The Great Zimbabwe

2 Plays

For a good while now, I’ve been stuck in a strange Splotter Game limbo.  On the one hand, I have loved my plays of Bus for the nail-biting worker placement stress that it brings to the table in such brilliantly pure way.  On the other hand, I still remember feeling so overwhelmed by the decision space and ripple effect strategies of Food Chain Magnate that Camille and I decided to pack up the game and give it back to its owner rather than invest such an enormous amount of energy and brain power.

Knowing that Bus is Splotter’s most approachable game simply made me hesitant to try anything else, as I wasn’t looking for another behemoth design to add to my collection simply for it to collect dust.  Yet with the recent reprinting of The Great Zimbabwe, I finally wilted to the Splotter effect and picked up my second title from their offering.

The Great Zimbabwe caught my eye because it doesn’t feature an overwhelming menu of cards, nor does it run the risk of lasting 4 hours.  Rather, this game comes with a clean board of land and water spaces on a grid, a handful of resource and artisan tiles, a few simple cards, some wooden player discs, and a pile of money in the shape of cows.  I was also drawn to this game simply because of how unique it feels compared to anything else I’ve ever seen.

The object of the game is to get your point marker to reach your victory requirement disc.  All player discs start at 20 points, yet your personal finish line can move further and further away (up to double your starting distance—40!) if you greedily add any advantages to your tableau.  These advantages come in the form of technology cards, god cards, and specialist cards.  It’s a thrilling temptation to have constantly dangling in front of you, because many of these cards offer mega-powerful, rule-breaking abilities.  So will you attempt to play a quick, clean game using only the standard options at your disposal, or will you plunge into the deep end by enjoying the card-benefits now and worrying about the consequences later?

What you’re doing from round to round is bidding cows for turn order (with the paid cows getting evenly distributed back to all players), and then adding artisan tiles to the board or paying those artisans to help you raise your monuments.  The spatial requirements of placing artisans and accessing their goods is the beating heart of The Great Zimbabwe.  Artisans must be within three spaces of resource sites, and your monuments must be within three spaces of artisans, but a blob of water counts as one big space, and you can use anybody’s monuments as “hubs” to reset your three space limit—sort of like a refuel station.

It makes for a refreshingly unique puzzle, especially once you wrap your brain around it.  I’ll admit, I had to watch a playthrough, read the rulebook, and then watch a How to Play video to finally wrap my brain around this wonky design.  I’ve observed that Splotter doesn’t write the best rulebooks either, so that certainly doesn’t help the onboarding experience.  Fortunately, all that effort has absolutely paid off for us.

At its core, The Great Zimbabwe is a tight economic struggle between all players where every single decision you make has a massive impact on the entire group.  Budgeting your cows wisely between the turn order bids, artisan construction expenses, specialist abilities, and monument raising requirements is vital to a competitive strategy.  When one player appears to be running away with the victory, you can really shake things up by putting out a secondary artisan or raising the prices of your goods to soul-gouging heights.  Such a move just might buy you enough time for a late come-back victory.

In a lot of ways, this one reminds me of some of my all-time favorite Euros including Age of Steam, Brass, and… how about that, Bus.  It’s a game that is not afraid to step out of the way and let the players crash into each other or fly off a cliff as they grapple with the emergent strategies and dynamic game board.

At any rate, I haven’t even won The Great Zimbabwe yet; my two opponents have both gotten the best of me in some absolutely tight competitions, but I’ve come away from these 3-player games hungry for more.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that this is the best new-to-me, published game that I’ve encountered this year.  

Current Rating: 9/10

Switch & Signal

2 Plays

It’s time to make good on my anticipatory blog post from *checks calendar* 1.5 years ago. One of my most anticipated games of 2021 was in fact a 2020 release titled Switch & Signal, so here I am, finally talking about the game after playing it in July of 2022.  I take no blame for the drawn out conclusion, as Kosmos waited 17 whole months before releasing their game in other languages besides German.  As the saying goes: “The best time to release a game is after the hype train is long gone…” or something along those lines.  That’s why we here at Bitewing Games follow the tried and true crowdfunding model of big splashy campaign, small pledge manager rekindling, delay, delay, delay, delay, and then release 😆.

Fortunately, many crowdfunded games get a second wind when they finally deliver to backers and critics as they board the second hype train.  But I’m not sure that Switch & Signal benefitted from a second train or second wind of any kind, as its North American release earlier this year seemed to go largely quiet and unnoticed.  What this one needed was a third hype train, one of critical acclaim and internet recognition to remind us all that this cooperative train game was worth a look.

Having played and enjoyed both sides of the game board (Central Europe and North America), I too can confirm that this is a solid experience. In Switch & Signal, you’ll take turns resolving a departure card before spending your hand of cards as actions.  Departure cards can deploy new trains and/or trigger train movement.  You’ll also have cards that let you push trains even further along their set path, but most of your cards let you manipulate the switches and signals of the train tracks.  The objective is to route your trains toward cube-filled cities so all the cubes can be delivered to a port before time runs out.  Each train can only carry one cube, and they tend to come from all different directions moving at a wide range of speeds, and therein lies the challenge of the game.

These moving trains will constantly be threatening to encounter delays, hit dead ends, take unintended detours, or collide with other trains, so it’s up to you and the gang to keep the trains on task and the cubes en route to their destination.  Switch & Signal poses a simple gameplay loop to rival that of Pandemic, and it provides a solid, unique, thematic, and engaging cooperative experience.  It constantly offers up interesting decisions from which train type to deploy, which risks are top priority, how should your hand be used, which direction should you send each train, and when should you activate your one-time-use helpers?  

Although it’s best to adapt to whatever enters your hand from the draw pile, you can always discard two cards as a wild action.  You’ll constantly be pressured to blow all of your cards in a single turn.  The pressure comes in the form of losing time via inefficient train directing.  Each problem you allow will accelerate your defeat as you spend time tokens and lose departure cards.  But if you can manage to conserve your cards and overlook smaller risks, that often pays off later when you find yourself needing a larger hand in a future turn.

Despite hitting all the right notes, Switch & Signal is not able to overcome the usual weaknesses of the cooperative genre.  The opportunity for quarterbacking is wide open here, and alpha gamers will struggle to resist bossing their teammates around when those precious cubes and time tokens are at stake.  Even worse, there’s really no benefit to having more players at the table.  It’s effectively a solo game where your turns are divided among all the participants.  Yet as a 2 player game, it’s perfectly fine.

The bigger issue, at least for me, is that I already feel like I’ve seen and experienced everything that Switch & Signal has to offer.  As with many other cooperative games—once you’ve conquered the challenge and sampled the entire menu, you lose the hunger to come back for more.  Tweaking the difficulty by subtracting a departure card or two isn’t interesting enough to keep me coming back for more.  It’s far different from a competitive game, where the interactive struggle between players continually breathes new life into the core gameplay loop.

I’ve found that my favorite cooperative games tend to contain at least one of these key ingredients:

• Virtually Endless Content.  Games like The Crew and MicroMacro (and their sequels) keep me coming back for more because there is always a new objective to overcome or a fresh case to crack.  When games like Switch & Signal offer nothing new and enticing to rekindle my curiosity or push me out of my usual strategy or stretch me beyond my current skill level, then I quickly lose interest.
• Brutally Challenging & Thoroughly Tense Gameplay.  Cooperative games don’t always have to be packed with content or variety to hold my attention—sometimes all I need is a good challenge.  Despite having “seen it all,” I’m happy to return to games like The Mind, Regicide, or Siege of Runedar because I know these titles will put up a good fight.  These are all games that destroyed us on our first few plays, yet they allowed us enough hope to not give up entirely.  With Switch & Signal, we won both of our plays.  The first session was thrillingly close, mind you, but I’d prefer to lose my initial attempts at a cooperative or solo game rather than conquer it instantly.

The good news is that the rulebook implies that designer David Thompson has concocted expansion content for Switch & Signal to help give the game a longer lifespan.  The bad news is that Kosmos took 17 months to localize the game to English, and even 2 years after its debut there are no signs of any expansion being brought to life.  But even if the core game experience ends up being all that we ever get, I suppose it remains a solid train ride that is worth the trip, and even the occasional revisit, for folks who can spare the investment.

Current Rating: 7/10

Longboard

3 Plays

One aspect I appreciate about Reiner Knizia’s ludography is that it spans a wide spectrum of genres and styles… You have epic cooperative challenges such as Lord of the Rings and Siege of Runedar, family friendly romps including Quest for El Dorado and Whale Riders, dynamic and deep strategy games including Babylonia and Stephenson’s Rocket, simple lively crowd pleasers like Soda Smugglers and Rapido, unique and novel concepts including Tajuto and Pumafiosi, and tense 2-player tug of wars such as Royal Visit and Battle Line.  If I were to reduce my collection down to purely Knizia designs, I would still have a great game to satisfy almost any group or setting.

Not only does he provide a wide spanning breadth of offerings, but he also plunges deep into various genres by iterating on his most compelling concepts.  You’ll find some of the key tile placement ingredients of classic Through the Desert in Blue Lagoon and Orongo.  You’ll enjoy the shared incentive betting of Winner’s Circle in Equinox.  You’ll recognize the clever scoring of Ra in Sumatra and Ra: The Dice Game.  And you’ll spot the game-of-chicken auctions from Taj Mahal in Beowulf: The Legend and Karate Tomate.  If you find something you really love about a Knizia game, odds are that you can find that favorite flavor with a unique twist in several other designs in his catalogue.

Longboard is another such game that sees Reiner iterating on the core concept of a popular game series—namely Lost Cities.  In both games, players are committing to runs of cards in various colors by playing ascending values into their personal tableaus.  The difference in Lost Cities is that your hand remains hidden from your opponent, yet you are strictly limited in hand size and constantly forced to play or discard cards far earlier than you’d like.  With Longboard, you don’t have a private hand or even a card limit.  Rather, your supply of cards is public information and open to a form of thievery—forced trades.

In Longboard, your turn consists of two actions of your choice: draw a card from the deck and add it to your supply, take a card from your supply and add it to your tableau, or swipe a card from an opponent’s supply and replace it with higher value card(s) from your own supply.

Those two key differences—public hands and forced trades—go a long way in making Longboard feel drastically different from Lost Cities.  Other differences include a wider player count (2-4), randomized objective cards (for bonus points), and milder scoring.  You’ll still be punished for not completing a surf board that you started, but the punishment is merely 1 or 2 negative points rather than Lost Cities’ 10 or 20 or more.

Of course I enjoy the Lost Cities style of tense card play that Longboard provides, but I appreciate it most for how it stands out in my collection.  When an opponent displays a highly coveted card in their supply that would be perfect for one of your growing longboards, you’ll spend the next few moments desperately hoping that nobody claims it before your next turn.  You’ll let out a sigh of relief if it survives the gauntlet, only to realize that the only way you can acquire that card is by giving up one or more valuable cards from your own supply!  What if your forced trade helps your opponent more than it helps you?  What if you give up a card that you’ll need later?  How will you spend your two actions?  If you leave cards in your supply for too long, they’ll get swiped away right before you were planning to play them.

Within this casual space of 20 to 30-minute gaming, Longboard certainly hits the spot.  Folks who prefer tighter, spicier, and more punishing experiences in this field are likely to prefer Lost Cities or Arboretum.  But if you enjoy exploring the differences, then you’ll certainly find something to appreciate within Longboard.

Current Rating: 7.5/10

Carpe Diem

1 Play

Carpe Diem!  Seize the day!  A game with such an ambitious title must surely be an ambitious design, correct?  Well… if only.

After playing five other Stefan Feld games, I can definitely confirm that Carpe Diem is also a Stefan Feld game 😆.  The point salad force is strong with this one.  You’ve got your turn order track (which will score you points at the end of the game).  You’ve got your resource collection (which will convert into points at the end of the game if you haven’t spent them on points earlier).  You’ve got your tile drafting and placement (which will gain you resources and/or points when you complete buildings and fields).  And you’ve got your objective card selection (which will score you points both during the game and at the end).  Indeed, Carpe Diem is a Feld, through and through.  Unfortunately, it’s the most soulless Feld of the six I’ve played and perhaps the most soulless Euro I’ve played this year.

What do I mean by soulless?  Well the tiles consist of plain old rooftops and fields—blobs and rectangles of red and grey and purple and brown.  The resources are coins, fish, bread, leaves, grapes, and chickens—you know, Roman stuff.  The primary driver of points is a large display of bland objective cards that demand things like: “Pay 2 chickens for 4 points,” “Build a green building for 3 points,” “Build a gray building for 3 points” “Build two fields for 5 points,” and so on.  The tile placement is like Carcassonne (connect matching sides of square tiles), but with all of the competitive joy sucked out.  The tile drafting consists of moving your person to one of two spots and selecting one tile from up to four options—move, take, place, rinse, & repeat.

The design is fine, mind you.  The decision making is substantial and the mechanisms are coherent.  There’s nothing here that would make you hate the game, necessarily.  Yet Carpe Diem is devoid of any personality whatsoever.  Where is the imagination here?  What makes this one stand out in any way from the haystack of Euros both old and new?  What kind of experience is this immersing players in aside from a bone-dry efficiency puzzle?  The game only lasted an hour, yet somehow it felt like two.  If I had to accuse any game of being generated by a lifeless algorithm—just input a few mechanisms and let it spew out an instant answer—then Carpe Diem would be my chief suspect.  I suppose that’s the most efficient way to make a game.  Seize the day, indeed.

Current Rating: 5/10

Sumatra

1 Play

Despite my being a huge Knizia fan, there are certain releases that even I will pass on (or at least hesitate to purchase), one of those being Sumatra after it garnered a lukewarm critical reception.  But the fact that I enjoyed Ludonova’s other Knizia Games (Babylonia and Siege of Runedar) is what led me to finally try Sumatra.

Despite having a pretty box cover, I imagine that Sumatra didn’t make a huge splash upon its release largely because of its simple premise and recycled concepts.  No particular aspect of the gameplay necessarily leaps out at onlookers and demands to be explored.  All you’re doing in the game is drafting from a public pile of tiles or moving your tiny traveler to the next space.  There are no lively auctions or crunchy economics or elaborate puzzles to acquire what you need—simply pick a tile or march onward!

The most engaging aspect of this island excursion game comes from the combination of the player-driven tempo and clever set collection scoring.  You and your opponents travel around the island in a large pack, as if you are following a tour guide and exploring the flora, fauna, scenery and villages while interacting with inhabitants and collecting local crafts.  If one player strays ahead of the pack, then the others are forced to catch up, but they can linger behind just a little longer to squeeze one more tile out of that site.

The never-ending question that the game poses to players is this: Which is more worthwhile—hanging back to soak in the available opportunities or racing ahead for first dibs on yet unknown mysteries?  It’s a game of opportunity costs where you’ll constantly be missing out on some expedition experiences because you were too focused on others.  Sometimes you’ll resent your fellow travelers for pulling you away from exciting encounters; other times, you’ll quickly grow bored of an area’s offerings and push the tour ahead far sooner than others are ready for.  Honestly, it’s a brilliant theme for a set collection game, even if it’s a bit quirky.

You’re not only gaining encounters with and memories of people and wildlife, but you’re also managing your travel equipment and hunting for GPS signals.  Each player gets a large travel notebook for collecting their tiles, and each row presents a unique incentive.  All tiles will score you positive or negative points at the end of the game, but some will earn you bonus point badges or bonus tile drafts along the way.  

The inhabitant row presents a competitive majority track, where you’ll be rewarded or punished for having the most or least inhabitant tiles, respectively.  The craft row provides snowballing points that pushes you into becoming an obsessive collector once you get a taste of the island materialism.  The flora and fauna must be combined in pairs in order to score, but you can push your luck and spread them out because you’ll only score the higher valued tile from each pair.  GPS devices and reception tiles also form pairs, but rather than score points on their own they help you to discover lost/unobtainable tiles.  Villages are great to visit, but the entire row is all or nothing scoring depending on if you have more pairs of GPS/reception tiles than village tiles.  Volcanoes are high risk and high reward, as they should be, scoring you negative points or positive points depending on if you acquired enough equipment to match the volcano.  And finally, the equipment row is vital in that all your tiles in a column are invalid unless that column has at least one equipment tile, yet stacking three of a kind in one space can lead to a 15 point swing from equipment and volcano points—so will you stack or spread your equipment?

While you’ll spend the entire game wrestling with all of these competing incentives on your personal board, you’ll also be gunning for the bonus point badges that are awarded to the first player to collect x amount of tiles in a row or column.  This badge mechanism is an essential element that helps maintain a tension of table competition and tough decisions.  It makes Sumatra feel less like a lazy, rejuvenating vacation and more like a stressful, demanding adventure.

Sumatra presents yet another example for why Reiner is a master of compelling set collection and interesting scoring.  Although, folks who are familiar with his broader work will recognize that Sumatra borrows much from other Knizia classics, most notably Ra.  Sumatra takes the fascinating set collection of Ra and combines it with the tense player-driven tempo of Whale Riders.  This combination makes for a solid design and an enjoyable experience, yet the purity and simplicity of Sumatra also means that it struggles to stand out from its peers.

Whale Riders provides a lightning quick action efficiency romp.  Ra delights with agonizing auctions and nail-biting push-your-luck rounds.  Both of these games are also surprisingly great from their lowest to highest player counts.  In many ways, Sumatra feels less enticing, more niche, and somewhat redundant.  It’s a questionable addition to my collection with limited shelf space and even more limited opportunities to get these games to the table.  The game also takes a hit when one compares productions and approachability—where Ra (the newest version) puts everything you need to learn and remember about the setup and scoring directly onto the player boards, Sumatra presents bare player boards and a single, clumsy side aid.  Sumatra also desperately needs yet is bafflingly missing a score pad to help players tally their scores across the 9 rows of tiles and extra badge tokens.  

In spite of all these drawbacks, I still found myself enjoying Sumatra.  Maybe it’ll happen sooner than I think, but right now I’m reluctant to get rid of the game.  I’m keen to revisit this solid experience with further plays, but it probably won’t hit the table nearly as frequently as the rest of my Knizia collection.

Current Rating: 7/10

Green Team Wins

1 Play

Green Team Wins is one of the hot new releases from Origins Game Fair 2022 targeted squarely at parties of any shape or size.  The objective is simple: Get on the Green Team, stay on the Green Team, and win.

This game comes loaded with 12 player boards and markers, but you could even combine two boxes into a mega-group bonanza.  That’s because the gameplay is pacy and light.  Everyone is asked the same question, there are three types—fill in the blank, best of three, this or that.  These questions can be things such as: Curly fries or Waffle fries?  Captain ______?  Euro Games or Ameritrash Games (this one is from the Board Gamer promo pack)?  Then, all players will secretly write down an answer—either one that aligns with their preferences or one that they predict will be the most popular.  Finally, all players reveal their answer with the most popular response becoming the winner.

A winning answer will allow you to jump from the orange team to the green team and score one point.  From there, you want to try and continue your hot streak, as you’ll get two points with future correct answers as an existing green team member, and you’ll be demoted back to the pitiful orange team the moment you don’t choose the most popular answer.

It’s silly, simple, and quick.  Those who prefer to get more nuanced or strategic party games to the table (e.g. Codenames, Decrypto, Wavelength, So Clover, etc.) will likely be left unsatisfied.  On the other hand, it’s basically impossible to be upset with a crowd-pleasing game that only lasts 15 minutes (unless your group insists on playing it 10 times in a row, I suppose).  Plus, I can’t think of any game that engages this large of a crowd this well (we’re talking 12, 15, or 20… if you have a second copy), so it definitely has a place in the right gathering.

Current Rating: 6/10

Wonderland’s War

1 Play

Another title from my “games I’d love to play but I’m too cheap to buy” bucket list is the recently released Wonderland’s War, which I’ve heard is a killer combination of Quacks of Quedlinburg and Rising Sun.

I’m already a fan of these genres—push-your-luck, bag building, and area control—and Wonderland’s War is a newborn baby of these parent genres.  More specifically, it’s a baby that has had its milk spiked with caffeine and steroids.  Those who acquire a copy of the game (especially the deluxe Kickstarter edition) will also likely need to knockout a wall in their home to give it ample space to reside.  This isn’t your average newborn, it’s a Paul Bunyan-sized baby.

The bits and bobs and tokens and trays know no bounds, but at the end of the day the most important part of the game is it’s gameplay experience.  You’ll be adding troops to various regions of Wonderland, acquiring more recruits into your bagged army of tokens, gaining powerful Wonderlandians to aid your conquest, unlocking asymmetric character abilities to use to your advantage, striving to avoid madness which plagues your supply, embarking on secret quests to gain bonus points, and pushing-your-luck in bag-draw battles.

Normally, in an area control game such as this, the number of troops in a region equates to the amount of strength you have against your competition.  In Wonderland’s War, that is not the case.  More troops is still a good thing, but that only means you have a better chance of surviving the battle long enough to score points from the region.

Your strength in a region, and thus your ability to score 1st or 2nd place points, is mainly determined by whatever “ally chips” you draw from your bag.  Just like Quacks, all players involved in the conflict will simultaneously draw tokens one-by-one from their customized concoction of chips.  These chips have unique types and strengths, and their abilities are dependent on whatever ally cards you set out for that session.  One ability will score you bonus points, another with double the strength of the next chip drawn, and other might trigger your character ability.  There are as many ally card abilities as there are sands of the desert sea.  So with all these possible combinations, you are unlikely to want for more variety.

But as all push-your-luck games go, it’s possible to draw the bad things out of your bag—namely madness chips.  These will progressively weaken your presence on the board until you evaporate from existence, assuming you or your opponents don’t bow out first.  So deciding when to quit drawing and concede a battle can be a tough but vital decision—2nd place region points are better than no points at all.

Another reason you might back out of a heated battle comes from the secret Quest cards which encourage you to do things like end a battle in a specific location at a specific number of strength which will reward you with 3 points for doing so.  This can be a disheartening decision to those who bet on you winning the battle only to discover that you had ulterior motives.  But more than that, these quests feel unexciting, arbitrary, and undermining when compared to the focus of the game.  Much like other games with private objective cards that are drawn mid-game, you can easily draw yourself into an objective that you already accidentally completed just as easily as you can end up with a hopeless dud.

For me, the real meat of Wonderland’s War comes from the combination of unrestrained bag building, engaging push-your-luck battles, and competitive jockeying for region control.  If the box was half as big and the playtime half as long, I’d be twice as eager to plunge further down this rabbit hole.

Current Rating: 7.5/10

Beowulf: The Legend

1 Play

Beowulf: The Legend is yet another seemingly forgotten Knizia design from nearly two decades ago.  In board game years, that practically makes it an ancient artifact.  This is one that I never hear anyone talk about aside from Mark Bigney of the So Very Wrong About Games podcast.  Yet this is actually one of Mark’s all-time favorite Knizias.  While we don’t exactly agree on everything (Babylonia is, in fact, a masterpiece Mark!), there is no denying that the man knows his Knizias.

I waited far longer than I should have to try Beowulf: The Legend.  Frankly, the theme and production aren’t the most approachable in Reiner’s catalogue.  While the art is evocative, it doesn’t exactly stand out from the thousands of other games that feature dragons and swords.  Even worse, the game board features a winding trail of 36 microscopic spaces with text and icons that almost require a magnifying glass.  Unboxing the game and cracking open that rulebook for the first time required an unwavering drive to get the game played and trust in Knizia’s design chops.

Going into our first play, I understood that Beowulf shared some similarities with it’s more popular sibling, Taj Mahal.  Players manage their own hand of cards and must decide how to commit their cards during sequential auctions; yet knowing when to quit an auction (or not even attempt it) and settle for a lesser reward is equally important.  The two designs branch off in different directions from there.

Players act as comrades to Beowulf as he progresses through the legendary events of his story.  The player who has earned the most fame over the course of play will be crowned victor of the game and successor to Beowulf himself upon his passing.  The tabletop experience takes you through a series of minor and major events.  Minor events present players will quick, simple decisions to help them prepare for major events which can be a couple different types of auctions.

Players will either bid simultaneously or, more often, in a clockwise cycle where the highest bidders (or last to pass) will get first-dibs on the bonuses of the event.  Some of these rewards aren’t bonuses at all, rather they can be scratches or wounds that become massive problems if a player accumulates too many by the end of the journey.

Each auction is tied to a couple different card suits (out of five possible options), and thus these are the only cards you can play from your hand to gun for the best prizes.  The brilliant twist here is that you are not fully restricted by what is in your hand.  Each time it’s your turn to raise or match the bid, you can actually start your turn by choosing to take a “Risk” action.  This simply means that you will flip over the top two cards from the deck—any cards that match the current auction’s suit requirements are automatically added to your bid.  But this optional action isn’t called “Risk” for nothing.  If your two revealed cards do not match the current auction’s suit, then you are immediately eliminated from the auction and you must take a scratch token (three scratches turn into a wound, and three or more wounds will decimate your end-game score).

So not only are a playing a game of chicken against your opponents—deciding when to commit all your resources against a competitor versus when to pull back and reserve your cards for a potentially better or easier prize down the road—but you can also press-your-luck against the deck itself in hopes of scrounging up exactly what you need to stay in the auction.

While the biggest barrier to entry was motivating myself to acquire, learn, and play Beowulf, that didn’t stop me from plunging myself and four other newcomers straight into the “advanced rules.”  This basically adds another type of auction (with money) that we all handled and enjoyed just fine.  And the aged production didn’t get in the way of us having a blast.

I’m honestly a bit baffled that Beowulf: The Legend isn’t more highly rated by BGG users.  An average rating of 6.4 isn’t bad, but it isn’t amazing either.  My hunch is that some folks find it to be a bit too long (our play was much longer than the promised 60 minutes), or too luck-dependent (you can certainly be hosed by the Risk mechanism).  But I was fully engaged from start to finish, and I found the card draw element to be quite thrilling as the cost of busting can be quite painful yet the reward for success is endlessly enticing.  I also had the luxury of playing the game at the strongly recommended 5-player count.  But even then, the game tailors the auction rewards to the exact player count of the session, so I have to imagine that 3 and 4 player games are better than most folks give it credit for.  I’ll likely find out before too long.

Current Rating: 8.5/10

Our next Kickstarter project, Trailblazers, launches on August 16!  The pre-launch page is live where you can click to be notified the moment it launches.  Bitewing Games is only made possible and kept alive by the support of backers and fans of our published games.   Thanks for your support!

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 1st Impressions of Wonderland’s War, The Great Zimbabwe, Longboard, Green Team Wins, Switch & Signal, & more! appeared first on Bitewing Games.

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.

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