Welcome back to my Top 50 Board Games of All Time! If you missed part 1 of this post, then head on over and check out games 50-26. Today, we’ll be finishing things out by discussing games 25-1. That’s right, the cream of the cream of the crop…

25. Camel Up (Second Edition)

Best suited for everyone

Camel Up might be the most reliable party game in my collection.  If there is any game that I can place before a random assortment of 4-8 friends, family, or strangers, and expect them to request a second and third play in a row, that game is undoubtedly Camel Up.  None can resist the allure of betting on chunky, colorful camels as they race around the desert.  Between the stacking camels, dice-dispensing pyramid, memorably dramatic moments, popup palm tree, and shoot-for-the-moon strategies, this one has it all.

24. El Grande

Best suited for everyone

While it doesn’t have the party pizazz of Camel Up, El Grande has been another crowd pleaser at my table.  This classic strategy game of competing for area majorities is unmatched in its elegant flow and potent interaction.  Many designs since have wisely borrowed from El Grande’s master class mechanisms, but few, if any, have risen to its level of grace and wit plus the drama of revealing the contents of the towering Castillo.  It’s not really worth considering outside of the four or five player count, but within that range you’ll find consistently satisfying area influence, auctioning, and action drafting to be had.

23. Renature

Best suited for everyone (but be ready for some mean moments)

El Grande designer, Wolfgang Kramer, also brought us last year’s Renature with the help of Azul designer Michael Kiesling, and this is a game that I’m loving more and more with each new play.  One of the quickest ways to my heart is down the path of simple, clever brutality, and Renature is indeed beautifully simple, wonderfully clever, and deliciously brutal.  This game sees its competitors placing one domino onto the board at a time, and touching domino animals must match.  But the placement of a domino also allows one to plant an adjacent foliage piece, and these plant tokens are used to compete for area majority or even cancel out other player’s plants.  I stand by my declaration that this is the greatest domino game OF ALL TIME.

22. A Feast for Odin

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

While it has dropped out of my previous top 10 games list, that’s more a side-effect of many other stellar games climbing their way up my rankings than A Feast for Odin becoming any less enjoyable over time.  I would label this a heavy worker placement polyomino Euro game with relatively low-interaction.  When there are roughly SIXTY worker placement spaces to choose from—like a wide sandbox of strategies one can use to acquire points—it is typically quite effortless to stay out of each other’s way and do your own thing.  While this blog is riddled with me bemoaning low-interaction games on a regular basis, mostly due to their commonly stale dynamics and limited replayability, I find that A Feast for Odin is one of the few exceptions to my preferences.  The numerous interlocking concepts and mechanisms here are perfect for a warm, cozy, lazy few hours of puzzling perfection that still satisfies after all these plays.

21. Bus

Best suited for cold-blooded strategists

Bus is a game about building bus routes and transporting passengers around town, yet this design is no flowery Ticket to Ride.  Imagine a world where all people were predictable creatures of habit.  They go to the work, then head to the bar, then go home, rinse and repeat… as long as a bus route can get them there, of course.  On and on they cycle through this unchanging lifestyle, with the only exception being when a greedy bus line decides to STOP TIME.  Suddenly, everyone in town decides to work another shift in a row, or pull an all-nighter at the bar, or play hooky from their jobs and kick back at home, and all the buses that were prepared to take them to their usual next destination are suddenly hosed and empty-handed.  With completely open information and not even a hint of luck, Bus is a pure strategy game that has players feuding over the tight economy of passengers in an effort to scrape just a few precious point morsels from this ruthless game.

20. Tournament at Avalon

Best suited for everyone

If you really want to know what this wacky trick-taking card game is all about, I would direct you to my full review from last year.  Here’s a sample of what I said:

“If the possibility of falling behind early and spending the rest of the game trying to claw your way back to the top while your leading opponents pounce on you like sharks to a bleeding prey sounds dreadful, then steer clear of Tournament at Avalon… Then again, perhaps you are like me.  Maybe you’re happy to roll with the punches and simply want to experience trick-taking at its finest.  In Tournament at Avalon, you may be completely fine with being the favorite piñata of the round because you see the fresh gaping wound in your side for what it truly is: a firehose of retribution.  You may be the type of competitor who loves to form shaky alliances with fellow weaklings to surround and beat down the mighty.  And when you are the current King of the Hill, you welcome the opportunity to bob and weave around targeted attacks and gleefully watch as swinging blows skim past your head to land squarely on your neighbor’s face.”

19. My City

Best suited for everyone

Perhaps you’ve noticed by now that I have a soft spot for great polyomino games.  In my Top 50 board games of all time, we’ve already covered titans from master polyomino designer, Uwe Rosenberg, including A Feast For Odin and New York Zoo.  Yet the game that claims the crown to world’s best polyomino game, and the title that makes a strong case for being the best Legacy design yet, is none other than Reiner Knizia’s My City.  We’ve played this one 24 times now—that’s as many episodes as the game contains, so we’re not likely to play it much further with the “eternal game”—but that’s more plays than most other titles on this list.  We’ll always hold a special memory in our hearts for the journey we took through My City

18. Ethnos

Best suited for everyone

Ethnos remains one of my go-to gateway games (games to introduce people to the hobby) because it never fails to entertain newcomers while continuing to engage me.  While the art direction could use a drastic overhaul to match the family friendly nature of the design, none of that matters once the cards are dealt and the fun begins.  Turns are as simple as drawing a card or playing a set known as a “band of allies” of matching colors or creatures.  The band will net you points while the card on top of your band (the “leader”) grants you a special bonus and a token placement on the map.  Much like El Grande, players compete for points via area majorities.  While some folks complain of “top decking” in Ethnos, where you spend your turns drawing a card off the top of the deck until you find what you want, I find this to be a hollow complaint thanks to a little wrinkle that Paolo Mori includes in the design: Whenever you play a band of cards from your hand, you must discard the rest of your hand faceup into the market for other players to feast on.  Suddenly, you have to decide whether the “top decking” strategy is worth it for that one extra card, because everything else you draw will simply help your competition.

17. The King’s Dilemma

Best suited for a regular group of 5 players

Aside from My City, The King’s Dilemma is the only other legacy design that made my Top 50 Board Games of All Time, or even came close, for that matter.  The concept of a legacy game—a game whose rules and components permanently change over time based on the outcome and decisions of each play—is a fascinating, alluring, and popular feature in the industry.  But our experience with some of the more popular options has uncovered it’s ugly side-effects including rules & component management fatigue, forced narratives, messy productions, and unwieldy scheduling requirements.  Burnout is real within this genre, but The King’s Dilemma has soared over these common traps across our many plays by staying focused on the addicting core concept of political negotiation and bribing.  As you’ll soon find out with even higher rated games, I’m a sucker for a good negotiation game, and The King’s Dilemma hits the spot.  I love how the secret incentives can have me championing the cause of the good people in one game and sacrificing their well being for my personal gain in the next like the greedy posterity of a heroic monarch.

16. Wavelength

Best suited for everyone, especially groups of 6 or more

And here we arrive at my favorite party game, Wavelength.  Between Kyle’s video review and my own written review, we’ve covered the entire spectrum of reasons why we love this game. The simple truth is that Wavelength effortlessly captures the the feeling of a gameshow and generates engaging conversations and hilarious memories that last far beyond the party.  It was the first game I backed on Kickstarter, sending me down the rabbit hole of thrillingly creative possibilities.

15. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

Best suited for everyone

Now we are onto my top rated cooperative game, and not only that, but this is one of only two cooperative games that made my Top 50 Board Games of All Time.  Don’t get me wrong here, I dig a solid cooperative game such as Pandemic, Mysterium, and Horrified.  Yet those types of games obviously don’t quite hit the spot for me as all the competitive ones on my list.  So what makes The Crew so special?  In this mission-based trick-taking game, everyone’s turns matter and nobody can quarterback them through it.  The only communication allowed between players is a single token that lets you signal or imply information about some of the cards in your hand.  Each new challenge and each new hand of cards presents an obstacle that can often seem impossible to overcome, yet it feels amazing when your crew finally triumphs.  It’s an addictive challenge that takes players on an unforgettable 50-mission journey.

14. For Sale / For Sale Autorama

Best suited for everyone

We’re talking about my two favorite card games back-to-back between The Crew and now For Sale.  For Sale consists of two phases: auctioning coins for houses that become your hand of cards, then selling that hand of cards one at a time in a closed auction.  When I pass on the auctioning of the first phase, I have to pay half of what I’ve bid up to that point and take the lowest value face-up house.  So there is a game of chicken between players when nobody wants to take the grungy outhouse card, and thus the bidding war ensues.  Yet the outhouse card might be a great one to claim with a pass in a particular round if the other options aren’t that much better and spending your precious coins to avoid it will merely land you a slightly higher card.  The second phase becomes a game of predicting your opponents’ plays, as the bidding becomes a closed auction where everyone plays a single house card facedown and reveals their bid at the same time and the values of the money cards are dispersed to players according to who bid highest, who bid lowest, and everything in between.  Nothing feels worse than wasting your best card on an auction that everyone else played low for.  Conversely, eeking out the best money card of a round with a measly house makes you feel like a mastermind.  And that roller coaster of emotions is the magic of For Sale.

13. Root

Best suited for a regular group of hobbyist gamers

Root has to be one of the most aesthetically charming games on this list.  Screen-printed, wooden animal tokens and their more detailed card and board illustrations are all brimming with personality.  Rich colors of the woodland span from deep orange hues to refreshing green shades.  Card suits consist of mice, birds, foxes, and rabbits.  There is no shortage of warmth in the presentation of Root.  Yet this art direction was intentionally chosen because of the stark contrast it presents against the savage gameplay.  These woodland creatures are at war, and a negotiated alliance in one round can quickly become a callous betrayal in the next.  No animal is safe from a sudden beatdown, and only one faction will triumph.  With the consistent release of more expansions including animal factions over these past few years, and at least two more in the pipeline, it feels as though I could explore Root’s fascinating asymmetry for dozens upon dozens more plays.

12. Babylonia

Best suited for everyone

This may not be shocking to you, but Reiner Knizia’s Babylonia at number 12 feels like a bit of stealth ranking to me.  It’s one of the more recent Knizia’s which flew under my radar as I was gobbling up his most popular and revered titles.  Yet when I finally came around to Babylonia, I found it to be a rock-solid game that grew on me with each and every play.  This is a fast-paced, 45-minute strategy game that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed at the 2, 3, and 4 player counts.  Everything about picking up the clackity wooden tiles, slotting them into my rack, and deciding which ones to place onto the board and where makes for a deeply satisfying ritual.  My deepest thanks is owed to Space Biff, whose eloquently written review talked me into trying this brilliant jewel.

11. Inis

Best suited for everyone

While it is no longer my #1 game of all time, Inis remains an outstanding area-control experience of careful drafting, crafty cardplay, elegant combat, and sneaky intentions.  Because there are three different conditions one can aim for to become the victor, I’ve rarely seen a game that didn’t come down to the wire as players wrestled to become King of the Celtic Hill.  The production is a mesmerizing masterclass in capturing the mysterious theme thanks to Jim Fitzpatrick’s alluring illustrations and Dimitri Bielak’s lovely tiles.  Ultimately, Inis is as much about playing your opponents as it is about playing the game, and that subtle politicking is what makes it consistently satisfying for me.

10. Chinatown

Best suited for everyone

Out of all the games that made my top 10, Chinatown is the dark horse the snuck its way on here.  This pure negotiation experience beat out dozens of other personal favorites thanks to my many fond memories of it that match my enthusiasm to play it again.  I’ve found Chinatown to be a surprising hit with non-gamers that delightedly brings out both the best and worst in them.  The most generous and thoughtful of folks can immediately transform into vicious traders who see the hunger in your eyes for their prized possessions, so they seize the opportunity to milk you for all you are worth.  

9. Ra

Best suited for everyone

Perhaps Ra is so high on my list simply because I’ve been waiting to acquire my own copy for far too long.  Yet maybe it has made its way here due to the perfect blend of auctioning and push-your-luck that it provides.  How long will you wait to spend your best sun disks?  Wait long enough, and you’ll be one of the only ones left to bid on all the lucrative tiles.  Wait too long, and you may find the round ending before you’ve put your sun disks to good use.  Is this auction really worth fighting for?  Surely you aren’t going to let another opponent claim these tiles for so cheap, are you?  This game is jam-packed with tough decisions.  As a fan of auctioning games, it doesn’t get much better than Ra.

8. Age of Steam

Best suited for hobbyist gamers with thick skin

I just barely shared my thoughts on Age of Steam: Deluxe Edition in my last Candid Cardboard: New Release 1st Impressions post.  This train game rewards careful and opportunistic economic planning and punishes a lack thereof.  Yet players don’t only have to account for their own budget and round-to-round plans; they must also account for the plans of their opponents.  All it takes is for one player to steal away your goods cube, or build track on your planned space, or claim your needed bonus action, and you may suddenly find yourself losing a lot of money and points.  But the arc this game takes—from scraping by with a few meager deliveries, to prospering with massive gains in income and ambitious rail developments, to shrinking opportunities for points as the cubes diminish from the board—is a supremely satisfying experience.

7. Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

Best suited for hobbyist gamers with a big table… and maybe a side table, too

Last year, I sold my fully deluxified, mostly expanded, legendary boxed copy of Scythe and put some of that money toward a copy of Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy.  After spending several good hours playing multiple sessions of Eclipse, I have no regrets in swapping these two games.  That’s not a knock against Scythe, which I played and enjoyed a solid fifteen times.  But the change to Eclipse reflects a change in my personal gaming preferences.  Eclipse not only presents a wider range of freedom across its various actions and engine upgrades, but it also embraces a more interactive and tense 4X experience.  The memorable moments of war and betrayal are strong with this one, as I shared in my recent Board Game Birthday Marathon Musings.

6. Sidereal Confluence: Remastered Edition

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

Continuing on with the theme of epic space games, Sidereal Confluence features up to 9 wildly asymmetric alien factions cooperating with each other through chaotic cube-tacular negotiation.  Take the simultaneous trading concept of Chinatown, crank it up ten-fold, add in a couple thousand chunky cubes, and you’ve got yourself Sidereal Confluence.  The sheer amount of soulless components and icons in this game scared me off from trying it for the longest time.  But I was sorely mistaken to avoid this game, because all those bits and pieces are mere cogs in a system of player-focused deals and negotiations which are the beating heart of this excellent experience.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the remastered edition has given it a welcome makeover.

5. Hansa Teutonica: Big Box

Best suited for everyone

Despite Hansa Teutonica being over ten years old and looking even older, it remains undeniably refreshing amid the onslaught of sluggish, overly complicated, low-interaction Euros because it is fast-paced, streamlined, and wonderfully interactive.  The new Big Box version provides even more content to explore—it makes for an incredible package value that is not big in size, but big in content.  Quinns of Shut Up & Sit Down recently proposed that this might just be the greatest Euro ever, and I’m inclined to agree.   That’s why the big box version was my number one release of 2020. 

4. Brass: Birmingham

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

Brass hasn’t moved an inch in the rankings since I posted my Top 50 Games of All Time last year.  Even after several more plays, it remains just as engaging and enjoyable as the first time I tried it.  It’s solid at all player counts from 2-4, and I’ve yet to introduce it to a hobbyist gamer who didn’t enjoy it.  Brass: Birmingham makes a strong case for reimplementations considering the look of the original design and the reach that the new versions of Brass have had within the hobby.  If you are a hobbyist gamer looking to add a long-term, well-loved gem to your collection, you’d be hard pressed to find a better bet than Brass: Birmingham.

3. Tigris & Euphrates

Best suited for strategy gamers

The deeper I get into this hobby, the more I appreciate games that contain a wide dynamic range within a narrow rules space.  Reiner Knizia is more skilled at creating these kinds of games than any other designer in the industry; that’s why my Top 50 is crammed with his masterpieces, and that’s why Tigris & Euphrates, his magnum opus, is my number three game of all time.  Most turns simply involve placing a couple tiles or leaders onto the game board, but the points those tiles can earn, the ripple effect their positioning can have, and the wars and revolts that they can trigger are where things get incredibly meaty.  For an experience that appears to be abstract strategy through and through, it’s surprising how thematic of a civilization game this is.  The rise, prosperity, and fall of dynasties and kingdoms are epic arcs that most civ games can only dream of providing.  The many opportunities for clever moves and brilliant plays are what continually keep me coming back for more Tigris & Euphrates.

2. Crokinole

Best suited for everyone

Crokinole straddles the fence that separates board games from competitive sports and rides that fence to the moon and back.  Darts, billiards, foosball, and Jenga are perfectly fine indoor activities, but Crokinole takes the cake for me.  Like a meaner, faster, sexier version of curling, Crokinole sees its participants flicking discs to the center of a large, slick board as they ricochet off a center ring of posts and collide with other discs.  There’s far more strategy here than simply aiming for the center hole.  With enough plays, you start to realize that the planned positioning of your disc after you hit an opponent’s disc is just as important as knocking them off the board.  Crokinole works as both a 4-player party game and a 2-player showdown, and my board will remain a family heirloom for decades to come.

1. Pax Pamir: Second Edition

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

When every aspect of a game oozes with deliberate thought and delicate attention to detail, it’s hard not to be attracted to such an experience regardless of its theme or genre.  From the deeply intricate gameplay to the opulent multi-sensory production, none could call Pax Pamir: Second Edition anything but a labor of love.  Pamir transcends the level of consumer product and cements itself as a historical, philosophical, and strategic sandbox for participants to lose themselves in as they explore its nuances over the course of endlessly engaging plays.  To boil this game down to its mechanical pieces—a political area control tableau builder—is a disservice to its greater whole.  The vast card market, oscillating coalitions, tight economy, and unstable alliances all combine into a supple, historical harmony between musical chair loyalties and tug of war gameplay.

This concludes my Top 50 Board Games of All Time! I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey with me through some of the world’s greatest tabletop games, and if you’re still hungry for more gaming goodness then stick around with us here at Bitewing Games!

We are thrilled to be launching a Kickstarter campaign this summer featuring a bundle of three 20-minute games, including two zesty Reiner Knizia designs! Be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter so you don’t miss out on this killer filler bundle. Speaking of which, the upcoming May email will feature a concept art reveal for Reiner Knizia’s Soda Smugglers!

Article written by Nick Murray. If you found yourself nodding in agreement to some of his favorite games, then keep an eye out for the three upcoming games that he loved enough to publish! Nick’s first published design, Social Grooming, which will debut in a Kickstarter bundle alongside two games—Soda Smugglers and Pumafiosi—from critically acclaimed designer, Reiner Knizia!

The post Top 50 Board Games of All Time — 2021 Edition — Games 25-1 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

We’ve got the whole spectrum of games on the menu today. From massive, sprawling space epics to tiny, cute, 10-minute fillers. Let’s see how they’ve fared at the table…

Sidereal Confluence (Remastered Edition)

1 Play

Holy space cubes, what a barnburner of a negotiation game!

Trust me when I say that I am the first person who runs and hides from a bland cube pusher.  Century Spice Road?  I’m out.  Terraforming Mars?  Wake me up when it’s over. Through the Ages? No thanks!

Sidereal Confluence is one cube-swamped game that you have to play to believe.  I am blown away by the thought and care that went into the creation of this game.  And I am SHOOK by how much fun I had trading cubes, spending cubes, and earning cubes like some kind of unrestrained cube addict.  This master-class design takes the addictive simultaneous trading loop of Chinatown to the next level for people willing to sit through a longer rules explanation.  Fortunately, this version provides an invaluable 1-sheet teaching guide that makes the teach much easier for both instructor and listener.

The plentiful converters and fascinating asymmetry of Sidereal Confluence combine into a perfect blend of negotiation stew.  I’m tickled by the ability to trade or loan cards to other players, as this feels like a bottomless well of strategery that we merely dipped our toes in on our first play.  On top of that, these alien races all seem wildly unique and lovingly crafted for engaging replayability and dynamic interactions.

This remastered production is a knock-out from head to toe. The cubes are satisfyingly heavy, the rules are blessedly clear, and the graphic design is thoroughly thoughtful.  The insert is great, yet I’m eager to seek out a custom insert that hopefully separates the cubes and factions for even faster setup and teardown.  This is one design that I’m dying to play over and over and over again.

Current Rating: 10/10

Sequoia

2 Plays

Sequoia uses dice allocation and area majority to good effect in this quick, simple, pretty game.  This is a decent way to kill 10 minutes of time.  The game is played simultaneously as players roll 5 of their own dice and secretly form two pairs.  The revealed pairs determine where your two tree tokens go for area majority as players compete for first and second place points after 10 rounds.

The tiebreaker phase is perhaps my favorite part.  Any ties are resolved by playing extra rounds with the first person to place another tree token on the card claiming it.  While that is in some ways just a roll-off to see who gets the right number first, I found myself having to decide between one tie and another.  Which tied card do I put off for another round and hope that nobody else swoops in and claims?  

Sequoia is an all-around solid filler that should amuse anyone, but we don’t play fillers nearly enough to justify owning and playing this one over other more interesting options.

Current Rating: 6.5/10

GPS

1 Play

GPS provides a nifty concept for a filler with the main attraction being the spinner.  Wherever the spinner lands, players will select one of their satellites (numbered 1-12) to place or move there (or in the next open space in either direction if they already have a satellite there).  This is all in an effort to be the first to line up your satellites in numerical order in a clockwise direction around the board.

It’s definitely more fiddly than we’d like, as the satellites don’t quite fit around the board.  Because the satellites are a bit wider than the spaces they are supposed to line up with, things get crowded and messy when multiple spaces in a row are filled.  This issue is compounded with the slight movements of the board that frequently occur while spinning the rocket.  There were times where it was hard to tell which space a satellite was supposed to be in.  While it’s not a huge effect on the game outcome, it does dampen and distract from the fun a bit.

As far as strategy and meaningful decisions go, they are pretty few and far between.  The best move is almost always obvious.

For a 10-minute filler, it’s hard to give weight to any of these complaints, and you can certainly do a whole lot worse.  This one seems best with a loud, light-hearted group who cheers the eye-catching spinner onward. Although I can see things getting even messier with more players.

Current Rating: 5.5/10

Mountain Goats

1 Play

Mountain Goats is a game of king of the hill with multiple hills being contested.  Dice allocation is used to get a player’s goats to the top of the hills where they can start raking in points until another player knocks them off those hills.

There’s certainly some fun to be had here, but decisions are fairly predictable as there is only so much you can do with your dice rolls.  It also seems like adding more players to the game will simply increase the playtime by another 5 minutes per player, as goats are more frequently knocked back down and have to spend multiple rounds climbing back up.

I just don’t see myself opting for this filler for 2-4 players when for an extra 10 or 20 minutes we can get so much more bang for our buck with the likes of an Oink Game, For Sale, High Society, Love Letter, a solid roll & write, a whole slew of killer 2-player games, and more.

Current Rating: 6/10

Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

1/2 of a Play

When I first looked into Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy, I saw the BGG weight (3.5) and expected a reasonably straightforward game.  Yet I wasn’t prepared for the sheer scope of Eclipse and the way it boldly spans across both time and space.  This is an epic war game and a rare design that made me lust for a larger table and longer chunks of free time to satisfy its demands and bask in its payoffs. Likewise, we don’t have the playmat, and it certainly isn’t required to play and enjoy Eclipse, but it’s definitely something I intend to pick up eventually because of game of this ambition is worthy of such vanity.

The game required two entire tables of space just to keep everything within reach.  And even then, I don’t see this game ever getting played at our home again until we upgrade to a much larger table.  The biggest issue was that the expanding map of tiles quickly encroaches on player areas if players explore outward.

Despite me being the space banker who had to constantly retrieve components from our second nearby table, the gameplay justified its sprawling size and extra effort. Players can claim any research tiles they want, provided they can meet the required cost. Ship upgrades are even more sandboxy, as you can customize and specialize your fleet however you please. Every aspect of the experience has been carefully thought out and ironed down to make the play as smooth as possible, courtesy of Game Trayz. Passing the research and upgrade trays around like they are appetizer platters is a constant and luxurious affair.

The lure to explore and expand outward is ever present, with more discovery bonuses and population squares always within reach. The catch is that spreading yourself too thin in a quest for dangling carrots will simply make you look more appetizing to the predatorial foes of the galaxy. This is a war game, after all, and goodies are generously awarded to those who seek destruction and domination.

With the streamlined experience and (relatively) condensed playtime, I don’t see any other epic war game dethroning Eclipse from my collection.  Unfortunately, our first play of it was stopped short when one player was called into work mid-game, but we were all fully invested and enjoying ourselves up until then.

Current Rating: 9/10

Babylonia

2 Plays

If you’re a glutton for Knizia tile layers, like me, then you really should be getting yourself a copy of Babylonia.  This one feels like a hybrid between Samurai’s tense tile majorities and Through the Desert’s dangling carrots and snaking connections.  The big differences here are that points are constantly/instantly awarded, unique abilities/bonuses are up for grabs, and decisions have a much wider ripple effect.

While the game provides a constant flow of juicy decisions, it lacks the dramatic moments of Tigris & Euphrates and Ra, so I’m not about to put it above those.  Nevertheless, there are several interesting strategies here that one can lean into for lucrative points.  The relative values of these strategies all hinge upon your opponents, making this a highly dynamic game.  So while Samurai feels more cutthroat and opportunistic, and Through the Desert keeps a clean state and smooth tempo, Babylonia forges its own path by providing subtly critical choices that ripple throughout the arc of the game.  Therefore, none of these games cannibalize each other within my collection.

While the game board suffers a bit from a lack of clarity, the wooden tokens and racks (at least of the latest printing) are a nice touch, so I guess the production is a wash?  It doesn’t really matter.  At the end of the day, we’ve been favored with another killer Knizia.  That’s why this game was categorized as a Lover in my recent revisit of the best board games of 2019.  Now, who wants to play?!

Current Rating: 9/10

This concludes another episode of Candid Cardboard: my first impressions of new releases! Have you tried any of these games yet? What are your thoughts on them?

Article written by Nick Murray. To learn more about his tabletop gaming tastes and preferences, check out his blog series: Tabletop Tastes: My Favorite Flavors in Board Games. To follow his designs as they come to fruition, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

The post Candid Cardboard – New Release 1st Impressions (January 2021) appeared first on Bitewing Games.

All this talk of bananas and ice cream, yet not even a mention of banana splits?  How is this even possible?  Find out in this episode of Tabletop Tastes #10: the importance of A Dynamic Arc in board games.

Arc of the Ingestion

I have a confession to make: I can’t finish bananas.  Even though I enjoy peeling back a ripe one and diving in to those initial bites, I almost always hit a wall.  At some point I look down at those last few bites and my body suddenly tells me, “Please make it stop.”  I completely lose my appetite for the fruit and reluctantly end up tossing the remains in the trash.

Is this true for anybody else?  Am I crazy here?  How can something start out so enjoyable and prematurely end so unappetizing?  My theory is that it must be related to that mushy, potassium-induced sameyness that comes with each bite.  That’s right, I think each bite of a banana is too samey.  

Let’s contrast this repetitive banana with a nice, dynamic pint of ice cream.  Imagine with me a classic pint of Ben & Jerry’s.  Or perhaps the incomparable Jeni’s, my personal favorite brand of ice cream.  Either way, do you recall how the experience starts out?

First, you pry off the lid.  Second, you scrape the thin layer of ice cream from the top of the lid for a small, supple appetizer.  Third, you dive into the pint itself.  Having just taken the ice cream out of the freezer, you chip away at the rock hard surface for even the tiniest morsels of that frozen goodness.  It’s nearly too cold to even taste, but you don’t care, and you simply can’t be bothered with waiting for it to warm up.

But of course, over time the ice cream begins to soften up as you clutch the pint in your cold, hungry fingers.  The bites become bigger, softer, and more flavorful.  Soon, you’re taste buds are reading at maximum saturation as the temperature hits that beautifully sweet spot.

What’s this?  You’re nearing the bottom of the pint?  And the edges of the ice cream are melty and liquidized, yet dripping with deliciousness.  But you can’t allow the pint to get too melty!  No, time is of the essence, and this ice cream is ripe for the finishing.  What once was a slow, melodic waltz become a frenzying race to consume every last bite before it becomes too much of a drink.  Downward you go!  Digging, scraping, and slurping until finally… it is finished.  You’ve just completed a delectably satisfying arc of the pint.

Do you now see the difference between the banana and the pint of ice cream?  One is excruciatingly unchanging in its consumption, presenting nothing new or exciting or compelling to bring you back for another bite.  The other is dynamically satisfying in its consumptive journey, ramping up slowly, reaching a peak of perfection, then urging you beyond your stomach’s limitations in a downhill rush to the finish.

Arc of the Play

In this sense, the best board games are also like pints of ice cream, containing a dynamic and engaging arc.  Meanwhile, the games that are like bananas usually get the big boot from my collection.

One big banana game that I played in 2019 was Dead Man’s Cabal.  While it had interesting decisions and an eye-catching production, the biggest knock against our experience with it was simply how samey every round felt.  The central goal is to pick up and place out skulls that line up and meet the requirements of a point card.  There are of course other actions you can take and secondary points you can pursue, but nothing felt evolving.  We couldn’t get ourselves to play another game after our first go, as the cycle of using skulls to get point cards grew stale within a single play.

One of the masters of dynamic arcs is Reiner Knizia.  Typically, his games start out wide open.  “Place a tile anywhere, there are loads of good options!”  “Play any card from your hand, it’s hard to choose wrong!”  Yet as the tiles or cards start going out, you begin to see long-term strategies and short-term opportunities emerging for each player.  Like the curling liquid of the melting ice cream against the walls of the pint container, things start to get even more deliciously interesting.  Tile chains gather momentum, card types gain purpose, and decisions grow in importance.  Players never have enough actions that they desperately wish they could take on their turns, and they must clench their butt cheeks between turns as they pray that no opponent swoops in and snatches away the next golden opportunity.  In this sense, Reiner is like the Ben & Jerry’s of the board game industry.  His pints of play are consistently satisfying and evolvingly interesting from start to finish.

Another banana I recently discovered was Raiders of the North Sea.  While the game has a novel mechanism of placing a worker and picking up a worker to take your actions, this loop grew old for me over its 80 minutes of play.  Over the course of the game, players see themselves reaching more expensive action spaces and thereby raking in more points and resources.  But a ramp up in cost, points, and resources is like a bump in a sidewalk… hardly noticeable to the average cyclist who is looking for a thrill.  These superficial changes do little to differentiate the rounds of play.

Contrast this viking placement game to another one, A Feast for Odin.  Uwe Rosenberg’s sprawling viking Euro starts players off with something like negative 60 points on their personal boards that they must cover up over the course of the game.  The opening round starts off slow and methodical, with players earning a small handful of tiny tiles to help them cover up the first of many spaces on their boards.  Ironically, early game is often the best time to acquire another player board with even more negative points that must be covered.  

As the rounds march onward, players gain more vikings to spend on stronger and more numerous action spaces.  Animals, income, and bonuses have a snowball effect that helps players to accelerate their economy.  When the final round nears, the game becomes a race to cover every negative point that you’ve neglected the entire game as you greedily pursued the many other dangling carrots.  This arc that starts with precarious investments and baby step turns, snowballs into huge gains of tiles and profitable tile arrangements, and concludes with a race to maximize points and cover nasty spaces is an arc that keeps this relatively solitaire game dynamic and interesting throughout.

Designed with the Arc in Mind

From a design perspective, lack of a dynamic arc is one of the most consistent problems I’ve seen in some of my prototypes and other designers’ prototypes.  It can be easy to get lost in the minor problems, suggestions, and improvements amid a playtesting session.  But smooth gameplay and novel mechanisms can only carry a design so far.  I recently found myself offering up a bunch of random ideas after a playtesting another person’s design.  But toward the end of the discussion, I took a step back from my minor complaints and suddenly realized that they were all part of a bigger problem: a missing game arc.  If the designer could stay focused on giving the game a satisfying arc, then the obvious changes and best ideas would likely fall into place.

Perhaps the most visible form of a gameplay arc is an engine builder.  If players can feel their actions and choices are gaining momentum and value, then their engagement with game tends to grow in parallel to this progress.  Yet, like the countless flavors of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, there are plenty of other ways to give a game a dynamic arc:

• A race where the stakes ramp up as the finish line nears
• An evolving game board or player area where a network sprawls outward or the opportunities narrow inward
• The formation of shaky alliances to bring down the dominant leader
• The development of bitter rivals in competition for dwindling resources
• The unfolding of secrets and uncovering of information in a game of deduction
• Containing multiple acts in a single game

The possibilities go on yet the pattern for success is the same.  If the turns or rounds all feel roughly the same, then you have yourself a boring banana.  Good luck pitting that against a dynamic pint of ice cream.  Of course, if I’m hungry enough and the bland samey food is quite filling, then you might catch me eating it anyway.

Continue on to Tabletop Tastes #11: Filling Turns

More killer games with a dynamic arc:

Satisfying Engine Builders: Roll for the Galaxy, Race for the Galaxy, Viticulture, Great Western Trail, Sidereal Confluence, Concordia, Dice Forge, Taverns of Tiefenthal

Evolving Game Board: Crokinole, Carcassonne, Tigris & Euphrates, Babylonia, Through the Desert, Brass: Birmingham, Age of Steam, Lords of Vegas, Ethnos, Bus, Condottiere, Blitzkrieg!,

Raising Stakes: Inis, Downforce, Camel Up, Pandemic, Undaunted: Normandy, New York Zoo. Scape Goat, The Quest for El Dorado, Men at Work, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, The Estates, Last Bastion

Multi-Act Games: Blue Lagoon, For Sale, Mysterium, Insider, A Fake Artist Goes to New York

Evolving Player Areas: Patchwork, My City, Curious Cargo, Wingspan, Isle of Skye, Azul, Sagrada, Castles of Burgundy

Unfolding Secrets & Uncovering Information: The Search for Planet X, Bristol 1350, Cryptid, Loot of Lima, Treasure Island, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

Forming of Alliances and Rivalries: Root, Pax Pamir (Second Edition), Cosmic Encounter, Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy, The King is Dead

What are your favorite games with a dynamic arc?

Article written by Nick Murray. To follow his designs as they come to fruition, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

The post Tabletop Tastes #10: A Dynamic Arc appeared first on Bitewing Games.

It’s been nearly a year since we received the last of 2019’s thousands of board game releases.

I waited until nearly May to make my top games of 2019 list, and I’ve since discovered loads of great games, some of which would have even made my top 10 of the year. The sad truth is that there is simply not enough time to keep up with all the best new board games that are constantly pouring down on the industry. Especially not if your FONYO (Fear of Neglecting Your Own) keeps you coming back to your under-played collection.

I recently heard some content creators squirming over their top 10 games of 2020 lists due to the overwhelming amount of great designs. I’m always surprised when content creators are declaring their best games of the year when that year hasn’t even ended yet. Unless you are Tom Vasel, you likely haven’t played every noteworthy release of the year, even months into the following year. A quick glance at my want to play list on BGG reveals that I’ve only scratched the surface of 2020’s bangers, and it’s going to take me many months yet to even come close to trying everything that has caught my eye.

So rather than make a premature 2020 list, I feel inclined to revisit the many board games of 2019 that I’ve tried. I considered updating my top 10 games list, extending it to top 15 or 20, or even ranking all of the games I’ve tried against each other, but none of those options had a strong appeal to me. Instead, we’re gonna separate all these games into 5 different categories: Lovers, Keepers, Dumpers, Flingers, and Seekers. Let the fun begin!

Lovers

Games that I’m still CRAZY about.

I’m a bit of an explorer when it comes to my hobbyist gaming habits. This is mostly due to the curious designer within. Sometimes it results in me playing hot potato with certain games (see Dumpers below), but it’s all worth it when I find an absolute gem that I love. The following are my cream of the 2019 crop (in no particular order):

• Pipeline– I recently talked about how Pipeline made a poor first impression at our table, but eventually we came around to its brutal economics. What can I say? I guess I’m a glutton for punishment. But with a little practice and a lot of thinking, you’ll go from scraping oil out of the bottom of the barrel to drowning in gallons of that greasy goodness.

• Blitzkrieg!– Paolo Mori is quickly becoming one of my top designers. His quick and accessible Ethnos has long been my favorite gateway game, and his difficult to obtain Dogs of War is what I asked Santa for this Christmas. Blitzkrieg deserves a spot among his greatest hits thanks to its elegant back and forth battles between 2 players at war.

• The King’s Dilemma– I finally tracked down a copy and can happily report that it was worth the wait. If you enjoy bluffing, bidding, and negotiation all wrapped into a light role-playing package, and if you can track down a group of 5 people to join you, then this is a must-play legacy game.

• QE– I now own a crap-load of auctioning games. It’s a testament to QE’s uniqueness that it firmly remains a title that I get excited to play. I love myself a golden opportunity to mess with other people’s heads and sneak away with the victory.

• Watergate– A zesty but simple tug-of-war 2-player game, certainly in the same ballpark as Blitzkrieg. I love ’em both. If you’re a big fan of this game, then the Geek Up bits coming in Q2 2021 might catch your interest.

• Babylonia– If you’ve got a soft spot for Knizia tile layers, like me, then you really should be getting yourself a copy of Babylonia. This one feels like a hybrid between Samurai’s tense tile majorities and Through the Desert’s dangling carrots and snaking connections. The big differences here are that points are constantly/instantly awarded, unique abilities/bonuses are up for grabs, and decisions have a much wider ripple effect.

• Maracaibo– This is the sole lover of 2019 that I don’t own. I had a blast trying it out for the first time. Yet Maracaibo fills the same niche as Great Western Trail, and I don’t even give GWT enough table time. I would recommend this one to anybody who appreciates an epic heavy Euro.

• The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine– This game probably deserves a spot in my top 10 games of all time. That’s how addicting and delightful it was to play through its 50 cooperative missions. I still stand by my review and declaration that this is one of greatest card games of all time. Thank goodness Kosmos has announced a sequel for next year!

• A Feast for Odin: Mini Expansion 2– Before this expansion, I looked at the shorter (6-round) version of A Feast for Odin as a joke. Why would somebody shorten this sprawling game by a single round and miss out on the big 7th round climax? This expansion changed that entirely. It essentially trades the uneventful first round of a 7-round game for an interesting, highly variable setup with an exciting head start for everyone.

• Inis: Seasons of Inis (expansion)– Inis is one of my all time favorite games, and this expansion was well worth the investment. Particularly the extra Epic Tale cards and area tiles, the harbors and islands, and the 5th player addition.

• Mandala– Mandala is as good as simple 2-player cards games get. I rank it right up there with the likes of Jaipur, Lost Cities, and Battle Line.

• Pax Pamir (2nd Edition)– Between you and me, Pax Pamir might just be my #1 game of all time. After plenty of plays at a wide range of player counts, it is still that good. This is a deluxe strategy gaming experience in a deservedly deluxe package.

• Age of Steam: Deluxe Edition– Speaking of all time greats, Age of Steam is a newer title on my radar (with only two plays so far) and it’s already knocking on the door of my top 10. That’s right, if you’ve been counting, we have three releases from 2019 that are worthy to be among my 10 best! That’s a good year, my friends. Of course, I may be cheating considering that Age of Steam and Pax Pamir originally released in years prior. At any rate, this is the perfect blend of punishing economics and crafty interaction for those with a blood-thirsty appetite and thick skin.

• Undaunted: Normandy– My wife and I finally closed out our campaign of Undaunted: Normandy, and it was the bomb. This is the kind of deck builder that made me realize I didn’t need Dominion anymore. We’re looking forward to diving into the next one, Undaunted: North Africa.

Keepers

Other games that have survived the purge of 2020.

Now, obviously the Lovers mentioned above are Keepers. But there are plenty of other 2019 releases that I enjoy breaking out when the setting is right. The following games are great options that have thus far survived my purging ploys.

• Aerion- I’m not much of solo gamer, but Aerion eliminates all of my personal barriers to entry. This puzzly little game has a quick setup, minimal bookkeeping, and addictive gameplay loop that I intend to see through to the end of its several included expansions.

• Cairn– Cairn is one of those abstract games that is good enough to keep around yet forgettable enough to not get to the table. In other words, we’ve only played it once so far, but it was solid.

• Caylus 1303– This updated classic absolutely pummels your average worker placement game with its refined balance, deep interaction, and juicy tension. Just don’t set your expectations for something exceptionally unique.

• The Quest for El Dorado: The Golden Temples– I would not recommend this standalone expansion to somebody who has never tried the excellent Quest for El Dorado, but it does make for an interesting change of pace on its own and an epic journey when combined with the base game. More thoughts here.

• Azul: Summer Pavilion– I’ve weighed and measured Summer Pavilion against its siblings and found it to be a more gentle, gamer friendly version. At the end of the day, vanilla Azul is my go-to thanks to its more dynamic player interaction.

• Dice Forge: Rebellion (expansion)- I haven’t played Dice Forge in over year, which tells you a lot about how it fares against the rest of my collection. Rebellion does add a whole lot of interesting variety for fans of the game, and I’m hoping to explore the rest of it soon.

• Horrified– There are far too many Pandemic copy-cats out there, but Horrified remains one of the best. It’s a fun one to break out with non-gamers that presents an undeniably charming theme.

• Men at Work– I always get a kick out of Men at Work whenever we break it out. Nothing beats Crokinole as far as dexterity games go, but Men at Work is an excellent option that puts Jenga to shame.

• On Tour– While it isn’t my favorite roll & write, On Tour is one of the easiest to break out and teach others. It’s a nice, easy way to start out a game night as players discover how far they can stretch their strategies.

• PARKS– I suspect that if I was forced to play PARKS enough, it would get the boot from my collection. There’s just not a ton of meat here that I frequently crave. But as a gorgeous, pleasant game, I’m ok with breaking it open every now and then.

• Trophies– A quick, simple, and pretty party game of quick thinking. This is the kind of solid stocking stuffer that I would recommend to anyone. That’s why it landed a spot on our Holiday Board Game Gift Guide.

• Unmatched– This series becomes more and more fun as you explore the variety of characters and pit them against each other. Who wouldn’t want to see Bruce Lee take on 3 raptors?! I’ve talked about some of the newer sets here.

Dumpers

Games that I dropped like a hot potato.

Many of these games made a strong enough impression for me to purchase and enjoy them for several plays. Others were a train wreck right from the get-go. Either way, I eventually found myself ok with never playing them again, and those that I owned were traded or sold away thereafter.

• Point Salad- Like a well-made salad, this game is tasty, addicting, and not completely filling. After a few plays, it doesn’t provide much incentive to keep returning for more. But for $15, it was fun while it lasted.

• Res Arcana– This is a solid design that any engine builder super fan should put on their radar. Unfortunately, we didn’t love it because the game feels like a ho-hum resource converter. Res Arcana was ultimately unable to escape the shadow of its own genericy.

• Wingspan + European Expansion– The presentation initially knocked our socks off, but our many plays over time demonstrated the law of diminishing returns. Wingspan contains a pretty narrow track for decisions and strategy; most turn actions will feel on-the-rails, for better or for worse. As a gateway engine builder, I can’t deny that I enjoy playing it. But as a game night go-to, it now struggles to do more than mildly amuse.

• Tapestry– I wish Tapestry had spent more time in the development oven. The fun factor of a session of Tapestry can vary just as much as the strategies and Civilizations themselves. Cutting certain elements, balancing others, and increasing players’ abilities to truly interact with each other on the map could have gone a long way to make Tapestry a consistent hit. Ultimately, I’d rather not roll the dice on how fun a 3-hour game will be.

• Tiny Towns– A solid bingo-style spatial puzzle that lost its luster after five plays. My City is also a quick, accessible Bingo-style game about building a town for points within the confines of a spatial puzzle… and frankly, it blows Tiny Towns out of the water. But to its credit, Tiny Towns can be played with up to 6 players!

• Jaws– An amusing, highly thematic experience that gets bogged down by an excessive setup, rules-to-depth ratio, downtime, and duration. Act 2 especially dragged on and thereby felt weaker than Act 1. Played it once and had no desire to play it again. But I still respect that shark meeple.

• Bruxelles 1897– I enjoyed how compact and dense Bruxelles 1897 is for a strategic, Euro-style card game. It makes me wish more games would follow suit by trimming the fat and getting to the juicy center. My only complaint is that the game lacks legs to get it beyond more than a few interesting plays.

• Cartographers– This award nominated flip & write lacked the tension that I love to experience in my favorites of the genre. More thoughts here.

• Dead Man’s Cabal– Some interesting decisions, a fairly solid production, but the turns with many steps (simple as they may individually be) are prone to regular AP leading to longer down time and slower turns. The game also seems to lack any true sense of progression or change over the course of its long playtime… what you are doing on the first turn is practically the exact same as what you are doing on the last turn. This makes Dead Man’s Cabal feel as though it overstays its welcome. It quickly got the boot from our collection.

• Era: Medieval Age– A hefty price tag for fancy parts and pieces amount to a glorified spreadsheet roll & write polyomino Yahtzee game. I admire its production ambition but can’t get past its clumsy execution. Too much time is spent reading spreadsheets, moving pegs, or arranging dice and not enough time is spent playing a game.

• Funkoverse– Shameless cash grab of an unimaginative game with an IP pasted on top. There was absolutely nothing in the game design that made it feel like the IP we tried (Batman). The gameplay of Funkoverse itself consists of mind-numbingly basic dudes-on-a-map mechanisms and offers no reason to exist. The bland design is just veiled behind colorful funkos and meaningless variety. Unmatched is a much better version of this.

• Rune Stones– A generic resource converter. While the deck building aspect of the game certainly works, it doesn’t fully embrace any of the mechanism’s strengths. Rarely do you feel rewarded for slimming your deck or punished for bloating it. Most of the differentiating traits between the cards just blur together into a dull, samey mush. Not for me, but I can see why others may enjoy it. Kyle has a very different opinion from me on this one, so it’s worth giving his video review a look!

• Tricky Tides– I was quite impressed with Tricky Tides. The artwork and presentation is what drew me in, but the interesting combination between pick up/deliver and trick taking is what really sold me on the game. My main downside would be that the game takes way longer than advertised. We would simply rather play a meatier game if we are doing a 4 player game for 90 minutes.

• Tussie Mussie– A simple, beautiful game of I Cut, You Choose that doesn’t provide a compelling reason to keep coming back for more plays. That’s obviously a tough ask for an 18 card game, but Sprawlopolis (from the same publisher) manages to pull it off.

• Welcome To: Outbreak Thematic Neighborhood– This one is a hot mess. Deep Water Games was clearly going with quantity over quality on these expansions. It seems they were in such a big hurry to crank these out that they didn’t bother to properly test, polish, and streamline this expansion. The rulebook is unclear, the added gameplay poisons the base game’s fun, and the graphic design muddies the visibility of your writing.

Flingers

Games that were amusing to try at least once.

I’m blessed to have some good friends who possess solid collections and a knack for teaching their games. Most of these are games they’ve introduced me to that made for a fun night.

• Paladins of the West Kingdom– A nearly solitaire game from a publisher I’m lukewarm on… all the more impressive that enjoyed this play. While the novelty of Architects and Raiders felt overshadowed by their blandness, Paladin’s blandness is overshadowed by its juicy arc. Not one I would buy, but I wouldn’t mind playing it again.

• Taverns of Tiefenthal- I can see why this is thought of as a spiritual sibling to Quacks of Quedlinburg. Taverns largely benefits/suffers from the same strengths/weaknesses as Quacks. On the other hand, Taverns quite possibly beats out Quacks for me because bad luck is much less punishing, strategic options feel more numerous, and the theme is even more charming.

• Animal Kingdoms– Solid, simple gameplay. Very easy to teach, but enough meat on the bone for interesting decisions. The kind of game you can play with anyone. Not sure if it would hold interest beyond a few plays, but it was fun to try at a convention.

• Last Bastion– Improves on the rulebook, production, and gameplay of Ghost Stories, yet still feels largely the same. Last Bastion/Ghost Stories is an engaging cooperative game that plays best at a rapid pace with experience players, but doesn’t reach the heights of my favorite co-ops because so much of the game comes down to luck of the dice.

• Tuki– From the publisher of Azul. Tuki is an amusing real-time dexterity game we tried at a convention, but not exceptional enough for us to throw down money on.

Seekers

Interesting games that still elude me.

Whether they haven’t hooked me enough to convince me to open the wallet, or they require a ideal setting that my current situation can’t provide, these are the games that hover over the fringe of my radar and elude my reach.

• Isle of Cats– This is the big game that was missing from my Battle of the Polyominoes comparison. Drafting + polyominoes + psychedelic cats certainly sounds interesting!

• Detective: City of Angels– We weren’t huge fans of Chronicles of Crime. While amusing, it was ultimately not as satisfying as a board game without a screen; and it honestly feels kind of pointless to play with other people. Detective: City of Angels appears to be the game we wanted out of Chronicles.

• Dune- A heavy, Shut Up & Sit Down approved war game that works best at 6? Sign me up! ….Anyone?….No? *Sigh*

• Nova Luna– I’m sure I would enjoy this one, but it seems so similar to Rosenburg’s Patchwork (aside from the polyomino tiles) that I struggle to justify the purchase. Can anyone convince me to bite?

• Rail Pass– A real time cooperative dexterity game where you pass trains that are carrying physical goods to each other causing a jumble of brains and arms. Best of all, when you want to pass a train along, you have to communicate by saying “Toot toot!”

• Barrage– A heavy, nasty economic game of controlling water flow with dams for power. The overwhelmingly positive critical acclaim surrounding this one tells me it is certainly worth a go!

• Shobu– An elegant, abstract game of pushing stones off wooden boards. I’ve heard good things about this one, and the presentation is just classy.

• L.L.A.M.A.– A simple Knizia card game is always going to catch my attention. If I were in a supremely casual setting perfect for a light card game with kids and/or grandparents, I imagine this would hit the spot.

• Medium– While I usually opt for something with at least a hint of strategy, this appears to be a light, funny party game I would enjoy. Two players hold a unique topic card and must simultaneously blurt out the same word that connects the two topics, that is if they are on the same wavelength.

This concludes my walk down memory lane of the best board games of 2019! Can you think of a Lover, Keeper, Dumper, Flinger, and Seeker from 2019? Share them with us in the comments below!

Article written by Nick Murray. To learn more about his tabletop gaming tastes and preferences, check out his blog series: Tabletop Tastes: My Favorite Flavors in Board Games. To follow his designs as they come to fruition, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

The post Revisiting the Best Board Games of 2019 appeared first on Bitewing Games.