With roughly 2300 plays of over 250 different Reiner Knizia board games, Nick, Scott, and Jared are ready to unleash their Ultimate Reiner Knizia Ranked Tier List! This list is split up into a 7-part YouTube series where we rank and discuss each game in depth. Check out each episode below!

If you scroll down far enough, then BEWARE OF SPOILERS. At the bottom of this post you will find the image and written spread of our tier list. 

Here is a link to the Tiermaker list itself where you can rank and share all of the Knizia games you’ve played!

If you’re a fan of any of Reiner Knizia’s games, then you should join the Reiner Knizia Enthusiasts Discord Server where we chat all things Knizia Games!

Finally, this list was created in celebration of our current Kickstarter for Reiner Knizia’s Gold Country as well as recent 2025 releases featuring SIX new Reiner Knizia games, Iliad, Ichor, SILOS, EGO, ORBIT, and Gazebo. Be sure to check out the pages for these games. Thanks for your support!

Watch the Video Series (Click the image to watch the Youtube video):

SPOILERS: Full Tier List Below….

Disclaimer: Bitewing Games is the publisher of some of these titles (marked with an * below). Biases are certainly present (it’s a subjective list, after all). But in many cases, we published a new version of an old Knizia game because we already regarded it so highly (this includes Zoo Vadis, Cat Blues, SILOS, and EGO).

For comparison, here is our older Tier List from 18 months prior.

The full tier list (in the order pictured):

GOLD-Tier (Greatest of the Only Living Doctor):

• Tigris & Euphrates
• Ra
• The Quest for El Dorado
• Through the Desert
• Zoo Vadis*
• High Society
• Schotten Totten / Battle Line
• Yellow & Yangtze
• EGO*

S-Tier (The Best)

• SILOS*
• Lost Cities
• Babylonia
• Cascadero*
• Samurai
• My City
• Mille Fiori
• The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation
• Orongo / Nyakuza
• The Quest for El Dorado: Dangers and Muisca (expansion)
• Taj Mahal
• MLEM: Space Agency
• CONIC
• Iliad*
• Marabunta
• Einfach Genial 3D
• Huang
• Blue Moon / Blue Moon Legends
• Gazebo

A-Tier (Amazing. Absolutely. Always.)

• Ichor*
• L.A.M.A. Party Edition
• Gold Country*
• Hot Lead*
• Rebirth
• Blue Lagoon
• Botswana / Wildlife Safari
• Heckmeck am Karteneck
• Chartae
• Circus Flohcati
• For One: Galaktix
• For One: Kniffel
• For One: Number Up
• For One: Schwarze Rosen
• Gang of Dice
• Modern Art
• Royal Visit
• Tatari
• Winner’s Circle
• Cat Blues: The Big Gig*
• Winner’s Circle (Japanese Edition)
• Viking See-Saw
• Zamek / Carcassonne: The Castle
• Zamek: dodatek Sokół / Carcassonne: The Castle – Falcon Expansion
• Municipium
• Penguin Party
• Tajuto
• Qin
• Callisto: The Game
• Merchants of Andromeda
• Piñatas
• Mille Fiori: The Masterpieces (expansion)

B-Tier (Super Solid, Hidden Gems, Surprisingly Great)

• Blue Moon City
• Wheedle
• Marshmallow Test
• Voodoo Prince
• Colossal Arena / Equinox
• Whale Riders
• Schotten Totten 2
• Quo Vadis?
• Beowulf: The Legend
• No Mercy / HIT!
• Cat Blues
• Rapido / Excape
• Axio
• Ingenious
• Stephenson’s Rocket
• Karate Tomate
• Art Robbery
• Genesis
• Keltis
• Keltis: Neue Wege, Neue Ziele
• Priests of Ra
• Pan Tu Nie Stal!
• Silver Screen
• Pumafiosi*
• Fantasticks
• Soda Smugglers*
• Kingdoms
• Beowulf: The Movie Board Game
• ORBIT*
• King’s Road
• Medici: The Card Game
• Medici
• Pollen
• Sunrise Lane
• San Francisco
• The Siege of Runedar
• Rheinlander
• Tower of Babel
• Reif fur die Insel
• Amun-Re: 20th Anniversary Edition
• Cascadito*
• My City: Roll & Build
• Nightmare Productions / Hollywood Blockbuster / Dream Factory
• Genial Spezial
• Neighborhood Hide & Seek
• Pixel Party
• SlideAscope
• Trendy
• Whale Riders: The Card Game
• Ape Town
• Butterfly Garden/Indigo
• For One: Mensch ärgere Dich nicht
• Kingdom of Dice
• Meister Makatsu
• Ra & Write
• Palazzo

C-Tier (Reliable Reiner. Good games. We’d rather play these than much of the industry hotness.  Worth a try, at least for Knizia fans)

• Ninja Master
• My Island
• L.A.M.A. Dice / Don’t LLAMA Dice
• Alien Attack USA
• Fruit Fight
• Havalandi
• The Quest for El Dorado: Dragons & Treasures
• Wiener Walzer
• The Quest for El Dorado: Heroes & Hexes
• The Quest for El Dorado: The Golden Temples
• Kariba
• SWAT! / It’s Mine!
• Africa
• LAMA / Don’t LLAMA Card Game
• Foodie Forest
• Odd Socks
• Amun-Re: The Card Game
• Cheeky Monkey
• The Lord of the Rings
• Aristocracy
• Classic Art
• Das Letzte Paradies
• Dice Monsters
• Tower of Babel
• Space Worm
• Forbidden City
• Through the Desert: Bazaar Expansion
• Ra: Traders Expansion (not yet played, this is a prediction)
• Sumatra
• Amazonia Park (not yet played, this is a prediction)
• En Garde / Duell
• Treasures of Nakbe
• Great Wall of China
• Ilium
• Longboard
• Keltis: Der Weg der Steine Mitbringspiel
• Lost Cities: The Board Game
• Medici: The Dice Game
• Ra and Write (not yet played, this is a prediction)
• Lost Cities: Roll & Write
• Merchants
• Medici vs Strozzi
• Merchants of Amsterdam
• Minotaur Lords
• Scarab Lords
• High Score
• Money
• Poison
• Battle of Mekaverse
• Ra: The Dice Game
• Rondo
• Spectaculum
• Strozzi
• Knights of Charlemagne / Tabula Rasa
• Tutankhamun
• At the Office
• Into the Blue
• Heckmeck Deluxe / Pickomino Deluxe
• Prosperity
• Des Souvenirs plein le Ciel
• Marco Polo Expedition
• Axio Rota
• Palmyra
• Spy
• Battle of Mekaverse
• Blooming Sea
• The Hobbit: There and Back Again
• Qwirkle Flex
• Schatz des Phönix

D(cent)-Tier (Sub-par for Knizia… It’s fine… I mean, I’ll still play it if you insist)

• Ratzia
• Gravediggers
• Planet Rush
• Escalation!
• Capybara Cookie Club
• MEOW
• Sakura
• Super Crazy World
• Der Herr der Ringe: Die Zwei Türme – das Kartenspiel
• Pick a Pen: Tuinen
• Pick a Pen: Riffen
• Pick a Pen: Crypten
• Euphrates & Tigris: Contest of Kings
• Age of War
• Criss Cross
• Reiner Knizia’s Decathlon
• Dragon Land
• Family Inc.
• FITS
• Galaxy Cat Extension
• Ivanhoe
• Loot
• Cezar
• Looting London
• Lost Cities: Rivals
• Modern Art: The Card Game
• Arquimedes
• Pitagoras
• Ohio
• Res Publica
• Wurfel Poker
• Star Trek: Expeditions
• Sushizock im Gockelwok / Sushi Bar
• Turtle Mania
• Clash of the Gladiators
• Yangtze
• Ribbit
• Buddy Hop
• Yoku Gamı
• Witchstone
• Desperados
• Ice Tumble
• Feats of Cheese
• Whoowasit?
• City of the Living
• Kartel
• Knights Poker
• LAMA Kadabra
• Rooby’s ABC
• Arctic Riders
• Karakorum
• Shell We?

F-Tier (Nah, I’m good)

• Ramses Pyramid
• Monster Chef
• Pan Tu Nie Stal! Demoludy
• Sudoku Challenge
• Zombie Mania
• Oshiya Tokyo
• Vampire
• Easy Come, Easy Go!
• Cat Ass Trophy / Zero Down
• Cthulhu Rising
• Gold
• Ramses Pyramid
• Hong Kong

What are your favorite Knizia games? How would your tier list be different from ours? Share below!

The post Ultimate Reiner Knizia Tier List — Ranking 261 Knizia Board Games! appeared first on Bitewing Games.

A new year is upon us, and the churn of new board game releases relentlessly tempts hobbyists one and all. You can either flee from it, or you can welcome it with open arms. I’m the open arms type, so come peruse my Most Anticipated Board Games of 2026! This list will be roughly ordered by date of release, for convenience.

Note: This list will also include a few titles published by us here at Bitewing Games (noted below) — because why wouldn’t I be excited about those?

All In: Predictions

Expected Release Date: March 2026

Thanks to The Gang (and Balatro), poker is hotter than ever! With All In: Predictions, designer Phil Walker Harding (Sushi Go) is getting in on the hype train with a more gamery version of The Gang that allows you to manipulate your poker hand, discard cards to utilize powers, and pick up discarded cards.

Purrramid

Expected Release Date: Q2 2026

Knizia’s at it again with another push-your-luck dice game, this time featuring… a pyramid of cats. Don’t question it, just embrace it.

Moytura

Expected Release Date: April 2026

From Bitewing Games

Our third Mythos Collection game (2-player games of strategy and mythology) is our most ambitious yet. It’s so ambitious, that it even has to come in a thicker box than the others in this line. Moytura asks the question: what if an area majority competition could work well in a 2-player only game? It then answers that question with an innovative third faction system that competes with players for points and functions elegantly similar to spreading Pandemic diseases. It’s a semi-cooperative affair where you and the rival clan must keep the monsters of Irish mythology in check while you all compete to rule ancient Ireland. The system here is so smooth that we even included a solo and cooperative variant in the rules. Moytura also features epic artwork across generously large cards and boards thanks to Irish illustrator, Henry Conway.

Azure

Expected Release Date: April 2026

From Bitewing Games

While Moytura is meaty and unexpected, Azure is perhaps the cleanest and sleekest title in our Mythos Collection. Here you’ll be managing a hand of cards while you stake your claim on various spaces across the grid using go stones. What’s interesting here is that your stones offer discounts to all other spaces in their row and column, allowing you to construct a clever strategic route in your journey to 25 points. The only problem is that your opponent is playing on the same grid — stealing your precious spaces, wrestling for favor of the powerful beasts, and racing you to the end of the point track. Between the smooth stones, snowballing decisions, and gorgeous cards brought to life by Kwanchai Moriya, this game just feels good to bust out and play. 

Container 

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

Container is that elusive economic grail game that so many of us have been dying to try over the past several years. The high price point, short supply, and garish presentation of the last version was enough to keep most of us at bay for far too long. Finally, thanks to our friends over at Allplay, Container is getting a proper treatment with a new version that is somehow both astronomically cheaper and comprehensively superior than its predecessor. At last we’ll get to experience what it’s like to produce, sell, and ship containers… and watch the economy frequently fly off the rails.

Triangulation

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

Triangulation takes on the Goliath hit party game Decrypto with its own angle by being easier to teach and quicker to play. I’ve had a chance to try it, and I came away very impressed with the more compact entertainment it delivers. Players take turns giving their team three clues to help them triangulate the secret word. But the opposing team gets a chance to hear the first two clues and steal away the victory if they’re able to guess first. The challenge here is to come up with clues that are complete nonsense, even when presented in pairs, without the full context of hearing all three together.

GRUNTZ

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

Fans of War Chest should keep an eye out for GRUNTZ — an abstract strategy war game that delivers similar thrills. Aside from offering magnetic customizable vehicles that are ridiculously cool, GRUNTZ aims to provide an addicting tactical head-to-head duel between two players.

Gold Country

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

From Bitewing Games

Gold Country was born to be the ultimate California Gold Rush board game. With simple rules and surprising depths, it cuts straight to the heart of what makes commodity speculation and stock manipulation fun. Players are investing in various mining companies and influencing their destinies by expanding those mines to precious prizes and perilous traps. You’ll stumble across glimmering gold veins, suffer devastating mine collapses, scheme with bandit outlaws, rally with fellow investors, sabotage rival companies, and more. Each turn you’ll need to read the board state (and your opponents’ intentions) well to know what you should invest in or sell out of. 

This is our only Knizia big box release of 2026, but it is primed and ready to make a huge splash with gripping gameplay and lush landscape artwork by Beth Sobel. Don’t miss the Kickstarter project (featuring low flat-rate shipping, deluxe upgrades, and a free expansion for backers) launching January 27!

Totally Human 

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

From Bitewing Games

While Gold Country is the headline title of our upcoming Kickstarter, Totally Human is the dark horse game that is sure to cause waves of its own. This one is designed by Kasper Lapp, who I’ve been wanting to work with ever since enjoying the silly antics of his other hits — That’s Not a Hat and Magic Maze. Totally Human is a hilarious game of probing questions and dubious answers that is so fast and addicting I’ve seen groups knock out half a dozen plays in under an hour. Each player is dealt a secret identity — alien or human — but everyone is trying blend in like a human. The group must answer three randomized multiple choice questions as human-like as possible, but the aliens face restrictions on what they are able to answer. With interesting questions like “What is scariest?” “Best name for a band?” or “Worst place to wake up without explanation?” and silly answers like “Spongy Boat” “Squeaky Pirate” or “Prickly Mountain,” you’re in for a lot of laughs here. The second phase is no slouch either, as players argue, beg, petition, negotiate, and bluff over who they trust and whose rocket ship they should join.

Just last Saturday I broke this one out with a group of eight tennis players (non board game hobbyists, mind you) who loved it so much that they played eight times in a row. Same thing happened a few days earlier with a church group of 10 teenagers and 3 adults (who had two tables of the game setup). It is a riot of a game.

Dogs of War

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

Dogs of War has been a longtime favorite hidden gem at my table. My wife even tracked down an elusive copy as a Christmas present for me several years ago. I have many fond memories of digging into its flashy tug-of-war politics with friends. That said, it’s always felt a bit off to me. The faction abilities are seriously imbalanced, the game can drag on a bit too long, the experience was never super consistent from one play to the next, the box is obnoxiously huge. Despite having the world’s greatest selection of hats, the game was in need of a second edition. That’s why I’m very hopeful for this new version coming from Paolo Mori and the team at Shut Up and Sit Down. Dogs of War second edition has the potential to become the greatest multiplayer tug of war game ever conceived.

The Crew: Journey to the Ends of the Earth

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

The original version of The Crew — the Quest for Planet Nine — was a masterpiece cooperative trick taker that took the industry by storm. Yet somehow, someway, the sequel — Mission Deep Sea — was able to raise the bar to new heights by injecting even more variety into the formula. Can Thomas Sing and Kosmos capture lighting in a bottle once again? I’m rooting for them. While Journey to the Ends of the Earth is prominently displaying its new Indiana Jones style theme, I’m more interested in what new tricks (no pun intended) this system has up its sleeve.

Rheinlander

Expected Release Date: September 2026

This will be the year that we finally get to behold Rheinlander: Evolved. This interesting hand management area control game from Dr Knizia has gotten a massive artwork and development facelift that I’m praying will propel the experience into the highest tiers of Knizia titles. I always felt like this one existed in that awkward space between approachable gateway game and hidden-depth strategy game, and it needed a proper nudge in one direction or the other. With the new expansion modules designed by Knizia, it appears that I just might get my wish. I’m a smidge suspect of the September release date, considering that this Kickstarter project launched with 10 total games that all need to be printed and shipped together. That’s a whole lotta logistics. But 25th Century does have a ton of experience in coordinating many products at once, so we’ll hope this project sees no delays. I crave the Rhine … let me float those waters once more.

Oath: New Foundations 

Expected Release Date: Q3/Q4 2026

Oath is an experience unlike any other. What if the players directed the campaign? What if the legacy was unending? What if the history of past plays lived on in current and future plays? It’s a thrilling prospect that has enthralled and/or flummoxed many a gaming group. Five years on from its release, designer Cole Wehrle has returned with new insights and a fresh perspective on how he wants to refine that experience. The answer is Oath: New Foundations. Word on the street is that this expansion not only adds more variety, but it also streamlines the original game. As one of my favorite gaming experiences of the past decade, I’m keen to see how this expansion shakes things up.

Sail Legacy

Expected Release Date: Q4 2026

Sail Legacy may very well go down as one of the most ambitious legacy games ever crafted. It takes the  popular cooperative 2-player trick taking pirate experience from Sail and blows the hull wide open with branching storylines, fail-forward shenanigans, and outlandish twists. I get the sense that nothing can prepare us for what’s coming here. Let me just leave you with this quote from Allplay COO, Joe Wiggins, “On the spectrum of Sail to Gloomhaven, Sail Legacy is much closer to Gloomhaven than it is to Sail.”

For the Gods 

Crowdfunding Campaign February 2026, Estimated Release Date Q4 2026

The designers of our own Azure and Moytura (and Undaunted, Mandala, War Chest, and more) are joining forces to put out a big box strategy game with Mighty Boards, and I’m all for it. Aside from pulling objects from a bag, building pillars, utilizing god powers, and competing for area majority, I have no idea what’s going on in this game. But it sure as heck looks good, and the pedigree is bullet-proof, so bring it on!

Mountain Goats: Legacy

Crowdfunding Campaign Right Now, Expected Release Date: Q4 2026

Never content to rest on their laurels, Allplay has taken it upon themselves to release not one but TWO legacy games in the SAME YEAR. Admittedly, this second one is a considerably smaller game and will likely release before Sail: Legacy simply because there are far fewer elements to finalize. The original Mountain Goats has been one of Allplay’s evergreen small box titles due to its simple dice allocation and charming king-of-the-mountain goatmanship. Personally, I haven’t played the original game in years, but I remember wishing that it gave me more bang for my buck. Well, now my wish is coming true, because Mountain Goats: Legacy aims to be a family-weight legacy game that adds all kinds of layers to the formula. Notably, the publisher says there are no permanent changes in this “legacy” game, so you can reset and replay to your heart’s content.

Roma XLI

Crowdfunding Campaign in February, Expected Release Date: Q4 2026

I’m always interested to see what my old pals over at Facade Games are up to. Their Dark Cities line (social deduction games packaged in faux-book boxes themed around dark historical events) is meticulously produced. If you’ve played one of these games before, then you know exactly what to expect from another one in the line. Notably, this one is illustrated by another friend of Bitewing, Alisha Giroux (artist of Gazebo, Gingham, and Cat Blues), and the early photos of the game are stunning. After the death of Caesar, players are competing to seize power over Rome through cunning politics.

Flintlock: Global Warfare in 20 Minutes

Kickstarter coming in March, Expected Release Date: 2026 

Fans of Paolo Mori’s Blitzkrieg and Caesar, take note! Flintlock is the next release in this legendary series and it promises to be the biggest one yet. You can enjoy two different 2-player experiences, or you can combine them for a 2v2 partnership mode, or you can even play solo. This time around David Thompson and Roger Tankersley have joined the design team, which makes for a very promising tug of war experience here. 

Regicide: Inferno & Regicide: Crown Duels

Expected Release Date: 2026

Regicide Legacy was one of my top releases of 2025. That game is absolute fire. I’m excited to see that the team is wisely taking some of the ideas from the legacy game and slimming it down into a greatest hits expansion of sorts for standard Regicide. Smart play, Badgers from Mars.

But I’m even more excited to hear about Regicide: Crown Duels — a two-player duel game where the royals of Regicide are pitted against one another. 

Both coming this year? You spoil us, Badgers.

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

The post Most Anticipated Board Games of 2026 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

What makes a favorite game? Is it the way it consistently entertains or surprises you? Challenges or delights you? Welcomes and invites you? Is it found in the excitement you feel to show it to others? The hunger you possess to return to it once more? The need to climb higher and explore deeper? The memories you smile back on and the people you share them with?

No doubt, it’s all of these things. A game is only as good as the experience it hosts and the emotions it generates for those at the table. Yet, it’s the players who fashion so much of that outcome. The perfect game for me might just be the worst choice for you. Despite our differences, we find ourselves here… Me sharing my strongest recommendations, and you hoping to find at least a spark of opportunity and/or vindication. What could be more human than the desire to find and share common joys?

Board games were alive and well in 2025, despite the year’s best efforts to torch them. Thank goodness they survived. In some ways, you could even say that board games are thriving. Particularly if you’re a fan of 2-player games, party games, or trick takers. It was a very good year for those genres (as you’ll soon see).

It’s worth noting that I’ve intentionally excluded Bitewing Games publications from my Top 15. As a daytime dentist and a nighttime cardboard vigilante, any design that we choose to champion will obviously be one that I love so much that I personally see to its fruition. Rather than bump another game out of the Top 15 spotlight, I’ll simply share afterwords what I love about each 2025 Bitewing release. I’ll also grant some special awards to other games and expansions including my favorite new-to-me game released before 2025, best game I didn’t love, worst game I adored, and more!

Let’s celebrate 2025 gaming, shall we?

15. Torchlit

For my tastes, Allplay had perhaps their best year ever in 2025 in terms of hit releases. It’s not surprising for one or two of their releases to end up on my best of the year list, especially when they release nearly 20 games in a year. Yet it is unprecedented for them to have … well, you’ll see. On top of that, their first game to make my list is a trick taker! I’ve been pretty ambivalent about most trick takers in recent years — the flood of them is starting to wear on me. But that doesn’t mean that one (or multiple) can’t sneak their way onto my list when they really hit the spot. 

Torchlit marries an interesting theme with a stunning presentation (from the legendary Harry Conway) to great effect. Here players are delving into a dungeon to battle monsters and claim loot. At the start of each hand, you’ll place your bet on how deep into the dungeon you’ll travel. Every time you win the trick or play a value that matches the trick-winning card, you’ll get to advance to the next room. The loser of the trick (the lowest value played) gets to decide which played cards get added to dungeon to become points. So you’re aiming to land on your chosen room and in a room with the most monsters. But you’d prefer to be there alone, otherwise you have the split the points with all other occupants! 

That may sound like far too much for a trick taking game to work, but some smart design decisions under the hood give you more flexibility than you’d expect. In our last play, I was able to execute a thrilling comeback and land on the jack-pot dungeon all by myself. 

14. Tic Tac Trek

Tic Tac Trek is one of those sneaky-good games that may be too sneaky for some. This charming little tin box is jam packed with wood tiles and campfires. Two players take turns drawing a square tile from the bag and placing it on their side (X or O) adjacent to a matching colored tile. Whenever you position three of your symbol in a row, you will crown the last tile with one of your campfires. But this is where things get very clever — you don’t score points for the campfire itself, you score points for the empty spaces surrounding your campfire. Sometimes it’s better to cover up your rival’s points (especially if they have multiple campfires clustered together) than try to build out another row of your tiles. Although it is easy enough to play with my 6-year-old, I’ve enjoyed some surprisingly cutthroat competitions with adults as well. 

13. Animal Rescue Team / The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship

Now before I hear any complaints, I just want to say that if Matt Leacock can keep using the core Pandemic system for multiple designs, then I should be allowed to use the same slot for two games. Fair is fair!

One of the more playful productions I’ve encountered this year comes from Shut Up & Sit Down’s debut title: Animal Rescue Team. In this game, you and your friends are driving vehicles around, loading them with animals and equipment, and delivering animals to shelters. Just like real life, each vehicle has different strengths and weaknesses… Some are better at speed while others can fit more stuff or even hitch a trailer behind. Random animal emergencies pop up around the board, and you’ll have to manage your time and resources wisely to keep things from spiraling out of control. If the proximity of problems and the roll of the dice don’t go your way, things can quickly become tricky. Thanks to the vehicle logistics and animal challenges, this one feels like a nice spin on the Pandemic formula (which happens to be from the same designer, Matt Leacock).

While Animal Rescue Team is the more zippy and casual cooperative experience, Fate of the Fellowship is more of a “meat’s back on the menu” kind of Pandemic game. While many board games have come from the Lord of the Rings IP in recent decades, Fate of the Fellowship might just be the most thematic yet. Here you feel the daunting quest of carrying the One Ring to Mount Doom while fighting back the forces of evil. The basic Pandemic system proves to be a great fit, and those looking for something more complex (with more events and abilities and variety) will find it here. It’s an event game that begs to be explored again and again.

As an added note, I don’t want to diminish either title here by having combined them into one spot. Both are great experiences that I would happily revisit again. One does not replace the other (unless you have very limited time and space for cooperative games at your table or on your shelf). I highly recommend you seek out the chance to try both and enjoy what makes them unique.

12. Feya’s Swamp

I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of Feya’s Swamp at Essen… from a random stranger who was walking around with it… days after it sold out at the publisher’s booth. I didn’t even ask him for it, he simply offered. Sometimes fortune just lands in your lap. Thank you kind stranger.

Feya’s Swamp is an economic swamp development game that lets you boat around, throw parties, and cause a bit of mischief along the way. My favorite aspect of the game is how the islands grow outward over time by players adding their tiles to them. This changes the water routes that are available to everyone’s boats and allows players to create bottlenecks, port monopolies, and all kinds of shenanigans. Meanwhile, you’ll be rushing for the best worker placement spots and jumping on the juiciest financial opportunities as you upgrade your actions. The player driven economy reminds me of Brass in some ways, and I consider that a very good thing.

11. Piñatas

As mentioned above, trick takers have strong-armed their way onto my list this year. Coincidentally, this one is also from Allplay. Piñatas is not the most flashy or innovative card game in this genre. But it has proven to be one of my favorite competitive trick takers for having a single brilliant twist. You’re out of the round when you win three tricks, and you immediately score points based on how many tricks other players have won. Crucially, the last player in the round effectively busts for waiting too long to go out and thus ends up with the worst score results. If you’ve ever been at a piñata party, then you may know what it feels like to be the last person in line to take a swing after that thing is already busted open and all the candy has spilled out.

Piñatas is wonderfully punchy while staying squeaky clean in its execution. It’s not even all that new. This game is basically a perfect meld of Reiner Knizia’s wackier Voodoo Prince and tighter Marshmallow Test — two games that were already extremely similar. So hate this pick if you wish, but it’s technically a different game. Plus it features illustrated piñatas that get beaten to a pulp across the increasing card values.

10. Alibis

Alibis shares a lot in common with Codenames — words are displayed across the table and players come up with clues to link them and then guess each other’s words. The key difference here is that Alibis is a cooperative game (instead of team-based) and everyone is doing everything simultaneously. Each player gets dealt two words and must come up with a clue to link them. Then everybody sees all the clues and must figure out each other player’s pair of words. There’s virtually no downtime or boring turns here since you are always doing everything. If that sounds fun to you, then you’re practically guaranteed to enjoy Alibis. It’s a crowdpleaser.

9. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — Trick-Taking Game

Beside boasting the longest board game title of all time, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — Trick-Taking Game presents a mighty fine spin on the cooperative trick taking formula established by The Crew. The major differences are the thematic chapters and the asymmetric characters, along with some novel new ideas sprinkled across the campaign.  While I still consider The Crew (especially Mission Deep Sea) to be the goat in this genre for its stronger approachability and endless variety, we’ve had a blast playing through The Fellowship of the Ring.

8. Zenith

It’s time to blitz through a few more killer 2-player games, starting with Zenith! I’ve been known to champion a great tug-of-war game, and Zenith is the next worthy addition to this esteemed line of legends. In Zenith, you’ll utilize a hand of multi-use cards (drawn from a huge central deck) to drag planet tokens in your direction, advance up the tech track, and tussle for a larger hand advantage. Similar to Splendor, the cards you add to your tableau will grant you discounts on future cards. You’ll be juggling a few different resources including credits and zen while you try to hold your rival back long enough to cross the finish line first. If you don’t mind a huge variety of card icons (and their accompanying player aids that are packed with explanations), or at least have the patience to get the hang of the card language through the first 30 minutes, then you are in a for a cosmic treat here.

7. Tag Team

This 2-player auto-battler is far more captivating than it has any right to be. In Tag Team, each player assembles a duo of characters from a wide variety of options and collects their associated cards. Then all you do is introduce one extra card to your programmed sequence each round and then watch it go over and over until one character is knocked out and the opposing team wins. There aren’t many decisions to be made here, but they are pivotal choices. By selecting where in your sequence to insert each new card, you’ll aim to synergize your powers and neutralize your opponent’s cards. But they are attempting the exact same thing, meaning it’s an experience of mind games where you must predict where your opponent will try to sync or desync their specific cards with your specific cards in the cyclical duel to the death.

6. Toy Battle

Toy Battle is surprisingly simple yet deliciously clever. Where Tag Team and Zenith require the right type of person to enjoy their experience, Toy Battle is effortless to break out and play with anyone. Just play a tile or draw two tiles. Draw two tiles, then play a tile. Play play draw draw play draw draw. Back and forth, back and forth, badabing badaboom, into a gradual crescendo with a swift victory. 

Every choice in this quick-playing game is far more impactful than the playful presentation lets on. Your tiles feature various toys with strong abilities, and you never seem to have the perfect tile at the right time. You can cover opponent tiles with your own tiles if they are stronger, and much of the game is about holding the defensive line while advancing your offensive front. If your line of troops is cut off from your HQ, then your ability to expand shrinks tremendously. This is all paired beautifully with two ways to win — capturing the enemy HQ or surrounding stars to claim enough first. The cherry on top here is that the game comes with a whopping 8 maps. EIGHT. Madness.

5. Merchants of Andromeda

Merchants of Andromeda has proven to be far more polarizing than I expected. It’s nearly as rules heavy as Feya’s Swamp, yet infinitely more silly and chaotic. I suppose if you hand somebody a mango popsicle and don’t warn them it’s spicy, they might be upset when they take a bite.

This one doesn’t even try to hide its wacky flavor. One look at the busy boards and aggressive artwork ought to clue you in to its brazen nature. Merchants is effectively five distinct mini games crammed into a single experience and strapped together with a dutch auction. What’s a dutch auction, you ask? It’s a bid clock that winds down until the first player leaps at the opportunity to claim the prize at the current bid value. This is facilitated by a free app where players start with their finger on a smartphone and the first to pull away wins the auction. It’s all about patiently pacing your spending and precisely bidding before somebody else takes the prize. Patience is a hard thing to come by when everybody wants to play those mini games (especially at 5-players). Timing is everything here — both in winning the auctions and in competing across the boards before their next scoring event triggers.

While some folks have lambasted Andromeda for having too much going on across the gameplay and presentation, this one has been a hit with my gaming groups to the point that they’ve asked to play it again on multiple occasions. It’s a love it or hate it kind of game, I suppose.

4. French Toast

I don’t wanna brag, I don’t wanna boast, I love French Toast. 

This is another pick that will get me thrown in board games prison. French Toast technically released in 2021… but this was likely a 700-ish copy print run for a 500 backer campaign from a very small publisher. Barely a blip in the board game industry that was forgotten as quickly as it came. In reality, the game hasn’t been properly (widely) released until a few weeks ago at PAX Unplugged. So is it old busted or new hotness? YOU DECIDE. I’ve got bigger things to worry about… like what on earth is the secret noun I’m supposed to guess in this game?

French Toast has a bit of a 20 questions vibe — one person draws a secret noun card and everyone else tries to deduce what it is via rapid-fire interrogation. But instead of asking yes or no questions, you’re skipping straight to the last part where you guess exactly what the noun is. All the Toastmaster can do is answer … “French Toast” … OR they can repeat the word you guessed! They’ll latch onto whichever one is closer to the actual noun and continue to echo that word until somebody guesses an even closer one. Sometimes the group can pigeon hole themselves in the wrong direction, but fortunately the Toastmaster gives them a clue at the start of every round (which hopefully gets the group back on track). 

The beauty of French Toast is that it is simple enough to play with anyone, from a group of gamers to a family gathering with kids, and it’s full of electric guesses and enticing go agains. What a great party game.

3. Magical Athlete

Magical Athlete is a party game in disguise, especially because it works well at 4-6 players. Heck, you can even have a riotous time at 3 players if everybody plays two characters each. This racing game turns lemons to lemonade with a taboo mechanism that all hobbyists loathe — roll to move. It should NOT be fun to race around a simple track by taking turns rolling a six-sided die. This is the kind of stuff that makes the general population assume that board games are for children only. But Magical Athlete is built different.

Layered on top of this simple premise is a cornucopia of hilariously broken powers. A banana that trips other racers as they pass by. A huge baby that hogs the space all to itself (and makes my 4-year-old yell “Big Babyyyy” in her deepest masculine voice). A suckerfish that attaches itself to the nearest racer. A lovable loser who gains a point every time they start their turn in last place. A tall bloke aptly named Legs who can just move 5 instead of rolling their die… every single turn. 

This is the kind of game that everyone wishes they had owned growing up (instead of Chutes & Ladders or Sorry). It’s the kind of game that makes you feel like a kid again. It’s the kind of game that can bring grown ups, grandmas, and kids around the table for a riotous occasion. It’s fun boiled down to its purest form.

2. Regicide Legacy

I wasn’t sure the creators at Badgers from Mars could pull off the feat of making a full-blown legacy game. Especially since their only other title was a small card game that merely uses a standard deck of cards. That’s a huge leap in terms of project scope. But to say that Regicide Legacy has been a pleasant surprise would be the understatement of the year.

For those who haven’t played standard Regicide, this is one of my all-time favorite cooperative games. You can play it with a standard deck of cards if you want to try it. Players are going up against jacks, then queens, then kings in this limited communication boss battler. If I play a 10, then I deal 10 damage to the current boss. If the suit played is a spade, then I defend all players against the boss (effectively reducing the boss’s attack by 10). If the suit played is a club, then my attack value is doubled. Hearts and diamonds grant you the ability to replenish your draw pile and hands. These abilities are fun to juggle, but then there are other clever wrinkles like bosses being immune to their own suit, bosses getting added to your deck as you defeat them, players having the ability to play sets of cards together to combine powers, and more. It’s a brilliant system and the best creative use of playing cards I’ve ever seen. My only complaint would be that there isn’t anything new to see after you’ve beaten the game at various player counts. Enter Regicide Legacy…

Regicide Legacy takes what was already a challenging system and cranks up the insanity to eleven. You’ll encounter new bosses, utilize new powers, permanently alter cards, and more. You’re not allowed to progress to the next level until you beat the current one, but the game has a great system that allows you to hire increasingly stronger mercenaries to help you overcome the obstacle. It’ll take a lot of plays to get through the entire campaign, especially at higher player counts where players have smaller hand limits (or in other words, less health). But we’ve had blast battling through this one at 2-players, and I hear it even works great solo.

1. Hot Streak

Before Hot Streak came along, it seemed like we had seen everything that racing/betting games had to offer. We have the timeless Winner’s Circle with its secret betting (the best way to play) and clever concept of rolling a dice and deciding which horse to assign it to. There’s the classic Camel Up with its layers of betting intermingled with the other action options of rolling dice and affecting spaces. And there’s the new hotness of Ready Set Bet with its tense real-time bet claiming. But while those games are all about manipulating the odds, hatching schemes, and pivoting tactics during the race, Hot Streak is a spectator sport first and foremost. 

Hot Streak understands more than any game that the thrill of betting is all about the emotional investment of the bettors. That’s why no decisions are made during the actual races — players can focus all their energy on cursing or cheering their mascots. That’s why the mascots themselves are some of the most delightfully garish figures you’ll encounter in board games, each with their own name and personality and history. That’s why the race deck is packed with comical disasters and unexpected comebacks. That’s why your final winnings are less about crowning a victor and more about setting the course for your life’s story as a degenerate gambler. Everything here is lovingly crafted all in the name of putting on a show and giving you a gaming experience to remember.

Many of my favorite gaming memories of the year were born from my plays of Hot Streak. Everything from the production to the experience is a home run. That’s why it’s easy to crown this one as my game of the year.

Celebrating Bitewing Games’ 2025 Releases:

Best Cold Pitch — Iliad

Of all the designs I’ve ever been cold pitched, Iliad remains the best. Unlike our other publications that were projects I sought out or that started out as promising pitches and eventually developed into worthy candidates, Iliad landed like a strike of lightning — bright, bold, and perfect. I only had to read the rules to see that this one was special…

• The 2-dimensional tug of war across rows and columns of juicy rewards and perilous disasters.
• The contrasting mixture of a tight hand size with flexible tile abilities.
• The competing victory conditions of exclusive color collection versus point supremacy.

Add in the epic greek mythology artwork from Harry Conway, and it all combines into what feels like another stone-cold classic from Reiner Knizia.

Best Grower — Ichor

As a hobbyist, I’ve rarely been all that attracted to pure abstract games. Between the unforgiving perfect information and the historically muted presentation, it’s hard for me to get excited about moving around pawns or tokens in a battle of wits. So when I first encountered Ichor, I found the premise to be neat, but I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with it. Yet as I began to play, and I kept encountering endlessly new challenges and opportunities from the asymmetric character abilities, I realized that this was quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite 2-player games. There’s so much to dig into here between a larger map, additional characters, and an optional gate module. And it’s all supported by a satisfying core of whisking your figures around like rooks as they leave behind a trail of tokens in a race to put out all your tokens first. No wonder Reiner has been tinkering with this design for decades until he finally perfected it in Ichor.

Proudest Production — SILOS

As a board game publisher, sometimes you hire a talented artist for a project and hope that they can clearly see the end product that you can only somewhat make out in your mind’s eye. It’s a blurry silhouette that you can barely perceive through a thick fog, and you’re relying heavily on the artist to cut through that fog. Other times, inspiration strikes and you can clearly see it all — the pieces, the cards, the table presence, the wow factor. SILOS was the latter for me… I knew it would have chunky figures showing a human on one side and a disguised alien on the other. I knew they’d be wearing dapper hats as they abducted humans and cows beneath a roaming UFO. I understood that the game needed designated discard spaces to help players count the cards and dig into the thrilling probabilities. The vision was ripe for the taking.

Of course, the art team for SILOS (Kwanchai and Brigette) still managed to exceed expectations. And Reiner managed to do even more than I hoped with the gameplay variety. I’ve loved this wacky area majority game ever since I first played it as Municipium, and I’m extremely proud of what our team was able to evolve it into.

Favorite Gaming Experience — EGO

I like to describe EGO as an epic push-your-luck auction adventure. It delivers everything I want in a big box board game. Gorgeous artwork and lovely tactility across the components. A wild rumpus ripe with memorable interactions and dramatic surprises. Rich opportunities for careful strategies and clever tactics. A steady tempo of action and decisions without the baggage of fiddly upkeep or excessive downtime. Unique flavors and mechanisms that aren’t found anywhere else. A vast wealth of variety and depth that rewards repeat plays. And a streamlined system that lets the table get to playing quickly. Simply put, EGO is one of my favorite games of all time.

Best Crowd-Pleaser — ORBIT

ORBIT went through a major development overhaul between the initial pitch and the finalized version. The fascinating core premise of racing to and surfing on various moving targets was always there. But we considered all kinds of wacky paths to take it down. All the credit goes to Reiner, especially for his relentless focus on keeping the game fast-paced and streamlined. Thanks to his simple system of play a card and do everything on it in any order, ORBIT has proven to be one of our most approachable and popular big box games. I also love how Vincent Dutrait brought this space-race to life with vivid planets and stylish ships. There are a lot of ways to play ORBIT thanks to the many modules, but my personal favorite is the 4-player partnership mode with the devious nebula tokens and ridiculous hyper accelerator engine included.

Favorite Domino Game — Gazebo

Gazebo manages to capture the vibe of dominos better than any other domino game I’ve played. It’s all about being light on your feet —  taking advantage of the opportunities in your hand and on the board. Do you start a new nook, grow an old one, block an opponent from a lucrative opportunity, concoct a hostile takeover, pounce on a juicy bonus? It’s a lovely tactical time with a lovely presentation from Alisha Giroux. I enjoy bouncing around between the four different maps — they each provide a distinct flavor of Gazebo that keeps me endlessly hungry for more.

Most Clever Game — Gingham

This year we published our 20th title, which is absolutely bonkers to me. We’ve all encountered the concept of a 5-year plan and a 10-year plan. Where do you imagine yourself in X number of years?… That kind of thing. Well I can assure you that my 5-year plan at the end of 2020 most certainly did not envision me being a full-time board game publisher with 20 titles under my belt. I was fresh out of dental school, for heaven’s sake!

Anyway, out of the 20 titles that we’ve now published, I believe that Gingham is the most clever of the bunch. The design is born from a dichotomy between turn order advantage and strategic opportunity. That dichotomy is represented by a square grid shown across a gingham blanket. Players are positioning their queen in a row and then deploying an ant to that row between their queen and the central stitch. The row that gives you the best turn order advantage gives you the worst strategic opportunities, and vice versa. The objective is to build networks of your ants that connect matching sweets. The challenge is that players are often racing for the same sweets and fighting over the same spaces. So Gingham is all about reading the board state and finding the most lucrative opportunities while you jockey for turn order. It is incredibly rewarding of smart play.

Favorite Travel Game — Bombastic

Bombastic has become my new favorite travel game by a long shot. How so?

• It plays in 5 minutes.
• It’s dead simple to teach anyone.
• I can literally play it at the beach or on an airplane tray table.
• I’ve never had a bad play of this. Either it ends hilariously quickly when somebody accidentally explodes or it evolves into a tense battle where you start to second-guess your memory. 
• It’s delightfully moreish. The different cards and the order they come out continue to deliver unexpected moments. It’s the kind of game that begs to be played again and again.

Amid the dozens of mechanisms, hundreds of plays, thousands of releases, and millions of rules, it can be far too easy for us hobbyists to turn our noses up at dumb, silly games. Especially games that are built on simple commonplace concepts like tic tac toe. But Bombastic is one of those helpful reminders that games should be first and foremost about play. And I love that it lets me play with anyone, anywhere.

Best New-To-Me Game Released Before 2025

Winner: Leviathan Wilds — I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Leviathan Wilds is one of the best big box cooperative games I’ve ever played. It avoids the common pitfall of being an overcomplicated fiddly mess and instead provides its replayability through interesting character combinations and numerous boss challenges. The concept of scaling a gargantuan beast while it tries to squash you is refreshingly unique and expertly executed for a board game. This would easily haven been in my Top 5 of 2024 if I had played it that year. Bravo, Moon Crab Games.

Honorable Mentions

• Mexica
• Magic Maze
• Wheedle
• Linko
• River of Gold

Best Reskin/Reprint

Old classic game brought back to life (sometimes with a new visual style)

Winners: High Society and Calimala — Allplay’s new version of High Society is absolute dynamite — it takes a masterpiece and adds three spicy new cards from Knizia, all in a stunning production. Calimala, newly illustrated by Ian O’Toole, proved to be one of the favorite games of my gaming group thanks to its beautiful components and distinct area majority competition.

Comeback Award

Haven’t played in years… even better than I remember it.

Winner: YINSH — Shoot, I haven’t played YINSH in roughly 8 years. But I got the chance to try it again (this time on Board Game Arena) and was struck by how solid this abstract strategy game is. You’re moving your rings around, flipping tokens as you pass over them, and trying to line up five of your tokens in a row. Despite culling hundreds of games from my collection, I was wise enough to keep this one around. I’m long overdue to dust this one off and dig into it more!

Honorable Mentions:

• The Castles of Burgundy
• Iwari

Fall From Grace Award

Once respected, now rejected

Winner: Skyrise — I’ve had really great plays of Skyrise. But this year I’ve also had some very painful plays of it. This one benefits greatly from a group that shoots from the hip and doesn’t think too hard about bidding. If you’re playing with folks who are prone to analysis paralysis and overthinking every single bid, you are in for an agonizing game. Not only do players have to consider what to bid, but they also have to evaluate where to bid… every single time the auction gets around to them. My last play was so slow that I was happy to purge this one from my collection and never see it again (unless with the right group).

Best Game I Didn’t Love

Winner: The Hobbit: There and Back Again — It’s obvious that this scenario-based roll & write game was made with love, both by the designer (Dr. Knizia) and the publisher (Office Dog). The scenarios are inspired by their source material and creatively diverse, and the production is one of the best I’ve seen for a roll & write. I can understand why this has been such a hot title in 2025. All that said, I was bored to tears by this game. Slowly extending my routes to all the landmarks, collecting a few punchboard tokens here and there, and racing to claim a couple 3-point bonuses first was as thrilling as watching paint dry. Each scenario felt like homework, and the prospect of playing all the scenarios filled me with reluctance and dread. So rather than put myself through such misery, I quickly got rid of the game.

Worst Game I Adored

Winner: Slambo! — I get a kick out of Allplay’s tiny box line. For $9 a pop and a few short minutes of your life, you can explore all kinds of gaming experiences. There are a lot of interesting design concepts out there that perhaps don’t hold up to close scrutiny or a higher price point. But the neat thing about this tiny box line is that it allows the publisher to put out more experimental products and aggressively seek out interesting bite-sized games. Slambo is a simple little card game where two players take turns manipulating the total with plus and minus cards until one player is “forced out of the ring” by pushing the total below zero or above ten. I wouldn’t call myself a Slambo pro, but it feels like a one-trick pony with one optimal strategy (get rid of your largest cards first while trying to keep a healthy balance of positive and negative cards). I suppose you could card count as well if you want to get real serious. But even so, I didn’t dislike my plays of it. My six-year-old loves it as well. So while it’s not one that I’ll recommend to the world, I’ll keep it around and dabble in some sumo card play every now and then.

Best Kids Game

Winner: Magical Athlete – Because of course it is.

Honorable Mentions:

• French Toast
• Diver Go

Biggest Bummer of 2025

Winner: Tariffs. I suppose this might not be so bad if you long for the good old days of mass poverty under a corrupt monarchy.

Best Video Game of 2025

Winner: Donkey Kong Bananza — As much as I love Mario and Zelda, it warms my heart to see Nintendo invest so much money, passion, and creativity into one of their b-side characters like Donkey Kong. I grew up playing and loving the big collectathons — Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazoo, Spyro, Donkey Kong 64, and Super Mario Sunshine. These are some of the most memorable gaming experiences from my childhood, so for Nintendo to throw their best developers and budget at a brand new Donkey Kong collectathon is a dream come true. These people have perfected the 3D platformer, and it was a blast to see them explore that with destructible environments and a lovable hulk-smashing protagonist. If this game doesn’t put a smile on your face, then you should probably check for a pulse.

Honorable Mentions:

• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Kirby Air Riders
• Mario Kart World
• Hades 2 (Probably… when I get around to it)

Best Film of 2025

Winner: The Ballad of Wallis Island — While Hollywood continues to churn out increasingly putrid sludge, there are still some great films being made by passionate artists and competent teams (if you look hard enough). The Ballad of Wallis Island is one such film I can heartily recommend. A quirky superfan wins the lottery and pays his favorite musicians to get back together for a performance on a remote island. That sounds like it could be the premise of a horror film, but it’s actually a heartwarming comedy/drama that hits the spot in all the right ways.

Honorable Mentions:

• Kpop Demon Hunters
• Frankenstein
• F1 The Movie

Launching on Kickstarter Soon

One of our biggest releases of 2026 is launching on Kickstarter soon! We’ve crafted the ultimate gold rush game featuring competing mine companies, crafty stock manipulation, rip-roaring shared incentives, dubious diggings, trepidatious cave-ins, timely canoes, California frontiers, devious bandits, and more! Don’t miss out — follow the Kickstarter here.

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

The post Top 15 Board Games of 2025 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Welcome to the official Bitewing Games 2025 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide! Few moments are better than gathering friends and family around the table for wholesome gaming — that’s why we started Bitewing Games as a way to create and share classy board games that bite. And there’s no better time for tabletop gaming than the holidays. As is tradition, we like to create and share a Board Game Gift Guide to kick off the holidays.

As always, our selection criteria for this guide include the following:

• The games have been tried, tested, and approved by us and/or trusted critics
• The games are generally available to purchase (links will be provided below to sites where you can purchase them—click the $)
• We won’t recommend anything from our past Holiday Gift Guides, but we still fully endorse those previous guides, so if you need even more recommendations then check out our 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 Guides.

For your information, we receive no financial compensation, sponsorship, or advertisement money for this guide or these recommendations except for 8 of the 24 games which Bitewing Games directly publishes — noted below. At the end of the day, these are simply 24 games we genuinely believe are great Holiday gifts. If you find value in our content, then we’d love to have you join our Bitewing Games newsletter! We use our newsletter to send regular updates regarding our latest content (like this gift guide) and publications (such as our 2025 releases featured below).

This guide is divided into five sections for your convenience (scroll at your leisure or click to jump straight to the section that interests you most):

• Gifts for the Casual Board Gamer
• Gifts for your Significant Other
• Stocking Stuffer Games (small & cheap!)
• Perfect Games for you Holiday Party
• Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer
• Black Friday Deals

Gifts for the Casual Board Gamer

Botswana | 2-5 Players | $25

Botswana is one of the highest ranked card games on our Ultimate Knizia Tier List, and for good reason! This simple box of wildlife and shared incentives is a hoot. All you do is play a card to change an animal’s value and then take an animal token. When all six cards of one animal have been played out, the round is over, and your animal tokens are worth whatever their last card played was. It sounds too basic to be fun, but you’d be surprised how much mileage Dr. Knizia gets out of a tight game of hand management and stock manipulation. Botswana just got a gorgeous new edition illustrated by Weberson Santiago, so there is no better time to pick up a copy.

ORBIT | 2-4 Players | $49

From Bitewing Games

Speaking of approachable hand management games by Reiner Knizia, ORBIT is a brand new design by the good doctor featuring cosmic competitive tourism among orbiting planets! In the vastness of space, your ship moves rather slowly, which is why it helps to jump on a planet and surf its orbit to your next destination. Your turn consists of playing one card from your hand to take its actions (like flying your ship, regaining energy, and advancing a planet along its orbit) and then refilling your hand at the end of your turn. Easy as that. Meanwhile, you’ll want to upgrade your ship to increase your hand size and energy capacity. You’re gonna need it, because your opponents will try everything to slow you down in this tactical space race.

Bohnanza | 3-7 Players | $19

Nothing like a classic bean trading game to get the group going. Bohnanza has been in print for decades and continues to delight both hobbyist gamers and casual gamers. Your hand will become cluttered up with beans you do and don’t want, and the best way to get things in order is by trading with other players so you can all plant what you want and harvest your crops for money.

Gazebo | 2-4 Players | $39

From Bitewing Games

There is something about dominoes that makes them universally appealing. They are fun to handle, easy to understand, and interesting to orient. Gazebo takes that elegant simplicity and fleshes it out into a full blown area control strategy game. You’ll be establishing nooks, connecting to patios, and overtaking opponents, all in the name of putting out your titular gazebos first. It’s abstract yet addicting, and the variety of maps are a joy to explore.

Magical Athlete | 2-6 Players | $30

When you first dive into the hobby of board games, you learn that a lot of the mechanisms and types of games you grew up enjoying are actually taboo among hobbyists. These include things like Monopoly’s roll-to-move (where the dice dictate how far you move instead of your own decisions) or Uno’s take-that (aggressive effects that target another player). It makes sense why these generally are frowned upon — they take away player agency, undermine strategic decisions, and generally aren’t used in particularly interesting ways. Magical Athlete is a game spits in the face of these hobbyist taboos. It’s a game of rolling dice to see who reaches the finish line first and sabotaging your opponents with wacky abilities along the way. The difference here is that Magical Athlete understands that dumb luck is exactly that — silly, dumb fun. By cranking the hijinks up to eleven, it breaks the mold of established gaming and turns the experience into something that everyone can enjoy.

Gifts for your Significant Other

Crisps | 2 Players | $20

Card shedding and ladder climbing games have been around for ages. They’re all about playing a set or run of cards that is stronger than the last one played to empty your hand first. Crisps doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel here, but it does turn this formula into a compelling 2-player-only experience. Much like its name implies, it’s an addicting little snack of a card game. 

Iliad | 2 Players | $29

From Bitewing Games

Much like the stone-cold Knizia classics of Lost Cities and Schotten Totten, Iliad is a fire-cracker of a 2-player experience. You’ll take turns positioning your tiles on the board as you compete for the surrounding tokens. When a line is filled, the strongest player in that row gets to decide which player gets which token at either end. Your tiles also have special abilities that let you sway the odds in your favor. All the while, you are sweating over whether to compete for a knockout (exclusive favor of the gods) or compete for most points. It’s tense, it’s more-ish, it’s Iliad.

Zenith | 2 Players | $35

2-player-only games tend to come in a small box, but they can still pack a big punch. Zenith swings for the fences by being a multi-use card tableau building tug-of-war game. There is a lot going on, and thankfully some large player aids to explain what the heck all of those different icons mean on the cards. Despite how much content it flexes, Zenith still manages to play smoothly and quickly once you get into a groove with it. You’ll execute a lot of neat powers along your quest to pull the right planet discs to your side of the board.

Ichor | 2 Players | $29

From Bitewing Games

While Iliad is the more popular and immediate of our new Greek Mythology games, Ichor is undoubtedly the deeper of the two. It may take a bit longer to sink its teeth in, but the payoff is certainly rewarding. Here you’ll juggle 12-14 asymmetric character abilities layered on top of a sharp abstract game. Your figures move like rooks (in straight lines) and leave behind a trail of your tokens. The game is not about eliminating your opponent’s figures, rather it is about placing out all of your tokens first. The characters break these rules in all kinds of deific ways. Zeus strikes down tokens around him, Poseidon washes them away in a tidal wave, the Siren calls an opponent to her, Heracles pushes monsters out of the way, Cyclops goes out in a blaze of glory, and much much more.

Tag Team | 2 Players | $25

I grew up playing a lot of war. You know, the card game where you both flip a card from your personal deck and see whose is stronger, winner takes both. I don’t remember the name of it, but I recall having themed decks like animals (killer whales and humans were GOAT) and Lord of the Rings. Tag Team is a bit like war — flip a card and see what happens. In hobbyist terms, this is called an auto-battler. Although you’re not stealing your opponent’s cards when you beat them. Rather, this is a mind game of revealing cards, resolving their effects, and gradually inserting more cards into your sequenced deck. The challenge comes from guessing where your opponent will insert their next card as you try to exploit the chinks in their armor. This auto-battler is made all the more fun by a huge variety of characters you can pair up and pit head-to-head.

Stocking Stuffer Games (small & cheap!)

Rainbow | 2-6 Players | $9

Recently, our friends at Allplay have started a Tiny Box line of games that are perfect for this kind of list. Rainbow is perhaps the best of this line so far. This lightning quick card game is about making bids (runs or sets of cards) to claim point-scoring cards from the middle. The twist here is that the cards you all bid with become the rewards that you fight over for the next round! On top of that, if you spend your cards too quickly then you might miss out on some juicy final rounds.

Bombastic | 2 Players | $19

From Bitewing Games

I see people ask all the time about great games they can play on the airplane or at the beach. Answers are always few and far between — probably because airplane tray tables or wet sandy beaches don’t usually get along with board game components. Bombastic is the perfect answer to this question — we’ve built this game to be something you can truly play with anyone, anywhere. Bombastic takes tic tac toe (something everybody knows) and makes it fun. Nine tiles are placed face-down — four Xs, four Os, and one bomb. You’ll use action cards and your cunning wit to track, rearrange, and align your tiles to reveal three-in-a-row and win. But if you accidentally reveal the bomb? … let’s just say that your opponent will be delighted.

Viking Seesaw | 2-4 Players | $21

Viking Seesaw is a delightful dexterity game that I’ve been praising for a few years now. The only downside is that it is published in Japan and much harder to acquire elsewhere. Fortunately, Allplay has come to the rescue and partnered with publisher Itten to sell their game in the US! In Viking Seesaw, players take turns adding items of various weights, shapes, and materials to an unstable viking ship. While you try to get rid of all your pieces, the ship will threaten to teeter-totter and force you to take more cargo. What a splendid time.

Linko | 2-5 Players | $13

Linko feels like a stone-cold classic that has been around for decades, but it’s actually only 11 years old (which admittedly is still pretty old in board game years). This card game of one-upmanship is all about playing stronger sets to steal opponent sets. Initially it may seem flimsy, but that is merely the outside of the onion. Peel back the layers and you’ll find a brilliant little card game with surprising depth and stimulating discoveries.

Perfect Games for you Holiday Party

Hot Streak | 2-9+ Players | $45

Every now and then, a game comes along that feels like a revelation, an event, a masterpiece. Hot Streak might just be such a game, thanks in large part to its sublime production that complements a truly wacky experience. You’ll unroll a long race track from this vibrant box and place upon it four zany mascots. As a group of degenerate gamblers, you and your friends will place your bets on these unreliable mascots before watching the chaos unfold. It’s silly and raucous in the best possible way.

Alibis | 2-6 Players | $19

Fans of the widely loved Codenames or similar games will find much to enjoy in Alibis. This cooperative challenge has virtually no downtime because players all think of their own clues and then guess each other’s words at the same time. It feels good when another player guesses your two words, and it feels amazing when you guess everything else correctly.

Ito | 2-10 Players | $18

Ito is like a faster, leaner, cooperative version of Wavelength — a party game of relativity along a topic spectrum. Players are dealt a secret card from 1 to 100 and must play their cards facedown in order based on the clues everyone gives within a spectrum. It’s portable and moreish, making it a great game to travel with for the holidays.

Tearable Quest | 1-99 Players | $9

Tearable Quest asks the question that everyone has been dying to answer: Who among you is the best paper tearer? With a timer counting down and a small sheet of paper pinched between your fingers, you must carefully rip out sets of symbols to complete quests and defeat monsters. One slip up could cost you dearly, yet time is of the essence. It’s the kind of novel stress that won’t be for everyone, but it comes with tons of sheets and works with any size group.

Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer

Leviathan Wilds | 1-4 Players | $74

For my tastes, great big box cooperative games are very hard to come by. Either they get bogged down with too many rules and systems, or they lack the allure to keep me coming back for more. Leviathan Wilds finds a perfect balance by marrying smooth, engaging gameplay with thrillingly meaningful variety. You must work together to scale a massive leviathan, survive its attacks, and rescue it from its curse. The game features a large spiral bound book of different scenarios and a cornucopia of character combinations.

SILOS | 2-4 Players | $55

From Bitewing Games

It’s a rare treat to come across an experience as unique as SILOS. Even in Reiner Knizia’s catalogue of over 800 board games, there is really nothing like it. SILOS is a tactical area majority slot machine of abducting humans and cows during an alien invasion. On your turn, position your figures wisely, reveal a card, and resolve the event. There are many incentives and possibilities pulling you in different directions, but it helps to keep your cool and play the odds. If you happen to distinguish your alien-in-disguise with a graduation cap, then they’ll be all the more influential in human society. 

Calimala | 2-5 Players | $50

Calimala just got a lovely new edition thanks to Ian O’Toole and Alley Cat Games. While the core gameplay was always compelling, it now looks prettier than ever. Calimala has an interesting worker placement twist where you’ll stack a tile between two actions to perform those actions, and when later players go to that same spot they’ll activate your worker for you again. You can even bank actions as cards if you can’t or don’t want to do freebie actions. And rather than let the stacks of workers get too high, Calimala solves this problem by kicking out the fourth worker in a space to trigger an area majority scoring event. It’s a super clean and satisfying system that has been a hit with my group.

EGO | 2-5 Players | $49

From Bitewing Games

The more I play EGO, the more I realize it is one of my all-time favorite games. This epic push-your-luck auction competition sees players acting as human ambassadors who traverse the galaxy together in a bumbling quest to befriend alien civilizations. Along the way, you’ll encounter various intelligent species who are quick to take offense, especially as you push-your-luck to gain more cards. Growing and managing your hand is key to success, because you’ll desperately need cards during the game of chicken auction events where ambassadors try to outshine each other. While there are plenty of electric moments and swings of fortune, the game remains highly strategic by letting you see the entire sequence of events and plan your moves carefully.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game | 1-4 Players | $27

The Crew is a cooperative trick taker that has cemented itself as a card game classic thanks to the addicting series of missions. But that doesn’t mean it has to hog all the spotlight. For those who want even more of its card play goodness, or if you prefer a more thematic touch, then The Fellowship of the Ring is a great alternative. You’ll get to play as characters from the beloved fellowship as your progress through Tolkien’s adventurous tale. 

Gingham | 2-4 Players | $39

From Bitewing Games

Gingham might be the most clever strategy game I’ve ever signed. Players are connecting, stockpiling, and claiming sweets as their ants sprawl across the picnic blanket. It’s a game of jockeying for turn order while you chain together your pieces. It has everything: careful long-term planning, spicy tactical pivoting, and powerful ability triggering. After dozens of plays, I still enjoy the tough tradeoffs and tense interaction it presents. I’m excited for more folks to sink their teeth into this sweet new release.

Black Friday Deals

Starting Friday and continuing through Monday, Allplay is hosting a HUGE Black Friday sale featuring 10 Bitewing Games titles and over 100 other games and products from a dozen different publishers. Good luck finding a better place to shop board games this weekend than that. Check it out here (live Friday through Monday).

Here are some deals you can look forward to specifically from Bitewing (for our base games and their add-ons):

• Shuffle & Swing
• Cat Blues: The Big Gig
• Cascadero
• Cascadito
• Spectral
• Gussy Gorillas
• Soda Smugglers
• Pumafiosi
• Hot Lead
• Trailblazers: Sasquatch Expansion

Happy Holidays and Happy Gaming!

The post 2025 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide + Black Friday Deals appeared first on Bitewing Games.

It’s been a few months since my last post thanks to the chaos of tariffs, new releases, and the convention season. Plus, I can’t lie, I’ve been playing a lot of Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza during the times when I normally write about board games. Too busy gaming to talk about games, go figure.

But what better way to get the blog flowing again then with my Most Anticipated Board Games of 2025, Part 2 list? If you missed Part 1, you can check it out here (many of these games either just barely released or have yet to be released, so the list is still very relevant).

These hotly anticipated games are roughly ordered by release date or crowdfunding launch date. Note: this list will include a few titles published by us here at Bitewing Games (labeled below) — because why wouldn’t I be excited about those?

Soda Jerk

Expected Release Date: August 2025

I had the pleasure of trying Soda Jerk a year or two ago as a prototype on TTS, which means my memory of it is now fuzzy, but I do recall it being far more amusing than it has any right to be. If you, like me, have enjoyed Chris Yi’s witty humor laced throughout the Dice Tower’s video content, then you’ll likely enjoy his quick, clever, and dramatic game of commodity speculation and soda sabotage.

Tearable Quest

Expected Release Date: August 2025

Tearable Quest is another game that I’ve been able to play before its release … and I love it. As the title implies, here you are racing to carefully tear out the most valuable items from your sheet of paper while avoiding tearing into the perilous traps. Buying a game only to immediately tear it apart sounds like madness. But the good news is that this game is dirt-cheap ($9) and it comes with a bunch of sheets and variety, so I think you’ll get your money’s worth here. Plus I’ve never played anything like this, so I think the game absolutely justifies its price.

Cat and the Tower

Expected Release Date: August 2025

My girls (4 and 6) are big fans of Rhino Hero Super Battle — a kid-friendly dexterity game where you build towers out of folded cards. So when I heard rumblings that Cat and the Tower is like Rhino Hero — but cooperative … and possibly better — that’s all I needed to add it to the list. 

Rheinlander

Q3 Kickstarter Launch

A year or two ago Reiner Knizia teased in an interview that he was working on new content for an updated version of Rheinlander. The long wait (at least until the crowdfunding campaign) is nearly over, and we’ve finally gotten our first look at the new edition illustrated by Ian O’Toole! From my plays of the original version, I always felt like this game had more potential just waiting to be developed. I’m happy to see that this hand management area majority game is under the solid stewardship of 25th Century Games (who also published the newest version of Ra). It’ll be interesting to discover what Reiner has cooked up on the development end.

Qwirkle Flex

Expected Release Date: August 2025

I’ve never played Qwirkle, despite it being an all-time best selling family-weight board game. In Qwirkle, you are simply adding matching colors or shapes to growing rows and columns in the central play area. What better way to motivate me to try it than with a meatier version co-designed by Reiner Knizia? Apparently, Qwirkle Flex adds another layer of complexity to the game by also letting players score diagonally on newly added background colors.

Junk Art Revolution

Expected Release Date: August 2025

Junk Art might just be one of the best stacking games ever created. It features delightful wood blocks that come in all kinds of versatile shapes used across several different game modes. Junk Art Revolution promises to raise the bar with revised rules, an updated scoring system, and new modes of play. Color me intrigued.

Moytura

September 23 Kickstarter Launch

Published by Bitewing Games

Moytura represents our first-ever collaboration with designers David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin (designers of Undaunted and War Chest). It is game three in our critically acclaimed 2-player line, the Mythos Collection, which started with Iliad and Ichor by Reiner Knizia. It is also a very different beast from the other games in this line. Moytura was created specifically for the Mythos Collection with the ambitious goal of being a streamlined area majority war game steeped in Irish mythology. Where most area majority games desperately need 3+ players to thrive, Moytura works beautifully as a 2-player-only game thanks to the non-player enemy faction that competes with both players for control and spreads out across the island a bit like Pandemic diseases. Moytura is also packed with extra content including asymmetric enemy clans and a full blown expansion that will be free during the Kickstarter — making it our largest Mythos game to date.

Azure

September 23 Kickstarter Launch

Published by Bitewing Games

While Moytura could easily be its own Kickstarter, we’re launching it alongside another killer Mythos game from the designers of Mandala, Patterns, and Great Plains (Trevor Benjamin and Brett J. Gilbert). And while Moytura is more dramatic and epic, Azure is perhaps the most universally loved game among our playtesters and team that will give even Iliad a run for its money in a popularity contest. That’s because it is quick, smooth, and oh-so satisfying to play. In Azure, you must manage your hand of cards and spend them to claim valuable spaces in the square grid that grant boons (specific cards and/or points). As your stones begin to occupy the grid, they will grant you discounts on other spaces in their same rows and columns. Meanwhile, you’ll be competing with each other for the favor of the four auspicious beasts (including the titular Azure Dragon). This Splendor-like game just hits the spot, and like Moytura it comes with a free expansion for Kickstarter backers.

The Hobbit: There and Back Again

Expected Release Date: September 26, 2025

I’m not hungry for more roll & write games, but I’m willing to make an exception for a Reiner Knizia roll & write campaign based on The Hobbit. My City: Roll & Build is proof enough that Reiner knows how to make this kind of game. I expect that The Hobbit is will be even more interesting since it doesn’t have retread the My City formula. Plus publisher Office Dog has been nailed their productions lately (I was impressed with both Lord of the Rings: Trick-Taking Game and River of Gold).

Tower Up: Paradise Islands

Expected Release Date: October 2025

Tower Up was one of the best new releases I played last year. Here is what I said about it in my Top 20 Games of 2024 list:

“Tower Up is a beacon of hope in this modern gaming world. Like its titular skyscrapers, it stands tall and boldly displays the glory of light strategy gaming. Tower Up is the kind of design that impresses me far more than a big box Eurogame with complex and layered systems. You won’t find an ounce of fat in this ruleset. It’s a lean, mean evergreen about raising skyscrapers and cruising up the score tracks. You can play it with anyone, yet you’ll uncover plenty of depth underneath its simplicity.” 

I’m thrilled to see a new expansion is releasing soon featuring an island board, red bridges, and new objectives. 

Gingham

Expected Release Date: November 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

While our 2-player Mythos Collection rolls on, we’re also excited to be releasing the first games our Travel Line this year. This line aims to be portable, compact, quick, and approachable. In other words, these games are super easy to take on a trip and get to the table with any kind of group. Gingham is a very unique game of jockeying for turn order while deploying ants to a picnic blanket. The objective is to connect matching sweets to create stockpiles and surround those stockpiles with your growing chains and clusters of ants. Players can even bump each other’s ants out of a space in a Hansa Teutonica style way that benefits both the bumper and the bumpee. There is a lot of strategic depth to uncover in the quick-playing Gingham.

Gazebo

Expected Release Date: November 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

Gazebo is the other big-game-crammed-in-a-small-package, like Gingham. This strategic domino game is designed by Reiner Knizia, and he has called it one of his “Top 10 designs, ever” (which is saying a lot when he’s designed over 800 games). Between the smooth gameplay of placing dominoes on a shared board and the dynamic interactions that emerge from the area majority gameplay, I can see what he means. You are simply racing to put out all of your gazebos first — the competition is fierce and the variety is huge with the four possible maps.

Bombastic

Expected Release Date: November 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

I’m a huge fan of Trio/Nana thanks to its hilarious drama and addicting approachability. This kind of game is exactly what we at Bitewing are aiming to publish more of — small, quick, affordable, memorable, dramatic, and addicting. It’s not so easy to come by these brilliantly simple games, so we feel very fortunate to be releasing Bombastic. Bombastic does to tic tac toe what Trio/Nana does to go fish — it takes a game that everyone is familiar with and makes it a blast to play. Bombastic is a 5-minute 2-player game that features 9 face-down tiles (4 Xs, 4 Os, and 1 Bomb) that players take turns peeking at, rearranging, showing, and more until they decide to “Go For It” and flip three tiles in a row. If the flipped tiles are all yours, then you win. Otherwise, you give your opponent valuable information or even lose if you flip the bomb. This game also comes in a clamshell case letting you take and play it anywhere — on an airplane tray table, at the beach, you name it. Preorders for this game will go live in August, and all preorders come with a free PVC card upgrade (making the game fully water-proof… except for the rulebook which you won’t need after your initial plays).

Hibachi: Fired Up!

Expected Release Date: Sometime 2025

I got a kick out of Hibachi back when I tried it a few years ago. It’s hard not to enjoy tossing poker chips onto a large board and aiming to land them on valuable ingredients while knocking away opponent chips. I had a lot of good things to say about the experience here . Yet after writing my first impressions, I soon found myself willing to part with the game because it tended to last longer than I preferred. What I failed to recognize in that impressions post is that the game was overstaying its welcome, and that eventually wore me down to the point where I culled the game from my collection. I must not have been the only person with that feeling, because Grail Games is about to release a new version of Hibachi featuring streamlined rules and a shorter playtime! If this version actually hits the 25 minute mark that the box promises, then Hibachi: Fired Up should have a much longer shelf life in my collection. 

Feya’s Swamp 

Expected Release Date: SPIEL Essen 2025 or Q1 2026 Release

The early buzz is strong with this one. Feya’s Swamp presents itself as a punishing and interactive pick-up-and-deliver game. The landscape of the board is a large swamp that changes over time as players expand islands while navigating around those islands with boats. This can make the game turn into a nightmare of choke points and detours if your opponents are inclined to slow you down. This is the kind of economic nightmare I want to dive into when the game fittingly releases at SPIEL Essen in October (or 2026 in retail).

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

The post Most Anticipated Board Games of 2025, Part 2 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

 

The larger my board game collection gets, the more I appreciate a compact game that packs a big punch. These are the games that I most frequently take to public game sessions or on trips with friends or family. There simply isn’t space in my bag for a huge box unless I know that we’re guaranteed to play it. For something much smaller? Well… I can spare the space for a little game that will maybe get played.

Nearly three years ago, I made a list featuring the Best Travel-Friendly Board Games. This was in celebration of our then upcoming launch of Trailblazers featuring a travel-friendly clamshell case and carabiner. I didn’t know it then, but it turns out that this was only the beginning of our quest to make killer portable games.

After putting out far too many different versions of Trailblazers (a whopping FIVE, if you are curious), it turned out that Trailblazers: Travel Edition proved to be the most popular version by hitting that sweet spot between portability and affordability. It makes sense that those of us who enjoy gaming also love to squeeze in a bit of play at the hotel and such amid our travels. And the most convenient games for such occasions are generally compact, approachable, and relatively quick.

While my old list still applies, I realized that I have many more recommendations up my sleeve. It’s also the perfect time to put out a sequel list since we recently revealed our upcoming Travel Line. So in celebration of all gaming-on-the-go, here’s my list of the Best Travel Sized Board Games followed by some details about our upcoming titles in this genre…

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DroPolter

DroPolter is a delightful little game of jingling bells and sticky palms. Each round players are racing to dispose of the reveal items on a flipped card — these items reside in each player’s fist and can only be removed using that hand. But the most brilliant rule of all is that the winner of the round earns the point in the form of a tiny bell that gets added to the player’s fistful of knickknacks. And if a bell is dropped, then it is lost forever. DroPolter is the kind of hilariously unique game that is made all the more excellent by its tiny box.

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Viking See-Saw

On the topic of portable dexterity games, Viking See-Saw is another winner. It’s basically tiny Jenga on a teeter-totter with a variety of objects including rolling balls, weighty metal cubes, and light wood pieces. The  objective is to get rid of all of your objects first, but you have to decide when and where to add each piece to the high end of the seesaw. If you cause the ship to tilt the opposite way, then you must take a cargo piece from the center. And if you knock over a growing tower of precariously stacked items, then you’ll suffer the sadistic laughter of your friends.

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Rainbow

This next batch of games comes from our friends over at Allplay who just so happened to start a new line of $9 “Tiny Box” games perfect for travel. Of the four titles released thus far, Rainbow has become one of the clear favorites. In this game you make ladder climbing style bids (solo cards, sets, or runs) to try to earn scoring cards from the center. The catch is that the bids of this round become the scoring cards of next round, and you’ll have to manage your hand wisely to not run out of cards too early.

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Panda Panda & Fairy

If you’re looking for even more of that tiny box goodness, then I also recommend Panda Panda and Fairy. Panda Panda is basically Phase 10 (gradually fashioning your hand into a specific set) but funnier and in only 15 minutes (instead of an agonizing stretch of hours). Fairy is party-style gambling on what card comes out of the deck next — you can play it in 5 minutes with up to 10 players (and it’s a blast if you have the right group who will fully invest in mindless gambling). Neither of these games are earth-shattering experiences, but at this size and price they are absolutely charming.

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Ito

If you’re looking for a travel sized party game that is more social than Fairy, then I recommend Ito (which plays 2-8 players). And for those groups who enjoy The Mind or Wavelength, meet your next game night hit. Ito is a cooperative game of ranking your secret cards in numerical order (each player can have a card ranging from 1 to 100). The only way to communicate the value of your card is to give a clue based on a topic spectrum. So if the topic is “Things You Want to Take a Picture Of” then a player with a 12 might say, “A blank white wall,” while a player with an 87 might say, “The Grand Canyon.” It’s funny, it’s addictive, it’s Ito.

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Hive

A common question I see online is “What board games can I play at the beach?” To be honest, I don’t think there are very many good options, but the perhaps the best answer is Hive. Hive is nothing more than a drawstring bag of weighty plastic tiles that can be played on the sand or by water without a care in the world (unless a big wave manages to reach your tiles and carry them back out to sea). This Chess-like abstract strategy game sees two players using their various insect abilities to try and surround their opponent’s queen bee. Hive is one of the highest rated abstract games of all time, so if you’re into such battles of wit then you can’t go wrong here.

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Chartae

If you’re looking for something a little less heavy than Hive, then Chartae makes for a nice little 2-player snack. This game does a whole lot with only 9 square tiles. As cartographers, you and your opponent are competing to build the largest mass of land or water (depending on which state of matter is your favorite sorry, no gas fans allowed here). Chartae definitely falls into the category of “micro-game” or game so small and simple that it will underwhelm some and mightily impress others.

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Marabunta

For those hobbyist gamers who want more meat on their 2-player travel-sized game, Marabunta has my strongest recommendation (as long as you don’t mind painful decisions and cutthroat competition). Marabunta is all about cutting off your opponent on the map while giving them horrible options with the I-split-you-choose dice rolls. You’ll bask in glee as your rival groans over the evil options you’ve devised, only for them to give you some of your own medicine in the next round. While Marabunta functions like a full-blown tile placement strategy game, it brilliantly condenses its size down through the use of dry erase markers and boards instead of piles of tokens. 

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Azul Mini

Azul Mini is an easy pick for this list, but that doesn’t make it bad pick. The mega-hit Azul is now more affordable and accessible than ever thanks to this smaller production. There are even some quality of life improvements such as bumps and grooves to help hold your tiles and score markers in place. It also comes with a drawstring travel bag, but you’ll want to be careful because loose tiles can still sneak out.

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So What is the Travel Line?

It is games like those listed above and others that inspired Bitewing Games’ new Travel Line. The Travel Line is debuting with Gazebo and Gingham plus Bombastic in the pledge manager (although Trailblazers is an honorary member as well). This line of games is laser-focused on one thing above all else: being supremely easy to get to the table. That means our Travel Line games are super portable, easy to learn, quick to play, and addicting to revisit. These are the kind of games that you can simply toss in your bag, bring to a gathering, take on a trip, and break out with friends or family. Thanks to the sturdy clamshell case and carabiner (a free gift to Kickstarter backers), your game pieces will be well protected and effortless to transport. The Travel Line lets you enjoy a game that you can truly play with anyone, anywhere.

Gazebo

Dominoes are such a satisfying game piece — the way they feel in your hand and nestle together on the board — but few games do them justice. We set out to publish the greatest domino game ever created… and boy howdy is Gazebo a worthy contender. The game is dead simple — play a domino from your hand next to any other on the board — but the strategic depth is oh so satisfying to uncover.

Gazebo is our most approachable strategy game yet. It can easily be played with your partner, your parents, your co-workers, or your friends whether they are casual or hobbyist gamers. Thanks to the compact size and travel case, you can take Gazebo on the go and play on any nearly flat surface in roughly 30 minutes. It lives up to our Travel Line’s “play with anyone, anywhere” mantra.

While Reiner Knizia has made a whole lot of games, he rates Gazebo as one of his “Top 10 designs ever” thanks to its elegance and depth.

Follow the Kickstarter for Gazebo

Gingham

Gingham is a game where you are deploying real ants on a real picnic blanket as you compete to stockpile and claim sweets… Ok, maybe that is only partially true. The game does come with an actual gingham fabric game board, but the ants may only be replicas… Either way, this game is freaking brilliant. 

While Gingham is NOT a trick taking game, its creation was inspired by trick taking card games, and this has resulted in a wonderfully unique strategy game. The lead player determines which side of the board that all players must play on each round. In other words, all players must follow the led “suit.” Who ever places their queen closest to the star (in the most valuable position of the led side) becomes the leader of the next round. You will deploy an ant into whatever row that you positioned your queen. The catch is that you cannot deploy your ant beyond the stitch, and the rows that are closer to the star offer less options. Do you opt for a better turn order position for next round, or more flexibility for this round?

Players are racing to connect matching sweets to score big points. Can your ant colony snatch up that valuable cupcake before your rivals assemble their chain? By fully surrounding a sweet token or stack, you can claim it as your own stockpile for major scoring. But it’s possible for another player to steal your stash if they can surround your stockpile, and that’s even easier to accomplish if they can carry your stockpile away with a clever connection of ants. Jockeying for turn order can become painfully crucial when it means the difference between triumph and defeat. You can even bump rival ants from their spaces, but be careful, a bumped ant can be placed on any open space on the board!

Folks who enjoy highly interactive games on a shared board are likely going to love Gingham.

Follow the Kickstarter for Gingham

Bombastic

Note: Our recently revealed Tic Tac BOOM has now been renamed to Bombastic… although BoardGameGeek has yet to update the name. The images shown here are with a prototype that also has not been updated yet.

I mentioned earlier how Hive is one of the only good options for playing a game at the beach. Well that list is going to grow a little larger with the release of Bombastic. This is a 2-player, 5-minute game that you can play in the sand, on an airplane tray table, or in a damp cave by the light of glowing mushrooms.

Those who enjoy Trio/Nana are especially going to love this. Bombastic takes the widespread familiarity of tic tac toe and makes it a tense, addicting, and frequently funny game that you can play with anyone. One player is Xs, and the other is Os — pretty standard so far. But what you don’t know can hurt you. Nine chunky tiles are shuffled face down into a 3×3 grid — 4 of them Xs, 4 of them Os, and the last? A ticking, delicate bomb. Can you find your tiles without blowing up?

On your turn, either:

• Go for It — Show three tiles in a row. If they are yours, you win! If you show the bomb — BOOM! You lose! If you show any of your opponent’s tiles, then you give them helpful information (whoops), but the tiles are placed back face down, and the game keeps going.
• Use one of two available action cards to help you peek at and rearrange tiles, staying one step ahead of your rival.

Only the cleverest player who uses the action cards wisely (and isn’t afraid to take a chance here and there) will be able to win.

Bombastic will be our first ever direct-to-retail release, but folks can also add it to their pledge during the Travel Line pledge manager or preorder it from us directly for a bonus PVC (waterproof) card upgrade.

Posts like this are made possible thanks to the support of our Kickstarter backers. Backers will further be rewarded with free travel cases and discounted bundles — all for low flat-rate shipping in most regions. You can follow the Travel Line Kickstarter project here. I wouldn’t have the privilege of making or highlighting all these awesome games without your help, so thanks for your support!

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Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

The post Best Travel Size Board Games appeared first on Bitewing Games.

What makes a favorite game? Is it the way it consistently entertains or surprises you? Challenges or delights you? Welcomes and invites you? Is it found in the excitement you feel to show it to others? The hunger you possess to return to it once more? The need to climb higher and explore deeper? The memories you smile back on and the people you share them with?

No doubt, it’s all of these things. A game is only as good as the experience it hosts and the emotions it generates for those at the table. Yet, it’s the players who fashion so much of that outcome. The perfect game for me might just be the worst choice for you. Despite our differences, we find ourselves here… Me sharing my strongest recommendations, and you hoping to find at least a spark of opportunity and/or vindication. What could be more human than the desire to find and share common joys?

I found that 2024 was a particularly strong year for board games. So strong, in fact, that I couldn’t quite settle on only 15 games like last year. There were a few more games beyond 15 that were too good to be left off my list. So while this likely won’t be permanent increase for future years, for 2024 I’ll be sharing my Top 20 games.  

It’s worth noting that I’ve intentionally excluded Bitewing Games publications from my Top 20. As a daytime dentist and a nighttime cardboard vigilante, any design that we choose to champion will obviously be one that I love so much that I personally see to its fruition. Rather than bump another game out of the Top 20 spotlight, I’ll simply share afterwords what I love about each 2024 Bitewing release. I’ll also grant some special awards to other games and expansions including my favorite new-to-me game released before 2024, best game I didn’t love, worst game I adored, and more!

Let’s celebrate 2024 gaming, shall we?

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20. Fairy Ring

Fairy Ring is a simple drafting game of adding mushrooms to your tableau and moving your fairy around the mushroom circle created by all players’ tableaus. The fact that you even pay attention to and interact with your opponents’ tableaus makes it more interesting to me than 95% of the games in this genre. And it’s interesting to decide whether to build your mushrooms wide (for more frequent fairy hits) or tall (for more powerful scoring opportunities). All in all, it’s an engaging little game that has left a good impression with everyone I’ve shown it to. If you play it too frequently, then some of the novelty might wear off. Admittedly, there is not a ton of depth or variety to explore upon repeat plays. But I plan to keep this one around anyway and break it out on occasion for a reliably good time.

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19. Inori

Inori is a humble worker placement game that harkens back to simpler times while offering a new twist to the genre. Instead of following the modern trope of layering a dozen complex systems to keep you from cracking the solitaire puzzle, Inori is all about influencing your opponents in a simple system of collecting favor tokens and competing to score them. Every round, new cards (and thus new worker placement spaces) come out to replace the old ones. If a card’s spaces are entirely occupied, then those players present get to score their matching favor tokens and that card color will come out in the next round. If a card is not fully occupied, then that card color will be replaced by the opposite color for the next round. Depending on how many tokens you have relative to your opponents, you might want certain colors to shrivel up or bloom and flourish on the game board. While the theme is as intangible as its spirits, I love that it has me watching my opponents like a hawk.

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18. Tokyo Highway Rainbow City

I never played the original Tokyo Highway, but I’ve always liked the look of it. The table presence of this game has always been top tier, but my understanding is that the original version had issues. Most notably, the components were too fiddly for a game where the stacking and dexterity was supplemental to the core objectives.

Rainbow City is a an evolved edition of Tokyo Highway where the production is much better and the titular Rainbow City mode is much more interesting. The popsicle stick highways now have rubber feet on them, making stacking much easier. The cars are likewise rubbery and grippy. But the real star of this edition is the Rainbow City mode. Now, instead of just racing to put out your cars while you criss cross your highways with opponent highways, you are aiming to complete as many objectives as possible. Normally, I prefer a game that doesn’t make you tally up your score across a bunch of objectives at the end. But the objectives here are just plain fun — plus the score track is an actual race track that you push your cars along. You’ll be aiming to surround buildings, pass through rainbows, build unbroken chains of cars, construct supports on developments, offramp at landmarks, and more! And the elaborate labyrinth of highways that you construct together is almost more satisfying than winning the game.

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17. Lure

If you know my tastes, then you know that I love a spicy dice game. For whatever reason, this genre seems to be more polarizing than most. Some people love these games, others hate them, and nobody can agree on which ones are best. But that won’t stop me from listing Lure as one of my favorite releases of 2024. The clever twist here is that players secretly decide how many dice to roll in an attempt to catch the available fish, but the players who bid less dice get the chance to catch them first. Lure is all about walking that fine line between bidding enough dice to successfully catch fish but not too many dice that you let others catch the fish first.

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16. The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

Before I fell hopelessly deep down the rabbit hole of board games, 7 Wonders Duel was my favorite game for a good while. It took one of my most played games as a teenager (7 Wonders) and made it a perfect little 2-player drafting game for the early years of my marriage.

Fast forward another 5 years and a few hundred board games later and I’ve finally revisited this system in 2024’s Duel for Middle-earth. The 7 Wonders Duel core is just as good as I remember it, but now the points have been replaced by a race between the Fellowship of the Ring and the dark forces of Sauron. I love that there are three paths to victory, all of which can trigger in an instant: the ring path, gaining alliances, and controlling the map of Middle-earth. Vincent Dutrait’s artwork is a perfect fit for this world and story. No surprise that this game is already ranked in the BGG top 100. It’s a solid melding of two things that the hobbyist community already adores.

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15. Kabuto Sumo: Sakura Slam

Review copy provided by the publisher

Kabuto Sumo remains one of my favorite dexterity games thanks to its unique coin-pushing gameplay and breezy approachability. It’s especially good at 2-players, but I understand how some folks had problems with it. The most common complaint seems to be that a game can drag on too long because players are able to undo the push that their rival just executed. Sakura Slam is the sequel to Kabuto Sumo that directly addresses this main complaint.

Because Sakura Slam forces players to push their discs into the square ring from one of its corners, it’s much harder to reverse your opponent’s previous turn. On top of that, there is a new alternate way to win the game: by pushing the central gold belt out of the ring. From our plays, these changes have absolutely sped up the game and prevented the stalemates that Kabuto Sumo could succumb to. Plus by tagging all four corners (pushing from all four corners across multiple turns), you can earn an exciting bonus push to really swing momentum in your favor. I also dig how many of the new insects utilize the corner posts with their abilities. In other words, Kabuto Sumo is better than ever with Sakura Slam.

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14. Rebirth

As I mentioned in my first impressions post, “Rebirth feels like a greatest hits tile layer. And that’s certainly a good thing. Yet by not leaning too heavily on one of [Knizia’s other] classics, it manages to carve out its own identity and feeling. The end result is nothing incredibly innovative or remarkably new, yet it’s still solidly satisfying. And both maps offer distinct flavors.” My favorite aspects of Rebirth include the gorgeous production and breezy turns of deciding where to place the one tile in your hand.

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13. Moonrollers

Moonrollers is easily the best push-your-luck game that I played last year. It nails the tempting incentives to keep going, the satisfying payoffs when you strike gold, and the hilarious failures when you push too far. Even has your fistful of dice dwindles, there is always hope for a miracle roll thanks to the wild face and the gain more dice face. Unlike some push-your-luck games, Moonrollers is also quite interactive by allowing players to work on completing a card together so that all participants can score points. Newcomer designer Robert Hovakimyan has a bright future ahead if he keeps cranking out games as good as this one.

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12. Courtisans

Courtisans is a feisty little card game that has been a big hit at my table. This one just made the cut of my recent Top 100 Board Games of All Time list. Here is what I said there: “Sometimes it’s nice to just gather around the table for a quick communal bashing. As a 20-30 minute game, Courtisans delivers with funny and cutthroat moments. Each turn your hand of three cards must be split up: Play one to yourself, one to another player, and one to the table to influence the end-game value of a suit. In addition to manipulating the incentives of the group, there are plenty of opportunities to nail each other either out of petty revenge or cunning calculation.”

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11. Skyrise

As a fan of auction games, Skyrise is the type of title that I love to see releasing in today’s market. It’s refreshing and revitalizing to the genre to see a game take auctions and make them evolving and spatial. Each higher bid is for a new spot adjacent to the last one. The bidding snake grows longer and taller as it twists and turns and winds around the city until finally everyone else passes and the last person standing erects the building that they bid. Then the snake begins anew as they start the next auction and the city districts become more cluttered over time. I’ve had great success teaching this to a wide range of gamers who seem to catch on quickly and invest fully in the wacky antics of Skyrise.

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10. Galactic Renaissance

Review copy provided by the publisher

After a five year hiatus, it’s great to have designer Christian Martinez (creator of Inis and Cairn) back on the scene with Galactic Renaissance. While this new release has proven to be more polarizing than I would have predicted (some folks insist that they would rather play Inis in every instance), I find that this political race of deck cycling is plenty unique and satisfying at my table. While it requires a large table, it ends up playing fast and smooth once your group gets the hang of this game’s unique style. Much of challenge rests on building up a solid infrastructure and then being able to quickly pivot and adapt to the changing public score cards.

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9. The Gang

Review copy provided by the publisher

Out of all the titles on this list, I would wager that The Gang has the best life expectancy in the market. That’s because it takes the widely known concept of poker and makes it cooperative. This is a game that you can play with anyone, especially casual gamers. While it may not demand the depth of exploration with a consistent group that The Crew did (another hit card game from publisher Kosmos), The Gang is certainly the better option as a quick filler with anyone and everyone. In fact, I’ve had the most fun with this one simply by showing it to different groups (ideally with 4 or 5 players where it shines best).

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8. Kelp: Shark vs Octopus

I’ve mentioned repeatedly how 2023 was such a good year for 2-player games. But I must admit that 2024 was no slouch either. We’ve already covered the rock-solid Kabuto Sumo Sakura Slam and The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth. But Kelp comes from the opposite end of the spectrum by being something entirely new and unique. One player acts as the octopus trying to survive and the other player is the predatory shark. As a wildly asymmetric strategy game, Kelp manages to soar (or swim?) where other designs of this genre often sink. The rules are streamlined, both creatures are engaging to play as, and the action stays focused on a shared interactive board. It’s satisfying to see your creature grow in abilities and power. And it’s downright divine to see Weberson Santiago’s aquatic artwork on full display across the cards and board.

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7. CONIC 

Looking to get some of that Knizia juice injected straight into your veins? CONIC is the answer. CONIC is distilled Knizia delivered via IV therapy. It’s simultaneous bidding where the decisions are fast, loose, and brutal. One moment you’ll throw down your precious 8 only to have it beaten out by a blasted 9. The next moment you’ll find yourself in a multi-disc bidding war over a spot you didn’t even care all that much about to begin with. Every disc bid is gone forever, expect the 0. The 0 is the only loyal subject who returns to you, despite you resenting its very existence (especially when you all bid 0… except for Tonya who therefore wins the auction with a measly 2 — who does she think she is?!). Between the slick ruleset and the elegant production, I can’t get enough of CONIC. Sadly, this is by far the most difficult game on this entire list to acquire. I had to buy it directly from Japanese publisher Korokoroduo’s shop and then jump through more hoops to get it shipped overseas to my doorstep. And it appears that even they are currently sold out of CONIC. Dark times, indeed. But maybe someday a savvy publisher will decided to release this hidden gem Knizia worldwide. Never say never…

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6. Tower Up

Well if the previous game (and more particularly its rarity) made you sad, then let the blocky plastic of Tower Up wipe away your tears. Tower Up is a beacon of hope in this modern gaming world. Like its titular skyscrapers, it stands tall and boldly displays the glory of light strategy gaming. Tower Up is the kind of design that impresses me far more than a big box Eurogame with complex and layered systems. You won’t find an ounce of fat in this ruleset. It’s a lean, mean evergreen about raising skyscrapers and cruising up the score tracks. You can play it with anyone, yet you’ll uncover plenty of depth underneath its simplicity.

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5. Agent Avenue

Speaking of delicious elegance, Agent Avenue is one of the best bluffing games since the release of Skull in 2011. It’s criminal how under-the-radar this game has flown so far, but maybe that’s just because you have to order it directly from the publisher to acquire it in North America. In Agent Avenue, you simply present one card face up and one card face down for your opponent to keep one and leave you with the other. As you collect sets of these cards, they’ll help you to advance forward or force you to move backward. The goal is simple: catch up to the other spy on the circular track. If you catch them then you win. The magic of the game comes from the carefully crafted set effects that influence the mind games between the players. While Agent Avenue presents itself as mainly a 2-player game, it actually has a banger variant for 3-4 players as well. 

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4. Einfach Genial 3D

If you would have told me that Ingenious 3D would be among my Top 5 Board Games of 2024, I would have told you that you are crazy. Sure I like Knizia Games just as much as the next Kniziaphile, and I enjoy Ingenious as a family-weight abstract game, but I’ve never loved it.

That all changed with the arrival of Einfach Genial 3D from the great land of Germany. Part of the reason that this game has been such a big hit is simply because it has hit the sweet spot for my wife and I — we are evenly matched and equally engaged in the competition. But the bigger reason is that this 3-dimensional spin on Ingenious has just been so unexpectedly satisfying to play. The growth of the board, layered by chunky plastic tiles, is thrilling and strategic. Blocking your opponent’s ability to score their weakest color is so much more nuanced than the obvious 2-dimensional blocking of Ingenious. Now you must build pits and peaks into your schemes. 

Especially at 2-players between evenly matched opponents, this really is one of the best abstract strategy games out there. It strikes a beautiful balance between casual and cunning, clever and comforting.

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3. Wilmot’s Warehouse

Any game that tries something truly unique is going to earn a lot of points in my book. Any game that tries something unique and sticks the landing at my table is going to be a surefire winner. Wilmot’s Warehouse is a cooperative storytelling memory game that jumps straight to the essence of play. Through creative brainstorming, you and your group must commit to memory the look and position of 35 different tiles. It helps to come up with a narrative that only gets more unhinged as time goes on and the tiles you draw force you to conjure wacky ideas. The daily mandates only serve to make things more hilarious by forcing extra restrictions upon the group.

The best games are less about the maneuvers we pull or the combos we execute and more about the moments we share. Wilmot’s Warehouse is a delightful game of sharing moments, imagining stories, and creating memories.

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2. Marabunta

Marabunta was the very first 2024 release that I had the pleasure of playing. Despite me then trying over 50 other releases from the year, Marabunta remained one of the very best of the lot. Marabunta feels like a revelation in the roll-and-write genre. It’s so unique from the standard fare that some folks claim it isn’t really a roll-and-write at all. But you are rolling dice and marking your chosen dice results with a dry erase board, so what else could it be? Well, it could be a 2-player tile placement strategy game.

The agonizing decision space of Marabunta is found within the splitting and choosing of dice results. If I split the dice, then you get to choose and execute one of the options first. We’ll mark our dice results on a shared board where our ant colonies are competing for territory and blocking each other out of regions. You’ll also seek to earn valuable point-scoring cupcakes or powerful crates that can unlock various bonuses. It’s such a meaty experience in such a beautifully compact box that it really cements Reiner Knizia’s legacy as an all-time great designer of 2-player games.

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1. Arcs

Review copy provided by the publisher 

Arcs was one of the easiest Game of the Year picks that I’ve ever selected. It’s everything I want from a Cole Wehrle design — politics, drama, wild swings of fortune, unexpected plot twists, challenging objectives, painful tradeoffs, staggering depth, uncharted mechanisms — wrapped in an experience that is more approachable than ever (for a Wehrle design, of course). While none of them are necessarily “easy” to get to the table, Arcs is the Wehrle design that is most likely to get played for me. Separating the design into a more approachable, competitive, compact box and a more wacky, heavy, and unwieldy expansion was a brilliant move on Leder Games’ part. 

But the brilliance of the design is what truly deserves the spotlight here. Trick taking proves to be a gritty but thrilling way to force players to adapt their space opera strategies on the fly. Arcs gives you just enough tools and resources to pull off some truly unexpected schemes. With every play, I discover more layers to this cosmic onion, and it keeps me hungry to return once more. For being a genuinely innovative and deeply rewarding labor of love, Arcs is my Top Board Game of 2024.

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Celebrating Bitewing Games’ 2024 Releases:

Favorite Logic Deduction Game – Spectral 

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Spectral is a game that we couldn’t resist publishing because it has proven to be my favorite logic deduction game I’ve ever played. This is thanks to everything that makes this design so unique within its genre — particularly the spicy interactive bidding, thrilling climactic reveal, and spooky thematic vibe.

Favorite Wacky Expansion – Trailblazers: Sasquatch Expansion

I’ve never seen another expansion do anything as wild and ambitious with a game system as what Ryan Courtney did to Trailblazers with the Sasquatch Expansion. He effectively took a largely solitaire route building puzzle and turned it into a social deduction cooperative game. And it works. It works so well that this ties the solo modes as my favorite way to play Trailblazers. The potential for a hidden traitor (Sasquatch) keeps the experience much spicier than most cooperative titles. The tricky balance between optimizing your trails and playing defensively makes things interesting for the humans, while Sasquatch has to toe the line between blatant sabotage and plausible deniability. This one is definitely best played with the same group over multiple sessions. But the good news is that it plays great at all counts (2-4).

Favorite Combotastic Strategy Game – Cascadero

As the name of the game implies, Cascadero is all about harnessing that juicy cascade of bonuses that awaits you on the tracks. In this box, legendary, elegant, interactive Knizia tile placement gameplay meets addicting, combotastic, crunchy track considerations. A refreshing twist on the genre from the King of the Tiles. I’ve played this dozens of times now and still have a blast every time. The two boards and modes also add in a nice bit of strategic variety that is fun to cycle through.

Favorite Classic-stye Roll-and-Write – Cascadito

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I’m not the biggest fan of roll-and-write games, but I’m always happy to revisit Cascadito. The dice drafting and competitive achievements keep things spicy while the sheet variety and tough decisions make this game a joy to return to. If you prefer something a little more forgiving than Cascadero, then Cascadito might hit the sweet spot for you.

Favorite Spicy Card Game – Cat Blues: The Big Gig

One of my favorite card games and favorite auction games (1998’s Cat Blues) is made even better thanks to Dr Knizia’s magic development touch in Cat Blues: The Big Gig. And how does he squeeze so much out of a deck of 6 unique cards?!? I’m still surprised to see how differently each game plays out within a 3-act session. The quartet tokens help to ramp up the pressure in Game 3 as players try to muscle each other out of the Big Tips. So spicy and smooth, just like a good jazzy tune. Artist Alisha Giroux brought immense personality to this production with the cat musicians and colors. One can almost hear the serenading blues as they meld their quartets and scoop up mouse tips.

Favorite Non-Knizia Tile Placement Game – Bebop

Tile placement is my all time favorite genre in board games. It’s so versatile, interactive, and engaging, and it’s why Knizia and I get along so well. As a then unpublished designer, Robert Hovakimyan found the way to my heart by pitching a unique tile layer that features oodles of dice in Bebop.

The two layers — placing tiles and inserting dice — are paired beautifully with the three ways to score points. I love how the game provides a dynamic arc in a quick playtime. You are doing the same simple actions the entire session, but the focus and pressures shift dramatically from start to finish.

Add in vibrant art from Weberson Santiago, clackety dice from a draw bag, and a variety of festival maps and I’m a happy boy.

Favorite Modern Eurogame – Shuffle and Swing

I’ve been complaining for years about Eurogames that are too solitaire, too bloated, too dull, and too long. Shuffle and Swing is the remedy to my afflictions. Everything here ties back to the core objective of building instruments and claiming credit for it. It’s unusually focused for a game of this genre. Navigating the shifting rondels and evolving shared incentives makes for a consistently gripping session. The variety of instrument boards with unique objectives is fun to explore as well. 

And huge props to the artists (Gary Chalk and Alisha Giroux) and graphic designer (Brandt Brinkerhoff) for making something that is a joy to bask in when it is laid out on the table. Due to how grueling and demanding the creation of a mid-weight Eurogame is (from play testing to development, from graphic design to rulebook editing), and because it strays into the distant fringe of our target audience and focus of projects, we will likely never publish a game of this type again. But I’m glad it exists, I love to play it, and I’m happy we put out a modern style Eurogame that swims against the current in many ways. 

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Best Expansion

Winner: Heat: Heavy Rain – I wager that Arcs: Blighted Reach would have won if I had been able to play it. But Heat: Heavy Rain is great as well for allowing a 7th player to join the fun and for providing two new tracks to race on.

Honorable Mentions

• Through the Desert: Bazaar Expansion (Half the modules are great! The other half I could live without.)
• Sky Team: Turbulence (More Sky Team is always a good thing)

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Best New-to-Me Game Released Before 2024 

Winner: Innovation – I discovered a lot of killer old games last year, but Innovation has left an impression on me unlike any other. This feels like a civilization game that I can play for decades and never grow tired of.

Honorable Mentions

• Strike
• Great Plains
• Flowerfall
• DroPolter

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Best Reskin/Reprint

Old classic game brought back to life (sometimes with a new visual style)

Winner: Fantasticks – Fantasticks is Mario Party meets Bingo conjured up by Reiner Knizia himself. Players proceed through a series of challenges ranging from dexterity to bluffing to trivia to memory to charades in order to cover the spaces on their bingo card. I’ve played kitchen-sink party games like this before and they’ve always landed with a thud. But Fantasticks — with its charming piles of colorful sticks and its weirdly captivating deck of challenge cards — has proven to be a consistent delight.

Honorable Mentions

• Hamster Roll (hamster wheel dexterity game — fun for all ages!)

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Comeback Award

Haven’t played in years… even better than I remember it.

Winner: Hive Pocket (this is a stinking good 2-player abstract strategy game… and it’s portable!)

Honorable Mentions

• Just One
• No Mercy

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Fall From Grace Award

Once respected, now rejected

Winner: Ark Nova – After a year-long break, I found revisiting Ark Nova to be a much less enjoyable experience than our previous plays. Sadly, I find myself no longer a fan due to the exhausting demands of the game — I simply find more fun out of playing multiple faster and more focused games in the same amount of time.

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Best Game I Didn’t Love

Just because I respect a game, doesn’t mean I want to play it

Winner: SETI – It provides a lot of meaty decisions, but it also had wayyyy too much downtime

Honorable Mentions

• Battalion: War of the Ancients (just too battle tactics-ish for our tastes)
• Altay: Dawn of Civilization (neat deck builder / area control hybrid that often ends up feeling a bit too solitaire for me)

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Worst Game I Adored

Either they are objectively bad, or more likely they are just bad for most people in my gaming circle

Winner: Fairy – To be clear, I wouldn’t call Fairy a “bad” game. Rather, it simply feels like a “barely” game. Players merely make a hand signal to indicate what their guess is for the next card to be flipped from the deck. Higher, lower, same suit, or the mystically rare fairy. Some players will hate it. I think it’s an absolute joy… especially with larger groups, and especially as a $10 tiny box game.

Honorable Mention

• DaDaDa (the rules for scoring are basically broken at most player counts, and some players will never click with this game, but it is great fun to play)

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Best Kids Game

Tested and certified by my 3- and 5-year-old girls

Winner: SlideAscope – This one has proven to be enjoyable for the entire family, and it has seen the most plays of any family game we’ve played with our girls. It also teaches kids how to visualize effects and search for optimal solutions. Nice!

Honorable Mentions

• Spotlight (real-time searching game with novel spotlight components)
• Dodo (real-time memory game with an epic rolling egg)

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Best Video Game of 2024

Winner: Animal Well – While most AAA game studios seem to be creatively bankrupt, indie games are doing just fine. I’ve grown tired of major sequels and IPs beating the same dead horse for years, so it’s incredibly refreshing to stumble across imaginative games like Animal Well. This Metroidvania style game is one of thrilling discovery with staggering depth to its layered puzzles. The more you think outside the box, the more you’ll uncover in this literal rabbit hole of fun.

Honorable Mentions

• Astrobot (the best modern 3D Mario game that doesn’t feature Mario)
• Balatro (addictive poker-style card game)

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Best Film of 2024

Winner: Hundreds of Beavers – Anyone who says that the comedy genre is dead hasn’t seen Hundreds of Beavers. This wacky, Looney Toons style live-action indie film is one of the most inventive and hilarious flicks I have ever seen. Bravo.

Honorable Mentions

• Dune: Part 2 (A chills-inducing sci-fi epic. Denis Villeneuve is easily one of the best working directors)

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Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

 

The post Top 20 Board Games of 2024 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

NOTE: THIS POST HAS NOW BEEN UPDATED TO INCLUDE OVER 260 KNIZIA GAMES! SEE THE UPDATED POST HERE.

With roughly 2000 plays of over 200 different Reiner Knizia board games, Nick, Scott, and Jared are ready to unleash their Ultimate Reiner Knizia Ranked Tier List! This list is split up into a 6-part YouTube series where we rank and discuss each game in depth. Check out each episode below!

If you scroll down far enough, then BEWARE OF SPOILERS. At the bottom of this post you will find the image and written spread of our tier list. 

Here is a link to the Tiermaker list itself where you can rank and share all of the Knizia games you’ve played!

If you’re a fan of any of Reiner Knizia’s games, then you should join the Reiner Knizia Enthusiasts Discord Server where we chat all things Knizia Games!

Finally, this list was created in celebration of our upcoming 2025 releases featuring FIVE new Reiner Knizia games, Iliad, Ichor, SILOS, EGO, and ORBIT. Be sure to check out the preorder pages for these games. Thanks for your support!

Watch the Video Series (Click the image to watch the Youtube video):

SPOILERS: Full Tier List Below….

Disclaimer: Bitewing Games is the publisher of some of these titles (marked with an * below). Biases are certainly present (it’s a subjective list, after all). But in many cases, we published a new version of an old Knizia game because we already regarded it so highly (this includes Zoo Vadis, Cat Blues, SILOS, and EGO).

For comparison, here is our older Tier List from the year prior.

The full tier list (in the order pictured):

GOLD-Tier (Greatest of the Only Living Doctor):

• Tigris & Euphrates
• Ra
• The Quest for El Dorado
• Through the Desert
• Zoo Vadis*
• High Society
• Schotten Totten / Battle Line
• Yellow & Yangtze
• EGO*

S-Tier (The Best)

• SILOS*
• Lost Cities
• Babylonia
• Cascadero*
• Samurai
• My City
• Mille Fiori
• Mille Fiori: The Masterpieces (expansion)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation
• Orongo / Nyakuza
• The Quest for El Dorado: Dangers and Muisca (expansion)
• Taj Mahal
• MLEM: Space Agency
• CONIC
• Ichor*
• Einfach Genial 3D
• Huang
• Blue Moon / Blue Moon Legends

A-Tier (Amazing. Absolutely. Always.)

• Iliad*
• Marabunta
• L.A.M.A. Party Edition
• Hot Lead*
• Rebirth
• Blue Lagoon
• Botswana / Wildlife Safari
• Chartae
• For One: Galaktix
• For One: Kniffel
• For One: Number Up
• For One: Schwarze Rosen
• Gang of Dice
• Modern Art
• Royal Visit
• Tatari
• Winner’s Circle
• Cat Blues: The Big Gig*
• Winner’s Circle (Japanese Edition)
• Viking See-Saw
• Zamek / Carcassonne: The Castle
• Zamek: dodatek Sokół / Carcassonne: The Castle – Falcon Expansion
• Municipium
• Penguin Party
• Tajuto
• Qin
• Callisto: The Game

B-Tier (Super Solid, Hidden Gems, Surprisingly Great)

• Freigard (not yet played, this is a prediction)
• Colossal Arena / Equinox
• Whale Riders
• Schotten Totten 2
• Quo Vadis?
• Beowulf: The Legend
• No Mercy / HIT!
• Palazzo
• Cat Blues
• Rapido / Excape
• Heckmeck am Karteneck
• Axio
• Ingenious
• Stephenson’s Rocket
• Karate Tomate
• Art Robbery
• Circus Flohcati
• Genesis
• Keltis
• Keltis: Neue Wege, Neue Ziele
• Priests of Ra
• Pan Tu Nie Stal!
• Silver Screen
• Pumafiosi*
• Fantasticks
• Soda Smugglers*
• Kingdoms
• Beowulf: The Movie Board Game
• ORBIT*
• King’s Road
• Medici: The Card Game
• Medici
• Ninja Master
• Pollen
• Sunrise Lane
• San Francisco
• The Siege of Runedar
• Rheinlander
• Tower of Babel
• Reif fur die Insel
• Amun-Re: 20th Anniversary Edition
• Cascadito*
• My City: Roll & Build
• Nightmare Productions / Hollywood Blockbuster / Dream Factory
• Genial Spezial
• Neighborhood Hide & Seek
• Pixel Party
• SlideAscope
• Trendy
• Alien Attack USA (this was a low B tier prediction at the time of recording, but now Nick has played it and ranks it as “high C tier, but Rebirth scratches a similar itch faster”)
• Havalandi (this was a prediction at the time of recording, but now Nick has played it twice and ranks it as “at least B-tier, possibly higher, need more plays”)

C-Tier (Reliable Reiner. Good games. We’d rather play these than much of the industry hotness.  Worth a try, at least for Knizia fans)

• Whale Riders: The Card Game (note: a new version of this is releasing soon that addresses our graphic design complaints, so this should probably be ranked in B-tier next to Trendy)
• My Island
• L.A.M.A. Dice / Don’t LLAMA Dice
• Havalandi
• The Quest for El Dorado: Dragons & Treasures
• Wiener Walzer
• The Quest for El Dorado: Heroes & Hexes
• The Quest for El Dorado: The Golden Temples
• Kariba
• SWAT! / It’s Mine!
• Africa
• LAMA / Don’t LLAMA Card Game
• Indigo
• Foodie Forest
• Marshmallow Test
• Odd Socks
• Amun-Re: The Card Game
• Cheeky Monkey
• Blue Moon City
• The Lord of the Rings
• Aristocracy
• Classic Art
• Das Letzte Paradies
• Dice Monsters
• Tower of Babel
• Space Worm
• Forbidden City
• Through the Desert: Bazaar Expansion
• Ra: Traders Expansion (not yet played, this is a prediction)
• Sumatra
• Amazonia Park (not yet played, this is a prediction)
• En Garde / Duell
• Treasures of Nakbe
• Great Wall of China
• Ilium
• Longboard
• Keltis: Der Weg der Steine Mitbringspiel
• Lost Cities: The Board Game
• Medici: The Dice Game
• Ra and Write (not yet played, this is a prediction)
• Lost Cities: Roll & Write
• Merchants
• Medici vs Strozzi
• Merchants of Amsterdam
• Minotaur Lords
• Scarab Lords
• High Score
• Money
• Poison
• Battle of Mekaverse
• Ra: The Dice Game
• Rondo
• Spectaculum
• Strozzi
• Knights of Charlemagne / Tabula Rasa
• Tutankhamun
• At the Office
• Into the Blue
• Heckmeck Deluxe / Pickomino Deluxe
• Prosperity
• Des Souvenirs plein le Ciel
• Marco Polo Expedition
• Axio Rota
• Palmyra
• Spy

D(cent)-Tier (Sub-par for Knizia… It’s fine… I mean, I’ll still play it if you insist)

• Planet Rush
• Escalation!
• Capybara Cookie Club
• MEOW
• Sakura
• Super Crazy World
• Der Herr der Ringe: Die Zwei Türme – das Kartenspiel
• Pick a Pen: Tuinen
• Pick a Pen: Riffen
• Pick a Pen: Crypten
• Euphrates & Tigris: Contest of Kings
• Age of War
• Criss Cross
• Reiner Knizia’s Decathlon
• Dragon Land
• Family Inc.
• FITS
• Galaxy Cat Extension
• Ivanhoe
• Loot
• Cezar
• Looting London
• Lost Cities: Rivals
• Modern Art: The Card Game
• Arquimedes
• Pitagoras
• Ohio
• Res Publica
• Wurfel Poker
• Star Trek: Expeditions
• Sushizock im Gockelwok / Sushi Bar
• Turtle Mania
• Clash of the Gladiators
• Yangtze
• Ribbit
• Buddy Hop
• Yoku Gamı
• Witchstone
• Desperados
• Ice Tumble
• Feats of Cheese
• Whoowasit?
• City of the Living
• Kartel
• Knights Poker
• LAMA Kadabra
• Rooby’s ABC

F-Tier (Nah, I’m good)

• Monster Chef
• Pan Tu Nie Stal! Demoludy
• Sudoku Challenge
• Zombie Mania
• Vampire
• Easy Come, Easy Go!
• Cat Ass Trophy / Zero Down
• Cthulhu Rising
• Gold
• Ramses Pyramid
• Hong Kong

What are your favorite Knizia games? How would your tier list be different from ours? Share below!

The post Ultimate Reiner Knizia Tier List — Ranking 224 Knizia Board Games! appeared first on Bitewing Games.

A new year is upon us, and the churn of new board game releases relentlessly tempts hobbyists one and all. You can either flee from it, or you can welcome it with open arms. I’m the open arms type, so come peruse my Most Anticipated Board Games of 2025! This list will be roughly ordered by date of release, for convenience. Heck, maybe I’ll even sneak in an exclusive look at a yet unrevealed Knizia game this time around…

Note: This list will also include a few titles published by us here at Bitewing Games (noted below) — because why wouldn’t I be excited about those?

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

Expected Release Date: January 17, 2025

I must confess: I already own this game. But that’s only because I picked up an early copy at PAX Unplugged before its retail release in January. If you like the sound of The Crew (cooperative trick taking) within the Lord of the Rings narrative, then this is probably right up your alley.

Power Vacuum

Expected Release Date: February 2025

Trick taking meets political power grabs between anthropomorphic household appliances? I’m in. This game sounds supremely wacky and social for a trick taker.

Azul Duel

Expected Release Date: Q1 2025

Just when I say I’m out, they know how to draw me back in. Azul was already an amazing game for 2-players, so a Duel version wasn’t necessarily needed. But usually “Duel” means a more focused, interactive, and intentional experience for 2-players. Most of the Azul spinoffs have been less interactive and less tense, so hopefully this one takes things in the opposite direction.

Freigard

Expected Release Date: Q1 or Q2 2025

Freigard sees inPatience (publisher of the acclaimed Onirim solo series) teaming up with Reiner Knizia (designer of my favorite solo series — For One) for a 15-minute “deceptively simple game of risk taking and hand management”. Say no more… except for exactly when I can pick this up!

Calimala

Expected Release Date: March 2025

It’s never ideal when a game ends up on my Most Anticipated Games of the Year list two years in a row. In the case of Calimala, its timeline ended up being delayed by six whole months. Regardless, I’m still looking forward to this one when it finally releases. Here is what I said about it last time:

Calimala is another reskinned edition of a game I’ve played and discussed in the past.

This one originally hit my table at a time when I was burnt out on beige Eurogames with generic themes and presentations (and my initial thoughts on the game certainly reflect that mood). Ultimately, this was one design that I purged from my collection, but I never quite purged it from my mind. Something about the bitey gameplay lingered with me, and I’m thrilled to see that it will soon break free of its original look with a new presentation from Ian O’Toole. I’m hoping that this new version will help me uncover a newfound love for the clever Calimala.

Iliad

Expected Release Date: April 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

It’s gonna be another killer year for fans of 2-player only games! One major reason why is because 2025 will see the grand debut of our Mythos Collection — 2-player games of strategy and mythology. As huge fans and evangelists of so many great 2-player games, we are thrilled to finally be contributing to this genre of legends. 

In many ways, Iliad reminds me of Lost Cities and Battle Line / Schotten Totten in how it is such a tight, tense, and elegant Knizia game of hand management and competitive dueling. It felt like an instant classic the moment Reiner created it and pitched it to us. I’m excited for folks to get the chance to compete for the favor of the gods as Hector vs Achilles.

Ichor

Expected Release Date: April 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

Our Mythos Collection is (fittingly) coming in waves of 2 — 2 killer titles at a time. Ichor has quickly become my favorite abstract strategy game ever. The concept of moving your figures around like rooks in a race to leave behind a trail of all your tokens first is super slick and refreshing. And the infinitely combined asymmetric powers of Greek gods and monsters lead to gripping new opportunities and challenges every time. The expansion (releasing alongside Ichor) is also fun to dive into — it offers 8 more characters and a powerful gate tile module.

Magical Athlete

Expected Release Date: Q2 2025

CMYK is a publisher who rarely (if ever) misses, and one of their next releases will be a new version of Magical Athlete with development updates by Richard Garfield (creator of Magic: The Gathering). This chaotic roll & move racing game has been on my bucket list for years because I hear it is a delightfully silly game. It appears that CMYK is definitely preserving that spirit by the looks of the teased art style.

Toy Battle

Expected Release Date: May 2, 2025

I’m always on the lookout for the next release from designer Paolo Mori, and Toy Battle (also codesigned by Alessandro Zucchini) appears to be his next big 2-player dueler. Seeing how this game is 15 minutes long and coming from publisher Repos Production (known for 7 Wonders, So Clover, Just One, and more), I get the vibe that this will be a very approachable experience.

Line of Fire: Burnt Moon

Expected Release Date: June 10, 2025

This spinoff game of the Undaunted series fuses the beloved deck building of its predecessors with fast-paced lane battling. For a 30 minute game with presumably an easier setup and teardown, this has the potential to become my favorite game in the Undaunted universe.

SILOS

Expected Release Date: July 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

Between his two Mythos games, this Cosmic Silos Trilogy, and another trick still hidden up our sleeve, this may very well go down as one of Reiner Knizia’s best years ever. The reason I say that is because in 2025 we are releasing 5 of my Top 20 Favorite Knizia Games out of the 200 that I have played.

This entire trilogy feels unlike anything else that Reiner Knizia has ever created (aside from Municipium and Beowulf: The Legend — the two games that inspired SILOS and EGO, of course). SILOS (Secret InterLopers from Outer Space) is a three-pronged area majority game where players are competing to abduct cows and humans, brainwash Earthlings, and invade a town. Unlike most area majority games, SILOS is not a competition for the most points, instead it is a race for societal power (by collecting five sets of humans first). It feels much more dynamic and shifting than your standard game of this genre — players will constantly be repositioning their figures to set up for the next big invasion event.

EGO

Expected Release Date: July 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

EGO (Extraterrestrial Greeting Organization) evokes a feeling of adventure that I’ve never seen in another game. That’s largely thanks to the series of cosmic events you’ll progress through together. As you visit various alien civilizations, you’ll try to outcompete rival ambassadors by offering more gifts or being more persuasive in epic game-of-chicken auctions. You’ll often be tempted to take big risks…. at least until you realize how badly you’ve offended the aliens.

ORBIT

Expected Release Date: July 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

ORBIT (Orbital Race Between Interstellar Tourists) is a refreshingly unique race of riding planets along their orbital paths as you zig zag between them. While many of the decisions are highly tactical, you’ll also have to decide whether it’s worth slowing down to upgrade your ship for a later comeback. ORBIT is one of our most approachable big box games yet, making it perfect for any combination of hobbyist and casual gamers.

Regicide Legacy

Expected Release Date: Q2 or Q3 2025

I’ll be honest, I didn’t do much research on this game back when I pledged for it. I suppose my love of Regicide made me blindly trust this team to make a killer legacy game based on this concept. As long as it still plays smoothly and offers a similar tension as Regicide, I’ll be a happy camper.

Alibis

Expected Release Date: Q3 2025

I’ve had the pleasure of trying Alibis and it only has me more excited to eventually acquire my own copy. Alibis is basically So Clover (a cooperative word association party game) on a shared board. Each player must come up with one alibi (word clue) linking the two suspects who they know are innocent. All players will share their alibi and then must guess which characters everyone else’s alibi’s connect to. By ruling out suspects correctly, the table will be able to narrow it down to the one guilty character who has no alibi.

Exclusive Knizia Sneak Peek — Merchants of Andromeda

Expected Release Date: Q3 2025

Seeing how this is the unofficial unveiling of a new big-box Knizia game, we’re gonna dig into the juicy weeds with this one. Buckle up!

After acquiring Reiner Knizia’s Merchants of Amsterdam, it sat unplayed on my shelf for months before I eventually sold it. What kind of sicko would do such a thing? One with insider trading information, that’s who. Well it’s time to leak that insider information, baby! Ok fine, it’s not a true leak… I got Allplay’s permission.

Once I heard that Allplay was developing a new version of the game, the burden of playing my ugly old copy was lifted from my shoulders. But it’s important to emphasize that this is NOT simply a reskin of Merchants of Amsterdam. The core concept of a Dutch auction (a bid amount that winds down until somebody loses their nerve and stops the countdown to claim the reward first) is one of the most interesting parts of this design, and that part has been preserved in Andromeda. The key is to not overpay for rewards while securing the most important ones for yourself.

Another core highlight of the original game happens every time it is your turn — draw three cards and pick one to discard, one to keep for an immediate action, and one to auction off. This has been preserved as well, but it is more fun in Andromeda because the discarded card grants a resource to the active player, the kept card grants an action to the active player, and the winner of the auction gets both an action and a resource (making the auction even spicier than it used to be).

One problem with Merchants of Amsterdam was that everything surrounding the Dutch auction and three-way hand assignment was pretty dry and dull. It was nothing more than multiple shades of vanilla area majorities. But with Andromeda, all of the game board competitions/mini games have been completely reworked by Robert Hovakimyan (designer of our own Bebop and Shuffle and Swing). The central area majority competition of Amsterdam is still one of the mini games of Andromeda (and the merchant goods tracks are preserved as well). One new mini game sees players casting votes for different policies that will influence upcoming events or public objectives — this voting system feels like the delightful Castillo in El Grande. The other debuting mini games are competitive space defense and push-your-luck exploration. The thrilling variety of thematic mini games is by far one of the biggest improvements to the design.

Robert also adapted the event system, concocted the new deck, and reworked the concept for how you use the 3 cards on your turn (described above). All of these changes effectively make Robert a co-designer of this new version of an old, forgotten Knizia game. Reiner essentially handed the design to Allplay (who eventually entrusted it to Robert) with this message: “I trust you to help this game reach its full potential. Do what you need to.”

This is obviously a very different development path from something like our own SILOS, EGO, Cat Blues, or Zoo Vadis. But to you Knizia purists who worry that Reiner’s precious design has been contaminated by another creature, I say this: Go play Bebop (a supremely Knizian-esque game) and then tell me if any other developer was better suited for this task. As another note of comfort: Reiner did provide thorough feedback, impressions, and guidance based on Robert’s development plan, and Robert elected to follow Reiner’s instincts during development.

By the way, you can learn more about the development of Merchants of Andromeda in an upcoming episode of The Bits with Joe & Nick featuring Robert as a guest appearance.

I’ve had the chance to play Merchants of Andromeda during its late-stage development by Robert, and I came away very excited to acquire my own copy when it is finished. Sci-fi/Knizia fans will be eating well this year.

Animal Rescue Team

Expected Release Date: October 2025

Shut Up and Sit Down is diving into the publishing waters by collaborating with Play to Z on a line of games titled “SU&SD Presents.” My understanding is that SU&SD are helping select, develop, and provide art direction for these games. My hope is that their trained critical eye will help them put out some truly excellent games.

Animal Rescue Team, a cooperative game from Matt Leacock and Lisa Towell, is their debut title. Here is the overview: You and your friends will puzzle out the perfect rescues of creatures big and small. One game might have you arriving just in time to save a coop of distressed chickens, and another may have you fruitlessly trying to rescue a cow with a motorcycle, or cursing yourselves for “unfortunate horse logistics”.

Dogs of War: Second Edition

Expected Release Date: Q4 2025

Dogs of War has been on my Top 100 Games of All Time list for years, but this tug of war romp has been woefully out of print for far too long. 2025 is the year where dreams come true with Dogs of War: Second Edition. This new edition will be overseen by the team at Shut Up and Sit Down who promise to make it the “definitive version” by “packing more punch with a lower price.” You love to hear it.

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

The post Most Anticipated Board Games of 2025 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

The wheel of time ever turns, and so it must come to pass that we revisit the very best board games of 2023. With more plays under my belt and more distance from their hype-infused releases, I’m now ready to look back on all the 2023 releases that I played.  For those who don’t know, this has become a yearly tradition, and you can still go back and peruse my reflection of 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 releases. You can also compare the list below to my Top Games of 2023 which was posted back in February (spoilers: most of those remained Lovers).

With over 50 games to cover, I’ll simply be offering my brief thoughts on each game as I categorize them into Lovers, Keepers, Dumpers, Flingers, and Seekers.

Lovers

The must owns, can’t get enough ofs, top 50 games of all time candidates, going through withdrawals if I wait too long to play it again type of games.

• Patterns – Patterns is the equivalent of capturing lightning in a bottle twice. This sequel to the revered Mandala is just as good, if not better. I love the marriage of simple actions with deep strategy. If you’re into Euro-abstract strategy games, then Trevor Benjamin and Brett J Gilbert are two designers to keep an eye on. 

• That’s Not a Hat – Memory games are all the hotness, baby! Thanks to this game and the next one, this genre has become far less taboo. I believe the secret to changing our collective minds is the fact that these games expect players to forget, which results in funny and relatable mistakes. That’s Not a Hat is all about passing gifts around until you forget where everything is at and have to bluff your way out of trouble.

• Trio – Simple, addicting card games often make for the best tabletop moments with friends and family. Trio is one such game that always hits the spot. This memory game is far more fun than it has any right to be.

• Viking See-Saw – Much like Trio, Viking See-Saw has been a killer filler to bust out between games and delight the table. The challenge of stacking pieces on top of each other is always engaging, but the tilting see saw and variety of pieces takes this one to the next level.

• Trailblazers (from Bitewing Games) – I have more plays of Trailblazers than any other game we’ve published. That’s because the solo modes of Trailblazers are so stinking challenging and addicting. Plus this one is now on Board Game Arena! My favorite ways to play Trailblazers are either the crunchy solo modes or the spicy Sasquatch Expansion which makes the game cooperative with a potential hidden traitor.

• Lacuna – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “The simplicity and speed of Lacuna, combined with the unique abstract challenge and a perfect production, make this one of the most fresh 2-player games in years. Lacuna has a breezy timelessness to it that many 2-player titles can only dream of providing. It’s not the most tense or riveting game among my collection of duelers, but it doesn’t want or need to be.”

• For One Series – It takes a special kind of solo game to get me hooked for hours. The For One Series is that perfect blend of ingredients that has kept me coming back to beat its series of challenges. While For One is probably the least flashy any games on this list, it’s all the more impressive that Reiner Knizia’s solo series thrives on nothing but the carefully crafted gameplay. If you’re like me in preferring your solo games to be quick, streamlined, tense, and challenging, then nothing beats the For One series. Hopefully it reaches beyond the German market soon.

• Witchcraft – In most other years, Witchcraft would have easily been my favorite solo game, but second place is nothing to be ashamed of. Witchcraft feels like a refinement of the stellar formula laid out in Resist. I love everything about this game, especially the tough decision of when to reveal your witches and let them go out in a blaze of glory.

• Gussy Gorillas (from Bitewing Games) – This remains my only published design! I’m fine with that. I enjoy the process of publishing a game more than designing a game. But Gussy Gorillas was fun to design because it is such a simple and social game. The premise is Hanabi (hold cards away from yourself) meets Pit (chaotic trading). If that sounds great, then this is probably up your alley.

• Sky Team – The 2-player smash hit of 2023 remains one of our favorite date night games in my home. Sky Team offers a golden combination of approachable rules and interesting variety within an engaging cooperative system. It seems that we have many more flights ahead of us.

• Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West – Ticket to Ride Legacy is paradoxically a lover and yet not a keeper. But the only reason that is the case is because we finished this legacy campaign and have moved on to other games. But it was definitely an enjoyable campaign that did not overstay its welcome (finishing out at 12 sessions total). I suppose it’s time for me to recycle the box and its components and await the time when my girls are old enough to play regular Ticket to Ride.

• MLEM: Space Agency – I crowned MLEM as my #1 game of the year, and I still stand by that declaration. Few games elicit social banter and captivating dice drama as well as MLEM and its push-you-luck rocket-launching antics. If you can manage to wrangle together four or five humans at a table for an hour tops, then MLEM is a must.

• Sea Salt & Paper – I was honestly surprised to realize that Sea Salt & Paper had landed on my Top 100 Games of All Time list. This charming and breezy yet spicy little card game has been especially great at 2-players. It straddles the fence well between casual card game and hobbyist filler game. 

• Zoo Vadis (from Bitewing Games) – Perhaps more than any other title, I’m most proud of Zoo Vadis. That’s because the original game (Quo Vadis) was absolutely dead in the industry, but I felt like it deserved a second chance. So I drew up a plan and recruited some incredibly talented people (Reiner Knizia, Kwanchai Moriya, Brigette Indelicato) to bring that vision to life. Since the very first play of the new ruleset from Reiner, Zoo Vadis has been one of my absolute favorite board games to play. It’s a streamlined sandbox of thrilling negotiations. This project also paved the way for many more great successes of bringing new life to hidden gems including Cat Blues: The Big Gig, SILOS, EGO, and more to come.

Keepers

The solid games that have survived many purges over the past year.  I would be sad to see them go, but I don’t need to bring them to the table constantly either. 

• Big Top – This one has flown too far under the radar for being one of Allplay’s best small box games. The core twist of bidding exact amounts to complete the cards that you already won in previous auctions is a ton of fun, and the metal coins are a satisfying upgrade for this game.

• Wandering Towers – I was more enamored with Wandering Towers during my initial plays, before the novelty began to wear off. But I’m keeping this one around because it is still a worthwhile family-weight game to break out once or twice a year. It just the type of game that doesn’t reward more frequent plays.

• Pick a Pepper – I find it rather easy to hang on to small card games with an interesting twist, even if they aren’t my absolute favorite. Pick a Pepper has some neat bidding / hand-management decisions and a great theme that keep it around on my shelf.

• My City: Roll & Build – This roll and write twist on My City started out slow but proved to be worthwhile as we progressed into the second half of this polyomino city building campaign. My City is still the best in this line, but Roll & Build is a fun twist on the concept.

• Inside Job – Trick taking meets social deduction! While this Kosmos card game didn’t quite reach the heights of The Crew, I found it to be a great experience nonetheless. It works so well because the restrictions of trick taking allow for plausible deniability.

• Archeos Society – I still haven’t decided whether I’m keeping Archeos Society or selling it off and just sticking with Ethnos 1st Edition. They both scratch the same itch, although Ethnos obviously does it with an area majority flavor (compared to Archeos Society’s variable track advancement flavor). But both games are great, so here it resides for now.

• Ninja Master – For the longest time, speed games have never really been my thing. But I must say that some recent releases have really surprised me with how enjoyable they’ve made quick reflex challenges. The common denominator between these hits is that they allow for players to be too hasty and make hilarious mistakes. Ninja Master is one such design where players must react to the dice results by snatching up the most valuable ninjas and avoiding the bad ones. This game really puts you in the mood as you all assume the katana pose with your fingers before the dice chucking and quick snatching begins.

• Sail – Sail remains one of the best trick takers of this current flood of them. That Weberson Santiago artwork is as good as ever, and the novelty of steering a ship through troubled waters via 2-player cooperative trick taking is still a treat.

• General Orders: World War II – General Orders may not be the strongest offering from legendary duo David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin, but it’s a darn good one. This almost feels like a micro worker placement game with a tactical war skirmish theme. It’s quick, compact, and smooth.

• My Island – We hit a brick wall with our progression through My Island (made it about 2/3s through the 24 episode campaign), but I remain hopeful that we’ll go back and finish it someday. Although it is not encouraging to hear that many folks who did finish it did not enjoy the final third. Either way, I can’t deny that the polyominoes of My City are fundamentally more satisfying than the hex shapes of My Island. Kudos to Knizia for mixing things up, though.

• Sunrise Lane – This lightweight Knizia board game remains one that I’m happy to play anytime thanks to its quick pace and breezy decisions. It’s reminiscent of Ticket to Ride, but a bit more spicy and strategic in my opinion. The UI on the game board could be better (readability of colors/icons), but it hasn’t been a major issue for us.

• Havalandi – I’m a sucker for Knizia tile layers. Sadly, I seem to enjoy Havalandi more than most people. The vague rulebook and restrictive die rolling are probably to blame. Havalandi is best recommended to Kniziaphiles who are already a few years down the rabbit hole. The rest of you can ignore this one and keep exploring the absolute cream of the crop.

• Match of the Century – 2023 was a year loaded with solid 2-player games, so Match of the Century might have been overshadowed by others, but it nevertheless remains a keeper in my collection. As a game about a game (Chess), this one packs a surprising punch. It feels like there is plenty more strategic depth that I’ve yet to explore here.

• Reif für die Insel – Reiner Knizia has more than a few hidden gems buried among his 800 game catologue. Reif für Die Insel is one the newest hidden gems from the good doctor that has never missed for me. This little auction game plays great all the way up to 6-players and utilizes my favorite part of Amun-Re — the bumping style of auctions. Players each commit a monkey card to one of the bananas on display, and the larger monkeys can scare off smaller monkeys. The brilliant twist is that a spent monkey is gone forever, and an unspent money is worth its value in points at the end of the game, so you must use them very carefully over the three rounds.

• Bacon – Bacon turned out to be my favorite release from Allplay’s latest trick taker project (featuring Pies, Lunar, Mori, and Bacon). Part of that is just because Bacon is the most approachable of the bunch. The other part is simply because Bacon is specifically a ladder-climbing game which makes it slightly more unique among my collection of card games. Also bacon.

• Prey Another Day – This simple little filler game has been more hit or miss with my groups than it deserves. Then again, the people who tend to dislike it are the ones who get especially unlucky. You can think of this card game like Love Letter, but with even more mind games. The artwork is a delight too.

Dumpers

Some made me question my life decisions, others simply made me wish I was playing something else.  None are welcome back at my table.  So long and good riddance.  May you find a better home

• Pick a Pen Series – Reiner Knizia’s pick a pen series feels a bit too late to the roll and write party. True, the concept of rolling pencils and drafting them is unique. But the overall experience still comes out feeling no better or different than any other roll and write.

• Judge Domino, Stick Collection – These two Funbrick games from Itten didn’t fare nearly as well as Viking See-Saw and Ninja Master. While I appreciate their novel productions, the gameplay didn’t quite measure up. After one play of each, we never felt compelled to return to them.

• Dragonkeepers – I wouldn’t call Dragonkeepers a bad game… just a bad one for me. Here is what I said about it in my first impressions post: “For a box that revolves around fire-breathing dragons, Dragonkeepers surprisingly lacks that teeth or heat that I prefer in a short card game. The influence you can have on opponents is faint and distant. The tension of when to pull the trigger on playing out a rummy set is mild. The focus is on milking your turns for maximum points rather than outwitting your rivals. This one is as harmless as the adorable creatures on the cards. Carebear gamers will be right at home.”

• World Wonders – Much like the rise and fall of the civilizations it evokes, World Wonders is slow, convoluted, and overstuffed… at least in comparison to my favorite polyomino games. I’m obviously in the minority with my opinion, as this game has been mega popular. But my distaste for World Wonders merely stems from my preference for more tight, interactive, and streamlined games. Most hobbyists will enjoy this one, especially the great production featuring loads of wooden wonders.

• Mori – Mori is a very weird trick taker. Do you like strange games? Are you a strange person? Do you wish your skulls were mixed with a bit more flowers, or vice versa? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then Mori might be perfect for you. Unfortunately, this one just never clicked for me. Beth Sobel’s artwork is amazing, regardless.

• Earth – Earth is an interesting title to consider. It was far and away the number #1 hobbyist board game of 2023 (with nearly twice as much acclaim as the second highest game), and yet it represents the opposite of practically everything I love about board games. My preferences lean heavily toward games that are interactive, focused on a shared space, and streamlined yet deep. Earth is undoubtedly a deep game, but it gets there by focusing the group’s attention on a cornucopia of personal cards and solitaire player tableaus.

Flingers

Do you like to dabble?  I dabble from time to time.  These games were amusing to try.  Didn’t love em.  Didn’t hate em.  And sure, I’d play them again… given the right mood and circumstance.

• Fiction – Fiction is a flinger in the truest sense of the word. I only got to try this game very briefly at a convention. It was interesting, but I could tell that I only scratched the surface of its Wordle deduction antics.

• High Score – A Knizia push-your-luck dice game that is by all accounts, fine. That probably isn’t good enough when he has so many better ones. But I do like the variety of competitive challenges in High Score.

• Roll to the Top: Journeys – This is another Allplay game that I briefly tried at a convention, and I enjoyed it more than I expected! The wide variety of dice and boards are obvious highlights. But ultimately, this is still very much a roll and write which is a genre I don’t love.

• Mind Space – Like Roll to the Top, Mind Space is another Allplay roll and write that I enjoyed sampling. I would even go so far as to say that this is one of the better roll and writes I’ve tried in recent years. It’s hard to dislike polyominoes, and this game does it with style by having players cram emotions into their brain.

• Amun-Re: 20th Anniversary Edition – I’ve enjoyed Amun-Re as a grand auction board game, and I still maintain that this is the best version thanks to the new modules that improve the game for 3 players. That said, Amun-Re has also proven to be an overly procedural game that often overstays its welcome. All of the steps and phases of each round slow down the game more than I’d like. After a particularly long play session, I decided I was ready to part ways with this one.

• Blind Business – Blind Business offers a great presentation with the Cuphead-style art and a fun premise of making blind deals with each other. But it didn’t quite hit the highs I was hoping for. As an alternative bluffing/set-collection card game, I would instead recommend Agent Avenue.

• Chomp – In Chomp you are building out a personal grid of regions and collecting scoring criteria as you work to feed your Dinos. Nothing here is groundbreaking or flashy. And it certainly lacks the fangs of more interactive fillers. Fortunately, Chomp is just quick and thinky enough that I didn’t mind chomping around for a few minutes.

• Couture – Couture is another clever auction game released by Allplay last year. In this one, you are deciding where to invest your best cards by simultaneously assigning them to different locations — it’s three auctions at once! Couture also boasts some of the most impressive artwork of any Allplay title thanks to the authentic fashion sketches by a real fashion designer. I’d happily play this one again, but I don’t feel compelled to keep it in my collection.

• Undaunted: Battle of Britain – It’s cool to see the creators of Undaunted venture off into new and exciting territories, like arial combat in Battle of Britain or more recently futuristic sci-fi war in Callisto. But unfortunately, these games have mostly made me wish I was continuing our unfinished campaign of my favorite Undaunted game: Stalingrad. I simply don’t have the bandwidth to keep up with all of these new releases in the Undaunted line, but I’m happy to watch its continued success.

• Hollywood 1947 – My favorite play of Hollywood 1947 remains our playtest with friends way back before it launched on Kickstarter. With the right group, this movie making communist conspiracy game can be a real hoot. I haven’t found that group again, but I hope to someday.

• Fit to Print – For better or worse, Fit to Print is like a modern gamer’s version of Galaxy Trucker. You still have the chaotic first phase of digging for and claiming the best tiles from the huge facedown stack. But the second phase replaces galactic swingy events with optimization scoring (you are trying to assemble the best newspaper). I enjoy everything about this one from the artwork to the frantic gameplay, but I suppose I ultimately prefer more interactive board games.

• Thunder Road: Vendetta – My favorite play of Thunder Road remains my first one. It’s a blast to discover the chaos that awaits this Mad Max style racing game. Sadly, my second and third plays were not nearly as riveting. By my second play, I was wishing for more variety to the experience, more nuance to the decisions, and new surprises to the chaos. And then our third play ended up dragging on an hour longer than it should have (because the end game doesn’t trigger until a player is eliminated, and our attacks kept failing due to unlucky rolls). Before the end of play three, I had had my fill of Thunder Road.

• Battle Card – Battle Card is a neat little print and play solo game from one of the creators of Undaunted (David Thompson) that I have only scratched the surface of. I’ve only tried the first two scenarios so far and enjoyed them as simple yet thematic puzzles. But it’s hard to get this back to the table with so many other tasks and games demanding my attention.

• Lunar – Lunar is a gorgeous 4-player game with a neat trick taking twist: one teammate plays the suit and the other plays the value. I think this one is solid all around, and it is definitely worth exploring if you love this genre. My only problem is that Lunar is in a couple overly crowded genres for my table (4-player games, trick takers). I knew right away that it would be hard for me to justify keeping this game in my collection when it would rarely get played, so I passed my copy along.

• Pies – Ask my wife what my favorite foods are and it won’t take her long to get to pie. I wish I loved the gameplay as much as I love the theme and artwork. The main issue is that Pies reminds me of similar yet spicier games that I would rather play over it (namely Art Robbery, For Sale, and Hot Lead… yes, I am extremely biased).

• Wonder Bowling – From my experience, Wonder Bowling sounds more fun than it actually is to play. Even so, it is still pretty fun. I just wish it was easier to reset the pins every time somebody clumsily knocked over all the pins and busted.

• Chicken! – Chicken is one of those games that works best as a social facilitator — a way to gather and engage your close friends who are especially good at banter. If you’re looking for a great dice game, there are roughly a bagillion better options out there.

• Die Patin – This game seemingly only exists in Germany (despite including an English rulebook), so it’s one of those titles that nobody around here has heard of. Fans of old-school German-style games should take note, because Die Patin hits that genre dead-on (except for the anthropomorphic animals, I suppose). I love how players are forced to strive for a different objective each round, and only one player can claim each objective in a round. The only reason this didn’t stick around in my collection is that it is kind of long (roughly two hours) and living in the shadow of El Grande.

• Trailblazer: The John Muir Trail – It’s been two and a half years since I played this one (it was an early demo at a convention), so my memory is fuzzy. I remember enjoying the artwork and theme but wishing it was a few rounds shorter. So here it stays.

Seekers

I’m still open to trying out these leftovers.  I’ve heard good things about them here and there.  Of course, I’ve now had over a year to find and play them, so I’m obviously not that desperate.  Although sometimes they are much harder to track down or get to the table…

• Darwin’s Journey – I’m not one who tends to seek out heavy Eurogames, but I don’t mind dabbling in the best of the genre from time to time. Darwin’s Journey sounds like it was among the best of 2023, so I’m keen to try it eventually.

• Forest Shuffle – Forest Shuffle sounds like a faster and smoother version of several popular modern Eurogames of recent years including Earth and Wingspan. Granted, I’m not super into Earth or Wingspan, so I haven’t felt the urge to track down Forest Shuffle. But I’m interested in giving it a shot sometime since it is such a popular title.

• Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game – Popular IPs have never been a huge draw for me in the realm of board games. But I’ve heard nothing but good things about Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game. The idea of a head-to-head Rebels vs Empire 2-player game sounds neat. And it appears that the publisher wisely steered clear of the hot garbage sequel trilogy, so I really have no reason to not try this one.

What’s Next for Bitewing Games?

I hope you enjoyed our final post of 2024! We’ll be taking a brief break over the holidays, but there is a lot to look forward to next year. I’ll eventually be sharing my Top Games of 2024 and Most Anticipated Games of 2025. We’ll be releasing the first games in our 2-player line (the Mythos Collection) — Ichor and Iliad — as well as our Cosmic Silos Trilogy — SILOS, EGO, and ORBIT. Plus we have some additional epic projects in the works. Thanks to all of you for following along and supporting Bitewing Games. If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to the Bitewing Games Newsletter so you don’t miss out on the massive year ahead.

Happy Holidays!

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

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