gang

Designers: John Cooper, Kory Heath | Publisher: KOSMOS | Full Review

Talking about games that got a bit overplayed, The Gang went over like gang busters when it hit our table early this year. There was a four or five week stretch where this was getting pulled out before or after every game. In The Gang, players are cooperatively trying to sort out their poker hands. With limited information, players take a chip from the centre of the table indicating where they think they’ll end up in the hierarchy when all the cards are revealed. It was easy to play, and even easier to say “just one more round” again and again.

I always need to caveat that none of our players had any real experience with Poker, so this was largely an exercise in a bunch of rookies playing in the mud. But boy did we have fun doing it!

1 – Fit to Print

Designer: Peter McPherson | Publisher: Flatout Games

I’ve always said I love real time games, and Fit to Print is no different. As editors of the local newspaper, you’re all scrambling to assemble articles, photographs, and ads to earn the most points and money over a hectic weekend. First, you’ll scramble to pick up tiles and put them on your desk, then when you think you have all the tiles you need, you’ll move into the layout phase, where you place the tiles onto your board. If you overcommitted, extra articles that don’t make it onto the paper lose you points, and if you have huge swaths of empty space, you guessed it, lost points. Also, you have to have variety, so ensuring all no columns to pictures touch each other is pivotal in making a good-looking newspaper.

I find Fit to Print easier to play than Galaxy Trucker, while still retaining the same feeling of panic and stress that I relish. It doesn’t result in the uproarious laughter that Galaxy Trucker delivers, but it’s still a really fun game. I love playing it, and the Ian O’Toole art makes it a delight to look at.

Alright, that’s enough from this cave-dwelling Canadian troglodyte. What was YOUR favourite new-to-you game this year? Tell me in the comments so I can immediately convince myself I “need” it and then spend January explaining to my family why another box showed up on the doorstep.