I’ve mentioned it in other places, but we have a new child in our home. Which means sleep is a bit of a luxury, and a lot of these lists were written in the wee hours of the morning. Please forgive the brevity or grammatical errors you may find!
The feeling of progression makes a game of Splendor feel splendid, ahem satisfying. I know there’s a strategy where you only buy 3rd row cards, but playing that way isn’t fun to me. I like getting a plethora of cheap gems to get to the point where I rarely ever have to visit the gem market anymore!
The 3d building/toy factor is a large part of my enjoyment of Santorini. But my favourite aspect of the game is the variety of player powers available. Each one will drastically change how you approach your opponent, and gives lovely texture to this awesome game.
I can’t deny that the production of Foundations of Rome has nothing to do with my enjoyment. I love how gorgeous it is, how peoples Jaws hit the floor when I hand them their player tray. Beyond that, it’s a lovely light game. Buy deeds, build buildings, score points. Simple, gorgeous game.
My favourite thing about Viticulture: Essential Edition:
Like many board gamers, I just innately enjoy a good worker placement game, and Viticulture is a great worker placement game. I love building a farm, harvesting grapes, and the mechanic of aging the grapes and wine makes me smile. Realistically, I know you don’t age grapes on a crush pad, but as a game mechanic, it’s satisfying to know you can harvest bad grapes and eventually they’ll become a quality wine.
Similar to Santorini, the part of Hive I enjoy the most is the variety of powers to play with. The twist is that both players have access to all the different unit types. What separates winners and closers in Hive is the order in which and how they choose to spawn their units into the play area.
75 – Go
My favourite thing about Go:
Coming in as the complete opposite of Hive, Go is the grand-daddy of abstract strategy games. A 19 x 19 grid of lines and a bowl of black and white stones. I love the relative simplicity of Go, while also harbouring an incredibly high skill ceiling.
I played Go a lot more as a teenager, and while I would love to play more, finding casual games locally is more than a challenge.
74 – Cribbage
My favourite thing about Cribbage:
I love the nostalgia that I have associated with Cribbage. Memories of lazy summer days, visiting Grandma at the cabin on Cape Breton Island, and getting absolutely skunked at cribbage made me into the gamer that I am today.
My favourite thing about Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
My favourite part of Gloomhaven is how varied the action cards are. Every character has wildly different abilities, and because Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion only has 4 characters, their abilities are designed to sync up nicely. This makes it the perfect scaffold to get into the beast that is the Gloomhaven system.
This little card game houses a lot of tension. All players simultaneously select a card, then all at once the choices are revealed. The surprise, shock, and horror as the cards slide into their appropriate rows is just a delight to experience.
Another game with a lavish production that gets me excited to play it. But the box full of minis isn’t what I love most about Mechs vs. Minions, no. It’s the push your luck of constantly adding to your action programming row. The more you add to it, the more you can do. But the more you have to do, the more likely it is you’ll end up impotently spinning out in the corner.
I know a lot of people use the PubMeeple ranking engine to generate their top X lists, but I’ve gotten to the point in my gaming career where that tool is almost unusable for me. Comparing 500+ games takes thousands of matchups and takes literal hours to complete.
What I do to make these lists is go through BGG and sort by all the games I’ve played, then give them a ranking from 1 – 10. I then export the list, sort the games by their ranking, and then take each respective number and figure out the order within that segment of games. What really shocked me was learning that I have some games that I’ve rated an 8 that didn’t make it onto the top 100 list. There are so many games out there that even great games don’t crack my top 100!
But my feelings are always changing, so maybe if they see another play, they’ll work their way into the list the next time I do this.
I love that the components for the game is just a generic deck of cards, and yet the way you interact with the game is engaging and exciting. Making the royalty cards bosses to be overcome, and every suit a special ability is some special, out of the box thinking that I really appreciate.
The resource market brings me so much joy. The ebb and flow of fuel that dictates which plants can produce energy is easily my favourite thing about Power Grid. I’ve only played this twice, and haven’t played it in over 5 years, but it obviously left quite the impression on me to remain on my top 100 list even through years of not playing it.
How dynamic the gameplay is with different players. When I played a 2 player game with Otter, we were absolutely rolling in resources. When I played a 5 player game, most rounds each player only gets 1 action, so you really have to make them count. I really enjoy that Le Havre not only works at low and high player counts, but that the experience is so different.
87 – Inis
My favourite thing about Inis:
The quality of decisions grow as the group gets more familiar with the cards. In the first game, the draft is somewhat important, but after everyone has a game under their belt, every card you take feels monumental. Handing your opponent a hand of cards that you know could cripple you is delicious.
86 – Underwater Cities
My favourite thing about Underwater Cities:
The interplay between the cards in your hand and the actions on the board. It’s tight, but not too tight. Gently nudging you from doing EXACTLY what you want to do, and doing what might be the most efficient thing, feels great. I love having to decide between the action on the board I want to do, but not having a card, or, having a card that I really want to play, but don’t have an action on the board that benefits me.
The whole game revolves around the central mechanic. There’s a grid of building tiles that require you to a worker with a number along the edge of the board to claim the tile that many spaces in from the edge, and place it into a matching space on your player board, with points being awarded for certain things being adjacent to other buildings. There are two modes of play, one gives everyone a set of numbers for them to use, the other pools all the numbers together into a common supply. I literally cannot tell which mode I prefer, both are so amazing to play, and this central mechanic is genius.
The double-sided cards mixed with the mechanic of not being able to re-arrange your cards does allow the space for some clever play. I keep expecting to get bored of playing Scout, but it’s been a joy every time I play.
I like arguing with my friends over which words could possibly connect with the clues they’ve given us and agonizing over what clues to give. How do you connect the words Quilt and Sausage? Homemade! I love word games like Just One and Codenames, as you’ll see further on down this list, and I feel like So Clover sits right up with them, which is an impressive feat. There’s a lot of word-based puzzle games out there, and breaking into the top spots is an accomplishment.
The amount of details in the map is astounding. Over the course of all the missions you’ll be pouring over the map for hours, and while it starts to feel familiar, you’re constantly discovering new people and new situations that you must have missed the last four times you were investigating a certain area. Discovery is something I’m always craving, and MicroMacro: Crime City delivers on that front.
The way the barbarians march gives an amazing sense of impending dread. Unlike base Pandemic, where new hot-spots can pop out anywhere, Fall of Rome has a great progression to it. Tribes you ignore slowly follow their path towards Rome, giving the game a great thematic feel.
Here we are again, counting down my top 100 games of all time. It’s been about 3 years since I last did this, and a lot has changed in my heart and soul. Not to mention, I’ve played a lot more games since then, so, let’s get right into it!
I won’t be spending a huge amount of time on each game, as many of them now have full reviews, which I’ll try to link in where appropriate. What I will be doing is just focusing on something that I love about each of these games. This isn’t to say that each of these games is perfect, far from it. But each of these games does have something to love, something that makes them stand out in my mind.
La Granja takes multi-use cards and takes them to the next level. Every card can be used in 4 ways, either to expand your farm on the left or right side, as an order along the top, or as a player power along the bottom. Forcing players to make the choice between either an excellent power or the perfect order to fulfill makes La Granja a delight to play
Much like La Granja, I love the way multiple ways dice are used. 3 dice are rolled into every action of the game board. The pip value can affect the power of the action, and the colour affects the ‘pure, tainted, or forbidden’ quality of the dice. At the end of each round, your karma must be balanced, or you may suffer some penalties.
Also, having a standing Spire is fairly unnecessary to the gameplay, but it does make the board look so much more impressive when it’s on the table
I really like the turns in Alhambra when the stars align, and you happen to buy several cards in the same turn. It feels amazing slapping down the perfect amount of cash three times in a row, slot all the tiles into your garden, then your opponents suddenly realize that you just overtook their green majority right before the scoring phase. So satisfying!
The core mechanism of the sun going around the board and the ebb and flow of the sun and shade is a really fascinating puzzle. I also love the 3d trees and watching the board grow from just a few saplings to a dense forest.
The dice worker placement is excellent. I like the mechanic where you can use other players dice, for a cost. This grants you access to more actions than what would normally be available, or, if you’re first in player order, can snipe all the dice of a specific colour (for a cost) to control access to the associated action. I really appreciate that level of freedom.
The aspect of the game that sets it apart from the rest of the Pandemic universe! The way the water flows is wildly interesting to me. I also find Pandemic: Rising Tide to be quite a bit more difficult than the other Pandemic games that I’ve played, and the challenge is something I appreciate.
The polyonmino puzzle, especially with the oval play space. So many Polyonmino games (Like Patchwork or Bärenpark) have you playing your tiles on a square plane. The Isle of Cats choice to make the boat a bit rounded on the ends makes it a much more interesting game
93 – Tak
My favourite thing about Tak:
It’s so simple, yet surprisingly deep. I love it when someone proclaims that a game is stupid or has no strategy, then can’t beat me in it. Such is the case with Tak. It’s so easy that it feels like it’s anyone’s game at any point, but a sufficiently skilled player will win every single time.
92 – Star Realms
My favourite thing about Star Realms:
Speed and size. I love that Star Realms contains an eminently replayable and engaging 1 v 1 deck building experience in a tiny deck of cards. Many games have tried to do similar things to Star Realms with much more production, but I still feel compelled to come back to this little deck of cards (disclaimer: I have no expansions, which is why my copy of Star Realms is still so small)
91 – Red7
My favourite thing about Red7:
The constantly changing rules keeps players on their toes. Because every player has to be ‘winning’ at the end of their turns, the rules and table situation is constantly changing, and I love the way these colours bend my brain!
Every year I play a lot of games, but rarely am I at the bleeding edge of the new releases. I don’t go to any big conventions, I rarely back crowdfunded games, and the bulk of my board game purchases happen through the local used market. A “best games of 2023” from me would be fruitless, as I really only played 4 games released in 2023. Instead, I’m taking this opportunity to highlight the 10 best new to me games I played in 2023. Here we go!
Starting off the list is a game that I played exclusively on BoardGameArena, and one that I wasn’t really a fan of to start. As I said in my review, after my first game, I felt like I had absolutely no control. That the game was all luck, and if you didn’t have any, you were absolutely toast. Thankfully the adorable origami art pulled me back in for a couple more rounds, because eventually Sea Salt & Paper opened up to me, and I’ve had some very enjoyable games over the past few months. Sea Salt & Paper by Bruno Cathala and Theo Riviere will be high on my list of games to pick up in the new year, assuming a copy didn’t make its way into my stocking for Christmas.
9 – Mists over Carcassonne (2022)
I’ll be honest, I actually thought I was ‘over’ Carcassonne. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy it, and it’s a great game to pull out with people who are just starting to get interested in board games. It’s a classic, but it’s not one that I was ever itching to play. When Mists over Carcassonne was announced, promising a cooperative spin on the classic gameplay, I was dubious. But I’ve had some real great experiences with competitive games turning into cooperative experiences (Viticulture World and Orleans come to mind).
I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed Mists over Carcassonne. I wrote out my thoughts back in July, and while I haven’t dashed out to buy myself a copy, I find myself drawn to it each time I end up at my local board game café. Both my wife, and my game group expressed quite a bit of enjoyment with this game. I do like the scenario approach where rules and mechanics are slowly introduced, giving a real nice introduction to the game.
8 – Wandering Towers (2022)
A birthday gift from my mother in law, Wandering Towers, by Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer, has actually been fun for the whole family. I didn’t touch on it during my review, but my 3-year-old has become really excited to play with the stacking towers and hiding the wizards. I shuffle the wizards up, put them into various levels of the tower, and I make her guess which colour in on the next level down.
All of that to say that the toy factor for Wandering Towers is powerful enough to capture the attention of a toddler. The actual game is a joy to play, with snickering and giggles abound as a pile of towers falls onto your opponent’s head, and another two players move the whole stack. It’s very easy to lose track of where all your wizards have gotten off to, but that’s part of the fun. The reveal when the tower is lifted, and the piece you were so sure was there has gone missing. I adore this game, and I can’t wait to introduce it to my extended family.
7 – Applejack (2022)
I remember Jon Purkis of Actualol once said something along the lines of “If you want a game to have a high BGG rating, release it on Kickstarter first. If you want it to have a low BGG rating, release it on BoardGameArena first”, and I suspect that’s the case for Uwe Rosenberg’s Applejack. I adore this game, you can read my full review here for the details, but it’s languishing with a 6.9 rating on BGG.
Regardless of what the BGG users say, Applejack was a bright spot in my BoardGameArena experience this year. It had a slow burn, at first I dismissed it as being lucky, or pointless. But after half a dozen games, I started to see different strategies, and found so much joy in arranging my orchard to group the apple varieties together. I don’t own a copy of Applejack yet, but as soon as a copy hits the used market, I know I’ll swoop in to pick it up.
6 – Space Alert (2008)
Hey look, the first game that isn’t from 2022! Space Alert by Vlaada Chvatil is one of the games that I regret only playing once this year. A real time, cooperative, action queue game, players are trying to survive a 10-minute onslaught of threats before leaping into hyperspace and sailing off to victory.
Within my game group, I’m known as the ‘real-time’ fanatic, and I have a feeling that my friends are only middling on the concept. That said, everyone I played with enjoyed Space Alert, and I have no doubt that I would have any trouble getting it back to the table. Of course, the challenge with real time games is that everyone has to know all the rules before you begin, lest accidental cheating throw the whole game sideways.
Space Alert was full of tension and stress and great problem-solving. I love the chaos that real time games bring, and having a soundtrack blaring alerts while players are frantically debating how to deal with the threats, and therefore potentially missing crucial information, was just full belly laugh fun.
5 – Mechs Vs. Minions (2016)
Mechs vs. Minions has been one of my grail games since it was released in 2016. Another cooperative action planning game, but this time designed by Chris Cantrell, Rick Ernst, Stone Librande, Prashant Saraswat, and Nathan Tiras and published by Riot Games. And I mention the publisher here because the production is stunning. A big box full of minis, bright and colourful cards, and all for a very reasonable price.
The reason why this has been a grail game for me, is because shipping to Canada has been abhorrent. I was never willing to pay $80USD to ship a $95USD game. So when a used copy became available locally, my game group got very excited to finally dig into it. And it didn’t disappoint! The game is structured around various missions, with the first handful being a stripped down version of the game to get all the players used to the rules. Even those games were fun, as the action programming leads to chaos and when you can’t stop players from spinning around and around in the corner of the map, all you can do is giggle. We played 4 games of Mechs vs. Minions this year, and I can’t wait to play more.
4 – Switch & Signal (2020)
I knew nothing about Switch & Signal when I picked up a used copy early this year. But as I said in my review, I can feel the seed of train-love growing in my soul, and I didn’t own any train games. Switch & Signal by David Thompson is a cooperative game about moving trains to pick up goods in cities, then manipulating the signals and switches to get the trains to drop off the goods at port. Every round a card is flipped over that dictates where new trains span, which of the trains need to move, and the number of spaces each train moves is based off the roll of a die. Players need to anticipate where each train is going to go and which routes to open up, lest the trains run into a closed gate, or worse, each other.
I feel like Switch & Signal flew way under the radar when it was published in 2020, but that doesn’t diminish how great of a game this is. It’s fast and cooperative, meaning it’ll likely be making its way into my rotation of games that I use to introduce people to the board game hobby.
3 – Kites (2022)
Another real-time cooperative game, Kites by Kevin Hamano tasks players with keeping their kites in the sky, or rather, keep sand falling in all the timers. Players play a card from their hand, flip the timers corresponding with the colours on the cards, then draw a card to replenish your hand. The game ends when either the deck runs out (winners!) or if any one of the sand timers runs dry (losers!).
That’s the whole game. There are some advanced cards in the box if you want to get crazy with it, but the base game is so much fun on its own. There’s frantic card playing and timer flipping. Players are trying to communicate what they have and what they need, but information is constantly changing. Every time a timer flips over, everyone has to recalculate what’s the next most important task to tackle. I adore Kites, and will be forcing this game upon anyone who shows even a modicum of interest!
Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition was the surprise hit of the year. Everyone I’ve introduced it to has loved it. It’s a trick taking card game in which you declare what colour your cards are as you play them. It’s a concept that sounds like it shouldn’t work, and yet, I adore this game.
The hook of declaring your card suits is one thing. In Cat in the Box, there are more cards than should exist. There’s 4 suits, yet 5 cards of each number, meaning one of those cards can’t be played. The other hook of the game is avoiding paradoxes, meaning playing a card that has been declared to be impossible. This can happen if 5 cards of the same colour are played, or, if you’ve previously declared yourself to be void of a whole suit, but then are in a situation where that’s the only suit that could possibly be played.
Cat in the Box isn’t a game that I would use to introduce the trick taking mechanic to someone who’s never played it before, but it’s an amazing mind twisting treat for those of us who have a small history with trick taking. Cat in the Box is delightful and unique and has been a joy at my table all year long.
1 – Akropolis (2022)
I was introduced to Akropolis in the springtime, and it’s been a bug in my brain ever since. I posted a glowing review in August, and since then I’ve acquired my own copy of the game and have subjected it to my entire game group in addition to playing a dozen times on BoardGameArena
I’ve sold this game as Kingdomino meets NMBR 9. You have the scoring style of Kingdomino (you score the number of points for each colour, multiplied by the number of stars of that colour. And 0 stars means no points. That’s the law of maths) and the vertical gameplay of NMBR 9. The resultant game is one that’s easy to teach, and deliciously satisfying when you can manage to nail a huge score, generally by really maximizing your points in a single colour.
I don’t know exactly why Akropolis rose to the top of my board games of the year, all I know is that I love it, and I yearn to play it over and over again.
Thanks for reading my rundown of the best new to me games of 2023! I probably should have just named this list ‘the best of 2022 – a year late’, considering most of the games were from just last year! Either way, I hope you enjoyed this list, and let me know what your favourite gaming experience in 2023 was!
I never feel ready to make a “top games of X year” list when the new year comes around. The odds of me playing a significant amount of new releases is fairly small. As you can tell from my Best New to Me Games of 2022 post, and the fact that only 2 games released in 2022 made that list, I don’t play games the moment they get released.
Halfway through 2023 and I finally feel like I’ve played an adequate number of 2022’s titles where I can make a list highlighting the bright spots of this gaming year!
10. Wingspan: Asia
Number 10 on my list is Wingspan: Asia, designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and published by Stonemaier Games. Wingspan: Asia is a stand-alone expansion to the very popular Wingspan. What makes this expansion a bit special, is that it contains everything that you need to play the game with just 2 players. It also includes a ‘duet’ board, which adds a bit of an area control aspect to the game. When you play a card that matches a feature on the board, you place a token of your colour on that spot. Many of the end of round goals that come in this expansion focus on your positions on this board. Some demand you have tokens on as many rows as possible, while others will reward a dominating force in the wetlands.
My biggest pet peeve with Wingspan: Asia is that the tokens you’re placing on that duet board are ying-yang shaped wooden pieces. However, only one piece can exist on each of the spaces, which makes me question, why use ying-yang pieces at all? They fit together perfectly! Surely that would serve some purpose, right?
Alas, it’s a minor gripe. Wingspan: Asia contains all the great engine building gameplay that you know and love from the Wingspan series. It’s a game that my wife adores, and I’m very happy to have a two player specific version to play with her.
9. One Deck Galaxy
One Deck Dungeon is a dice-rolling dungeon crawl adventure that I got mildly obsessed with when I picked up the app version. You pick a character, get a pool of dice, and throw yourself against various challenges, which in the end, will level you up, expand your dice pool, and culminate with a fight against a big boss.
One Deck Galaxy designed by Chris Cieslik and published by Asmadi Games is the space themed sci-fi follow-up. You embody a hero, facing off against a dangerous foe. You roll and re-roll your dice pool, and adjust the rolls with skills and abilities, trying to clear certain thresholds to bring the card into your fold, which will grant you new abilities, expand your dice pool, or upgrade your base, all in an effort to clear the thresholds that the foe has, before calamity strikes, and you are overwhelmed.
I really enjoy the tactility of rolling mitt fulls of colourful dice. One Deck Galaxy makes for an excellent solo game, with 5 heroes and 5 foes to test your mettle against, it makes for an excellent little package. I’ve only played a few times, but it’s currently sitting behind me at work, begging to be broken out during a lunch break!
8. Foundations of Rome
Designer Emerson Matsuuchi has quite a catalogue of games under his belt. From the Century line of games, to Specter Ops, toHerStory, and now, Foundations of Rome. What each of these games have in common is that they’re all reasonably light and quick. What makes Foundations of Rome stand out, is the lavish production that publisher Arcane Wonders put into this product.
Sitting at an impressive 17″ by 15″ by 14″, this massive cube will take up several spots on your game shelf, and catch the eye of anyone wondering by.
The game itself is fairly simple, on your turn you either claim a plot of land, take income, or, place a building down on the main board, assuming you’ve claimed adjacent plots of land. The buildings you build will either earn you income and points, or, provide you with citizens, which may inadvertently give points to your opponents if you’re not paying attention. There are also civic buildings, all of which earn points in different ways, based on the buildings they’re placed adjacent to.
Considering it’s much larger than average footprint and price tag, Foundations of Rome is a fast and easy game to play. Each player’s components are contained within their own custom plastic tray, making setup as easy as passing each player a tray of their preferred colour.
While I can’t fathom ever putting up the cash to own this box myself, I would happily play it whenever it’s available to me. Thankfully, our local board game cafe has a copy in their library, which may serve as a pull to get me in there more often!
7. First Rat
I don’t know where or when I became aware of First Rat, designed by Gabriele Ausiello and Virginio Gigli, and published by Pegasus Spiele, but the theme was immediately charming to me. Players take control of a colony of rats that are inspired by comics and fuelled by apple cores to build a rocket ship and blast off to the cheese moon.
The clever gameplay of First Rat starts by giving you two rats to control, and on your turn, you can either move one rat 1 to 5 spaces, or multiple rats 1 to 3 spaces. The caveat being that all the rats need to end their turn on spaces of the same colour. Each space gives you resources, and with some added bonuses of stolen backpacks and lightbulbs, your ability to accrue resources gets better and better as the game goes on.
First Rat has a great engine building feel. At the start of the game you’ll feel utterly accomplished when you manage to collect 3 cheese on a single turn, but come the end of the game, you might swing a turn where you could collect 9 to 20 cheese. The progression feels excellent. First Rat is also quick to play, and offers a variable side of the board, so you can mix and match the spaces, thwarting that one player who manages to find the optimum route on the first play. I’ve only played First Rat once, but I’m looking forward to more
6. Kites
I love real time games. If a game has a real time component, I’m instantly down to give it a shot. Kites, designed by Kevin Hamano and published by Floodgate Games, gives you 6 timers and a stack of cards, then tasks you with keeping all the timers going simultaneously via card play.
Each card has one or two colours on it. When you play a card, you must flip over the colours depicted on the card, then draw a new card. If any of the timers ever run out, you lose. If you manage to drain the entire deck and play all the cards from your hand, then you win!
It’s straightforward, elegant, exciting, and kinetic. You’ll be anxiously looking at the red timer getting close to empty, play a card to flip it, then the next player will play a purple and red card. The anguish and stress that comes from trying to quickly parse your cards and which timer needs flipping, all while those timers are constantly draining, is simply delicious. I’m not sure how much staying power Kites has, I imagine once your group figures out the ‘flow’, it’ll move from exciting to just an exercise in flipping timers. But I really enjoyed the two times I’ve played Kites so far, and I won’t hesitate to introduce new players to this fun game.
5. Viticulture World: Cooperative Expansion
I’ve already talked about Viticulture World: Cooperative Expansion at length on this blog late last year. We bought it as a birthday gift for one of our game group members, as Viticulture: Essential Edition was one of his top 10 games of all time. And he loves cooperative games, making this expansion, designed by Mihir Shah and Francesco Testini published by Stonemaier Games, a no-brainer.
If you don’t want to read my full review, here’s the summary. It’s great. I enjoyed playing Viticulture World more than the competitive regular game. If you like coop games, and you like Viticulture, this is a must get!
4. Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition
Most people have some kind of history with trick taking games. My mom had a game group where they would play Hearts into the wee hours of the morning. As I grew up, my family gatherings always included a game of Wizard. Many of the gamers I’ve talked to have a similar background, of a specific trick taking game being something that brings people together.
Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition, designed by Muneyuki Yokouchi and published by Bézier Games, puts an out-of-the-box twist on the trick taking game formula. All the cards are black, and are suitless until observed. And by that, I mean, you need to declare what suit each card is when you play it. It’s fascinating that a trick taking game still works when you just, let people decide which suits they were dealt.
There are still rules, like, if you choose to not follow the lead suit, you are declaring that you have no other cards of that suit in your hand. And a big wrinkle in this game, is there are 5 of each card number, but only 4 can be played. If you find yourself in a situation where you cannot play a card, you cause a paradox and the round ends.
I am looking forward to getting my hands on my own copy and introducing Cat in the Box to my friends and family!
3. Akropolis
I spent a couple of weeks in Saskatoon in April, and while I was there I met up with Ryan Rau of Mista Rau’s Gaming to just chat and play a few games. He pulled out Akropolis, and knowing absolutely nothing about the game going in, I was floored at how much I enjoyed this game.
Akropolis, designed by Jules Messaud and published by Gigamic, is a tile laying game where you’re trying to build up your own city. Each of the tiles consists of 3 hexagons in a triangle pattern, which each hexagon depicting one of the various buildings. Each building scores differently, the blue buildings must be touching, the purple buildings must be enclosed, yadda yadda. When placing a building into your city, you can choose to build on top of other buildings. If you cover white buildings, you’ll get stone, and if you cover point scoring buildings, they no longer count for anything. But the buildings that end up on top, get better. A point scoring building on the third level scores 3 times, turning those useless quarry buildings into copies of the colours you want!
In addition to the vertical planning required for building a game-winning city, you also need to pick tiles that hold the stars. As each colour, building will be multiplied by the number of stars that you manage to collect. And in case you were wondering, each player only starts with 1 blue star.
I’ve played Akropolis a few times now, and it’s immensely satisfying. Placing the tiles in the exact right spot, overbuilding useless tiles with ones that generate tones of points, and denying your opponent any stars of the building they’ve been amassing since the start of the game are all simple joys. I would not be surprised if Akropolis ends up becoming a beloved tile laying game next to Calico or Azul.
2. Bullet⭐
I’ve already raved about how much I love Bullet♥︎ and the amazingly puzzly solo boss battle mode. The 2022 expansion, Bullet⭐, designed by Joshua Van Laningham and published by Level 99 Games, is literally just more of the same game. 8 new heroines and 8 new bosses, perfectly intergratable with the base game, there was nothing for me not to love about this expansion.
The new characters are a bit more out there. Their powers push the game system in new and interesting ways. Between Jane Doe, a half girl half deer detective who has three special bullets representing her get in your bag that you need to pull out to use, and Nawa, who has no actions or action points, but has persistent recipes that can be used endlessly (provided the bullet requirements are met). The pattern cards can move bullets, but with only 3 of those per round, things get dicey, quickly.
It’s difficult for me to articulate why I love Bullet⭐ and Bullet❤️ so dearly, but they spark something in my soul. An excitement that reminds me why I love board games. This is a ceberal puzzle that I don’t really feel in other kinds of games. I’m so happy with this expansion, as it just doubled my possibilities with this system!
1. Paperback Adventures
This one is kind of a cheat, as I got the opportunity to review a digital version of Paperback Adventures back in 2021. But, the game actually released in 2022. But Paperback Adventures is so much fun that I can’t help but put it as my favourite game of 2022.
Paperback Adventures is a solo roguelike deck building word game, designed by Tim Fowers and Skye Larson. In Paperback Adventures, you take on the persona of one of three heroes, the Damsel, Ex Machina, and Plothook, each with a unique deck of cards. A game takes place over 3 books, with each book pitting you against a minion and a boss. Each turn has you drawing 4 letter cards, which you add to a persistent wild card, and a vowel card, depending on the enemy you’re facing, and tasks you with making a word.
Once a word is made, you choose to show (or splay) either the left side of the cards, or the right side of the cards, revealing symbols that will provide you with attack, defence, and energy. In addition to these symbols, the letter on top will activate its special ability, which is the text in the centre. The downside, is that the top card will then be removed from your deck for the rest of the combat
It’s not hard to use all your letters, but it is challenging to get the right letter in the right spot. Adding into the challenge, you have the enemy attacks, your items, and skills that all need to be considered before you commit to your attack. Your health doesn’t automatically recover at the end of each combat, either, so taking wounds could mean disaster down the line.
As you defeat enemies, you’ll replace cards in your deck, upgrade cards, which has you flip them around in their sleeve to make them stronger, acquire macguffins and items that drastically improve your abilities, and challenge weird and wacky bosses, each with their own reward cards, offering a disjointed, but lovely vignette.
There are criticisms of the production, mainly that the trays that you use to track health, boons, and poison on are too tight. And it’s true, they are, but after a couple plays, the plastic gets a little worn in, making that problem fade into the background. Still, to address this, Fowers Games has made replacement components available to anyone who wants them.
Paperback Adventures is my favourite game of 2022. Every time I play, I’m caught off-guard with just how much I enjoy this roguelike adventure. There are some coop two player modes in the box, but I haven’t had the chance to give those a try yet.
And those are my favourite games from 2022! If you have some favourites or think that I’ve missed some great games, let me know in the comments below!
It’s no secret that I love discovery. I crave new experiences, and will choose to explore a new game over a game that I’ve played before and know I like 9 times out of 10. For some, this character trait is annoying, but I am who I am. in 2022 I played 105 different games 235 different times, and of those 105 different games, 41 were new to me. I’ve compiled the games that were new to me in 2022 that I enjoyed the most
Now, these games may not have been released in 2022, but I played them for the first time this year. While it’s tempting to be seduced by the new hotness every week, it’s a reminder that sometimes you should look back a bit and see what gems you missed.
#1 – Bullet⭐ (2022)
This one is a bit of a cheat in that it’s kind of an expansion to my favourite game from 2021, Bullet❤️ . And by expansion, I mean that it’s the full game again, just with 8 different heroines and bosses that can be mixed and matched from the original game.
If you’ve somehow missed my myriad of posts about Bullet❤️ and ⭐, here’s a quick rundown. Bullet⭐ is a push your luck pattern matching game for 1 – 4 players. Players pull bullets out of their bags, and assess the colour and number. The bullet slots into the column of the matching colour, and moves down the number of open spots. If the bullet hits the bottom row, BANG, you lose a life. Lose all your life, and game over!
I’ve exclusively played Bullet⭐ solo, which has become my favourite way to play. I love the symmetry of the bosses and characters, and I love mixing and matching, discovering which bosses are a cakewalk against which characters, and I love the push your luck gameplay. The multiplayer mode is also quite fun, if you’re a fan of real time games. It’s fast and exciting, but also, isolating. When the game is on, you are 100% focused on your own board, and all the interaction you get is flinging bullets back and forth between your opponents. It’s a fine experience, but the solo boss battle mode is where this game really gets to shine.
#2 – 6 Nimmt (1994)
6 Nimmt by Wolfgang Kramer is brilliance in a box. A mere 104 cards manages to contain a world of tension and excitement. 6 Nimmt pits players against 4 growing rows of cards. Everyone plays a card simultaneously, then they’re slotted into a row in ascending order, placed next to the card they’re closest to. If someone’s card would be the 6th card in that row, they instead take all those cards into their play area as their score. The catch of the game is, score is bad. The first player to hit 66 points triggers the end game, and once the game is over, the player with the least points is the winner.
6 Nimmt achieves what many much larger and more expensive games aspire to, generate tension and excitement and audible groans as the gameplay unfolds. I love the double-think as you desperately try to figure out what your opponents will be doing. If you’re successful, and you sneak in the 5th card in a row just ahead of someone else, it’s immensely satisfying. If you’re wrong and end up taking a terrible handful of cards, the jeers from your opponents do nothing to ease the sting of failure.
Luckily, 6 Nimmt only lasts for ~15 minutes. Once it’s done, you sweep the table and go again, no harm, no foul. If you like card games, especially simple to learn and easy to break out at the local pub, than 6 Nimmt is an excellent choice.
#3 – Viticulture World (2022)
One of the best things about having friends who are just as enthusiastic about board games as you are, is that when you buy them a game as a gift, they’ll generally play that game with you. It may be a little selfish, but it makes it really easy to buy gifts for your friends when that gift will facilitate a couple nights of hanging out.
Viticulture World designed by Mihir Shah and Francesco Testini is the cooperative expansion to Jamey Stegmaier and Alan Stone’s 2013 game, Viticulture. In Viticulture World, each player is still managing their own farm, and each player must reach 20 victory points by the end of the game, or the players lose the scenario. In addition to those personal goals, there’s another track that all players can contribute to that also needs to be pushed to its limit to claim victory.
I’ve complained about Viticulture‘s luck before, and how getting the right cards at the start of the game can launch you into a powerful position, and while that still holds true in this expansion, a player doing well benefits everyone. The goal isn’t to try to catch up to the leader despite the luck, but to take the situation the game throws at you and form a winning strategy out of it.
If I’m being honest, I don’t really want to go back to base Viticulture after playing Viticulture World. Now, I don’t always LOVE cooperative games, but this one is pretty special. There are great moments of collaboration, but players still get ownership over what they can contribute to the team.
If you want to read more, I did write a full review of Viticulture World, which you can read here
#4 – So Clover (2021)
As a seasoned gamer, I can often dismiss party games as not for me, as the vast majority of the games that I play are in serious settings. Four grown men silently sitting around a table with furrowed brows, pushing cubes for 2 hours until a final exclamation of emotions at the very end, is my idea of a good time. So when these word association party games show up, I’m perpetually tempting to crush them under the very weight of a superior game, such as Scythe.
I’m only kidding. I’m actually super impressed with how great a game can be with so little. So Clover has a few decks of cards with 4 words, one on each side of the card, and a handful of plastic clovers, so you can align the cards easily. Your goal is to connect the two words on the outside of each wall. What I like about So Clover over other great games like Codenames or Just One is that everyone is involved for a lot of the time. In Codenames, players sit and wait while the codemaster hems and haws over the clue they’re going to give. In Just One, the active player sits with their eyes closed as all the players write their words and compare notes. In So Clover, all players prepare a clover at the same time, then, players go through the clovers one by one, keeping everyone involved and engaged.
I had a blast playing So Cloverat Cabin-Con this year. The next time I go to visit my family, I’m going to pick up a copy of this excellent game, as I know it’ll be a hit anywhere I pull it out.
#5 – Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun
I’ve had a bit of a complicated relationship with the T-series of games (Tzolk’in, Teotihuacan, Trismegistus, Tiletum, etc). Initially, I didn’t like Tzolk’in at all. Then, I disliked Teotihuacan even more. Upon revisiting Tzolk’in, I found myself enjoying it much more than I remember. Then, I got my hands on Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun and found myself really enjoying the game.
If you haven’t played it before, Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun is a big and complex game, but the crux of the mechanics is an obelisk sits in the board and casts a shadow over some of the action spaces. Die are rolled and placed into each of the 6 action spaces, and the colour of the die dictates if that die is pure, tainted, or forbidden. When taking an action, the pip value and colour may affect the action, and the purity dictates where that die goes onto your scales of karmic balance. There’s a lot to consider in every action of the game, and the player who can balance all these aspects the best, will emerge the winner.
Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun has an incredible table presence. A plastic spire rises off the table, and chunky dice lie around it, displaying all the options available to you. There is much more to do than you could ever hope to achieve in a single game. I only got a single play of Tekhenu in this year, but it’s one I’m keen to return to.
#6 – War Chest (2018)
Once upon a time in cold, bitter Winnipeg, I had a roommate. This fellow and I were both avid gamers, but our time together was prior to my discovery of board games. We’d play Gears of War 3 and Borderlands 2 and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game into the wee hours of the morning. We also played a fair amount of Chess, Magic: The Gathering: and Yu-Gi-Oh together. Xel was the perfect opponent, we were both equally enthusiastic, evenly matched, and both grew in our strategies, developing a meta unique to us and figuring out how to counter that meta.
It’s my great regret that I left Xel behind in Manitoba before getting into the world of board games. He installed a deep love for two player direct conflict games in my heart that I still hold to this day, despite not having a gaming partner with the same proclivities over nearly a decade now.
War Chest by Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson is the kind of game that Xel and I would have dove deep into. It’s an abstract game with a hex map. Each player has a different set of units available to them, each with their own unique abilities. Your units are represented by chips, and you take actions by pulling chips from a bag, and spending them. Some actions can be spent by using any chip, while others require chips matching the unit you want to use the action with. The goal of the game isn’t necessarily to wipe out your enemy forces, but to control certain points. While attacking and removing your enemies can be very helpful, I’ve won games without attacking a single time and while sustaining heavy losses.
As soon as I get a gaming partner who enjoys these two player direct conflict games, and we start playing games more regularily, I’ll be picking up my own copy of War Chest and any expansions that are available. I really enjoyed my plays of War Chest and can’t wait to explore it further.
#7 – Canvas (2021)
Canvas, by Jeff Chin and Andrew Nerger was a bit of a surprise to me. My wife and I went down to our local board game cafe and plucked this game off the shelf simply because it looked pretty. I vaugely knew that it featured plastic transparent cards. What we discovered was a pretty puzzle game about creating works of art and trying to satisfy the conditions of score cards to earn points.
Now, the actual artwork on the cards is unnecessary to the gameplay, the only thing that really matters is the icons along the bottom. Players take turns drafting plastic cards into their hands that feature different icons. They can then stack 3 plastic cards and slot them into a plastic sleve to create a masterpiece and submit it for scoring. Once all players have submitted 3 artworks, the player with the most points is the winner!
I know I just said that the artwork was unnecessary, and from a gameplay perspective, it is. But it gives the game lots of charm and a lovely theme, even if the composition of some of the artworks feels like it leaves a bit to be desired.
#8 – Pandemic: Rising Tide (2017)
I would never call myself a Pandemic expert, but i’m also no slouch. Playing on the normal difficulty on the app, I have about a 70% win rate, and I haven’t lost a game of Pandemic: Fall of Rome yet. So maybe I had a little bit of hubris when I pulled out Pandemic: Rising Tide by Jeroen Doumen and Matt Leacock. I strode in, expecting another easy Pandemic experience but with a different coat of thematic paint. What happened was I got lulled into a false sense of security thanks to plentiful dykes, then when they broke and water flooded all across the map and I started to panic then promptly ran out of water cubes and was left a broken shell of a person.
I’m being dramatic, but, this version of Pandemic thumped me good, and I’ve been thirsting to go back to it. If you haven’t played it before, Pandemic: Rising Tide is set in the industrial age in the Netherlands, tasking players with building modern hydraulic structures that will prevent the country from being swallowed by the ocean. The feature that sets this version apart from other Pandemics, is that there is only one colour of cube to battle against, and water flows across the map. If a section of map has 3 cubes on it, all adjacent sections will get 2 cubes, then regions adjacent to those regions will get 1 cube each. Luckily, dykes are in place to prevent the water from freely flowing across regions. Unfortunately, dykes break and the torrents of water are relentless.
It’s great, it’s hard, and it’s really hard to pronounce any of the dutch regions. I hope to play more soon so I can figure out where it sits in my personal rating of Pandemic games!
#9 – SCOUT (2019)
I think… I like card games. It’s not something that I logically find myself particularly drawn to. When I’m pursuing the shelves at my FLGS, my eyes are naturally pulled to the big impressive boxes. More and more I find myself charmed by little games that can do so much with just cards!
Enter Scout by Kei Kanjino and published by Oink Games. In Scout, players are dealt a hand of double sided cards, and are explicitly told, under no circumstances are they allowed to rearrange the cards in their hand (I absolutely love this mechanic). On their turn, they can either ‘Show’ or ‘Scout’, and once per round you can ‘Show and Scout’. If you show, you need to take cards from your hand and place them on the table, either a set of cards (cards of the same value), or a run of cards (cards with sequential ascending or descending value). If there is already a show on the table, your showing must be stronger than that’s already there (meaning more cards, or, if tied, a higher value). If you can’t, or don’t want to show, you can ‘Scout’. This allows you to take one of the cards from the current show and add it to your hand. Finally, once per round you can ‘Scout and Show’, where you do both actions on a single turn
The round ends when someone runs out of cards, or, when someone plays a show, and all subsequent players scout. Points are tallied and the player at the end of the game with the most points is the winner
Scout is a little delight. It’s so frustrating looking at your hand and seeing how close some of the cards are, and it’s immensely satisfying when you’re able to scout a card and place it in the perfect spot in your hand. The box for Scout is literally the size of the cards, making it easy to travel with, and the gameplay is fast and easy to teach. I think Scout is the kind of game that could live in my travel bag forever, and would be a hit at every pub I pull it out at.
#10 – Ultimate Railroads (2021)
Much like Bullet⭐, Ultimate Railroads is a bit of a cheat. This version by Helmut Ohley and Leonhard Orgler is the ‘big box’ edition with all the expansions for 2013’s Russian Railroads. If you haven’t played Russian Railraods before, it’s a worker placement game in which players are trying to build a rail line to earn the most points. Unlike most other train games, in Russian Railroads there is no central map or pick up and deliver aspect. Instead you have tracks of varying grade, and as you build the weakest track you unlock the ability to build better tracks over the ones you’ve already build. As the grade of track goes up, so does the amount of victory points you earn.
One of my favourite aspects of Russian Railroads is how the amount of points you earn each turn pretty much doubles throughout the game. On the first turn, earning 5 points is reasonable. Then in turn two, you’ll earn another 10 points, then 20, and by the end of the game you’ll be earning 135 points and riding that locomotive to victory!
The only module of Ultimate Railroads we played with this year was German Railroads, which introduces coal (a module I wouldn’t bother with again), and a modular player board, letting you choose how the rail lines develop and what kinds of benefits you’ll earn from those tracks. I quite enjoyed that playerboard, even if I came in dead last by a wide margin.
And those have been the top 10 new to me games I played in 2022! What were some of your breakout hits? Any games you’re looking forward to playing next year?
Honourable mentions: The Red Cathedral, Acquire, Unsettled
Dishonourable mentions: Maglev Metro, In the Hall of the Mountain King, The Pillars of the Earth, Azul: Queen’s Garden
