With all the “Most Anticipated Games of 2022” lists I’ve seen over the past few weeks, it feels like Bitewing Games is a little late to the party. On the other hand, I’ve been surprised to see very little overlap between my list and the many others out there. So today it is my honor to shine a spotlight on many promising—and possibly overlooked—titles.

From quick, simple card games to sprawling legacy campaigns… from loud, hilarious party romps to tantalizing expansions, my most anticipated board games of 2022 list covers the entire spectrum of exciting upcoming releases. And these are just the ones we know about so far…

Caesar!: Seize Rome in 20 Minutes

Expected Release Date: Now

Well it appears that Caesar being on our 2021 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide was wishful thinking.  But now that this promising war game is finally starting to show up on shelves and doorsteps, it feels like second Christmas!  Don’t be surprised it this one ends up claiming the title of best 2-player game of the year.  Father Paolo Mori and the older sibling to Caesar (Blitzkrieg) are that good.

Why it’s Exciting: Tense, bitey tug-of-war games frequently hit the spot for me.  While this one isn’t as blatant of a tug of war as Blitzkrieg, it still appears to capture a similar essence.  It also gives me faint vibes of another classic tile laying game—Samurai.  Those two bangers are very good company to be in.

Ghosts of Christmas

Expected Release Date: February 2022

Thanks to clogged ports and delayed shipments, some of the games here are spillover from last year’s most anticipated board games list.  Ghosts of Christmas is the first in a trio of games that Board Game Tables launched on Kickstarter last year.  Sadly, this game may have just missed Christmas 2021, but I suppose it’s not a big deal because here you’ll be able to time travel as you play tricks in the past, present, and future.

Why it’s exciting: BGT has developed a new hobby of unearthing bizarre Japanese designs and bringing them to a wider, western audience.  Folks like me who love wonky card games should have this on their radar.

Bear Raid

Expected Release Date: February 2022

Game two from the BGT trio is none other than Ryan Courtney’s Bear Raid.  Fun fact: Ryan told me that he’s not a big fan of games where politics (wheeling and dealing, messing with others’ plans, persuading opponents in directions that help yourself and hurt others, etc.) can influence the outcome, and Bear Raid is in many respects this type of game, so he basically designed a game that he personally isn’t into.  How about that.  The important thing here is that Ryan’s playtesters love this stock investment romp… and it’s whimsically illustrated by Nick Nizzaro.  I was born ready for this one.  Yet for those who are hoping for a more warm and welcoming game from Ryan, we’ve got you covered (more on that later).

Why It’s exciting:  I love a good interactive game where you can bet on or invest in various options.  Whether it’s a horse, a camel, a battalion, or a company, the moment you feel personally invested in a thing’s success is the moment where the excitement begins.

Factory Funner

Expected Release Date: February 2022

I’ve never associated factories with the adjective “fun,” but this final game in the BGT trio is poised to change all that.  I recently shared my top 10 spatial puzzle games, and Factory Funner made that list thanks to questionable combination of gut-feeling and critical acclaim.

Why It’s exciting:  The crunchy spatial game play, the stylish art, the flexibility of tile arrangements, and the quick playtime all speak to me in this updated version from BGT.

Sound Box

Expected Release Date: March 2022

I’m not sure which is more surprising: the implication that Horrible Guild needed to take Sound Box to Kickstarter or the fact that it only raised 12k Euros.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they spent roughly that much just to market the game—what a depressing thought.  Of course, launching a party game during COVID may have had something to do with that… Regardless, I’ve got my money on this game being a hoot (literally—I’m a backer) and gaining a second wind once it hits tables.  The design team behind The King’s Dilemma and Railroad Ink have created a game where players must cooperate to listen to each other’s weird sounds in a quest to pick out the right topic cards.  Imagine Codenames where the clues are a chaotic jumble of simultaneous noises and you’re basically there.

Why it’s exciting: Also imagine your partner, sibling, parent, or friend trying their best but epicly failing to recreate the sound of a printer… or a golf tournament.  Need I say more?

Root: The Marauder Expansion

Expected Release Date: Q2 2022

Few things bring me as much joy as a new box of Root goodies.  Between the exciting faction variety, charismatic art by Kyle Ferrin, and colorful Leder Games production, Root and its several expansions never fail to capture my heart.  The Marauder Expansion is particularly notable in that it apparently offers an enhanced experience a lower player counts thanks to the new hirelings.

Why it’s exciting: “Some critters just want to watch the world burn.” Such a sentiment can be said about about the new faction Lord of the Hundreds—an unhinged rat who incites ‘torch-wielding mobs.’  Meanwhile, the Keepers of Iron are disciplined Badgers on the hunt for ancient relics.  What’s not to love here?

John Company: Second Edition

Expected Release Date: June 2022

Speaking of exciting new games from Root designer Cole Wehrle, John Company: Second Edition is hot on the heels of The Marauder Expansion’s scheduled release.  While this is only the second game to come from the brothers Wehrle and their company Wehrlegig, the first one (Pax Pamir: Second Edition) is one of my favorite games ever.  Thus, a meaty game of negotiation and politics from Cole is exactly the kind of thing that could easily become my favorite game of 2022 (and of all time).  It’s gonna be a good summer of gaming, my friends.

Why it’s exciting: If gorgeous, historical board game productions from a boundary-pushing game designer sound like your kind of thing, then Wehrlegig Games is a publisher you should follow.  They’ve already proven that their games are a labor of love, and John Company: Second Edition is set to please folks who enjoy deep, immersive, and dynamic political experiences.

Soda Smugglers

Expected Release Date: June 2022

I can’t believe we’ve had to stretch all the way to June to find a new Knizia game to be hyped about!  But worry not, because the second half of the year should more than satisfy Knizia fans.  These next three games are ones that I’ve already played a ton of, but that’s because we here at Bitewing Games are their publisher.  Personally, I’m excited to see our vision for Soda Smugglers achieve its final form—bottle cap tokens, hilarious bribing, and all.  For people who want a quick, clever bluffing game that is dead simple to teach, Soda Smugglers should be right up your alley.  You can even still preorder the standard or limited deluxe edition here and be one of the first to own it.

Why it’s exciting:  Harmless, simple, and fast bluffing games are perhaps some of the best gateway and/or filler games out there.  Nothing breaks the ice better than witnessing a seemingly gentle person attempt to cross the border with a couple suitcases jam-packed with illicit soda bottles.  And few things are as funny as watching the border guard fall for a bluff or a wily traveler shoot themself in the foot with a mistimed double-bluff.

Pumafiosi

Expected Release Date: June 2022

Along the same lines, Pumafiosi is another offering from Reiner Knizia and Bitewing Games.  This one features a unique style of trick-taking where the second-highest card wins the trick and slots their winning card into a push-your-luck style hierarchy.  To top it all off, it features zany Puma Mafia characters galore.

Why it’s exciting:  Similar to Ghosts of Christmas, here we have another wonky card game that slowly reveals layered strategies as you peel through the onion.  This is a small game with a big payoff in how it rewards multiple plays.  Plus the Pumafia art and lore spread across the entire collection is simply a joy to explore.

Hot Lead

Expected Release Date: June 2022

Finally, Hot Lead rounds out the Criminal Capers Collection with a new twist on auctioning from the master designer of auction games himself.  With the help of 19 illustrated investigators, you’ll be undercover collecting evidence on criminal organizations.  Just like the other two games, this one is quick, simple, and addicting.  Again, if you’re interested, you can preorder here.  This is currently the best and only way to support Bitewing Games as a publisher and content creator.  We love sharing and making games that bite (it’s in the name), and we appreciate the support!

Why it’s exciting: Those who appreciate auctioning games are likely fans of Knizia’s stone-cold classics including Ra, High Society, and Modern Art.  With Hot Lead, we were thrilled to discover that Reiner had funneled his mystical auction design powers into an even faster experience while giving the game its own distinct flavor.  Furthermore, you get the best of a push-your-luck experience where the glorious triumphs feel amazing and the stinging failures are as quick as ripping off a band-aid.  Either way, you’re always hungry for another go.

Beyond the Sun Expansion

Expected Release Date: Q2-Q3 2022

We don’t know much yet, but word on the street is that the upcoming expansion for Beyond the Sun provides more incentives to focus on the planet board (colonization and area control).  But to be honest, anything that gives me more reasons to revisit this excellent tech-tree bonanza of a Euro has my interest.

Why it’s exciting: Beyond the Sun is one of those types of games that feels like it has endless possibilities thanks to the uniquely unraveling tech tree.  Adding more possibilities to those ‘endless’ possibilities is a thrilling prospect that has me wondering what lies beyond Beyond the Sun.

Ahoy

Expected Release Date: Q3 2022

Ahoy is the next direct-to-retail game coming from Leder Games.  This one is described as an asymmetric pirate strategy game for 2-4 players that plays in roughly 1 hour.  Two players will play as oppositional governments (one insurgent, the other established) while the other two players act as smugglers who influence the topology and value of the map that is being contested over.  According to Leder Games, this one is already finished and heading to manufacturing.

Why it’s exciting: Folks who love the idea of Root but dread the baggage that game comes with it (meaty teach, steep cost of admission, etc.) can look forward to Ahoy being the more approachable design that scratches a similar itch.

Trailblazers

Expected Release Date: Q4 2022

Assuming we don’t hit any significant delays, it’s very possible that our next release after the Criminal Capers Collection reaches tables before the end of the year.  We recently unveiled the first details of Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney, and more juicy info will be trickling in over the coming weeks.  Those who enjoy spatial puzzles will find much to love here between the three solo modes, wide player count of 1-8, charming outdoor adventure theme, simple ruleset with a high skill ceiling, and handy travel case.  Be sure to subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter to follow the game all the way to the Q2 Kickstarter launch!

Why it’s exciting: Ever since my first play of the excellent Pipeline, I always thought it would be cool to see a game that really focuses in on and explores the possibilities of a pure spatial puzzle game based solely on Ryan Courtney’s windy pipe domino tiles.  Trailblazers is that game.  Trailblazers is to Pipeline as Patchwork is to A Feast for Odin.  Here you can simply concentrate on constructing ambitious, exciting routes within a charming theme and colorful presentation that will appeal to anyone.  

Horseless Carriage

Expected Release Date: Q4 2022

Publisher Splotter Spellen is known for many strategic classics including Food Chain Magnate, Bus, Indonesia, and The Great Zimbabwe. Fans of their designs have come to love the trademark Splotter traits of pure strategy, punishing decisions, brutal interactions, and deep gameplay. While details on Horseless Carriage are sparse, we do know that this is another economic game about creating and selling automobiles in the dawn of the industry.

Why it’s exciting: Horseless Carriage is the first entirely new game put out by Splotter since 2015’s Food Chain Magnate. With FCM being their highest ranked game and most recent game, that means Horseless Carriage has big shoes to fill. Whether it lives up to those high expectations or not, Splotter fans can finally celebrate the end of a 7-year new game publishing drought.

Sidereal Confluence: Bifurcation

Expected Release Date: 2022

I was recently delighted to discover that one of my favorite high-interaction games is getting an expansion this year.  Thanks to a cross-country move and COVID, it’s been trickier to get Sidereal Confluence to the table lately, especially where the game shines best with 5+ players who enjoy wheeling and dealing.  I’m hoping to dive deeper into this epic game of negotiation before this exciting expansion releases.

Why it’s exciting: Bifurcation is set to effectively double the variety of asymmetric species players can use during the game. It introduces a new variant to each of the 9 alien species in the game—meaning new mechanisms, new strategies, and new trading opportunities.

My City: Roll & Write

Expected Release Date: 2022

Last year, I interviewed Dr. Knizia about his plans for a follow-up to the phenomenal legacy game, My City.  He hinted that there would be a sequel, but it would explore new gameplay rather than retread the same ground.  It turns out, that sequel has been reveal as My City: Roll & Write.  From the box cover, we can gather that many of the core concepts have been carried over: the city sheet shows a very similar layout to the original game’s board including mountains, a river, rocks, and trees.  The art also shows similar polyomino shapes and three different building types.  

Yet this version can play a wider range of 1-6 players and features a smaller (and presumably cheaper) box of 12 episodes rather than 24. The major question is: How will the roll & write aspect of the game change things up?  Will we see new dice introduced across the four chapters?  I’m normally not one to get excited about a roll & write, but I’ll make an exception for the follow-up to My City.

Why it’s exciting:  Those who play Knizia dice games would largely agree that Knizia understands how to make the most of dice.  The man even wrote an entire book on dice games, for crying out loud!  So the introduction of dice to the My City system means that these 12 episodes will likely have all kinds of new tricks up their sleeves.

Crescent Moon

Expected Release Date: 2022

If a meaty expansion to Sidereal Confluence isn’t enough for you, then perhaps you’ll be able to satisfy your negotiation cravings with Osprey Games’ ambitious Crescent Moon.  This mammoth design apparently takes 2.5-3 hours to play and can only be played with 4-5 players.  You’ll take on the role of a wildly asymmetric character who has unique objectives, actions, and powers in an area control competition of alliances, rivalries, and negotiations.  Based on that description, fans of Cole Wehrle designs should take note.

Why it’s exciting: From a publisher standpoint, putting out a game with such a narrow target audience (groups of 4-5 players who enjoy meaty, asymmetric games) is a tricky proposition.  What this tells me is that publisher Osprey Games really believes in this project enough to take such a risk.  Combine that with the fact that they’ve been putting out some excellent games recently (Undaunted, Brian Boru, etc.) and suddenly this one has the potential to be something truly special.

Ra

Expected Released Date: 2022

Reiner Knizia fans won’t have to wait too much longer for one of his most popular classics to make a triumphant return.  We’ve finally seen a magnificent box cover from artist Ian O’Toole, and that’s only the tip of what’s bound to be an iceberg of stunning visuals and clean graphic design.  We also know that 25th Century Games is aiming to make this the best production of Ra ever.  So whether you own and love this fantastic push-your-luck auctioning design or not, the latest version of Ra should be on your radar.

Why it’s exciting:  A new version of Ra illustrated by Ian O’Toole is like the Spider-man: No Way Home of board game team-ups.  They’re bringing back a classic, critically acclaimed, beloved experience (Doc Oc, Green Goblin—Reiner Knizia’s Ra) and pairing it with something popular and exciting (Tom Holland’s Spider-man aka Ian O’Toole).

The Queen’s Dilemma

Expected Release Date: 2022?

If you’ve played the 2020 Kennerspiel des Jahres nominee, The King’s Dilemma, then you understand how much work went into this legacy game of tug-of-war politics.  Thus, it’s understandable why The Queen’s Dilemma has been announced but not given a release date.  The big change here is that the tug-of-war resource tracks from the King’s Dilemma are being replaced with a kingdom map where players control regions, gather resources, and develop their areas.  I can’t wait to see how this game of tense voting and impactful decisions is taken to the next level. 

Why its exciting: For folks who were underwhelmed by the mechanical side of The King’s Dilemma—dragging resource tokens up and down a track—The Queen’s Dilemma seems to be aiming for a more ambitious area control + Euro experience.  Beyond arguing and debating how the kingdom should be run, players will now get to see their decisions take effect on a map and feel even more invested in their slice of domain.

Fit to Print

Expected Release Date: 2023

While Fit to Print is not scheduled to release until 2023, it’s worth noting here because the game is coming to Kickstarter this year.  Beyond coming from the increasingly popular creators of Calico, Cascadia, and Tiny Towns, Fit to Print caught my eye with the whimsical artwork by Ian O’Toole.  One of my favorite movies of all time is Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox., and this game box gives me very fantastic vibes of the fox variety.  Mr. Fox himself even works for a newspaper, so the game’s theme is obviously a warm (and welcome) nod to that delightful stop-motion animation movie.  Players will be racing to arrange the best front page of their newspaper in this real-time spatial puzzle game.

Why its exciting:  For many gamers, Flatout Games have been on a hot streak of attractively approachable yet engaging publications, and Fit to Print is set to continue that streak.  Bringing in a design from the creator of Tiny Towns seems like a perfect match here, as Tiny Towns shares much in common with Calico and Cascadia.  If you love any of these games, then Fit to Print should certainly be on your watchlist.

Amun-Re: 20th Anniversary Edition

Expected Release Date: 2023

Amun-Re: 20th Anniversary Edition is another new reprint of a Knizia auctioning classic, and it’s likewise an upcoming 2022 Kickstarter that won’t hit tables until 2023.  But even 20 years on from its initial publication, it remains strongly ranked in the top 500 games of all time on BGG.  This new version will see the classic team up of Vincent Dutrait art with Reiner Knizia gameplay plus 3 entirely new expansions.

Why its exciting: I recently acquired an older copy of Amun-Re and it has proven to be a solid design that has been worth keeping around.  It’s a mark of a good Euro when I’d often rather play it over other Euros that are up to 20 years newer.  That said, Amun-Re has widely been regarded as a game that is good for primarily 4-5 players.  It sounds like publisher Alley Cat Games is aiming to improve the experience at lower counts with the help of an expansion, and that is certainly something to be excited about.

Arcs

Expected Release Date: 2023

While Cole Wehrle was designing his latest ambitious strategy game, Oath, he had many wildly intriguing design ideas that ultimately didn’t end up in Oath.  Arcs is the space-themed exploration of those leftover ideas set to come to Kickstarter in 2022.  It’s described as a short campaign game played over a few punchy episodes (or one long session of 3-5 hours) with branching narratives that can be enjoyed across many campaign sessions.  It’s also easier to teach than both Oath and Root.

Why it’s exciting: Arcs approaches the same question that was posed by 2021’s excellent Brian Boru: How do you combine trick taking with a strategy board game?  According to Cole, Arcs answers this question in a very different (and meaner) way from Brian Boru.  Any game that sounds like the love child of Oath and Brian Boru immediately has my attention.

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 upcoming Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

The post 22 Most Anticipated Board Games of 2022 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

It’s that time of year once more, my friends!  Now that the cardboard dust of 2020 has settled, as we find ourselves in the calm before the storm of 2021 releases, I’ve been reflecting on all the tabletop games I’ve ever played.  Within this mountain of ever growing titles, fifty designs have risen to the top.  These are the board games that have proven their quality over hours of play across many tables surrounded by friends, family, and strangers.  These are the games that I love and want to play more than any others.  Indeed, these are my current Top 50 Board Games of All Time.

If you’re even remotely familiar with my last Top 50 Board Games of All Time list, you’ll soon notice a DRASTIC change in most of the games and their rankings.  This change not only represents the many new-to-me discoveries of the past year, it also symbolizes a significant shift in my gaming tastes and preferences across the nearly 700 plays since my last top 50 list was created.

The list of games that I love is getting to be a crowded place.  To offer you a bit of context, I used the Pub Meeple ranking engine to pit individual games head-to-head against each other over and over until my I died of a broken heart for declaring so many of my beloved board game children to be inferior to each other.  Each game left outside of my top 50 hurt to leave out until perhaps the 89th ranked game.  There are still many designs beyond that which I truly enjoy playing, yet this low on the list is where I’m finally content with leaving them out of my Greatest of All Time post.  Perhaps next year we’ll have to extend this list to my top 75 or top 100, but it’s the excellent games which don’t make the GOAT list that give weight and credibility to the ones that do.

So let’s roll up our sleeves and wrestle with the rankings of the greatest games to grace my tabletop…

50. Watergate

Best suited for everyone

Watergate won’t be the last tug-of-war style game on my list, nor will it be the last Capstone Game here, but it was one of the very first of both categories that I had the pleasure of discovering.  This endearing 2-player game is far more accessible than it sounds or appears.  Yet the way each session plays out is consistently tense and refreshing.  My favorite aspect is perhaps the difficult decisions one must make within the hand management, between deciding whether to dispose of a card to use it’s powerful ability or retain it for its useful pull on the tug-of-war track.  Thanks to the asymmetric decks and objectives of the Nixon Administration vs. the Press and the dynamic unfolding of the pin board conspiracy, I don’t see myself tiring of this excellent design.

49. Arboretum

Best suited for mean, thick-skinned folks

I wonder if us hobbyist gamers sometimes take small box card games for granted.  These are rarely the games that I intentionally schedule a game night for, yet a really good one can often pack a bigger punch and provide more thrills and amusement than a longer and larger “event” game.  Arboretum is the first of these such titles on my list, and it’s as sharp as they come.  There is nothing quite like writhing in my chair because my cards are either too important to play so soon or too precious to discard.  Arboretum is a game where my entire hand feels this way almost the entire time.  I still adore this beautiful little design about trees, yet it’s probably fallen a bit since last year because it’s almost too bitter of a brutality pill for others to swallow when an opponent denies them the scoring on a tree type they’ve spent all game building towards.  If your group has thick skin, then Arboretum is a collection essential.

48. Modern Art

Best suited for any group of four or five people

If you liken an art museum to a snooze fest, then you should come and let Modern Art teach you the exciting intricacies of art valuations.  Modern Art is where my love for auctioning games was born, as the bombastic bidding takes center-stage here.  It’s essentially Dr. Reiner Knizia flexing his auctioning design muscles for up to an hour of richly thematic fun.  The mix of four auction types and the mystery of which artists will have the most valuable pieces hits the spot like a piña colada on a hot summer day.

47. Blue Lagoon

Best suited for everyone

Blue Lagoon is a bit of an unexpected hit of a purchase, despite that being a common theme with Knizia Games in my collection.  On the surface, it appears to be a generic abstract game with shameless Moana-like art.  You combine those two off-putting things together and only a name like Reiner Knizia and a cheap price of $20-30 could warm my icy heart enough to give it a chance.  Yet now here it sits among my Top 50 Games of ALL TIME.  I freaking love this family-friendly strategy game.  I very recently shared how it’s one of Dr. Knizia’s best designs thanks to its agonizing decisions and passive-aggressive opportunities across two subtly distinct rounds of play.

46. Irish Gauge

Best suited for everyone

Well, it’s not the third Knizia game in a row on this list, but it is a Knizia-like design.  What does Knizia-like even mean, you ask?  And why is that a compliment?  Much like the work of Reiner Knizia, Amabel Holland’s Irish Gauge is a vast wealth of deep and compelling gameplay born out of extremely simple rules.  So simple, in fact, that the rules fit onto a single sheet of paper.  It’s hard not to be drawn in by Ian O’Toole’s face-melting box art and clean graphic design, yet it’s the pleasure of placing trains, auctioning shares, and calling for dividends that keeps me thoroughly engaged in this cube-rail classic.

45. The Quest for El Dorado

Best suited for everyone

Phew, well I don’t know about you, but I almost had a panic attack straying from Reiner Knizia for so long.  Look, I get that his style of game isn’t for everyone.  And I can assure you that we won’t break into the double digits of Knizia designs on this list… but we do get awfully close (and you should probably brace yourself for a couple more of them in about two minutes).  Anywayyyyy, let’s talk about one of the best deck-builders ever designed!  Despite the miniature cards and sprawling components, The Quest for El Dorado marries deck-building to racing on a game board with seemingly effortless ease.  The game is so polished and simple that it can be easy to dismiss the genius mechanisms and satisfying flow hidden within.  This is a title that I can put down in front of my eight-year-old niece and thoroughly enjoy playing or break out with my fellow hardcore hobbyists for a charmingly cutthroat contest.

44. Great Western Trail

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

Allow me to be vain for a moment (if putting together this massive ranked list about cardboard leisure isn’t vain enough already) and share that the main thing that keeps me from loving Great Western Trail even more is the uncomfortable box art containing three massive faces of scowling, staring, soul-less men.  It’s like Mount Rushmore got lost in the Twilight Zone and landed itself in a dystopian Wild West.  Thankfully, publisher Eggertspiele decided that five years of heebie-geebies was long enough, and they’ve finally invested in a redesigned and drastically improved art style for the second edition coming later this year.  Yet I’m not so vain as to dismiss the intricate complexity that launches this heavy Euro game to greatness.  The mechanisms interwoven together include deck building with a herd of cattle, traveling with a cowboy along an action rondel, progressing economic potential along a railroad track, constructing buildings along the trail to help yourself and hinder your opponents, developing an engine within your evolving player board, and so much more.

43. Through the Desert

Best suited for everyone

As promised, we’re back with another irresistible adventure from the bottomless well of brilliance that is Knizia Games.  This time, we have pastel camels sprawling across a dry desert in search of lush oases, private piles of sand, and thirst-quenching watering holes.  Believe it or not, I was mildly underwhelmed with this game after my first play of it.  It was only with more plays at varying player counts that I uncovered my adoration of Through the Desert.  Once again, you can hear more about why I love this design in my recent Top 10 Knizia Games post.

42. Lost Cities

Best suited for everyone

Speaking of which, Lost Cities is the last I’ll speak of Reiner’s work for at least a dozen games, so you better eat up while you can!  Remember back when we were talking about Arboretum and how that is a painful card game where you don’t want to play or discard any of your cards?  Lost Cities takes those same hand management woes and cranks them up to ten!  The 20-point penalty for committing to a color is perfectly calculated to make you hesitate with every card you decide to play.  I especially love that you can start out a color with handshake cards that raise the stakes by doubling, tripling, or quadrupling your score, whether they are positive or negative points!  The temptation to commit to a color late can become strong as that color appears in your hand or in the draw piles, and the threat of a premature game end can make the final turns tight as noose!  I still stand by my previous statement that this is the chips and salsa of 2-player card games.

41. New York Zoo

Best suited for everyone

2020 was a great year for board games releases, and New York Zoo is the first one on my Top 50 games list to prove it.  Between the giant tray of animal meeples, the piles of polyomino enclosures, the emerging zoos on player boards, the bounteous breeding bonuses, and the roaming elephant action token, I find myself submerged in a colorful pool of play.  The race to fill your zoo first remains a refreshing change of pace from the common trope of gaining points for anything and everything.  Uwe Rosenberg and polyomino games pair together just as well as chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream…. Am I getting hungry or something?

40. Mandala  

Best suited for everyone

I’ve never been let-down by a play of Mandala.  The moments of difficult decisions and clever plays are a gift that keeps on giving.  The pleasant production consisting of a cloth “board” and colorful cards are merely a disguise for the confrontational gameplay that lurks beneath.  Your turns are spent essentially bidding for first dibs on the sets of colors in each mandala while feeding those sets for lucrative points.  Once a mandala is complete, the highest bidder chooses the first color to add to their scoring river, and frequently it’s best to take the cards that would help your opponent more than they help you.  

39. Jaipur

Best suited for everyone

Jaipur falls into the same category of simple, all-time greats within the 2-player card game genre.  It’s another one that doesn’t contain an immediate hook or obvious wow-factor, but it’s addictive flow grows on you over time.  I could tell you more about how Jaipur perfectly balances incentives against risks or goods against camels, but I wouldn’t be able to do it better than Kyle who put out a very slick 6-minute review of the game last year.

38. Cosmic Frog

Best suited for hobbyist gamers who appreciate the weird and wacky

We’re onto another one of my top releases of 2020 with Cosmic Frog!  Something about this punishing experience is so irresistible… sort of like staring at a sunset, or staying up past bedtime to watch another episode of your favorite show, or drinking soda while eating spicy food.  The more that Cosmic Frog hurts me, the more I want to play it.  Yet I’m far too greedy of a gamer to play the game defensively, and my greed continues to burn me.  Why send my frog groveling back to its vault with only one or two shards when I can load his gullet to the brim with goodies?!?  Why take only one action on my turn when I can spend a little oomph to double my productivity?!?  Why, you ask?  So my merciless opponents can come in and gut-punch me to another dimension and steal away everything I ever held dear.

37. The Estates

Best suited for mean, thick-skinned folks

While we’re on the topic of merciless gut-punching, we might as well transition to another one of my favorite blood baths, The Estates.  This one feels sort of like a sandbox game, where on your turn you have the freedom to auction off almost any piece still on the table, except players spend more time throwing sand at each other than building their own sand castles.  You may be the owner of the red company, but if I win the bid for that red building block, then you better believe I’m going to stack it in the negative point row to sabotage your score.  And if you let me get away with purchasing the Mayor token, then I’ll gleefully add it to your incomplete row where your buildings will now score you double negative points.  In The Estates, cruelty knows no bounds.

36. Lords of Vegas

Best suited for those who can tolerate a hearty dose of luck with their strategery

You know, it’s quite convenient that these games all ended up next to each other on my rankings.  Starting back with Cosmic Frog, we’re currently in the thick of some of the more polarizing games on my list.  It’s likely you either love ‘em or you hate ‘em, and Lords of Vegas is no different.  This is the game many have pointed to as “What Monopoly Should Have Been.”  Growing casinos, hostile business takeovers, big pay-days, gambling to steal money from others, and player turns spent blowing all your cash on greedy expansion schemes.  As an area control game with a flair for dramatic Vegas-style gambling, you’d be hard-pressed to find another game quite like Lords of Vegas.

35. Condottiere

Best suited for everyone

Kyle and I recently shared each of our Top 10 Family Games, and Condottiere was an easy one to add to this list.  It had proven it’s merit when I brought it on a vacation with relatives and they requested to play it multiple times over the many other games I had also brought and taught them that week.  Condottiere boils down to a card game of chicken where the last person to stay in gets to claim a territory if they committed the most troops, and the first person to control three adjacent territories or five total wins.  This game of chicken takes the form of an auction where you can commit troops from your hand to a battle, but that means you’ll have even less cards in the following round.  A major aspect of the strategy is to bluff your commitment and push others to spend too much for something that you don’t actually want, just so you can easily take a more important territory later.

34. Undaunted: Normandy & Undaunted: North Africa

Best suited for everyone

We’ve now arrived at my personal favorite deck-builder, the Undaunted series.  I’ve now played a combined total of 17 games of Undaunted (Normandy and North Africa) and we’re still going strong.  The many scenarios provided in these games help to keep each play fresh, and the asymmetry offered by each setup and faction make it doubly replayable.  The addicting loop of sacrificing a card to compete for initiative, deciding which actions to take with the remaining cards, and honing your deck in on the victory objective is as good as deck-building gets for me.  Just like in war, you’ll be sticking your neck out and taking big risks in hopes gaining the upper hand in this streamlined, 2-player, scenario-based war game.

33. Love Letter

Best suited for everyone

Love Letter might just be the best micro-game ever designed.  With only 16 cards and a handful of cubes, this design weaves together a tapestry of deception, deduction, drama, and delight.  Each player is holding one card in their hand, kept secret from everyone else.  On your turn, draw a second card into your hand and play one of them.  The goal is to be the last person standing or have the highest number when the deck runs out.  And the card actions and values are brilliantly crafted to where players can try to outfox each other with each quick round of play.

32. Treasure Island

Best suited for everyone

I adore how the pirate’s life comes alive in this island treasure hunt!  There is something so exhilarating about being Captain Long John Silver, marking the spot of your buried treasure on your private map, and then spending the entire game misleading the other mutinous pirates with vague, piecemeal information on your treasure’s whereabouts.  I also enjoy being one of those mutinous pirates, drawing on the large game board map, and scouring the island for the booty as I try to puzzle together the hints and clues before Long John escapes captivity and reunites with his treasure.  It’s been a while since I’ve played this wonderfully unique design, but that’s only because I’m waiting to receive my copy of the expansion which promises even more variety to the core experience.

31. Beyond the Sun

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

We’re back with yet another big 2020 release, and it’s really had an upswing in the rankings with my most recent plays of it.  In particular, Beyond the Sun was the very first game we played in our recent 2-part Board Game Birthday Marathon, and it ended up being the group favorite of the entire day.  We had a killer lineup of games that were played too, so that’s high praise indeed.  Beyond the Sun mixes tight resource management with branching worker placement actions on an evolving tech tree while providing a buttery smooth area control experience on the space exploration board.  The whole package comes together so beautifully that it’s all the more impressive to discover that this is designer Dennis K. Chan’s first published game.

30. Concordia

Best suited for everyone

As far as I’m concerned, Concordia deserves to be the real Catan of the board game industry.  It’s an accessible game all about getting your wooden settlements built onto the map, yet everything about Concordia is far more interesting and engaging than Catan.  You build up your hand of cards over time, and these not only serve as the action you take on your turn, but they also score you points at the end of the game according to how well you executed your game board strategy.  Concordia never fails to hit the spot, especially because you are not waiting for the dice to roll your numbers and trigger your resource production.  So maybe it’s time to give Catan the boot from your collection and introduce your friends to the REAL Catan which is the unbreakable Concordia.

29. Stephenson’s Rocket

 Best suited for Knizia fans and/or train game fans who plan on repeat plays

Like Beyond the Sun, Stephenson’s Rocket was another game we had the pleasure of enjoying at our recent gaming marathon.  While I can understand why it might be a bit polarizing due to the objective opacity and in-your-face nastiness, Stephenson’s Rocket is a game that really sings once you catch onto its crafty ways.  The opportunities for clever turns are subtle yet numerous in this design about extending rails, investing in industries, and bidding for control.  This game, in my opinion, is criminally underrated among Knizia’s designs and the board game industry itself.  To this day, I thank my lucky stars that I was able to discover it and snag myself a copy of Grail Game’s beautiful version.

28. Dogs of War

Best suited for any group of 4-5 players

Thus begins the reign of Paolo Mori on my top 50 games of all time list.  The man has landed himself not one, not two, but three spots among my top 30.  Dogs of War is the first that I have the privilege of acclaiming today.  While you could call this a worker placement game, I don’t really think of it as such.  Rather, I tend to think of it as a political tug-of-war strategy game.  Players act as Dogs of War who influence the battles that are taking place between noble houses.  The victor of each battle will be determined by whichever house receives the most support from players, and the players on the winning team will gain significant benefits.  The incentives to support a particular house on a particular round are many, and the challenge is to choose your allies wisely so that you benefit from the various battle outcomes more than any opponent.

27. Blitzkrieg!: World War Two in 20 Minutes

Best suited for everyone

For those of you who are unable to track down a copy of the out-of-print Dogs of War—or perhaps even more difficult is the challenge of gathering 4-5 players around one table—then Mr. Mori has just the solution: a new 2-player, 20 minute version of this game known as Blitzkrieg.  And what a heck of a 20 minutes this design is.  Those who dismiss Blitzkrieg for its generic look or plain production are simply missing out on one of the best new 2-player games in the industry.  The back and forth that occurs between two opponents as they attempt to conquer each theatre of war is a blast from start to finish.  Unlike most war games, there are no cards or dice involved here.  You simply select one of three tile options that are hidden behind your shield to play out almost anywhere onto the board.  The tile you choose and the spot you place it on may haunt you long after this 20 minute romp is over. 

26. The Mind

Best suited for everyone

I have to imagine that those who scoff at the simplicity of The Mind just haven’t uncovered the magic within.  The Mind captures the organic satisfaction of acting on gut-feelings and having those feelings confirmed by others without even word spoken between them.  It’s a cooperative game where the group must find an equilibrium, a rhythm, and a tempo together as they play numerical cards from their hands in ascending order without saying anything.  While it starts out laughably basic in round one, the difficulty quickly ramps up as more cards are dealt each round and the group loses more lives.  Some of the best board and card game designs on this planet attain such greatness because they trim away the fiddly supplemental rules and maintain a laser focus on what makes them special.  The Mind is one such design that remains a joy to play with the right people who are willing to invest in its unusual concept.

Continue on to the next post for the final 25 of my Top 50 Board Games of All Time!

Article written by Nick Murray. If you found yourself nodding in agreement to some of his favorite games, then keep an eye out for 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! Don’t miss out on this killer filler bundle coming in 2021! Subscribe to the Bitewing Games monthly newsletter to stay in touch.

The post Top 50 Board Games of All Time — Games 50-26 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

10 Games, 2 Saturdays, 1 Mission: Play until our brains are fried. Nick shares his experiences and impressions of these 10 games hand-picked for maximum entertainment and played over the course of two gaming marathons.

These past two Saturdays consisted of birthday celebrations of the best kind, where I and another friend chose to forgo physical birthday presents in favor of something even better…. TIME.  Time to step away from the responsibilities of life and do nothing but play tabletop games all day long.  Fortunately for us, our small gaming group had time as well, and thus we dove headfirst into two meaty Saturdays of seemingly endless fun.

The first Saturday started with one of my top 15 games of 2020, Beyond the Sun.  Despite me sitting at the table with the board facing the opposite direction, something that is usually relentlessly annoying for a very wordy game board, I was able to manage just fine.  

Beyond the Sun was perhaps the favorite game of most players that entire day.  The area control board of planets was hotly contested, more so than I’ve ever seen.  Some planets with a colonization requirement of only 3 ships were seeing massive armadas (multiple ships tallying up to 7 or 8 or even more) occupying their territory with a fierce death grip.

It was difficult to ignore the allure of that half of the game and focus heavily on the tech tree because most of the public objectives and many great bonuses incentivized colonization and control.  It made for a thrilling and intense game where all came away fully satisfied with the start of the day.

The next game on the menu was Reiner Knizia’s train game, Stephenson’s Rocket, featuring the Eastern US expansion map.  I’m usually a train station kind of guy, throwing them down generously and early to get a leg up on scoring points when locomotives connect to rail towns.  But with this map, there is an even higher scoring potential for industry investments, so I decided to mix up my primary strategy.

The center of the board quickly became crowded with my opponents moving locomotives, gaining stocks, and throwing down train stations.  I opted to stick to the perimeter of the board, but with less help from others to get things rolling, and my best rail company quickly getting rammed into an inescapable corner by a devious rival, I found myself falling behind in the early game.

I had to pivot my strategy if I wanted to salvage the slow start.  So I did what all the best train games let you do: I leeched the prized stocks from players who were in too deep to let me tank their rail companies.  The interesting thing about having a heavy station strategy—where you want to connect to your stations and towns for maximum scoring—is that opponents can take advantage of your obvious intentions.  

If I start steering a locomotive away from somebody else’s next big payday, they must begin burning off stock to veto my chosen direction and keep their plans from… derailing.  With only a few turns, I can overtake the lead for a company’s stock and then let my opponents handle the rest of my dirty work, because now every city and town they connect to will serve to score me massive points as well.  This strategy worked very well for me to the point where I made a huge point rush in the second half.  Though I didn’t win, I was satisfied with my diabolical takeover.

Speaking of hostile takeovers, our next game was old reliable Lords of Vegas.  This is a game that requires a higher luck tolerance than most plus a generous appreciation of the thematic intricacies of the design.  When I first realized that a game titled Lords of Vegas has inherent risk and gambling integrated into every action available to players, I discovered my undying love for this box of bombastic fun.  It had been seven months since my previous play, and this long-awaited reunion made our play all the sweeter.

Of course, I refuse to play this game with the provided Monopoly-like paper money, opting instead for Roxley’s Iron Clays.  While it looks and sounds like Monopoly, Lord of Vegas deserves to be held to higher standard thanks to its clever, cutthroat strategic space.  Our play was riddled with the usual casino dynasties and huge momentum swings, and it was an enjoyable ride to take with friends.  Despite our best efforts, we weren’t able to bring down the 7-tile mammoth controlled by the black color.

Next, we leaped from one end of the luck spectrum to the other by digging into Hansa Teutonica Big Box.  I can’t get enough of this classic, German-style Euro design.  It never ceases to amaze us how each play has an extremely different feel from the last.  This time, the most popular upgrade (gaining more actions per turn) was left wide open for me to exploit in the early game.  I quickly threw down a trading post at this site and milked it for all I could while leaping to the maximum 5 action upgrade surprisingly early in the game.

We also saw another player make a great run for the coast-to-coast connection that scored them 7 points in the late game.  I caught onto their intentions and did my best to be a thorn in their side by throwing down trading posts and merchants along their path.  It turned out to be a wise play on my part, as I ended up stealing away first place from that player by only one point.

We followed up this cube placing extravaganza with a game that is fresh out of the oven: Bristol 1350.  This is a plague-themed social deduction race from my friends over at Facade Games.  I previously playtested and wrote a preview for this game, and it’s great to see the final form that Bristol 1350 has taken.  A noteworthy change that I immediately noticed in the final rules is that nobody starts out with the plague during setup, as I remember that certain players could and did start with the plague in previous versions.

Yet with what felt like a rare stroke of chance, the very first cart mingle of the game resulted in myself and my cart-mates all contracting the plague, though we didn’t know at that time that all three of us had succumbed to the same fate .  From there, we fanned out and did our best to sabotage the innocent victims of the other two carts.  

Despite our best efforts, another cart of seemingly healthy passengers raced ahead of the rest and escaped town to our sadistic disappointment.  They each revealed their secrets… one was healthy, as was the second, as was the—NOPE!  The third passenger in the cart had contracted the plague during a seemingly harmless mingle long before the finish line, and he strung his teammates along the rest of the way before brutally stabbing them in the back!  It was quite the sight to behold.

At this point, the board game marathon was winding down, so we found it fitting to play one last quick, simple game…. and that game was Social Grooming.  Social Grooming is one of the three designs in our upcoming Kickstarter bundle launching later this year.  While the other two games were cooked up by master chef, Reiner Knizia, this one is our own in-house design.  

To play Social Grooming, I dealt out eleven cards to each player to form their own face-down deck.  Then, much like the popular card game, Hanabi, we each drew one card off the top of our decks and held them facing away from ourselves so we could see everybody’s cards except our own.  This is where the madness begins, as we immediately proceeded to offer the cards in our hands—something we knew absolutely nothing about—to others at the table.  

Similar to one of our family favorites, Chinatown, players participate in a simultaneous negotiation phase.  Yet negotiation becomes all the more tricky when you don’t know how valuable your own goods are.  The key is to pick up on subtle cues and reactions while downplaying other people’s cards.  When you see somebody’s eyes go as wide as flying saucers at the sight of your own card, you start to get a hunch for what you could be holding.  And the good news is that you are allowed to keep your card instead of trading it if you feel it is valuable.

Yet value is partially contextual in Social Grooming.  Everybody wants a 10 value card, as it is the highest point card in the game, but nobody wants two 10 value cards, because pairs will cancel each other out during scoring.  The same card can be both very good for one player and very bad for another.  And when you are able to keep tabs on what cards are currently bad for other players, there’s a whole nother layer to this tricky trading where you can bluff your reactions to an opponent’s card in an attempt to convince them to keep a bad one.

I’ll save further details for a future designer diary, but our session crowned two joint victors after three rounds of play.  I found it quite funny that one special card type plagued my collection at the end of one round yet it was the only card I so desperately wanted and could not attain in the next round.

The following Saturday’s marathon was kicked off with a game I received for Christmas and finally got around to playing for the first time: Galaxy Trucker.  In board game years, Galaxy Trucker is getting to be quite the old-timer, yet my first play of it proved that it still provides a highly unique and enjoyable experience.

The simultaneous, chaotic, real-time spatial puzzle of the first phase paired with a bombastic push-your-luck second phase makes for a perfect blend of entertainment.  I dig how the game ramps up in craziness over the course of three rounds and you’re not completely out of the game after a rough beginning or middle act.  I had always heard that this was a game about clinging on for dear life as your hodgepodge space ship gets blasted to smithereens, yet I got cocky after an easy two rounds where my ships suffered hardly a scratch.

Round three was where this wacky space game humbled me.  I quickly built out a flawless left half of my ship before realizing that I had nearly walled off the entire right half of my board.  The final minutes of building consisted of me scrambling to find the only piece that can fit into the one spot that I can even connect anything to, just so I could keep my hopes alive of filling in the many empty spaces still on my board. 

This messy right side of the building phase was merely a foreshadowing of the flight phase, where very early on some nasty pirates arrived and blew off the right side of my ship that I had clumsily cobbled together last-minute.  It’s as if they could see my weak point from a mile away and took a single pot shot to bring the whole thing down.  Needless to say, I had to give up before round three was over so I could recede into a black hole of shame and lick my many wounds.

Brass: Birmingham

Fortunately, I came storming back in our next play of none other than Brass Birmingham.  Brass is a game that never gets old for me, despite my many plays of it.  I’m typically the player who can’t resist the big point pottery tiles, and sure enough, I got two of them out on the board before game end.  In this particular game, the demand for coal far outweighed the supply, so players were frequently forking over five or ten pounds just to get a couple of those precious cubes.  Meanwhile, the beer was bounteous and plentiful until the very last round of the game, where it dried up in an instant, forcing a couple players to pivot on their final plans.  

The thing that gives Brass so much mileage play after play is just how interactive and dynamic the economy is.  My plan to feed the hungry iron market can be completely obliterated when the person right before me cranks out an iron producing tile or builds on the space I was planning to use or spends the coal that I so desperately needed for my turn. 

Designer Martin Wallace understands the importance of turn order, and he wields it with unapologetic brutality in Brass.  Yet a lost opportunity in one area of the market simply means an open door in another area.  Players must be as fluidly adaptive as they are cutthroat in order to thrive in Brass Birmingham.  My many previous experiences with Brass helped me to come out on top in this particular session, and I was able to score the most network and building points in the rail era.

Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

Yet our group hadn’t quite had enough of that economic savagery, because we next decided to break out the grizzly bear of a box containing Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy.  My faction of choice for this session was the Descendants of Draco, who are buddy-buddy with the imposing ancients.  Ancients are gray ships that show up on the board and take on any player who trespasses on their property.  Yet the Descendants faction has the exclusive privilege of peacefully cohabitating with Ancients and even claiming control of their tiles.  

In the early stages of the game, it can be quite difficult to take out an Ancient, and I used that to my advantage by exploring and churning out as many ancients around me as possible.  I formed an early peace treaty with the Terran Alliance who were immediately to my left (left is a direction in space… right?); yet my insurance policy was the pile of Ancients he would have to bulldoze through if he wanted to reach my precious sectors with a later betrayal.

Meanwhile, I knew the Eridani Empire and the player who controlled them to my immediate right to be an overly aggressive bunch, so I constructed my explored tiles in a way that they didn’t have a single wormhole that would let them through into my territory.  Between a peaceful neighbor and an impenetrable wall, these cleverly constructed defenses quickly lost their coziness when I realized that I now had very few options for scoring points in this space-faring war game.

So I did what any reasonable person would do and bided my time as I piled my biggest and best ships onto the sector that was right next-door to the central GDCS (Galactic Defense Center System) that looks suspiciously similar to the Death Star.  This GDCS is known to Eclipse veterans as a lucrative opportunity for scoring big points and skyrocketing one’s economy.  One must spend several of the game’s 8 rounds preparing to take this centerpiece down.  Yet once a faction does all the hard work of taking out the GDCS and becoming the new occupant of the valuable central tile, they are now at their weakest, making themselves an easy target in the following round for anyone else to pile onto and perform cleanup crew. 

So while I was amassing my glorious space fleet on one side of the GDCS, two other factions—the Planta and the Eridani Empire—were doing the very same thing on other sides the central tile.  Judging by the gnarly blueprints on their ships, I knew I likely wouldn’t survive a showdown against either of them.  My best bet was to take the coward’s way out and backstab the Terran Alliance who had spent all game building 3-point Monoliths on SIX DIFFERENT TILES in their region!  Do not think less of me, for none can resist the allure of such an opportunity.

So with two rounds left to play out, I sent my fleet sprawling deep into Terran Alliance territory, squashing one starbase after another like ants under my space shoes.  And inn the final round, the Eridani Empire sniped both the Planta ships and the GDCS before the fight could even begin with some of the best missile rolls this side of the Lylat System.  They didn’t even break a sweat obliterating the central space and had earned three rare 4-point Reputation tokens by game end.  Yet it was my own Descendants who ultimately reigned supreme after being branded a traitor and stealing away over twenty points worth of tiles and Monoliths from the poor, gullible humans of the Terran Alliance.

Soda Smugglers

Despite Eclipse only being our third game of the day, we had nearly reached our limit for gaming that evening.  Yet the group was gracious enough to play one last 20-minute game that was in need of some playtesting as requested by the one and only Reiner Knizia. 

Like us, Reiner is quite excited to see his games, Soda Smugglers and Pumafiosi, be published with the help of Kickstarter backers, so he’s spent these past few weeks cooking up some stretch goal content for both games.  Due to COVID restrictions, Reiner’s legion of play testers are a bit more limited lately, so he suggested that some further testing on our end wouldn’t hurt.

For a Soda Smugglers stretch goal, Dr. Knizia has crafted an 8-card event deck that is most comparable to the event deck in Quacks of Quedlinburg.  At the start of each round, the Border Police Officer flips one event card and reveals the unique conditions of that turn.  These clever events range from the Police Officer being more lenient toward travelers because it’s their birthday and they are in a good mood, to having a sniffer dog who aids in the search for illegal suitcases because he’s a good boy.  In classic Knizian fashion, these event cards contain minor tweaks to the core gameplay that make for drastically different feeling rounds.  After playing and enjoying the base game many times now, this optional content was a welcome addition to mix up the core formula.  

I made a good run at smuggling my own suitcases of soda over our five rounds, but another crafty opponent adapted well to the different events.  She knew just when it was the right time to either pull the trigger and smuggle piles of soda or resist the temptation and cross with legal luggage, and thus she emerged the Soda Kingpin of the night.  As intended, Dr. Knizia’s upcoming game was a great way to wind our marathon down with some light, simple fun.

So there you have it… Two full Saturdays of board gaming bliss!  Should you find your own small group to safely gather with soon, I highly recommend a similar session of entertainment therapy.  And if you couldn’t tell from my experiences, I highly recommend all of the games mentioned above.  Hopefully you enjoyed these musings as much as I enjoyed sharing them.

Article written by Nick Murray. To follow the above mentioned Social Grooming and Soda Smugglers as they come to Kickstarter, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

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I always look forward to comparing, ranking, and declaring my top games of the year.  When I tune in to other content creators’ lists, I’m frequently fuming or cheering at their selections and omissions: 

“How could you leave this MASTERPIECE completely off your list?!?” 

“Thank you!  THAT’s what I’m talking about!  This gal just gets it!” 

“Yeah, I played your favorite game of the year, and I seem to recall it being a HOT MESS!”

“Can confirm, this game is freaking LEGENDARY.”

But at the end of the day, these lists represent the unique experiences that people shared with a particular design, and they reflect one’s individual tastes and preferences within a medium that mixes art, entertainment, and narrative.  Ultimately, these lists are a celebration of designers, illustrators, publishers, and countless others who had a vision, worked tirelessly to make it a reality, and succeeded at bring joy to others.  

Despite my vain, passionate feelings on this subject, I fully acknowledge that my rankings are no more right than others.  All I can offer is some insight into how this list might provide some unique benefits.  So let’s talk about that for a moment.

Every hobby has it’s own subgroups of individuals and types.  You have the casual dabblers—those who merely enjoy a simple, convenient sampling here and there.  The hardcore campers—those who find their sweet spot, set up camp, and pay no mind to their wider surroundings because they are content with digging deeper and deeper into their cozy niche.  Then there’s the hungry explorers—this is what I consider myself within the industry.  We explorers set out to find the very best within each region, the cream of the crop.  And there are very few categories that we don’t extract enjoyment from.  We certainly stub plenty of toes and hit plenty of dead ends along the way, but the constant feeling of discovery within a world of creativity makes it all worth it.

I’m likely one of the more critical explorers in this hobby, as I’ll hold no punches against games that don’t land for me. Concerning tabletop games, my strongest biases are probably against sprawling, cumbersome cooperative designs and any game that heavily prioritizes tangible style over mechanical substance.  You’re not gonna see these types of games on this list because they just don’t speak to me from a design perspective, so I didn’t even seek out an opportunity to play them.  Anything that flaunts its components or theme so hard that I have difficulty seeing a clever and clean mechanical underbelly gives me enough reason to leave it alone while keeping an open ear out for them among the critics I follow.

I’m not surprised by many of the games that have ended up on other’s top 2020 lists.  I’m much more surprised by the games that haven’t ended up on other’s 2020 lists!  These are the unsung gems that I’ve set out to play and analyze to ensure that they’ve gotten the love and attention they deserve.  This is why my list is debuting in March of 2021 rather than December of 2020.  And this is why I’ll return at the end of this year to revisit 2020’s releases again, just like I did with my Best Games of 2019 list.  Come December, we’ll be looking back at the Lovers, Keepers, Dumpers, Flingers, and Seekers of 2020 after an extra year of playtime.  As for now, we’ll stick with my current top 15 board games of 2020. 

Fair warning: you may find some of these selections to be upsetting. Several of my top 15 are either second editions, re-implementations, or basically re-printings.  And for those of you who feel inclined to protest, I suggest you first direct your pitchforks and torches to popular reviewers Shut Up and Sit Down or No Pun Included, who hilariously and entirely selected games that existed before 2020 as their top games of 2020.  I only jest, they’re a bunch of great folks who had great picks all-around.

I debated whether or not to include these remixed games among my rankings. Ultimately, I realized that without their 2020 versions, I may never have discovered these absolute bangers.  If that excuse is not good enough for you, then you are welcome to simply cross those out on my list and shift everything else beneath them upwards.

Finally, let me just add one more hot take:. Anybody who claims that 2020 was a weak year for board game releases has simply spoken too soon…  or they are a “hardcore camper” in the hobby who is unsatisfied with their particular genre of releases.  This was one of the most excruciating lists I have ever had to rank.  Pushing certain titles down the hierarchy had me writhing in pain.  Leaving several of these gems outside of my top 15 feels like tossing my precious children out of the house, locking the door, and abandoning them to the desolate cold.  I played at least 20 new firecrackers from last year, and at the end of this post I’ll be sharing even more remaining contenders.  2020 was unquestionably a killer year for board game releases.

Top 15 Board Games of 2020

15. Beyond the Sun

The first thing I want to say about Beyond the Sun is that I’m honestly shocked that this game didn’t end up higher in my rankings.  I agree with So Very Wrong About Games’ Mark Bigney in that this is one of the best new Euros of 2020.  But full merits are given to this stellar design and the other 2020 releases that just barely squeezed past it on my personal rankings.

Beyond the Sun is a triumph thanks to its unflinching commitment to being extremely good at one particular thing: A Tech Tree.  The possibilities branch ever outward in this space civilization game where the actions start out few and simple yet quickly multiply into many powerful options.  The strategy of developing your technologies is well-balanced against the opportunities for controlling and colonizing the systems of space.

For anyone looking for the best Euro of 2020, Beyond the Sun is a strong contender.

14. Iwari

Iwari is a breath of fresh air every time I play it.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that this gorgeous production is a visual and tactile pleasure.  But there are plenty of games that can reach that bar these days.  What sets Iwari apart from the pack is its simple, breezy gameplay mixed with insanely clever rules.  I can easily recall these 3-2-1 rules from memory: Play up to 3 cards to place 2 pieces in 1 territory, then refill your hand back up to 3.  Boom.  That’s all there is to it.  The only thing that functionally matters about each card is its color.  Play some colors and draw some more.

I’m gonna toss out some phrases like candy on Halloween.  If any of these mean anything to you, particularly if they fill your heart with childlike joy, then you’ll know that Iwari is must-try for you because it evokes strong feelings of the following:

• Cube Rails
• Knizian Elegance
• Dynamic Player Interaction

For the rest of you, Iwari compares quite similarly to the worldwide phenomenon known as Ticket to Ride.  The key differences are that Iwari contains more depth and room for strategy, but feels entirely abstract.  That’s quite easy to forgive because, again, this game is a real looker.

13. Durian

If you aren’t familiar with a publisher known as Oink Games, they are an extremely charming Japanese brand known for their tiny, rectangular boxes crammed with stylish components that make for quick, simple, and (usually) engaging games.  Shut Up and Sit Down does a great job reviewing a whole heaping of their games, even ranking them into tiers from “Worst” to “Average” to “Best.”

The 3 Oink Games that made their top tier include A Fake Artist Goes to New York, Insider, and Startups.  I can confirm that that all 3 of these titles have been hits at our table and keepers in our collection.  Wait, I thought we were supposed to be talking about Durian! Why all this preamble?!  Oh, that’s right.  Because Durian is one of the latest offerings from Oink Games, and I’m here to formally nominate it to be ranked in the Top Tier list alongside the Big 3!

Durian is the type of game you can set down in front of your complexity-averse mother-in-law, get her fully engaged in the competition, and yet still have a blast playing yourself.  That’s exactly what I did very recently when she flew out to help take care of our newborn.  We had such a great time trying the game that we found ourselves back at it the very next night!  

This game of deduction and bluffing sees players acting as clerks running the same store.  Each person displays one inventory card toward everyone else and away from themselves.  You can’t see the types or amounts of fruits on your own card, but you can see all the other cards.  Thus, everybody has imperfect information about how much inventory is in this fruit store.  One at a time, players take an order card from the deck and add it to the center, deciding which of the two options on the card to add as a customer order.  The moment a player feels that the orders exceed the inventory, they can instead ring the bell, calling the grumpy gorilla manager to inspect the problem.  Players lay all the inventory cards face up and determine whether the tattletale made the right call.  If they did, then the previous player (in turn order) takes the blame for taking the last order!  But if not, then the tattletale gets punished for their false alert!  Whoever has the lowest sum of angry manager tokens at game end wins!

Durian just hits the SPOT as a filler game.  It has the perfect amount of luck, drama, suspense, and mystery to make for tense, addictive rounds that end with a thrilling ring of a tiny bell.   Even at 3-players, we’ve had so many memorable rounds.  Despite us playing the game many times, I still haven’t won it a single time.  Yet those moments of me being one decision away from sweet victory, confidently ringing the tiny bell, and watching it all crumble under the gleeful eyes of my mother-in-law as I discover that I was horrifyingly wrong about my own inventory card is a memory that holds a special place in my heart.

12. Fort

From the moment Leder Games announced Fort, I knew we were in for a treat.  How can a game that is illustrated by the legendary Kyle Ferrin and all about being kids who build forts, make and steal friends, and collect toys and pizza not be pure delight?!  Spoilers:  It is pure delight.

Although, you have to come into Fort with the right mindset.  Those who see that this is a “deck builder” and come rolling in with their truckload of associated expectations are either going to be pleasantly surprised or bitterly disappointed by this subversive design.  Within Fort, you won’t find many of the popular ingredients that most deck builders contain like mega-combo turns or meticulously crafted player decks.  What you will find is refreshing and rare deck building ingredients including significant player interaction.

Fort is less about calculating the entire trajectory of your strategy and more about rolling with the punches.  This works extremely well because the game plays so quickly.  There are also a good handful of icons to learn at the beginning, but they’re well designed and easily remembered thanks to the handy player aids.  While this game contains surprisingly more rules than its appearance suggests, the act of playing Fort feels nimble, whimsical, and joyous.

11. Renature

Ever heard of a little game called Azul?  You know, one of the top selling board games of the past several years?  Well I would suggest that Renature deserves to be the next Azul, and that’s not just because they share the same father (designer Michael Kiesling).  Consider this: both Azul and Renature are pretty games with chunky pieces.  Both games serve up elegant rules above a platter of agonizing decisions with a hearty dollop of cutthroat nastiness on top.  Only Renature is MORE.  More elegant, more agonizing, and much, MUCH nastier.  When the placement of a single domino and a single plant token can cause my wife to say in a burst of rage, “I’m never playing this game with you again,” that’s when you know you’ve found a rare treasure.

In fact, now that I reconsider it, Renature likely won’t reach the same heights as Azul simply because of how evil it allows its participants to be.  Don’t get me wrong, I am in LOVE with the diabolical opportunities this game presents, but you’ll require some thick skin to get through this fiery furnace of fun, especially at 2-players.

You’re probably wondering if I’m even talking about the right design at this point.  Yes, I am talking about the cute, cuddly game with colorful animal dominoes and cheery chunks of foliage and bright sunflower tokens.  Speaking of dominoes, I’m gonna plant my flag right here and declare that this is the greatest domino game of all time.  Come at me, Dominites!!!

10. Cosmic Frog

What a strange beast of a game, that Cosmic Frog.  Across the entire list of my Top 15 Board Games of 2020, this one is likely the most polarizing.  My personal experience with Cosmic Frog up to this point has been ripe with bad luck.  Yet for those who can appreciate the bizarre, refreshing package that this game provides, those moments of horrible luck are part of its memorable charm.

That charm oozes from every inch of the production.  Take one look at the psychedelic art or read a brief description of this whacky concept and you’ll get what I mean.  Players control 2-mile-tall cosmic frogs that leap through the interstellar aether, consuming planetary shards that are stored in their gullets, before disgorging their gullets of valuable terrain into their inter-dimensional vaults.  Simple enough, right?  Only these frogs can hit each other so hard that they vacuum the shards out of each other’s gullets or even blast their victim into another dimension learning their vault unprotected.

This is the only game I’ve ever encountered that transforms turn order into a randomly shuffled deck.  That’s right, on one end of the spectrum you can sometimes have multiple turns in a row, on the other end you might be waiting what feels like AGES for your next turn to show up.  Designer Jim Felli fully embraces this chaos by asking players how far they wish to push their luck.  By making player turns feel like unicorn sightings, players develop this insatiable hunger and greed to milk each turn for all its worth.  The problem is that you only get one free action each turn; if you want to take a second action, you’ll have to spend precious Oomph, and less Oomph in your supply translates to a larger target on your back because Oomph gives frogs significant advantages when spent in combat.

The luck in Cosmic Frog is like a huge serving platter where players must decide how many expensive drinks in fragile glasses they are willing to carry at once.  Successful deliveries can equate to huge gains, but a tilt of the platter can be disastrous.  I’m the type who can’t resist using up all the precious platter real-estate, and thus I’ve landed myself in more than a few self-inflicted messes.

I think at this point you know whether this is game for you.  And if it is for you, then boy are you in for a trip!  So BUCKLE UP!!!

9. Scape Goat

Like Durian, this is another under-the-radar gem that I haven’t seen on ANY top games of 2020 lists.  I can’t exactly blame anyone for judging this game by it’s cover, because one can’t help but assume that the goat puns are the only standout feature here.  Let me be perfectly clear that such brash assumptions are entirely WRONG.

Scape Goat is the epitome of a sleeper hit.  At the time of this writing, which is nearly three months into 2021, this game has a whopping total of 222 owners and 62 ratings and an overall rank of 7,930 on BoardGameGeek.com.  For those of you not familiar with the stats, that’s a depressingly low number for one of the freshest designs in the entire party deduction genre. 

The conventions of social deduction are flipped on their head here.  From the get-go, everybody knows exactly who the Scape Goat of the round is because their individual cards reveal this person to them, except one player’s card is lying to them and that player could be YOU.  

So do you think you’re the Scape Goat?!  Why is she acting that way?  Why did he take that card?!?  You better run to the police before your traitorous gang throws you under the bus!  But hold up, you’ll jeopardize everything if you aren’t actually the Scape Goat…

While your own teammates might scare you off within the game, don’t let the term “party” scare you off about this game.  This one is meant to be played with only 3-6 people.  And if you want experience the most paranoid-induced 5-20 minutes of your gaming career, then you’d be wise to pick up a copy of Scape Goat.

8. New York Zoo

We’re on a roll with the animal games here, so let’s continue with the excellent New York Zoo. What can I say about this delectable racing game featuring diverse polyomino enclosures and colorful animal breeding that hasn’t already been said? I’ve already spent paragraphs upon paragraphs gushing over this design in my feature article, Battle of the Polyominoes, where New York Zoo is a close runner up to the greatest family-weight polyomino game of all time (more on that later).

What lands New York Zoo so high on my Top Board Games of 2020? Satisfaction. The pleasure of moving an elephant around a rondel. The relief of claiming the perfect piece to fit your zoo. The amusement of breeding penguins and kangaroos and arctic foxes. The achievement of snatching a precious rollercoaster from the supply. The pride of timing your moves and your spaces perfectly while predicting your opponent’s decisions. And the ultimate satisfaction of completing your zoo first and becoming the winner.

7. Undaunted: North Africa

Undaunted: Normandy made my top 10 games of 2019, so it should come as little surprise that Undaunted: North Africa is keeping the hot streak going. Despite this Undaunted sequel retaining the same core system, we still haven’t grown tired of this stellar head-to-head deck builder. This fusion of deck building and tactical war commanding is a match made in heaven.

North Africa cleverly builds on its predecessor by polishing the rules, speeding up the playing time, increasing asymmetry, and smoothly implementing vehicles. Yet, for complete newcomers to Undaunted, I still might recommend Normandy first because it is a solid game that will provide you with at least a dozen worthwhile plays and make the jump to North Africa feel like an exciting evolution of the fun. But you really can’t go wrong with either game.

The Undaunted series will go down as one of the most played experiences in our entire collection thanks to its tense decisions interlaced with slick gameplay across many thrilling scenarios.

6. Tournament at Avalon

I’ve been enchanted by this trick-taking game ever since my first play of it. The extra large cards and the appropriately thematic art contribute to a highly satisfying card game with charmingly medieval brutality.

There is no winner of each trick in Tournament at Avalon. Rather there is merely a loser who plays the lowest card and takes the trick of played cards into their “wound” pile which will bring them that much closer to death. All of the other rules, powers, special cards round out this compelling entree for a fantastic feast of fun.

No other game makes me as excited to be in last place as this one. Last place means that I get to have a unique, overpowered ability for an entire round. Last place means that I’m the closest to activating my secondary power. Last place means that I can rally my fellow opponents around a common cause: bringing down the leader.

You can explore my full review of this riotous romp here.

5. Curious Cargo

Speaking of full reviews of stellar games, Curious Cargo earned one from me recently as well. One key takeaway from my review is that this 2-player puzzler isn’t for everyone. It’s best suited for those who love spatial analysis, crave dynamic player interaction, and feed on adaptive challenges.

I can’t get over how dense and indulgent this small box feels. The PVC material used for the six unique player boards, the screen printed wooden cargo tokens, the player forklifts, the long truck tiles, the double-sided conveyer tiles, the Kwanchai Moriya art… Mmm, mmm, MMMM. Of course these would all mean nothing if the game wasn’t also highly compelling and repayable challenge.

Curious Cargo is all that and a bag of chips. It’s one that I just don’t see myself ever turning down a chance to play.

4. My City

Well, it’s time to make good on my promise from back when we were talking about New York Zoo. The design that has proven to be the greatest family-weight polyomino game of all time is Reiner Knizia’s My City. You don’t have to take my word for it! Go look for yourself! My City took down heavyweight champions Patchwork and Barenpark, for crying out loud!

Beyond being the GOAT (greatest of all time) in that category, I’m gonna throw down the other gauntlet and say that this is the best legacy game by a country mile. Legacy game fans may cry foul here, citing the lack of a heavy narrative to accompany this mechanical rollercoaster, but I’ve yet to see a legacy game as slick, streamlined, and focused as My City.

No other Legacy game that I’ve encountered fundamentally changes my entire strategic approach from one play to the next like My City. No other Legacy game I’ve encountered feels as gut-wrenching, tense, and personal as My City.

I named the city on my player board Wolverton, in honor of the gray wolf symbol on my board. We’ve been through soaring highs and crushing lows, Wolverton and I. We’ve seen eras come and go… times of prosperity and times of famine, times of opportunity and times of trouble. From the stickered trees to the cursed rocks, from the winding river to the sprawling buildings, there’s a familiar coziness to this game that I will desperately miss when we conclude our final episode that is now only a few plays away.

My only hope is that the good Dr. Knizia will give us a sequel to My City before too long…

We now enter the top 3 games of 2020 which, admittedly, all have existed in some form before last year. Since I’m making guilty admissions, I’ll also toss this one out for you to chew on: I’m not confident in how I ranked these games against each other. It feels like my opinion on how these should be ordered could change tomorrow… or in an hour… or right now—One second, let me just swap number 1 with number 3… Yeah that’s better… Hold on! Number 2 looks like it accidentally got pushed one lower than it should. We’ll just bump that one back up…. there we go! And then we’ll just tidy things up by rearranging 3 with 2 and 2 with 1… and voila! I now present to you my top 3 Board Games of 2020!

3. Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

Every hobbyist gamer deserves a good war game in their collection. An old, reliable friend who will always be there for you when have large table, a few enthusiastic companions, and a wide chunk of free time that all need spending.

And no, I’m not talking about a war game like the previously mentioned Undaunted: North Africa. I’m talking about a wooly mammoth war game that rarely emerges from its spot on your shelf but always makes a splash when it does hit the table. I’m talking about the kind of game that often requires 2 or 3 tables, 4 or 5 hours, days or weeks of prior planning.

This is the type of game that I considered a “bucket list” experience. I figured, “Hey, if I ever get the chance to play somebody else’s copy of one of these mega-hits, then that sounds great! But there’s no way in heck I’m dropping 100 bucks or more on a game like that when I don’t even know if I’ll ever get to play it!”

At least that was my attitude until I met Eclipse: Second Dawn. The creators of Eclipse looked long and hard at what gamers love about this genre and what barriers are keeping everyone from enjoying it more. Eclipse Second Dawn, a reimplementation of the 2011 original, was their answer. And this game is one heck of an answer!

Within Eclipse, we have a sprawling, epic game that can be played in a very reasonable 2-3 hours (maybe 4+ for complete beginners). We have a stunning production that feels perfectly tailored to enhance and supplement the entire experience. And we have a whole cornucopia of engaging decisions and weighty consequences within this beautiful blend of Euro-like management and Sci-fi style conflict.

2. Sidereal Confluence: Remastered Edition

Sidereal Confluence is all about being a wildly unique alien who exchanges resources and ideas with other intergalactic beings in a quest to maximize your strengths and develop new technologies.  In other words, it’s an epic simultaneous negotiation game featuring cubes, converters, and asymmetric factions.  

While the original edition of Sidereal Confluence released in 2017, and I was fully aware of it before 2020, it was 2020’s Remastered Edition that finally convinced me to give this game a try.  The Remastered Edition changes nothing about the core gameplay; rather, it aims to increase readability, clean up graphic design, improve the rulebook, provide a useful teaching guide, and modernize the overall look of the game.  Call me vain, if you must, but this newer version is infinitely more attractive and approachable, and that’s precisely the push I needed to dive in to this negotiation romp.

Even subtle touches such as trimming the alien names down from “KJASJAVIKALIMM” to “K-JAS” on the player shields is a wise change to avoid scaring off newcomers.  Despite the thematic liberties that Tauceti Deichmann has taken to challenge our lingual abilities, his design is as rock solid as ever.  The fresh makeover is a fitting production that matches the high quality of the design.  

This is the ultimate negotiation game where almost anything goes as players desperately strive to acquire the resources and converters that will propel them to victory.  Few things are as satisfying as turning a pile of useless resources in a cornucopia of opportunities via the art of negotiation.  Just be prepared for a crowded table and lot of noise, as this game hosts up to 9 players, and things can get wild.

While it demands much in terms of time, space, and participants, this is an all-time favorite that will undoubtedly make it to my table for years to come.

1. Hansa Teutonica: Big Box

Hansa Teutonica is the type of German game design that wipes the floor with other Euros before gobbling them up with glee. It requires no decks of cards, no piles of money and resources, no desperately extravagant variable setups… It simply gives each player a small board with a bunch of cubes and a few discs and challenges them to use these “tradesmen” wisely upon the game board.

Each turn, participants have 5 options for spending their 2 actions (or more actions, if they develop their player board). Actions are as simple as placing a tradesmen on an open space along a route, moving your tradesmen already on the board to other spaces, paying extra cubes to bump another player’s tradesmen and take its place, establishing a trade route along a path that you completely control, and restocking your personal supply of tradesmen.

The layout of the game board and the development opportunities of the player boards are what make this simple premise exquisitely deep. The playing field is ripe with golden opportunities for those who can discern the strategic intentions of their opponents and exploit these to their benefit. Like a little point leech embedded in the fur of a beast, players can establish trading posts to profit off of the efforts of others. Yet decisions become more precarious and more tense as the three possible game-ending conditions threaten to cut the legs out from under your strategic grand finale.

Be warned, inexperienced players are more susceptible to strategic group-think, where one area or aspect is perceived as superior to the rest. An expert player can quickly make such assumptions look foolish by exploiting the blind spots. And herein lies another great secret of this unassuming classic: Hansa Teutonica is a living, breathing game that will grow with the experience and knowledge of the players surrounding it. When the group meta zooms in too closely on one strategy, that simply opens the door wider for one creative schemer to sneak off with the victory. Only those with an open mind and a courageous trigger finger will come to love and appreciate the deceptive depth that keeps the dynamics of Hansa brilliantly balanced.

The entire game looks and sounds like standard Euro fare, but make no mistake, Hansa Teutonica is leaps and bounds ahead of the pack. With its shared incentives and network building, it holds much in common with timeless train games. Through its elegant rules, brisk pace, and boundless depth, it resembles the legendary designs of Reiner Knizia. By its complex interactions and dynamic opportunities, it shames the vast majority of Euros releasing today.

Hansa Teutonica: Big Box is a fitting tribute to a modern classic and the perfect place for newcomers to jump into the fun. While it would have been nice to see something like an Ian O’Toole-caliber makeover to the visual presentation, this design and production is a well-oiled machine that has no problems producing one of the finest tabletop experiences in the entire industry.

Remaining Contenders

Whether we’re awaiting a North American release or simply a re-print of these unavailable titles, these are the games that will almost certainly make an appearance in my Revisiting of the Best Games of 2020 (coming this December):

Anno 1800

Economic Euros are a staple of tabletop gaming, yet there were very few new ones that successfully captured my heart in 2020.  Last year’s Rococo Deluxe is one such game that is solid on all accounts, yet I couldn’t quite find the magic within that would earn it a long-term spot among my collection.  For games like this, the elephants in the room will always be our all-time favorites: Brass: Birmingham, Great Western Trail, Concordia, A Feast for Odin, Pipeline, etc.  These are the kind of greedy elephants that don’t like to share time at the table or space on the shelf with lesser animals (at least at my household zoo).

Yet within the the green shrubs of opportunity hides a promising beast, waiting to pounce on my unsuspecting collection when it is localized in North America.  The blood of a greedy elephant courses through its veins, as it is a sibling to Brass Birmingham and child of Martin Wallace.  This sneaky predator is known as Anno 1800, and its time has nearly come….

Of course, it just as easily might leap from the bushes and land on its face, embarrassing itself at my table.  We shall see!

Nidavellir 

If I had a dollar for every time I heard the phrase, “This game is a Splendor killer,” I would have….. 5 dollars, probably.  Nidavellir is the latest title to add to this imaginary wealth.  And despite my increasing numbness towards anything Splendor-like, Nidavellir in particular has pinched me back to a sense of intrigue with two simple words: constrained bidding.  What the heck is exciting about that, you ask?  Consider this… Three absolute bangers in my collection contain this same mechanism of bidding for something using the limited options in your hand: namely Ra, High Society, and For Sale.  So with the early positive buzz this one has received, I’m definitely planning to check this light weight, accessible game out.

Kyoto

I’ve got a hunch that Kyoto will be surprise banger of a game.  It sees players representing selfish countries that have come together to negotiate unselfish topics, specifically climate change.  I get the impression of mix between Q.E.’s amusing theme and Chinatown’s engaging gameplay.  It’s also coming at us from the hot new publisher, Deep Print Games, who recently busted open the industry’s Saloon doors with the fantastic Renature.  I could be wrong, but Kyoto is at least one to keep on the radar.

The Search for Planet X

My household enjoys a good deduction game including the popular Cryptid and more recent Loot of Lima.  The Search for Planet X appears to be among the best of the bunch, and it’s one I’m looking forward to trying whenever it decides to show up in stores again.  This game keeps things running smooth with a handy app, freeing up players to focus in on the space riddle at the table in a hunt for Planet X.

Switch & Signal

I’ve already talked about this highly accessible cooperative train game in my most anticipated board games of 2021 list, and now I’m back double dipping on this title in my remaining candidates for the top games of 2020.  So is this game a 2020 release, or a 2021 release?…. The answer is yes…. probably.  Kosmos seems to be dragging their feet getting it to North America, but like the little engine that could, I think they’ll eventually come around.

Sumatra

Even after hearing the Shut Up & Sit Down Podcast’s lukewarm reaction to Sumatra, I can’t help but try it for myself.  This light set-collection game intrigues me with it’s characteristically Knizian elegance.  The game is a simple as either move ahead one space or hang behind and draft another tile, but players set the pace of the movement by forcing others to keep up with the pack in this chill game about touring an island.

Best Art

Fort – Kyle Ferrin

Not only does the theme of Fort snuggly fit Grant Rodiek’s design. It also perfectly matches Kyle Ferrin’s art style. Kyle does a masterful job evoking all of the weird, wacky wonder of being a kid. I’ll let his art do the talking:

Best Art Runner-Up: Cosmic Frog

Best Production

Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy – Lautapelit.fi

Just to be clear, the best production does not equal the most expensive game. Our pick for 2019’s best production was the $35 Wavelength thanks to the way its production felt essential to the experience. Yet in this year’s case, the best production of 2020 is, in fact, the most expensive game on this post: Eclipse Second Dawn.

Without the Game Trayz in this box that serve to organize, enhance, and streamline the Eclipse experience, this game would be significantly more cumbersome. As it is, Eclipse’s production serves to carry it over the barrier of “event game of the month” into a much more approachable “feature game of the night” by reducing playtime, simplifying setup, and deluxifying the experience. This game both looks and feels freaking phenomenal.

Best Production Runner-Up: Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

Best Expansion

Root: The Underworld Expansion – Leder Games

The Underworld Expansion to Root offers even more of that asymmetric good stuff! The new board is gorgeous and shakes things up nicely while the new factions are delightfully unique and solid additions. The moles are a tasty tableau builder while the crows are slimy sneaksters.

Our plays have been very well balanced and competitive between the new and old factions. No complaints here! This one is absolutely worth the purchase if you are a fan of base Root.

Best Expansion Runner-Up: Downforce: Wild Ride

This concludes our Top 15 Board Games of 2020! What were your favorite new releases from last year? Share with us in the comments below!

Article written by Nick Murray. Keep an eye out for his first published design, Social Grooming, which will debut in a Kickstarter bundle alongside two games from critically acclaimed designer, Reiner Knizia! Don’t miss out on this killer filler bundle coming in 2021! Subscribe to the Bitewing Games monthly newsletter to stay in touch.

The post Top 15 Board Games of 2020 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

The hot new releases of 2020 continue to make it to our table! Nick shares his latest 1st impressions below…

Rajas of the Ganges: The Dice Charmers

1 Play

I’ve played nearly 10 different roll & write / flip & fill games at this point, and Rajas of the Ganges: The Dice Charmers unfortunately ranks at the bottom of them.

I find that roll & writes are at their strongest when:

1. The tension is high
2. The replayability is pungent
3. The combos are explosive
4. The game is fast
5. The player turns are interactively impactful and/or simultaneous

Rajas Dice Charmers struggles in all of these categories by containing:

1. A mild tension that it solely derives from its race to victory (by crossing the two victory point tracks)
2. A weak replayability with roughly 3-4 different strategic paths one can travel down but ultimately no variation to offer outside of these few paths and a misguided insistence on forcing optimal plays to do at least a bit of everything
3. Decent combos that lose their potency due to numbing repetition  
4. A longer playtime than most roll & writes on the market without justifying its extra use of precious table time
5. Non-impactful and non-simultaneous player turns

By frequently giving players 2-3 different ways to accomplish the same task, Rajas dilutes the importance of dice drafting.  I never had a reason to care for what my opponents took or what I denied them.  The opportunity for dice manipulation via Karma spending is also pitifully pointless.

Of all the games I’ve played within this genre, Rajas compares closest to That’s Pretty Clever.  Both are games that play best at 2 players by minimizing the downtime and game length of their turn-taking formulas.  Both involve drafting dice, pursuing various paths with different types of dice, and setting yourself up for combos.  Frankly, That’s Pretty Clever annihilates Rajas in every way outside of presentation.  That’s Pretty Clever has more poignantly interactive dice drafting, more deliciously satisfying combos, more agonizingly critical dice manipulation, more refreshingly dynamic replayability, and more genuinely meaningful decisions.

Rajas of the Ganges: The Dice Charmers isn’t a bad game by any means.  It’s just tragically and comprehensively inferior to many of its competitors including its incrementally longer but blatantly more worthwhile sibling (the original Rajas of the Ganges).

Current Rating: 5.5/10

Iwari

2 Plays

Iwari is a gorgeous and fitting callback to classic, simple strategy games of the past.  With a rapid pace, simple ruleset, and juicy decisions, Iwari gives players maximum bang for their buck.  Simply play up to 3 cards to place 2 pieces into 1 territory.  Then refill your hand back up to 3 cards.

The meat of this game is derived from the scoring conditions of tents and totems.  The key is to time your tents and totems at the right time in the right place to inch yourself ahead of the pack by majority.  

This fits comfortably into the gateway game category, yet it is a refreshingly satisfying way to start or end a game night.  Anyone who appreciates a deceptively simple Knizia-like design should find themselves loving Iwari.

It’s easier to forgive the baffling totem color fiasco (orange looks like yellow, making for an unnecessarily messy 5-player experience) when every other aspect of the production is stunning.  I do wish I had the extra boards and pieces of the deluxe version, simply for a little extra variety, but I picked this standard copy up for $25 new, and that was an absolute steal for a timeless design.

Current Rating: 8/10

Rococo Deluxe Edition (Plus)

1 Play

Rococo: Deluxe Edition is undoubtedly the definitive version of Rococo thanks to Ian O’Toole’s comprehensive smackdown of every visual aspect of this production.  The art and graphic design is some of the best I’ve ever seen within this theme and time period.  The resin tokens, metal thimble, resource racks, and thick cardboard tokens also contribute to an excellent tactile experience.  And while the game is comfortably medium weight, one senses that the included expansions are essential to keeping the experience fresh with increased depth and replayability.

On the gameplay front, you’ll find a nice, crunchy combination of deck-building, area majority, and resource management.  We tried it at the ideal player count of 3 where you get the most bang for your buck within the area majority competition without pushing the game time off a cliff (I would actively avoid playing this at 5 players for how long it is bound to take).

My favorite aspects of the design would include the following:

– The unique twist on deck building where you choose any three cards from your draw pile.  You must got through your entire draw pile before getting back to your discard, but any new cards you acquire go straight into your hand.

– The hand management is a scrumptious aspect where your cards (“employees”) can only do certain actions based on their type. But your cards also have bonus actions or rewards on them that you gain when played.

– There are a wide variety of strategies one can pursue in gaining points, money, and resources.  Your decisions have a constant meaningful impact on others by decreasing their costs, claiming their desired rewards, and competing for majorities.

All in all, Rococo: Deluxe Edition is a very solid Euro wrapped in an excellent package.  So is it worth the $110 MSRP?……  Ooof, I really have to LOVE a game to warrant such a cost.  And even if the price was more palatable, I struggle to justify a place for it on my shelf.

Rococo competes within an extremely crowded genre of excellent Euros.  The closest game I can think of that compares to it might be Brass: Birmingham, and that’s a formidable opponent to be up against.  Both games have you playing one card to execute an action.  Sometimes those cards limit what you do or where you can go, depending on your desired action and the specific card played.  Meanwhile, players compete to claim limited spots on the board as they seek to increase their income and spend resources wisely.  Granted, Rococo isn’t nearly as tight or punishing, but the similarities are too strong to simply be ignored.

Rococo Deluxe also shares strong commonalities with the likes of Great Western Trail, Concordia, Gugong, and many more.  It struggles to stand toe-to-toe with some of these classics, yet it eats up as much table time (if not more) at over twice the price.

With a shelf full of Euros that are more affordable, addictive, dynamic, and unique…. I just can’t talk myself into keeping Rococo for long.

Current Rating: 7.5/10

Dune: Imperium

1 Play

Dune: Imperium is a surprisingly mixed bag for me after hearing several content creators rave about it.  On the one hand, it blends together both deck builder + worker placement mechanisms in exciting new ways.  On the other hand, it amplifies some of the weaknesses that are common among these mechanisms, in particular the long downtime and barely thematic gameplay.

The brilliance of the game is how it often pits the rewards of deck building against the rewards of worker placement.  It may cost me a valuable card to place a worker into a matching, powerful space.  But if I don’t spend that card to place a worker, I can instead use it to acquire an even better card or other advantages at the end of the round.  

There are loads of unique benefits that cards can have, and they are different depending on whether you spend them or save them.  With plenty of strategic paths to explore, it’s a game that gives players much to feast on.  But therein lies the main problem.

You see, at the 4 player count, you are often waiting a painfully long time for your turn.  The double layered mechanisms give participants that much more to analyze, and it gets even slower when somebody claims the spot that another’s entire plan was built upon.

Dune: Imperium demands a level of downtime that I feel it doesn’t merit, at least at 4 players.  I often found myself waiting ages for play to go around the table only for me to do something as minuscule as place a worker and gain 1 water token.  When I already know this pitiful action is my best move at the end of my previous turn, that only makes the wait worse. Sadly, there are far more bland worker placement spaces like this than interesting ones.

Another aspect that struggles to dazzle is the card market. While there are interesting and tempting options that sometimes pop up, you’re usually just mindlessly buying the most expensive card you can afford or the only card you can afford.

The player interaction rarely presents me with ramifications to consider or opportunities to munch on as others take their turns.  Rather, my opponents’ turns usually range from personally meaningless to coincidentally inconvenient.  Dune’s best rebuttal against this is the combat phase where majority bonuses are handed out to the top committers.  This aspect of the game is undoubtedly strongest at 4, but it’s too basic to keep one fully engaged during the long wait between turns.

The shallow theme isn’t doing the stale downtime any favors here either.  Don’t get me wrong, the Dune lore seems really fascinating, and I look forward to checking out the source material.  But Dune: Imperium could have been any theme in the universe, and it wouldn’t have affected my gameplay experience one bit.

So at a table with 4 average speed players, this one probably shakes out to around a 6/10 for me thanks to the sluggish downtime.  It seems that a 3 player game with experienced and/or zippy players is the 8/10 sweet spot here, and I can see myself enjoying Dune: Imperium in this setting.

Current Rating: 7/10

Beyond the Sun

2 Plays

Take a bow, Dennis K. Chan!  Your first published design is flipping phenomenal.

There is a lot to love about Beyond the Sun… like the fact that it starts out relatively simple and straightforward with roughly 5 worker placement spaces and snowballs into this enormous spread of possibilities and rewards.  Or the meaningful interaction that ranges from hogging a valuable action space for an entire round to hostile takeovers of planets.  And the precarious balance of precious resources and tempting incentives that brings tension to each decision.

And boy are there a lot of decisions to be had here.  Will you go heavy into colonization or hard into research or a healthy mix of both?  Researching a new technology provides two possible paths you can elect to travel down, and your chosen path will become a dangling carrot for all other opponents.  You’ll see plenty of unbelievably good routes unraveling up the technology track, yet you may never touch some of them because you are busy doing something else fantastically unique.  Will you take advantage of the paths that opponents have paved by cherry picking the best technologies for your benefit, or will you pursue the allure of the great unknown and trigger exclusive beneficial events?

Despite its shipload of content, the game never feels overwhelming thanks to its smooth ramp upward.  The dynamic arc of the game expands across a wide canvas of opportunities before contracting into a desperate stretch to score one last big turn as players complete enough achievements to trigger the final round.  The journey is deliciously captivating from start to finish.

Rio Grande Games has opted for a slender yet solid production, splurging on components where it matters most (dual-layered player boards, screen printed tokens and cubes, sturdy and meaningful player aid tiles, fun plastic resources, etc.) while presumably keeping the rest of the production at an affordable level (card & box quality, etc.).

From head to toe, this is a design and production that is so carefully and passionately planned out.  The rules and components include advanced boards and expert variants that were undoubtedly thoroughly tested and lovingly polished in parallel to the core design.  Not that it needs all the extra depth, considering how each game is bound to churn out an excitingly unique combination of techs and permutation of reveals.  You won’t see me complaining about all the extra game in this box.  In fact, you can expect to see me first in line for the upcoming expansion(s).  I’ll be happily exploring Beyond the Sun as I anxiously await to see what else is beyond Beyond the Sun….

Beyond.

Current Rating: 8.5/10

This concludes another episode of Candid Cardboard: my 1st 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 (February 2021) appeared first on Bitewing Games.