Every December, I scroll through everyone else’s “Best Games of the Year” lists and feel the familiar pang of jealousy. By the time those posts go up, I’ve generally only played about five titles from the current year. Hardly enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with anyone publishing a “Best of 2025” list.
But that’s okay. Being a little behind the curve has its perks. At the time of writing this post, I’ve played 110 games that were published in 2024, giving me some insight of which games actually endured the hype cycle. So instead of churning through hot takes, these are the five 2024 releases that climbed the BGG ranks this year, and what I think about them.
5 – Arcs
Arcs is one of those games where the praise and the frustration can live side by side. Designed by Cole Wehrle and published by Leder Games, it’s a tactical, trick-taking-adjacent space opera where everything, from its world-building to its action economy, feels flawlessly engineered.
As I wrote back in my review, “Arcs is a masterpiece. It’s a game bursting with so much variety, discovery, and depth, all crafted meticulously by designer Cole Wehrle. Every mechanic feels intentional… There isn’t an ounce of unnecessary bloat.”
And yet, “It’s just a shame that I don’t like playing it.”
For players who love being on their toes, Arcs is exhilarating. It’s a game about seizing fleeting opportunities, pulling the exact right lever at the exact right time, and surviving long enough to pivot when the galaxy turns against you. The Blighted Reach campaign expands the base game into a three-act space saga that rewards mastery and table commitment in equal measure.
But for players like me, who crave structure and control, Arcs can feel like being handcuffed to the whims of the deck. I don’t like being cut off from core actions entirely, just because I was dealt a hand of manoeuvre cards. And yes, I know there are ways to subvert a bad hand, it still feels more frustrating than anything else to me. But even I can’t deny how deftly it integrates narrative, tactics, and high-stakes decisions. Arcs might not be the game for me, but it’s unquestionably one of 2024’s best and boldest designs.
4 – Harmonies
Harmonies deserves all the praise it’s gotten so far. It’s a gorgeous spatial puzzle that’s both soothing and surprisingly demanding.
Designed by Johan Benvenuto and published by Libellud, Harmonies quickly became a darling of the 2024 awards circuit, earning a Spiel des Jahres recommendation and winning the Golden Geek Medium Game of the Year. It’s easy to see why.
To oversimplify it, imagine Azul crossed with Cascadia. In Harmonies, you’re building a landscape on your personal player board, creating harmonious habitats for the various animals that could call your board home. Each turn, you draft and place terrain discs, plan for animal patterns, and try to make everything fit together in a natural rhythm.
The cadence of Harmonies is calm, and the puzzle is satisfying. It’s a short, beautiful game that rewards smart drafting and spatial planning without really punishing you for mistakes, aside from lost opportunities. And while there’s precious little player interaction, that calm independence is part of its charm. Harmonies is a game for quiet concentration and tactile joy, not cutthroat competition.
3 – The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth
I love 7 Wonders Duel, much more than the full 7-player game from which it spun off from. And that’s the bias I held which I approached The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth, the streamlined reimagining from Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala.
Like 7 Wonders Duel, it’s a two-player card drafting duel, but this time, one player controls the Free Peoples of Middle Earth while the other commands Sauron’s forces. Victory can come from destroying or capturing the ring, conquering every region, or earning the allegiance of all six races.
Comparing it to 7 Wonders Duel, Duel for Middle-earth has been smoothed to a polished stone. All the wonky rules have been shaved off, everything is easier, and you’re able to calculate the cose for everything with a glance. The result is an elegant, fast-playing experience that evokes the tension of the original while being even more accessible.
That polish, however, comes at a cost. Because the game is smoother, it feels flatter. There’s less texture and depth to grab onto. You lose some of the crunchy engine-building and wild swings in resource costs that make 7 Wonders Duel so replayable. And yet, when my partner and I played Duel for Middle-earth for the first time, we learned it and knocked out two games within an hour and immediately wanted a third. It doesn’t replace 7 Wonders Duel for me, but it does make for an attractive 2 player game that I’d be happy to introduce to almost anyone.
2 – Slay the Spire: The Board Game
Slay the Spire needs no introduction to digital-deckbuilding fans, but the tabletop adaptation from Contention Games was one of the year’s most quietly ambitious triumphs. It managed to translate the tension, rhythm, and roguelike loop of the video game without feeling like a diluted knock off.
Each player pilots a unique character through a branching path of combats, upgrades, and relics, all while managing card efficiency and risk. What impressed me most isn’t that it’s accurate, but that designers Gary Dworetsky, Anthony Giovannetti, and Casey Yano understood the core of the game and didn’t just copy the digital game one for one. They took it as inspiration and created something that works amazingly well on the table without a computer managing the math in the background.
I convinced a friend to buy this for her husband, and while she was initially hesitant because she wasn’t a fan of coop games, they told me they played it almost a dozen times in the weeks that followed. And now both of them have been playing the app too, which inspired me to continue my ascension challenge as well.
1 – SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
There’s something poetic about a game that looks to the cosmos for answers, topping this list. SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, designed by Tomáš Holek and published by Czech Games Edition, became one of the most celebrated euros of 2024.
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 the best thing I can say is that we finished our first play at a local café, and one of our players immediately bought a copy on the spot.
Any euro that inspires instant ownership speaks volumes. SETI strikes a rare balance of brain-burning complexity and cool, thematic immersion. You’re not just moving cubes to score points; you’re sending probes out to the far reaches of our solar system, chasing the thrill of discovery itself. And that spark, the sense of optimism and wonder that pushes people to explore the limits of space, well, I think we all need a bit more of that in our lives.
2024 was a great year for games, and these 5 games really showcase the strength of the board game hobby. Now that 2026 is here, I can’t wait to get started on all the great games that came out in 2025!
Gosh. I love all the games on this list. Any of these games could be in my top 10, but, there’s only 10 spots on that list, and way too many really great games competing for those spots! But, if you asked me in person, any of these games would be liable to slip their way up the list, depending on how front of mind these games are.
20 – Golden Sun
Year Released: 2001 | Platform: Gameboy Advance
Golden Sun was literally a buried treasure for me. I was a pre-teen, visiting a friends house, digging through his treasure chest, when I excivated a random GBA cart from the bottom. The sticker has been ripped off. I asked him what game this one, and he just shrugged, so I asked if I could take it home to try it out.
Golden Sun is an epic tale of young heroes with the ability to use Psynergy powers, trying to save the world. Satros and Merdini have kidnapped your childhood friends, stole the elemental stars, and are trying to light the four elemental lighthouses spread across the land. If they do, the world will surly end.
Along your journey, you’ll find some Dijinn, who can be assigned to different character to augment their powers. Also, many of your psynergy powers can be used in the overworld to solve puzzles, from forcing vines to grow, to reading peoples minds, to psychally moving distant objects.
It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly make Golden Sun special, but it holds a pretty special place in my heart, and it the kind of JRPG that I enjoy returning to every few years.
19 – Mass Effect 3
Year Released: 2013 | Platform: PlayStation 3 (multiplatform)
Much like how The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won 11 Oscars, not just because the individual movie was stellar, but it was more of a recognition of what the series had accomplished. Mass Effect 3 is one of my favourite games because it was the culmination of a trilogy of excellent sci-fi games. While the series changed gameplay styles from game to game, and some storylines were a little more boring than others, the overall experience was nothing short of phenomenal.
I was originally put off playing the entire Mass Effect series because of the voheminetly negative reaction around the finale. But for my money, I thought the ending was perfectly adequate.
What I really pine for, from Mass Effect 3, is the online multiplayer mode. It was seriously, so much fun. it was cooperative as you try to hold your own against a waves of enemies. I don’t usually play online modes, but that one was absolutely worth the time.
18 – Final Fantasy IV
Year Released: 1991 | Platform: Super Nintendo
I’ve been working my way through all the Final Fantasy games as part of a Final Fantasy Challenge, but even before I started that, Final Fantasy IV has been a favourite game of mine ever since I was a little kid.
I covered Final Fantasy IV in depth already based on my very recent replay, and the long and short of it is, Final Fantasy IV holds up. As I continue to go through the FF series, I’m seeing a lot of rehetoric that FF 6 through 10 was the “Golden era”. In my humble opinion, that era starts with FFIV, and if anyone asked where they should start with the series, I’d point them to Final Fantasy IV without hesitation.
17 – Banjo-Kazooie
Year Released: 1998 | Platform: Nintendo 64
Banjo-Kazooie has a pretty special place in my heart. I distinctly remember visiting a video store while visiting a friend, and I was allowed to rent one game for the weekend. My friend tried pushing me towards Doom 64, because “LOOK HOW AWESOME THE COVER IS” (to a 9 year old boy, anyway). But I’ve never been a big fan of gratuitous violence, instead I was drawn to the bright colours of Banjo-Kazooie.
A 3D platforming collecta-thon, Banjo-Kazooie has you tracking down 100 notes and 10 jiggies across 10 distinct worlds, before confronting the evil witch Guntilda. The worlds are focused and full of charm and secrets, but what really stands out for me is Grant Kirkhope’s absolutely iconic soundtrack. Every track for this game is an absolute hit, and even the re-jiggied album is one of my default soundtracks when I go for any drive that’s longer than 30 minutes.
I recently finished a “100%” replay of Banjo-Kazooie with my 4 year old daughter as a copilot, and had an amazing time doing so, but I made a terrible mistake. Turns out, on the 360 version, if you play Bottles puzzles before going to the Haunted Mansion level, the Banjo in the puzzle will collect 4 notes, and then they won’t be there when you make your way to the level, forever leaving your note count for that world at 96.
16 – Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
Year Released: 1996 | Platform: SNES
Mario and friends embark on a JRPG adventure across the Mushroom Kingdom to collect stars to repair the star road, and kick Smithy out of Bowsers Castle. Square crafted a wonderful, charming adventure, and while the RPG elements are a bit of a back seat, I did really enjoy the active turn based battle system, where well timed button presses will net you extra damage, or give you a bit of a defensive buff. The isometric view is excellent, the story is goofy, but when I was a 8 year old playing this for the first time, I felt like there was a real gravity behind the events as they unfurled.
I did play the Switch remake, and I had a great time revisiting the game, but the extra bits that were added sucked any difficulty away from the game. I felt a profound sense of joy when Princess Peach joined the party, and how excited my daughter got when she saw that Peach was a playable character, and demanded she be present in every battle possible.
To this day, I pine to see Geno in Smash.
15 – Donkey Kong Country
Year Released: 1994 | Platform: SNES
To me, Donkey Kong Country is the quintessential Donkey Kong game. The music is atmospheric and perfect, the platforming gameplay is challenging, especially if you’re aspiring to collection all the KONG letters in each level. I really appreciated the inclusion of 2 players here, so I could play with my siblings. We bonded as we cursed those bastard bumble bees.
I know future DK games add so much more to the ape’s gameplay, including Donkey Kong Country Returns barrel jetpack, or Dixie Kongs hair twirling helicopter, but for me, Donkey Kong Country is the DK for me.
14 – Mega Man X
Year Released: 1993 | Platform: SNES
Oh the Blue Bomber. Mega Man X takes the jump and shoot gameplay and gives you a dash and wall jumps. Now you’re zipping through levels, leaping over chasms, and blasting baddies to kingdom come.
I’ll be honest here, I can’t even be unbiased. I friggin LOVE Mega Man X. I played it so much as a kid, that I just innately know the order in which to fight the bosses, where all 4 health packs are, and I can clear this game in like, 90 minutes.
The momentum and excitement of Mega Man X is brilliant. If I’m being really honest, Mega Man Zero 2 is probably the better game (of course it’s the better game, it has a friggin SWORD), but Mega Man X has such strong nostalgia, that I can’t help but put it here on my top games of all time list.
13 – Super Mario Galaxy
Year Released: 2007 | Platform: Nintendo Wii
Side note, sometimes when I write the year released for these games, I feel like I’m a billion years old.
ANYWAYS, Mario Galaxy is a stellar entry in the Mario franchise. The core quirk is that Mario flies around to little unique planetoids, and he collects stars. The gravity of the planets is so much fun, and pretty technically impressive on how well they pull it off. After all, it’s not uncommon for you to be running to the left, then for the camera to swing around, and suddenly you’re running to the right. A few times, Mario gets stuck running in circles, but coming to a stop resets the joystick orientation.
Being a Nintendo Wii game, there is an emphasis on pointer controls and stick waggles, but thankfully those moments are fairly few and far between and unobtrusive. Getting through the game is a joyful occasion, but getting that 100% will make you want to tear your hair out in a couple places. From the daredevil runs where you need to beat a boss with 1 hp, or trying to collect 100 purple coins. And when you do get those 120 stars, you get to do it again as Luigi!
I love Mario Galaxy. Mario Galaxy 2 is also excellent, but I generally really appreciate original games, rather than sequels that improve upon the path blazed by the first game. It also helps that Mario Galaxy is a part of the 3D All Stars collection, and I recently replayed it, while Galaxy 2 is locked to the Wii. Perhaps it’s about time I configure my Wii emulator and revisit that Galaxy.
12 – Slay the Spire
Year Released: 2019 | Platform: PC
I was determined to not like Slay the Spire. I immediately disliked the art style. And the animation. I played my first game, died before the first boss, and called the whole game unfair.
I don’t remember what brought me back, but at this point I’ve poured hundreds of hours into Slay the Spire. It’s an absolutely brilliant game that just keeps revealing new layers the more you dive into the system. Every character is a unique puzzle to solve, every decision matters, and most often I feel like my losses are due to my own poor mistakes rather than randomness just being a jerk.
The ascension levels change the game dramatically, getting and beating A20 with each character was an incredible challenge that I was so proud of overcoming. Every deck building roguelike gets compared to Slay the Spire and more often than not, I drop them after a few hours just to return to Slay the Spire.
11 – Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire
Year Released: 2002 | Platform: GBA
Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire is my most played Pokemon game by a very wide margin. First, I was on a 10 hour road trip with my school one year, and one of the other boys wasn’t interested in playing it, so he let me take it. When I started, he only had 1 gym badge, and when I gave it back, I had just reached the Elite Four. But what made me replay this version of Pokemon so much, was that it was so easily emulate-able. Every smartphone and laptop I’ve owned had since I turned 18 has had a copy of Pokemon Sapphire on it, and it’s generally my favourite way to kill time. Spin up a new save, and blaze my way through the Hoenn region. I have a deep love for Ruby and Sapphire, from the music, to the new ‘mons introduced in 3rd gen, all the way down to the colourful sprites. Going from Pokemon Gold to Pokemon Sapphire was an incredible jump in graphics for my little 12 year old brain.
And as you’ll see next week, this isn’t even my favourite Pokemon game. 😉
I love listening/watching the videos by Tea and Games. Her enthusiasm for board games is so genuine and her joy is infectious. So when she posted her mid year Tabletop Challenge video, I was interested in playing along. Then when Kovray posted their video, I knew I had to get in on this action.
The midyear challenge has been initiated for the past 3 years by Rolling Reggie on his social media channels, so if you want to see what other creators have gotten in on this challenge, be sure to give Rolling Reggie a follow! Without further ado, let’s do this!
What is your favourite game so far this year?
Slay the Spire is the one that springs to mind. Now granted, I’ve played the living hell out of the video game, and I even played the TTS mod when STS was on crowdfunding. But actually sitting down and playing a 4 player game was probably the most fun I’ve had all year.
What is your most played game?
Technically, Solar Storm has been my most played game, but that’s just from sheer tenacity of my Board Game Arena group bashing our heads against the wall of the cooperative challenge. My most played game on the table so far in 2025 has been The Gang.
For those who haven’t played The Gang yet, it’s cooperative Poker. You deal out cards, Texas Hold’em style, and between each card reveal, you silently take chips to determine who has the best hand. When the final card is revealed, all players reveal their hands. If you managed to sort yourselves properly, you win!
It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s surprisingly engaging, and has been a hit with everyone I’ve introduced it to. I think I’m the least enthuastic amongst my friends about it, but even I still have a great time when The Gang hits the table.
What was your biggest surprise?
I think Bomb Busters was the biggest surprise. After reading the rulebook and playing the first introductory game, I was sure it was going to be Minesweeper, but boring. A baby game for babies, the options were either going to be obtuse, or obvious.
Well if it’s recent Spiel des Jahres win hadn’t convinced me, actually sitting down and playing the game turned me into a fan. I loved the experience, and I can’t wait to keep playing through the 60+ missions that come in the box.
What game’s production/art has impressed you the most?
I think most recently Vladamir Suchy’s Shipyard surprised me with its sheer amount of cardboard engineering, from assembling a crane to hold all the tiles, to stickering parts of the cardboard sprue to the player board to simulate a dual layered experience.
Beyond that, Re;Act: The Arts of War had gorgeous anime artwork and stunning acrylic standees for it’s grid based tactical duel game that left me totally charmed.
What has been your most reliable introductory board game?
Cockroach Poker has been a huge hit with me this year, and I’ve been successful in getting my aunt and cousin to sit down and enjoy a game. It’s so simple to deal out the whole deck of cards, explain the concept of lying, and then just letting the drama unfold.
What game do you want to get off of your Shelf of Shame in the second half of the year?
I have two that I’ve been been eyeing for a while now. Tragedy Looper by BakaFire is a 1 vs many scenario based deduction game that looks to be unique and exciting, but I’m just haven’t been in the mood to essentially GM a game for my friends. The other one is Argent: The Consortiumby Level 99 Games. This one is a competitive worker placement game, and the only thing holding me back from this one is its sheer complexity. At a weight of 3.77, it’s generally more than I’m willing to commit to on a Wednesday night. Perhaps when I host my annual birthday board game day I’ll break the seal on both of these games.
Which game from 10+ years ago did you discover this year?
Mountain Goats is the one that comes to mind, thanks to the new edition by AllPlay, but if we want to talk about OLD GAMES, then in Janurary I was introduced to Evo. This was a charming little dinosaur evolution game. In Evo, you spend rounds evolving a dinosaur species, roaming your tribe through the ecosystems to content with global warming and cooling. The art is whimsical and charming in the 2001 edition, and I felt like it held up surprisingly well for being published around 24 years ago.
Which anticipated releases are you most excited about for the second half of the year?
As someone who doesn’t look forward very much, this is a hard question to answer. I’m intrigued by Recall, simply to see what the designers of Revive (another one of my most played games this year) have cooked up this time. Burgle Bros. 3is somewhere on the horizon, and I implicitly trust Tim Fowers to put out great games. Vantageby Jamey Stegmier is currently delivering, and I feel the deep pangs of regret for not pre-ordering it months ago.
Bonus: What’s your personal favourite video that you’ve posted to your channel?
It’s not board game related, but I’ve been most proud of the work I put into my Final Fantasy Project, where I play through all the single player mainline Final Fantasy games. I’m almost finished playing through Final Fantasy VII, which is the first time I’ve ever even made it out of Midgar before. It’s been a fascinating journey, playing video games from 1987, and seeing how the series has evolved over each of its entries.
Slay the Spire: The Board Game, designed by Gary Dworetsky, Anthony Giovannetti, and Casey Yano and published by Contention Games is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. As a fan of the video game it’s based on, I have been eagerly anticipating this game since it was announced nearly a year ago.
To start, here’s my Slay the Spire credentials. I’ve played Slay the Spire for about 71 hours on Steam, and an additional 60 hours on Android. My favourite character to play is The Defect, with which I’ve reached Ascension level 8. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to even just beat the game with The Watcher. After 16 runs I’ve just today finally managed to do. I think I’ve reached the 3rd act boss half a dozen times, but I kept on losing to that final hurdle. While I’d never call myself a Slay the Spire expert, I’d definitely class myself as an enthusiast.
When the Kickstarter campaign finally launched, my heart dropped. $135 CAD for the base game, plus $16 for shipping. $150 is firmly out of the impulse buy category for me. The campaign itself had extremely few details on what the board game did differently from the video game. I knew a straight port wouldn’t be possible, there’s much too much math involved to make it enjoyable or playable. Over the next few days, more details came out, and various creators who got preview copies published their content. While helpful, the lack of information on the actual pledge page is disappointing. What was helpful was the release of the Prototype rulebook, and a playable version of the game on Tabletop Simulator.
I roped in Bigfoot, who, like me, is an avid board gamer and has significant experience playing the Slay the Spire video game. This made teaching a breeze, he already knew the flow of the game, the iconography, and some of the strategy (like how important defence is, and why we should focus on tackling elites). He assumed the role of the ironclad while I took on The Silent.
How to play
Slay the Spire is a deck building dungeon crawl where the goal is to defeat enemies to earn rewards to acquire better cards and relics with special abilities until you finally defeat the boss. When normal combat starts, an enemy is placed into a row, one for each player. Enemy cards may also summon minions into their row.
Players have 3 energy each turn to play cards from their hands, and by default, draw 5 cards. A die is rolled which will affect everything that has a die ability. Some monsters will have different attacks based off the die roll, while others will simply do the same thing every time, while others will work through a series of static effects.
Players play their cards, generating block to shield themselves from damage, and swords, which do damage to the enemies. Players can target any enemy on any row with their attacks, enabling some great collaborative play. After all players have finished playing cards, any unplayed cards are discarded, and the monsters take their turn. Starting from the top left and moving to the bottom right, monsters attack. Any damage is negated by shields, but should those run out, then hp is reduced. If anyone’s hp drops to 0, the team has lost.
Should the players be victorious, they acquire rewards. Coins that can be spent at shops, potions offering clutch 1 time effects, and new cards they can add into their deck. Each character starts with a basic 10 card deck, and has a pool of 60 cards from which they can add from. Each character also have 20 rare cards which are very powerful, but harder to obtain.
First Impressions
A key component of Slay the Spire is upgrading your cards. At a rest site, you can choose to either heal hp, or, upgrade a single card. This can reduce the cost, or increase the ability of the card itself. The board game handles this by utilizing double-sided cards in sleeves. When you upgrade a card, just pull it out of its sleeve, flip it around, and put it back into it’s sleeve for the remainder of the game.
So what’s different from the video game? Well, the math has been reduced. All the strikes and defends generate 1 hit or shield respectively. Weakness now just reduces the number of hits generated by 1, and vulnerable doubles the damage the next time the target takes damage. Stats effects have been turned into cards that either effectively reduce your draw then disappear, or a card that goes into your discard pile that will cause trouble when it appears in your hand. Burns, which do damage if they’re in your hand at the end of your turn, or green spirals, which will sap your energy when drawn. The Silent’s poison is now persistent, it doesn’t tick down at the end of a round. Shivs offer a 1 damage attack, but can be saved from round to round, allowing you to build up for a big combo. The Defects orbs don’t cycle in order any more, you can choose to evoke any orb of your choice. As I mentioned before, a lot of items and monsters are controlled via a single die roll at the start of the round turning a lot of the encounters and relics from deterministic effects that can be planned around, into a more random experience. I suspect this was done to reduce the already significant upkeep this game requires.
Slay the Spire: The Board Game is a very faithful adaption of the video game. Halfway through the first act of the game I put on the Slay the Spire OST, and suddenly everything just felt right in the world. It really feels like Slay the Spire, even with all the difference I mentioned above. The relics seem to be much less useful in the board game. In the video game, the relics are the lynchpin of your engine. Here, they seem to offer minor rewards. I haven’t explored enough to say for sure, but I think a large part of what makes Slay the Spie (and other roguelikes) special and what brings people back again and again, is finding those crazed combos.
Let’s talk about the $15 elephant in the room. Just who is this game really for? I have a hard time imagining board gamers dropping $135 on this crate of cards when so many other deck builders already exist for much less cash. And anyone who wants to play solo can just buy the video game for as low as $10. Some will argue Slay the Spire: The Board Game is cooperative, you can use this a tool to introduce others to the game, but at it’s current price, you can buy 15 copies of the video game to give away as gifts. And for people who are already attuned to the video game, there isn’t much new for them to discover here, other than the ability to play with friends.
I understand the joy of tactile play. I adore board games, but I am not willing to drop that kind of money when I can play the video game on the go. That said, if you’re a board gamer who loves Slay the Spire, and/or loves cooperative games, this is a slam dunk. I do think the video game is the superior version, there’s no upkeep to track, no chance of missed rules, and the gameplay loop of building a deck, racing up the spire, dying, and just restarting from scratch is so fast and so fun. The physical production is super cool, but I shudder at the thought of tearing down after a game. Flipping all the upgraded cards, breaking down the cards back into their appropriate decks, etc. I think Slay the Spire: The Board Game is more of a luxury piece of merchandise for those who really love Slay the Spire. A beautiful and lovingly crafted game that is less meant to be played for hundreds of hours and more of a physical object for fans to own and showcase, much like the dozen steelbook video games I’ve purchased in the past.
