Of Course I Like It

Those who know my gaming tastes understand that I’m a shameless Knizia fan.  If he puts out something new that looks even mildly interesting, odds are that I’m going to buy it.  If I hear talk of a classic Knizia design that has aged well, then I’m likely to hunt it down.  If we’re looking to add another project to our Bitewing Games publishing lineup, then we’re typically fishing at Lake Reiner before looking elsewhere.

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Despite my strong preference for the tension, interaction, and elegance that Knizia games provide, I’m not afraid to acknowledge flaws in the gameplay or production when I see them.  The only way we can truly bring about industry growth and improve our collection curation is through critical analysis.  I have no qualms bashing on Modern Art: Card Game for being a zombified version of Modern Art.  I’m not afraid to call Tower of Babel one of the ugliest games I have ever seen.  And I’m eager to recommend Mille Fiori over Witchstone, as I feel the former blows the latter out of the water in terms of impactful decision-making.

In many cases, my criticisms stem less from design flaws and more from personal preferences.  But even then, a creative decision could be considered a flaw if it repels its intended target audience.  In the case of Ra by Reiner Knizia and 25th Century Games, I might just be sitting within the bullseye of the target audience.

• Revered Knizia classic?  Check.
• Tight auctions and tense push-your-luck decisions?  Check.
• Simple rules, quick gameplay, and staggering depth?  Check.
• Artwork from one of my favorite industry veterans—Ian O’Toole?  Check.

The question for this review is not whether I like Ra.  Of course I love it.  Rather, the question here is: How does this new version compare to older editions?  And is it a worthy addition or replacement in your collection?

Curious how the new RA tiles stack up against the previous editions?

From L to R: 25th deluxe, 25th regular, FF, BGG Geek Up, Uber/RGG.

Other two images show the difference in size of our new wooden deluxe tile vs the BGG plastic.
Keep in mind our wood tiles are prototypes. pic.twitter.com/rcC3TpKo6H

— 25th Century Games (@25thCG) April 30, 2022

Ra—Huh!  What is it good for?

For those who are uninitiated in the Egyptian antics of Ra, let me offer you some brief thoughts:

Ra is widely considered one of the greatest games created by one of the greatest board game designers.  Any list that explores the “best auctioning games”, “best set collection games”, or “best push-your-luck games” ever made that omits Ra from its lineup is like omitting the Grand Canyon from a list of the “best natural wonders.”  

Player turns are quick and simple: You can either draw a tile from the bag to add to the auction track, spend one or more God Tiles to steal one or more auction track tiles, or Invoke Ra to trigger an auction.  Each player has a handful of sun disks to pick from in each auction, where you always only get one shot to pass or raise the bid.  Whoever plays the highest sun disk will claim all of the tiles in the auction track, and their winning sun disk will get swapped out with the one on the game board.

What makes these auctions interesting is the multi-layered incentives tugging at you from all directions: wanting to claim tiles to score points is the obvious one; yet keeping valuable tiles away from hungry opponents is just as important; but swapping your low-value sun disk out for a high one can be even better than the auction tiles that are up for grabs; of course, you’ll ideally want to avoid winning the dreaded disaster tiles that sometimes end up in the auction row; meanwhile, spending your sun disks too quickly can let players get away with highway robberies later on as you are forced to watch them rake in massive points; on the other hand, waiting too long to blow your sun disks can be just as bad if the end of the era sneaks up on you.

That last point is key—any time a Ra tile is drawn from the bag, that’ll move the sun boat closer to the immediate end of the round.  So do you play it safe and spend your sun disks early, or do you push your luck and hope for easy auction wins later in the era when other players have tapped out?  The beauty of Ra is that there is no right answer until after the decision is made, and that’s where the juicy Knizian drama hits the table with full effect.

So, is Ra worth trying?  100% YES.  This is a top-tier game in my collection and a worthy addition to any hobbyist’s bucket list.  It even works great at any player count from 2-5, although 3+ is my preference.

But is This the Best Version? What If I Own An Older Version of Ra? 

Much of what I’ve said up to this point is old news, preaching to the choir, etc., etc.  For you folks, the most interesting question becomes what’s different about this version (for better or for worse)?

On the surface, it seems like a simple matter of subjectivity… Which art style do you like the most?  The rules are unchanged, so it’s just a matter of personal preference.  But from playing this latest version by 25th Century Games, I can confidently say that it is much more than that.  I’d argue that this is objectively the best production and most functional version of Ra that has ever existed.  Hands down.  Allow me to show you why…

Let me take you back to my first ever encounter with Ra from several years ago…. I was starting to dip my toes into the Knizian waters of gaming—naturally jumping from one popular classic to the next and thoroughly enjoying it.  So it wasn’t long before I tracked down a playable copy of Ra at a public game cafe.  At that point, I was already comfortable with reading rulebooks and teaching games, having done it dozens upon dozens of times.  Yet Ra proved to be abnormally tricky to get into.  

The biggest thing that trips up newcomers—such as myself back at this cafe—is undoubtedly the tile scoring:  Which tiles score every era versus only at the end of the game?  Which tiles go away after each round, and which ones stay?  How many points do I get for these tiles versus those ones?  What does this scarab icon mean again?  Which of these is the nile tile and which one is the flood?  For veterans, these questions are no big deal.  For the uninitiated, it’s nearly headache-inducing.

Enter Ian O’Toole.  For those who don’t know, Ian is a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to the visual design of a board game.  Not only does he distill complex systems (see Vital Lacerda) down to clear iconography, but he also puts out some of my favorite box cover illustrations in the entire industry.  Beyond his raw talent and extensive experience, you’ll find an organic approach to his work.  

As a relatively new publisher, I’ve had the pleasure of working with several talented artists and graphic designers who each bring unique contributions that have made them perfect for their assigned project.  Ian is the only creator I’ve encountered who has this specified approach: He requests a prototype of the game so he can play the design, soak in the entire experience, and explore its mechanisms.  As he does this, he is analyzing and questioning every assumption that has already been made in terms of component choice and graphic design (even if they are just placeholders).  If a game contains point or resource tokens, he’s wondering if those might be better as a track.  If the design requires that players remember a tricky rule, he’s asking how it can be converted into a helpful graphic and where that graphic can be placed on the components for easy clarity.  In many ways, Ian is shouldering the job that publishers usually have to carry.  The big difference is that he is much more experienced and creative when it comes to visual design.

So the most obvious and drastic improvement to this new version of Ra can be credited to Ian O’Toole.  The functionality of the graphic design and component organization here are a massive step up from previous versions of the game.  Setup is a breeze, with player boards telling you exactly which sun disks and how many points you’ll start the game with.  Teaching, learning, and retention are intuitive thanks to the simple, clear, and consistent iconography running throughout the cardboard.  Gameplay flows with a smooth cadence as each tile has a fitted slot and all pieces are thoughtfully considered.  Even the most subtle of decisions can be appreciated here, such as the permanent tiles being sent to the left side of your player board while the transient tiles are sent to the right.

For anyone who wants the smoothest onboarding experience for Ra, the 25th Century Edition is a clear winner.

But visual design isn’t only good for getting players into a game.  It’s also critical for getting games to the table.  Consider with me your own collection of games… Which ones get played the most?  Your favorite games, right?  Well… mostly.  Obviously if a game has a niche appeal or a narrow player count range, then it’s going to hit the table less often.  But beyond that, wouldn’t you agree that your better looking games are generally easier to get to the table?  This is a topic that I explored a while back in my Tabletop Tastes series, particularly with the post about Sweet Evocative Art:

“I submit that evocative art is one of the most powerful tools that a board game publisher can possibly use.  Just think of how much effort it takes to muster your desire to play a good game that is gorgeous compared to a good game that is ugly.  What makes me hungry to play an unattractive game like El Grande, Castles of Burgundy, or Puerto Rico? I have to stretch and strain my arms of memory as I struggle to grasp at slippery ideas such as clever mechanisms and interesting strategies.  Contrast this with Scythe or Inis or Root: I simply have to look at a box on my shelf, or a painting on my wall, or a picture online, and I’m already salivating at the idea of playing them again. Evocative art not only enhances the experience, but it sweetens and strengthens the memories too.”

Yet even games with solid art can easily be overlooked if they don’t stand out among the many options in a stack or on a bookshelf.  Jamey Stegmaier made an insightful observation on this topic in his blog last year.  https://stonemaiergames.com/an-epiphany-about-the-sides-of-game-boxes/ His point was that in the heat of the moment, when you and a group of friends are eyeing which game to play next, it’s easy to pass over the boxes that don’t stand out or convey much personality.  So let’s connect the dots here—if you want to see Ra get the most plays, you’re better off choosing the version that pops off your shelf.

Amusingly, I saw this in practice when I took Ra to a friend’s house this past weekend and he and his wife had the following conversation:

Wife – “Don’t we own this game?”

Husband – “Yeah we’ve had it for quite a while.”

Wife – “Why haven’t we ever played it?”

Husband – “I don’t know.” 😆

I imagine it didn’t help that the Rio Grande version of Ra was one of the most bland and beige boxes on his shelf.  I’ve observed the same kind of thing in my own collection…. Favorites such as El Grande, Ethnos, Condottiere, and more are far too frequently overlooked and neglected because they rarely catch my eye.  It’s crazy, but it’s true.

Finally, I would be remiss to omit my feelings on the component and production decisions made by 25th Century Games.  Everything here is impressively on point.  The draw bag is spacious and gorgeous.  The game box is refreshingly compact.  The tiles and boards are of solid size and quality.  The sun disks are large and chunky, as they should be.  And that Ra Statue, OOO BABY, that Ra statue.  You may think you’ve enjoyed yourself a fine wood component or two in your day.  But in reality, you’ve never known the full joy of board game wood until you’ve clenched your fist around this massive hunk of tree and pounded it down to the table while exclaiming, “I INVOKE RA!!!!”  A word of advice: find yourself a lover who loves you the way that 25th Century loves wood tokens 😆.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Some of the most common sentiments I observe in our hobbyist community include the following: 

“Why is this game out of print?  It’s criminally hard to find!”

“Why does this Kickstarter project have to be so overproduced?  It’s too bulky, too expensive, too much plastic, etc.  This is prohibitively wasteful.”  

“I hate how large this box is.  It’s full of air and takes up far too much space on my shelf.”

“I wish a publisher would do an updated version of this game with nicer art.”

Have you ever said anything like this?  Me too.  And for all of us who dream of brighter board game future, Ra by 25th Century Games and currently on Gamefound is our clarion call.  Do you wish it was easier to track down classic games from Reiner Knizia and other designers?  Are you sick of publishers trying to milk you with wasteful crowdfunding bloat?  Do you want to see more games like Ra surfing the wave of board game hotness?  Then what are you waiting for?!? Pledge your dang support, already!

Let me remind you that 25th Century Games is not run by a faceless mega-corporation that is hell-bent on ingesting and dissolving everything you love before discharging soulless products born from joyless algorithms.  This publisher is pretty much run by one guy.  His name is Chad.  He’s a cool dude.  You could even say that he is one of us—a fan who is passionate about the hobby.  And from where I’m standing (and playing Ra), it’s obvious that this project is a labor of love. 

Here’s a look at how the thicker wooden auction tiles in the RA deluxe look next to the player board and center board. Wood bid tokens are the same thickness and come in both editions.

Gamefound page: https://t.co/eG1KWoeyDL pic.twitter.com/9PkYJqMwF8

— 25th Century Games (@25thCG) May 4, 2022

Retaining your old version of Ra or waiting to find the cheapest retail deal is all good and fine, and these certainly have their place in our consumerist hobby.  But if you want to see more genuine passion projects and stone-cold classics coming from fellow fans like Chad at 25th Century Games, or us at Bitewing Games, or the many other indie publishers out there, then you’ve gotta support them directly.  Whether it’s $1 for a symbolic pledge, $40 for a standard edition, or $80 for an all-in deluxe reward, your direct support will continue to fan the flames and fuel more projects such as the masterpiece that is Ra by Reiner Knizia, Ian O’Toole, and 25th Century Games.

Current Rating: 10/10

Crowdfunding for Ra is still ongoing until May 25th.  You can find the Gamefound page here.  Preview copy provided to Bitewing Games by 25th Century Games.

Bitewing Games is planning to cover even more exciting releases from publishers including upcoming Knizia games and beyond.  We are also collaborating with Reiner on several publishing projects of our own.  To follow our game coverage and publishing projects, subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter!

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 Ra Preview—Should You Back the New Version? appeared first on Bitewing Games.

These past few weeks, my family has been bracing ourselves for our cross-country move to sunny Arizona.  As everybody knows, July is the perfect time of year to move there… for anyone looking to be baked by Mother Nature.  

If there’s anything that is just as reliable as as a hot summer in Arizona, perhaps it would be my enjoyment of a solid auctioning game.  There are a surprising number of ways that bidding and auctions can be incorporated into a board game, and I’ve had a blast exploring this entire spectrum of possibilities over the years.

In celebration of our own auctioning games launching on Kickstarter next month that are designed by the master Auctioneer himself, Reiner Knizia, I thought it fitting to explore the many games which have fostered my love for this genre.  The notable titles below are huge reasons why we loved auctioning game Hot Lead and quasi-auctioning game Pumafiosi enough to publish them ourselves.

Rather than rank these bidding games in order from my most to least favorite, I decided it would be more fun to award my favorites by category and type.  Hopefully these categories help you to find a new great game that would fit in perfectly with your collection…

Meanest Auctioning Game

The Estates

The Estates wins this category by a country mile… or maybe a city block?  You can’t possibly prepare a newcomer for the lurking savagery of the colorful, blocky Estates.  What starts out as innocent one-time around auctions to place out pleasant building blocks onto city plots rapidly crumbles into nasty maneuvers and cold-blooded tactics. 

Players can have their hopes dashed when their tall, valuable tower is covered and reclaimed by another player.  But even worse is the calculated sabotage of an entire row that contains your most valuable investments.  When the game ends, any incomplete rows transform from positive points to negative points.  And if I don’t have any personal investments on a particular row, then you better believe that’s my number one target. 

The Estates can go so far as to see the entire board fall into ruin with the player who earns the least negative points claiming the blood-soaked victory.

Honorable Mentions

• Age of Steam
• Tammany Hall

Best Large Group Auctioning Game

Medici

Auctioning games typically take a “the more, the merrier” approach, and perhaps nowhere is this more true than Reiner Knizia’s Medici.  Up to six players bid with their precious points on goods to fill their ships.  More players leads to more competition on the board and for the precious cargo, and navigating this wild journey is all kinds of fun, especially at a full table.  It’s these kinds of auctioning designs that often blur the line between strategy game and party game.

Honorable Mentions

• For Sale
• The Estates
• Skull

Best Small Group Auctioning Game

Biblios

There are quite a few auctioning games that play well at 3 players, but there are very few that play best at 3 and well at only 2.  I would argue that Reiner Knizia’s Hot Lead and Pumafiosi are strong upcoming contenders in this category, but for now Biblios is one of the few titles that excels within small game groups.  The reasons why it made my Top 10 Filler Games are the very same reasons why it’s such a great auctioning game.  And every time I’m with one or two other gamers looking for a fun, quick romp, Biblios is always an easy pick.

Best Game with just a Hint of Auctioning

Oath, Sidereal Confluence

These two mammoth games are like melting pots of all kinds of tasty mechanisms, and one of their shared flavors is that of auctioning.  

In Oath, these auctions take the form of claimed banners with either favor or secrets that pile high on them.  Both banners are frequently critical to the victor’s success, and the main way to reclaim them is through outbidding the current stack that the owner used to claim them.  Of course, you can also just simply sidestep the auctioning all together and bring in your war bands to steal them by force, but that can often be an even trickier route to take.

Sidereal Confluence’s auctions are one of the few mechanisms that breaks up the loud, lively simultaneous negotiation that makes up core of this game.  Yet, like Oath, this mechanism is not to be dismissed, as earning the right research or technology card with a strong bid of ship tokens can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Best Looking Auctioning Game

Modern Art

Huh.  A game about buying and selling art is the best looking auctioning game.  Go figure.  Of course, I’m not counting Oath as an official auctioning game for most of these categories or it would just win everything, including this one.  I’m just surprised that this category wasn’t more contested.  Going through all of the possible options, it seems that most auctioning games are pretty average looking, or the art is nice but the generic theme brings it down, but at least there are a few notably exceptional box covers mixed in. At any rate, Modern Art is a pleasure to lay out and look at thanks to its large, diverse art cards and wooden gavel.

Honorable Mentions

• Irish Gauge
• Age of Steam: Deluxe Edition
• Skull

Best All-Around Auctioning Game

Modern Art

Back-to-back victories for Modern Art!  If you know anything about it, you should have seen this game being a strong performer on my list from a mile away.  That’s because Modern Art possesses FOUR different types of auctions that keep each session saturated with bombastic bidding from start to finish.  It’s also designed by Reiner Knizia himself, who practically has a trademark on auctioning mechanisms.  I’ve already spoken plenty about Modern Art, as this one earned a spot among my Top 10 Knizia Games and Top 50 Board Games of All Time lists.

Honorable Mentions

• Amun-Re
• For Sale

Most Unique Auctioning Game

Hibachi, Q.E., Cyclades, Downforce

That’s right, this one is a four-way tie for me!  Hibachi, Cyclades, and Downforce all earned their way onto this category because they mix auctioning with something else entirely to make a truly distinct experience.  

Hibachi (or the original version, Safranito) is a dexterity set-collection game of tossing your poker chips facedown onto a board.  Once the chips are out, they are flipped face up and function as bidding tokens for the actions spaces that they landed on.  I’m eager to try out the new Hibachi when the kickstarter fulfills soon.

Cyclades is a member of the classic Matagot area control trilogy composed of Kemet, Cyclades, and Inis.  This one mixes auctioning, in the form of offerings to the gods, with area control where the player who wins an auction for a particular god earns their blessing and executes their category of actions.

Downforce is a modernized version of a racing game originally designed by Wolfgang Kramer.  Players will place bets on cars as they seek to help give their own racers the edge.  But the way you earn a car is through bidding on them at the start of the game.  Whatever amount you pay for your winning bids will be subtracted from your score at the end.

The final auctioning game that feels refreshingly unique, Q.E., doesn’t need any fancy mechanical hybridization tricks to be here.  In fact, it even takes some inspiration from Reiner Knizia’s classic High Society in the way that its highest cumulative bidder is eliminated from victory at the end.  Yet the reason it still feels extremely unique is because players are allowed to bid any amount from zero to infinity.  If that piques your interest, then Kyle sums up the rest of the game nicely in his 6-minute review.

Best New(ish) Auctioning Game

Nidavellir

I recently shared how Nidavellir won me over with its novel coin bidding and upgrading system despite the rest of the design playing things a little too safe.  Yet as I looked back over the past few years, I was surprised to find that nothing else tops it among the newly released titles of this genre.  Most of my top picks are over 3 years old, and many are even decades old.  So if you’re looking for the freshest auctioning game around, you can’t go wrong with the dwarf-infused Nidavellir.  

Best Auctioning Game I Haven’t Played (Yet)

Keyflower, The Great Zimbabwe

On my shelf of opportunity and among my preorders are the legendary designs Keyflower and The Great Zimbabwe, respectively.  These are two games I anxiously await the chance to play, as Keyflower ranks highly across the board from the many trusted hobbyists I follow while The Great Zimbabwe appears to be a solid step up from our household favorite Splotter game, Bus.  I’m very much looking forward to bidding with workers in Keyflower and cows in The Great Zimbabwe.

Honorable Mentions

• Dream Factory
• Container

Most Regret-Filled Auctions

Age of Steam

No game makes you feel worse for over-spending in the auctions or under-spending with your bid than the legendary Age of Steam by Martin Wallace.  That’s because bidding determines the turn order for the rest of the round, and even going one turn too late can mean the difference between making a lucrative route or delivery and being royally screwed by your opponents.  To make matters worse, if you don’t plan and budget your money with the meticulous care of Ebenezer Scrooge, then you can quickly find yourself plummeting back down the income track to bankruptcy and elimination.

Honorable Mentions

• El Grande
• The Estates
• High Society

Best Auctioning Game of Chicken

Condottiere, Skull, Taj Mahal

We’ve got another multi-way tie here between Condottiere, Skull, and Taj Mahal.  If you’re not familiar with the term “game of chicken,” I typically imagine two drivers speeding their cars toward each other, waiting for the other to be the first to “chicken” out by veering off course before a deadly collision.  That’s basically what these three games feel like, and I love ‘em for it.

Condottiere is the perfect card game for feigning your intentions and bluffing your hand as you play in a series of battles over individual regions.  Yet if that’s not sneaky enough for you, then Skull is bluffing distilled down to its purest form.  It’s another one that earned a place among my top filler games as it perfectly blends bluffing and bidding into a hilarious romp.  Yet for those looking for a fully fledged, strategic board game, no big box game does chicken better than the tense auctions of Reiner Knizia’s Taj Mahal.  We can only hope that another publisher picks this one up and reprints soon.

Honorable Mentions

• High Society
• For Sale

Best Shared Incentive Auctioning Game

Irish Gauge, Chicago Express, Modern Art, The Estates

Auctioning mechanisms and shared incentive gameplay go together like peanut butter and jelly.  Except I’m allergic to peanuts, and I prefer my jelly on warm toast, not cold bread… 

Whatever, it’s fine.  Here we have four games that band players together as easily as they tear them apart across evil auctions and engaging gameplay.  Interestingly, all four of these games see players selecting the item to auction off on their turn from a range of options.  Typically, you want to see some of your opponents invested in the same things as you to help protect those investments for external colluders.  The key is to benefit more from all those shared investments than anyone else.

Best Overall Auctioning Game

Ra

This list would be automatically disqualified if it didn’t feature the legendary Ra among its rankings.  It’s difficult to describe exactly how Ra achieves the pinnacle of auctioning games, but perhaps that’s related to the fact that it’s also a difficult game to acquire (at least until its inevitable reprint). 

The thing that makes Ra stand above the rest is the dynamic tension it provides thanks to its irresistible push-your-luck + auctioning combo within Knizia’s signature set collection scoring.  This entrancing, unsolvable beast is light on its feet through its perfect pacing and emergent gameplay.  You almost have to play it to believe it.

Two New Auctioning Games Coming Fresh out of the Oven

Hot Lead, Pumafiosi

Believe it or not, master Auctioneer Reiner Knizia still isn’t finished riffing on one of his favorite mechanisms.  When he presented to us a wide variety of fresh, unpublished card games for our consideration, we were delighted to discover these particular designs.  Hot Lead and Pumafiosi both hit the spot as 20-minute capers perfect for a casual family gathering or a hobbyist filler activity.  Even after all the great auctioning games I’ve explored, I’ve found plenty of reasons to love the distinct auctioning twist that Knizia has given to these two games.

In Hot Lead, players participate in sealed bidding by using the 11 card hand they start with.  Similar to the second phase of For Sale, players select a card from their hand, place it face down on the table, reveal their cards simultaneously, and earn a specific reward from the middle depending on what everyone else bid.  Yet in Hot Lead, the low cards in your hand are just as valuable as the middle and high ones!  That’s because the highest bidder doesn’t lay claim the most valuable reward.  Rather, they simply lay claim to the card that is positioned closest to deck in the column of displayed cards.

Hot Lead also features the tasty combination of push-your-luck and auctioning that fans of Ra have come to love.  Of course players want to win the higher value cards on display for their inherent points, but the juicier prize lies within the formation of sets of exactly three cards of the same type.  You see, a set of three cards of the same type represents enough evidence collected on one criminal organization, perfect for convicting them for 10 bonus points at the end of the game.  The only problem is that once a fourth card of that type is collected, you’ve investigated too aggressively and scare the criminals underground, losing yourself all four cards of that type!

What results is a game of reading your opponents’ minds—predicting which evidence cards they are hungry for and what numbers they will bid with—in order to claim the right evidence for yourself and force the wrong evidence onto your opponents.  It’s a roller coaster of a game that punches way above its simple rules and zippy playtime, and we can’t wait for you to enjoy it as well.

While Hot Lead is unquestionably the auctioning game of Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers Collection, Pumafiosi offers its own interesting combination of quasi-bidding and quasi-trick taking.  I say quasi because each round sees participants playing one card from their hand face-up to the table in clockwise order with the second highest card winning the trick or auction or whatever you want to call it.  Why the second highest, you ask?  Because Pumafia members don’t want to stick their necks out too far or they’ll end up in prison or dead.

The winner of each round takes their winning card and uses it to claim a point-scoring step on the Pumafia Hierarchy.  The catch is that those points won’t be scored until the end of the game, and opponents can claim your spot and knock your card down by playing higher value cards on that same step.  The twist that really makes you second-guess where to stake your claim in the Hierarchy is the fact that every step you get knocked down earns you negative penalty points in addition to the shrinking Hierarchy points.

We are now less than a month away from launching the Kickstarter campaign for Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers Collection, and we need your help to bring these games to life.  We here at Bitewing Games do not currently have the luxury of bringing these games direct to retail.  Our only hope is that those who share in our passion for juicy auctioning games, for clever Knizia designs, for thoughtful productions and a striking table presence, will also share in our vision for the Criminal Capers Collection.

If you would like to support Bitewing Games for the meaningful content we share, for the refreshing games we are crafting, and for the exciting plans we have in store, then the best thing you can do is subscribe to our newsletter or social media channels of your preference, prepare for our August Kickstarter, and share this upcoming campaign with anyone and everyone who may be interested.

Thanks for your support.  And please share with us your favorite auctioning games, especially the ones that were left off this list!  I’m always hungry for more of that good stuff…

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. 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 Top Auctioning Board Games appeared first on Bitewing Games.

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

25. Camel Up (Second Edition)

Best suited for everyone

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

24. El Grande

Best suited for everyone

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

23. Renature

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

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

22. A Feast for Odin

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

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

21. Bus

Best suited for cold-blooded strategists

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

20. Tournament at Avalon

Best suited for everyone

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

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

19. My City

Best suited for everyone

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

18. Ethnos

Best suited for everyone

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

17. The King’s Dilemma

Best suited for a regular group of 5 players

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

16. Wavelength

Best suited for everyone, especially groups of 6 or more

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

15. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

Best suited for everyone

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

14. For Sale / For Sale Autorama

Best suited for everyone

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

13. Root

Best suited for a regular group of hobbyist gamers

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

12. Babylonia

Best suited for everyone

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

11. Inis

Best suited for everyone

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

10. Chinatown

Best suited for everyone

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

9. Ra

Best suited for everyone

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

8. Age of Steam

Best suited for hobbyist gamers with thick skin

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

7. Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

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

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

6. Sidereal Confluence: Remastered Edition

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

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

5. Hansa Teutonica: Big Box

Best suited for everyone

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

4. Brass: Birmingham

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

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

3. Tigris & Euphrates

Best suited for strategy gamers

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

2. Crokinole

Best suited for everyone

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

1. Pax Pamir: Second Edition

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

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

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

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

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

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

Not much of a reader? You’re in luck! This post also exists in podcast form shown below. Happy listening!

It’s about time to kiss (or more appropriately, kick) 2020 goodbye! As we hopefully look forward to a new year of long-awaited returns to normalcy, what better way to get hyped than to peek behind the curtains and get a glimpse of the most exciting board games to come!

I’ve cooked up quite the list with a variety of promising titles that might just deserve a spot on your wishlist. Several of these games were also explored in my Kickstarter Case Study: How to Win Backers and Fund Projects. Let’s see what’s on the 2021 menu…

Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile – Q2/Q3 2021

We might as well start off with my most anticipated game of 2021. Cole Wehrle’s magnum opus is right around the corner. With the publishing passion of Leder Games, the artistic flex of Kyle Ferrin, and the design chops of one of the industry’s hottest designers, we’ve got a recipe for success in Oath. Along the lines of Root and Pax Pamir, Oath is a highly strategic, cutthroat, and political game that best suits a group of regular players.

This title innovates upon legacy and campaign designs by taking the results of one game and integrating them into the objectives and setup of the next. Nothing is scripted or predetermined, rather the game organically follows a meta narrative controlled entirely by the decisions of the players. The ripple effect of players’ actions will be felt by all for games to come, and they can even keep record of this fascinating history in the Chronicle Session Journal (included in the kickstarter copies or likely to be available directly from Leder Games).

Kemet: Blood and Sand – Summer 2021

The area-control darling, Kemet, has been an established favorite for nearly a decade now. In 2021, Matagot will be releasing version 2.0 with a completely revamped presentation, improved rules, and new gameplay. Matagot’s legendary dudes-on-a-map trilogy has proven its worth to me with the incredible card-drafting Inis and solid auction-style Cyclades; Kemet is the remaining classic that I have yet to try, and Blood and Sand appears to be worth the wait.

Hibachi – Fall 2021

Hibachi flew a bit under the radar when it recently launched on Kickstarter, but it appears to be firing on all cylinders as a family-friendly set collection dexterity game. The design is a reimplementation of 2010’s Safranito that retains the core fun it presented.

Players toss poker chips onto a large board in an attempt to center the poker chip’s hole over ingredients and bonuses that will help the fill orders. The catch is that your poker chips are also used as a sort of blind auction for drafting order and other privileges. The value of your chips will stay face-down as you toss them onto the board, so a combination of skillful tosses and wise chip selections will ensure that you come out on top when the chips are flipped and the ingredients are claimed.

Grail Games promises that the leftovers from this Kickstarter will go to retail (or you can late pledge here), so keep your eyes peeled come Fall 2021 if you’re hungry to jump in on this fun feast.

Coffee Traders – May 2021

Capstone Games has gone all out with their debut of Coffee Traders. This heavy economic Euro from the makers of Wildcatters boasts over 650 deluxified, colorful components including wooden donkeys and plastic coffee beans! More importantly, the design promises a meaty, interactive competition within the sprawling coffee industry of the 1970s.

While we’re likely to see a more affordable, standard version of the game down the road, it’s hard not to get behind such an ambitious, beautiful project spearheaded by a highly capable publisher. If you can’t get enough sprawling Euros in your life, then this one is a no-brainer for any group of 3-5 players.

Whale Riders – Spring 2021

Dr. Knizia is on another hot streak spanning back to 2017 with the likes of Quest for El Dorado, Babylonia, My City, and more. Whale Riders brings us another team up of old faithful designer Knizia, ever stalwart artist Vincent Dutrait, and the consistently solid publisher Grail Games.

In this economic race, players must decide how to spend their 2 actions each turn as they ride whales along the arctic coast. You can sail ahead to claim the greatest treasures for yourself, but you’ll be missing out on golden opportunities along the way.

Next year, if you find yourself in need of a simple strategy game with enough subtle tension to satisfy everyone at the table, then you’d be hard pressed to bet against Reiner Knizia.

Undaunted: Reinforcements – August 2021

For fans of the Undaunted series, Reinforcements is the modular expansion you never knew you always wanted. This title will include new scenarios, units, and rules to keep the fun rolling. Compatible with both Undaunted games, this expansion even provides 4-player and solo modes for owners of either version. While the details are still sparse, this series already earned its right to the title of Undaunted when it initially debuted among the top board games of 2019. Undaunted will go down as one of my all time favorite deck builders thanks to its elegant flow and painful decisions. I’m thrilled to have more reasons to dive back into this excellent system.

Anno 1800 – Q1 2021 (English Version)

While the game setup isn’t exactly easy on the eyes, Anno 1800 doesn’t need to look amazing when it boasts the design talent of Martin Wallace, creator of Brass: Birmingham and Age of Steam.

Anno 1800 is based on the popular PC game from Ubisoft, but I’m more interested in what Mr. Wallace has done to create a city building tech-tree game. The German version is already on the market, and early buzz around this medium-weight Euro is positive.

Switch & Signal – 2021 (English Version)

Speaking of German games that have yet to make it overseas, Switch & Signal is a cooperative train game from one of the designers of Undaunted: Normandy. This game is as simple and accessible as Pandemic, yet thankfully it is not another Pandemic clone. Switch & Signal sees players guiding trains across a map of Europe or North America to deliver cargo to its destination before time runs out. Each turn involves deciding how to spend your cards to move trains, adjust signals, and switch tracks to keep engines along the most efficient paths possible.

There’s no official date for when this game hits North America, but we can safely assume that Kosmos is planning to localize and release it sometime next year, as it debuted in Germany just a few months ago.

Don’t Get Got: Shut Up & Sit Down Special Edition – Apr 2021

Don’t Get Got is a clever party game that has been around since 2018. It received high praise from popular critic site Shut Up & Sit Down in their highly entertaining review. Thereafter, Big Potato Games reached out to the funny folks at SU&SD and pitched a collaboration for a special edition which successfully funded on Kickstarter this year.

Don’t Get Got is a meta-game that can be sneakily tucked into the background of a game night, group party, or work environment. Each player receives a small wallet with unique objectives that typically require harmless but ridiculous tasks. These tasks span from “Get a player to compliment your hair” to “Make up a word and get a player to ask what it means.” The catch is that if players suspect foul play, they can call you out on your odd behavior and cause you to fail that mission. The first player to complete three missions wins the game.

I’m hoping to receive this game while I’m still at my General Practice Residency program with 7 other dental residents, where the setting is ripe for getting got!

Ra (New Versions)- 2021

Ra, one of all-time greats of the auctioning genre, has been criminally out of print for years. It’s a game that perfectly mixes agonizing auctioning with precarious push-your-luck mechanisms. 2021 is the year where that changes. Dice Tree Games is a South Korean publisher known for its deluxe productions of Knizia classics including Modern Art and Winner’s Circle, and they have a version of Ra ready to release seemingly any day (the game is listed as a 2020 planned release).

25th Century Games, best known for its Splendor-like 2017 release, Space Explorers, is a US-based publisher planning to release an English version of Ra in Summer 2021 as well. Details are sparse, but this release will be one to keep an eye on for anyone looking to jump into this masterclass design. I reached out to Chad (25th Century Games) and learned that he’s aiming to “create the nicest quality and visual art version of the game to date.”

It sounds like a fantastic way for new fans to jump in or old fans to update their copy. Although for those who already own a copy (Alea, Rio Grande, or Uberplay versions in particular), Board Game Geek will be offering delectable Geek Up bits in the spring! All hail the year of Ra!

Tutankhamun – Jan 2021

Speaking of 25th Century Games, they’ll be releasing another Knizia design that has been refreshed and revitalized in Tutankhamun. Players travel down the Nile and collect artifacts in a race to 30 points. The rules are easy enough for any friends or family, simply move your boat downstream and collect the tile you stop on. The key is to have majority in artifact types and lunge for the special power tiles when the timing is right to end up on top.

Dead Reckoning – May 2021

Dead Reckoning is nothing short of ambitious. This mega-project from AEG and John D. Clair (Space Base, Mystic Vale) takes their card crafting concept to the next level. Transparent cards will be combined, flipped, and rotated within sleeves to create a deck-building experience that sends players on a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXtort, eXterminate) journey through piratism.

It also features a wildly creative combat system where cubes are dropped onto a battleship that sends them cascading across a battle board, giving a cannonball-like effect that determines the result of the attack by where the cubes land on the board.

This game has so many mechanisms and pieces crammed into it that I’ve opted to leave it on my radar and wait to strike if the reviews come in overwhelmingly positive. It won’t be simple or cheap, but it promises quite the epic adventure.

Kabuto Sumo – June 2021

BoardGameTables.com is back at it with another novel design and gorgeous production. Kabuto Sumo is inspired by coin-pushing arcade games and real-life rhinoceros beetle wrestling. That’s pretty stinking awesome if you ask me.

Players will be shifting the push platform around the sumo ring to line up their move of pushing a piece into the ring in hopes of shoving opponent beetles off. This combination of physics, tactics, and dexterity promise to be a breath of fresh air for any game night. The world can never have too many refreshing dexterity games, and Kabuto Sumo is teed up to be the next one.

So, You’ve Been Eaten – 2021?

That’s right, the game is titled So, You’ve Been Eaten. With a name like that, it has to be good!…. Right?…

After initially rearing its head and riding high on the hotness wave of BGG, news on this title seemingly vanished… like it had been eaten. But more recent updates indicate that they’ve been quietly cramming even more tasty content into the game as they prepare for a Kickstarter launch.

The game claims that it is for 0-2 players. You read that correctly, zero players. A bold miner takes on a massive beast by burrowing into its intestines for crystals as the beast’s immune system fights back. Players can take on the role of either the miner or the beast… or neither?… in a 1v1, 1vGame, or GamevGame showdown.

Bristol 1350 – April 2021

The Dark Cities games have always taken the bones of a classic social deduction game and dressed them in various thematic mechanisms. From witch trials to pirate mutinies to wild west bank robberies to now escaping the Black Plague.

I’ve already played Bristol 1350 plenty of times leading up to my written preview of the design. The timing of this plague-themed game is uncannily coincidental, but the design has been a blast ever since I first tried it two years ago. I’m looking forward to experiencing the full vision that Facade Games had in mind for this quick, engaging gem of a deduction game.

John Company (Second Edition) – 2021?

Wehrlegig Games, the publisher of Pax Pamir (Second Edition), is cooking up their next project in John Company (Second Edition). Designer Cole Werhle’s most recent update reveals that the design has received a complete overhaul to help streamline the rules, focus on the game’s strengths, evoke the period art, and presumably deluxify the production. This heavy political economic romp is sure to be a strategically engaging and historically informative exploration of the British East India Company.

Railroad Ink Challenge – Q1 2021

One of our household’s favorite roll & writes makes an explosive return with Railroad Ink Challenge. The Shining Yellow and Lush Green editions promise player interaction, special structures, and new dice to help keep the puzzle fresh and interesting for series veterans. The development team has also cooked up a cornucopia of extras from an Epic game board to loads of expansion dice.

Iberian Gauge – Summer 2021

Like the previous two games in Capstone’s Iron Rail series, Iberian Gauge already exists among many other cube rails options. These cube rails games possess a common thread of stock investment, railroad expansion, and shared incentives. The key differentiator with the Iron Rail series is that publisher Capstone handpicks a solid design from the many options, gives it the Ian O’Toole makeover, and brings it to the masses. These slim, gorgeous boxes contain a single sheet of rules but pack a huge punch in roughly 1-hour of fun.

Sleeping Gods – Q1 2021

Sleeping Gods was on our most anticipated games of 2020 list, and it’s back again for another round of hype! The good news is that this cooperative exploration adventure is right around the corner, with fulfillment planned to begin in January. Players will be chipping away at this epic adventure a little bit at a time, and they can save their progress and pack it back into the box at any time. I spoke more about how Red Raven convinced me to back their project in my Kickstarter Case Study: How to Win Backers and Crowdfund Projects.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea – March 2021

Ooo baby, designer Thomas Sing is dipping back into the well in an effort to satiate my unquenchable thirst for more of his brilliant cooperative trick taking. All we know thus far is that we’re going from space to sea, but hopefully Mr. Sing still has a few more tricks up his sleeve to mix up the formula. Either way, I’m all in on this sequel to one of the greatest cards games of all time.

Publishers To Watch

That’s right, we’re not done quite yet! Many publishers like to play their cards close to the chest, meaning that there are surely more hype-worthy games waiting to be announced and planned to be released direct-to-retail than the 19 we’ve already covered. We’ll point you toward a handful of publishers that have been on hot streaks recently and show no signs of cooling down.

• Capstone Games: At the time of this writing, I’ve had the chance to try ten of Capstone’s releases of 2018-2020, and they have all been killer games. 2021 releases will include Coffee Traders, Iberian Gauge, Pipeline Emerging Markets (expansion), and more.

• Leder Games: Most famously known for the deceptively charming and deeply asymmetric war-game Root, Leder Games is banking on their next mega-hit being Oath. But with Oath development wrapping up, they’ve shared that their next big project will be another Root expansion featuring militant factions of a Rat warlord and Badgers (expect a Kickstarter in Q1)! Patrick Leder is also working on his own spin on Twilight Imperium known as Void Lich. And who knows, maybe we’ll get a Fort expansion as well…

• Boardgametables.com: I’ve found that the best approach to take with Boardgametables.com’s publications is to expect the unexpected. They’ve brought us a band touring roll & write, an unchained auctioning game, a thinky pirate treasure deduction game, a trio of pretty fillers, and soon a coin-pushing style dexterity game. Whatever they cook up next, it’s sure to be unique and well-produced.

• Eagle-Gryphon Games: With recent killer deluxe versions of Rococo and Age of Steam, heavy hitters like On Mars, on upcoming refreshes such as For Sale Autorama, Eagle-Grypon games is not a publisher to be dismissed.

• WizKids: WizKids has been bringing their A-game recently with the incredible Sidereal Confluence: Remastered Edition, spicy Tournament at Avalon, and juicy Super Skill Pinball 4-Cade, all from 2020 alone. I’m hoping they have just as good of a lineup for 2021.

• Grail Games: This Australian publisher has earned a spot on my radar because of their ability to dig up and dust off the underdog games of yesteryear. Thanks to them, I’ve been able to discover and enjoy Knizia classics including Stephenson’s Rocket and Medici, and I’m excited to try Yellow and Yangtze and Whale Riders. Outside of Hibachi, they have many more exciting plans in the works for 2021 and beyond, including a Yellow and Yangtze expansion, an updated version of cult fan-favorite Fjords, and a two-player climbing card game known as ChuHan from the designer of Race for the Galaxy.

• Osprey Games: This publisher is based in Great-Britain and has drummed up at least 1 killer title every year for the past few years. Those games include Cryptid, the Undaunted series, The King is Dead (Second Edition), and more. They certainly deserve our attention for whatever else they have in mind for 2021 besides Undaunted: Reinforcements.

Designers to Watch

We’ll top this post off with a list of designers that, much like the above mentioned publishers, are on hot streaks of their own. Whenever I catch wind of a new release coming from one of these creative folks, my ears always perk up:

• David Thompson: I’ve talked plenty about David’s upcoming Undaunted Reinforcements and Switch & Signal, and that merely scratches the surface of David’s designs that are hitting the market in 2021. Others include War Chest: Siege (an expansion to Undaunted-like abstract game, War Chest), Soldiers in Postmen’s Uniforms (a WWII inspired solitaire game), Sniper Elite: The Board Game (a hidden moment design based on the video game series of the same name), and Dire Alliance: Horror (a cooperative/competitive tactical deck builder). And those are just the ones we know of. Needless to say, he’s certainly one to keep on the radar.

• Paolo Mori: We’re big fans of Ethnos, a family-weight area majority game that was #8 in my most recent top 50 games of all time list. We’ve also been digging 2019’s Blitzkrieg, a 2-player tug of war game that made a fantastic 1st impression and still holds up after several more plays. There’s no telling what Paolo will do next, but odds are it will be amazing.

• Alexander Pfister: This is the legend who brought us the excellent Great Western Trail, Isle of Skye, Maracaibo, and much more. His latest release, CloudAge, should probably be among the list of games up above seeing how the North American shipment appears to be delayed into the new year (thanks for nothing, Covid!). Regardless, the man is a machine who continues to impress with his designs. I expect to see another big one from him in 2021.

• Wolfgang Warsch: From The Mind to Quacks of Quedlinburg, from Wavelength to That’s Pretty Clever, you know him, you love him, he’s Wolfgang Warsch! After seemingly bursting onto the scene in 2018, Wolfgang has been on a design rampage ever since. Hopefully he hasn’t run out of steam for 2021. You can do it, Wolfgang!

• Kramer & Kiesling: Like Peanut Butter and Jelly, Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling have been tearing it up together for years with classics such as Tikal or Mexica and more recent releases including our Holiday Board Game Gift recommendation, Renature. Not that they actually need each other, as Mr. Kiesling is the genius behind Azul and Heaven & Ale while Mr. Kramer is mastermind behind El Grande and Downforce. Indeed, these gentlemen should already be on your 2021 watchlist.

• Cole Wehrle: I started this entire post out with Cole’s upcoming design, Oath, and quickly followed it up with his returning hit, John Company (Second Edition), so you already know where I stand here. He’s both a lead designer/developer at Leder Games and he runs Wehrlegig Games with his brother, so anything coming from either company is going to have his fingerprints on it. Why do I appreciate his handiwork so much? Aside from him owning two spots in my top 10 games of all time, I’ve found Cole to be more interested in creating immersive experiences than tossing out gimmicky, shallow designs. He’s churning out arguably the most fascinating designs in the industry with the help of many talented colleagues. Keep it coming, Cole!

• Ryan Courtney: Ryan is the newest published designer among those on this list. In fact, his first game, Pipeline, was categorized as a Lover in my recent revisit of the best games of 2019. His other design, Curious Cargo, continues to impress as well. The man takes “thinky” to the next level, and I’m there for whatever he cooks up next.

• Uwe Rosenberg: It’s breeding!… It’s polyominoes!… That’s right, it’s Uwe Rosenberg. Uwe is one of the all time greats in the industry, and his most recent hits, including New York Zoo and Nova Luna, prove that he’s still got it. He’s always a safe bet when heading into a new year of releases.

• Reiner Knizia: Alongside Cole Wehrle, Reiner Knizia is my absolute favorite board game designer. I own and love more games from Dr. Knizia than any other designer (15 and counting)! He’s best known for his decades old evergreens including Tigris & Euphrates, Lost Cities, and Ra, but he’s been on another hot streak with recent bangers including Babylonia, My City, and Quest for El Dorado. This man is the Willy Wonka of board games, with over 600 titles to his name. Of course they’re not all going to be amazing at that kind of output, but the sheer number golden designs that have come from this one mind is staggering. I’ll take three more decades of Knizia releases, please and thank you.

Hungry for more board game hype? Then continue on to PART TWO of my Most Anticipated Board Games of 2021!

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!

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