This year had an unprecedented number of new games added to the list, and no more is that more evident than this part of the list. Only 5 games in this section are retreads from a previous year, and one of those actually is a Second Edition of a game whose first edition fell off the list years ago. The last couple years have just been utterly fantastic for new, interesting and novel board games of all types, sizes and weight classes. Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta gamer.
Previous entries: 100-91 90-81 80-71 70-61 60-51 50-41 40-31
30. Underwater Cities
Released: 2018
Designer: Vladimir Suchy
Players: 1-4
Estimated Time: 80-150 minutes
In the not-too-future, all of the best real estate has an ocean view. In Underwater Cities, players will compete to build new settlements at the bottom of the sea, by building an interconnected series of domes. To do so, they’ll need to harvest kelp, gather resources, and science the shit out of everything.
The key design innovation is the action selection system. Every turn, players activate an unoccupied space and play a card to go along with it. Both the card and the space have actions on them, but they only get to do both things if the colors match, meaning that players need to carefully manage their three-card hand to get optimal benefits and deal with other players blocking where they need to go.
Underwater Cities also has a tableau building element to it, and due to its slightly-heavier-than-average weight class, is likely to appeal to fans of Terraforming Mars – although ‘build your own atlantis’ is likely not as sticky a theme as Mars, even though both have a strong scientific undertow to their themes. Still, it looks much better on the table, and everyone always loves the little domes that make up their drowned suburbia.
29. VagrantSong
Released: 2022
Designer: Matt Carter, Justin Gibbs, Kyle Rowan
Players: 2-4
Estimated Time: 45-120 minutes
It’s Hobo Ghostbusters.
VagrantSong is a cooperative, story driven game where you and your fellow Drifters are travelling across the country in a train, which it turns out is haunted. Your hobo gang will need to work together in order to help these lost spirits find peace – before the haunting spirits trap you into an existence of eternal torment.
At its core, VagrantSong is a campaign-based tactical game. There are roughly 20 scenarios for the players to play – arranged in a campaign, and each one centers around a different ghost which has a different AI and/or set of rules for players to adapt to. Meanwhile, the players themselves will be moving their pieces around the board, and trying to solve the puzzle before everyone in the party loses their humanity.
There’s a lot to like about VagrantSong – although I should stress the rule book could definitely be a lot cleaner. But one of the things to really call out is its charm. The art is a wonderful cartoony style that is represented throughout the game, including on the acrylic standees for both your characters and the ghosts. And the writing is funny, witting, charming and occasionally dark – as you’d expect. The end result is a tactical game that feels very DIFFERENT than the typical swords-and-sorcery or sci-fi fare that most tactical games aspire towards. And different in a good way – VagrantSong feels far more accessible than others in the same genre, despite how unusual the theme is.
28. Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes!
Released: 2022
Designer: Paolo Mori
Players: 1-2
Estimated Time: 20 minutes
The days of the Roman Republic are coming to an end, as Julius Caesar maneuvers in order to name himself emperor and gain absolute power and become master of the known world. If you happen to be Caesar, that sounds pretty good. If you’re the other guys, not so much.
Caesar is a light two-player game. On each player’s turn, the player has two military strength tokens to choose from, and they’ll choose to place one of them on an open border spot These tokens are themed (for example, you can only place navy tokens in the water) and are split in value – you might give 6 military to one province while adding 0 to the other (as shown in the sea in the image below).
Once provinces are completed (all border spots are filled), the player who completes the province takes the orange token inside, which is a bonus token that grants special powers. Then the player who has the most power in the province takes control of it by placing an influence token on it. The first player to place all of their influence tokens wins the game.
The thing I like about the game is the simplicity and the deviousness of the split token values. A strong military presence in one area will often necessitate leaving a dilapidated presence in its neighbor, meaning that every token placed is forcing you to make harsh decisions about what to fight for and what to concede to your opponent.
This is my top-ranked two-player game, although I confess I don’t play as many of these as others. But the deep tactics, quick playtime and small form factor make this particular game a delight. If the idea of this game appeals to you, you may want to look into Blitzkrieg! as well.
27. Blood Rage
Released: 2015
Designer: Eric M Lang
Players: 2-4
Estimated Time: 60-90 minutes
In Blood Rage, you play a clan of Vikings to get together with other Vikings and do viking things. You know, drinking ale, taking long boat rides, knitting warm wool sweaters, a hefty side order of pillaging and, of course, Ragnarok. The end of time is upon you, and it’s the last chance for your clan to to prove their mettle and secure their place in Valhalla.
Blood Rage is a ‘dudes on a map’ game combined with a card drafting/deckbuilder. There are three rounds, and in each round, players will draft a hand of 8 cards. With that hand, you’ll be armed to take your turn and advance your clan’s glory: invade the map, move your troops around, and summon mighty beasts to fight for you.
Eric Lang is one of the finest board game designers on the market, and two of his other games (Chaos in the Old World and Marvel United) are already on this list. He’s the king of finding new ways to reinvent the classic ‘dudes on a map’ formula, and Blood Rage may well be the pinnacle of his design efforts.
26. Space Base
Released: 2018
Designer: John D Clair
Players: 2-5
Estimated Time: 60 minutes
It’s not easy being an intergalactic parking lot attendant.
Your little armada consists of twelve ships, representing the numbers from one to twelve. On each turn, you’ll roll dice and choose to activate them seperately – as an example, if you roll a 3 and a 4, you can opt to activate two ships (in the 3 and 4 stardocks) or just activate the 7 ship instead. Each ship, when activated, grants resources or other effects. Sometimes, these effects chain in delightful ways.
What makes Space Base good is how it keeps you engaged on other player’s turns. When you decide to replace your ‘7’ ship with an upgrade, you take your old 7 ship and stack it under the ‘7’ slot. Now, whenever someone else rolls, you’ll activate that card. Now, these flipped benefits are decidedly lesser than what the unflipped ships – but you can stack several cards under one number and gain the benefits of ALL the cards you stacked. It’s very common to get to a situation where other players’ turns are more productive than your own!
Space Base is not the first of its genre. It builds upon concepts already seen in similar games like Machi Koro and Valeria: Card Kingdoms. But this general formula is a winner – especially if you like easy-to-teach games where everyone is engaged on every turn, and so far Space Base is the best iteration of that format.
25. Western Legends
Released: 2018
Designer: Herve Lemaitre
Players: 2-6
Estimated Time: 60-90 minutes
About as pure a sandbox game as you’re likely to find in the board game space. Do you want to be a cowboy? An outlaw? A lawman? Poker ace? Run a brothel? Prospect for gold? Scrub the latrines? You can almost do it all.
On top of simply moving around the map and performing these thematic actions to earn Legendary Points that will win them the game, players are also dealt poker cards at the start of each turn. These cards all have effects that can offer new actions or otherwise break the rules for the game. Or players can save them up to assemble for a hand of poker in the saloon. Player actions may also result in them getting on the wrong side of the law – which offers short-term gains but may also offer big scoring opportunities for other players who continue to wear the white hat.
Western Legends is a beautiful, thematic experience and one of those that’s great out of the box, but the expansions just continue to add new activities for players to do. If you want to play a game that’s more about just being in a world instead of trying to beat it, Western Legends is for you.
24. Cascadia
Released: 2021
Designer: Randy Flynn
Players: 1-4
Estimated Time: 30-45 minutes
A simple yet compelling tile drafting game, where each player is trying to build their own thriving ecosystem in the Pacific Northwest.
The mechanics are quite simple: each turn, players will draft one bit of land, and one animal token that has been paired with it. Each piece of land can support up to three different kinds of animal tokens, but only one animal can find their home there.
The ultimate goal is to place these animal tokens in your personal park in such a way that they match certain patterns that score points – deer like to stick to herds, bears in pairs, and hawks alone. And yet, the scoring specifics of each are randomly chosen from a deck of cards each game, adding more variability to the game, which helps keep the game fresh.
Cascadia simple, fast to teach, and fast to play – a great little filler game that’s also easy on the pocketbook. There’s a good reason why it’s one of the hottest games in its weight class.
23. Mansions of Madness (Second Edition)
Released: 2016
Designer: Nikki Valens
Players: 1-5
Estimated Time: 120-180 minutes
The original Mansions of Madness was a great game with huge flaws. An enormous ‘dungeon crawl’ where one player played a Dungeon Master character who controlled the monsters and the rest of the players would play investigators trying to figure out what was going on, and put a stop to it. The game came with a number of different scenarios that played quite differently from each other, and plenty more were available via an app.
The game was not without it’s problems, most notably that game setup was a terrible slog and scenarios were kind of frail – it wasn’t uncommon for the DM to miss a step and break the whole game, something that wasn’t uncommon enough.
The Second Edition fixed that, by replacing the need for a player to run the game with an app. The app handles setup, tracks all the hidden variables to progress the scenario, and manages the AI for the enemies hunting players down. This, of course, means that all players get to play (although one still has to be savvy enough to manage the app). The end result is one of the best story-infused dungeon-crawl sorts of experiences on the market, and probably the best Lovecraft game you can get as well.
22. Cryo
Released: 2021
Designer: Tom Jolly, Luke Laurie
Players: 2-4
Estimated Time: 60-90 minutes
While flying across the galaxy, your colony ship got into a nasty squabble over the remote control in the officer’s lounge, and as a result, your ship ended up crashing into a frozen backwater on the ass end of the universe, and even worse, the crew has split into four angry factions who hate each other and have vowed never to send each other Christmas cards ever again. As the leader of one of those factions, you need to get your population under the surface of the frozen planet before the sun sets, because frankly everyone forgot to bring thermal underwear.
Cryo is a fairly simple worker placement game, but with a twist. Your workers are drones you can to various clover-shaped worker spaces across the board, and the drones can access any adjacent space. Given that most spaces have at least two drone docking points next to them, it means you have multiple access points to get to the same locations — and blocking others from those locations takes more effort and planning.
The other thing that I really like about Cryo is the slick, colorful presentation. While most sci-fi themes have opted more for a dark, metallic, realistic presentation, the art of Cryo hews closer to a graphic novel aesthetic, which means it really feels like something you haven’t seen before. Overall a solid, excellent eurogame on the lighter side of Eurogames.
21. Praga Caput Regni
Released: 2020
Designer: Vladimir Suchy
Players: 1-4
Estimated Time: 45-150 minutes
Charles IV has been elevated to be not only the King of Bohemia, but also the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, and he wants to transform the city of Prague into a city of glory that is a testament to his reign. And yes, he’s a wasteful megalomaniac of the highest order, but as an architect, you approve of his grand ambition as it is very good for the family business.
Praga is a very heavy Euro, and it’s got a lot going on. It’s a presentation, whether it’s the wall and cathedral stands, the action crane wheel or the cute little bridge. You’ll work with all of these to gather resources, build walls, complete the bridge, construct buildings and advance technologies.
The beating heart of Praga is the action crane wheel. This is a round game construct that contains beige tiles. Each tile contains two actions the player can perform – the player chooses one of those. However, each tile is on a wheel which spins around, and lines up with bonuses on the inner circle of the wheel. On top of that, tiles may have costs or bonuses on the outside. This rewards you with bonuses if you choose a tile that hasn’t been chosen in a while (shown as blue in the picture above) and penalties if you chose a tile that has been recently chosen (shown as red). The net result is an action system that lets you take any action tile – if you’re willing to pay the cost.
Praga Caput Regni is just a heavyweight of a heavy Euro, which combines beautiful presentation, deep strategy and a very novel core mechanic. Just a great grab if you like the heavy stuff.
Whew – only 20 more to go! Stay tuned this weekend as we make the final push!
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